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Feeling overwhelmed by the relentless attack on American Democracy by the Religious Right? Welcome to Unreasonable: sane conversations for a country that's lost its friggin' mind. But Unreasonable is more than a podcast. It’s the start of a movement to reverse the inexorable rise of religious fanaticism taking over our government and our lives, on issues from public education, to women’s reproductive health, to the mainstreaming of loud-and-proud racism. Here we not only learn together what in the world's going on with our country, we develop an action plan to move America forward. It’s time for all of us who believe in the Separation of Church and State to unite — as the majority of Americans we are — in the name of democracy, common sense and kindness. Is that really so unreasonable?
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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, whi...
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 use...
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 with o...
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 LGB...
By his own definition, Todd Stiefel is weathly. He just is. That’s not a judgment, just a fact. When his family business was sold and the non-compete clause kicked in, he was left financially secure and without a career. His years of preparation to lead the company were rendered unnecessary. One day he was Chief Strategy Officer of Stiefel Laboratories. Next, he’s searching for ways to protect, and make the best use of, his windfall. He created the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, whose missio...
Like just about everyone we know, Jason Berlin woke up one morning in November 2016 and realized he had to change his life. Being a writer for a reality comedy TV show was all fun and games. But real life had taken a dark turn with the election of a new president who, let’s just say, was not Hillary Clinton.He became an activist. And now, his grassroots organization, Field Team 6, is a political powerhouse, registering new voters around the country. Their slogan is "Register Democra...
LIVE FROM SRF is a new limited series from Unreasonable, recorded at the 2024 Summit for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., April 13-16.We kick off the series with the event's host, Rachel Laser, Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s formidable president and CEO. In this conversation she sets the tone for the amazing and illuminating conversations coming your way by describing the political landscape, the measures AU is taking against religious intrusions on our secular de...
What if young people took their collective future into their own hands, cultivated and supported their own candidates, rather than relying on the elders who appear increasingly out-of-touch with their concerns and will inevitably disappoint them?That sounds promising, until you discover the incredibly low voter registration rates among high schoolers arriving at the age that was once considered a major milestone: voting in your first election.Culture warriors have made it so that the simplest...
David and Christina talk to one of the country’s leading lights in the area of American constitutional law and dean of Berkeley Law, about the various interpretations of the First Amendment’s two religion clauses; freedom of speech in the age of artificial intelligence and political deep-fakes; staying positive and vigilant even as an overreaching Supreme Court undermines the constitution it is sworn to uphold; judicial term limits and expansion of the Court; the electoral college, even where...
As a constitutional lawyer, Andrew Seidel has fought on the front lines in the battle to protect and preserve the separation of church and state. He’s written two books on the scourge of Christian Nationalism: “The Founding Myth” provides a detailed history of the false notion that America was founded as a Christian nation, how the myth began and who’s perpetuating it today. “American Crusade” focuses on how Christian Nationalists have won incremental battles in the courts for over ...
Pennsylvania State Representative Chris Rabb represents the 200th district of Philadelphia County, which includes, as he calls it, The People's Republic of Mount Airy. He is also non-religious and is proudly open about it. We talked to RepRabb about politics, religion, and why the twain should never meet. This one is fast and furious and 100% on point!Thanks for listening! Now follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. And please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at www....
Since Eisenhower, every American president has attended something called the National Prayer Breakfast, hosted by a mysterious and amorphous group called the Fellowship Foundation, or more familiarly, The Family.The Family’s focus, according to our guest, journalist Jonathan Larsen, is to “pursue relationships with people in power and use those relationships to pursue relationships with people in power. Jesus plus nothing. In contrast to the sort of traditional, stereotypical Jesus image of h...
In the lead-up to the 2022 midterms, pollsters uniformly predicted a red wave. This seemed a harmless prediction as our fickle American electorate often engages in buyer’s remorse a mere two years after a presidential election. But what actually happened was the exact opposite of that polling. While not exactly a blue wave, Democrats performed well enough for the election to be considered not just an upset but a full-throated rejection of MAGA.How did the pollsters get it so wrong?And how did...
Since Unreasonable began, we’ve heard of horrifying tales, from the dark money fueling our far-right SCOTUS to the religious impositions on our personal healthcare choices, to the history, mobilization and impact of White Christian Nationalists literally praying for Armageddon.In observance of Halloween — Unreasonable’s highest and holiest of days — we’re revisiting some of our scariest moments and reflecting on what they mean for our future.Enter. If you dare… Thanks for listening! Now ...
“How do you expect this country to ever be anything but in turmoil?”This is the rhetorical question posed by our guest, Gwen Leaffe Carr, executive director of the Carlisle Indian School Project.A relatively unknown chapter in the ongoing tragedy of America’s Native people is the one about the boarding schools designed to erase them. Or, in the words of their architect, Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man." This episode of Unreasonable is dedicated ...
When we give up on our students, especially those in public schools, we relinquish our collective responsibility as stewards of a thriving democracy. After all, knowledge is power. And in a democracy, knowledge is also a birthright. Defunding our public schools, demonizing public school teachers, diverting public funding to private and religious institutions, deprives our kids — soon to be adults — of that power, and assigns to them less than first-class citizenship.To some highly-motivated (...
On the eve of Rosh Hashanah we talk with Paul Golin, executive director of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, an organization which promotes the concept of being Jewish absent a belief in God.But as with so much of Judaism, it's not that simple. Jews and their history are laden with baggage. For starters, is it a religion, a race, an ethnicity or a culture? Are Jews obligated to adhere strictly to biblical scripture or read the Talmud for interpretive guidance?Is marrying out...
Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry.On the one hand, a typical Donald Trump speech is comedy gold. No sentient human actually speaks like that, and the words, not to mention the syntax, are often a spew of laughable preposterousness. (Alec Baldwin was good, but nowhere near as hilarious as the original!) Still, he has an audience that takes him straight, no irony. And then they act out on those words. And then, as a democracy, we want to cry.But as each of our guests have de...
While some politicians — who had never given a thought to God or Christianity or had ever committed an act of forgiveness or charity toward others that anyone could recall — were disingenuously embracing Jesus for their own craven ends, others were working across multiple, nonviolent, nontheistic, and legal approaches to protect children, fight on behalf of women’s bodily autonomy, and litigate to restore true religious freedom and equality for all Americans, regardless of their belief s...
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