It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind Christianity in America with Ryan Burge

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode: It's a Numbers Game—The Numbers Behind Christianity in America with Ryan Burge
Host: Ryan Graduski (guest-hosting for Clay Travis & Buck Sexton)
Guest: Ryan Burge, professor and data analyst on American religion
Date: September 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode digs into the changing landscape of Christianity in America, focusing on generational shifts, the perception of religious revival—especially after the assassination of conservative figure Charlie Kirk—and the complex intersection between politics, faith, and community life. Ryan Graduski hosts a data-rich conversation with sociologist Ryan Burge, exploring whether there truly is a Christian resurgence among young people and what the underlying numbers reveal about religious practice, identification, and polarization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Special Elections and Political Mood (03:06–07:40)

• Ryan Graduski recaps recent special elections, noting minimal surprises and emphasizing the outsized importance of local political races for larger political trends.
• Elections reflect the nation's mood, but Republican hopes for a surge in turnout (attributed to Charlie Kirk’s assassination) have not materialized in voting data.

2. The Hope for Religious Revival after Charlie Kirk (07:41–14:00)

• Some expect Kirk's death to trigger a Christian revival.
• Graduski relays anecdotes of people returning to church, noting both the societal and spiritual upsides of regular religious engagement, such as greater charitable giving, stronger families, and increased social cohesion.
• He references reactions by secular commentators to Kirk’s memorial, including:
  • Don Lemon: called it an event of “Christian nationalism.”
  • Thomas Chatterton Williams: felt culturally alienated watching.
  • Dan Williams (philosophy prof): described feeling like an outsider, comparing it to encountering a distant tribe’s rituals.
  • Quote:

    “Watching the Charlie Kirk memorial, I am struck by how extremely culturally distant I feel from that world. Everything about it feels alien—the aesthetic, symbolism, music, rituals, mythology, gurus, ideas and norms.”
    — Dan Williams, [13:31]

• Graduski pushes back, arguing Christian Americans exist immersed in secular culture and feel less alienated than their secular counterparts.

3. Religion, Politics, and Self-Reflection (14:01–19:19)

• Graduski discusses his own Catholic faith and how recent events prompted him to reconsider keeping religion out of public conversation.
• References a Pew Research report (pre-Kirk assassination) which showed a plateau in Christianity’s decline and notable increases in Christian identification among Gen Z.
  • 63% of Americans identify as Christian (similar to 2019).
  • Young men now more likely than young women to identify as Christian—a shift from the historical pattern.
  • Cautions that “identifying” as Christian is not the same as active religious practice.

4. Interview with Ryan Burge: The Data on Christianity in America

Segment Begins: [19:21]

A. Trends in Religious Identity & Practice

• Massive Decline Slowing: Christian identification dropped from 90% to 63% (1972–2020), but recent years show a halt in declining religiosity, especially among young people.

  • “The share of Americans who are Christians declined from 90% to 63% between 1972 and about 2020… The rise of the nones among young people has stopped increasing so rapidly.”
    — Ryan Burge, [20:01]

• No “one-time event” (9/11, Kirk’s assassination) has ever led to lasting increases in American religiousness:

  • “There has not been a single event in the last 50 years that's had a demonstrable and durable increase on religiosity in America.”
    — Ryan Burge, [20:59]

B. Younger Generations: Fewer, but More Devout

• Young Christians today attend church more regularly than their 2008 peers, but the overall pool of young Christians is smaller—those who remain are more committed.

  • “Among young people who still identify as Protestant or Catholic, they're more likely to go to church on a regular basis today... The people who are left are the true believers.”
    — Ryan Burge, [22:11]

C. Religious Identity, Practice, and Politics

• Some young conservatives embrace a Christian identity for tribal alignment, even if not deeply practicing.

  • “If I'm conservative, I have to be a Christian. Especially if you’re white... If you hang around a lot of people in your tribe who are religious, the likelihood is that you at least open yourself up to the idea of religion.”
    — Ryan Burge, [24:47]

D. Religion, Social Trust, and Education

• In the US, higher education correlates with religiosity and church attendance—opposite to Europe.

  • “The people who are most likely to attend church this Sunday are people with graduate degrees. The least likely are those who didn't finish high school.”
    — Ryan Burge, [26:34]

• Church instills social trust; those with lower education tend to drop out of both civic and religious institutions, which raises concerns about their societal integration.

E. Church as Community Nexus

• Churches serve as one of America's last true “mixing grounds” for socioeconomic and demographic diversity.
  • Benefits include increased tolerance and opportunities for economic mobility.

  • “Religion is one of the last economically diverse spaces we have in American society.”
    — Ryan Burge, [31:23]

F. Polarization: Religion Aligns with Politics

• “The God gap” grows: Republicans are increasingly the party of devout Christians; Democrats now represent both non-white Christians and the non-religious.

  • “45% of Harris voters in 2024 were atheist, agnostic, or claimed no religion in particular. It was 12% of Trump’s voters.”
    — Ryan Burge, [34:10]

G. Reluctance to Mix Faith and Politics in Church

• Majority of congregants do not want explicit political messages from religious leaders, regardless of party or denomination.

  • “People want a safe space… I think there's a huge lane in America for, ‘Hey, we're not political here.’”
    — Ryan Burge, [35:40]

• Both hosts recount personal experience with political versus apolitical church communities.

H. Young Converts, Gender Dynamics, and Denominational Change

• No evidence of a statistically significant “male surge” in Catholic conversion, though anecdotal stories abound.

  • “The gender gap used to be women more religious than men… With Gen Z the gap has closed… probably as religious as each other.”
    — Ryan Burge, [38:24]

• Young men are trending more conservative, which may tie into higher religious identification.

I. Which Christian Groups Are Growing?

• Most mainline Protestant groups are shrinking; Pentecostal and charismatic denominations (e.g., Assemblies of God) are growing and are the most racially diverse.

  • “Assemblies of God has grown almost without fail in the last 50 years... They're actually the most racially diverse large denomination in America.”
    — Ryan Burge, [40:44]

J. Rise of Religious and Political Polarization

• Evangelicals nearly monolithic in GOP affiliation. Mainline Protestantism is rapidly shrinking; Catholicism is trending more conservative, especially among new priests and white Catholic voters.

