Freethought Radio

Tune in to hear the inside story about the young Orlando student whom Catholics have accused of committing a "hate crime" for not eating a communion wafer! And listen to Sarah Braasch talk about how some public-funded senior centers are imposing prayer on senior citizens and why that is illegal.

Guest: David Mills

Author: Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism

Freethought Radio will discuss "atheist in a foxhole" Jeremy Hall's federal lawsuit against the military, charging that it is promoting Christianity and has discriminated against his rights as a nonbeliever, as covered by CNN this week with Anderson Cooper. Journalist and science writer David Mills, the author of the popular book, "Atheist Universe,"  will be interviewed about what's wrong with fundamentalism. The show will also highlight contributions by the many famous freethinkers born in July.


Hosts: Dan Barker & Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation
Produced by the Freedom From Religon Foundation

Freethought Radio will analyze Barack Obama's controversial decision to rename and expand Bush's "faith-based initiative," using clips from his announcement this week. It will also interview southern activist Pat Cleveland, who is in the midst of the annual 4th of July bash in the heart of the bible belt sponsored every year by the activist Alabama Freethought Association. Author Nica Lalli will be interviewed about her memoir about growing up as and embracing being a "nothing" when it comes to religion.

Jim McCollum, who at age 10 became the center of a huge legal battle against religious instruction in the public schools, will talk about the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision, McCollum v. Board of Education, keeping schools free of indoctrination. The show will also pay homage to several other anniversaries of significant Supreme court decisions affirming separation between church and state. Listen for cameos of famed litigants Roy Torcaso, Ed Schempp and Vashti McCollum.

Elissa Wall, author of "Stolen Innocence," will talk about being married against her will at age 14 to an adult in her polygamous Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints community in Utah. Wall was the key witness in the criminal trial which convicted FLDS patriarch Warren Jeffs of being an accomplice to rape. The show will also feature Sarah Braasch, FFRF's legal intern, who will talk about her research into unlawful Christian prayers opening the Wisconsin State Assembly. Her interview will include sound bites of a legislator casting the "Evil One" out of the chambers!

Michael Shermer, one of America's leading skeptics, will be interviewed, along with Denver FFRF activist Mike Smith, about the "Imagine No Religion" billboard he helped get posted for two months this summer in Denver.

Author: "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," Jeff Sharlet, contributor to Harper's and Rolling Stones, will be interviewed about his new book exposing a religious-right cult with tentacles reaching into Congress. Freethinkers Almanac will celebrate several musical composers and the hosts will discuss the biblical roots of the polygamy scandal involving the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints.

Author of the bestselling "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," Prof. Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University, will be interviewed. State/church activist Prof. Eric Barnes will also be interviewed about why he complained about ownership of a lighted cross by the Village of Holmen, Wis., and what has since transpired. Freethought Radio will update the continuing saga of pastors embarrassing the presidential candidates they have endorsed, in this case John McCain.

Freethought Radio interviewed leading geneticist and the lively science educator, Prof. Sean Carroll, author of The Making of the Fittest, about the evidence for evolution being found at the DNA level, and the ongoing controversy over creationism. China's devastating earthquake and Myanmar's cataclysmic cyclone were addressed in Dan's Pagan Pulpit, which discussed the age-old theological "problem of evil."

Freethought Radio will discuss the Freedom From Religion Foundation's newest legal challenge over school subsidy of the Child Evangelism Fellowship in a Wisconsin school, and will talk with the dad who originally lodged the complaint. (He is not being identified to protect his children.) Sound clips from John McCain and his pastor supporter relating to their views against state/church separation will be featured. And the show will conclude with an interview of internationally-known magician and exposer of hoax, the atheist and author, James Randi!

This weekend's show will feature an interview with Richard Sloan
about timely issues involving the dangers of religion and prayer being prescribed as "medicine." Freethinkers Almanac will look at the nonreligious views of Irving Berlin and Katharine Hepburn, and the hosts will talk about a freethinking visit to New York City and Los Angeles.

Freethought Radio talks with Eugenie Scott about the rightwing antievolution film "Exposed." Hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor also speak with Jeremy Hall, who will be receiving FFRF's "Atheist in Foxhole" award.

Freethought Radio talks with Temple University professor John Allen Paulos, author of the bestseller "Innumeracy," about his new and amusing book debunking belief in a god, "Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up." The show also dissects what's wrong with a National Day of Prayer.

18-year-old high school senior Matthew LaClair, who received the Thomas Jefferson Student Activist Award last year from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, talks about his latest headline-grabbing complaint about religion in public schools, this one involving a biased text used nationwide. The hosts go after CNN-TV for the media imposition of a religious test for public office, imposed on Democratic candidates in a April 13 "faith forum," and object to public financing of the pope's visit to America.

In addition to speaking with the intrepid editor in chief of the irreverent Onion weekly newspaper, this weekend's show will thoroughly dissect what's wrong with the Ten Commandments (listen for cameos from The Ten Commandments), in response to a Senate resolution pending to declare the first weekend in May "Ten Commandments" weekend.

The unnecessary, tragic deaths of two children last month whose respective parents let them die of preventable diseases in the name of faith will be discussed with Shawn Francis Peters, author of When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law. Dan Barker's "Pagan Pulpit" exposes the biblical admonitions to rely on faith to heal. Also featured: clips from "Fitna," the controversial Internet movie about Islam by Dutch parliament member Geert Wilders, an update on a Congressional probe of prosperity preachers, and a recording of Tom Lehrer, born April 8, singing his classic "Vatican Rag."

Journalist and freethinker Susan Jacoby, author of the new book, The Age of American Unreason, who also wrote Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, is interviewed on this weekend's show.

Evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard, is the featured guest, discussing both his nontheistic views, and his concerns about the current administration's attacks against science in order to placate the religious right. "Theocracy Alert" discusses the Rev. Wright-Rev. Hagee fallout on the presidential campaigns. The hosts discuss the problem with Easter, and also pay tribute to nonbeliever Arthur C. Clarke, who died this week.

Freethought Radio's Theocracy Alert discusses the unseemly mix of religion and politics in presidential actions and the presidential race. The former reverend Dan Barker's Pagan Pulpit examines the biblical role in sanctifying torture here on earth, and Dan, with co-host Annie Laurie Gaylor, in a segment on "being good without god," addresses the tired old myth that nonbelievers are immoral. The rejection of dogma by Albert Einstein is featured in Freethinkers Almanac.

Freethought Radio devotes its entire program to an interview with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author of the bestselling blockbuster, The God Delusion.