“Everything that you see in politics is based on a zero-sum frame of reality,” David Gornoski says. He points out how politicians rely on you to vote them into defeating your enemies without actually dealing with any of the core issues. “Excellence doesn’t require a savior; it requires skin in the game.” Amid social scandals, […]
Shannon: “Parents often say: ‘don’t discuss politics and religion at the dinner table.’” David: “But that’s what I always talk about at dinner; all politics and religion originate at the original dinner which is ritual cannibalism.” Shannon Braswell, a Girardian from Washington, sits down with David Gornoski to examine the historical and mythological narratives through […]
Host David Gornoski explains how we can be freed from the shackles of collectivism by looking to the Biblical story of the woman caught in adultery. He who is without sin may cast the first stone, Jesus told the persecuting mob. The first step is the recognition of our part in societal injustices. Abandoning the […]
“We’re seeing the overreaction to the pandemic spilling over to other parts of life,” says Norman Horn, founder of the Libertarian Christian Institute. Dr. Horn goes on to explain how institutional coercion spills onto the streets in the form of riots. “Just because we agree that there are structural problems does not mean that we […]
Very few films have defined a genre. One of these films is the 1927 German silent movie Metropolis. Directed by legendary filmmaker Fritz Lang, Metropolis is a dystopian sci-fiction movie that touches on important socio-political and even theological aspects of modern society. Made during the Weimar era—a time when Germany was in political and economic […]
In these times of social unrest we need to understand what drives humanity towards conflict. David Cayley, longtime CBC Ideas broadcaster, joins David Gornoski to discuss the breakdown of social unity through a distinctly Christian lens shaped by experiences with Rene Girard and Ivan Illich. On the pandemic, Cayley says that “the virus is the […]
In ancient times, there were often masked rituals, and in these rituals, boundaries and identities were blurred because the participants wore masks. But what would these rituals lead to and why was anonymity so important? David Gornoski gives us an earth-shattering explanation of this ancient ritual and how it is refined and imposed today under […]
David Gornoski talks with renowned neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist on his groundbreaking paradigm of how the left and right hemispheres shape our world, institutions, and culture. Julian Jaynes’s bicameral mind, Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic field hypothesis, Rene Girard’s mimetic theory, and Weiping Yu’s dipolar particle theory are all explored with the premise of McGilchrist’s “The Master and […]
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 […]