Nerds of Pray is the podcast where Nerd Pastor Nathan Webb of Checkpoint Church sits down with some of the leading people in the realm of Nerd/Pop Culture Ministry. He asks them questions about their specific venture into the ministry, as well as what first led them to the intersection of faith and fandom.
In this episode, Nathan sits down with Drew Dixon, author of Know Thy Gamer and founder of Love Thy Nerd.
Support Drew Dixon:
Twitter: @_DrewDixon
Buy the Book: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1087755220/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_96KTDRTA0JKRP9T6GPGN
Website: lovethynerd.com
Nerds of Pray is made possible by the support of Checkpoint Church, the church for nerds, geeks, and gamers online. This episode was hosted, produced, recorded, edited, and mastered by Nathan Webb. It was captured via Cleanfeed and edited in DaVinci Resolve.
Intro/Outro Music is Royalty Free: "The Little Broth" by Rolemusic
Key Art/Logo was created by: Nathan Webb
Character Art/Avatar by: mondayvibes
To support Checkpoint Church and the ministry they produce, please like this video and subscribe to our channel or these other sources:
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Website: http://www.checkpointchurch.com/
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/CheckpointNerd
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Our next episode will be dropping next month and will feature Drew Dixon of Love Thy Nerd and Know Thy Gamer. Look forward to that and thanks again so much for giving us a listen!
If you have any recommendations or would like to be considered as a future guest on the podcast, submit your name and biography to checkpointchurch@gmail.com.
The Checkpoint Church Podcast Hub is the hub for all of our podcasts, sermons, and special projects. To learn more, go to checkpointchurch.com or send any questions you have to checkpointchurch@gmail.com.
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RAW UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT (MAY CONTAIN ERRORS):
Drew, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Thanks for being on the nerds of pray. We're excited to learn more about the exciting things that love th nerd is doing and your role there. But also just in your own nerdy ministry and writing that you're doing outside of that world.
So to get us started and just to help people know who you are and where you're from. Let's just ask that. So who are you first and foremost and where are you currently? Both physically and on social media, what does your social media presence look.
Yeah. Yeah, sure. So I am the chief content nerd at love line nerd, which means I am, I oversee all of our written content amongst a lot of other things. So I wear a lot of, as everyone who helped found love line. I'm one of the six founders of our ministry. We wear a lot of different hats.
So I also host a podcast one of our podcasts where we interview game designers and people in the games industry about their spiritual beliefs and their life and what they're about. It's called humans of gaming. I'm also a editor and publisher. So I work for a publishing company in Nashville Lifeway Christian resources, where I'm mostly work in student ministry curriculum.
So my team I oversee a few different teams that, that. Produce student ministry curriculum for local churches. So I definitely have a heart for the church as well. And that's my background. Actually. I was a pastor for about six years before, before coming to Nashville where I live now.
And yeah I wrote a book that's coming out in the summer, so that's another really exciting thing in my life. That'll be, it's being published by B and H publishing. And it'll be, yeah, be out in the summer of 2022 and it's called. No th gamer a parents guide to video games. So it is a Christian parenting book on navigating video games with your kids.
There's all these parents that are pulling their hair out because they hate how much their kids love video games. And so this is a book that tries to help parents learn to love and respect their gamer kids and understand them and understand the world they're in because it feels foreign to a lot of parents.
Even though more parents are technically savvy now than they used to be technologically savvy than they used to be. They still they're still that divide. And so we wanna try to bridge that gap and help parents love their kids and set appropriate boundaries and and love them, those kinds of things, but also help them develop a vocabulary to see why games matter and why they can be good for us, which is a big part of.
That, that issue of what I do with lovely nerd, one of my passions is to help. What we do at lovely nerd is we wanna be the love of Jesus to nerds and nerd culture. So a big part of that is like understanding nerd culture, understanding what nerds are about what makes 'em click, seeing the, what's good, beautiful, and true in nerd culture and and celebrating those things.
And then also helping the church see the opportunity that there is a nerd culture to love and serve their nerdy neighbors and point them to Jesus.
The first thing that I want to address is who are you as a nerd? And where do you find yourself in this space? So most of the answers have been that we're all nerdy melting pots, but if you had to come up with the true essence of your nerd, then what flavor of nerd would you
consider yourself?
Oh, man. I guess. I definitely grinded my teeth as a nerd playing video games. That was my first love as a kid and still to this day I love to play video games. Unfortunately, like with three kids, I play them. I just wrote a book about video games, but , I feel like I don't have time to play them anymore, like I would want to, but I still love it, so yeah, I'm a video gamer, but I also if I could all day I would play board games all day, for sure. Like now those are probably equal loves video games and board games. I dabble in anime dabble in comics, just dabble lightly. I dabble in all kinds of nerd stuff, but video games and board games.
That's me. Yeah. How about
you? Video games and board games. I'm more of an anime fan than anything. I'm definitely the, okay. The weest of the nerd ministers I attended LT Encon last year, and that was the place that I gravitated toward was the Jesus Taku. And what's
like your, that group in particular, like what's one or two anime that are like your gym.
I'm just curious now. Oh man. Now I'm interviewing you. Is that okay? that's all
good. That's all good. I got plenty of 'em. I feel like the one that really sums it all up is always full middle Alchemist. That's like the, okay. The hallmark of anime for me. Yeah. But currently I've been getting into a little bit different genre right now.
I'm actually not an anime at all. I'm in horror shows just cuz it's spooky season. Halloween is we're recording this. Yeah. Nice. But there's tons of great ones out there. Let's see. Pu magi, Monica is something that I've really enjoyed, especially cause that's kinda a spooky one as well. That kind of lets itself off as a magical girl.
Trope kinda like sailor moon and then very quickly takes a twist towards the very dark. There you go. Yeah, pretty much anything and everything anime, I try and pick it all up as it comes out. But I do find myself going more and more towards the like darker and more demented death game stuff like Dan and that kind of thing.
Yeah. Something about my pastoral energy, I guess I'm trying to flee away from that and experience the darker side of life. But yeah that's more, my, my S Steves is going in that anime world. Cool. Yeah. So you said you started out with video games, started out with video games and board games and that kind of thing has always been your passion.
So where did that begin? Was it, just playing by yourself on the couch, down in the basement, with the, with whatever console of the generation might have been, or did you have a particular line of Nintendo or Sony or Xbox or what, whatever might have you with the video game journey?
It got started or my parents bought us why I say us actually, they bought it for themselves.
My mom bought an Nintendo, the original NES for her and my dad to play games on. And they played it for a week and then my brother and I took it over it was like, became our nindo. So we would go to this shows how old I am. We'd go to like blockbuster and rent, Nees games, we'd ride our bikes and stuff to blockbuster and rent, Nees games.
