Military rescue in Iran, Artemis moon mission, Cane's vs Chick-fil-A, March Madness champs & Masters predictions | Ep. 64

Conner Jones: [00:00:02] Hi, I’m Conner Jones.

Micah Tomasella: [00:00:04] I’m Micah Tomasella.

Conner Jones: [00:00:05] And this is Culture Brief, a Denson Forum podcast where we navigate the constant stream of top stories and news, politics, sports, pop culture, and so much more. And we’re doing it all from a Christian perspective. And Micah, some say Christmas is the best time of the year. I say no, this week in particular, every April is the best time of the year.

Micah Tomasella: [00:00:25] Why is that, Conner? Why is that?

Conner Jones: [00:00:26] Well, the Masters is here.

Micah Tomasella: [00:00:30] Oh, you mean, oh, you mean the Masters? You mean Yes. You mean the Masters?

Conner Jones: [00:00:34] Yes, you get to pridefully show all of the the gear that you bought when you attended two years ago.

Micah Tomasella: [00:00:39] I did. I did go to Augusta and my life was forever changed and the life of my wife was forever changed as well. We had an incredible time. It is Masters week. Spring has sprung. It’s beautiful outside. I guess that’s subjective depending on where you live and where you’re listening from. Around here in these parts in DFW, it is mostly beautiful outside, not really getting over high 70s these days, which is pretty great. It is a wonderful time of the year. On top of that though, Conner, we’ve obviously got a lot that we’re discussing. There’s also some tough things going on. So I’m going to go ahead and preface right now that there is a deadline on Iran right now. And what I mean by that is Trump has set an ultimatum regarding a breakthrough taking place, either a ceasefire or a peace deal being announced. And if it’s not, he is threatening to bomb the entire country, roadways, infrastructure, energy, things like that. Because of some everyday meetings here at Denson Ministries, we’re having to record on Tuesday afternoon when we would normally record on Wednesday. So bear with us. The deadline is is technically tonight, Tuesday, April 7th.

Conner Jones: [00:01:44] Yeah, so by the time you’re listening to this. Yeah.

Micah Tomasella: [00:01:46] Yeah, we’re going to have a better. You’ll know what happened if an agreement was made, if Trump pulled back on that threat, if the threat was realized. We’re praying for our servicemen and women. We’re praying for people in Iran. We’re praying for everyone made in God’s image that people would be kept safe and there would be some sort of a peaceful resolution to this. But specifically what I want to talk about today as we jump into the brief.

Conner Jones: [00:02:09] The brief.

Micah Tomasella: [00:02:10] The brief. Yeah, you got to take us into the brief. Can’t skip that.

Conner Jones: [00:02:12] Right.

Micah Tomasella: [00:02:13] Right. Can’t transition it like that, right? So, I want to talk about the American rescue mission in Iran that we all got to read about and more and more has been coming out about it. I I did my best to pull from a lot of really great resources, specifically Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Axios, X, got some good stuff on X from people like Michael Weiss. Anyway, there was a lot of information to pull together on what happened there. But let’s talk about it. A US F-15E Strike Eagle was flying over Southwestern Iran when it was hit by Iranian fire. Both crew members were ejected and the aircraft went down deep inside Iranian territory. Because of the speed of the jet in the moment, the two airmen landed miles apart. Right? So you get attacked, there’s two people on the plane, two airmen, two American service members on the plane. They eject and parachute. They land not in the same spot, miles and miles apart because of how fast they were going. One was recovered, the pilot was recovered within six hours. The second airman, a weapon systems officer, was missing. So that’s kind of how I’m prefacing the story. But Conner, most people know what happened, but without giving too much away, what were your thoughts on this before I give a flyover of this story? What were your thoughts on this story overall, especially after he got rescued?

Conner Jones: [00:03:30] Man, the initial thoughts were Friday morning, this is good Friday, and we had the day off here and I was at the zoo with my family and I’m getting these alerts like, hey, a jet’s been shot down.

Micah Tomasella: [00:03:38] Which zoo?

Conner Jones: [00:03:39] The Fort Worth zoo.

Micah Tomasella: [00:03:41] That’s that’s by far the best one. Yeah.

Conner Jones: [00:03:42] Best zoo in DFW if you’re ever here.

Micah Tomasella: [00:03:43] Just want to make sure you, yeah, right.

Conner Jones: [00:03:46] Yes. While we were there though, I’m getting these alerts. I’m like, oh, this is not good. We’ve got two servicemen behind enemy lines. But the one thing that I did know as this was happening, and you know, we just didn’t know if they’d been captured, if they if they’d even survived the ejections, which they both did, thankfully. The one thing I did know is that the motto for the American armed forces is no man left behind. And that they would move mountains and earth to make sure that these guys got out of there safely if they could. My biggest fear was they were going to get taken captive, be held hostage, used as a leverage point. All of this. That’s exactly what Iran wanted too, right? But knowing what happened, I I’m just amazed by our military. That’s that’s where I’ll I’ll say now.

