Daniel: Alright Sophia, we’re diving into a book today that’s been described as both heartwarming and wildly impractical. So, to kick us off, give me your five-word review of Bob Goff’s Everybody, Always. Sophia: Okay, five words. Here we go: "Sounds lovely. Also, completely terrifying." What about you? Daniel: I’m going with: "Whimsical stories, dangerously practical love." And I think our reviews perfectly capture the tension at the heart of this book. Sophia: Dangerously practical love. I like that. It’s not a phrase you hear every day. So, for our listeners, we are talking about Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People by Bob Goff. Daniel: Exactly. And to understand this book, you have to understand Bob Goff. This isn't some theologian in an ivory tower. This is a guy who was a practicing lawyer for 25 years, then one day just walked into his firm and quit to become a full-time "encourager." Sophia: He just... quit? To encourage people? Who does that? Daniel: Bob Goff does. He's also the Honorary Consul to the Republic of Uganda, where he's deeply involved in human rights work. So when he tells these almost fairytale-like stories, they're grounded in a life of very real, very high-stakes action. It’s this mix of profound whimsy and serious conviction that makes the book so unique. Sophia: That context is fascinating. It makes the title, Everybody, Always, feel less like a sweet platitude and more like a battle-tested philosophy. It’s one thing to say we should love everyone, but it’s another to hear it from someone who has spent time in war zones and prisons. Daniel: Precisely. And it all starts with a fundamental shift in how we even think about love. He argues it’s not really something we do. Sophia: What else is it? A feeling? A nice thought? Daniel: It's an identity. And that’s the first big, challenging idea we have to wrestle with.

Daniel: Goff tells this incredible story in the prologue. He’d just finished the first draft of this very book. He was in San Francisco visiting a friend who runs a ministry in the inner city. They parked their van, went inside to help wash dishes, and when they came back out, the van's windows were smashed. Sophia: Oh no. Don't tell me. Daniel: Everything was gone. Luggage, wallets, phones... and the laptop. The laptop with the only copy of his manuscript. It wasn't backed up. The entire book was gone. Sophia: That’s a writer’s absolute worst nightmare. I would have had a complete meltdown. What did he do? Daniel: Well, after the initial shock, he had this profound realization. He writes, and I love this quote, "It’s given me a lot of comfort knowing we’re all rough drafts of the people we’re still becoming." Instead of seeing it as a catastrophic loss, he saw it as an opportunity to write a better version. He had to start over, but he realized he was a different person now, and the book would be different too. Sophia: Wow. To find a life lesson in that moment of crisis is incredible. It’s one thing to have grace for a typo, but for a whole lost manuscript? That’s next level. Daniel: And that’s his whole point! He says, "God doesn’t want us to just study Him like He’s an academic project. He wants us to become love." The goal isn't to perform loving acts perfectly, like checking boxes on a divine to-do list. The goal is to undergo an identity shift where love becomes your default operating system. Losing the book was a real-time test of that. Was he just a guy who writes about love, or was he someone who was becoming love, someone who could see even this disaster through a lens of grace? Sophia: That makes so much sense. It’s less about the action and more about the person performing the action. But, Daniel, that’s a beautiful way to have grace for yourself. The book’s title is Everybody, Always. How does this "rough draft" idea apply when you're dealing with other people? Especially, as he puts it, "creepy people"? Daniel: Ah, you’ve hit on the first big challenge. He’s very clear about this. He tells a story about realizing he was avoiding people who made him uncomfortable, the ones he’d label as "creepy." He realized that in doing so, he was preventing himself from actually meeting Jesus, who consistently hung out with the outcasts and the difficult. Sophia: Okay, but there’s a difference between being loving and being unsafe. How does he square that? You can’t just invite everyone into your life without discernment. Daniel: He agrees. He’s not advocating for recklessness. He makes a crucial distinction. He says becoming love doesn't mean you stop having a front door. It means you stop building walls. It's about being kind and open, but not being a fool. He talks about how fear and insecurity are what cause us to build those walls and judge people. We’re afraid of being taken advantage of, or of being uncomfortable. Sophia: That’s a very human fear. Daniel: It is. But he argues that our true identity isn't in our job, our accomplishments, or how safe we keep ourselves. Our true identity is found in how we love. And if we only love the easy-to-love people, we’re missing the entire point. He has this killer line: "Burning down others’ opinions doesn’t make us right. It makes us arsonists." He’s constantly pushing us to choose kindness over being correct, to choose connection over self-protection. Sophia: So becoming love is an internal transformation that then changes how you interact with the world, even the parts of it that creep you out. It’s not about forcing yourself to do something, but about being someone who can respond with love naturally. Daniel: Exactly. It’s a shift from behavior modification to identity transformation. And once that shift starts, it changes your entire approach to relationships, which leads directly to the next big idea in the book: the power of just showing up.

