I have a User model, a Post model, and an Interest model. Using User has_many posts through interests Using User has_many interests Using Post has_many users through interests Using Post has_many interests Using Interest belongs to Post Using Interest belongs to User Application_Controller is as follows: class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base before_filter :login_from_cookie before_filter :find_user_interests helper :all # include all helpers, all the time session :session_key = '_blah_session' include AuthenticatedSystem def find_user_interests @user_interests = current_user ? current_user.interests : [] true end Application.html.erb has as follows: <%= render :partial = "users/interests", :object = @user_interests % _interests.html.erb partial is as follows: ul <% unless current_user.nil? then -% <% @user_interests.each do |interest| -% li<%= interest.post.title %/li <% end % <% end -% /ul Given all this when I at localhost:3000/posts/1 my partial shows up fine, but when in localhost:3000/posts I get an error "undefined method `title' for nil:NilClass" thus an error in the line li<%= interest.post.title %/li shown above in the _interests.html.erb partial. What the heck would be the issue? TIA end