Haroon obsessed over Morocco at the 2022 World Cup. Like many of us, he didn’t know how much the world championships would mean but after COVID, the reprieve was joyful. It also felt deeply meaningful. With millions of Muslims, Arabs, Africans and so many others, he cheered on an improbable, Cinderella run. This World Cup has felt even more incredible.

Watching Moroccans invoke God, Canada’s Muslim prayers prostrate, Iranians appeal for understanding, it’s been an epic case study in changing the narrative.
But that’s all got Joey thinking: Is prayer on the pitch appropriate? Are sports too much of a religion? Join us for a very fun, twenty-fourth episode, with Joey and Haroon asking what we should (and shouldn’t) ask God, whether the better team really wins, if sports have replaced religion, and why it is that everything Donald Trump does turns to algae (or, in this case, a 4-1 drubbing).

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.

For this episode, we talk to Reed Frerichs. Reed is the founder of The Lesson, he’s the creator of Inner Story (Substack), and he’s an executive coach at MIT Sloan. Reed explores the inner stories that shape leadership, performance and who we become under pressure.

This conversation asks the question, what if the stories that shape us aren't the ones we tell, but the ones we're still living? We talk about the hidden threads that connect our lives - from his experience as an actor to entrepreneurship, from sports to spirituality, and from failure to transformation. Along the way, we explore what it means to become the author of your own story while discovering that the most meaningful journeys are never just about yourself.

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.

For this episode, we talk to Daniel Yudkin about Potentialism, the emerging political philosophy at the center of the Beacon Project, as an effort to answer one of the oldest civic questions: What do we owe each other? Drawing from social psychology, political theory, and moral philosophy, Daniel argues that every person possesses a unique gift and that society should be organized around both the right to develop that gift and the responsibility to share it. Rather than positioning Potentialism as a radical break from American political traditions, he presents it as a recovery of forgotten ideas about contribution, virtue, and mutual obligation that have been obscured by contemporary political polarization.

The conversation moves beyond politics into questions of identity, formation, and human nature. Daniel shares personal stories about his own experiences of hybridity, belonging, and identity, while we draw connections to religious traditions, civic formation, and the moral frameworks that shape communities. Throughout the discussion, the conversation returns to the tension between rights and responsibilities, institutions and culture, individual freedom and collective obligation, asking not only how societies should be organized, but what kinds of people democratic societies require.

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.