Sophia: Okay, so if we’re "becoming love," what does that look like in practice? It still feels a bit abstract. Daniel: This is where Goff gets incredibly concrete. It looks like radical availability. In a world obsessed with productivity, schedules, and boundaries, Goff’s life seems to be a testament to the power of the interruption. It's about presence over plans. Sophia: I’m intrigued and, as a planner, slightly horrified. Give me an example. Daniel: The story of his neighbor, Carol, is just beautiful and heartbreaking. He and his wife Maria intentionally chose their neighbors. They sold their house to Carol, a widow, because they wanted to "do life" with her, not just a transaction. She became part of their family. Sophia: That’s already a pretty counter-cultural way to approach homeownership. Daniel: It gets better. Years later, Carol is diagnosed with cancer and is terrified. So what does Bob do? He doesn't send a casserole or a thoughtful card. He goes out and buys a set of walkie-talkies. He puts one in his house and gives the other to Carol. Sophia: Walkie-talkies? Like when we were kids? Daniel: Exactly. He said it instantly changed the dynamic. They weren't a 50-something guy and a sick neighbor anymore. They were two kids on an adventure. They’d talk all day. "What are you having for lunch? Over." "Watching a movie. Over." It was simple, constant presence. He says, "When you’re together with someone you love, you get to decide where you are, even if it’s different from where you actually are." The walkie-talkies let them escape the reality of cancer and just be friends. Sophia: That’s so incredibly moving. It wasn't a grand gesture. It was a small, consistent act of presence. It wasn't a plan; it was a connection. Daniel: And that’s the core of it. He says, "God doesn’t just give us promises; He gives us each other." His love for Carol wasn't an item on a calendar. It was a constant, open channel. It was availability. Sophia: That reminds me of his friendship with Adrian, the TSA agent. That story floored me. It wasn't a scheduled meeting. It was a friendship built in three-minute increments in a security line. Daniel: Tell our listeners about that. It’s such a powerful illustration of this idea. Sophia: Bob flies a lot, and he kept noticing this one TSA agent, Adrian, who was just unfailingly kind to every single stressed-out traveler. Instead of just appreciating it silently, Bob walked up to him one day and thanked him. Adrian was so moved he gave him a big hug. That started a friendship. Every time Bob flew, they’d chat for a few minutes. They built a real bond, three minutes at a time. Daniel: And it wasn't just superficial. They shared their lives. Adrian told Bob about his dream of buying a house for his wife, Patricia. And then, tragically, right after he finally bought the house, Adrian died of a stroke. Sophia: It’s heartbreaking. But what’s so powerful is that Bob didn't need a grand plan to have a profound impact on Adrian's life, and Adrian on his. He just needed to be present and available in those small, repeated moments. He didn't need an agenda. He just needed to show up. Daniel: And that’s the challenge to our modern way of living, isn't it? We schedule coffee a month out. We protect our time like it's a fortress. Goff seems to suggest that the most beautiful things in life happen in the interruptions, in the unplanned moments where we choose to be available. Sophia: It’s a radical idea. But being available for a kind TSA agent or a sick neighbor is one thing. The book then takes this massive, terrifying leap. It asks us to be available for our enemies. Daniel: Yes, it does. And that is the final, and most difficult, frontier of becoming love.

