In this week's podcast, I interviewed my friend Chris Heuertz, International Director of Word Made Flesh. In an time when Christianity has often been reduced to ugly stereotypes or pragmatic self-help cloaked in quotes from the Bible, Chris is advocating a very simple (not simplistic) Christianity that has called him to befriend the poorest of the poor. In this interview, Chris and I discuss his new book, Simple Spirituality: Learning to See God in a Broken World.

Today I interviewed my friend Gabe Lyons of the Fermi Project about his new book, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters.

Gabe and David Kinnaman of the Barna Group co-authored this book in which they explore some of the common perceptions that people have about Christians. Those perceptions include judgemental, anti-homosexual, and too political. I highly recommend people picking up a copy of this book.

I am particularly interested in the section on politics in this book. As regular readers of this blog probably know, I am very interested in changing the nature of political discourse in this country particularly as it relates to interactions between conservatives and liberals, Christians and non-Christians. Over the next few weeks, I am going to be focusing on this topic and will be interviewing more people that are challenging many of the preconceived notions of how Christians should approach politics. read more »

This week I interviewed Aaron Krowne of The Mortgage Lender Implod-o-meter. We discussed the current housing crisis, his legal efforts to defend his freedom of speech on his website, and the future of Web 2.0 as it relates to financial markets. (Sponsored by The Market Traders)

(if you have problems playing the interview above, try this link)

To get you in the frame of thinking about the current housing crisis, let me recommend this article by Stephen Chapman:

In the old days, financial institutions that refused to lend to people with low incomes or imperfect credit were accused of victimizing the needy. Today, financial institutions that make many loans to those same people are found guilty of the same crime.

read more »

Yesterday I was joined by Andrew Keen, author of the new controversial book The Cult of the Amateur.

I went into this interview with about three pages of objections I had about Keen's book. I had already written at length last week about some of my concerns about Keen's book.

However, as our discussion got underway, I decided that real dialog rather than playing the "gotcha game" would be much more interesting. I'm sure that some listeners will feel that I copped out of asking Keen some harder questions, but quite frankly those questions have already been asked of Keen both online and in other interviews.

As a blogger, I am more interested in finding common ground with Keen. As I discovered in our chat, Keen is less concerned about technology than he is about various cultural changes.

Feel free to join the discussion in the comment section. read more »

I am privileged to have Georgia State Rep. Mike Jacobs join me today for a discussion of his decision to switch parties to the GOP.

For more information on this news, check out Mike's own blog and my blog post from earlier today.

This week's podcast features Georgia 4th District Congressman Hank Johnson. Hank and I discussed Iraq, his new committee assignments, and the Democratic presidential primary among other things. Big thanks to Congressman Johnson for taking time out of his busy schedule for this interview.

This week's podcast interview features Erick Erickson, managing editor of RedState and PeachPundit.

This week's podcast interview features former Georgia Libertarian Party chairman, Jason Pye. Jason blogs at Peach Pundit, JasonPye.com, and the Georgia Legislative Watch.

Jason did want me to note that while he mentioned in the interview that he didn't think there were any friends of freedom in the Georgia Legislature, in retrospect he realizes that he made a huge omission by not mentioning State Rep. Jill Chambers.