The Beached White Male Podcast with Ken Kemp

Send us Fan Mail REPRISE - Dr. Peter Enns returns to the podcast to discuss his brand new book Curve-ball - When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming* or How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God. Pete admits it's the longest title in the history of publishing. The popular professor, author (see show notes for his many other books), and podcaster ( The Bible for Normal...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s Beach Talk begins with a review of the loss of feminist champion Gloria Steinem. Betsey recalls her non-religious college years, when feminism was opening new possibilities for women and challenging assumptions about marriage, work, and identity. We talk about another big loss - Dolly Parton, admired by all of us, including Gloria.  Ken reviews Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s fasci...

Send us Fan Mail REPRISE: Today, we welcome a conversation with Dr. Christian Smith, one of America’s leading sociologists of religion. He studied at Wheaton and Gordon College, earned an M.A. and PhD at Harvard, and currently serves as the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. You may know him from his groundbreaking research on adolescent spirituality, but...

Send us Fan Mail Twenty-five years ago, we woke up to a terrible tragedy. We remember the images. The first plane. The second plane. The towers collapsing. The Pentagon burning. The field in Pennsylvania. We remember the smoke, the sirens, the stunned faces—and the terrible realization that the most powerful nation on earth was suddenly, frighteningly vulnerable. But we also remember something els...

Send us Fan Mail In Part One of my conversation with Scott Chesebro, we talked about a life shaped by curiosity - by people, places, questions, and a willingness to look beyond the boundaries of his own religious and cultural experience. Scott has never understood faith as simply a system of beliefs about heaven and hell. For him, it has been a way of being in community and of remaining open to th...

Send us Fan Mail There are some conversations we know we will remember for the rest of our lives. This is one of them. My longtime friend Scott Chesebro and I share a history that stretches back decades - our education, our years in Chicago, our careers, our families, and our love for a city that has meant so much to both of us. But this conversation took place at a very different moment in Scott’...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when you take a position at a university because you believe it will honor your faith—only to discover that the institution you trusted is not what you imagined?  That’s the story of my guest, Julia E. Inglis, Ph. D., MPH, RD. Julia is a nutrition scientist, researcher, clinician, writer, and educator who spent nearly four years as an associate professor at Liberty Un...

Send us Fan Mail Today, we begin by looking ahead to Betsey Newenhuyse's upcoming three-week adventure in Costa Rica, where she'll explore the rainforest and indulge her family’s passion for birding. I also share highlights from four memorable days in Park City, Utah, with my three brothers - a rare gathering of just the four of us. Between hot air ballooning, river rafting, and long con...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to Two Kens with my good friend, Ken Fong. Every so often we record a conversation that challenges us as much as it challenges our listeners. This is one of those episodes. We begin with a hilarious - but surprisingly insightful - clip from Leslie Jones that opens the door to an honest conversation about race, the myth of colorblindness, code-switching, white fragilit...

Send us Fan Mail Every once in a while I read a book that stays with me long after I've turned the final page. That's exactly what happened when I discovered Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. In fact, I was so moved that I immediately read it a second time - something I almost never do. The novel inspired two essays for my Substack, and in this episode I bring those reflections together. Mor...

Send us Fan Mail This week, I’m reaching back into the archive to reprise the most popular episode in the history of my podcast. The Rev. Ben Cremer has built a significant and growing social media presence—one that caught my attention when I stumbled across a lengthy essay he titled  “Myths We Believe.” In it, Ben details the things he was taught to embrace but has since had to unlearn. As I read...

Send us Fan Mail NEW EPISODE: This is where our conversation takes an even deeper turn. Caleb shares the story of his personal confrontation with Christian nationalism—how an invitation to participate with Turning Point USA forced him to take a much closer look at the movement and the version of Christianity it was promoting. That investigation eventually led him to write his remarkable book, Disa...

Send us Fan Mail In this new episode of the Two Kens , Ken Fong and I explore a growing movement that claims white Americans have become an "unprotected class" in modern America. Sparked by the ideas of author and Claremont Institute fellow Jeremy Carl, whose book The Unprotected Class argues that anti-white discrimination is widespread, we examine the resurgence of white identity politi...

