Lot and Too Much Sodium

Opening banter: Vance's one-man-band trick

The show opens with banter about the theme music and a story about a musician named Vance: at a Spirit Midwest Music Festival performance he appeared to beatbox a bass drum while looping acoustic guitar, but the bass drum was quietly added by his looper. The hosts call the hidden bass drum the only 'fraudulent' part of an otherwise impressive one-man-band act, and note he also played well when he was snuck into a church service.

Show open: Ben hosts; Dan returns from a pastors' retreat

Ben introduces himself as the evening's host ('I am Ben Foost') and welcomes co-host Dan ('Dan Velvet Crush Hudson'), who is back from a Focus on the Family-sponsored retreat for about a hundred pastors and their spouses in Colorado Springs. Dan describes it as relaxing and encouraging rather than informative, built around pastors telling their stories to people who uniquely understand the work.

The handsy worshiper and the Oosk game

• Are the exuberant, hands-in-the-air worshipers aware of how their worship affects the people around them?

Dan describes the 'super charismatic' type who shows up at every group worship event: at the retreat, a woman sat next to him and his wife Cheryl and threw her hands up directly in front of his face the moment the music started. The hosts debate whether such worshipers are aware of their effect on others — if not, they're fine with it; if so, not — and then invent and explain 'Oosk,' a game where you poke someone's armpit when they stretch their arms up.

Impressions and the unwritten Christian musical

The banter turns to celebrity impressions: a host does Louis Armstrong ('I see trees of green, red roses too'), they attempt Neil Diamond's 'I Am... I Said,' and one host claims to have won a Neil Diamond look-alike contest that he held at his own house with himself as the only entrant. They also recall that he and Mike once decided to write a Christian musical — possibly built around Stevie Wonder's 'I Just Called to Say I Love You' or 'Always' — but never got around to it.

Banter: shirts, loofahs, slippers, and robes

• If your house catches fire, is it better to run outside in your underwear or in a robe?

Returning to the worship discussion, the hosts admit they'd feel too self-conscious to worship exuberantly, then spiral into everyday-life comedy: a wife-bought loofah nobody knows how to use, pedicure eggs and foot dry-skin checks, never knowing when to switch into slippers, and whether it is manlier to flee a house fire in underwear than in a robe — with Steve Prefontaine and Hugh Hefner cited as robe precedents.

Retreat archetypes: Johnny Conservative, the weeper, and songs that move them

Dan continues his retreat observations with the opposite of the charismatic worshiper — 'Johnny Conservative,' stone-faced, arms folded, refusing to clap or smile — and a pastor who wept through every session, including the testimony of a former 1980s-90s baseball player. The hosts then trade songs that move them to tears: Elvis's 'American Trilogy' and 'It Is Well,' which Pathway Church's mostly unchurched original worship team had to learn from scratch.

Elvis's drummer, falling podcast numbers, and 'three sheets to the wind'

• Where did the phrase 'three sheets to the wind' come from?

A host claims every Elvis drummer past age 35 looked like the members of the band Bread — bearded, bouncing, staring everywhere but at the drums — and demonstrates the arm-flailing style. In housekeeping, they note podcast signups are 'falling off like flies,' plug the YouTube channel and a Demastus appearance, and pose the open question of where the phrase 'three sheets to the wind' comes from.

Elvis footage, onesies, union suits, and straight razors

The hosts pull up Elvis concert footage on a computer to find the drummer, riffing on his one-piece 'drummer onesie' and a former coworker nicknamed 'Onesie' whose shirt never moved. That leads to union suits with bum flaps, the Family Guy one-piece-pajama episode, confusion between 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' and the 'ya-ya' movie (which one host saw as the only man in the theater), and Pants's painful straight-razor shave — plus a debate over whether barber poles have blue stripes and where the stripes came from.

The whoopin' strap and the wooden spoon

A long riff on childhood corporal punishment: one host's dad used a barber's leather strop — 'the whoopin' strap' — while another family kept a designated wooden spoon on top of the refrigerator as 'the ender,' framed and lit like a trophy. They swap stories — a mom who counted to three but swung on two, a dad who swung at his son on the stairs and missed completely — and discuss their own parenting philosophy: never in anger, always with a clear warning line, and only once or twice ever, including an upcoming sermon series on child-rearing titled 'Beat Him With a Rod' from Proverbs.

The spanking glove and the 'three sheets' etymology

Still on discipline, a host proposes theatrically donning a Michael Jackson-style glove — or a snapping rubber glove at the grocery store — before administering punishment. Then they look up the earlier open question: 'three sheets to the wind' comes from sailing, describing a ship whose sheets (lines) have come loose so the sails flap uncontrolled and the ship meanders at the mercy of the elements. Verdict: 'definitely pirates.'

Oosk rules, the barking dog, and the alpha-dog guy

The hosts formalize Oosk — is there a defense, what is the proper retaliation for being Oosked — before a long story about a storm-phobic barking dog that no discipline reaches except grabbing its tongue, after failed attempts to 'go Pavlov' on it during thunderstorms. They mock a TV dog trainer's 'be the alpha dog' mystique, which one host reduces to screaming at the dog with his hands on his hips.