  • “White Catholics voted for Trump in 2024 by over 60%.”
    — Ryan Burge, [45:33]

• Mainline churches’ moderation is leading to their decline and impending irrelevance:

  • “They were sort of moderate politically... but guess what? They're almost gone in America today.”
    — Ryan Burge, [44:11]

K. Ryan Burge’s Work

• Substack: “Graphs about Religion”—deep dives into religious and political data with frequent charts and plain-language explainer posts ([48:22]).
• New book: The Vanishing Middle, about religious polarization and its effects on American society (preorder available; see [43:46-49:15]).

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Notable Quotes (by Timestamp)

• On event-driven revival:

  “There has not been a single event in the last 50 years that's had a demonstrable and durable increase on religiosity in America.”
  — Ryan Burge, [20:59]

• On why young churchgoers are more devout:

  “The people who are left over are the true believers... the marginal people have left.”
  — Ryan Burge, [22:11]

• On education and religion:

  “The people who are most likely to attend church this Sunday are people with graduate degrees. The least likely are those who didn't finish high school.”
  — Ryan Burge, [26:34]

• On churches as last social 'mixing grounds':

  “...where else do you get that in American life now? No Elks, no Moose, no bowling league, no Boy Scouts, none of that stuff. So if we lose that, we don't have a great mixing place in American society.”
  — Ryan Burge, [30:07]

• On polarization:

  “The Republican Party is the party of Christianity, particularly white Christianity... Meanwhile, the Democrats... they’re the party of everyone else when it comes to religion.”
  — Ryan Burge, [34:10]

• On what most churchgoers want from church:

  “My job's to preach Jesus in the kingdom. If that's what you want to hear, that's what you're going to hear from us.”
  — Ryan Burge, [36:38]

• On mainline Christianity’s decline:

  “The main line was over half of America in 1972, and now they’re down to about 10% of America, quickly going to go to 5% because they're all old.”
  — Ryan Burge, [44:11]

• On shifting Catholic conservatism:

  “Among priests who have been ordained in the last 10 years, almost all of them are conservative now.”
  — Ryan Burge, [45:33]

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Timestamps for Main Segments

• [03:06] – Local election results and political landscape
• [07:41] – The reaction to Charlie Kirk’s assassination and religious implications
• [14:01] – Graduski’s reflections on faith, public conversation, and Pew data
• [19:21] – Start of Ryan Burge interview
• [20:01] – Trends in Christian identification and impact of major events
• [22:11] – Devoutness among young Christians; generational differences
• [24:47] – Politics driving religious identification
• [26:34] – Education, church attendance, and trust
• [31:23] – Church as locus of community connections and social trust
• [34:10] – Political polarization and partisan-religious realignment
• [35:36] – What churchgoers want: apolitical churches
• [38:24] – Gender and religious conversion
• [40:44] – Pentecostal growth; denominational trends
• [44:11] – Religious and political polarization in detail; future of mainline Protestantism and Catholic Church
• [48:22] – Ryan Burge’s Substack and books

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Conclusion

For listeners seeking to understand the data behind American Christianity, this episode is packed with research, expert commentary, and thoughtful reflection on how faith and politics shape—and are shaped by—generational change and social trust. The discussion underlines that American Christianity’s numerical decline may be halting, but practice, identity, and political alignment within religious groups are rapidly evolving, fueling higher polarization and reshaping both religious and civic life.

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Transcript

[Ryan Graduski]

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[Ryan Graduski]

