Season 4 Preview

🎙️ In this episode of the Navigating An Ancient Faith Podcast, we preview what’s ahead in Season Four. 🔮 We share upcoming topics like the parables of Jesus, the Minor Prophets, familiar Sunday school stories, and a new series focused on transformation. 🙏 We also reflect on how the podcast has evolved—from a Greece travelogue to deeper explorations of symbolism and ancient meaning. 🏛️ Along the way, we tease some new video content on YouTube, a potential book project (The Mythic Story of the Judges), and the continuation of our Stranger Things series as we tackle modern issues. 🖥️ Join us as we look ahead—and invite you to help shape the conversations to come. ✨

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Chapters

• 0:00 Planning for Season Four
• 2:56 Exploring the Parables of Jesus
• 11:26 Diving into the Minor Prophets
• 15:57 Sunday School Stories Revisited
• 20:12 Stranger Things and Cultural Phenomena
• 25:47 Upcoming Series on Transformation
• 27:57 Other Projects and Season Four Teasers

Transcript

Season 4 Intro

David: [00:00:00] And you know, Joel had buddies being like, dude, did God tell you who's gonna win the college football playoffs?

I got some.

JR: Yeah.

kno

Look, hook me up man. Let's, let's, let's win some bones here. We can do something with this. Yeah.

David: You got nothing from God about that. No. Yeah.

JR: Or his critics, you know, if he's a prophet, how come he never wins the lottery? 

David: Hey, this is the preview for season four. Can you believe we are already recording season four?

JR: I know. That's nuts. I mean, I don't, how many episodes have we done? Like pretty much ballpark?

David: Twenty a season, so it has to be around 60, maybe 61, 62, something like that? Yeah.

JR: Okay. Yeah, man, I mean, well we should have celebrated a 50th episode and, yeah, we'll, we'll tack on 20 more, I guess. And no I couldn't believe that and it was hard to even wrap my head around what we had done each season, but I'd kind of gone back and looked and it, it's funny 'cause go back season one.

Well this started as sort of [00:01:00] like a travel. You know, a Greek travel log, you know, when we went to Greece, it's like, ah, we'll just throw some stuff out there, see if people are interested. And then it turned into, you know, fairytales and the judges series and, you know, it's it's spread out.

So it's, it's grown. It's pretty cool. This is a cool journey though.

David: Yeah. And then I think you and I are both to the point where we're like, yep, let's keep rolling. If nothing else, just because you and I have fun and get a chance to talk around ideas and bat 'em around.

JR: Oh yeah. The best parts of all these episodes for me is me and you sitting down and discussing it to see where it takes us.

David: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Kind of like live discovery. Like we bat ideas around and it's like, yes, I think we're onto something. Yeah.

JR: Yeah. Well, when we were up at the cabin here a few months ago, it was, man, it was just like every day we were coming up with something else cool. You know, some other kind of new idea, some big, some big something that we're gonna bat around. And it's kind of cool to see where it goes. 'cause it does work better face to face and it's usually [00:02:00] 'cause we're grabbing coffee or just, you know, sitting up late at night yapping about this stuff.

And how many conversations have we had that we're thinking, man, we should have been recording this. And we try to go back and recreate it sometimes, but yeah, it's, been a lot of fun, man. Yeah. What are we gonna do? Uh, What are our plans this season?

David: Yeah, so I guess to start it out, we went to, well. Every October I try to go to this cabin unless we're traveling, cause we tend to do our travels in October too, so it's turning out to be every other year now. So the cabin, I love it up there. You usually come up for a little bit of the week.

So, yeah. Last October we were at the cabin found a good coffee shop and we were just batting ideas around for season four. And so we came up with, I, I think several four what, four or five, six series that we're gonna review in this episode. This is just gonna be a little preview episode of season four, and then next time we'll actually kick it off.

But yeah, so I guess let's start off with, you could say [00:03:00] almost a continuation of our Ancient Stories series, the first time we did the fairy tales, but we're gonna do the parables of Jesus. That's what's gonna kick off season four.

