In Conversation… with Frank Schaeffer
Conversations with the Artists, Authors, Activists, and Change-Makers Who Are Shaping Our World Today.
Episodes
268 episodes
Melissa Duge Spiers: You Don’t Leave a High-Control Religion. Not Really.
I joined Melissa Duge Spiers to talk about her upbringing in the Seventh-day Adventist Church and what it means to leave a high-control religious system.We talked about the structure of that world and how it shapes identity, behavior, an...
How Did We Get This Lost? With Becky Garrison
Frank Schaeffer talks with Becky Garrison about the deeper cultural forces shaping our moment.They discuss economic insecurity, media collapse, masculinity, and the rise of charismatic leaders.The conversation moves through religi...
Keri Ladner on American Dominion and the Rise of Dominionism
Keri Ladner joins Frank Schaeffer to discuss her book American Dominion: The Rise and Radicalization of a New Christendom.They talk about how dominionist theology moved fr...
Matthew Davis on Mount Rushmore and the Histories We Don’t Tell.
This is a conversation with writer Matthew Davis about Mount Rushmore and the story beneath it. What begins as a discussion of a monument turns into something more personal and more complicated. We talk about the Black Hills, the Lakota, broken...
Leah Libresco Sargeant on The Dignity of Dependence
Leah Libresco Sargeant and I talk about something simple that we spend a lot of time avoiding.We are not autonomous.We talk about women’s bodies, pregnancy, and the way those re...
Amplified: What Happens When America Exports its Culture Wars?
I sat down with filmmaker Mike Sheridan to talk about his documentary Amplified: The Exportation of the Culture Wars
Healing Yourself Before Raising Your Children with Dr. Terence Lester, PhD
This conversation with Dr. Terence Lester begins with his journey from dropout to doctorate, but it quickly becomes something deeper.We talk about growing up with fear, living through trauma, and making the choice not to pass that pain o...
Gaslighting For God: Becky Garrison on Spiritual Narcissists, MAGA, and What Comes Next
In the first hour we get into spiritual narcissism, not as an abstract idea but as something that shapes real communities and does real damage. We talk about MAGA as a kind of cult identity, Trump as a case study in personality-driven power, an...
Where Snowbirds Play: Palm Beach, Power, and the Choices That Define Us
I sat down with Gina Goldhammer to talk about her novel Where Snowbirds Play, which is set in 1991 at what she describes as the end of the golden age of Palm Beach, a world of wealth, influence, and powerful people living inside their ...
Dr. Warren Farrell: From The Boy Crisis to Role Mate to Soulmate; Fixing Modern Relationships
Dr. Warren Farrell: From The Boy Crisis to Role Mate to Soulmate; Fixing Modern RelationshipsWhat Men, Women, and Modern Coupling Are Getting WrongIn this candid conversation, I sit down with Dr. Warren Farrell to explore the cult...
“Scratch” by Kate Cohen | Why Making Things Is a Radical Act
Writer Kate Cohen joins Frank Schaeffer to talk about her new Substack “Scratch,” a project devoted to the things we make that keep us human.From cooking and sewing to carpentry and farming, Cohen explores how working with our han...
Marianne Leone: Catholic Guilt, Italian Fire & Becoming Bold
Marianne Leone joins Frank Schaeffer to discuss her novel Christina the Astonishing, growing up Italian-American under Irish Catholic nuns, religious trauma, losing faith after h...
My Conversation with Andrew Lownie, The Author Who Brought Down The House of York
In this revealing Conversation, I speak with historian, publisher, and author Andrew Lownie about his investigation into Prince Andrew, the aura of untouchable royal privilege, and the culture that allowed secrecy to fester and rot. We explore ...
Too Precious to Lose: Jason G. Green on Obama, His Grandmother, and the Work of Community
Jason G. Green joins me to discuss his memoir Too Precious to Lose. We talk about his years serving President Obama, the lessons he learned from his grandmother, and why community, not chaos, must shape America’s future._____
America’s Best Idea: Randall Balmer on Church, State & Christian Nationalism
Historian and ordained Episcopal priest Randall Balmer joins Frank Schaeffer to discuss his powerful new book, America’s Best Idea. Together they explore the true history of church-state separation, the myth of America as a Christian n...
Furious Minds: The Intellectual Engine Behind Trumpism with Laura K. Field
Why the MAGA movement is far smarter, and far more dangerous, than liberals want to admit.Political theorist Laura K. Field joins me to expose the philosophical, religious, and institutional ideas driving the MAGA New Right. From elite C...
When Evangelicals Put Guns Where Faith Used to Be | In Guns We Trust by William J. Kole
Journalist William J. Kole joins me to talk about In Guns We Trust and the rise of gun culture inside white evangelical Christianity. We discuss fear, politics, self-defense myths, suicide, and why firearms have come to occupy a moral ...
Why Play Matters for Children and Families | Making It Up with Christopher Mannino
Why Play Matters for Children and Families | Making It Up with Christopher ManninoA conversation about play, attention, and why being fully present with children is some of the most important work we do.I’ve spent a lifetime raisi...
Doing Small Things With Great Love — Sharon Eubank
In this conversation, I speak with Sharon Eubank about what it really means to help other people without stripping them of dignity or agency.Drawing on decades of humanitarian work, Sharon reflects on accountability, choice, faith, and w...
The Christian Nationalist Dystopia We Pretended Was Fiction with TJ Poortinga
Novelist TJ Poortinga joins me to discuss Electric Orange, a prophetic satire exposing Christian nationalism, evangelical power, masculinity, and political rage — written by someone who knows the culture from the inside._____
Apocalypse in the Tropics: Faith, Power, and the Fall of Democracy
Filmmaker Petra Costa and producer Alessandra Orofino join Frank Schaeffer to explore how evangelical movements fused with authoritarian politics in Brazil—and why the same forces are reshaping democracy in the United States.
LAB DOG: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research
What happens when a beagle bred for laboratory research gets a second life—and changes a human forever?Journalist and author Melanie D.G. Kaplan joins me for a conversation about her book
Lynn A. Cooper: Interfaith Friendship as Survival Practice
Frank Schaeffer talks with Tufts University Catholic Chaplain Lynn A. Cooper, author of Embracing Our Time: The Sacrament of Interfaith Friendship, about building real connection across difference in an era of polarization and lon...
McNamara At War: Guilt, Power, and America’s Unlearned Lessons
What happens when the architect of a war knows—deep down—that it cannot be won?In this episode of In Conversation with Frank Schaeffer, I speak with William Taubman and Philip Taubman about their new book, McNa...
Steve Griggs: Straight Dirt on Wealth, Work, and the Art of Landscape Design
Landscape designer Steve Griggs joins Frank Schaeffer for a raw, funny, deeply human conversation about rising from a working-class New York childhood to becoming one of America’s premier landscape artists — featured in Forbes, ...