Sophia: Okay, Daniel, this is where the book goes from inspiring to, frankly, unbelievable. Loving difficult people is a challenge. Loving your enemies feels like a whole different category of existence. And Goff doesn't just talk about it in theory. He lives it. Let's talk about the witch doctors. Daniel: This is the story that defines the book for me. Through his work in Uganda, Bob got involved in combating child sacrifice, a horrific practice carried out by some witch doctors. He worked with the justice system to prosecute a particularly evil witch doctor named Kabi, who had brutally mutilated Bob’s adopted son, Charlie. Kabi was sentenced to life in prison. Sophia: A just and righteous outcome. End of story, right? Daniel: For most of us, yes. But not for Bob Goff. He starts thinking about Jesus’s command to "love your enemies." And he realizes he can't just agree with that idea; he has to do something. So he starts a school for witch doctors. Sophia: Hold on. He starts a school... for the people who practice child sacrifice? What on earth do you teach in a witch doctor school? Daniel: You teach them how to read and write. He and his team would go into these remote villages, confront the witch doctors with the legal consequences of their actions, and then offer them a different path. He would literally get on his knees and wash their feet—an act of profound humility. Then he’d invite them to his school, where the textbooks were the Bible and his first book, Love Does. He wasn't teaching them to be better witch doctors; he was teaching them to be literate, to be loved, and to see a different way. Sophia: I’m speechless. That is so far beyond what most of us would consider possible. Washing their feet? After what they’ve done? Daniel: He says, "People who are becoming love don’t just use tough talk; they do difficult things." And he argues that "There is no love without justice, but there is no justice without love." He didn't ignore their crimes. He worked to stop them. But he also offered them a bridge to a new life. Sophia: This is where I really struggle, Daniel. How is this not incredibly dangerous and naive? Where is the line between radical love and enabling evil? Daniel: I think the line is in the action and the transformation. The proof is in the outcome. He tells a story about getting a call late one night from two of his witch doctor students. They told him a child had just been abducted for a sacrifice. They asked him what they should do. Bob, half asleep, just said, "What does love do?" Four hours later, he gets a series of texts. The first: "We’ve rescued the child." The second: "He’s with his mother." And the final one just said: "Love does." Sophia: Wow. So the very people who were the problem became the solution. They were transformed. Daniel: They were transformed because someone was willing to engage with them, to love them when they were enemies. It’s the ultimate test of the book's premise. It’s not about a feeling. It’s not about being nice. It’s about difficult, transformative, world-changing action. It’s about visiting Kabi, the man who hurt his son, in a maximum-security prison and, over time, coming to see him not as a monster, but as a broken person in need of grace. Sophia: And Kabi eventually asks Bob for forgiveness and finds faith himself. It’s an almost impossibly redemptive arc. Daniel: It is. And it proves that this idea of loving "everybody, always" isn't just a sweet sentiment for a coffee mug. It's a powerful, disruptive force for change in the most broken places in the world.

Daniel: When you put it all together, you see this clear, escalating path. It starts with an internal identity shift—deciding to become love, not just do loving things. Sophia: Right, moving from the checklist to the core of who you are. The "rough draft" idea. Daniel: Exactly. And once your identity starts to change, it naturally leads to a new posture towards the world: one of radical presence and availability. You start showing up for the Carols and the Adrians in your life, not because it's on your schedule, but because you're just... there. Sophia: The walkie-talkies and the three-minute airport chats. It’s love in the small, unplanned moments. Daniel: And that foundation, that new identity and posture of presence, is what gives you the capacity to face the final frontier: actively engaging and loving your enemies. You can't just jump to washing a witch doctor's feet. It's the culmination of a life spent practicing love on every level. Sophia: The book is less of a how-to guide and more of a "what if" prompt. Goff keeps asking, "What if we weren’t afraid anymore?" It’s not about having a perfect plan or all the answers. It's about, as he says in another story, just "landing the plane" with the information you have and trusting that you know enough. Daniel: It’s a powerful and deeply challenging message. It’s easy to read these whimsical stories and just be entertained, but the underlying call to action is profound. It asks you to fundamentally re-evaluate how you interact with every single person in your life. Sophia: It really does. It makes you wonder, who is the "creepy person" or the "enemy" in our own lives that we're building walls against? Maybe it’s not a witch doctor, maybe it’s a difficult coworker, a family member we’ve cut off, or a political group we despise. The principles are the same. We'd love to hear our listeners' thoughts on this. Who is the 'everybody' you find it hardest to love? Find us on our socials and share your story. We’re all in this together. Daniel: A perfect way to put it. Because in the end, Goff’s message is simple, even if it’s not easy. Love everybody. Always. Daniel: This is Aibrary, signing off.