JR: Yeah. Yeah, that'll be a lot of fun. We kind of talked about, and we may still switch this up, so I guess we won't commit to what parables we're gonna do, but we were just talking about man, you know, the sower and the seed. Digging in some of these stories in a little bit different way. And not in a way, you know, we say this kind of every time, this is not a Bible study type of podcast that we're doing, but kind of digging out the deeper meaning and why they still mean something - why they still seem so relevant today. And so we're kind of digging around not just what these stories meant, but what they're still doing to us today, and how to kind of look through it through the ancient lens and pull something new out of it.

David: Yeah, the ancient lens is a big piece of it, and I, I say kind of the ancient stories because we approach the fairytales really through the lens of symbolism. What is all this embedded [00:04:00]meaning in these simple stories? Right? And so I found myself, 'cause I've done a little bit of studying for this series so far. I, I've done some of the outlines of these parables and right off the bat, one thing I noticed is. I think for our discussions to be really good, I think we have to let go, or at least I'll say from my perspective, I have to let go of what I've always been taught the parables mean, right?

JR: Right.

David: Even some of them even will say. The disciples go, whoa, we don't know what this means. You know, there's a big shock. Jesus tells them a story and they're like, master, what does this mean? Right? And Jesus is like, ah, okay, let me explain this to you. Right? Let me draw this out for you. And so I had to overcome this idea that, well, Jesus is even saying, here's what this means, but we're trying to approach this from a little bit different angle, right?

What is the deeper symbols in these? Why do they resonate? Why do they last? Why are they still relevant today? And so I think it's gonna be fun [00:05:00] and challenging. I would say to move away from, you might say, our traditional interpretation of what we've always heard. Not that those are wrong, but you have to go back to our Layers of Meaning episode that we ended season three, right?

And just say we're, coming at it from a little bit different layer, I think. And once I got over that mental hurdle, some of these parables really started to come alive for me in different ways that I haven't read them before.

JR: Okay. That's good. Well, one of the challenges with the parables is, you know, they're parables. We all know them. There's probably a hundred sermons about all these parables, right? That people's different angles on them. Whereas, you know, you get, dig into some of the fairytales, especially in our fairytale series, we were digging in and kind of breaking down fairytales that I've never heard of before.

You know, we did some common ones like Little Red Riding Hood and we're doing Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin, but some other ones that we've never even heard of. So, I don't know. [00:06:00]It's a little bit easier to get a novel take on something that is not so I don't know, embedded in, you know, the psyche of, of culture.

You know, everybody kind of knows the parable of the sower and the seed or the prodigal son. And it's like, man, how are we gonna find something new? How are we gonna find something fresh and new that hasn't already been discovered? So it is gonna be a little bit more of a challenge, but I think we can do that through that layers of thinking, the layers of meaning and getting to that symbolic layer a little bit more than maybe what your pastor does. 

David: Yeah, that's right. And it did start to come together. The other thing we're doing, we're gonna group probably 3, 4, 5 at a time around a certain subject, and I also think it helps when you understand the parables in terms of the other parables that Jesus said along the same subject, you know? Because sometimes they're in Matthew and sometimes they're in Luke and, and sometimes they're not all together.

So when you pull some of these things together and read one through the lens of another, I think that also helps shed new light on some [00:07:00] of these parables as well.

JR: Yeah, when they overlap. Well, and what you do when I dig in the parables, I realize they don't just give you answers. They give you, they kind of give you eyes, they give you a new way of seeing. And I think that's what Jesus was trying to do in general is, was not just simply saying, Hey here's a cool story and here's the moral of it.

I think he's trying to get the disciples and us as an extension of that to see things a certain way. He's trying to change our eyes, not just give us answers to a question that we have or a, you know, answer some moral dilemma. Right? And so I think that's what I think we can try to pull out.

And I've noticed that as I've been reading the parables myself, that way of viewing things really is helpful.

