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You can stuff, you know, hundreds of people into a. Into the fuselage of some jet. Hello, and welcome to the Skypod. I'm Sky Jutani. This episode is being brought to you by Holy Post Media and Vandelay Industries. We are doing a skydive episode this week. We haven't done one of these in a while. I should say I haven't done one of these in a while because skydives are where it's just me. No guest, no Mike, no Caitlin, no one else on the show. It is just me monologuing. And full disclosure, why I'm doing a skydive is because we originally had scheduled a French Friday for this week. That's usually the last Friday of the month. And David French and I were scheduled to record on Monday, but that massive storm hit the South. David was apparently in Nashville and he got snowed in, iced in, power outage, and no way of recording a podcast. So Mike and I decided on the fly. Well, let's do skydive because I have thoughts in my head, things to do. So hoping to have David back on soon once he digs out from this horrible storm. And we'll get him in here for French Friday. There's always plenty of things to talk to him about, so look forward to that. Thankfully, here in Chicago, we didn't get nailed by that massive storm. We got maybe a few inches of snow when that came through the rest of the country, but, man, is it cold. It is really, really cold. This is my least favorite time of the year. Basically between New Year's and the end of March, spring break time. I call it the long dark of Moria for you Lord of the Rings fans. It's just cold, dark, miserable. But there are a couple things happening. Sometimes I take these skydives to update you all on other things going on both with me and with Holy Post Media. We recently made a decision as a family to add another puppy to our household. Some of you know, we have one dog. I love dogs. I've always had a dog. We have one dog right now. His name is Steve. He's an Aussie doodle. Best dog I've ever had. He's fantastic. He's five years old now, and some friends of ours who have a farm not too far from us just had puppies. And we found out about this, and my wife found out about this and the kids found out about this, and everyone got on my case about getting another dog. So I think we're going to do that. The puppies were top of the list, apparently. So we have the pick of the litter. These are Bernadoodles. So Bernese Mountain dog, dog poodle mix. This dog, whatever one we get is probably going to be twice as big as Steve. Steve's about 40 pounds. So the new Bernadoodle, I don't know, 75, 80 pounds. It's a big dog. We don't have a name yet. So if you guys have suggestions for a name that might go well with Steve, I'm open to them. Thought I had was maybe trying to get a sponsor to pay for the dog's name. We could. We could name. We could name the dog Poncho after the shirts that we advertise on Holy Post. Or maybe Sunday's Dog Food would be interested in sponsoring the dog of the name of the dog. We call him Sunday. I don't know. But open to names and suggestions. We have a family chat going on right now where they're all coming up with their names. I told everybody my only condition for agreeing to add this dog to our lives, since I'm going to be doing most of the work, at least my wife and I was. I have final veto power on naming rights. So everyone was upset with me when I named Steve Steve. They thought it was ridiculous, but now they all love it and they couldn't imagine him named anything else. I don't know. I've always had dogs with like human names. When was a kid, my dog's name was Jesse. He came with that name. We got him from the pound. Then we got Sammy, and then we had Alfie, which I guess is kind of a cute name. He's named after a local burger restaurant here. And then Steve, who I named after Steve Harrington from Stranger Things. So I don't know what the new puppy's name is going to be. I think we're going to be getting the puppy at the end of March, maybe early April. So they were just born a couple days ago. But that's a little bright thing to look forward to in this long dark of Moria. Right now. A couple of other updates before we get into the meat of what I want to talk about the World Born in youn, My book that I have been writing throughout 2025 and releasing as a serial on Holy Post Plus. It is now done. At least this version of it is done. All the chapters are now posted on Holy Post Plus. They're available for you to read online, digitally, or the audiobook. And if you have not yet signed up for Holy Post plus to get access to that book along with everything.
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Else that we do, including full Skypod.
