Concluding Thoughts – Season One, Episode 9

Kyle and Daniel pause to look back on their conversations. They walk through each episode asking questions like, what did they learn about each other? How did their opinions changed? What surprised them? They also gather up any loose ends discussed over the season and announce their plans for Season Two.

 
Media Discussed:

Daniel’s Lego Yellow Submarine can be found here.

The origins of Assumptions can be found way back in 2013 when a younger Daniel and Kyle talked about books and movies for Kyle’s other podcast. For a blast of that 2013 nostalgia, that YouTube channel holds up well. 

That inspiring Atticus Finch quote from To Kill a Mockingbird reads, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Links for media discussed in Episode 1: We Are Made of Stories can be found  here.

Mike Cosper’s podcast is called “Cultivated” and his quote about the role of podcasts in a divided age can be found in the bonus interview with Richard Clark on CT’s “The Calling”.

Daniel quotes from Saint Augustine’s Confessions, from Book I part 7 (this is from R.S. Pine-Coffin’s translation for Penguin Classics):

“Who can recall to me the sins I committed as a baby? For in your sight no man is free from sin, not even a child who has lived only one day on earth… What sins then, did I commit when I was a baby myself? Was it a sin to cry when I wanted to feed at the breast? I am too old now to feed on my mother’s milk, but if I were to cry for the kind of food suited to my age, others would rightly laugh me to scorn and remonstrate with me. So then too I deserved a scolding for what I did; but since I could not have understood the scolding, it would have been unreasonable, and most unusual, to rebuke me. We root out these faults and discard them as we grow up, and this is proof enough that they are faults, because I have never seen a man purposely throw out the good when he clears away the bad. It can hardly by right for a child, even at that age, to cry for everything, including things which would harm him; to work himself into a tantrum against people older than himself and not required to obey him; and to try his best to strike and hurt others who know better than he does, including his own parents, when they do no harm to him and refuse to pander to whims which would only do him harm. This shows that, if babies are innocent, it is not for lack of will to do harm, but for lack of strength. 

I have myself seen jealousy in a baby and know what it means. He was not old enough to talk, but whenever he saw his foster-brother at the breast, he would grow pale with every. This much is common knowledge. Mothers and nurses say that they can work such that they can work such things out of the system by one means or another, but surely it cannot be called innocence, when the milk flows in such abundance from its source, to object to a rival desperately in need and depending for his life on this one form of nourishment? Such faults are not small or unimportant, but we are tender-hearted and bear with them because we know that the child will grow out of them. It is clear that they are not mere peccadilloes, because the same faults are intolerable in older persons.

I do not remember that early part of my life, O Lord, but I believe what other people have told me about it and from watching other babies I can conclude that I also lived as they do… But if I was born in sin and guilt was with me already when my mother conceived me (Psalm 92:1), where, I ask you Lord, where or when was I, your servant, ever innocent?”’

Links for media discussed in Episode 2: The Stories That Shape Us can be found here.

Links for media discussed in Episode 3: Oh, the Horror! can be found here.

Daniel quotes from 1 Corinthians 15:20-26 in the Bible: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

Kyle mentions a Buffy the Vampire episode about that banality of eternity.

Links for media discussed in Episode 4: Harry Potter is of the Devil can be found here.

Links for media discussed in Episode 5: The Validity of Video Games can be found here.

The two games released since recording the video games episode are Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn. Kyle mentions some video podcast.

Links for media discussed in Episode 6: Dance, Dance, Otherwise We Are Lost can be found here.

Daniel again mentions C. S. Lewis’ classic essay The Weight of Glory, which you should totally go read.

Links for media discussed in Episode 7: #Stories can be found  here.

Links for media discussed in Episode 8: The Cathedral and the Cinema can be found  here.

Josh Larson of Filmspotting compares a movie theatre to a liturgicalexperience in his new book, Movies are Prayers. 

Further Reading: 

Kyle talks about how he realized that the Bible is more a worldview shaping story than a book of moral instruction. For more on how this works, Daniel again highly recommends the videos created by The Bible Project.

Credits:

Assumptions is written and produced by Daniel Melvill Jones and Kyle Marshall.

This episode edited by Kyle Marshall.

Our soundtrack comes from The Parson Red Heads, whose new acclaimed album, Blurred Harmony, is available everywhere. 

Podcast artwork designed by Chris Taniguchi 

Photography by Jen Hall

 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, listen on Soundcloud, or look us up wherever you get your podcasts. 

Email feedback or questions at [email protected], or drop us a line on Facebook or