Breakfast with a Heathen - Ep 1: Coffee, Questions, and the Cost of Honesty

 Mike Smithgall, the unelected mayor of Atheistville, sits down with coffee to answer your questions about atheism, belief, and honesty. From telling your Christian mom you’re an atheist to why arguing with believers never works, this Sunday Q&A takes on faith, comfort, family, and finding peace without religion. No sermon, no shouting, no salvation required. 

Visit us at www.Atheistville.com for more content from Mike Smithgall and the Atheistville team

📺 Subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@atheistville

💬 Want to be a guest or submit a question? Drop us a note at CONTACT

Check us out at: https://atheistville.buzzsprout.com

🔥 New episodes weekly from Atheistville — Mike Drop with Mike Smithgall, Ask an Atheist, and The Unholy Roundtable

© 2025 Atheistville Media

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Hey, I'm Mike Smithgall, the unelected mayor of Atheistville. And go ahead and pour yourself a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, because this is Breakfast with a Heathen. I wanted to start this show because I there's a lot of questions. I've had the show Atheistville on YouTube and as a podcast. We also have a website, atheistville.com. Nice little plug there. But uh as a result of that, I get a lot of questions that people ask me, and sometimes they're very legitimate questions, and sometimes they're just people wanting to fight with me or troll. And I really don't do that. A lot of people have made the comment that um, you know, people like that. The uh there's uh um enragement equals engagement. There's a comment that that uh that that's true, but I I'm really just not uh the kind of guy who wants to get into a battle. I don't mind pushing back, but I'm not really here to battle. But again, people do make some good questions. Sometimes they're again very legitimate questions, sometimes they're trolling questions, but they're questions that I thought, well, that's it's a legitimate question in the sense that yes, I would like to answer that, even if the person is being a bit snarky sometimes. But that's okay. We all have our little role to play in life. But I thought what I would do on this series, again, this is Breakfast with a Heathen, uh, is give you something to maybe chew on on a Sunday morning when you're not going to church, or maybe you did go to church and you're listening to this later. Maybe you're listening onto your on your drive-in from work, but that's okay. We're gonna go through a handful of questions that I've received and just gonna give you my opinion on them and how I come down as an atheist. And I'm gonna give you a real quick commercial about who I am, but we won't spend any more time on that. Again, I started Atheistville actually a number of years ago. I kind of let it sit for a while and I re- I just picked it back up again. And I do a lot of live streams, a lot of interviews with people. We also do the unholy round table where we have, you know, four or five different atheists uh come together and we talk about uh our perspective on some of these same questions, and we all have different walks of life. But I am an atheist. I would classify myself as an uh agnostic atheist in the sense that I don't know if there's a God, I have no idea. But thus far, nothing has been proven to me. Uh something else I say a lot of times, I don't reject God. I reject you. If you're the one trying to assert that there is a God, you're trying to convince me that there's a God, I'm rejecting you because you're not doing a very good job at proving it to me. If there is a God, that person or that deity or that man, that woman, whatever you want to describe God as, uh, they've not come to me and proven themselves. So if you're their uh if you're their last hope here on earth to prove their existence, uh you're failing miserably at it because at 55 years old, uh, I don't see the evidence of it. But so that's me. That's me in that shell. If you have any questions about this, make sure you send me a message. I'll be happy to answer them. I'm very transparent that way. And make sure you go to our different channels again, YouTube. It's Atheistville on YouTube. Uh, we also have atheistville.com where we we have all of our videos and the audio podcast and our blog. We also have a sub stack. So I'm kind of hitting all the different corners of the world. But here we go. Let's talk, let's talk about some of the questions I've got pulled up. Some of these questions are they're actually from all the different places we reach out to. So let's see here. I'm gonna start with this first one because this kind of goes with what I've just said. Uh, the person says that arguing with Christians is pointless. Um, yes, to a degree. And and I'm gonna take exception with the word arguing. Um, yeah, arguing with uh anybody, it ultimately ends up being pointless. If it is a very strongly and passionate hell belief, it can very often wind up as pointless, right? Because the person, when you're talking about religion and politics, and unfortunately nowadays, those two are uh really can't separate the two, they they go hand in hand. Uh, we can get into that later. I think I've actually got a question about that, but we can get into why politics and religion are so hand in hand. But if that's something that's super passionate, the person's worldview is based on their belief and their identity as a Christian. And I'm gonna use Christian a lot because I'm an American. I grew up in America. Uh, I know people that are of different religions, but by and large, America is mostly Christians. I'm not gonna say it's a Christian nation because we're not by definition, but if you want to look at the sheer numbers, we have we're a Christian nation by sheer numbers. So, getting back to this question, arguing with Christians is pointless. I do find it somewhat pointless to argue and try to persuade them. And I guess they could say the same thing about me. They're trying to persuade me that there's a God, and they're very often using the same tired arguments that they've been using for 2,000 years, um, they're not going to get very far. Me trying to persuade them the other way, is probably equally fruitless, right? Telling them that there's not a God and that, and calling it skydaddie and um trying to condescend to them is really not very helpful. It doesn't, that doesn't push the conversation forward. And then what it doesn't do, and which is something I'm trying to figure out, and I don't know, I'm doing a good job at it, but something I think that I would like to do more of is find middle ground. Most of us are good, hardworking, warm-hearted people. We we have parents that we love or they're getting older and we want to take care of them. If we have children, we have children that we'll we'll defend to our last breath if we have to. Um, you know, we treat normal, everyday people with a level of respect and dignity. That's that's everybody in the world. That's not just Christians, that's not just atheists, it's not just Buddhists and yada, yada, yada, name your you know, pick your poison, so to speak. So we have a lot more in common than we have that is not in common. So trying to persuade someone and point out these things that I disbelieve versus what they believe is it doesn't generally get us anywhere. I prefer to take more of a um, there's a good word for that. I don't know if academics is the right word. It makes me sound like I'm I'm saying I'm very smart, but I'd like to point out things that, okay, this logically doesn't make sense to me. You're telling me that I'm gonna use this as a silly example, but for the people that take the Bible literally, you're telling me that a guy lived in the belly of a whale for three days. Let's both recognize that's illogical. It's illogical based on the fact that this was a human being. This is a human being who needs food and water and air. So living in the belly of a whale is impossible. Now, if you're not the kind of person who takes that literal and you you think that it means it's