Non-Prophets episode 10.11

Two weeks ago there was a great disturbance in the atheist community, like a million voices crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced. They were reacting to the news that it would be an estimated four weeks before the next official Non-Prophets episode would air.

Luckily, the guerrilla gorillas have been hard at work to bring you a brand new tin-cans-and-string episode. If you're subscribed to the podcast, you may have already known this. If not, check it out at the Non-Prophets audio archive!

New LIVE Non-Prophets return this Saturday

The rabble are banging away at Martin's post with torches and pitchforks, demanding to know: when, oh when will there be a new non-guerilla episode?

Wonder no more! The first new "official" Non-Prophets Radio will air LIVE this Saturday, October 23. It will feature Matt, Denis, and me... and if all goes according to plan, a special phone-in mystery guest. (I've been known to make these claims before and look foolish later, so apologies in advance if the guest can't make it. Forget I ever said anything! What guest?)

Non-Prophets 9.9!

Well, here it is at last, gang. Probably the last of the guerilla episodes, as the regular series is set to resume, I do believe, this coming weekend!

Gia Grillo, Chris Conner and I reteam, and end up spending a lot of this episode wagging our fingers at some of our fellow heathens, expressing our dismay at the way some people in the atheist camp got caught up in the wave of Muslim-bashing that arose around the Park51 controversy. While none of us likes Islam, naturally, most of the rhetoric was simple hate speech from the Fox News wingnut camp that grossly generalized all Muslims, even those who are peaceful and loyal U.S. citizens, under the "terrorist" banner. That some atheists actually fell into that trap of emotion-clouded unreason is something we hate to see.

Then we smack around Phil Plait a bit for his "Don't Be a Dick" speech, and talk about accommodationism vs. confrontationalism.

Not to be a whiner, but holy hell balls this one was tough to edit. But I think the mix is superior to 9.6, even though our different mics and the fact we were basically recording a three-way Skype call means it still isn't audiophile material by any means. (I apologize for my harsh S's.) I hope you all enjoy it, and I'm off for a nap. If you'd rather wait for the iTunes feed, Matt tells me he'll do the necessary admin stuff to get it up on the feed either tonight or tomorrow, so you won't have to wait days and days like last time. And if you want art for your iPod, download the above graphic and stick it in yourself. With 9.6 Russell told me I inadvertently changed the art for the whole feed by embedding it in the episode beforehand. Durp.

Consider the comments to be an open thread on the episode.

Some updates

Hey all. I know there hasn't been a lot of activity here in several days. Sorry for that, I guess life has us all occupied at the moment. But you folks have done a fine job keeping the home fires burning here, especially as we've got a new theist who's turned up in the thread below. So go have a look at that conversation if you're so inclined. It could end up rivaling the thread we recently had with Parture, aka Troy.

Just to bring you all up to speed: No AETV tomorrow, due to that stupid pre-emption thing. But I hope you'll all be excited by the news that the geek trio of myself, Gia Grillo and Chris Conner have recorded one more guerilla Non-Prophets show, right before the resumption of the regular series. I hope to have it fully edited by tomorrow night or so, and up on the feed early in the week at the latest. This one will be a bit shorter than the nearly 2½-hour epic we recorded in July, and we deal with some more current topics of interest. In particular, we air our views on the recent rise in accommodationism and the "don't be a dick" flap.

Back soon. Until then, play nice (I expect the more mature of you to be off and running with "don't be a dick flap" jokes), and clean off your knives and put them away neatly before bedtime.

Open thread on Non-Prophets 9.8

It just occurred to me that I mentioned the new episode was up last week via Facebook, and of course you podcast-savvy listeners have already heard it. But for those who only rely on the blog for new information, you may not know that there is an all new guerilla episode featuring Lynnea, Jeff Dee, and me, Russell. Go check it out!

Non-Prophets podcast updated with episode 9.6... and 9.7!

Yep, you heard right. Not is the excellent episode recorded by Martin, Gia and Chris now available through conventional means, but Lynnea and I have been busy as well. This weekend we called up European internet buddy Dean Jones. You can download both by subscribing to the podcast or direct download at http://www.nonprophetsradio.com.

Non-Prophets 9.6 is up

For your consideration.

Gia, Chris and I had a blast doing this. As there was no live chat involved, we'll just make this an open commentary thread about the show. (Also, here is a much lower bitrate version, as I didn't take into account just how huge the higher quality version is and I didn't know at the time what bitrate the guys usually use. So choose this one if you just want a faster download and don't mind some loss of fidelity.)

The last thing that sidewalk evangelists ever see...

New "renegade" Non-Prophets episode recording tomorrow

During the lengthy and ongoing hiatus that has frustrated NPR fans for months and months, Russell and Lynnea recently recorded their own stop-gap, "renegade" episode to help mark time until the regular show hosted by Denis, Russell and Matt is able to resume. Which they're saying may be September. Which would be better interpreted as "wait and see." But as fans were happy with Russell and Lynnea's effort, there's no reason not to keep this up, especially as magical internettical computerifical technological magic makes it so easy.

Tomorrow afternoon, I will be recording yet another of these renegade shows, and it should be available on the NPR site by Friday. (It won't be a livecast though, so no simultaneous chat.) One of my guest hosts will be my dear friend, the beautiful and snarktacular Gia Grillo, aka PamAnnJett, whom most of you will recall from the post here not long ago, in which she recounted her little saga about walking boldly up to a pair of squeaky clean sidewalk proselytizers and mercilessly emasculating them in front of everybody! Hey, she may be small, but she packs a wallop. Joining us also, from the misty forests of northern California, will be our mutual friend, Chris Conner. Mostly our topic will involve how the Internet has played such a powerful role, both as a resource for atheists and a way to forge a sense of community among us that atheists never had before. The rise in atheism's profile globally; the popularity of shows like AETV and blogs like Pharyngula; the ability for there even to be such a thing as million-selling atheist books; and finally, the many connections of simple friendships open to us — the Internet has done more for the spread of reason than anything, and we'll talk about how it's impacted our lives. The Young, Godless, and Fabulous today live in a much different world than the one that afflicted Madalyn O'Hair's generation. But in many ways, not much has changed and there's still so much to be done.

All this and other stuff. Look for the new show to be downloadable by the weekend, gang. I'm very much looking forward to it myself.

New content this week

And verily the Lord of the internet did say, "Wherever two or more are gathered around a web-capable computer, and spend ninety minutes bullshitting about news of interest to atheists in the name of the ACA, yea, even there shall be an episode of The Non-Prophets."

And Russell and Lynnea, having nothing better to do one weekday evening, did do such a thing. And the readers of atheistexperience.blogspot.com, who did hunger for more NPR episodes, went forth and listened to it. And they declared that it was good, or at least we hope they will.

For the conclusion of the Ross/Rana/Shermer debate review

I apologize for not completing my earlier discussion of the debate. For those who don't listen regularly to The Non-Prophets, I just wanted to mention that we had a fairly lengthy discussion there. You can hear the end by listening to this episode.

If you have listened to the episode, feel free to post a summary of what we said in the comments.

PZ Myers on The Non-Prophets

In case you haven't heard it already, this past Saturday we got a chance to interview PZ Myers, author of the wildly popular Pharyngula blog, on "The Non-Prophets." The resulting show is here.

PZ dropped by at 27:23 in the broadcast, and we got to chat with him for about an hour. Topics we covered included Ben Stein's "Expelled," science education, Michael Behe's latest book, and thoughts about what you would have to do in order to make a good pro-science documentary.

Remember to drop by this thread and say thanks!