Human Story

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, threats to our democracy, and national protests for racial justice, Black Christian Brad Braxton and Black secular humanist Anthony Pinn exchanged a thousand words a week, each to the other, exploring the philosophical and theological questions of what it means to be human. The result was a book titled A Master Class on Being Human.

Tom Jump is defined by a paradox. His autism and introversion make meeting people awkward and painful. Yet the one thing he wants from life is a relationship. After years of searching, he stumbles on a solution in the last place he expected.

Casey Karaman never expected the biography of an urban planner to change the way he saw the world. But the nearly five years it took to work his way through that one massive biography changed his view of himself, those around him, and the way our lives are dictated by decisions made by people we will never know—people whose shadows loom over us. Casey Karaman is a writer, performer, improviser, and teacher who has worked with the Washington Improv Theater. Casey has performed in multiple theater productions, most recently in Second City's “Love Factually” at the Kennedy Center. He lives in Los Angeles.

In October of 2005, comedian Nathan Timmel was in Kandahar, Afghanistan, to perform for American forces stationed far from home. While there, he was invited to attend a Ramp Ceremony to witness the loading of a fallen soldier onto a plane to return home for burial. Two days later, he had to perform for that soldier's friends. ** Nathan Timmel is a stand-up comedy veteran, masterful storyteller, and headliner with years of experience behind the mic. He is also the author of the vigilante justice thriller "We Are 100." He lives in Iowa.

When we asked people at an atheist convention what they missed the most after leaving religion, one word came up more than any other.

Before the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, an Iranian activist, blogger, and translator who goes by the pseudonym Ashkan Mehr Roshan connected with an Afghan woman and freethinker. Together, they formed one of the biggest and most effective underground support communities for nonbelievers and religious minorities in the region. But shortly after the Taliban came to power, she fell silent. Ashkan hasn't heard from her since. Ashkan Roshan is an Iranian activist, blogger and podcaster who writes about philosophy, religion, and the politics of the Middle East/North Africa region.

Raised in Saudi Arabia in a Muslim family of Pakistani background, and now an atheist living in Canada, Eiynah knows something about displacement, and disorientation, and the yearning for the lost familiar. Although she left Islam under her own power and is a strong critic of religion, her childhood and culture are intertwined in Islam. And each year, when the holy month of Ramadan comes around, she is struck by a complicated mix of emotions. Eiynah is an atheist of Pakistani background who grew up Muslim in Saudi Arabia. She is a critic of both religion and online ‘movement atheism'. She is host of the Polite Conversations Podcast and the miniseries Woking Up, and the author and illustrator of the first Pakistani anti-homophobia children's book, My Chacha is Gay. She lives in Canada.

Learning that she didn't know the name or work of the most famous actor in the world sent lifelong movie enthusiast Jennifer Hancock down a rabbit hole into the massive film industry of India. In the process, she found insights about love that are rarely touched in Western cinema—and solved a puzzle about her own son that changed his life.

How does a secular perspective change the way you see the world and your life? OnlySky's Dale McGowan asks this question of people attending the American Atheists conference in Atlanta.

Most Americans don't give a lot of thought to the Pledge of Allegiance. You were taught to say it when you were four or five, and you said it, probably in a droning voice, surrounded by 20 other droning children who likewise hadn't thought much about it. Whether or not he started off droning like the rest of us, Adam Lee eventually developed serious reservations about this strange ritual. So when his kindergarten son was selected to lead the whole school in reciting the Pledge, Adam was…conflicted.

People are different. That's a good thing. But in recent years, it feels like some differences have deepened to the point that we look at friends and family on social media, or even across the dinner table, saying and believing things that are just baffling to us. And we wonder: how did you get that way? The philosopher Jonathan M.S. Pearce spends a lot of time thinking about questions like that. If it's all nature and nurture, how do people with very similar circumstances, or even very similar genes, end up with wildly different ways of seeing the world? In this episode of Human Story, Jonathan turns the question inward: Why did he end up so different from his parents and his peers?

Hemant Mehta has been a freethought blogger, author, and speaker for nearly 20 years now, building his blog Friendly Atheist into the largest atheist blog in the world. Just as the pandemic began, he came across a YouTube channel called Notes from Autumn. The host was a young woman and recent deconvert with strong criticisms of the way atheists communicate online. "if atheists are not offering a community that meets people's needs," she asks, "and they're only offering this kind of bitter pill, what incentive do people have to join that group?"

George Hrab spends an unhealthy amount of time thinking about the end of the world. And he's pretty sure we've got it all wrong. Not just the zombies, but the role fear would play both before and after the collapse of civilization.

From the time she was young, Captain Cassidy heard promises of wonder. If she did this, or believed that, or avoided a long list of temptations, she would find herself smack in the middle of a world of wonder. She chased that promise from Catholic Maryland to Baptist Alabama to Waco Texas, finally landing in Pentecostalism—all the while waiting for wonder to materialize.

There's a story in your head, a kind of autobiography. You've been writing and revising it all your life. We take the chaos of information from a normal life and create a story that makes sense. Some of it might even be true. But considering who's telling the story, it's no surprise that a lot of it just doesn't hold up. Dale McGowan was well into adulthood before a random memory surfaced, poking a hole in what he calls his “founding myth.” He had a choice: stick with the better story, or switch to the truer one. Hosted by Leighann Lord for OnlySky Media.