Living On Common Ground

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What would you want your body to become after you die: ashes, a grave, or something that keeps feeding the living? We dig into a surprising end-of-life planning option that’s gaining ground in the US: human composting, also known as natural organic reduction. From there, we chase one weirdly heartfelt idea all the way down a rabbit hole of wills, funeral choices, and what it would mean to turn your remains into soil for a tree your family visits every year. 

We talk through the real-world side of it too: whe...

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A stranger yelling in traffic shouldn’t matter, yet it can light up something primal in us. We start there and follow the thread all the way into the bigger problem: a divided culture where anger feels not only normal, but expected. As a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who are still close friends, we talk through what it takes to stay grounded when everything around you pushes you to pick a team and punish the other side.

We dig into the idea of “swallowing it” as a kind of everyd...

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Everything feels like it comes with a team jersey now, even your faith, your politics, and your friendships. We start there because we’re tired of a world that demands you pick a side and stay there, and we’re trying to practice something harder: a real conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who actually respect each other.

That friendship sets up a big question from early church history and Christian theology: Jesus names Peter as the rock, yet Western Christianity often sounds like Paul wrote the operating syst...

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College football is starting to feel less like a tradition and more like a marketplace, and we’re not sure what to do with that. We’re two friends from different worldviews a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist trying to stay close in a culture that keeps begging us to pick sides. So we grab something familiar (sports) and follow the thread all the way into the hard stuff: money, incentives, identity, and what fairness even means now.

We begin with the lighter side of fandom: fantasy football drafts, league trop...

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The world keeps daring us to pick a side, then punishes us for talking to anyone across the line. We push back with a simple question: what if the people we’re told to avoid are the ones who can actually hold us up? As a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who somehow ended up close friends, we try to tell the truth about division without turning each other into a project or a stereotype. 

We start with a short reflection from the beach called “The Sand.” Up near the dunes...

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A teen lifeguard fights through heavy surf and pulls a kid to safety, and the clip goes viral for a reason: it hits that raw place in all of us that wants to move toward danger when someone is drowning. But then the headlines shift to warnings, expert quotes, and the familiar refrain that untrained people should not go in. That’s where our conversation really starts, because the advice can be true and still expose something broken in our culture.

We talk through the real safety logic behind “reach or thro...

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The fastest way to lose your mind right now is to assume everyone else is living in the same reality you are. We feel that pressure every day: pick a side, wear the label, stay in your lane, and treat the other lane like a threat.

We start with a problem we did not expect to care about so much: AI detectors. When a tool can confidently label human writing as “100% AI,” what happens to trust, authorship, and basic fairness? We talk Substack’s new AI checking, the way “evidence” can be as mean...

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The most dangerous water at the beach is not the wave you can see coming, it is the calm channel that quietly pulls you away from shore. We kick off a new series of short reflections by reading “The Rip Current,” then we take it apart like a real-life warning label: what does it mean when the hazard is subtle, the sign is easy to ignore, and your confidence shows up right when you should be paying attention?

From there we get honest about how we react to authority. A lifeguard flag...

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The most dangerous current in your life might not feel like danger at all. Jeff opens a new series, “Reflections from the Beach,” with the story behind the stories: a community tornado that revealed what people can become for each other, a pandemic that turned everyday choices into tribal tests, and a church season where United Methodist disaffiliation fights and LGBTQ inclusion debates left real emotional scars.

From there, we move from crisis to recovery without pretending it’s neat. Jeff shares why a solo Appalachian Trail sabbatical mattered, what it did to...

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Every part of life can start to feel like a walled-off camp: your work, your church, your friend group, even your news feed. We sit down as a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who still choose friendship, and we ask a hard question out loud: if we met today, would we still be friends?

A Kentucky congressional primary turns into a bigger conversation about political polarization, libertarianism, and what happens when principle clashes with party power. We unpack why Thomas Massie became important to small-government voters, why omnibus spending bills...

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Every part of life can start to feel sorted into boxes: conservative or liberal, religious or secular, my people or your people. We push back on that instinct with a simple reality check: we are a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who are also close friends, and we are not interested in letting the world tell us we cannot sit at the same table. 

