Join Conner Jones and guest host Josh Miller on this week’s episode of Culture Brief. With Micah on vacation, Josh joins Conner as they discuss the significant passing of Pope Francis and his progressive papacy, the intriguing process of electing a new pope, and the impact of antitrust cases against tech giants like Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon with a focus on the significance of humility. Josh also delivers a fiery hot take on a common American coffee habit and the guys offer quick insights into this weekend’s NFL draft!
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Topics
- (00:31): Special guest: Josh Miller
- (02:22): Remembering Pope Francis
- (04:18): The Conclave process
- (09:40): Pope Francis’ legacy
- (19:16): Big Tech antitrust trials
- (27:23): Google’s market dominance
- (28:50): Chrome and Safari: browser wars
- (30:42): The power of Big Tech
- (34:09): AI and the future of search
- (39:33): Coffee hot take
- (43:11): Updates on trade wars and the economy
- (46:06): NFL draft and sports highlights
- (49:10): Conclusion
Resources
- Mailbag: [email protected]
- Subscribe to The Daily Article by Dr. Jim Denison
- Culture Brief on Instagram
- Pope Francis dies at the age of eighty-eight
- The life and legacy of Pope Francis
- Pope Francis calls for same-sex civil unions: Why this is so important and how to respond biblically
- Why I hope you won’t see “Conclave”
- Pope Francis allows priests to bless same-sex couples
- Why should the death of Pope Francis matter to Protestants?
- Pope Francis, groundbreaking leader of Catholic Church, dies at age 88 – CBS News
- What Happens After the Pope Dies? A Visual Timeline of Rituals and Traditions – The New York Times
- Conclaves through time – the long and short | Euronews
- The Justice Department and Google battle over how to fix a search engine monopoly : NPR
- U.S. Asks Judge to Break Up Google – The New York Times
- Google could use AI to extend search monopoly, DOJ says as trial begins | Reuters
- Justice Department Sues Monopolist Google For Violating Antitrust Laws
- The Best Quotes from Pope Francis During His Pontificate – Exaudi
- E.U. Takes Aim at Big Tech’s Power With Landmark Digital Act – The New York Times
- Academy Sets New Oscars Rules for 2025: You Need to Watch All Nominated Films to Vote in a Category
About Josh Miller
Josh Miller is the Chief of Staff and Chief Strategy Officer at Denison Ministries. He is also a disciple of Jesus, husband, and father. A Christian leader, author, and songwriter, Josh brings over 20 years of ministry experience—from global worship tours to pastoral leadership. He lives in Plano, Texas, with his wife and two sons, fueled by faith, craft coffee, and a love for tacos.
About Conner Jones
Conner Jones is the Director of Performance Marketing at Denison Ministries and Co-Hosts Denison Forum’s “Culture Brief” podcast. He graduated from Dallas Baptist University in 2019 with a degree in Business Management. Conner passionately follows politics, sports, pop-culture, entertainment, and current events. He enjoys fishing, movie-going, and traveling the world with his wife and son.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Conner Jones: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Connor Jones. And I’m Josh Miller. Filling in for Micah. And this is Culture Brief, a podcast where we navigate the constant stream of top stories and news, politics, sports, pop culture and technology, all from a Christian perspective. Now, you, you may be wondering who is that, that just introduced themselves?
Who? Who’s Josh? Where’s Micah? These are definitely fair questions. Micah is on a much deserved vacation with his family, so we’re happy for him to be out there doing fun things while the rest of us are here working. And, and yeah, Michael, we’re gonna give you grief about that next week. But today I am joined by Josh Miller.
He’s awesome. He is the chief of staff here at Denon Ministries, and he oversees the direction of all of our digital brands. As you know, Denon Form is a part of this bigger ministry. We’ve got first 15 Christian Parenting Foundations with Janet Denison as other brands and ministries, and Josh oversees all of that, which is awesome.
And he has agreed to come on and fill in for Micah today. I would say, Josh, you’re a pretty techie person, so I think your topics that you’re planning to talk about today are perfectly up [00:01:00] your alley. And he’s definitely tuned into everything going on in the world. We’re always talking about what’s happening with news and sports and pop culture and stuff.
So Josh is the perfect guy to be here. So welcome to Culture Breed, Josh.
Josh Miller: Thanks so much. Glad to be here. And, you know, I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to give a proper hot take on this podcast and so glad to, glad the have the opportunity to do that today.
Conner Jones: I am super excited to hear that hot take.
Okay. That gets me, that gets me amped. Would love to hear your hot take. The people do not like my hot takes typically, so I need someone else to have something controversial.
Josh Miller: I’m with the people. I’m with the people, Connor, so let’s get into it.
Conner Jones: Okay. I, before we, before we move on, I would be definitely remiss if I did not mention that Josh, you may be known by some of our particularly millennial listeners because you were the guitarist in the Christian Rock Group 16 Cities.
Josh Miller: Oh boy.
Conner Jones: I don’t know. Were you guys like playing on the radio? I know you were at youth camps all across the country. Everybody was. Seeing you if they grew up in like the 2010s going to youth camps.
Josh Miller: [00:02:00] Yeah. I, I don’t, I don’t like to talk about this. This was, this was a, a long history of bad haircut choices, uhhuh and jeans that were too skinny and yeah, it’s true, but I think it’s time to change the subject. Hey, can I, can I do the honors of, oh yeah. Luminus on. Okay. Because I think it’s time for the brief.
Conner Jones: Okay. So obviously the big story this week, as everyone knows, Pope Francis did pass away on Monday. April 21st at the age of 88. And so I just wanna kind of hit on some of his legacy.
What happens next? What do we take from his life and what can we learn from that? Glean from that? So let’s dive in. As, as we talked about a few weeks ago and a few months ago, we kind of thought he may have passed away. Back in about February, he was in the hospital and they were saying it was not looking good.
He recovered and he even spent Easter Sunday. Greeting the public, talking to the public. He went out on the Popemobile. He met with Vice President JD Vance on Sunday, and by Monday morning he had a [00:03:00] stroke and heart failure and he passed away, sadly. Now, obviously he was an older man. He lived an incredible life and has so much just history there in a legacy.
