Join Conner Jones and Micah Tomasella in this episode of Culture Brief as they discuss the biggest stories of the week, starting with the significant security breach involving a Trump administration Signal group chat leak, its political fallout, and the comparisons to the Hillary Clinton email scandal. They also explore the cultural and political controversies surrounding the new Snow White movie and its box office performance. They share their own favorite Disney movies. Additionally, they highlight the start of the Major League Baseball season and the upcoming weekend of March Madness games. Tune in for insightful analysis and a Christian perspective on this week’s hot topics.
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Topics
- (01:27): The Signal group chat leak
- (04:59): Political fallout and double standards
- (13:34): Snow White box office bomb
- (20:40): Controversy surrounding Disney’s latest movie
- (22:46): Biblical perspective on the controversy
- (27:04): Favorite Disney movies discussion
- (29:07): Upcoming movie remakes
- (32:44): MLB Opening Day
- (35:27): March Madness and other sports updates
- (37:23): Conclusion and listener engagement
Resources
- Mailbag: [email protected]
- DenisonForum.org/subscribe
- Culture Brief on Instagram
- The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans – The Atlantic
- Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal – The Atlantic
- First Thing: White House texts secret Yemen airstrike plans to reporter | JD Vance | The Guardian
- Pete Hegseth claims ‘nobody was texting war plans’ in first comments since Yemen strike group text scandal
- ‘Sounds like a huge screwup’: Top officials react to report about US leaders texting war plans in a Signal group chat
- Trump’s top team rips into Europe in leaked war texts group chat – raging they ‘loathe’ having to bail out freeloaders’ | The Sun
- Maybe J.D. Vance Isn’t Trump’s Puppet
- Top officials inadvertently shared war plans with Atlantic editor
- Inside Disney’s ‘Snow White’ Fiasco: Death Threats, Beefed-Up Security and a Social Media Guru for Rachel Zegler
- After poisonous PR, ‘Snow White’ has ‘heigh-ho’pes for a fairy tale ending at the box office | CNN
- Rachel Zegler celebrates ‘Snow White’ being ‘#1 movie in the world’ despite sleepy box office debut
About Micah Tomasella
Micah Tomasella is the Advancement Officer at Denison Ministries and co-hosts Denison Forum’s “Culture Brief” podcast. A graduate of Dallas Baptist University, Micah is married to Emily, and together they are the proud parents of two daughters. With an extensive background in nonprofit work, finance, and real estate, Micah also brings experience from his years in pastoral church ministry.
About Conner Jones
Conner Jones is the Director of Performance Marketing at Denison Ministries and Co-Hosts Denison Forum’s “Culture Brief” podcast. He graduated from Dallas Baptist University in 2019 with a degree in Business Management. Conner passionately follows politics, sports, pop-culture, entertainment, and current events. He enjoys fishing, movie-going, and traveling the world with his wife and son.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
[00:00:00] Micah Tomasella: Hi, I’m Connor Jones. And hi, I’m Micah Tomasella,
[00:00:05] Conner Jones: and this is Culture Brief, a Denison Forum podcast, where we navigate the constant stream of top news, stories, politics, sports, pop culture, technology, anything happening in the world. And we’re doing it all from a Christian perspective. And Micah, if any of us thought we were having a bad Monday, at least we weren’t on the Trump security team when they found out they accidentally included a reporter in a group message about
[00:00:27] Micah Tomasella: war plans.
Yeah, I mean, again, we’ve all texted the wrong person. We probably all texted, maybe we weren’t saying something, you know, savory about that person. We were meaning to text it to somebody else, but we accidentally texted it to that person. I feel like a lot of the population has had that moment, and I’m not saying that that’s a good thing to do, something like that, but the stakes are just a whole lot higher.
When it comes to what the top US officials were talking about leading up to that strike and the leak and everything that’s happened. So we’re excited to jump into that. So here’s what we’ve got coming up on the show today. We’ve got the Signal Group chat heard round the world. We’ve got a Snow White Box, office bomb.
We’ve got what’s your favorite Disney movie? Connor and Micah, I know you guys cannot wait to hear about what our favorite Disney movies are, and then we’ve got opening day in Major League baseball coming up, so we’re excited to talk about that and all the other things to tune into. So let’s jump into the brief.
The brief. Alright. So here’s our first story for the day. We’re just gonna jump right in. I called it the Signal Group Chat. Heard Round the World where Good. Goodness gracious. You know, I came up with that title, by the way, and I feel pretty good about it. Did you,
[00:01:37] Conner Jones: because I’m pretty sure I saw the same headline on Politico this week yesterday.
[00:01:40] Micah Tomasella: They stole it from me. They stole it from me. They took, as I wrote this, I wrote this even before this story came out. So anyway. No, I’m just kidding. You were in the group chat too. You were also privy to the information. It definitely would’ve been better for them if I was in the group chat or most people other than Jeffrey Goldberg, the the guy who runs the Atlantic.
