Mere Fidelity

Latest Episodes:

The Christian Life with Kelly Kapic May 20, 2026

Show notes

Kelly Kapic's The Christian Life — the newest volume in the New Studies in Dogmatics series — frames Christian living as a response to divine love, arguing that human agency is always Christological and ecclesial before it is personal. With Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and James Wood.

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Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Classical Theism: A Christian Introduction, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships

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00:48
A Summit Work

04:01
False Dichotomies in Evangelical Thought

08:19
Anthropology and Life

11:33
A Little Summa

12:32
What's New About the Christian Life?

14:35
Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation

15:42
The Response to the Love of God

19:20
Christ's Vicarious Love and Agency

24:44
Understanding the Law and Gospel Distinction

29:58
Capital 'S' Sin

37:11
Obedience to the law

41:38
The Role of Liturgy in Corporate Worship

49:42
Living Out the Christian Life in Community

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% off the Baker Book of the Month by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

The Desecration of Man with Dr. Carl Trueman May 13, 2026

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Carl Trueman joins Mere Fidelity to discuss his book The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. They examine why "desecration" captures something "disenchantment" misses — the frenzied, ecstatic violation of what is still recognized as sacred — and trace its implications for abortion, gender, technology, and end-of-life ethics. Trueman argues the church's answer is consecration: creed, worship, and a code of hospitality that restores genuine personhood. With Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts.

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Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Classical Theism: A Christian Introduction, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships

—

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction
01:10 - Why "Desecration" and Not Just "Disenchantment"
06:16 - The Pleasure of Desecration and Alternative Sacralizing
10:07 - Is This a Perennial Problem or Something New?
14:27 - Power, Impotence, and Promethean Shame
17:35 - Dizziness, AI, and the Nothingness of Radical Freedom
22:41 - Nietzsche, Nature, and the Denial of the Given
28:42 - Consecration as Response: Creed, Cult, and Code
33:14 - The Church and End-of-Life Ethics
39:18 - Vitalism, False Friends, and the Logic of the Cross
45:38 - Two Cheers for Christianity and the Opportunity Before Us
48:51 - Freedom, Belonging, and the Gospel

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% off the Baker Book of the Month by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Virtues For Living Well with Dr. Alan Noble May 06, 2026

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What does it mean to live well in morally incoherent times? Alan Noble joins the show to discuss his new book To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times, which uses the four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues as a framework for navigating choice paralysis, the loneliness epidemic, and contemporary anxiety. The conversation covers why courage and temperance feel especially urgent today, the difficulty of writing on justice, hoping all things for political opponents, the sunk cost fallacy in vocational discernment, and why friendship requires intentional cultivation. Grace, not optimization, grounds the virtuous life. Hosted by Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and James Wood.

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Get the Spiritual Formation for the Family ebook for free at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Classical Theism: A Christian Introduction, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships

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Chapter Markers

00:00 - Welcome and introductions
00:52 - The pitch for To Live Well
03:30 - Diagnosis: alienation or anomie?
06:30 - The four cardinal and three theological virtues
08:14 - What is a virtue?
10:11 - Office hours and the paradox of choice
14:54 - Fortitude in an anxious age
18:41 - The sunk cost fallacy and pivoting well
21:40 - The heap of broken images and Christian wholeness
25:07 - Hoping all things for political opponents
29:36 - The hardest chapter to write: justice
32:17 - What pastors and churches can do
34:40 - Grace, virtue, and the Protestant hesitation
38:55 - Friendship as the practice of love
44:31 - Closing thoughts

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% off the Baker Book of the Month by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

On Paul and The Law Apr 30, 2026

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Was the Apostle Paul Torah-observant — not just before the Damascus road, but throughout his apostleship to the nations? Brad East stakes out a thesis drawn from Messianic Judaism and the Paul Within Judaism school: that Acts 21 should be read straight, that James is telling the truth about Paul, and that Genesis 12 and 17 still bind Jewish believers. Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts push back hard, working through Galatians 2, 1 Corinthians 9, and the question of whether the law's force after Christ is divine command or Hookerian adiaphora — with the future of Jewish identity in the church in view.

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Get the free ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv (or M.Div., your choice) and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship: https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships

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Chapters

00:00 - Welcome and the Disclaimer
01:00 - The Thesis: Paul Remained Torah-Observant
01:34 - Messianic Judaism and Paul Within Judaism
04:29 - Acts 21: Is Paul Lying or Walking the Law?
08:04 - Alastair's First Move: Affirming, Not Practicing
10:33 - A Law You Need Not Obey Is Not a Law
12:17 - Law as Covenant vs. Law as Instruction
15:34 - Circumcision as the Test Case
16:13 - Adiaphora, Hooker, and Binding Authority
17:40 - 1 Corinthians 9 Enters the Conversation
18:08 - The Halakhic Question: Should Elders Discipline?
21:11 - Acts 15 and Internally Differentiated Norms
23:13 - Alastair on Existing Authorities and Custom
26:36 - The Canonical Vision: Revelation 7
29:50 - Adiaphora's Sociological Problem
33:22 - Galatians 2: What Was Peter Doing?
38:18 - Permission vs. Prohibition
41:04 - Why Reduce Genesis 12–17 to Local Custom?
44:02 - Baptism, Circumcision, and Covenant Signs
47:55 - Does God Want Jews in the World?
50:10 - Providence and the Future Conversion
56:42 - One Body in Christ and the Complementarian Parallel
57:08 - Reinterpreting "Under the Law"
1:01:18 - Difference Without Division
1:04:13 - The Empirical Problem for Both Views
1:07:51 - Reading Our Situation Back into Paul
1:10:46 - Closing

