Yesterday New York Attorney General Letitia James appointed veteran federal prosecutor Jacqueline Kelly to lead a criminal investigation into allegations that seven Cornell University students sexually assaulted a young woman at a fraternity house in 2024.

Whatever the outcome of the investigation, the allegations have already prompted broader cultural commentary about what's wrong with young men today. Writing for the Institute for Family Studies, Leonard Sax argues that too many boys are no longer taught how to behave like gentlemen.

Boys receive endless lectures on what they should not be, while the cultural manual for positive male behavior remains suspiciously short on practical guidance.

Sax's central point is difficult to quarrel with: Boys should be taught self-control, and a decent man does not take advantage of a drunk or vulnerable woman. But as an explanation for what has gone wrong between young men and women, "teach them to be gentlemen" only gets us so far.

What would Cary do?

Teaching a young man 19th-century chivalry to navigate 21st-century sexual politics is like handing a soldier a musket to fight a drone strike. Modern courtship has become an administrative nightmare, and telling men to just be better behaved misdiagnoses the larger breakdown.

The modern American male operates in a culture that demands traditional performance while actively rejecting traditional roles. He's encouraged to open doors, organize every outing, pay for expensive dinners, start every conversation, and project unshakable confidence. Minutes later, he discovers that following his grandfather's romantic playbook can come off as patronizing. The rules shift depending on who sits across the table.

A modern man needs Cary Grant's courtly manners, the emotional intelligence of a licensed therapist, and the legal liability instincts of a seasoned corporate risk manager. He executes all three roles flawlessly, yet still gets ghosted before he reaches home.

Opening a car door used to be the heavy lifting. A young man walked up to a front porch, met a father, took a young woman to dinner, and generally knew what sort of ritual he was participating in. Today, that same man exchanges text messages for three weeks with a profile picture. Too often, the person looks little like the photo or has no intention of ever leaving her couch. He repeats this digitized vetting process with other profiles while she does the same.

Society preserved the grand rhetoric of traditional romance while methodically destroying many of the social environments that made it functional.

'An efficient livestock market'

The average guy no longer competes only against the man next door. He competes inside a technological marketplace built around endless choice and rapid judgment. Dating apps turned intimate selection into something resembling an efficient livestock market. A man gets sorted in seconds according to his looks, height, job, hairline, and ability to write a witty caption.

A steady, loyal, hard-working guy can disappear instantly because his vacation photo is poorly lit. Somewhere in a studio apartment, a fantastic potential husband is getting swiped past because he doesn't own a yacht or a golden retriever.

Research actually confirms part of the absurdity. A 2025 study of more than 5,000 swiping decisions found physical attractiveness overwhelmingly more important to initial selection than intelligence, occupation, height, or biography. Other research using Hinge data found users spent only seconds examining potential matches before deciding whether to proceed.

This is not an environment designed to reveal character.

Contradictory instructions

Meanwhile, much of the advice aimed at young men consists of contradictory instructions. Be confident, but avoid looking arrogant. Show vulnerability, but never act needy or overly emotional. Take charge of planning, but don't seem controlling. Pay the bill, but don't imagine generosity entitles you to anything.

Boys receive endless lectures on what they should not be, while the cultural manual for positive male behavior remains suspiciously short on practical guidance.

A guy has to survive digital screening before he gets a chance to show basic decency in person. He arranges the evening, coordinates the logistics, dodges conversational landmines, and prays his natural humor translates into audible laughter. Then the bill arrives, landing with the weight of a court judgment.

He filled out the application, passed the preliminary background check, paid for the refreshments, and now waits patiently for a call that may never arrive.

The conversation around chivalry also tends to focus on what men must bring to the transaction. In an era that screams for complete gender equality, many of the old expectations placed on men remain remarkably durable. Initiate. Plan. Impress. Pay. Be confident. Absorb rejection gracefully.

Xavier ROSSI/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

Whose standards?

Women are perfectly entitled to have standards for the men they date. Men are entitled to standards too. Yet male preferences are often treated as evidence of entitlement while female preferences are defended as healthy boundaries. Equality usually implies a two-way street. Modern dating can feel more like a one-sided audition.

And then we wonder why young men increasingly want nothing to do with it.

Too many parents and far too many schools abandoned their duty to teach boys what adulthood requires, leaving algorithm engineers and online shock jocks to fill the vacuum. Pornography offers a distorted view of intimacy, while internet gurus preach bitter, transactional warfare, casting the dating market as a battlefield and the average woman as an enemy to be manipulated and dominated.

Sax is right about one important thing. Boys need standards. They need restraint. They need to learn that strength includes the ability to govern themselves, especially around women who are vulnerable.

But a gentleman needs a culture in which gentlemanly behavior makes sense.

When traditional paths are branded toxic, modern dating advice contradicts itself, and courtship increasingly takes place through apps designed around instant judgment and endless alternatives, young men should not surprise us by retreating.

I believe the gentleman still exists. America remains full of decent, honest young men who would gladly step up if given the chance.

Whether the modern dating world knows what to do with them is another matter.

He went to prison angry and violent. He found Christ — and a reason to go back.

Karl Schlenker knows firsthand that prisoners can change through the love of Jesus Christ, even hardened criminals facing life behind bars.

Schlenker went from a church-going husband and father of three to an inmate in an Ohio prison. He turned aggressive as both a survival method and a reflection of his personal pain, years of clinical depression, and PTSD from past trauma lurking within.

'I have instant credibility with these guys ... almost every one of them will come up and say, "You don’t come across like an inmate at all,"' he says.

His salvation came via volunteers from Kairos Prison Ministry, a nonprofit that just celebrated its 50^th anniversary. The ministry serves nearly 500 prisons and communities in 37 states and 13 countries.

Schlenker is more than just one of many prisoners touched by the ministry. He’s a committed volunteer bringing his redemption story to others.

Smelling fear

“We need to look at people in prison and see that they’re human beings,” Schlenker tells Blaze Lifestyle. He recalls his first encounter with the ministry, watching 28 volunteers enter his Ohio prison armed with cookies and an open mind.

He could smell the fear on some volunteers, likely first-timers attempting to reach those who had given up all hope.

“They had no idea what was really going to happen and how they’d be received,” he says of the new volunteers. Schlenker connected with a college professor from Ohio State, also making his first foray into the ministry’s work.

“He was a highly intelligent person with a huge heart,” he says. “He put me at ease very quickly ... I still wasn’t sure what the weekend was going to hold. I had this reputation for being a nasty kind of person.”

It didn’t happen immediately, but Schlenker eventually opened up during a long weekend of conversation, listening exercises, and prayer. Now he does the same for those incarcerated in New Hampshire, the state he currently calls home.

The hope of second chances

Kairos has taught him about forgiveness and the hope of second chances. He also brings unique experience to the task at hand.

