Brannon McAllister

This is an unmissable conversation. It may be my favourite of the series so far. Renowned philosopher and psychiatrist @dr_mcgilchrist delves into consciousness, brains and spirituality (as well as opening up about his recent embrace of Christian faith) in a conversation with influential neuroscientist @anilkseth. ▶️ Watch or 🎧 Listen to our latest episode of Uncommon Ground 👉 justinbrierley.com/uncommon-groun…

BREAKING🚨: PETER JACKSON announces NEW Lord of the Rings movie!!! Focusing on Chapters 3-8 of The Fellowship of the Ring!!

Passion project alert 💕 thechildslibrary.com My @openclaw agents and I built this (free!) resource for filling your child’s bookshelf with time tested books you are sure to treasure Fave feature: filter by “values” 💛

In the light of the reaction to public prayer by Muslims this week, many thanks to @glenscrivener for this video! Part of the problem is that we in the West are WEIRD & don't know it or want to admit it. Also, the Left & Right cherry pick from Christianity youtu.be/wjp3p8VGLIY?si…

five words. 20 years. unfinished.

These are good policies

Pixar's Inside Out 2 earned more at the US box office ($652 million) than Elio, Lightyear, Onward, and Elemental made domestically, combined. That one number explains why Coco 2 is coming. And Toy Story 5 this June. And Incredibles 3 in 2028. And Monsters Inc 3 is in early development. Four sequels in the pipeline. The studio that built its reputation on original stories is now running a franchise factory. Let's look at the numbers. Inside Out 2 cleared $1.7 billion worldwide. The year before, Pixar's original film Elemental barely managed $496 million after the worst opening in studio history at the time. Then Elio broke that record in 2025 with an even worse debut of $21 million, finishing at $154 million on a budget north of $150 million. The whole industry looks like this now. In 2024, every single film on the top 10 highest-grossing list was a sequel, the first time that's happened in at least 50 years of tracked box-office data. Only two original films cracked the top 20 worldwide. In 1993, all ten of the top-grossing films were originals. Jurassic Park, Mrs. Doubtfire, Schindler's List. Pixar also has a cost problem, their competitors don't. Their films run $150 to $200 million each. DreamWorks and Illumination (the studios behind Shrek and Despicable Me) make animated movies for under $80 million. When The Wild Robot costs half what Pixar spends and still puts up solid numbers, a $200 million original that opens to $21 million is a crisis. Hoppers, released two weeks ago, opened to $88 million globally, the best original Pixar opening since Coco in 2017. But that nine-year gap between original hits tells the story on its own. Pixar's creative chief Pete Docter said recently that if the studio is "going to just crank crap out, let's shut the doors." They are still making originals (Gatto in 2027, plus two more in development). But the sequels are now the financial engine that funds everything else. Coco 2 is coming because the original made $814 million. Toy Story 5 because the franchise has passed $3 billion in lifetime grosses. Incredibles 3 because Incredibles 2 made $1.2 billion. The last time Pixar went this long without making a sequel to a specific property was the gap between Toy Story in 1995 and Toy Story 2 in 1999, when the studio only had one franchise to revisit. Now they have a dozen, and the box office is telling them to use every single one.

It’s 2am again, my favourite time, and as always reality is still staring me in the face 🧐

Good to see AOC stand up against online betting markets.

@Ferndiggity @YouTube We sing this very often at my Anglican Church. Gives me great comfort listening to it now while away from home

I led this song at the Getty Sing! Conference at Opryland Hotel last Fall. The cellist is Peter Kim. The song is called Trisagion. I wrote it for the congregation at Christ The King Anglican Church. youtu.be/4aSw_fqpxUA?si… via @YouTube

“Islam is uniquely undigestible for the secular mind” said @holland_tom. But neither @dcsandbrook nor @TomSwarbrick1 nor many others have understood the context. Context is important: youtu.be/wjp3p8VGLIY

This is one of my favorite @TGC articles in a while. So well done by Dan Doriani. Substantive and wise. thegospelcoalition.org/article/pastor…

Not sharing this to state a position, but just noting that this conversation will be a dominant issue. Christians will need to have better categories and thoughtful answers.

From THE GOD DEBATE: Me: The more religious the society, the worse the problems are. And if you don't believe it, consider some of the world's most irreligious societies, like Norway, Netherlands, and New Zealand. They're pretty nice places to live. Now consider some of the world's most religious countries, like Afghanistan and Congo. Those are places that people want to get out of. This is also true in a comparison across American states. The more religious, the more dysfunctional. Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT): What we should wish as Americans is to be neither Afghanistan nor Scandinavia, but to be the United States of America, which as a culture has always done an incredible job of balancing some of the absolute, definite benefits of modernity, including religious toleration, a respect for pluralism, a refusal to simply sort of impose the totality of one religion's theological doctrines on society with an abundant faith in a cosmic purpose for the human race. And obviously there are downsides to religious intensity. Those downsides are often manifested in zealous intolerance. There are also serious downsides to religious indifference, which are often manifested in anomie, drift, and despair. And it is simply the case that if you look across the developed world today, there is a strong correlation between secularization and a kind of loss of faith in human purpose and the human future, manifested most starkly in the declining birth rates that make it extremely unlikely that Dr. Pinker's predictions about the inevitable triumph of secularism and humanism over religion will come to pass, because the secularists and humanists don't seem to be making the basic choices that would enable the continuation of the human race.

How to develop taste

Somehow in my naïveté I missed until now that Charles Dickens left his wife of 20 years at age 45 for an 18-year-old.

Bob Iger retires as CEO of Disney today. He led the acquisition of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Fox. And brought the company into the streaming era with Disney+. One of the most strategy-minded leaders in Hollywood history.

This is a cool example of how you can use AI to help your writing—without relying on it for any actual writing. From @jasminewsun theatlantic.com/technology/202…

Beautiful. Hollywood Star Jessie Buckley praises marriage and motherhood during her Oscar-winning speech, dedicating the award to every mom “I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.” Marriage isn’t a trap. Babies aren’t burdens. Motherhood is a gift.

dear apple, the iPod needs to come back. not for nostalgia. for the parents who want their kids to love music and audiobooks without a browser, social media, and the whole internet attached to it