Send us Fan Mail NEW EPISODE: Today I have the privilege of talking with an author, a pastor, and an influencer whose journey is as compelling as it is timely. Dr. Caleb Campbell is the lead pastor of Desert Springs Bible Church in Phoenix, Arizona, the author of Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor , and one of the featured voices in the podcast series When the Wolves C...

Send us Fan Mail What We Love, What We Fear, What Comes Next As America approaches its 250th birthday, Betsey Newenhuyse and I take some time on Beach Talk to reflect on what we love most about this remarkable and complicated nation. We talk about the ideals that have inspired generations of Americans—democracy, freedom of conscience, a free press, equal rights, and the ongoing work of building &q...

Send us Fan Mail NEW! I’m delighted to welcome back a familiar guest and friend of the podcast, Dalaina May. This is Dalaina’s third appearance with us, and every conversation leaves me challenged, inspired, and more aware of realities that most of us rarely see. Dalaina is the founder and executive director of Dark Bali, an organization serving people on the front lines of the fight against human...

Send us Fan Mail Ken welcomes back professor, author, and activist Dr. David Dark to discuss his new book, We Become What We Normalize . David shares the recent tragedy on Belmont University's campus in the shooting of the popular freshman, accomplished musician Jillian Ludwig . He tells us about the impact of this horrible incident on his students. The entire nation took note - raising the i...

Send us Fan Mail REPRISE - When Wheaton College released it's anticipated Report on Race, there was a glaring omission. A comprehensive self-study over the history of the college had an arbitraty cut-off date of the year 2000. While it was an attempt to be transparent, vulnerable, and forthright over past mistakes, the report failed to address the painful departure of the first African Americ...

Send us Fan Mail NEW EPISODE - I'm so pleased to welcome back my friend Peter Wehner —  political thinker, former White House speechwriter, regular contributor to The Atlantic and The New York Times, and one of the most thoughtful Christian voices speaking into America’s moral and political turmoil. Peter joins me to discuss four remarkable recent *essays that confront some of the darkest and...

Send us Fan Mail Live Event - We're Talkin' 2021! Podcasters Brad Onishi (Straight White American Jesus), Ken Fong (Asian America - The Ken Fong Podcast) and Ken Kemp (The Beached White Male) join forces on Wednesday, February 10, 2021. A good group gathered to join us for a conversation about the New Year that brought serious crises: an insurrection, the denial of an election result, a...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is something special. Imagine reconnecting with two young men from your youth group… fifty years later. That’s exactly what happened when Brad Thompson and Rick Axtell and I found our way back into each other’s lives after five decades apart, tracing a shared journey that none of us could have predicted. Back in the early 1970s in Deerfield, Illinois, we were shaped b...

Send us Fan Mail This week, an original Beach Talk with Betsey Newenhuyse. We sit down for one of those conversations that moves from the deeply personal to the profoundly global. Seven years after losing her husband Fritz, Betsey reflects on grief—not as something to “get over,” but as something to understand. She’s now editing a book on the journey of grief. Her insights are as honest as they ar...

Send us Fan Mail (REPRISE) Ken welcomes back to the podcast the originator of the hashtag that launched a movement: #exvangelical, Blake Chastain. They discuss his new book, Exvangelical and Beyond: How American Christianity Went Radical and the Movement Fighting Back. An undergraduate at an evangelical university in Central Indiana, Blake had questions - about the Bible, the exclusive truth claim...

Send us Fan Mail REPRISE - When Ken researched his Bible School classmate, Melvin Warren, he stumbled across Dr. Curtis’ book. It referenced a familiar, legendary press conference. In 1970, at the famed Arch entrance at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Melvin made a speech as the cameras rolled and journalists scribbled notes. He claimed that the school’s racism so marred his experience as a...

Send us Fan Mail On this new episode of the Two Kens Podcast , Ken Fong and I sit down at a moment that feels like a hinge point in the American story. From the looming threat of a government shutdown to urgent debates over immigration reform and a President’s competency, we’re asking what kind of country we’re becoming—and who gets to shape that future. We walk through the surprising political mo...