Arizona State University offers a B.A. in Content Creation, AI-generated videos of Christians getting bullied go viral, and what The Odyssey and C.S. Lewis have in common. But first:
“Be Her” by Ella Langley
Reaching as high as #3 on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA chart and #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, the song “Be Her” is about wanting to live a more put-together life. The “her” Langley wants to be speaks assertively, only smokes and drinks in moderation, “calls her mama all the time,” and “stays talkin’ to Jesus.” Christian faith seems to be a big part of Langley’s worldview; in her acceptance speech for Female Artist of the Year at the ACM awards, she said, “Thank you Jesus for letting me do this for a living.” Videos suggest that she regularly shares her faith at concerts as well. (Additionally, this week, Langley’s breakout single “Choosin’ Texas” became the longest-running No. 1 single by a solo woman, aside from Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”) For the lyrics to “Be Her,” click here; for a lyric video, click here.
And now for our three conversations..
1. Content Creation, BA
What it is: Starting this Fall, Arizona State University will begin offering a Bachelor of Arts in Content Creation.
Why it’s timely: Under the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU, students will take courses like “How to Become an Influencer,” “On-Camera Presence,” and “Interpersonal Influence.” Other universities already offer select courses in this area, and two small schools in the U.S. offer similar programs. However, ASU is the first large university to offer a program to prepare students to become an influencer and a “strategic storyteller who thrives in the rapidly evolving creator economy.” Matthew Simoneau researches how young adults imagine their careers in the U.S. and Norway, and found that over 60% of middle and high school students surveyed from 2021-2024 said they wanted to be social media influencers—or picked their future careers based on what they saw online. So the new major will definitely be scratching an itch.
Continue the conversation: If you could create your own college major, what would your classes be?
2. Apostles of the Algorithm
What it is: TikTok accounts like @lilysfaithwear (122k followers) are posting AI-generated videos of Christians getting bullied for trying to sell Christian T-shirts—and getting hundreds of thousands of views.
Why it’s confusing: The basic plotline of these videos is the following. A Christian girl tries to sell shirts that say “Jesus: The Way, The Truth, and The Life”—and then she gets treated harshly. In one video, she sets up a booth at a Pride Parade and has coffee poured all over her merch. In another, she sets up a booth at a “Satan Parade,” and her merch gets thrown onto the ground and stepped on. Then some variation of the line, “I’m just trying to do God’s work… will you please buy a shirt?” comes onto the screen, with a link to buy in the profile bio. Little details (like the shopping bag here at 0:07) give away the fact that these videos are, in fact, AI-generated. And even though shirts like these could offer genuine encouragement, the strategy of generating fake conflicts to drive sales through sympathy seems at odds with the faith that’s being promoted.
Continue the conversation: What do you think about AI-generated Christian videos?
3. The Odyssey
What it is: Two weeks after its theatrical debut, the popularity of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey shows no sign of slowing down.
Why it’s epic: Between its star-studded cast, groundbreaking filmmaking techniques, and the name recognition that Nolan himself brings, one of the oldest stories ever told has become one of this year’s biggest movies. The film, which has already surpassed $700 million at the global box office, is based on Homer’s ancient poem and follows Odysseus’ journey home after the Trojan War. Nolan used over two million feet of 70mm film. Long before superheroes and cinematic universes, Homer was asking questions that people still wrestle with today. What makes a home feel like home? What kind of person do experiences of hardship and success shape us into? Thousands of years later, the questions of the Odyssey still resonate—in part because they are often the same sorts of eternal questions that the Bible answers.
Let’s translate this one further…
This section contains spoilers for The Odyssey (but come on, you’ve had 3,000 years).
The most memorable part of The Odyssey’s soundtrack is when Odysseus is trying to describe what it was like to hear the siren’s song. The movie’s composer, Ludwig Göransson, used an ancient reed instrument called an “aulos” for a composition that feels eerie, forlorn, and unforgettable.
While this composition plays, Odysseus says that the siren’s song was, “All the things you want it to be. Then, all the things you wish you had never wished for. It was the delicious itch you go to scratch but find it’s under the skin, you can’t reach it. So the delicious itch becomes unbearable. Told you what you most want is what you most can’t have. And what you most can’t have is what you already had, and lost.”
C.S. Lewis often referred to something similar in his writing. In the preface to The Pilgrim’s Regress he referred to “that unnameable something, desire for which pierces us…” He used the German word “sehnsucht” to describe this longing, and it was part of what convinced him to become a Christian. As he puts it in his book Mere Christianity, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
The Odyssey points to no such resolution—but it gets close. When Odysseus finally makes his way home, and sits, still in disguise, just outside the lattice of his beloved wife Penelope, the same haunting composition from Göransson comes back—this time representing how he is so near to his beloved, yet still separated from her.
In Ephesians 5:31-32, the Apostle Paul argued that marriage—the very thing that Odysseus has braved monsters and mutinies to return to—was actually meant to be a picture of our union with God: “‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.”
Marriage—like every other good thing on earth—is ultimately just a signpost to the goodness we were made to experience in eternity. But if we will let them—as C.S. Lewis did—our earthly longings can point the way there.
For more context and nuance, check out our Roundtable podcast on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In the meantime, here are three questions to help you continue the conversation with your teens:
- Have you ever felt the sort of longing that C.S. Lewis and Odysseus are referring to?
- If you could change one thing about your relationship with God, what would you change?
- What do you think human beings were made for?
Parenting together,
Evan Barber and the Axis Team
In Other News…
- Marvel will re-release Avengers: Endgame in theaters on September 25 with seven minutes of extra footage and a never-before-seen ending, connecting the movie to Avengers: Doomsday, giving fans another reason to spend money revisit the highest-grossing superhero movie of all time.
- Nearly half of middle and high school-aged teens have seen what they believed to be AI-generated sexual content, according to a new Common Sense Media survey.
- At Comic-Con this year, Marvel announced that Ryan Gosling will star as Ghost Rider in a movie directed by Sean Levy, and that Ryan Coogler will return to direct Black Panther 3, with David Jonsson playing the next Black Panther.
- According to The New York Times, using the phrase “Google it” officially makes you sound old, and the phrase “search it up” is now preferred.
- Ariana Grande’s new album, petal (language), comes out today.
PS: Know someone who could use our conversation starters with their teens? Share the CT with a friend!