“I have instant credibility with these guys ... almost every one of them will come up and say, ‘You don’t come across like an inmate at all,’” he says.

He previously used some of what he learned while still in that Ohio prison. He had angered several fellow inmates by using a gang member’s phone. He was approached in the bathroom by three thugs eager to punish him for what he had done. Except Schlenker didn’t defend himself.

“I will not fight you,” he told them. He was brutally beaten all the same, leaving him permanently scarred and urinating blood for days.

“I didn’t raise a fist in anger,” he recalls. Two of the three later apologized for what they had done to him. One of the attackers, a lifer, later renounced his gang ties and helped sway other inmates toward a more productive path.

“That transformation within him was unbelievably powerful,” he says. ”He was a big, strong, powerful human being, and he became a loving, tender person.”

menonsstocks/Getty Images Plus

The power of faith

Kairos Prison Ministry CEO Evelyn Lemly says the group shows the power of faith even in the worst of circumstances.

“Sometimes we think of God being so distant. He actually is so present,” Lemly says. Her work with the group reveals patterns that show the power of the volunteers’ approach.

“I hear the stories over and over and over again,” Lemly adds. “’I never felt like I was worthy. I never felt that I was lovable ... then a group of people showed up and demonstrated what the love of Jesus is all about.”

Kairos takes a spiritual big tent approach to its work.

“We don’t represent a denomination. We represent all denominations ... it’s about believing in Christ,” she says.

The Kairos Prison Ministry has a global footprint, but it’s not in every prison.

“I wish we could say every prison opened the doors for us ... there are lots of different reasons why not ... ‘We don’t have the time. We don’t have space. We don’t do programs like this,’” she says.

Schlenker says he takes a simple approach to his Kairos prison duties. He introduces himself, shows his name tag, and shares what they have in common.

“I know exactly how you’re feeling right now ... when I was in the state of Ohio as a guest, I had a number just like all of you do,” Schlenker says.

What happens next can make all the difference, a message he shares with every “guest” he meets.

“I became a different person through that experience. If you’re open and receptive and willing, the same thing will happen for every one of you,” he says.

GM made millions selling your driving data. Where's your cut?

General Motors has agreed to pay $220 million to settle allegations that it collected and sold customers' driving information without their knowledge or consent. But the drivers whose information was allegedly sold — some of whom saw their insurance premiums increase — won't receive a dime.

The October 29 settlement resolves allegations brought by attorneys general from 36 states and jurisdictions. The money goes to those states, not directly to affected drivers. GM must also comply with new privacy requirements, including obtaining express consent before collecting or sharing driving data.

Beginning in December 2022, GM also provided Wejo with radio-listening data, including ignition timestamps, AM/FM frequencies, station call signs, time zones, and radio genres.

That leaves an important question: How much money did GM make selling information its customers generated simply by driving their cars?

The information came largely through GM's OnStar Smart Driver program, which operated from 2016 until 2024. It included trip times, speed, hard braking, acceleration, and other driving behavior. Data brokers sold this information to insurance companies, which could use it to help determine premiums.

Chevy Bolt owner Kenn Dahl told the New York Times he learned a data broker had a detailed record of his trips after his insurance costs jumped 21%.

The investigation also found that many customers were enrolled without their knowledge. In some cases, dealership employees allegedly accepted terms and conditions on their behalf. Worse, GM's OnStar app incorrectly told more than 370,000 drivers they weren't enrolled in Smart Driver even while their information was being collected and sold.

Getting paid twice

Just how lucrative was GM's data business? A separate lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in August 2024 offers a detailed look at the financial arrangements behind it. Texas did not participate in the $220 million settlement.

Under a 2015 agreement with Verisk Analytics, a company that supplies data and risk assessments to insurers, GM received an initial multimillion-dollar payment for its customers' driving information. Verisk then put that information into a database that insurance companies could pay to access.

Every time insurers purchased licenses to the database, Verisk paid GM royalties based on the revenue generated. GM thus had a continuing financial interest in information collected from cars it had already sold.

GM also required Verisk to approach other automakers, telecommunications companies, and third parties about contributing their information to the exchange. Verisk subsequently entered similar agreements with Honda in 2017 and Hyundai in 2018, according to the Texas lawsuit.

The information wasn't anonymous. According to the filing, GM supplied Verisk with names, home addresses, vehicle identification numbers, and other identifying information that could be connected to individual driving records.

Insurers could then look up a driver's score when deciding whether to issue coverage, renew a policy, or set premiums.

A $70 million year

GM's arrangement with Verisk wasn't its only source of revenue from driving information.

A 2018 deal with Wejo, a British connected-car company, put a dollar figure on a single year's worth of driving records. GM paid $25 million for a 35% ownership stake in Wejo and agreed to supply 2018 data from 2.6 million vehicles. The Texas filing values those records at $70 million.

Wejo could license the information to businesses beyond the insurance industry, subject to GM's approval.

The agreement described in the Texas lawsuit included a minimum monthly licensing revenue target of $3 million, with Wejo agreeing to pay GM 70% of that revenue. Wejo also agreed to reimburse GM if it failed to meet the target.

The relationship continued until Wejo declared bankruptcy in May 2023.

And GM wasn't limiting the information it supplied to driving behavior. Beginning in December 2022, GM also provided Wejo with radio-listening data, including ignition timestamps, AM/FM frequencies, station call signs, time zones, and radio genres.

Think about that. Your driving habits were one thing. But even the radio stations you listened to could become part of a commercial data business.

Beyond GM

Other automakers are facing scrutiny over similar practices.

In April 2026, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen opened an investigation into Ford and Stellantis over reports that the companies collected and sold or licensed vehicle data to third parties, including data brokers and insurers.

The investigation is separate from the GM settlement, and the allegations against Ford and Stellantis have not been established as violations of the law. But the concern extends well beyond a single automaker or a discontinued OnStar program.

Modern vehicles can collect enormous amounts of information about their owners. That information can be packaged, analyzed, licensed, and sold to businesses the driver may never have heard of.

And if an insurance company uses that information to raise your rates, you could end up paying more because of data you never knowingly agreed to share.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Where's the driver's cut?

The GM settlement imposes new safeguards. The company must obtain affirmative consent before collecting or sharing driving and location information, limit its data collection, and strengthen oversight of dealership enrollment practices.

But GM did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel confirmed that the agreement provides no direct consumer restitution. A separate private class-action lawsuit seeking monetary relief remains pending.

So the states receive millions, GM agrees to new rules, and drivers whose information may have affected their insurance premiums get nothing.

That's a pretty convenient outcome for everyone except the consumer.

Automakers need to explain what information they're collecting, who is buying it, and how much money changes hands. Insurance companies should disclose when driving information influences rates, and consumers deserve the ability to challenge inaccurate records before those records affect their wallets.

If a company can make money from your driving habits, should you receive a share? And if your information was used to increase your insurance premium without your knowledge or consent, shouldn't you be entitled to a refund?

