In today’s episode, we continue our conversation with Kirk Cameron and Gary Bauer as they discuss the vision behind Iggy and Mr. Kirk, a children’s series that integrates faith into entertainment. Learn about the challenges faced in finding suitable platforms for such content and the creation of Brave Plus, a space where parents can trust the quality of what their children watch. This riveting discussion paves the way for understanding the impact of spiritually uplifting media on American culture.
Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It’s a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute supported by listeners just like you. I’m Dr. James Dobson and I’m thrilled that you’ve joined us.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, welcome to another edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love. I’m Roger Marsh, and on today’s program, we’re continuing an uplifting conversation featuring Gary Bauer, our Senior Vice President of Public Policy here at the Dobson Policy Center, and his guest, actor Kirk Cameron. We’re going to continue our conversation about how a brand new children’s television series is mirroring America’s spiritual comeback. Now, on the last edition of Family Talk, we introduce you to Kirk Cameron’s exciting new children’s television series called Iggy and Mr. Kirk. It’s bringing back biblical values to children’s entertainment. And in this lovable show, children follow the adventures of Iggy the iguana and his friend, Mr. Kirk, played by Kirk Cameron, as they learn important life lessons rooted in faith. Now, in part two of our conversation today, we’re going to dig deeper into why this kind of wholesome, values-based programming matters now more than ever before. Kirk Cameron and Gary Bauer will share their vision for how children’s entertainment can spark spiritual renewal in America, one young heart at a time. You know, as parents and grandparents, we are searching for positive content that aligns with our values for our kids and our grandkids. And this timely conversation offers both hope and practical solutions. As a matter of fact, let’s hear just a small sample of what you can come to expect on the brand new Iggy and Mr. Kirk series, starring today’s guest on Family Talk, Kirk Cameron. Let’s go ahead and roll that clip.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi, Brave Explorers. I’m Mr. Kirk. Welcome to my treehouse. It’s spring, which means it’s time for new life. Have you ever cared for a new life like a new little brother or sister or a puppy? It can be a lot of work, but it’s worth it because every life is a gift from God. Have you met Iggy? He and I are going fishing today. He is so excited. He has been looking forward to this for weeks. It’s all he ever talks about.
SPEAKER 02 :
Those are my fishing worms.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, no. It sounds like Iggy’s in some sort of trouble.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, it’s over here. Oh, it’s over there. Oh, get out of here, bird. What’s going on? Bird in our treehouse. It’s trying to steal my fishing worms and it won’t fly out. Get your own fishing worms. Iggy, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, wait, that’s my blanket. Mr. Kirk, what are you doing? The bird’s a robber.
SPEAKER 04 :
A robin?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, yeah, he’s robbing us. He belongs in jail.
SPEAKER 04 :
Look at this. This little bird has a hurt wing.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, well, that’s not good.
SPEAKER 04 :
We definitely need to take care of it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Take care of it? How?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, we need to make sure that it has food and water and probably time for it to rest its wings. I think we just need to be here in case it needs anything.
SPEAKER 02 :
What? What about our fishing? I’ve been looking forward to this for months.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, folks, welcome to Family Talk. I’m Gary Bauer, Vice President for Public Policy at the James Dobson Family Institute. We’re continuing our conversation today with Kirk Cameron and his fantastic new children’s series, Iggy and Mr. Kirk. Let’s get right into it and talk a little bit more, Kirk, about why this series is so important.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thank you, Gary.
SPEAKER 03 :
You mentioned that there’s 50 shows on there that parents can access. It’s really an important point because periodically Disney gets it right. They might have a show that if we watched it, we could look at it for a half hour and say – Okay, that was okay. But if you put the kid in front of the TV set watching Disney, you have no idea what the next show is going to be. And you tend then to be off doing something else. And now it’s going off the rails.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s exactly the case. That’s the case of what’s happening with with books. It looks like a benign cover and the kids open it up and the first five pages are fine. They’re hooked on the story. But then on page six, you’ve got a non-binary hero character who is now teaching your children that you can be male or female or you could be neither or you could be a furry. And all of a sudden, kids are being targeted without their parents’ knowledge. And the same thing happens with TV shows, even beloved TV shows. So in trying to find a home for Iggy and Mr. Kirk, we couldn’t find the perfect platform. It’s not going to be Disney. It’s not going to be Netflix. As they are, there’s too much harmful stuff. So we created our own. It’s called Brave Plus. And every show is vetted by parents for children’s health. In fact, the standards are so high, only one in 20 shows make the cut. Only one in 20 shows make the cut. And we found 50. That means that we’ve screened over a thousand shows to possibly put on there and only the very best and only the good remain.
