A performer who seamlessly weaves in secular and feminist themes into her music is the guest on the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s TV show this Sunday. The show debuts Shelley Segal’s music video, “Holy Man,” and features her live performance of the nontheistic “My Morality.”
Segal is an Australian-born singer-songwriter who now lives in California. She first received attention in 2011 with “An Atheist Album.” Since then, she’s released the albums “An Easy Escape,” “Begin Again,” “Our Resistance,” “Forms,” “Little March” (with the jazz guitarist Adam Levy), “Sidelined,” “Strange Feeling” and the “Shelley Segal EP.” FFRF Co-President Dan Barker played the piano on her album of jazz standards “Live at Audio for the Arts.” In 2019, Segal produced “Holy,” and her newest album is called “Waiting For Water.”
If you don’t live in the 27 percent of the country’s markets where the show broadcasts on Sunday, you can already catch the episode on FFRF’s YouTube channel.
“I had a non-Jewish partner at age 18, and that was such a divisive and difficult time for me and my family,” the Orthodox Jewish-raised Segal reveals to “Freethought Matters” co-hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor. “They told me that I had to end this relationship, which was such a joy in my life at the time. I thought religion is supposed to be this force for good and positivity. But it was just one more thing on the way for me to see that actually it wasn’t this peaceful force for good.”
This is the fall season’s 11th episode of “Freethought Matters,” airing in 12 cities on Sunday, Nov. 15.
Upcoming guests include movie/TV actor and singer John Davidson (a nonbeliever),“Cosmos” series producer/writer Ann Druyan, who also co-wrote the original “Cosmos” as well as many best-selling books with her husband Carl Sagan, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s great-great-granddaughter, the feminist Coline Jenkins.
“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, KUBE-IND (Ch. 57), Sundays at 9 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, KSTC-IND (Ch. 45), Sundays at 9:30 a.m.
- New York City, WPIX-IND (Ch. 11), Sundays at 8:30 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.
- Seattle, KONG-IND (Ch. 16 or Ch. 106 on Comcast). Sundays at 8 a.m.
- Washington, D.C., WDCW-CW (Ch. 50), Sundays at 8 a.m.
Previous guests this season include: punditEleanor Clift, which you can watch here, Professor Khyati Joshi, an expert on Christian privilege, joint interviews with possibly the foremost scholars on Christian Nationalism in the United States, actor and FFRF After-Life Member John de Lancie of “Star Trek” “Q” fame, atheists and jazz artists Addison Frei and Tahira Clayton providing a double musical treat, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Linda Greenhouse, the country’s leading analyst of the U.S. Supreme Court, and legislative stalwart and feminist and civil rights pioneer U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton. One of the most eminent public intellectuals in the world, Professor Steven Pinker, was interviewed was interviewed three episodes ago talking about his new course on rationality. The freethinkingly entertaining singer-songwriter Roy Zimmerman was the guest two week ago, and last week the interview was with Scott Burdick, a talented artist and dedicated secularist who works in several mediums.
Watch previous seasons here, including recent interviews with Ron Reagan, Julia Sweeney and Ed Asner, as well as U.S. Reps. Jared Huffman and Jamie Raskin, co-chairs of the Congressional Freethought Caucus.
“We want to provide sympathetic programming for the ‘unmassed masses,’ and offer an alternative, so that religious programming does not win by default,” says Gaylor.
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!
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational charity, is the nation’s largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics), and has been working since 1978 to keep religion and government separate.
