☀️ The inaugural episode of The Will Spencer Podcast. ☀️
This episode features a dialogue with Dr. Vishal Mangalwadi, an eminent Christian philosopher renowned for his insights into the intersection of faith and culture. Spencer introduces Mangalwadi as a luminary whose writings, including 'The Book That Made Your World', challenge contemporary understandings of history and civilization through a biblical lens.
The conversation weaves personal narratives of Spencer's youth with Mangalwadi's profound philosophical assertions, creating a tapestry that illustrates the enduring relevance of biblical principles in a rapidly changing world.
Takeaways:
Dr. Vishal Mangalwadi argues that the Bible fundamentally shaped Western civilization and its values, including human dignity.
Education is a critical domain that the church must reclaim to effectively disciple nations and communities.
The shift from viewing truths as sacred to self-evident has led to a cultural decline in America.
Mangalwadi highlights the importance of understanding historical influences on modern thought, particularly in relation to Christianity.
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MONOLOGUE:
Hello, my name is Will Spencer, and thanks for joining me for the first episode of The Will Spencer podcast.
This is a weekly interview show featuring extended discussions with authors, leaders, and influencers who can help us make sense of our changing world today. I release new episodes every week on Friday.
And if you’re looking for the Renaissance of Men podcast, you’ve come to the right place. This podcast replaces that one. Though hopefully you’ve heard a message or two about that by now.
My guest this week is Dr. Vishal Mangalwadi, and he’s India’s foremost Christian philosopher. He’s also the author of 30 books including two about the Bible: The Book That Made Your World and This Book Changed Everything. Dr. Mangalwadi has also written extensively about Eastern religion in When the New Age Gets Old, and his classic The World of Gurus. And last year, he appeared on Dr. Jordan Peterson’s podcast for a fascinating two hour discussion.
To introduce Dr. Mangalwadi, his work, and this new podcast, I’d like to begin with a story to help you see what The Will Spencer Podcast is about, and why Dr. Mangalwadi is a blessing of a first guest.
If you’ll indulge me...
When I was a boy, I had two kinds of posters on my wall. First, athletes. But those posters weren’t of action shots on the field or court. I preferred portraits that showed what the men were about. I’m thinking of the famous “Wings” Nike ad of Michael Jordan, which if you haven’t seen it, was a classic, back when Nike’s advertising was still good.
And I wasn’t a particularly athletic kid, except for a two all-star seasons in baseball when I was 13 and 14 years old that hold some of my most treasured memories, including one bases-loaded, two-out walk off home run. Every little boy’s dream.
Other than that, though, I did better in school than in sports. But looking back today, I think the athletes on my wall were mirroring something back to me about what it means to be a man, which isn’t unusual for a boy.
The other kind of posters I had on my wall I still remember today: they were landscape photography, including Ansel Adams and more. Now, I grew up an indoor kid in the middle of a major American city. My family didn’t travel, nor did I really notice or care about that fact. And I didn’t get into photography until my sophomore year in high school. But long before that, I was decorating my walls with epic mountains, rivers, and valleys.
Why? What were those posters mirroring to me?
Looking back, I think they were a reflection of some part of myself that I was yet to discover. Because the very night the calendar ticked over to a new millennium, the year 2000 or Y2K, I realized I had a desire to travel the world, which I nurtured and protected for 16 years, until it finally become possible. And man was it a fight to get there.
But I don’t believe that desire was put in me one day. I believe it was always part of me, expressing itself on the walls of my room. I just didn’t know that’s what it was.
So it’s very possible that in some sense I’ve always been a traveler, or if you prefer an explorer. And so I ask, what does an explorer do?
The first thing an explorer does is move from one place to the next. Not out of a restlessness or an addiction to novelty, rather a curiosity to see what’s there. I wasn’t driven by a desire for novel stimuli anymore than you turn the page in a book because you’re bored with the page you’re reading. You turn the page because you’ve reached the end of it, and it’s time for the next one. I did the same with the places I’ve visited.
