 103.9 FM, W-O-Z-O Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and W-O-Z-O Radio, 103.9 LP FM, right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, August 1st, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Hello, everybody. I'm hoping you guys had a good week. We're being bombarded by rain. I know it's worse in other places. You know, I'm tired from A to Z. That's why I got my A to Z bar. Get your Z bars available to you at a local shop. Z bars, proud sponsor of the show and everything about atheism. Z bars, get your Z bars. All right, go for it. That is tongue-in-cheek. We have no real sponsors. What? I'll try one. And with us today, our special guest is Swedish Steve. Say hello, Swedish Steve. Hello, Swedish Steve. We're going to get back to you with a little more detail from where you are and details of your land in a minute. Say hello, Dread Pirate Higgs. Welcome. Oh, Dread Pirate Higgs. And George Brown, two and a half. Hello, everybody. Enough to forget the John Richards out of England. Say hello. Hello. I did the voice for him because I thought he was muted. Yeah, muted. It's okay. I spoke for him. It's all good. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books and superstition. Juan Bet, what are we going to be talking about today? Hey, we're going to be talking to Swedish Steve all the way in Sweden. Talk about an international show. But before we get into the details and the meat and the potatoes and our own Z-bars who are proud sponsors of the show, we have our own Dread Pirate Higgs with our weekly invocation. Nudely Lord, who art in a colander, al dente be thy noodles, thy blood be rum, thy sauce be yum with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread, and forgive us our cussing, as we put up with those who cuss against us, and lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some curd, for thine are the noodles and the sauces and the grog whenever and ever. Wrong. Swedish Steve with the most confused face. We're going to get to you. No, I've seen it before. He's got the holy hand grenade. That's what I want to know. Dread Pirate, are you putting away any fires? There's some pretty bad wildfires going on. Have you been helping out more with that? I see you got your... Yeah, I'm actually up here in a place called Spencer's Bridge in a hotel room. I'm on my second week. We do two-week rotations. And it's just we're protecting essentially community assets and helping out the firefighters and whatever way we can. And there's right now apparently about 172 wildfires around British Columbia. And of course many more across Canada. Wow. But yeah, it's just been a dry year. We had that early heat bubble, which really dried everything out well before our typical heat bubbles come. So, yeah, we've been upwards of 40 plus degrees Celsius. Wow. I don't know what that translates well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It does because it does for me and Jonathan because we're both scientists. Doubt or five military guy, he should know. If you can do the conversion, it's helpful. But yeah, I think we know it's hot. Yeah, it's over 100 anyway. So, but yeah, that's what I've been up to. And I just got off shift. So I'm glad I can make it here. Yeah, I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you for the work that you're doing. You know, in California, it's already beginning to have orange tinted skies. So like what's the question is like, wow, what's coming down from up north. But thank you for being at the forefront and wish you the best of luck. You're doing the God's work. You're doing God's work. Right. George Brown quabs, quabs work, quabs work, quabs work. Praise be to the noodle. George Brown, got a question for you. Your, your fidelity, your bandwidth, your clarity is coming in so well. How are you improving your internet? What's your tips for, for people out there? Mind taking yourself off me before you start talking to my friend. Well, you see, the only thing I did is there we go. There we go. Yeah, it is the case of the only thing I did. I have been availing myself of telehealth medicine. That means, that means healthcare over the internet. And so one of the platforms, platform services that I've been using, gave me a link to a new test. And let me see, I can tell you all the name of the test. It's called speed of dot me. Okay. And it shows latency. Latency was my problem. And, and the thing that fixed it, believe it or not, was simply rebooting the router. You know, it's the secret weapon of all IT support. It's like, have you tried turning it off and turning it on again? You know, and I should know, I should know better than that. But so I learned and it fixed everything. Nice. Nice. It's a code green. You