I Believe

14:55

Equal Access, Equal Obligation?

I Believe ·

2026/10/06

I was cooking the other day when I thought about a lieutenant I haven’t seen in years. I don’t know why. That happens to me sometimes. A memory will just show up. Nothing in particular brings it to mind. I’ll be driving, or walking, or standing in the kitchen cutting onions, and suddenly I’m back in some room I haven’t thought about in years.This one has come back to me a couple of times recently.It was sometime around 2018 or 2019. I was a squadron commander in the Air Force, and one of my flight

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11:48

The Forethought of Grief

I Believe ·

2026/09/30

Everybody seems to be scared of artificial intelligence. Or maybe the press makes it seem like everybody is scared of artificial intelligence.AI is going to take our jobs. AI is going to replace artists. AI is going to manipulate elections. AI is going to become smarter than us. Eventually AI is going to destroy civilization.Why are we always doing this?Why do human beings always think civilization is about to end?In my lifetime, first it was nuclear war. We are all going to die. Then the millennium

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20:49

Four Things This Week, From a Bucket of Hops

I Believe ·

2026/09/29

Hey, this is Joel.I’m sitting next to a pile of flowers in the yard.I spent some time this morning taking hops vines out of our hoop house, and now I’m sitting on a bucket, picking the flowers off the vines.A buddy of mine brews beer. Sometimes he gives me some of it, so I’m going to give him a bunch of these.I grow several different varieties of hops in the hoop house. I’ve got some New Zealand varieties, some Cascade, and some Chinook. The Chinook seems to yield better than anything else I’ve

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13:53

The Flying Officer

I Believe ·

2026/09/22

Thoughts from the week, in podcast conversation form.Joel: The watch is quiet. Dark. Day and night, you don’t know the difference.Joel: Every twelve hours, you set the clock. If it’s more than a second off, fast or slow, it’s out of spec. And you have to set all three clocks at once.Paige: Three clocks, one second. I hear that and feel like it’s important. I suspect you’re going to tell me it didn’t feel that way.Joel: You’re just setting the clock. It’s standard. Wherever we were in the world, we

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17:53

By Hand

I Believe ·

2026/09/15

The shovel rings. Every year a couple or three fence posts rot along the front lane. Enough moisture gets in the wood and maybe a beetle or two, and the Earth wants to retake what it will. Everything eventually, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She has a couple of spare fence posts in the barn. Not too many anymore. She shifts other posts to unbury them, and dust and soil puff up, catching in her nose. She carries one out and lays it on the ground next to the leaning post. It’s heavy enough that she

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16:28

Heifers, Water, and Grass

I Believe ·

2026/09/01

Taking stairs down two at a time from the giant stone building, music thrumming in her AirPods. She rounds the corner and her pace slows to a walk. The Commuter Express is still there, leaving the city. Three-tone white and green and blue, blue cloth seats, standing room only, people in suits and dress shoes. Above the windshield, Backlick Three Ninety-Five lit up in yellow.A twenty-six minute bus ride to the commuter lot. I-95 and then the parkway.The doors fold shut and then the hiss of air

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21:46

The Shortcut Looks Like the Way Home

I Believe ·

2026/08/25

College girl. Blonde in a bright green shirt holding a clipboard, asking names and questions. Welcoming committee.What’s your major?Chemical engineering.Oh, you’re one of the smart ones.The van pulls forward through the maze of cones and kids wearing shirts that say “Unpack Your Future” that stand ready with laundry carts to take your life’s treasure into the unknown.Who will you meet on your journey?Through the great halls of stone and brick. Unknown sounds and the faces and voices of those someday

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24:23

The Night Shift | The Bottom 50% Own 2.5% of the...

I Believe ·

2026/08/18

Moths circle the streetlights in the mostly empty lot. Blacktop. White parking lines. Road noise. Pickup doors slam shut.They’re supposed to park at the back of the lot. Nobody who would care is here at eleven, and they’ll be gone before Beth gets in.She’s at the door, counting heads. Everyone calls her Lou.“I need you to go get Charlie,” she says. “He was supposed to be here an hour ago.”No problem.Charlie lives in a trailer park pretty close. Tires on gravel. Sideways glances. He bangs on the dark

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20:47

Dogwoods and Two Grand Lies

I Believe ·

2026/08/11

The dogwoods are blooming along the edge of the great lawn, dark pink and brilliant white. Below the hill, Brush Creek runs slow and clear past the parkway that shares its name. Beyond, Spanish mission buildings catch the morning sun.Saturday in April.The collie comes loping back up the slope. She drops the ball at his feet and barks and backs up, ready.“What’s her name?”The girl from the diner stands at the edge of the grass in a light sweater, holding two coffees. She hands him one.“Penny.”“You

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22:55

A Yoke Built for Two | A Dead Hog, a Shovel, and a...

I Believe ·

2026/08/04

May in Missouri. Warm, not hot like it will be in July. Humidity in the air, mist at the bottom of the hill hiding the green grass.Bright white gravel under tires. He opens the passenger door. He is fifteen. His grandma drove him.The Oldsmobile idles behind him until the screen door opens and a man comes out. Then she pulls away.The man is the rancher’s son. Sixty years old, maybe more. His truck is running in the yard.“You eat breakfast?” he says. Then, “Dad’s in the hospital. Nursing home after

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27:43

Return Tomorrow | A Warehouse, a Granddaughter, and a...

