Welcome to our new home on Freethought Blogs. The transition seems to have gone smoothly, so I assume we’ll have some new people stumbling across us.
The Atheist Experience is a live public access call-in television show based out of Austin, Texas. It launched in 1997. You can learn more about the show here, including information on how to watch live and view the extensive archive. We’ve got two hosts — Matt Dillahunty is on three out of every four weeks, and I (Russell Glasser) host the fourth week. We also have five rotating cohosts: Don Baker, Jeff Dee, Jen Peeples, Martin Wagner, and Tracie Harris.
Since we have fifteen years of live callers behind us, we’ve covered a pretty wide range of personalities. They range from slickly packaged professional apologists like Ray Comfort and Matt Slick on one end, to just plain unexpected silliness on the other.
The Atheist Experience is sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin, a terrific social group which also supports two other podcasts: The Non-Prophets, a round table discussion group; and Godless Bitches, an atheist feminist podcast.
We’re all looking forward to interacting with the Freethought Blogs community at large, and I’ll be writing a new post introducing myself personally as one of your regular bloggers. Talk to you soon!
31 comments
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Sunday Afternoon
September 29, 2011 at 4:31 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Another one of my regular reads joins FTB! Wonderful – welcome!
Monado, FCD
September 29, 2011 at 4:45 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Hello! It’s not such a pressing issue in Canada although our stealth evangelist Prime Minister is no doubt stacking the deck against future generations. His wife used to work at one of those bait & switch “pregnancy crisis” anti-abortion centres, the kind that inevitably pop up next to abortion clinics. But the last time he even mentioned re-opening the abortion debate, there was such an outcry that he backed off. However, that’s neither here nor there. Welcome to Freethought Blogs.
When you run the call-in show, do you ask people what they’re going to say, first? I recently called in to a show about urban planning here and they asked what point I wanted to make. I gave them my first point to show that I was not going to start screaming obscenities and being a total jerk. So when it came to air time, they extracted that first point and then moved on, leaving me mute. Next time I will know to give a short rundown of all three or four points I’m hoping to get across. It was well run but I just didn’t know the system. So–do you do that? Or do you take them cold? And if so, is there a time delay for bleeping out words that violate the broadcast standards, if any?
jacobfromlost
September 29, 2011 at 5:25 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
The show is on public access and is also streamed on the web. They have call screeners, but the show allows for some good back and forth. There are hundreds of clips on youtube to get a feel for the show. It can be funny, serious, sometimes angry, rational (the hosts), irrational (some callers), and overall the most free fun I have ever had.
Here’s my favorite compilation:
Russell Glasser
September 29, 2011 at 5:38 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
What a great nostalgia trip! Thanks for linking that.
besomyka
September 29, 2011 at 4:49 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Looks like I’ll need to adjust my RSS feed. A resident of Austin and a frequent reader… welcome! FTB is seriously simplifying my feed.
Russell Glasser
September 29, 2011 at 5:27 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Hi Monado,
When you run the call-in show, do you ask people what they’re going to say, first?
Yes we do. There is a call screener up who picks up the line first, so the hosts can see their name and location and a brief description of their topic. However, we try to leave the discussion running as long as it’s productive, so we won’t hurry people along at first, and we make an effort to let them talk without being interrupted… mostly. If the call takes a long time or gets repetitive, then we’ll consider cutting it short.
is there a time delay for bleeping out words that violate the broadcast standards, if any?
It’s public access, so the standards are pretty loose. We generally avoid swearing much ourselves, and obviously we’d hang up on a very rude callers, but both callers and hosts have gotten away with language that would be a problem on a network show. No major worries about it.
Tim H.
September 29, 2011 at 5:27 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
The Matt Slick link connects to the Ray Comfort Interview.
Russell Glasser
September 29, 2011 at 5:37 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Fixed it, Tim.