Micah Tomasella: [00:04:25] Yeah. So, you know, even though the information around this story and what’s going on in Iran, is it a war? Is it a conflict? As an American, whether if you fully agree with what’s going on over there or not. I’m going to be honest with you, I can speak for Conner and I, it has been hard to wrap our minds around everything that’s happening in Iran, what’s being done, what’s not being done. It’s been a difficult story to cover and and as a Christian, it has definitely been a a tight rope to walk to a certain extent. And I know that we’re all feeling that. We’re all feeling that weight and that tension. But one thing I do think we can agree on is exactly what you pointed to, Conner. What the American military was willing to sacrifice to just save one says everything about the American spirit and the American military overall. No man left behind. And that was a beautiful thing and it’s a beautiful story here. A difficult one, but I’m going to hit it from top to bottom. Let’s do it. So here’s what the down airman faced whenever he ejected. He was injured immediately. He was alone and on the ground in mountainous terrain inside Iran. He had minimal gear, a pistol, a radio and a beacon. That was it. He moved uphill to a ridge line, eventually climbing to around 7,000 feet while injured, by the way, okay? And he wedged himself into a mountain crevice to stay hidden. At one point, after reaching higher ground, he radioed back and all he said were three words, God is good. Meanwhile, Iranian forces were actively searching for him. They used helicopters, drones, ground teams. Iranian state media even offered a reward to civilians for capturing him alive, turning the search into a much wider effort, and they were getting close, right? So you had every possible person in Iran, a country of 90 million people looking for this injured airman who ejected and they knew the region. They knew roundabout where he was, okay? So at points, Iranian forces were just within a few kilometers away from his position. And if he had been captured, it would have been a major shift. He could have been used for propaganda like Conner said, leveraged in negotiation and it would have changed the dynamics of the conflict pretty quickly if they would be able to have an American service member, be able to hold him hostage, be able to use him for propaganda in their own country, used him as negotiating leverage against the US, it would have not been good. He survived like this for roughly, get this, 36 hours, injured, exposed, and being literally hunted, right? So that’s just kind of setting the stage of what was happening. But let’s talk about the training that kept him alive. There’s a lot of lessons in this too. In life sometimes, it’s a good thing to prepare our minds, our hearts, our bodies for a time where the flux hits, where difficulty hits, and we need to be prepared. We never know when it’s going to happen. I know that those pilots, those airmen were probably just flying like it was a normal mission. They’d probably been flying every day since the conflict started, and then it happened. They got shot at. So this is the training that kept him alive. It’s called SERE training, SERE training is designed for survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. Conner, I just found this so interesting. There are no articles out there that give you super in-depth details on this, and that’s probably a good thing. But just to say, he was trained to do this. It might have been a kind of a an extreme situation and in a situation that everybody in the world was watching and monitoring, but he was trained to do this. He was trained to treat his own injuries, conserve energy, move away from his landing point immediately, use terrain and elevation to stay hidden, limit communication to avoid detection, and stay alive long enough to be recovered. And that’s exactly what he did. God bless him. And we still don’t have his identity as of now at the time of recording. I believe we eventually will. And if this guy wants to start a podcast and start public speaking and write some books. He’ll be set up. He’ll be set up for sure. So here’s the US response to it and what happened. The US launched a large scale rescue operation and at one point, this turned into what official described as an quote unquote air armada, meaning there were well over 100 US aircraft who were supporting the mission as they were going to extract him. This included surveillance aircraft with drones that were scanning the area, fighter jets and bombers that were providing cover specifically, special ops helicopters flying into hostile territory and around 100 special operations forces and soldiers. There was also a CIA deception effort. I thought this was really interesting too, to mislead Iranian forces about where he was. An early rescue attempt had to be aborted after helicopters took fire and time was working against them. There’s only so long that this injured airman could avoid so many people searching for him. So here’s what was risked, and I’m going to go through this quickly. The operation pulled in a massive amount of resources. B1 bombers dropped close to 100 bombs to protect the area and push the enemy back. Drones struck Iranian forces moving towards the airman. Helicopters flew low into hostile airspace. Planned strike missions elsewhere were delayed to support the rescue. And there were also other major complications that took place. Two transport aircraft became struck on a makeshift air strip. Replacement aircraft had to then be brought in. After the mission, US forces had to destroy their own aircraft, millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars of their own equipment, helicopters that were on the ground to prevent them from being captured. This was one of the most complex and high risk rescue operations in years, and all of it was for one person. Conner, have I missed anything so far?