SPEAKER 03 :
Man, that’s fantastic. I mean, you’re doing work that parents in the busy lives that they live can’t possibly do.
SPEAKER 05 :
This is how we help each other. We carry one another’s burdens, as Scripture tells us to. And we understand that we’re much, much better and more effective together. but we’ve each got to do our part. It’s the biblical concept of the one and the many. We’re one big family and household of faith in Christ, but each member is vitally important. Let’s help each other and still do what God has called each of us individually to do as parents.
SPEAKER 03 :
Kirk, you’re known for whatever you get involved in to do it really professionally. I mean, sometimes things that are labeled Christian, it might be a movie or whatever, people will go like, oh, it was fine, but it just wasn’t up to the standards I’ve come to expect from entertainment. Your material and what you’ve done over the years is always top of the line. And as I was reading about this particular series, you actually took this to children themselves, right? And showed them a couple of the early episodes and got a really encouraging response.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes. In fact, we were just on a 20-city church tour going around the country and encouraging families to trying to inspire them to return to a vision of cultural victory as the family of faith, rather than just having an attitude that things are only going to get worse, that our only hope is to be raptured and rescued and taken away. No, wait a minute. What if this cultural setback is really a divine setup for a spiritual comeback? led by the family of faith. What if we are on the verge of the next revival or great awakening culturally? We’ve had it twice happen in the United States. It’s happened all over the world. And it always happens when things are terrible, morally, spiritually, economically, and politically. That’s usually when lazy or apathetic Christians wake up and say, oh no, this is not good for us or for our kids. You know, we’re either going to just lay down and let them take us, or we’re going to stand up, lift our eyes to heaven, repent of our sins, and seek the Lord with all of our heart and trust in him to heal our land. Well, that’s me. That’s what I want to do. So we’re doing all that we can, and I believe that God always multiplies what he loves. He’s given us faith, hope, and love, and a birthright of courage in difficult times. And if we lean in, I think that we can make a massive difference.
SPEAKER 03 :
You cited a little history there, Kirk, and it’s important history because that first Great Awakening took place in the years leading up to the American Revolution. And historians believe it had a lot to do with empowering pastors during that age and Amen. And then the other Great Awakening took place in the 1840s and 50s when we were leading into a great national debate, hard to believe now, over whether one man could own another man, that we actually have that argument. And that was only settled. after six to 700,000 people died to make sure that no man could ever own another man. So these two great awakenings came at existential moments.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Without them, there would be no America. And I know Dr. Dobson believes, and you believe, I certainly believe that we’re in an existential moment about whether we’re going to be one nation or under God, believing in order, liberty under God, or whether we’re just going to keep going off the rails into some neo-Marxist, I don’t even know what else I can say on family radio about it. It’s all up for grabs. And the battles are in Washington. The battles are in the culture. And you have run to the front lines in this battle. You’re on the playing field of the culture, and you’re trying to save our children. So it’s just as important, if not more important than the work that I try to do in Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, thank you for the work that you’re doing in Washington, D.C. We can’t neglect places of power, just like we can’t neglect Hollywood. We can’t neglect the courts. We can’t neglect education. We can’t neglect any of that stuff. You know, you talk about running to the front of the ballot. When you say that, it conjures up an image in my mind of Mel Gibson and the Patriot. Do you remember when he grabbed that flag and he ran in front of his men towards the British? And he’s got that flag in his hand and he’s just yelling, right? Freedom! And he’s running to the… And, you know… I think that we want to see our country thrive, but we know from scripture that the way a country is built is from the inside out. It starts in the heart. It’s not a bunch of strong men who just crush the opposition politically or militarily. That’s happened, and those empires come and go, but the things that last are the things that are solid from the core, and then they’re built from the inside out. That’s why God gave the strategy to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, form families, fill the earth, and take dominion. This is why the Shema was given to Moses about taking these commands of God, putting them in your own heart, then teaching them to your children and framing your house with these principles, the work of your hand and all the way out to the city gates. So it starts in my heart, it moves to my home, and then it’s from my house to the White House, not the other way around. And I think that we can do that by praying, carrying one another’s burdens, teaching our children to And if we all work together, then we’ve got a generation full of kids with the kind of character who can actually occupy the halls of Congress with righteousness and truth.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, there’s a recent study out. The research in the last decade or so has been a little unnerving about the decline in the number of Americans that identify as being Christian. But this recent study indicated that that’s stabilized and it might be beginning to move up a little bit. And the interesting thing to me was that it was most pronounced online. among younger Americans. So maybe because of the efforts being made by people like yourself, we’re beginning to see some of the early blooms of spring. Maybe we’re on the way to that new awakening that America so desperately needs. There’s a lot of talk right now here in D.C. about the budget deficit, and we got to get that under control. If we don’t, it’s going to be a day of reckoning. But I can make a strong case, I’m sure I know you can too, that the virtue deficit is much more likely to take us down even before the budget deficit. In fact, the virtue deficit leads to us spending money we don’t have.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, yeah. You’re right. You’re right. That’s the root. That’s the root of the problem. You know, I’m sitting outside here right now and I’m in a little child’s playhouse in my backyard and I got a tree above me. And if I see the fruit on this tree is coming out all like twisted and dry, shriveled, pithy, bitter, not sweet. If I know something about trees, I know that there’s probably something systemically wrong with that tree. There may be a fungus in the soil and it would be good to test the roots. That’s where you’re going to fix the fruit. And when we look and see the stuff you’re talking about, twisted government, we see an overreach of their powers. We see them overspending, or we see our schools or even our churches not adhering to good, sound moral principles. That’s the rotten fruit. But if we want to fix it, we got to go to the root. which comes back to that virtue deficit you’re talking about. We’ve got to nourish the root of the hearts and souls of people. And we do that through the word of God and loving God in one another. If we get that right, then the fruit can be sweet and healthy again.