We start with the stories we tell about place and identity, including Northern California’s rural “State of Jefferson” vibe and what it reveals about culture, geograp...

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We step into a topic that might irritate people if it’s handled carelessly, so we try to handle it with precision. We explore an idea drawn from historian Tom Holland’s work on Greek culture: even in societies that appear politically male-dominated, women often served as the recognized link between humans and the gods through temples, priestesses, and oracles. That opens a broader conversation about the divine feminine, early images of female divinity, and why pregnancy, labor, and birth can feel transcendent and meaning-laden in a way that modern life struggles to name...

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Life can feel like it’s been chopped into competing categories: church or secular, left or right, friends or enemies, work or rest. We start from that tension and then zoom in on a quieter divide most of us live with every day: the gap between how busy we claim to be and how distracted we actually are. We talk honestly about American hustle culture, why “I’m slammed” can become a badge of worth, and how that mindset quietly devalues leisure, stillness, and even relationships. 

From there, we explore Sabbath rest as s...

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Life can feel like it’s been split into rival camps: your job vs your faith, your friends vs your politics, your values vs your tribe. We’re not interested in pretending those differences don’t exist. We’re interested in proving they don’t have to end real friendship. We’re a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who actually like each other, and we start with the uncomfortable question: if we met today, would we still become friends in a world trained to sort people into teams?

From there we go straig...

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Every corner of life now feels like a forced choice: left or right, religious or secular, “our side” or “their side.” We don’t buy that those are the only options, and we’re testing that belief the only way we know how: two friends with clashing labels, a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist, trying to talk like actual humans.

A simple question kicks it off: why would Lucas start reading the Bible again, and why go straight to the Gospels during Lent? From there we get pulled into the Gospel of Lu...

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In August last year we had the opportunity to sit down and have a converation with Peter Enns. Peter's insights regarding certainty have inspired much of Jeff's work. We decided to share that conversation with you again. Enjoy.

Every day feels like a forced-choice quiz: left or right, religious or secular, believer or skeptic, my people or your people. We want a different way to live, so we invited Bible scholar, author, and The Bible for Normal People co-founder Pete Enns to help us name what so many of us feel...

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Life can feel like it’s been chopped into rival zones: work, church, school, online, each one demanding you declare a side. We’re two friends who don’t fit the usual pairing a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist and we keep testing a simple question: can you stay close without surrendering your convictions?

We start by revisiting Stoicism, and why the modern “neo-Stoic” wave can be both useful and incomplete. Once you bring Logos back into the picture, classical Stoicism stops being mere grit and becomes a framework for meaning, v...

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Every part of life can feel like it comes with a forced choice: left or right, religious or secular, your people or their people. We sit down as a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who are also close friends, and we ask a risky question right up front: if we met today, would we still choose each other in a culture built to split us apart? 

From Holy Week and Palm Sunday to a viral clip claiming “true Christianity” will sound socialist to conservatives and fascist to liberals, we dig into...

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“Steinbeck was a communist.” It’s a throwaway line until you realize how much heat a single label can carry and how fast it can rewrite what we think the other person meant. We’re two friends who disagree for a living, a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist, and we use a John Steinbeck debate to test whether curiosity can beat reflex, and whether listening can beat the urge to score points.

We talk The Grapes of Wrath, the Dust Bowl, “Okies” migrating to California, and why communities almost always tense up whe...

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It’s hard to stay close to people when every space in your life demands a label and a side. Church, work, family, politics, online life, even your friend group can start to feel like separate worlds with separate rules. We sit down with Steve Ghikadis, a secular humanist and atheist married to a Christian, to talk about what it really takes to build common ground without watering down what you believe.

Steve shares the messy middle of an interfaith marriage: the quiet pressure of being seen as “one of us,” the st...

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Division sells, but it also shrinks our minds. We sat down—progressive Christian and conservative atheist, still close friends—to ask why outrage feels so good, why it changes so little, and how we can teach our kids to seek depth instead of dopamine. A local student walkout becomes our lens: what motivates teens to protest, when slogans help or harm, and how to support conviction without feeding contempt.

