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Bart Ehrman, an atheist New Testament scholar with a penchant for annoying evangelicals, now claims that the teachings of Jesus determined the moral instincts of the West. Bart joins us to talk about his new book Love Thy Stranger and why acts of care for immigrants, refugees, and people outside “our tribe” may be downstream of Jesus, even when the people doing the caring don’t believe in him.

We get into what makes Jesus’ ethics so hard to swallow when you read them straight: giving up status, becoming last, serving the powerless, and treating “the least of these” as the real test of faith. Bart explains why many scholars see Jesus as an apocalypticist, how that urgency sharpens the radical demands, and why modern politics can feel like a relapse into the ancient ideology of dominance. Along the way, we ask what loving enemies actually means in real life, not as a feeling but as a set of actions aimed at the other person’s good.

Then we discuss a theological lightning rod: the relationship between forgiveness and atonement. Bart argues they’re competing concepts and claims Jesus teaches forgiveness while later Christians developed atonement frameworks after the crucifixion. We also explore the historical ripple effects, like the rise of public charity and institutions like hospitals and orphanages, and we look for honest common ground between atheists and Christians around ethics, service, and human dignity.

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AI can now generate essays, photos, songs, and video that look real enough to fool experts. This impacts how and whether humans can trust one another, and it’s already reshaping how we learn, create, and relate to each other.

Kyle sits down with Micah Voraritskul, author of Human Is the New Vinyl: Why Human Creativity Still Wins in the AI Revolution, to unpack why the vinyl comeback is more than nostalgia. Vinyl is inconvenient, physical, and slow, and that’s exactly the point. Micah argues we’re heading toward a similar “analog counterreaction” to generative AI: people will start seeking out work that is transparently human because it carries authorship, risk, and meaning.

We get concrete about how that might work through Verified Human, Micah’s grassroots trust label. We talk about why watermarking and legislation won’t fully solve the “what’s real” problem, why “disposable content” changes the moral stakes, and why education may be the biggest battlefield. If writing is how we assess learning and AI can write for anyone, what does integrity look like in the global classroom? We also explore the philosophical via Nozick’s experience machine and the spiritual through possible applications to language, Babel, logos, and Pentecost.

If you’re overwhelmed by AI slop but still curious about the tool’s benefits, this conversation offers a balanced, human-first framework.

Disclaimer: This episode description was definitely written by AI.

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We recorded this live gathering in Chicago with the Post Evangelical Collective, and it still feels uncomfortably current. Alongside Dr. David Gushee and Keri Ladouceur (director of the PEC), we sit with a question that haunts a lot of post-evangelical and progressive Christian spaces: how do you keep loving the church after trauma, public rejection, and the weaponizing of God-language against vulnerable people?

From there, we shift to the political and spiritual crisis so many families are living inside. We talk about Christian nationalism, authoritarian power, and the painful question of staying in relationship with people who support what you believe is harming democracy and your neighbors. David names the need to defeat destructive movements without surrendering our commitment to co-humanity, while Keri brings the conversation back to embodiment, connection, and the slow work of refusing the strategies that make us into the thing we oppose.

We also dig into misinformation and “epistemic fragmentation,” that dizzying reality where we cannot even agree on what is real. We explore what churches can model instead: information integrity, truthful speech, and practices that rebuild trust. Then we turn to healing Scripture after it has been used as a weapon, learning to read a not-flat Bible with complexity and community. We close with a candid conversation about masculinity, shame, and brave spaces, and a final invitation into embodied resurrection where tending our own wounds becomes part of resisting what is happening around us.

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