Jess Fields is a small businessman (ask him about cigars), an Eastern Orthodox family man and a news consumer who is especially interested in stories about religion. He has also worked in nonpartisan think tanks linked to issues in state and local governments. He is enthusiastic about life in Houston (due to personal Texas Gulf Coast history I will have no further comment on that).
All in all, Fields is not a logical guy to start a podcast about religion, politics and other subjects that interest him. So why did he do exactly that?
Well, he told me that he “grew tired of the edited mudslinging that passes for ‘interviews’“ and decided that he “could do better.” His goal is to produce “long-form interviews with guests from multiple perspectives, providing a neutral platform for different views to be heard and considered in a respectful manner.” In other words, his interviews are really long.
Fields got off to a hot start with a newsworthy chat with the Rev. Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church just outside of Baton Rouge, La., the man behind a blitz of coronavirus headlines because of his rejection of “shelter in place” orders. Spell has been arrested and faced all kinds of questions when it appeared, on video, that he backed a church bus dangerously close to a protestor.
That led to this:
#1 — Pastor Tony Spell — On Refusing to Comply with Coronavirus Orders
We interview Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Pastor Spell and his congregation are refusing to comply with Louisiana's stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic. He has been arrested for violating the orders, but continues to hold packed church services. This is the most comprehensive interview Pastor Spell has granted.
Pastor Spell has his critics, as you would imagine, so Fields decided to do a lengthy interview with one of them — Rod Dreher (who lives in Baton Rouge).
#2 — Rod Dreher — Responding to Pastor Tony Spell, How People of Faith Should Deal with the Coronavirus
We interview New York Times-bestselling author and blogger Rod Dreher, who resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Dreher responds to Pastor Tony Spell's comments from Episode 1 of this show, talks about how people of faith should deal with the coronavirus …
That discussion led, eventually, to Fields contacting me to arrange a conversation on press coverage of religious issues linked to COVID-19 and a host of other subjects, including some Orthodox chatter, the parable “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis and, finally, a discussion of a twist in my journalism education at Baylor University that led to my work as a religion-beat reporter and columnist.
Fields didn’t cut me off when — flying my prodigal Texan flag — I suggested that if Davy Crockett chose to die at the Alamo, rather than returning to the beautiful mountains of East Tennessee, then he must have been drunk. Here’s a link to that podcast at Apple. I advise readers to avoid the YouTube of that, since Fields had a software malfunction and viewers end up looking at me the whole time. #OUCH
Fields has also talked to political leaders involved in stories about the coronavirus crisis and, just for the heck of it, did a two-parter in which he interviewed Emmy-Award-winner Jeff Piotrowski about his decades of work chasing 900 tornadoes, 24 hurricanes and other forms of weather trouble.
Yes, I understand that this is a subject that interests Texans, seeing as how I spent my early childhood in Tornado Alley on the Oklahoma border. I was in Wichita Falls on April 3, 1964. Then my family then moved to hurricane territory. #ENOUGHSAID
One reason I am posting all of this is that Fields — especially in the Spell interview — is doing work that journalists might find interesting. This is on-the-record material that is worth hearing and maybe even quoting in news and commentary pieces (in an age in which travel budgets are zero).
It’s the Internet. May a thousand flowers bloom.