But anyway. Alright, so the signal group chat. Leak fallout, political reactions and double standards. I’m gonna kind of break all of those down. So let’s talk about the accidental leak. So in March, 2025, just a few days ago, a major security breach occurred when top US National security officials accidentally included the Atlantic’s editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a signal group chat discussing military operations against the Houthis militants in Yemen.
The group included Vice President JD Vance included the defense. Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz. Now, Mike Waltz was the one who set the chat up. He made the mistake and Goldberg was added to the chat. Over several days, officials discussed sensitive details including targeted information, weapons, systems, timelines, attack sequencing, Goldberg without participating, observe the conversation.
For multiple days, almost two weeks, and then later published a report on it in the Atlantic on March 24th. A bombshell that the last 48 hours, it’s everything that you’ve been hearing in the news. Connor, what was your first reaction when you heard about this?
[00:03:08] Conner Jones: I was honestly shocked, and I, I do wanna say Goldberg made mention of the fact that he thought it was a joke at first, that he was like, yeah, somebody was trying to trick him.
Again, just so
[00:03:17] Micah Tomasella: casual, such a casual group chat name. It was on signal, you know. Why would they be discussing such vital information on Signal and adding random people? Yeah,
[00:03:26] Conner Jones: yeah, yeah. Signal is open to the general public and it is encrypted, right? So yes, the messages disappear. You’re not supposed to be able to see it, but we know that Russia and China can definitely get into it, and they’re known to gotten into the Signal app before, so you’re not supposed to discuss such sensitive information there.
It’s good for if you’re making secret business dealings or if you’re doing journalists like to use it to talk to sources because it’s encrypted and it’s not over text and all that, and it’ll disappear. Which presents actually a whole nother problem because technically all these communications are supposed to go to the National Archives.
So if they’re using Signal and it’s set up, I think they had it set to delete all messages after four weeks. They could be in trouble just for not even sending all their communications to the National Archives. Anyways, man, my, my reaction was just like jaw dropped, dumbfounded. Who in the world thought this was a good idea to, one, do these types of communications about strategic planning on attacks?
Over an open app and not over a, a secure government approved phone or skiff meeting room. All of that skiff is like a security room where nobody can bring any communication devices in and all of that. There are so many other ways to communicate about these things, and these guys are just casually, basically texting each other back and forth, and they’re talking about this attack plan, but also the implications on the world and like bringing in conversations about Europe.
JD Vance is in there saying he doesn’t even think we should do the attack because it, it doesn’t line up with what Trump wants to do, and he is not sure the president. Can understand what’s the big picture here is? I don’t know. I was just dumbfounded. I cannot believe this happened.
[00:04:58] Micah Tomasella: Yeah, it was a lot.
And so there’s, there is political fallout and then there’s Trump’s response that I wanna go over. Just wanna kind of hit this by section, just so that we all understand the story and are able to take it in. Yeah. The revelation has led to bipartisan alarm. I mean this, this whole story, I mean, it’s on on both sides.
There’s been some alarm, obviously more from the left Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer and other lawmakers have called for an investigation. Critics argue that using an unapproved platform like Signal for sensitive discussions could violate federal record laws and even the espionage act, which is fair.
Trump, however, has downplayed the incident, calling it a minor glitch. He defended Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, stating that Waltz had learned his lesson and suggesting that no serious breach occurred. Trump’s response has been seen as an attempt to minimize the controversy. Meanwhile, defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, he’s frustrated about this has denied that war plans were shared.
So that’s, there’s a big argument between, was it more of a timeline? Was it more of in, you know, information, but was this detailed war plans? I think it’s probably somewhere in the middle now that we keep seeing more texts leaked and dropped, but still it doesn’t change the fact that sensitive information was being shared on a platform that’s unapproved and it’s not a good idea.
So here’s some double standards that I wanna call out. Like we say, we’re gonna call out both sides when it’s appropriate. So double standards. Let’s compare this to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. This was such a big deal. The email server scandal back in 2016, the leak sparked comparisons to the 2016 controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of private email server while serving as Secretary of State.
During that time, Republicans, even including Trump, did attack Clinton arguing that her handling of class of information made her unfit for office. Many critics are now pointing out the hypocrisy of the Republican’s response to the signal link questioning why some of the same figures who called for Clinton’s prosecution are now brushing aside something similar, if not kind of more serious issue in breach of security.
Here’s the consequences of this situation. So inside the White House, discussions are underway about whether personnel, CH changes are needed. National Security advisor, Mike Waltz, is seen as particularly vulnerable. Pete, Seth, I mean, here’s, here’s kind of the tough part of this, right? For example, if for some reason somebody had been added to that chat that was anti-American, they could have alerted the Houthis and then the Houthis could have been set up to defend this airstrike, and then American soldiers could have been harmed, which is kind of like what we’re hearing.
I mean, there’s just, there’s a lot at stake to just share that type of information. I mean, I, I’m gonna say flippantly, you know what I mean? I, I know that they all thought they were the only ones in there. But there’s just gotta be a better way to go about this. There’s so many better ways. Yeah.
