Geeks Without God Talk about CONvergence
This year’s pre-CONvergence episode is a bit earlier than planned because of our 100th episode church extravaganza coming up in a couple weeks. Still, CONvergence represents our podcast’s second birthday and we can’t help but be a little bit excited to celebrate that blessed event once again.
Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word blessed.
The three of us spend this week’s episode talking about the panels we’re a part of and some of the other things about the con that have us excited.
We did three CONvergence episodes last year because we all really love the con. This year, we are holding ourselves to one. I hope you listen and enjoy!
Geeks Without God Talk About Atheism and Comedy
When we were off at Die Laughing, we snuck back to my hotel room for an hour to record an episode of Geeks Without God with Ben San Del.
Ben did a stand up show at the Minnesota Fringe a couple years ago and he spent a fair amount of time in that show talking about his atheism. I found it interesting that a comedian was so up front about that particularly divisive issue and have been wanting to get him on our podcast for a while.
The stars finally aligned and we had a great conversation with Ben about how he tailors his show depending on where he is performing and when he uses the soft touch to introduce skepticism into his comedy.
It was a long time coming, but I think the episode was worth the wait.
Putting it Together – Podcasting
Putting it Together is my Monday “artist talking about art stuff blog”. The title comes from “Sunday in the Park with George,” the best (and possibly only) musical that is entirely dedicated to an artist talking about his art. Is that pretentious enough?
Two years ago, I knew of Podcasting as a thing other people did. I didn’t see the value. Well, I’ve come a long way to understanding why it is a benefit to me as a performer and as a creator.
A global energy crisis of epic proportions notwithstanding, the internet is here to stay. As a creator, I have to remember that when I produce a play, my audience may be local. However, there are a great many other things I do that can have a global reach. The Internet is the tool I use to reach those people.
Podcasting is a way to get yourself into other people’s lives in a way that no social media outlet can. It reaches back to days when people spent hours of their lives listening to the radio.
Writing is great but you lose so much nuance when you write a blog post. Sure, your grammar is (hopefully) better and there aren’t all sorts of awkward pauses while you figure out what to write next but you also lose inflection, tone, cadence, and so many other qualities that make speech a far more effective way to connect emotionally with an audience.
Podcasting allows you to talk to your audience. It allows them to get to know you in a far more personal way than a bunch of 140 character tweets or thousand word blogs.
Geeks Without God and Comics
This week’s episode of Geeks Without God is with friend and CONvergence co-founder Christopher Jones. I don’t know how it came to pass that so many of the co-founders of the convention are not religious but it is entirely possible we were able to do what we did because we had Sunday mornings free.
I can’t take credit for that. Molly said that.
Anyway, Chris has been a professional comic book artist for his entire adult life and so we spent most of the episode talking about his career in the comic industry and he even told us about a very cool project that he’s got coming up.
I haven’t gotten to see enough of Chris since he and I left the CONvergence board. It was nice to have him in the house again. Enjoy the episode!
Geeks Without God Tackles the Creationism vs. Evolution “Debate”
This week’s Geeks Without God was about as timely as our podcast gets. We talk about the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye that took place last Tuesday. I have to be honest and admit we didn’t actually watch the debate because we had strong issues with the fact it was even taking place.
Were we right to judge what took place without actually watching it? Well, given that our objections had little to do with the content of the debate, I think that we had some valid points to make.
Creationism is something that annoys the hell out of me because it is completely dishonest and I’m pretty sure it comes out in this week’s podcast. So if you want to listen to me (and Molly and Nick) get pretty vocally angry, I’m guessing you’ll like this week’s show.
You can listen to it here.
Geeks Without God Talks about the Fringe Festival
My life is about to become all Fringe Festival all the time so it seemed appropriate that this week’s Geeks Without God touched on the theatrical orgy that is the Minnesota Fringe. We brought back former guest Joshua Humphrey to engage in Fringe Nerd conversation.
To be fair, Josh and I are the fringe nerds. Molly and Nick patiently listened to what we had to say and asked really good questions. The conversation covers the origin of the Fringe, the benefits to local theatre companies and some of the challenges as well.
Then Josh got to ask us five questions and they required a fair amount of thought. I don’t know what it is with guests showing up and making us think, but it needs to stop!
If you would like to listen, you can do so here!
A Geeks Without God Double Date
We finally managed to get my wife scheduled for an episode of Geeks Without God! Pat joined us to talk about television, which is a subject that has been rather lightly covered on previous GWG podcasts. Sometimes our 30 minute format means that we only scratch the surface of a particular topic and this episode is a fine example of that problem. We briefly touched on a lot of different atheist characters and how they are depicted. It is a broad topic worthy of a lot more discussion.
I imagine we’ll have to ask Pat back.
Geeks Without God Talks about Nuclear War
As we’ve progressed through our first year recording Geeks Without God, we’ve seen a lot of changes in how we schedule our episodes. Early on, we did a geeky boner episode every month. We didn’t do it because we were lazy but we wanted to make sure that we never forgot about the “Geeks” part in “Geeks Without God.” However, when you do podcasts about stuff like your favorite convention, A fundamentalist Board Game, and Dr. Who, you find that you are covering the “Geeks” pretty well.
But still, it is a lot of fun to just sit down and geek out for a while. This week’s podcast is one of those.
Geekery is a lot broader than movies or comics or TV shows, though. We talked about stuff like running a half marathon, playing games on a 3DS and, of course, National Parks.
Also note: we have a little blurb for Camp Quest Minnesota at the end of the podcast. They still have openings for their Summer Camp!
Geeks Without God Gets Reflective about Comedy
This week’s episode features emergency fill-in guest Joseph Scrimshaw. Joseph is in the midst of a big Kickstarter campaign so it seemed like a great time to feature him on the podcast. We got him to tell us all about the Kickstarter (of course) and then we talked about Joseph’s favorite obsession, comic theory.
Speaking of Joseph’s Kickstarter, my band, The Dregs, will be contributing a song to his Flaw Fest album assuming it gets funded so now I’m not just excited because I like the idea, I’m also excited because I want to write a song about guilt for Joseph’s album.
He also decided that Bugs Bunny is an atheist and I’m all for putting Bugs in our court.
So hey, listen to the podcast and support the Kickstarter! It’s what friends do!
Geeks Without God gets Artsy Fartsy
I gotta be honest. I could have talked about this week’s topic for a lot longer than we did. Our jumping off point was a discussion of a jackass that Molly had as a professor in college. From there, we talked about the idea of aesthetic beauty and what art we all found attractive or interesting.
Of course, given the theme of the podcast, we also talked about whether or not religion could be afforded any intrinsic value because of the art and architecture that has been created in the name of religion.
It is all very philosophical and involves discussions of trips to Europe, artistic styles and even comic books. Have a listen if that is your thing!
Grail Diary 