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% off the Baker Book of the Month by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

How To Approach God Apr 22, 2026

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How do we hold together confidence before God and a proper sense of his holiness? Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Joe Minich take up a pastoral question at the heart of Christian worship and prayer. Working from the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms, Job, and John 8, they discuss the dangers of both presumption and paralyzing anxiety, the relationship between knowledge of God and knowledge of self, and why assurance is less a fact we verify than a relation we inhabit. Along the way: Isaiah's vision, Calvin on "stupid" prayer, and what Alcoholics Anonymous teaches about showing up.

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Spiritual Formation for the Family ebook: http://mereorthodoxy.com/family

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv (or M.Div., your choice) and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship: https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships

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00:00 - Introduction
01:17 - Confidence and holiness: the central tension
02:52 - The Lord's Prayer and the dynamic of approach
04:48 - The honesty of the Psalms and Job
09:16 - Boldness in prayer: the unjust judge and friend at midnight
11:11 - Hebrews and the two mountains
13:45 - Name-it-and-claim-it vs. petitionary prayer
14:45 - Being seen by God rather than seeing God
16:50 - John 8 and the woman caught in adultery
19:50 - Owen, Calvin, and "hard thoughts about God"
23:51 - "There is forgiveness with you, that you may be feared"
24:34 - Judgment and absolution in forgiveness
29:13 - The joy of approach and the glory of God
31:13 - Calvin, Isaiah, and the knowledge of God and self
33:58 - The erasure of sin in Waugh and Eliot
36:25 - Assurance as relation, not calculation
39:13 - Adoption, marriage, and secure identity
41:11 - Two kinds of self-absorption
45:48 - Alcoholics Anonymous and staying in the game
50:10 - Distorting the game itself: Jeremiah and the den of thieves
52:30 - Pastoral wisdom: who needs what
55:05 - Closing

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% off the Baker Book of the Month by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Replay: Protestants & History with Paul Gutacker Apr 15, 2026

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On this episode of Mere Fidelity, historian of history Paul Gutacker joins Matt, Derek, and Alastair to talk about the changing and sometimes fraught relationship that Protestants have had with the notions of "history" and "tradition." Paul's book, The Old Faith in a New Nation, particularly examines how nineteenth century debates about slavery, etc., influenced our ideas about the roles of Scripture and Church in regard to history.
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Get the free ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv (or M.Div., your choice) and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship: https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships

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Timestamps:
Neo-Calvinism [0:30]
My Fellow Subjects [2:08]
Meta-history [3:22]
What is Biblicism? [4:37]
Misusing History [9:54]
Scripture's Changing Role [14:42]
Tradition or History [18:41]
Church Disputes [23:36]
Foreigners [27:06]
Spirit and Letter [29:35]
Hermeneutical Precedent [42:42]
How should pastors use history? [46:05]

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% off the Baker Book of the Month by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Between Nature and Grace Apr 08, 2026

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Derek Rishmawy, James Wood, and Joseph Minich trace the nature-grace debate from de Lubac's challenge to neoscholastic "pure nature" through Blondel, Bavinck, and Betz's Christ the Logos of Creation — asking what's actually at stake: the gratuity of grace, the coherence of theological anthropology, and the twin dangers of secular dualism and pantheist collapse.

—

Get Spiritual Formation for the Family ebook for free at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonPhD

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Chapters

00:00 - Introduction: Why Nature and Grace?
02:30 - The Debate in Context: Neo-Calvinism, Catholic-Protestant Dialogue, and David Bentley Hart
05:00 - James on De Lubac: Challenging Pure Nature and Extrinsicism
08:30 - Blondel, Desire, and the Political Consequences of Separation
11:30 - Derek's Five-Year-Old Explanation: What Is Actually at Issue
13:30 - Joe: Natural Ends, Supernatural Ends, and the Beatific Vision
16:00 - Steel-Manning the Two-Tier View: Gratuity of Grace
18:30 - Bavinck, the Donum Superadditum, and Terminological Convergence
22:00 - The Neo-Calvinist Peril: Immanentizing the Eschaton
24:00 - Reception History: Did De Lubac Get Thomas Right?
27:00 - Betz, Chavarra, and Philosophy's Openness to Theology
31:00 - Participatory Metaphysics and Non-Competitive Freedom
33:30 - Derek's Worry: The Pantheist Ditch
36:00 - Horton's Trilogy and the Irenaean/Origenist Distinction
39:00 - The Two Ditches: Extrinsic Dualism vs. Pantheistic Monism
43:00 - Desire, Idolatry, and the Hook Into the Real
47:00 - Was the Incarnation Part of the Plan? Creation in Christ
50:00 - Closing Thoughts: Bavinck's Affirmations and Where to Go Next