O o.com welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Graduski. It is Thursday, September 25. We are 40 days from the 2025 elections. There were a few special elections that happened this past week. Republicans held onto the mayorship in Mobile, Alabama, which doesn't seem like a big deal. But Republicans hold so few mayorships that anything is a big deal when it comes to winning a mayor's office for the gop. Republicans won a special election in the Georgia state Senate where Jason Dickerson beat Deborah Shingley by 23 points. It was, though, a Trump +34 district, so that's nothing to write home about. Over in Arizona, A Delta Gravala won the seat once held by her father, Raul, who died in the seat back in January. She won by a very large 42. This was a better result than either her father received in the last few elections since the 2020 election. And Kamala Harri. These are not great results for the Republican Party, though none of them were surprising. It wasn't like a big shock. The Mobile, Alabama mayorship is actually probably the biggest deal of the three. Many people had hoped that in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, Republicans would start voting in these special elections in larger numbers, like presidential numbers, and that would have definitely reversed the trends in these seats. You know, had Republicans turned out at presidential levels in the congressional election in Arizona, Republicans would have absolutely won. That didn't happen, though, and it doesn't seem like it's happening. Next Monday's episode is going to specifically focus on the Virginia elections coming up because there's the Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and obviously New York City, but Virginia. And a deep dive into Virginia is going to be taking place next Monday. And I'm going to be a rundown what's happening in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. But I want to keep you guys attuned to these elections, which are indicators of how people feel going forward. So many of you run down of those elections about a deep dive into the Virginia election. Some people have asked, what are the elections in Pennsylvania? I keep talking about Pennsylvania has the state Supreme Court up for a statewide vote now a lot of people like Ryan, I don't care. I don't live in Pennsylvania. What do I care about the state Supreme Court? The state Supreme Court is very important because they decide on congressional lines. In Pennsylvania, Republicans lost a lot of congressional seats from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which sat there and said that the lines had to be give Democrats more seats. So the reason the House is much closer than it is is because Republicans probably lost three congressional seats in Pennsylvania. And going into 2030, 2032, when redistricting will happen again, Pennsylvania is likely to lose one more congressional seat as the population has not grown fast enough relative to the rest of the country. So those Supreme Court races, there's multiple will matter a lot of I know that local politics is not the sexiest type of politics, but they matter a lot more to your daily life than the Senate, the presidency, all these other things. So they just matter. They will really, really matter. And I love local politics where I got my start. I will say one thing briefly about what's happening before I go into my main topic. Winsome Sears really seems like she's losing momentum in this race, and I'm going to give the reason why. I think that she's losing momentum on Monday's episode. But there seems to be momentum building for Jack Ciattarelli over New Jersey. Now, he's still definitely not the favorite to win, but he earned a very important endorsement. He earned the endorsement the Fraternal Order of Police, which did not endorse at all in 2021 and endorse Democrat Phil Murphy in 2017. He had that great poll. He had a very strong debate performance. These are the kinds of things you want to see happen break in your favor in the last few weeks of an election for a surprising victory. I'm not saying he's going to be victorious. I'm not giving a prediction at all about it. I'm just saying these are the things if you're looking for something to break. This is when breaking matters the most, because people are paying attention. Going back to the Charlie Kirk of it all, which because everyone was hoping that this assassination would alter the state of politics and maybe it will long term. I mean, I'm not judge. I'm not canceling it out. I'm just saying these special elections, it's not really motivating people to go and vote. But there's also a significant number of people who are hoping that Charlie's legacy not only alters the state of politics, but he also alters the state of religion. They hope that there is a religious revival because as a result of his death, if this leads to a movement that people seek out a church and a faith. I spoke to several evangelical Christians, including some who work for me, and they've all said they were excited to see people go back to church after Charlie's assassination. I know somebody who had not been to church in 20 years who went after Charlie was assassinated, and she cried when she went. She said it was such a moving experience. And religious engagement is a great thing. Data shows that regular religious attendance promotes higher levels of charitable giving. It produces more intact families, lower rates of depression, and greater community coping cohesion. Even if you are not particularly religious, you enjoy immense benefits from a society with a higher church attendance. There's also obviously the religious element of it. All Christians hope that you will pursue faith in order to save your soul, which is a great thing if you believe in that. If you are a religious person, you see people go to church, you are happy that the army of God is becoming larger. Some liberal commentators noted that they felt very alienated by the whole experience of watching Kirk's memorial Mass. Don Lemon, formerly from cnn, said that it was really an event of Christian nationalism. Writer Thomas Chatterton Williams said that he felt a strange watching the whole memorial and said he'd feel more comfortable in Greece than he would at that place in Arizona. And philosophy professor Dan Williams from the University of Sussex over in England, he said that he built extremely culturally distant in this world. He said, and I think this is an important quote, he said, quote, watching the Charlie Kirk memorial, I am struck by how extremely culturally distant I feel from that world. Everything about it feels alien. The aesthetic, symbolism, music, rituals, mythology, gurus, ideas and norms. It feels like being exposed to a culture and symbolic universe of a distant tribe. If I reflect on this, it occurs to me that this feeling must be symmetrical, that they must view the kind of cultural universe I inhabit as similarly alien. And in a strange way, despite opposing almost everything about this political project, this reflection makes me feel more empathy for what the project must feel like from within side. So looking at these three comments, and I know Dan is from England, so it's much different than America, I respect Thomas Chetterton Williams the most because I feel like it was not disrespectful. It was acknowledging a divorce from a big part of America. Though I don't know why you're commenting on American politics if you feel that alienated from, you know, a giant portion of the population. Don Lemon is a paranoid attention seeker. So I don't Think of anything that he ever says as being serious. All he does is promote fear porn on the left. But the British professor, I use that quote because I can't emphasize enough about how much he misses the mark. The feeling of alienation that secular people feel towards Christian is not symmetrical to how Christians feel about secular people. Because unless you are a hermit who lives in a cave, Christians and religious people are bombarded with secular messaging all day, every day, their entire life. There are bakers and nuns who have been mired in lawsuits for years for not baking a cake for a gay wedding or, you know, giving out condoms to their employees or paying for employees to have birth control, which they don't believe in in the case of the nuns. Religious people are not just bombarded by the media and tech companies with secular messaging, but they are not allowed to live alone or live lives within communities that are divorced from the secular world. And I know many liberals feel that religious people want to control their lives. One of my very good friends, who's a woman, former college professor, a lesbian, who I respect deeply and I really love our friendship, but she said, you know Christians. She said on Twitter, christians are trying to run my life. I. I'm not saying that one side is 100% right and the other one's 100% wrong. But part of this conflict, especially when it comes to religion and political power, is because government is so large, individual liberties have become very limited. So we're inevitably going to be trampling on each other's right to exist in our own world or in the world and the communities that we see fit to belong to. I will say that since Charlie's murder, I have been thinking a lot about my own faith, a lot more. I'm a practicing Catholic. I have always shielded away from speaking about that in public. I gave one interview to a Christian newspaper after being canceled from cnn. But I was always taught you never discuss religion and politics. And let's face it, I failed very badly at one of those things and keeping that out of the public. But I will this in my own personal life. If you go to dinner with me, I don't bring up politics unless I know you're, like, in the business, like political consulting business, like I am, or you ask me about it first. I don't bring up politics. I don't. I was raised differently than that. And I have questioned since his murder whether that serves me well. Keeping those conversations within me. I, you know, keeping the peace in. In exchange for not having an open dialogue about faith doesn't mean, you have to browbeat the people over the head with it. But I think that maybe, maybe people should be talking about it more. I'm exploring this in my head. I'm exploring how to navigate that in a different capacity than maybe I did in the past. I know I'm not the only one who's thought about this. I've had conversations with friends of mine who think about this in a different way and exploring the idea of faith and what it means in their lives. A Pew Research report from back in February, months before Charlie was assassinated, explored the idea of religion and found that the number of people identifying as Christians, which had declined for decades, having a reversal around 2022. According to the Pew Research study, 63% of Americans identify as Christians, which is around the same number as 2019. So there was no more massive decline. And 92% of Americans believe in either God, a soul, an afterlife, or some kind of spiritual presence beyond the natur world. Very few are just true like atheists. They believe in something bigger than this. That Pew study also noticed that people born between the years 1990 and 2006 had a pretty significant shift in those identifying as Christian from For those born in the 90s, the number grew from 52 to 56%. And for those born between 2000 and 2006, that number increased from 45 to 51% between 2022 and 2024. So if there is a Christian revivalism, it's something that may predate Charlie, it may be turbocharged because of Charlie. Other really important things in that study is that young men are more likely to identify as Christian than young women. People born in the 2000s, that's the first time ever that men are overly stating this over women. And I want to partially just say identifying as Christian and practicing the faith are two very separate things. Right. Young people are increasingly likely to say that they are Christian, but they are not going to church in in the same percentages as some older generations and they are not praying daily. I think that all this conversation about religion and the idea of a religious revival and the idea of what that means in society, that is going to determine a lot of our politics, especially within the Republican Party going forward. In a country that has been moving towards secularization for, you know, it feels like time immemorial, but probably for the last half century or maybe a little longer than that, I decided to have an expert to discuss religion with me. He's coming on next. Stay tuned.

