Theology in the Raw - A Raw Conversation with a Very Thoughtful Left-Wing Atheist: Adam Davidson

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Adam Davidson was a business and economics journalist for 30 or so years at NPR, NY Times, New Yorker and elsewhere. He co-founded NPR's Planet Money. He is an atheist Jew with a Buddhist practice and a long-time fascination with evangelical Christianity. He majored in History of Religion with a focus on evangelicalism at University of Chicago. Adam lives in Vermont with my wife and son. Adam will be speaking at this year’s Exiles in Babylon conference, dialoguing with Dr. Sean McDowell about the question: Is the Evangelical Church Good for this Country. Register HERE for the conference.  -- If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel! Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Or you can support me directly through Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Visit my personal website: https://www.prestonsprinkle.com For questions about faith, sexuality & gender: https://www.centerforfaith.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Logos. Logos is the premier Bible study software. I use Logos almost every single day. I have for many years. In fact, I've been a huge fan of Logos long before they started sponsoring Theology in the Raw. Logos not only gives you a massive theological library right at your fingertips,

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who are already using Logos. And okay, so they just released a new version and it's more affordable than ever. And here's the thing. You can try it for free for 30 days. And if you go to Logos.com forward slash theology, you can take advantage of an exclusive theology in the raw extended two month free trial. So go try it, try it out. It's risk-free. Go check it out. Logos.com forward slash theology. Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in Iran. My guest today is Adam Davidson, who was a business and economics journalist for over 30 years at NPR, New York

Times, New Yorker and elsewhere. And he co-founded NPR's Planet Money. Adam is an atheist Jew with Buddhist practices and a long-time destination with evangelical Christianity. He majored in the history of religion with a focus on evangelicalism at University of Chicago. And Adam will also be a speaker at this year's Exiles in Babylon conference. If you want more information of the conference, go to theologyandroth.com. It's from April 3rd to 5th in Minneapolis. Adam will be speaking with Sean McDowell, wrestling with a question from two different perspectives. Is the evangelical church good for this country? I'm so excited about that conversation at the Exiles Conference. And I was, I love this conversation. I want to have Adam on

just to kind of get to know him. I've never talked to him in person. And I wanted to introduce him to the theology and the audience leading up to the conference. We obviously have very different religious beliefs, but I told Adam, I want to have you on to get to know you better, not to debate the existence of God or stuff like that. Maybe Sean and Adam will get into that, but really, really enjoy getting to Adam. He's a very honest person and a delightful conversationalist, so I think you'll really enjoy this episode. So please welcome to the show for the first time the one and only Adam Davis. Adam, so good to have you on Theology in the Raw. Really looking forward to this conversation.

Give us a bit of your story. You can go as far back as you want. I'm particularly interested in hearing how you have interacted with religion over the years, how you've thought through this broad category of religion and evangelical Christianity in particular, but take us back to how far you want to go, to the womb, to your childhood. Sure. I mean, I grew up, I'd say, culturally, religiously, like as far from evangelical Christianity, I think, as it's possible to be in the United States. I was born in 1970 and grew up in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, which was and is, you know, like extremely left-wing. I mean, I think you could probably have found other pockets in the world or in the country that were more left-wing, maybe.

But like, you know, I grew up not far from Stonewall, which is where the gay liberation movement started. I grew up in a building that's all artists. You have to be an artist to live there and like I think most artists or at least most artists in New York City, extremely left. I grew up in a world that was, I mean, to say it was like pro-gay, it's almost like it was like half gay. It was just a very gay world. It was a very open world to a lot of experimental lifestyles and creative expression.

In grade school, we called our teachers by their first name and we didn't have desks. We would just kind of lie around. And so it was, if you think of the hippies of the 60s, my parents were a little older, so they were more like, but those people growing up having kids, that's the world I grew up in. There was very little formal religion.