Left and lived. So we’re, we’re just grateful to see that and the way the Catholic Church is kind of coming around and mourning him but I think we need to kind of talk a little bit about what happens next now that he’s passed on. Where do we go from there? His funeral will be on Saturday, 10:00 AM It’s gonna be in St.
Peter’s Basilica, which is right there in the Vatican, and there will be a big public mass celebrated in front of St. Peter’s. And that’s gonna be attended by quite a few world leaders. I do believe President Trump is scheduled to be there for that. And obviously all these world leaders, powerful people were sending in their you know, tributes, they were posting on social media offering their mourning and their rest of peace tweets and were praying for you and the Catholic church type of statements.
So that’s just a big deal. I mean, when the Pope passes away. He’s one of the most influential [00:04:00] people on the planet. The Catholic Church is encompassing, like I wanna say, 1.4 billion people across the world. So obviously this is a big deal and Francis’ Pontificate was especially historic and often controversial.
So we’ll hit on that in just a moment. But what’s gonna happen after all the funeral stuff? We get what’s called a conclave. Josh, have you ever, have you ever heard of a conclave?
Josh Miller: You know, I’ve heard of it, but it’s not something I was super familiar with. I didn’t pay much attention to it last time around, and so it’s been really fascinating to read up on this whole process, how it works, the significance of it, the, it’s, it is a big deal.
Such a huge deal.
Conner Jones: Yeah, it is, and it’s, it’s so stoked in tradition and also secrecy. I actually think it’s pretty cool. As I was reading about this, I’ll, I’ll give a couple just points on what happens in a conflict. This is essentially when they elect a new pope, and when I say they, I am talking about 135 Catholic cardinals from around the world come together and they do secret ballot voting.
Technically there are [00:05:00] 252 cardinals and these are the second highest level of essentially. Appointment that you can get within the Catholic Church, and then Pope is the highest, right? The thing is only those who are 80 years old or younger get to vote in these ballots. So that’s why there’s only gonna be 135 of them.
They come to the Vatican and they will have secret ballots. They will close themselves off from the rest of the world. Anyone from outside of of the Vatican is not allowed in other than some of the priests, secretaries, cooks, and doctors. Who will be sworn to an oath of secrecy and this sing chapel will be swept for.
This is crazy for wiretaps and recording equipment. I mean, it is like serious
Josh Miller: stuff. That is wild. Yeah. It’s like
Conner Jones: CIA type gathering or something. It’s nuts. Yeah. I mean, the Vatican, it’s technically its own little country, so I guess maybe this is their like intelligence agency, I guess. Wow. Yeah. Crazy stuff.
So they’ll, they’ll do that secret ballot. They’ll vote until they reach a conclusion of two thirds of the vote, voting for a single individual. That will [00:06:00] be the next Pope. A lot of people know about the smoke that comes out of the Sistine Chapel. So if there is black smoke, that means a pope has not been selected ’cause they are burning the ballots.
That were cast that day. So until white smoke comes outta the Sistine Chapel, we will not have a Pope elected. That white smoke is when we get a lot of cheers outside the Sistine Chapel. There will be cameras posted just watching the smoke stack, waiting for the moment that there’s white smoke, and then once that vote is concluded, the dean of the college will ask the chosen successor whether or not he accepts.
The papacy, if he wants to be Pope most likely will say yes. And if he does, he will ask for the name that that person wants to be. Pope Francis was not the name, the actual born name of the Pope. His name was Jorge Maria Berger, Gillo, something like that. And, but whenever they’re elected, they choose a, a, typically a historic or biblical name that matches with the way that they see their potential papacy.
Yeah, I, I’m not from a Catholic background, Josh. I don’t know how familiar you are with that. I, I come from [00:07:00] a Protestant background, but it’s just been so interesting to see these traditions and rituals and everything that goes into this process and all of that. I, I mean, I. Are, are you, are you like intrigued by this conclave thing and what’s gonna happen?
Josh Miller: Yeah, it is pretty fascinating. You know, I, I’m similar to you grew up in kind of even non-denominational background or baptist background and so to, to see the seriousness in which they take these types of procedures and decisions I is pretty interesting and feels honestly fairly foreign. You know, growing up in our traditions, they’re a little more informal.
There’s less kind of prestige around the leadership in the church. And so to see both kind of the honor and respect given to this position in the church is fascinating and that there’s such a, a letter of the law in each aspect of this process that it’s, you know. Not only so secretive and, but every thing has to be done by the letter, through this kind of traditional process in a way that just feels interesting.
You know, there’s a part of me that I, I don’t [00:08:00] understand it to be honest, like why is there so much, always so much kind of. Prestige given to this you know, person this human, like the rest of us. There’s this kind of thing that I don’t fully relate to or understand, but at the same time, I appreciate the seriousness in which they take their faith that they would, that it shows some certain level of dedication and honor and importance to your faith and religion and beliefs that when something like this happens, that everything stops and your, your world re revolves around kind of.
Who is now the leader of the church and how are we gonna move kind of God’s kingdom forward as a part of this? And so I feel somewhat mixed, to be honest. I think both of it is somewhat of a lack of, you know, having been in the Catholic church personally. But also there’s some things I appreciate about that, that process in the, the seriousness in which they’re taking their faith and taking their beliefs.
Conner Jones: I’m right there with you. It, it is been intriguing. It’s been interesting to see. Obviously I, I think [00:09:00] the movie Conclave came out last year and it’s probably gonna, actually, I know it’s gonna be popular. It already is up in viewership 283%, and it does depict what a conclave is like. Although I would put out a warning that it’s not a great representation of the Catholic Church.
And Dr. Jim Denison, founder of Denison Forum, wrote an article last year saying that he believes. It gets it completely wrong, and he does not think it shows the church in a good light and does not recommend seeing the movie. And I would actually agree. So there’s a lot there. If you’re considering watching that movie, just know that it is not a real good representation of the church.