There’s just so many better ways. So many better ways. And then you think, you think that they’re using something different, right? Like we, even if you disagree. You know, with the administration, you assume they’re not using something like Signal to discuss an airstrike, right? Like you just kind of assume they’re doing it in a more secure way.
Assume that. It turns out they weren’t. You assume
[00:07:51] Conner Jones: that, and then you assume that if they are using Signal, which they shouldn’t be in the first place. Yeah. That they know who everyone is that is in the message. This had so many top officials in it and then just Jeffrey Goldberg just hanging out there.
Nobody de determined they should check to see who all’s in this message group. Yeah. And so in one way they, they’re very fortunate that it was Jeffrey Goldberg because this is an American who does not have any intentions to harm us. Intentions. Yes. Or personnel, but in another way they’re kind of un, it’s unfortunate that it was Jeffrey Goldberg, ’cause he’s the editor in chief of one of the biggest publications in America and was able to just.
Put this out on the blast.
[00:08:25] Micah Tomasella: And, and, and one of the most liberal ones too. True. So it’s it’s one of those things where, you know, Goldberg’s not anti-American, but he definitely is against the administration. So you just wanna talk about maybe it’s kind of in the middle of the spectrum of hey, who, who’s a, a bad person to add to this chat?
You know, chat overall, he’s probably kind of in the middle. Let me give kinda the most recent developments and then lemme just kind of jump into what God’s kind of speaking to me through this story. So Vance and Hegseth, they criticize Europe in this chat. It’s causing some controversy in Europe right now amongst European leaders.
The leak messages show JD Vance and Pete Hegseth expressing frustration with Europe’s reliance on US military power, and they get kind of specific about different things. With that. Vance also expressed concerns, personal concerns about the strike in Yemen and Trump’s awareness of it. So Vance pushback on the plan strikes against Yemen.
In this chat, we’ve all seen it, suggesting a one month delay for a better understanding of how it’s gonna affect the economy, oil prices, stuff like that. But he also. So privately he thought privately questioned whether Trump fully understood the scope of the attack. Yeah, so he said that, and obviously the administration’s not gonna, they even acknowledge that.
But I’m sure that there’s some internal conversations happening with that one. And then we’ve got senate hearings with Tulsi Gabbard. She is the National Intelligence Director and then the CI director, CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, and then the FBI Director Cash Patel on national security threats.
They’re, they were questioned yesterday at the time of the recording on Wednesday, March 26th. They’re being questioned again today. They didn’t have. A ton of answers in the first one, but we should, we’ll see what happens this afternoon, but most recently in an interview on Tuesday night, the 25th National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, took on full responsibility is what he said for the leaked group chat.
It’s embarrassing. We’re gonna get to the bottom of it. And that was kind of interesting about what he said was, is he is we’re gonna get to the bottom of it, but I take full responsibility for setting up the chat, for using Signal, and then including Jeffrey Goldberg, but we’re gonna get to the bottom of it.
What’s to get to the bottom of, you know what I mean? But I guess we’ll see what’s to come, my man. You
[00:10:26] Conner Jones: accidentally added this dude. It was, yeah. You right? Yeah, that’s what I think
[00:10:29] Micah Tomasella: at least. And you’ve got, you’ve got top democratic senators calling for Pete Hegseth to resign for some of the reasons that I said.
Before. So this situation is ever evolving, just like everything that we talk about on the show. And it’s crazy. It really, really is. And it’s, it’s frustrating to hear this and it just kinda leaves you feeling a bit perplexed. But I, but I wanna call out the political double standard that I’m noticing here.
People justify certain actions for one group, but then condemn them for the other. Mm-hmm. So if there’s somebody that you personally align with it, it’s human nature to give that group or that person an excuse because it feels like they’re on your team. But depending on what our vantage point and perspective is, that’s not always the right thing to do.
So this also serves as a personal challenge for me. Are we holding ourselves to the same standards that we hold others to and leadership and relationships in faith? True integrity means being consistent in our values, not just when it’s convenient. So if you believe it, it doesn’t matter who does it or doesn’t do it, stand by it.
So this verse comes to mind, and it’s the words of Jesus. So let’s listen to it. Let what you say simply be yes or no. Anything more than that comes from evil. Matthew 5 37. Also, here’s what I’m hit with. Are we willing to call a spade a spade anymore? Have we gotten to the point where if you’re a Democrat, through and through, can you acknowledge the fact that there are major issues in your party right now?
If you’re a Republican through and through, if you’re a right wing Republican, hard line Republican, can you acknowledge that this issue of this leak group chat is at best gross negligence? That it’s a problem, that it’s an issue, that it’s wrong, no matter who did it can. Can you do that? It’s probably even more than just gross negligence, honestly.
So remember, as Christians, your allegiance. My allegiance, Connor, is to Jesus. He’s the author perfecter of our faith. We are to be grounded in God’s word. Not anything else. Anything else is an idol. I am not to be grounded in the tenets of the Democratic national Convention. I am not to be grounded in the tenets of the Republican national Convention.
