Senior year can feel like standing on a cliff’s edge, and Leah Schmidt brings us right to that moment with clarity, humor, and heart. Hosted by Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr, this conversation follows Dan’s daughter as she wraps a long soccer journey, weighs college athletics, and chooses something rarer: a future built on faith, family, and balance. From small town sidewalks to country life, 4-H chores, and the day a goat didn’t make it, Leah shows how responsibility and loss shape character lon...
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Senior year can feel like standing on a cliff’s edge, and Leah Schmidt brings us right to that moment with clarity, humor, and heart. Hosted by Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr, this conversation follows Dan’s daughter as she wraps a long soccer journey, weighs college athletics, and chooses something rarer: a future built on faith, family, and balance. From small town sidewalks to country life, 4-H chores, and the day a goat didn’t make it, Leah shows how responsibility and loss shape character lon...
Senior year can feel like standing on a cliff’s edge, and Leah Schmidt brings us right to that moment with clarity, humor, and heart. Hosted by Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr, this conversation follows Dan’s daughter as she wraps a long soccer journey, weighs college athletics, and chooses something rarer: a future built on faith, family, and balance. From small town sidewalks to country life, 4-H chores, and the day a goat didn’t make it, Leah shows how responsibility and loss shape character lon...
Doubt has a way of sounding smart. It whispers that you’re a fraud, that you got lucky, that someone else would have done it better. On this episode of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr challenge that voice head-on as they unpack how labels, setbacks, and perfectionism feed imposter syndrome and how faith, community, and honest storytelling cut it down to size. We start with the hard truth that many of us chase achievement while starving for fulfillment. A bank’s refusal once said, ...
When someone says, “Brian’s dead,” life divides into a before and an after. For Chuck Winings, it divided twice. What began as an ordinary Super Bowl Sunday became a season of heartbreaking loss. First came the passing of his father. Soon after came the fight no family is ever ready for, when his wife Rhonda was diagnosed with triple negative metastatic breast cancer. On BeTempered, hosted by Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr, Chuck opens his heart and tells the story from the very beginning: high sc...
The wind through pine branches can sound like a lullaby, or the whisper of survival. That’s where Shirley Thacker loved to sit with her husband, Rich—a farm kid turned teacher, veteran, and fighter—dreaming about the book she would someday write. In this powerful episode of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr sit down with Shirley to trace the hard and luminous arc of her life: a small Indiana farm in the 50s and 60s, a ten-year-old’s stolen safety and the silence that followed, the m...
The first thing Greg Jackson will tell you is simple: no peace, no decision. That quiet rule has guided him from a teen revival moment in Dayton to decades of faithful pastoring in Camden, Ohio—through false starts at the post office, a bi-vocational grind, and the messy, beautiful work of building a church that truly serves its town. In this episode of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr sit down with Greg to explore what a small, faithful life looks like when it’s lived at full stre...
Raw vulnerability fills this deeply moving episode of BeTempered, where co-host Ben Spahr courageously opens up about processing a personal tragedy that has shaken his faith community to its core. When someone you’ve shared life with commits an unthinkable crime, how do you reconcile the good memories with their devastating actions? Where was God in the middle of all this heartbreak? Ben allows listeners into the raw and uncomfortable reality of his journey—sharing the guilt, anger, confusion...
What does it take to transform your deepest pain into purpose? Shawn Ruebush knows firsthand. After first sharing his life story on Episode 24 of the BeTempered podcast with hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr, Shawn took the courageous step of writing his memoir, Turning Pain into Purpose—a raw, unflinching account of tragedy, struggle, and ultimate redemption. Shawn’s journey began with unimaginable trauma at just eleven years old, an event that forever altered the course of his life. For decad...
What happens when a young pastor with no money but unwavering faith decides to plant a church in a town of just 1,800 people? On this episode of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr sit down with Pastor Justin Wiegand to uncover an extraordinary story of courage, obedience, and small-town ministry. Justin’s journey takes him from making pizza dough in Kentucky to leading five thriving church campuses across rural Ohio, proving the life-changing power of listening to God’s call—especial...
What happens when a successful executive's carefully constructed facade finally crumbles, revealing decades of addiction, pain, and self-deception? Doug Macias knows this journey all too well. For more than 20 years, he was trapped in cycles of alcoholism, drug abuse, and emotional isolation. His story is raw, unflinching, and proof that even the most outwardly successful lives can mask unimaginable pain. In this episode of BeTempered, hosted by Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr, Doug takes us back t...