Martin Wagner
September 29, 2011 at 5:39 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I have noticed something amusing and potentially confusing in the whole act of exporting our archive from Blogger to FTB: all of my original posts, every one, going right back to the launch in 2006, now has Russell’s byline on it. I guess that’s simply an artifact of my being the chief admin over at Blogger and Russell taking over that role here, and the software just doing what it does as a result. So, just so everyone is clear, it wasn’t Russell, for instance, who was libeled online by a lunatic apologist three years ago and came within a hair’s breadth of suing the guy. Mark my words, being affiliated with high profile atheist media means you meet some truly interesting (and by “interesting” I mean “seriously fucked”) examples of human fauna.
Russell Glasser
September 29, 2011 at 5:41 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Martin, I think that happened because of a mistake I made when I uploaded the archives, and at this point it seems like it might be a terrible headache to fix. If you want to change some of them on an individual basis, I think you have the power to reassign the authorship of those posts. Alternatively, I might just delete all those old posts and reupload them, but that was part of the terrible headache I wanted to avoid.
Martin Wagner
September 29, 2011 at 5:43 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I’m not upset about it, but I did worry it might cause some confusion. On my own time, I will go back, perhaps on a month to month basis, and change them as I see fit.
(Later) Okay, I’ve figured out how to bulk edit posts to change the bylines, so I’ll do that on my own time. Already the setup here is immeasurably superior to Blogger!
Ibis3, féministe avec un titre française de fantaisie
September 29, 2011 at 5:48 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Awesome!! This thrills me to bits.
JT
September 29, 2011 at 5:55 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I don’t get wordpress. How do I put the chipmunk in?
Ibis3, féministe avec un titre française de fantaisie
September 29, 2011 at 6:39 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
You do that via Gravatar (just make sure you use the same email address for your Gravatar account as the one you used here at FTB. Also, in case anyone gets confused, the login here is only for FTB not for other sites running WordPress (including wordpress.com).
JT
September 30, 2011 at 8:42 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Thanks! I’m surprised someone knew what I was talking about.
JT
September 30, 2011 at 8:53 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Can has!
Monado, FCD
September 29, 2011 at 6:42 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Thank you for the explanations and the sample!
Now, you need to remind FTB and your fellow bloggers to put AXP into their blog rolls. I had to re-trace my history log to get back here.
Martin Wagner
September 29, 2011 at 6:50 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
When we officially launch on the 1st, we will be added to the main FTB page and the blogrolls.
nightman2112
September 29, 2011 at 10:23 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Will the link off of the AXP homepage go to this blog at some point?
Brono
September 29, 2011 at 10:42 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Ray Comfort is a slick apologist now? lol
warren grubb
September 29, 2011 at 10:49 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Whoa, new blog and posting with your real name- no more Kazim?
Russell Glasser
September 29, 2011 at 10:52 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I’ll change it back to Kazim as soon as I can figure out how to fix my account without breaking something.
LykeX
September 30, 2011 at 11:24 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
If your profile as admin is the same as a regular account, there should be a field for setting a nickname. This will be the name displayed, instead of your username.
Ibis3, denizen of a spiteful ghetto
September 30, 2011 at 7:43 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Don’t forget to fix the template to the new 2-column version before the official launch.
Kazim
October 1, 2011 at 1:30 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Martin preferred the 3 column version and I have no strong preference.
colubridae
September 30, 2011 at 9:16 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Hi love the show.
Just testing my ability to post.
I could never do it on the old site.
Cheers
Aratina Cage
October 1, 2011 at 6:31 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
This place keeps getting better and better. Welcome to FTB!
Dana Hunter
October 2, 2011 at 3:08 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
How much fun is this gonna be? Howdy, neighbor!
JKVisFX
October 2, 2011 at 7:25 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Very glad to see you guys here. I have listened to the podcast version of your show for a few years now. Always entertaining and even, at times, informative.
Aquaria
October 3, 2011 at 3:58 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Awesome! This is turning into a fantastic site, with so many free-thinking blogs in one place.
pensiveye
October 27, 2011 at 3:42 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I am one of the new readers you mentioned. Glad to see the site here. You have some very interesting arguments and I look forward to more.