I was standing in the cold at a tree lighting ceremony, watching hundreds of people do the same thing, and I kept asking myself: what are we actually doing here?

Kerem Durdag came to the United States as a young immigrant. Along the way, he developed a philosophy that sounds simple but is anything but: decency is a radical choice.

Thanksgiving is a complicated day. It carries real gratitude and real harm in the same breath. A celebration of abundance built on a story that erases Indigenous suffering. I'm learning to hold both.

I picked up Leo Buscaglia's book Love expecting something soft. What I found was a challenge. He argues love is learned. Neuroscience says we're wired for it. So which is it?

I caught myself cherry-picking science. And it shook me. I was drawn to the findings that supported what I already believed and quietly ignoring the rest. That's not love. That's fear wearing a lab coat.

I met a man at an AMVETS Hall who changed how I think about mortality. He wasn't a veteran. He was a guest, like me. And he was dying. He didn't lead with that. He led with survival kits.

I recently read 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom. What caught me wasn't the framework. It was what it revealed about my own patterns. Specifically, my relationship with time wealth and the word yes.

Elmer Moore is my oldest friend. We've known each other for thirty years. He was the first guest on Campfire Conversations, and there's a reason for that.

My dad and I were wrestling with a stuck window on the house I grew up in. Under his frustration I could hear the fear. He knows time is real. The project looked like it was stealing his freedom.

My dad and I were up on staging replacing windows when a deer family walked out into the garden. It was the first day of hunting season. What followed was a lesson in death, gratitude, and connection.

I thought I understood capitalism. After all, I'm an entrepreneur with an MBA in Finance. Turns out, it's complicated. Very complicated. My trail notes from Scene on Radio's Capitalism series.

This past Friday I was off. I knew it while it was happening and I still kept showing up. What I've been learning is that being off isn't the problem. Not noticing it is.

At the Common Ground Fair, I went to a session called "Power of People vs. Power of Money." I was expecting a conversation. What I watched instead was a room of like-minded people default to correction over curiosity.

I took a class at Maine Primitive learning to make a bow. Not the kind you tie in a ribbon. The kind that sends an arrow. I came with a question: can killing be an act of love?

I was eleven the first time I heard Cult of Personality by Living Colour. I didn't understand the lyrics yet. Forty years later, the same song taught me something completely different about fear and power.

I sat down for lunch with Sam Harris at Saltine in Norfolk. He spent 24 years, 8 months, and 10 hours in prison. What makes him remarkable isn’t the time. It’s what he did with those years, and what he’s doing now.

I picked up a book about testosterone expecting biology. Instead I walked away thinking about prison systems, basketball camps, and what it means to build a world where men can be strong in love instead of fear.

After I wrote about the films that shaped me, I started wondering about other people. So I built something. A custom GPT that takes your childhood movies and reflects back what they might have taught you about being a man.

Every September at the Common Ground Fair, I watch Chris Lombard step into a ring with one horse and a microphone. No routine. No trick list. Just a conversation using breath, body, and attention instead of force.

I grew up in a small town in Maine. We didn’t have cable. So my sister and I watched the same stack of VHS tapes over and over. Those movies shaped me in ways I couldn’t see at the time.