Help Ask an Atheist Make the Transition to Radio

Wow, thanks for the support Hemant!

any time i see anything about anything, and it’s four white guys who at the very least emulate heteronormative culture in the visual sense? i make a moue.

Holy shit! Is that ever racist.
Talk about pre-judging.

Why do people always jump to make race and gender a central focus.
Maybe it’s just four guys who got an idea, put it together and made it work.
What I wonder is why aren’t they’re woman and people of color that are so concerned with race and color not doing more to help the problem? Start your own show, have your own conferences and invite us, show up to the ones thrown, I bet if all of a sudden a hundred color people, or a hundred women, or a hundred colored women showed up to the conferences, they would always be invited in with open arms. Maybe the reason we have huge meeting with old white guys is because few of the other demographics show up.

So many people whining about how things should be done but not doing anything. Almost as useful as praying.
Funny you don’t see Hemant whining about it, why? Because he’s contributing to the solution, not focusing on the problem.
(Sorry for being an ass)
Other than that I hope these guys succeed.

I am a member of Seattle Atheists and it’s as diverse as about all the other Atheist groups out there.

And I would love to support these guys, but frankly — Tacoma?

Hey,

Thanks for the big promotion, Hemant! I’m a huge fan of the blog.

The four guys who appear in the video — me included — are the creators of the show. I pitched the idea of an atheist-centric cable access show to the local atheist community over a year ago, and these are the gentleman who came to help from the beginning. It’s as simple as that. This isn’t a panel, it’s simply the show’s four creators.

Anyways…

As for Tacoma, we picked it because it’s the best radio option we have. KLAY 1180 AM is small and privately owned and will give us the greatest degree of creative freedom and the only affordable timeslots around. There’s no Seattle option that gives us anything nearly as good as KLAY.

And even if you folks don’t live in the Seattle area, please don’t think you can’t help. We’re also asking for donations from anyone who likes our show and would like to see it continue.

Actually, AM radio is big. It’s just that people like us — lefty NPR types — don’t listen to it. Millions of others do.

AM radio also offers us the best chance to reach theists and get great callers, who are not likely to hear us otherwise. We are stepping into “enemy territory,” so to speak. The fact that the station programming we’re on skews Right is only going to make our show all the more relevant.

And millions of people “wait for a radio show” every day, AM talk especially. Again, just because you don’t listen to it, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

And yes, the internet is huge, but with countless atheist podcasts out there, we’d get lost in the white noise. We’ve gotten the attention we’ve gotten so far because we broadcasted over the airwaves and because we took live calls.

The atheist corner of the internet is a great place, but only atheists and the rare theist internet gunslingers ever tread there. Our show has always aimed at reaching outside of the choir and being heard by people who disagree with us.

We’ve always had an internet presence, and that presence has always been 90%+ made up of atheists. We don’t want a “ditto head” preach to the choir show.

We want to challenge misconceptions about atheism and atheists. And we want to reach folks who aren’t internet debaters.

While we’re making this move through necessity, we think we have the potential to reach more people through AM radio than we did through public access television.

@Korinthian

http://www.youtube.com/user/AskAnAtheistTV

Chicago,

I hope you’ll actually check our show out before making some sort of judgment of us. The four creators of the show happen to be white males, because when I announced the desire to start a show like this, these are the only people who initially had an interest in it. That’s it.

As for diversity, of the three special guests we’ve had on the show so far, two were women and two were LGBT. One, Kate Fahr, has joined our regular host rotation.

This coming week, we’re doing an episode of the show on the atheist visibility movement in Latin America, filmed live entirely in Spanish. A couple months ago, I did a lengthy interview with Greta Christina for the show, on the topic of comparisons between the LGBT and atheist movements.

We also have an open invitation to Jenn McCreight to guest on the show — which she’s accepted, but the scheduled haven’t matched up yet.

And for the record, if four Japanese women or four latin transexuals had been calling for the creation of an atheist call-in show, I would have been the first to volunteer. We really need to get our voice heard in media.

Please do check out our show and don’t judge us before you do. You said that you commented based on an initial impression. Remember that often our initial impressions can be wrong, and give us a look before deciding that we’re racially and sexually uninclusive.

“that just looks bad?”

I guess it does if all you see is the color of skin and the gender, and fail to see the contribution they are trying to make.

But I guess it’s your story, so you can tell it anyway you want.

Sam’s a former Chicagoan.

That’s it? well I hoping for more. Some sorted story of one kind or another.

About 20 of years ago I hitchhiked from Saskatoon SK. to Chicago. I spent 6 weeks in working with a commune called Jesus People USA serving the homeless meals. Six weeks was all I could take. I hitchhiked back to Canada, and have to say I never felt happier leaving a place than I did then. We served about 150 people twice a day. There was an enormous amount of whining then too.
Hmmm….I wonder if there still around?