Darnell Samuels is the co-host of The Six Cents Report with Joel Nicoloff. A podcast that “uses theology and economics to analyze events that Impact Canadians.” A creative mix and an intriguing duo. Both have been interviewed. Nicoloff is first, as I met him at the Economics for Journalists conference of The Fraser Institute. Darnell was introduced through Joel. Here we talk about the report and more.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, Darnell Samuels hosts The Six Cents Report.
Darnell Samuels: The way I look at things in terms of creative work is to create content. I was studying this concept called the cultural mandate in theology in the Bible. It is seen in Genesis Chapter 1, Verses 21 to 28. In it, God commands all human beings to be fruitful and multiply throughout the Earth to promote human flourishing. Digging deep into the idea of that command of the Christian experiment led me down the rabbit hole of economic theory. I am going down. I am reading Thomas Sowell. I am reading these works to help people better understand theology in a technical sense. So I can help people better. Joel, these are the conversations I have together. I am still trying to unpack these ideas. Joel loves to communicate. He loves to talk. So, why don’t we come together and do a show together? That is how The Six Cents Report started.
Jacobsen: How does the cultural mandate relate to the libertarian philosophy Joel discusses and to your building this through a podcast?
Samuels: The cultural mandate comes in the first Great Commission to steward God’s Creation. Part of this is the individual developing the things they have. You’re looking at property rights issues and government issues. You are looking at the overlap between libertarian ideas and the individual being free. That was where the overlap was for me, seeing the theological aspect and the economic aspect. So, that’s how we see the connection between the cultural mandate and liberation thought.
Jacobsen: How do you start with the views and then have the views develop over time?
Samuels: Of course, you need an episode zero talking about how it came together and what you expect for the show. The idea is to stick to the premise: Our focus is on events that impact Canadians from a theological and economic perspective. So, as long as the content is Canadian and impacts Canadians, we can make the connection theologically and economically or analyze it through an economic and theological framework. Joel and I have a relationship. Anthony was a producer as well. It was a team. We naturally fell into our natural skill sets. Mine is creating and structuring content. That is why I am a teacher.
My brain works that way. I was going through Twitter. I will follow the major news outlets. From that, “Here’s a show idea here and here.” Anthony showed me how to structure a show and how to time stamp them. “We can talk about that and that.” That is how it started. We began pulling episodes through Twitter. Our listeners began suggesting ideas.
Regarding the show following, that took time because it is such a niche idea looking at the impact. If you look at the perspective, it took time for the audience to grow. So, whenever we did a partnership or were a guest on somebody’s podcast, that would help. Good old-fashioned having people on the show helped, too. Eventually, the word began to spread. We ended up getting a lot of followers. As I told Joel and the others, our goal is to be the #1 podcast in our niche.
If we could be the number one podcast in our niche, we have met our goal. For me, you show me a better podcast than we do; you won’t find one.
Jacobsen: Teaching high school kids, how does this thinking help with conversations with Joel? Did you have any influence on Joel’s way of thinking?
Samuels: The thing is, I am a teacher after the show. I am a big believer that preparation meets opportunity. That is when things happen. For me, I was already planning to be a teacher. So, what I was trying to do was prepare myself to become a teacher; that is one of the reasons I started the podcast. I wanted to be a teacher who taught civics and humanities. One that teaches, possibly, economic ideas and also theology. I am a Christian. I teach the Bible. I wanted to stick to it. That’s why I started the podcast. I am a teacher. Honestly, once we got 150 episodes in, that is when I became a teacher.
Jacobsen: So very far in.
Samuels: Yes, the plan came to fruition because of doing The Six Cents Report with these episodes and conversations with authors, economists, producers, artists, and musicians, all in a creative context. By the time I was hired as a teacher in God’s Providence, I was teaching a class on the Bible. I was teaching a class on anthropology, psychology, and sociology. I teach civics. All of this is The Six Cents Report content. Now, as a teacher, I can pull from that work. I can use that archive in class. It was a transition for me into teaching because of The Six Cents Report.