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[Ryan Graduski]

With me on today's episode is Ryan Burge. He is a professor of practice at the Dawnforth center of Religion and Politics at Washington University at St. Louis and the research director at the Faith Counts. Ryan, thank you for being on this podcast.

[Ryan Burge]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Ryan Graduski]

So, professor, when Charlie Kirk's murder happened, there was a lot of talk about the hopes of a religious revival, especially from a lot of evangelicals and even some young people that I know. Back in February, there was a report by Pew Research showing that many young people were increasingly identifying as being Christian. How real, according to the data you've seen, is that trend?

[Ryan Burge]

Yeah. So what we know is that the share of Americans who are Christians declined from 90% to 63% between 1972 and about 2020 or so. And really the numbers on this kind of hung there last couple years. As far as young people, what we know is that the rise of the nones among them has stopped increasing so rapidly. So, for instance, people born in 2000 are probably just as likely to be non religious as someone born in 1990, which is sort of a big deal if you think about it, because every generation is significantly less religious than the prior generation. So the fact that slowing down is a big deal. But I've been asked a lot about what's the impact Charlie Kirk's going to have. I'll just say a couple things about that one. It's way too early to know. You know, we don't, we don't do polling on religion. Big, big surveys on religion once a year. I mean, that's what you get. There's really no point in doing it once a month or once A week. The cost to do that would be astronomical. The value of it would not be that high.

[Ryan Graduski]

Yeah, so.

[Ryan Burge]

And even then we would. I would need to see several surveys that all came to the same conclusion. There's an upswing in religiosity among young people. And here's the other thing, and people don't realize this. There has not been a single event in the last 50 years that's had a demonstrable and durable increase on religiosity in America. I mean, 9, 11 happened, right? We're like, oh, America became a lot more religious. It became slightly more religious. And then by 2002, early 2002, all that had faded away back to baseline. So, you know, the preponderance evidence says that whatever happened with Charlie Kirk is definitely not going to lead to a long term, sort of quote, unquote, revival in religion in America.

[Ryan Graduski]

Yeah, I read your tweet about that where you sat there and said there was been no singular incident that reversed trends, only had brief incidences, and then reversed the norm. And that's why I think a lot of people are hoping that it's not an event as so much a movement. You said in one of Your reports that 18 to 35 year old Christians are more likely to be a weekly churchgoer than they were than that age demographic was in 2008. But older people kind of have given up on going to Mass. Can you explain that trend?

[Ryan Burge]

So this is. So this is one of those, like the math. You got to think about the math for a second. Okay, so overall religiosity has declined, but among young people who still identify as Protestant or Catholic, they're more likely to go to church on a regular basis today than young people who are Protestant or Catholic in 2008. And the reason for that is because the share of young people who identify as Christian has gone down the last 15 years. So the people who are left over are the true believers, like you. It's, I tell people, like, imagine you're an 18 year old and you're sitting in high school and you call yourself an evangelical. You're not going to call yourself evangelical because you kind of believe in evangelicalism. Like, because you might have someone who's trans sitting next to you and a gay guy sitting behind you. You know what I mean? Like, if you say that, you really believe that to be true and you're all the way in. So among young people who are still Christian, which is a smaller number overall, the ones who are there are actually more devout because it's sort of the marginal people who have sort of left. Among older people, that hasn't happened because Christianity still has a lot of cultural cachet among older folks. There's less stigma against being a Christian among, you know, 60, 70 year olds. So I think that's the reason is you're seeing that young people who are still there, who still say they're Christian, are actually more Christian than Christians were 15, 20 years ago.

[Ryan Graduski]

Yeah. And also I. People get stuck. And this is not just a problem of political commentators, but this is a problem with people in general is people get stuck in a certain age in which they came of age. So when I think of someone who is 80, I'm thinking of someone who was born in 1920 because my brain froze in the year 2000 as instinctively as that's the year that like 1990 was only 10 years ago. Until I think about it, I'm like, oh no, that's actually a long time ago now. So when I think of somebody who is 70 now, I'm talking about a baby boomer. And I said this to my audience all the time. Archie Bunker is dead and Meathead is a senior citizen. So who is a senior citizen and who is voting as a senior citizen is considerably left wing from when George W. Bush was running for president. And I think that makes sense. Do you find that young people, I mean, you mentioned higher church attendance and there's a Pew study about identifying as Christian. Do you think that there is a certain, especially in conservative circles, amount of young people increasingly identifying as Christian, not necessarily practicing, but identifying as kind of like, well, I'm conservative and I'm Christian, but they may not pray daily, they may not go to church. Is that, I mean, that's how I interpreted the Pew study. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Ryan Burge]

No, I think that for some people, you know, it's like if I'm conservative, I have to be a Christian. Especially if you're white. Like, it's like to go back to Charlie Kirk, if you look his early stuff, he was sort of more like an old school, like non religious libertarian, Tea Party kind of Republican. But as he aged, he sort of aged into a more, you know, Christian conservative style Republican. And I think, I think a lot of Republicans end up doing this like Elon Musk ended up doing this. Right. He was an atheist for a long time. And I was like, hey, Christianity is great. And he's like praying the Lord's Prayer. If you hang around a lot of people in your tribe who are religious, you know, the likelihood is that you at least open yourself up to the idea of religion. And people want to live unified lives. Right. They want everything in their life to line up behind. And that unifying force, unfortunately, in American life today is politics. So if I'm Republican, you know, I want to be a Christian. I want to say I'm rural. I want to say I'm conservative, because that's what those people are.

[Ryan Graduski]

Right? Right. You want to. It's like when that song came out about Richmond, north of Richmond, and a lot of wealthy people who live north of Richmond, Virginia, were all playing that song. And I'm like, it's a good. I mean, it's an interesting song, but you are definitely those kinds of people. I don't know what you're identifying with. What I think is a misinterpretation of religion, especially to people who are not particularly religious, is they view church attendance, especially church attendance, but also religious affiliation as being something for poor people. That is not the case, usually. And typically, people who are college educated and higher than median earned income are likely to participate in religion and go to church. Specifically go to church. Yeah, that was the truth, you know, when, like, Bowling Alone was written. And so is that still the truth?

