Insight with Karl Faase

Hosted by Karl Faase, Insight delves into the big themes of life, faith, and culture through the power of story. Each conversation opens a window into the experiences of everyday people, leaders, thinkers, and creatives who have navigated life’s challenges and found hope along the way. Rooted in a Christian worldview but open to all, Insight aims to spark thoughtful reflection and encourage deeper engagement with the world around us.

Insight with Karl Faase is a religion podcast hosted by Karl Faase, with 24 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Karl Faase hosts Insight with Karl Faase, a religion show with 24 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #24

  Stephen Driscoll: Made in Our Image: A Biblical Reflection On Artificial Intelligence

  Aug 19, 20261h 13m

  When Stephen Driscoll's laptop started acting up, he asked an AI agent to take a look - twenty minutes later it had tracked down and fixed a problem that had been quietly running in the background for six months. It's a small, almost funny story, but Stephen uses it to make a much bigger point: AI has moved from mimicking us to genuinely acting on its own initiative, and the theological and ethical questions are moving just as fast. In this wide-ranging conversation, Karl Faase and Stephen dig into AI-directed drone strikes, the Pope's recent encyclical, transhumanism, campus culture, and Stephen's own decade-long wrestle with doubt. About Stephen Driscoll: Stephen Driscoll is a university minister and self-described “tech realist” who tries to avoid both blind optimism and fear-driven doomism about artificial intelligence. He won the 2025 Australian Christian Book of the Year Award for his book Made in Our Image: God, Artificial Intelligence and You. Before moving into ministry, Stephen worked on a trading floor in finance, and has been fascinated by AI since his undergraduate years. Get a copy of Stephen Driscoll's book here: Made in Our Image: God, Artificial Intelligence and You Key Moments & Highlights Stephen's four-point framework for what modern AI actually is: brain-inspired, trained rather than designed, prediction-based, and radically general-purpose “Move 37”- the AlphaGo move against world champion Lee Sedol so unconventional it stunned commentators and convinced many that AI could be genuinely creative How reinforcement learning turns AI from a “debauched” mirror of the whole internet into a corporate “people-pleaser” with a morality borrowed from whichever company built it The Pope's AI encyclical and its warning, drawn from the Tower of Babel, about the danger of human unity turned toward evil The unsettling real-world stakes: AI-selected drone strikes, twelve-second human decision windows, and a strike on an Iranian school that killed around 100 children Why Stephen is less afraid of profit-driven AI companies than of AI controlled by authoritarian governments A working test for transhumanism: are we moving toward God's created order (like glasses or cochlear implants) or away from it (like losing our embodiment in a metaverse)? Stephen's own faith story: growing up in an Indonesian immigrant church, drifting through doubt reading the “new atheists” in his twenties, and finding his way back by actually reading the Bible Walking away from a trading floor career for full-time campus ministry and what convinced him within a week that he'd made the right call His read on why hostility to Christianity on university campuses peaked around 2022, and why he's now seeing more openness - especially among young men Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