I mean, I think growing up, I knew one or two kids who went to church, but that was kind of weird and we didn't understand it. And I'm sure these were super gay affirming, like, you know, left end of mainline Protestant. Well, my dad grew up American Baptist, so kind of what they call softshell Baptist, but my dad was a very, still is, a very strong atheist. So he had long since, I don't know if he ever had faith of any kind, I don't think he did, but long since, you know, and my mom is from Israel, so we grew up really in a Jewish home, but like many Jews, like a secular, not, I mean, we would say blessings, we would go

to synagogue, but it was more kind of a connection to the culture and the history than any kind of religious belief. Like we certainly didn't eat kosher or observe the Sabbath or anything. And I'd say the, almost all the people who practiced anything would have been, you know, there's a lot of like Sri Raj Nish, niche, like these Hindu folks, some of whom are cult-like, some aren't. There were Buddhists, there were more new age folks,

but I really didn't understand faith. I didn't have people in my life who had faith. I had a lot of people in my life who had contempt for faith. So I went to college. I went to University of Chicago and majored in history of religion. And I was like, I want to understand these evangelical Christians.

So growing in the 80s, when I was in high school, you think of some of the televangelist scandals and a kind of growing muscular moral majority. And the world I lived in could only understand these Christians as figures of hate, figures of judgment, sort of a weird combination of like comical, like, youical, like you can imagine all the prejudices that these are ignorant people who don't understand evolution and stuff, and also who just hate us and just want to ruin the world.

And so I was like, I want to understand those people. So the core of my program was ancient Near East religion, so sort of like Mesopotamian up through the Hebrew Bible. But I did some special work where I spent a lot of time at the Moody Bible Institute just because it was in Chicago and got to know a lot of evangelicals and got to understand a lot more about evangelicalism. And sort of to my shock, learned that you could be an evangelical and from a place of love, from a place of a generous spirit. Like I learned respect for some forms of evangelicalism. I also learned, you know,

I also met some people I didn't, you know, who kind of confirmed a lot of the stereotypes. You know, when I would meet kids who were gay who went to Moody Bible Institute, I met some people and the way they were treated. And I've never really had a faith in God. I've never, frankly, I don't understand what that would mean. Like I, even though I have a degree in history of religion,

even though I've spent, you know, in my mid-50s, I've spent a lot of time talking to religious people. I still, like when I say I'm an atheist, I don't mean it like I refuse to believe in God. I mean like I literally don't know what you're talking about. Like at some fundamental level, I don't know what people mean when they say they believe in God.

It doesn't make sense to me. But I do see, even though I see it as manmade, I see religion as a really vital part of how a society works, both good and bad. That doesn't mean it's always good. It also doesn't mean it's always bad. So I do have a personal practice, which we can talk about, which is a Buddhist practice. But I emphasis on practice, like not, you know, I don't know that I don't believe in reincarnation or Buddhism doesn't really have a creator god, but some forms of Buddhism have all sorts of god-like entities. They call them gods. I don't find I believe in anything supernatural. I also have a Jewish

practice. It's not very devout in any way, but we light, it was just Hanukkah, we lit the candles. We sometimes observe just not the full Sabbath, but like light the candles on Shabbat. But that feels more like both the Buddhism and the Judaism feel more to me like a connection to human beings around some themes that allows me to feel like I'm accessing some forms of wisdom and a way of thinking about human issues, but in a broader perspective than just materialism or naturalism or whatever. But I don't find a draw towards any kind of supernatural belief. In fact, I find that stuff just confounding and weird, to be honest with you. I'm curious.

You said your interaction with some evangelicals at Moody and in Chicago, some confirmed your presuppositions, but others maybe disrupted your presuppositions. Tell me about that latter category. What was it about these evangelicals where you're like, oh, these people actually can be loving and good for society. Like, what was it about them that gave that error? So part of it, I'm picturing one guy in particular, I don't remember his name. He was at University of Chicago actually getting his PhD in divinity.

There's just sort of a vibe that some people give you. I've that, um, where there's like, some people give you. That where there's like, you feel they are grounded in some approach to living life that feels peaceful and loving and allows them to engage others, even people they wildly disagree with, from that standpoint of being grounded and loving. And there's sort of a calm to it. There's a gentleness to it. I have a dear Amish friend who passed away a few months ago who really embodied that for me. And I can see the link to their faith in that. I would say while I have a lot of love for Judaism,

I don't think of a lot of Jews I've known who have that. I would say while I have a lot of love for Judaism, I don't think of a lot of Jews I've known who have that. I don't think that's a main driver of Judaism. I would say for me, in my experience, Buddhism is more likely to give that. I find that's part of what draws me to Buddhism is that, not to say there aren't jerky Buddhists or judgmental Buddhists, but I see that. And so I'd say it starts with that feeling, but then intellectually, understanding that a lot of non-Christians or non-evangelical Christians get really caught up on, oh, you think I'm going to hell. And understanding it can be deeper than that.

