Author and pastor Lee Strobel warned this week during a two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson that Satan and the demonic realm likely work through Hollywood and mass media to corrupt society by normalizing evil while many fail to notice.
“If demons do exist, we ought to be heads-up about it,” said Strobel, who recently wrote the book Seeing the Supernatural: Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World.
“Because the two biggest mistakes we can make about the demonic realm: number one, is to deny that they exist; and number two, to see a demon behind every bush and think they’re more powerful than they are.”
“They’re both problems, but I think the biggest problem in our culture is to deny that there is a demonic realm, pretend like there isn’t,” he said.
There’s a lot that science can’t explain, including most of what actually matters. Lee Strobel on the overwhelming evidence that the supernatural world is entirely real.
(0:00) Introduction
(3:02) Strobel’s Encounter With an Angel
(8:30) Do We Have a Guardian Angel?
(19:31) What… pic.twitter.com/0WsNeb1sBW— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) September 1, 2025
Strobel, a former investigative journalist who famously wrote the bestselling book The Case for Christ, went on to describe what he sees as the satanic strategy to co-opt the widespread influence of mass media and entertainment by mainstreaming sin in society.
“If Satan were smart, which he is, would he go around the country and around the world trying to possess or bother average, everyday people?”
Strobel said a “much more efficient” strategy is to “go to Hollywood and to influence a bunch of people there who are very influential in, let’s say, the entertainment industry.”
“And let’s say he encourages them to create films and television shows that are funny and that are creative and they’re fun, but there’s an underlying message to them, that there’s a normalization of immoral activity.”
When audiences are laughing, Stroble argued, their guards are down and more susceptible to suggestion.
Strobel pinpointed the hit 1990s sitcom Friends as an example of a show that glorified “a very ugly sexual ethic that normalizes multiple sexual partners and that sort of thing — the kind of thing that Satan would love to inculcate into American culture.”
Friends, which ran from 1994 to 2004, featured six friends in their 20s and 30s living in New York City, and often uncritically depicted the characters engaging in casual relationships and hookups.
Such a tactic is not limited to sexual immorality, Strobel said, but extends to other sinful, destructive behavior.
“I think it’s much more efficient for Satan to influence moviemakers and TV makers in Hollywood to create products that feed us stuff that, without us even realizing it, open us up to the occult, open us up to immoral activity.”
Carlson, who said he knows people in Hollywood, noted the bitter fruit of how such a worldview has affected many in the entertainment industry personally, whom he described as “really tormented people” with “a string of wrecked relationships, kids who hate them, trans kids, drug problems.”
“It does seem to match up,” Strobel said of the expected personal consequences for embracing the ungodly behavior Hollywood often promotes.
Carlson, who spent his last months at Fox News often talking about spiritual topics, has previously reflected on what he came to believe was the negative spiritual impact of mass media and cable news especially.
During a conversation with former fellow Fox News host Clayton Morris in June, Carlson explained that he came to believe channels such as Fox News inculcate a callous attitude among the elderly toward war that he believes is evil.
Speaking in the wake of the U.S. strike on Iran, Carlson said many of the older people he recently came in contact with adamantly wanted war, which he found disturbing.
“In the last month, like every old person I come into contact with [says], ‘Let’s just kill them.’ Like thoughtlessly, ‘Just kill people.'”
“And it’s like, ‘You’re going to face judgment really soon. Should you really be calling for killing people in your final days here?’ I always think that, I never say it, but why is that?”
“And I do think it’s, at least in part, the result of watching this filth,” he added. “And it is filth. It’s worse than pornography. It’s disgusting.”
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