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Episodes, then you should do that. You can sign up@holeypost.com and if you use the promo code book, you get 20% off. Again, that won't just give you access to my book the World Born in youn, but it's also gonna give you access to everything we do at Holy Post Media. All of our shows full episodes of Skypod, Getting Schooled by Caitlin Chess, 66 Verses to Explain the Bible by Issa McCauley, the book club behind the scenes footage, the live streams goes on and on and on. Just an enormous amount of stuff there all the time. And I think at least most of the people who've signed up for Holy Post stay signed up for Holy Post plus because they find it so valuable in the world Born in youn. For those of you who aren't familiar with this writing project of mine, it's.
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Written as a series of letters to.
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My young adult kids about my own faith formation. So it's kind of a memoir. It's definitely the most transparent and vulnerable.
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Book I've ever written, but it's also.
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Giving advice to them about what I think is necessary to follow Christ in today's very divided, very pluralistic culture as Christians. So it's timely and relevant to the things we're facing and challenges we're facing in America today. And also a look back on what formed my perspective on faith. So to get that, thank you for all of you who have signed up for it, who've been a part of this journey with me, who've engaged the book, encouraged me through writing it, giving me great feedback, and have told me how meaningful it's been to you. Really appreciate that. Love to see more people join us at Holy Post plus with that that.
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Discount code book, because not only will.
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You get access to all this stuff, but Holy Post plus is really the primary way we fund all of the things that we're doing here at Holy Post Media, all of the Christian pro neighbor content we're trying to produce.
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Last thing some people have asked me.
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About speaking that I'm doing and to.
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Be honest, I'm not traveling as much.
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As I used to and speaking around the country with the same cadence that I used to. But there are a couple things I'm doing that I wanted you to be aware of.
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One is at the end of February.
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28Th 8th I'm going to be in Phoenix for the Communities of Flourishing Conference.
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This is being organized by Caleb Campbell and I'm going to be there along.
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With my friend David Swanson, who's a pastor here in Chicago. He's been on the show before to talk about immigration issues in the city. Malcolm Foley, who's a regular contributor to Holy Post Media, part of Esau's show quite a bit.
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Also, Kit Danley and Linda Morris are speakers.
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So you can check that out. Just Google it, look it up on social media. Communities of flourishing. That's February 28th. And then some of you know that I, over the last year, year and a half, have been a semi regular speaker at New Song, which is a church in not Irvine. It used to be in Irvine. It's in Santa Ana in Southern California, in Orange County. New Song is it's just a wonderful church I've been connected to for many years through my friendship with Dave Gibbons, who's the founding pastor. And starting last year, I started coming with some regularity. So now I think the the pattern.
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Is I'm speaking at New Song roughly every other month. So I'm going to be there Again.
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I think March 29th, Palm Sunday, I'll be speaking.
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So if you want to come to.
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New Song, see me there, say hi.
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Come to one of the services.
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It'd be great. You could just go to their website to find out about others. And then I also speak regularly at a ministry here in Chicago called Chicago Fellowship. It's a men's fellowship that meets on Thursday mornings in the city downtown. You can go to Chicago fellowship.org I think it's.org maybe.com Google it, you'll find it. And that's been a really meaningful place for me to engage in relationships. There's some wonderful people there. A number of folks connected to Holy Post media are a part of that. And you can always, if you're not in the Chicago area, you can get those messages online. They have a podcast feed as well. So those are places I'm speaking if you want to come out and join me. Great.
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Okay. Diving into what I really want to.
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Talk about, what's been on my mind. So let me take you back a couple weeks. I was actually out in California speaking.
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At New Song on Sunday morning.
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And usually my pattern is there's two.
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Services at New Song. I speak at the first service, then I speak at the second service.
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And immediately after finishing my sermon in the second service, I I basically walk out the door into my rental car, drive to John Wayne Airport there in Irvine and get onto my flight back home to Chicago. It's just the way the scheduling works out.
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It happened to be the Sunday that.
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The Bears were playing in the divisional playoff game against the LA Rams. And so a lot of people on my flight, it's four, four and a half hour flight back to Chicago. A lot of people on my flight were all watching this playoff game. And for those of you who care about football or the Bears, you'll remember that the very end of the game, Caleb Williams, the Bears quarterback, threw a.
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Crazy, was it 40 yard, almost Hail.