like a metaphor for something, okay, we can talk about that. But for the people that say, no, no, that actually happened, you're suspending disbelief, right? It's like watching a play. I used to do a lot of theater. You go to a play and you have to suspend disbelief. You have to suspend the fact that you see lights and you see people and you see, you know, you're in an audience and you see an orchestra or all these other things. You forget all that and try to put yourself in the play and you really believe it's happening. You've suspended disbelief. It's the same thing sometimes when you talk about Christians and some of the stories that they have, you have to suspend that disbelief. To me, that's illogical. And I'd rather point, you know, that's an illogical statement. You may believe it and you have faith in that. And if your faith carries you through the day, then that's fine. But for me, it's just so illogical. I'm not going to argue that you're wrong, but I am going to just let you know that I don't see the logic in that. And thus far, as I've said, nobody has been able to convince me that a human being can live for three days in the belly of a whale. And that's just one example, but you know, the talking snakes and the burning bush, and there's a lot of these kind of things in the Bible that just seem very illogical to me. So, so this person's question about arguing with Christians is pointless. I think it's pointless from that perspective. Not because they're not smart, not because they can't grasp things, not because they can't be logical. It's just we're coming from such opposite ends, especially with a passionate person on both sides, that we're probably not going to find a lot of middle ground. So, sort of my point on that one. Here this is I this is a question. I'm gonna be careful how I say this because I've got family uh that may be watching, but probably not because they're mostly Christians. Uh, but this person's question is do Christians ever stop talking to you once they find out you're an atheist? And I would say yes. Unfortunately, two of my best, if and also worst, examples are two family members. Um, and again, I'm gonna kind of be evasive on who they are, um, but I've grown up with both those people. And they're not my brother. So I have two brothers, uh, natural brothers, I should say, you know, biological brothers of the same mom and dad. Um, it's not those two, but these are other people I've grown up with that I was around for a very young, um, I'm 55, so a long time ago. And both of these people um definitely stopped talking to me once that became known. In fact, one of them sent me a message on Facebook um and said, I'm trying to remember exactly the words because I still have it as a uh as a screenshot. The person said, atheist, like big bold letters and exclamation point, atheist. That explains a lot, deleted. And and that person was uh that's what they did. They deleted me. And I had known that person since uh that person was a teenager. And again, I'm 55 and they're 55, 53 in that range, give or take. So I've known them 30 plus years, um, been to many, many family functions. And you know, I'm still family with the rest of the family. Again, I'm being invasive, and I know that's a little maddening, maybe, but uh I'm trying not to point this person out so specifically. But the person stopped talking to me, and then we haven't talked since. This was uh gosh, 10, 10, 10 years ago, give or take. Haven't talked to him since. Um that's upsetting. Um you know, I wouldn't have stopped talking to them because they were a Christian because I know they're a Christian. I I tell people all the time the majority of people I have ever known, the majority of people I've ever loved, the majority of people I will ever love are Christians. Um, I have no problem with that. I may disagree with the Christian lifestyle, but I don't have a problem with them being Christian. Now, they may do things in the name of their Christianity that I absolutely just can't abide by, but that's not the same as saying, oh, you believe in Jesus? Well, we're never going to talk again. That I don't care. As an atheist who is very proudly atheist, I have a channel about atheism. So it's not like I'm trying to hide this. I don't care what you believe. If you're a Christian, you're Jewish, you're Buddhist, Muslim, Scientologist, uh Mormon, uh, I don't know, you again pick your poison. Some of them seem nuttier than others, but really, I don't know. Belly of a whale, is that any worse than Scientology? Give Scientology 2,000 years and it'll sound just as plausible as Christianity. I don't stop talking to those people because they're Christians. Again, I may stop talking to you because of the things you do. And if you're going to be the person who holds up the King James Bible and you flip through it and you say, ah, because it says right here in this book, I can't talk to someone because they're gay. Well, you're an asshole. That is that blunt enough? You know, if you're stopped talking to someone because your book says that they're doing something that you don't want to do or you are not supposed to do, and you just stop talking to them, that doesn't seem very Christian-like as I understand it, but unfortunately it happens. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people, younger people, I think I've got a question about this as well, that put them, they find themselves in a very difficult position dealing with family members and family members they may rely on, such as parents, when they start to go through this deconstruction journey and going from a level of Christianity down back to, and I say back to because we were born as atheists, back to atheism. Sometimes that does not sit very well with family, and it can be very, very stressful. Uh again, this person dropped me when I was in my 40s. So is it gonna ruin my day? Not really. It was upsetting, but not that traumatic. Another person that we were never super close, but we were family members and close families in the sense that we saw each other a lot. We just weren't particularly great, you know, buddies, so to speak. But that person also haven't spoken to me in gosh, more than that, 10, 15 years, probably. And I think largely it's there was a result of that. Um, they've gotten actually much more radicalized uh as Christian as they've gotten older, which you know that happens, and it's unfortunate. But uh, you know, what are you gonna do, right? Let's see. Here's another question. I kind of alluded to this earlier. Um, do you guys hide the fact that you're an atheist? And my answer is not today, but that does not mean I haven't in the past. And there are times when I keep it somewhat quiet. Meaning, um, I've got a good friend of mine that uh works with me. And um she's a she's a wonderful woman, and we're friends outside of work. We actually used to live within a mile or so of each other. So we so we're friends. My wife and she are friends, I'm friends. She's a great, great person. Super Christian, super Christian. She knows I'm an atheist. We don't discuss it, but it's really because it's not a big deal. Does anybody else at work know I'm an atheist? No, no, it doesn't come up. It has no reason to come up, but I also don't bring it up. When someone says, hey, I'm gonna go to church on Sunday, or they mention church, or they're on a you know, Zoom call and they're wearing a cross. I don't point out that I don't believe in that. That'd be silly. Why would I bring it up? But I also don't, I mean, you can see right here, I have Atheistville as a poster in the back of my room because this is the set that I use for these videos. My other computer is right over there, about four feet, and it faces the opposite direction. So the people on my Zoom calls or Teams calls, they don't see that that sign. They don't see that Atheistville sign in my background. Um, but let me take you back. I first started becoming an atheist in the sense that you know, I stopped believing that there is a God, again, based on I saw no evidence, and I started feeling comfortable with that fact, probably in