This Could Be Interesting

TCBI #34 - Depth Perception - Iain McGilchrist

Iain McGilchrist is one of the most important intellectuals in the world right now (he's also my favorite thinker and philosopher and a personal hero). Part of the impact of his work is due to the thorough and rigorous research supporting his theories (more than 5,000 papers and essays and deep understanding of countless authors and artists and their work from both ancient contexts as well as the modern conversation about these things). The other, perhaps even more impactful reason for his i...

TCBI #33 - Broken Identity and The ”Depths” - John Vervaeke

John Vervaeke PhD is an associate professor in Psychology and Cognitive Science whose work focuses on meaning and the science of wisdom. He's an award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto, with his classes ranging from psychology, cognitive science to Buddhist psychology. His popular youtube lecture series "Awakening From The Meaning Crisis" has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times and has struck a chord with many struggling in the modern day to engage with a sense of "meaning...

TCBI #32 - Ghosts, Spirits, Astrology, and The Unconscious - Ashtyn Dolenuck

TCBI #31 - Demons and Dominion - Fady Hana

TCBI #30 Latter Day Apostasy - Alex Williamns

Alex Williamns has hosted over 10 (different) podcasts, so he's a pro. He's also an ex-Mormon, which is something that came up when I had the opportunity to be a guest on one of those podcasts (an episode still to be released). As soon as it came up, the topic threatened to take over our conversation, but I knew it deserved its own conversation another time. I asked Alex after our chat if he'd be willing to come on this project and chat about his experiences in the Mormon church, and he grac...

TCBI #29 - Adventures in Mental Health - Dave Griffin

Dave Griffin is an actor, writer, creative, father, husband, and delegate officer in his local Democratic party. Dave is also the voice of the beloved character "Jimmy Barclay" in the well-known audio drama "Adventures in Odyssey". He started on the show in its first official season around the age of 10 and continued to voice the popular character for many years until ultimately the character was written off the show. Struggling with mental illness growing up, the show became an escape from...

TCBI #28 - Spiritual Techno Optimism - Caleb Weidman

Caleb Weidman is a Media wiz, and has been creating quality content for Spiritual communities for the past decade. He's the president of Blackbar Media, a youtube channel focused on exploring how Christianity can be complemented and augmented by technology and media, and how people working within positions related to media production can better engage with their faith. I've known Caleb for a very long time now, and we've worked together professionally on many different projects including sho...

TCBI #27 - Learning From a Master - Nadje Noordhuis

Pre-order Nadje's new album: https://nadjenoordhuis.bandcamp.com/album/gullfoss Check out my favorite of Nadje's past work (Ten Sails): Bandcamp - https://music.lukehoward.com/album/ten-sails Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/album/7k6LMeVKzWrL9XHzNTPkXu Nadje Noordhuis is my favorite trumpet player, and is the primary reason I worked up enough determination to (try to) learn the trumpet. Yeah, that bit of trumpet in the intro is me, heh. She's from Brooklyn, though she grew up in and moved...

TCBI #26 - A Typical Yogi - Markus Schneider

Markus grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home but later upon examining his religion rejected it in general and began to think more deeply about his beliefs and his philosophy. In this conversation Markus shares a bit of his story and how he ultimately ended up practicing and teaching Yoga and meditation from a primarily secular framework. I challenge Markus on this perspective towards Yoga and we dig deep into what it means to "listen to your body" and have a relationship with the "unkno...

TCBI #25 - The Bones of Creationism - Ian Juby

Ian Juby is a prolific hobbyist whose interests range from driving trains to amateur archeology to UFO theorizing to creation science. Ian's name has come up frequently in my house over the past several years whenever the topic of "evolution" was brought up. Many/most evangelical Christians (especially those of the generation before mine) hold very tightly to a model of creation and existence that is consistent with a literal interpretation of Genesis--that is, 6 day creation. Other key Bibl...

TCBI #24 - Evangelicals and Evolution - April M. Cordero

"Both Christians and atheists incorrectly accept the narrative that believers must reject evolution. I want to change this paradigm. I want to help Christians question their assumptions about this topic and broaden their perspective." - April M. Cordero April Maskiewicz Cordero PhD is a professor of biology at Christian university (Point Loma Nazarene) in San Diego and has taken on the challenging task of teaching evolution and ecology to Christian college undergraduates. She's co-authored s...

