Neuroscientist and educator Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath recently testified before a US Senate hearing on the impact of technology on American youth where he claimed, “Evidence indicates that indiscriminate digital expansion has weakened learning environments rather than strengthened them.” This negative impact and what to do about it is the subject of his latest book The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning—And How to Help Them Thrive Again. In this episode, he joins Dr. Keith Plummer for an informative exchange we trust will benefit and challenge parents, teachers, and educational administrators alike.

In this episode, recorded at The Gospel Coalition’s 2025 national conference, Keith Plummer talks with Cairn alum John Biegel, lead pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Annandale, VA, and TGC council member Bill Kynes, who for 36 years, preceded John in that role, about what it means to be a pastor-theologian. Next, Keith talks with author and lead mentor and trainer at Australia’s EvQ School of Evangelism, Sam Chan, about how to have natural gospel conversations and tips for addressing skeptics’ hard questions about the faith.

In their book Are We All Cyborgs Now? Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine, Robin Phillips and Joshua Pauling examine how our ongoing interaction with especially digital technologies could be altering our conceptions and expectations about how life should be. “Under the subtle catechesis of our machines,” they ask, “do we come to see our humanity—the flesh and blood bodies that God has given us—as problems to be overcome? Do we begin to perceive the human body as merely a machine or mechanism that doesn’t always work very well?” In this episode Joshua Pauling talks with Keith Plummer about how the Christian doctrines of creation, the mystery of the Incarnation, the promise of the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come can and should stabilize us in the dizzying, high velocity world of technological change.