Plain Values Podcast

It was a bitterly cold December day in 2016 (just 5 or 10 degrees) when Marlin, his brother, and a friend headed north to fly fish for steelhead. Marlin had years of experience and was excited to show off a little. But pride has a way of humbling us. While demonstrating how it’s done, Marlin stepped in a deep hole and fell face-first upstream. His waders instantly filled with freezing river water....

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast , Marlin sits down with his longtime friend and former pastor, Marlin Beachy, for a raw and honest conversation about life, ministry, and the unimaginable pain of losing a child. Marlin shares his journey from growing up Amish, leaving the church at age eight after his father’s powerful conversion, to pastoring in Alaska for 30 years. But at the heart of...

Things don’t always go according to plan. In this very first Minute with Marlin episode, Marlin Miller shares a memorable winter day when he and Lisa were trying to take their family to a little cabin for a much-needed getaway. What they didn’t plan on was waking up to a foot and a half of beautiful but heavy, powdery snow. After getting the tractor stuck while trying to clear the steep driveway,...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast , Marlin sits down with his longtime friend and neighbor, Jerry Miller. Jerry shares his life on the family farm in Holmes County, 173 acres that have been in his wife Gloria’s family since the late 1800s. He talks about raising five boys and now enjoying five grandchildren, milking 60–70 Jersey cows, and operating a certified organic, grass-fed dairy. T...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast, Marlin sits down with Aaron and Katie Ficker for the first of several conversations. Aaron, the oldest of eight, shares what it was like growing up as his family followed the Lord’s call from Illinois to Guatemala. His dad, a corporate pilot, gave up a successful career, bought an old school bus, rebuilt it, and drove the family through Mexico to answer...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast , Marlin sits down with his neighbor and friend, retired judge Linda Kate. Linda shares her journey from a small-town Catholic upbringing in Tuscarawas County to becoming one of the youngest judges ever elected in Ohio. She reflects on the weight of responsibility she felt the day she was sworn in, the exhausting good days and excruciating bad days in ju...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast … Marlin invites listeners into a warm, wide-ranging conversation with his friend Brian Dahlen. Brian spent 17 years hosting live radio for Moody Radio in Cleveland and Chicago. Known for his quick thinking and kind presence behind the microphone, he joins Marlin for breakfast and shares stories from his life … from growing up in Minnesota, teaching high...

In this episode of The Plain Values Podcast …  Some stories remind us that God writes better endings than we ever could. Tom and Ferree Hardy both lost their spouses in 2000. Two hearts shattered by grief, hundreds of miles apart, each raising children and learning to breathe again in a world that suddenly felt empty. Then, in 2002, their paths crossed. What began as a simple connection grew into...

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...