This week’s guest is Paul Vigna.

Paul Vigna is an author and former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and has been a journalist for more than 30 years, as a reporter, editor, and photographer. He currently writes the Substack newsletter PofV and posts on TikTok under his name. Vigna covered the equity markets and economics for the journal across its blogs, podcasts, and live video programs. In 2013 he began writing about bitcoin, pioneered coverage of bitcoin and the cryptocurrency sector. In 2015, he co-wrote "The Age of Cryptocurrency" with Michael J. Casey and published by St. Martin's Press, the first book about bitcoin from a Big Five publisher. They followed that up with "The Truth Machine" in 2018. He also covered arts and entertainment while at the Journal, and in 2017 published "Guts: The Anatomy of The Walking Dead," with Dey Street Books. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Dallas Morning News, and MIT Technology Review. He has spoken at South By Southwest and Comic Con New York, as well as many other conferences. He starred in the 2016 documentary "Banking on Bitcoin." Vigna is a native of New Jersey and a 1990 graduate of Fairfield University in Connecticut.

His newest book is The Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin.

In this conversation we dive into the intricate relationship between money, morality, and society. We explore the historical evolution of wealth, the moral implications of capitalism, and the cultural narratives that shape our understanding of money today. From the Renaissance to modern America, this conversation challenges conventional wisdom and invites you to rethink the role of money in our lives.

Our sponsor is The Brueggeman Center for Dialogue at Xavier University, here in Cincinnati, which is dedicated to deepening understanding across faiths and promoting systemic change.

Avenue M is produced by Bespoken Live with music by Zach Swelber, who plays in Circle It and Mosant.

This week’s guest is Shadi Hamid.

Shadi Hamid is a columnist at The Washington Post and a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Previously, he was research professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Seminary as well as a longtime senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Hamid's newest book is The Case for American Power (Simon & Schuster). He is also the author of several other books, including The Problem of Democracy, as well as the co-editor of Rethinking Political Islam. His book Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize for best book on foreign affairs. In 2019, Hamid was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine. He is also the co-founder of Wisdom of Crowds, a podcast, newsletter, and debate platform. Hamid received his B.S. and M.A. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and his Ph.D. in political science from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar.

His newest book argues that America, for all its contradictions and failures, is still, in his words, “the last best hope for a more moral and just world.”

In this conversation, we press him on that claim. Is it possible for a nation-state to act morally? What happens when faith traditions rooted in humility and sacrifice collide with the logic of power? And what do we do when moral conviction itself becomes a weapon — in foreign policy, in Gaza, and even in our domestic politics?

Shadi calls his book a “love letter to America,” but the conversation quickly becomes a debate about what love looks like and what it demands when the country you love commits moral wrongs.

It’s a conversation about belief and realism, religion and responsibility, power and purity and whether the only way to redeem power is to take it.

Avenue M is produced by Bespoken Live with music by Zach Swelber, who plays in Circle It and Mosant.

This week’s guest is Adam Fronczek. Adam has been the Pastor of Knox Presbyterian Church for eight years. He is passionate about understanding the changing role of religion in our culture; he is also convinced that there is still a place for an active neighborhood church, where generations gather together to figure out life, where people greet you by name and know your story, and where we consider together how we can leave the world a little better than we found it. Adam is married and has four kids.

In this episode, we talk about the ways religion can both hold us together—and pull us apart. What begins as a conversation about coherence quickly turns into something deeper: how faith, doubt, vocation, masculinity, and middle age collide in real life.

Together we ask: How do we navigate incoherence as parents and people of faith? And is it possible to find solidarity—not in having it all figured out—but in admitting that we don’t?

This is a conversation about the daily work of meaning-making, about gratitude, choice, and consent, and about what it might look like to rebuild our lives—and our faith—together, one day at a time.

We’re excited to share a new sponsor: The Brueggeman Center for Dialogue at Xavier University, here in Cincinnati, is dedicated to deepening understanding across faiths and promoting systemic change.

Avenue M is produced by Bespoken Live with music by Zach Swelber, who plays in Circle It and Mosant.