Jacobsen: How do you find the audience? What aspects of this niche are more of a pull?
Samuels: Oh! That’s a good question. One that hits home as Canadians. Looking at some deep theological concepts like the cultural mandate or sovereignty. So, these are concepts that people don’t regularly talk about. It brings these issues to life. Of course, we get into deep economic ideas. Joel and I are not big politics guys. We try to stay away from politics and stay more on principles. An emphasis on the country, God, and economic concepts, right? Economics is the science of making choices. In a Christian context, the science of helping people.
Jacobsen: For the economics for journalists training, the concept of tradeoffs comes through in the podcast episodes.
Samuels: For a good portion of the show, we may disagree. Even if we don’t disagree, we try to steel manning, Joel says. I say, Iron Manning.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Samuels: It is trying to be fair, show academic integrity, and show other angles to these policies and what is happening. When we scroll through our timelines watching the news, we may think, “That looks like a great idea!” Looking below the surface or the tradeoffs, people realize, “There is more to the story than meets the eye.”
Jacobsen: What episode do you consider the best? Also, what episode do you consider the most controversial?
Samuels: The one that I consider the best and the most controversial. The top five episodes would be the one we did on “Canada’s Racist Policies.” Number two, “What’s love got to do with it?” It was an economic paper on how marriage is business. The third is “We Rise Together.” We announced the “We Rise Together” report on why black males fail in the PEEL school system. We came to some interesting conclusions. “Gentrifiers and N.I.M.B.Y.’s.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Samuels: That was an episode, basically, during Covid. Homeless people were squatting in a residential neighbourhood. The people were like, “Not in my backyard.” They were trying to get them kicked out. The fifth would be “Why Liberalism Fails.” It was pretty cool. It was about why liberalism failed. It opened my eyes to the concept of liberalism, its pros and cons, and how it is not a saviour.
Jacobsen: What economic principles play to gentrification and identity for those who don’t have much of a life to stand on, whether dignity or economics?
Samuels: [Laughing] Before I answer that question, I will answer the last question about the most controversial. There was a pastor named Ravi Zacharias who died. He was well-known.
Jacobsen: Yes.
Samuels: He had a murky past that they uncovered. Joel and I had a guest on the show on the report to talk about a report that came out. Is he a Christian? Is he not a Christian? Is he going to Heaven? Is he going to Hell? What do we make of his legacy? Do we burn his books? That one got a lot of hits. Of course, the COVID episodes always get good traction. The idea will be, “It is not okay to kick these people out.” Yet, they don’t own the property. So, they don’t have a say, so it is the nature of the business. That was things that we were wrestling with.
Jacobsen: How about the interplay between core theological and economic concepts in content for Canadians? There were common threads throughout in terms of moral decisions equating to economic decisions, sometimes.
Samuels: That is a good question. What we see is the Scriptures talking about principles; you can look at the text. You are looking at the nuances in our culture and how things are supposed to be done. The idea is the connection Joel and I would make, often, that we want to be fair and not think, “Because we are liberal. We do it this way. Because we are conservative, we do it this way.” We used the Scripture to guide us on what is right and wrong instead of political, economic, and ideological stances without recognizing what is morally right. Scripture does have concepts that tie into economics and moral values. Sometimes, those ideas are hard to cover. We have to take it on a case-by-case basis. Take Socialism, “Share everything,” right? If we share everything, well, not everything, some things are better not shared. Because it incentivizes people to work with what they have rather than something that is simply given to somebody, they don’t take it for granted. It is not mishandled.
Jacobsen: From a Christian perspective, for things that are valued for hours and hours of podcasting, what exemplified the value for the culture to be incentivized to act morally within Christianity’s morals and disincentives?