Show me the money!

The $997 'sovereign baby' scheme that could leave your children fighting to prove they exist

Rebellion against the administrative state used to entail packing up, moving to a log cabin in Montana, and trying your best to survive off the land. Now all it takes is a Venmo account and decent internet.

As Wired recently reported, Kristin LaHargoue, a Utah-based influencer who goes by “Minister Veda,” caters to a hyper-specific, delusional niche: convincing people that it is patriotic not to register their children with the government. On Instagram (@veda.revival), she posts videos of her family traveling internationally without birth certificates or Social Security numbers for her children. In her view, registering a baby with the government is an unforgivable surrender of parental freedom.

The great escape from the administrative state still requires the administrative state to stamp your little blue book.

Her business model is simple: commodified chaos. For $997, LaHargoue offers personal coaching on how to obtain a passport for an unregistered child, including guidance for dealing with Department of State officials. If that's too pricey, another option is available. For $497, she sells a downloadable bundle to navigate the bureaucratic minefield.

The problem, of course, is that the parents aren't the only ones who must live with the consequences.

Off the record

Wired highlighted the real-world fallout through the story of Sarah Ashley Townsend. Raised by a sovereign-minded mother without a birth certificate or Social Security number, Townsend spent her childhood largely isolated from ordinary society. At 16, she repeatedly struggled to get a driver's license. In her early 20s, she discovered that supposedly having her documents straightened out had not solved the problem. When she gave birth to her own son, officials couldn't establish her birth records, and his birth certificate had to be amended twice.

Townsend was 22, newly postpartum, and running around Maryland collecting notarized documents just to get her son the paperwork her own mother had denied her.

This sovereign baby concept isn't new. Its roots trace back to William Potter Gale, a former Army lieutenant colonel who founded Posse Comitatus in Southern California around 1970. Gale preached distrust of the federal government, insisting that county sheriffs were the highest lawful authority and that Washington had vastly exceeded its constitutional powers. His followers rejected federal taxation and claimed the right to resist authorities they considered illegitimate.

Posse Comitatus helped inspire later sovereign-citizen groups, whose members developed increasingly inventive theories about secret government contracts, fictitious legal identities, and the supposed power of declaring oneself exempt from ordinary laws. Some issued bogus liens against judges and public officials, attempting to weaponize paperwork against the very institutions they rejected. Others refused to recognize courts, taxes, or government authority, sometimes with violent consequences.

The underlying fantasy remained remarkably consistent. Reality was supposedly negotiable, provided one knew the right words and possessed enough contempt for the rules everyone else had to follow.

Monetizing paranoia

Today's influencers have traded backwater meetups and photocopied manifestos for selfies in front of Barcelona's Sagrada Família. Take Minister Dionne, who peddles a $555 "Status Correction" package. Or Marisse Vista, whose $7,777 "Sovereign Conception Program" promises such delights as ancestral clearing and womb activation. Yes, it's absurd, but it perfectly captures the current zeitgeist, with online chancers monetizing paranoia.

Now, to be clear, I am no fan of the paperwork police, and I am all for parents being free to make the best decisions for their children. But the claim that birth certificates make newborns government assets relies on the long-discredited straw man legal theory. According to this fantasy, a birth certificate creates a separate legal identity that the government uses as collateral for its debts. By declaring themselves separate from this fictitious identity, believers supposedly escape government authority. Courts have repeatedly rejected the theory, yet influencers continue peddling it as gospel.

They claim to be selling rebellion. What they're really selling is a bureaucratic nightmare.

The irony is that the passport procedure itself is perfectly legitimate. The State Department allows applicants without conventional birth certificates to establish citizenship through secondary evidence, including baptismal records, early school records, family Bible entries, and affidavits. This exists for people who genuinely lack ordinary birth records, not as some secret sovereign-citizen loophole.

LaHargoue and her peers frame opting out of government records as grand independence, but it is pure hypocrisy. These influencers reject the obligations of a functioning society while demanding its perks and protection abroad. Having declined to obtain the usual documents, they must then assemble alternative paperwork and persuade the very government they supposedly reject to issue a passport.

The great escape from the administrative state still requires the administrative state to stamp your little blue book.

Print Collector/Getty Images

Sovereign headache

As Wired reported, one woman who purchased LaHargoue's instructional material eventually obtained a passport for her infant without a birth certificate. She submitted baptismal records, a family Bible, an affidavit, and a newspaper birth announcement. After considerable back-and-forth, the State Department approved the application.

In other words, parents are paying hundreds of dollars to navigate an elaborate government procedure made necessary by their refusal to follow a much simpler one.

A New York family lawyer told Wired he has seen an increase in parents attempting to reject or undo their children's official identification documents, while a law enforcement consultant described motorists refusing to show identification because they insist they are merely "traveling" rather than driving. Healthy skepticism is one thing. Pursuing a fantasy of total independence that only creates problems for you and your loved ones is another. Freedom is fantastic and necessary, but it doesn't mean freedom from consequences.

When a boy or girl grows up and runs into trouble opening a bank account, getting a driver's license, signing a lease, enrolling in college, or finding a job, the opportunist who cashed that fat check is long gone. The parent may get a fleeting rush of anti-establishment heroism; the child, however, is left with an endless headache, forced to spend years proving to the clipboard class that he is who he says he is — and that he actually exists.

Washington blocked Polestar. So why are Chinese-built robotaxis on American streets?

On the latest episode of “The Drive,” my co-host Karl Brauer and I discussed something that should concern anyone who has ever climbed into a driverless car.

Waymo, the autonomous ride-hailing company owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, is putting Chinese-built vehicles on American streets.

Regulators should be able to explain exactly why Waymo's Chinese-built vehicles are different — and what testing supports that conclusion.

These aren't experimental cars hidden away on a test track. Waymo's new Ojai robotaxi, built on a platform supplied by Chinese automaker Zeekr, is already carrying passengers.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with a car being built overseas. Americans have been buying foreign-made vehicles for decades.

But China presents a different set of concerns. Washington has spent years warning about the national security risks associated with Chinese connected-vehicle technology. And that raises a question: If Chinese automotive technology is considered dangerous enough to restrict, why are we allowing Chinese-built vehicles into America's growing driverless fleets?

Karl put it rather bluntly. “How about a Chinese computer driving you?”

Well, there's an important distinction. The vehicle may be built in China, but Waymo says the computer doing the driving is American. Whether that is enough to settle the security question is another matter.

Chinese car, American brain

Waymo's Ojai is based on a vehicle manufactured by Zeekr, which belongs to China's Geely Holding Group. Zeekr supplies the underlying electric vehicle. Waymo installs its own autonomous driving technology, including the cameras, sensors, computing equipment, and software that allow the car to navigate without a human driver.

