Today's caller was in line at a drive-through coffee place, and decided to pay for the people behind her in line. But she realized that, in the course of doing so, the rewarding feeling she got from the act may have been the reason she did it in the first place. And that led to [...]

Language really shapes how we think about things. After Jonathan Merritt moved from the South to New York City, he discovered that the words he had always used to describe spiritual life didn’t resonate anymore! The more pluralistic and postmodern the society, he observed, the less language people seem to have for spiritual experience. Jonathan [...]

Let's be honest: Spending time cooped up with family and friends on holidays like Thanksgiving can present some interesting conversational challenges for many of us. With that in mind, podcast producer John Wright asks this question of Bart Campolo in this episode: "Bill Maher thinks we should stop talking politics with each other in the [...]

Jessica Wilbanks grew up in a fundamentalist Pentecostal church on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, and then, at 16, walked away from the church. Ever since, she's been haunted by the world she left behind and wrote a book about it, just released: When I Spoke in Tongues. In this conversation with Bart [...]

Sometimes, in the face of big problems in the world, doing everything we can do feels inadequate. Consider this episode's question, asked by Lexi in the Humanize Me Facebook Group: "Today I find myself missing prayer. I just finished watching Last Week Tonight and it was about family separation. They played a clip of a [...]

Just say no! That's the mantra most of us have picked up from authority figures in our lives about drugs of all sorts, no matter their category. But for our guest Ashley Booth and a growing number of scientists, doctors and thinkers, it's become clear that our culture threw the baby out with the bathwater [...]

Some of the things people abandon when they leave the church are rituals. But this week's Q&A features a voicemail by listener Morris Bird, who asks: "The word ritual is used to describe things as innocent as reading the newspaper. On the other hand, it's used to describe sinister cult ceremonies. I'm curious, what are [...]

Don't worry; if you've never heard of 'evidism', you're not alone. This is a term coined by the guests in this episode, inventor Jeff Haley and author Dale McGowan, to describe people committed to fact-based, evidence-based thinking. In this conversation with Bart Campolo, Haley and McGowan talk about their book, Sharing Reality: How to Bring [...]

How does one decide who to pick to be friends with? Bart Campolo and John Wright look at this question as a sort of 'Part 2' to the last Q&A about cultivating good friendships: "I really enjoyed Episode 326 where you guys talked about how being interested in other people is the first step to [...]