Geeks Without God Chat it up at a Convention
This past weekend, my Geeks Without God compatriots and I were asked to host a panel at the Skep-Tech convention this weekend. Thinking it was cool to be invited as guests to a convention, we happily accepted. We were given an all-star lineup that included Chelsea du Fresne, an evolutionary biologist and one of the convention organizers, Greta Christina, author of “Why are you Atheists so Angry: 99 Things that Piss off the Godless,” Tim Farley, creator of What’s the Harm and Zach Weinersmith, writer and illustrator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
We were a little unsure of what to do for a panel so we decided to just do a talk about skepticism and technology. It was interesting but of course immediately after the panel, I came up with a much better topic! We should have talked about skepticism and entertainment!
Damn it!
I hope they ask us back next year (if there is a next year) so we can do that.
So there were some technical challenges recording on this one. I had to record from a table mic in a gigantic room where the panelists were using microphones. For all the challenges, the sound turned out far better than I feared.
There are a few edits on this one because a few audience members asked fairly long questions and they were too far away from the mic to be understood. I cut a few of those out just to get rid of what was effectively dead air.
So listen if you like! Our panelists were super interesting!
Geeks Without God Talks About Conventions!
This week, we brought our friend Matt Savelkoul back to the podcast so we could talk about conventions and atheism. We are appearing at the Skep-Tech conference this weekend so the episode works as sort of a set-up for that appearance. Actually, we spend most of the podcast talking about CONvergence because that is the convention all of us know the best. Given the breadth of the topic, it’s pretty amazing that we managed to keep the podcast under one hour.
Matt also gets to ask us five questions because he’s been on the podcast before. I gotta say that I love having return guests because as much as I enjoy our five questions, I enjoy the change up when someone gets to ask their own questions because it’s different every time. I also like spending time talking about what I like. That’s why I’m co-hosting a podcast, I expect.
One final bonus, if you listen to the podcast, you can find out how to win a free copy of Atheist Voices of Minnesota! That’s cool, right?
Geeks Without God talks about AA Again
After we talked to Marc Baker for last week’s episode, we sat down and recorded an episode with our friend Zach Nyhus. Like Marc, Zach is a recovering alcoholic who has found a road to recovery in AA. He’s also an atheist who was put off by how much god there was in the 12 steps. However, he found a solution in a secular AA group.
It makes a great companion piece to last week’s episode but it also stands on its own quite well. For someone who is struggling with addiction but put off by the religious nature of AA, this is a really terrific way to discover what options might be available to you.
Geeks Without God tackles Alcoholism, part 1
We took a different approach to the next couple of episodes of Geeks Without God. We have two friends who are both recovering alcoholics and we wanted to talk to them about their experience. See, AA includes a lot of talk about giving yourself over to god to fight your addiction and how do you deal with that if you are an atheist/agnostic? Rather that the two of them separately, we recorded each podcast with one of them as the “primary” guest and the other one listening in. That allowed for both of them to contribute to a particular conversation.
It was a really good way to approach the topic, I think. Listen to this week’s episode and decide for yourself!
Geeks Without God Explore a Creationist Science Fair
This week’s episode features newly “out” atheist Rob Callhan, who recently visited a creationist science fair. While we’d hoped for stories of truly horrifying science, there was unfortunately very little to be discovered. Instead, Rob told us about the organization that organizes the fair and their scary rules for the kids to follow. Rob also shares his experience when he came out as an atheist to write this article. It is rather elightening to listen to him talk about his experience because while it is typical, it is not what most might expect.
Rob is another great guest and we were very pleased to have him. Thanks, Rob!
Geeks Without God Explores Another Movie
So this week, we decided to watch “Religulous;” Bill Maher’s film about religion, and record a podcast about it. Molly took copious notes on the movie and, I have to say, made me look like a complete douche because I didn’t actually take any notes at all. I just watched the movie like a freaking amateur. I think that for all of us, the movie represented something of a turning point in our rejection of the god hypothesis.
For me, the movie represented the first time I really understood the stakes of failing to say that I was an atheist. Every time I chose not to simply be up front about who I was and what I believed, I was making it that much harder for the next person who felt the same way. Maher wasn’t afraid to say that he rejected religion and it made it easier for me to say the same thing.
So this week’s podcast is about our thoughts about the film. Enjoy!
Geeks Without God is Extra Geeky this Week
Our friend Matt Savelkoul joined us for this week’s podcast and after some talk about how he came to atheism, we got down and dirty with Dr. Who. We talked about all the ways the show is presented as existing in a secular universe. The whole conversation gets pretty geeky. That, of course, is the whole concept behind the podcast so I think we were pretty successful. Even if you aren’t a Who fan, it is a great conversation about secularism in popular media. And Dr. Who. We do talk about Dr. Who. Quite a bit.
Geeks Without God go to Church?
This week’s Geeks Without God episode is an interview with our friend Bob Alberti, who attends a Unitarian Church. And yet he’s an atheist. We talked with him about his experience as a Unitarian Universalist and why he wanted to go to a church given that he most definitely does not believe in god. We’ve actually been doing a passingly decent job of staying on topic with our guests lately. Listen in and see how we do this week.
Geeks Without God Cover the Oscars!
Another week, another podcast! I was pretty excited to record this week’s episode because we were doing a geeky boner episode and I had a pretty big one. Heh heh. Yes, I know I can be pretty immature somethimes.
This week, I got to talk Oscars! Yes, I know they are kind of ridiculous and they always seem to be voting for movies that a different generation enjoys and the film that wins the Best Picture Oscar is rarely one of the top five films that came out in a particular year.
But I geek out over them anyway. And Molly and Nick were very patient with me. They allowed me to geek out about them for a very long time. So thanks, Nick and Molly!
You can listen for yourself and decide if they should have shut me up sooner!
Geeks Without God Goes Back in Time
This week, Geeks Without God enters the wayback machine to have a conversation with Ronn Bauman of the Tortuga Twins. We recorded the episode several months ago during the Minnesota Renaissance festival and saved it until just now.
Actually, we had recorded our first episode with Ronn and it went so well, we all decided to record a second episode right away. We knew we wanted to save it for a while but we probably ended up waiting a little longer than we originally planned. We waited so long, in fact, that the five questions rule he created actually debuted before we aired the podcast that establishes the rule!
The rule Ronn created was that return guests have to ask the hosts five questions.
Before we get to that, though, we talked about zombies and guns and raising your kids as atheists. It was a rambling and lively conversation. Please enjoy!
Grail Diary 