SPEAKER 03 :
In the book you wrote, Born to be Brave, the first chapter, I believe, has the title Heavenizing Earth. Yeah. Is that really what you’re describing as you talk about us standing up and confronting the culture and trying to instead of just complain and hiding in our churches, waiting for the rapture? That we have to go out there and be Christian parents and Christian citizens if we’re going to save this great gift that God gave us by living in a place called America.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, that is what I’m saying. And it’s easier, right? It’s easier to just let it go. Because, I mean, it seems to us that it’s in an awful state, even though it’s not really. When I say that, that only makes sense if you do what I’m doing, which is compare it to what it was like for Christians a thousand years ago. Go back a thousand years and then compare the culture in America today to the culture back there. Or go back 1,500 years. How about when they’re throwing Christians to the lions and lighting them on fire in the Colosseum? to illuminate nighttime gladiatorial games. Well, we’ve got it a whole lot better than that. And the only reason that we do is because the gospel came here and civilized pagan society. Well, what I am saying is that rather than just letting our culture go and saying, beam me up, Lord, get me out of here. Why don’t we do what Jesus said when he prayed, Lord, may your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I call that heavenizing the earth, bringing the spirit of God and the word of God to bear on every sphere of life, my heart, my marriage, my family, my community, and to the nations.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’re told that we all stand before the throne someday and we’ll be judged about what we did and didn’t do and how much we followed our Lord and Savior. You know, I wouldn’t want to stand before the throne and be asked, so what did you do to save the children that I gave you and the grandchildren that I gave you? And the response was, you know, well, I was really busy and I just wanted to wait for you to come, you know, I mean, because— Everything in the earth is passing and won’t last. People should be able to look at an American citizen and know whether they’re a Christian or not, or an American banker and know whether he’s a Christian or not, or an American actor and know whether he’s a follower of Christ or not. It ought to be evident in everything that we do. who we are. And Kirk, that is certainly true with the career you have built since growing pains in the time that you first were introduced to Christ.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, thank you, Gary, for giving me an opportunity to talk with you and interact with you on these important issues and to let people know that we don’t have to resign ourselves to be cultural whiners. We can be cultural winners. through the power of the gospel, working in our hearts and in our lives, and we can create the future for our children. We don’t have to blame Bill Gates, or we don’t have to blame bureaucrats. We don’t have to complain about big pharma, big business, big tech ruining everything. Wait a minute. Why don’t we raise children of character and faith who one day will be interviewing for those jobs or creating those companies and we can right the ship and turn culture around? Gary, if we could go back to the metaphor that exists in this new TV show for kids, we have a vulture named culture. And one of the things that Mr. Kerr always tells Iggy, his little five-year-old iguana buddy, is that culture is not… lost irredeemably. Culture can be healed and culture can turn around and he can pray and come to God just like you and I can. And so I want Iggy to have a heart of compassion for culture, even though culture’s current condition is poor. And for us as Christians, we’ve got to see culture as our, not our enemy, but our opportunity. That cultural mandate was not given to the serpent to go create something to make things difficult for the children of God. In the Garden of Eden, God gave the cultural mandate to Adam and Eve and the human race and said, fill the earth, my earth, and together with me, you’re going to take dominion over all of this for the glory of God and the blessing of the human race. That is on us, and that’s our hope. So let’s not… get into this escapist defeatist mindset and let’s go fight the good fight of faith and win this for our kids.