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  Episode #23

  Dan Lyons: Sold for $500 - A Story of Abuse, Faith, and Forgiveness

  Aug 12, 20261h 4m

  "You can have Daniel and Lyndall for five hundred dollars." That’s the sentence Dan Lyons’ mother used when his father tried to gain custody of him and his sister - the price she put on her own children. In this raw and confronting conversation, Dan takes Karl Faase back through years of alcohol-fuelled domestic violence, a mother who turned her own pain into abuse against her son, and the homeless, drug-affected years that followed - before two schoolmates and a four-word prayer changed the course of his life. This is a story about the long, unglamorous work of healing, and what it looks like to lead, parent, and forgive when you never had a template for any of it. Dan Lyons is the Director of Missional Culture and Leadership at Carinity, the care arm of Queensland Baptists, where he leads a team of pastors and around 100–125 chaplains serving in hospitals, prisons, aged care facilities, and schools across Queensland. He has been married to his wife Anita for 28 years, they have four adult children, and he recently became a grandfather for the first time. Behind that role is a childhood marked by extreme domestic violence and abuse, teenage homelessness, and a decades-long journey of faith and healing - which he shares candidly in this episode. Listener note: this episode discusses childhood abuse, family violence and suicide. Please take care while listening. Key Moments & Highlights Dan’s current role tethering Carinity’s ~2,000 staff and 100+ chaplains back to "the person of Jesus," and what "mission drift" really means for faith-based organisations Growing up moving across Queensland with his mother and three sisters, and the Friday-night ritual of alcohol-fuelled, rage-filled domestic violence between his mum and her partners The abuse turned personal: being interrogated, beaten, burned, and stabbed with a fork by his own mother The one adult - his boss at a butcher shop - who noticed the bruises and dared to intervene The night Dan finally pushed his mother off him and ran through the rain, hand-in-hand with his sister Lyndall, to find safety with his biological father His mother’s chilling offer to give up her own children for $500 Becoming homeless at fifteen, sliding into drugs and self-loathing, and a suicide attempt interrupted at the last second The four-word prayer: "God, please help me" and how two Christian classmates befriended him days later with no idea what he’d been through A physical, overwhelming encounter with God while reading the Bible for the first time, which Dan marks as the start of thirty years of healing A prayer-counselling breakthrough years later that helped him recognise where Jesus had actually been present in his worst childhood memories — and his candid advice for anyone currently in an abusive relationship Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

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  Episode #22

  Tim Kelly: Finding Jesus at a Million Dollar Rodeo

  Aug 5, 202655 min

  Tim Kelly grew up on a dairy farm in northern NSW, learning to ride potty calves at five years old and by his late teens he was riding saddle bronc and bulls professionally, competing at the Calgary Stampede and winning the Saddle Bronc Junior World Championship. But behind the trophies, and the hard-partying rodeo lifestyle was a persistent emptiness Tim couldn't shake. In this episode of Insight, Tim shares his journey from rodeo arenas across Australia and Canada to a life-changing encounter at a "million dollar rodeo" in 1982, the fear that nearly ended his career, the devastating breakdown of his marriage, and how faith reshaped his identity, and continues to reshape the lives of the bull riders he now mentors through his own riding schools. About Tim Kelly Tim Kelly is a former professional bull and saddle bronc rider from Tenterfield, NSW, who competed internationally through the late 1970s and 80s, including at the Calgary Stampede and Canada's rodeo circuit, and won the Saddle Bronc Junior World Championship. After coming to faith at a major rodeo event in 1982, Tim went on to run bull riding schools for over 40 years, training riders from across Australia while sharing his testimony with the next generation of the sport. He has walked through both the highs of competitive success and the deep personal cost of a marriage breakdown, and now speaks openly about failure, forgiveness, and restoration. Tim is married to Laura and continues to mentor riders and share his story of faith found in an unlikely place. Key Moments & Highlights - The five-year-old's dream - Growing up in the middle of seven kids - Tim represented Australia at one of the world's biggest rodeos, competing in front of 70,000 people. - After what he calls one of the best rides of his life, Tim was disqualified on a technicality at the "million dollar rodeo" - the moment he decided to find out what other Christian riders "had that he didn't." - Giving his life to Christ — A bikie's testimony at a rodeo chapel service in 1982 became the turning point that led Tim to commit his life to God. - Tim recounts the terrifying accident that later triggered crippling fear, and watching another rider suffer a near-fatal version of the same fall. - How memorising and speaking out verses on fear allowed Tim to get back on a horse and keep riding. - Marriage breakdown and restoration - 40 years of bull riding schools Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