And then eventually we got a super Nintendo. I think maybe the first game I remember falling in love with was probably like final fantasy two on the S Andes. That was like, like going in deep, and like really getting into a video game. So yeah that's and and then in high school, like I, by the time I was in high school, I had a Nintendo 64 and a PlayStation, and I remember it's of funny story. I remember my mom said I couldn't get a PlayStation because I already had an Nintendo 64. And so she's you already have a game, one of those game things like you can't buy a PlayStation, but I was like mowing lawns and stuff. So I had saved up all this money, so I had the money to go get it.
So I rode my bike to the mall. Which was like a long bike ride from where we lived. I rode my bike to the mall and went to the EB game store there and bought a PlayStation, put it in a backpack and rode my bike back home. And that's how I got a PlayStation. yeah, that's awesome.
The things we do for love, right?
We gotta go out. The funny thing is, do my mom never knew that I did that. Never because she would just look in my room and I, by that time, I think I had this little like 19 inch TV in my room that they didn't need anymore. They'd replace their TV and I inherited it and they, there was, oh, there's drew playing's game thing.
They didn't know the difference between a PlayStation and an Nintendo 64,
yeah, that's true. Especially with, I know a a lot of like parents and people that aren't just in the video games sphere will just call them, you're playing in Nintendo and they'll just call everything in Nintendo.
Yeah. So every video game system is Nintendo. Exactly. So you could just say, yeah, playing the Nintendo. Absolutely. Mom
definitely doing that. Yeah. And then when I was in college and all through that time, I was really into the final fancy games and. But by the time I was in college, I had a Xbox and we were doing halo tournaments, land parties.
I dabbled in PC gaming throughout my life to was for a while. I was really into Warcraft two and StarCraft and stuff and played that on, dial up. If you can believe play, we would play Warcraft two on dialup and my parents would get really mad because we'd tie up the phone lines.
Yeah. See, I'm fortunate that in the dialup days in my household where like was young and so those were like my pajama Sam and those kind of days. So not many internet based games for, five year olds, thankfully. Yeah. So I didn't tie up anything there, but.
Yeah. You have this nerd journey, you have this thing, that's just been in your life since childhood. What about the faith journey as far as those two might have, intersected, were you always a Christian grew up in a Christian household and then discovered, that they intersected or were they always two divided things?
I grew up in a pastor's house. And so we had my like nerd friends over here and my youth group friends over here and, never the two shall meet. So how did that look like and when did that intersection occur?
Yeah. So I was definitely nerd before I was a Christian. I did grow up in a Christian home, but we weren't like, like my parents didn't talk to me about Jesus or about our faith.
We went to church, but we weren't like super committed church. Growers would be how I describe it. We were pretty sporadic in our attendance. And so I didn't like, I didn't even. I guess if you would've asked me, I would've said I was a Christian, but I didn't think about it very much. Yeah. It wasn't a big part of my life.
So when I was in high school, I started dating this girl who was pre pretty serious about her faith. And she thought I was a Christian and I probably did too, but then I ended up, that's where I really met Jesus at her church because like it's not like the church that she went to is not the kind of church I would wanna go to now.
But I do appreciate some things about it, I guess, just in that every Wednesday night they'd have an invitation at the youth group meeting, right. And every Sunday morning there was an invitation. So I don't really like vibe with that now, but that sort of high pressure approach, but it was good for me at the time because it sort of made me go I really need to think about if I believe this stuff, like I've gone to church all these years.
Do I really think Jesus is rose from the dead. Died on the cross. And that has something to do with me finding forgiveness and a relationship with God. And so that was the catalyst to make me like, get really serious and think about that. That was the first time I started reading the Bible and for myself and maybe even just reading the Bible ever, I don't remember paying attention.
I remember going to church when I was a kid and just like trying to sleep through it. If I could , doodling on the back of the little,
you
know, five cards or whatever. Yeah. Mom would get mad at me when I hit my head on the pew in front of me, cuz I started dozing off, but but yeah, it's funny like that church.
I appreciate, I definitely there's a lot of things I appreciate about it. I remember that was the first time I remember being shamed for being a nerd, cuz and it wasn't even something I was into at the time, but like probably like later high school, early college years, I was still at that church and And I remember there was this discussion and people were like slamming Harry Potter.
And I wasn't even reading Harry Potter at the time. Now I've read all the books, love them, but I was just like, they were like slamming it oh, it's so terrible. And I was like, wait, what, Harry, what's wrong with Harry Potter? It's like a fun wizard story. Right. And they were like, oh, it's demonic and stuff.
And I was just like, okay, that's weird. And that was about the extent of it. Oh, and I remember , there was, we had a, this is also weird too. We had a prophecy conference. Oh. I put prophecy in air quotes, cuz I'm not sure this really counts as true prophecy. Sure. But like we went, I went to this prophecy conference, so I was like, this is my church.
Which check it out. So I went and this guy had all these slides about all these toys and things and how they had demons in them. And like on their iconography and graphics and stuff. And I remember, I definitely remember Pokemon was one that he mentioned is a lot of these Pokemons are like tied to various demons and , I didn't I didn't necessarily think they were crazy or anything.
And I didn't feel like I didn't feel super shame cuz a lot of stuff they mentioned I wasn't into, I just thought this is weird. I don't really think that's true. Yeah. I just had this red flag in my mind go up. Like I don't think that's quite right. But those things I think trained me to not necessarily be super open about the things I was nerdy about, I think that was my experience.
And so then when I went to went to seminary, especially like I just decided. Cause I'd heard all. And a lot of the time, what I was hearing was like, Hey, really video games probably are just like the biggest thing problem with them is they're wasting your time and not helping you be a better follower of Jesus.
And so I put 'em on pause and didn't play video games, most of seminary. So it wasn't till I got to be a pastor help plan a church after I graduated seminary. And this church that I planted was in a bit of a rural area. And I was just like, I had more I just needed like some kind of creative outlet.
So I got back into playing video games a little bit, but actually for the purpose of writing about them. I wanted to explore them from a Christian perspective, cuz at that time, no, there weren't Christians that were writing about video games except to say. Hey, you shouldn't do this, or here's all the things that are bad about X, Y, or Z game.
Like you could find Christian articles about grant theft, auto , and why it's terrible or any other number of games, but you didn't see any Christians going, let's explore the themes and fallout three or and how they relate to a Christian worldview or how they, or, what, there wasn't any effort to see any good in games.
And I thought I, I was seeing some good, I've always seen some good in games, so I wanted to, I think I had a desire to try to correct the narrative a bit.
Yeah. So as you're exploring these, and as you're writing on these pieces, that's where you discovered it was just in an effort to make the connection, you kind.
Yeah. You were the catalyst making the connection. You were the ones tying these things together.