TCBI #23 - The Conspiracy Theory Theory - Brayden Beattie

I've known Brayden since I was a kid. Like many old friendships, Facebook allowed us to reconnect in some interesting ways later in life when we otherwise might not have crossed paths. I noticed Brayden had been posting a lot about various conspiracy theories and generally pushing back against the standard narrative and thought it would be interesting to meet up and chat again about just what a conspiracy theory actually entails, and whether or not we can figure out a healthy way of engaging...

TCBI #22.5 - Processing Opponent Processing with my Opponent (Brother)

Conversation with John Vervaeke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3AxPCwoVxA Subscribe to the podcast Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1ezktLCKtpdpPCvZHvFPvF iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/this-could-be-interesting/id1554166655 Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL3RoaXNjb3VsZGJlaW50ZXJlc3Rpbmdwb2RjYXN0L2ZlZWQueG1s   Podbean https://thiscouldbeinterestingpodcast.podbean.com/ John Vervaeke https://www.youtube.com/use...

TCBI #22 - A Way Out of the Vicious Cycle - John Vervaeke

John Vervaeke PhD is a Cognitive Scientist and Cognitive Psychotherapist whose work focuses on meaning and the science of wisdom. He's an award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto, with his classes ranging from psychology, cognitive science to Buddhist psychology.   I discovered John and his work through my friend Connor during a time when we were both doing a lot of soul-searching and struggling with the ever-encroaching cloud of nihilism that is modern-day media. When we discov...

TCBI #21 - When Reading the Bible Leads to Atheism - Michael Wiseman

Michael Wiseman is the host of "The Bible Says What?"-- a podcast a youtube channel exploring the limits of evangelical theology and biblical theory from an atheist perspective. He's also the author of a book of the same name, which you can find online here - https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Says-What-Michael-Wiseman-ebook/dp/B08Y7BLM3H/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= I came into contact with Mike earlier this year when he reached out to me, and we've had several engaging conversa...

TCBI #20.5 - What was that about Pumba?

Evan and I sit down to unpack some of the trickier parts of my most recent conversation with J.P. Marceau.

TCBI #20 - The Cosmic "Three-ness" - J.P. Marceau

J.P. and I unpack his latest article concerning the overlap between Christianity, Buddhism, and various other religious traditions on their central "trinity" like concepts. While I recommend reading the article, it's not necessary to read first (in fact I'd recommend reading it after watching) as this conversation is intended primarily to help introduce the ideas he discusses in the article to general audiences. Unfortunately, some of the data for this conversation was corrupted and had to ...

TCBI #19 - The Age of Artifice - J.F. Martel

Jean-François Martel has been working with various Canadian producers as a screenwriter and director for the past ten years. He's worked on numerous documentaries that have aired on most of Canada's major broadcasters, as well as writing and directing a number of award winning dramatic short films including "Cicada,". He's also the author of the fantastic short book/manifesto/artistic call to action "RECLAIMING ART IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICE" which was published in 2015. J.F. co-hosts a weekly p...

TCBI #18 - The Pareto Problem

"Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them." - Matthew 13:12 What a ruthless principle. Pareto Distribution (or "The Matthew Principle) can be found in almost any distributive dataset. 20% of people have 80% of the money in (almost all) economic systems. 20% of people have 80% of the power in (almost all) political systems. 20% of any language gets used 80% of the time in (all) languages. It's especia...

TCBI #17 - The Meaning of Magic - Sam Glenn

Sam Glenn https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv45xgouMHfxSFyi3zavCqA

TCBI #16 - Evaluating Values - Taylor Ealand

Taylor Ealand runs a conservative news commentary show called "Contrarix". Taylor reached out to me to chat a little bit ago, and we had a great conversation on his show about religion and politics. We had such a good time we decided to follow it up for This Could Be Interesting. We were interested in trying to unpack a little bit of the conundrum of evaluating values in the modern sphere. Why do we value things, and how can we back up or defend those values? Can we even? Are there such thin...

