April 4
David Cross
On this date in 1964, comedian David Cross was born to politically liberal, Jewish parents in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended Emerson College in Boston. Cross has been doing standup comedy for more than 20 years. He has also written for comedy shows, acted and made many television appearances. Cross wrote for the Emmy Award-winning “The Ben Stiller Show” (1992). He starred in the late 1990s HBO series, “Mr. Show with Bob and David,” with comedy partner Bob Odenkirk.
Cross’ acting roles include playing Rob in the movie, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” the salesman in “The Cable Guy” and a radio caller in “The Truth about Cats and Dogs.” His comedy videos include “David Cross: Let America Laugh” (2003). Cross played a teacher at a Rock Star Academy for the Sugarcube video by the progressive band Yo la Tengo. “Rock Against Bush,” Volume I, includes footage of Cross’ standup comedy routines.
“I was born Jewish, but I am an atheist. I don’t believe in God.”
— David Cross, appearance on ABC's "Politically Incorrect" (March 9, 1998), cited by Celebrity Atheists website
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor; photo by s_bukley / Shutterstock.com
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
Robert Scheer
On this date in 1936, journalist Robert Scheer was born in Bronx, N.Y. He attended public schools and graduated from City College of New York. He further studied economics as a fellow at Syracuse University, Yale and the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Chinese Studies.
From 1964 to 1969, Scheer was the Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor-in-chief of Ramparts magazine. He then worked as a journalist and columnist at the Los Angeles Times for nearly 30 years, serving as one of the most progressive voices on the staff. He was fired after decades of dedication to the paper for reasons he believes stemmed from ideological differences with the publisher.
Scheer has interviewed a number of presidents, including Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In 1993 at the Los Angeles Times, he launched a nationally syndicated column and worked as a contributing editor for 12 years. This column became known as Truthdig, which morphed into an online site and relocated to the San Francisco Chronicle, where Scheer is the editor-in-chief of the independent journal.
Scheer has written several books, including The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq (2004), co-authored with his son Christopher Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudry, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (2008) and They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy (2015). He has won numerous awards such as the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the 2010 Distinguished Work in New Media Award, and the 2011 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media. Additionally, Truthdig is a four-time recipient of the Webby Award for best political blog.
Scheer teaches as a clinical professor of communications in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He is former co-host of “Left, Right, and Center,” a political radio program on National Public Radio station KCRW. He hosts “Scheer Intelligence” at KCRW, where he interviews people who discuss the day’s most important issues, offering an often surprising perspective. He lives in California with his wife Narda Catharine Zacchino.
PHOTO via Shutterstock by Debby Wong
“I was always raised with the idea there was an inherent value to human life — and [that] certainly was not based on religion. I think it was enhanced by not being religious. I had to find meaning in the secular life. You know, I couldn’t be waiting for another life. And I couldn’t find it just in scripture or something. My parents had both basically rebelled against the life of scripture. They saw its downside.”
— Scheer, The Real News Network interview (July 5, 2015)
Compiled by Tolulope Igun
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
Clive Davis
On this date in 1932, music producer Clive Jay Davis (pronounced Klyve) was born to Florence (née Brooks) and Herman Davis in Brooklyn, N.Y. His father was an electrician and traveling tie salesman. His mother had a connection to the Russeks department store in Manhattan. They named him after Clive Brook, the English movie star who played opposite Marlene Dietrich that year in “Shanghai Express.”
His modest financial circumstances became even more tenuous when both parents died when he was a teen and he went to live with an older sister. He attended New York University, graduating magna cum laude in political science, then received a full scholarship to Harvard Law School and graduated in 1956. At age 29 he was named general counsel of Columbia Records, a CBS subsidiary that merged with CBS Records with Davis subsequently heading the new unit.
It was a heady time for music as the renowned “Summer of Love” dawned in the San Francisco area after the Monterey Pop Festival. Woodstock was on the horizon. Davis added upcoming artists like Janis Joplin, Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Aerosmith and Pink Floyd to the label.
But he championed genres besides rock and pop and in 1970 insisted that Lynn Anderson’s “Rose Garden” should be the country singer’s next release. The song crossed over, was a No. 1 hit in 16 countries and remained the biggest-selling song by a female country artist for 27 years.
CBS fired him in 1973 after accusing him of using company money for personal expenses, including for his son’s bar mitzvah. He founded Arista Records the next year and signed Barry Manilow, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Patti Smith, The Outlaws, Eric Carmen, Kenny G, the Bay City Rollers, Milli Vanilli, Ace of Base, Air Supply, Ray Parker Jr. and Alicia Keys. Other artists who signed were Carly Simon, Melissa Manchester, the Grateful Dead, the Kinks, Gil Scott-Heron and Lou Reed.
