Shores Of Ignorance

About Shores Of Ignorance

A podcast by Matt McCloskey and Michael Vaclav

Publisher

Shores of Ignorance

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

24 Sept 2018

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

278 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Oct 2026

   Ep 299: Washer Fluid and the Meaning of Life

   Once you name a thing, it judges you. So we'd rather not look. This week Michael poured a cup of water on his windshield instead of buying washer fluid. ⠀ The problems never run out. There is no arrival. So where does hope come from? We talk about holding plans loosely, communion as digestion, an age at war with definitions, and finding rest in a God who can't be tamed. ⠀ Cheers y'all 🍻 ⠀ Chapters: (00:00) To the Shores of Giddiness (01:00) Patterns That Don't Serve Us (07:15) Washer Fluid Avoidance (11:15) Stress Shrinks the Horizon (12:15) Holding Plans Loosely (19:00) Are We There Yet (29:00) Dayenu (31:15) Eat My Body, Digest Me (38:00) Anti Reality (45:30) When Michael's Reality Broke (53:00) God Is a Wild Man (1:01:00) Anti Science and Anti Definition (1:16:00) To Name It Is to See It (1:24:00) People Who Aren't There (1:30:45) Confession and Repentance ⠀ Resources: • Eric Weinstein on The Diary of a CEO - https://www.youtube.com/@TheDiaryOfACEO • Dayenu - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayenu • Rich Mullins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Mullins • Paradise Lost - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost • Jordan Peterson - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson • A Moveable Feast - https://www.amazon.com/Moveable-Feast-Restored-Ernest-Hemingway/dp/1439182728 • Nineteen Eighty-Four - https://www.amazon.com/1984-Signet-Classics-George-Orwell/dp/0451524934 • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion,_the_Witch_and_the_Wardrobe • Avatar - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film) • This Is Fine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_is_fine • Sisyphus - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus • Stress and the Prefrontal Cortex (Arnsten) - https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2648 ⠀ Fact Checks: • ⚠️ Chronic stress shrinks long-term thinking — Needs context • ✅ James 4 "if the Lord wills" — Verified • ✅ Paul's planned visits were hindered — Verified • ✅ Dayenu is a Passover Seder song — Verified • ✅ Weinstein says nearly 100% of us are insane — Verified • ✅ Rich Mullins "God is a wild man" — Verified • ⚠️ Evil believes its knowledge is sufficient — Needs context • ✅ "Feel for your hatchet" is from Narnia — Verified • ✅ Widowhood effect — Verified • ⚠️ Median COVID death age above life expectancy — Needs context • ⚠️ Unarmed police shootings study, Harvard firing — Needs context • ⚠️ Jung on thinking in words vs pictures — Needs context • ⚠️ Newspeak shrinking to a few dozen words — Needs context • ✅ Hemingway on Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast — Verified • ⚠️ Americans are the fattest people in history — Needs context Read the full fact checks here - https://shoresofignorance.com/episodes/299/ ⠀ Find us here: x.com/mattmccloskey x.com/michaelvaclav All Matt's Links - https://solo.to/mattmccloskey All Michael's Links - https://solo.to/michaelvaclav Shores of Ignorance - https://shoresofignorance.com Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/2BnhB2qVLP4gdRjy7R0uo0 Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shores-of-ignorance/id1438899219 Sovereign Goods - https://sovereigngoods.shop Cafe Medici - https://mediciroasting.com

2. 

