Freethought Radio

Hear about FFRF's billboard caveat at the RNC in Tampa: "God Fixation Won't Fix This Nation." This week we talk with University of Central Florida professor Charles Negy, whose Cross-Cultural Psychology course warns about bigotry, yet he was unable to avoid religious bigotry in his own class, prompting him to send an eloquent letter to his students which has gone viral on the internet.

Irish atheist eyes are smiling! FFRF complaint stops church discount at Irish Fest in Milwaukee. Listen to FFRF's new "Spotlight On Freethought" segment now airing on national public television. Guests this week are Alvin Harris, the Nashville attorney who handled the successful lawsuit challenging the water tower cross, and Josh Everett, a former fundamentalist evangelical minister and missionary who is now an outspoken atheist.

More FFRF victories and activism to report this week. Listen to Russian female punk band Pussy Riot protest the government in an Orthodox church, and hear Robert Ingersoll's "Declaration of the Free" set to music. Then we talk with well-known atheist blogger Greta Christina about her new book, Why Are You Atheists So Angry?

Government prayer, religious symbols on city seals, freethought billboards in Spokane, atheist Boy Scouts turning in their badges: it is a busy summer for state/church activism. This week we hear the testimony of a brave 12-year-old girl protesting prayer in her Tennessee county; we play a little-known Cole Porter song, "Experiment," about the value of science; and then talk with Linda Stephens, one of the plaintiffs in the victorious 2nd-Circuit Appeals Court decision outlawing governmental prayer in the Town of Greece, New York.

This week we have a whole lot of victories to report in the battle to keep religion and government separate, mostly in the south. We listen to country singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks' irreverent tune, "God Isn't Real," and then talk with Annalise Fonza, a United Methodist minister who gave up her faith and is now a happy atheist university professor.

Freethought in the Arts! After reporting on victories and positive developments in FFRF legal complaints in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and the U.S. Army, we talk about the many freethought connections in the movies, music, literature and poetry. For the second half of the show we play Bill Moyers' remarkable interview of freethought poet Philip Appleman that ran on PBS in early July.

Hasa Diga Eeebowai! After reporting news on our own continent--including an FFRF victory in Virginia stopping prayers at a county board meeting, a JFK billboard in Lubbock, press coverage of our full-page ad in the New York Times, and a clip of FFRF's "freethought poet laureate" Philip Appleman being interviewed by Bill Moyers--we talk with Leo Igwe, the leader of Humanists in Nigeria, about his heroic attempts to combat superstition, witchcraft, Christianity, and Islam in Africa with reason and skepticism--efforts which got him unjustly thrown in jail.

Perhaps it should be called the "Godless Particle," since the newly discovered Higgs boson was named after an atheist. This week we honor nonbelieving lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, and talk with Barbara Forrest, professor of philosophy, author ofCreationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, and expert witness in the Dover (PA) "intelligent design" trial.

This week we hear reaction to FFRF's provocative "Quit The Church: Put Women's Rights Over Bishop's Wrongs" billboard. We talk about (yet) more governmental prayer violations, then we interview Ron Williams, the Australian singer/songwriter and father of six who challenged state-paid chaplains in public schools, and this month won a victorious decision from the High Court.

We're storming the bishops' bastille. Attorney Andrew Seidel exposes the bishops' phony claim that the contraception mandate is religious persecution. We unveil FFRF's impressive TV ad campaign with Julia Sweeney.