You Have Permission

• Charlie Kirk & The Psychology of Evolution (#350)

  In this week’s Top of Mind segment, I address the Charlie Kirk assassination through cognitive distortions, calling out the all-or-nothing thinking that's turning him into either a blessed martyr or democracy's destroyer when the reality is more nuanced. I also push back against the dangerous idea that speech equals violence, pointing out that Kirk's murder serves as a stark reminder that actual bullets—not words—constitute real violence. For this week’s main episode, I’m going solo. I start by sharing how my own faith deconstruction included grappling with evolution. From questioning young earth creationism to eventually embracing evolutionary theory by my late twenties, and how evolution informs my therapeutic practice. Then, I go into how psychology has fully embraced evolutionary explanations across five key areas:  attachment theory (which appears across species and helped our ancestors survive through bonding),  shame (as an evolved social conscience that keeps us aligned with group norms),  sexual jealousy (as mate-guarding behavior found throughout the animal kingdom),  anxiety (as an overactive alarm system that kept our ancestors alive through hypervigilance), and  depression (as either energy conservation during adverse conditions or analytical rumination for solving complex problems.)  These evolutionary frameworks help reduce client shame by showing that their struggles aren't personal defects but rather ancient survival systems that are now mismatched to our modern world. In the Patreon-only portion, I dive deeper into attachment research with macaques, the neuroscience of shame and anxiety across species, mate-guarding behaviors from chimpanzees to humans, and two competing theories of depression—the hibernation model and analytical rumination hypothesis. Episodes Mentioned: Episode with Adrian Wyard | To Accept Theistic Evolution (#2) To Trust Science (#28) Evolution Myths & Long Lifespans in Genesis (#36) Who’s Afraid of Evolutionary Psychology? (#47) ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: [email protected] YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• The Gospel of Self-Optimization (#349)

  My fellow Beach Boys fan and returning guest David Zahl is back to discuss his provocative critique of self-optimization culture in his Plough Quarterly piece "Against Self-Optimization.” As someone who has maximized my morning routine to a science, I wrestle with my own efficiency obsession and David's argument that our machine-like language and relentless pursuit of becoming "optimized" versions of ourselves is fundamentally dehumanizing.  We look at how Jesus wasn't particularly efficient, how the wellness industry monetizes our unhappiness, and whether there's a difference between optimization and ruthless efficiency. Along the way, we touch on everything from Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger" to the theology of death, the loneliness epidemic, and why churches that function too seamlessly might actually be missing the point.  David brings his characteristically poetic perspective to counter my more prose-like approach, creating a conversation that challenges both the Silicon Valley promise of endless self-improvement and the Christian concept of becoming our "ideal selves" — while somehow managing to work in references to Beach Boys, Radiohead, and why AI should do our laundry, not write our books. David's Piece Against Optimization David's Books Songs Played: Me Without You | "Red Cow & Dorothy" Daft Punk | Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: [email protected] YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• Dobson’s Legacy: Trauma, Attachment & Shame (#348)

  I sit down with licensed therapist Emily Maynard—herself a product of Dobson-influenced parenting—to unpack what I'm calling one of the most consequential psychological disasters of the last fifty years. While James Dobson's death a few weeks ago has evangelicals reflecting on his legacy, Emily and I dig into the wreckage his teachings left in therapy offices across America.  We explore how his "loving discipline" and will-breaking methods created attachment wounds, spiritual abuse, and shame cycles that adults are still untangling decades later—and why parents who would never have hit their children became convinced it was the most loving thing they could do.  Emily brings both clinical expertise and personal experience to bear on questions that hit close to home: How do you heal from authoritarian parenting that was sold as godly love? What happens when the very people meant to be your safe harbor become sources of fear? And perhaps most importantly—what do we carry forward, and what do we finally have permission to leave behind? Emily's Website | ⁠Emilymaynardtherapy.com⁠ Emily's Instagram | ⁠@Emilymaynardlmft⁠ ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: [email protected] YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• Producer Josh Takes the Hot Seat (#347)

  He’s out from behind the green curtain! In this episode, my guest is none other than my producer and audio/editor wizard, Josh Gilbert. Josh spends about 23 hours per week listening to conversations on religion, psychology, and deconstruction. He joins me to tell how this work has fundamentally changed his worldview and sense of self. For Josh, this immersive listening experience has made it nearly impossible for him to be surprised by new ideas and has pushed him towards comedy and entertainment for palette cleansing. He tells the story of attending both Black Lives Matter protests and police ride-alongs, and shares how listening has transformed his capacity for empathy and given him the ability to see multiple perspectives. We dive into the psychology of repetition, the nature of intellectual humility, and how Josh's journey through religious scrupulosity and OCD diagnosis has intersected with his unique vantage point as someone who absorbs thousands of hours of other people's spiritual and psychological processing—without being able to contribute his own voice to the conversation. In the Patron-only portion, we wrestle with the deeper questions of religious belief—Josh arguing that we inevitably construct our beliefs from our experiences rather than discovering objective truth, while I explore whether there's a defensible middle path where following Jesus's teachings remains worthwhile even if I'm entirely wrong about the metaphysical claims of Christianity. ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: [email protected] YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• Why Study Religion? (#346)

  In this week’s episode of You Have Permission, I sit down with Dr. Richard B. Miller, Professor Emeritus from the University of Chicago Divinity School, to tackle his blunt question (and the title of his book): Why Study Religion?  What starts as a defense against critics like Sam Harris—who'd rather we just stick to the "straight dope" of science—quickly spirals into something much more provocative: religion as the ultimate training ground for navigating our hypermediated, pluralistic world where we're drowning in conflicting authorities and information overload. Miller argues that religious studies isn't just academic navel-gazing but a crucial skill-building exercise in what he calls "post-critical reasoning," teaching us to hold multiple worldviews in tension without falling into either fundamentalist certainty or relativistic paralysis.  We discuss why the secularization hypothesis got it wrong, how contemplative traditions across religions offer surprising resources for the ecological crisis, and why understanding the religious "wackadoodles" (my term, not his) might be the key to actually changing minds rather than just preaching to the choir.  By the end, I'm wrestling with my own biases about expanding this podcast beyond Christianity, and you'll be questioning whether your discomfort with religion says more about the world's problems or your own assumptions about how to solve them. Richard's Book | Why Religion Matters? ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: [email protected] YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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