Wired.com presents the Geek's guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 361 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Penny Lane, director of the new documentary Hail Satan, about the

satanic temple. The satanic temple, founded in 2013, is a religious community and activist group that seeks to uphold separation of church and state, and it's argued for years that if state and local governments are going to promote Christianity by placing 10 Commandments

Monuments on public property. The First Amendment

requires that they also be willing to place the satanic

temple's goat-headed bathamette statue nearby. At this point

multiple governments have chosen to remove their Ten Commandments

monuments rather than accept the Baffimed statue. The film follows characters such

as Lucian Grieves, the Temple Spokesperson, and Jex Blackmore who for years headed up the Detroit chapter as the

satanic temple grows from a handful of pranksters into a global movement with

over 50,000 members. The satanic temple does not believe in a literal Satan or in anything supernatural,

but they draw inspiration from the idea of Satan as a mythical figure who rebels against tyrannical authority,

and through their seven tenets they preach values such as freedom, empathy, justice, scientific understanding, and bodily autonomy.

The New York Times writes that Hale Satan is hilarious and a must see.

And now here's our interview with Penny Lane. All right, so we're here with

Penny Lane. Welcome to the show. Hello, thanks for having me. Okay, so prior to making

this documentary, what was your attitude toward church-state separation issues?

Oh, I mean, I was a, you know, lifelong kind of atheist, but I wasn't exactly paying attention to

church state separation issues like I sort of vaguely knew that there were some issues

but I I wasn't like on it.

I mean so growing up as an atheist you didn't have any problems with religion any

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