Dan and Ryan learn some heartfelt lessons about making babies cry and setting your local woods on fire while dropping some life-changing knowledge about Hebrew words and the trials and tribulations of Mr. Dill Tudd. #lovewins

Dan and Ryan discuss a comedy special from Christian comedian Mark Lowry featuring very little stand-up and an awful lot of fake commercials and Christian cameos. Be sure to watch Ryan's own comedy special on YouTube!

In which Dan and Ryan learn how to access a media file online.

There are some who walk among us, warriors who live by an ancient code, who seem like normal people but whose blood protects them from the venom of cobras. Unfortunately their story remains untold. Instead, this week Dan and Ryan discuss the rapture movie that started it all, and by "all," I mean, all of Dan's anxiety about life and reality. This h…

Ryan and Dan discuss the Christian music industry's attempt at a grunge anthem.

Dan and Ryan discuss what is quite possibly one of the strangest, most incoherent TV shows ever produced. It's all about a Christian theater that is almost certainly a money laundering front for Mr. Wheeler, a man who probably wears a cowboy hat and probably has some shady dealings with "the cartel." None of that is in the show, but if Mr. Wheeler …

Dan and Ryan enter the nightmarish world of Psalty, a sentient book of Christian songs who may or may not be keeping horrible genetically-altered creatures enslaved in his home. It's okay, the kids seem to love it!

This week it's a good movie! Never mind what Roger Ebert says. Dan and Ryan discuss the 1986 film The Mosquito Coast starring Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, and River Phoenix. They also talk about various issues related to church mission trips. At the end they battle a horde of giant mosquitos, and one of them dies! I'm almost certain that's how the …

Dan and Ryan discuss the awful comedic stylings of former presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee while dissecting a "funny" news segment from his late night talk show on TBN. Then Dan shares four memes based on Huckabee tweets that got him banned from the r/standupshots subreddit.

Dan and Ryan discuss a movie about the end times that pretends to star Stephen Baldwin and Eric Roberts. There's car chases with speeds as high as ten. And a former sex-worker who speaks like a robot and then dies like she's pretending to take a lil nap. There's redundancies, quantum computers, summer camps pretending to be cities, and, um, Lewis. …

How a short animated video on YouTube destroyed our brains.

Dan and Ryan revisit the fever dream that is the Church of the Rock in Canada. They watch a combined total of three Easter plays and come away with more questions than they started with.

In which Ryan destroys his vocal cords as he warns us about the political career of a congressman whose name shall not be spoken.

Miracles - anyone can do them! Or can they? In this movie, a little girl who may or may not be a teenager can do them, but she also says that she can't. But later she says that anyone can. If you need more information about this, talk to Sam Donovan on Crestline. We don't know who he is but apparently he changes lives. But the movie's not about him…

Dan and Ryan watch a short action film starring Carman which is ostensibly a music video. Be sure to check out our new FREE PATREON PAGE where you can easily search for episodes. We also set up some fun episode collections which include a few cool extras!

Dan and Ryan return with another look at the Bibleman franchise, this time with a deeper dive into the life story of the man who played the title role. Be sure to check out our new FREE PATREON PAGE where you can easily search for episodes. We also set up some fun episode collections which include a few cool extras!…

Dan and Ryan talk about Dan's latest book which is about why Dan left the Christian faith over a decade ago. They also talk about a couple of Christian apologists who had a lot to say in response to Dan's first book. Politely Rejecting Jesus is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in both paperback and ebook form. The audio book will be available…

Picking up where the last episode left off, Dan continues his discussion of cosmological arguments for atheism. In this episode he talks about an argument from Quentin Smith which accepts the Kalam Cosmological Argument for a cause of the universe, but which attempts to show that the universe is its own cause. Resources mentioned in this episode: T…

Ryan is currently on a quest to rescue the New Year Baby with the help of Caveman and Ben Franklin, so Dan tackles a couple of philosophical arguments for atheism. The first is a version of (or response to) the Kalam Cosmological Argument which suggests that the universe can't possibly have a cause. Send us your questions, comments, and other gener…