know, it's funny. I love how even computers need a little nap to just get restarted. It just includes you into like the, the minds that made them. Anything. John Richards, good to see you. How you been? I'll be fine. Thank you. Yes. I believe that turning it off and turning it on again was what they did to the helicopter on Mars when it went AWOL. But yeah, it's, it's great here. We haven't got any fires. We had a little bit of wind, a little bit of rain, everything in modest amounts here. You know, the middle way, that's how we should go. Yeah. So I mean, is generally England not prone to dramatic shifts in climate? We're a bit warmer. We're about 0.9 of a degree that Celsius. Wow. Warmer than it was when I was a boy. But that's about it really. I mean, we don't get snow anymore. We only used to get a sprinkling that was gone by 11 o'clock in the morning, you know. And we have, April was wonderful. There was no rain at all in April, but then we had some rain in June. It's, you know, it's, it's a balmy climate. I love it. But speaking of weather, you've had to weather some new guests on your show, right? Tell me about how that's been going so far. Yeah. Well, I've been all over the internet. I had, I make my Global Atheist News and your, and your weekly show. Yeah. Which is, both of these shows are on my Free Thought Productions YouTube channel. The other one is Free Thought Hour. And my guest this week, this is where I interview somebody and we have a chat. And my guest this week was a guy called Bruce Gorensa. Was he the one with the suspenders? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Braces, please. Sorry. Oh, is that, I'm sorry. Okay. All right. He's, he's got a fine beard. Yes, he does. Father Claus, Santa Claus, Father Christmas type of beard and a yellow hat, a straw hat. Yeah. And we are lovely. He's a lovely guy. He's an ex pastor who is now an atheist. He converted from being a pastor in about 2008, 2009. His wife of 43 years went on the same journey with him. Wow. That's useful. Absolutely. That's a good story. I need something like that. You need to go to Free Thought Hour on, what do I call it? Can't think of the name of my show. Free Thought Productions and you'll be able to see it. Yeah. Also, I highly recommend Global Atheist Network, right? Check that out on the YouTube as well. Global Atheist News. Yes. Global Atheist News. Global Atheist News. Check that out. I've been on other people's shows, too, because I now join in with an Atheism UK podcast. We didn't manage to do it this week for various reasons, but it's supposed to be a weekly podcast, which is like this. There's a few books talking together. Nice. And I was also, I'm co-hosting, Harris Salton. She is. Stop. Stop, John Richards. You're doing too much. You're only one man. What are you going to do? Well, I'm retired. Nothing else to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. That's great. You're really putting yourself out there. And I know, I know you're making it sound easy, but I know it's hard to schedule and find the right times and then maintain, you know, like good conversation, maintaining good conversation about important topics in a way that's captivating for people to listen to is a difficult thing. And so, yeah, you're doing good work. And I enjoyed your interviews. Okay. Even though guy with the rainbow suspenders, I was like, all right, that's a good thumb, though. I'm going to have to check this out. You know that. Yeah. That or five. Would you mind if I just check in with you real quick, sir? How have you been? Sure. No, fine. Just staying in, staying on the internet, doing some gaming. Nice. My ice maker just went off as just as I unmuted the mic. No, the only report or the only thing I have to report from my conversations on the internet was a guy. That I was talking to. I mean, I really wasn't just talking to him. I just commented on the line of Facebook and he saw it was an atheist. My answer was an atheist and came back and said, and I quote, your answers are thieves and liars who cause mass genocide. Where did that come from? Just because I'm an atheist. My answer is for Christian. I don't know what he's talking about. Maybe he knows something I didn't. I don't know. But just that's the kind of thing he was from like Virginia. A lot of fallacies in there. But, you know, you were you have actually made some good contacts that you've been gaming with recently, right? Oh, certainly. Would you like to throw with us today? Yeah. Sweetest Steve. You and I met on Eve online playing games. Wow. And we got to be friends and we wanted to ask you a few questions on the show. If you don't mind, thank you for coming. First of all, but we had, we had a believer online saying