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Hello and welcome to Marshall Matters of me, Winston Marshall for the Spectator. Today it is my privilege to speak to Professor, Philosopher, author and former

assistant professor at Portland State University until a rather dramatic resignation in September

2021. Peter Boghousian, Peter, thank you so much for speaking with me today.

Thank you. I appreciate having me on and getting to know you over the last few days.

Yeah, we've had some fun.

Very cool.

So there's quite a few things to get into, and you've done a lot within academia that I'm keen to

hear about, not least the resignation, which is now 18 months or so coming up to two years

ago, but also the great SoCal Squared hoax.

And I want to get a picture of academia and whether it's redeemable.

But also, maybe we can go further back into your work in New Atheism.

Of course, you're author of the book, A Manual for Creating Atheists.

And I'm keen to understand if we can get from new atheism to

wokeism. Yeah, we can easily draw that line. So wherever you want to begin. Well, if you

wouldn't mind, maybe for listeners who aren't familiar with your story, maybe you can tell us

why you resigned from Portland State University. Sure. So I did my dissertation in the prisons

with prison inmates and it was using the Socratic method, which is a way of asking people

questions, to help the men, and I say men, because everyone in my study at the time, the prison was Columbia River Correctional Institution, it was all male, to help the men, and I say men, because everyone in my study, at the time, the prison was Columbia River Correctional Institution, it was all male, to help the men desist from crime so that they had tools that they could use.

So then I took the tools that I developed from my dissertation, and then I, as you mentioned, the book, I turn the same Socratic questioning tools to

Issues of religious fundamentalism and issues of faith specifically and then I

You know I came up with an app to teach people how to have civil conversations that's the key key in this whole thing, civil conversations across divides. And a book. And a book, how to have impossible conversations about

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