Quick to Listen
Each week the editors of Christianity Today go beyond hashtags and hot-takes and set aside time to explore the reality behind a major cultural event.
Episodes
December 1, 2022 • 68 mins
There’s not a lot making Americans hopeful these days. More than half of the country told pollsters last year that they were “extremely worried” about the direction of the country. One in 4 said that “nothing made them hopeful.” Their anxieties: politics, the pandemic, and inflation.
This year, existing worries have likely been compounded by fears and anger over mass shootings, the war in Ukraine, sex abuse scandal cover-ups by chu...
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November 19, 2021 • 61 mins
100,000 Americans died from April 2020 to April 2021 due to opioids, according to numbers released this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of the deaths have come via fentanyl, which accounted for more than 75 percent of all fatalities. Most of the time fentanyl has been used in combination with drugs like methamphetamine or cocaine.
Who were those who lost their lives? According to the New York ...
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November 12, 2021 • 62 mins
Last Friday, both chambers of Congress passed an infrastructure bill that will commit more than one trillion dollars to America’s deteriorating roads and bridges, making life easier for pedestrians and bikers, improving broadband access, and renovating suffering public transit systems.
This bill has been closely tied to Biden’s Build Better Back, legislation that would invest heavily in climate change and social policies. While the...
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November 5, 2021 • 49 mins
Politicians, business leaders, and activists from around the world are meeting this and next week in Glasgow, Scotland, to make commitments and urge others to do the same to keep the planet from overheating more than it already is. Earth’s global temperature has risen 1.1 C and as the planet has warmed, fires have raged in Australia and California, heatwaves and floods have killed hundreds around the world. So what can be done to k...
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October 29, 2021 • 48 mins
This week, the revelations from a number of internal Facebook documents came to light, thanks to Frances Haugen, a former employee of the social media giant. The documents reveal that the organization, as The Washington Post summarized, “privately and meticulously tracked real-world harms exacerbated by its platforms, ignored warnings from its employees about the risks of their design decisions and exposed vulnerable communities ar...
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October 22, 2021 • 48 mins
On Saturday, a gang kidnapped 17 North American missionaries in Haiti as the party returned from an orphanage in a suburb of Port-au-Prince. Since then, the group, known as 400 Mawozo, has demanded a ransom of $17 million for the victims, who include five men, seven women, and five children. While many locals have been kidnapped in recent years as security on the country’s roads has been increasingly threatened, this incident has d...
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October 15, 2021 • 58 mins
Season 1 and Season 2 spoilers ahead.
The second season of Ted Lasso ends with an image of Nate. The once kitman, recently promoted Greyhounds assistant coach is not wearing Richmond attire as we see him lead team exercises on the pitch. Instead, he’s in all black, staring at the camera, as we realize he’s the head coach of Westham United, the team recently purchased by season one nemesis Rupert Mannion. Just minutes before, we’ve ...
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October 9, 2021 • 47 mins
This week, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, announced that he would retire at the end of the year. An evangelical Christian who previously worked as the head of the Human Genome Project, Collins’ 2009 appointment still drew scorn. From a 2010 profile in the New Yorker:
Collins read in the Times that many of his colleagues in the scientific community believed that he suffered from “dementia.” Steve...
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September 24, 2021 • 56 mins
In this third decade of the 21st century, we’ve seen a lot of religious scandals, with Christian leaders abusing their power and position. Too many. Nevertheless, still to this day when you say the words religious scandal—more often than not folks will think of two television personalities of the 1970s and ’80s: Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.
The “Jim and Tammy” show was the basis of what became a massive ministry and theme park in For...
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September 17, 2021 • 44 mins
On August 29, as American troops were accelerating their pullout from Afghanistan, the U.S. military ordered its last drone strike in the 20 year war. The missile destroyed a parked car that military officials said was operated by an Islamic State sympathizer, and contained explosives for a suicide attack on the Kabul airport, where American forces and civilians had gathered for evacuation. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen...
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September 10, 2021 • 52 mins
This year marks 20 years since 19 men hijacked four planes, driving two of the aircraft into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one into a field in Pennsylvania, after several of the passengers fought back. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and left 25,000 people injured and were organized by Osama bin Laden, who used his faith as justification for the attacks. Several days after September 11, 2001, President B...
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September 3, 2021 • 56 mins
In recent weeks, some Americans sick with COVID-19 have been looking for a cure from a very unorthodox source: ivermectin. Here’s how the Food and Drug Administration described the situation in a letter to veterinarians and animal health retailers this week:
People are purchasing various highly concentrated animal ivermectin drug formulations such as “pour-on,” injectable, paste, and “drench” that are intended for horses, cattle, a...
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August 31, 2021 • 23 mins
Here's a special, stand-alone Slow to Speak where guest host Kate Shellnutt joins Morgan Lee to read over listener feedback from Episode 271: Critical Race Theory: What Christians Need to Know.
If you have feedback for us about any episode, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at podcasts@christianitytoday.com.
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August 27, 2021 • 39 mins
This spring and summer, a lot of headlines about the economy sang a similar tune:
From CNN: Why American workers don't want to go back to normal
The Wall Street Journal: Job Openings Are at Record Highs. Why Aren’t Unemployed Americans Filling Them?
The New York Times: Why Aren’t People Going Back to Their Jobs?
The Washington Post: It’s not a ‘labor shortage.’ It’s a great reassessment of work in America.
Across the country, hundr...
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August 20, 2021 • 43 mins
Earlier this year, Joe Biden announced that after close to 20 years, the United States would be withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan. Last week, as the military began its exit, the Taliban was ready and within days had seized control of the country. The ascent sparked widespread fear and led to thousands arriving at the airport only to find their flights out of the country had been canceled. Some even grabbed a hold of the aircr...
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August 13, 2021 • 65 mins
This week, the Christian Post reprinted a blog by Samuel Sey, a Canadian writer, entitled, “Why I am not getting the vaccine.” Sey’s essay didn’t address the scientific concerns he has with the vaccines, though he says he has hired a fitness trainer and is working on maintaining a healthier diet. But the piece is largely in response to several Canadian provinces instituting vaccine passports.
When our governments infringe on some o...
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August 7, 2021 • 59 mins
Due to production issues, we are not running a new podcast today. Instead, we are replaying a unfortunately, once-again-timely episode we recorded last year about California’s devastating forest fires. We’ll see you all next week with a fresh episode.
Unless you’ve actually been in an area where you can look out your window and see the view with your own eyes, by now you’ve caught images of an orange sky coming from West Coast. For...
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July 30, 2021 • 64 mins
After one vault on Tuesday, Simone Biles took herself out of the US gymnastics women’s team competition. A day later, she withdrew from the all-around, “in order to focus on her mental health,” read a statement on the USA Gymnastics' Twitter account.
Simone also blamed the twisties, where, as the Washington Post describes, athletes “lose control of their bodies as they spin through the air. Sometimes they twist when they hadn’t pla...
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July 22, 2021 • 63 mins
This Tuesday, Amazon founder and the richest man on the planet, Jeff Bezos, entered space for the first time. This was the virgin flight for Blue Origin, the space travel company that Bezos founded, and lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds.
Bezos's trip came just days after billionaire Richard Branson reached the edge of space on board his Virgin Galactic rocket plane. The company currently has more than 600 reservations, a trip that c...
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July 16, 2021 • 64 mins
Half a dozen Canadian churches have been set on fire or burned down this summer. This arson has come at a time when multiple mass graves have been found across the nation on the grounds of now-defunct residential schools. Operated by multiple churches, including the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and United, the Canadian schools were part of a 20th-century government program to assimilate its First Nation community.
The...
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