Yeah. And I'll say, should say I had a friend who was an editor of a web who started a website called Christ and pop culture. And we had started writing together a bit and he asked me to come be an editor for that website.
And he was a gamer and a nerd. And I think that and he was doing really unique work in the space of pop culture, like taking it seriously from a, but from a confessionally Christian perspective. And I was like, oh, that's like that, that kinda made me go oh, okay. You can be a nerd and a Christian.
And this is viable. And I think that was like all the encouragement I need. And I think sometimes that's all people nerds need to like step into these kind of spaces ministry spaces, Christian nerds need is just, Hey, you're not alone. There's other people doing this stuff.
And it's not lesser ministry or something. In fact it's really innovative, I think, and really has a lot of tremendous amount of potential.
Yeah. Just realizing that it's possible is a huge proponent of what we're doing here at checkpoint. Whenever I first got started, Loveline nerd was one of the first people that I reached out to one of the first entities that I saw of how this is working and how nerd ministry is being done and being done well.
And there's more and more examples as I continue to, to deep dive into do more research. So I'd love to talk more about lovely nerd. You already mentioned a little bit about your role, that you're the chief content nerds. You oversee a lot of the writing and the content creation there.
So how did that first start out? I know you also mentioned you were one of the founders, so how did you first get involved with love by nerd and whatever form of fashion there? Sure.
Yeah. While I was pastoring. In Alabama in this rural church, which like, I never would've thought I'd end up in Alabama, but but I loved the church I was at.
It was a wonderful church, but I still, like I said, I needed a creative outlet. So I started writing really seriously about games and that spawned into not just writing for Christ pop culture, but also writing for a rope for relevant magazine and past magazine and Christianity today and think Christian and all sorts of I was into it, and it was like enjoying some success, I think.
I stumbled as an editor for Christ milk culture. I stumbled onto this ministry called game church, and I had heard rumors about them that they had they passed out these Jesus Bible or game gamer Bibles is what they would call them. They passed out these gamer Bibles at like conventions, like E three.
I even heard a rumor that they had given out beer at E three. . So I was like, this is crazy. What is this ministry? So I inter interviewed the guy who started game church about game church, which was this ministry that would go to conventions, mostly video game conventions all over the country and pass out these little, like they were they call 'em game revivals, which is the gospel of John was some gamer commentary in it, like game lingo commentary and had Jesus with, they had this giant banner at these conventions that have this huge Victorian style of Jesus with with an Xbox headset or headset and controller So they called him gamer Jesus, and people would come and take pictures with gamer Jesus and stuff. So I interviewed their founder and he's he stumbles onto some of the stuff I had written. And he was like, the writing world, like you, you know how to write about video games and stuff.
And he is we have this blog and we don't know what to do with it. Would you consider taking over our blog and like joining our team and help us figure out what we're doing? And I was like, sure. It was, its kind of like I found, I stumbled onto some people who were into what I was doing.
It was another one of those moments where I realized I wasn't alone. Like here's these people doing really unique work and what they had done at just to explain the beer thing. Cause I've already that's year now. Yeah. Yeah. They had passed out like free beer coupons is what it was. And it was just, I know some people have a problem with that and I get it.
But the point of that was just to like. they wanted to shock you and in a way to get your attention Hey, we're not. And it was like, you had, of course you had to show your ID and you had to go and you just got one little cup of beer, and anyway it, it was wild game church was wild in some ways, but but nobody was doing that.
No one was doing that kind of industry at that time. So I thought, Hey, I'll see if I can help them for a while. And that ended up turning into about a I worked for them for about almost six years doing that. Got to go to conventions all over the country. I turned me and a team of other editors and writers really turned that website into something that was per was respected, not just by Christians, but by non-Christians.
So there were a lot of non-Christian outlets that would quote our articles or, Like all kinds of like secular game journalists, that were following us. It was really cool. And that's where we had the idea to start interviewing game designers in a podcast about their spiritual beliefs.
Like we interviewed Ken Labine one time, who's the creator of bio shock and bio infinite and also an atheist. It was cool. I think God was at work in those efforts. And and anyway, so fast forward and game church went through some big organizational changes some big budgetary changes and all those kinds of things.
And so myself and some other people some other, some other people that working for game church found ourselves, not seeing a future with it anymore. It just wasn't Yeah, it just wasn't, it wasn't going in the direction we were going anymore. And so we we got to this place where we felt like we had to part ways like that was, and I love that ministry's still around.
It's very different. It's very different now than it used to be, but it's still around. And I love the people who are leading it. They're amazing. Christ following people they're and I'm thankful for them, but we got to the point where we were like, we had to part ways and started praying and saying, I, cuz I still had this drive to do nerd min ministry.
And so we had the idea I think as we prayed and thought about what might be next, we had the idea of broadening out, not just reaching nerds. Not just reaching gamers, video gamers but reaching nerds. And so that was where a alumni nerd was born. and yeah that's the long story short.
There's six of us that were all working in various, most of us, part-time a couple of them full-time capacities for game church broke out and went and started our own 5 0 1 nonprofit ministry. That is lovely nerd. That's been now. We've been going for almost four years, I guess.
Yeah. That's interesting. Just thinking about the growth and the changes and the evolutions that's already happened in this nerdy space. We had Derek white on not too long ago. Who is the geek preacher? Yeah, I know Derek was very much involved in the kind of Christian gamer Guild, D and D kind of world And even hearing him talk about the evolution that took place and seeing all these different ways that things have changed and grown and adapted and. . Yeah, it's just incredible to me looking from the outside being the fresh meat on campus and getting to see where the world is already gone and just being humbled by the reality of the internet.
And we're all gonna reach so many people just because of the expanse of there is no shortage of people to reach in this space. It's not like we're all that's right in the same small town, rural USA we're reaching the entire internet which there's plenty of space for it.
So I'm gonna talk more about your title as far as the chief content nerd of love th nerd and the way it works into your other passions. Like you mentioned the game church person seeing in you, you have a real passion for writing. Yeah. And just really see a calling in that.
And so what is this title as the chief content nerd? What does that actually mean to you? As a ministry, like how do you see that working? And, it seems like that is the place that you keep coming back to no matter how you serve. Sure. That's what you do. So why that, what does that mean to you?
Yeah. I think for me, it probably starts at feeling like that's area, God has gifted me. So I've for a while now. That's what I do professionally now, too. I'm an editor essentially and work in publishing. I just love, I love words. I love the power of words. I love to, dig deep into things deeper.
Most of us, go into all kinds of things in nerd culture. I also love helping people understand why I don't know if you've ever done strength finder. Sure. If you ever done that, you know what that is? Yeah. So ideation is one of mine and, I just, I love. I love brain brainstorming and I love thinking about how can we help people see things that they didn't see before.
