In 1964, Sam Cooke famously sang this about the direction of the world; It's been a long A long time coming, but I know A change gonna come Oh yes, it will Well, that change is heard. The way we now communicate has changed forever with the advent of social media. With this change has come new challenges; we are more polarised than ever before, and the psychological health of the population is stretched - especially among younger people. As we strap in for the rollercoaster of 2024, what can we e...
Jan 04, 2024•26 min•Ep. 27
What if the purpose of marriage is to make us better? What if personal relational choice is a bit of a lie? For many, a committed marriage may seem “old school”. What many people expect from relationships is satisfaction and freedom. So it’s paradoxical then, that once again young people seem to be partnering younger and getting married younger. Commitment, and casual interest: both are alive and well today. There’s something about long-term love stories that capture our imaginations - regardles...
Dec 28, 2023•21 min•Ep. 26
In a special Christmas episode, Steve takes some time to reflect on how Christmas - an ancient celebration - is changing as fast as the culture itself. The commercialism and pageantry of Christmas has sucked meaning from this important celebration. The earliest Christmas memories of ordinary people can be lost in this meaningless procession. But are we at risk of losing something even more significant? Are we in short supply of joy at Christmas? It certainly seems to be in short supply at the mo...
Dec 21, 2023•20 min•Ep. 25
In the run up to Christmas, Steve McAlpine looks dubiously at the West's repeated calls for 'peace on earth'. Could peace - at least as far as the West is concerned - remain beyond reach because of the direction our culture wars have taken? If calls for tolerance are now viewed suspiciously as a fig leaves for oppressive powers, so much so that we must behave in a violently intolerant way, then what room is there for peace? Instead, we may find ourselves in a society that is perpetually at war w...
Dec 14, 2023•25 min•Ep. 24
What word do you associate with "masculinity"? Guesses are, 'toxic' is high on the list. With so many "damaged men" portrayed in our literature - especially in schools - what hope can young boys in the global west have of finding a good role model? Perhaps it's time we broadened what the typical "man" looked like. Only when we do that will sayings like "boys will be boys" be a thing of the past.
Dec 07, 2023•23 min•Ep. 23
However bad you think it is, it seems the younger generation thinks it's even worse. How about these figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as reported in The Australian newspaper: "Just under 40 per cent of 16-24 year-old Australians, 1.1 million people, reported having a mental disorder in 2020-21, That’s far higher than the overall proportions of 21.4 per cent for all Australian adults." And the figures climb for young females to over 40 per cent. The Australian reports: "More than...
Nov 30, 2023•21 min•Ep. 22
Never mind gender identity. The new trend is 'reversion' - a 'return' to the Islamic faith. A growing movement of young women are espousing the Quran, wearing the hijab, and calling on other young women across the West to do the same. Is it a social media storm in a teacup? Statistics suggest it's definitely something to consider. The simple hashtag #revert has had 2.9 billion views, followed by #RevertMuslim (1.4 billion), and #MuslimRevert (525 million). Such movements have happened before, pa...
Nov 23, 2023•21 min•Ep. 21
Is choosing to be alone the "safe" option? The show "Apartment Therapy" explores. But there's a strange quirk - almost all people live alone: and they see this as the "self-crafted" pinnacle of their lives. More people are alone now than ever before. One-seventh of all Americans live by themselves. The UK has similar numbers. This is a global Western phenomenon though - a more accurate read is Westerners prefer to live alone more. This runs parallel with an increasingly fractured society in the ...
Nov 16, 2023•24 min•Ep. 20
The Beatles have delivered a new single some 62 years after their first one - and some 22 and 43 years respectively since the deaths of two of their members, George Harrison and John Lennon. The song, Now and Then, was written by John Lennon and was on tape with him singing over piano. But as a pre-release mini-documentary explained, until recently the technology wasn’t available to split the track up into its component parts. Whatever you think of this curio from the past, it's release raises a...
