Get Me to the Gray

Season Finale: Research, Reality and the Mission, LIVE at GRASP

Recorded live at GRASP in Denver, this episode asks what research can become when it stops extracting stories from communities and starts protecting the people closest to the harm. Paula sits with Johnny, Jenny, Erica, and members of the GRASP research team to talk about trust, gun violence, community-led inquiry, and why data means very little if it does not lead to action. Learn more about GRASP at graspyouth.org [https://graspyouth.org]. We’ll be back with new episodes in September. In the meantime, keep in touch with us at cojaservices.com [https://cojaservices.com], opt in to the newsletter [https://cojaservices.com/subscribed/], and follow along as we keep asking better questions in public.

Reason, Religion, Faith & the Unknown

What is religion actually for? For thousands of years, religion has offered explanations for life's biggest mysteries. But what happens when reason replaces revelation? Can a religion survive if it no longer asks people to believe the supernatural? In this episode of Get Me to the Gray, Paula Lehman-Ewing sits down with Matt Ward, founder of New Atenism, to explore whether faith is essential to religion—or whether religion can evolve alongside human knowledge. The conversation begins with reason, science, and the role of speculation in human progress, but quickly moves somewhere deeper: What should we do with the unknown? Is faith simply belief without evidence? Or is it the willingness to live with questions that may never have answers? Rather than debating religion versus atheism, this episode asks a more fundamental question: Is religion meant to explain life's mysteries—or help us live with them? You can learn more about Matt Ward and New Atenism at newatenism.org [https://newatenism.org]. Learn more about COJA Presents at COJAServices.com [https://cojaservices.com]

Good Agents, Broken Patterns: Former FBI Special Agent Eric Robinson on Burge, COINTELPRO, and Institutional Harm

Former FBI Special Agent Eric Robinson spent 24 years inside one of the most powerful law enforcement institutions in the world. He worked counterterrorism, crimes against children, public corruption, and national security. He was part of the team that arrested Jon Burge — the Chicago police commander whose torture program put more than 100 Black men in prison on forced confessions over nearly four decades. He's also publicly stated the FBI today is unrecognizable from the one he was a part of. Paula challenges that idea: Is it different or just more exposed? This conversation asks what it means to do good work inside a broken pattern. Robinson doesn't deflect the hard questions. What he gives instead is something rarer: an honest account of what it means to see clearly and still stay inside. Learn more about Eric and his forthcoming book Irreverend: From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners in the FBI visit preachertobreacher.com [https://preachertobreacher.com/] and follow him on Instagram @_eric_robinson [https://www.instagram.com/_eric_robinson/]. If you're interested in having or facilitating conversations with hard questions, contact us at cojaservices.com [https://cojaservices.com].

War Coverage Without a Fixer: What We're Not Seeing in Iran — Amjad Tadros

War coverage depends on infrastructure most audiences never see. The fixer — the local journalist who arranges access, speaks the language, reads the room, and absorbs the risk — is the reason foreign correspondents can tell any story at all. And the fixer disappears before it airs. Amjad Tadros spent 33 years as CBS News' Middle East producer — one of the most decorated fixers in the history of American broadcast journalism. He won some fights to get the real story through. He lost others. The ones he lost still find him at four in the morning. Now retired and watching a new war unfold from Jordan, Tadros is seeing what happens when that infrastructure collapses entirely. There are no independent journalists inside Iran. The internet is restricted. The coverage is being assembled in London and Washington and Dubai from satellite imagery, Telegram channels, and exile sources with their own agendas. The people who would push back on the frame are not in the room. This is what that absence looks like — and what it reveals about what the fixer was actually providing when he was there. Learn more about Amjad Tadros' work and book at amjadtadros.com [https://www.amjadtadros.com/]. His book The Fixer is available on Amazon [https://a.co/d/01pjyQjr]. For information about how COJA Services teaches narrative strategies that make these kinds of conversations possible, visit cojaservices.com [https://cojaservices.com/].

Antidepressants, Mental Illness, and Unresolved Tension — with Dr. Fred Moss

Antidepressants are in the news. A federal announcement [https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-launches-maha-action-plan-curb-psychiatric-overprescribing.html] called for reducing overprescribing of psychiatric medications — and the conversation immediately became political. This episode goes somewhere the political coverage can't follow. Dr. Fred Moss is a board-certified psychiatrist with over 45 years in practice and more than 30,000 patients across hospitals, nursing homes, correctional facilities, and private practice. He's also one of the rare psychiatrists openly questioning the system he trained in — particularly the reliance on diagnosis, labels, and medication as first-line treatment. His program Undoctor Reset and books Creative 8 and Find Your True Voice are built around a different premise: that many people labeled mentally ill are not ill so much as unheard. Host Paula Lehman-Ewing brings a different experience to this conversation — one in which medication wasn't a shortcut but a rope. What emerged wasn't resolution. It was something more honest: a disagreement that runs deeper than treatment philosophy, all the way down to what depression actually is. The tension doesn't resolve. That's the point. Learn more about Dr. Moss' work: drfred360.com [https://drfred360.com/]welcometohumanity.net [https://welcometohumanity.net/]welcometohumanityretreat.com [https://welcometohumanityretreat.com/] Learn more about the strategy behind these conversations at COJAServices.com [https://cojaservices.com/]