[Ryan Burge]

Yeah. No, I think this is. If I want to, like, feel. If I'm feeling bad one day and I want to get a lot of retweets, I just post a graph that shows educated people are more religious than non educated people in America. Because it's true. Like, across. When it comes to church attendance, the people who are most likely to attend church this Sunday are people with graduate degrees. The least likely are those who didn't finish high school. The most likely people identify as non religious are those who have the lowest level of education. People's master's degrees are the least likely to be non religious in America today. Now, in Europe, it's the reverse. Educated people are less religious in Europe. But in America, it's the. And I think. And people, like, see this in their. I think they read too much. Carl Marx is the problem. Like, religion's the opiate of the masses. Right. It keeps. It keeps stupid people down in. In happy in their. In their. In their. Their bondage, you know, is what Marx would say. Right. Well, guess what? The data actually says that, you know, religiosity and education are related to this idea called pro sociality or pro trust. And the more you trust people, the more likely you are to go to college. Because guess what? Going to college is really an exercise in trust. Your roommate, your professor, Your classmates, the administrator. You gotta trust all those people to get through college. But you know what church is? It's an exercise in trust, right? It's sharing your life with other people. It's like giving money to an organization where you're not 100% sure where it's gonna go. So I think it's this sort of web of causality between education, religiosity, pro sociality, pro trust. That. And I think what we're seeing more and more in America is that low education people are less trusting people and therefore they're dropping out of American society. Not just education, but also politics, also religion, also all the social structures that sort of bind us together. And those are the kind of people that really worry me, to be honest. You know, because they're not. They don't have governors and they don't have guardrails in their lives that tell them like these are acceptable things to believe and say and do. And I mean, I don't want to extrapolate too much, but if you look at a lot of these, these, these shooters, these shooting incidents, I feel like a lot of those people fall in that, well, what do I do all day? I spend a lot of time on YouTube or a lot of time on social media. And I'm not part of any social. In real. I don't touch grass. Right. I live all virtually. That cannot be good for our souls. I just, I can't believe that.

[Ryan Graduski]

Yeah. And you know, it's funny, I worked for senator, I worked for Now Vice President J.D. vanceman. He was Senate when a Senate candidate. And I remember reading hillbilly elegy the first time and him mentioning that his grandmother, who was a lower income person without a college degree, I don't even. She had a high school degree but never really went to church, but read the Bible all the time. And it was a very kind of personalized relationship with religion versus J.D. now who's a church going Catholic. And I think that that is the truth for most high, most people of certain things, social trust, religion. I don't. Do you think religion creates social trust or is it a chicken the egg thing where you have to have high levels of trust to participate in religion?

[Ryan Burge]

I think it's both, right. Like I think it takes a certain level threshold to get you in the church the first time. But then I think, I think what people don't realize is the more you're there, it almost naturally builds trust in other people because you get to know them on a personal level. Now it's not just like, like the faithless, nameless religious people. It's, oh, there's, there's Stan and there's Bob and there's Helen at church. And they're great people because I've known them for three or four. And that's actually what my new book's about by the way, is like religion used to be a great mixing place in Americans. It's called the Vanishing Middle. How they Find a Moderate Congregation, Search Democracy.

[Ryan Graduski]

I'm bringing it up at the end. Yeah, like the book for right now.

[Ryan Burge]

But yeah, yeah, like, I think it's like so important to be in spaces with people who are different than you. Vote different, believe different, different age groups. Right. Like, we need all that stuff. And the thing is, where else do you get that in American life now? No Elks, no Moose, no bowling league, no Boy Scouts, none of that stuff. So if we lose that, we don't have a great mixing place in American society.

[Ryan Graduski]

So. Yeah, and I find when people make a church, like I always attended mass growing up, but we were not when we're Catholic, when we were not, we went to church and we went home and then we did things with our family. People who make the church kind of not the center. I don't, I don't want to over emphasize like the center of their world, but they're part of like church organizations and they spend time in like the auditorium after church because they're doing social mixers or whatnot and beforehand and Sunday school and all that and babysitting organizations. And I've been all over the country because of political campaigns. And it is a, the church is a center for, that holds community together in a lot of different ways. What are societal benefits of a high church community?

[Ryan Burge]

I think first one is tolerance. Like the very first paper I ever published was about what aspects of religiosity drive up political tolerance. And tolerance, by the way, is just putting up with, with ideas you disagree with. Just saying that people have the right to say things that you don't agree with, have books in the library you don't agree with. And among the aspects of religion, the J.D. vance mom story, like where she doesn't go to church, read the Bible a lot, Biblical literalists were the least tolerant people, but people who went to church on a regular basis were the most tolerant people. So like, religion has these countervailing forces, right? Part of it makes you less tolerant, but other parts of it makes you more tolerant, unfortunately. Guess which one's dropped the most in America the last 50 years? It's the attendance piece, the piece that we need the most to generate these feelings of democracy. So I think from that perspective by itself. But also there's a great paper by Raj Chetty that came out a couple years ago that found that economic mobility is really important in America. Moving yourself up the economic ladder, the number one predictor of that is being in an economically diverse space. And guess what? Religion is one of the last economically diverse spaces we have in American society. So how do you move up the ladder? You talk to someone at church who's a manager at a company, says, hey, we'd love to have you come work for us. You move your way up that way. So I tell people, like the thing about religion, you think it's all vertical, it's all spiritual, it's all about God and salvation and stuff. But really at the end of the day, a lot of it's very horizontal, it's very social. Right. It actually might help you like in this world too, not just the world.

[Ryan Graduski]

After this world that I never thought of it like that. I always tell the Republicans when they talked about when the conversation on defunding the police was happening, I would say to Republican politicians, like, there is a safety net thing component to it very obviously. But also if you are a Latino lower income who can only get an associate's degree, one of your only chances to be part of the middle class, your only economic ladders is joining the police or the fire. It is a public union and you need to talk about things from an economic standpoint. I never thought of religion in the same capacity, but it makes a lot of sense. And I'll say this as someone who goes to mass almost, almost every single Sunday. There are times I sleep in, but most of the time I'm there, I find that the only ones going still are Republicans. I mean, I can. You can almost. And I live in. I mean, like I spent my time between Louisiana and New York. And I mean, Louisiana obviously is a very red state, but even in New York City, when I go, you could nine times out of 10, if we were to campaign outside of a church, they're almost all Republicans. And the ones that are Democrats left are like Joe Biden's age. And maybe this is just my unique experience, but is church becoming considerably the Republican Party at prayer?

