heretics.

Stephen Knight is an atheist who has made a name for himself online and in the media as both a friend of comedian Ricky Gervais, and an outspoken critic of woke culture and critical race theory. The host of the Godless Spellchecker podcast, which goes by the Knight Tube on YouTube. Do check out his podcast, he’s had some really big names on it, including Douglas Murray and Sam Harris to Ricky Gervais and…well, me. The lucky so-and-so. I was on his podcast just a couple weeks ago, so do check it out.   We talk about how Ricky – who is a hero of mine – first approached Stephen (link to his Twitter) to come on his podcasts, which makes for a really great story. We also go into the problems with religion, and we talk a lot about class, which is particularly funny and strange in the UK. Stephen is from a working class background in Manchester, and believes that if anything does make us unequal, it is class rather than race or gender. But even so, he wouldn’t want to play that card, as he prefers to judge people as individuals.   I have to respect that my listeners come from a range of backgrounds and viewpoints. This discussion might put some of you off at first, but do stick with it – I don’t think we are that disrespectful to woke culture or religions, and maybe we’ll find some common ground. This podcast came at the opportune moment – just this week, prominent write Julie Burchill had her book about the problems with woke cancel culture…cancelled after she joked about Islam online. And a school in the US is being sued after trying to force white students to publicly recognize their innate racism and privilege, threatening them with failing grades, if they refused to comply. Where does this end, according to Stephen? Well, some pretty dark places. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As we come to the end of a year most of us would be keen to forget, I thought it was time to have a look at…time. Today on the show, I’ve got physicist Julian Barbour, who has a new theory about the Big Bang and time, which he elucidates in his latest book, The Janus Point: A New Theory of Time.This one gets a little more complex than a typical episode of On the Edge with Andrew Gold, so I’m going to break down a few things I think I’ve learned. Firstly, Julian (official website) posits that the old Newtonian view of time is not entirely right, because it puts us inside a box. Thinking outside the box, Julian believes time is not necessarily a thing on a map like some of us thought…the only thing that time is, is a series of changing shapes of the universe. To differentiate between the past and the future, it’s just a case of seeing things like atoms and particles becoming less simple and structured, until complex things like us are able to exist. One of the most amazing parts of Julian’s theory however, is that time goes back to the Big Bang – and then goes the other way. So before the Big Bang is just another timeline going in the other direction. Bit weird, right?I always edit down the interviews a fair bit to make them quick and accessible, so I’ve lost some of Julian’s most intriguing – yet complex – material, so if you are interested in more, make sure to get hold of the Janus Point: A New Theory of Time on Amazon. There, you’ll get to the real thermodynamics and theories and historical stuff.Many of you are going to be fascinated, and I’m proud to have such a remarkable mind on the show. Others of you might find it difficult – I would suggest you stay with it, because we do go into other fun things like aliens, what happens at the end of time, whether it’d be good to live forever, and whether we have free will (or are things all decided for us) in the latter part.If you enjoy the show, please take a look at my Patreon website and consider signing up to a tier. It takes SO much time to get this ready each week, and I appreciate the support a lot. Lots of cool benefits too! Here's that link again, patreon.com/andrewgoldSee acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m honoured to be joined today by one of the UK’s most impressive speakers and mental health advocates in the form of Jonny Benjamin MBE, who made headlines after sparking a national campaign called Find Mike – with the goal of tracking down the man who talked him down from a bridge. Jonny talks candidly about his own experience with schizoaffective disorder, which has led to him hearing a voice in his head that used to take on the form of an angel, before becoming the devil. He’s passionate about mental health and how we all need to talk more openly, and you can find the charity he founded, Beyond, on wearebeyond.org.uk. He’s also created a mental health festival for schools called Now and Beyond. Jonny also tells me how his relatively conservative Jewish upbringing made it harder to talk about his issues, while also feeling he had to keep his homosexuality secret. We also spoke about fellow schizophrenia sufferer Elyn Saks, whose Ted Talk you can find here. