Academics, officials, writers, and clergy we think can answer the f**king question. Four rotate onto the home page every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday — this is the full archive.
Four rotate onto the home page Mon · Wed · Fri· Vote for who you want on the mic — Vic sees the leaderboard every Sunday
Politics · PhilosophyIn rotation
John O. McGinnis
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law; Senior Writer · Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law / Law & Liberty
McGinnis has argued that 'the rich play a very important sort of Madisonian counterbalance role' in democracy — a thesis tailor-made for Vic to push back on hard. He is the anchor constitutional law voice at Law & Liberty, has appeared on the Legal Talk Network and the Law & Liberty Podcast repeatedly, and writes regularly for National Review and City Journal, meaning he is fluent in adversarial public discourse without needing green-room coddling.
“You argue democracy 'needs the rich' as a Madisonian counterbalance — but doesn't that functionally enshrine oligarchy as a constitutional feature rather than a bug?”
Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology; Anglican Priest; Author; Podcast Host · Wheaton College (Litfin Divinity School) / Holy Post Media / The New York Times (contributing opinion writer)
McCaulley is an ordained Anglican priest, canon theologian, and evangelical New Testament scholar whose entire public project argues that Scripture — not secular liberalism — is the most coherent framework for racial justice, human dignity, and public ethics. His NYT columns and 'Reading While Black' explicitly defend Black ecclesial theology as an authoritative interpretive tradition, which would put him in direct, evidence-rich tension with Vic's secular progressivism. His Yale Center for Faith & Culture engagement and his own active podcast (100+ episodes) demonstrate he is fully capable of unscripted, adversarial dialogue without retreating to talking points.
“You've argued that Black ecclesial interpretation of Scripture is an authoritative framework for justice — but if the Bible has been used historically to justify slavery and segregation, why should a secular person accept any scripture-based epistemology as a reliable guide to what's right?”
Senior Research Fellow & Podcast Host · American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) / Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy
Free-market economist with a Christian-formation lens
“You argue for free enterprise and limited government — but wage stagnation, housing unaffordability, and healthcare debt are empirical outcomes of the market system over the past 40 years. At what point does the data falsify the model?”
Butler holds a PhD in quantum gravity from the University of Saskatchewan and uses hard physics to interrogate secular assumptions, making him unusually equipped to fight Vic on his own empirical turf. His 2023 Apologetics Canada conference talk framed AI and human identity through a Christian lens — asking whether humans are 'nothing more than a biological algorithm' — which maps directly onto ATFQ's Science and Philosophy pillars. As an active adjunct speaker bookable through Apologetics Canada's public speaker-request form, he is realistically reachable and has a demonstrated track record of engaging non-specialist audiences on contentious science-faith questions.
“You've spent years studying quantum gravity — a field where our best physical theories break down and no consensus exists. Doesn't that radical uncertainty at the foundation of physics actually undercut religious certainty rather than support it?”
Senior Pastor & Public Apologist · Grace Community Church / Give Me an Answer Ministry
Knechtle built his entire career on open-air, unscripted Q&A with hostile secular audiences on college campuses — his YouTube channel (Give Me an Answer) has 961K subscribers and 96M+ views, demonstrating sustained public appetite for his format. He debated Alex O'Connor (CosmicSkeptic) on the historicity of Matthew 27:52, showing willingness to engage credentialed secular skeptics on their own terms. His ministry model is explicitly adversarial-by-design, which maps directly onto ATFQ's core ethos.
“You've spent decades fielding hostile questions on college campuses. What's the single best secular objection to Christianity you've encountered — the one that actually gave you pause — and how did you resolve it?”
Executive Director, Church-State Council; Religious Liberty Attorney; Co-host, Just Liberty Podcast · Church-State Council (Seventh-day Adventist)
Reinach has been litigating religious liberty cases for nearly 40 years from the perspective of Seventh-day Adventists — a minority denomination historically concerned with state overreach — giving him a non-majority-Christian vantage point that separates him from typical culture-war guests. His podcast Just Liberty explicitly engages the argument that religious freedom has 'taken a PR hit' as a cover for bigotry, meaning he already engages the secular progressive critique directly. His dual role as practicing litigator and podcast co-host makes him an unusually bookable and media-fluent adversarial voice.
“You've spent 40 years litigating religious freedom from a minority-faith tradition. When does religious liberty become a tool of Christian majority power — and how would we even know when that line has been crossed?”
Second Vice President, Henry County Democratic Women; Supervisor of Business Services, City of Stockbridge · Henry County Democratic Women / City of Stockbridge, GA
Uneeda Smith-Sellers | The Accountability Vacuum
“Georgia re-enfranchises returning citizens — but the process is murky and inconsistently communicated. Who is actually failing these people: the state, the county, or the party organizations that are supposed to do voter ed?”
Tocqueville Professor of Political Science & Concurrent Professor of Law; Founding Director, Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government · University of Notre Dame
Muñoz's 2022 University of Chicago Press book Religious Liberty and the American Founding has been cited by Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts in Supreme Court church-state opinions, giving him rare direct policy impact. He appeared on ACTA's Higher Ed Now podcast in August 2026 and has a track record of small and mid-size audio appearances. His argument that progressive secularists have 'misread' the Founders to suppress religious expression is a direct adversarial challenge to Vic's framing of religion as a threat to democratic governance.