It can be more profound than that. You have a different understanding of the very fabric of the universe and, and you found a way to feel in keeping with the structure of the universe. And you want to invite me into that. And it pains you to see people not in that. Like that, that I didn't know that existed. You know, I didn't know that was a thing. At the same time, while there are plenty of jerky atheists and stuff, like I met, you know, for me on that gut level, like meeting Christians or anyone like of

any faith who is super caught up in what other people are doing and thinking and feeling and like in a really angry judgmental way where there's like this kind of forced angry certainty. To me, I'm like, I don't believe that you're that you believe what you say you believe like I think to me a real belief in a connection to the eternal and to connect like you you just wouldn't Be all caught up on like on how someone else doesn't get it And I'm so mad at them and like like how like if that's where you got then

I don't want to be part of that. And I don't believe that you actually believe what you're saying you believe. Cause if you did, you'd be chiller about it. Like you almost see a disconnect between how some religious people behave and what they say they believe. Yeah. I, I, I'm not saying this in some like big, like I'm ready to like argue with William Lane Craig

in some really formal way about it or something. I love that you know all these names. I don't know why my calm, happy place is watching evangelical YouTube and also watching atheist YouTube. I don't know why. I can't explain it. It makes no sense to anyone I know or myself.

We all have our guilty pleasures of stuff we watch on YouTube that we will publish next. Yeah. So I'm not trying to make some big philosophical proof. I don't want capturing Christianity to do a whole debunking of my arguments or something. I'm just throwing out Bertuzzi, what's his name. But if someone is spending a lot of time really focused on how other people are doing things wrong, I don't understand, like, if you really truly, like, have accepted and believe that God created the universe, gave His Son to remove all our sins and you have access to a new life born in this good news and you're in a position

to share it. Like, I don't see how you go from that to like freaking out about some people are having brunch and they're drag queens there or like there's like 12 kids in the country who think their gender is different than what they were assigned at birth and being super angry about it. I'm fine with you not wanting your kids to go or even not wanting that to exist. But I would think you'd, if you truly believed what you believe, like I don't see how you get from that to anything other than like a sweet, sad pain like that. I understand. But the like, God damn those people, I hate

them so much. And I'm going to spend a lot of time making them miserable. And then I'm going to say some nonsense about how I hate the sin, but I them so much. And I'm gonna spend a lot of time making them miserable. And then I'm gonna say some nonsense about how I hate this sin, but I love the sinner, but I'm gonna do it in a way that shows I really, really hate the sinner. You know, I wrote an essay years ago about, what was the 1970s movie about the rapture that was like really popular?

Oh, Left Behind, right? But it wasn't Left Behind, it was- Heaven's Gates, Hell's something. Maybe Strangers. I grew up on this stuff. It's been a while, though. Yeah. A Thief in the Night.

A Thief in the Night. Oh, Thief in the Night, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You watch that movie, or you hear Christian music from the 70s, there's a sadness to the non-believer. There's a sympathy and sadness. Not sympathy like I agree with you being a non-believer, but it's a sad, it's like, oh man, there's this beautiful truth.

But then you watch the God's Not Dead series, and it's like this mocking, contemptuous, no non-religious person sees themselves in the secular characters in the God's Not Dead series. It's like a comic, I mean, literally it's hilarious. It's like, I watch it for fun. It's like the funniest stuff in the world. A Thief in the Night tried to sympathetically understand the people who are left behind so that they can better mission to them. God's Not Dead is this kind of triumphalist mocking.

Pugilistic. Pugilistic, setting up straw people. I mean, I know Christians like to say, you can't know someone else's faith. They absurdly somehow use that to imagine Trump is a Christian, but I'm not a Christian, so I get to judge other people's faith. And we'll know you by your fruits. And if your fruits are anger and judgment, then I don't know, you didn't read

the book I read. You didn't connect with the Jesus figure I read about. And not that I'm some authority, but like I said to Sean McDowell once, I would guess that if I was in your church, I'd be in the top 20% of knowledgeable about the New Testament and probably in the top 2% of knowledgeable about the Hebrew Bible. You know, I've done a lot of reading. I think I have, for a non-Christian, a pretty rich understanding. That's sort of where I land, and I mean, we can get into it, but you know, from the outside, I like to think a loving outsider perspective. I'm heartbroken by where the evangelical church is right now. It's like