And I think that's what I also love to teach the Bible. I do miss being a pastor in many ways. And the biggest part I miss is like just regularly getting to teach. And so all those things together, I think that's one of my hopes and I think we've done some really cool stuff in that space with love by is we wanna educate the church to see this mission field that they're missing.
And we want to help them see that Dungeons and dragons which the church has just constantly labeled Dungeons and dragons as dangerous or demonic. And but to see that man there's there are some really cool ministries right now going on in that space.
Some people doing some amazing things in the D and D space and the churches still thumbing their nose about it. So you did a series of articles on that, that Jacqueline parish wrote about how does Dungeons and dragons relate to a Christian worldview? And and then there was another another seminary professor.
Jacqueline's not a seminary professor, but she's a PhD student. But then there's another seminary professor named Philip Tallon who wrote a Christian defense of Dungeons and dragons. And I just love the idea of opening people's eyes. And we've we wrote these series on different genres of nerd culture.
Like why do board games matter? Why do video games matter? Why does anime matter those kinds of things? Why do comics matter? And just helping people see the opportunity in those spaces is huge for us, but then also just like digging deep into things like we've done these series on, we're doing a series on star wars visions right now.
, there's a reflective article on each episode that comes out. We did one of those on low key and wine division. So yeah, we're I hope we're training Christians to be more thoughtful, but then also we're introducing, I think one of the goals of our website constantly is like, Hey don't I tell our writers all the time, don't write, like you're just writing to your Christian buddies or the people in your church, to your atheist friend, right. To, yes, you're gonna talk about Jesus and all that kind of stuff. We want people talking about. We don't hide Jesus at all in what we do, but right about in a way that someone who doesn't wanna. Who doesn't wanna go to your church and probably wouldn't even go if you invited them, but right.
In such a way that they would read it and at least find it interesting and compelling. And so yeah I think I hope we, what we do also points people to Jesus in a lot of ways.
Yeah. So this may already be your answer to this question, but, as an ideation person, as a brainstorming person, as a person that is future minded and idea minded what do you see as being the future for this part of lovely nerd as, as far as chief content nerd, what's your plan as far as looking forward?
And moving on, you're doing this kind of work already,
but what do you hope for? Yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things that I really like my book is not , it's not like an official love line nerd book, but it definitely, I got the opportunity because of my work through love line nerd.
And those are the kinds of things that I really would like to see more of. So we're talking right now about potentially publishing. And so this gets into April Lynn Kat's role at love line nerd. She's our chief resource nerd. And so she really works on a lot of the curriculum things that we have, but she and I work closely on those things.
So those are we're both editor types. There's a lot of synergy, I think, in what we do. But yeah, I would love to see there. We may be, publishing some Bible studies in the near future for churches to use. We may be. , eBooks, we've talked about a lot of eBooks or maybe even publishing some more books that really delve into wide nerd culture matters and why why it can be a meaningful part of our lives.
And so yeah, those are some things that are definitely like, not just like dreams or whatever, but I think like very likely to happen soon. And I just wanna see, I just wanna see you more more of what we're doing too. Just like more educational pieces that help the church more reflective pieces that help people see what's good and true and beautiful nerd culture.
We also wanna write about the problems, honestly, if we can, some of the problems in nerd culture, this is not a space that is devoid of problems and darkness and brokenness. Just recently, there's this. This trend of hate raids on Twitch and and gamer gate wasn't that long ago, and we're still feeling the effects of that and toxicity and misogyny and all those things.
Those are still big problems in nerd culture spaces. Yeah, that's another space where I'd like us to grow. I'd also really like us to grow, to be more diverse nerd culture certain parts of nerd culture are predominantly I think male and white. And I think, and I don't think that's always because those are the types of people that just happen to like those types of things.
It's because of a lot of gatekeeping and yeah. And I'd like to see that I'd like to see that change. And I'd like for a love they nerd to to work at being more diverse and inclusive so that we can, we can. be a part of encouraging that and seeing that change. Yeah. And it's also just not true that a lot of a lot of the things we think about in culture spaces, take video games, for example, that we think that's a predominantly male space and it really isn't if you look at the statistics for the last decade, it's been anywhere between 40 to 46% of all gamers are female.
So it's just not, it's just simply not true that it's all the boys in their basements. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
I think there's a lot of those stigmas and things that we set up as these boundaries. I feel like I was watching a game theory episode, not too long ago that was talking about.
The majority of gamers aren't even on a console, like mobile gaming has absolutely taken over oh yeah. In the world by storm, just cuz phones are so much more accessible. And so yeah.
And then you have, some of these games are like mobile gamers. Aren't real gamers. Right. And that's another gate keeping thing, but yeah,
if you gate keep them out, then it does feel like the gaming world is so small, but once you include mobile gamers, it's oh, it's even bigger than we could even imagine.
And we might even be on the smaller side compared to them. Yeah. I think that's great. I think so as far as creating the content, you guys have that and love ner does that well, but what about facilitating those conversations? I Is there a future for that to happen on LTN is already happening or what does that look like to you?
As far as those conversations, once the questions are in the air, once these topics have been addressed, what does it look like then?
Sure. Yeah. I think we're definitely trying to do that with our podcasts and have more diverse guests onto them. Like I said, I think I said before I host this podcast called humans gaming, where we interview game designers about their life and their beliefs and what makes 'em tick.
And so that's a space that we're working towards that on. And also we have Loveline nerd con once a year. And so that's another space where we get to have those kinds of conversations and talk to hopefully and growing diversity of people who are doing nerd ministry. And then, yeah, of course, like you said, just hosting those kinds of articles too, where yeah, being, hopefully being a more inclusive.
Voice in those spaces. So those are some of the ways off the bat, but I think also like we, and we just we just got an advisory team who is going to help advise us into the future. So almost a board of directors, but our advisory team is there to help us pursue that.
That's one of the things we've asked them to do is let's bring some people who know us and love us, but are not on staff are not us. They're not our founders. And bring them in. And one of the goals we've given them is help us be more diverse, more inclusive. Like we want you to speak into this so that we can grow.
Cuz I think that's how you grow in those spaces is you don't just like you don't just start throwing stuff. The wall I like to do that. I love to throw stuff off the wall, just see what sticks. But I think a big part, especially when it comes to diversity and inclusion, you've got to talk to people who are not like you, who are different than you.
You gotta talk to a diversity of voices and ask them Hey, where do we need to grow? How do we need to what steps can we take? What do you see? Where are we weak in those spaces? And so that's happening too, which I'm excited.
I think one of the, one of the gifts of having a really robust community like love diner has, is that you've got the existing, critical mass that you can work in these spaces and tackle these issues and explore the possibility.
But another huge aspect that I'm thankful for in this work of nerd ministry is the gift of collaboration. I've written for love, I nerd. And we I love going to LTN con and looking at all of the different people that you guys bring together and getting to meet those people.
