Freethought Radio

Religion in politics. Listen to the vote (3 times!) at the DNC, and YOU decide if there was a 2/3 majority wanting to insert "God" into the platform. This week we expose both major political parties mixing religion and government. Then we talk with Rene Chouinard, the Canadian father whose complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal is challenging the distribution of Gideon Bibles in public schools, and the refusal to allow distribution of Just Pretend, Dan Barker's book for children.

This week we announce FFRF's decision to sue the City of Memphis over governmental prayers, and denounce the American Family Association's complaint that FFRF is waging "the second war of northern aggression" against southern states. Our guest is Michael Nugent (calling us from Dublin), chair of Atheist Ireland, a group that recently donated to a Milwaukee charity to thank Irish Fest for stopping religious discrimination.

Hear about FFRF's billboard caveat at the RNC in Tampa: "God Fixation Won't Fix This Nation." This week we talk with University of Central Florida professor Charles Negy, whose Cross-Cultural Psychology course warns about bigotry, yet he was unable to avoid religious bigotry in his own class, prompting him to send an eloquent letter to his students which has gone viral on the internet.

Irish atheist eyes are smiling! FFRF complaint stops church discount at Irish Fest in Milwaukee. Listen to FFRF's new "Spotlight On Freethought" segment now airing on national public television. Guests this week are Alvin Harris, the Nashville attorney who handled the successful lawsuit challenging the water tower cross, and Josh Everett, a former fundamentalist evangelical minister and missionary who is now an outspoken atheist.

More FFRF victories and activism to report this week. Listen to Russian female punk band Pussy Riot protest the government in an Orthodox church, and hear Robert Ingersoll's "Declaration of the Free" set to music. Then we talk with well-known atheist blogger Greta Christina about her new book, Why Are You Atheists So Angry?

Government prayer, religious symbols on city seals, freethought billboards in Spokane, atheist Boy Scouts turning in their badges: it is a busy summer for state/church activism. This week we hear the testimony of a brave 12-year-old girl protesting prayer in her Tennessee county; we play a little-known Cole Porter song, "Experiment," about the value of science; and then talk with Linda Stephens, one of the plaintiffs in the victorious 2nd-Circuit Appeals Court decision outlawing governmental prayer in the Town of Greece, New York.

This week we have a whole lot of victories to report in the battle to keep religion and government separate, mostly in the south. We listen to country singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks' irreverent tune, "God Isn't Real," and then talk with Annalise Fonza, a United Methodist minister who gave up her faith and is now a happy atheist university professor.

Freethought in the Arts! After reporting on victories and positive developments in FFRF legal complaints in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and the U.S. Army, we talk about the many freethought connections in the movies, music, literature and poetry. For the second half of the show we play Bill Moyers' remarkable interview of freethought poet Philip Appleman that ran on PBS in early July.

Hasa Diga Eeebowai! After reporting news on our own continent--including an FFRF victory in Virginia stopping prayers at a county board meeting, a JFK billboard in Lubbock, press coverage of our full-page ad in the New York Times, and a clip of FFRF's "freethought poet laureate" Philip Appleman being interviewed by Bill Moyers--we talk with Leo Igwe, the leader of Humanists in Nigeria, about his heroic attempts to combat superstition, witchcraft, Christianity, and Islam in Africa with reason and skepticism--efforts which got him unjustly thrown in jail.

Perhaps it should be called the "Godless Particle," since the newly discovered Higgs boson was named after an atheist. This week we honor nonbelieving lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, and talk with Barbara Forrest, professor of philosophy, author ofCreationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, and expert witness in the Dover (PA) "intelligent design" trial.