Uncover the transformative power of literature as we navigate through the ideological landscapes painted by Friedrich Hayek, Benjamin Hardy, Murray Rothbard, and Dr. Michael Heiser. Are you prepared to challenge your notions of state control and personal growth? This episode promises to arm you with insights from Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" and its chilling cautionary tales of totalitarian regimes, and Hardy's "Personality Isn't Permanent," which will empower you with strategies for self-evolution. Rothbard's "For a New Liberty" might just alter your perspective on libertarianism and societal structure, while Heiser's "The Unseen Realm" will reimagine the biblical narratives that have been foundational to our spiritual beliefs.
As we celebrate our love for profound reads, we eagerly extend an invitation for a literary exchange—tell us about the books that have reshaped your worldview. Experience the enriching conversations where we not only dissect pivotal ideas from revolutionary authors but also honor timeless wisdom from church fathers. Our discourse is more than an analysis; it's a tribute to the enduring power of books in sculpting our journeys through life and politics. Join us, share your reflections, and let's collectively build a community of listeners united by the passion for knowledge and a good page-turner.
Uncover the transformative power of literature as we navigate through the ideological landscapes painted by Friedrich Hayek, Benjamin Hardy, Murray Rothbard, and Dr. Michael Heiser. Are you prepared to challenge your notions of state control and personal growth? This episode promises to arm you with insights from Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" and its chilling cautionary tales of totalitarian regimes, and Hardy's "Personality Isn't Permanent," which will empower you with strategies for self-evolution. Rothbard's "For a New Liberty" might just alter your perspective on libertarianism and societal structure, while Heiser's "The Unseen Realm" will reimagine the biblical narratives that have been foundational to our spiritual beliefs.
As we celebrate our love for profound reads, we eagerly extend an invitation for a literary exchange—tell us about the books that have reshaped your worldview. Experience the enriching conversations where we not only dissect pivotal ideas from revolutionary authors but also honor timeless wisdom from church fathers. Our discourse is more than an analysis; it's a tribute to the enduring power of books in sculpting our journeys through life and politics. Join us, share your reflections, and let's collectively build a community of listeners united by the passion for knowledge and a good page-turner.
Hi everyone. Thanks again for joining us for the launch of the Psychintheo podcast. We're excited that you're here. If you have listened to our first full length episode and are enjoying these shorter episodes of who we are and why we started the podcast, we greatly appreciate it. If you can share these episodes and their stories, comment on our posts and leave a review for us on Apple Podcasts. Let us know what you think and if you have any topic ideas, feel free to message us. Enjoy the following episodes. Let's do a note I like this one Sam and Tim's favorite books, and why.
Speaker 2:
Okay, you want me to go first. You want?
Speaker 1:
to go first.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Wait a minute. Did you go first Austin? I'll go first this time.
Speaker 1:
Yes, okay, okay, all right. I talked so long, it was like I, tim, is the expert promoter of books. Like he reads books like crazy, and you'll hear him like I will try, right, okay, then I want to just show you one.
Speaker 2:
Great question. Are you interested in as much as we do?
Speaker 1:
What are the secrets that?
Speaker 2:
you are Little versus objetos. Hey, how do you read for us? Great question, okay, no, I think you can write about this picture you will bring to fire.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so I can skip all the comments, but you won't believe what they wrote. I don't like books. You have to know how to watch them. Because of what you say in the talk, we're only going to read quizzes. Let's get, let's do this. Okay, I'll pick up Kira Rivera. Right now, kimberly and I are writing these books. He wrote it mid 20th century. He's a famous libertarian type economist, nobel Prize winning economist, and it's all about how societies drift into well, it's called the road to serfdom. So it's how free societies drift into some form of slavery to the state, and he wrote this sort of signaling at like. He wrote this mid 20th century, so in the backdrop is Nazi Germany in the Soviet Union, and so he wrote this as a way to explain to the West that we are creeping, we're on the road to serfdom and we need to correct course if we hope not to go down that same road. So very, very insightful book.
Speaker 1:
I love those.
Speaker 2:
One of the best chapters in the book, I think, is I think it's titled it's been a long time since I cracked it open, but it's called how the Worst Rise to the Top and it's just about how unethical people know how to gain power because they're willing to do things that good people won't.
Speaker 1:
That's true.
