Welcome to the Gospel Coalition podcast where we help to renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel.

Today we're pleased to share with you one of our articles on audio.

AI can't beat what we learn in the school of our senses by Brett McCracken, read by the author.

In March 2020, the sights and smells of Southern California Spring were especially sweet to me.

The roses and camellia, the potent fragrance of orange blossoms, the chirping chickadees and pollinating hummingbirds,

the usually brown Santa Ana Mountains remade with emerald grasses and yellow wild mustard.

My two-year-old son, chasing butterflies around the backyard, blissfully unaware of the surrounding

societal chaos.

I went outside a lot in those days, trying to escape the surreality and paranoia of life

online in the COVID-19 era.

I remember feeling more grounded, more human, more hopeful when I could breathe fresh air,

sit outside at sunset, or pick avocados from our

backyard tree. The script of creation, however uncontrollable, felt more predictable than the

uncertain script of human history as our screens narrated to us an unfolding apocalypse.

The reality of COVID-19, we now know, was never as severe

as our digital feeds declared. That's not to say it wasn't a nasty sickness that caused real

suffering. It was, and it did. But bigger than the pandemic's biological disaster was its

informational disaster,

the tragic alchemy of an already brewing digital epistemological crisis,

the algorithm's acceleration of extreme takes, and the utter failure of the expert class to engender trust.

The rest of 2020 was a turning point for me, and I suspect many others in recognizing

the extent of screen-mediated information's untrustworthiness.

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