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Tune in every Tuesday for an inspiring journey on Created in the Image of God: Building Vibrant Communities. Wade Fransson and his distinguished guests explore the essence of human nature and the transformative power of unity in diversity through live-streamed discussions rooted in the Independent Investigation of Reality. This series advocates for authentic connections among individuals to foster thriving, inclusive communities. Anchored in spiritual truths and a collective quest for understanding, these conversations inspire growth and progress toward a harmonious world.
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What if faith and humor aren’t opposites, but companions on the road toward hope? In this episode, we sit down with Sy Hoekstra—a writer, editor, and podcaster whose story weaves together deep honesty and joyful perspective. Blind since birth, Sy brings firsthand insight into the realities of living with disability, but refuses to let hardship define the story. Instead, his writing explores faith in the language of humility, hospitality, and generous self-awareness, often delivered with a contagious sense of humor.Sy speaks candidly about choosing humor not as a coping mechanism for pain, but as a sign of spiritual and emotional health. Drawing from the words and actions of Jesus—especially those challenging self-importance and pride—Sy shares how laughter becomes an act of hope, inviting others into dialogue about awkward or misunderstood topics. Far from avoiding difficulty, his approach opens the door to real connection, helping friends and readers find clarity, grace, and even joy in unlikely places.Whether you’re navigating your own challenges, seeking a fresh take on faith in a broken world, or simply curious about humor as a tool for hospitality, you’ll find Sy’s approach both inviting and thought-provoking. This conversation is an honest exploration of humility, belonging, and how we care for each other by meeting awkwardness with kindness and wit. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Mark Vernon steps into the studio for an episode that faces our collective anxieties with honesty and depth. The conversation opens with the sense of collapse many feel today—a sense that familiar certainties are fading. Instead of offering quick fixes or retreating into platitudes, Mark explores what happens when we approach uncertainty as a call to discover deeper forms of truth and beauty.Drawing on his background as a psychotherapist, educator, and former vicar, Mark unpacks lessons from the Platonic and Christian traditions. He reflects on thinkers like Dante and William Blake, but also connects these traditions to the symbols and stories of modern culture—even Frankenstein and zombies become part of the journey.This episode asks: Can meaning and hope break through, even when everything feels unsettled? Mark suggests that wisdom is less about escaping difficulty and more about cultivating a way of seeing—a spiritual intelligence—that reveals goodness precisely in the moment of greatest uncertainty. Whether you’re drawn to philosophy, psychology, faith, or simply the yearning for deeper answers, this conversation offers a space to wrestle honestly with the questions of our age. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Shane Claiborne is neither content with ideas nor preoccupied with abstractions. His vision of peacemaking is urgent, tangible—and sometimes quite literally, forged in fire. In this episode, Shane shares the journey behind Raw Tools, where surrendered guns are melted and re-formed into gardening instruments, echoing the prophetic call to “beat swords into plowshares.” The work is as symbolic as it is practical, challenging both the weaponization of society and the ways Christians can drift from the teachings of Jesus.We go deeper than headlines or slogans. Shane speaks with candor and humility about learning from figures like Mother Teresa, collaborating with grassroots communities, and the struggles of being a “Red Letter Christian” when compassion means confronting systems—and ourselves. There is room here for laughter (yes, Dolly Parton makes an appearance), but also for reflective questions about what it means to love authentically, seek justice, and cultivate hope in broken places.This conversation will speak to anyone asking how faith can be lived in the real world—where change is hard, but redemption is always possible. Whether you’re passionate about justice, curious about social action, or simply searching for honest spiritual dialogue, you’ll find both challenge and inspiration in Shane’s story. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Michael Stone joins us again for a focused conversation on fear, trauma, and the quiet work of becoming whole. He explains how trauma forms early, how it influences our choices and relationships, and why fear often becomes the lens through which we interpret everything. His approach is steady, practical, and rooted in decades of lived experience.Building on his previous appearance, Michael reflects on the difference between coping mechanisms and true integration. For him, oneness isn’t an idea to believe in but a state that emerges when the body, mind, and heart are finally aligned. The conversation invites listeners to understand their fear with more compassion and to recognize the possibility of healing within their own story.This episode offers a calm, grounded perspective for anyone navigating unresolved pain or searching for a sense of inner steadiness. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Humanity is standing on the edge of a profound transition. In this episode, award-winning author and educator Dr. Scott Guerin joins us to unpack the central themes of his book Awkward Awakening—a call to recognize our divine nature, our expanding awareness, and the subtle shifts reshaping how we understand mind, body, and spirit. He outlines why the old boundaries between the physical and nonphysical are no longer holding, and how this realization is opening an entirely new landscape of experience.Dr. Guerin brings decades of work in human development and spiritual psychology to a conversation that bridges science, spirituality, and the unexplored dimensions of consciousness. From our “galactic heritage” to the rise of experiential spirituality, he explains how these emerging patterns are not fringe ideas but signals of a larger evolutionary moment. His perspective offers clarity without sensationalism—a grounded understanding of what many people are already feeling but haven’t been able to name.Together, we explore how to navigate this awakening with discernment and purpose. Dr. Guerin shares practical approaches, reflective tools, and the inner posture needed to engage this shift with integrity. Whether you approach this as a believer, a seeker, or simply someone sensing change on the horizon, this conversation offers a meaningful map for finding your way home. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Reynaldo Pareja joins the conversation to explore two questions that have defined much of his work: How does God communicate with humanity, and is there a single principle that holds the universe together? His perspective moves between the sweep of cosmic reality and the interior landscape of human consciousness, treating both as essential parts of the same search.He reflects on revelation as an ongoing, intentional process—one that invites humanity to understand the divine not as a distant abstraction but as a presence that unfolds across history. At the same time, he examines the astonishing coherence of creation, from the behavior of galaxies to the complexity of cells, suggesting that unity is not an ideal but a structural truth woven into existence itself.The result is an episode that brings science, spirituality, and human experience into the same frame, offering a grounded and expansive look at how we make sense of our place in a universe that is both immeasurable and intimately connected. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Facing nine federal indictments and a possible thirty-seven-year sentence, Daniel Gray did something few people in today’s outrage-driven culture ever do: he took responsibility for everything. Not only for January 6, but for the digital spiral that pulled him in — the doomscrolling, the toxic influencers, and the online ecosystem that blurred judgment and distorted truth. When he pleaded guilty, he wasn’t seeking leniency; he was seeking honesty. Judge Amy Berman Jackson ultimately sentenced him to thirty months. And as Daniel reflects, you cannot receive grace without accountability — and grace without repentance is a mockery of grace.In this rare, unfiltered conversation, Daniel opens a window into the psychology of radicalization and the cost of stepping back into the light. He examines the pressures of the algorithm, the moral vacuum of influencer culture, and the growing dissonance between truth and the digital personas we choose to believe. This episode is not about politics — it’s about the spiritual, moral, and human journey of a man who confronted his own failures and discovered that redemption begins where self-deception ends. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Mary DeMuth joins Wade Fransson for a direct and honest conversation about what it takes to heal from harm. Rather than circling the idea of trauma, she names the internal patterns that linger long after the moment has passed—shame, silence, and the false belief that suffering is the end of the story.She speaks openly about the discipline of rebuilding a self: how truth-telling restores agency, how faith steadies the inner life, and why freedom begins with refusing to inherit the limits others place on us. Her perspective is not theoretical; it’s lived, tested, and carried forward through her work as an author, advocate, and voice for those still finding their own.Mary is a literary agent, artist, speaker, podcaster at PrayEveryDay.show, and author of 50+ books, including The Most Overwhelmed Women of the Bible (Skyhorse, 2025). She lives in Texas with her husband and is the mom to three adult children. Find out more at https://www.marydemuth.com Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Freedom for Sale begins by revisiting one of the most urgent frontiers of our age: the struggle to think freely. Journalist Mehrtash Olson