Get Me to the Gray

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, Ginny, 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...

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 r...

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 fou...

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 A...

Antidepressants are in the news. A federal announcement 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 faciliti...

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 , has spent years trying to decode session behavior so more people can stop feeling an...

Prosecutorial accountability has become a flashpoint in American justice debates — but what does it actually look like from inside the office? District Attorney Alexis King of Jefferson and Gilpin Counties joins Paula Lehman-Ewing for a live conversation recorded at Denver Book Society. King is not a skeptic of prosecution — she believes in it, has reformed it from the inside, and built the larges...

When democracy and authoritarianism go to war, the easy story is about good guys and bad guys. Daniel Bookman doesn't tell that story — but he comes close, and that's where this conversation gets interesting. Bookman is the author of Beyond Power , a philosophical framework for understanding how ethical societies form, why authoritarian regimes can't tolerate democratic neighbors, and what that me...

Can you change policing from the inside — or does the system just absorb you? That's the question retired NYPD lieutenant and highest-ranking whistleblower in department history Edwin Raymond has been living inside for years. This episode 4 of Get Me to the Gray was originally recorded live at Tattered Cover in Denver — now released with a host intro and outro that weren't there the first time. Th...

What does it take to stay friends with someone you've disagreed with politically for decades — and keep showing up anyway? With host Paula Lehman-Ewing away on a reporting trip, COJA Marketing Director Jamie Konegni sits down with his longtime friend, Jimmy Panepinto. In this midseason palette cleanser, Jamie and Jimmy, who have clashed on politics, policy, and principle for as long as they've kno...

No guest this week — and that's the episode. Get Me to the Gray is built on the belief that most hard conversations are worth having. That polarization is often performance, and that real dialogue — across genuine difference — is possible if both people are willing to stay in it. This week tested that belief. And what it gave me wasn't a failure. It was clarity. There are extremes with which certa...

In this episode of Get Me to the Gray , Paula speaks with researcher and decentralized technology advocate Wouter Constant about Nostr , an open protocol designed to move social media away from centralized platforms like Meta, Google, and X. Instead of a single company controlling the platform, Nostr distributes communication across independent servers called relays, allowing anyone to build apps...

What happens when public narratives move faster than the systems meant to deliver justice? In this episode of Get Me to the Gray , Paula Lehman-Ewing sits down with filmmaker and commentator Sara Alessandrini to explore how media narratives shape public perception around political figures and social movements. Drawing on Alessandrini’s docuseries This Is What New Yorkers Say , the conversation exa...

Important contextual note: This conversation was recorded before the escalation between Israel and Iran this weekend. I’m releasing it as scheduled because the issues we discuss — peace, security, and human dignity — are especially relevant in moments like this. As a narrative consulting agency, we believe that if we only talk about these questions when things are calm, we miss the moments when th...

What happens when reform ideas collide with real institutions? In this episode, Paula speaks with Cristine Soto DeBerry, founder and executive director of the Prosecutors Alliance and former chief of staff to San Francisco district attorneys George Gascón and Chesa Boudin. Drawing on her experience inside one of the country’s most closely watched progressive prosecution offices, DeBerry describes...

Recorded LIVE at Tattered Cover Book Store, Paula Lehman-Ewing speaks with retired NYPD lieutenant, whistleblower, and author Edwin Raymo nd about the unresolved tension between inside and outside approaches to change in policing. Edwin joined the NYPD after experiencing police harassment as a teenager, determined to challenge discriminatory practices from within. He later became the highest-ranki...

What happens when a liberal and a conservative sit down — not to debate, but to think out loud together? In this episode of Get Me to the Gray , Paula Lehman-Ewing speaks with Josh Lewis, a CPA, government auditor, and conservative writer behind Saving Elephants , about a core political divide: whether the systems we’ve inherited are capable of correcting harm, or whether they were built to benefi...

What do we do when the stories we tell about violence stop helping us solve it? In this episode of Get Me to the Gray , Paula Lehman-Ewing sits down with criminologist David M. Kennedy to confront one of the most uncomfortable questions in public life: how do we reduce violence without falling into either punishment-for-punishment’s-sake or denial that harm is happening at all? The conversation un...

This episode is about getting to the heart of what capitalism and socialism mean and how no true example of either actually exists. In this episode of Get Me to the Gray , Paula Lehman-Ewing sits down with economist Doug Cardell for a candid, unscripted conversation that cuts through ideology and into reality. Together, they explore how capitalism and socialism are often treated as fixed, opposing...

Welcome to Get Me to the Gray . This episode is the trailer. Hosted by journalist and author Paula Lehman-Ewing, the show creates space for conversations many of us avoid—across deep disagreement, uncertainty, and difference. This isn’t debate or performance, but dialogue that stays in the room when things get hard. Full episodes launch soon. Follow the show to be part of it from the beginning.