“Your scholarship has been cited by Justice Alito to restrict what government can compel religious organizations to do — but your originalism has real-world winners and losers. Who loses when your reading of the First Amendment wins in court?”
Professor of Philosophy & Honors Distinguished Faculty · DePaul University
Hill is a Black, gay, immigrant philosophy professor at DePaul who rejects progressive race-grievance frameworks, writing for The Federalist, Commentary, and American Greatness to argue that identity politics corrodes individual moral agency. His 2024 book Letters to God From a Former Atheist documents a journey from committed atheism to religious faith — a lived account that directly disrupts secularist assumptions. He has appeared on ISI Conservative Conversations, The Fallen State, The Ruth Institute Podcast, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali's podcast, confirming a strong small-show track record.
“You reject the premise that being Black in America means carrying a permanent grievance — but isn't that position only available to someone with your specific biography and institutional privilege as a tenured professor? Does it scale?”
Professor of Christian Apologetics · Talbot School of Theology, Biola University
McDowell co-hosts the Think Biblically podcast from Biola's Talbot School of Theology, one of the most active evangelical academic podcast platforms in the country, with episodes directly engaging secular ethics, AI, progressive politics, and scientific epistemology. He has published widely on apologetics and human sexuality and engages skeptics in live unscripted debate formats — including his Think Well Debate Series where he fields live challenges on God's existence and objective morality, exactly the high-friction format ATFQ needs. He is a tenure-track academic who also speaks to popular audiences, making him both credentialed and practiced at plain-language adversarial dialogue.
“You run live call-in debate sessions on whether God exists and whether objective morality requires God — have you ever had a caller who genuinely changed your mind on anything, or is the format performative rather than epistemically live?”
Professor of Church History & Philosophy; Chair, Dept. of Church History and Historical Theology · The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Wilsey's 2025 book 'Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer' argues that the conservative and Biblical roots of religious freedom are being abandoned by both the secular left and the populist right — a position that opens multiple lines of adversarial conversation with a secular host. He has appeared on well over a dozen podcasts ranging from Law & Liberty and Thinking in Public to the Good Citizen Project and Clearly Reformed, demonstrating comfort with adversarial, intellectually demanding formats. As a Georgia native now at SBTS, he carries both regional resonance and national credibility.
“You argue that religious freedom has 'Biblical and conservative roots' — but isn't that framing itself a kind of Christian privilege that excludes non-believers from the founding story?”
Professor of Philosophy & Founding Director, PPE Program · Georgia State University
Cohen is a GSU philosopher who specializes in toleration, civil discourse, free speech, and applied ethics — and he runs the Interdisciplinary Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at GSU. He has appeared on the ReImagining Liberty podcast discussing toleration, pluralism, and why civil discourse matters in a fractured society. His Substack (prosociallibertarians) shows he engages lay audiences directly, and his framing — defending toleration without collapsing into relativism — is exactly the kind of principled, evidence-grounded position Vic's format rewards. NOTE FOR SCOUT: Confirm this is distinct from 'Andrew I. Cohen' already in CRM — the CRM entry may refer to this same person under a slight name variation. If confirmed duplicate, substitute with next candidate.
“You've argued that toleration doesn't mean approval — it means choosing not to interfere even when you disapprove. Where does that principle break down in today's political environment?”
Independent Researcher & Speaker; MA Religious Studies candidate/graduate · Georgia State University (Religious Studies); Secular Student Alliance Speakers Bureau
Burnley is a Black former Christian who left organized religion and now researches the rapid rise of the religiously unaffiliated ('Nones') with specific focus on the African American community — a demographic and cultural story that is radically under-covered and directly relevant to ATFQ's Religion pillar around faith and public life under honest scrutiny. He has presented at the National AAR Annual Meeting, the Southeast Regional AAR, the Conference on Religious Trauma, and the Southeast Philosophy of Education Society, showing a track record of public academic engagement across multiple venues. His background in finance before academia adds a data-literacy credibility that matches ATFQ's data-driven inquiry ethos.
“Your research focuses on Black Americans leaving organized religion. What does the data actually show about the rate of that shift, and why is it being ignored by both the church and the press?”
Peachtree Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth; Senior Pastor, Wheat Street Baptist Church · Columbia Theological Seminary / Wheat Street Baptist Church
Watkins sits at the intersection of sociology, hip-hop culture, digital media, and faith — and he has the broadcast pedigree to prove it: his show on Atlanta Interfaith Broadcasting was the network's top-rated program for five years. His work explicitly challenges churches to engage the digital age and young adults rather than retreat into institutional insularity, which maps directly onto ATFQ's scrutiny of how faith operates in public life. As a Black pastor-scholar at a historically white Presbyterian seminary with a PhD in sociology, he models the kind of cross-institutional candor Vic values.
“You run a historically Black Baptist church while holding a chair at a historically white Presbyterian seminary — what does that dual institutional position reveal about how faith communities actually navigate racial and theological power?”