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Mary kind of pass into the end zone that was caught for a touchdown to, to send the game, you know, crazy. It was just a crazy comeback. They ultimately lost the game, sadly. But at that moment on the plane, like everyone screamed. It was, it was really funny because we're all watching on our iPads or phones or whatever, streaming it. And I don't know how many people on the plane that was going from LA to Chicago, how many were Rams fans, how many were Chicago fans, but there was this just scream that came.
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From the whole plane. I've only been on a few planes.
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A few flights that have had people scream like that.
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And this is the only one where.
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It was exciting and fun to have a plane full of people screaming.
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I have been on some other flights.
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Over the years where there was screaming going on because of some crazy turbulence or near misses or other things that have happened, go arounds from landings. But this was a different experience and it was actually really enjoyable to be stuck in a tube with people watching this game together. But the reason I'm bringing that up is because I fly a lot and I have flown a lot since I was a kid. And I've always been fascinated by airplanes and basically large moving mechanical things in general, cars as well. I love cars. And when I was a kid I remember my grandfather who my grandparents retired up to Northern Michigan the up when I was a boy and my grandfather on a few occasions flew a plane, a small, small Cessna kind of plane down to Illinois to pick up me and my brother and fly us back up to Michigan to hang out with him. My grandfather had, he'd flown in World War II. He was a navigator on the B17s in the 8th Air Force that bombed Germany, North Africa. And if you saw Masters of the Air, that incredible series, I forget who he was on Amazon or something. So that's what my grandfather did. And as a boy I enjoyed flying. But when I got in that little airplane with him, it was kind of terrifying. It was definitely the smallest plane I'd ever been in. And I remember asking him if he gets scared of flying and his response, I'll never forget, he said, not unless someone is shooting at me. And he'd been shot down and experienced all kinds of crazy things in World War II. But it was a reminder that there's really no legitimate reason to be afraid of flying in most cases. And he's right. When I became a teenager, though, I. I don't know why. I just developed this irrational fear of flying. And maybe it's because as a teenager, I was more aware of the things that could go wrong, or I was more aware of crashes that had happened that I was ignorant of as a kid. But my way of dealing with that fear as a teenager, and this tells you something about my personality and makeup, is I studied aviation. I learned all about the physics of flying. I learned all about airplanes, how they're designed, and all the.
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All the different technical things that go into it. And as I learned more and more.
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And more about airplanes and more about how they worked, it kind of calmed.
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My nerves and my fears.
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That's generally how I deal with stress and anxiety in my life. As I learn. If you guys are into enneagram stuff, this is a typical five kind of thing.
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But one of the things I learned.
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Is that.
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Flying is still by far.
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The safest way to travel. You are 100 times more likely to die in a car accident on the way to the airport than to be killed in a plane crash. There are 100,000 commercial flights every single day around the planet, and flying today is actually five times safer than it was even 30 years ago.
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And that last statistic is the one.
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I found surprising, which I looked up recently, and.
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Yeah, okay, well, if there's so much.
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Aviation's grown a lot in the last three years. There's way more flights every day than there used to be.
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And yet it's gotten increasingly safer. You would think as the number of.
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Flights increases, the number of accidents increases, but that's actually not been the case with aviation. Why?
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Well, it comes down to one idea.
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And this is the big idea that I really want to talk about today, and that's redundancy.
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You might be thinking, why on earth.
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Are we talking about airplane sky? I'll get to it. But first, we got to understand this idea of redundancy.
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Redundancy. I don't mean this in the economic.
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Sense or in the efficiency sense.
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I mean it in the engineering sense.
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In engineering, redundancy is not a negative term. It's a positive one.
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And when it comes to aviation, especially, redundancy is the idea that every critical.
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System within an airplane for Flight should have multiple backup systems so that if.
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Any one of them fails, it's not.
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Going to mean a crash or a major accident. So airplanes have more engines than they need to fly. Most commercial aircraft, if they lose half of their engines, they can still take off safely.
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Multiple computers, multiple control systems, multiple hydraulic systems, multiple fuel lines, fuel tanks. And even the reason we still have.
