Freethought Radio & Podcast

FFRF Senior Counsel Patrick Elliott tells us about FFRF’s newest federal lawsuit challenging religious discrimination against the Satanic Temple’s desire to host after-school club meetings for children in Memphis, Tennessee. Then FFRF Director of Governmental Affairs Mark Dann and Senior Policy Counsel Ryan Jayne describe how the FFRF Action Fund (a 501(c)(4) nonprofit) is working to keep religion out of our laws and policies.

Many FFRF victories and legal complaints to talk about this week. Since today is “Pi Day,” and π is irrational, we hear the irreverent Joe Hill song about the irrational belief of “pie in the sky” called “The Preacher and the Slave.” Then we speak with Steven Emmert, Executive Director of the Secular Coalition for America, working to “protect the equal rights of nonreligious Americans.”

After we report on state/church violations and victories in Illinois, California, Kentucky, Alabama, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, FFRF’s Senior Policy Counsel Ryan Jayne tells us “everything you need to know about public school chaplain bills” that are being introduced in many states. Then, we speak with Wisconsin state Sen. Kelda Roys, an openly atheistic public official who is working to improve this world.

“Welcome to the end of democracy,” said a Christian nationalist leader. This week, we parse many of such anti-democratic comments made by evangelical leaders. After hearing a Spanish-language version of the love song “It’s Only Natural,” we talk with Enrico Gnaulati, author of the book Flourishing Love: A Secular Guide to Lasting Intimate Relationships.

FFRF’s Equal Justice Works Legal Fellow Kat Grant describes the amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief they wrote for FFRF in a case involving an Oregonian Christian who is challenging the law prohibiting her from discriminating against LGBTQ+ children in the adoption process. Then, we talk about the new documentary film “God and Country,” produced by Rob Reiner, that warns against the looming threat of Christian nationalism.

This week we talk about Christian nationalism, leaving the Mormon Church, and religion in the classroom. After listening to part of our TV interview with Rep. Jared Huffman about the theocratic Speaker of the House, we talk with historian Robin Vose, author of The Index of Prohibited Books: Four Centuries of Struggle Over Word and Image for the Greater Glory of God.

Prayer is the target of this week’s show: the National Prayer Breakfast and school-board prayer. For Valentine’s Day, we hear Susan Hofer sing Dan Barker’s freethought love song, “It’s Only Natural.” Then, we speak with FFRF attorneys Sammi Lawrence and Chris Line about their watchdog letters of complaint to public officials who violate state/church separation and the legal friend-of-the-court briefs they have written to keep religion out of government.

This week, we call out governmental prayer at the National Prayer Breakfast and an egregious Christian nationalist invocation before the House of Representatives. Then we hear Kate Cohen, Washington Post contributing columnist and author of the book We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (and Maybe You Should Too), deliver her entertaining and riveting talk: “The Tiny Titanic Act of Telling the Truth.”

FFRF Director of Communications Amit Pal describes how India’s Narendra Modi inaugurated a Hindu temple on the site of a demolished mosque in a political effort to establish Hindu nationalism in that country. Then we speak with Devin Moss, the humanist chaplain who was called in to support an atheist death-row inmate executed in Oklahoma.