Conner Jones: [00:09:50] I think also something cool to mention is the CIA apparently has some top secret device that they used to keep tabs on where his location was. Like no one else has this device, whatever they were using. They knew where he was basically the whole time. Something else I I noticed too is Donald Trump is normally the guy who will go home to Florida every weekend to Mar-a-Lago, hang out there. He’s got, you know, his little vacation home down there, leaves the White House every weekend. He stayed back this weekend to oversee this operation and probably do some more like high stakes negotiations with Iran and all of that behind closed doors. It probably would have been a bad look if he had gone back this weekend, especially with a, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, the seriousness of this is just so intense. And then also all these generals who are planning all to go get this one guy and recognizing what this meant. Let’s save this life. He matters. This guy matters. There are so many countries who would not do a thing. In fact, the Russians, the Russians when they have men get stuck behind enemy lines in Ukraine, they leave them or they force them to bribe their commanders to take them back with their injuries. Like it’s terrible. And yet here’s the US that’s sending an entire special forces. These guys are risking their own lives. It reminds me, Micah, of saving Private Ryan, if you’ve ever seen that movie, where these guys risk their lives to go to go extract a guy, essentially. It’s a different scenario. He’s not being rescued per se, but he’s being extracted for reasons that you would learn about in the movie. Or even the guys who went back during the Black Hawk Down saga. There were guys who went back to rescue the soldiers who were stuck in Mogadishu. These guys are incredible, brave, and courageous.

Micah Tomasella: [00:11:19] And there’s also the behind enemy lines movie that came out in the early 2000s with Owen Wilson. That was based on that fighter pilot. I think it’s O’Grady who went down in Bosnia in like the mid 90s or something. So anyway, and there is kind of a similar story to get him back. But this was extreme. This this will be a great movie, but also just the amount of resources expended to get one guy. There’s been nothing like this so far. Let me finish this up. So here was the rescue. So once his position was confirmed, they waited until that night. Special operations forces flew in. Air support struck nearby positions to keep Iranian forces from closing in. They were close. I can’t stress that enough. They were close to him. From his position, the airman helped indicate where threats were approaching. Commandos reached him, secured him, and moved into an extraction point. And after delays at the air strip, replacement aircraft arrived and the team successfully exited Iranian airspace. No US personnel were killed. Not from the original plane being shot down, not the guys who had to parachute out, who had to eject this airman who was injured and fleeing for nearly 36 hours, evading for his life, not any of the soldiers or the team that kept the Iranian forces at bay. Thank God, there was no US personnel killed in that, right? So here’s what’s on the table. If Iran does not comply to what’s going on, we’ve talked about this. This is setting the stage for there is this big decision coming up. So it’s either going to be a ceasefire, a peace deal, or like we talked about, it’s going to be potentially large swaths of the country being attacked, which could create a humanitarian crisis. Please be praying with us for our country’s leadership, for the people in Iran, for the vastly what I would believe is just a whole lot of innocent people there in Iran. There is a large, large population of Iranian Christians. The church has been growing there in persecution. Just praying for everyone’s safety there and for discernment for our country’s leadership and allies. We’re praying for that. It’s heavy. But I’m going to give you a spiritual application from this story that really struck me. And you can probably guess what it is. You know, it was low hanging fruit, but my goodness.

Conner Jones: [00:13:30] You and I, we were talking about it, we both hit it at the same time. We were like, I know, I know, I know. This is, we know what Bible story we can point to.

Micah Tomasella: [00:13:37] Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll give everybody a second to think before I say it. Okay, anyway. So this story highlights something simple. The US committed significant resources, personnel, and risk to recover one person. Millions and millions and millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions, I don’t know. Hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of military personnel to save one life. Okay? That lines up directly with what Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 18 verses 12 through 14. I’m going to read it. And what do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who’s in heaven that any one of these little ones should perish. That’s the heart of God, guys. One matters. That’s not just one story. That’s you, Conner. That’s me. That’s you who’s listening right now. Jesus was willing to leave the 99 sheep for you, the one lost sheep. On your worst day, when you were far from him, when you didn’t have it together, he came after you actively. So here’s the challenge. Who is your one? Someone far from God, someone overlooked, someone you’ve been meaning to reach out to, but you keep getting busy. It’s easy to stay where it’s comfortable, to stay in your comfort zone in this stuff, right? The harder move is to go after one person intentionally. And if you think long and hard enough, and if you say a prayer, I can just almost guarantee you God’s going to bring someone to mind. The harder move is to go after that person intentionally, like I said. And so reach out, start the conversation, don’t put it off. And remember this, when life feels heavy, when you feel far, when you’re struggling, you are, I am the one that he came after. That’s how important I am to God. That’s how important you are to God. So my encouragement is to seek to live that out one person and maybe one reminder to yourself at a time.