It it, it is a political thriller with some interesting ideologies. Anyways, that being said. How are we remembering Pope Francis’s papacy specifically, how do we take his legacy? What did he do with the Catholic church? How will he be remembered? Like I said, he was born with a totally different name to a working class family in Argentina in 1936.
And he, he’s actually the first pope from Latin America from the [00:10:00] Americas actually. So kind of an interesting dynamic there. They’re traditionally, typically from Europe and Asia a lot of times Europe. And so his first act as Pope Josh is actually pretty interesting. It was to receive his fellow Cardinals as their peer, as his peer, and he stood on their level.
He did not put himself on a higher level. So if we can say one thing about this Pope, he was all about humility. And he, he exemplified that in other ways too, including on his first Holy Thursday, he participated in the traditional foot washing service. Choosing 12 people who were not wealthy, they were not notable people of significance in the church.
They were actually juvenile offenders. And after he washed and kissed their feet, he said to them, washing your feet means I am at your service. Two of those 12 people were actually female and making him the first Pope to ever wash the feet of a woman. In addition, two of them were Muslims. So he kind of set aside some of the standards that a lot of popes held and offered himself as a servant [00:11:00] to those who were marginalized.
And he, that, that’s one thing that he was big about is marginalized and poor communities.
Josh Miller: And that’s what was so interesting is that one of the criticisms against the Catholic church has been this kind of bit of elitism when it comes to leadership and, and the secrecy kind of speaks into that as well.
This kind of elite group happens behind the scenes, raises some questions there, and so he was one of the first popes to kind of break down a lot of those. That, that kind of distance between I am now above you as the Pope and really worked very hard to break down those barriers, to come close to the people, to pick somewhat of the, the least of these you know, as people would view them, which, you know, in a lot of ways is just very Christ-like.
He, he reached out to those who would be considered controversial. Reminds me of what Jesus did and what made the Pharisees so angry back in the day, and that he chose to, to hang out and elevate those that society and the religious elite had rejected and called unworthy. And so it was a very powerful statement he [00:12:00] made very early on in his tenure was to, to kind of break down some of those walls that had been built up by previous popes.
Conner Jones: Yeah. And a lot of that actually led him to be known as more of the progressive pope, possibly the most progressive pope that’s been had in history. Which of course pleased a lot of people. He was more welcoming. He wanted more people to feel welcomed in the Catholic church, and obviously also irked others, particularly more conservative people within the church.
He definitely spoke out against economic inequality, like you were saying. He warned about climate change and he sympathized with migrants. And definitely the poor and the marginalized like you, you’re suggesting there. He, he cared about those people who felt like maybe they were distant from the rest of society.
They were outcast. He did also seek to reform the church’s finances by offering more transparency. He did also combat the sexual abuse scandals that have obviously plugged the church. He stepped in right at a time when a lot of those scandals were coming about. So that was the very beginning of his papacy back in 20 12, 20 13.
He had to deal with a lot of that. A lot of the controversy [00:13:00] with him though does stem around his just views on sexuality. So he, he’s been dinged by people on the conservative aspect of the Catholic church as being too progressive here. But let me just offer some insights on how he approached sexuality.
’cause a lot of people are saying he championed L-G-B-T-Q rights. I think that might be a step too far. Here’s what actually happened with his stances during his time as Pope. So he did seem to still hold homosexuality as a sin, right? But he also pushed the Catholic church to be more welcoming of same-sex couples and transgender people, and he affirmed that transgender people could be baptized and took steps towards normalizing L-G-B-T-Q relationships by allowing priests to bless same-sex couples.
But those blessings were not meant to necessarily convey approval or legitimize their lifestyle. Though that is probably how media is portraying it and has portrayed it in the past. They’re saying that the Pope is allowing this type of thing. That’s the way they like to portray it, but that’s [00:14:00] not exactly the case.
Rather, it was more so to extend the hand to the LGBT community to let them know that their sins did not have to keep them from coming to God any more than the sins of any other Christians. So he was basically just saying, yeah, it’s a sin, but the rest of us are sinners as well. So why should you not be able to come to God?
You know, there’s, there’s different ways we can take that. There’s a whole theological deep dive you can take with that. And I would honestly highly suggest listening to the podcast that came out today from the Denison Forum. The Denison Forum podcast episode features Dr. Jim Denison, and he is addressing a lot of this, and he is talking about why should Protestants care about the Pope dying and, and about the Pope’s position, and it’s a really good episode.
Go listen to that. We’ll link it in the show notes. If you wanna dive more into some of the theological things about the Catholic church and about the Pope specifically, this did stand in stark contrast with previous popes including his predecessors. So now the question is, will the Cardinals elect another progressive style Pope?
The Pope Francis did appoint a lot of cardinals that may have the same [00:15:00] ideals and values as him and ideologies. But there’s still some of the old school cardinals in there who may not stand for that. They don’t want to see that. They wanna go back to some of the old school ways. And so we’ll see what they elect.
We’ll see if they elect somebody who’s more conservative or more progressive, or maybe somewhere right in the middle that will just be a steady ship for the church. Yeah, that, that’s the thoughts there. Any, any last thoughts on that, Josh?
Josh Miller: Yeah. I mean the, the only other thing here is that this is such an unpredictable phase we’re entering into now.
Mm-hmm. And that no people are making projections on who might be the next Pope, but all come to the conclusion that nobody really knows.
Conner Jones: Yeah. We’ll see. I, I, what I will say is that no matter what we make of the Pope’s decisions in his life, what you as a listener specifically think. We still mourn the loss of his life.
It is still death. And that is hard no matter the age, no matter the person, no matter how far away, death is just a stinging thing, right? And so whether he was a beloved figure in your life, if you’re a Catholic and you just love the Pope and all of that, or even outside of the Catholic church, if you found him to be a great and [00:16:00] admirable person or if you feel distant from him and you’re just like, oh, he was just a figure in the world.
This is still time to really stop and pray for not only his family, but also the entire Catholic church as a whole. And of course, we’re gonna be praying that God would be glorified in this whole process and that his gospel would be shared through all of this, and that the next person appointed would be someone committed to him and ultimately glorifying him and his name not their own.
