America's Best Idea
Freethought Radio
Freedom From Religion Foundation
4.6 • 578 Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We report on state/church violations in the White House, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Then, FFRF Rapid Response Attorney Chris Line tells us what it means now that the IRS has announced that places of worship can endorse political candidates. Finally, we speak with distinguished Dartmouth historian Randall Balmer, who is an Episcopal priest, about his new book, America's Best Idea: The Separation of Church and State.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is Free Thought Radio with co-host Stan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Irreverent Views, News, Music, and Interviews. |
| 0:19.0 | Imagine there's no heaven. |
| 0:21.6 | It's easy if you try. |
| 0:27.6 | No hell below us, above us only sky. |
| 0:41.3 | Imagine all the people living for today. Welcome to Free Thought Radio. I'm Annie Laurie Gaylor. |
| 0:59.0 | And I'm Dan Barker. Annie Laurie and I are co-presidents of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. |
| 1:06.0 | And this is the July 17th, 2025 episode of Freeethought Radio, recording in the Stephen Ool-friendly |
| 1:13.8 | atheist studio in Freethought Hall, which is our national headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. |
| 1:21.2 | Free Thought Radio, as regular listeners know, is the weekly production of FFRF, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which is working |
| 1:30.7 | at this very important time to try to shore up the very besieged wall of separation between |
| 1:37.6 | state and church, trying to keep religion out of our social policy and government, and also |
| 1:42.8 | representing the views of our 42,000 members, mainly free thinkers, |
| 1:48.0 | atheists, agnostics, non-theists, |
| 1:51.0 | who personally dissent from religion, |
| 1:53.0 | and you can join us at ffrf.org. |
| 1:57.0 | It's 42,600 now. |
| 2:00.0 | What is wrong with mixing religion and government? In the second half of today's show, |
| 2:06.7 | we're going to talk with distinguished Dartmouth historian Randall Balmer about his new book, |
| 2:12.9 | America's Best Idea, the separation of church and state. |
| 2:18.3 | Randall Balmer is an Episcopalian priest who's firmly committed to keeping religion and government separate. |
| 2:24.3 | And before that, we'll talk with Avaverav attorney, Chris Lyne, |
| 2:28.3 | about the recent, disturbing IRS decree that many Christian nationalists are claiming now allows churches to freely |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Freedom From Religion Foundation, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Freedom From Religion Foundation and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.