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And I live with the peace of mind that I'm supporting my health at the cellular level. When you reflect back in like the 1970s version of Christianity, while you disagreed, you felt like the posture was a lot better. It was a grief over people who didn't have this knowledge that led to life or whatever. But now it's much more pugilistic, angry, combative. Where does that shift come from, do you think? Yeah. And I don't want to say this speaks to everybody. No, sure, you're speaking to generalities. Yeah, we get that. Generalities, but you are like a thief in the night,

as I understand it, was like a major thing in Christian circles. Like it really spread. I don't think that vibe, I don't know, I'm happy to be told I'm wrong and that there's lots of movies I haven't seen. But, you know, I'm wrong and that there's lots of movies I haven't seen. But, you know, I'm a pretty avid consumer. And there are lots of people who are trying, you know, today.

Like, so I really don't want to overgeneralize because I think there are tons of, I personally know plenty of Christians who are like, by my definition, which every Christian is free to completely ignore, obviously, but by my definition seem like grounded in a true faith. And I don't know that I have some unique insight, but Jimmy Carter just passed away. We saw from 1976 to 2000, well, I mean, starting with the moral majority in the late sixties, we saw this in my judgmental view, an explicit turning away from a turning towards power, turning towards wanting what is Caesar's, I guess, you know, and in the late eighties, early nineties, like, you know, you're, you're younger, but you know, there's a lot of like the prayer movement, like a kind of like,

oh man, we went too far towards power. Like we went too far towards like prosperity gospel and stuff and you would like this return to wanting these tools and practices that brought that faith deeper into your soul and deeper into your heart. But the public, I mean, certainly the public face of evangelical Christianity today, it's not we want people to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. It's we want people who have not accepted Jesus to also take on all these other viewpoints and actions.

I mean, in a way, to me, It's bizarre like I'm a married straight dad I am NOT saved if I became a transgender Openly gay drag performer. I'm still not safe. Like there's no like like keep your eye on the friggin prize people like it's not like what in the world of the unsaved, like obsessing about minority groups. And I do, I can, you know, I can intellectually understand this feeling of like, I certainly don't agree with it, but I think I can understand this feeling of like, oh my goodness, we've really strayed so far, like in the 50s and even in the early 60s,

like even if most people weren't what we would today call saved, they were living a moral life. And from a certain viewpoint, the kind of base of our culture is immoral or anti-moral. Again, not agreeing, but I can understand that pain and I can understand the fear of like, I'm raising my children in this world and the messages they might be getting

are gonna take them away from, even further away from a moral life. Like I can get myself to understand that, but I can't get myself to then obsessively the level of anger and judgment and cruelty and like theatrical cruelty. I think obviously we can go down a deep, deep, deep well talking about Trump, but among many things about him, the openly delighting and cruelty, the mocking of people, the delighting and humiliating people. And I know that not every evangelical supports Donald Trump. And I know that

I've seen the statistics, like, you know, we say 80 something percent of evangelicals support Trump, but then people will break that down. And, you know, these are self-reported evangelicals support Trump, but then people will break that down. These are self-reported evangelicals and a lot of them aren't even going to church and aren't really affiliated with the church. But that being said, anything short of a clear moral statement that we're not on board with theatrical cruelty to immigrants, to the downtrodden. Have you read the New Testament? Jesus can be really angry, but he's angry at people with power. He's not angry at people who are on the outskirts of society, who are downtrodden.

If you can look at, I grew up, where I grew up in Greenwich Village was the center of trans, at the time we called him tranny, transgender prostitutes. Like that was the center of it. Like maybe San Francisco also had a center, but we were, like I grew up seeing like the word process, like you should start, like alarm bells should be going off. Like, oh, right, right, right. There's some really clear instructions about how we think about people whose society has cast aside, even if, maybe especially if, they are doing things that we consider immoral. And this is not ambiguous. Like, you know, we can argue over who are the moneylenders of today and who gets their tables turned over, but it ain't them. And it's not some 16-year-old girl who was born a boy who wants to play volleyball. You can disagree, you can feel bummed, but if there's like 100 of those kids in the country,