my early 30s. But I had two children. My first child was born when I was 19. My second child was born when we were 27, same mother, same woman. I've been married to for 31 years. Um I and we grew up in the South. I grew up in Florida, northern Florida, very conservative, red. Um, and I'm gonna say this, you'll think that I'm lying. Uh, the highway from my house, from my front door to the highway that I took every day to go to work was about a mile and a half. I passed four churches in that mile and a half. So this is the south. Throw a rock, you're gonna hit a church. Throw two rocks and you're gonna hit two churches. It's just the way it is down there. So I literally had to pass four churches on the way from my front door just to get to the highway, an umptain number of them on the way to work, right? So when you're in an environment like that, people are very judgy about it. I, you know, I hate to say it that way, but unfortunately it's reality. Where do you go to church is a question that is often asked very early on in any get-to-know-you type of conversation. It's just gonna come up. And I don't have a problem with the question, but it's kind of intrusive because, first of all, you're assuming, because you ask about church, that I'm not Jewish. You're assuming that I am not Buddhist or I'm not Muslim. I can guarantee you they are absolutely assuming that I'm not atheist, because that is not something that they would be comfortable with. So I had to make that decision. Do I do I say, well, I'm an atheist, and then deal with that to the random mom and dad that is at the baseball park when my son's you know in t-ball? Uh do I do I handle that conversation when you know my daughter was in uh playing basketball uh with those parents? Do I talk about that at the block party? I lived on a cul-de-sac, a very nice, friendly neighborhood and friendly neighbors. But do they know I was an atheist? No, they do not. Because I don't want, and and again, I'm it's unfortunately I have to say this, I don't want them to not let their kids play with my kids or not be allowed to come to my house to swim in our pool for the birthday parties because their parents, you know, meaning me, um, his parent or her parent is a um is an atheist. And unfortunately, too many people make this silly assumption. If you're an atheist, you're a devil worshiper, which couldn't be more illogical. I I don't believe in God. Why would I believe in his ex-bf, the devil? But that's a very common trope, if you will, of misunderstanding and uh just frankly ridiculous. But again, I'm talking about my little babies, right? They're little kids. And do I want these narrow-minded parents to say, you know, I'm not gonna let you come over and play with um that child because his dad's an atheist, he's a devil worshiper. You can't go into a house like that. And you might think that's being a little hyperbolic, but I used to sit next to a woman at an office, this is gosh, 20-something years ago. Um, and we moved from one next section of the office to a different floor or a different section. And her extension on her phone, back when we all had phones on our desk, was something 666. She she refused to use that desk. They had to change the phone line and change the phone. So this is the kind of people we deal with sometimes in the South. I mean, she would not sit in a desk because the extension of four digits was six digits, which you know, every thousand numbers, that's gonna happen again. So uh, you know, whatever. But so I did hide that for a very long time. And it really wasn't until my kids were my youngest was in his teens. He's the youngest one. He was in his teens, he was old enough to deal with any sort of ramification. He had his own friends, he had his own car. You know, I wasn't worried about people not coming over to the house because I am an atheist. Um, so at that point, I started, you know, when hell with it. I'm just gonna tell people what I tell them. But even then, again, I don't bring it up just randomly because it's just it's not that important. And people are gonna think, well, Mike, you have a show about atheism. I do, but I can guarantee you, after this thing is done, this video that I'm doing right now, and this audio uh podcast I'm doing right now, once I'm done and I maybe spend some time editing it, I won't think about atheism at all until I do my next one. I I just don't, it's not something that defines me, but it is a trait and it's part of my personality, I guess. So hope they answered that one. Uh, let's see here. Oh, this one is from YouTube. So this is at Adam Marshall. I'm gonna read these names because this is these are public names. These other ones, um, they weren't necessarily public, but this is public on my YouTube channel. So if it's someone who made a comment publicly on my YouTube channel, I'm assuming they wanted their information out there. They put it publicly. So this is Adam Marshall uh P1D. Um, that's a weird name, but at Adam Marshall P1D, uh, he says, you know, you're going to hell, right? Thanks, Adam. Thanks for checking in, man. Uh, I guess I'm going to hell. Um, Adam might be surprised when he sees me there, quite frankly. So if I've been told that once, I've been told that a thousand times. Anyways, thanks, Adam, for checking in. So, next question: how do you tell your Christian mother that, or this person, how do I tell my Christian mother that I'm an atheist? So, I'm gonna address that the same way I told my mother, who is also a Christian. Now, my mother is odd. Um, and mom, if you're listening, this isn't anything. I still love you, but my mother was raised episcopal, and I was raised episcopal. Episcopal is what I would call casual Christian, right? Very casual. As a little boy, um, you know, we would go to church on Sundays and we go to Sunday school, and then I would sit through the sermon. And we always talk about Episcopal, it's the smells and the bells, right? If you've been episcopal or you're Catholic, you know what smells and bells are, right? But after that, we would come home on Sunday afternoon or you know, whatever, and I go out and play with my friends or ride my bikes and you know, run around the woods because we lived up in Pennsylvania, and I wouldn't think about church until next Sunday. Um, maybe when I was a little boy, I would pray, like I'm talking about four or five, but at some point I didn't do that. And then if we had big events like Easter or, you know, Thanksgiving or something, then all the family came. Then we would pray before dinner. But we didn't, we really just didn't do much of that. But then we moved back to Florida and my mom remarried. And the man that she's been married to now for Josh, since I was 15. So when is that 40 years now? He's very Southern Baptist. And subsequently, she's become very Southern Baptist. And now they're the type that pray at McDonald's, and she works at the church part-time, and you know, everything revolves around the church. Now, she's also 75 years old, and you get to that point, and you know, you're trying to find the last bit of your friends because they keep dying it off, dying off, quite frankly. And church is a good place to interact and it's very social, and I understand all that, but she's also very Christian now, and it bothers her that I'm an atheist, and I'm sure she's fearing for my soul. But I had to let her know, you know, I'm a grown man, and I understand you don't agree with it, and I understand that you are genuinely concerned, and because you're genuinely concerned for me, maybe not like Adam was, where you're just gonna say, Hey, you're going to hell, she's genuinely concerned. Okay, I can appreciate that, and I know that she is sincere about that, but there's a point where you just have to say, This is the life I'm living, and you don't have to like it. Um, when my son was uh a teenager, and and um I had already gone through this with my daughter, who's seven years older, um, I would tell other friends of mine that your kids are about to leave the house. If they're 13 or they're 18, the day they leave the house is coming really