David: Yeah, and the other thing is when you understand parables they're told at a level where Jesus can sit there and explain it and says, here's what they mean. But I think you're supposed to walk away with the simple story in your head be thinking about it like the [00:08:00] next day

JR: Yeah.

David: Hey, I've been thinking a little bit more about that parable, Jesus said, and I think there's maybe a little bit more to it than that.

We're supposed to take the parables and walk away with them like that, I think. I just, over the summer or, or this fall, I read Aesop's Fables. And I have to admit, those were challenging because they're so short and simple.

JR: Yeah.

David: What do I do with this? You know, it's like I can't think of a one right off the top of my head, but you know, it's like the mouse takes the cheese and the cat's like, no, that's my cheese. There's the moral to the story. It's like, don't mess with the bigger threat.

JR: The end, right?

David: You know, like that, the end. And they're like, well, okay, what am I supposed to do with that? How is that supposed to fill 30 minute podcast? You know? 'cause we talked about that, but at the same time, yeah, you're supposed to let them ruminate for a while and you're supposed to talk about 'em and then revisit them. That's what parables are supposed to do. So I think we're gonna experience that during this series, which is, [00:09:00] there's a surface level, but then once we start batting ideas around, I think we're gonna pull some other ideas outta some of these parables, because they're supposed to ruminate, they're supposed to stick in our mind.

They're supposed to bug us because maybe there's something more to it than even what Jesus said, right as a surface explanation.

JR: Right. Well, and parables are a lot like fairytales in the sense that there's a very simple layer. A child can listen to it and get something out of it, but then there's also a deeper layer, a symbolic layer that if you dig down, you're like, oh, I think, you know, it really holds on to several layers at the same time.

And when you kind of dig into a fairytale, it's surprising to get something more than, Little Red Riding Hood; stay on the path; listen to your mom. And when you start to dig some of these deeper ideas down, you're like, oh, wow, man. It's almost so surprising, you ask yourself, do you think the author really meant this? I mean,

David: Yeah,

JR: even though it holds. It holds through. And I think you know, [00:10:00] the difference between fairytales is they're kind of synthesized over generations. And I think it is eventually built into it, into these stories, this meaning.

But yes. I don't know. There's also kind of a layer of fable, I would say is kind of at the bottom. It's really simple. One moral idea, maybe a child can understand it. And then you throw fairy tales on top of that, a little bit more complex. And then you throw the parables on top of that where you have a little bit deeper moral layer moral meaning.

And then you show something really complex, like let's say myth, you know, the broader myths. Where there's all these different gods and all these things going on, they're trying to explain reality in a very complex way. And so, you know, there's kind of a hierarchy to these stories too, as far as complexity.

David: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And they all have a little bit different take on what they mean, what you're supposed to get out of them, you know, the level of symbolism in them, the different layers in them. So they all have a little bit different take on that idea.

Yeah, I'm excited to unpack these [00:11:00] parables. I'm looking at our time 'cause I'm already thinking, all right, let's not go down the road of parables and just start on it. 'cause I have a lot of thoughts on these parables. ' cause that's the one I started studying. But yeah. Any more thoughts on the parables?

JR: No, you're right. If we keep going, we're just gonna end up talking another 30 minutes. So, and this is how we get episodes, by the way, is we just, we let ourselves go down these rabbit trails and try to take the best bits of it. So, okay. So yeah. So we're gonna do parables that's gonna be exciting.

We're doing a few minor prophets, right? What was the, what was the thought on that?

David: Well, I think it arose probably because you had read Joel, I think. And you were talking about specific symbols in Joel, and you've mentioned a couple of those in season three. Joel is something that I studied a long time ago. In fact, I spent a whole, if you can believe it, Joel is four chapters long, if you haven't read it. I spent a whole semester in one of my classes in seminary where all we did was talk about Joel. You might think, well, how in the world could you [00:12:00] do that? Well, you can do it because there is a lot to unpack in what we would say the minor prophets, right? These short little books that have,

JR: Yeah.

