Unreasonable

What did you do on inauguration day? If you’re like us, you were seeking shelter from the impending storm, some sort of diversion to preserve your mental health before the inevitable onslaught to come. At Unreasonable, we went into the studio as a team to discuss the sunsetting of the podcast, what we all plan to do now, and to vent.

And we all have very different responses to our current situation; one of them might align with yours, whether it’s disillusion, rage, nihilism, or a holding on to some semblance of hope. We’ll all continue our activism, but along very different lines.

Join us one last time. And thank you for listening.

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As Unreasonable's production comes to a close, and American democratic norms shift towards theocracy, we sought perspective, a calmer voice that might, while acknowledging the darkness, also offer a glimmer of hope.

Andrew Seidel is no stranger to Unreasonable listeners. He is Vice President of Strategic Communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a constitutional attorney who’s defended the First Amendment for more than a decade. He is the author of two books: The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American (2019) and American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom (2022).

In December, 2023 he closed out our first season. This episode bookends that one. 

This time David and Christina talk to Andrew about the cases AU is gearing up for in a second Trump administration, the practical implementation of Project 2025, the future complexion of the Supreme Court, AU's recent legal victories and what clues they might hold for future success as we enter America's darkest period.

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As we enter what promises to be an era of American-style Christo-fascism, it's hard for secular people -- people of reason, of science, who believe that faith is earned by evidence -- to not be cynical of those whose deeply held yet unproveable (indeed, improbable) beliefs will soon be determining our laws and dictating our behaviors.

Yet, without hope there is only despair. So as we turn the page on 2024, a year of frustration followed by cautious optimism followed by grief for some/surrender for others, we at Unreasonable are like moths seeking the light. Our flame? Sasha Sagan.

Sasha is a television producer, filmmaker, writer, and speaker on the ways science can inform our celebrations and how we mark the passage of time, inspired in part by the work of her parents, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.

Her podcast “Strange Customs” explores why we practice the rites of our ancestors, act them out, teach them to the next generation, often without questioning them. 

"When we take a step back, however, what can seem bizarre, arbitrary…can also be, sometimes, profoundly beautiful.”

Our holiday gift to you: a ray of reason-based sunshine for these gloomy times. 

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Whatever your position is on Israel, on Zionism, on Hamas' attacks on October 7, 2023 or Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, it's undeniable that Israel had an outsized influence on our recent presidential election.

And it's ironic that our greatest ally in the Middle East, that tiny state described as the only functioning democracy in the region, may well have been a major contributor to the undoing of American democracy. 

How did the promise of Israel become the problem of Israel? 

Unreasonable executive producer and this episode's guest host, Bennett Windheim, spoke with political economist, educator and author Bernard Avishai and asked: Is Israel a theocracy, and are there cautionary lessons for America to learn?

Avishai is the Visiting Professor of Government at Dartmouth and former adjunct Professor of Business at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He’s taught at MIT and Duke. A Guggenheim fellow, he is the author of several books including 'The Tragedy of Zionism,’ 'A New Israel,' and 'The Hebrew Republic.' 

He is a former editor of the Harvard Business Review and contributes regularly on matters of political economy and Israeli affairs to the New Yorker, The New York Review, The Nation, the New York Times Magazine, and Harper's, for which he wrote last year’s captivating report entitled “Israel’s War Within: On the Ruinous History of Religious Zionism.” 

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Despite the New Testament’s recording of its main character making a clear distinction between what man owes his government (taxes) and his lord (devotion), in real life it’s never quite worked out that way. Churches have been tax-exempt since time immemorial. Today, the very idea of asking houses of worship to pay their fair share is a non-starter. Much like asking this country to elect a woman president.

At a time when the IRS is stretched thin and overwhelmed by its own complexity, religious organizations are leveraging loopholes to take advantage of the tax code and pastors are increasingly, and egregiously, flouting electioneering from the pulpit (an activity restricted by the Johnson Amendment). Further, the incoming administration has already made clear its intent to declare nonprofits that oppose its policies terrorist organizations, thereby stripping them of their nonprofit status and thus their ability to collect tax-deductible donations, their very lifeblood.

Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, professor of nonprofit law at Notre Dame University, is our Virgil, guiding us with wisdom and humor through this holy hellscape of taxes and religion.