Samuels: The incentives we saw being a good steward of God’s Creation. It goes back to the cultural mandate. Being fruitful and multiplying, some people say the world is overpopulating. So, we need to stop having children and slow down, but Scripture before the Fall, before Sin enters Creation. God says, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the Earth.” There, we see an example of God saying to every human being to have children. Even after the Fall, God still echoes or says the same principle in the cultural mandate in Genesis 9. God says, “Do what I said in Genesis 1; be fruitful and multiply?” That would be an example in the Scriptures. So, here is an incentive to have children, to have dominion over birds of the sky, fish of the sea, and animals on the land; when you get to ideas of climate change and so forth, I am not big on climate change alarmism. But we should still be responsible for God’s Creation. We do not want to be careless and reckless with how we deal with animals, how we deal with the sea, how we deal with the air. But we don’t want to go to the extreme of “the world is going to end if we don’t stop using electricity and don’t start using wooden forks.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing] or wooden straws.
Samuels: [Laughing] Oh, yeah! [Laughing] Yes, so this principle applies to everyone. There are principles that apply to everybody. When we look at human rights, all human beings are made in the image of God and, therefore, have inherent value. Therefore, our human rights are inalienable. They are not given to us. That was a big concept being debated during COVID-19. Overnight, people became political scientists.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Samuels: Overnight! What can’t we do? Is this a human right? What is a human right? We can look at the Scriptures. We are all made in the image of God. We fast forward, look at the Ten Commandments and see God say, “Don’t steal. Don’t covet your neighbour’s wife.” There are property rights inherent in there. God is saying people have property and jurisdiction. So, that was when some of the Scriptures apply to today’s lives.
Jacobsen: As an aside from the podcast, what do you find the most fulfilling aspect of teaching the Scriptures?
Samuels: The approach that I take in my teaching is getting them to read. It is not up to me whether they believe or not. Of course, I pray God will do what he will do, but I try to equip them with the ability to think for themselves. So, in my class, I say, “I need you to be aggressive in criticizing God. Don’t believe this stuff because I am telling you this. Don’t believe this stuff because it is part of what you grew up knowing. I am teaching you to think. God is a reasonable god. God is a logical god. He is a god of communication. He gave you a brain to think, ears to hear, eyes to see. As I teach you how to read, the Truth will come alive.” We have Bibles. We read it verse by verse. We ask tough questions about it. I unpack the text. Not to get too technical, I am teaching the science of hermeneutics. It is the science of interpreting literature.
Not just the Bible but for reading in general. It is a skill we’ve been doing since we were kids. We understand the science of literature. We are unconsciously competent. We know how to interpret legal documents. When we are fined or get a ticket, the science of literature for interpreting the loophole in this [Laughing] parking bill. We introduce the I.D.’s to this concept of hermeneutics. There are two things: in context and out of context. That is when it comes alive. The students are like, “What? What do you mean in context and out of context?” We move into principles in secular texts and biblical texts. That is when the Scripture comes alive. That is when I get excited. “Oh my God, God has stated this. Now, I can follow it.” The first exercise is I get them to pick some secular texts., Their favourite song, poetry, and favourite instructional book or movie. I tell them to take it out of context of what the author intended. It is cool. You have the song’s author who says, “I wrote this song for my dead mom. I was in a bad spot. The song came to my heart. I penned these lyrics.”
The fool will say, “This is about a party that you got smashed at.” Now, we do this to the secular texts and the biblical texts. You already know how to put secular texts in context because we put it out of context, then we put it back in. We know the meaning of the song. Because we told you what the meaning of the song was. It was about his mom. It was not about getting smashed at a party. When we get to the Scripture, they make their context clear. How dare we take it out of context and make it say something else? That gets into a psychology class, where we get to ideas of postmodern relativism and how we got to where we are today.
Jacobsen: What do the schools typify as the hardest morally to grapple with?
Samuels: Oh, ha! The hardest that God chooses. There is election and predestination. That is hard. So, a lot of Christians in general. You have the majority who claim the religion who don’t read the book, especially People of the Book. You have people who don’t read it and a minority who do read the book. “This is who God is. That is what he does.” When you read the Scriptures, it says something different than what you seem, culturally. So, the fact that God is electing and God is in control throws things off. It challenges people and scores them. But it also excites them. “Wow! There is a God on his own. He is not a God who I made up.” God is an equal-opportunity offender.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Samuels: He is not conservative, liberal, or progressive. He is not for equity or equality. He is not Woke. He is different. That is what draws us in. “Who is this God that isn’t politically correct?” It is a lot of fun.
