Episode 16: God's Gonna Run You Over

Details, credits, errata: This week Sam and Alissa talk about God’s Not Dead, Harold Cronk’s 2014 Obama-era fever dream about liberal professors run amok on campus, a sort of Christian version of Crash or Magnolia where a bunch of tangentially related characters have mini-adventures throughout the Fox News Cinematic Universe. Americans can watch God’s Not Dead on Netflix, if they so choose.Our guest is the wonderfully funny comedian and writer Josh Gondelman, an absolute treasure of goodwill and good jokes, whose book Nice Try can and should be purchased here. He’s a writer and producer on Showtime’s terrific late-night talk show Desus & Mero and an all-around swell guy. He also watched this movie of his own free will long before he came on our podcast, so he is also a man of formidable patience and endurance.We talk about a lot of stuff on this episode; it’s a long one but there’s no fat on it largely because Josh is so funny. This is, he observes, an incredibly mean movie. I also get to the bottom of why I don’t care for Franklin Graham, Alissa reminds us that people are only mad at God in these movies because they have some trauma that it is the Christian characters’ job to expose, and Josh tells us about being a Jewish guy in a largely Christian community (and country) and is very generous about our incredibly weird culture.Our episode art on the website this week is a picture of Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher and poet who caused all the trouble in the first place, made available through Wikimedia Commons and used with our gratitude.Our theme song is Louis Armstrong and His Hot 5’s Muskrat Ramble, made freely available by the Boston Public Library and audio engineering shop George Blood, LP through the Internet Archive. God’s Not Dead is copyright 2013 Pure Flix Entertainment, brief audio excerpts are used herein for review purposes and no other copyright is intended or implied. All other content is copyright 2020 Sam Thielman and Alissa Wilkinson.If you’re not a subscriber, subscribe now! We have a special Halloween episode next week and we don’t want you to miss it! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yammpod.substack.com