SPEAKER 03 :
Great closing words, Kirk. Folks, I really want to urge you to check out Iggy and Mr. Kirk. If you’re a parent or grandparent out there, we know how difficult and challenging it is in the times we live in. Don’t just rail against the darkness. There are assets, there are tools that are out there that people have created with you in mind and that will stand alongside of you as you move raise the children that our Lord and Savior has entrusted you to raise. This is the most important thing you will end up doing. It’s more important than your career. It’s more important than what your stocks are doing. This is raising the next generation to be free and moral people, which is, according to our founding fathers, the only way that a constitutional republic can survive is to have citizens that are morally upright and believe that liberty comes from God. That’s right. Tell us one more time, Kirk, where they can access Biggie and Mr. Kirk.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, you can go to braveplus.com, braveplus.com, and you can watch all the episodes of Iggy and Mr. Kirk. And let’s see, if you just go to bravebooks.com, you can navigate your way through to a YouTube channel and watch the first five episodes for free.
SPEAKER 03 :
Fantastic. Kirk, thanks for being with us. Keep up the great work. All of us at JDFI promise to pray for you and your family as you venture out into the public square. It doesn’t matter what anybody’s doing, even something as nondescript as, hey, I’m making some entertainment for kids. If you stand for the Christian values that you stand for, There are going to be critics. There are going to be people that try to distort it. You’ve stood up against that. You’re setting an example for all of us about how to fight the good fight and try. And by doing so, restore America as a shining city upon a hill again. We love you. We love the work you’re doing. God bless you. Folks, be sure to tune in every day. For Family Talk, we’ll be back with many shows to help you defend faith, family, and freedom.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, you’ve been listening to Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk and the conclusion of a conversation featuring Gary Bauer, Senior Vice President of Public Policy here at the Dobson Policy Center, and actor Kirk Cameron about the new Iggy and Mr. Kirk children’s television series. It’s an innovative new series bringing biblical values back to family entertainment. Now to revisit either part one or part two of this conversation, or to share it with friends and family, go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. There you’ll also find information about how you and your family can watch the entire series of Iggy and Mr. Kirk, As a matter of fact, the first few episodes have already dropped at BravePlus.com, and also the first five episodes are available on YouTube as well. For more information on how you can check out these episodes and access to all of Season 1 of The Adventures of Iggy and Mr. Kirk, go to BravePlus.com, which we have linked up at DrJamesDobson.org. You’ll also find a link there for Kirk Cameron’s books through BraveBooks.us as well. Before we close today, I want to share with you about a beautiful resource that’s perfect for this time of year. It celebrates an important aspect of family life, and that’s simply gathering around the family table. Dr. James Dobson’s wife, Shirley, and her daughter, Danae, have written a book called Welcome to Our Table, which invites you into the Dobson’s family traditions of hospitality and meaningful connection. Now, this treasured collection includes family recipes, recipes, heartwarming stories, and ideas for seasonal celebrations that transform ordinary meals into ministry opportunities. And with Easter coming up and also Mother’s Day and even Father’s Day as well, you’ll learn some valuable lessons about the ministry of hospitality when you read the book by Shirley and Danae Dobson called Welcome to Our Table. Now, we’ll be happy to send you a copy of this outstanding book as our way of thanking you for your gift of any amount in support of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute today. So go online to drjamesdobson.org. That’s drjamesdobson.org, and you can make your gift securely there online. Or you can call our customer service team at 877-732-6825. That’s 877-732-6825. You know, when you support Family Talk and the James Dobson Family Institute, you become part of a movement to reclaim our culture, one family at a time. Your generosity today helps provide trusted biblical guidance for parents navigating challenging issues like the ones we’ve been discussing on today’s program. Together, we can ensure families have access to parenting resources that honor God and nurture children’s spiritual growth. So please consider making a secure donation online at drjamesdobson.org. Learn more about Kirk Cameron’s new television series for children, The Adventures of Iggy and Mr. Kirk. And also, make sure you request your copy of Shirley and Danae Dobson’s book called Welcome to Our Table. Again, you’ll find all that information at drjamesdobson.org and also on the Family Talk app. And if you’d like to make your donation through the U.S. Postal Service, you’re welcome to write to us. Our ministry mailing address is Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949. Once again, our ministry mailing address is JDFI, Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, Post Office Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949. Well, I’m Roger Marsh, and on behalf of Dr. Dobson, his wife Shirley, daughter Danae, and all of us here at the JDFI, thanks so much for listening. Be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