Those things change. All of their policies have shifted even in the last five years. They shift, they change God’s word. Is eternal. It’s true. It’s an errant. That’s what we’re to base our life on, not anything else,
[00:12:57] Conner Jones: man. That’s so true. Yeah. So good. That is the truth. That is the source of all truth is scripture.
And so that’s what we rely on and you know, as a nonpartisan ministry. That’s what we rely on. Like we That’s right. We, we always turn to truth. We do not turn to, yeah, the Republican Party did this and left wing party did that and all like it is always gonna come back to what does the Bible say about certain issues.
So thank you for that Micah. I think that’s great perspective on just a very intriguing, interesting story. Yeah. And interested to see the developments that continue to come outta that. I know there’s more hearings in the Senate and the house, but we’ll just keep y’all updated. Okay. Let’s move on Micah to.
Kind of a big cultural story. Yeah. This is become bigger than it ever had to be. Snow White, the movie, you know, I, I think people cared about it, but it shouldn’t have been anything that like was a divisive issue. It should have just been another Disney movie that came out. Yeah. But it’s pretty divisive.
And the movie did technically bomb at the box office. Oh yeah. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. So let’s dive in. Obviously Disney’s been investing in creating live action versions of their like most famous animated properties for Yeah, several years now. We’ve seen Cinderella, beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, little Mermaid, even Lion King, sort of a live action movie that they did back in I think 2019.
Those have all been very successful. Financial. Yeah. Yeah. Even when they, even they, when they had critics and didn’t have great reviews, they still just drew in massive numbers of people to the movie theater. So naturally Disney looking at this. Says we gotta do our most, you know, traditional property. The original animated film Disney made was Snow White back in 1937, which I didn’t realize it was that old anyways.
Wow. Yeah, they, they thought that this was obviously gonna be a box office juggernaut. Let’s do one of our most prized possession properties, and it had a budget of $270 million. Which is huge. That’s bigger than, than the rest of those, except maybe Lion King. They estimated that it would, you know, initially they were estimating this would be a potential billion dollar box office movie after the full run.
Then they estimated as we got closer to the release that it was gonna bring in 45 to $55 million in this opening weekend, Micah, it brought in only $43 million, which sounds like a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things, on a $270 million budget, that’s a big flop.
[00:15:17] Micah Tomasella: And that’s, and that’s your biggest weekend.
So they’re you’re not gonna get a better, you’re not gonna get a bigger weekend than that. So if you have this huge goal, you gotta get closer to it. From the opening weekend,
[00:15:28] Conner Jones: it did end up bringing in $87 million worldwide. Also very small, couldn’t even reach a hundred, which is just very, very bad.
My, my question for you is, as a, a dad of two young girls. Is, was Snow White like a thing that was being talked about in your household? Were your girls interested in going to see this movie at all? Were they excited? Did they even like Snow White? We, we didn’t
[00:15:46] Micah Tomasella: talk about it at all. We, we watched the, the cartoon we just have, I mean, my wife is a huge Disney fan, but just really the, the live action remakes of the classics.
There’s been no interest in my household. My house is full of girls. There’s been no interest in any of those over the years, so Interesting. Yeah.
[00:16:02] Conner Jones: Yeah. I mean obviously that’s anecdotal, but I was just curious how, how that felt. Yeah, yeah. I mean, think there was, I
[00:16:06] Micah Tomasella: think if you guys, a lot of people align with that, right?
Like why mess with something, you know? That’s you know, that people grew up with that. People know so well. I mean, you know, I get why they’re doing it, but I also get why people have a lack of interest in it. And I know that we’re talking about Snow White, but I think with a lot of these live action remakes, it is really hard to remake a classic.
I mean that’s, mm-hmm.
[00:16:25] Conner Jones: No, it’s gotta be, I think a lot of people did like the Beauty and the Beast movie. That was maybe the first one that they did. I can’t remember. That one was good. That one. That one was good. They’ve only gone downhill since then, I think. Mm-hmm. Anyways, so why did it do so bad?
So critics are, have been attributing the performance to mixed reviews, audience fatigue, like you just said, with Disney’s live action remakes. ’cause they have been releasing one basically every year. And then most notably. It’s probably because of the films widely publicized and viral controversies. So what went wrong and, and honestly Micah, why does it even matter for us that, you know, we’re not on the Disney payroll.
Why do we care that much? I think it’s because there’s a lot of culture war issues here. So what are those culture war issues? It kind of started all the way back in 2022 when they casted Rachel Ziegler as the main actress to play Snow White. And it sparked debate because she is Latina and Snow White obviously is.
Traditionally known as having skin as white as snow. So you know, some people called it racist, that people were mad at that. Others were like she’s not the type of person you want to play this character that is traditionally supposed to be pale and all of that. So just depending on where you landed on that anyways, it automatically sparked backlash.
And it emphasized just zeer, sorry, emphasized the importance of representation and expressing pride in portraying a Latina princess. That just sparked debate immediately. Then the movie, which was set to release last March in 2024 has just been in delays. Several delays, one because of the rider strike that happened in 2023.