I'm not saying you have to embrace it or accept it or fly some flag, but just if that's your focus, like you look at America today and your main focus is there's a hundred kids in the country who are playing sports. Like, just think about that kid, like what they must feel like every day. And then you're just going to add to that. Like, anyway, I don't get it. Can I? Yeah, no, this is so, yeah, this is so fascinating. And what's interesting is like you and I probably come from completely different worlds where I didn't have any exposure to anything That was remotely left-wing. Like I thought that was a category out there. I remember when I became a Christian at 19 I heard that there was a Christian professor at the junior college

I was at that was a Democrat and a pacifist and I was like, well, obviously he's not a Christian Then you can't be a Democrat and a pacifist. Jesus obviously wasn't a pacifist. Those are the categories. I don't have those categories anymore. No, I'm a pacifist. So it's fascinating that we probably come from the opposite ends of our kind of cultural environment and have grown to try to understand the other side. And so I think there's a lot of overlap between your perception and my perception looking at my own tribe. And I don't disagree with a lot of things you're saying. I wonder with the, I'm trying to think,

with the category of, say, moral outrage, if it's toward certain behaviors that mean nothing to you. Somebody wants to smoke pot in their living room and whatever, whatever, you do you, it's free country. But there's also certain categories in a, you know, melting pot society where somebody else's behavior might affect me. So, and there I would say, I just wonder, I'm thinking out loud here,

because it seems like both sides would be equally upset at if, for instance, if a secular community saw Christians working out their values in a way that actually affected them, like we're seen as unjust maybe even, then I would, you know, let's put 10 Commandments up in the public school house. Like I would see secular people saying, being upset at that. Like, no, now your religious beliefs are incringing upon me and my kids. I don't want my kids to lead to the same commandments.

We're not religious. Like, how dare you put your, you know, what if I put it, you know, some Hindu statement in the public schools, you would be upset. So let's just not do that. But I think there would be a legitimate moral outrage. And so I wonder if there are some Christians

who feel that, maybe their kids are being taught things about gender and sexuality in the fourth grade that they're like, wait, you shouldn't be teaching my kid these things. Like, this is not right. Yeah. And I do want to differentiate the vibe. I don't know why I'm using that word,

but the sense of the emotional content and the actual policies. Like a posture in which they're expressing their moral out. Yeah. When I think of people I've known, Christians I've known, who do not want anything other than what they would consider biblical marriage. I know enough about the Bible to, I could have a lot of fun talking about what biblical marriage actually is.

But so you can have all the judgments. You could say, I don't want any state support of transgender issues. I don't want any medical treatment of anyone under 18. I don't want any open homosexual, whatever, whatever it is. And you can do that. I mean, can I say as Jesus would, you could do it with love. You can do it with empathy, you can do it with empathy, you can do it with a maybe a bit of heartbreak. You don't have to do it, you

know, this is something I work on with my kid, like he's 13 and he's in a volatile age and you know, I try and say to him like, just because your friend said something that hurt your feelings doesn't mean you get to respond, you know, I mean, you know how little kids are or even he's not a little anymore. Like, yeah, but he said, and it's like, yeah, he did say that and that is hurtful and he shouldn't say that. And you also shouldn't behave the way you behave. So I'm happy to also get into the policy conversation.

I mean, I will say like in a smart, alecky way that if I wanted evangelical Christianity to go away, which I don't, I would say, please mandate 10 commandments. Please put it up in every school. Please force every kid to think of the Bible and evangelical reading of the Bible as the core, as something they have to study and they have to learn, because that would be the best way. I mean, look at Europe, look at any country with a state mandated religion, that would be the best thing in the world for atheism.

The problem is, I think we need, I don't know if we need faith, but we need, I believe, this is my personal belief, and this is a new belief for me in the last few years, is that part of the crisis we're having in America is I think there are real values in balancing, in having connections to spiritual, if not necessarily supernatural, practices and traditions. And so I think America would be much better off if more people had a grounded, loving practice, even if they

disagreed. Like you can disagree. You and I probably disagree on like a whole host of political issues. I feel like we could have a very loving, cool talk about it. Like it wouldn't be, you know what I mean? Yeah, we might agree more on that than we disagree. I'm curious, do you make a distinction? It sounds like you do. You haven't quite said this, but I think you would agree that when you look at

how Jesus taught people to live and then how you see many, not all, but some many modern evangelicals living, you seem like you see a disconnect there. You know, God, he has this thing, a saying of, you know, I love your Jesus. I just wish Christians would, you know, be more like him, you know. When you read the Gospels, does he see Jesus? Do you resonate with a lot of what he taught and did? I do. I do. I mean, I do, you know, I place Jesus in a broader context. So I don't, you know, I think some things that you might think of as uniquely Jesus, I would see as broader faith categories at the time. And, but that being said, yeah, I mean, take immigration, for example, I'm very pro immigration.

