Award-winning bestselling author John Irving is the guest on the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “Freethought Matters” TV show this Sunday.
Irving has written 15 books, including The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Hotel New Hampshire. He’s won the National Book Award, the O. Henry Award and a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for his script of The Cider House Rules. His new novel is The Last Chairlift, his first book in seven years, which is being described as a ghost story and a love story spanning eight decades of sexual politics. FFRF offered Irving the Emperor Has No Clothes award after his column, “The Long Cruel History of the Anti-Abortion Crusade,” was published by The New York Times back in June 2019. Irving wrote: “We are free to practice the religion of our choice, and we are protected from having someone else’s religion practiced on us. Freedom of religion in the United States also means freedom from religion.” Irving received the award at the group’s convention last month.
“I never felt that Roe v. Wade was safe or I never felt it would be safe, even when it was new,” Irving tells “Freethought Matters” co-hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor. “I believe that my friends who believe that abortion rights were now a done deal were kidding themselves, and we had to stand on guard. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, what those Republican justices did is so much more in step with the Vatican than it is with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
If you don’t live in the quarter-plus of the nation where the show broadcasts on Sunday, you can watch the interview on FFRF’s YouTube channel. New shows go up every Thursday. You can also receive notifications when we post new episodes of “Freethought Matters” by subscribing to the playlist on FFRF’s YouTube channel.
Upcoming shows will feature the ACLU’s Dan Mach, abortion provider Amy Hagstrom Miller, Andrew Seidel talking about his new book American Crusade and 11-year-old Elle Harris, author of Elle the Humanist. This fall season already contains must-see interviews with “Star Trek” actor John “Q” de Lancie, acclaimed thinker Professor Daniel Dennett, Texas iconoclast Jim Hightower (who received FFRF’s 2022 Clarence Darrow Award at its recent convention), leading constitutional abortion rights expert Professor Geoffrey
Stone and atheist Washington Post columnist Kate Cohen.
“Freethought Matters” airs in:
- Chicago, WPWR-CW (Ch. 50), Sundays at 9 a.m.
- Denver, KWGN-CW (Ch. 2), Sundays at 7 a.m.
- Houston, KIAH-CW (Ch. 39), Sundays at 11 a.m.
- Los Angeles, KCOP-MY (Ch. 13), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
- Madison, Wis., WISC-TV (Ch. 3), Sundays at 11 p.m.
- Minneapolis, WFTC-29, Sundays at 7:30 a.m.
- New York City, WPIX-IND (Ch. 11), Sundays at 10 a.m.
- Phoenix, KASW-CW (Ch. 61, or 6 or 1006 for HD), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
- Portland, Ore., KRCW-CW (Ch. 32), Sundays at 9 a.m. Comcast channel 703 for High Def, or Channel 3.
- Sacramento, KQCA-MY (Ch. 58), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
- San Francisco, KICU-IND (Ch. 36), Sundays at 10 a.m.
- Seattle, KONG-IND (Ch. 16 or Ch. 106 on Comcast). Sundays at 8 a.m.
- Washington, D.C., WDCW-CW (Ch. 50 or Ch. 23 or Ch. 3), Sundays at 8 a.m.
You can catch interviews from past seasons here, including with Gloria Steinem, Ron Reagan, Julia Sweeney and Reps. Jared Huffman, Jamie Raskin, Hank Johnson and Eleanor Holmes Norton.
Please tune in to “Freethought Matters” . . . because freethought matters.
P.S. Please tune in or record according to the times given above regardless of what is listed in your TV guide (it may be listed simply as “paid programming” or even be misidentified). To set up an automatic weekly recording, try taping manually by time or channel. And spread the word to freethinking friends, family or colleagues about a TV show, finally, that is dedicated to providing programming for freethinkers — your antidote to religion on Sunday morning!