fast, right? And you, as their parent, are no longer in charge of their life. You want to be and you want to steer them in the right direction, but you're not. And the further they get away from those days at your house, the more those decisions are maybe not in any way aligned with what you want them to be, because that's what we do. We raise them up and we let them go. And we hope that they've given them enough information that they can make good decisions and they don't hurt themselves in some way. But they have to make their decisions. And my mom does not like the fact that I'm an atheist. She does not like the fact that my daughter is basically non-religious. I don't know if she'd say she's an atheist, but she just doesn't care one way or the other. That probably bothers my mom. But you usually gotta you just gotta tell them at some point. Now, I go back to my other point. I don't just tell people this randomly. So if your mom doesn't ask, who cares? Don't tell her. What's the point? There's really I who cares? I it's just not a big deal. If your mom asks, or if your mom is insisting on you do something, you gotta come to church with me on Sunday. No, I really don't. It's not my thing. You have to do it. At some point, you're like, no, I don't want to because I'm an atheist, and this is not uh something I'm really comfortable doing anymore, and I know that you like it. Now, I say all that and say that when my niece was baptized, I went. Um, and she got baptized older, I don't even know what she was now, um, 11, 12, 13, something along that line, because she was baptist and you get baptized later in life. I went because that's a big deal to her. Wasn't a big deal to me. I wasn't uncomfortable sitting there, but I'm not gonna go for the sermon. I'm gonna go for her, right? I've been to uh um uh is it a bot mitzvah, right? Uh for uh for a Jewish girl. My daughter had a friend who uh had a bot mitzvah, and I went to the service. I had never been to a Jewish service, so that was actually quite interesting to me. Am I gonna go every Saturday? Uh no, but it was interesting. If a if someone dies, I'm going to a wedding in January, you know, and I go to that wedding at a church. Um, is that gonna bother me? Not at all. Again, if someone dies, is it gonna bother me going to a church? Not at all. But I'm not gonna go for fun for fun, you know, to hear the sermon and really absorb the word of Jesus. I'm not doing that. So it's kind of a long way to say at some point, if they're insisting on you telling them or insisting on you sort of exposing that side of you, you gotta do it. And unfortunately, as I kind of alluded to, that may cause tension. But here's my thought on that. That tension's coming from them, it's not coming from you. You simply said, This is the person that I am. You're not saying you hate them, you're not saying you don't want to be friends with them or to love them or interact with them in any way. You're not the one saying that. If they have a tension and they have a problem with you being an atheist, realize the problem is on them and it is not your job to make them satisfied or to appease them in some way. I that's where I have to draw the line. Like, no, no, we don't have to talk about it, we don't have to get in deep conversations about it. But don't guilt trip me into um playing by your rules and pretending and cosplaying as if I'm a believer, simply so you feel better, so you sleep better at night. So that's sort of my two cents on that. You know what? I'm gonna give one more fairly brief thing. I think this comes up later, but in case it doesn't, the caveat to that would be if you're 15, you're 16, 18 years old, or whatever the case is, you're living at home and you know your parents will flip the F out, maybe keep it to yourself. And I know that goes against everything I, as a 55-year-old man, wants to say, but the reality is if you're 16 years old, you can't live on your own, right? You have to sort of hide things to get along until you can be on your own. And that is again, that's a terrible truth to have to deal with, but unfortunately, it's real. And I'm gonna make a segue to that. When my daughter came out as a lesbian when she was about 17-ish or so, she was still in high school, 11th grade, do or take. Um, she came out to the right people. My wife and I are very like, okay, whatever, past the potatoes. We don't care. Sort of knew this was, anyways. And I also was doing a lot of theater. So when I say a lot of the people I knew, it sounds like one of those black things, like one of my best friends is black. Well, when I say most of my friends were gay, I I'm not even joking. Most of my friends were in the theater, and trust me, the theater, that's one industry where gay people have it fairly locked up. If you're not comfortable with gay people, the theater is not for you. But because of that, we knew so many gay people of all stripes. It didn't phase us when she came out. She also realized she was in a safe space. So after she came out, I would wake up and there'd be a kid sleeping on my couch. And I'm like, who's the kid on the couch? She's like, Well, that's X my, you know, XYZ. Um, he goes to school and his parents found out he was gay and they kicked him out, which would infuriate me and want me to make me want to protect that kid. It would infuriate me because this kid's 16, 17, whatever he was, he was in high school and they kicked him out because they found out he was gay. That's it. Not that he killed a guy, you know, not that he out there and you know attacking nuns. He simply uh has feelings for the same sex, or she had feelings for the same sex, whatever the case may be. Yeah, that's that is not comfortable. So unfortunately, those were almost those were 100%. You're gonna disagree with me, maybe those were 100% decisions based on religion and the same type of The person who would kick their child out for being gay is the same person who'd also stop talking to you if it came out that you're an atheist. So if you're in that position and you don't have a safe place to go, keep it to yourself. And I and again, I don't want to say that, but being pragmatic, as I often am, um, keep that to yourself until you're able to move out and live on your own, and then do that as quickly as possible and move to a big town, a city, someplace where you're not the only one where you can find other people that uh will make up your tribe. Let's see, what's another good construction uh question here? Um this is a good question, but is religion a necessary form of comfort? Um, but I understand why people might think that. Um again, I would take exception with the word necessary. It is absolutely not necessary as a form of comfort. Can it be a form of comfort? Yeah, yeah, for sure. If you are religious and you have a family member die, then you are comforted by the fact that you will see them again. That's incredibly comforting. I can't imagine losing, say, a child and thinking, well, that's it. That if that's going to happen, no my God, I hope that doesn't happen to me. But that happens to people, and those people, if they're an atheist, they don't believe they'll see that child again. So however they left it with that child or that time that they had with that child, it's over. That's not particularly comforting. It's reality, and reality isn't comforting. Would it be better to believe that I'm gonna see my grandparents again who were lovely people? Yes. My dad died two, three years ago, I guess, at this point. Would it be good to see him again? Of course it would be. It's not gonna happen though. So for me as an atheist, once I came to that conclusion that there is no God, therefore there is no heaven, I'm not gonna see these people anymore. It um it does sort of make you feel bad at first until you sort of work this through your brain and you realize, okay, but I had X amount of years with them. You know, I those people were in my life, and I can think back about that. Um I I can I can deal with that. Another side of this, outside of death, you know, when something bad happens to you, um, it's very comforting, I'm