So as we reflect on the life of Pope Francis, I do think it’s a great time for us to remember Christ’s call to humility in servant hardness like Pope Francis showed. And I, I love what Dr. Denison said in his article on Monday his daily article that went out Monday morning right after we found out that the Pope passed away.
He said, humility is the decision to place the Lord in others before ourselves. And it’s not just an important principle for Christians who wish to be used by God. It is the foundation of all other principles. So Jesus even began his sermon on the Mount in Matthew five with the proclamation. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
All that [00:17:00] follows in Jesus’ sermon. And the Christian life is literally based on that. The commission of the church to preach the gospel to the end of the earth can be fulfilled only in the power of the Holy Spirit and that power can. Be given only to those who are yielded to the Lord when we bow down to him in humility and that’s that’s shown in Acts one.
The character of the church as exemplified by the fruit of the Spirit can be manifested by the Spirit only in those who are humbled and submitted before him. We see that in Ephesians five 18, the compassion of the church for the least, the last and the lost. A commitment so exemplified by Pope Francis is fueled by the compassion of Christ.
When we humble ourselves before his spirit humility, Josh, I, I think the Pope really showed that. And we have to remember he was exemplifying how Christ showed humility. Jesus was the most humble servant of all. And I love that you pointed out that Jesus cared so much about the marginalized. And I’m thinking about the, the woman who we healed, who, who society had cast out, but she [00:18:00] touched his robe and he felt the power leave him.
And he knew that he had just healed her. She might have been cast out by by society, but she knew that he would love her for who she was. And he did. And that was just the case with all the people that he was talking to. He was talking to those marginalized, he was healing them, he was doing miracles. And I just love that.
And so as we go about our week, remember that good stuff, Connor?
Josh Miller: Yeah. Thanks for, yeah, thanks for sharing that. That’s a good reminder for all of us, and I hope that each of us can, regardless of whether or not we love everything he did or didn’t do, you know, it’s a reminder I think for, for each of us.
Neither one of us are all good or all bad as humans, and I think it’s easy to wanna put make somebody either a hero or a villain rather than recognizing. The humanity in each of us. And so we see that in, in Pope Francis, that he was a person who did a lot of things that were very Christlike, and it may have had some stuff as well that was like that, that doesn’t necessarily follow scripture.
You know, I could look at my own life and see the same thing. There are some parts of me that are God honoring [00:19:00] and parts of me that I, man, I need to. I need to get right and I need God’s grace in. And so I think that holds true here for Pope Francis. I think it holds true for the Catholic Church and it holds true for us.
And so I think walking forward in humility is probably the key takeaway here for me.
Conner Jones: Absolutely. That, that kind of wraps up everything I’ve got on the Pope, but Josh, I know you wanted to really hit on some interesting technology stuff, so why don’t you take us through that?
Josh Miller: Yeah, absolutely.
Connor, it is a tough time to be a monopoly. I’m just gonna, I’m being kind of somewhat sar I’m being sarcastic, but that you may have seen over the last. Few months, these stories about big tech antitrust trials. And now before you fall asleep on me, I hear the word antitrust and I just wanna take a nap.
But let me explain why this matters because these, these are big deals. But some of the big antitrust cases we’ve seen in the news lately are regarding Google Meta, apple and Amazon. If you don’t re, you obviously recognize those names. Some of the [00:20:00] biggest companies in the world. All of them are facing government scrutiny right now, both for the kind of scope and scale of their businesses and some of their business practices.
In fact, today, right before we hit record here, the eu, we learned the EU just fined Apple 500 million euros, about 570 million US dollars, and then Meadow was fined 200 million euros, about 200. $30 million for breaking the law, their digital markets act which was adopted in 2022. And so there’s, this is breaking almost every week.
Governments all over the world are going after the biggest companies that we all use on a daily basis. And so when you see the. You see the word antitrust again. You’re like, what is that? Why do I care? This sounds kind of just ridiculous. Doesn’t matter to me, but I wanna break down why this matters. And so when you hear the word antitrust, it really revolves around the question, when is a company [00:21:00] too big and when is it too powerful?
And so when there are antitrust laws, those are really designed to promote fair competition and to prevent. Behavior that hurts either the economy or the consumer. And so there’s a few ways in which when companies get to a certain size, they have this inordinate amount of power to where they can control, actually control the economy and, and do things that are selfish or unethical in a way that hurts the economy and hurts us as consumers.
And so one of the ways is through. Monopolization. So a single company ends up gaining dominance over a market in a way that just prevents any type of competition at all. Just a, there can’t be a competitor. The company is just too big. And so that they, the government would say that this is harmful. To the economy, harmful to the consumer.
There are also things that can happen around price fixing. So where competitors can actually collude to [00:22:00] set prices higher than they have to be to their own advantage. So it could be one company reaching out to the other and go, Hey, what if we both at the same time raise our prices by 20%? And so we’re not, we’re both gonna make more money if we work on this together and, and there is no cheaper option.
And so they look out for this and antitrust laws. And then there are things like bid rigging and even certain types of mergers that end up giving these companies an inordinate amount of power that end up being harmful. And so the overarching concern in all of this is that when you don’t have competition, bad things happen.
That’s what the government would be kind of trying to communicate here and protecting for is that bad things happen when a single company has too much power. So you could think about, what happens when there is competition? I think about, you know, have you ever noticed how when, whenever there’s a Home Depot, there’s like a Lowe’s across the street, they’re like right next to each other, or there’s a Walmart and Target CVS and Walgreens, [00:23:00] and then there, it’s almost a meme that that Burger King always opens right after a McDonald’s does right next to it.
Hmm. And these could all be except the, the hot takes. By the way, the Burger King’s usually
Conner Jones: empty and everyone is at McDonald’s
Josh Miller: for sure, for maybe good reason. But you know, it’s Burger King does that because they’ve, they’ve looked at McDonald’s and, and gone, Hey, they’ve done the market research around where the, where the people are gonna be.