According to Waymo, the vehicles arrive from China without connectivity hardware or autonomous-driving sensors. The company installs its own equipment in Mesa, Arizona.

Waymo says it does not share American passenger data, vehicle information, or autonomous driving technology with Zeekr. Nor, according to the company, does Zeekr receive Waymo's source code, algorithms, or artificial intelligence models.

Those are significant assurances, but they leave an obvious question: Who independently verifies that the entire vehicle, including its underlying electronic components, is secure?

The Polestar problem

Consider what happened to Polestar.

In June, the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security denied the electric vehicle maker authorization to sell vehicles in the United States beginning with the 2027 model year.

Polestar can continue selling its remaining earlier-model inventory and servicing the vehicles of existing customers. But under the current ruling, it cannot introduce new 2027-model-year vehicles into the American market.

Why? Federal restrictions on connected vehicle technology associated with countries considered national security threats.

Polestar is headquartered in Sweden, but it is controlled by interests associated with China's Geely group and its founder, Li Shufu. And Geely also owns Zeekr, the company supplying Waymo's robotaxis.

Think about that. One Geely-linked automaker has been blocked from selling future models in America over connected vehicle security concerns. Another is supplying cars for Waymo's growing robotaxi fleet.

There is an important difference between the two. Polestar uses connected technology that falls under federal restrictions. Waymo says it replaces the relevant systems with American-developed hardware and software.

But a modern car is more than its navigation system or the computer that drives it. Electronic control units manage everything from braking to battery performance, and those components communicate with one another. Securing the autonomous driving system is one thing. Making sure the underlying vehicle is secure is another.

That is why independent inspection of the complete vehicle matters.

Only connect

During our discussion, I recalled an experience at an international automotive test event.

I was preparing to drive a Chinese-made vehicle when a representative from Volvo approached and asked to ride along. Before we started, he told me to turn off my phone's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

I asked why.

He explained that the vehicle could automatically attempt to connect with my phone, making it easier to access features such as contacts, messages, and navigation.

Sure enough, when we started the car, a notification appeared indicating that it couldn't connect to my phone.

Now, automatic phone connectivity isn't unique to Chinese vehicles. American, European, Japanese, and Korean cars offer similar conveniences. But the experience reminded me just how easily we allow our cars access to information that once stayed on our phones.

Think about what a connected vehicle may know: where you travel, when you leave home, where you work, and which destinations you visit regularly. Depending on the vehicle and the permissions you grant, it may also interact with your contacts, messages, and other personal information.

Most of us barely think about these permissions any more. We just want the navigation to work and our music to play.

But an autonomous vehicle adds another layer of complexity. It depends on sophisticated cameras, sensors, computers, and communications systems to operate. Who controls that information? Where does it go? And who can access it? Those questions deserve answers regardless of which country manufactured the vehicle.

Closing the door

Washington has already taken steps to restrict connected vehicle technology linked to China and Russia.

In January 2025, the Commerce Department finalized rules restricting certain connected vehicle systems and components. The restrictions begin applying to certain software in model-year 2027 vehicles, with additional hardware restrictions scheduled for model year 2030.

But two senators from opposite parties believe those protections don't go far enough. Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin and Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno introduced the Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026, which would go farther by restricting vehicles manufactured in China, rather than focusing only on Chinese-controlled connected technology.

The bill passed the Senate Commerce Committee in July and has attracted broad bipartisan support. But an effort to fast-track it through the full Senate stalled in September over an objection from Kentucky Republican Rand Paul.

The sticking point is a provision that would restrict automakers with more than 15% Chinese ownership. Mercedes-Benz, despite being a German company with American factories, has nearly 20% Chinese ownership through passive investors. Paul argued that the bill could unfairly prevent Mercedes from selling cars in the United States.

Moreno has acknowledged the problem and said he is working on changes to protect companies such as Mercedes-Benz and Volvo. With no agreement reached before the Senate's election recess, the legislation will have to wait until lawmakers return in November, according to the Associated Press.

For Waymo, the existing rules remain in place. Its Chinese-built robotaxis can continue operating provided they comply with federal connected vehicle requirements.

Politicians aren't the only ones concerned by this. Missy Cummings, an autonomous vehicle researcher at George Mason University, has called for independent examination of the vehicles to establish what equipment is actually inside them.

In an October 29 report by Phoenix-based television news outlet Arizona's Family, Waymo said its finished robotaxis contain no Chinese software or connectivity and that Zeekr cannot communicate remotely with the vehicles or send software updates. The company also said its vehicle platforms undergo rigorous security audits.

But the report did not establish whether the complete Chinese-built vehicle had undergone independent hardware security testing or whether the results of any such examination had been made public. That seems like a question worth answering. If the vehicles are as secure as Waymo says, independent verification would offer additional reassurance.

Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

Convenience has a cost

I understand the attraction of autonomous cars. For someone who can't drive because of age, disability, or some other limitation, a reliable robotaxi could provide tremendous independence. For everyone else, there is the convenience of getting where you need to go without worrying about parking or finding a designated driver. Those are real benefits.

And this isn't exclusively a China problem. American automakers and technology companies also collect enormous amounts of vehicle and driver data. Consumers deserve clear explanations of what is collected, how long it is retained, and who can access it.

But when vehicle components have connections to a country the U.S. government considers a national security threat, the questions become more serious. I'm not suggesting that Waymo has been caught sending Americans' personal information to China. There is no evidence presented here establishing that.

What worries me is whether the safeguards are sufficient — and whether anyone independent of Waymo has thoroughly verified them.

If Washington considers Polestar's Chinese connections serious enough to block its future vehicle sales, it owes American drivers a clear explanation of why Waymo's Chinese-built robotaxis meet the government's security standards.

Maybe Waymo has solved the problem by installing its own technology. But shouldn't we verify that before putting thousands more of these vehicles on American streets?

Because when you climb into a driverless car, you're trusting more than the computer behind the wheel. You're trusting everyone who helped build it.

What is culture? Look around your dinner table.

What is culture?

That is a big question. It trips up a lot of people. Often, we tend to think of high culture when attempting to answer. Art, literature, and the stuff of the academy are what comes to mind. Yes, of course, that is culture and very important culture. But it is not all of culture. There is also folk culture and the ways of your people. That sounds hokey or old-fashioned in our day and age, but it doesn’t need to be, and that is not how it’s meant, at least not in this case.

The cake you make because your grandmother used to make it was everyday culture for her, just like the way you and your son go fishing every Friday afternoon.

Folk culture can mean a lot of things, but in the most general sense it is taken to mean the ways of the common people. The things they eat, the things they do, the things they believe, the way they speak, the way they marry, the way they die, the things they are afraid of, the things they valorize, and anything else that isn’t so much taught or studied.

Family matters

At the most basic level, your culture is what you consider to be normal.