And we met some of them here on nerds appre and one of our big goals here on nerds of pre is just to highlight all these nerd ministries. So I'm curious to know what do you think about. the possibility for collaboration. How do you think we're using it? Whether as LTN or whether nerd ministry in general and how can we do better as far as working with one another and leaning on our connection as Christians, regardless of denomination or background, I'm meth, I'm Methodist.
So we're super into the connectional. So that's why I'm, I might be nauseating everybody with this, but I do think our connection and our collaborative ability is what makes the internet so viable as a medium. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. How do you feel about that? Yeah, and we're definitely doing some of that already.
Loveline nerd con is an example of how we that's something that we have on our calendar every year. Now that we're going to do that with. So like we had Mike Perna who I think you mentioned is coming on this show. Right. Or did you already have him?
He's on the episode that comes out after our interview, but
before this interview airs.
Yeah. Yeah. Mike's awesome. And I met him through game church. I twisted his harm to write for game church and Mike's a great writer. Yeah. And a really good speaker too. Like he came and spoke about his no preaching rule at LT incon about how when he does his inroads tabletop ministry stuff, like he doesn't pre tip people at the table at the board game table.
Right. That's not the space for it, but talks about. Those, that's an opportunity to build relationships and yes, point people to Jesus, but there's a certain way that you go about it. And it was really good. Every time he speaks is really good. Hector Mik is with faith and fandom and he he spoke at LTN con as well, did a breakout session for us.
And also hosts one of our podcasts. Co-host one of our podcasts on comic books, the pool list. So yeah we're already, I feel like we're already pretty connected and it's just a Jamie Harris who does a video game ministry spoke at LTN con. And we're partnering with him to do a Minecraft league right now, which is been really cool.
We like, basically people send in their build, they have a few days to build, they send in their build and then we judge it on Twitch. And it's kind almost like a reality show like Lego masters or something, but with Minecraft it's really fun. But those are just ways to we're connecting with all kinds of different nerd ministries and yeah, I think it's just a matter of trying to keep an open hand there and and figure out ways to cuz we're like we dabble in all of it.
That's our thing is like we wanna have our hand in a little bit of everything. So if we can lift up some of these other ministries, we definitely want to do that cuz there's some cool people out there doing really good stuff. I will say you also have to be you have to be careful there because there are nerd ministries out there that are like, I don't know.
Maybe not there. Maybe they're not nerd ministries generally, but there are ministries out there that are painting a picture of Christianity that I'm not comfortable with. Yeah. It's like the most like jarring example would be like when you go to Jen con or something and there's Christians outside protesting about how everyone's going to hell who's in there playing games.
So yeah, you gotta be a little bit careful about who you're partner with, but the, the people that we found to partner with in this space just keeps growing ones that we really do love and trust and that's exciting. So
yeah, absolutely using that gift of discernment and just being open to the exploration.
And I will say that's one thing that I'm low key obsessed with humans of gaming the podcast. Oh, nice. I ran rave about it to everybody that I know. It's always we put out a nerd of mouth, which is like a biweekly blog where I just catalog some things that I'm finding in nerd ministry.
Yeah. And.
You've got those nerd puns. Unlike
I got all the nerd puns. I got 'em for days. Yeah. They're this is only the beginning. So I always end up citing humans of gaming, cuz I just think that what y'all, what you'll do is so incredible. So I would love to talk more about humans of gaming and how did that get started?
So I know you mentioned that, that got started back in the day, but what really was the origin of that podcast
in particular? Yeah, so it really was the game church. It when I left game church, that was something I asked. I was like, I would like to take this with me if you're okay with it and we'll call it something else.
We won't call it game church podcast anymore. But really humans gaming was the game church podcast. And the tagline was open and honest conversations about games, life and belief. And yeah, it was under game church that I interviewed Ken Levine and gosh, Steve gainer and from gone home, he did gone home and liked Tacoma.
. Yeah. Just all kinds of amazing indie Edmund McMillan who made binding Isaac and some really awesome triple a and indie designers and stuff. And yeah, that was all out of this hair-brained idea that Richard Clark, who he's the guy I told you about that I met at Christ pop culture. And he was the guy that was like, oh, there's another nerd like that plays video games and is a follower of Jesus and yeah, writes about it.
So I actually recruited him to help me with game church and we did that podcast together for a few years. And and yeah, it was just this hair-brained idea that he and I had that was like, what if we asked these people what they believe, but we made it a setting where it's like, it's okay to disagree.
So we tell our guests, like we promise we're not gonna correct you or preach at you. We might say, Hey, this is what I believe. And contrast what I believe from what you believe, but never outta a desire to. You're an idiot or right.
You should believe what I believe. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And I love it because I think those are conversations that just don't happen much today.
Like we live in this so deeply divided and this very deeply divided culture and it feels sometimes there's people, we couldn't even sit around the same, sit on the same table at, with, without getting into a big fight. And so I'm just like, I wanna prove that wrong and prove that you can't have those kind of conversations if you'll change your expectations.
And that's the only way we get to be vulnerable and get to points of like real connection is if we'll press pause on like those debates and just try to see these people as real human beings, made in God's image with real dreams and values and fears and. Concerns. And if everyone really is made in the image of God, then everyone has inherent value and everyone has something to teach you.
I've learned as much from those podcasts as I've maybe, pointed someone to Jesus or whatever. But it is cool that, that podcast, because of the level of conversations that we're able to have, where we, like we do ask people did you grow up in church? And what do you believe about God?
And these kind of questions that no one asks anyone else anymore outside of the church anyway. Because we ask those kind of level of questions. There's some people in there that I, I hang out with every time I go to a convention or we, I sent one off to sent some sent my book off to some of them.
And just because we've developed this friendship and said, Hey, would you look at this? And if it's decent, would you consider writing a. An endorsement.
And got some of these amazing, like really kind endorsements from folks that I'm like, I never would've thought that would happen. Cuz I would never think they would come to my church if I invited 'em, it's that kind of thing. So yeah, that, that podcast has been like just a huge blessing to me.
So it's cool to hear that there are some people out there who actually listen to it, oh, absolutely.
Yeah, no I make sure not to miss one. I It really is just interesting to hear the perspectives, like you said, and I'm curious to know, you mentioned that you've learned so much yourself, in, in coming to that place with in kind of a humble spirit and listening and being present in that space you've taken away a lot.
So if you had to sum up one big takeaway or one big surprise that you've found just by listening to people what would you say is that, that one thing that you've taken away.
I think that podcast and having those conversations has really helped me to have more empathy for people who feel hurt by the church.
Because I would say like the, at least 75% or so of those who are atheist or agnostic or whatever on that show grew up in the church on some level, and were there and had these questions or had experiences that just made them go. Like I can't be here anymore. And just, and I think like growing up in church, I would, you would have conversations about those kinds of people that demonize them.