We dig into the gap between awareness and understanding, tracing the curve from Dunning–Kruger’s Mount Stupid to Neil Postman’s warning ab...

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Feeling stuck between faith and skepticism, reason and ritual? We open the door to a different way through. Two friends—a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist—set aside purity tests to ask a harder, better question: if belief is what you act out, how should you live?

We dig into Jordan Peterson’s “I act as if God exists,” not to idolize a quote but to probe its ethical edge. What if belief is less a list of statements and more a pattern of fruits—habits that make you gentler, braver, and...

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Feeling squeezed into a side? We are too. This conversation pairs a progressive Christian with a conservative atheist who’ve stayed close friends, even as the world begs us to sort, label, and cancel. We start with a striking claim from a Durham campus: progressive churches with welcome signs aren’t drawing students, while a megachurch outside town is bussing them in. That observation sparks a deeper question—are young adults craving clarity and particularity more than broad vibes of inclusion? And if a church sounds like an activist club, why not just join t...

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Feeling forced to pick a side? We chose friendship instead. A progressive Christian and a conservative atheist sit down to make sense of judgment, grace, and the strange way big ideals can both guide and haunt us. Using Jordan Peterson’s Sermon on the Mount lectures as a shared springboard, we reframe familiar teachings through psychology: the measure you use will be used on you, not as a scold, but as a real-world feedback loop that shapes communities and personal growth.

Together we unpack the parable of the talents via the Pa...

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Ever feel like belonging now requires an enemy list? We sat down as longtime friends—a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist—to push back on that reflex and ask a harder question: what would it take to build a community that includes both the marginalized and the establishment without creating new outcasts? Starting from the subversive image of Jesus sharing tables with tax collectors and widows alike, we unpack why true inclusion offends every camp, and why it’s still worth the cost.

We revisit Roman history to reframe tax collec...

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What makes a people trade a messy republic for the promise of a single, steady hand? We take you inside Rome’s long unraveling—where unwritten rules cracked, armies switched their loyalties from the state to ambitious men, and everyday citizens learned to equate strong leadership with survival.

Starting with mos maiorum, the “way we do things,” we unpack how norms sustained Rome when laws fell short—and how prosperity after the Punic Wars quietly hollowed out the citizen-farmer base. The Gracchi brothers tried to fix real economic pain by routing around the...

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Feeling squeezed to pick a side? We’re two longtime friends—a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist—who refuse the script and get honest about how change actually happens. Instead of scoring points against “the other,” we explore why declaring what we’re for creates room for unlikely allies, better policy, and more durable wins.

We cue up Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” and sit with its power to invite a nation into its own ideals—equality by creed, dignity by character, freedom shared by all. Then we turn to Malc...

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Start with a simple question: when your world divides you into teams, how do you stay friends across the line? We stress-test that question by putting our own friendship on the table—a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist—and then follow the thread from art museums to ancient theology to modern Stoicism. The journey is winding, but it holds together: what you focus on, how you practice, and which stories you trust will shape the way you live.

We trade museum stories first, including a “headless” dog in a Dalí painting...

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Division sells, but it doesn’t solve much. We sat down—one progressive Christian, one conservative atheist—and stress-tested whether two people who disagree on faith and politics can talk through fear, foreign policy, and identity without turning each other into enemies. The short answer: yes, if we swap hot takes for honest motives and keep the relationship above the scoreboard.

We start with a spiral: news about Venezuela and saber-rattling around Greenland sparks late-night dread about drafts and war. From there we unpack how negotiation theater, “naked empire” rhetoric, and shifting j...

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Feeling squeezed to “pick a side” on every issue? We pull the lens back and ask a deeper question: what is a right, and what do we owe each other to make it real? With Elena joining the table, we test our friendship across belief lines—a progressive Christian, a conservative atheist, and a listener who pushes hard on language and policy—to map the territory between personal liberty, social duty, and the state’s role.

We start by sorting fundamental rights from civil and social rights and examine the claims-and-duties framework...