Conner Jones: [00:15:48] I wanted to show this picture that I’ve got that is of Jesus. I don’t know how well you can see it in this lighting. If you’re watching on video, you’ll see this. If not, you can you can check it out later. It is Jesus leaving the 99 sheep and chasing this one. And the reason I’m showing this is because this has hung in our hallway for a few years now. And I love it. I love this parable, this story that Jesus tells. And I love the concept of Jesus chasing after the one. And when I went through a really dark season a few years ago, I would stand in front of that picture and just remember that Jesus was coming after me. And he’s doing the same for everybody else. Amen, brother. And that is so comforting. In the same way you would feel comforted if you’re in the armed forces and know there is an entire legion of military assets that are going to come and rescue you. It’s even more so when you know Jesus is there to rescue you and rescue your soul. And he cares and loves you. In fact, I love this because this kind of leads right into where we’re headed and some of the messages that came from our astronauts who are currently going around the moon. They said some similar stuff this week. That’s what I was going to hit on. That’s cool. That’s cool. Yeah, man. Jesus is cool. Like genuinely, his love for us is so cool. And these astronauts up in space, they recognize it too. If you’ve been following what’s going on with Artemis 2, we talked about the launch last week, which was unique. But then now, at this point, they have gone around the moon and they lost contact with the Earth for about 40 minutes on Monday, which was I would imagine frightening. Yeah, sure. They knew it was coming. They’re brave and then they also set the record for the furthest any humans have ever left Earth. Unbelievable. 52,760 miles. That is a long road trip.

Micah Tomasella: [00:17:28] I just wish we were able to focus on this.

Conner Jones: [00:17:30] I know.

Micah Tomasella: [00:17:31] You know, I mean, what an American triumph. And it’s just not even the most important story right now, unfortunately.

Conner Jones: [00:17:38] Yeah, you’re right. There’s also a Canadian on board. I don’t know if you knew that. I know you’re a big fan of Canada. Love to sing the national anthem there, but

Micah Tomasella: [00:17:45] You love Canada, bro.

Conner Jones: [00:17:46] Of course I do, man. Of course I do. The Great White North. That’s awesome. Yes, I did see a Canadian was on board. Good for them.

Conner Jones: [00:17:53] Yeah, these four astronauts though, man, it is a testament to ingenuity, bravery, exploration, and where the next steps are. Because this is this is just going around the moon. The next steps are going to be actually getting people on the moon, potentially building a base on the moon to be the launching pad to trips to then Mars a decade from now. I mean, there’s so much that’s comes out of this, but man, these astronauts are so cool and they’re taking the, you know, like the most unique pictures from the spacecraft of Earth, of the moon, of the moon and Earth in one shot. And they’re just they’re better pictures than we had in the 70s. And we had some pretty cool images from back then. Some of the most famous photos on the planet to this day are images that the Apollo missions took. Yeah. One of the first. And there are still people saying that didn’t happen then and that this isn’t happening now, right? There’s just some people who are not going to believe we go to space or do anything in space. Yeah, we got these guys like literally tweeting from the spacecraft. They could not do that back then, but now they’re these astronauts are like tweeting and posting on Instagram. What do you want them to do, man? It seems pretty legit to me. You know, it’s like location, space on their Instagram photo. Reed Wiseman’s one of those. He took a really cool photo of him just looking out the window hatch and he just said, there are no words. And it was a beautiful picture. And then that went super viral. Millions and millions and millions of people have seen that. And my point of saying the numbers there is people are interested in this. They want this sense of like, we’re all together on the same planet. Can we work together? Right. It’s also this reminder that God is our creator. Like the Earth is big, but it’s not that big in the grand scheme of things, right? They’re seeing the entire Earth with their eyeballs. That is insane. Yeah. NASA also published a photo of the Earth taken by this crew and they put it next to a 1972 Apollo 17 mission photo. They look very similar, but now what’s really cool is in the photo from this week, it’s obviously much sharper. We got better cameras. It’s got better lighting, better contrast. And when you zoom in on the outer edges of the Earth, you can see one, the sun on the other side, kind of the sunrise coming over one side of the Earth. And then on the poles, you can see on the north and south pole, the Aurora Northern Lights. Dude, I don’t know. That just shook me. I was like, it reminds you that there are so many beautiful things about this Earth. You’re seeing the clouds, you’re seeing the oceans, you’re seeing the land, this light all around our planet. And God crafted it so perfectly in that way. It just shows the beauty of this planet. Yeah. Another thing I wanted to do for us here is I’m going to play a message that came on Easter that astronauts were doing a kind of a telecast back with an interviewer. They were talking to him and Victor Glover is the pilot on this mission. He’s also a professed Christian. He’s been given quite a few messages in the lead up to this launch as well as now that they’re out in space. He just seems cool. Military man, very highly trained, extremely intelligent, very sharp and has a beautiful family and all of that. But man, he was excited to go on this trip and he was kind of put on the spot for an Easter message. And so I wanted to just play this message real fast from him because I thought it was so good. Here we go.

