Have you ever enjoyed the taste of kimchi or haggis or pickled pigs feet or maybe listen to bagpipe music or new metal or Mongolian throat singing?

While some of these ideas may disgust you, they truly are another man's treasure.

It turns out the disgust is not just some innate

biological reaction, but a conditioned cultural response. Religion tends to hijack that emotion

by telling us what we should be disgusted by, things like taboo foods or menstruation or people having sex the wrong way. By teaching us to feel

disgust towards things that we are naturally driven towards and then conveniently offering us

absolution, the pattern of sin and forgiveness can keep us locked in a cycle of religious thinking.

How else might we think about or interpret these physical sensations such as the fear of the

Lord or a peace that surpasses all understanding? Well, we want to talk about it. So give us a call

because the show is coming right now.

All right. Welcome everyone. Today is March 16, 2025. I'm your host, licensed professional counselor, Christy Powell. And joining me today is Professor Richard Firth, Godbe, here, one of the world's leading experts on disgust and emotions. He's a writer, researcher,

and consultant in the history, language, science, and philosophy of emotions, and the distinguished

professor of liberal arts and humanities at Waxon University, Richard, really excited to have you on. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on. It's about time. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, no, I saw you on Talk Heathen a good while back and thought, man, why do I not get to co-host that show? So I had to bug our producer.

I'm very glad to be here. Yeah, it's good. Boogie Mo. That's fair enough. Sure. Well, we're

going to get into all kinds of things today. I mean, of course, on Talk Heathen, we're open to all

of your questions about religion, secular humanism,

atheistic morality, cosmology, philosophy, science, history, life, the universe, and everything.

But today, I'm really hoping to get some spicy calls about emotions, about what they mean,

where they come from, and how we might want to think or feel about them.

Richard, who are you hoping to hear from today?

I'm hoping for the same.

I'm really interested in the aspect of emotions and religion and how they work with each other.

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