Speaker 2:
So it's a really good chapter. Another book your personality. Well, it's called Personality Isn't Permanent, by Benjamin Hardy, very recent book, and it's all about shaping, not getting trapped in thinking that my, your personality or the way your habits are just who you are, that you can't change. So he really blows up a lot of the common myths about personality tests. And then yeah, and then all of them like the. I don't know if he goes through all of them, but he talks about the big ones and says that they're sort of just.
Speaker 2:
They're basically, you know, snapshots of you and they're not static things that can't change, and you can actually work on changing yourself. There's things you don't like about yourself. You can work on that.
Speaker 1:
So you're not destined to be your character.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah yeah, you can. You know you can work to be more extroverted, or you can work to be more optimistic or you know things like that. You can by setting goals and working toward those goals.
Speaker 1:
It's a really really good practical book.
Speaker 2:
Another book, a political book, called For a New Liberty, and that is by Murray Rothbard. It's it's one of these like sort of like the constitution of libertarianism. Let's say I like it because he's he doesn't shy away from very difficult questions and the in the political space, libertarians are often pressed on. Well, how would how would you know this thing work in a libertarian society if you didn't have a state, or the state was really really small and only had a couple functions? How would you build roads? Or how would you handle telecommunications?
Speaker 2:
or or how would you handle courts or something like that? And this book really takes an honest crack at those questions. Other books do too, but this was one of the first ones. He was a pioneer. I just think it's a really, really good book too If you're interested in just understanding political liberty from a, from a like a much more like hard line position it's a really good book.
Speaker 2:
I don't obviously endorse everything in the book, but you know some of that's sad. We have to say that sometimes. I know, I know, okay. So I think that's the last book, which I think is a a recent one for me, but also something I've gone deep, deep down the rabbit hole and the book is called the unseen realm by Dr Michael Heiser, who was a conservative evangelical biblical scholar, and the book is about the backdrop of the Bible, the spiritual backdrop of the.
Speaker 2:
Bible what he calls ancient cosmology, not ancient cosmology. What am I? One of my cosmic, cosmic geography. Let's say where there's a lot more going on in the spiritual realm than what you might initially think just by a cursory reading of the Bible. And he does a really good job of exegeting many passages to show the complexity of the spiritual world and and how the narrative of scripture is pointing to this ongoing story in the background. So once you read this book, you will not read the Bible the same way really it's.
Speaker 1:
It's that good of a book yeah, and it's one.
Speaker 2:
You know, it's one of those things where I think I think Heiser pioneered or maybe just broke open a new phase of theological development for for the church, where at certain times you know the church aid, in the church history, there's ages where we have to focus on different doctrines and hammer out different things, and this might be one of those eras that we're heading into where people have to hammer out what exactly is angelology and demonology with reference to the church and other things that we, you know, we salvation and all the other doctrines. So, you know, angelology and demonology doesn't get a whole lot of attention in evangelical circles, except for like the more very very charismatic side, yeah, but this book will treat it with a very, very in-depth study, probably deeper than than you might be anticipating.
Speaker 1:
So it's a very, very fascinating book for a book like that sounds like it'd be pretty lengthy. Is it the thick?
Speaker 2:
yeah it's um, you know it's, I'd say there's a smaller book that he. It's like a summary of the it's more popular level book called Super Natural. So if somebody wants to start there to start.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's called.
Speaker 2:
Supernatural, what the Bible says about the unseen realm and why it matters. See, I promote books guys.
Speaker 1:
Yeah you're good at it too, yeah yeah, so that's the popular level book.
Speaker 2:
But if you want something that's a little meteor here by the unseen realm and then there's follow on books that he he wrote after that, that kind of flesh out other topics that came up in that kind of his area special, yeah, yeah yeah, unfortunately dr hyzer died early this year and I think February died of cancer, but he I think he's left him an indelible legacy that's cool or evangelicalism, but that's it's a very, very good book. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you can also watch a youtube documentary on the book really that's for you though but I'll warn you that in my opinion the documentary is a little cheesy okay but, it'll give you a good primer to the book, because it I saw the documentary and I was like, okay, I need to get this book oh so we went from there into getting the book. Okay, that's good.
Speaker 1:
I like it Good. Okay, no, you did mention. Yeah, okay, I was gonna see if you mentioned any fiction books. Oh, yeah, no fiction here.
Speaker 2:
I'm just yeah, I'm not fiction all the way.
Speaker 1:
So you won't get those exciting books from us. So my top three and you know I'm sure it was just as difficult for you like to pick your top three, your top five books and so on. It's there's so much to choose from. But I think when, when I think about books that change my perspective on something or challenge me. One of the ones was Knowing God by JI Packer.
