Serious Inquiries Only

Here’s the 3rd and final part of my episode 300 spectacular! Joining me first is Andrew Torrez from the little known fledgling podcast Opening Arguments! First we do a little reminiscing, then a segment where I try to play the lawyer and he plays the questioner! Finally, we discuss the hate speech law that Jake brought up in his segment.

After that, it’s my great podcasting friends Tom and Cecil of Cognitive Dissonance!! As I always say, these guys really gave me my start and I owe them a ton, so I’m very thrilled to have them here for the final part of AS300!! We have a discussion on Twitter and free speech, where Tom shares some thoughts that have been percolating for him lately, and Cecil shares a great story about someone who blew up at them online but later met them in person…

Thank you SOOOO much for 300 episodes, and for all the support over at http://www.patreon.com/atheist!!! You guys are the best!

Two more great guests for part 2 of the 3 part episode 300 spectacular! First up is Ishmael Brown of the Angry Black Rant podcast. Ishmael is someone I really enjoy speaking to because he’s thoughtful, provocotive, and hilarious all in one. We talk about whitelash, Colin Kaepernick, and other post-Trump victory issues facing our nation!

Next up is Jake Farr-Wharton of the Imaginary Friends Show!! (or iFriends). Jake and I go way back and I’m so thrilled to have him on to celebrate 300 episodes. Jake brings a very interesting story about an Australian hate speech law that would violate our 1st Amendment here in the US, and yet might seem to be a net benefit… It’s an interesting utilitarian problem to look at. Is free speech absolutely fundamental or is hate speech worth banning? Jakes gives us a peek into those questions.

Joining me first to kick off my extra special 300th episode, 3 part, 3+ hour extravaganza are none other than Noah, Heath, and Eli of the Scathing Atheist and God Awful Movies! Oh right, and the Skepticrat… I interview the guys on a few different topics related to their particular approach to atheist activism and spreading knowledge while also being entertaining.

After that, I have a personal message and announcement that I’m very excited for you to hear!! Thank you so much to all my patrons over at http://patreon.com/atheist, where you can enjoy parts 2 and 3 early!!!

Alright the response for part 2 of the discussion that went bad was actually pretty overwhelming. Eyeballing it, I’d say it was at least 4 to 1 in favor. However, the people who didn’t want to hear part 2 had really good reasons… So I’ve sort of split the difference. I’m going to talk a bit about the conversation and give you some thoughts, and then I’m going to play a decent length of selected clips. They will roughly give an indication of what happened, but the full length will still be available at http://patreon.com/atheist

In looking back, I think this discussion was actually pretty useful in some ways. I think I was hugely negative on it because of how it ended and how Eli reacted in the end to it.

If you’d like to be a part of my little Facebook community, you can add me as a friend at http://www.facebook.com/thomaspodcast!

I highly don’t recommend listening to this.

Time for part 2 with Michael A. Wood Jr! Michael is a retired Baltimore police officer and veteran of the USMC. He originally went viral in 2015 for publicly speaking out against police brutality and has become an advocate for police reform. Part 2 focused on problems in policing and his proposed solutions to them, among other topics!

Find Michael’s website here.

Check him out on twitter @michaelawoodjr

Here is part 2 of my truly excellent recording with Andrew and Eli. We commiserate, we give our answers to a lot of the common questions, we laughed, we feared and I feel slightly better knowing I’ll still have these two amazing people and more to get me through this. I hope everyone else is as lucky as I am!

Today we are talking to Dr. Robert Price about the historicity of Jesus.  Dr. Price is a former Baptist minister and current Professor of Biblical Criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute. He has written and spoken extensively on this topic.  In this part 2 we cover the references to Jesus found in Josephus. Find out Dr. Price’s response!

Today we delve even further into the study found here. We talk more about the implications and possible explanations for the ultimate finding, which of course was a strong effect of people evaluating the danger of a situation not based on actual risk but on moral judgment.

Ishmael Brown of Angry Black Rant sent me some thoughtful comments on my last episode about the Sam Harris-Hannibal Buress communication breakdown. So, I wanted to have him on to give his take on it! We had a really interesting and productive talk.