The Prosperity Gospel says God wants you to be rich. That if you tithe, believe, and work for it, the blessing comes back to you in this life, in your bank account, in your driveway, in your annual physical. Millions of people find this persuasive. But why? We go deep on the Prosperity of Gospel (and the Gospel of Luke), not to dunk on any denomination, but to ask where this theology comes from, what it’s doing, and what it’s missing.

Joey questions whether Prosperity preachers really understand their Protestant priors and what’s abundance, anyway, before Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson claimed it? Haroon brings in barakah, the Muslim belief that faith doesn’t promise you more but transforms the relationship between what you have and what it yields. We argue about sacrifice, formation, and whether your tradition produces people who feel like believers — generous, present, uncomfortable with the right things — or if money’s filling the hole where God goes.

Along the way: hair transplants in Turkey (something we can both refuse to get behind and look principled — and shiny — doing it), the Muslim prohibition on usury, the Protestant Reformation’s role in sanctifying wealth, Haroon produces the single verse from the Qur’an that rebuts the Prosperity Gospel, and whether we’re actually, at all, content with what we have. We can podcast the podcast, after all. But do we walk the transcript?

Our sponsor is The Brueggeman Center for Dialogue at Xavier University, here in Cincinnati, which is dedicated to deepening understanding across faiths and promoting systemic change.

Avenue M is produced by Bespoken Live with music by Zach Swelber, who plays in Circle It and Mosant.

Haroon obsessed over Morocco at the 2022 World Cup. Like many of us, he didn’t know how much the world championships would mean but after COVID, the reprieve was joyful. It also felt deeply meaningful. With millions of Muslims, Arabs, Africans and so many others, he cheered on an improbable, Cinderella run. This World Cup has felt even more incredible.

Watching Moroccans invoke God, Canada’s Muslim prayers prostrate, Iranians appeal for understanding, it’s been an epic case study in changing the narrative.
But that’s all got Joey thinking: Is prayer on the pitch appropriate? Are sports too much of a religion? Join us for a very fun, twenty-fourth episode, with Joey and Haroon asking what we should (and shouldn’t) ask God, whether the better team really wins, if sports have replaced religion, and why it is that everything Donald Trump does turns to algae (or, in this case, a 4-1 drubbing).

Our sponsor is The Brueggeman Center for Dialogue at Xavier University, here in Cincinnati, which is dedicated to deepening understanding across faiths and promoting systemic change.

Avenue M is produced by Bespoken Live with music by Zach Swelber, who plays in Circle It and Mosant.

For this episode, we talk to Reed Frerichs. Reed is the founder of The Lesson, he’s the creator of Inner Story (Substack), and he’s an executive coach at MIT Sloan. Reed explores the inner stories that shape leadership, performance and who we become under pressure.

This conversation asks the question, what if the stories that shape us aren't the ones we tell, but the ones we're still living? We talk about the hidden threads that connect our lives - from his experience as an actor to entrepreneurship, from sports to spirituality, and from failure to transformation. Along the way, we explore what it means to become the author of your own story while discovering that the most meaningful journeys are never just about yourself.

Our sponsor is The Brueggeman Center for Dialogue at Xavier University, here in Cincinnati, which is dedicated to deepening understanding across faiths and promoting systemic change.

Avenue M is produced by Bespoken Live with music by Zach Swelber, who plays in Circle It and Mosant.