April 2025 Updates

A digital postcard from a very delayed train on the American East Coast

New York

I am supposed to be in Washington D.C. right now, but I am on a train which was delayed for around three hours, due to an unthinkable tragedy occurring somewhere further down the tracks this evening. I am tired, but grateful to be alive. Hug your friends. Kiss your partner. Call your mother; she misses you.

We’ll take this backwards: I have just left New York City, having spent a few hours today in the company of Andrew Schultz and his fellow Flagrant Podcast co-hosts. Not my usual speed, but after an hour or so of attempting to navigate the trolley problem with them, I got on to my favourite subject—Jesus of Nazareth—and we produced what should prove to be an interesting conversation.

New Jersey

The day beforehand in New Jersey I spoke with Julian Dorey for his podcast. I’m not quite sure what made it so, but I think it was probably my favourite appearance on someone else’s podcast of all time. We spoke mostly about the New Testament and gnostic gospels, and it went on for the better part of four hours. I could have happily gone for four more. It comes out on Tuesday.

Los Angeles

Let’s not forget I have my own podcast, too! In Los Angeles I was invited to the Mythical Entertainment HQ, from which is produced Good Mythical Morning, an extremely popular YouTube show—hosted by the loveable Rhett and Link—with nearly 20 million subscribers. (Yes, twenty million; that’s not a typo.)

Rhett and Link used to be intimately involved in Christian outreach during their university years in North Carolina (Rhett’s wife had a professor you may have hear of: Bart Ehrman), but since then have both lost their faith in the religion, with Rhett in particular having spoken quite openly about his deconversion.

Rhett was kind enough not only to record an episode of Within Reason, but also to host me on one of his sets, even having his own podcast producer manage the taping, which saved me a great deal of time, effort, and money in organising our conversation.

It will come out at some point soon, and, of course, Substack supporters will see it first!

San Diego

In San Diego I finally participated in a long-awaited showdown with David Wood, at a live, in-person debate on the question, “Did Jesus Claim to be God?”

The event was shoehorned into the “Bless God Summit”, an event organised by YouTube Ruslan KD, which was otherwise a Christian conference with no sceptical presence. So, I was very much in “enemy territory”, but you wouldn’t have known that based on how hospitably and enthusiastically I was welcomed into the environment.

I thought the debate was a fairly even matchup. It will come out this weekend, and I will at some point afterwards produce a more detailed review, particularly of some moments I think I could have been stronger on. I haven’t watched the debate back yet, but as far as I can remember, there was no obvious winner, and I am genuinely curious to see what you all make of it.

***

It has been a long time since I last wrote to you all, and so much more has happened since then, too. I debated 25 Christians on Jubilee; I hosted Penn Badgley, Brian Greene, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Rainn Wilson on my podcast; I debated Cliffe and Stuart Knechtle; I hit one million subscribers; I hosted an 11-hour livestream; I hit episode 100 of the podcast; I even released a song on Spotify.

Yet things are moving so fast that all of that feels like it was ages ago, which tells me that I should write these updates more often. Part of me resists the idea because it “gives away” some exciting upcoming projects before their release, but I suppose that I don’t need to give everything away just to check in and say hello. I don’t need to mention that I’ll be going on Lex Fridman’s podcast soon, for instance.

As always, more is to come. Thank you for being here!

- Alex