Very insightful conversation, but any discussion of teacher accountability and standards that doesn’t include a serious reevaluation of teacher salaries, is an incomplete one. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

My list of five controversial Jesus movies that I think would be fun to watch and discuss: brianleport.home.blog/2025/11/19/c...

This is a wonderful and wild podcast series about priests and nuns on the Catholic left who took on J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI in protesting the Vietnam war. Highly recommend! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

“When prophecies fail, religions adapt.” youtu.be/nH-pwULIGzs?...

An enjoyable conversation about the Book of Revelation: open.spotify.com/episode/1A2n...

Fascinating topic: the rise of a Silicon Valley-style Christianity: open.spotify.com/episode/4VbZ...

Pondering images of universal reconciliation in the lyrics of U2: brianleport.home.blog/2025/10/03/u...

Nice overview of the Council of Nicaea at its 1700th anniversary: earlychristiantexts.com/council-of-n...

A good conversation responding to the whole “empathy is a sin” trend happening in some corners of American Christianity: open.spotify.com/episode/5UAY...

If you teach or parent teenagers, you know exactly where in this paragraph you can hear them getting out of control for no apparent reason if it was being read out loud.

Religious, theological, and biblical studies when you can’t go the traditional route: brianleport.home.blog/2025/09/13/r...

I’ve been pondering Texas’ influence on how people read the Bible. I’ve listed some *major* figures and institutions below. Am I missing anyone (from let’s say from 1900-present)?

Did the Antonine plague lead to Christianity going from about >100,000 people in the second century to over a million in the third? youtu.be/zQY5eVa4toQ?...

Interesting introduction to Coptic Christianity: youtu.be/a5EnGR1XqmU?...

Me: “I need a break from religion and theology. I’ll read some philosophy.” The philosophy:

Insightful discussion about housing in America: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

A video introduction to the life and career of Philippa Foot: youtu.be/K7KkXvHXtGM?...

“…everyone should be allowed freedom of judgement and the right to interpret the basic tenants of his faith as he sees fit, and that the moral value of a man’s creed should be judged only from his work.” - Spinoza, “Theological-Political Treatise”

How is there not a true crime podcast dedicated to San Francisco? Or am I missing one?

New history of California! So far, so good!

What Christians can learn from John Stuart Mill: brianleport.home.blog/2025/07/17/w...

“On the national and neighborhood level, people are being forced to move to places where housing in available and affordable, and those places are often the riskiest ones when it comes to extreme weather.” youtu.be/7SOFoxXiLEQ?...

More on our desire to live in our reality: open.substack.com/pub/brianlep...

Is the Bible “relevant” even if it isn’t the “inerrant Word of God”? megaphone.link/ADL3010747337

Cool history of San Francisco’s Ferry Building; youtu.be/Q01TgTHEiB4?...

Why do some people self-sabotage? open.substack.com/pub/brianlep...

Studying Philosophy Does Make People Better Thinkers This study “offers the strongest evidence to date that studying philosophy does indeed make people better thinkers.” www.cambridge.org/core/journal... (h/t @greggdcaruso.bsky.social) #philosophy #PhilSky

California pays about $78,000,000,000 more in federal taxes than it gets in federal spending and I doubt they're vacationing in Nebraska so ...

The philosopher Simon Critchley says that we “are still drawn by the desire for asceticism” even when we reject its explicitly religious connotations: brianleport.home.blog/2025/07/13/s...

What do you value? What do you do when your goals conflict? If you’ve wondered about these things, you’ll like this book: open.substack.com/pub/brianlep...

“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.” - John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty” (chapter 2)

If the Book of Job teaches us anything, it teaches us that at times like these, theologizing a disaster is precisely the worst thing you can do. Job’s friends were right for the first week when they just sat with him in silence. The mistake was opening their mouth and trying to speak for God.

“God might be ineffable, but the mystics are constantly effing the ineffable, for as long as it effing takes.” - Simon Critchley, “Mysticism,” p. 63.

The GOP’s budget cuts to NOAA are set to take effect at the start of fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025. Anyone making the deaths of the children in Texas about partisan politics is morally bankrupt. Please reflect.

JUST IN: At least 67 people are dead following flooding that slammed central Texas over the weekend, while a desperate search for 11 missing girls continues.

“The time, it is hoped, is gone by when any defence would be necessary for the ‘liberty of the press’ as one of the securities against corrupt tyrannical government.” - John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty” (chapter 2)

John Stuart Mill’s three regions of human liberty: 1. “the inward domain of consciousness” 2. “liberty of tastes and pursuits” 3. “freedom to unite” “No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is free.” - “On Liberty”

“Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from themselves; universal too is the shy concealment of this haste because everyone wants to seem content and would like to deceive more sharp-eyed observers as to the wretchedness he feels”. - Nietzsche, “Untimely Meditations,” 5.

Crazy that the world population around the time of Jesus was only 170 million. historyfacts.com/world-histor...

Svend Brinkman’s helpful distinction between two valuable forms of thinking: problem-solving & meaning-generating. open.substack.com/pub/brianlep...

Machiavelli knew: “…principalities are won by prowess or by fortune but are kept without the help of either. They are maintained, in fact, by religious institutions, so powerfully mature that, no matter how the ruler acts and lives, they safeguard his government.” - The Prince, XI

“A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” - the Declaration of Independence

If you had to drop one of these lessons from a course on the philosophy of a good life (human flourishing), which topic would it be?

The disparity btwn what’s actually happening in Los Angeles and the way it’s being mischaracterized is one of the biggest stress tests of modern media in recent memory. Botted socials, AI, old clips, declining literacy—it’s like seeing a broken emergency response system hit by a storm.

How should we think about the art we love when it turns out that the artist was a monster? podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Is there a consensus among experts with regard to the connection between smart phone use and mental health? podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

🌳🧠 Nature shapes the mind A study of 7,100+ US adolescents found that living near greenspace was linked to slower brain thinning, greater surface area, & better mental health outcomes – via changes in brain structure. 🔗 www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S000... #SciComm #Greenspace 🧪

“Because if you can FLOOD people with new decrees every day and a landscape that they can never really predict…then you can KEEP people in a kind of paranoia—and uncertainty…” podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...