And maybe we can kind of peel off some of the. Some of their business here by offering a product maybe at a lower price, maybe we at least give them an option. And so maybe McDonald’s is busy and so people go, ah, maybe I’ll go to Burger King instead. And but what that does is it creates a competition that both, both brings options for customers, you know?
Mm-hmm. We’ve all been to the, that small town where there’s only the subway and the gas station, and you’re like. I guess I’m eating at Subway. I’m not sure that this is, you know, the best place I should be eating right [00:24:00] now, but this is my only option. And so none of us like that as a consumer. And it also allows those types of places to charge whatever they want because there is no other competition.
And so antitrust. Laws and the reason the government is coming after some of these big companies is it when a company becomes too big and eliminates competition, it prevents other businesses from opening and then that one business can kind of get away with whatever they want because of their, their power and the isolation they’ve created around them.
Again, big subject sounds very nerdy and over the top, but why it matters to us is that these are all the companies I just mentioned around these tech companies are all companies we use on a regular basis. I mean, we’re on Google Chrome right now recording this podcast. We’re on Apple devices. I probably have an Amazon package coming this week.
We’re, we’re gonna promote this show on meta platforms, and so these are. All platforms, [00:25:00] all of us in the US use every day. And so when the, if they are doing things that are unethical, they’re, the cost of that or the stakes of that are pretty high, and any thoughts on that so far, Connor?
Conner Jones: Yeah, it’s just interesting.
I, I, it obviously, maybe it is harming the consumer, but I, I’m curious to see how the US government takes this, because I know that they want Google to potentially break up and sell off certain aspects of their company. How are they gonna do that? Who’s gonna buy those? And then I’m thinking about meta specifically.
Like they, they may have to sell Instagram is the threat there. And I think Mark Zuckerberg was literally sitting on the stand in a courtroom last week answering questions about that. Hey, you guys don’t have any competition Now, his argument would be, we do have some competition. Tiktoks coming for us.
We have to compete with iMessage. And that’s why they bought WhatsApp. I don’t know if, if they have to sell off like Instagram, that’d be wild.
Josh Miller: Yeah, it’s gonna be a big deal. Let’s, let’s, we can. We can look at Google real quick ’cause there’s two separate cases filed against Google already. In fact, they lost both already.
So [00:26:00] the government has already determined, the judges have already determined that Google specifically has, has operated their business. Unethically in a way that is hurting consumers and hurting other businesses. So the first one was the, in 2020 that they, and they were, the government was claiming that they had a monopoly and online search.
And so like you were mentioning. They already came to that conclusion and recommended that Google has to sell off Chrome, their browser among some other measures. So Google is going to appeal this. They say that’s over the top, that’s government overreach. That’s gonna, you know, it’s damaging to their business and they just disagree with the verdict altogether, but would be a pretty significant.
Loss for Google to lose the top used browser in the entire world. The second case was that Google was accused of and found guilty of illegally dominating the advertising business. And a judge heard arguments in that case, and they [00:27:00] issued a ruling last Thursday on this and said, Hey, you’re being a monopoly here.
And the the judge said, let me quote him here, judge. Brima said, in addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, I. This exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and ultimately consumers of information on the open web. And so they’re not only in the first case trying to get them to get rid of Chrome, their browser, but they also want them to di divest from their ad manager suite, which we use even to kind of promote this podcast to promote some of our other platforms.
We use Google Ads all the time to do that. And but here, here’s the significance of why they’re, they’re coming after Google. Google. If you had to guess, Connor, how much of the market do you think Google Hold holds in search? So how many people I would, what percentage are searching on Google versus another platform?
Conner Jones: I would venture to guess probably at least 98%. [00:28:00]
Josh Miller: Yeah. It you’re, you gave them even more credit. They have at 90%, which is Oh, still. Okay. Pretty wild. But their their next closest competitor. 4%. That’s bing. 4% Bing.
Conner Jones: Who’s using Bing? If you’re using Bing out there, I got questions.
Josh Miller: I guess it’s gotta be the PC guys, right?
Any PC guys out there using Bing? But that, that’s the closest competitor at 4% and they’re at Google’s at 90% and they’ve had this, this hold on the market for over 20 years. But they also,
Conner Jones: I mean they kind of, it’s similar to Netflix, they basically created it. Yep. And so they dominated it and they were the early adopters and so they’re always probably gonna be the biggest one until someone comes up with something different and better.
Josh Miller: Yep. Yeah. So I think they took over from, from Yahoo 20 years ago and then never gave up the lead. It just continued to grow and dominance, you know. And then what about, so Chrome, so we have chrome and Safari are the biggest. Chrome has 67% of the market and safari’s the closest at 23, so not quite, which, when [00:29:00] you go to
Conner Jones: Safari, the, the default browser on like your Apple product is literally Google.
Josh Miller: And do, do you know why they Google pays billions of dollars every year, billions every year to be the default search engine on Apple devices. And so that’s, yeah, I can believe that that’s one of the things that they’re calling sort of malpractice in this space is that one of the ways that Google is maintaining its dominance is not because it’s just that much better, but because they’re so big and have so much money, they can pay off.
All of these device manufacturers pay off all of these platforms in a way that says you will use Google for all your stuff. Mm-hmm. And we’re gonna make it worth your while. Which again, the government would argue, pushes out. All competition. And so Google doesn’t have to be that good. It doesn’t have to be the best ’cause they can just pay to be the main platform there.
And so it’s really fascinating. They can and they can acquire
Conner Jones: anything that comes up that [00:30:00] they want. They can, I They bought YouTube, right? Yeah. Like years ago. But they, they bought them ’cause they were like, they’ve already got the technology, let’s just buy them before someone else does. Or before another competitor comes in and they just have been able to.
Make it even better and bigger. So when, and Meta does the same thing, that’s why they bought Instagram and WhatsApp. These companies have the ability to just drop money. You said earlier the EU finds were like 200 million on meta and 500 million on Apple. That is a drop in the bucket for those companies.
