David Gornoski explores the anthropological origins of the recent attempts to quarantine guilt onto the back of President Trump, China, and other entities for the coronavirus pandemic emergency. Sir James Frazer’s classic book “The Golden Bough” is explored to see how primitive societies used rainmakers, chiefs in charge of good weather to blame when bad […]
How did Christianity change the world? Can we trace a path towards a less violent world due to the impact of the story of Jesus’s death on humanity’s sense-making? David Gornoski talks with acclaimed historian Tom Holland on his new book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World and how his study of history […]
David Gornoski explores how our forms of collective violence increasingly fail to deter violence because of our lack of appetite for publicly sanctioned brutality. This phenomenon, a product of the Gospel’s influence in the West, will continue to render state coercion impotent in foreign nation building campaigns and domestic wars on nonviolent choices. Media ecology […]
Where did political correctness come from? Why is it unique to the West? What force provides the context by which this contagious complex of victim-posturing for power arose? David Gornoski explores how our gradual demystification of historical texts acts as a blame-the-messenger self-obsession with attacking Western institutions and traditions.
David Gornoski explores why politics is failing to contain our violence and animosity increasingly in AD 2020. We examine the anthropological forces at play as division grows in politics the longer cultures steep in the story and values of the crucified one.
In this episode, David Gornoski analyzes the Apollonius of Tyana mythologically-intermediate story of a miracle in Ephesus. The pagan miracle worker is often favorably compared with Jesus of Nazareth by moderns anxious to posture rebellion towards their parents’ Christian affinity. We then use this demystification process to deconstruct a modern news report on a pharmaceutical […]
David Gornoski explores how the story of Jonah, Susanna’s persecution, and Daniel’s imprisonment serve as evidence of early Christianity’s deeply anti-sacrificial meaning and aesthetic. These stories deal with averted sacrifice and mercy for the weak, misfits, and outsiders.
We talk about human sacrifice in history and our modern times. What binds us together? What is the psychological-social force that unites us out of our personas? We look at the earliest depiction of the Cross of Christ in history–a telling piece of street graffiti meant to deride the new concept of Christ followers that […]
Things Hidden host David Gornoski analyzes the movie ‘Joker’ while using its themes about culture, scapegoats, hierarchy, doubles, envy, and the breakdown of myth with the support of the Mimetic theory founded by Rene Girard. Saturnalia and other winter solstice carnival festivals preceding sacrifice, Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus, Jesus and the Demoniac, and […]
Jesus’s persecution looks like the Saturnalia sacrificial festival of the Romans as well as the scapegoat ritual of Leviticus and the Greek pharmakos purge. This was a feature of Jesus’s plan in demonstrating the ugly reality of how humans make culture, order, and peace. Find out how this social mechanism Jesus uncovers operates in world […]