David: They have weird images, they have apocalyptic images, and there's a lot of like, woe to this country and woe to that king. You go, what are we supposed to do with that? So I think it arose out of this fascination with Joel for both of us for.

But then we said, well, let's look at some of these others. You know, we wrote down Habakkuk, Hosea, Zachariah, Micah.

We're not tackling the book of Isaiah, which, you know, 54 chapters, and people have written entire books on

JR: Yeah. It's pretty ambitious.

David: Yeah. So that would be maybe an entire season. But yeah, that's how this idea came about. We said, let's talk about some of these minor prophets. And again, through the same lens of what's really buried in these books in terms of symbolism, because when you understand prophecy, it has the same idea, right? There's this very, [00:13:00] whatever the prophet was saying 2,700 years ago, right? that seems pretty plain, but then the nature of prophecy is that it echoes through time. So there should be something, if we're paying attention, there should be something that we can get out of the book of Joel if we're paying attention to our culture today. Right. It's that idea.

JR: Yeah. Prophets explore patterns, and we've said this in other episodes, it's not just that they can see into the future, like, there's gonna be a car wreck tomorrow, or, here's what the stock market's gonna do. It's not, that type of thing. It's the ability to pick up and recognize patterns.

And when you can see that as a prophet, then you can also see where your culture is right in front of you and say, Hey. Listen, we're at the end of a pattern. We're, we're seeing this collapse, we're seeing this start to rebuild, and they're calling these things out to the people. And so to your point that we should be able to see these same things today, if we can see where we're at on the patterns that they're trying to explore and lay out for us.

And so, no, I think that's gonna be [00:14:00] a lot of fun.

David: Yeah, I think you're right. Once you extract the pattern, you can reapply the pattern wherever. And they definitely talk in terms of patterns. You mentioned something and I just had this image of, you know, Joel talking about this is what God has showed me. And you know, Joel had buddies being like, dude, did God tell you who's gonna win the college football playoffs?

I got some.

JR: Yeah.

kno

Look, hook me up man. Let's, let's, let's win some bones here. We can do something with this. Yeah.

David: You got nothing from God about that. No. Yeah.

JR: Or his critics, you know, if he's a prophet, how come he never wins the lottery?

David: Yeah.

JR: he see he's still run around in the sheepskin and you know,

David: Yeah. Well a

JR: Do something good with it.

David: Yeah, make a little money on the side. But that's not what prophecies were about. And funny because there's a little bit, when you read the prophets of a little bit of the Cassandra complex where they had all these insights from God and basically very few people believed them, and it usually landed them in hot water.

JR: Oh [00:15:00] yeah. Well, and I think we mentioned this in another episode, that if the prophecy didn't come true, Levitical law said to stone them, get rid of them. They're false prophets. It's like, wow, that's, that's a tough one to swallow, you know?

David: Pretty confident if you're going to say, you know, thus sayeth the Lord. This came to me in a vision last night, right? Because,

JR: Yeah.

David: if you got that one wrong,

JR: Yeah, these guys that say that Jesus is gonna return on this date and that date passes. Well,

David: Yeah, that's right.

JR: I'm not saying, I'm just saying right.

David: Yeah, so we're gonna spend what, five episodes looking at the minor prophets. We'll tackle a different one every episode. But I think this will be really cool. I'm excited about what we kind of unpack because you and I both have experience with Joel, but I've gotta say, like, I couldn't tell you the basic storyline of Hosea or Habakkuk. So some of this will be fun to revisit and really see if we can extract some of those patterns.

JR: Yeah. Yeah, that'll be good. Okay. And then we're gonna jump into I'm looking forward to [00:16:00] this too. We're jumping into good old fashioned Sunday school stories, right?

David: Yeah. Yeah. We've kind of already done this throughout, but we're just gonna make it official and say we're gonna talk about some of these sunday school stories, right? And

JR: Yeah.

David: we ended last season. Okay. So we ended that last season on what I thought was a really fascinating conversation that we had around Jonah.