The second thing an explorer does, if he’s smart, is travel light, which is to say he knows what is essential to bring along. I traveled with a carry-on size backpack, just 40 Liters. And in that bag I had clothes for four seasons, including the beach and below-freezing cold, plus appropriate attire for trekking the countryside AND dining in the city in a way that didn’t make me look like I’d just come from trekking in the countryside. Oh, and I had two weeks’ worth of underwear.
No scuba gear, no surfboard, no night vision goggles. Just the essentials so I could pack up and move fast, as the moment asked or sometimes demanded.
The third thing an explorer does is look closely. In the traveling community there’s an argument between tourists and travelers, with the latter greatly disrespecting the former, which I never did. If an elderly person or a midwesterner can ONLY get themselves out of the United States by being shepherded on a tour bus, hallelujah, they did it. They busted out of their comfort zone. So I honored those brave souls for their courage.
But as for me, the appeal of being a solo traveler was that I could linger if I wanted to. This enabled me to be invited “back stage” into the lives of locals. Because travel is a lot like theater. The things you see on stage are true, but not the whole truth. In many countries the tourist bubble is a form of illusion that protects both you and the residents from encountering each other in views of the less tidy aspects of a country.
But me being the man I am, and traveling for as long as I did, I learned to see through the bubble, almost right away. The locals could feel that I didn’t have an agenda, I just wanted to understand. So, many were very gracious to help me do so.
Which leads to the fourth thing a good traveler does, which is the most challenging: bring people along.
Yes, some explorers travel for themselves, seeking a private experience. And that’s fine. But shortly into my own journey I recognized the immense privilege I had being able to travel the world the way I did, AND being the sort of man who was purpose built to do it, right down to my hair, or lack thereof.
Laugh at my bald head all you want, but it sure was easy to wash my hair on the road. My showers often lasted less than 60 seconds, and I could even give myself a haircut for free, in the dark. So there.
Anyway, not long into my adventure I recognized that the number of people in all of human history with the means, motivation, and opportunity to see the world the way I did probably numbers in the thousands TOTAL, if that. I also knew that even if most people COULD do it, the vast majority wouldn’t. As in, hand them a packed bag, and a one way plane ticket to anywhere, and they’d say thanks but no thanks.
Meanwhile, that’s all I dreamt of for 16 years. And when I finally achieved it, I wanted to share it. In fact, I felt a responsibility to.
The only thing is, I couldn’t pack people in my bag, because it turns out that people are much bigger than carry on size.
That’s why I started my travel blog and instagram, to give people a window into what I was experiencing, in a way that hopefully offered escape, entertainment, and inspiration for those who’d never dream of leaving the Shire.
Except now that phase of my life is over. It ended in 2020, never to return.
But if I was an explorer when I was a young boy, am I not an explorer now? It turns out I still am.
And that is the purpose of The Will Spencer Podcast. I’m going on an adventure, and I’m bringing you along. Because if the Renaissance of Men was the product of my 23 year long journey through masculinity and into faith in Christ, then The Will Spencer Podcast is me taking my values on the next road to see what’s and WHO is out there.
To see what I mean, get out your phone or laptop. The new podcast cover and logo was designed by my good friends over at Tigrett Agency, who edited my documentary materials, designed my old Ren of Men website, my new Will Spencer website, and also did my photography way back when. Brandon Tigrett and his team are the unsung heroes of the most elite stuff I do.
The bird-shaped logo is an albatross, one of God’s creatures that’s inspired me for a decade. It’s one of the largest birds on earth, with a wingspan of up to 12 feet. It hatches in the South Pacific, many in New Zealand, and when it comes of age it sets off on a trip around the world. It flies over the oceans before returning home to mate with one partner for life.
You can probably see why I found that bird so inspiring.
Brandon and co took that idea, and wove it into a logo that also features my initials WS, and I’m thrilled with their work. Plus, I’ve always wanted an easter egg style logo that reveals a secret if you look, and they delivered. Thanks guys.
