Discussions With Dad: Faith, Blood and the In-Between

Matthew and Tony revisit one of the most defining conversations of their lives: Matthew's coming out. Sharing the same Christian faith but arriving at different understandings of what that faith required, father and son reflect on fear, identity, parenting, and the responsibility to keep listening when conviction and relationship collide. Rather than revisiting old arguments, they explore what...

Summary As America approaches its 250th birthday, Matthew and Tony ask what we are called to preserve, what we are being asked to outgrow, and how families, communities, and countries move through growing pains without losing each other. In this conversation, they wrestle with freedom, patriotism, the Constitution, generational fear, social media, AI, education, the trades, gun rights, mental heal...

As Father's Day approaches, Matthew and Tony discuss what fathers leave behind for the next generation: not inheritance, but values. Along the way, they wrestle with questions about freedom, control, AI, community, and the future they'll leave behind, ultimately asking what it means to leave the world a little better than we found it. Theme Music Composed by Bruce Martin.

Sorry listeners! We're two days late in posting our podcast this week. Dad is on a motorcycle in D.C. and I'm on the island of Maui, without further delay here is episode ten! After conversations about disagreement, identity, and division, Matthew and Tony turn toward the deeper question of what still binds people together. Through family, faith, citizenship, and shared responsibility, the...

When belief moves beyond ideas and becomes identity, disagreement can feel less like a difference of opinion and more like a personal threat. Matthew and Tony explore what happens when faith, politics, and values become so intertwined with who we are that questioning them feels like rejection of the self. Drawing from their ongoing conversations about responsibility, masculinity, and language, the...

Trust is harder to sustain in a world shaped by competing headlines, social media, and constant outrage. Matthew and Tony explore what happens when institutions lose credibility, lived experience clashes with media narratives, and people begin assuming bad motives before good intentions. As truth becomes harder to define, the conversation turns toward exhaustion, generational frustration, and whet...

Language is shifting faster than ever—shaped by social media, generational change, and evolving ideas of identity. In this conversation, Matthew and Tony wrestle with what happens when words no longer mean the same thing to everyone. They explore the growing tension around language—why some Americans believe certain words should be restricted, while others are seen as reshaping or misusing languag...

We’ve spent time exploring belief, disagreement, and what we owe each other—but this time, we bring it back to something more personal. As a father and son, we ask: when have we felt most proud of each other? How has emotional restraint shaped us across generations? And beyond politics, religion, or identity—what actually makes a good man? This conversation attempts to step away from ideology and...

“If freedom means we can live differently, what do we still owe each other as Americans?” We’ve explored why conversations matter, how belief shapes facts, why disagreement now feels like rejection, and how freedom means many different things. If freedom gives us the right to live differently from one another, the real question becomes: what do we still owe each other as citizens? In this episode,...

In Episodes 1–3, we explored why conversations matter, how belief shapes facts, and why disagreement now feels like rejection. This week, we take on a word both sides claim: freedom. Is it autonomy or protection? Agency or responsibility? Dad introduces the tension between Godly freedom and earthly freedom, raising the question of whether moral conviction should ever be legislated onto someone who...

From Episodes 1 and 2, we’ve explored how disagreement becomes dangerous when facts and beliefs are filtered through fear, lived experience, and identity. What used to be healthy debate has increasingly turned into personal confrontation. In today’s episode, our entry point is empathy—not as pity or a buzzword, but as the ability to stay curious about someone else’s reality, even when their belief...

In this episode, we unpack how facts don’t exist in a vacuum—they’re filtered through faith, culture, fear, and lived experience. Acknowledging what we don’t fully understand about the fears and realities of the BIPOC communities, we explore how those unseen experiences shape perspective—both theirs and ours. From algorithms that reinforce division to the loss of gathering across difference, we as...

In their first episode, Tony Shaffer, a conservative Christian father and his gay son, Matthew Shaffer—an artist and educator—begin an honest dialogue about faith, belief, and the hypocrisy they’ve witnessed in media, politics, and leadership. Grounded in lived experience and creative practice, the conversation reflects on why hard conversations are essential to sustaining community—and why contin...