Two, because of some covid related things. Set, fire, costly, reshoots, and then. What is really believed to be true is just Disney recognized all the controversies that were coming down the line and just delayed it, hoping to get a, a pr relief rather than releasing last year when it was in the heat of so many controversies.
And, and, you know, after Zeer was casted back in 2022, she then came out. And criticized the original 1937 movie, one of one of the most beloved properties of on Disney’s ip. She said, the new Snow White will focus less on snow White’s love story with a guy who literally stalks her. That was her portrayal of mm-hmm.
The 1937 film that prompted criticism and that the remake would be a departure. You know, it got everybody thinking it would be totally different than the classic cannon. And Zary even said, it’s not really about the love story at all. It’s an inner journey. She goes on to find her true self and she meets a lot of people along the way that make the journey.
Really incredible. So that is just not what people wanted to hear. And then one top Hollywood agent even said that this is the moment when she said that on a, on a interview. That was the moment Disney allowed her to take control of the narrative, and Disney basically lost all control of. Marketing and narrative around this movie.
And then even actor Peter Dinklage, who you may know from the movie Elf, or he’s in the Game of Thrones show, he’s in the Hobbit movies.
[00:19:19] Micah Tomasella: He’s probably the most famous little person on the earth, right?
[00:19:22] Conner Jones: Yes, he is. He is. He has dwarfism and so he is, yeah, very well known. And he spoke out criticizing the films portrayal of the Seven Dwarves, the way that they were gonna portray their characters, as well as the way they’re using CGI, that Peter Dinklage and a bunch of other actors thought that they should use.
Actual dwarfs to play these characters. And then the film also became just entangled in more political controversy due to the opposing views, really, of Rachel Ziegler. And then the other lead actress, gal Gadot, who you may know from Wonder Woman, she plays Wonder Woman, but she is Israeli. She served in the Israeli military, and Rachel Ziegler is very pro-Palestinian.
And so this led to just beef between those two behind the scenes as well as online. And last August, Zary even posted on X to thank her supporters for the REIT of the movie’s trailer, which is great. But then one minute later, she added an afterthought in the same tweet thread and said. And always remember Free Palestine, which that immediately went viral, went way further than she ever expected, is my guess.
And it led to, that’s just random. I just felt random. So yeah, it was random and just unnecessary. Yeah. That led to death threats for Gal Gadot, her co-star, who is a, like I said, Israeli and Disney had to literally hire security for ghetto. And then following the 2024 election, Zeer took to Instagram to say, may Trump supporters never know.
Peace. So that was in recent months. She said that, and obviously Disney was not happy with that because that just alienated half of the audience in the country about to say. When your main actress playing this Disney princess comes out and says such a political statement like that? Yeah. Disney’s not happy.
Yeah. I will note that Zeer, yeah, she is very talented. She’s got an exceptional singing voice and that not all the reviews for this movie are terrible, but they are pretty mixed. I don’t think it was anything that was gonna be. Greatly reviewed. Even aside from controversies and honestly, Micah young children who are gonna see this movie will have no idea about any of these things happening online and in the culture at large with this film.
Yeah. It’s gonna be more so parents making their decisions on if they wanna take their kids to see it and it, it’s really tough to just fully even trust the community reviewing that happens on this. So if you go to Im DB right now, it has 1.8 out of 10 stars. I do not think that the movie is that bad.
Yeah, it also has a ton of reviews you know, people are going in there and review bombing based off of their own political beliefs or their, you know, their biases here. Yep. So any thoughts on that and, and just kind of all this controversy around the film?
[00:21:46] Micah Tomasella: I just think that so making movies.
If you’re an actor, if you’re a producer, director, you’re the company. Especially if you’re like an actor. I guess I understand where it’s when I’m acting in something, I’m expressing my craft. I’m living out of my abilities. So I guess I can kind of understand honestly, like from Ziegler’s perspective of being kind of shortsighted of I mean.
This is the role that I’m in and I have these opinions and I can, I can express those and she can, but then I understand by, you know, like the big wigs in Disney of we’re also making movies to make money. I. So stop doing things that’s gonna prevent us from making money. ’cause we’re fronting so much money to make it in the first place.
And so you just try to put yourself in everybody’s shoes. It either way, whether if this controversy was happening or not. Personally, I’d have no interest in seeing it either way. So it’s like it just doesn’t, yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:41] Conner Jones: No, but that’s my thought. You’re, you’re exactly right that you can express opinions, but you also have to be smart about it.
So that, that, honestly, as I was thinking about this whole story and I, I was considering like, what is a biblical application here? There’s honestly so many, so many, but I’m gonna hit on a few things that hits both sides of this. One is, in my opinion, it is sad to cheer on the failure of a massive project.
Yeah, like this because of disagreements with the lead and even maybe some creative mishaps around the, the dwarfs in the movie or or anything with it, right? The set design, the CGI, all of that. I just think it’s sad to cheer on the failure of something just because you don’t align with certain things when you think about it.
