Do Something With Your Life, Gordon

Studio open and docket

The show opens from the Pathway Studios in Johnston proper with a thanks to listeners who left feedback. The docket is set: an article about the James Webb Space Telescope and the Big Bang, guest Todd Gordon in the studio for a career-transition interview, a round of secular-versus-Solomon, and Dear LFTP advice.

JWST article read: did the Big Bang happen?

A host reads aloud from a mindmatters.ai article titled "James Webb Space Telescope Shows Big Bang Didn't Happen?" reporting that the telescope's images of the early cosmos are surprising cosmologists, with small, surprisingly old galaxies and at least one paper titled with the candid exclamation "Panic!"

Humility discussion: faith, science, and the Big Bang

• What does the new James Webb Space Telescope data mean for the Big Bang — and for faith-science debates?

The hosts discuss the article's lesson about humility on all sides: the study of science becoming a pseudo-faith for those who fervently believe things they cannot touch, taste, or smell; God being free to do as he pleases with creation; Genesis being possibly nebulous about history versus poetry; peer pressure among scientists; and the temptation to over-crank asserted truths. Comedy bits include a Tower of Babel joke, fear of the Higgs boson, and a complaint-line plug.

Todd Gordon's path into education

Guest Todd Gordon tells his backstory: a preacher's kid whose father served in ministry over sixty years; a basketball coach's poke-in-the-chest challenge that sent him from a dropout with shoulder-length hair to Iowa Western Community College and Northwest Missouri State; thirty-seven years as a teacher, coach, athletic director, and activities director across nine school districts; and a surprise retirement party where the ailing coach Gatie was the first person he hugged.

The power of moments with kids

Gordon introduces his core theme: moments matter. He tells how a coach's blunt challenge changed his life, how a former player's life changed from one stern conversation he cannot even remember, and why he greeted every student in the hallway — because kids need to know they exist, including kids who may be thinking about taking their own life.

Teaching career stops and hallway time

Gordon walks through the career: physical education degree after a decade teaching special ed, resource room, and computers (starting in Walnut, Iowa with two Apple IIe computers); moving up to administrator; and what he will miss most — standing in the hallway between periods trying to start conversations with kids.

Kids these days and the loneliness epidemic

• How do you complete the sentence 'kids these days...'?

The panel completes the sentence "kids these days...": Gordon answers "ain't loved" — kids looking for love in all the wrong places. They discuss device-based community, nostalgia distorting memory, how loneliness breeds depression and anxiety, and a survey finding roughly one in three college adults reports diagnosed depression or anxiety, with debate over how much is genuine versus identity-claiming.

Someone's best hope: transformation over behavior modification

Gordon shares Manny Scott's maxim "every day you are someone's best hope" as his operating principle for educators. The hosts add that Jesus is after gospel transformation and behavior modification follows — not the reverse; that people are more complicated than trends; and that being a stable, reliable presence matters more than policing outward behavior.

Hope for public schooling: if not you, then who?

• In what ways do you look at public schooling and coaching with hope — and where is caution warranted?

Asked where he finds hope in public schooling, Gordon says every job is a ministry and divine moments show up daily; the leader's mentality is "if not you, then who?" He and the hosts discuss Christians in public schools living faith consistently rather than shouting it, deeper conversations coming in times of distress and tragedy, and controlling only two things daily: attitude and effort.

People of Jesus run in

A host argues that when people are running out — disasters, emergencies, the Black Plague, cultural chaos — the people of Jesus run in, and that in a society debating "what is truth" like Pilate with Jesus, Christians should be the steady boat amid tossing seas. The panel agrees kids can smell being advertised to: authenticity beats showy posturing.

Praying to a Father

A host reflects that prayer has become talking to a steady, calming Father rather than praying "at a god," illustrated by a movie scene where children simply wanted their father to bless them like Jacob's blessing. Another host jokes that this week's t-shirt would read "I gotta tell you about Jesus — get out of my way." The panel agrees kids need a steady figure who is for them.

Todd Gordon's platforms

Gordon plugs toddagordon.com, his daily short article and Thursday "moments" newsletter on leadership, a podcast for athletic directors with a new leadership side channel, and his work with Bound, a web-based sports management company, including the twice-weekly ten-minute "Bound for Greatness" leadership podcast.

Giving your best at work but not at home

The panel lands on a convicting theme: Gordon admits his own kids sometimes got the least of him because he gave his best between eight and four; the hosts agree they come home drained and cranky at the people who need their best, prompting the joke that one host owes an apology and needs another journal.

Dear LFTP: the engaged daughter's joking fiance

• How should a mother handle her future son-in-law's dry, uncomfortable jokes?

A listener writes that her thirty-year-old daughter is engaged to a man she calls Jonas, whose dry jokes about the engagement and the beloved vehicle he lent them make her uncomfortable, though her daughter finds him funny. The hosts judge it mostly innocuous — he's comfortable, she'll straighten him out — and advise staying out of it. The Secular answer is far more alarmist: call the police.

Dear LFTP: the dog-walker email

• How should a man respond to a hostile email after declining to walk a woman's dog?

A listener describes dating a woman for years and helping with her house, then declining to walk her dog once — and receiving a hostile email saying anyone who isn't a friend of her dog is no friend of hers. The hosts suspect he is telling a fraction of the story and advise not overreacting and trying again later. The Secular answer calls the woman self-centered and notes "Dan went too far" with a crude earlier remark.

Outro: complaint line and the mullet

The outro plugs the Bob Eisenlauer complaint line for listener disagreement, the hosts demand listeners text the word "mullet" after Todd's early-eighties haircut story, and the show closes with the standard benediction: be faithful in means, God will handle the ends.