The label’s most significant acquisition came in 1983 when Davis signed Whitney Houston, who became Arista’s top-selling act and one that sold over 220 million records. Davis was forced out of Arista in 2000 after the German company that was majority owner invoked its mandatory retirement policy. Davis joined the RCA Label Group until 2008, when he was named chief creative officer for Sony Music Entertainment, a title he held until his death.
Davis was married to Helen Cohen from 1956 to 1965 and to Janet Adelberg from 1965 to 1985; both marriages ended in divorce. He had three sons, Fred, Mitchell and Doug, and a daughter, Lauren. Among the survivors listed in his obituary was Greg Schriefer as his partner.
He had come out publicly at age 80 as bisexual in his autobiography “The Soundtrack of My Life” and told talk show host Katie Couric that he hoped the revelation, 14 years before his death at home in 2026 from respiratory failure, would lead to greater understanding of bisexuality.
As a producer, Davis won four Grammy Awards and was nominated for three others. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 in the nonperformers category. The Hollywood Reporter credited his “golden ear” with elevating Joplin’s career and making “household names” of Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Carlos Santana, Aretha Franklin and others.
He was active professionally into the last months of his life. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, presiding at his funeral in Manhattan, said “Clive did not wear his religiosity on his sleeve but he proudly identified as Jewish. … Even if Clive was not conventionally religious, he understood something very deep about the Jewish tradition, which he embodied so profoundly with the work of his life.” She added, “In the Torah, when God parts the Red Sea and the Israelites cross over into freedom, what does Moses do on the other side? He does not give a speech, he does not even pray: He sings.” (PBS.org, June 29, 2026)
When Buchdahl asked his children if there was any song he loved that he didn’t personally produce, they told her there was one that he talked about and it was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg in 1938 for “The Wizard of Oz.” At the service, Buchdahl sang a soaring version of it. (D. 2026)
PHOTO: Davis at the 2025 New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center; photo by Bryan Berlin under CC 4.0.
“My dad just looked down at the Hebrew and he just read it easily. I said to him, I didn’t know you speak Hebrew. And he said, I’m not at all religious, but I’m very Jewish.”
— Davis' son Doug telling how Clive surprised his family while rehearsing for Doug's bar mitzvah when the rabbi asked if he needed the English pronunciation of a prayer. (PBS.org, June 29, 2026)
Compiled by Bill Dunn
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
Shelley Segal
On this date in 1987, singer/songwriter Shelley Segal was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Jenny and Danny Segal in a traditional Jewish household. For years, her dad was president of the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, an Orthodox synagogue. He fronted a klezmer band that was often booked for celebrations of life-cycle events like bar and bat mitzvahs. Jenny, whom Shelley calls “Mum,” managed the band.
Displaying her own talent and surrounded by working musicians, Segal started sitting in with the group when she was 11, playing acoustic guitar and adding her voice to her dad’s. Her religious doubts started during school biology classes when the topic was evolution. “I probably called myself an atheist at 18, but I still thought religion was positive, if not for me. It was the beginning of learning to think critically.” (The Age, April 14, 2012)
“When I got some distance and perspective I saw things I might take issue with — women being separated [in synagogue] and not being allowed to take part in the service or lead the service and, looking back, it’s abhorrent to me that I didn’t see a problem. … When as a teenager I came home and said I didn’t believe in God, it must have felt like a complete rejection. The more I meet people in the movement and hear how hard it’s been for them, the more impressed I am by my family.” (Ibid.)
She released an EP composed of songs she wrote at ages 15–21 in 2009. “An Atheist Album” (2011) included the single “Saved.” It was the first time she’d ever written about her beliefs. “I was told very kindly and very politely by a preacher in the street that I was going to burn in hell forever. So I felt like I wanted to push back and say, ‘I won’t be told how to live my life.’ ” (FFRF’s “Freethought Matters,” Jan. 23, 2025)
“An Atheist Album” explored her beliefs and was hard for her dad to accept, she said, but they had reached common ground and could still play together. “My overall goals are to increase empathy and lessen suffering, humanist goals, those are things my dad can agree with me on.” (Melbourne Herald Sun, Feb. 27, 2013) One of their favorites to perform together is Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love.”
Segal performed at the Reason Rally for religious skeptics in Washington, D.C., in 2012 and 2016, then moved to Los Angeles. By then she had released five recordings. Segal co-produced the 2023 single and video tribute “Mother” with her husband Rob J Robertson. Her dad played violin.
She opened Secret Sauce Studio & Production House in Los Angeles and has been a guest several times on FFRF media and at events, including the 2013 national convention and FFRF’s 2024 winter solstice celebration at Freethought Hall in Madison, Wis.
PHOTO: Courtesy of Shelley Segal.
What will it take for you
To start opening your eyes
To start questioning the bullshit everyone around you buys
You think it’s any of your business what goes on between my thighs?
I wonder, I wonder,
When we’ll be rid of your lies.— A verse from Segal's song "Saved"
Compiled by Bill Dunn
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
