Humanize Me

The earth is in trouble and nobody seems to care. That's the observation of Josie, 15, who called the podcast after hearing more and more about humanity's biggest challenges during science class.

Is it even a word? Bart Campolo’s reaction to the anti-semitic shooting in Pittsburg was to reach out to his Jewish friends and ask how they were doing. It made him wonder if there is a way to be actively pro-semitic, and to support Jews more. To answer this, Bart reached out to the hosts of the most popular Jewish podcast in existence, Unorthodox. Mark Oppenheimer, Stephanie Butnick and Liel Leibovitz chatted with Bart in this fun conversation about philo-semitism, stereotypes of Jewish people, the places where people can get to know more Jews, how to be part of a group identity, tribalism and bagel-sniffing.

A letter this week from a listener who says he's hungry for community with like-minded secular people is just the latest one like it. But this one couldn't have come at a better time, or landed on more fertile soil. Two Sundays ago, Bart Campolo and a team of like-minded people held their first content-driven gathering at his new house in Cincinnati. The theme of the event was, 'Paying Attention.' They have decided to hold these meetings once every 2 weeks, with a different theme each week. Bart has a hunch that their material may be of interest to the wider Humanize Me community, and his team are excited to share their format.

You can be forgiven for not being familiar with 'pyrotheology', the lifelong philosophy project of Peter Rollins. In this episode of Humanize Me, Bart Campolo attempts a philosophical deep dive with Pete, a friend of the podcast for years. It’s a very lively, argumentative conversation on the differences between Bart and Pete on human drive and desire, humanism, religion, death, meaning and meaninglessness. Along the way, the pair touch on dialectics, human evolution, dual instincts, psychoanalysis, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, ontological antagonism, fundamentalism and the death of God.

One of our listeners read an interview with Conan O'Brien in the New York Times last week, wherein Conan embraces the idea of his own coming irrelevance, and that of his work. Our listener finds it both 'liberating and depressing,' and Bart Campolo has lots to say about this, attempting to give an answer.

James Croft is the Outreach Director of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, a longstanding humanist congregation, and one of the largest in the world. In this conversation with Bart Campolo, James talks about what his congregation is doing to engage with the issues of St. Louis, a place which has made many headlines in the past number of years for racial strife. James subscribes to 'deed before creed', an interest less in what people believe and more in what they commit to doing. His congregation is creating safe places to ask questions that people are worried about asking, or which may be loaded, in areas like LGBTQ matters or on topics like white fragility. In addition, he and Bart get into a discussion on the usefulness of protests and revolutions versus better conversations (spoiler: they eventually agree that both are of use).

It's a new year! A time for fresh ideas and new beginnings, and so much has been happening in Bart Campolo's life that this episode serves as an update and a reflection on various themes, including: how helping a parent cross life's finish line can focus the mind and change your plans, how the birth of a first grandchild a few days later can turn the whole thing into a 'circle of life' motif, while turning attention on the kind of world they're being born into, how suddenly becoming aware of your own habits and behaviors can give you a desire to change them.

A quick Christmas greeting from Bart Campolo, urging secular folks like himself to embrace the holiday for what it is, and be their best humanist selves during the season.

Bart Campolo's oldest and closest friend, Matthew Rodreick, is this week's guest on the podcast. Matthew's life has been shaped by his son Gabe's spinal cord injury, sustained around a decade ago when Gabe was 16.