Murtaza Hussain is a reporter at Drop Site News, a non-aligned, investigative news organization. He focuses on national security, foreign policy and human rights. A 2026 PEN America nominee, his work frequently appears in outlets like The New York Times and The Guardian. He is recognized for his analysis of US foreign policy and civil liberties. He's also a fellow Substacker and YouTuber.

He didn’t set out to be a journalist but the Arab Spring pulled him into a career spent chasing the truth across wars, systems, and stories that don’t always want to be told. In this conversation, Murtaza Hussain names what he sees as a real decline in American culture, intellectually, politically, and spiritually, and wrestles with how we got here. And by the end, it turns into something more personal: what it takes to hold onto meaning, faith, and clarity in a world that feels increasingly disorienting.

Murtaza mentions his article - Christie's Conspiracy: The Real Story Behind the Four Dix Five Terror Plot

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 Brian Alexander.

An award-winning journalist and author, Brian has written about American culture for decades. He is a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award. He has also been recognized by Medill School of Journalism’s John Bartlow Martin awards for public interest journalism, the Association of Healthcare Journalists, and other organizations. He has been a columnist for NBC News. He grew up in Lancaster, with a family history in the glass business.

You can preorder his newest book - The Mayor: One Poor City's Fight to Bring Back Government and Save the Nation's Soul.

In this conversation, we speak to Brian about his book, Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town, where he uses the story of his hometown, Lancaster, Ohio, to show how seeds sown 35 years ago have sprouted to give us Trumpism, inequality, and an eroding national cohesion. This conversation explores what happens when work, dignity, and community are stripped from a place and what it reveals about the soul of America. We talk about the forces hollowing out towns like Lancaster, Ohio, and the human cost behind economic transformation. And ultimately, we ask what it means to belong, to make something real, and to hold onto hope in the middle of it all.

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.

Avenue M is hosted by Haroon Moghul and Joey Taylor. We’re two men on a journey of faith and meaning. In most episodes, we sit down with a remarkable guest to unpack the moments that shape us, the struggles that build us and the questions that intrigue us.

In this live conversation, we wrestle with what it means to keep showing up to spiritual practices—even when they don’t seem to be “working.” We explore the tension between personal spirituality and communal religion, asking whether faith is about feeling something or being formed over time. Along the way, we land on a quieter, harder truth: maybe the point isn’t perfection or progress, but the willingness to keep returning.

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.

Avenue M is hosted by Haroon Moghul and Joey Taylor. We’re two men on a journey of faith and meaning. In most episodes, we sit down with a remarkable guest to unpack the moments that shape us, the struggles that build us and the questions that intrigue us.

In this live conversation, Joey and Haroon open the floor to listener questions as the war with Iran intensifies. Together they explore what people in the region are experiencing, how media narratives shape the way we understand the conflict, and what faith leaders and communities can do right now. It’s a wide-ranging conversation about responsibility, moral imagination, and where our agency still lies.

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

Avenue M is hosted by Haroon Moghul and Joey Taylor. We’re two men on a journey of faith and meaning. In most episodes, we sit down with a remarkable guest to unpack the moments that shape us, the struggles that build us and the questions that intrigue us.

In this live episode, we take on an urgent conversation — the escalating conflict with Iran and what it means for Americans and people of faith right now. We wrestle with the history behind this moment, the moral and political questions it raises, and the tension between despair and responsibility. This isn’t a hot take, it’s an honest attempt to think clearly, faithfully, and publicly in a time of war.

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

Avenue M is hosted by Haroon Moghul and Joey Taylor. We’re two men on a journey of faith and meaning. In most episodes, we sit down with a remarkable guest to unpack the moments that shape us, the struggles that build us and the questions that intrigue us.

But this episode is a little different. Instead of hosting a guest, we went live to have the kind of honest, unscripted conversation we usually save for ourselves. We talked about faith, doubt, spiritual direction, Ramadan and Lent, mentorship, and what it means to discern the trajectory of your life when you’re no longer 18. We chose to share this publicly because these are the conversations that first sparked Avenue M and because we’ve learned that when we wrestle out loud, it often gives others permission to do the same.

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 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.