Victor Glover: [00:20:53] And as we are so far from Earth and looking back at, you know, the beauty of creation, I think the for me, one of the really important personal perspectives that I have up here is I can really see Earth as one thing. And you know, when I read the Bible and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us who were created, it’s, you know, you you have this amazing place, this spaceship. You guys are talking to us because we’re in a spaceship really far from Earth, but you’re on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe and the cosmos. I think maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we’re doing is special, but we’re the same distance from you and I’m trying to tell you, just trust me, you are special. In all of this emptiness, this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. I think as we go into Easter Sunday, thinking about, you know, all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, um, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing and that we got to get through this together.

Conner Jones: [00:22:03] Man, how about that? That was me clapping. That wasn’t super clear. That was really good stuff from Captain Glover there. I mean, just incredible stuff and such boldness. Man, he’s so right. Such love in his heart as he’s saying it, man. Yeah, and he’s just saying we’re all special. And it’s true. It’s what we just talked about with Jesus chasing the one because every single one of us is endowed with a creative spirit. We’ve all got a piece of God. We’re created in his image. You’re special if you’re listening to this. Every human on this planet is. And that’s what he’s trying to say. And I think he conveyed that pretty well. It’s also very reminiscent the Apollo 8 crew, which was the first crew to go around the moon. They did not end up landing on the moon. They were doing the first test, could you go around the moon safely? They were going on Christmas in 1968, bro. They were doing that with like, well, no computers. It’s just allegedly, allegedly. Right, right, right. Some would say no. They were in an interesting position. They were up in space at a very turbulent time. This is 1968. Vietnam War was just getting started. MLK and RFK had been assassinated that year. Soviet Union tensions were just ratcheting up. The Cold War was, I mean, as hot as it was going to get. And they were in space on this incredible mission, trying to prove that the moon landing could occur. And it was Christmas week and on Christmas Eve, they were given basically permission by NASA to speak, give a message, just keep it appropriate. And so Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, as they became the first humans to ever fly around the moon, delivered a message on Christmas Eve, and all they did was read the first 10 verses of Genesis. And I’m just going to read verse one and verse 10. You’ll know kind of what goes in between that. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called the seas. And God saw that it was good. Man, they said that as they were looking out over the entire expanse of Earth. I just think for us individually, Micah, we can remember Ephesians 2:10 that says, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And, you know, even Jesus reinforced that Earth is our temporary home in John 17:4 when he said, I glorified you on Earth, having accomplished the work you gave me to do. So one thing that’s really cool is Jim Lovell, who was on that Apollo 8 mission, helped deliver that Genesis 1 message. Man, you might know his name because he was played by Tom Hanks in the movie Apollo 13. Jim Lovell went back to space a few years later. Both times, he never got to set foot on the moon. He did the test mission and then Apollo 13 obviously had problems. That’s why they made a movie about it and never made it to the moon. Did go around the moon. So he went around the moon twice in his life, never stepped foot on it. But last August, he died at age 97. But before he passed away, and he’s a legend in his own right, just an American legend. Before he passed away, he was able to record a message for this Artemis 2 crew, which I thought was really cool. And in that message, it’s very grainy, so I’m not going to play it here. It’s kind of hard to to understand. But he said, hello and welcome to my old neighborhood. When we orbited the moon on Apollo 8, we got humanity’s first up close look at the moon and got a view of the home planet and inspired and united people around the world. I am proud to pass that torch on to you as you swing around the moon and lay the groundwork for missions to Mars for the benefit of all. It’s a historic day and I know how busy you’ll be, but don’t forget to enjoy the view. I’m presenting that message because I think there’s a lesson here we can learn that Lovell is presenting. It’s just basically about the finiteness of us as humans. Lovell was a highly accomplished pilot, decorated military man, obviously a legend in the astronaut world, legendary American all around. But he knew that life on this earth, which he got to see, you know, the entirety of the earth with his own eyes. A unique perspective. He knew that it was not actually his permanent home. And that, I think, you know, he he had the opportunity to see space exploration as a journey to be carried on. And it is. This was him passing the torch on with this message to this new crew right before he passed away. Yeah. And he passed that torch on to this new generation who will then pass it on to another generation down the road. Yeah. Because it is all finite at the end of the day. And I think that’s what Captain Glover is saying here too. Like there’s more. You’re special. There’s more. Read the Bible. God exists. God created this. This is a tiny, tiny little sliver of space that we are exploring. Look at the vast expansiveness of what our God created. There’s so much to explore, so much to take in. And yet he still cares for every single one of you. You’re all special. I love that message, man.

