Avoiding Babylon

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A single text about a grandma refusing to babysit shouldn’t break the internet, but it did, and we could not let it go. We read the viral “boomer mom” childcare thread line by line and ask the uncomfortable questions: when does family help become entitlement, what does gratitude actually look like, and why does “I need a reliable backup plan” hit such a nerve for grandparents who feel like they already did their time raising kids?

From there, we zoom out into the bigger generational fight. We talk about baby boomers and millennials without pretending it’s simple, including how post-war culture, propaganda, the sexual revolution, and family trauma shaped the way people parent. We also get practical about discipline, the “fun grandma” role, the resentment that builds when one parent becomes the constant disciplinarian, and the difference between real safety boundaries and trendy no-contact culture.

Then we pivot into money and systems: Social Security, fixed income fears, taxing younger workers, inflation, national debt, and why so many people feel like the whole economy is held together with duct tape. We also break down inheritance realities like capital gains exposure and why trusts matter, because losing a family home to an unexpected tax bill is not theoretical. Finally, we give a grim true-crime update and debate the death penalty from a Catholic lens: justice, deterrence, and whether swift punishment can be a severe kind of mercy that forces repentance instead of decades of denial.

Listen, share it with someone who has strong opinions about boomers, and leave a review if you want more episodes like this.
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Get 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!
Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!
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A lethal injection that allegedly didn’t do its one job sets the tone for a wild conversation: witness accounts of strange sounds in the chamber, headlines about an all-women execution team, and the feeling that the public is being handed a story engineered to trigger a specific reaction. We sort through what’s being claimed, what feels inconsistent, and why “humane” capital punishment can still look brutal when the process goes off the rails. 

Then we zoom out to the bigger issue underneath it all: narrative control. When the same medicalized language can be sold as torture in a death penalty case but mercy in euthanasia, it forces a hard question about moral consistency and institutional trust. From there we get into how social media algorithms reward outrage, how selective reporting can inflame men versus women hostility, and why parenting in 2026 means having honest, awkward conversations with your kids before the internet does it for you. 

The back half turns to AI ethics and AI safety, including reports of companies pushing “AI personhood” and trying to influence religious leaders and public language. We also talk practical AI adoption at work, what tools like Claude can actually do, where they still fail, and why hallucinated citations and fake confidence are not small problems. If you care about capital punishment, media manipulation, parenting, or the future of artificial intelligence, hit play, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave us a review with your take on what’s real and what’s performance.
Support the show

Get 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!
Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!
Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1
https://www.avoidingbabylon.com
Merchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.com
Locals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.com
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Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!
A married pastor. A 20-year-old singer on the worship team. A secret relationship that stops being “just an affair” and turns into something darker, uglier, and catastrophically permanent. We break down how this case unfolds, why the text messages matter so much, and how two people can talk themselves into the kind of evil they’d never admit to in public, all while leaving a digital trail that’s basically a confession.

We also wrestle with the parts people love to ignore: motive and consequences. When divorce threatens a reputation, a job, money, and the future someone feels entitled to, the temptation is to “solve” the problem instead of facing it. We talk about why the intruder story is so common, why it almost never works, and why “he seems remorseful” often translates to “he’s devastated he got caught.” Along the way, we pull out the bigger lesson about temptation, desensitization, and why real accountability and boundaries matter long before anything crosses a line.

Then we change gears into culture and theology, reacting to a women’s conference clip that sets off alarms for us, plus broader frustration with how certain talking points spread across generations. We close with a thought-provoking segment sparked by a clip describing Judaism as a “worldly religion” and our Christian argument for what it means that God chooses to dwell with His people, not in a building.

If you got value from this conversation, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it. What part of the story hit you hardest, the texts, the motive, or the aftermath?
Support the show

Get 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!
Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!
Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1
https://www.avoidingbabylon.com
Merchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.com
Locals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.com
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Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!
America doesn’t have a “neutral” public square, it has a creed it rarely names. We take on the rising debate over Catholic integralism by reacting to Jeremy Boreing’s interview with a Catholic academic and then pulling the thread all the way back through Catholic social teaching, church and state history, and the modern liberal order that most of us were taught to treat as inevitable.

We start by defining liberalism in plain terms, not as a generic insult, but as a set of ideas with real consequences: religious liberalism that separates civil society from the Church, political liberalism that grounds authority in popular consent, and economic liberalism that elevates individual autonomy in markets. From there, integralism becomes easier to understand as a competing vision of the common good, where the state is not a “theology-free zone” and where spiritual ends outrank temporal ones without collapsing into theocracy.

We also tackle the hard part Catholics keep circling: Vatican II and religious liberty. We talk through why Dignitatis Humanae is invoked as a conversation-stopper, why older papal condemnations like Quanta Cura still matter to many Catholics, and what it means when people read everything through a conciliar lens. Then we test popular claims about Spain, Ireland, and Quebec by looking at the timing of religious decline, the role of Catholic education, and the way culture shifts can break practice faster than any single policy.

If you care about Catholic integralism, post-liberalism, Americanism, or the future of Catholic institutions, this is a sharp, source-driven conversation that refuses easy slogans. Subscribe, share this with a friend who disagrees, and leave a review with your best question: can a liberal state ever be truly neutral?
Support the show

Get 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!
Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!
Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1
https://www.avoidingbabylon.com
Merchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.com
Locals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.com
Full Premium/Locals Shows on Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1987412/subscribe
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Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!
A couple hundred bucks lost in Atlantic City turns into a surprisingly honest gut check: why do some temptations feel instantly disgusting, while others slowly become normal? From that cold open, we move into two listener stories that hit the opposite note: real momentum in Catholic life through community, courtship, conversion, and even a vocational step forward. It’s a reminder that small choices and daily habits can compound in either direction.

Then we tackle the main spark for the night: a viral clip featuring Jimmy Akin and a question about the golden calf. Were the Israelites attempting to worship the one true God through an image, or was it a flat-out return to pagan idolatry? We don’t just react to the clip, we walk through why the framing matters, why “context” can still leave a bad argument intact, and how Catholic apologetics can drift when novelty starts replacing clarity. Along the way, we talk about Church messaging, interreligious dialogue, and how vague language can leave ordinary Catholics unsure about mission, conversion, and what the faith actually demands.

We also widen the lens to modern pressures that shape the soul and the headlines: prescription stimulants and the fear of spiritual numbness, AI and cyber-panic narratives, and Canada’s MAID assisted dying program as a case study in the culture of death Pope John Paul II warned about. If you’re tired of recycled talking points and want an unfiltered conversation about doctrine, culture, and discernment, press play, then share this with a friend and leave a rating and review so more people can find the show.
Support the show

Get 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!
Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!
Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1
https://www.avoidingbabylon.com
Merchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.com
Locals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.com
Full Premium/Locals Shows on Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1987412/subscribe
RSS Feed for Podcast Apps: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1987412.rss