TCBI #15 - Pierre Proudhon and the Individual - Cayce Jamil

Cayce Jamil is an RA and Ph.D. student at UNC Charlotte. While I spent some time in Charlotte growing up, I actually came into contact with Cayce via a conversation thread on Reddit on one of the previous videos for this project. His responses were thoughtful and interesting but definitely strayed away from my own views. His views also revolved around a political thinker I hadn't heard of "Pierre-Joseph Proudhon", and I was interested to hear more. I asked if he'd be interested in having a l...

TCBI #14 - Where Christianity Hits the Fan - Kevin McCreary

Kevin McCreary is a YouTuber, podcaster, comedian, and all-around creative guy. I've known Kevin for a very long time. He was one of the very first connections I made with someone originally through the internet that ended up sticking around to be part of my life. Kevin and I have done various creative projects together here and there for the past 10 years. Kevin has always been a great friend as well as an interesting conversation partner. Our views clash on certain issues, but Kevin is suc...

TCBI #13 - The Goat for Azazel - Daniel Townhead

I recently got to have a conversation with Daniel "The Wakeful" Townhead. Daniel wrote an article recently that really intrigued me, so I reached out to him to see if he'd be willing to talk about it! The article is about philosopher Rene Girard's interpretation of the ancient myths and archetypal patterns of the stories man has held onto since before history. Girard thought there was something connecting these stories and it hinged around two (complicated?) concepts: "Mimesis", and "The Sca...

TCBI #12 - Reality and the Emergence of God - JP Marceau

"As infants, we learn to perceive simple objects, and eventually people. As children, we learn to perceive increasingly complex emotions in people. Later, we begin to discern narratives and moral patterns. As we grow older, we learn to perceive social and historical patterns. As Christians, we strive to perceive the Pattern of all patterns, i.e., God." - JP Marceau, "Perception is Symbolic" Jean-Philippe (JP) Marceau is a self-described "part-time philosopher" (because who pays enough to let...

TCBI #11 - A Being of Pure Evil - Andrew Gaskin

Andrew Gaskin is one of the most intuitive and creative people I know. He's extremely talented and way too humble. Every time I talk to him I'm amazed at the vast connections he makes and the interesting insights he comes up with. He's also an extremely talented vocalist and lyricist and has been a part of several musical projects, including a few we worked on together. Not too long ago Andrew made the strange claim to me that "Evil doesn't exist". We had a few shorter chats about his idea, ...

TCBI #10 - How To Prevent a War - Peter Farrugia

Dr. Peter Farrugia received his D. Phil. from Oxford in 1991 with a thesis on French Anti-War Thought Contrasted to Its British Counterpart. He's taught at various universities but in 1999 he started teaching at Laurier Brantford as one of the founding faculty members. I was introduced to Peter by Ken Paradis. He and Peter are good friends, and connected partly due to Ken's unique openness and interest in religion and Peter's staunch Christianity in a predominantly non-religious academic sys...

TCBI #9 - A Theism Chat - Alex Pallas

Alex Pallas is an atheist/ex-evangelical from Australia. I met Alex through one of Paul Vanderklay's Q&A videos in February when he asked some thoughtful questions about the Christian stories. I was interested to pick his brain further, so I reached out to him and he graciously agreed to have a conversation with me. While coming to definitively different answers to the question "do you believe in God", Alex and I actually had a lot in common in our views. In the areas we differ, I really enj...

TCBI #8 - Religion, Faith, Pastors... What's The Point? - Paul Vanderklay

Paul Vanderklay is the pastor of Living Stones Christian Reformed Church in Sacramento California. While his position includes teaching a group of people in person, Paul teaches a much larger pool of people on a weekly basis via his youtube channel with a weekly series called "Rough Draft for Sunday" where he gives a first pass at delivering content he's putting together for a sermon the following Sunday. His channel has amassed a fairly large following, partly due to his engagement and comm...

TCBI #7 - Slightly Unorthodox - Devon Peacock

Devon Peacock is a very interesting person to me. I first met him when we were both in our early teens while I was traveling through Eastern Canada with my family. We reconnected recently after Facebook decided to start including his quips, memes, and political hot takes in my feed. I was especially interested to chat with him about Orthodox Christianity, as when we met we were both part of the Evangelical community and when we reconnected recently he mentioned his departure to the Orthodox ...

