I’m trying to do something new — and I don’t know what to call it

By David McElroy · March 12, 2020

Try to imagine that you’ve never seen a sunset.

Now picture yourself on top of a mountain in the evening. You look to the west and see clouds. As the sun sinks beyond the horizon, the sky starts filling with dramatic color. The light show is stunning, because the sky which had been just blue and gray and white only minutes before looks like something out of a dream.

You don’t know what this is. You might feel awe. You might feel scared. You might feel like worshipping a Creator who is making this happen. You might feel a hundred different things. But your heart would know you were witnessing something majestic and stunning and powerful.

If you know what this is, you just call it a sunset and enjoy it. You understand the way it works and why it happens. But until you’ve experienced it and come to understand it, there is no way you could imagine such a stunning natural spectacle. You would have no frame of reference for it.

Right now, I am trying to create something brand new. I can almost see it, but I’m still blind. I can feel it. I’m stumbling toward something that is brand new — and it is as different to me as it would be to experience a sunset for the first time.

The movie industry was invented about a hundred years ago. That sounds odd to say. How could someone invent an entire industry?

But it’s true. Some people had figured out how to make “moving pictures,” but nobody knew what to do with them. The quality wasn’t great. There was no sound. But somebody had the idea of making stories — almost like filmed plays — and then selling tickets to people so they could watch these flickering images in darkened buildings.

Inventing the movie camera was a stunning achievement. Inventing ways to project an image from pieces of film was another huge leap forward. And it was just as big an invention to figure out how to put together the talents of hundreds of people — doing jobs which had never in history existed — to create films for this new medium.

As the pieces of that puzzle all came together, a powerful industry was created, one which would change modern culture. But nothing happened until smart people with insight and vision put those tiny pieces together — of things which nobody had ever seen before — and they invented something which nobody had ever even imagined.

History is filled with similar inventions.

It’s hard for us to imagine today, but somebody had to invent books. Then someone had to invent the concept of making up stories — with new plots and dialogue which had never really happened — and putting those into books. The concept of what we call the novel was a major invention, even though it seems obvious to us today.

In the early 20th century, radio stations were a novelty. Nobody knew what to do with radio technology. And then someone invented the concept of commercial radio as we know it — filled with entertainment and information, sponsored by companies which wanted to advertise. That was a stunning change.

Radio stations were largely responsible for the invention of the music industry as we know it today. Recorded music started being created in the early 20th century for people to play on record players at home, but then radio came along as a way to promote those records. Recorded music and radio grew together.

Nobody knew quite what to do with television in the middle of the 20th century. The primitive technology was there, but there was no concept of sitcoms and westerns and all of the things that seem obvious and common to us today.

Somebody had to invent every single one of those concepts. Some of the men who invented such things got wealthy. Some died in obscurity. But on their shoulders, today’s media world was built, block by block, bit by bit.

I’ve told you before that I want to make movies and that’s true. I’ve told you that I’d like to make better podcasts with better concepts to reach a broader audience than the experiment I’m running right now. That’s true, too.

But what I’m ultimately reaching to create doesn’t yet exist. I don’t even know what to call it yet.

A lot of my friends know they want to make movies or write books or perform music. They have specific roles they want to fill within well-understood parts of the modern media. But something about what I’m doing is different.

I’m trying to create something for which there is no name. There was a time when nobody had heard of a novel or a radio program or a TV show or a movie, much less a podcast. There was a time — not long ago — when a mention of any of those things would have drawn blank stares.

I’m trying to create something that doesn’t quite exist yet. It’s sort of like movies. It’s sort of like broadcasting. It’s sort of like radio. It’s sort of like publishing. I’m trying to invent something that I can feel — something I’m pushing toward — something that will be completely different.

If I showed you this sunset photo — from two days ago near my house, by the way — you would easily understand what it is. You can appreciate it. I assume you would even find it beautiful to experience in person.

But I’m trying to invent something which is beautiful and important and powerful — just as much as a sunset — but I don’t know what it is. I don’t have a name for it. I’m stumbling toward the concept.

In the meantime, I’m figuring out how to make things that are kinda, sorta like it. And as I gain experience doing these things in fields that are kinda, sorta related, I’m stumbling toward what I’m trying to create.

As I move in that direction, I’ll make podcasts. I’ll make movies. I’ll write books. I’ll somehow publish or broadcast my ideas — especially related to redemption themes which I’ve told you about — to a world which needs to hear this.

But to deliver my message, I have to invent some brand new form of media. I don’t know why. I just know it’s the only way I’m going to be successful.

I don’t know what that media format is. I just know that it will be just as beautiful as a sunset one day — and the day will come when you will see it and understand it and appreciate it just as easily as you would appreciate a sunset today.

But it’s going to be a struggle to get there.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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