Humanize Me

Bart chats with his friend, the actress Maggie Wheeler, who is a director of the Golden Bridge Community Choir in Los Angeles, where people join together at all levels of singing ability and form a harmonious whole. They explore how singing brings people together and how her choir is actually an exercise in [...]

A special year-end edition of Humanize Me.

Secular stories: On this episode, Bart chats with his old friend Mark Yaconelli about his latest project, The Hearth Community, gatherings in which people explore, craft, and share stories from what they have lived. They talk about how these gatherings compare to Christian church, how they're different, and what role such things can play in shaping a secular world.

What to do when you've made a mistake. After all, we're all human.

That's the name of Jim Gilliam's book, wherein he describes his journey out of fundamentalist faith, through serious illness and into internet-facilitated activism and a software company that helps leaders connect with their people. In this episode, Bart chats at length with Jim at his offices in Los Angeles about connected humanity.

How does a secular humanist respond to the election by many of his fellow Americans of a brash, impulsive man who they know deep down doesn’t really care about them? Slowly. Thoughtfully. In this week's episode, Bart reads aloud his careful thoughts on the election of Donald Trump, and advocates an approach which [...]

Like Bart, Katherine Ozment is trying to figure out how best to find meaning, purpose and belonging in a secular age. In this conversation Bart asks her about her journey, which is similar to so many stories we've been hearing recently from the audience of Humanize Me.

Irshad Manji is an author, speaker and founder of the Moral Courage Project, espousing a ‘reformist' interpretation of Islam. She's featured in all kinds of media to speak out when others have wanted to shut her up, and chats with Bart here about a wide range of relevant and interesting subjects. Her books, The Trouble With Islam Today and Allah, Liberty and Love, have been translated into many languages and read around the world.

Last week's episode hit a nerve, or perhaps that should be many nerves. It's late at night in his apartment in Los Angeles and Bart takes a few minutes to touch upon the many responses to the episode with his wife Marty about whether he's being ‘too nice' about Christianity.

If it were up to Bart’s wife Marty, the rest of the world probably still wouldn’t know about their deconversion and this podcast wouldn’t exist, so her joining him for this episode is a pretty big deal. Rather than focusing on their marriage per se, however, Bart and Marty open up to each other about an immediate and excruciating question that every former believer must face sooner or later: How long do we hold our tongues once we realize that what we used to believe – and that many of our loved ones still do – is not just untrue, but also genuinely harmful?

On this episode of Humanize Me, Bart's friend Peter Montoya talks about his attempts to start a new community of secular ‘freethinkers' from the ground up, how he began with the idea of a real, physical intentional community and didn't get there, and ended up with a large online community to show for it instead. Bart asks Peter about his first attempts at secular community building, what he thinks didn’t work and why, and what the two of them believe to be the factors that set apart real communities from online ones, or from mere ‘events' or ‘meetings'.

Bart talks about the attempt to create a new humanist community, one that listeners of this podcast can be part of. What's the difference between having a group of friends and having a community? Listen to this episode to find out.Get in touch with Bart HERE!

Can documentary filmmaking tell us anything useful about how to live our lives? Are people worth listening to for their own sake? And when is that film about Bart and his dad Tony going to be released? These questions and others came up during Bart's chat with his friend John Wright, the Northern [...]

In this episode of Humanize Me, Bart reads a letter from a listener whose wife worked really hard over many months to get a coveted new job, only to have her mother attribute all her success to God instead. Bart responds.To get in touch with Bart yourself, contact him HERE!

Bart chats with Brian Kateman of the Reducetarian Foundation about his mission to help reduce our meat consumption by encouraging people to simply eat less meat. This exciting new movement is composed of individuals who have committed to eating less red meat, poultry, and seafood, whatever the degree or the motivation. Not everyone is willing to completely eliminate animal products from their diet, so it's an appealing idea and Bart finds much common cause during this conversation. Included in this episode: * Effective Altruism and how to maximize the efficiency of your philanthropic work * How Brian discovered explanations outside of religious ones, and became secular * Some of the reasons people engage in the ‘reducetarian’ idea, and what the movement is about * The similarities between reducetarianism with respect to eating meat and humanism with respect to religious belief * Why the reducetarian movement is based on what works, rather than more abstract ideas * How people can get involved Visit Reduceta

Here's a 20-minute episode from Bart Campolo on how to initiate conversations with people about life after religious belief, even when you live in the Bible Belt. During the episode Bart mentions the Radiolab episode here: From Tree to Shining Tree.

Once in a while, we run into people who we have so much in common with, it's an instant connection and leads to a long conversation. This is one such conversation, between two well-known progressive Christian ministers who both stopped believing in God in recent years and left Christianity in public ways. Although [...]

Your life is going to end someday. How do you live when you know life is finite? In this clip, Bart Campolo and Hemant Mehta talk about the moments of connection, awareness and sensation that make life worth living to its fullest. It starts with a question by Hemant, recorded for his own podcast last summer: [...]

A listener writes with a problem: she's an atheist but her husband is still a strongly committed Christian who is teaching their kids that, if they don't accept Christianity, they'll go to Hell. What does she do?Bart gives a response with advice for those in a similar situation: how to communicate, what to communicate about, how to teach respect for religious faith even if one doesn't hold it.Getting in touch with Bart HERE, or join the conversation on his Facebook page HERE.

Shane Claiborne