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135 – Cool Ellul with Jason Thacker

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

Release Date: 07/18/2023

171 – Reality Therapy Redux show art 171 – Reality Therapy Redux

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

At the end of 2024, Ryan Rogers joined the show to share his as a graduate student.  He later had Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis on his new podcast, , for a wide ranging discussion on conservatism, the challenges of the modern conservative movement, what conservatism offers that other political ideologies do not, and much more.  This episode is a re-podcast of that original conversation.   About Ryan Rogers Ryan Rogers is a graduate student in clinical mental health counseling. He has a bachelors degree in psychology and a work history in addiction treatment.  His latest...

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Roundtable - Trump's 1st Week on the Job show art Roundtable - Trump's 1st Week on the Job

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

It’s Trump’s first week on the job and he’s been quite busy making America great again or summoning the Fourth Reich, depending on your political perspective. Join Saving Elephants’ livestream roundtable of cross-partisan pontificators to break it all down for you and what this first week might portend for the next four years.

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170 – Tribalism is Dumb with Andrew Heaton show art 170 – Tribalism is Dumb with Andrew Heaton

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

Comedian, author, and political satirist joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to explore where our political tribalism comes from, why it’s gotten out of hand, and what to do about it.   About Andrew Heaton   Andrew Heaton is a comedian, author, and political satirist. He’s the host of “The Political Orphanage” comedy and news podcast, and scifi deep dive podcast “Alienating the Audience.” He’s a frequent Reason TV contributor and hosted the popular webseries “Mostly Weekly.” He’s performed standup comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as a finalist in the...

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169 – Unsolicited Advice with Blake Fischer show art 169 – Unsolicited Advice with Blake Fischer

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

With the 2024 elections in rearview both parties are trying to grapple with what lessons they should learn.  Who better to offer unsolicited advice than Josh Lewis and Blake Fischer, the respective hosts of the and podcasts?  As two Trump-skeptical conservatives on the outside looking in, sure both parties are eager to hear their thoughts on how both parties should proceed in the elections ahead.   In this episode, Josh and Blake take a deep dive into what went wrong and what went right for the Republicans in 2024 and what might help them secure their newfound majorities for...

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Roundtable - 2024 - A Year in Review show art Roundtable - 2024 - A Year in Review

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

As 2024 comes to a close podcasters everywhere will be doing one of those hackneyed and insufferable “a look back at the year’s major events” shows. Not to be outdone, Saving Elephants will be getting in on the action as well with another livestream roundtable to bloviate and pontificate about the numerous twists and turns of our most recent trip around the sun.  Of course, unlike all those other shows, you never know when the panelists will get into an argument about whether Burke, Strauss, Hayek, or Scruton would have had the more insightful outlook were they alive today.

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168 – The Perennial Burke with Daniel Klein show art 168 – The Perennial Burke with Daniel Klein

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

As Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is wont to do, here is yet another episode exploring the political and philosophical brilliance of Edmund Burke.  But this time he is aided by scholar and professor Daniel Klein to examine the late writings of Burke’s life as Europe was descending into revolutionary chaos.  What was Burke’s understanding of liberty and natural rights, and how did it differ from many of his more radical contemporaries?  How did Burke distinguish between reforms that were constructive or destructive, and why did he seem so reluctant to use them in some...

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167 – The Woke Mind with Ryan Rogers show art 167 – The Woke Mind with Ryan Rogers

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

“I do not believe,” wrote F. A. Hayek in his book , “that the widely held conception of ‘social justice’ either describes a possible state of affairs or is even meaningful.”  Hayek would complain “social” was a sort of “weasel word” that carried a lot of unexamined prescriptions.  To call something “social justice” is to advocate for something without bothering to fully explore what that something might even be.   What are the philosophical underpinnings of social justice?  What does it practically mean, and how could it practically apply.  And...

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Roundtable - Bullish or Bearish on Trump 2.0? show art Roundtable - Bullish or Bearish on Trump 2.0?

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

Should conservatives be bullish or bearish on the incoming Trump administration? Will Trump 2.0 deliver us to the sunlit uplands of a prosperous free market economy, sensible immigration reform, and reductions in wasteful deficit spending and overbearing regulations? Or will America become a dreadful hellscape with an executive branch consistently thwarting its constitutional limits and a GOP-controlled congress refusing to hold them in check, federal departments and agencies run by charlatans and conspiracy theorists, trade wars and industrial policies that would make late 19th century...

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166 – Independent Idiosyncrasies with Brett Loyd show art 166 – Independent Idiosyncrasies with Brett Loyd

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

“The biggest takeaway from the 2024 election,” , is that “independents have officially broken the duopoly and now share the title of America’s largest political group with Republicans.”  But what is an independent, exactly?  What do they want and how are they different from those who proudly affiliate with the Republican or Democratic parties?  And what might this portend for the future of American politics?   Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by pollster Brett Loyd to make sense of the rise of the independents in the electorate.   About Brett Loyd...

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Roundtable - Election Night - Livestream show art Roundtable - Election Night - Livestream

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

Sure, the major news networks had all the "experts", but how many of them opined on what Buckley, Burke, or Kirk would think of the election results? Listen to Saving Elephants' livestream on election night as results come in from another stellar panel of cross-partisan contributors: , , , , Kent Straith, , John Giokaris, , and Steve Phelps.

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Modern views on how future technology is likely to change our lives range from bloviatingly aspirational visions of utopia to musings on whether the latest advancement in AI will destroy humankind in our lifetime or merely enslave us all in Matrix-style battery capillaries.  Yet debates on whether technology is a neutral tool for our benefit or a near-unstoppable force leading us to a particular destiny are nothing new.  In 1964, French philosopher and sociologist Jacques Ellul wrote The Technological Society, in which he argued technology had a totalizing effect that could potentially dehumanize our world in its never-ending effort to make all things efficient and “useful”.

 

While he’s somewhat critical of Ellul’s determinism, this episode’s guest—Jason Thacker—gleans much wisdom from Ellul’s warnings.  Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis and Jason Thacker discuss competing views of technology and how they might help us for a foundation for dealing with the technological challenges we face in our digital public square.

 

About Jason Thacker

From https://jasonthacker.com/

Jason Thacker serves as an assistant professor of philosophy and ethics at Boyce College in Louisville, KY.  He also is a research fellow in Christian ethics and director of the research institute at The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  He is the author of several books including Following Jesus in the Digital Age and The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.  He also serves as the editor of The Digital Public Square: Christian Ethics in a Technological Society and co-editor of the Essentials in Christian Ethics series with B&H Academic.  He is the project leader and lead drafter of Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles, and his work has been featured at SlatePoliticoThe WeekUSA TodayChristianity TodayWorld Magazine, The Gospel Coalition, and Desiring God.

 

He is a graduate of The University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies.  He also holds a Master of Divinity from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he is currently a PhD candidate in ethics, public theology, and philosophy.  He serves as an associate fellow with the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge, an advisor for AI and Faith, fellow in science and technology at the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Seminary, and a research fellow with the ERLC Research Institute.  He is married to Dorie and they have two sons.

 

You can follow Jason on Twitter @jasonthacker

 

About The Digital Public Square

Brooke was one of the contributing writers to the recently published book The Digital Public Square.  In The Digital Public Square, editor Jason Thacker has chosen top Christian voices to help the church navigate the issues of censorship, conspiracy theories, sexual ethics, hate speech, religious freedom, and tribalism.  Many of the contributing writers (David French, Bonnie Kristian, Bryan Baise, and Brooke Medina) have been prior guests on the Saving Elephants show.