No Easy Answers with Mike Bellanti
Aug 2, 2026 · 42 min · 9 segments
In this episode, host Mike Bellanti sits down with apologist and evangelist Michael Ramsden to unpack metamodernism, what it is, why it matters, and why Christians should understand it. If you've ever…
I'm wondering, anywhere you turn people are talking about the exponential rise in anxiety and depression and typically one of the first things they get blamed is social media.
I think it was Jonathan Haidt who suggested that you can directly correlate the rise in depression amongst teens when Apple introduced the front-facing camera.
But as we're talking, I start to think, could this also be a contributing factor to – I think it was either Jonathan Haidt or somebody wrote that in the last 10 or 6 or 10 years, a 60 percent increase in anxiety and depression amongst young people is happening worldwide.
that? I mean, I think Jonathan Haidt's definitely right with that part of the analysis.
And the images it portrays and the kind of perfection it puts before us makes...
At the same time, I think running alongside that, what has also happened to your point is, well, if you go to school and you're taught... well, this whole world may be destroyed by us because of what we're currently doing.
And classically, we'll talk about four different types of dystopia classically.
You talk about the kind of Orwellian dystopia, the idea that we may be controlled and manipulated through oppressive power you have.
Franz Kafka wrote about a type of dystopia where we have a very meaningless bureaucracy that makes life unlivable.
And then you have other forms of dystopia where the world is destroyed through economic collapse or through violent collapse or what have you.
And if you ask the average 18 year old today, which of these can you imagine being true? They'll say all of them.
I can imagine all of those plus a few others you haven't even mentioned yet.
Well, I think a lot of the way we get things up by trying to make people responsible is that we've maybe inadvertently loaded onto a whole generation, a series of issues, which are so overwhelming with that.
Well, what can I do as an individual to stop this and I think that absolutely is a contributing factor and that feeds very much into that meta-modern sense, so So even people in the past who were raised maybe with a threat of nuclear war and everyone's trying to hide under the desk with an atom bomb comes At the same time a message is coming from well, we're bigger than them and we're stronger than them and we can defend you and we can win So make sense.
I'm wondering, anywhere you turn people are talking about the exponential rise in anxiety and depression and typically one of the first things they get blamed is social media.
I think it was Jonathan Haidt who suggested that you can directly correlate the rise in depression amongst teens when Apple introduced the front-facing camera.
But as we're talking, I start to think, could this also be a contributing factor to – I think it was either Jonathan Haidt or somebody wrote that in the last 10 or 6 or 10 years, a 60 percent increase in anxiety and depression amongst young people is happening worldwide.
that? I mean, I think Jonathan Haidt's definitely right with that part of the analysis.
And the images it portrays and the kind of perfection it puts before us makes...
At the same time, I think running alongside that, what has also happened to your point is, well, if you go to school and you're taught... well, this whole world may be destroyed by us because of what we're currently doing.
And classically, we'll talk about four different types of dystopia classically.
You talk about the kind of Orwellian dystopia, the idea that we may be controlled and manipulated through oppressive power you have.
Franz Kafka wrote about a type of dystopia where we have a very meaningless bureaucracy that makes life unlivable.
And then you have other forms of dystopia where the world is destroyed through economic collapse or through violent collapse or what have you.
And if you ask the average 18 year old today, which of these can you imagine being true? They'll say all of them.
I can imagine all of those plus a few others you haven't even mentioned yet.
Well, I think a lot of the way we get things up by trying to make people responsible is that we've maybe inadvertently loaded onto a whole generation, a series of issues, which are so overwhelming with that.
Well, what can I do as an individual to stop this and I think that absolutely is a contributing factor and that feeds very much into that meta-modern sense, so So even people in the past who were raised maybe with a threat of nuclear war and everyone's trying to hide under the desk with an atom bomb comes At the same time a message is coming from well, we're bigger than them and we're stronger than them and we can defend you and we can win So make sense.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
