I’ll be honest. I was a little starstruck sitting across the fire from John Biewen.1
John is the creator, producer, and host of Scene on Radio,2 a documentary podcast out of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Over the past decade, he has taken on some of the hardest subjects in American life. Race3 and the invention of whiteness. Democracy4 and its fragility. The patriarchy.5 Capitalism.6 Each season is deep research distilled into something that feels less like a podcast and more like a graduate education you can take on a walk.
His work has greatly influenced how I see the world. Last fall, I spent weeks with his Capitalism series.7 It cracked open questions I thought I already had answers to.
When I reached out, I wasn’t sure he’d say yes.
He is a professional journalist, documentarian, and storyteller. One of the best. I am an amateur dude who asks people to sit around campfires and talk about love and fear. Asking John to have a Campfire Conversation with me is a little like asking Michael Jordan to play a game of horse in my driveway.
The fact that John said yes tells you something about the type of person he is.
We sat together in Hillsborough, North Carolina, on a rare snowy day, and talked about fear, love, justice, capitalism, community, and the stories we tell ourselves to keep what we have.
Justice First, Fear Underneath
I came into this conversation through my usual door. Love and fear. Where do they show up? How do they shape us?
John came through a different one.
“If I were to try to express what is in the forefront, it’s justice. And systems of oppression. And trying to understand them.”
He wasn’t dismissive of the love/fear lens. He just doesn’t lead with it. His words are justice, decency, kindness. But as we talked, the connection became clear. The systems he’s spent his career examining are built on fear. Fear of the other. Fear of falling. Fear of not having enough.
He named something I think about a lot.
“One thing that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough is the precarity of what most people live with and this sense of it in our society. If you’re not one of the winners, it’s really tough. You can fall very far and nobody’s gonna catch you.”
That fear doesn’t just affect individuals. It shapes everything.
“The fact that we’ve set up our society like that has deep seated ramifications for how our politics work and how we live together and don’t live together.”
The Tension of Participation
This is where the conversation got uncomfortable. In the best way.
John made a documentary series arguing that capitalism is built on the exploitation of labor and the natural world. He also has a 403(b) retirement account invested in the stock market. He said it plainly.
“Should I have not signed up for the 403(b) when I was 30 years old as a cub reporter at Minnesota Public Radio? Because there’s not another way actually that I’m aware of that I was gonna support myself in retirement. That was the way.”
I need to name this because I hold the same tension. I benefit from a system that I’m learning causes profound harm. I wrote a 5,000-word piece about how capitalism has been built on extraction and exploitation. And my financial security sits inside that same system.
John and I didn’t resolve this. But I think there’s something important about saying it out loud. Two guys sitting around a fire, both aware that the system they’re questioning is also the one keeping them comfortable.
As John put it:
“People have a great capacity for telling ourselves stories about the way the world is in order to justify us getting what we want. And keeping what we have.”
That line includes us.
What Love Looks Like
I asked John how he thinks about love.
“I care about you. Which is to say, I love you. If it comes to it, I will love you. I mean, I will do. I will care. I actually care what happens to you and will take steps to make your life better if I can. Especially if you need that help.”
Not a feeling. A commitment to action. That distinction matters.
He pointed to what’s happening right now in Minneapolis, where thousands of people are showing up to protect their neighbors from ICE raids.
“The people who are feeding people, the people who are giving people rides, picking up their neighbor’s kids and taking them to school so the parents don’t get grabbed at the school doorstep.”
That’s not abstract love. That’s love with its boots on.
The Fire He Tends
I ask every guest what fires need tending. In ourselves. In our communities. John’s answer surprised me for its simplicity and its importance.
“We really need to tend to the fire of telling the truth.”
He went on to say:
“Trying to say stuff that’s true. And that feeling like amidst so much that’s not true and so many lies and so much gaslighting and so many actually culturally nurtured untruths that we’ve all grown up with for generations, to in the face of that, to just kind of try to open a window that lets in the cool air of what actually seems to be true. That feels like really what I’m trying to do in the world.”
But truth wasn’t the only fire he named. He also talked about the fire of community, of caring, of openness. And then he said something that caught me off guard. He admitted he’s not great at community. He’s introverted. Not a joiner. Prefers to stay home with his laptop and his books.
“I’m not a great participant in community if I’m really, if I’m being honest.”
I pushed back. Isn’t the storyteller one of the most important roles in any community? Someone who steps back, sees the connections, and shares what they find so the rest of us can see more clearly?
He paused.
“I do think that my work sometimes contributes to what people do in community and to people’s understanding, and that that can help the kind of work that people do.”
A mentor of mine said something similar to me recently. There are soldiers and there are surveyors. You need both. Someone has to do the work on the ground. And someone has to climb the ridge and map the terrain so the work makes sense.
John Biewen has been mapping terrain for over a decade. And for this conversation, he was generous enough to sit with me and share what he’s found.
Why This Matters
This conversation is part of my Heart-Strong Adventure. A year of exploring where love and fear show up in the world.
John and I are both men who grew up in modest families, worked our way into comfort, and now find ourselves asking hard questions about the systems that got us here. We both played D3 basketball. We both care about justice. We both benefit from a system we’re learning to see more clearly.
The difference is John has spent decades doing the deep, slow, careful work of documenting these systems. I’m a few months into trying to understand them through the lens of love and fear.
Sitting with him felt like sitting with a teacher. Not because he lectured. Because he was honest about what he knows, what he doesn’t, and where he falls short.
That’s the kind of man I want to learn from.
If John’s words sparked something in you, share this with someone who might need to hear it. And if you haven’t listened to Scene on Radio, start anywhere. You won’t regret it.
https://kenan.ethics.duke.edu/people/john-biewen/
https://sceneonradio.org/
https://sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/
https://sceneonradio.org/the-land-that-never-has-been-yet/
https://sceneonradio.org/men/
https://sceneonradio.org/capitalism/