That’s nothing to them. I mean, yeah, it, it’s a big amount and it is like a slap on the wrist, but they have so much power and money that I, I could see why these antitrust cases are needed or necessary and seen as necessary by the governments of the world.
Josh Miller: Yeah. To your point, Apple’s market cap is comparable.
Comparable to the GDP of Germany or Japan. So like literal, the Wealth of nations Google comparable to Italy, Canada, Brazil. And so we are the scale of money and power that [00:31:00] they have out rivals a good portion of the nations of the world. And so because they have that level of power and influence, they can kind of get away with a lot.
And so that’s been the government’s push is to go. Somebody’s gotta keep them in check. Now we could argue both ways what is right here whether or not that’s right for the government to come after a company because they are so successful. And then you could argue the other side around. Our mar, our economy thrives again on competition.
And so if they are squashing, I think they call it a buy or bury strategy, ESP specifically towards meta, what you were talking about. So when there’s a, a competitor that rises up, they either buy them out or they bury them. And so that’s what some of these largest companies use. They use their power and influence and great wealth to make sure those competitors either come into the fold or get totally eliminated.
And the, the big question [00:32:00] is the. Does, how does this affect us? You know, how, why is this a bad thing if a company is this big has that much power? Why is it bad that Google is 90% of the market? One of those issues is that it gives them a huge amount of power over the information that we see.
And so when you’re searching for you know, this became really controversial during the elections. This became really controversial during Covid as Google was obviously, so filtering out certain types of answers, and again, you could. That you could go into a deep conversation on the ethics of that and why they did that and whether or not that was right or wrong, but just the fact that they could control the information for 90% of the world in terms of what they saw.
Is that a problem? Is the big question there. And, and what happens when you don’t have other platforms like Bings or DuckDuckGo who are doing it differently, offering opposing [00:33:00] viewpoints. Does that create this really weird ecosystem of information where we’re not. Able to really think for ourselves or not really able to have healthy debate and make decisions.
And then ultimately, what would happen if some of these companies with this much power end up becoming Antifa or anti Christianity, what kind of possibilities are there? And so I. So there’s a lot of controversy, controversy around this. And then the other factor is the amount of data that these companies have on each of us, our, our search behaviors, our buying behaviors, our relationships, how we interact with our friends on social media.
The government would also argue that this is maybe too much power for a company to have. And does that leave us vulnerable in some ways, even to foreign foreign countries and to these companies to. Be able to exploit us in a way that they probably shouldn’t. Anyway. Yeah. I wanna wanna know what you think about all this, but are, are you using Google for all your stuff now?
I know, you know, we kind of mentioned some other, like things are [00:34:00] coming up in terms of competition. There. Is Google still your kind of search engine?
Conner Jones: Yeah, I, I, right now it is for the most part, I would say probably 95% of my searches are on Google. Now, here’s where I think this is gonna get interesting is I think they actually do have competition on the way through open AI and perplexity in other ai, AI models.
And obviously Google is got their own AI model and Gemini, and they’re trying to be. Competitive in that space, but there is the possibility that they could be outdated here in the next year or so if chat GBT can really become the primary search engine for a lot of people. And I think that they’ve even struck a deal with Apple to try to get on more devices there.
So I. Right now, I’d say 95% of my searches are through Google, but I’ve been exploring with Chat GPT, and there’s gonna be other AI models that come out that can really do a lot of the searching even better and more accurately and really get to the pinpoint of what you are looking for. But I do think it’s interesting when you search something on Google, you get that Gemini AI answer at the top right now, and it’s kind of nice, but also you don’t know if it’s fully accurate at the [00:35:00] moment.
I think it will be down the road, but I kind of usually have to double check and make sure it’s giving me correct information. But I’m just interested to see how AI plays into all of this. I imagine Google’s argument in court is we do have competition with open ai, we have it with perplexity and all these other AI models.
I, I, I would guess that is their argument for why they’re not a monopoly.
Josh Miller: I. You’re exactly right. Yeah. There Meta’s looking at TikTok and all of the other social platforms coming up. Yeah. Google’s looking at chat, GPT and Bing and, and saying, Hey, these are getting more popular. We have to, we have a right to protect our business.
You know? And so the, the big question is where is that line? Where do, where does it become unethical in their practices? And where is it just, Hey, I’m a. A business owner that needs to protect my business. And so it, it’ll be interesting to see where all of this falls over the next couple of months. But it makes me, it makes me think about just the, the weightiness and danger of power.
You know, at, at one point in time, Google and Facebook were these scrappy startups, tiny little companies, no money, [00:36:00] just bootstrapping, trying to build. Something. Right. And now, now they became some of the biggest corporations in the world. And, and if these claims are all valid, they’re now using this power to protect their own kingdoms at the expense of other companies and people.
And and I think Kingdom, using Kingdom to like pro protect their own kingdom isn’t, isn’t an over exaggeration in this case where we’re talking about the GDP of country. No. They have a domain. Yeah. It’s, and so it, it just, it reminds me of. Just the, the danger of power. In fact, I was thinking of this story in the, in scripture in one chronicles about King Siah, who was the king of Judah.
It says in I forget which chapter, but he, it says he became powerful and his pride led to his downfall. His downfall, and he was unfaithful to the Lord his God. So there was this. Process for him. That power led to pride led to unfaithfulness and led to downfall. And so we’ve seen this with corporations in the past.
You know, our, we joked about our band back [00:37:00] in the day, our first band, you know, website was MySpace. That’s both dates me and just to make a point, MySpace was the thing. It’s no longer right. There we’ve seen all these companies. We were worried about Napster at the time. Napster was gonna change the music industry and it did.
But it’s gone, you know, at least at the, in the way that it was before. And so we’ve seen that these companies gain these massive levels, levels of success and power, and it, they misuse that power or can misuse that power, and ultimately they fade away. And so I think about that for us personally though, as people, we all have our own spheres of influence, our own levels of power that we have in our lives and relationships that we, we steward.
And how important is it for us to, to walk with humility and grace and not work to protect our own kingdoms or to build our, our own wealth? But to lead with humility and to, with a heart, to [00:38:00] serve others, to lift others up, and not to just protect what’s ours. And I, I saw this quote actually from Pope Francis that I thought exemplified how to use power.
