Plain Values Podcast

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast …  Kristen Smith never planned on becoming an herbalist.  As the oldest of three, she grew up surrounded by farmland in northwest Ohio, helping grandparents with conventional crops and meat chickens.  But life shifted after marriage, college, and her first baby. A routine blood test at 22 revealed severe hypothyroidism. The doctor offered medication for...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast …  Some stories don’t just inspire you, they quietly rebuild your hope. That’s what happened the moment I sat down with Zach and Katie Miller. Zach, a former Air Force pilot and commercial airline captain, lost his first wife Kaley to cancer after a seven-year battle. Left to raise three young children, he found himself in the kind of darkness that makes...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast …  Joni Eareckson Tada was 17 when a diving accident in 1967 left her quadriplegic.  What followed was not defeat. She learned to paint holding a brush in her mouth, shared her testimony with millions alongside Billy Graham, and turned letters of despair into a ministry born at her kitchen table. That ministry (Joni and Friends ) now reaches families liv...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast …  Most of us have felt it… that quiet exhaustion when the body is running on empty and the spirit feels even emptier. Chris Zimmerman lived it for seven long months.  Successful on paper, hollow inside, he reached a point where getting out of bed felt impossible. Then he found cold water. Not as a gimmick. As a last resort. What started as brutal cold s...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast …  It was in his hometown church where Ryan Wolfe grew up and was drawn early to adults with intellectual disabilities who prayed, cross-stitched, and taught him more about friendship than any textbook.  From coaching Challenger baseball with his young family to building a field when no one else would, he asked one question, “How can we be a blessing, no...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast …  Melissa Brown never planned to lead Ohio’s largest faith-based residential home for teen survivors of sex trafficking.  A Catalyst conference umbrella moment in 2013 shattered her world … kids sold for sex, hidden in plain sight.  She surrendered her “yes” to God anyway. Today, Safe Harbor’s 30-acre campus offers everything on-site: medical care, scho...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast , Bekah Hilty, executive director of the Pregnancy Care Center of Wayne County (in Ohio), shares her unexpected path into ministry.  From a health education background and personal miscarriage to leading a center that offers free ultrasounds, parenting classes, and newborn support, she emphasizes affirming women's worth in Christ. She details the risks o...

In this raw and unforgettable episode of The Plain Values Podcast , photographer Eric Brown opens his studio in rural Eastern NC and his life.  He talks with Marlin about his time in Nashville, family, and the six miraculous years with his daughter Pearl … born with holoprosencephaly, doctors called incompatible with life. Eric shares the gut-punch diagnosis, the choice to welcome siblings into th...

Jake Drumm, a longtime paramedic now running Drumm Emergency Solutions and managing Watauga Flats Farm in East Tennessee, sat down for a raw, beautiful conversation.  He shares stories from the ambulance that’ll make you hug your people tighter … about the ghosts that linger from years of witnessing grief, the burnout, and how true healing comes from community, not isolation. And then there’s the...

In this warm, heartfelt episode, Chris and Kelli Coyne (owners of Muletown Coffee in Columbia, Tennessee) share the unlikely story of how a small coffee roasting operation became the spark that transformed a forgotten downtown into a thriving community hub. What started in 2013 as a risky venture in a near-empty square has grown into something far bigger than great coffee (though their roasts are...

In a raw and moving episode of The Plain Values Podcast , Kevin Hewitt, CEO of Christian Children’s Home of Ohio, pulls back the curtain on a lifetime devoted to foster care, adoption, and healing traumatized children.  From his own faith awakening as a teen, sparked by his brother’s battle with cancer and a faithful basketball coach, to quitting law school because his heart couldn’t settle for mo...

In this remarkable conversation, we sit down with Dr. Roberto Matthew — born in Cuba, shaped by revolution, exile, poverty, and perseverance to trace a life marked by danger, resilience, and deep conviction.  As a child, he fled Castro’s regime with his mother, sister, grandmother, and aunt, while his father stayed behind to support counter-revolution efforts. What followed was a journey through C...