I honestly like, I think America could have a billion people and it would be fine. Like I'm not, but leave that aside. Let's just say I have a strong belief that we need better border security, that we have too many undocumented immigrants, that we should have a process, blah, blah, blah. You can have all those views but treat the immigrant the way Jesus treated the leper or the prostitute. You don't have to delight in family separation. You don't have to delight in kids in cages, even if – which to me is ridiculous –, even if, even if, which to me is ridiculous, but even if you believe at the end of the day, there's going to be kids in cages, it's just,

is that's how this stuff works. You can still be sad about it. Like you, you, if what, looking at that kid or looking at that immigrant or looking at that transgender child, if you're, if you've come to a policy conclusion that their life is going to be filled with pain, you can still be sad about it, even if you think that's the right thing. And you can still approach it with love. And I want to say, there are a lot of Christians who are like that.

I'm really not trying to say nobody is. But there are a lot of Christians who are not. and they are the loudest, most public ones. And what I notice is a lot of the Christians who do live the life I'm describing have kind of sat out. There's not a counter, at least that I see loudly. There's not a, there's either pro Trump or there's, I don't talk about Trump because I don't want to get into that whole thing. And you don't even have to vote democratic. You don't have to Trump because I don't want to get into that whole thing. And you don't even have to vote Democratic. You don't have to support Kamala or it's too late anyway.

You don't have to like Joe Biden. You can even vote for Trump and be sad about it, which I know there are people who do that. So I think for me, it's this vibe. What is the focus? How much do you think is, I mean, you're a journalist. So I often wonder in our post internet age, it seems like the most annoying obnoxious voices get the headlines where, you know, Pastor Billy Bob in, you know, Northeast Indiana,

who visits old ladies in the hospital and has praise for his congregation two hours every morning and hasn't had an affair and groped the secretary or whatever and is faithful to his family and has been loving towards gay people that show up at his church and stuff. They will never, never make the headline. gay people that show up at this church and stuff, they will never, never make the headline. So it gives us, this is me, I've been thinking about this a lot, like how much of the newsfeed

that we are involuntarily exposed, like we are, there's certain things that make the headlines and many things that don't, and that just seems to give such a warped perspective of, in any community really. 100%. Yeah, 100%. perspective of any community, really. A hundred percent. Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think social media makes it much worse.

Like, you know, I started my journalistic career in the early nineties and you really didn't know, like I was at the Chicago Tribune and I was at the local public radio station in Chicago and then I was at NPR and you just didn't know what was hitting and what wasn't. Like we would have a bunch of stories, and then the next day we'd have a different bunch of stories. And you couldn't, you didn't really know what was hitting and what wasn't. They would do these studies where they'd like sit

a bunch of people in a room and give them the Chicago Tribune and just watch what articles they read, but that's such an artificial. And now you know instantly. And even though I've worked for mostly not like click-baity publications, I've worked in NPR, New York Times, New Yorker, still, you feel like you have it. You develop a sense of what's really going to click

and what isn't. And the vast Gulf, like I spent a year in Iraq as a reporter in 2003 to 2004. So that's before like major internet usage of media. Later when we started getting data, it was basically like all you reporters in Baghdad who are risking your lives, nobody's reading you. Nobody cares. You know? And that's like heartbreaking.

You know, that like, I cares. And that's heartbreaking. I didn't know that in Iraq. And then you add to that social media and the proliferation. I really got lost. I really became a jerk and a half on Twitter. I was one of those guys screaming at everybody, getting into big fights, getting angry. And I do feel some shame and some deep regret about it.

And so I think, of course, of course, and that's why I do go out of my way to consume more content about Evangelicals, about other groups. But it's still through a filter, right? It's still through, I created Planet Money, which is one, I think the first like real professional podcast, like a news podcast created by a major,

I think so. What year is that? How long ago is that? 2008. Oh wow. I did a podcast, yeah. Yeah, so I wasn't aware of any at the time. I've never heard of one that was earlier.