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Two pilots on a flight deck is for redundancy, because if one pilot is incapacitated, has a heart attack, whatever, there's still someone there to fly the plane.
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So the redundancies that are built into.
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Modern aircraft.
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Ensure that when something critical.
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Does happen, the plane can continue.
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And these redundancies have been built into the system over time because we have.
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A brilliant system that when there is an airplane accident, there's a thorough investigation that explores what went wrong. And then based on what went wrong, they can decide was there a lack of redundancy in a critical system.
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And then they build that redundancy into future aircraft.
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And over the decades, now a century of aviation, we have created the safest form of travel ever.
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Nassim Nicholas Talib refers to this idea.
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As anti fragile, that as a system.
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Progresses, it not only becomes stronger or more robust, but actually learns from its.
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Failures and then puts systems in place to make sure that that failure can't be repeated again.
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So let me tell you two stories, two aviation stories that illustrates when redundancy.
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Works and when a failure of redundancy was exposed.
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So one comes from a Qantas flight.
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Back in 2010, an A380. This is the largest commercial airplane ever built, full two deck, two story, massive jumbo jet. And it was flying over the Pacific Ocean and it had what's called an uncontained engine failure.
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That basically means one of this plane's.
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Four engines absolutely exploded and it sent.
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Shrapnel through the wing, through the fuselage.
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To completely destroy the engine. Multiple control surfaces were damaged and destroyed.
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The debris severed hydraulic lines, the landing gear.
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I mean, it was a massive midair catastrophe for this airplane.
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And yet the crazy part was this jet continued to fly for another two hours and it landed safely.
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No one was injured. The whole reason is because of redundancy.
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Because even though an engine exploded and.
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All the damage that was done, there.
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Were backup systems that ensured it could.
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Still fly and land safely. And incredible story of kind of modern engineering brilliance.
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Now, the opposite is really a horrible and tragic story.
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But some of you may have, might remember this.
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Back in 2019, the Boeing 737 Max airplane, which was the newest iteration of.
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The 737, which was originally designed back in the 1960s.
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The Max variant had just been released and there were two fatal crashes of this brand new airplane. One was in Ethiopia, the other in Indonesia, and 340.
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Some people lost their lives in these two accidents.
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And it was stunning because these were brand new airplanes. The aviation industry had never seen anything like this.
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And the FAA immediately grounded after the second crash, grounded all 737 maxs around the world.
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I remember this vividly because it was March of 2019, and my family was.
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Scheduled to fly from Chicago to New.
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York for spring break to pick up.
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A cruise that we were taking. And we were flying Southwest Airlines and they Fly in all 737 fleet.
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And so they grounded a bunch of.
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Their airplanes because of this mess that had happened.
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And our flight got canceled.
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It was a fiasco.
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We ended up getting on a later flight. And remember, we were landing into Newark.
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In New Jersey, and I looked out.
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The window and I could see our ship sailing away through New York harbor.
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As our plane was landing.
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Turned into a huge mess for our spring break.
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But it was all because of this.
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New system that Boeing had put onto.
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Their new 737 Maxs.
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And this is called MCAS.
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I won't bore you. There's some really interesting documentaries about how.
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Boeing screwed this whole thing up. But they violated their own engineering principles when they added this new system onto the 737. Because the system relied on a single sensor, what's called an angle of attack.
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Sensor on the airplane, which meant if.
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That one sensor broke, if it failed, then this whole new electronic system of.
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The Boeing 37 would fail and the plane could crash.
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And that's precisely what happened in both of these incidents. It was the lack of redundancy in.
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A critical system that led to these horrific failures.
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So the big picture in aviation is redundancy is really, really important. But there's always a trade off because the price of redundancy is more weight. It just, it's a lot. How do I put it simply? So non engineering, non aviation geeks will get this. Like, you can create a passenger plane that only has one engine or only one computer system, or only one hydraulic.
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System, or only one pilot.