It's oh, they left because they're addicted to some sin or they left because. I don't know Satan got a hold of her heart or something. And but we would say all those things without ever having talked to people who experience about their actual experience. So yeah, it's given me a lot more empathy for people who have been hurt by the church, I think.
And and also like a passion to change that culture too, because just think of how healthier, how much healthier our churches might be. If when people ask really hard questions our answer was like, oh yeah, man, that's tough. That is a really tough question. I don't know, but let's, but you're welcome here.
Even if we don't answer this question in a week or a month or a year, like we want you here and I'm, and that's, I love your question. And I love you , I don't know. I'm still figuring out what that looks like. I have a lot to learn there, but I want, I wanna be a, I wanna be a catalyst for helping the church be kinder, I guess.
I think that's why I'm so drawn to that podcast in particular is that you do enter into that approach with a real heart of humility and listening and rather than worrying about what am I going to say next?
You're just, yeah. Empathizing and hearing what's what needs to be said.
And so I have, it's a, yeah, it's amazing. The kind of conversation you can have if you'll like, put that on pause like that, and fact early in, early on in, in the game church podcast, I think I struggled with that, cuz like I've just been trained for years to that like apologetic mindset.
Like I've got to know the thing, that's going to show them why they're wrong and I'm right. And you don't. You just don't have to . Yeah. That's just not how relationships work. And yeah, I wanna get to those. I wanna get to the next level with people where we are talking about why Jesus is Lord and he is, and he has risen from the dead and those kinds of things, but you don't have to do that in your first meeting.
Right? Most of the time you probably shouldn't. .
Yeah, I think that's great. I think that's, it's important stuff and I really do. I highly recommend it. I'll encourage everybody again. I know that I mentioned it enough, but I do recommend that podcast highly. So I don't wanna, I don't want time to run out on us and us not get to talk about this book.
So I wanna talk about your book, know the gamer. . I'm excited for this kind of thing. So I wanted to give you just a quick time to talk about what is the book for, why is the book happening?
Why is this important? I'm also a parent. And so I appreciate the parenting guide.
Yeah. As a platform. How old is your, you have a
one child. Yeah, one kid two and a half years old. Okay. She's our little girl and we actually have another one on the way coming in April. So congrats.
We'll be a parent of two and we'll see how life changes. I've heard. The jump from one to two is dramatic.
Yeah, I think it was worse for us. The jump was worse from two to three, but but yeah, in a few years, maybe three, maybe four could be five years for you. You'll probably have this experience where even though you're a nerd and a gamer and stuff, like it's gonna drive you nuts that your kids are as into gaming as they are cause you love them and want them to be diverse and have a diversity of interest.
And and yeah, right now we're in the space where my 10 year old daughter if she could, she would spend all of her time playing Roblox and I'm a gamer. So I see the value in Roblox. I see the value in video games, but I don't want that to be the only thing she cares about. I want her to love people.
I want her to love her sister. I want her to love her little brother. I want her to be kind. I want her to. Do you know, service projects and all kinds of things. Yeah, there's a lot of parents pulling their hair out about how much their kids are into video games. And there's a lot of conflict in homes.
So that's a big part of the book is trying to help parents who don't get why their kids are so into gaming. Understand it. There's a lot of parents that just don't understand gaming at all. So that's a big part of it too. Let's understand it. Let's unpack it. Let's see. What's good and true and beautiful in it.
Let's also unpack what can be broken in it too. So the first chapter is like, why are, is it's called games are good. And so the goal that chapter is to illustrate there's. So there's so much potential in video games to enhance our lives, to help us love our neighbors, to build community, to have these epic victories games can help us feel better about ourselves.
And I think that can be good. I don't wanna feel bad about myself, but that's one of those things that Christians have a hard time accepting that it's okay to play games as a means of, increasing your self-esteem that's, that can be a positive, but anyway so that's the first chapter and then the second chapter and I develop a theological framework for that too.
Like here's what I think God thinks about games. Games are in the Bible. There's mention of play in the Bible, which is the father of games or the catalyst for games, play existed, then games. Right. And then the second chapter gets into it's called games are broken.
And so that's where we get into the most problematic aspects of video games. So we get into try to answer all the big questions about video game violence. Addiction is the big concern of parents. These days. There's a lot of parents that think their kids are addicted. So we impact a lot of research, a lot of statistics and try to help parents get some grasp on that.
Marker
And then also the other problems like sexism and misogyny and toxicity. And so the goal of that chapter is to see to sort of just help parents understand where we're at on those topics. And then the next chapter is called games were complicated. So that's where I lay some groundwork for just, Hey, here's how here's some tips and tricks essentially on how to navigate the space as a father of Jesus, as a parent, in a way that will promote your child, loving your child.
Like that's the goal of a parent, God, hasn't called us to fix our children. They're not broken. He's called us to love them. I know there's a sense in which we're all broken by sin or whatever but your job as a parent is not to fix your children, it's to love them. And that's where we unpack some tips and tricks on screen time and all kinds of things.
But also with just this framework of prioritizing the love of your kid and then the final chapter is games or mission. And that chapter tells the story of love line nerd really. And and helps parents see that, Hey, if you have a really nerdy kid, who's super into video games yes, you need to set some limits and you need to help them diversify their interests.
But that's also an opportunity for mission, just like a lot of churches, do sports missions or whatever, or all kinds of like hobby based mission kind of stuff. Why not think about why not help our kids dream about how they might do nerd missions and use their love of gaming to reach people and point people to Jesus.
Yeah, I think we're paving the way with a lot of the things that we're doing as the stigma. One stigma disappears the idea that games are bad, or the idea that, the panic kind of stuff. And now we're, we've moved on, we've accepted gaming as a thing, and we're starting to come up with the new problems behind it.
And yeah, I think it's important to for works like this, to pave the way. So between now and July, that's a little while it's a little bit of time. So what would you say like right now, if somebody is a parent stressing out about this in the moment, other than going ahead and going, and pre-ordering your book that I'm sure will be down in the description down below.
What can they do in the meantime? Are there any resources or anything you would point 'em to?
Sure. Yeah, there's two that I really like. My friend, Andy Robertson wrote a book called TAing gaming. If you just go to TAing gaming.com, you'll find it. He, it probably does way more research than I even did for my book.
He's. Very thoughtful in his approach. And it's not necessarily aimed at Christians, but he is a follower of Jesus. So that's nice to know for some people but it's, yeah, it's trying to help games be less of a problem in your home. And it's not just for kids, like some of this. And I get into this in my book.
Some of it is that parents you just need to chill out and realize you're not gonna fix your kid tomorrow. Right. And again, it's not even the goal of parenting is to fix them. So sometimes a lot of the problems that happen in the home around gaming Our parent problems. We need and I say that to myself as a parent who's broken like the rules, or like the guidelines that I would set for myself as a parent, I've, lost my temper and I've parented in ways that I'm not proud of.
