Ian Olson is a grad student living with his wife and four children in southern Wisconsin, doing all he can to resist the gravitational pull of the world’s despair and commend what is excellent. He is a contributor to Mockingbird, has written for Covenant and Mere Orthodoxy among others, and has articles forthcoming in The Other Journal and Comment. He also discusses "the weird and the eerie" on his YouTube channel, "Book of Common Terror." He begs you to fight the demons and delete Facebook and Twitter.

Who Killed the World? Hope That Is Not a Mistake in Mad Max: Fury Road

The desolate future envisioned in the Mad Max films lays bare the emptiness which always threatens the human effort to build something meaningful.

Can Watching Horror Help Us to Neither Deny Nor Domesticate the Darkness?

Horror is a witness to the monstrous we wish we could explain away but cannot.

The Dead Do Not Forget: Advent as the Practice of Penitence

Advent was historically preoccupied with the second coming of Christ and focused on the last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

“Am I Not Free?” The Freedom to Forgo Our Rights for the Sake of Love

A “freedom” which floats above social context and concrete relational bonds is no freedom at all.