Radio and podcasts and such.

I have a morbid fascination with Christian talk radio. My mom listens to it on our morning commute, so it doesn't particularly bother me... until they start talking. The singing I can deal with, the talking makes me want to swallow a brick.

These Christians... they're fucking nuts. When I was a Christian, these are the type of guys I'd brush off and try not to associate myself with. They just... assume that everyone who is NOT a right-wing evangelical is out to get them. Like, everything a non-evangelical does is for the sole purpose of bringing down the Christians and intruding upon the First Amendment rights of Christians and so on and so forth, and it's all nonsense.

And the worst part is that they ice their little act with these sickly sweet, fake-ass personalities. Okay, example, these two guys were talking about how Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor are atheists and That's A Shame. Clown Number 1 is like "Apparently Dan Barker is an ex-evangelical turned atheist, which is really quite awful. I don't understand how that possibly could have ever happened. It makes no sense at all, hyuck."

Clown Number 2 then adds, "And Annie Laurie Gaylor is apparently his wife... it's strange; they're husband and wife, but their last names are different." And of course that last sentence is just dripping with condescension, because a wife is supposed to take her husband's last name no matter what, and that's Just How It Is. And they top it all off with this gem:

"Please, take a few minutes out of your day to pray for these atheists and blah blah blah insert regurgitated Christian love phrase here."

I really need to stop listening to this stuff... but I'm attracted to things that make me angry, I guess.

Anyways, the main point of this post is to plug some podcasts that I've gotten into recently. I've never really been a big podcast person, but my summer job of filing paperwork at a health clinic is unbearable if I don't have something engaging to listen to. So here we go, the podcasts that keep me from gouging my eyes out at work:

1. Atheist Experience. Of course, who doesn't listen to the Atheist Experience? I started listening when I found that music was not enough to entertain me on the 5-hour drive to my boyfriend's place. Definitely some good stuff. I've found, though, that I'm mostly interested in listening to the hosts' conversations, and not so much the viewer calls. The theist callers to the show tend to bring up the same points over and over and over again, and the atheist callers tend to, um, overstay their welcome and get really wordy. And errbody be off-topic. But anyways, love these folks.

2. The Good Atheist. Okay, this one is probably my personal favorite. I pretty much love everything about this podcast. It's funny, and I learn a lot, and the host (Jacob Fortin) is a bit of dick but a lovable dick, because he says what we're all thinking but are too scared to say. I've listened to about 10 or 15 of these podcasts so far, and they're good listening for the office. Really funny, but not SO wildly, insanely funny/goofy/irreverent that I start laughing to myself in the corner of my shared office and giving the gossipy nurses something to talk about.

3. The Grapes of Rad. This is one of those wildly, insanely funny/goofy/irreverent ones. I can barely listen to this one at work anymore because I laugh far too much. It's not specifically about atheism, but they did do this one really great podcast on religion with the creator of StuffChristianCultureLikes.com. I'm still not too sure about the religious beliefs of the two hosts. I've gathered that they were both heavily involved with church in the past, but not so much anymore? I dunno. Anyways. None of that matters because this shit is hilarious.