So I need to work on me first. Then I can help work on my kids. And TA gaming would be a really great resource there. Then the other one I really like, and this is also not a Christian resource, but I think it's just very helpful for educational purposes is common sense media. It's just a great website.
That's very descriptive. You get reviews written by professional game and. Whatever TV movies, all of it by professional critics that are very good writers, but then there's also parent reviews where parents review those things and you get to see a parent's perspective on different things. And then they have all sorts of other resources too, about things like addiction and violence and all those kinds of things.
Those would be two really helpful resources. And of course loveline.com. We've got some great parenting articles there as well. So I'll give you an example a few years ago, and it still is, but a few years ago, Fortnite was like the craze, right? Sure. Everyone was playing fortnight and half the parents of those kids who were playing Fortnite were fed up with their kids playing it.
So we wrote an article called eight better games for kids than Fortnite. It's not that we don't like Fortnite but that's, but it's a, the reward structures of that game. Sure. I think are not super great. And so we tried to. Give some other ideas. If games, parents could put in front of their kids that have a healthier reward structure that doesn't doesn't reward compulsive play.
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Super cool. So I think that's great. So definitely recommend that. And I'll pre-order that and anticipate it as we, we move into the future of what it looks like to be a gaming parent or a parent that has kids that game. So now I wanna, and I wanna turn future forward.
And like you mentioned earlier, you are very much a an ideation person. So maybe you have a real vision for this beyond Loveline nerd beyond any of the structures that are currently existing. What do you think this intersection looks like in five, 10 years? What, the way I've been putting it is if you could dream a dream of where nerd ministry is in the next 10 years, what does it look like?
What does the future of this nerd ministry look like?
Yeah. That's a great question. I think it's going to be more, I think it's, they're gonna be way bigger because the church is in this space right now, where I think it's being forced to recognize that this is like a big part of the world we live in.
And so I think the church is waking up the univer, when I say church, universal church, I was waking up to this being a really important and viable ministry space. So I think it's just gonna be a bigger deal. I think you're gonna see more churches embracing it. I also think, we may see some legitimately viable virtual iterations of the church.
There's already some of that going on. I know some guys that help out with VR church and I'm not sure I'll be honest. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Yeah, I. I I wanna be in the same room with people going up to the front, taking communion together, like those types of things like that, embodiment and embodied a community is important to me.
And I think even in like maybe important in my understanding of the gospel and stuff, but but man, it's cool. It's really cool what they're trying to do and it makes me uncomfortable, but I think that's probably good, we don't grow unless we make ourselves a little bit uncomfortable, right. So I, yeah, praise God for those be our church guys. I don't know. It's cool.
It's yeah, we gotta wrestle with those weird conflicts and see what name we
come out with on the other end. And yeah. And if any of them listen to this, I'm sure they've wrestled with this already.
Like I know they're not dumb. They've thought these through these things yeah. You should have one of them on if you haven't. Oh, for sure. I'd
love to reach out to 'em and learn more. I wrote my that's not really a dissertation in seminary, but I wrote my kind of final thesis on the virtual church and VR church and of looking back to whenever it first really started in second life.
And second life feels like ages ago. I know and that's that's where we were even doing it back then and exploring the possibility there and yep. Yeah, I'm intrigued by the future there as well. And I feel totally overwhelmed and unprepared to do anything in that space.
I'm thankful there are people out there paving the way there and exploring that for us. Yeah, I think that's very much true. So as we wrap up and ask this final question, I like to always get recommendations from the people. What are you currently experiencing? And I know you mentioned you got three kids and very little time.
Yeah. But hopefully you're making a little bit of time here and there even to experience little chunks. What are you currently watching? What are you currently playing and what are you currently reading? And I can start us off while you think so I'm, I just finished up, I it's spooky season as we're recording this.
And so I am, I'm just finished up watching pretty much all of Mike Flanigans filmography, because I started watching midnight mass and I was obsessed. Yeah. I like, I ate it up in a single night and I was like I guess now I gotta go experience everything this guy's ever made. And so I hyperfocused on him and now I've watched the haunting of Hillhouse.
And I'm gonna go watch the hunting of Bly manner and just totally wreck my sleep schedule for the next couple weeks. And I'm currently just finished up playing.
Go ahead. Does it keep you up? If you watch those,
yeah, I can't watch 'em in the dark. I cannot watch 'em in the dark. Yeah. I'll have to watch 'em during the daytime and just hope that I don't remember them, but it's like always, as soon as you close your eyes and you're like, all right, I'm ready to go to bed now.
Then it's like all the images, just rush into your head. And oh boy. Fortunately like most of Mike Flanigan stuff, isn't too jump scary. And so there's not so much that it's just like really good character studies. And so I'm loving it. Absolutely eating up every that. Yeah. Nice. Then playing Metro red, I just finished that and just started up disco Atium because it finally came out for the switch.
And so I'm super whoa, that's on my list. Yeah. I'm super excited so far. I was not prepared. It is cheeky as can be. I was not expecting it to be like hilarious. Like I, it's gonna me laugh out loud, which
normally it's hilarious. And also Also like it's pretty dark, yeah. Like from a like psychological standpoint.
Yeah. There's, it's interesting. I'm sure I'm excited to
Discover all the different nuances. And I know that it goes with that, like OG fable, like you get to choose whether to be good or bad and your character shifts and adapts compared to that. So I'm excited. Yeah. That's cool. And then as far as reading, I'm currently reading completely on the other end of the spectrum.
So we've got like scary game, psychological game, scary, psychological horror shows. And I'm reading, fly me to the moon which is a romance manga , which is as slice of life romance, as you can get. And I have no idea why I'm reading this. It is just, it is so it is I don't even know I'm reading it just because it's like my guilty pleasure right now.
It's just this story about this newly we couple that have barely even met, but he gets saved by her one night, whenever bus almost hits him and he like gets pushed outta the way. And he vows that night. He's I'm gonna marry you. And she's are you sure? And he's yes, I'm sure I'm gonna marry you someday.
And then she disappears. And then eight years later shows up on his doorstep and is he said you were gonna marry me, so let's get married. And then they do. And so they don't know each other and they're married. They just have all of these, there you'd think it'd be a mistake and that there'd be trouble in paradise, but they're both.
So adorably awkward the entire time that it's just, I don't even know. It's what's it called again? It's called fly me to the moon. Okay. An anime called over the moon with you. And I don't know the actual like Japanese title, but it's just it's so that sounds amazing. It's so light and easy. And compared to the other heavy things that I'm watching and playing it's just really just unpleasant a pleasantly.