Micah Tomasella: [00:26:28] I love that, Conner. Thank you for taking it in that direction. It’s a really great reminder. And thanks for talking about even like taking the time to point out that in 1968 when this other mission was going on, all the assassinations that took place, how shook people in the world and specifically in America were probably feeling, how war with Russia, potentially nuclear war with Russia felt imminent, so on and so forth. Just everyone take a deep breath and remember, first of all, our country has been in situations like this before of uncertainty. We’ve talked about this a lot as we’re approaching 250 years as a country. Never discount and discredit the resiliency of the American people. Yep. That’s the first thing I’ll say. But I’m going to give you something that’s going to give you even more hope than that. The God of the universe has a plan and is in control of this entire situation. We just have to remember that we want his will to be done over ours 24/7, every day, right? Even if it’s not specifically what I want or how I want, God has a plan and a purpose that he’s fulfilling and we want to join him in that. But you know what? Hug your loved ones, take a deep breath, remember that you have purpose today. You have a plan for your life today. The God of the universe loves you and is willing to leave the 99 for you. Yeah. And we’re all in this together as the astronauts new and old like to point out. And it does seem like a sovereign thing, a beautiful thing that this is happening right now in another tumultuous time and how it helped inspire people back then. I hope it inspires people to unity now and not just unity for the sake of unity, unity in Christ.

Conner Jones: [00:28:03] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, great stuff. Let’s change it up a little bit here. Let’s do a little hot take I got for you, Micah. I didn’t really prep you for this. I brought this one. We haven’t done a hot take in a minute. And if you’ll remember last year, we really set the world on fire when I brought the hot take that if you’re wearing Masters gear, you better have gone to the Masters. You better have actually attended and bought it there in person. Yeah, that was tough. That made a lot of people mad. Also a lot of people agreed. Here’s my hot take today. Okay. I’ve been thinking about this one because I I’ve been to both of these restaurants recently and I think a lot of people will disagree with me here. But specifically on chicken sandwiches, I think the Cane’s, Raising Cane’s chicken sandwiches are a better bang for your buck and maybe just all around better than the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches. And I can kind of explain my thoughts here, but I just want your initial thoughts.

Micah Tomasella: [00:28:52] I think you’re probably right. I don’t order the sandwich normally. I do the box combo. Yeah. Four strips. I do it without coleslaw, extra fries, and I do it crispy all the way through. So they leave the chicken and the fries in the fryer for a little bit longer and they both give you a little bit more crunch. Praise God.

Conner Jones: [00:29:11] I didn’t know you could do that.

Micah Tomasella: [00:29:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re talking to a guy who knows his Raising Canes. So, anyway, you’re probably 100% right. I do love Chick-fil-A. I’m not knocking on Chick-fil-A, but specifically if you’re just getting the sandwich, whether if it’s the regular or the spicy, I know it’s the deluxe, it’s all those same kind of circular-ish fillets that they serve. Yep. It is always just an absolute Pandora’s box on what size the fillet’s going to be. So true. Sometimes it’s real thin. It’s like, did you just smash this thing with a hammer? Where’s the chicken? And then sometimes every once in a while, you are blessed with a big fat piece, okay? But I can’t count on it in that way. There’s a lot of ways that you can count on Chick-fil-A, customer service, if you order nuggets, if you order strips, a wrap, a salad, you can count on that. It’s always good, right? But I’m saying specifically, if you’re making a sandwich argument, you’re probably 100% right on that.

Conner Jones: [00:30:06] Okay, thank you. This is my point because at Cane’s, they throw three full tenders on there with lettuce and Cane sauce and thick buns. And then the fries. And here’s the thing, I looked this up this morning. The combo meals of the chicken sandwich at Chick-fil-A and Cane’s are the same price. I’m getting more bang for my buck at Cane’s, dude. It’s a bigger sandwich, probably the same amount of fries, maybe more fries, honestly, same size drink. I’m leaning towards going to Cane’s. This came up because last Friday, after we went to the zoo on Friday, we swung by the Cane’s right outside the Fort Worth Zoo to go through the drive-through. Haven’t done that in a minute. And another thing that I love about the Cane’s chicken sandwich. If you go there and you order one and you go inside, they yell back to the kitchen, we got a sandwich, you know, like it’s it’s very much so like a declaration of this person’s making a special order. Okay, but in the drive-through the other day, this guy, he takes my order on the iPad and he goes, he puts his finger up to the to the earpiece and he goes, we got a sandwich. Like it was so serious. He looked like he was in the secret service. And I felt I felt like I was getting something very unique and special. It upgraded the situation. I think all around, it’s just a better chicken sandwich. Let us know if you disagree with this concept or this hot take.

