HeyJaredDiscussions With Dad: Faith, Blood and the In-Between
Hosted by Tony Shaffer and Matthew Shaffer, a father and son having the conversations many families avoid. Tony, a lifelong Christian raised in a small rural town in Southern Colorado, brings a traditional, conservative perspective shaped by faith, service, and responsibility.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 5
- Latest publication
- Sep 16, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 9, 2026
Latest episodes
Episode 17: What Happens When Tolerance Challenges Freedom? (opens the original)
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Matthew challenges Tony to define where protecting freedom ends and taking justice into your own hands begins. What starts with Tony’s warning that people may eventually “take action” expands into a larger debate over whether a tolerant society can protect beliefs that may themselves threaten the freedoms allowing them to exist. Father and son wrestle with religious liberty, Islam and Christianity, free speech, political violence, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the killing of a healthcare CEO, a
Episode 16: When Certainty Feels Safer Than Truth (opens the original)
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Matthew asks Tony why people would rather be certain and wrong than uncertain and still thinking. Beginning with their own convictions, father and son examine whether intelligence or common sense actually protects anyone from radicalization, why evidence becomes harder to accept when it challenges what we already believe, and why extremism is easier to recognize in people we oppose than among those who agree with us. Their conversation moves through faith, politics, religious conviction, radical
Episode 15: The Boy You Thought I’d Be (opens the original)
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Matthew asks Tony when he first realized his son would not grow up to be like him—and what it meant to raise a boy who loved dance at a time when masculinity was more narrowly defined. They reflect on whether anyone questioned Tony’s parenting, how much parents should encourage rather than simply observe, and whether children today have greater freedom to become themselves—or face new pressure to define themselves too quickly. As political battles over parental rights, gender, and childhood cont
Episode 14: When Certainty Gets in the Way (opens the original)
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Matthew and Tony examine what happens when confidence in institutions begins to erode. From environmental predictions and political messaging to scientific theories and religious conviction, they explore why people stop trusting experts, how personal experience shapes belief, and whether faith and skepticism can exist side by side. Along the way, they ask whether certainty helps us find truth—or sometimes keeps us from asking better questions. Music Composed by Bruce Martin.
Episode 13: When Conviction Meets Family (opens the original)
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Matthew and Tony revisit one of the most defining conversations of their lives: Matthew's coming out. Sharing the same Christian faith but arriving at different understandings of what that faith required, father and son reflect on fear, identity, parenting, and the responsibility to keep listening when conviction and relationship collide. Rather than revisiting old arguments, they explore what helped them remain connected—and whether faith is ultimately measured by certainty, or by the way we ch
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