That is a very simple definition that is easy to understand, and it is applicable at just about every level. The definition applies equally to rich and poor, big countries and small ones, the hinterland and the metropolis. It applies to even smaller units like families. Certainly, a family’s culture is related to its broader people’s culture, but it is also distinct. Each family is different, and each family has its own culture.

This is important to consider, because when we think of culture as only being high and academic, we separate ourselves from our own folk culture. We turn ourselves into spectators or passive observers rather than active participants. We downgrade ourselves and think of ourselves as “culture-less,” when in fact, every single person on earth, by virtue of having grown up somewhere with some family, has a culture — that which they consider to be normal.

Rooted in routine

When you wake up in the morning, how do you greet your wife? How do you say good morning to your kids? What do you do after that? What is the routine you have kept up for the past 20 years? What is the prayer you say before you sit down for breakfast? What kind of clothes do you wear?

How about the way you talk to the people you work with? Do you open the door for women? Do you insist that someone you just met should go first, just to be polite? What do you say and what don’t you say? What do you think is nice and what do you think is rude?

At home, what do you do for dinner? What does your wife make? Or perhaps what do you make? Do you eat together? Do you pray before? What is the rhythm of the meal? Do you sit and talk afterward? Do you have coffee or dessert? Or is that only on the weekends?

Afterward, do you read a book or watch television? Do you work some more, or are you done for the night? Do you listen to music? If so, what kind? Do you have a drink, or do you abstain? When do you go to bed? And when do you wake up and start it all over again?

All these things are so small and mundane that you probably don’t even think of them as anything other than your daily routine. And they are that, of course, but they are also little points of culture. It is these mundane things — and 10,000 other ones — that add up to what we know as life.

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Home truths

Often, we don’t realize how potent these little points are until we leave home at 18. We move away from mom and dad and meet other people with other ways, and we realize the obvious fact that everyone doesn’t eat the same things on the holidays, wake up at the same time, eat dinner the same way, have the same manners, or live the same way. It is often in close contact with others that we fully realize who we really are, who we aren’t, and what little things make us that way.

The reason all this talk of mundane routine and family culture matters is because we very easily forget how important these little things are. We focus all our efforts on high, hard-to-reach culture and forget that it is the everyday moments that come to shape the world our children consider normal.

The cake you make because your grandmother used to make it was everyday culture for her, just like the way you and your son go fishing every Friday afternoon or the way you all have dinner together every Sunday evening no matter what.

These traditions may seem too ordinary to be worth thinking about. But the things your children grow up considering normal are the very things they may one day pass along to their own children. That is how culture survives, and it is something every family takes part in, whether they realize it or not.

Matthew Perry, child of divorce

Editor's note: This article was first published in November 2023.

Chandler Bing, like many of his Gen X cohort, was the product of divorce. His wealthy parents casually announced their split to him, their only child, at Thanksgiving dinner when he was 9 years old. Chandler’s resultant lifelong hatred of the holiday becomes a running joke in “Friends,” as do his defensive, acerbic humor and inability to commit.

The Bing divorce is portrayed as extravagantly messy, the better to wring laughs from Chandler’s discomfort. A flashback in the show’s first season takes us to the scene of the primal trauma, with mother Nora (Morgan Fairchild) half-heartedly spouting boilerplate therapeutic reassurance while blithely revealing that Chandler’s dad, Charles, has been having sex with the houseboy. (“More turkey, Mr. Chandler?” leers said houseboy in the scene’s tacky “button.”)

Chandler’s relationship with his parents as an adult is also a reliable source of comedy. Nora is a best-selling “erotic novelist” who embarrasses her son during a “Tonight Show” appearance and later attempts to seduce his friend Ross.

Charles (Kathleen Turner) is just as monstrously self-absorbed. Now a transgender cabaret performer in Las Vegas (Chandler ruefully recalls him showing up at high school swim meets dressed as different starlets), he attends Chandler’s wedding after years of estrangement. There, the spectacle of his horrible, freakish parents once again at each other’s throats dredges up enough unpleasant memories that Chandler nearly calls the whole thing off.

None of this is as funny as the show seems to think it is, but then the same could be said about much of the show’s cutesy, cloying humor. It’s not as if this “insensitive” portrayal of adult-children-of-divorce Americans merits some kind of apology. At any rate, “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman has predictably focused her public self-flagellation on the show’s egregious “misgendering” of Charles, as well as its more general crimes against diversity. But the emphasis placed on Chandler Bing’s unhappy childhood takes on a certain poignancy as we collectively mourn the actor who played him. Matthew Perry, it turns out, also bore the scars of his parents’ divorce.

The source of misery

Released just a year ago, Perry’s memoir begins in media res, as our protagonist’s loyal assistant wisely busts Perry, then 49, out of yet another sober living house (Perry counts a career total of 15 treatment facilities) and speeds him to the hospital, where he almost dies of a burst colon brought on by years of opioid abuse.

Perry dedicated “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing” to “all of the sufferers out there,” and his stated purpose in writing it was to share all the gory details of his decades-long struggle with drugs and alcohol. In promotional interviews last year, Perry emphasized that he now valued his fame mainly as a tool for reaching other addicts and helping them achieve sobriety; since his death on October 28, many have testified to his generosity in this regard.

The divorce may not have caused Perry’s drinking and drugging, but perhaps it did lead him to seek refuge in his public identity as an addict.

And yet in telling the story of his life, Perry repeatedly returns to a source of misery predating his first drink at 14. Once he dispenses with his obligatory opening hook, Perry then reaches deep into the past to depict a far quieter but no less devastating memory: He is 5 years old and terrified, flying alone from Montreal, where he lives with his mother, to visit his father in Los Angeles. Almost 50 years later, Perry’s anger is still raw: “The other kids had parents with them. I had a sign and a magazine. ... Why was that little kid on a plane on his own? Maybe fly to Canada and f***ing pick him up? That’s a question I often wonder about but would never dare to ask.”

Perry’s parents met in 1967 at an Ontario beauty pageant. His mother, Suzanne, was there in her official capacity as the reigning Miss Canadian University Snow Queen, while his father, John, was there performing with his band. Their only child, Matthew, was born in 1969. Nine months later, John abandoned them both to pursue an acting career in Hollywood.

A tension familiar to anyone who’s survived such garden-variety “trauma” as the late 20th-century American no-fault divorce runs through the book. While the pain Perry’s parents caused him is obvious, every time he dares to express it, he checks himself. Surely it wasn’t that bad. Nobody died or got hit, and there was enough money to go around.

Yes, his overwhelmed single mother took a doctor’s dubious advice to soothe her baby’s colic with barbiturates, and by the time Perry was in kindergarten, he had so thoroughly assumed a “caretaker” role that his first instinct after losing the tip of his middle finger to a slammed car door was to comfort a distraught Suzanne.

And yes, his mother’s eventual career as Pierre Trudeau’s press secretary meant that she was often almost as absent from her son’s life as John, who called every Sunday and only had Perry flown out for visits “when enough time had passed that it was unseemly.”