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% off the Baker Book of the Month by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Replay: The Age of AI with Jason Thacker Apr 01, 2026

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When students started turning in papers written by artificial intelligence, educators were caught flat-footed. We knew that machines would replace many human tasks, but we thought the humanities were immune to that. Have our writing standards fallen so low that we can no longer write better than computers? Or are we about to experience the awakening of Artificial Consciousness? Matt and Alastair discuss this situation with Jason Thacker, the Chair of Research in Technology Ethics at the ERLC.

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Get the ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

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Timestamps:
Written by a Bot [0:00]
The ChatGPT Panic [2:45]
What is human? [6:48]
Is intelligence important? [11:09]
Going Full Hobbit [20:57]
Did we do this on purpose? [28:00]
Inevitable Arms Race [34:44]
Covid Tech-lash [45:20]
AI(dolatry) [52:34]

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% off the Baker Book of the Month by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

The Fall Before The Fall with Philip G. Porter Mar 25, 2026

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What if death's presence in the cosmos is not native to creation but a wound running all the way down to its foundations, inflicted before Adam ever reached for the fruit? Philip Porter joins Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Brad East to discuss his new book, which retrieves Augustine, Aquinas, Milton, and Tolkien to argue that the angelic fall precedes and precipitates every other form of evil, and that contemporary theology has been too quick to make peace with death.

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Hosts: Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, Brad East

Guest: Philip Porter, assistant professor of theology at Saint Louis University (Madrid) and author of Unnatural Death: Creation, Sin, and the Angelic Fall. He completed his doctoral work under Paul Griffiths at Duke Divinity School.

——

Get the free ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonPhD

——

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro
3:50 - Porter's thesis: why death as enemy matters and what contemporary theology gets wrong
8:40 - Augustine's rationes seminales: the seed-like reasons at the heart of creation
10:15 - Angels as administrators of creation and how their fall wounds the cosmos
13:30 - Tolkien's Silmarillion, Melkor's discord, and the felix culpa logic
17:30 - The conditio and administratio: God's atemporal creation vs. its unfolding in time
20:00 - Three false paths: Kelsey, McCabe, and Darwin
27:00 - Does scripture naturalize death? The grain of wheat, 1 Corinthians 15, and Alastair's question
39:10 - The double fall: Romans 5, the angelic fall, and how they fit together
42:00 - Satan's envy of the hypostatic union: what Lucifer saw and why he turned
52:00 - Refracted and diffracted light: a metaphor for holy and fallen angels
1:01:40 - Deep time, hominins, and what it means for Adam to be unfallen in a devastated cosmos
1:05:05 - The Johannine thread: destroying the works of the devil and what the devil actually wants
1:12:30 - Universalism, David Bentley Hart, and the problem the angelic fall poses for it
1:20:35 - Supralapsarianism and the incarnation-anyway position

Books Mentioned

Philip Porter, Unnatural Death: Creation, Sin, and the Angelic Fall
Paul Griffiths, Decreation
David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Well
Ambrose of Milan, On the Good of Death

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% off the Baker Book of the Month by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

What 'Headship' Really Means with Dr. Lyndon Jost Mar 18, 2026

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Derek Rishmawy, James Wood, and Alastair Roberts welcome Dr. Lyndon Jost, author of Transfiguring Headship: A Figural Theology of Gender. Jost argues that headship is rooted in Old Testament figural theology rather than Greco-Roman culture, that it fundamentally means representation rather than authority, and that this reframes debates between complementarians and egalitarians alike.

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Get your copy of our free ebook, Spiritual Formation for the Family, at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family.

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering A Biblical Vision For Lifelong Discipleship, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonPhD

—

Chapters

01:15 - Overview of Transfiguring Headship

03:06 - Headship as Representation, Not Authority

06:09 - Critiquing Complementarian and Egalitarian Readings

10:32 - Figural Theology and the Fourfold Senses of Scripture

17:05 - Against Greco-Roman Readings of Headship

20:13 - 1 Corinthians 11:3 and Trinitarian Headship

25:35 - Ivan Illich, Gender vs. Sex, and Vernacular Gender

32:48 - Headship, Marriage, and the One-Flesh Union

43:23 - Essentialism, Gender Realism, and Minimalist Claims

50:36 - Headship as Unity, Not Opposition

55:59 - Male Responsibility and the Final Account

58:28 - Headship, Creation Order, and External Representation

01:02:14 - Closing Remarks

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% off the Baker Book of the Month by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

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