There’s so many people, thousands of people who worked on this movie and probably worked diligently pour their blood, sweat and tears into this for years and went through so many different missteps and reshoots and a fire on the set and all like just so many things. And there’s so many people whose lives and livelihoods depend on the financial success of this movie.
Not just the Disney bigwigs, I’m not necessarily talking about them, but cast crew, all the crew, crew, makeup artists, cast crews, they
[00:23:39] Micah Tomasella: all have families, you know, they all have families
[00:23:42] Conner Jones: and people who get royalties out these movies and all that. There’s just so much there. You know, scripture actually teaches us, Micah not to revel when our enemy.
Falls. Proverbs 24 17 specifically says, do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles obit I one 12. But do not gloat over the day of your brother and the day of his misfortune. First Peter denied Die Man obit. Shout out. I haven’t quote that
[00:24:07] Micah Tomasella: one
[00:24:07] Conner Jones: in a
[00:24:07] Micah Tomasella: while. It’s a good verse.
[00:24:08] Conner Jones: It’s
[00:24:09] Micah Tomasella: a good verse.
[00:24:09] Conner Jones: It is. And one Peter three, nine, do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling. But on the contrary, bless for this. You were called. That you may obtain a blessing, so don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t go and review bomb at something just because you didn’t like the political stances of the main actress.
You know, like I, I’m, I’m just, I I think there’s ways we can approach this differently than, yeah, wishing for something to be a failure anyways, on the flip side of things. Be wise with your words personally, I wonder if Ziegler could go back in time. Would she change her answers and refrain from making controversial statements on social media?
Maybe, maybe not. I really don’t know. I don’t know her heart. I don’t know her thinking there. But either way, Micah, there’s a lesson to be learned here for all of us, and that’s just to be careful and wise with our speech, honestly, in James chapter three, the first 10 verses speak to taming the tongue. The whole, I mean, a whole subsection of James chapter three in verses four and five specifically say, look at the ships.
Also that they are so large and are driven by strong winds. They’re guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. Yeah. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire. Yeah. So I think Zeiger maybe didn’t even think ahead to realize that some small little things that she said with, you know, the tongue would end up causing a forest fire of problems for this movie.
Yeah. For people around her causing Disney to hire security for her co-star, all of that and Proverbs 2123 emphasizes the concept as well and it says whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble. It’s just a great reminder that we need to watch what we say and how we go about it.
So this week, as you consider how you may respond with your words, any situation, negative situations, people in your life or even speaking into cultural hot topics, just think before you speak, pray before you speak, and make sure the words you say are of the right mind, heart, and soul, and that they will glorify God.
’cause anything else. Only serves to cause a forest fire of damage. Micah.
[00:26:27] Micah Tomasella: Hmm. Preach brother. Yeah, that’s good. Yes. Thank you for taking that and give us an, giving us a good spiritual and personal application to this. You know, we talk about this every week, but there’s. All of these new stories on the surface, you think that has nothing to do with me.
But I do believe God uses current events of the day and God is using the fact that we’re more connected than we’ve ever been before because we can learn lessons good and bad from others who make mistakes or do awesome things than maybe in the past we wouldn’t even known about or wouldn’t have been a controversy in the past, but we’re experiencing it today.
So God has something for us from the news and from the current events of the day. So Connor, thanks for pointing that out to us. Alright, let’s jump into just a small version of Hot Seat. Really just a couple of questions. So I, it, it got us thinking, it got me thinking as we’re talking about this Disney movie.
Connor, what is your favorite Disney movie of all time? Oh,
[00:27:18] Conner Jones: you know, I actually, I, I really, I do love the movie Lion King, the original nineties animation circle of life. Little Circle of Life, little Una Matata movie. Do you wanna s great movie, any of those? You don’t want me to sing any of those? Trust me, for our listeners, they don’t need
[00:27:35] Micah Tomasella: that.
One day. One day I’m gonna get him to sing y’all
[00:27:38] Conner Jones: the, yeah. And the other one that has actually been stuck in my head since I knew we were gonna be talking about Snow White. I don’t know why, but the, the music from Hercules is really good. Anything Alan Minkin. Puts together musically is just great.
Obviously Elton John and Han Zimmer did Lion King, but Alan Minkin did Aladdin and Little Mermaid. Yeah, all the music and all those movies, he’s just a genius himself. So those are great.
[00:28:01] Micah Tomasella: Yeah. Yeah. What about you? I mean, what do you think? I think, I think I’m thinking either Tarzan or Lion King, just like growing up.
Maybe, you know, kind of what I was watching. But then you look back on like Tarzan. You know, Phil Collins is just Phil ripping it up, man. I mean, the soundtrack on Tarzan is amazing. Amazing. You’ll be be In My Heart.
[00:28:22] Conner Jones: Yeah. And Phil
[00:28:23] Micah Tomasella: Collins wrote and, and, and produced a lot of the music for that movie. I mean, we’ve, we’ve gotten some great music out of Disney movies.
I mean, I’m gonna say Tarzan since you said Lion King.