And yes, Suzanne’s many suitors meant that Perry relived his father’s abandonment over and over, and when she finally did remarry (enlisting Perry to — cringe — “give her away” at the wedding), he struggled to feel included in her growing new family.

And yes, Perry was exhibiting the whole array of “troubled” behaviors — smoking, fighting, neglecting school — by the time he was 10.

The damage carries into adulthood

But John and Suzanne aren’t to blame. They’re much better parents to Perry now that he’s a grown man, and maturity (not to mention sobriety) demands that he cut them some slack. “I needed to remember that my dad left because he was afraid, and my mom was a kid who was just doing her best,” he wrote. Perry, of course, was a literal kid, but maybe that was a blessing. We all know how resilient children are.

Or are they?

“Contrary to what we have long thought, the major impact of divorce does not occur during childhood or adolescence,” wrote Judith Wallerstein in her groundbreaking study “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce”:

Rather it rises in adulthood, as serious romantic relationships move center stage. When it comes time to choose a life mate and build a new family, the effects of divorce crescendo. A central finding to my research is that children identify not only with their mother and father as separate individuals but with the relationship between them. They carry the template of this relationship into adulthood and use it to seek the image of their new family. The absence of a good image negatively influences their search for love, intimacy, and commitment. Anxiety leads many into making bad choices in relationships, giving up hastily when problems arise, or avoiding relationships altogether.

This passage might help explain why Perry never seemed to enjoy the substances that gave him so much trouble. From the start, his drinking seemed to be medicinal, a way to treat his persistent sense of discomfort, much like his Vicodin use, which he began to relieve the pain from an on-set jet ski accident. At his peak he was taking 55 pills a day to feel normal.

Perry’s pursuit of success was similarly driven by the need for relief. His earliest “performances” were bids for attention from his distracted parents. “Acting came naturally to me,” he writes of his first big role, the lead in his high school production of “Our Town.” “Why wouldn’t I want to pretend to be another person?”

Although Perry reports that he “fell deeply in love with acting” while playing opposite River Phoenix in his first movie, 1988’s “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon,” he mostly talks about his chosen profession in more mercenary terms. “Acting was like a drug for me,” he wrote, and he soon realized the exact high he was chasing: “By 1986 I was pretty sure fame would change everything. ... It was the only thing that would fix me.”

Maybe this is just the more or less sensible single-minded focus of an ambitious, career-driven young man. But it’s worth noting that even after he had reached the top, Perry never managed to figure out love, intimacy, and commitment. Not for lack of trying, either. Although he seemed to live the life of a Hollywood playboy, dating one A-List beauty after another, he was tormented by his inability to settle down.

Consider Perry’s own testimony, from an October 2022 interview: “I break up with them because I’m deathly afraid that they will find out that I’m not enough, that I don’t matter, and that I’m too needy, and they’ll break up with me and that will annihilate me and I’ll have to take drugs and that will kill me.”

Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes. And beneath the optimism of his recovery-speak, Perry hurt. For all his recent soul-baring, Perry’s most revealing moment happened unintentionally, while promoting his book on Canadian radio: “The thing that always makes me cry is that it’s not fair. It’s not. It's not fair that I had to go through this disease while the other five didn’t. They got everything that I got. But I had to fight this thing, and still have to fight this thing.”

What can you say about Perry’s strangely tone-deaf ingratitude and lack of perspective here, other than to wonder how much suffering this self-obsession must still have caused him?

The legacy divorce leaves

One also wonders about Perry’s conception of himself as having a “disease.” The disease model of addiction is, of course, standard in recovery circles. As a metaphor, it’s quite efficient at communicating the implacable, life-or-death nature of the challenge, while training focus on the most pressing task: to stop using.

But evidence suggesting that compulsive, self-destructive indulgence is literally a chronic medical condition is scant. Journalist Peter Hitchens calmly raised this point during a televised debate with Perry on a 2013 episode of “BBC Newsnight,” denouncing the disease model as a “fashion for dismissing the ability of people to take control over their own lives and to make excuses for them [instead].” Perry quickly became defensive and angry.

Why? Maybe he thought Hitchens was trivializing the hell he’d been through — implying that Perry simply should have manned up and quit long ago. But to see addiction as a psychological rather than a physiological affliction is not to minimize its seriousness. The disease model Perry clung to reinforced his reluctance to look too closely at how his parents’ divorce affected him; to search for a “reason” for one’s substance abuse comes perilously close to justifying it.

The divorce may not have caused Perry’s drinking and drugging, but perhaps it did lead him to seek refuge in his public identity as an addict. What would true intimacy with another person look like for Perry? What kind of family could he envision for himself? Rather than confront the void left by his own upbringing, Perry could pre-emptively set himself apart and choose instead the carefully constrained vulnerability of an addict helping fellow addicts.

By all accounts, Perry had been sober for a year when he died. His death does not present the usual cautionary tale of a doomed celebrity finally undone by one party too many. And yet he died alone. Unlike the character he so memorably inhabited, Perry never quite managed to embrace adulthood. Maybe Perry, contra Hitchens, was right, and it had to be this way; such was the progress of his disease.

At any rate, it’s not for us to judge how well Perry played the cards he’d been dealt. But as long as we’re seeking a lesson from his sad, untimely demise, surely we can consider the entirely voluntary decisions of those who brought him into this world. Perry leaves behind him a foundation in his name to help those struggling with addiction; it’s what he would have wanted, as the cliché goes. But the injury of divorce compromises the very sense of self that enables us even to know what we want.

The opioid crisis is much discussed these days, with good reason. To honor Perry’s legacy, however, we should also remember him as a survivor of another all-too-common epidemic.

'You can just do things': An interview with Meriwether Academy founder Warren Steury

We all understand the terrible state of our leftist-run education systems, whose main goal is to turn normal young people into progressive activists.

The good news is that many parents have had enough. Homeschooling is on the rise. Charter schools are booming.

I want the parents of our students to know that this man won’t just teach my son science or literature; he’ll be a role model for my son.

In some cases, brave, intrepid souls are even attempting to build entirely new kinds of schools, from the ground up.

I recently met with one of those brave souls, Warren Steury of Nashville, Tennessee. At age 29, Steury is the founder of Meriwether Academy, a school where “young men have the opportunity to experience a rich and rigorous classical and outdoor education.”

While the school itself is still in the planning stages, Steury has already established himself as a central figure in conservative intellectual circles in Nashville, through his Classic Book Study groups and adult workshops.

Recently, he was part of a four-man team that brought Peter Thiel to Nashville to present his Antichrist lecture series.

I was able to talk to Steury recently about his views on education, his current projects, and the future of Meriwether Academy.

Blake Nelson: What was your own education like?

