This is him and Jessica and you're listening to the Friendly Atheist podcast. If you like what you're listening to, please go to patreon.com slash Friendly Atheist podcast. If you give a $5 a month donation, you can get access to add free versions of this show. So please do that. Thanks. Hello. Hi. How are you? I'm good. I'm very curious because on Twitter you teased this episode by saying you're going to tell me about the whitest thing you ever did. And I've been

thinking about it for the past hour. And my mind is racing with options. Okay. It's a compound thing. And I was embarrassed when I realized actually what was happening. So this weekend, I'm going to a wedding for the first time. And as you know, today, as of today, Illinois, quote unquote, opened back up, which I will say everywhere I went today. Everyone was still in masks. So that's good. Yeah, it's good to know. But so I decided to get myself a manicure pedicure, which I haven't done in so many months.

Like everybody else, as a special treat. And I realized as I was sitting in the pedicure chair, I was listening to a podcast. I was listening to Planet Money, a podcast about finance and football players and whether or not they should be able to get paid. And then I realized I'm also wearing a Planet Money t-shirt, which is they're both an NPR show. So I don't know listening to Planet Money, wearing Planet Money swag. I think that's at least.

And eight out of 10 had you been holding like a latte while you do all this or like a like a mimosa or something. Yeah, I mean, listen, I can always strive to be better and wider, haven't you know that about me?

Congratulations. Thank you so much. I'm really proud. I called my parents. The other thing is tonight at seven tonight Friday at seven central. I'm going to be.

Oh, no, it's not at all. But I'm just giving you right, Hemant. You're right. And I'm wrong. Whenever you're listening to this, go to YouTube, go to Truth Wanted. I'm going to be on live tonight Friday. But I assume you can stream it forever on YouTube.

So I'm sure Hemant will do me the courtesy of putting a link in the notes to that. Yes. Uh-huh. And my last thing is I'm going to Denver first week in August. And I might do a like friendly atheist podcast meetup.

So like probably on the whenever that Thursday is like August something August like six. Let's say so I'm maybe fifth or six. So yeah, I'm going to be doing that. I don't know my way around Denver that well, but I'm visiting friends. So those are all things I wanted to get out at the top of the show.

Hemant, let's talk about white dudes fucking up. Oh good. That is the first story I had.

I was pretty lucky like most of our stories are about problematic white dudes, but like I'm really proud that I landed this.

Okay, there was an article this week in Salon written by Phil Torres who has covered the new atheist for a while. He's been critical of them. He's a philosopher and author. He's written a bunch of stuff about it.

And I kind of agree with the gist of this article, but then it veers off track for me in a way that we are very critical of some of those quote unquote new atheist dockins being the primary example of that.

And there's a lot of issues with this. I don't want to spend the whole show on this article.

So I would suggest Thomas Smith, who does a podcast series, agrees only didn't entire hour long episode where he dissects this entire piece.

I listened to it. It was excellent. I would strongly urge you to check that out.

Is this about how like the far right and new atheists are sort of merging together?

Yeah, so this is, let me bring up just a few big points here.

The headline of the Salon pieces, Godless Grifters, how the new atheist merged with the far right subtitle.

What one seemed like a bracing intellectual movement has degenerated into a pack of abusive small-minded bigots holds no bars there.

A couple of bunches. A couple issues. I realize Phil may not have any control over the headline or the image.

So Salon's trying to get their clicks. I think Grifter is a very large word for what they're trying to.

Yeah, and the picture that they included includes Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Stephen Pinker.

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