Pope Francis says we should not “make fun of faith,” but we point out that blasphemy is a victimless crime. After honoring the birthdays of freethinking composers Mozart and Jerome Kern, we celebrate the birthday of founding patriot Thomas Paine, the deistic freethinker who wrote The Age of Reason, by listening to Dan Barker’s tribute,“The World is My Country.” Then we talk with Steven Hewett, a retired Army sergeant and Afghanistan veteran who successfully stopped religious symbols from being displayed at a Veterans Memorial in his North Carolina city.

Podcast.