IT WAS BOUND to happen. The Nick & Josh Podcast scooped the Almighty. Oprah that is. Last Tuesday I recorded a podcast with one of the co-founders of Kiva. And Friday they went into Oprah’s studio to record Tuesday’s Oprah television show. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they mentioned just how cool The Nick & Josh Podcast was/is.

But besides scooping Oprah, we had a great conversation with Jessica Jackley Flannery of Kiva (co-founder with her husband Matt). If you’re not familiar with Kiva . . . this is a great chance to get to know them and what they’re about. And if you’re already a fan and partner . . . then you can hear Jessica talk about a variety of things including social networking in giving, flattened relational models, the power of women in power, and Kiva’s leveraging of their relationships with big business Silicon Valley giants for their role in micro-loans.

Unfortunately, Nick couldn’t make this podcast and as usually is the case when I fly solo, I struggle to sound coherent and intelligent. He is truly worthy to be Wayne while I am nothing but Garth. But despite my suck-i-ness in “interviewing” . . . I did get to talk to somebody whose going to talk to Oprah . . . and that’s got to count for something right?

Check it out.

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Shane Claiborne joins us this week for the podcast. Shane is his usual hospitable, nicest guy in the world, self. He waxes poetic with us about justice, poverty, and economics with his east Tennessee southern drawl.

At one point, Nick accused Shane of spamming him for money after his home burned to the ground. Which almost made Shane cry. But Nick recovered and apologized and we all moved ahead better people because of it.

If you know anything about Shane, you know that he’s a stand up guy and beyond gracious. Josh even tried to bait him into civil disobedience talk once and Shane stayed above the fray as usual.For more information about Shane, check out his community over at thesimpleway.com.

You can also check out the litany we mentioned that Shane did at Catalyst this past year. Or you can watch it in the video player on our front page.

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This week Nick talks to Dave Andrews from the Waiters Union. The Waiters Union is a community of people that live in West End, an aging suburb in Brisbane, Australia.Dave and the Waiters are active in the community in all sorts of ways. He is an author, musician, activist, speaker, and teaches classes at local universities on community development.He works to find sustainable ways to live and be a community of integrity in the area of West End. All of his work involved the underprivileged – refugees, mentally unstable, destitute – all of these make up a congregation that is treated with dignity and respect.

Dave’s website is here, where you can read more articles, listen to his music, or hear more about the waiter’s union.

Nick also wrote up a review of three of his books on his blog here.

This is the website that launched with his latest book Plan Be – a guide to using the beatitudes to transform the way you relate to the world around you.

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