I wanna just wanna kind of close this segment with this. He said, Jesus teaches us that true power does not lie in the dominion of the strongest, but in care for the weakest. True power is taking care of the weakest. This makes you great. And so I think that was just an such an important reminder. I think Pope Francis exemplified that.
I think it’s an important thing for us. You know, I, I don’t know that any of us will be successful business owners to the level of a Google or Facebook, but even with the power that we’ve been given, how do we use that power well to care for those who are weaker? How do we use that power to serve others rather just.
Than building ourselves up. And so it was a good reminder for me.
Conner Jones: Yeah, it’s a great word. Thanks, Josh, for that. I, I, I think it seems like the primary takeaway and theme from this week’s episode is humility and being humble [00:39:00] and setting aside pride, and obviously the Proverbs talk all about pride and how it leads to the downfall.
And we’ve talked on this podcast before about the rise and fall stories of companies or people, individuals who get so big. Too big for their own britches, and then they just fall and leads to their downfall like King Giah. So thank you for that great reminder. We’ll see what happens with all of these tech companies.
It’s gonna be interesting to just. See how the courts take that, and I’m very curious to see how they would sell things off. What do you do with Chrome? All of that. Okay, Josh, we gotta dive into what you, you previewed earlier. You apparently brought some big hot take with you, so I gotta hear it.
What, what are you thinking?
Josh Miller: Yeah, this may just be a big hot take for me, but it is a hot take. You can blame this on my childhood in Portland, but I grew up with a love of coffee. Maybe beyond love, an obsession with coffee, a passion for coffee. And so my hot take today, this may make me unwelcome to come back to this show, but my hot take today is that K-cups [00:40:00] are not coffee.
It’s not coffee. K-cups are to coffee. What Impossible Burger is to beef. They are their sadness in a cup like pods of instant regret. At best, K-cups are coffee adjacent. That’s the best. That’s the closest I’ll get, but it’s kind of like calling frozen pizza, Italian food. Like sure there’s tomato sauce, but I’m not serving my wife that for date night and staying married.
And that’s my hot take. K-cups are just a bane of my existence. Despise them, not coffee, don’t judge the individual. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but K-cups are just not real.
Conner Jones: Okay. You came in real hot on that. Is that hot? Hot enough? Yeah. Okay. So I, I don’t have a strong opinion here.
I use K-cups in a pinch. I don’t prefer them. I think that they are not as good. I don’t think the water goes through them. I, I guess my question for you, you say they’re not coffee. Is it not coffee [00:41:00] beans in the little
Josh Miller: K-cup, you know, that’s debatable. Has every, anybody ever actually watched them put the coffee in there?
It just, they, they tell you it’s coffee, but do we, do we trust them? That’s really what it comes down to because it certainly is the same thing you just said. Big corporations, that’s, that’s right. Down,
Conner Jones: down with Starbucks, down with Dunking Donuts. They’re two powerful, they get K. It’s the antitrust
Josh Miller: case right here.
Coffee antitrust.
Conner Jones: Yeah. How can they own both the K-Cup market and the coffee bean, just bag market? I don’t know. And most people, I think it’s a good hot take.
Josh Miller: Yeah. Most people that I see that use K-cups are filling at half the half of their cup is filled up with vanilla creamer and then coffee or coffee in quotes.
Okay? Guilty. Guilty that that should be a sign right there, that what you’re drinking isn’t great. If it needs to be half vanilla sweet cream creamer in there, you’re not drinking coffee, you’re drinking something else.
Conner Jones: Okay. If you, if you’re listening to this, you got thoughts, you’re a big K-Cup person, let us know.
Look, I, I, I use it in a pinch. You know, you go into like a, a hotel or a dealership or [00:42:00] something and they’ve got that K-cup there and you’re like, I just need some shot of caffeine. Yeah, I’ll do it. But I agree, I do prefer just a regular old coffee or at least something from a coffee shop. Thank you for that, Josh.
Love that you, you waited for your moment to come on culture brief to share this. And I will say I, I know you’re a big coffee guy. I even once mentioned that I used to in high school, go to a gas station every day, I think racetrack or QuickTrip and, and get coffee there. And you and some of the other people in that meeting room and I mentioned that were like, oh my gosh, this is like criminal.
I was like, you know, it’s not that bad, but maybe it is. I don’t know. Yeah, IM not, I’m just not a big coffee. I got nauseous. I
Josh Miller: got a little nauseous after you said that, but, but I’m weird ’cause I ha I roast my own coffee beans. I’ve got like four different types of pour overs, so I know I’m, I’m probably unwell too, you know, but I’m still, it doesn’t keep me from having a hot take.
Conner Jones: Yeah, I, I love it. If, if you have thoughts on that, let us know. Our mailbag is always open. We’d love to hear from you. Send us your thoughts and questions at Culture [email protected] or go follow us and still do, go [00:43:00] follow us no matter what at Culture Brief Podcast on Instagram. We’d love to see you there and we’d love to hear from you in the dms or on comments.
Let us know your thoughts on different things. Send us your questions and topic ideas, and we can definitely talk about that. Okay, Josh, before we wrap up, I, I wanna hit on a couple things here that we need to probably update the listeners on from what we’ve talked about in previous weeks, including last week, we really hit on trade wars and tariffs and everything, just a quick update on where the economy stands. It’s still chaotic every day. It’s still up or down and it’s just a rollercoaster, so won’t be able to give a direct update there. But what I can say is the stock market was a little spooked because President Trump threatened to fire the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerry Rome Powell.
He kind of threw out some threats last week on truth social, but then on Tuesday he came back and said. His intentions on, on. When asked about his intentions to fire Powell, he said, I have none whatsoever. Never did the press. The press runs away with things. I have no intention of firing him that caused stocks to rise again.
But the thing is, he did threaten to fire him on truth, social, I don’t know. [00:44:00] We’ll see if he stays around. Technically, the president is not supposed to fire the federal. Reserve chairmen. So don’t, yeah, just don’t,
Josh Miller: just don’t look at your retirement accounts right now. It’s just not worth it. Just wait a few weeks.