Warren Steury: I grew up in North Carolina. I was a public school degenerate. I was doing what most boys do, which was rebelling against all forms of order and discipline.

I was sent to a program in the mountains, against my will, at 16 years old, where I lived out of a backpack for three months. I was making fire with rocks and sticks.

Then I was transferred to a disciplinary boarding school that was also in the mountains of North Carolina, on an old Scout camp. It was a boys’ school. It was the mountain of misfits.

BN: Was that an effective way of dealing with a kid like you?

WS: It was certainly better than me sitting in some fluorescently lit institutional room. My whole reason for building these schools was thinking about what periods of my childhood had the most impact on my character.

I saw that year in the woods, hiking, camping, living in the forest as having an instrumental effect on who I was. All the other years in public school were essentially a blur.

BN: What’s the thought process of creating a new kind of school?

WS: One question I work on answering is: Does this school need to exist, or is there another school that’s offering the same thing that you’re thinking of?

Like what is truly going to distinguish this school from others? My answer is that we have a pretty unique program with the classically inclined education, the heavy outdoor model, and then the martial arts.

BN: Are there other schools that have inspired you?

WS: One of my personal favorites is St. Dunstan Academy in Virginia, which is a very cool new Anglican boys’ school.

They got their hands on 200 acres in the mountains. They’re building the campus from scratch. They just put up their Great Hall, which is a 33.5-foot-tall, massive timber-frame structure.

The students are learning how to build. The students are literally building the campus.

BN: What will you look for in your teachers?

WS: Life experience. So much of academia is essentially this pipeline where you go to college, you study something, and then you immediately become a professor in that subject. And then you’re speaking from this vacuum, this fake world that you’ve been in.

A good teacher should be a role model, a mentor, a guide, in ways that expand beyond teaching calculus. I want the parents of our students to know that this man won’t just teach my son science or literature; he’ll be a role model for my son, and even if my son forgets the math, this man will make an impression on my son’s life that will influence him for the better.

BN: I enjoyed attending your Classic Book Study Group (Plutarch’s "Lives"). When did you start doing book study groups?

WS: I was 18, when I started my first book club with some friends. It was the "Celestine Prophecy." It was like five of us in Boone, North Carolina, when we were in college.

I always enjoyed book clubs and hosting dinners for my friends. And sometimes making it more formal and paying a speaker to come in.

BN: I noticed the Plutarch study group is men only.

WS: We want to do events for guys. It’s a different conversation. It’s nothing against women. You need male spaces, and you need female spaces, and then you need spaces that are shared. A healthy society needs all of those. I think that there is a coordinated attack on male spaces in America for the purpose of weakening or discouraging the culture.

BN: I liked a recent article you had on the Meriwether website, about the role of a father in a boy’s life.

WS: It’s so important to have that masculine guiding force in a young child’s life. We know with the Spartans, the boy was with his mother for the first nine years, and then the man came and took the boy and threw him into training, and that’s where he was made a man. So we shouldn’t expect mothers to be able to raise men on their own.

Fatherlessness is a massive societal issue, and is completely detrimental to the health of the child, but also to the nation as a whole. Whereas the mother provides emotional sustenance, the father has to toughen him up. He has to bring an energy that’s very different from the mother. Aristotle talks about this, how the family should be. It’s important to have both of those.

BN: Meriwether Academy co-hosted the recent Peter Thiel lecture series. What was that like?

WS: We threw it together in two weeks. I think people need to have more faith in themselves and their friends. A group of like three or four guys who are aligned can pull off some really cool stuff.

I feel like we’re quick to assume these things are more complicated than they are, when in reality, four guys who had this idea can go to work on it.

BN: You can just do things!

WS: You can just do things. There aren’t that many laws. The laws of physics. The laws of God. Other than that, it’s all made up.

The strange, dark story of how John 3:16 infiltrated American sports

You don't have to be a Christian to know John 3:16.

You may not know exactly what the verse says. But if you've watched enough American sports, you've probably seen the citation: on a sign behind the goal posts, beneath Tim Tebow's eyes, or this summer, written on the Pride caps of three San Francisco Giants pitchers.

Convinced that the rapture was imminent, he wanted to warn the world before it was too late.

For decades, six characters and a colon have served as American sports' unofficial Bible verse.

Why this one? The answer begins long before television and eventually involves Martin Luther, D.L. Moody, a rainbow-wigged publicity seeker, Google, a hostage crisis, and a controversy this summer over Bible verses written on baseball caps.

The gospel in miniature

John 3:16 appears during Jesus' nighttime conversation with Nicodemus in the Gospel of John:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Christians noticed early that the verse managed to pack an extraordinary amount of Christianity into a single sentence. Around the turn of the fifth century, John Chrysostom marveled that although John wrote concisely, "each word had much significance." From the verse, he drew God's love for sinful humanity, the giving of the Son, faith, salvation from destruction, and the promise of eternal life.

Martin Luther later became famous for calling John 3:16 "the gospel in miniature." By the 19th century, the verse had become especially important to evangelical preaching. The English evangelist Henry Moorhouse preached on God's love from John 3:16 repeatedly during a visit to D.L. Moody's church in Chicago. Moody later described the experience as transforming his understanding of God's love.

It was hard to compress the Christian message much further than John 3:16.

Then came the perfect way to distribute this message: live television.

Enter the Rainbow Man

Rollen Stewart initially had nothing to say about Jesus. He wanted to be famous.

According to Sam Green’s 1997 documentary, "The Rainbow Man/John 3:16," Stewart discovered the power of television during the 1977 NBA Finals in Portland. Wearing a rainbow-colored Afro wig, he danced for a cameraman filming the crowd and managed to get himself onto the broadcast.

During the 1977 NBA Finals, Stewart discovered that television offered a shortcut to celebrity. There was no need to get cast in anything if he simply went where the cameras were already going and made himself difficult to ignore.

So he put on a rainbow-colored Afro wig and started showing up at major sporting events. He danced for the cameras and learned to anticipate where they would point next.

"Once I saw the red light, I was hooked," he later recalled.

Soon the Rainbow Man was everywhere, and Stewart became surprisingly sophisticated about getting himself into the picture. At football games, he positioned himself between the goal posts, where the field-goal camera would find him. At baseball games, he appeared behind home plate. At the Masters, he maneuvered himself over Jack Nicklaus' shoulder as Nicklaus prepared to tee off.

Best of all, he carried a small battery-powered television. Stewart could stand inside a stadium, watch the broadcast he was attempting to infiltrate, and adjust his position according to what the director was putting on the screen.

He wasn't even much of a sports fan. "I despised sports," he admitted years later. The games were useful because television covered them live.

After the 1980 Super Bowl, Stewart returned to his hotel room depressed. He had spent years trying to become famous and discovered that being famous wasn't doing much for him. He turned on the television, encountered Bible prophecy teacher Charles Taylor, and subsequently became a born-again Christian.