Yeah. Yeah. To answer your question, I'm really into, and I'll give a disclaimer about this, cuz it's very violent. So if you're adverse to violence maybe skip it. But the far Fargo TV show series, the TV series I had just finished season three. Yeah. I, what I love about it is the characters are so quirky and complicated.
And also I think it's one of the rare shows that always has at least one or two really good characters that have that are virtuous, like very virtuous characters. So the foils in that sh there's always there's usually one villain who's hor horrifically evil, and there's usually another, there's another character who's in the middle and sort of stumbles into crime.
so there's this great, like formula where there's a virtuous detective or some kind someone in law enforcement, there's a really evil so really evil criminal. Then there's someone who stumbles into criminality and they all intersect. And it's this glorious, like gloriously complex series of mistakes.
And, by the one who stumbles into crime, Yeah. And then just all this, these great Midwestern accents and one
characters now, it like true detective in the sense that it's like a season long anthology where each season is its own capsule? Like
yeah. Yeah. Each season's kind of self-contained but you do, there is some like little, connections.
Sure. But it's all set in Minnesota or South Dakota. So it all has that, but they're different eras too. Like every season, a different timeframe. So I like that a lot. My wife and I are big survivor fans, the reality TV show. Sure. We actually have our own podcast. We just started a couple a year ago.
It was during COVID. We started it when the season 40 started. So it's called Jen and drew talk survivor. And people laugh at me cuz they're like, you still watch survivor but we love it because it, this there's a connection to what I do. I love it because I think it's a great game. Like I love the game aspects of it.
It's a very complex social deduction game yeah. But that also has physical elements and that is physically demanding. And so the, the tagline is out wit outlast out play. And so it's fun. It's really fun. We get into the strategy of it. Talk about who's playing well, who's not and all the different dynamics, the mechanics of the game.
It's really fun. Yeah. You don't make it to season
40 without having a pretty good
catch. Yeah. It's pretty good. Yeah. I think they have a great formula for, I think it's the best game on television. That's what I always say. It's the best game you can watch on television. I'd rather watch people play the game of survivor than professional football or whatever.
And then I haven't had much time for gaming lately. Most of the time I play games with my kids, but I have gotten into dirt. The racing game. Yeah, the rally racing game. I've been playing dirt rally 2.0. And I'm a big fan of the souls games, like dark souls and bloodborne and stuff. This what draw me to this is I heard that dirt rally is like the, so like the dark souls of racing.
It's super demanding, like very requires precision timing. And you just have to be like dialed in, to play it well. And you don't get restarts. You get five restarts over the course of like a whole series of races. You can do five restarts and if you mess up your car and it has pretty realistic, like damage and stuff to your car.
So you can, if you trash your car in one of these like insane mountain rally courses, like you're gonna have to drive that same car in the next stage. You get your repaired every few stages, but it's just yeah, I like those type of games that require like flow. I dunno if you know what I mean by that.
Oh yeah. But I just totally dialed in, yeah. Yeah. So that's been fun. And then reading we've been reading this book called simplicity parenting, which is just about like simplifying everything in your kids' lives. So I've been reading a lot of parenting books because I'm writing one.
Sure. And but if you want a book about like cutting back some of the excesses, is that a word, the excess stuff in parenting? In, in America, American parents, I think it would. I think it, it would be helpful to you. It's a little, it's a little Luddite ish but I like to read things.
Or from a different perspective than me anyway. And then that's kinda like a,
I never want to actually do the van life, the hashtag van life thing, but I really like watching videos of hashtag van life. Yeah. Yeah. Learning from the minimalist lifestyle while not necessarily going in the whole
hog.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot to learn from that. Like the whole Marie condo craze that was, I found that helpful I've I cleaned out I watched some of that her stuff and cleaned out, cleaned out a bunch of stuff I don't use anymore and got rid of it. It feels good. right. Yeah. It's
a spectrum.
You don't necessarily have to simplify everything. You can just, you can, you have to buy and
complete it, work towards it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll mention an anime that I really like that as on Netflix, actually it's called March comes like a lion , that's a slice of life anime about a professional Shogi player in Japan and just really endearing character.
So that's been my kind of thing, you mentioned just something that feels good and doesn't yeah. It's not super heavy. There is some heavy like background of the characters, but it's mostly just these, this group of people that find themselves in the same space and are doing, trying to do their best to love each other and support each other.
It's nice. Yeah. I
always see that when recommended to me, because I watched your lie in April, which is like one of my favorite I may of all time. And I balded through all of your lie in April, so I don't know. Oh man. I don't know if I can handle any more emotionally Maye. So if it's anything like that's where I I gotta choose a specific time in season than where I'm like I
can handle it's probably today.
Yeah. I think it's probably goofier. It's a bit goofier than that and a little more lighthearted. So I think you'd probably like.
Yeah, I'll have to check that out for sure. I appreciate all the recommendations and all the good stuff. That's always, it's so interesting to me, how everybody just has so many different things that they experience and so many different games and things.
They like, that's what I really love about this place is that we have a lot of different ways. We can go a lot of things. We can watch a lot of things. We can play a lot of things we can read. Yeah. In closing, go ahead and give a quick shout out. So where can people find you all the different avenues I'll tag most of the stuff down in the description down below but just, what highlights would you have?
Any social media or projects
or thing you're working on? Yeah, you can definitely follow most everything I'm doing on Twitter. Now. I, because of this book, I've been making an honest effort. It's like one of the things you ha learn you have to do when you write a book, I guess. And like now I actually have to use my Twitter.
Right. Because I want people to read this thing. Cuz I've worked hard on it. So I am making an effort to be really active on Twitter. If I can. I say really active, somewhat active probably is the more
accurate nobody's on Twitter because they wanna be on Twitter.
It's purely exactly right.
Yeah, so ju and ad two on Twitter, and then love th nerd.com. Love th nerd community on Facebook. If you search for love, I nerd community on Facebook. Don't also like us on Facebook as well. We have a, our official account and then we have a community on Facebook. We have a discord channel as well, which is a great place to connect with other nerds.
And then yeah, just any of the social search for love I nerd. Yeah. And that would be a good way to, to keep up with what I'm, what
I'm. Yeah, absolutely. And again, I'll plug the podcast and make sure that people know about that and keep up with anything there. I don't think you're not, you don't stream on Twitch with any of the nights, do you?
I don't. I've thought about getting into it, but right now I'm not, we have a stream. Yeah. That's another great place to go. If you wanna check out what lovely nerd's doing, we stream almost every night and just search for, just go to twitch.com/editor and you'll find us.
Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show and for ING all this great knowledge and hopefully people will check out all the things that you're doing, but I appreciate your time and appreciate you being here.
Thanks for being on the show. We'll have to have you back on some time to just deep dive again and see what anime you're on then.
Yeah, that'd be great.