It, you’re just gonna be up and down every day for the next little while, so best to to come look. I less ride
Conner Jones: and I, I didn’t feel great about it, but I felt better than I did two weeks ago, sure. But you’re right. It’s probably just not even worth it. It’s too stressful. Okay. Another thing to just mention, this is way out there, but I just had to say it because this is just a crazy headline.
The Academy Awards, which we just had the Oscars, so we’re almost a year out from the next Oscars. But they did go ahead and release their new rules and they included the rule that says, Josh, get this. Voters have to actually watch all the movies before they can vote in a category.
Josh Miller: Shocker. That is a rule.
Just a shocker. Did you
Conner Jones: know that you did not have to watch the movies before? You
Josh Miller: could vote in a category. I mean, it may explain some of their picks, you know what I mean? Maybe, maybe that’s why, maybe we now know why it just [00:45:00] doesn’t make any sense. So hopefully this remedies some of that. But yeah.
How is that not a rule already? I have no idea.
Conner Jones: That just seems like common sense, but at least they’re enforcing it now, so I don’t know. Also, I, I should mention the Emmys. They’re not until September, but they, they are bringing Nate Bartzi in as the host for the September show, which is awesome.
I’m
Josh Miller: pumped. Pumped for that.
Conner Jones: That dude is so funny. I believe he’s a believer and he is a clean comedian. He’s gonna be so fun to watch. So that’ll be exciting in September, probably get some people to tune in to the Emmys for a change. A couple other things to note. We do have playoffs going on in the NHL, in the NBA.
It’s round one, so I’m not gonna go through all the different series happening there, but I can say the Mavs. They got a taste of their own medicine. When I say the Mavs, I’m talking mostly about gm, Nico Harrison, who the entire fan base once fired because he traded away Luca and probably the worst sports traded in all of history.
And it’s almost just a slap in his face that the team did not even get into the playoffs. They lost in a play in game and they’re not in. So there you [00:46:00] go. And we’re here in Dallas and we are feeling the heat of it. Yep. Man. Sad stuff. Hate that for the Mavericks. But the big thing is tonight, if you’re listening on Thursday, the NFL draft begins round one.
Man, I love the draft. There’s nothing like hearing that little music come in when Roger Gidel has a new announcement to make of a new pick. It’s just so fun. So we’ll see how this plays out. It is in Green Bay. That’s gonna be pretty fun to see. They’re expecting a quarter of a million people to attend the draft.
Wow. Just massive crowds to go out there over the weekend. So round one is tonight. And then the rest of the rounds start on Friday through Saturday and we’ll just have a ton of picks to watch. This is a. Week draft. Technically in the quarterback realm, it’s kind of not got a lot of depth. So kind of interesting to see how this will play out.
The Tennessee Titans, they’ve got the first pick. They’re expected to pick University of Miami quarterback Cam Ward, so that would be a franchise quarterback for them to see if he can revive that team there in bad shape. But then after that, man, it’s totally up in the air. This is kind of fun. There’s not really a whole lot of [00:47:00] just immediate nos of who’s gonna go where. So we will see some of the top people to watch out for are the Penn State linebacker, Abdul Carter. He’s very much so like Micah Parsons, also from Penn State, also wears number 11 reminiscent of Micah and LaVar Arrington, Penn State legends. We’ve also got Colorado wide receiver slash cornerback.
And Heisman winner, Travis Hunter, this is the most interesting guy because he is that dual threat playing offense and defense, and he was so good at Colorado. He won that Heisman. Would love to see what team picks him up and if they’re gonna let him play both positions, play on offense and defense and play basically an entire game, which it would be insane.
Josh Miller: Yeah.
Conner Jones: And then we’ve got Deion Sanders son, Colorado quarterback, Shado Sanders. He may be overrated, may be underrated. Not sure where he is gonna land, but here’s the, here’s the thing, Josh, I got my Cowboys hat on ’cause obviously massive Dallas Cowboys fan. I love that. Yeah. And that is because I’m just so hoping the Cowboys make a good decision here and I would love for them to come up and get the last guy I was gonna mention.
Boise State running back. Ashton Gente, who just. Went off the [00:48:00] charts last year. He set so many records in college football. He may be the next best running back in the league and I think a lot of teams will be vying to get him, including I’m hoping the cowboys will trade up to go get him there at the number 12 spot.
I imagine he’s gonna be a top five to seven pick, so we’ll just see there. Are you big NFL guy Josh?
Josh Miller: I definitely, I’m a bit of a Fairweather fan to be honest, but I, it doesn’t take much, like if the Cowboys will just do one or two things right, I’m back in. But they’ve, I’ve been fairly discouraged over the past couple of years, and so I would love to see some good picks here.
Just give me a reason to hope again and I’m back in, but it, it’s kinda like the Mavs, it was like, you, you can only make so many really bad decisions. To where I’m, I’m kind of kind of giving up for a bit, so I’m, I’m gonna keep an eye out, see if there’s something to get excited about, and then I’ll be back in for sure.
You mean the cowboys make bad decisions, so it might be all the decisions they make. I’ve, I’m waiting for a good one, so
Conner Jones: we’ll see. Yeah, no kidding. Anyways should be fun. Watch the draft tonight [00:49:00] and if you’re listening on Friday or Saturday or anytime afterwards, you’ll have the benefit of the doubt of knowing what actually happens.
So I, I’m excited to see what all the moves are there. Hey Josh, thanks for being with us today. Grateful that you stepped in and filled in for Micah, and we will have Micah back next week and we’ll just keep going through whatever the news is next week. Thank you all so much for listening and joining us on this week’s episode of The Culture Brief, a Denison Forum podcast.
I. All the articles that Josh and I mentioned and or any videos or anything else that we mentioned will be linked in the show notes. If you enjoyed today’s podcast episode, please subscribe and rate or review this show and share with a friend. That’s how we’re able to reach new audiences, and we will see you next Thursday.
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