[00:28:31] Conner Jones: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honestly, I, I don’t, I don’t blame you at all. It’s a really good one too. Yeah. And also, I’m just gonna say this and I, maybe somebody listening can. Connect the dots here for me. There’s a Phil Wickham worship song that sounds like a Tarzan song, and I can’t think of either of the song’s names right now.
So if you’re out there and you know what I’m talking about, like the notes are the same, the melody’s almost the same. Let us know. Maybe I’ll try to find it and come back next week with that
[00:28:58] Micah Tomasella: culture [email protected]. Email us there or you can DM us on Instagram after you follow us on Instagram at Culture Brief Podcast.
Okay, Connor, what about this? Are there any remakes that you like better than the original, since we’re talking about the Snow White remake?
[00:29:16] Conner Jones: No. I’m just gonna be straight up honest. It seems like the originals
[00:29:20] Micah Tomasella: have all been better. I do not. ID so I’ll, I’ll jump in an answer. I think this one’s close. Top Gun Maverick is close.
It’s not as good as the original, but the technology that’s the sequel. Okay whatever. Sequels, whatever. I just love Top Gun, like live action
[00:29:39] Conner Jones: remake means it was like an animated film then No, and
[00:29:41] Micah Tomasella: then, then, no, no.
[00:29:44] Conner Jones: Sorry. I didn’t mean to bust your verbal there, but that’s No,
[00:29:46] Micah Tomasella: no, no, no, no, no. You’re right.
Thanks for saying that. If, if, if the question was different and it was, you know,
[00:29:53] Conner Jones: what’s the best Sequel?
[00:29:54] Micah Tomasella: Sequel, yeah. Top Gun Maverick. I just love, I love both of those movies and so I just to jump in and say that. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:01] Conner Jones: I will say, I’m interested to see how have you seen that they’re redoing, they’re doing a live action remake of how to Train Your Dragon.
It’s coming out like this summer, I think. I’m not saying it’s gonna be good. I’m not even saying I’m gonna the movie theater to see it. Great. But I’m just interested to see how it does. What if it’s amazing. You know? I think it’s literally just the same movie, which didn’t even come out that long ago.
It’s not like we we’re making a, a nineties or eighties movie. Where were we making a movie that came out like a decade ago? And it’s gonna be basically the same thing just with real people in a CGI dragon.
[00:30:32] Micah Tomasella: So also when you’re, you have to understand the stage of life that Connor and I are in. We both have young children, so going to the movies is just, you really have to plan for it.
You know what I mean? So it’s gotta be something you really want to see. I mean, before kids, I think for the last several years, Connor went to a movie a week or something, basically. Yeah, essentially. He loves his kid, so he doesn’t go to very many movies anymore
[00:30:56] Conner Jones: there. There is definitely, that is true, but also I feel like the movies just haven’t been as great and that is true.
I love my kid, so it’s, it’s great time. I’m a willing sacrifice for my kid to not have to go to the movie theater, but yeah. Anyways, Micah, let’s talk about a few things to just watch out for this week. Yeah. Obviously we already talked about the signal chat and everything that we know so far up to this morning.
Yeah. When more texts were released, but I think we’ll just continue to see more fallout from that. We’ll see if that either kind of goes away. I do know that the Democrat party who has just been looking for anything to, to lean into and message on is hoping rally around sticks. They’re trying to rally, rally around around this.
They finally have something they can cling to anyways. Beyond that, we’ve got the White House came out and said that Russia and Ukraine did make another step forward towards a, a ceasefire, and they agreed to stop fighting in the Black Sea, along with not attacking one another’s. Energy infrastructure. So we kinda had the first pieces of that coming together last week.
Now it’s official. They’re gonna Yep. Kind of stop in the Black Sea area. And the poor area and energy infrastructure is not attacking that anymore. And this does maybe seem like the first legitimate step toward a deescalation since the start
[00:31:58] Micah Tomasella: of the war. I mean, and that story, I mean, you and I were talking about, you know, just ourselves because we are friends outside of this.
We were talking about how with this story, this signal group chat leak has dominated everything that. This is actually really big news. Yep. Ukraine and Russia agreeing to this type of ceasefire and both agreeing to it and both submitting to kind of the Oh, okay. Like if you, if you step out of this, this is what’s gonna happen.
Now we’ll see. Especially if Russia is gonna actually stay in this thing and do that. Ukraine kind of needs this to work. So we’ll see how that turns out. But you know, that’s actually a good thing that the White House is a part of that just gets. Completely swept under the rug because of this boneheaded move.
Boneheaded mistake. Okay, so Major League Baseball opening day. On the day of recording it’s today. Yeah. On the day of recording, it’s, there’s some games today and tomorrow, but there’s 28 teams playing on opening day. So Connor, how you feeling about the Ranger season? Man?
[00:32:58] Conner Jones: I’m sitting here, I’m looking at us.
I, I realize we both showed up in some Rangers gear. You’ve got your Rangers polo on. I’ve got my 2023 World Series hat that I got it. Game. That’s right. Never forget man. Went to game one of the World Series. Man, it’s, it’s, here’s the thing, I, I’m not the world’s biggest baseball fan. I think it is an American pastime.