Micah Tomasella: [00:31:11] Everyone remember, this was Conner’s hot take. I might agree with him to a certain extent, but I don’t think I’ve ever even ordered the sandwich at Cane’s. I think I’m going to next time. But everyone remember that if if you like this hot take, it was my idea. If you don’t like it, it was 100% unequivocally Conner’s idea.

Conner Jones: [00:31:29] It was definitely my idea both ways. Yeah, let us know. Shoot us a message to our email, your thoughts on chicken sandwiches or anything, any topics, anything. [email protected]. Love hearing from you guys, the good, the bad, the ugly. And we also have an Instagram. Go follow us at Culture Brief podcast on Instagram. Check out our clips there and message us, comment on anything. Maybe we’ll post a poll about our chicken sandwiches this week. Okay, let’s check in on a few things going on, Micah. Yeah. After we recorded last week, later that day, Pam Bondi got fired. She was the Attorney General. She was a popular pick at first when Trump initially announced her. She wasn’t his first choice. He initially wanted Matt Gaetz. He was really controversial in Congress and so there was no chance he was going to ever get confirmed by the Senate. So he moved on to Pam Bondi and the expectations were high for her from Trump and his administration and she I just don’t think met them fully. She wasn’t going after his enemies as much as he wanted. She also really didn’t perform well in congressional hearings when she had to go before the Senate. And then the biggest thing was she really bungled the Jeffrey Epstein files. That’s it. That’s it. Yeah. Made him look worse, made the entire administration look worse. She didn’t look great, made the Department of Justice just look like they weren’t forthcoming or even accountable to anything. So it really wasn’t good. So I wasn’t entirely surprised by this. This is now two people fired in the last month and a half from Trump’s administration after a full year of no firings, which was honestly kind of surprising.

Micah Tomasella: [00:32:59] Yeah, Noman and Bondi, both of those make sense. Noman was super obvious. The Bondi part is like, yeah, I just felt like they could have fired her quite a bit longer. Like, I mean, sooner to when the actual issue happened. It just kind of felt like a little late to do it, but I definitely understood why the move was made.

Conner Jones: [00:33:17] Yeah, and you know what, those Epstein files still won’t go away. There’s obviously the thoughts that everything with Iran, everything with Iran is a distraction or even if it’s not an intentional distraction, it is distracting and it’s taking a lot of heat off of people, but I don’t think those Epstein files are going away anytime soon. So going to continue to be a problem.

Micah Tomasella: [00:33:34] And they shouldn’t go away. Right? They shouldn’t.

Conner Jones: [00:33:37] No, no, there needs to be accountability, full accountability.

Micah Tomasella: [00:33:39] Correct. Correct. Absolutely. Yep.

Conner Jones: [00:33:42] March Madness, it wrapped up. We had the women’s March Madness wrap up on Sunday, the UCLA team there. They won their first title since 1978. And they pummeled South Carolina, man. 79 to 51. That was just a absolute beating. Wow. But then the men’s on Monday night, the Michigan Wolverines beat the Yukon Huskies 69 to 63. I was watching that game and kind of the Huskies almost had a comeback there. It was a good game. The last minute. Yeah, it was a good game. Turned into a really good game, but Michigan, man, remember the Fab Five from the 90s? I mean, we don’t because we weren’t even born yet, but

Micah Tomasella: [00:34:14] I do, man. I’ve seen, I’ve seen, well, we were born in the 90s. Calm down, brother. We’re not that young. However, yes, I do know about the Fab Five. Fab Five. I’ve seen documentaries, okay? Yep. I know what happened. All right. Now, I’m going to hit you with a tune in. All right, you ready? And it’s really the most important tune in update we’ve given in a long time, in my opinion. It’s Masters week, y’all. In Augusta, Georgia. You know how people say it’s hard to not be romantic about baseball?

Conner Jones: [00:34:45] Conner would say he probably disagrees with that. Conner doesn’t like baseball and doesn’t like America’s pastime. You could even say maybe Conner doesn’t like America. Anyway, I’m not going to go that far.

Micah Tomasella: [00:34:55] I actually do like baseball, just not every single day of my life.

Conner Jones: [00:34:58] Yes, yes, you’re not romantic about it though.

Micah Tomasella: [00:35:01] But I appreciate it.