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  Episode #21

  Graham Clarke: It's Gonna Be Okay - A Husband's Story of Loss

  Jul 29, 202654 min

  If life were a film, most of us can point to the moment everything changed. For Graham Clarke, that moment came as a phone call from a radiologist about his wife, Christy - a call that changed everything that came after. In this raw and moving conversation, Graham shares the story of walking with Christy through a terminal cancer diagnosis, parenting three young kids through unimaginable loss, and discovering that faith doesn't mean pretending everything is fine - it means bringing your honest grief to God and waiting for Him to meet you there. This is a conversation about lament, Shalom, single parenting, and the surprising, hard-won hope that things really can be okay again!! About Graham Clarke Graham Clarke spent most of his adult life in local church ministry as a senior pastor, most recently having stepped out of that role and looking toward a return to education - his first career, as a PE teacher and school chaplain. Raised in the Uniting Church in Brisbane, Graham met his wife Christy on the set of a Christian children's TV show in his late teens. They married young, had three children, and spent almost a decade leading a church in Geelong before returning to Brisbane. Key Moments & Takeaways - Early days and meeting his wife, Christy. - Christy's first breast cancer diagnosis came early and was treated as a full recovery - The phone call from the radiographer became Graham's own "sliding doors" moment - Graham and Christy independently sensed the same words in that moment: "it's gonna be okay" - a promise not about the outcome, but about the presence of God in the midst of it. - Graham unpacks the biblical idea of Shalom - Facing an eleven, ten, and seven-year-old, Graham and Christy chose honesty over shielding their kids. - A pastor's advice - "That's our job. You look after your kids" - freed Graham from having to hold the family's faith and its parenting at once. - Graham reflects candidly on "solo parenting" and the exhausting kindness of a grieving community. - He closes with the spirituality of lament - honesty with God in the middle of pain, and the hopeful expectation that mercy is renewed every morning. Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

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  Episode #20

  Rex Rigby: The Gospel Wrapped in Western Clothes

  Jul 22, 20261h 1m

  He was taken from his family before he could walk, told for years he'd had polio when it was actually malnutrition, and labelled "dumb" by a school system that never diagnosed his dyslexia. Decades later, Rev. Dr. Rex Rigby became the first Indigenous Australian to lead a national denomination. In this honest conversation, Rex sits down with Karl Faase to talk about childhood abuse, being removed from his family as a toddler, and the shame he carried for years - and how those wounds became the foundation for a life devoted to reconciliation, empathy, and the gospel. Rex shares his story from an abusive home in Holland Park, to a stint as a chef on Brisbane's first luxury yacht, to twelve years as General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, to a doctorate exploring how Western culture has often been tangled up with the gospel message delivered to Indigenous people. Along the way, he shares hard truths about the church's mixed legacy in Indigenous communities and a hopeful, hard-won vision for what an intercultural church could look like. Rev. Dr. Rex Rigby was the first Indigenous person to serve as national head of a denomination in Australia, spending twelve years as General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist Church - the longest tenure in that role. He is an elder of both the Kamilaroi and Bigambul peoples. Before entering ministry, Rex trained and worked as a chef, including a stint as the first chef aboard Brisbane's first luxury yacht. He holds a doctorate for his thesis "Social Cohesion Through the Eyes of an Indigenous Elder for the Application of the Intercultural Church," and today continues to teach at several Bible colleges. Key Moments & Takeaways - Rex Rigby was the first Indigenous Australian to lead a national denomination, serving 12 years as General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. - He is an elder of both the Kamilaroi and Bigambul peoples, with ancestral ties on both sides of the Queensland/NSW border. - Removed from his family as a toddler due to abuse and neglect in the home, Rex spent three years in a home for children with disabilities - an experience that left him with a lasting sense of being unloved. - For years Rex was told he'd had polio; it wasn't until his late teens he learned his leg braces were actually the result of childhood malnutrition. - Undiagnosed dyslexia and an unstable home life meant school was a constant struggle - but Rex found his footing as an apprentice chef, eventually cooking for Brisbane's elite and serving as the first chef aboard the city's first luxury yacht. - A deep sense of calling pulled Rex out of the kitchen and into ministry, despite a rocky start in high-demand inner-city pastoral work that nearly burned him out early on. - His doctoral thesis examined how the gospel was often delivered wrapped in Western cultural assumptions - creating unnecessary shame for Indigenous believers. - Rex speaks candidly about the mixed legacy of mission work in Australia, while insisting Indigenous spirituality and Christian faith are not at odds. - He points to empathy and truth-telling as essential to reconciliation, urging people to look past the symptom to understand the cause. - Despite two bouts of cancer and a recent fall, Rex remains hopeful - still teaching, mentoring young Indigenous leaders, and working toward his vision of a genuinely intercultural church. Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

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