Entries by Wallace Smith

In Search of the Eternal (Dopamine) Buzz

Some of us have noticed a lot of podcasts talking these days about dopamine—the neurotransmitter your brain uses to “reward” behavior—and how our current society is addicted to triggering it in so many unhelpful ways. (For example, social media is like a dopamine-triggering machine training you to keep on scrolling and scrolling and scrolling…) One […]

Podcast: Politics, Jury Duty, and the Military

In a world that is increasingly political, being representatives of a different kingdom presents its challenges. Join us today as we jump into our (non)relationship to politics and related topics. The YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcast embeds are below. Also, the podcast refers to a Living Church News article, “Christians and Causes.” A link to […]

Podcast: Surviving Christmas

It’s that time of year again. As Christians who don’t keep Christmas, the season presents its special challenges! In this episode, we discuss some of those challenges, prompted by a request from one of our listeners. At a certain point in the podcast, we refer to a Tomorrow’s World Whiteboard video, which you can find […]

Podcast: The Tasty Trifles of Gossip

A listener-recommended topic today from one of you: Gossip! Tempting to do, but so damaging to yourself and others. Today, we dive into gossip and talebearing and give some simple advice both to those who’ve been the victim of gossip and to those who feel its temptations. The article mentioned in today’s podcast episode has […]

Podcast: What We’re Thankful For

This week, we are thankful. On the podcast, we talk about some of the things for which we are very thankful (and fair warning, we do get a little rambly!), and we hope it spurs you to meditate on things you are thankful for, both the obvious things and the not-so-obvious. We mention two articles […]

Biohacking and Thankfulness

Here in the U.S., Thanksgiving Day is tomorrow, and while not all of our teen and young adult readers are in the U.S., many of you are—and even for those who are not, when does thankfulness go out of style? In the spirit of that, consider enjoying this short read from Mr. John Robinson titled […]