joins Wade Fransson to examine how modern information systems—powerful, profitable, and often opaque—reshape not only public opinion but the inner landscape where conviction, conscience, and moral clarity are formed.Expanding on earlier conversations about skepticism and the sources that shape our worldview, this episode traces the mechanisms through which narratives are engineered, trust is eroded, and attention becomes a marketplace. Yet the conversation rises above critique. Through the lens of the Bahá’í teachings on truthfulness, justice, and the sanctity of thought, Mehrtash asks what it means to safeguard the integrity of our own perception when the world is designed to bend it.This episode marks the beginning of a new mini-series within Created in the Image of God—a journey into the forces that influence our choices, the freedoms we unknowingly surrender, and the spiritual discipline required to reclaim the authorship of our own minds. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Yiscah Smith joins us to reflect on a lifetime of transformation—from the suburban landscapes of 1950s America to the spiritual terrain of modern Israel, where her search for meaning has unfolded across decades.Her latest work, Planting Seeds of the Divine: Torah Commentaries to Cultivate Your Spiritual Practice (University of Nebraska Press), gathers the wisdom of her experience into a meditation on what it means to live consciously. Having spent seventeen years immersed in the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic world, Smith came to recognize that ritual without sincerity leads to silence of the heart. Her decision to leave that world was not a rejection of Judaism, but a return to its essence—a rediscovery of the living spark that connects the individual soul to the Divine.With rare clarity, Yiscah speaks of faith as an embodied awareness—a way of seeing that restores dignity, meaning, and connection in an age of dislocation. Her life’s work is a testament to the quiet strength of authenticity and to the enduring human desire to find God not in heaven, but within the soul’s own language. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Addison Hodges Hart has spent decades writing at the intersection of theology, history, and the contemplative life. Across twelve books—ranging from his studies of the Gospels to his philosophical meditations and even his fictional experiment Confessions of the Antichrist—he has returned again and again to a single question: what remains of faith once the scaffolding of doctrine has been stripped away?In this conversation, Hart draws on his long career as a priest, scholar, and spiritual essayist to examine how belief evolves when it is tested by experience rather than upheld by obligation. He reflects on the tensions he has observed within Christian communities, the limits of dogmatic certainty, and the quiet resilience of a faith grounded in intellectual honesty. With the same clarity that animates his Substack The Pragmatic Mystic, Hart argues that the spiritual life matures only when it learns to breathe outside the structures built to protect it.What emerges is not a dismissal of tradition, but a more demanding version of it—one that asks for depth over compliance, and for courage in the face of unanswerable questions. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Willie Handler has reinvented himself on several occasions throughout his work career. He has been a hospital administrator, a government policy manager, an insurance expert, and consultant. Following his retirement from the government, Willie began a writing career. He has published three fiction novels over the past few years. His latest book is a memoir focusing on growing up as a child of Holocaust survivors.Willie is active in Toronto’s Holocaust second generation and third generation survivor community, participating in educational programs, commemorative events, and group discussions. He is also a volunteer at the Toronto Holocaust Museum, where he assists students and visitors as they make their way through the museum’s gallery. Willie has spoken online and at in-person events on the Holocaust, antisemitism, trauma and his family’s history.He is currently working on a book dealing with intergenerational generational trauma in descendants of Holocaust survivors and have interviewed over 100 descendants. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
When Kathleen Johnson’s life fell apart, she didn’t set out to become “Scripture Girl.” She was a woman searching for peace, holding on to faith through divorce, fear, and a diagnosis that left doctors without answers. But when healing came — spirit, soul, and body — so did a new purpose: to show others that the same Spirit who heals also sends.In this conversation with Wade Franson, Kathleen shares her journey from pain to restoration and the message behind her book Healed to Heal. Together they explore the transforming power of surrender, the discipline of Scripture, and what it means to live by the Spirit in a world driven by fear.It’s a testimony of grace, boldness, and the freedom that comes when healing becomes more than a miracle — it becomes a mission. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