sure, to say, well, God has a plan, and this is part of a plan. And and the implication there is that there's a reason for this, and that reason is going to be revealed to me, and it's and likely again, it's going to get better. That's probably very comforting. I can't think that. In fact, and this is where I think sometimes not being religious makes me a bit stronger, and and I'm and I know that's gonna come across wrong, and I don't mean it to sound arrogant, but not thinking that there's a master plan, thinking specifically that whatever's happening to me right now is a result of a lot of decisions I made or unfortunate decisions that other people made that have now affected me in some way. The reality is tomorrow when I wake up, that decision or that circumstance will still be there. And it's up to me to get myself out of it. Now, getting myself out of it might mean I need to lean on other people or I need to reach out to groups of people or whatever the case may be, but nonetheless, I can't just wait around for it to get better on its own or trust that it's all gonna work out because there's a master plan. That master plan is always in my favor. No, I have to dig deeper and say, okay, I don't like this situation. What can I do to change it? And then set about doing that. So again, that's um, yeah, that's that's that's tough sometimes, but I don't think that religion is necessary. I I think it is comforting when you want it, and I give people a great amount of leeway. If they are going through some several some level of grief, and they say that the um that the Lord helped them get through that, more power to you. If that's what helped you get through it and helped you get up on the next day and go on about your life, I'm fine with that. It doesn't bother me at all. I find atheists that point that take opportunities to point out, you know, there is no God. When someone says, um, you know, that that God healed me. I don't like that statement, but I don't point that out because it's kind of an asshole thing to say. Like, right, what you know, we're not having that discussion right now. The person's glad my wife went through cancer four or five years ago. People came out of the woodwork, all of our old friends and our family, people that aren't the atheists, like, oh, God is so great. I'm so thankful. I prayed for you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it because I know you're being sincere. I don't believe God had anything to do with it, but I understand you do, and that's a very nice thing. It would be an asshole thing of me to do, would be to point out and say, Well, God didn't have anything to do it. It was the doctor. Did I feel like saying that sometimes when it's the umpteenth time I've heard it and I'm getting a little frustrated and we're going through all the stress of having cancer? Yes. Time and place. Pick your battles. That's not the place. Uh, let's see here. What do we got? Um, this is a little bit of a longer question here. I'm gonna try to read this. So I did a mic drop, which is again something else I do. Look on um the YouTube channel and here on this podcast channel for something I call the mic drop. Uh, cleverly named because I'm Mike, right? I usually do those on Wednesdays. And I did one about a um about a lawsuit or um a case, I should say, I guess, that the Supreme Court has heard. They heard it on October 7th, I want to believe. Um, there's a woman in Colorado, she's a therapist, she's a Christian therapist, and she's arguing that therapy is uh protected speech. So when she's trying to convert gay kids to being straight through conversion therapy, that she should be allowed to do that because that's truly a freedom of speech issue and a religious issue. So I made a whole mic drop about that. Go back and check that out. I'll see if I can drop a link to that in the show notes. But um, I obviously would disagree with that because therapy, the speech in therapy is not speech like me standing on the street corner. That's not the same thing. I'm actively trying to heal someone with my words. And uh that there's more responsibility than just to say, oh, I can say anything you want. Not to mention that conversion therapy is fraud. Flat out, full stop, it's fraud. It does not work, and it's actually quite harmful. And the kids that are put through that uh suffer greatly, and it doesn't work. But this person, uh, what's her name? Dale Hammer4425. He says, please explain. I hate to read this, but here we go. He says, If I'm so backwards, now we had an exchange back and forth, and I said his thoughts were a little backwards. He says, if I'm so backwards, then please explain to me how trans kids, especially, are such a massively small, uh, small minority, yet you are finding families with every child being trans. Okay, that's point one. Why are liberal cities and liberal city schools and states have so much higher rates of non- I'm gonna read that again. Uh his language here. Why are liberal city schools and states having much higher rates of it than non-liberal areas? So higher rates of trans go to liberal schools in liberal cities? Why are the areas with the most liberal teaching have the most trans kids? Why are the numbers of LGBT rising at an astronomical number compared to the past? I hope you can his language is a little funky there, but essentially, let me boil this down. How come you find more trans kids and more gay kids and gay people in general in liberal areas? Because we don't beat them up. That's it. That is that's uh I remember when Trump then we were going through COVID, and Trump said, you know, if we didn't test as much, we wouldn't find as much uh COVID. Yeah, yeah, duh. Uh, you know, if I didn't walk outside, I'd never know if there's sun out there. I mean, you know, I yeah, there's more gay people and trans people in liberal areas because they feel comfortable coming out. Not that they're not gay people in red conservative areas, they're there. If you live in Mississippi right now, there are gay people in your neighborhood, but they're not coming out because you drive around in a big Bubba truck and a rebel flag hanging off the back and you say you hate gay people. Why on earth would that gay man or that gay woman or that trans kid, why would they come out? They can come here to Chicago and they can be out all day long. Nobody cares. I just went down to get my watch repaired about uh, I don't know, two blocks from where I live. I live in an area called Boys Town. It's called Lakeview, but it's traditionally been called Boys Town. It's a traditional gay neighborhood. I went down there to get a watch battery, and I, you know, if everybody there was gay, I don't know. I mean, some people were gay, some people maybe not, but it's called Boys Town. It's a very gay neighborhood. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Let two men walk down the street holding hands and kiss each other goodbye in Mississippi or Louisiana or Georgia. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. In Chicago, nobody cares. So it's not that there are more gay people in liberal areas, they just feel comfortable and they don't fear for their safety. That was a silly question, but uh, what was your name again? Dale Hammer. Uh, you know, it gave me a good opportunity to address uh some kind of truly ridiculous thoughts there. That one still makes me just chuckle because it's so dumb. Uh, let's see. What's another one? Oh, here we go. Another YouTube uh person, Frankly Farcicle. Kind of like that name, Frankly Farcicle. I pray that you find Jesus, my friend. God bless you. Well, thank you, Frankly Farcicle. I I I don't have a problem with that. Thanks for praying for me, man. Uh, you know, again, you're praying to a God I don't believe in, but I think you're sincere. I think you truly think that will help me. And I don't have a problem with that at all. So no problem with that one. Uh, let's see here. This this was uh this is gonna be maybe harder to explain, but those of you that are atheists, uh, you'll you'll understand this. And I read two or three comments today, in fact, on my YouTube channel, and they're all in this sort of thing. Um, the person says, one thing that always astounds me is the utmost confidence with which some Christians will tell an atheist what atheists believe. That happens all the time. I have had so many people tell me, atheists believe this. Like, that's not even true. Um, atheists don't believe half the things you say. First of all, uh, yeah, we don't all believe that the Big Bang started everything. Most of us probably do because it's a pretty well scientifically uh understood fact, but I'm not a cosmologist. I have no idea. Um if if that's what uh a lot of very, very smart people who've studied this for decades believe. I'm gonna take their word for it. I don't know if I believe it or not, but okay. Um, do atheists believe that uh the devil is somehow worth worshiping? Uh no, we absolutely do not. Um, do atheists believe, I'm trying to think what else the person was saying this morning, that uh do atheists have no morality because we believe that we can uh just kill and maim and rape people at will, and nobody cares. No, we absolutely do not believe that. Uh that that's ridiculous. But I've been told that I'm told that almost every day, in some form or fashion, that uh we have no morals, atheists have no morals, so we can feel free to do all those horrible things. Penn Gillette says, I do do all those horrible things as much as I want, and the amount that I want is zero. It's it's a whole ridiculous statement, but um a lot of people believe that. It's in it's insane to me. This one, I almost didn't put it in here because Charlie Kirk is still, you know, the fervor over Charlie Kirk has somewhat died down, but he's obviously not gone anywhere in terms of the public consciousness. Um, but this person made a very good point, and I thought it was worth bringing up. Uh he says the Charlie Kirk worship has made me realize how quickly someone's memory can be altered by a sudden, perceived anyway, tragedy and how we may never know what the real Jesus was like. And I thought that was actually a really good point. I was vaguely aware of Charlie Kirk. I actually made a video or two on Charlie Kirk. We talked about it in the Unholy Roundtable. Um, and when he died, we we actually made a very quick uh live about that live stream about that. But I was only vaguely aware of him. I knew who he was, and I knew what side of the fence he was on, I knew he was a provocateur, but I really just I didn't dig deep in because I kind of knew enough to like, okay, I this isn't a guy I nearly need to follow or get too deep into. Since then, of course, I've seen a lot of things that are disturbing, um, let's say the least. But what I did find is as soon as he was killed, and I'm gonna go ahead and state this just for the people so they don't flip the fuck out. As soon as he was killed, um, he he should not have been killed. He was simply speaking, and speech, whether you dislike it or not, is protected. I made a whole video on hate speech, and a lot of people on my side of the aisle, very liberal people, would say that, you know, hate speech against gay people or this, that, and the other should be protected. I disagree. You can argue with me. If you're a liberal, you can argue with me, but I disagree. Hate speech is speech. I I it's basically full stop. There's very few exceptions to the hate speech. And if I don't like your speech, my option is to push back on your speech with better ideas or to cancel you in any way that I feel is good. Murdering you is not one of those. I cannot buy your book, I cannot watch your TV show, I cannot go listen to your speeches or whatever the case may be. I cannot be friends with you. I can ignore the fact that you live next door. I can do all of that, but it shouldn't harm you because your speech, because your speech is as protected as my speech. And if we start limiting your speech, you're gonna limit my speech, and I don't want that. So I'm a very free speech kind of guy. But getting back to this person's question, as soon as Charlie Kirk was murdered, the deification of him was unreal. I had never seen that level. This man went from, again, provocateur who made a lot of really terrible comments, to basically sitting at the right hand of God, maybe at the left hand, because I'm assuming Jesus on the right hand, and now we got Charlie Kirk on the left hand. I that's that was very fascinating to me. Um the whitewashing of the things he has said that were terrible, that's that's this has been two months, I guess, since he's been killed. That's been whitewashed as much as possible. Um oddly enough, and I'm gonna say this the bad things he says or has have said have been tried to be downplayed by the right and people that love him. Although I do not see a lot of good things he said. Usually when someone dies, that becomes a martyr-like type of figure. You're you're inundated with all these great quotes. You know, you can read these quotes. I can read um the the quotes uh from Martin Luther King. I I can read these good quotes. I don't see these for Charlie Kirk. In fact, there was a famous uh uh service for him recently, I can't remember what it was, and they had an AI um speech that was supposed, you know, in his voice, in his style. Dude, if you have to go to AI to create a speech that sounds like him because you don't have speeches that are him, that's a problem. Okay. But the person's second point here, it made them suddenly realize how we may never know what the real Jesus was like. Charlie Kirk's image has been changed in a month, two-month period. 2,000 years? If there was a real Jesus, and I'm not 100% convinced, I'm not a scholar of that sort of thing, but let's assume, let's assume there was a real guy named Jesus, whatever he was actually called. But there's a real guy who fit that role. Was he the Jesus that we know? Was he walking on water and turning things into fish and making wine out of water? No, he wasn't doing any of that. But 2,000 years later, that seems very plausible, right? Those are good stories to tell. If Charlie Kirk, I hope this doesn't happen, but if Charlie Kirk's memory gets so whitewashed that he is literally held up as a saint a year from now and five years from now, and 10 years from now, what is going to be attributed to him that never happened? Probably a lot. Um, and that's unfortunate because I don't expect people to be perfect. I'm not perfect, nobody's perfect. You can be a very, very good person on one hand and do some very bad things and make some very bad comments in the other. But at some point, those things do swap when your bad comments and bad thoughts become you know the thing that you kind of looked at and you're like, that's that's who this person was. They do tend to outweigh the good things you may have done, or they belie your your internal um thoughts. That's not good, and that's kind of where I put Charlie Kirk right now. But I don't know, ask me again in 20 years what Charlie Kirk's uh Charlie Kirk's memory is like, and I bet I I don't know. We'll see what I say then, right? This is a good question. This is a this is a funny question. It really is, and it's a cute, just they try to make a little cute point. What are Christian nationalists, and I rail on Christian nationalists all the time, but what are Christian nationalists going to do with the enormous number of foreigners in heaven? Uh I like that question. I like that question a lot because presumably Christianity's got, I don't know, two billion people in the world of all over the world. Christians have been very good at colonizing chunks of the world and making them into Christians, sometimes at the end of a whip, but they've done it. Well, those people are also going to go to heaven. And all these Christian nationalists that live here in the United States who just cheer with just pure glee that ICE agents are trying to throw out the foreigners out of freaking Nebraska. They they round them up at their job site. So they go to the court where they're doing things legally and trying to become citizens, and they round them up and they chuck them out of the country. What