JR: Jonah. Yeah. No, that was neat.

David: Right. And I think that's one of the things that launched us to say, man, let's just, do a series where we talk about these, we call 'em Sunday school stories because. Look, they're stories that everyone knows. You know, you learn them, you heard them, you either hear them in the wider culture.

So if you walked into most people and said, Hey, what about Noah the Ark? You know, what about David and Goliath? People would be like, yeah, I know what that story

JR: Sure.

David: says, you know? So we said, yeah, let's really unpack what these stories mean, right along the lines of what we did with Jonah. So going back to those layers of meaning, right? We [00:17:00] know

JR: Yeah.

David: We know the story of David and Goliath, right? We know Noah and the Ark, Jonah and the whale, but why are they in the Bible? Right? And they're not just to entertain the kids.

JR: Right. Well, we use them that way, but sometimes the stories that formed us the earliest are the ones we've never actually really wrestled with. And so it'll be interesting to go back as adults through these layers of meaning and layers of patterns and kind of looking it through those lens and see if we can kind of pull a little bit more of a adult idea out of some of these stories that we heard at Sunday School as kids. 

David: Yeah, and I do think we probably lose something in the story because we do think of them as children's stories and, and really, well, it goes back to idea that we talked about a couple minutes ago where they are simple enough for a child to understand. But I do think sometimes when we relegate them to children's stories, it's kinda like a Disney movie, right? That [00:18:00] we actually lose some of the meaning and look, a lot of these stories, when you dive into them they wouldn't be rated G. Right?

JR: Right. 

David: There's a lot more going on in these stories that we kind of just brush over because we think, oh, we have the common narrative and the kids are here, so let's keep it clean. Right?

JR: Yeah, well it's kind of broadening what we're doing. Same thing we're doing with the fairytales. These are obviously kids stories, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Little Red Riding Hood, and you know, but we're just trying to point out that man, there's a lot more deeper meaning going on with these patterns and you know, we did it with Jonah in this last season. And so yeah, we kind of wanna officially tackle some of these patterns in the kid stories and pull out the deeper meaning. And I think we're gonna find some really neat things because it holds true to that pattern that we talked about.

What is it? Water, wilderness Mountain, you know, that it's just so, it's, it's just there so much that once you kind of can lay that over most [00:19:00] stories, then you can draw out the different meanings of, I'm trying to broadly speak while at the same time thinking of the individual stories of Daniel and the lions den or whatever.

But but yeah, we'll just be able to pull these patterns out if you kind of allow yourself to look through that symbolic lens.

David: Yeah, that's right. And I've heard a couple things recently on some of these stories and it got me excited to go ahead and do this series because really when you understand some of the cultural background and some, just some of the images in our head, you know, like I heard someone recently say that we think David is a young boy, but he is not, right?

JR: Yeah. Yeah.

David: He's probably, he's probably a teenager and I don't know, just little things like that. Again, I won't go down that path 'cause we'll save that for that series, but I think there's gonna be a lot we can pull out from these stories. So we'd written down, looking back, Noah, the Ark, David and Goliath, Jonah the Whale, Daniel and the Lions Den. We talked about Elijah and Mount Carmel. That's not a kid's story either, so we'll pick four of those.

Yeah, we'll pick four of those.

[00:20:00] and

JR: Okay. Yeah, that'll be fun.

David: Run down rabbit trails and talk way too long about these individual stories.

JR: Yep. Okay. Man. Alright, so we're up to about what, 15 three quarters of the way through. What else do we have?

David: Your favorite series, which is Stranger Things. So we're gonna do Stranger Things. We're gonna keep doing Stranger Things.

JR: I know. That's a lot. Well, there's just always something weird popping up in the culture, so I don't think we know exactly what we're gonna do it on. We try to align that kind of, with the Halloween season, you know, stranger things. So I'm sure by October there's gonna be three or four things that pop up in the news.

It's we're saying, golly, write that one down 'cause that's what we're gonna have to do an episode on this now.

David: You got anything in mind?

JR: Oh goodness. There's always something surrounding AI or, I don't know, just the emerging technologies. Yeah. There's always something that kind of piques my interest, you know?

David: I'm trying to think. AI's, like we could do AI every season. 'cause it's far different from what we did two years ago even.

JR: I just sent a buddy, 

David: yeah, [00:21:00] there's still people, you know, freaking out about it. And there's still others who were like, man, this is gonna be great. And so, yeah.

What were you gonna say?

JR: Well, I just sent a buddy a song and I said, dude, listen to, it's a cover of, I forget if I showed you. It was a cover of Live the band Live, Lightning Crashes. You remember that song? It's like a soul cover and it is so good. And anyway, I sent it to him and he listened to it and it sent back.

He was, this is an a, this is one of the best covers I've ever heard. And I said, is it a bummer that this is AI? And he said, dude, you gotta be kidding me. And he, he just said, A boo. And, you know, thumbs down, all this kind of stuff. And that's an interesting, it's an interesting phenomenon because we both recognize this is really, really good music.

I mean, I'll send it to you. It's fantastic, but look it up. But once you find out it's AI it's almost like why does that bother us? I realized that on the surface you're like, well, there's not a artist behind that, that put his blood and sweat into this song.

But on the surface, it does. It makes you say, well, I mean, if it's good music, why does it bother you? There's no doubt that I [00:22:00] think the reason it bothered him was he thought that he could spot it.

David: Right.

JR: He thought I would send him a song and, he would say, oh yeah, you know, that's pretty cool. But it sounds a little digitally, whatever. It sounds, a little AI and it's not, it sounds fantastic and that's almost more bothersome to some degree. But why? So maybe that's kind of an interesting thing to dig into about AI. Why does it bother us when it sort of replaces

David: Yeah.

JR: the artist a little bit?

David: Well, and I was talking, it's funny, I was just talking to a buddy of mine last week and we were batting this idea around, 'cause you hear people say it's gonna kill creativity. And my comment was, no. I think it unlocks a different level of creativity, right. And it allows people who maybe don't have the skill to compose musics or something, maybe to come up with some good ideas about a great song. And you and I, we were just talking before we hit record about little AI videos that we've been doing. I don't know, it just allows you to communicate in a different way. And I can see a lot [00:23:00] of the criticisms, but I can also see areas where it's going to allow more people to unlock creativity if it's used right.

And I think one of the things that we've gotta get past, and then we'll move on, 'cause this is gonna turn into a whole episode, is

JR: Right.

David: We gotta move past the idea of trying to pass things off as real. But they are AI and I think we can get past that. I dunno,

JR: I think so too.

David: But that's the biggest thing right now is people going, well, is this real or AI? You know? But on certain apps where it's all AI, it's just fun because you don't have to ask that question. But that's the hangup right now out in the wider culture is we don't know what's real and what isn't.

JR: Right. Well, and there's just the fear that people are going to try to pass off this as real and people do on social media. But you know, I guess there's the fear that, well, what if our news stories, are we gonna be able to trust the news? Are we gonna be able to trust what we see on TV as official video or something like that?

And [00:24:00] there are concerns, and it obviously can be abused, but man, there's no doubt that it is a very powerful new technology that's gonna have to be dealt with one way or another, it's not going away. So we might as well get past that. It's a matter of figuring out how to deal with it. I was talking to my son about Star Wars and he was kind of saying, you know, what's the big deal about Star Wars?

And I told him one thing I loved about the original three Star Wars, is that we used to watch the making of you know, how they filmed the space scenes, how they filmed the exploding, you know, I mean, there were whole documentaries on it and they were fascinating, the sound stages and the miniatures that they created.

And you know, same thing with things like Indiana Jones, how they filmed these things and did the special effects. And then digital computer animation comes along and kind of does away with all that. And you know, there's a nostalgic side of me also that says, well, how hard is it now to just tell a computer to have a spaceship flying through space as opposed to actually building a model and, [00:25:00] you know, making it, realistic for film.