The original gospel proclamation that the Lord of the nations was a crucified Galilean raised from the dead and that salvation was found in vowing allegiance to Jesus of Nazareth unleashed a shock wave that turned the Roman Empire upside down. Early Christianity was subversive and dangerous—dangerous for Christians and a threat to the keepers of the old order. Most of all, Christianity was countercultural. But what about contemporary American Christianity? Is it the countercultural way of Jesus or merely a religious endorsement of Americanism? In his provocative book, Postcards From Babylon, Brian Zahnd challenges the reader to see and embrace a daring Jesus-centered Christianity that can turn the world upside down again. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Sylvain Horwood, natural health advocate and founder of PURU, joins Wade Franson for a radiant conversation about light — the kind that sustains our biology and awakens our spirit. Through a lifetime of curiosity and research into the relationship between sunlight and human wellbeing, Sylvain has seen the sun as medicine and metaphor — a bridge between the physical and the divine. In this episode, he shares how aligning with the sun’s natural rhythm can restore balance to our health and open a deeper awareness of the creative force behind it all. Together, Wade and Sylvain explore how modern disconnection from nature affects our physical vitality and sense of meaning. Their discussion moves fluidly between science and spirituality, revealing how the energy that sustains life may also illuminate the image of God within us. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
David Zahl, founder of Mockingbird Ministries and author of Low Anthropology and Seculosity, joins Wade Franson for a rich conversation on faith, culture, and the power of grace. Drawing from years of work translating theology into everyday language, David shares how Mockingbird’s message — that God’s love is for the real, the flawed, and the weary — continues to resonate in a culture driven by achievement and self-definition. Together, Wade and David explore what it means to proclaim good news in an age that doesn’t think it needs saving, how “low anthropology” opens the door to deeper compassion, and why grace is the most radical message of all. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
In Sacred, Not Sinful, Dr. Lyman A. Montgomery provides a bold, biblical, and balanced exploration of the tension between Greek life and Christian discipleship. Drawing on scripture, cultural history, and personal testimony, his book offers clarity, not condemnation, showing believers how heritage can be redeemed, traditions re-examined, and identity rooted firmly in Christ. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Where religion and reporting meet, the stakes are high, and the stories are deeply human. Writer and scholar Mark Oppenheimer joins Created in the Image of God to reflect on a life spent at the intersection of belief, culture, and public conversation. Known for his work with The New York Times, This American Life, and the groundbreaking Unorthodox podcast, Oppenheimer brings wit and candor to how faith traditions—his own Jewish background among them—can enrich our collective dialogue rather than divide it. Together, we explore what moral imagination journalism requires, how spiritual humility can coexist with critical inquiry, and why telling the truth about who we are remains one of the most sacred acts in a pluralistic world. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Philosopher and educator Joe Atman approaches the Book of Genesis as a universal and familiar entry point for rethinking how humanity learns—and why we so often mistake information for understanding. Rather than treating Genesis as theology, he interprets it as a map of consciousness: a story of curiosity, judgment, and rediscovery that mirrors our intellectual and moral evolution. Drawing on his experience at Middle Tree, where reimagining education means restoring wonder to the learning process itself, Atman explores how true learning begins with humility—and how the human mind must continually be re-educated to perceive meaning beyond its own assumptions. This conversation moves between philosophy, discovery, and the renewal of learning itself—a journey back to the source, where creation and education meet. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
Can journalism still serve truth instead of ideology in an era defined by partisanship and polarization?Tangle founder Isaac Saul joins Created in the Image of God for a timely conversation about the pursuit of balance in modern media. Through Tangle’s nonpartisan model—where stories are examined from the left, right, and center—Isaac is reimagining what it means to inform without inflaming, to challenge without dividing.Together, we explore how humility, transparency, and moral courage can restore faith in journalism—and why the spiritual act of seeking truth may be the antidote to a broken information age. Get full access to Something or Other Publishing on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe
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