Jacobsen: With Joel, what do you find him and you have the greatest rub, conflict, pushback from one another?
Samuels: That’s a good question. Our biggest pushback was that we did have an episode on gentrifiers and N.I.M.B.Y.’s, where we went back and forth a lot. I remember going back and forth on that. Generally, I think we didn’t have many instances where we would have extreme arguments or differences. You might have nuances. So, for example, he might be more libertarian than I am. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a libertarian. That might be a part where we differ. We probably disagree on the role of government. He would mention the government is a necessary evil. I would say that the role of government was a necessary good. Out of that simple idea, sparks could fly.
Jacobsen: What sparks were the biggest?
Samuels: It might sound weird. I am less conservative than I was before.
Jacobsen: Why is that?
Samuels: There are points. You hang around in conservative circles. You read a lot of conservative culture. Gaps and problems in conservative ideas emerge. It caused me to be more skeptical. I wouldn’t say I am liberal, either. I am more skeptical and less likely to call myself conservative or jump on the conservative bandwagon. I see some areas where it would fall short. That was helpful for me. Because now, when I teach a politics class or a civics class, I don’t have a horse in the race, which is good for the kids. They can see for themselves. None of these are perfect. The only perfect authority is Christ, King Jesus. I don’t feel pressure to side with anybody and deal with everything case-by-case. Joel, too, would probably say the same thing. We take things on a case-by-case basis. “What about this or this?” It is on a case-by-case basis. “What about a white officer who kills a black person?” That is on a case-by-case basis. I need to see the footage, read the report, and have a 3-year window for the dust to settle. I need to wait for Candace Owens to do a video.
Jacobsen: [Laughing]. When you had that difficult choice leading to the transition to teaching away from the podcast, what were the major considerations there, too? What is your recommendation to those who are looking to start up a one- or two-person podcast?
Samuels: Starting the job was a blessing; it came about and made recording more difficult. Eventually, my plan worked. I did the podcast. I got the teaching job. I am doing well at it. Now, it is phasing out the podcast. I would say that is part of the reason for the podcast. Teaching is an action-packed movie with explosions and moving cars. There are moving parts, lesson plans, and marking. There was less time. For those who want to get into podcasting, if you can do it, I would do it with a team. Find a co-host; Anthony is our guy if you can find a producer. He helped us fill in the gaps with the audio editing and so forth. Having a partner is someone who you can work with; in some episodes, Joel would have to carry the episode just because I might be knowledgeable about the content. I am tired and didn’t get a chance to prepare. If we can get an episode done, then I can have to turn on the energy. It is the same with Joel. He would probably say the same thing.
I don’t know where this is going, but I must release this episode. We can feed off each other; my friends do it individually. They say, “Man, this is tough.” If you have a partner, it is a lot easier.
Jacobsen: Any final thoughts based on the conversation today?
Samuels: Yes, I think creativity is a gift from God. I think it is important to bring our creative ideas to life. Just as I knew I wanted to get better at teaching and had a good idea of a podcast with Joel, it came to fruition in the podcast. I got to go to Fraser Institute, I got to go to B.C., and I got to meet a lot of cool people. I don’t know if Joel mentioned it. We almost got to syndication.
Jacobsen: He did not!
Samuels: Yes! We almost got syndicated in Nova Scotia. That plan fell through because Joel and I burned out in the end. We could not stay on top of things. We were missing the work and weren’t putting the episodes together again. We couldn’t execute on delivery. My point is that these come from their Light and opportunity. As a teacher, I use this content in my class as an assignment. Even though the podcast is edited, it still has life. It can still be introduced to newer and younger audiences every semester.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Darnell.
Samuels: No problem, no problem. Thank you, Scott.
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Photo credit: The Six Cents Report.