That was, you know, it was a world of like, like this, a couple jokers with microphones just yapping at each other. But in the beginning, our numbers were really tiny compared like NPR would reach 6 million people every minute of the morning. And we, you know, planet money, we'd get like 50,000. But I would say it's not just the numbers, it's the quality of engagement. And that was a big thing I would emphasize to my team and to others at NPR that when someone chooses to listen to a podcast, it's a proactive step. It's different from just turning on the radio and whatever's on is on.

And it's a quality of engagement that is different. Like, you can start even putting numbers on it. Like, advertising is in CPMs, cost per thousand impressions. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was like cost per thousand on broadcast radio back when I was in this business was like $2.00. Maybe it was $2 and cost per thousand impressions on podcasting was like a hundred something dollars. Like it was, you know, 50 times the impact because people listen in a different way.

They engage in a different way. It means more to them. They chose it. When you think about the kind of content that gins up outrage, yes, it gets numbers. It gets deep, big numbers. But if you think, like if you did a podcast and someone came to you and said, I, I was saved because of you,

or I reformulated how I see the world and I'm now an advocate for a more loving form of Christianity. Like how many of those do you need to hear to feel like you've had a life well lived? Like one, two, three? If you had 12, it would be unbelievable, right? Just to pick a number out of a hat. But if I told you, oh, 200,000 people liked your tweet and 199,000 of them didn't think about it ever again and don't know who you are and it had no impact because they're now getting all worked up about some other tweet.

So I think we get obsessed with these headline numbers. Has that radically changed the nature of journalism? I've heard journalists talk about this, that since outrage, clickbait is rewarded, that journalists are falling into, saying things and doing things and writing the headline in a way that continues to be that kind of algorithmic catastrophe really. Yeah, I mean my evangelical mission within journalism

is to introduce this like number times impact, which doesn't really exist as a metric and because it's harder to measure impact. I mean, you have some like ProPublica, which is a nonprofit investigative journalist outlet, you have some formula form forms where that exists. But I think so there's the first pass, like the very first level, which is like, oh, let me do the stories that have a lot of likes and dislikes and blah blah blah and That if I can obnoxiously say at elite media, I didn't see a lot of that It would be like totally uncool

Okay to be like do this story because it'll get a lot of likes like it's there in the background like you kind of feel better when more people engage than don't. But it's, and we look at, but it would be considered uncouth. But then you have like bosses looking at entire categories of coverage based on engagement, and you see like, oh, people want a lot of cooking content

or people want more celebrity content or people, investigative reporting is really expensive. Like it's really costly to have one or two or three reporters spend six months on a story that maybe goes nowhere. It's probably the most valuable thing journalism does, but it starts to become harder. Like when you're in a bundled product, like the old pre-internet media where it's just,

here's the newspaper every day, you can see how, oh, okay, we want some percent of it to be investigative, we want some percent to be like coverage of Baghdad, and we want some percent to be cooking and puzzles. But when you're like, oh, we thought five percent were doing the cooking stuff, it's like 98 percent, we thought 5% were doing the cooking stuff. It's like 98%.

And we thought like 20% were reading the investigative. It's like half a percent. So that kind of second and third order, I think is where you really see the destructive impact on our society because not having investigative reporting makes us all worse off, I believe. So, yeah, I think it's... But then the bigger issue, I would say, is the whole role of kind of official media has weakened so much

that the New York Times or the New Yorker or whatever is just seen as one more Twitter handle with a point of view. I'm not here to say, oh, everything the New York Times does is 100% great. You know, nobody complains more than people within an institution. And you get a bunch of New York Times reporters together, a bunch of New Yorker reporters. All we're going to do is grumble about, oh, did you see that? Stupid article so-and-so wrote or whatever.

That being said, there is a fundamental difference between a news organization that has enormous brand value tied up in a reputation, that has a fact-checking process that corrects its mistakes, where culturally and institutionally saying outright falsehoods or just saying things that sound right and not doing enough checking is career-ending. That's just a fundamentally different universe of content than some guy with a Twitter handle who's just spouting off. And the fact that people don't understand that

and that to me is a bigger issue than journalists chasing clicks. Like that is a deep, deep issue. Like when I read a New York Times article, I might disagree with some of it. I might think, oh wait, I know that topic really well, and I think they missed some key points. But I'm never going to think that person knows nothing,

did no research, or is deliberately misrepresenting the truth for some agenda. I will never think that because it can't. Like it has happened a few times, and those people have been humiliated, and their bosses have been fired, and it's like a big deal. Whereas more activist media or just some guy with a Twitter handle, that's all it is, right? Like that's all.