What happens when a life built on fear, alcohol, and self-destruction finally crumbles? On this episode of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr sit down with Alan Bair to share a story that is as raw and honest as it is inspiring. Alan grew up in a home overshadowed by dysfunction, where fear and insecurity became the lens through which he saw the world. Even with an elite prep school education and later an engineering degree, those internal struggles followed him into adulthood. When ...
What does it really take to defy the odds when nine out of ten startups fail? On this episode of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr welcome Justin Bayer, founder of Welcome to College, for a raw and inspiring conversation about perseverance, setbacks, and finding meaning in the grind of entrepreneurship. Justin opens up about his 15-year journey building Welcome to College, a company born out of a single transformative moment—a campus tour at the University of Dayton that changed the...
What makes a leader? Is it the title, the position, or something deeper? In this powerful episode of BeTempered, host Dan Schmidt sits down with Tucker Perkerson to unpack the experiences, challenges, and defining moments that shaped his leadership journey—from a small-town childhood in Atlanta to making an impact in both education and corporate America. Tucker reflects on the lessons learned growing up immersed in sports and community, and how those early values carried forward into his adul...
Some stories are about survival. This one is about transformation. In this unforgettable episode of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr welcome Ray Mackelson—a man whose life was once confined by invisible walls. For decades, anxiety ruled everything. Ray couldn’t drive more than an hour from home without facing crippling panic. Normalcy, freedom, and adventure felt like distant dreams—out of reach, beyond reason, and completely unattainable. But then, something changed. Through a c...
Strength isn't pretending everything's fine—it’s having the courage to be real about what’s hard. On Episode 64 of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr open up about how this podcast has become a journey of transformation through vulnerability—for themselves and for the community it’s building. From a young age, especially as men, we’re taught to suppress emotion, to “man up,” and to keep going no matter what. But that kind of emotional isolation can be a heavy burden. In this episode...
How do you find strength when your world is crumbling from the inside out? In this powerful episode of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr sit down with Susan Preble, whose story of perseverance through hidden trauma, heartbreak, and healing will leave you breathless and forever changed. Susan’s journey began with tragedy—when she was just 18 months old, her family car was T-boned, leaving her mother in a coma and shifting the course of her life. As she grew, the trauma deepened: chil...
Some friendships are built on shared victories, bruises, and sweat—on long bus rides and harder losses. But the deepest friendships aren’t just remembered; they return when we need them most. In this deeply moving episode of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr reconnect with Jeff Swanson, a former University of Dayton teammate and roommate whose story is both heart-wrenching and hope-filled. What begins as a conversation between old friends quickly transforms into a profound explorati...
What does it take to break through the walls of selfishness we’ve built around ourselves? For Dan Schmidt, it was a brutal 24-hour journey through the mountains of Georgia that stripped away every comfort and convenience of modern life. In this powerful episode, host Ben Spahr leads a raw conversation with host Dan Schmidt about his experience in The Rite of Passage, an endurance challenge led by former Navy SEAL Chad Wright. This wasn’t just another test of grit—without electronics, timepiec...
What does true freedom really look like in our daily lives? In this thought-provoking Independence Day episode of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr welcome guest Brian Ballenger for an intimate, wide-ranging exploration of how personal discipline—and the courage to confront our own weaknesses—shapes genuine independence. Freedom, as the trio discovers, isn’t simply about doing whatever we want or escaping life’s responsibilities. Instead, it’s rooted in self‑regulated integrity: the...
In Episode 59 Part 2 of BeTempered, hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr sit down with Jeff Travis for a raw, unflinching conversation about faith forged in the fires of real life. Jeff opens up about his remarkable journey—from a struggling student to a reluctant pastor and, eventually, a missionary in Thailand. What begins as a familiar story of answering God’s call soon unfolds into something far deeper—a father’s desperate fight to protect his family amid cultural isolation, special needs pare...
What happens when following your faith costs everything? In this powerful episode of the BeTempered podcast, Pastor Jeff Travis joins hosts Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr for a deeply personal and inspiring conversation that traces his extraordinary journey—from childhood struggles in suburban Detroit to anti-trafficking work along the Thailand-Myanmar border. As a young boy, Jeff battled severe reading difficulties and depression, feeling like he didn’t belong in traditional academic settings. Co...
Senior year can feel like standing on a cliff’s edge, and Leah Schmidt brings us right to that moment with clarity, humor, and heart. Hosted by Dan Schmidt and Ben Spahr, this conversation follows Dan’s daughter as she wraps a long soccer journey, weighs college athletics, and chooses something rarer: a future built on faith, family, and balance. From small town sidewalks to country life, 4-H chores, and the day a goat didn’t make it, Leah shows how responsibility and loss shape character lon...
