And the Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. My name is Brad O'Nishi, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Skidmore College. Our show is hosted in partnership with the CAP center at UCSB and I'm glad to say after two weeks I'm back with my co-host

I'm Dan Miller Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College, and it's good to talk to you, Brad, there's a nice break, but you know, it always makes my day to hear your voice.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

People are going to be wondering if you're being sarcastic now, you know, I think, but I think you're being sincere, so I appreciate that.

Being sincere, my reason for hope over the last world was hearing your voice again.

Yeah, going that that was in my future.

Well, I think both of us are tired.

The end of the semester is upon us.

For those of you listening, this week has also been the American Academy of Religion Conference,

so that's a gathering usually of about 8 or 10,000 religion and theology profs

and other folks, grad students and stuff.

It's been online.

So there's been a lot of Zoom meetings

and a lot of presentations and things. So anyway, all that to say friends, we're in the midst of it we're grading.

We're finishing this semester.

We are trying to be smart on panels at national conferences,

but we're also here and I agree with Dan. This is a highlight of my week and it's something I look forward to. So it helps me get to Friday. And with all that said, Dan, we have a bunch of stories we need to cover that are not so happy and not so cheery.

I think we're going to start today by talking about mainly newsy stuff,

and that means what's going on in Georgia in terms of the Senate runoffs and some

magga controversy there. We're going to talk about some recent comments by former President Obama about the slogan

Defund the Police. Talk about COVID, which is raging in ways that are unprecedented in terms of our pandemic.

Talk about General Flynn's recent call

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