The Russell Moore Show

What does American football reveal about who we are and who we’re becoming?

Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here.

Russell Moore talks with cultural critic and essayist Chuck Klosterman about his new book Football and what the sport tells us about masculinity, community, memory, violence, and belief. From Roman gladiator games to Super Bowl halftime shows, and from church attendance to television economics, Klosterman argues that football is more than entertainment: it’s one of the last truly shared experiences in American life—and one that may not survive the century.

Even for listeners who don’t care about football at all, this conversation is about the deeper question beneath the spectacle: what happens when a culture’s rituals outlast its imagination?

Moore and Klosterman discuss football as a made-for-television phenomenon, the way fandom shapes identity and irrationality, and how football functions as an unofficial secular holiday—one that churches once resisted, then accommodated, and eventually surrendered to. Along the way, they examine agency, violence, masculinity, and why moral critiques of football provoke more outrage than theological disagreements ever could.

The conversation widens to include politics, class, religion, and even Billy Joel—ending with the question: when future generations judge our era by one piece of football culture, what will they see?

Keep up with Russell:


Sign up for the weekly newsletter⁠ where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying.

Submit a question for the show at ⁠[email protected]⁠ 

Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: ⁠Click here⁠ for 25% off a subscription

— 

“The Russell Moore Show” is a production of Christianity Today

Executive Producer: Clarissa Moll

Host: Russell Moore

Producer: Leslie Thompson

Associate Producer: McKenzie Hill

Senior Producer: Matt Stevens

Audio engineering by Kevin Morris

Video producer: Sam Cedar

Theme Song: “Citizens” by Jon Guerra

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Believers often use Romans 13 to wave away state violence, but that’s the opposite of what Paul intended.

⁠Watch the episode on YouTube.

On occasion, we like to record audio versions of the latest from Russell’s weekly newsletter. Read this article here. Sign up for the newsletter, Moore to the Point, where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying.


Submit a question for the show (and include a voice memo!) at [email protected] 


Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What do myth, wilderness, and ancient story have to teach a culture drowning in information but starving for meaning?

Watch a video version of this episode, here.

Russell Moore sits down with mythologist, storyteller, and author Martin Shaw–called our “greatest living storyteller”–in a conversation centered on Shaw’s upcoming book, Liturgies of the Wild (releasing February 3).

Drawing on folklore, wilderness tradition, and Christian theology, Shaw argues that Christianity is not merely a belief system but an initiatory path—one that modern culture has domesticated into something safer, quieter, and far less demanding.

Shaw reflects on his own journey from Baptist church pews to decades spent studying myth, living in a tent, and eventually returning—reluctantly—to Christianity through Eastern Orthodoxy. Their conversation touches on his 4-day-retreat-turned-conversion, myth versus fact, the resurrection as “disturbingly strange,” the dangers of cynicism and sarcasm, the rise of psychedelic spirituality, and how practices as simple as memorizing a poem or sitting by a fire can begin to re-form the soul.

If you’re beginning the year considering longing, risk, and what it means to become fully human in a world that prefers comfort to transformation–and you’re wanting to hear poetry recited in a British accent–this conversation is for you.

Resources mentioned in this episode:


Liturgies of the Wild — Martin Shaw


The Moviegoer — Walker Percy


The Pilgrim’s Regress — C.S. Lewis


Against the Machine — Paul Kingsnorth (Listen here for Paul’s interview with Russell)


The Hero with a Thousand Faces — Joseph Campbell

Keep up with Russell:


⁠Sign up for the weekly newsletter⁠ ⁠⁠where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying.

Submit a question for the show at ⁠[email protected]⁠ 

Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: ⁠⁠⁠Click here⁠ for 25% off a subscription⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Believers can disagree on migration policies—but the Word of God should shape how we minister to vulnerable people.

On occasion, we like to record audio versions of the latest from Russell’s weekly newsletter. Read this article here. Sign up for the newsletter, Moore to the Point, where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying.


Submit a question for the show (and include a voice memo!) at [email protected] 

Watch the episode on YouTubeSubscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We begin 2026 with a question: What if the most decisive battles in our time aren’t fought with ballots or bombs—but with the imagination?Watch the full conversation on YouTube

Russell Moore talks with historian and author Joseph Loconte about The War for Middle-earth, his book on how World War I and World War II forged the friendship, faith, and fiction of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Together they explore why The Lord of the Rings and Narnia weren’t escapist detours from reality, but a deliberate counter-assault on cynicism, propaganda, and the will to power—written by men who had seen the trenches up close and knew exactly what modern darkness looks like.

Loconte and Moore talk about why World War I has slipped from our cultural memory, what protected Tolkien from the disillusionment that swallowed so many of his peers, and why both writers keep insisting that deeds done in the dark are “not wholly in vain.” They also discuss Lewis’s warning about the “cataract of nonsense” in modern media, and why genuine friendship is almost never built by chasing “community”—but by pursuing a shared mission so compelling you find yourself fighting alongside someone.

Loconte shares the origin story of the Lewis–Tolkien friendship, why grace—not grit—is the hinge point in both Middle-earth and Narnia, and where to start if you’ve never read either author: The Screwtape Letters for Lewis, and Tolkien’s short, haunting “Leaf by Niggle.”

Resources mentioned in this episode:

By J.R.R. Tolkien


The Lord of the Rings


The Hobbit


Leaf by Niggle


The Fall of Gondolin


“Beren and Lúthien” (legendarium story)

By C.S. Lewis


The Screwtape Letters


The Chronicles of NarniaOut of the Silent Planet


That Hideous Strength


The Space Trilogy


The Four Loves


Spirits in Bondage (early poetry collection)


“Learning in Wartime” (sermon/essay)

By Joseph Loconte


The War for Middle-earth


A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War

Other Literary & Historical Works Referenced


All Quiet on the Western Front — Erich Maria Remarque


Paradise Lost — John Milton


The Odyssey — Homer


The Aeneid — Virgil


The Divine Comedy — Dante

Plato’s Cave (from The Republic) — Plato



Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices