Democracy, Authoritarianism, and the Ethics of War

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/]

Come for the Craic: Irish Sessions and Who Gets to Belong

Irish traditional music session etiquette has a reputation for being fluid, unspoken, and learnable — if you're let in long enough to learn it. But what happens when the people arriving at the door didn't grow up inside the culture that shaped the rules? Tara Connaghan, creator and host of In Tune with Tradition [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-tune-with-tradition-perspectives-on-session/id1824597652], has spent years trying to decode session behavior so more people can stop feeling anxious and start feeling welcome. Wendy Morgan has spent 20 years trying to get in — and recently realized she might never fully arrive. This conversation doesn't resolve that tension. It lives in it. What does tradition owe to newcomers? What do skilled players owe to learners? And when the gatekeeping is unconscious — when nobody's being deliberately exclusive, but the door still doesn't open — whose responsibility is it?