Does everything have an explanation? What about the clown ghost that seems to be haunting Ryan? These are Very Important Questions and Dan and Ryan will do their best to get to the bottom of them as they talk about another version of the cosmological argument for God's existence. (As for the ghost, he is welcome to set up a third mic and join the d…

Can someone really hire an infinite number of assassins to take out Ryan? Also where did the universe come from? These are the questions that Dan and Ryan try to get to the bottom of in talking about the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which is a prominent argument for the existence of God. Resources mentioned/used in this episode: The Blackwell Compa…

Ryan sinks deeper into the world of depressing holiday specials while Dan reels from the horror of Meta's ill-fated AI-generated Instagram account. Then the two get to work in discussing a variety of informal logical fallacies. Resources mentioned in this episode: Informal Logical Fallacies: A Brief Guide by Jacob E. Van Vleet Send us your question…

Three ghosts visited Ryan in one night and convinced him to keep doing this podcast, meanwhile Dan can't get any ghosts to visit him. Also, Dan and Ryan talk about a YouTube video that claims to show how science disproves free will. Resources mentioned in this episode: "Free Will" by Mark Balaguer "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will" b…

Seems like our old pals Smith and Jones are at it again, this time baking cookies with potentially deadly results. Also, we can't seem to stop ourselves from dunking on the late Stephen Hawking. But can we be blamed? Or did the universe make us do it? Send us your questions, comments, and other general hate mail via our podcast page, which you can …

Do we have free will? If not, then who should we blame for the movie where Nicolas Cage plays a Vegas magician who can see two minutes into the future? Personally, I blame Ryan. Send us your questions, comments, and other general hate mail via our podcast page, which you can access by visiting thinkhardernotsmarter.com (Podcast art by Andie Basto)…

What do evolution, a cat named Nacho, and 108 philosophy podcasts all have to do with the problem of skepticism? I'd tell you but I don't know anything. Send us your questions, comments, and other general hate mail via our podcast page, which you can access by visiting thinkhardernotsmarter.com (Podcast art by Andie Basto)…

Dan and Ryan know things, allegedly. But what does it mean to know something? And what does this have to do with a man named Jones bringing loose change to a job interview? Send us your questions, comments, and other general hate mail via our podcast page, which you can access by visiting thinkhardernotsmarter.com (Podcast art by Andie Basto)…

Do minds even exist? Will Ryan let Dan remove his brain for scientific purposes? It's all part of their ongoing discussion about the mind-body problem. Send us your questions, comments, and other general hate mail via our podcast page, which you can access by visiting thinkhardernotsmarter.com (Podcast art by Andie Basto)…

What is the self? Is it possible for mental substances to interact with physical bodies? Dan and Ryan continue discussing the mind-body problem and consider some of the problems related to substance dualism. Send us your questions, comments, and other general hate mail via our podcast page, which you can access by visiting thinkhardernotsmarter.com…

What happens when a transporter malfunction creates two Will Rikers? Where does his mind end up? Did he even have a mind to begin with? Also what is the secret to comedy? Dan and Ryan take a look at the mind-body problem and explore a view called substance dualism. Send us your questions, comments, and other general hate mail via our podcast page, …

The late great Stephen Hawking once opined that philosophy is dead, so Dan and Ryan get to work to try to figure out who the killer is. Send us your philosophy questions and other general hate mail via our podcast page, which you can access by visiting thinkhardernotsmarter.com Special thanks to Andie Basto for the amazing podcast art! Follow @andi…

John Travolta is an angel who swears and smokes cigarettes and eats a lot of sugar and is the desire of every woman on the planet except for Andie MacDowell, who is too busy hiding her shameful secret about how she babysits dogs. This is a super weird, super goofy movie from the 90s that was much, much easier to watch than any movie Ryan has ever p…

In a sense, this is the Citizen Kane of bad Christian movies. Also the world is going to end about forty years ago.