And so, I don't know, but it's just a change of the way we're gonna do things. And again, it is just, we better get on board with it, but at the same time yeah, figure out how we're gonna deal with it as a culture. And so I'm sure we'll probably dig into some of that in some of the Stranger Things episodes, no doubt.

David: Yeah. We could always do that. I don't know, just off the top of my head, I'm thinking like colonizing Mars, maybe that'd be an interesting topic or,

JR: Hey, yeah, that'd be great.

David: About recently. But hey, if you, the listener, if you have any ideas, we would love to hear them and send them into us. And we might do one of them.

because that's kind of wide open right now. The Stranger Thing series.

JR: Oh, yeah. And there's plenty of topics to choose from, so let us know what you think.

David: Yeah, that's right.

JR: Okay. So is that it? What else do we have?

David: We have, we're gonna end this season on - no, this would be cool. This is something we haven't done much of is, remember we talked about a series on transformation, which

JR: Oh [00:26:00] yeah.

David: So finding those patterns in the Bible that talk about what it truly means to live a transformed life. I think that's something that everyone wrestles with.

We throw that word around maybe in churches, but I think most people walk around going, don't feel very transformed, if I'm honest.

JR: Right. Go and sin no more. You know, you're like, man, really? What am I supposed to do with that?

David: Oh, blew that one, you know?

JR: Yeah, that lasted five minutes.

David: So, yeah, we're gonna uncover, I think the idea we had here is uncover some of the patterns. So a couple, that encountering the divine, right, Moses or yeah, Moses and the burning bush, right?

Yeah, that's right.

JR: Mm-hmm.

David: You know, Paul on the Paul gets struck down by light, you know, so people have these dramatic encounters by God. We may have a tendency to say, well, that's never happened to me. Well join the 99.9 the rest of us that these things don't happen to. But still, what does it mean to encounter God?

Right? So the death that brings [00:27:00] life, right? The return of the transformed. So some of these is kind of the heroic journey, the mythic part of it too.

JR: Right.

David: You can see these patterns in the Bible and what are we, a people of faith, what are we supposed to do with this? And what does it really mean to be transformed?

So I think that'll be actually a really cool, series to end on.

JR: Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, that sounds interesting. Well, that last series that we did this in season three was a little, oh, not obscure. It was just hard to define. Like when you told me, Hey, let's talk about exploring the Bible. Let's, let's unpack how to do these things. It was a little bit hard to kind of discuss on a vague level, but once we got into it, man, it was a lot of fun. That's where we broke down Jonah so.

David: Yeah, that's right.

JR: Jonah story. So yeah, it was a lot of fun and it takes you a lot of interesting places. So that'll be a lot of fun too.

David: Yeah. So there you go. There's season four. We're already done.

JR: Yeah. There we go. That's a wrap. What are we gonna do for season five?

David: Oh gosh. Let's get season four. Hey, we talked about a couple other things we might do this [00:28:00] season though, and one of them talking about when we were at the cabin. One of the things that we can, we, we will go ahead and announce it right, is that we recorded two more fairytale episodes that we are going to release at least initially exclusive on our YouTube channel. we talked about sleeping beauty, right? And Rumpelstiltskin.

And I don't know man, we had a lot of fun recording those. In fact, we planned to do one, but then we just said, let's just keep going.

JR: Let's just keep going. Yeah. Well, and the fun part of it is now been in the editing part of it since this is gonna be a video series. The, the creating the slides for it that kind of allow us to dig in a little bit deeper. And so we may mention a touch on an idea, the symbolism of waking up or the symbolism of a wedding and a fairytale, and we kind of created these slides that go along with it and really kind of dig in while we're talking.

I don't know, it's a lot of fun to do the editing. 

David: Yeah.

JR: part of it. And so I think it's gonna kind of unlock a little bit [00:29:00] deeper layer of some of the things we're talking about it. If you're a visual person like I am, it's a lot easier to look at the screen and, you'll see the video, you'll see the pictures that we come up with.

