The Loneliness Pandemic — Nicky Gumbel on Hope for the Future

Ever wondered who the Prime Minister rings when even they don't know the answer? Gary sits down with Dame Juliet Gerrard, former Chief Science Advisor to the PM, who had a front row seat to the mosque shootings, the White Island tragedy and COVID-19 from day one. She talks candidly about the biscuit tin and Post-it notes she used to gather ideas from quiet voices in a room, the discipline of giving "good enough" advice before a decision is made rather than perfect advice too late, and why her job was never to filter the truth for "the greater good".

Remember flared pants, slide projectors, and those old Scripture in Song books? Gary sits down with the Kiwi legends themselves, David and Dale Garrett, who (despite not reading music or playing instruments) wrote and gathered the simple, singable choruses that shaped a generation of church worship here and around the world. They share the wonderfully unplanned story of how it all started, the cassette-tape origins of "Hallelujah, God Reigns" (nearly binned!), and a chance encounter with a very tall Jack Hayford.

Heavy metal and church don't usually go in the same sentence, but here we are. Gary talks to Brian "Head" Welch, guitarist for Korn, about the documentary Loud Crazy Love and the wild true story behind it - crystal meth, suicidal thoughts, a rock star lifestyle he thought could stay secret, and a moment in his office where he reckons God's love physically wrapped around him. It's raw stuff: rejection from both his old rock world and the Christian community, the struggle raising his daughter as a single dad, and getting baptised in Israel with CNN cameras rolling.

Gary digs out an old TV chat with Irish preacher Bob Gass - the man behind the wildly popular daily devotional, The Word for Today. Turns out those bite-sized daily thoughts start life as 400-500 words scrawled longhand on a yellow legal pad, whittled down to exactly 285 (every word's a worker, apparently) with help from his wife's mum transcribing it all twelve times over.

Part two of Gary's chat with Bob Gass, the man behind that little devotional you've probably seen lying around - The Word for Today - now read in a dozen-plus languages and beamed out across the globe. Recorded in front of a UK studio audience (plus a few Facebook questions thrown in), Bob gets into the meaty stuff: grief, growing up in a strict Belfast church household, why he reckons churches don't talk about money enough, and the wedding-day prophecy that basically predicted his whole writing career.