TCBI #6 - How to Have a Conversation - Christopher Rosevear

Christopher Rosevear is a Tyndale University and Seminary Graduate and has served in several churches in various positions including Associate Pastor of Youth and Young Adults at Uxbridge Baptist Church. He's an articulate communicator and a very intelligent and thoughtful guy. He's challenged me and my worldview at various stages in life, and has always been willing to have deep and/or difficult conversations with me. Sometimes talking to someone as articulate as Christopher can be intimida...

TCBI #5 - The Sin God Commands - Lloyd Vandenberg

Lloyd Vandenberg is my dad. He's 100% Dutch by blood but was born in Canada. He grew up in the Dutch Reformed church and became part of the Charismatic Evangelical tradition as a young adult. He and my mom have been touring with the rest of the family around the United States and Canada under the name "New Generation Ministry" for the past 30 years performing Christian "worship music" as well as counseling couples and sharing my dad's story of freedom from addiction. The last two years have...

TCBI #4.5 - Stickin' it to Jared Byas - Evan Vandenberg

After the last conversation with Jared Evan and I had a lot of thoughts we still wanted to unpack, so we sat down to do our first ".5". I'm not sure if this is a format that's going to stick or not, but we'll see. The obvious flaw with doing this sort of thing is that in discussing a guest's ideas (or trying to rebut their ideas) they don't have a chance to respond or correct us if we're missing something important. The cost is dwarfed by the benefit, though, I think, because it seems to be ...

TCBI #4 - Speaking in Tongues and Cheek - Jared Byas

Jared Byas is a self-proclaimed "serial question-asker and ideas explorer". He's also the co-host of the popular podcast "The Bible for Normal People" along with Pete Enns and is the co-author of the book "Genesis for Normal People" with Pete too. He also just wrote a new book called "Love Matters More". Jared is a really interesting guy, and I'm so thankful he took the time to ask some questions and explore some ideas with me. Jared's New Book - https://www.jaredbyas.com/book/​ An Article J...

TCBI #3 - To Take Arms Against a Sea of Complexity - Ken Paradis

Ken Paradis is an Associate Professor at Wilfred Laurier University in Brantford Ontario. Before coming to Laurier, Ken spent time working at Palcky University in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia, as well as at McMaster, SUNY Buffalo, and Dalhousie. While teaching at Laurier Brantford Ken has taught or administered in several programs including English, Contemporary Studies, and Cultural Analysis and Social Theory (CAST). Ken has a particularly interesting perspective to me regarding the Christian fa...

TCBI #2 - The Church Catholic - Tyler Seidenberg

Tyler (B.Mus., B.Ed., OCT, A. Piano Perf.) is an Evangelical to Catholic convert. He works as a freelance pianist/vocalist, educator, and producer from Oakville, Ontario. His works have been performed on radio and television across North America, and his music workshops have inspired music students and teachers across Canada. He also acted and performed in the Christian children's television show "God Rocks!". Tyler's family have been long-time family friends, but since a young age I always ...

TCBI #1 - Talking to the man upstairs - Ken Paradis

Ken Paradis is an Associate Professor at Wilfred Laurier University in Brantford Ontario. Before coming to Laurier, Ken spent time working at Palcky University in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia, as well as at McMaster, SUNY Buffalo, and Dalhousie. While teaching at Laurier Brantford Ken has taught or administered in several programs including English, Contemporary Studies, and Cultural Analysis and Social Theory (CAST). Ken has a particularly interesting perspective to me regarding the Christian fa...

TCBI #0 - What could be interesting? - Andrew Kalmar, Connor Howard, Evan Vandenberg

Hey, I just started a podcast!   The concept of the show is based around the medium of the "long-form conversation". It's a medium that allows people to unpack complicated and positions on things in an appropriately long format that allows for some nuance and genuine humanity. I've been watching people in my community gradually sort of "drift apart" in certain ways, especially in their ability to have conversations about issues they don't see eye to eye on. While I found this increasingly c...