In this episode, we sit down with Buck Alford, an Atlanta native who traded suburban life for the wide-open fields and beauty of upstate New York. Buck shares the unexpected path that pulled his family north: a growing conviction about food, place, hospitality, and living closer to the land.  What began as a simple desire to cook with better ingredients evolved into ripping out suburban landscapin...

In this week’s conversation, we sit down with therapist Kent Ernsting, a man shaped by a lifetime of caring for wounded hearts.  Trained in Marriage and Family Therapy and Theology at Fuller Seminary, Kent has spent 35 years walking with people through trauma, addiction, attachment wounds, and the long road toward healing. His story begins with adoption, loss, and a defining question, “What will I...

Today’s episode is with our friend Dave Sims. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . Dave Sims is a man whose life was split cleanly in two by a single moment.  In 1998, a slow family bike ride turned into a catastrophic accident, leaving him a C5/6 quadriplegic. The years that followed carried every dark instinct a person can have: despair, anger, bargaining, and the hollow si...

Today’s episode is with our friends Curt Yoder, Brian Yoder, and Mark Schlabach. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . In the rolling hills of Amish country, a small youth deer hunt that started with just four kids in 2012 has exploded into something extraordinary... A thriving 501(c)(3) that gives disabled, special-needs, and first-time hunters a life-changing day in the wood...

Today’s episode is with our friend Julie Kerby. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . Julie is the founder of Hope’s House Foster Closet and a woman who has spent nearly two decades on the front lines of foster care. Julie and her husband fostered for over 18 years and opened their home to more than 100 children through emergency placements, respite care, and long-term fosteri...

Today’s episode is with our friends Chad and Kyla Kethcart. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . Chad and Kyla Kethcart’s journey began in the creative pulse of Chicago … he a musician, she an artist … bound by both love and struggle.  When life’s storms hit in 2020, they were forced to confront what truly mattered. Out of hardship came a radical shift: rebuilding not just th...

Today’s episode is with our friend Pam McCue. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . After a distinguished 30-year career as a senior executive in the U.S. Department of Defense, Pam McCue could have easily settled into a quiet retirement. Instead, she turned her lifelong curiosity toward one of the most studied (and most mysterious) artifacts in human history: the Shroud of Tu...

Today’s episode is with our friend Griffin Long. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . Griffin and his wife Rachel live in Canton, OH with their three children Isaiah, Thomas, and Ely.  Griffin is a founder and Executive Director of Sacred Ground, a faith based nonprofit whose mission is to cultivate an environment of belonging and purpose for people with intellectual and deve...

Today’s episode is with our dear friend Josh Thomas. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . As Co-Founder of The Homesteading Family and School of Traditional Skills , Josh partners with experts in the homesteading world to help people learn the skills they need to create a healthy, free, and secure life. Welcome to the Plain Values Podcast , please meet our friend, Josh Thomas...

Today’s episode is with our dear friends Gabe and Mandy. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . Gabe McCauley is an actor and film director as well as the founder of the production companies, Soul Feather Studios and lilDRAGON.  He has directed over eight seasons of television, feature films, commercials, and music videos. Gabe lives in Columbia, TN with his wife Mandy, the mus...

Today’s episode is with our dear friends Ryan and Sara. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . Ryan Heckert is first and foremost a Jesus follower, husband, and father. He’s also CEO at TWi and lover of photography, bigfoot lore, baseball, golf and fantasy football.  Welcome to the Plain Values Podcast , please meet our friends, Ryan and Sara ...  This conversation encapsulates...

Today’s episode is with our dear friend Sam Burchfield. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . Sam Burchfield is a musician. But wait, that’s an understatement … Rooted in South Carolina and tempered by years of chasing and then rejecting “sparkly” offers from TV and major labels, Sam has learned the value of community, autonomy, and slow growth. His latest album Nature Speaks...

Today’s episode is with our dear friend Dave Stauffer. Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com . Dave is the Executive Director of SpringHaven Counseling Center with more than 30 years’ experience in community mental health, residential care, and private practice.  A licensed professional clinical counselor and supervisor, he works with adults, couples, families, and individuals o...