are these people gonna do when they get to heaven? And the first person they meet is Jose Vasquez. And Jose is like, hey man, thanks for coming. I was the guy you deported. Um, a lot of confused people in heaven. A lot of shocked and confused. It's worth me believing in God just to go to heaven and see that play out. Oh my goodness. Oh, goodness. Let's talk about a serious question. What do you say to someone who's dying? Um this is a tough one. This is a tough one, and I lie. I lie. It depends on who it is, I guess I should say. If this person is a we talked about my mom earlier, if my mom is dying and I have to fly down to Florida and be with her on her last days, and if it makes her feel better to say she's gonna be with Jesus, I'm all in. I will cosplay that to the last breath she takes. What does it hurt me to do that? It's not betraying who I am, she knows who I am. It's like telling your grandmother that she looks old and wrinkly. Who would do that? You don't say that. You say, no, grandma, you look beautiful. You look so young. You know, you're 85 years young. People say this kind of stuff, right? Maybe it's a bit condescending, but you know, um, but but people get it. You're not gonna tell an 85-year-old woman that she looks old and wrinkly, and her, you know, she looks bent over and saggy. You know, you're not gonna tell a guy in a wheelchair, oh, your legs don't work. He freaking knows that, right? There are some things, there's no point in saying it, right? So if someone's dying and they're a believer, and this is where they came from, I don't mind cosplaying that. I don't mind it. If they know that I fully don't believe it, if they make a comment, it's like, you know, I don't believe, but I know you do, and that's enough. And if you believe you're gonna be there, then I I wish you every good thing. And the other part I would tell people, and my friend Larry Warren brought this up, uh, is that I will remember you. I will, and I will repeat your name occasionally. I'll try not to let your memory slip from my memory, right? In fact, my wife and I were talking about a woman the other day, a woman that I worked with who died quite young. She was probably in her 30s. She died of cancer, and we were just just she popped in my memory the other day. And I thought every once in a while she'll pop up on Facebook. Someone must wish her a happy birthday. I mean, they know she's died, but and her Facebook profile pops up. And it's a way for me to to to remember, like, yeah, Kelly, I I do remember you. You were a nice woman, and we were friends, we were peers, we worked together. You were a nice woman. I always liked you. So I'll I'll do that. And you know, it maybe that's comforting, maybe it's not. I don't know. But I sincerely do, I I will, I will try to remember your name, and I'll remember you, and I'll remember the good times we had together. And that's the legacy you can leave. You know, you can you can create a legacy where people fondly look back at you, and even if it was just a you know a brief time they knew you, they think, yeah, but that guy was a really good guy, or he was funny, or you know, she was a just a barrel of laughs, and then we always had a good time when we got together, or she always made me feel good. You know, that that's fine. If that's what people say to me when I'm dying, I'll be I'll be happy as a clam, as they say. I don't know why clams are happy, but that's what they say. Uh let's see, what are we gonna do? I think I saw that question. Um, so here's a uh I'm gonna let two questions and then I'm gonna run. I'm gonna wrap this up. Um, this is actually there's a specific question, at least that I saw it, and I thought, oh, this is very, very specifically me. The person said, Why don't humanist humanist or secular meetups or atheist meetups, why don't they seem to last? Um and I would say there is a bit of herding cats kind of concept there. Atheists, um, I and I'm and let me preface this. I have a group here in Chicago, uh, then I'm an admin with a couple other people, my wife and some friends of ours, we're an admin of a local atheist group. Now, just saying that has sent some atheists running for the hills. They heard that my brother would be one of them. Like, why do I want to get together with atheists? You don't have to. Nobody's asking to do that. But a lot of people, when they left church, and I say Christianity again, that's where I'm familiar with, when they lost that and they gave it up because they became an atheist, they also lost their social networks. They lost their friends, they lost the families, they lost that Sunday afternoon, you know, the potluck that happened after church. They lost that pancake breakfast that happened every you know quarter. They lost the men's group or the women's group or the prayer group or the choir prayer, all these things that were very social in nature. If you're a social person like me, then those are very important because that's how you get out and you get out amongst people that have a similar mentality. But once you start to switch and once you realize I don't believe any of this anymore, you start to feel like a fraud, right? You start to say, I can't go to Bible class, even though I like John a lot, and Mary and Lisa are great women, and and brother Johnson is a fantastic guy, and he'd give you the shirt off his back. I like all those people. I just can't spend an hour and a half reading a book that I just don't believe in anymore. So there are groups out there like ours here in Chicago. The the um the atheist, uh, we have we call it the uh atheist republic, the atheist republic of Chicago. We are a group. We encourage people to come. We do meetups. In fact, uh, what is today, the 18th? So on the 25th, and it depends on when you're watching this, may not have any or listening to this, may not matter to you, but here at the end of the month, let me just put it that way, I'm having a party at my house. Now we have about 20 people already scheduled to come, all from that group. And that's 20 without their plus ones. That so we'll get another, you know, five or 10 people. We'll have 30-something people here at our apartment because they are the social people and they want that social interaction and they know they can come here. And because atheists tend to have very overlapping things, we all have a very, all is not the right word, but a lot of us have a very similar political perspective. Um, we have difference of uh we have um similar views on on just interacting with other people in the world, how we raise our children. We're obviously atheists, so that colors a lot of things. If you're a social person like I am, it's nice to find a group where you're like, ah, I can relax. I don't have to pretend that there's a Jesus. Um, calling back to one of the first questions I answered on this, I don't have to pretend or keep it quiet that I'm an atheist. I can just say, yeah, I'm not gonna go to Sunday school tomorrow. I'm not gonna go to church tomorrow. I'm gonna watch TV all morning long because I can, because I don't believe. You don't have to hide that. So we do those groups. But again, my group here is 600 and something people large. Again, I'll get 30 people. So um, but if I had a church that had 600 members, I'd get 500 members, right? Because the passion of atheism is not the same as the passion of Christianity or the passion of being a Christian. Um, at the same time, to be quite frankly, there's no threat if I if you don't come to an atheist meetup, you're not gonna go to hell. You're not gonna spend eternity suffering because you didn't come to our atheist meetup at the bar. You know, you just it's not. So I don't have a big stick to wield and say you got to come to our atheist meetup. I don't have that. So um I wish more people would come. I love it when we go. We try to do these, we try to do it monthly, usually turns into every month or two. I love those. They're so much fun. I enjoy meeting new people. And it's fun to meet new people that are newly converted to being atheism, uh, to be an atheist. I love it. But if you want to start