[Ryan Burge]

Absolutely. Like that's. We call it the God gap. And it's getting bigger and bigger every year. Like the idea that Republicans are the party of religious people and the Democrats are the party of non religious people. 45% of Harris voters in 2024 were atheist, agnostic, or claimed no religion in particular. It was 12% of Trump's voters. So, you know, what's happening is the parties are sort of sorting into. The Republican Party is the party of Christianity, particularly white Christianity, by the way. So white evangelicals, white Catholics, but the Democratic Party has like, become the party of non white Christians. So black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, Muslims, Jews, but also the party of the non religious. I think that's actually a huge problem the Democrats are facing now. Like, on a lot of these issues of like morality and culture and society is like, how do you please an atheist and a black Protestant on issues about pronoun usage in public schools or, or abortion. Right. Like those, those two groups are not going to agree on anything in the social space. And yet I was saying the Republican coalition is a lot easier to campaign to, to message with because it's like, like Christianity is good, family values are good, traditionalism is good. You know, like, you can basically hit these notes and 85, 90% of Republicans will agree with you. Meanwhile, the Democrats don't. They don't. They're the party of everyone else when it comes to religion.

[Ryan Graduski]

Yeah. And you put out some interesting data that I had not read before, that a majority of churchgoers do not actually want to hear their minister or priest talk about religion.

[Ryan Burge]

They don't. Politics from the pulpit politics.

[Ryan Graduski]

Sorry, politics. Right.

[Ryan Burge]

You're right. Yeah. People, they wanted to save space. I don't, I think people forget that. Like, and I just talked to a progressive pastor yesterday, like, what should we do in response to this? I. This God gap you talk about. And I don't think the solution to them becoming more right wing is for you to become more left wing. I actually think there's a huge lane in America for, hey, we're not political here and you can be vaguely liberal, talk about, you know, everyone's welcome here, things like that. But like, if you're wearing a rainbow, there's actually, I saw a female Methodist pastor who had a Planned Parenthood logo on her stole when she was preaching. And I'm like, if you don't like when you see pastors wearing MAGA hats but you're okay with that, then that's the problem. Like, the solution to the MAGA hat issue is not you wearing a rainbow stole. It's for you to preach the gospel in an apolitical, non political way to give people a respite from all the nonsense that's going on in the discourse and just say, my job's to preach Jesus in the kingdom. And come on, if you, that's what you want to hear, that's what you're going to hear from us. And listen, I go to a Methodist church now, First United Methodist here in town. My church closed down as an American Baptist for a long time and I've been there for over a year now. There's not a single time I would go, wow, that's really political. Not once. And I love it. You know, I mean I just sit there and I get to hear the message, I get to be told to do better and God loves you and serve your neighbor and love your family. Like how can you be mad about that? That's what I think to myself a lot is like how can people be mad at the message they're hearing right now?

[Ryan Graduski]

Right. You know I grew up, I've lived my whole life as a Catholic so I think it's a little different. I've never had a priest talk about abortion from a pulp. I mean maybe one like literally close to never and any other really big political issue maybe, maybe like assisted suicide I think was brought up one time. But of the tens of thousands of times I've been to a church, I could count on one hand how many times it's been explicitly political. Maybe it's something that's different in like an evangelical setting where I've known, you know, political commentators get to speak at the pulpit. So it's a very different, I think unique experience. I have to ask this because it's part of my church and because you read this data. So what is the data on young converts to Catholicism? I know in my own life I know like about a dozen young people mostly only 11 of the 12 have been men. It's mostly young men who have said I'm going to convert to Catholicism. What is there? Is that just anecdotal or is it there a real thing? Because I think that like a lot of young men are looking specifically for structure and there's nothing more structured and less democratic in the world in the Catholic Church. So.

[Ryan Burge]

The data macro level stuff doesn't show anything worth writing home about in terms of you know like a huge push ups tick and men now. So what we do know is the gender gap used to be a women more religious than men. We've known that forever. Like that's just one of those we don't know things in social science. But this is as close as we get. And, and what's happened with Gen Z is the gap has closed between men and women on religiosity measures. It's not reversed. I think people, like, overestimate this. Oh, men are more religious than women now. Young men. That's not true. They're probably as religious as each other. And it does seem. It's like it's being driven by politics. We don't know that for sure, but definitely there's some suggestive threads that's happening. You know, for instance, I have a piece coming out, I think, next. Yeah, next week, where I look at how young men and young women think about issues like transgender, lgbtq, abortion, and the gender divide on those questions among kids born in the 2000s is actually larger than any other decade of birth between men and women. So young men are actually significantly more conservative than young women on these social issues. And I do think that has to be tied to religion in some way. Right. Because it's like, what teaches you about LGBTQ and how we think about those things? Well, it's the church. And I also think that young women are. They're reacting to, you know, me too. And the church, let's be honest, the Catholic Church and evangelical churches are very patriarchal. Right. Women don't have access to leadership. And I think a lot of them would look around and go, why am I part of an organization that doesn't give me access to leadership? You know, I want to lead in Fortune 500 companies and social organizations, but why would I be part of a church that doesn't think I'm valued? I'm not equal to men. And so they're leaving. So the increasing liberalization of young women, I think, is something that is talked about, but not enough in American society.

[Ryan Graduski]

And there's only so many women who want to become trad wife influencers on Instagram. So, I mean, there's a. There's a market for that, but it's. There's definitely a ceiling. Last question before I get to your book. What is the fastest growing segments of the. Of the Christian faith in America?

[Ryan Burge]

Oh, man. What is the.

[Ryan Graduski]

So that's a hard question.

[Ryan Burge]

Yeah. The problem is, it's like, these really small groups will come to me and be like, oh, we're growing. Look at our numbers. And they're like125,000 last year, and they're130,000 this year. Right.

[Ryan Graduski]

Okay, that makes sense.

[Ryan Burge]

You know what I mean? Like, that's cute.

[Ryan Graduski]

Like, yeah.