Housekeeping: Spirit Midwest reposts and contact info

A brief announcements block: better-quality reposts of the Spirit Midwest Music Festival band performances are coming, plus the usual plugs — livefromthepath.org, the podcast signup, the YouTube channel, the blog, and the info@livefromthepath.org email address. They also float the idea of letting listeners call the studio live.

Testing the 888 line; Mike phones in and hunts the creepy guy

The hosts test the toll-free 888-327-1007 studio line and discover calls connect instantly with no screening. Mike calls from home, arrives at the studio building, and is dispatched down the hallway and skywalk to find a thin, forward-necked 'creepy guy' who roams the building — checking behind the dumpster and in the bathroom. They also discuss Google Voice's voicemail transcription and its hilariously wrong readings, and Danielle is noted in the studio, heading back to school in Kentucky on Thursday.

Anne Rice quits Christianity: the anti-church, pro-Jesus wave

• Can you walk away from the church and keep Jesus — be anti-church but pro-Jesus?

From the Los Angeles Times: author Anne Rice announced on Facebook she was quitting Christianity, twelve years after returning to Catholicism — 'in the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay... anti-feminist... anti-Democrat...' and more. The hosts push back on the fashionable 'anti-church, pro-Jesus' posture: the church is the people, not the building; Christians are hypocrites by definition, but the question is whether you are repentant or rebellious about it; and if your church is not biblical, get in and fix it or find one that is. Asides include a pastor whose church bought him Armani suits and the joke that there cannot be more than one 'First Baptist church.'

Naming the church: baggage, Pathway, and the first church of Oosk

The hosts mock churches that claim to be 'the first' of something, then explain why their church is called Pathway: after twenty years of telling people what they are not, they wanted a name with no baggage that lets them just talk about Jesus. They recall rejected heavy names, note Danielle once combined whiteboard fragments into 'Pathway,' and joke they should have been 'the first church of Oosk' — 'Jesus gets you in the armpits.'

'I'm a Christ follower / I'm a Christian' skit video

The hosts play a comedy sketch contrasting a rule-bound 'Christian' — rule books, ethics manuals, a KJV 'sword' in a leather bag, bumper stickers, a pressed suit with a visible offering envelope, and a 'J-Pod' with 77 gigs of Christian music — with a low-key 'Christ follower' who just tries to follow Jesus in how he lives. They identify the makers as Community Christian Church in Naperville, Illinois, whose creative-arts pastor one of them knows, and say their own church is modeled on its multi-site approach.

No time capsule, but prayers behind the drywall

Asked whether the church has a time capsule, the answer is no — but when the ministry center walls were torn out, members spent days writing prayers and scriptures on the back of full sheets of drywall before they were hung. The hosts joke that one installer deliberately chose his cuts to avoid slicing through anyone's writing, tease Dan for being 'anti-time capsule,' and note there are photos of Shanna drilling drywall into the walls.

Oosk spelling, deep V-neck syndrome, and Troy's van call

• Why did Troy's van lose power steering and start overheating at the same time?

After formally spelling O-O-S-K and debating its punctuation and whether the creepy guy should be Oosked, the hosts decode 'DVS' as 'deep V-neck syndrome' — from a John Acuff blog post — the practice of wearing an undershirt under a V-neck from fear of showing chest. Troy then calls the studio line about his 2002 Dodge Caravan: dead power steering, overheating, leaking fluid. After the joke prescription (walk around it three times, jump on the hood, lick each window), they diagnose a serpentine belt and warn him to find what caused it to break. They offer the church's green van; Troy recounts getting his license suspended and the van impounded the last time he borrowed it.

Helpline bit and evangelism tone: warn like the hot stove

• Does the end justify the means in evangelism — how far can you go to keep someone from spiritual harm?

The hosts riff on turning the call-in line into an all-purpose helpline (mechanical, fashion, dating, and medical advice, including pet-egg pedicures) while insisting callers must actually phone in rather than email. That flows into a serious thread: 'hate the sin, love the sinner' works like warning a child away from a hot stove — you do not need an intimate relationship to not want someone burned — but the church often comes across as judgmental rather than loving. They cite the gym 'turn-and-burn' street preacher nobody listens to and a childhood memory of scaring preschoolers with 'you're going to go to the devil.'

Balding, the walker invention, and soundproofing the doghouse

Light closing banter: studio lighting that emphasizes balding, coworkers guessing a host is 38 ('ten years my senior'), and the mystery of why walkers ship without glide caps so everyone cuts up tennis balls — prompting a glide-walker invention pitch aimed at the baby-boomer market, also useful for sneaking up to Oosk the elderly. They close the dog thread by considering spray-foam soundproofing a doghouse so the barking cannot wake the kids.

Sign-off: next week's all-call-in show

The hosts sign off with the week's plugs and announce next week's plan: open phone lines all show at 515-327-1007 — callers should bring something prepared, like what they got their mom for Mother's Day or when they last wore Harlem Globetrotter-style socks. A final ramble about lying in a laundry basket of warm clean clothes precedes a promo spot for a following Des Moines Amplified program featuring Mike, Dan, Zach, and Jared Roy.