   8 Oct 2026

   Ep 298: You Are Traffic

   Matt and Michael start with ACL weekend and the arrival of fall. But the conversation quickly turns to something deeper. What are our artists telling us? Matt shares his observation from watching ACL clips on Instagram. The performers all seemed low energy, emaciated, and disengaged. No rock and roll. No guitars. Just DJs and singers buttoned up to the neck. It sparks a bigger question. If artists are the first to catch the zeitgeist, what zeitgeist are they catching right now? They explore the line between artist and propagandist. When Ed Sheeran uninvited Macklemore for making political statements at a concert, people demanded Sheeran pick a side. When a performer at ACL held a sign reading castrate the Cornell 7, it raised the question of whether that is art or propaganda. Michael shares how he left an Eddie Vedder concert early because the politics drowned out the music. The conversation spirals through the algorithm as a false god. You are not a person on Instagram. You are traffic. Performers are not playing to people anymore. They are playing to a sea of iPhones broadcasting to the algorithm. The result is a culture that celebrates everything and scrutinizes nothing, where the only sin is asking whether something is actually good. They land on the hardest truth of all. Matt confesses that even when he asks himself what he wants, the answer is not good things. His own desires are broken. And the only answer he has found is not in himself but in the one who says, I am the way. Cheers y'all 🍻 Chapters: [00:00] Fall Is Coming [02:57] The Reality of Reality [04:23] What We Accept Without Scrutiny [07:17] Artists at ACL [11:49] Artists vs Propagandists [17:11] The Degradation of Sex [22:05] When Actors Became Political [29:46] A Sea of iPhones [33:44] You Are Traffic [43:06] The Need for Discernment [51:57] Monogamy and Evolution [57:24] God Is Dead [67:46] Something Wrong With My Heart [73:33] Grateful Despite Myself [80:34] The Renaissance Resources: • Red Rising — https://amazon.com/Red-Rising-Pierce-Brown/dp/0345539788 • The Brothers Karamazov — https://amazon.com/Brothers-Karamazov-Fyodor-Dostoevsky/dp/0374528373 • Four Quartets — https://amazon.com/Four-Quartets-T-S-Eliot/dp/0156332256 • Friedrich Nietzsche — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche • Albert Camus — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus • The Cinderella Effect — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_effect Fact Checks: • ✅ If there is no God everything is permitted — Verified • ✅ Bonnie Blue claimed 1057 men in 24 hours — Verified • ⚠️ Ed Sheeran uninvited Macklemore — Needs context • ✅ God is dead Nietzsche — Verified • ✅ Eliot wait without hope quote — Verified • ⚠️ Non-biological adult predictor of child abuse — Needs context • ✅ Ed Sheeran among most streamed artists — Verified Find us here: x.com/mattmccloskey x.com/michaelvaclav All Matt's Links — https://solo.to/mattmccloskey All Michael's Links — https://solo.to/michaelvaclav Shores of Ignorance — https://shoresofignorance.com Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/2BnhB2qVLP4gdRjy7R0uo0 Apple Podcasts — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shores-of-ignorance/id1438899219 Sovereign Goods — https://sovereigngoods.shop Cafe Medici — https://mediciroasting.com

3. 

   1 Oct 2026

   Ep 297: What If Belief Actually Changes You?

   Michael opens with a question that has been rattling around his soul. What actually changes when someone goes from not knowing God to knowing God? Is it just semantics, or does something real happen? He traces the pattern through scripture. Israel crossing the Red Sea. Jacob wrestling God and becoming Israel. Simon becoming Peter. Saul becoming Paul. Every time, something shifts. A name changes. A person becomes someone new. Matt tells the story of sneaking backstage at concerts as a broke college kid. No credentials, no lanyard. Just confidence. The hypothesis was simple. Act like you are supposed to be there and nobody stops you. It worked every time. This becomes a metaphor for what belief actually does. It is not just intellectual assent. It is a change in how you carry yourself in the world. The conversation spirals through God's question to Adam in the garden. Where are you? Not a question about atoms and molecules. A question about presence. About where your heart is. They explore what it means to be maximally alive, why the just be a good person worldview collapses under the weight of real relationships, and why every human walking in circles without a landmark ends up right back where they started. They land on fatherhood. Matt's two year old is learning that other people have names, but Dad is not a name. Dad is a category. The highest one. And maybe being born again is exactly that. Recognizing a Father you did not know you had. Cheers y'all 🍻 Chapters: [00:00] Fun Facts with Matt [01:38] What Does It Mean to Be Born Again [08:21] Backstage Without Credentials [12:36] The Power of Belief [15:04] Catechism and Belonging [18:01] Where Are You [25:45] Love and Vulnerability [32:01] Walking in Circles [36:12] The Hole That Can't Be Filled [42:57] Eternity Written on Hearts [58:23] Heaven Here and Now [67:44] The Father's Love [75:00] Born Again Means a New Reference Point [80:58] Buddhism and the Problem of Desire [88:20] Takeaways Resources: • The Four Loves — https://amazon.com/Four-Loves-C-S-Lewis/dp/0156329301 • The Great Divorce — https://amazon.com/Great-Divorce-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652950 • Orthodoxy — https://amazon.com/Orthodoxy-G-K-Chesterton/dp/1598560514 • The Alchemist — https://amazon.com/Alchemist-Paulo-Coelho/dp/0062315005 • Mere Christianity — https://amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652926 • Bryan Johnson — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Johnson • John Piper — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Piper_(theologian) Fact Checks: • ✅ Mission Impossible theme is Morse code for MI — Verified • ⚠️ Placebos work as effectively as pharmaceuticals — Needs context • ✅ Ezekiel 36:26 heart of stone to flesh — Verified • ✅ Ecclesiastes 3:11 eternity in hearts — Verified • ✅ Humans cannot walk straight without landmarks — Verified • ✅ Lewis love and vulnerability quote — Verified • ✅ Lewis thy will be done quote — Verified • ✅ Chesterton heresy to orthodoxy quote — Verified Find us here: x.com/mattmccloskey x.com/michaelvaclav All Matt's Links — https://solo.to/mattmccloskey All Michael's Links — https://solo.to/michaelvaclav Shores of Ignorance — https://shoresofignorance.com Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/2BnhB2qVLP4gdRjy7R0uo0 Apple Podcasts — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shores-of-ignorance/id1438899219 Sovereign Goods — https://sovereigngoods.shop Cafe Medici — https://mediciroasting.com

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.1 / 5

14 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 39 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

46

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

81

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Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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