I think it’s a great sport. I think they’ve made great improvements and I think the Rangers, you know, obviously they had their struggles last year coming off the World Series win. They had some injuries, but I think that they’re gonna be in good shape. Their offensive plan should be good. They, we’ve got Cory Seger, we’ve got Josh Young.
Jonah Heim, the whole crew is out here. They’re ready to play. Jonah Heim, shout out. Love that. Let’s go man.
[00:33:35] Micah Tomasella: Love that man. You sound like a big fan. You know, I think, I think the Rangers are primed to win the Al West. Okay. I am not a big Astros fan as any. Rangers fan would say, I’m probably being nice in my description of that.
I’d love to win the AL West. Then they can finish second, third, fourth, fifth, you know, wherever they wanna finish
[00:33:56] Conner Jones: last. Let’s hope they finish
[00:33:57] Micah Tomasella: last. Yeah. But I feel, I feel really good about this team If, if the pitching staff. Starting pitching and the bullpen stay healthy. And then the offense smashes the way that I think that they’re going to, with all of the additions, we have top to bottom, a top three lineup in the major league.
So the strong suit of this team this year is going to be the offense, but if Jacob deGrom can stay healthy, when you see him pitch, even if it’s for a short amount of time, you understand that he has. He has a stuff of legends. I mean, he’s got just an incredible arm and so hopefully he can stay healthy along with the, the rest of our pitchers and I think we can do pretty well this season.
So I am very excited for opening day and,
[00:34:40] Conner Jones: and then, you know, just for the rest of the league. I mean obviously we’re Rangers fans, but we’ve got a lot of listeners throughout the country, so hopefully y’all lost team too. Luck to your team as well, I guess unless you’re in Houston. We hope that the Astros just are not good.
But I, I, I’m excited to watch, I’m excited to watch the Dodgers just continue to do their thing where they spend like a billion dollars. We’re gonna flag for that one on payroll and they’re really good. And the Dodgers, just to clarify, played last week in Japan, so technically this season already started,
[00:35:03] Micah Tomasella: this is not the first Yeah.
Regular season game, but this is played in Japan last week is a true opening
[00:35:07] Conner Jones: day. Mm-hmm. And I love opening day, even if it’s, I’m not gonna sit and watch all the games. Me, it just feels like it’s the beginning of. Spring. It’s like saying we’re entering this phase of the American dream season of spring into summer, and then, you know, baseball wrapping up in the, the beautiful crisp weather days of fall.
Just, it’s always an exciting day. It’s exciting, man. Yep. And then Micah, obviously we’ve got the next phase of the March Madness tournament. So last week we had the round of 64 and 32 and our brackets, I honestly, my brackets are just completely tattered. I’m in. Either last place or second to last place in the three different bracket leagues I’m in.
Wow, that’s really unfortunate. I mean, ugh. How are you doing?
[00:35:47] Micah Tomasella: I’ve got three brackets. Two of them, I’m kind of in the middle of the pack, and then I’m in one that has 300 people that are a part of it that I’ve been doing since high school. 300 people. Yeah. It’s crazy. It’s it, and there’s prizes and everything.
It from a, it’s from a church thing from my youth group. I mean, anybody can join in, but the, the pastor of the church. You submit this physical copy of your bracket and then he tallies everybody’s score and then sends out texts and updates. So I am second right now. Of 300 people. So it’s, that’s actually really impressive.
I’m also just, I picked on this bracket specifically, I just picked almost all upsets and I actually picked Michigan to win it all. I, I picked Maryland to win the game that they won. Like I just picked a lot, you know, I picked McNee, you know, so it’s like there were just a lot of games that I just chose the underdog and it’s just working out for me.
[00:36:38] Conner Jones: Very interesting. I feel like there actually hasn’t been, like, there hasn’t really been a Cinderella story this year, which is
[00:36:43] Micah Tomasella: no big. Yeah, because they were upset conversation, but nobody was able to sustain it all the way through. Some upsets. Everybody that’s in the Sweet 16, there’s no, there’s no gigantic surprise in the Sweet 16 right now,
[00:36:52] Conner Jones: all Power five schools from the big conferences.
So I don’t know. It’ll be fun to watch because it’s all Power five schools, so that means we’ve got some really big matchup. I’m excited to watch Duke play Arizona. I think that one, yeah, that’s gonna be a good one. Thursday night mm-hmm. We’ll be watching that and keep up with that. And so by by Sunday afternoon, we’ll have the final four set and ready to roll.
It’s exciting man. It’s an exciting
[00:37:12] Micah Tomasella: time for sports. You know, you’ve got the PGA tour happening every weekend now. Mm-hmm. You’ve got, you got Major League baseball, their season’s opening up. You got March Madness. I mean, it’s just, it’s just an exciting time. Alright, so guys, thanks so much for joining us for this week’s episode of Culture Brief, a Denison Forum podcast.
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Have a great week y’all.
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