Nov 09, 2023•22 min•Ep. 19
There's been a lot of death in the news recently - but one made the front pages around the world, and generated hundreds of column inches in newspapers around the world. It was the death of a friend - Matthew Perry The Star of the smash-hit sitcom Friends passed away at just 54 years old, found drowned in his hot tub following a suspected heart attack . The death of this "friend" caused a moment of sober realisation for many bystanders - especially millennials and Gen-Xers . We're all on the slo...
Nov 02, 2023•22 min•Ep. 18
In the wake of the horrors of the recent Israel-Hamas conflict, Steve ponders the deep divisions such wars reveal in our own society. The West, he observes, has a fascination with conflict. After all, it took the recent conflict in the Middle East to wipe battlefield reports of Eastern Europe off the front pages of newspapers around the world. The response to the recent conflict in Israel is emblematic of a constantly shifting culture, albeit one that remains deeply divided. But as Steve notes, ...
Oct 26, 2023•21 min•Ep. 17
Welcome to season 2 of Delorean Philosophy. On Saturday, 14 October 2023, Australians voted in a referendum about changing the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. The referendum did not pass. In this episode, Steve McAlpine takes stock of this outcome, and how the vote cast a light on a deeper problem in society. Steve asks why complex societal issues are often reduced to binary facets: YES or NO?...
Oct 19, 2023•22 min•Ep. 16
Steve McAlpine takes a look at our trend towards conspiracy theories and wonders where it will take us in the coming year. 2022's word of the year was 'gaslighting' and it seems we are set up for a darker shade of deceit in 2023 now that everyone is increasingly committed to only searching for the news they want to hear. The death of six people in Queensland as the year comes to a close demonstrates how dangerous conspiracy theories can be. But such disturbing events are a result of our increasi...
Dec 22, 2022•19 min•Ep. 15
Steve McAlpine pulls up a chair to Christmas and asks if the increasingly secular scene we're looking at is one we'll be happy with in years to come. Steve believes Christmas is becoming like so much of the other stuff that Christianity gave to the world - advances that many in the West think sprang up from nowhere. The idea seems to be that if we can have the fruit of the gospel without the root of the gospel, we'll be just fine. And now pretty much the same for Christmas. If we can have the ef...
Dec 15, 2022•18 min•Ep. 14
Steve McAlpine addresses the Western trend away from the Christian faith, evidenced by disturbing statistics from leading countries, and asks, "What will faith look like for future monarchs?" Much ink was spilled a couple of decades ago when King Charles III (then the Prince of Wales) stated that he would prefer his title to be 'defender of faiths' rather than 'defender of the faith'. Charles - in his multicultural, multi-faith zeal - was keen to embrace the growing religious pluralism of Britai...
Dec 08, 2022•20 min•Ep. 13
Steve McAlpine considers the near-universal agreement that Andrew Tate is not a suitable role model for young men, but poses the question, 'Where to from here?' Who are the role models who show what healthy masculinity is supposed to be like? And if we’re not sure, then there’s little chance the next generation of men is going to be either. Many of the alternate voices that attempt to define masculinity have zero connection with most young men. They suggest a path that has more to do with the ab...
Dec 01, 2022•19 min•Ep. 12
Steve McAlpine says the media-fuelled controversy surrounding Qatar, the host-nation of the World Cup reveals a hint of neo-colonialism in the way the West treats nations that don't agree with it. There are more than two football sides on the pitch these days. There are also opposing sides in another way. Two ways – at least two ways – of looking at the world. This World Cup is being held in a Muslim-majority country in West Asia and it’s being held at the very time sport in the West has taken o...
Nov 24, 2022•20 min•Ep. 11
Steve McAlpine looks at the apocalyptic angst that is engulfing younger generations and asks if there is no off-tap to their earth-shaking fears. Those whose early memories are of the twin towers falling are experiencing not simply a climate crisis but a crisis climate. Crisis abounds. The end has seemed nigh for some time - for all of their lives at least - and they’re just waiting for the axe to fall. Or the fire to fall. Whatever it may be. Steve finds it’s a climate of crisis in seemingly ev...
Nov 17, 2022•21 min•Ep. 10
Steve McAlpine looks into a brewing crisis at the juncture of health care and euthanasia legislation. Stories emerging from Canada demonstrate that people with chronic illness or pain are choosing to end their lives not because they want to die but because it is too expensive to live. With countries like the Netherlands ever widening the door to assisted death, Steve asks what incentive exists for Western governments to repair struggling healthcare systems when clearing the path out of this worl...
