America experiences the most significant homicide rate reduction in 125 years.

Elon Musk's AI chatbot releases millions of sexually charged images, including women and children, on X.

The new trend called looks maxing reveals the crisis young men are facing today, and China's birth rate plunges. These are the stories we will discuss, and we will also address some of your questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell. And I'm your co-host, Scott Ray. This is the Think Biblical Weekly Cultural Update brought to by Talop School Theology, Biola University. Before we jump in, if people didn't figure it out from my introduction, we're going to be

talking about a topic that you might want to make sure you have age appropriate people in the

room, especially on the second story. This first one, Scott, really jumped out to me because

especially since COVID, we've been talking a ton about crime rate increase,

homicide rate increase.

And it's been decreasing over the past, say, three or four years.

And the narrative has been, and we're back to pre-COVID times.

It seems now in 2025, we've gone even better, so to speak, than before COVID.

So something is happening here that both The York Times and the Atlantic find surprising.

Now, before we jump in, both of these publications say, we don't know what's going on.

We don't know why.

And then they proceed to give their best guess, which is fair because they say that's what it is.

So here's some of the data.

Last year for the first time, all seven categories of violent crime tracked by the analysis fell below pre-pandemic levels.

And they say, this is the New York Times article, provides further evidence,

suggests that the surge in violence in the early 2020s was a departure during a time of

massive social upheaval, not a new normal. So there's 25% fewer homicides, 13% fewer

shootings, 29% fewer carjacking.

This is like surprising and remarkable news to come out.

One of the things they say, typically most people insist that crime is going up regardless

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