Conner Jones: [00:35:02] There, yes, okay, fair. There is a beauty to baseball. And I think there’s a beauty in golf. I think both sports, I’m not really trying to draw like a connection here. What I would say is it does take a certain level of patience as a fan to watch baseball and golf. And there’s something about that payoff from the patience. There’s something about the quietness of each game that really do make them American pastimes, golf included. So the Masters is teeing off on Thursday. It’ll run through Sunday. This is the tournament. I mean, this is the, yeah, the Super Bowl of golf. It’s a big deal. Every celebrity goes. It is the major. It is the most important golf tournament of the year. Rory’s coming back trying to defend his title. Scotty won it the year before. That was the year that we got to go and I detailed that a lot in previous episodes. We were forever changed by our time at Augusta National and at the Masters being able to go the last two days. But we’re going to give you our predictions for the Masters and we would encourage you, watch it. If you’ve never watched golf before, or if maybe you weren’t planning on watching it, just find some time and turn it on. And I just the music they play, the camera angles, like you will just be transported to that world and I can guarantee you it’ll relax you a little bit. It’s great.

Micah Tomasella: [00:36:16] If you don’t know, they’re very traditional minded. They don’t let anybody bring phones in. So you don’t see people in the crowd with their phones taking pictures. You have to put your phones away. You’re dressed nice. The flowers there are beautiful. The birds are chirping. It’s the most gorgeous landscape, like tailored by men, probably in America. It’s just gorgeous.

Conner Jones: [00:36:33] It’s the most manicured. It’s the most beautifully manicured piece of earth like on the planet, for sure, bar none. I mean, when we were there, there were people literally employed to pick up the pine needles that would fall into the grass. They were taking tools and just picking up singular pine needles in the grass. It is just it’s incredibly beautiful and it’s almost kind of even hard to explain. You guys just tune in and watch it this weekend. That’s one of our greatest recommendations that we can give. So we’re going to give you our winner predictions. Conner, you go first. Who’s going to win?

Conner Jones: [00:37:05] I’m thinking, I I’ve I’ve been dibble-dabling in this and, you know, playing a little Masters fantasy league, trying to think through who I want to pick and I’m landing on Justin Rose, the man who got second place to Rory last year, took him to a playoff and one putt going in would have changed the entire thing last year and Rory would not have had that massive comeback and is finally winning the green jacket that he’d been looking for for two decades. Justin Rose has gotten second three times. I think it’s his time. I think it’s his time.

Micah Tomasella: [00:37:35] That’s a good pick. British guy. British guys are really good in Augusta and he’s also like 45. He’s played a lot there. I think it’s his time, man. Just a legend of golf.

Conner Jones: [00:37:45] That’s a great pick. What you got?

Micah Tomasella: [00:37:47] Justin Rose could absolutely win it. I’m going to go with Cameron Young. He’s obviously never won it before either. He had an incredible performance, especially on the last day at the Ryder Cup last year. And then also, he won the Players Championship last month at TPC Sawgrass. And so he’s coming off of a high and overall, he’s just a great American. He seems like he’s a great husband, a great dad, has a young family, and just goes about his business and works methodically. And he’s absolutely on the come up. So I think he has the right amount of momentum and he plays well on courses like this. I think he has a very good chance of winning.

Conner Jones: [00:38:22] Well, he’s the best putter in golf right now. Like that is his like

Micah Tomasella: [00:38:27] And putting matters in golf and specifically at Augusta National, man, like if you if you can putt well, you’re going to be in a good spot.

Conner Jones: [00:38:36] Well, because you’ve said it too. I’ve heard this like when you’re actually, I’ve never been, obviously, I’d like to go one day, I hope to go. I’ve heard that it when you’re there in person, you can actually see how intense those greens are. They don’t it’s not nearly as well conveyed on television. Everything looks a little more flat than it actually is. There’s hills and dips.

Micah Tomasella: [00:38:50] And the best putters can look silly on this course, right? I’m just kind of banking on him channeling that and being able to kind of fight those elements. But I mean, yes, the best putters in the game can absolutely look silly on this course. No Tiger this year at the Masters. We talked about that last week. We did. No Tiger or Phil Mickelson. First time in 32 years that we won’t have one of those two guys. So hopefully Tiger’s getting better. That doesn’t seem, yeah, that doesn’t seem right, does it? Yeah. No. Yeah, that’s an update from last week. Tiger is seeking help. So hopefully he’s getting better and we’ll be back next year.

Conner Jones: [00:39:23] All right. Yep, sounds good. Everybody go watch the Masters. Thanks for joining us for this week’s episode of Culture Brief, a Denson Forum podcast. All articles and videos mentioned will be linked in the show notes. If you want to help us reach more believers with truth in today’s chaotic culture, please share this podcast around and leave a five-star rating and review. And we’ll see you next Thursday.

Micah Tomasella: [00:39:44] See ya.