Nov 10, 2022•20 min•Ep. 9
Steve McAlpine asks where our increasing preference for two-person families is taking us? Not only are one in four Australian households child-free in 2022, but it's predicted that between 2023 and 2029 the number of couples living without children will overtake the number living with kids. This is NOT a podcast about couples who are unable to have CHILDREN. Nor is it a promotion for having ten and living in isolated communities behind barbed-wire fences. However, for whatever reason, many young...
Nov 03, 2022•21 min•Ep. 8
Steve McAlpine takes a look beneath the surface of the heavy seas that are swamping Western governments and asks whether or not we have bigger things to fear than political instability. Our political turmoils are the tip of deeper cultural churning. The West is balkanising. We are fracturing, not along ethnic lines but along cultural ones. No one is willing to cede their authority, and that only leaves one way for us to get other people to do what we want them to: power. Political instability mi...
Oct 27, 2022•22 min•Ep. 7
'You do you' is the mantra of western society. The technical term is expressive individualism – the almost sacred right of every person to find out what aids their flourishing and to do that, even if it comes at the expense of other people. It’s a project seemingly full of promise. Full of personal growth. And it’s built on the philosophical assumptions of the past couple of hundred years, in which communities – particularly family and faith communities – are viewed as restrictive and damaging t...
Oct 20, 2022•13 min•Ep. 6
Steve McAlpine introduces us to ‘The Sexular Age’ - one in which sexual rights trump religious rights because they’re seen to be more core to what it is to be human. Spring-boarding off a controversial football sacking in Australia, Steve shows how restrictive sexual rights have become. Individual expressions of belief that don't celebrate someone's sexual self-expression are now considered a violent act worthy of the utmost condemnation. LINKS To celebrate the launch of the newest podcast in th...
Oct 13, 2022•20 min•Ep. 5
Steve McAlpine draws our attention to the wider implications of a data hack that's exposed the personal information of 40% of Australia's citizens. The attack on the data vaults of Australian telco Optus seems alarming, but a far greater amount of data is being released daily - willingly - by the digital citizens of the West. It's already being 'hacked' by political parties and corporate giants, and is likely to be sifted to a greater extent in the not-too-distant future. So what should we be do...
Oct 06, 2022•18 min•Ep. 4
Steve McAlpine looks at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II as a metaphor for a much bigger change in society. The death of the Queen was supposed to be the final nail in the coffin of a public acknowledgement of something transcendent, a God who orders the world. But instead what we’re finding is a longing for something more - something more than a materialist view of the world, or, as one writer put it, “something magical” to fill the void. If we're going to have a future without a personal mona...
Sep 30, 2022•19 min•Ep. 3
Steve McAlpine suggests that your future perspective on sex will have a lot to do with who you think won the sexual revolution. Is masculinity - and femininity - to be defined by the Andrew Tates of this world? Or will the reactionary blowback against such cancelled individuals have the greater say? Steve says that both sides have lost in the war to define what is sexually acceptable and the only way to a safer future is to find ourselves a better standard. LINKS To celebrate the launch of the n...
Sep 30, 2022•18 min•Ep. 2
Steve postulates that there are two models of work being offered for your consideration - the drudgery of Fred Flintstone and the relaxed atmosphere of George Jetson. But neither offers a place to rest your soul. And in a world where corporations are seeking to own as much of you as possible, all the time, we would do well to consider where meaningful work can be found. Steve asks, do we simply drop tools at the end of each day, or double down in our search for work-as-paradise? The future of ou...
Sep 30, 2022•18 min•Ep. 1
John Dickson, the sovereign of the Undeceptions Network, introduces listeners to the latest addition to this growing territory. Meet Steve McAlpine - social commentator, theologian, author and futurist. With the help of a bit of mental time travel, Steve's weekly show will look at where our world is headed, ask if we like what we see, and suggest what we can do about it. That's Delorean Philosophy.
Aug 25, 2022•2 min
