Humanoid robots get real jobs that include stacking, sorting, and lifting.

The push to allow people to choose medically assisted suicide years in advance continues to advance.

According to new study, the narrative of Christianity's inevitable decline in America might have been premature. And a deep dive

on plant parenthood in New York Times reveals botched care, lawsuits, and extensive complaints

about chaotic and toxic working environments. These are the stories we will discuss,

and we will also address some of your questions.

I'm your host, Sean McDowell.

I'm your co-host, Scott Ray.

This is the Think Bivocally Weekly Cultural Update, brought you by Talbot School Theology, Biola University.

Scott, this first one jumped out to me in the Wall Street Journal, because it feels like 2025 might be a pivotal year where actually robots shaped like human beings become more, let's just say, integrated into the working environment around us

because they're more accessible, there's higher technology, there's artificial intelligence, and the cost has gone

down. So this article describes that many of the jobs these robots perform are menial. They're

called digit robots, but they are a direct replacement for the humans who would otherwise be doing this

work.

Of course, you and I have seen, and of course, our listeners have science fiction for years,

has had these kind of robots taking on human type, just jobs, but it sure seems that

that's starting to change, and it's not just in science fiction,

according to this article. Global demand for new kinds of robots has shot up. Mass manufacturing

and falling costs for components are making them cheaper to produce. And the big key is AI now gives them, quote, brains so they can function in a way and

solve problems that they apparently couldn't in the past.

Now, one thing I hadn't thought about, which seems obvious, they say the advantages of body

plans like ours, like why make them look human, is they say the world is

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