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And that one plane would be a lot lighter, which means it burns less fuel, which means the cost to operate the plane would be a lot cheaper, which means the ticket to fly on that plane would be a lot less. So you could imagine a scenario in which you could fly cross country on one of these really simple airplanes for, I don't know, $10 a ticket. But would you want to do that? Would you accept a $10 flight on.
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A plane that has no backup systems on it? Probably not.
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So all this redundancy, multiple engines, multiple systems, multiple fuel tanks, all that stuff, adds a lot of weight to an airframe, which requires then more fuel to fly, which costs more money, which then gets passed on to us when we buy a ticket. So there's a trade off, and the tension is between efficiency and redundancy and between savings and safety. Over time, however, redundancy creates more reliability and more stability, which is why, at least now, most of us, hopefully when we fly in an airplane, we're not thinking about, is it going to make it?
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Are we going to crash? Because we've created the safest travel system the world's ever known with the benefit of redundancy. Okay, that's a long introduction. Thank you for tolerating my aviation geekiness.
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Here's why it's on my mind Ever.
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Since that screaming on the flight a couple weeks ago for joy over the bears rather than some fear of crashing.
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Here's my hypothesis and how it relates.
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To what I'm really after.
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My hypothesis is that our culture's overemphasis on efficiency has resulted in dismantling the redundancies that previous generations have created for our protection and our benefit. And it's now making everything a lot more fragile. So if you can think about it this way, just as the aviation industry has created the safest planes we've ever known, because they've learned from past accidents and have built redundancies into the planes we now fly, making it the safest system ever. Likewise, prior generations of humans, of Christians, of Americans, pick whatever community you want. Prior generations have learned from their mistakes and have created systems of redundancy that have made modern life for us relatively prosperous, safe, and flourishing. But in recent years, recent generations, we have lost a value of redundancy. We have so emphasized efficiencies that we've actually dismantled the redundancies that we've inherited from previous generations. And I think this helps explain why so many things are failing us today, why so many industries, institutions, even just our way of life is not working the way it used to. And what I want to spend the rest of the skydive doing is just unpacking examples of, of where we've given up on redundancies for efficiencies and how it's backfiring on us. So this kind of started at the highest altitude. To continue the aviation metaphor. Just the hyper individualism of our culture today is sort of a rebuke of redundancy. One way to think about it is that community itself and family is a form of relational redundancy. It's the idea that. What's that old proverb? Is it an African proverb that said, if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group? And that's how most of our society was organized. It was designed so that we did things in groups, we did things in relational connection with others. Not the most efficient way to do it. It's much easier to go alone and go fast. But that group commitment ensured that we could go longer, we could go farther, we could sustain our travel together. And the hyper individualism of modern culture is dismantling those relational systems of redundancy. Some examples, not that long ago, most people lived in extended family units. Not just in, like your immediate home, but you lived close to your parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents. There were whole networks of people that helped you through life. And increasingly, as we become hyper individualized, we're moving away from those networks of relational connections to be independent social networks, community groups. We're just not committed to them the way we used to be. Even the most intimate of family networks, the nuclear family isn't what it used to be. I'm not trying to be like James Dobson and focus on the family stuff here, but there's a wisdom in the way family units have been designed. I looked this up before recording, In America today, 40% of children are born to single moms. And that doesn't mean there's no dad in the picture. But they're not born to households that are structured around the greater stability of marriage. And we are seeing declining marriage rates, more people choosing to cohabitate or have serial monogamous relationships rather than a single committed one. At the same time that all these relational redundancies are being stripped away so that we can be more autonomous, more individual, more unfettered and restrained by relational commitments. At the same time that that's happened, we've seen a consistent rise in feelings of loneliness and deaths, of despair, addictions, a sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness in American society. So the left looks at all that and they tend to want to give an economic explanation. Well, it's cost of living is high. It's difficult to.
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Don't worry, this is not the end of the episode. There's actually plenty more. But to listen to the rest, you need to be a Holy Post subscriber, so head over to holeypost.com skypod and sign up for just $5 a month. Not only will you get uninterrupted episodes of the Skypod, which means you'll never.
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Have to hear this dumb announcement again.
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