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In 2017, like many financial journalists, Gareth Gore went to Spain to report on the sudden collapse of the global bank, Banco Popular. And, like every other reporter, he missed the real story. 

That is, until he returned to Spain two years later. As he recalls, "It was sheer luck, ...that I picked up a newspaper and saw that there was this scramble from people to get their money back. And it was only when I discovered some of the more sinister links later on that it became a wider story about Opus Dei rather than the bank."

In his new book, "Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church" (Simon & Schuster) Gore explains how one man turned his "vision" from God into a mission to "reChristianize the world," and how the organization he created, with its bizarre rites and structure, first infiltrated Spanish society with the help of the country's dictator Francisco Franco, won the imprimatur of the Vatican, became a financial powerhouse, and today, wields influence in the halls of the United States Congress and Supreme Court.

If you thought the New Apostolic Reformation and Ziklag were disturbing, you will not be assuaged by Gore's revelations. Still, knowledge is power. Come November 5, we have the opportunity to reject the theocratization of America. #vote

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Early last week we recorded an interview with illustrator Jesse Duquette. Then we got the word over the weekend: Meta not only shut his account down, but permanently deleted its posts and eradicated his community of over 200,000+ followers. Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaminions decided Duquette’s incisive and hard-hitting cartoons were just too much for Instagram. (Meta is the company that started out simply as Facebook but now includes Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp as well as other properties.)

This is the same Mark Zuckerberg who in 2019 told students at Georgetown University that “Frederick Douglass once called free expression ‘the great moral renovator of society,’ and repeating Douglass’ words, ‘slavery cannot tolerate free speech’.”

Apparently Duquette’s style of cartooning was intolerable.

This episode is a twofer: Part One is a deep-dive into the life and times of an artist and political commentator at work. Part Two explores the aftermath, when the AI of the world’s most powerful social media company, proves incapable of discerning satire, and banishes a popular presence based on its own misunderstanding of what it thinks it knows. 

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Pierce Watkins is a Zen-master of epistemology.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, epistemology is “the theory of knowledge and understanding, esp. with regard to its methods, validity and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.”

In other words: how do we come to know what we know, and believe what we believe, whether it’s true or not? At what point do our inherent biases take control of our brains?

Pierce's current project, Compassionate Epistemology, is fascinating. He’s interested in having civil conversations around why people believe what they do and, more importantly, how they came to those conclusions. Even more importantly, how does one express an opposing view (based on, say, provable facts) without resorting to emotional violence. 

It's not easy. But at a time when America is a country of divided states each with their own belief system, isn’t it at least worth trying to understand where "those people" are coming from? (Maybe. I dunno…) 

As Christina asks, "How do you have a conversation with someone who would have stoned Galileo?"

Pierce has some ideas about that.

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Just when you thought you had a handle on all of the Christian Nationalist efforts to reshape America into their biblical paradise (think New Apostolic Reformation, Seven Mountains Dominionism, Jericho Marches, The Federalist Society, The Heritage Foundation, TurningPointUSA, Project 2025), along comes Ziklag, a secret society of mega millionaires created to help sway our elections toward a Christian Nationalist agenda that's also, (get this!) a tax-exempt 501(c)3!

With a name right out of the Marvel Universe, you'd think it comical if it weren't for real. ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll (along with his collaborator Nick Surgey of Documented) engaged in good old fashioned investigative journalism to draw back the curtain on this nefarious group and the ultra-wealthy families (whose fortunes you likely contribute to) behind it. 

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After a long long week of activity in Chicago, our friends Sarah Levin (Secular Strategies) and Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist), graciously agreed to connect for an exclusive conversation for Unreasonable listeners, recapping what they saw and heard at the Democratic National Convention, especially from a secular perspective, since over 30 percent of the Democratic party is non-religious.

There was a lot of god talk coming from the podium. And we get it: Democrats have the opportunity to draw in people of faith who’ve finally had it with their anti-Christ candidate. How many of those people actually exist? Who knows, but in this game of inches it behooves us to invite them to the party and feel welcome. As they should: honest people of faith do, for the most part, share the social and moral values of secular voters.

And though there’s still work to be done, tremendous strides have been taken by the party to acknowledge their reliable None voters. 

Sarah and Hemant walk us through them on this special DNC episode of Unreasonable.

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