Would you say, so this is an area outside my knowledge, but I listen broadly to lots of stuff and it seems like a lot of the mainstream media outlets, aside from, say, Fox News and New York Post or something, are extremely biased politically, where the articles written that are clearly anti-Trump would far, far outweigh any article that would be critical of the Democratic Party. Would you see, again, aside from Fox, maybe a couple others, that being the case? Like... I'm gonna really push back on that,

and, you know, and this is a good conversation. Like, I'd love to have this as a longer conversation. I covered Trump for four years for the New Yorker. He is a different kind of character than Joe Biden. Like, in my mind, there are a few overlapping issues. So like I never like, like within journalism, I think I'm seen as kind of critical, very critical of journalism.

A major bias area is we just don't know other people. Like I remember when gay marriage was a big issue in the early 2000s. I wasn't saying we should have 50-50 reporters who are for and against gay marriage, but I was like, we should at least know people who are against gay marriage. I didn't know reporters who even knew people who are against gay marriage. And so just to know them, or covering the Iraq war, I didn't know many reporters who had served in the military or knew people who had served in the military.

I'm not saying there are none, but there are very few. As I said, there are very few evangelical Christians. I've known a couple who tended not to talk about it because they felt like it wasn't a safe place. So that's a deep issue. And while I think losing gatekeepers is a problem, having gatekeepers is also a problem. And whoever the gatekeepers are. So I do think, I'm not going to say there's no bias or anything like that. And I will say, most journalists do tend to be Democrats. That being said, there's a fundamentally different stance

towards Trump than there was towards, say, Mitt Romney or John McCain or someone else. Where you have two people who fundamentally buy into our system, have displayed some level of basic competence and decency who seem to understand our system. I could go on for days. I'd love for you to read some of the work I did,

work that the Trump organization said was accurate. I don't know how you would objectively cover Trump and Joe Biden and be like, oh, for every corruption story on one side, there's a corruption story on the other. For every unethical, norm-breaking theatrical cruelty on one side, there's one on the other. So my view would be we under-covered Trump's downsides, not over-covered them by far.

So you would say it's not a problem of bias covering. It's the content you're working with, namely you have a guy who is demonstrating a vast array of character issues. I don't think most people... Look, I spent four years deep in his world. I talked to his business partners. I don't think people have really engaged with this guy. So you're saying, so if there is a lopsidedness, it's more towards Trump, not say the Republican

Party or conservatives. If he is a unique figure on the political scene. Yeah, I mean, there are others, Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, there are others who are kind of theatrically trying to, I keep using the word theatrical because I think that's a good word. They're performing a role. They're openly performing a role. I hate to call this off but I have to run to another call. You do. You do. No, no. I totally lost track of time. I have so many other questions. We'll have to take this up offline but I will see you if anything in April. Really excited. Yeah, yeah. And I can't wait to have lots more conversations. This was so fun.

Awesome. Thanks so much. Have a good one. Thank you. Take care. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Hi, I'm Haven, and as long as I can remember, I have had different curiosities and thoughts and ideas that I like to explore, usually with a girlfriend over a matcha latte. But then when I had kids, I just didn't have the same time that I did before for the one-on-ones that I crave. So I started Haven the Podcast. It's a safe space for curiosity and conversation. We talk about everything from relationships to parenting,

to friendships, to even your view of yourself. And we don't have answers or solutions, but I think the power is actually in the questions. So I'd love for you to join me, Haven, the podcast. Hey, so I'm launching a new season on the podcast, The Doctor and the Nurse. World renowned brain coach, Dr. Daniel Amon joins me as a co-host as we dive deep into the mind and the brain of everything high performance. I've been fascinated for years as I've worked with top athletes, high powered CEOs, Hollywood actors and all high

performers in all types of different fields of how they break through pressure, ignite drive, how they overcome distractions, how they put fear on the bench, how they tap into flow state and just dominate all these different areas of high performance. So on this season, my good friend, Dr. Daniel Layman will break down what is actually going on in the brain in these different areas and I will give actionable tools to be able to use and apply in your life. So buckle up, the doctor and the nurse on The David Nurse Show coming at ya.