What better way to start the new year off than with the latest and greatest from Donald James Parker? This week we watched Pickleball Princess, which turned out not to be a religious movie, except in the sense that pickkeball seems to be Donald's new religion. Pickleball is basically the Messiah in this movie. It can cure racism and build bridges, …

Jesus' diner has closed for business, so now he's vacationing in Thailand and making new friends. You know what that means - it's the hit sequel to The Encounter, only this time, Jesus is taken hostage. David A. R. White is here too, as the world's worst policeman, but he's tied to a chair for most of the movie. Thankfully, Jesus can break the tens…

Kids these days, they're 29 and have major social media followings, am I right? Thankfully some parents out there still know how to raise their kids right, by waiting until their birthday, leaving the country, cutting them off, and forcing them into a life of poverty and homelessness until they can learn how to put God first. Dan, Alexa, and Ryan l…

In which Ryan continues the saga of Harry Potter, very continuingly.

It's all very simple: Satan drives a semi-trailer truck, which he uses to kill a lady so that her infant daughter Sheri can someday grow up and be diagnosed with a terminal illness that leads her to become a Pentecostal superhero. With her newfound powers, Sheri stops middle-aged high school bullies, hypnotizes TV executives, and shuts down whole m…

A faith-based movie with F bombs! And murder! And angels that seem to be slacking off on their job of stopping terrible things from happening. This week, Dan, Alexa, and Ryan watch their first R-rated faith-based film, which comes with an important lesson about forgiveness. Or something. There's also a murder mystery that goes nowhere, a detective …

Imagine an episode of Pinky and the Brain where Brain feeds Pinky to a cat, and you have a basic idea of what this Christian cartoon is like. Nero is killing all the Christians in Rome, and that means it's time for some hilarious antics where four probably-orphans have to run for their lives to avoid being sold into slavery. And it's all very wacky…

Ever wondered what it would be like if Jesus made you a cheeseburger? What if it was the most delicious cheeseburger you'd ever had? And what if Jesus ruined it by saying weird things about genocide? There's all this and more in this week's movie, The Encounter, in which Jesus fulfills his lifelong dream of becoming a small business owner. Unfortun…

How did life begin? It's a question no scientist has ever thought about. What are scientists hiding? And do they have what it takes to win $5000 of Ben Stein's money? I might be mixing some things up. In any case, this week we watched Stein's 2008 propaganda-fest, which boldly defends the right of scientists everywhere to advocate for a vaguely def…

One's a skeptic, the other's a lapsed Christian. Now they have to work together to get to the bottom of a mystery about UFOs. Sounds like a recipe for hijinks! But we'll never know, because the movie skips all that. Instead we have to spend endless hours in their magazine's office listening to people drone on about apple juice and the rapture. Why …

God's Not Dead is back, and this time, he's out for vengeance. Reverend Dave has to face his deadliest foe yet: Common Core. It's all very simple: The government wants you to think that its founding documents were written by rich old white slaveowning men, so that you'll be disgusted with them, reject our founding documents, and agree to let the go…

What happens when a tough-minded skeptic sets out to disprove Christianity? And what if that story is told by evangelicals who don't seem to know how tough-minded skeptics actually think? And what if it's based on a true story? That's right, it's the personal account of author Lee Strobel's journey from atheism to Christianity, although calling the…

Die Hard on a plane, but with the rapture! If there's one thing we can't get enough of, it's movies about the rapture that are set mostly on an airplane where the central premise of the film is treated as a surprise plot twist near the end. Sadly, this movie does not feature Nicolas Cage, but it does have Eric Roberts, who is almost as good! Basica…

This week we're going back to the year 1890, when podcasts were more godly, and all people cared about was their unpublished manuscripts. Dr. Russell Carlisle wants to teach people to follow Jesus' morals without mentioning Jesus' name every two seconds, but his baldest colleague is so outraged at this idea that he sends Dr. Carlisle over a hundred…

Try as we might, we just can't seem to escape the Kirk Cameron vortex. Why do we do this to ourselves? Do we enjoy the suffering? Is there something wrong with our brains? Perhaps if the three of us had received an education directly from our parents, this never would have happened. We'd all be outside, tearing up the countryside in our four-wheele…

He's already saved Christmas. Now he has to save his own marriage. No, we're not talking about Ernest P. Worrell, we're talking about someone with far less dignity than him. That's right, we're back with another Kirk Cameron movie. This week we watched the 2008 Christian film Fireproof, about a fireman whose marriage is failing due to the fact that…

Gramps is still at college! And now people are dying!