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Feeling tugged to pick a side—left or right, secular or religious, old school or ultra-online? We start the year by stress-testing a simple idea: friendship can thrive across deep differences. On one mic, a progressive Christian. On the other, a conservative atheist. What keeps us laughing, learning, and listening when the world rewards outrage?

We warm up with Rose Bowl nostalgia, family fandoms, and New Year travel plans, then get practical about resolutions that stick. One of us lays out a straightforward system—write “I will” goals, set dates, build a strate...

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What if Christmas isn’t magic from far away, but matter aligning with love right here? We open with holiday greetings and step into a reimagined Nativity that holds science and faith together. Starting from the Big Bang and the birth of consciousness, we explore the logos as the universe’s deep pattern—energy organizing toward truth, beauty, justice, and love—and we ask what changes when that pattern takes on skin.

Mary’s yes and Joseph’s courage become more than pious moments; they are human choices that create room for alignmen...

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Every December, something in us softens. The traffic is still bad and the lines are still long, yet we wait with a little more patience and offer a little more grace. We wanted to understand that shift without scolding or sanctimony, so we sat down to unpack holiday joy from two very different angles: a progressive Christian’s lens on incarnation and an atheist’s take on seasonality, nostalgia, and community.

Our conversation starts with a sermon in progress and a question that keeps getting louder online: why do people try to p...

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Feeling cornered by purity tests and tribal litmus checks? We’ve been there. As a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be close friends, we trade quick outrage for slow curiosity and ask a tougher question: are we building bridges or policing borders? From social media habits to Stoic clarity, we unpack how certainty hardens into fundamentalism and how to interrupt that slide before it fractures our families, feeds, and neighborhoods.

We start with small, practical habits that shift conversations: a simple list of guardrails to use before po...

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What if a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist could argue hard topics, laugh at themselves, and keep choosing friendship? That’s the spirit of this conversation as we map common ground without sanding off our edges—tackling public education, healthcare, and the blurry line between rights and services.

We start by calling out how split life feels and then test our labels. Music sparks a detour to Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and why compatibilism appeals to people who dislike rigid binaries. From there we build a case for a limited social floo...

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Division feels baked into everything—work, faith, politics, even friendships—yet the best conversations still start on shared ground. We sit down as a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist, grateful for a friendship that doesn’t need uniformity, and we follow a thread from holiday calm to the future of intelligence. Along the way, we ask hard questions about survival, connection, and what it really takes for people and systems to flourish.

We begin with the quiet grace of Thanksgiving and the relief of a season that invites rest. That breath...

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When every headline demands a side, what if we started with a question? We sit down as a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist to explore how creation stories frame our deepest assumptions about chaos, order, and the feminine. From Genesis’ hovering spirit over the deep to the Babylonian Enuma Elish’s splitting of Tiamat, we trace how cultures turn raw potential into a livable world—and how those choices shape what we call sacred.

We dig into wisdom literature where Sophia stands at the crossroads, calling out as a feminine presen...

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Feeling pulled to choose a side in every room you enter? We bring a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist to the same table to ask a harder question: if life doesn’t come preloaded with meaning, what should we build together?

We start by untangling nihilism from its stereotypes. Passive nihilism stares into the void and shrugs; active nihilism treats the blank space as a canvas. From that lens, we revisit Joseph Campbell, Nietzsche’s much-misread “God is dead,” and the cultural panic around moral relativism. Along the way, we connect...

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Feeling squeezed into a corner by every conversation? We push back with a frank, funny, and steady exchange between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who’ve made a promise: stay friends, stay curious, and keep the hard questions on the table. Together we take on the urge to be right, the fear of feeling like a fool, and the hidden role ego plays when debates turn into dead ends.

We dig into whether admitting “I might be wrong” weakens belief or actually makes it more resilient. From there, the path w...

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Ever catch yourself deciding that someone’s chewing or phone volume is a moral failure? We start there—small frictions that expose big assumptions—and climb toward the larger question: how do we live together with sharp differences, without losing honesty or hope? As a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist, we test the edges of our friendship by trading judgments for curiosity, and certainty for conviction.

Jeff shares the heart of several writing projects, including Walking on Common Ground, The Bible I Thought I Knew, and a provocative new outline explor...