And anyway, we're gonna, because it's video editing, man, it takes a lot, it takes a lot more editing. It's kind of interesting. It's like, wow, are we gonna have time to do this very much? But it's coming along. So we're about, through with the first one that that'll probably be popping up here in the next month or so, I would think.

David: Yeah, maybe around the time we release this, which should be the 15th of January. We're doing this around the holidays.

But yeah, sometime January, February, my guess is Sleeping Beauty will be out on our YouTube channel.

JR: Yeah, should be up. So yeah, check that out. Push some traffic to the YouTube channel and let us know if that's interesting you to kind of, if it's worth taking the extra time to have that visual element to it.

And we'll probably also release it, you know, as an audio additional podcast. Maybe also 'cause it, they work that way too.

David: Yeah, we talked about that, that we take a break [00:30:00] in July and we might scrape the audio out of those and just release 'em for an audio podcast. Just so if you're not a YouTuber, you could still listen to those if you want, fill some downtime in our podcast. But yeah, we talked about, you know, every season we try to do something a little bit more, right? Expand ourselves a little bit.

And so, well, another thing I'll mention is, you know, we record the audio to these, but we're also recording the video. And if we have time, and if it works out, we might throw the video of these podcasts on our YouTube channel. The audio's already on there. But we're experimenting with this one.

If it shows up as video, then the experiment was successful. If it doesn't, then we just scrap the whole thing. Right?

JR: Right, we're just two old dogs that can't learn it. It is kind of crazy seeing these content creators and they're just constantly putting video out there and I don't know how they're doing these slick edits and you know, I'm just, I guess I'm just, I'm too old man. I just have to go to my old, you know, video [00:31:00] editing software and go through frame by frame and kind of do my thing. But anyway, yeah, maybe, maybe we just kind of put it up there and let it be unedited or something. I don't know.

David: Yeah.

JR: Yeah. We're, we're dabbling in that. We're dabbling in that.

David: Yeah. Anything else?

JR: Well, we are still slowly but surely we're digging into the judge's book. So that's in the works. And yeah, I'd say we're more than halfway done now.

David: We're more than halfway done.

JR: Writing, you're much better at it than I am, but writing is very slow process.

So that's in the works.

David: Yeah, I actually, today I was at the coffee shop. I started on the chapter on Samson. So I, I'm excited. It's been I think we might be able to get it out in the fall. But once you've done writing, there's the whole editing process too. So, that be another thing that happens in season four, wider on Navigating An Ancient Faith, is we might be releasing what The Mythic Story of the Judges? I think what we're going to call it.

JR: Yeah. No, I like the name. That's a good one. And it's been a lot of fun so far, but [00:32:00] golly woo, you're a much better writer than I am. I know that my chapters just take months and months and they feel exhausting, although they, they're getting a little bit easier, you know?

David: Yeah.

JR: And some of it's been, we're so far removed from doing that series that I forget some of the stuff. I need to go back and find notes. I need to go back and listen to that episode to jar my memory on some of the thoughts that we had. But, you know, no, it's, been definitely an interesting project.

David: Yeah. So Navigating An Ancient Faith might have a book come this fall, so that'd be exciting too.

JR: Yep. There you go.

Uh, What else we got? Is that it?

David: Well, I say I would say anything else, but that kind of makes me tired just talking about it all. If we could pull

JR: Oh, I know. Golly.

David: it'll be a jam packed season four.

JR: Yeah. Yeah. We still got some energy left in us, man.

David: Alright, well that was just a little teaser. I hope as a listener that kind of peaks some of your interest, maybe some of these series. And again, if you have any thoughts along the way, send us an email, go to the website. There's links in the show [00:33:00] notes that you can say, Hey, have you thought about this?

Or, here's a Stranger Things idea. We'd love to hear from you. And yeah, we'll see you at the episode one of season four.

JR: Here we go. Let's go.