Humanize Me

'How are you not freaking out?' is the question Gabe asks in one of the two songs we play in this inaugural episode of 2020. Gabe is an artist, musician, poet and more. His C5 spinal injury, incurred when he was 15 years old, left him paralyzed from the armpits down. What more could there be to freak out about? In this conversation, Bart talks with Gabe about finding a room of one's own in a hostile world, his art including an electronic rock opera telling the story of his life, sexuality and intimacy as a disabled person, music as therapy, Gabe's agnosticism about God and more. Gabe's music can be found on Spotify under his stage name Freaque. He's also on YouTube.

It's an end-of-the-year podcast from Bart Campolo, who answers a question from a listener called John. John wants to know whether faith (of a sort) can still be useful for a post-Christian, whether believing something without evidence can sometimes have its benefits. Bart answers with a riff on the difference between optimism and hope, and thinks about its applicability to the new decade we're going into this week.

Emma Bloomfield researches the intersection of science and religious rhetoric, particularly around issues of climate change, human origins and the body. In this conversation with Bart Campolo, Emma talks about how Christians tend to think differently about science and the environment, the three ‘types’ of religious climate skeptic (separators, bargainers and harmonizers), the similarities and differences between creationists and climate change skeptics, how language matters, how ideological 'purity' and orthodoxy can push people away from contributing to positive change, the importance of storytelling, and why she feels hopeful after her conversations with the groups she wrote about.

Thanksgiving has been and gone, and now we're into a whole month of Christmas in America. How does one navigate a time that can be very tricky for those who have deconverted from faith? In this Q&A episode of our podcast, Bart Campolo tries to answer three questions related to being post-faith at the holidays.

John Tucker used to be a literalist Christian, but says he has now rejected the 'belief paradigm' to move beyond either accepting or rejecting the claims of religion. In this conversation with Bart Campolo, John lays out how he sees truth now, and says that he thinks religious claims should be expressed only as catch-22s. An example of a catch-22: 'The only acceptable evidence for religious belief is evidence that is unacceptable.' Confused by this, Bart explores what John means by it.

Bart and John answer a question about the sci-fi that humanists might love.

Yasmine Mohammed wore the hijab from the age of 9, but never felt comfortable as a Muslim. Now, having been out of the faith for many years, she's able to reflect on her remarkable life, on the Islamic world and on religious indoctrination in general. In this conversation with Bart Campolo, Yasmine talks about the differences between Islam and Christianity, the powerful, debilitating effect she felt of being covered from head to toe, how easy it is to indoctrinate children, how western governments protect subjugation out of cultural sensitivity, how western liberals protect abusive behavior, how corporations are demonetizing her and others like her, and how humanist values should pertain to Islam.

The question being asked this week: 'Hey Bart, I listened to a speech by Attorney General William Barr at Notre Dame University, in which he denounced ‘militant secularists’ and said they were trying to destroy the ‘traditional moral order’. Does this worry you as much as it does me?' Bart Campolo sits down with John Wright to answer this question, and - spoiler - it's a resounding 'Yes.'

Josh 'Phantom' Strider is an Australian YouTuber known for his commentary on cartoons. He's also an avid listener of the Humanize Me podcast and one of our supporters on Patreon! In this conversation with Bart Campolo, Josh talks about the secularism of Disney, the messages of VeggieTales, the importance of cartoons for those like him on the autism spectrum, the business model of YouTube, Hank Green and the online content ecosystem.

A solo podcast by Bart Campolo with poetry, songs and nepotism.