[Ryan Burge]

So I will say this. Pentecostal groups are growing, like the Assemblies of God, for instance. So, like, if you look at almost every Major large denomination in America. Southern Baptist, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans. Their membership is down significantly, you know, over the last 30 years, talking 25, 30%. The assemblies of God has grown almost without fail, in the last 50 years. There are 3.3 million people now. They're actually the most racially diverse large denomination in America. So I think to me, like, charismatic worship, you know, people raising their hands and clapping and sometimes, you know, speaking in tongues, those kind of things. That kind of religion, actually not just the United States, but in the world, is really the resurgent kind of. Of religion happening all over. People are drawn to that. It's almost like a spectacle in some ways. And by the way, it's very good on YouTube, you know, to watch people, like. It's fun to watch people, like, have a really, like, seem like they're having a religious. And by the way, the Kirk funeral, I think you saw a lot of that at Charlie Kirk's funeral. Like, Chris Tomlins, the CCM rock star.

[Ryan Graduski]

I mentioned my monologue and said that they were like that. One writer said, he's like, I feel more at home in Greece than I do at an event like this. Thomas Williams. Yeah, it was very evangelical.

[Ryan Burge]

Absolutely.

[Ryan Graduski]

And there is even certain portions of Catholics who pick up on evangelical performance a little bit. I don't want to say, like, they don't obviously do the same things, but there is definitely some of the aesthetics that seem very similar.

[Ryan Burge]

Oh, and I think I was thinking, what's Shady Vance doing during all this stuff, you know, being Catholic, but also not wanting to alienate the evangelical base. But the worship was incredibly evangelical in its orientation. And that's. Catholics don't raise their hands except during the Lord's Prayer. Like, you know, I mean, like, that. That's just not a thing that happens in Catholic worship. So there's like, there's. In some ways they're aligned on certain, like, social issues, theological issues. But in terms of style, that is the movement. Like, there are groups, like, there are churches that literally go. They have their worship band, like, go on tour and go to stadiums and sell out 5,000, 10,000 person stadiums where people just do an hour and a half of praise and worship. Like it's a movement right now.

[Ryan Graduski]

I will say something. I might offend people, but I don't care because it's very funny. I dated someone briefly who was an evangelical and brought me to an evangelical church and they had a rock band. And I was like, oh, this is weird. And then the pastor was just saying, like, clap if you, like, just wanted more participation than I am used to as a Catholic. And it was, you know, clap if you. If you, if you want Jesus and snap your fingers, whatever. And I looked over and go, this is not like a Tinkerbell situation where if you just clap hard enough, they come back to life like this. I don't understand what we're doing right now. So your book, the Vanishing Church. I haven't read a book specifically about sociology and religion since A Nation of Heretics, which was a great book. What's this book about? What can we expect?

[Ryan Burge]

Yeah. So I really. I take all the data I've got from the last 50 years and make this claim that we talk a lot about political polarization in America. We do not talk about religious polarization in America and how religious polarization is probably actually driving the political wedge between us even stronger. And so if you look at evangelicals, obviously they become a lot more conservative over the last 50 years. Actually, in 1972, a majority of white evangelicals were Democrats.

[Ryan Graduski]

Not surprising. Jimmy Carter.

[Ryan Burge]

Yeah, Jimmy Carter. Right. And even like the old Southern. The Southern Democrats, right. You know about race and all those things. But today they're more polarized than ever. They're more. They're more monoculture than ever politically. Almost 80% of them identify as Republicans. 82% voted for Trump. But what people don't realize is even like mainline Protestant Christianity. And people don't know that's Episcopalian, United Methodists, sort of the middle stream of Protestant Christianity that is actually becoming. They were sort of moderate politically, like divided politically. But guess what? They're almost gone in America today. The main line was over half of America in 1972, and now they're down to about 10% of America, quickly going to go to 5% because they're all old. They're all going to die soon. So the point I make in the book is, like Margaret Thatcher said it best, you stand in the middle of the road, you get hit by cars coming and going. And the main line was always too liberal for evangelicals, but too conservative for. For atheists. And so they. They kind of rode that middle line. They're going to write it, right to irrelevancy in extinction. But the Catholic Church, you know, we. You go. You're a Catholic. You go to. If you look at data on priests and ask them about their politics and their theology, among priests who have been ordained in the last 10 years, almost all of them are conservative now. And the white Catholic vote is moving incredibly to the right. Over 60% of white Catholics voted for Trump in 2024.

[Ryan Graduski]

That's pretty wild. I mean, I think that a majority voted for Obama in 2008. I.

[Ryan Burge]

Correct.

[Ryan Graduski]

That's the data. So it's. But to win by 20 points in the largest single church in America is pretty wild. What, what was I going to ask you about the perfect, perfect thing about priests? I have a young priest at my church who's younger than I am. First time I've ever had a priest is younger than I am. And he said to me, I speak seven languages. I go, oh, that's like, amazing. Which, like, which ones? He was like, well, English and then six other dead languages. And I was like, okay, that is, that is literally count.

[Ryan Burge]

I don't know if we count it that way.

[Ryan Graduski]

I know, but it's, it speaks to the level I never in my life a priest I grew up with would smoke cigarettes while, like, giving you confession. So, like, it was a definite version of like, orthodoxy that younger priests I know are. Younger priests are very, very orthodox. And I think that the, the Pope Francis form of Catholicism has a very short window within the papacy, within the entire practicing faith. They just don't. Even though there's less priests now, the ones who still commit the life of the priesthood are very, very, not just conservative, but very, very beholden to the belief of like the catechism and the belief of the, of the founders of the church or the like. You know, I, I would, I would strongly suggest that there's probably a decent percentage that think Vatican II was a mistake.

[Ryan Burge]

Oh, I. Well, Cardinal Dolan called Charlie Kirk a saint. Like a martyr.

[Ryan Graduski]

He called him. He compared him to St. Paul.

[Ryan Burge]

Yeah.

[Ryan Graduski]

Cardinal Dolan is not a, I mean, Cardinal Dolan, like, wears like, you know, talks about football. I mean, like, Cardinal Dolan is not a radical right wing pastor in the respects. I can't remember his name, but Simon and Garfunkel, the radical priest, blanking the name and okay, someone's gonna comment and send me an email. Like, how would you forget? It was from this song, whatever. But Julio, me and Julio down at the schoolyard. There was, there was, there was a radical precinct mentions. And I forget. But it was, it's the role that Cardinal Dolan currently has. Colonel Nolan is not of that ilk. And to compare Charlie Kirk to St. Paul is a very, very substantial claim from, from, especially from him, of all people. And I just think that that is a sign of the change within this church is going to be immensely different than what it is now. So. Well, where can people go to get your work? Read your stuff.

[Ryan Burge]

Hit me on that substack. Graphs, graphs about religion. That's, that's what I, people like. I, I try to come with a cool name for it. I was like, nah, dude, it's just grass about religion. Like I, I post Mondays and Thursdays. It's just a bunch of grass. 1500 words and five, six graphs. Just trying to explain something happening in the world of religion. Mostly religion, besides religion and politics. You can sign up. There's a free tier. There's a paid tier. Free gets you most of everything. Pay gets a little bit more. On top of that, I've got a new book coming out. We just talked about it. You can get on Amazon pre order now. Comes out in January. Wrote a book called the Nuns. N O N E S. Where They Came from, who they are, where They're Going, which came out second edition. Came out two years ago. And I had a book with Oxford University Press called the American Religious Landscape that came out like six months ago. If you want, like, if you want to understand the American religious landscape, like with just a bunch of charts and graphs, like in a textbook style, in an engaging textbook style, that's the book you should pick up. It's called the American Religious Landscape.

[Ryan Graduski]

So it's like a religious version of Generations by Jeanette, her last gene tweeny. Yeah, yeah, but that was literally like reading a textbook for school. But I enjoyed it. But I'm a nerd, so I get it. I love your graphs. I look at your Twitter constantly. I'm so happy you will do this podcast. Thank you for coming on.

[Ryan Burge]

Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate it.

[Ryan Graduski]

You're listening to it's the Numbers Game with Ryan Graduski. We'll be right back after this message.

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[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out [e-mail] that's o d o o dot com.

[Ryan Graduski]

Now it's time for the ask me anything segment of the podcast. If you want to be part of the Ask me anything segment. And I love getting your emails. I read them all. Email me ryanumbers game podcast.com that's ryanumbers plural numbers game podcast.com I will read your email and I will get to it eventually on the show. This comes from I actually know named Jake. He asks, have you always been a conservative? The answer is no, because I was not always political. When I was young, I was the only political opinion I had as a kid. I had two, which was that I was against the Iraq war, which I snuck out of. I went to one of the protests. I went to the Manhattan without telling my parents that I was going there to protest the Iraq war when I was in high school. And I was against amnesty for illegal immigrants because growing up in New York City, I saw neighborhoods vastly demographically change and the level of social trust within those neighborhoods and the norms and the customs of these neighborhoods go with it. And I was like, this is not, you know, healthy for society. These neighborhoods are not. Are definitely less participatory in civic engagement, in civic society. And I think that there's a big problem with how many people are coming to our country in very fast numbers. So I had those opinions, but other than that, I didn't have like, you know, some people are like, I'm Republican so I have to believe in everything in the platform or I'm a Democrat. So blame the entire liberal series of liberal platitudes. And I was very. I just didn't have a lot of other opinions aside from immigration in the Iraq war, which I thought made me a Democrat. So the first person I voted for was Anthony Weiner. He was also running on a pose. So I have a little carve out from that. But I voted for him. And then when I was like 19, I needed a job. I was doing like a lot of like, you know, when you're like young and you just need to make money so you do like, like crazy things. I was, was shadowing a real estate agent for a little while. I was doing a bunch of things to try to find something I was interested in. And I thought of politics and I went to go work for moveon.org they used to have a. It used to be this big anti bush organization if you don't know what it is. They were very against the war. So I was like, oh, perfect, I'm against the war. They're against the war. And they used to people that they hired to basically stand out in corners of Manhattan and ask people for money to do like anti war activism. And I was like, all right, whatever. Probably 18, I probably wasn't even 19 yet. And I was like, all right, that sounds good to me. And beforehand we had to have like all the people there. They got to go to the moveon.org office and walk in and sit on beanbag chairs and have coffee and discuss, you know, why they're there, what motivates them to be political. You know, some events of the day and I get there and everything smells like pod and like feet and it was like disgusting. And you sit down and. And I'm, you know, in a semicircle or circle with these other people who want to be like left wing activists. And they were like, I believe the nation state should be abolished. Like, it was like the craziest shit I've ever heard before in my life. And I was like. And I, of course I started arguing with people because I can't help myself. And I was like, I do not belong here. Like, these people are nuts. I can only imagine those people say now at this point, because this was, you know, 20 years ago. But. And then I went, I was like, okay, this is not for me. And like 2008, I was like, I'm going to vote for who was ever against the war in Iraq and against amnesty for illegal immigrants. And that was Ron Paul. So I went to a Ron Paul meetup group and a Ron Paul. I joined a Ron Paul forum online. And I actually still have friends from the Ron Paul forum from 2008 who I still speak to occasionally. And then I read, started reading. We talked about constitutional limited government, things I never thought of before, and Austrian economics and the gold standard. And it was just fascinating to. Definitely piqued my curiosity. And then on a very boring family vacation, I decided to buy some audiobooks and I bought Ann Coulter's book and Pat Buchanan's book. And there was just really no going back ever after that. So that was my little. And there was also like a lot of religious movement in my life at that time as well. So there was a lot going on. But no, I definitely was. I was not always conservative, but I was not always deeply political. And the one consistency in my life is I was going to say we're war in Iraq. I was against amnesty for illegal immigrants and I still don't have opinions on a lot of things that I don't jump into. I don't need to get into the fray about a million things I know there's a lot I don't know about and I don't really care about them. So I only talk about things I'm interested in. Anyway, thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you like this podcast, please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast. Wherever you get your podcast, give me a five star review. If you really like this episode and and I will see you guys on Monday.

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[Cynthia Littleton]

There'S a lot going on in Hollywood. How are you supposed to stay on top of it all? Variety has the solution. Take 20 minutes out of your day and listen to the new daily Variety podcast for breaking entertainment news and expert perspectives.

[Ryan Burge]

Where do you see the business actually heading?

[Cynthia Littleton]

Featuring the iconic journalists of Variety and hosted by co editor in chief Cynthia Littleton.

[Ryan Graduski]

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[Cynthia Littleton]

Open your free iHeartradio app, search daily Variety, and listen now.

[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at o d o o dot com. That's o d o o com.

[Ryan Graduski]

This is an iHeart podcast.