I Believe ·

2026/07/28

Her eyes open at five twenty-eight. She lifts her head and switches the alarm off before it kicks on at five thirty. She’s up and moving. Chores to do. Coffee, dishwasher, shower, lunchbox. Their apartment is a one-bedroom in Lakewood, Colorado, on the west edge of Denver. Third floor. She starts the coffee maker and showers while it runs. On the refrigerator door, under a magnet, a printed listing for a two-bedroom on South Ammons Street. Four hundred ten thousand. Beneath the price, handwriting

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26:24

What Counts | A Rancher, a Charging Station, and a...

I Believe ·

2026/07/21

A family, driving north out of Denver. They left before light. Mom’s driving. Yellowstone tomorrow. Lamar Valley and the bison and wolves and trout. Tonight, the Sheridan Inn. The car planned this stop in Buffalo before they crossed the Platte. It planned every stop.Dad has the atlas open on his knees, the paper kind. Nobody’s looking at it. Two kids in the back. A yellow dog between them with his chin on the armrest.Somewhere past Kaycee the little one got carsick. Mom keeps empty cups up front for

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25:56

Item Six

I Believe ·

2026/07/14

The agenda is one page. Somebody ran it through the copier this afternoon and the toner is going, so item six is fainter than item five.You can read it anyway.Outside the county annex, there are nine pickups, a sheriff’s Tahoe, and a Buick that belongs to a woman named Arlene who has kept the minutes of this commission for thirty-one years. It is a Tuesday in March on the high plains of Nebraska. The wind is doing what the wind does. Inside, the fluorescent lights hum over four rows of folding

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14:56

The Art of the Deal

I Believe ·

2026/06/23

The shouts pass over the water to Lincoln.He sits there, silent. The man who, more than any other, overstepped his authority in a time of war. Habeas corpus suspended. A nation half at arms. And the question underneath all of it, whether any nation so conceived and dedicated could long endure.He broke the limit. But he never pretended he was above it. He answered to the Congress, to the ballot, to the cost, and he paid that cost in the open for the only stake that could justify it. The Republic.Real

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18:27

Man Eaters

I Believe ·

2026/06/16

The mess. Mid rats.He came in a couple minutes early. He ate fast, at a table that became a hospital bed for the wounded, and then he cleared his tray and dishes and moved into the narrow passage with the pipes running low overhead, ducking his head around them. Up the metal stairs to starboard. A couple of minutes with the sea before the watch.The deck was nearly empty. In a few minutes the others would join him, shadowed faces moving through the dark.He stood at the rail to watch the sea under the

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18:31

Latrines

I Believe ·

2026/06/09

Behold again the stars.The light. The stairs down. Down. There are no windows in the basement of the residence hall. The light comes from tubes that hum in the ceiling. It does not change, the same at five in the morning as at noon. He could work an entire spring semester down here and never once know what the sky was doing. He lets himself in with the key on the loop at his belt. The door shuts behind him. The hum of the fixtures, the only sound in the part of the building that is awake.He fills

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29:15

The Drought Sale

I Believe ·

2026/06/02

A man selling good cows is not happy about it.Wednesday morning in May.He pulls into the gravel lot at half past seven. The sun is up but the cold has not gone. Winter is fighting summer. Some days in May might reach the 80s, some days snow. His breath hangs in the air and catches on the bill of his hat. Jesse stands on the seat and watches the door.The lot is full. It should not be full. Wednesday is not a normal sale day in May. Today is a drought sale, and the trailers are lined up in rows he has

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24:30

We Are All Republicans, We Are All Federalists

I Believe ·

2026/05/19

Dr. Nick van Terheyden had bone pain that he could not explain. He was fifty-eight, a physician in Maryland. A specialist ordered a $350 blood test for vitamin D deficiency. The test came back positive. The deficiency was severe enough that if left untreated, it would lead to osteoporosis.Van Terheyden’s insurer was Cigna. They refused to pay for the test.The corporate medical director who signed the denial letter said the test wasn’t medically necessary. Van Terheyden read the letter, looking for

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28:17

The Social Responsibility of Government is Sovereignty

I Believe ·

2026/05/12

The trailer’s loaded by four. Twenty-five head, sorted yesterday, the gate latched twice. The F-350 idles in the yard while he checks the running lights one more time. Jesse watches from the cab, ears up. The Bentley mark on her forehead catches the radio light. She is certain about the day.Buffalo to Torrington is four hours if the roads are dry. He pulls out of the drive at 4:17 and turns south on 25, coffee in the holder, the dog settled, the cattle quiet behind him. The dash reads twenty-six

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29:50

Pursuit, not Happiness

I Believe ·

2026/05/05

The Open Door.October, 1723. Market Street Wharf in Philadelphia. A seventeen-year-old runaway stepped off a boat. Dirty from the journey, pockets stuffed with shirts and stockings. He carried his entire fortune on him, a Dutch dollar and about a shilling in copper. Food money for a few days and nothing else. He could not afford a room. The shilling went to the boatmen for passage down the Delaware. He had run from his older brother’s printing shop in Boston without permission and with no prospects

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