That albatross represents the adventure I want to take us on with The Will Spencer Podcast, talking to men and women shaping the world with their thoughts, words, and actions.
And with a broader format that’s no longer focused on masculinity, Christianity, and the family, I can introduce you to some of my other interests, including filmmakers, chessmasters, photographers, fiction authors, historians, businessmen, travelers, and more.
I’m not ashamed to say I aspire to be a Christian alternative to Joe Rogan, hosting just as in-depth discussions but through a different worldview lens.
To that end, not all of my guests will be Christian. But they’ll know *I* am. And maybe that means some of them will say no.
Though with your help, perhaps we can grow this show so big that they won’t be able to. Because I believe it’s vital that Reformed Protestants who are able to should begin bravely re-engaging with the public square, rather than remaining in their tight corner of cultural and theological familiarity.
That’s why my new podcast is about a journey, because I have always been an explorer. I hope to be an example of what I’d like to see. Thus it’s time once again for me to leave home, to see what and who is out there, and bring you along. No backpack required.
And my first guest sets the tone in a glorious way.
His name is Dr. Vishal Mangalwadi, and as mentioned earlier he’s India’s foremost Christian philosopher. He’s traveled to more than 50 countries around the world to share his insights, and has even been imprisoned multiple times in India due to his social reform efforts among India’s poor.
Dr. Mangalwadi has also written 30 books. But the one that brought him to my attention is called The Book That Made Your World, and it’s about the massive impact that the Bible had on world history.
Friends, The Book That Made Your World is glorious. It brought me more joy to read than anything since CS Lewis’ Perelandra. Yes, I left my heart on Perelandra, and it’s still there. But it vacations in The Book That Made Your World, back here on Thulcandra.
Because as Dr. Mangalwadi and I discuss in our interview, Christians this past century have lost their nerve. In fact, Vishal calls Protestant Christianity a defeated religion. It seems our fathers bought the lie that that Christianity was a religion of patriarchal colonizing oppressors. When in fact, Christianity and more specifically the Bible, brought social, political, cultural, and theological liberation to the world, including to to women and children too.
The thing is, I’ve seen this firsthand in my travels through India, among other nation. My most popular tweets, one of which has 23 MILLION views, was about how the Christian Worldview built the West in a way that India has rejected, and how those differences are obvious to anyone who actually travels between the two countries.
But it wasn’t always so, as Dr. Mangalwadi demonstrated in his book. He helped me see that while the British were far from perfect, many of the early missionaries were determined to make India into a self-governing Christian state. Christian Nationalism... in India? Someone call Doug Wilson and Stephen Wolfe!
But The Book That Made Your World is about much more than just India. It’s also about how the Bible built the soul of Western civilization, and how Scripture’s distinctive imprint can be found in everything from our politics to science to the arts. Dr. Mangalwadi’s book also shows that without the Bible as our foundation, our Western soul is withering. We can see it daily in the decay of the family, of course, but that decay was even evident back in the early 90’s in the music and message of Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana.
That’s why Dr. Mangalwadi’s “The Book That Made Your World” was such a joy to read. He surfaces and celebrates the buried foundations of our world in a way that will inspire believers AND make non-believers take notice, which is why Dr. Mangalwadi was interviewed by Jordan Peterson and Eric Metaxas’ as well.
So as I begin this new adventure with The Will Spencer Podcast, I hope you can see why Dr. Mangalwadi is the perfect guest to begin the journey in the same way Rich Lusk was the perfect guest to conclude the Renaissance of Men. Dr. Mangalwadi ties together my trip around the world, into and through Eastern religion, finally arriving in Christ, and along the way witnessing without knowing it just how much the world was shaped by the Bible, which I’m thrilled to help you discover too.
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And please welcome the first guest on The Will Spencer Podcast, to help me kick off my next grand adventure which you are hereby invited on. A three hour conversation with India’s foremost Christian philosopher and the author of “The Book That Made Your World,” Dr. Vishal Mangalwadi.
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