What did you do on inauguration day? If you’re like us, you were seeking shelter from the impending storm, some sort of diversion to preserve your mental health before the inevitable onslaught to come. At Unreasonable, we went into the studio as a team to discuss the sunsetting of the podcast, what we all plan to do now, and to vent. And we all have very different responses to our current situation; one of them might align with yours, whether it’s disillusion, rage, nihilism, or a holding on ...
As Unreasonable's production comes to a close, and American democratic norms shift towards theocracy, we sought perspective, a calmer voice that might, while acknowledging the darkness, also offer a glimmer of hope. Andrew Seidel is no stranger to Unreasonable listeners. He is Vice President of Strategic Communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a constitutional attorney who’s defended the First Amendment for more than a decade. He is the author of two books:...
As we enter what promises to be an era of American-style Christo-fascism, it's hard for secular people -- people of reason, of science, who believe that faith is earned by evidence -- to not be cynical of those whose deeply held yet unproveable (indeed, improbable) beliefs will soon be determining our laws and dictating our behaviors. Yet, without hope there is only despair. So as we turn the page on 2024, a year of frustration followed by cautious optimism followed by grief for some/surrend...
Whatever your position is on Israel, on Zionism, on Hamas' attacks on October 7, 2023 or Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, it's undeniable that Israel had an outsized influence on our recent presidential election. And it's ironic that our greatest ally in the Middle East, that tiny state described as the only functioning democracy in the region, may well have been a major contributor to the undoing of American democracy. How did the promise of Israel become the problem of Is...
Despite the New Testament’s recording of its main character making a clear distinction between what man owes his government (taxes) and his lord (devotion), in real life it’s never quite worked out that way. Churches have been tax-exempt since time immemorial. Today, the very idea of asking houses of worship to pay their fair share is a non-starter. Much like asking this country to elect a woman president. At a time when the IRS is stretched thin and overwhelmed by its own complexity, religi...
In 2017, like many financial journalists, Gareth Gore went to Spain to report on the sudden collapse of the global bank, Banco Popular. And, like every other reporter, he missed the real story. That is, until he returned to Spain two years later. As he recalls, "It was sheer luck, ...that I picked up a newspaper and saw that there was this scramble from people to get their money back. And it was only when I discovered some of the more sinister links later on that it became a wider stor...
Early last week we recorded an interview with illustrator Jesse Duquette. Then we got the word over the weekend: Meta not only shut his account down, but permanently deleted its posts and eradicated his community of over 200,000+ followers. Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaminions decided Duquette’s incisive and hard-hitting cartoons were just too much for Instagram. (Meta is the company that started out simply as Facebook but now includes Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp as well as other properties.) This ...
Pierce Watkins is a Zen-master of epistemology. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, epistemology is “the theory of knowledge and understanding, esp. with regard to its methods, validity and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.” In other words: how do we come to know what we know, and believe what we believe, whether it’s true or not? At what point do our inherent biases take control of our brains? Pierce's current project, Compassionate Epistemology, is fas...
Just when you thought you had a handle on all of the Christian Nationalist efforts to reshape America into their biblical paradise (think New Apostolic Reformation, Seven Mountains Dominionism, Jericho Marches, The Federalist Society, The Heritage Foundation, TurningPointUSA, Project 2025), along comes Ziklag, a secret society of mega millionaires created to help sway our elections toward a Christian Nationalist agenda that's also, (get this!) a tax-exempt 501(c)3! With a name right out of t...
After a long long week of activity in Chicago, our friends Sarah Levin (Secular Strategies) and Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist), graciously agreed to connect for an exclusive conversation for Unreasonable listeners, recapping what they saw and heard at the Democratic National Convention, especially from a secular perspective, since over 30 percent of the Democratic party is non-religious. There was a lot of god talk coming from the podium. And we get it: Democrats have the opportunity to draw...
The Black Church is as American as anything you can name. For so many, the promise of a glorious afterlife gave, and gives, succor to a lifetime of hardship here on Earth. The influence of its sacred music is directly linked to the secular music we all listen to and enjoy today, from Jazz to Soul to R&B to Rock nd Roll. And for that we can be grateful. But despite the prevalance of church culture in the African-American community, and American society as a whole, many Black people rejec...
Last month, David and Christina attended the annual Secular Student Alliance conference, held this year in sweltering Little Rock, Arkansas. It's a gathering of college students from campuses around the country seeking community and inspiration. That opportunity is especially important at a time when, being reason-based, one feels increasingly outnumbered. They presented our “So You Want to Be An Organizer” workshop and conducted a series of run-and-gun interviews, collaring spe...
This was an especially nutty week in America. And none of it had to do with a particular televised debate or even the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity. This week the state of Louisiana mandated that The Ten Commandments be displayed in every one of its public school classrooms. In Oklahoma, in the wake of the state’s Supreme Court decision to disallow the establishment of the country’s first publicly-funded religious charter school, Ryan Waters, the state’s education supe...
Kadida Kenner and her organization The New Pennsylvania Project — modeled after Stacy Abrams’ New Georgia Project — is focused on engaging with and registering voters in communities whose doors are rarely knocked. NPP is doing a tremendous job across the Commonwealth, and her insights into the current mindset of voters, particular minority voters 35 and under, is an important one that you should hear. And that, hopefully, will inspired you to get involved. Links to references from this episo...
In this special edition of Unreasonable, guest host Olivia Goudeau, national organizing manager of the Secular Student Alliance (SSA), talks to Washington Post columnist and author Kate Cohen about her new book, “We Of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (and Maybe You Should Too)." Neither fit the conservative invention of “angry atheist.” They are both kind and thoughtful women who come from different backgrounds and different generations, yet arrived at a place of peace, able...
Elizabeth and Gabe Rutan-Ram had fostered numerous children before they decided to adopt one, a child from Florida identified with a disability. If they were a monied couple, they could have gone through a private adoption agency spending $30,000 or more. Instead, and more in keeping with their means, they opted to take their state’s mandatory foster-parent training program and home-study certification through the Holston United Methodist Home for Children, a child-placement agency that recei...
In the House of Representatives there are a handful of secular politicians (some more out than others) who work toward enacting laws uninspired by providence and more by simple reason and innate human morality. Jared Huffman is a congressman from California. A former Mormon preacher and now self-defined humanist, he co-founded and co-chairs (along with Rep. Jamie Raskin) the Congressional Freethought Caucus, created “to promote sound public policy based on reason, science and moral values, wh...
Erica Coray and Zach Pekelis are attorneys working to limit the deleterious impacts from religious accommodations. Their SRF panel “Past, Present and Upcoming Battles Over Health Mandates and Religious Accommodations” examined the law governing religious exemptions from public health requirements and the impact these cases have on the future of religious exceptionalism in law and society. They talked to Unreasonable about the real-life threats posed by religious accommodations, the cynical us...
Erin Reed is a transgender woman, public speaker, journalist and activist who tracks anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the world, tirelessly reporting on issues concerning the trans community. Her immensely influential TikTok account has over 445,000 followers and her daily Substack, Erin In The Morning, has more than 54,000 subscribers. On twitter alone, her works has been viewed over 250 million times. That’s reach. All told, her content has been viewed hundreds of millions of times wi...
On June 12, 2016, life changed for Brandon Wolf. He crouched in a bathroom while a gunman opened fire at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub, killing his best friends, Drew Leinonen & Juan Guerrero, and 47 others. Rather than be swallowed by the anger and fear of tragedy, Brandon set out to honor the victims’ legacies with action. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Brandon co-founded The Dru Project, a nonprofit organization that works to empower youth and provide future leaders in the...