The rainbow wig stayed. But Stewart now had something besides himself to advertise.

John 3:16.

6 characters and a colon

The choice was unusually well suited to what Stewart was doing. Christians had spent centuries treating John 3:16 as the gospel in miniature: In the King James Bible, the verse takes 25 words to move from God's love for the world to the promise of everlasting life. Stewart figured out how to shrink it even further. Forget the verse itself. All he needed were six characters and a colon, large enough to read on television. The viewer could look up the rest.

In 1984, Christianity Today reported that Stewart had displayed his banner at eight football stadiums in five days. He appeared at professional golf tournaments, championship basketball games, the World Series, football bowls, and even the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.

The fact that many viewers had no idea what John 3:16 meant didn't bother him. It was part of the idea.

"If they don't know what John 3:16 means, most people will eventually try to find out," Stewart told the magazine. "And some will pick up their Bibles and begin reading it."

Television networks charged advertisers enormous sums to reach the audiences watching America's biggest sporting events. Stewart had figured out how to place his message inside the same broadcasts without buying airtime at all.

Live sports made the scheme possible. A network could edit an entertainment program before broadcasting it. It couldn't edit a field goal before showing it. If Stewart got himself behind the goal posts before the kick, by the time the director realized what was happening, John 3:16 was already in America's living rooms.

Eventually, the networks and sports organizations became less cooperative. Camera operators tried to frame Stewart out, while stadiums restricted his banners. By 1986, Christianity Today reported that all but one of the NFL's 28 teams had prohibited them.

At Washington's RFK Stadium, the fight became a federal lawsuit after security prevented Stewart and an associate from displaying John 3:16 banners. Elsewhere, Stewart devised Scripture banners that could be worn like ponchos and exposed by spreading his arms.

"They'd have to undress us to take away our gospel signs," he said.

By then, however, the mysterious citation was becoming part of the scenery of American sports.

Did anybody actually look it up?

There was an obvious question about Stewart's entire enterprise: Did anybody sitting at home actually do what he hoped?

Mike Kerrigan did.

The Charlotte attorney was about 11 when he kept noticing the Rainbow Man during football games. Eventually, he asked his father what John 3:16 meant.

His father didn't know either.

"Let's look," he said. They opened a Bible.

Kerrigan still remembered the moment decades later, when he wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal in 2024. Stewart had predicted that an obscure biblical citation on television might make someone curious enough to find a Bible. In at least one living room, that is exactly what happened.

Unfortunately, Stewart's own story didn't end nearly as happily.

Rainbow's end

His life began to unravel toward the end of the 1980s. His marriage collapsed. His money disappeared. His religious beliefs became increasingly preoccupied with elaborate predictions of an imminent apocalypse.

Television remained his constant companion. Living in cheap Los Angeles hotels, Stewart later described watching as much as 18 hours a day: Christian broadcasters, daytime talk shows, news magazines, reality television, and more preachers at night. He called it being "fed by the media."

Eventually, appearing on television was no longer enough. Stewart began trying to create events that would force television to cover him.

In 1991, authorities accused him of setting off foul-smelling devices at several Southern California locations, including the Crystal Cathedral, Trinity Broadcasting Network studios, and a Christian bookstore.

Then, on Sept. 22, 1992, he took over a room at a Hyatt hotel near Los Angeles International Airport with a gun. Two day laborers escaped. A hotel maid locked herself in the bathroom. Stewart covered the windows with religious messages and demanded a lengthy live press conference. Convinced that the rapture was imminent, he wanted to warn the world before it was too late.

Green's documentary includes an audio recording of Stewart speaking with a police negotiator during the standoff.

"I've watched the cops, you know, cop shows and tried to get a handle on what's going on," Stewart explains.

"Maybe you look at a little bit too much TV," the negotiator replies.

"I watch a lot of it."

After roughly nine hours, police stormed the room and arrested him. Stewart was sentenced in 1993 to three life terms with the possibility of parole.

From the family Bible to Google

Once the Rainbow Man was gone from sports television, the signs persisted.

On Jan. 8, 2009, Florida played Oklahoma for the national championship. Gators quarterback Tim Tebow had spent the season wearing Philippians 4:13 — "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" — on the eye black beneath his eyes.

For the championship game, however, he decided to switch to John 3:16. Coach Urban Meyer was horrified. A superstitious man, Meyer wasn't about to tamper with a winning formula. "That verse got us here!" he protested, according to Tebow's later recollection.

Tebow explained that John 3:16 expressed the essence of his Christian faith. Meyer relented.

Florida won the national championship, and Tebow had an advantage Rollen Stewart could only have dreamed of: The cameras were trying to find him.

During the game, viewers began searching the citation online. By the following morning, "John 3:16" had become Google's hottest search term.

Twenty-five years earlier, Stewart had imagined people seeing the citation and going to find a Bible. Well, now they had Google.

The story subsequently acquired an almost suspiciously neat postscript. On Jan. 8, 2012 — exactly three years after the national championship — Tebow led the Denver Broncos against the Pittsburgh Steelers in an NFL playoff game. Denver won on an 80-yard touchdown pass on the first play of overtime.

Tebow had thrown for exactly 316 yards. Because he completed 10 passes, he averaged 31.6 yards per completion.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

The verse that wouldn't leave sports

By 2011, the connection between John 3:16 and televised sports was so familiar that a proposed Super Bowl commercial was built around it.

The ad showed football fans watching a game on television. The broadcast zoomed in on a quarterback with John 3:16 written beneath his eyes.

"I'll look it up," one of the fans says, reaching for his smartphone.

Fox declined to air the commercial under its policy against advertisements from religious organizations intended to advance particular beliefs or practices.

The citation continued turning up elsewhere. In 2012, a Texas school district became embroiled in a legal fight over cheerleaders putting Bible verses on the banners through which their high school football team ran onto the field.

And this summer, San Francisco Giants pitcher Landen Roupp employed a version of Stewart's old tactic — with a different Bible verse.

During the team's June 12 Pride Night, Roupp wore a special rainbow-logo cap but wrote "Gen. 9:12-16" across it, partially covering the logo.

Two other Giants pitchers, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker, also added biblical citations to their caps.

Roupp had chosen the passage in which God establishes the rainbow as the sign of His covenant with Noah, promising never again to destroy the earth with a flood.

The Giants' rainbow logo had acquired an unexpected biblical footnote.

MLB warned the three pitchers not to repeat the inscriptions, explaining that its uniform regulations prohibit unauthorized messages of any kind. The league emphasized that its warning "had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the message."

Roupp was unapologetic. "That's just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that," he told reporters.

There was no indication that Roupp had taken inspiration from Stewart. But the resemblance was striking. Nearly half a century after the Rainbow Man first appeared on television, a baseball player had put another biblical citation in front of the cameras, leaving viewers to discover the verse for themselves.