one in your area, I urge people to go to like something like Reddit or Meetup or Facebook and find other atheists in your area. Um, Reddit has a bunch of subreddits for atheism. Go in there and put in your town or the next biggest town. You know, if you're in in Texas and you live anywhere near Dallas, put in Dallas Atheist or go to an atheist group and put in the word Dallas. Find those people and say, you know, I'm thinking about doing a little bit of a meetup, you know, with with two of you or three of you or four of you, whatever. Would you guys want to meet at the Denny's, you know, on Sunday morning since we're all not going to church? If you get two people that show up, and it's just three of you, that's fine. And our meetings are very, very social. They're not agenda-driven. We're not like bringing the uh the book of Dawkins and reading through it and like, but Dawkins says this, or let's all sit down and watch a Christopher Hitchens video together. Ours are just social. We just know that we we have this shared interest. So that's why we do it. I always tell people when they first time coming to our meetings, don't expect us to agree on anything else that you agree with. Um, and don't expect us to talk about atheism the all time. Because if you just saw a cool movie, tell me about that. You know, if your kid just graduated, tell me about that. If you just got a brand new cat, I want to hear about it because my cat is, what is she? Can you see it? She's right there. Damn it. However, I do this. There he is. That's the top of her right there. Um, that's my cat. I love my cat. Um, tell me about your cat. I'm I'm thrilled to talk about it. If you want to talk about atheism or your deconstruction, we'll talk about that too. That's fine. But I would encourage people to have to get together with other atheists and talk about whatever. Some people don't want to go to an agenda. They don't want to go to a meeting, they just want to chill and hang out with some people that they know aren't going to bite their head off or or uh browbeat them for not going to church. And this is especially true if you're in a small southern town or some rural part of America. Try to find the nearest larger town. You're gonna find more of us. Kind of goes back to my other question you're gonna find more of us that are willing to be out. We're all there. There's atheists in every town, but you're gonna be more likely to find the ones that are out and willing to say they're atheists in a um in a bigger city. And my final question. This is this is I get this a lot, actually. You're trying to force people into your atheism and what was the other antinatalism. Lock that one up. Antinatalism. Oh, okay. I hate when I see a word I don't know. Uh antinatalism. I don't know what they're saying. Is that a real word? Anyways, obviously caught me on that one. I don't know. But uh, am I trying to force people into my atheism? No, I absolutely do not care if you become an atheist. I do not care. I am not trying to persuade you. I got plenty of friends that are atheism. I don't atheist. I don't need to create another one out of whole cloth. Um, no, so I'm not trying to convert anybody to atheism. Again, if I if I say anything, I just like hey, well, here's my perspective on it. I think this is illogical, or I don't understand why you think prayer works because so often it just didn't. But that's fine. If you still believe it, knock yourself out. If you believe that Reggie, the magic penguin, uh, controls this world, okay. Okay, fine. If you think, hey, I was in the woods and I heard a heard a strange sound, obviously it was Bigfoot. All right, man, knock yourself out. I don't care, but I'm not trying to convert anybody to atheism. Now, I say that with a bit of a smile, a bit of a smirk, because I'm sitting talking to you on an atheist channel. Um, I have an atheist YouTube channel, I have an atheist podcast, I have an atheist website. Um, my hat is as an atheist symbol. That picture right there is an atheist symbol. You'd think that this is a 24-hour day thing, but it's not. I do this for the show, so to speak. Um, that's when I talk about it, but I don't live my life as an atheist. I live my life as a husband, as a father, as a friend, as a uh a guy that works in the fintech environment or industry. Um as a guy who travels. I'm going to Japan and Thailand and Vietnam and Philippines in a month. I'm gonna go there for I'll be spending a month in these four different countries. I'm a traveler. Atheism is not at all my main function. But people that watch this assume that it is and assume I'm trying to convert them. Really, what I'm trying to do is make atheism normalized. That is literally my mission. I want anybody to say, oh, I'm a I'm a Catholic. And then that person they're talking to say, Oh, okay, that's fantastic. I'm an atheist. Great. What do you think about the Cubs? You know? Oh, did you see uh, you know, what'd you think about that episode, the very final episode, that show that we were talking about the other day? What'd you think about that series ending? That was terrible. Yes. Doesn't matter if he's an atheist and that person's a Catholic. Doesn't matter. I'd like to normalize that so people don't fear bringing that out. They don't have to worry about, hey, you won't bring your kids to my house for my son's birthday party because you think that I'm an atheist and that somehow makes me a bad person, you know, an evil in some way. My job is to help normalize that in the little tiny way that I can. I'm just one man, I'm not gonna have that big of an impact uh on the world, but maybe I can help one person see it a little differently. And again, if that doesn't convert them to being the atheist, I don't care. But if it makes them realize, you know, that guy Mike, I've watched on his videos or I've listened to his podcast, he doesn't seem so bad. Maybe atheists really aren't trying to eat children and worship the devil. Maybe they're just normal people. We just disagree, and I'll never agree with their life, and they won't agree with mine, but that's okay. We can still be buddies, we can still be friends, we can still go watch a movie together, we can still go look at cars together or any of a million other topics. That's fine. That's all I'm really after. So, uh, so again, even though I have an atheist channel, that is not the goal. So I'm gonna take a little sip of my uh morning coffee here. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this. Um, tune in to our shows again. We have them on YouTube, uh, here on this podcast as well, wherever you get your podcast, I guess is what people say. Um, I do mic drops on Wednesday. We do the Unholy Roundtable. We've got one of those coming up, but again, depends on when you see that. But that's gonna be October 26th. We've got a live stream. I encourage people, that's gonna be on YouTube. I encourage people to go in there, ask us questions live. We will take that. We also have the um the heathen hotline that I'm gonna have to pull up very quickly here because I wasn't prepared for this. Hold on just one second. We have the heathen hotline that I created. If you want to leave me a message, um, a phone voicemail, it's 224-307-5435. Again, that's 224-307-5435. That's the Heathen Hotline. If you want to leave a voicemail that I'll either play back on this show or play back on one of our uh live streams, I'm I'm happy to have you do that. Obviously, don't say something that's uh you know inappropriate, but if you have a legitimate question and you just feel like it'd be better to explain it, knock yourself out. I'm happy to take those calls and we're happy to do those. Unfortunately, I can't take those live, so you have to leave a message just because of a technology thing. And I need that seven-second delay button because people do say crazy things. I can't delay it on a live stream, but leave a message, I'll get back to you. In the meantime, uh, have a great rest of your morning, your Sunday, your afternoon, or going into the week, however, you uh are listening to this. And until we talk again, take care of