Speaker 1:
Okay, really great book, golly guy, and the thing that changed me with that book is the level of depth that he had in understanding the process of knowing God. Because there's so many elements, obviously we can't know God fully. There's still so much more to learn about him. But the way that he's able to write and the level of depth that he had in describing who God is and the different facets of God his relational nature, the intellectual or the knowledge nature I just feel it was something that hadn't seen before, like I've heard people talk about it but I don't know the way that he wrote it within the book when he's talking about those infinite attributes of God, was very I don't know.
Speaker 1:
I was able to see his heart, in a sense of man. This guy was really searching to know who God is, and so that's kind of what was my takeaway from it. This is a journey of someone who's dug so deep into wanting to know God, so deep into scripture, that he has this greater understanding that you know I wish I could know. Now he does make a point about also being relational, because we can know everything about God, or know a lot about God, not know everything, know a lot about God and still not have that relational component to him.
Speaker 1:
So that was a really good book, grasping God's Word was another one, because that one taught me how to read the Bible. Yeah, that's a good book. Oh, yeah, I love that book and it changed the way that I would look at scripture, because when you give Bible studies as a young adult or teenager, you're thinking topics right, what are the kids talking about? And you take a topic and you try to adjust your message to that. And when I got older, as I was reading through scripture, I'm like I don't know if this says what. It's what I thought it said and I was like, okay, someone recommended Living by the Book which he honest.
Speaker 2:
Did you use Jeremiah 2911 at some point? Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:
I did, and that's an often misquoted one. I can do all things through code is another one, but yeah, that one. I don't think I used it in the same way, but definitely Jeremiah 2911. I think I did. You prayed the prayer of J-best. Oh man, it's the things like it hits you, like you're like I've been doing this wrong, and that was exactly what happened, as I was reading through my. I haven't looked at the cultural context.
Speaker 2:
We had to use Grasping God's Word for our Hormoneutics class, did you Okay?
Speaker 1:
yeah, so I did that for one of my costs too, and so once I took that class it was like it just changed the way that I studied the Bible, so that one was a life changing one. And the third one, last one, is the 5000 year leap. I think you would like this that one basically talks about the advancement of how the United States principles of freedom came through fruition so quickly in comparison to other countries so 200 years basically, of this development, this idea of freedom, and how the founders started it through their religious beliefs, right, their belief in God, and it talks about each president and how they came to the conclusion that they arrived. So someone talked about how Moses led Israel right, how he depended on God. It was a theocracy, essentially, he depended on God. Then he picked his 12 people and they had smaller units and basically all the way down to the people's needs and he would only deal with the serious needs, but basically talks about the structure and the reason why.
Speaker 1:
I also remember that book, not just because it talks about excuse me the history of each president and how they came to develop this idea of freedom, but also was given to me by a professor who at the it was a political science class I was probably it was 40 students maybe, and I was maybe one of three conservative voices. This was back in UNOV and I would speak up, as fearful as I was to get shot down. He was just open to ideas. But he gave us the opportunity to ask him questions at the end of class and to ask him whatever we wanted and he would answer it directly. And someone asked are you a conservative? And he said yes, unashamedly conservative all along, and he started going on this random, why he's like the way that he was.
Speaker 1:
But anyways, when I took my final he I turned in my test and he says Sam, I wanted to give you something. Here's a book. I think you would appreciate it and thank you for speaking up in class. And I've had the book ever since and it still has his, his notes for me. Thank you for speaking up. I really appreciate your insights and so it's a memorable one, yeah, so those are the top three books.
Speaker 2:
All right, I hope you guys are liking this, do you guys have?
Speaker 1:
top books. Feel free to message us and send us your top three books.
Speaker 2:
It can't be a book of the Bible, folks, yeah.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we all have Bible number one.
Speaker 2:
So you can't, just you can't, you can't do that. Exactly yeah, Just so you know, we do have that Now if you list like a book of one of the church fathers, that's impressive. That's very impressive, very much so yeah.
Speaker 1:
Okay, friends, thanks so much for tuning in to our launch day episodes. We actually released our pooling episode first and then published the shorter episodes for you to learn about us, our why and how our life stories, perspectives, faith and even humor influenced how we discussed these various topics. We have plenty of more short episodes like this for you to enjoy, so feel free to click on the next episode.