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram, both andrewgold_ok, and have a browse of the different perks you can get from a membership on patreon.com/andrewgold --- Episode sponsored by the wonderful Pink Moon Interiors, they really make some great stuff that I've personally visited. Check out and follow their instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/pinkmoon_interiors/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, we’ve tackled Judaism, Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Westboro Baptist Church so far on the On the Edge with Andrew Gold podcast. That can only mean one thing. It’s finally time for the Mormons. And I’ve got none other than Dan Beecher, one half of the famous Frank and Dan who host Thank God I’m Atheist. I actually appeared as a guest on their podcast to discuss my exorcism film, and I’ve no doubt that some of our listeners cross over. Theirs is absolutely huge though – straight out of Utah, they’re a couple of ex-Mormons who discuss all things atheism. Dan also has a massive podcast show called The How-To Heretic, so both touch on atheism, cults, religions and all that stuff that you and I can’t get enough of. We discuss everything from the late British atheist and thought leader Christopher Hitchens to haters and polyamory – as opposed to the polygamy Mormonism is famous for – we discuss that too, and get to the bottom of it. Like most of these podcast interviews, we dip in and out of serious themes and lighter moments that bring levity to proceedings. You don’t want to be sad for an hour, and neither do I. But it does get quite intense, as Dan describes certain aspects of his childhood, his mind conflicted as he searched for a sign from god that wouldn’t come. This exasperation and pressure left irreversible marks on his psyche, touching everything, including his sex life. Remember to subscribe to this podcast so you don’t forget about it, and support it on patreon.com/andrewgold Huge thanks to Podcorn for sponsoring this episode. Explore sponsorship opportunities and start monetizing your podcast by signing up here: https://podcorn.com/podcasters/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lucy Edwards is a 24-year-old British journalist who holds the distinction of being BBC Radio 1’s first ever blind presenter. She’s since worked across the channel, from BBC World News to BBC Radio 4, and has run a marathon and started up an extremely successful YouTube channel – Lucy Edwards - where here make-up tutorials and videos answering questions you were too polite or timid to ask have racked up millions of views. Links Lucy: Tiktok Twitter YouTube The Blind Beauty Guide eBook Andrew: patreon.com/andrewgold Twitter Instagram Podcast website We delve into brail, language learning, Robbie Williams, Jon Ronson and inspiration porn. We talk about the details behind how Lucy lost her sight, and how she learned to cope, along with helpful sidekick, Olga. Olga’s a dog by the way. We actually spoke a couple of months ago, but timed the episode to coincide with the International Day of Disabled Persons on December 3rd. Lucy talks in the episode about how the modern BBC studios she worked in were not equipped for blind people. A lot of media attention has rightly helped redress societal imbalances across different subsections of society. However, disabled people remain totally under the radar…and nobody seems to care. Well, we should do, and we can start by hearing Lucy out – not because she’s blind, but because she has so much to say and she’s a fantastic journalist. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Links: The John Cedars YouTube Channel Lloyd Evans: The Reluctant Apostate Andrew Gold's brand new Patreon page - patreon.com/andrewgold Episode Summary Lloyd Evans is pretty much the world’s pre-eminent ex-Jehovah’s Witness and authority on the religion, its attractions and its snares. He tells some of the downright craziest and unbelievable stories of his childhood and his time in religion. So that Jehovah’s Witnesses know, I’m not just picking on them, as I’ve already done episodes on an ex-Muslim whose family are trying to kill her, an ex-Hasidic Jew who believes the community raped her and the son of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church. You’ll find those in the backlog, by clicking the links above or by visiting my website, andrewgoldpodcast.com. This is also a special podcast because Ex-Jehovah Lloyd convinced me, as you’ll hear, of the merits of starting my own Patreon page, and he’s even started contributing himself, which is a really touching gesture from a fellow content maker. Bringing this podcast to you every week is a full-time job, it takes about 40 hours each week. Just go to patreon.com/andrewgold. Of course, if I’m going to be making money from this, I also have to up my game. I’ve been making an effort to ensure interviewees send me their audio files – so you’ll hear in this one, Lloyd’s voice is absolutely gorgeous. And I’m going to start publishing the video versions of the podcast on YouTube, with lots of flashy camera angles and high definition. Anyway, that was my announcement and I don’t want it to eat into any more Lloyd Evans ex-Jehovah’s Witness time. We’re going to be talking about everything from the community’s controversial views on blood transfusions to its purported inaction on child abuse. Lloyd talks eloquently about cognitive dissonance – the way our mind refuses to consider reasoning that runs counter to our engrained idea of how the world works. Lloyd really is an authority on the subject, and if you want to know more, I encourage you to get hold of his acclaimed book – The Reluctant Apostate – and to visit his popular YouTube page with over 70,000 subscriptions, the John Cedars channel. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ed Hudson worked as the narcotics and law enforcement officer in the Florida unit responsible for bringing down Freddie Crow. Freddie used to steal planes and fly under the radar with death-defying stunts to reach Belize, where he’d smuggle so much marijuana onto the plane that the pressure would bust open the doors. He wore camouflage and became known by the FBI only as Rambo, before they could identify him and his partner in crime Billy. His life was very much like that of Tom Cruise’s character in American Made, but it took a drastic change after he was caught and met today’s guest on On the Edge with Andrew Gold podcast: Ed Hudson. After serving time, an unlikely friendship developed between the two, before things took a tragic turn. I’ll leave it there for now. I came across Ed’s fantastic book, As The Crow Flies: The Redemption of an International Drug Smuggler, which you can find on Amazon and in selected stores. Look up his Facebook page Ed Hudson Author – there’ll be a link on my andrewgoldpodcast.com blog - for photos of him and Freddie, and Freddie’s family. Couple things to note. One, a huge part of the story is, to Ed, religious. I’m not a religious person – in fact, I’d describe myself as a proud and open atheist. But it’s impossible not to make a link between Freddie’s redemption and punishment tale and religious stories…which to me, are just that: stories. But to Ed, they’re something more, and it means he speaks with a genuine enthusiasm and passion that elevates the story both in this interview and in his book. Two, Ed has a quite marvellous way of talking. It’s a real traditional Deep South accent that we in the UK can only dream of encountering in real life, so if nothing else, I hope you enjoy listening to the musicality of his voice. As regular listeners will know, I always attempt an impression of the disparate accents on the show, so it didn’t escape notice that he says things like ‘that’s done been done’. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s show, I’m proud to say, I’ve got someone almost entirely unique. Rebecca Sharrock is one of 80 people in the world with HSAM, which is an ability to remember every moment of your life, stretching back as far as the womb. What would you do with such a power, or is it a curse? Rebecca will shed some light on the matter. She also has obsessive compulsive disorder and autism, but it’s her near-perfect memory that puts her in the rarest of rare groups, one that makes up just 0.000001 per cent of the world population. Given the cognitive nature of the episode, this seemed like a great idea as a follow up to last week’s podcast with cognitive scientist Dr. Lera Boroditsky, where we discussed the way languages shape thought, and how the mind works. Rebecca is a huge Harry Potter fan – something we both share, and were able to bond over. She was actually supposed to be going on a trip to the Harry Potter World at Universal Studios, but it was cancelled due to Covid. As you’ll hear, she knows the books off by heart and is able to finish any line from Harry Potter that I throw at her – you can find the video version of that clip on Twitter and Instagram on andrewgold_ok, while Rebecca is on r_sharrock on Twitter. The things she shows me are truly remarkable, and open up all sorts of questions about the human mind, memory, the subconscious and how it all links up. Also, her lovely mum Janet shows up halfway through to give some great insight about what it’s like living with somebody who remembers everything good and bad you do or say. A few warnings. One, I’m going to attempt my terrible, terrible accent. Rebecca’s not the first guest we’ve had from Queensland, Australia – I had the Coffin Confessor who reveals secrets at people’s funerals just a few episodes back. Another warning – something my girlfriend Julieta has picked up on and mocked me about – is that I’ve been mentioning a lot lately how many languages I speak. It comes up again here, so I’m going to make a concerted effort in future episodes…to keep doing it. At the end of the day, it took an extortionate amount of time and effort to learn to speak five languages – and it has very little practical use day to day – so I might as well gloat about it on this podcast. That’s what I told her anyway. I hope you enjoy this episode – if you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe – and please leave me some lovely new reviews on the Apple Podcast app – they’ve been drying up the last week or so – tell me where you’re listening to this, and any funny stories relating to the episode or your state of mind. I’ll read the latest ones out at the end. For now, I’m trying to impress Rebecca Sharrock with my best Australian accent. P.S. if you like this episode, you might also like my one with NME music journalist James McMahon, who discusses what it's like to live with crippling OCD. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, I’ve got Lera Boroditsky, Professor of Cognitive Science at UCSD on the show. She’s a really big deal in the languages and cognitive science worlds, having taught at MIT and Stanford. and you can find her Ted Talk here. Her teaching and her research focus on the way we form thought, the way we think, and the way language affects how we think. If any of you have seen the movie Arrival (trailer), you’ll know what I mean – because it’s a great example of how learning the alien language allows you to think different. I won’t spoil it, but the film and it’s original short story by Ted Chiang just blew my mind. Scientists in the real world haven’t encountered anything quite so sci-fi-like – but Dr. Boroditsky has nailed down certain characteristics in the 7,000 languages around the world that make its native speakers think in different ways. For example, she engrained herself with one community where they use cardinal points, so south, west, east and north, instead of left and right. It means they have an internal map of compass points – something we never thought humans had the ability to do. Other examples she’ll talk about include the way we see colour, the way we count and use maths, and the way gender is influenced by language. For example, the French bridge Le Pont is masculine, and they therefore tend to describe it as imposing and strong, while Germans Die Brücke is feminine, so it’s seen as elegant and fragile. While these gender stereotypes might be a little outdated, they give us an insight into the way words can have an effect on meaning. As many of you know, language is one of my biggest passions. I speak five, although I cheat by including English – the others are Spanish, French, German and Portuguese. And one of the things that has fascinated me is how I find myself taking on a new personality with each language. When I’m in a group of French people I become this low-voiced suave, philosophical guy, while in Argentine Spanish, I take on an Italian inflection, and I’m a bit more risqué, I’m singing my words, and that has to change your personality – not only in how you’re perceived by others, but in how you think while communicating in these other languages. I really feel like I become another person, and you can see me using these languages in my work in my showreel. So that’s why I’ve been absolutely fascinated by Dr. Boroditsky’s work, and by a book a recently read by Guy Deutscher, called Through the Language Glass. Dr. Boroditsky talks to me all about those things, and also touches on things like enforced language change – such as gender-neutral pronouns and other social-justice changes – and talks a little about psychopaths that she might just be one. I think she was joking, but there’s some truth in the notion that high-performing people might just be some form of sociopath. If you’re into that, check out my earlier episodes with M.E. Thomas the female Mormon psychopath, and Mary Turner Thomson, whose husband was a psychopath and a bigamist. Please make sure to share this podcast, follow me on andrewgold_ok on Twitter and Instagram – I could do with more followers! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

British comedy-horror animator David Firth is known universally for his Salad Fingers series, and has been putting up short films on his website fat-pie.com for decades. He has worked with the BBC and the likes of David Mitchell among many others. I think Lynchean – in that David Lynch manner – is the most apt word to describe his subtle blend of the creepy, eerie, nightmarish qualities of his cartoons with a very dark sense of humour. Catch him on Twitter and get yourself a Salad Fingers toy for Halloween. Before I forget – this background music is by the late Clara Rockmore on the Theremin instrument, and it ran through David’s Spoilsbury Toast Boy film, which is creepy as hell. This is like a Desert Island Discs of his stuff, as I play a bunch of clips of his best stuff, while he talks about them - all these clips belong to David Firth and the full versions can be found on fat-pie.com. Thanks David for allowing me to play these clips, and I hope it gives newcomers to his work a sense of what we’re dealing with here! I’ll put links to the full episodes of each of the clips I show in my blog on andrewgoldpodcast.com. Also check out his ambient music on Locust Toybox on Spotify – I’ll be using one of his clips for the outro. But now it’s the podcast - we talk about a lot of stuff, including where David gets his ideas, his dreams, his nightmares and his process as well as things like cancel culture and Pete Townsend. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices