You're listening to, atheistically speaking. Oh, Hey, welcome to Atheistically Speaking, episode 43. My name's Thomas Smith as usual, and this

week we've got a special guest Ryan Bourne. How you doing, Ryan?

I'm doing great, man.

Glad to be here.

Awesome.

So for those of you who aren't familiar or didn't hear my promotion for this episode at all,

Ryan is the winner of the Sam Harris essay contest.

And I guess I'll say congratulations.

Good job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I don't normally like to do too much background talk with guests because most of the time they've appeared on a million podcasts and I don't want to repeat stuff that other people have said, but since you told me this is your first podcast appearance, I'd love it if you don't mind to give us a little background, maybe academic background kind of how you got to where you are now, that sort of thing, do you mind?

No, no, that's fine. It's it's funny prior to winning the contest. It's like I didn't even exist on the

Oh yeah, yeah. You could you could find a mix of flattering and not so flattering reviews of me on rate my professor but otherwise I was I was sort of a non entity

But yeah I I teach philosophy some semesters not, it just kind of depends on when the university needs me.

But I studied both cognitive science and philosophy here in my native state of Georgia.

Got a bachelor's degree in cognitive science,

though don't be deceived by the science part.

I mostly took philosophy classes.

I snuck in enough psychology that they gave me a science degree.

And then I went on to Georgia State

to study philosophy where I got a master's degree.

...