All right, welcome everyone to a new episode of No Nonsense Spirituality with me, Britt Hartley,

and Bill Real of the Almost Awakened podcast.

And we are joined today by Austin D. Valentino, who is a content creator that I saw pretty

early on when he was a really small-time content creator.

And I messaged him and I really

loved his content and early on I said like you're going to blow up and you don't know it yet. And then

he did and I'm excited to bring him onto the channel. He is really doing well, has a large following on

Instagram where he explores topics in philosophy, religion, literature, and

critical thinking. And last time I talked to him, he considered himself an atheist, but he's

been shifting with that word. So we're going to get into that. And he's just really interested

in questions around religion, morality, and meaning. And I've just been loving his content

and had to have him on. So Austin,

thank you for joining us today. Yeah, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

And I'm really excited. I have other questions of things that I would love to pick your brain about

as you spend so much time in so many philosophy books. But what I actually really want to go

into more than that is like the story

about how you got here. How did you get to be someone who comments so much on morality and

religion, but more in kind of an atheist space? And I just really want to get a sense of your story.

So start us off at the beginning and take us on a journey here.

Sure. So of course, going to the content stuff, it's going to start with the motivation,

which started very young. I was a strange kid. I always loved the folklore myth, even religions

that I saw very similar to mythologies.

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