that most countries were religious and we reminded him that there were some that were pretty much atheist countries. And we mentioned Scandinavian and he came back and said, no, we're looking at statistics from the CIA government website. And I said that like 65% of Swedish and other countries in that area were actually believers. So you live there. Can you address that for us? Also, talk about yourself for a little bit. Oh, yes, please. Tell us a little bit about yourself first. Because you've only said so far. Sweetest Steve. Right, right. Yeah. Who are you? What are you about? What's your life story? Tell us 30 seconds. You got it. My life story. Yeah. 27 seconds. It's true. It's very true. Well, at the moment I live in the woods, but I'm a resource teacher on a small school. Nice. I've never been a Christian or never been part of it in any way. It's not a big thing. My wife had, how do you say, a week moment when she was 13, 14, when she went to school or church a lot, but she outgrew it. What? She outgrew it. Yeah. Quickly. Yeah. Feel free to correct me if I overstep, Steve, because you are the sweetest expert here. But when I was over there, there's tends to be two kinds of religious people. The ones that absolutely, absolutely, absolutely take it very seriously, very literally. And then the ones who are apathetically religious or just like, yeah, eat the cracker. Just come on, guys. We got a few months ago. Yeah. It's more like, let's be a little Christian so the church will pay for our funeral. Right. It's hard to find a Swedish person that says, I believe in God. It is very difficult to find a staunch religious person. There's, there is, oh, John, go ahead, go ahead. I wanted to ask Steve, what's the constitution say? Are you secular? Yeah, we're secular. Good. We made it public first January 2000, but it's been like that since, yeah, most of the 90s. George, you got more comments? What's that? Yes. I have a question. What is the prevailing religion in Sweden? Is it the same as the rest of Scandinavia or is it different? And how did they feel about the country going secular? I would say it's not much of a discussion. It's more natural to just be secular and they can have their little, how you say, parties somewhere. We don't mind them as much. They don't really care about us. Yeah. It's a really ambiguous form of Christianity. Just like, yeah, there's a state church and sometimes I go there on Easter or I'll go there for Midsummer. It's really nice singing. We got books. Is it Lutheran or is it something else? It's Lutheran. Yeah, it's Protestant-ish. Yeah. Hey, Larry, what do you got? I was just wondering, do you face any kind of evangelizing or proselytization there at all? Just the Mormons from you. Yeah. Do they come to your door periodically? Yeah. Sweden is a Mormon heaven for Mormons. They're like, oh my gosh, look at these people. Perfect. You get a virgin territory. Yeah. It's like, look at all these blonde blue-eyed guys just waiting for the discovery of the truth. Yeah, it's perfect for them. I didn't want to ask this. So one of my favorite things about Sweden is metal music. And I'm going to get to the point. Trust me, you guys. I feel, in my head, it comes right off the vine when you go to listen to Swedish metal. But there are bands, I would say this. There are bands in Sweden that take it to the next level in terms of displaying and showmanship. And there's a band that dresses up like a whole entire Catholic church. Are you familiar with them? Ghost. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And all of their things. So in America, when we do death metal, you might be familiar with like the guttural kind of gibberish sound. It's like... That in Sweden is an actual language. And when Swedish people do it, like they're actually speaking the language, we're going to imitate the sound when we do our death metal impressions. So like when Ghost is singing, it's like, what's he saying? It's like, oh, these are the hymnals. You know, Psalms 111, it's like, that's what he's singing. It's like, that is the most hardcore thing I've ever heard of ever. That's so awesome. Yeah, but Ghost is really like level one. Yeah. He's not even burning churches or stuff like that. In his videos, I hope. No, no, no. It's very... I like the way there's different levels of metal. So you can imagine, you know, there's lead. And then there's fire. Somebody like status quo, they're just aluminium. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aluminium, I love it. I love it. I love it. Okay. Hey, so Dread Pirate and Swedish. You're both basically... And John Rich's. Wow, we have such an international cast. It's like even now. It's crazy. Three Tennessee's and three... Okay, so the original question I was going to ask was, have you had opportunity to go to anywhere else outside of America, Sweden, Steve, and got an impression of the culture contrast? When you step outside of Sweden and you're like, wow, there's a perhaps a more permeating sense of religion around here than I am when I go back to my home country. Yeah. Where'd you go? I can say Russia, crazy religious. Austin, Texas. Really? Wow. Austin, Texas. Yeah. And the person between the two, yes, that is true. That is true. We consider Austin sort of like the mecca of non-religious Texans, but yeah, you heard the Sweden. Yeah, I know, but still, they seem like all this country, like God. Yeah, it's just, it feels weird for me as a Swede too. Oh, every street corner has a church on it. Yeah. And every property has a flag on it. Yeah. Christian nationalism. Do you have flags on your properties in Sweden, Steve? If we have flags on properties. Do you have, does everybody have a flag of Sweden in the garden? No. No. We don't like it. Most of us or most of our, the you younger people that doesn't like the Swedish flag at all. It's, it's just something that either fascists or naturalist, that's you. Sorry. Nationalism in other words. Yes. You're, you're more likely to encounter someone wearing the British or American flag, but just as a fashion statement, which really confused me when I got there. Cause I'm like, oh, American is like, no, no, no, no Pratarengelska. It's like, oh, okay. I didn't know. I didn't know. Sorry. Can you help me with this? I need some help. I don't know where I am. Can you help me? Yeah. Um, I want to say, Hey, thank you for coming on to the show. Of course you're welcome back anytime, but I think we're getting close to the bottom of the half hour Larry, which mind taking us out and then we can come back and we'll, we'll talk about stuff. This is the digital free thought radio hour. We're on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee, and we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM W O Zio radio Knoxville. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Again, today is Sunday, August 1st, 2021. Now let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK founded in 2002. Look, we're in our 19th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly zoom meetings during COVID, but we are again meeting in person at Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria in Knoxville's Old City every week Tuesday evening from about 5.30 to 8. We'll be out on the patio and hope to see you there. You can find us on Facebook or meetup.com or KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just as simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. Start one. Start one. Right. Right. One bit. Where do we want to pick up? So I wanted to just highlight we have a real international cast today. We have represents from England, from Sweden, from Canada and three people from Tennessee. We got basically the A to Z to the world and what else is better than A to Z than a Z bar? Get your atheist support. They represent everything that we say in this show. So make sure you get a Z bar at your local place. Get a Z bar, A to Z, Z bar. Is that anything like a rebar? Who knows? Chocolate chip Z bar is my favorite. Anyway, Dreadpire eggs. I want to point out that correctly. That's a Z bar. It's a Z bar. It's a Z bar. Dreadpire. George loved that joke. You want to introduce the topic for the second half of the show. Myself? Yeah, sure. So just during the break, I wanted to talk about how media has really recently made death quite the spectacle and that people are indulging themselves in grief. Recently, of course, there was the discovery of unmarked indigenous graves at the residential schools right across Canada, and while we can certainly all appreciate the gravity of that situation, it was known, I mean, people knew this was going on for 30 years. Just the fact that, you know, it has now become a media spectacle is as embarrassing to Canada as the whole residential school system to start with. I mean, this has been in place for a long time. Could you tell us when that 30-year period was just to put it in historical perspective? Yeah, well, I think it started in the, you know, the 60s and moved into the 70s, and it may be long. I mean, I haven't, you know, delved into it too much, but I think the last school was just not even 10 years ago. Wow. The last one that closed, I think it was not very long ago. But like I say, I mean, people knew that this was going on, and certainly the Catholic Church and other churches have been sanctioned by the federal government to do that. So sorry, I didn't want to interrupt this. A couple other comments there. Yeah. John, what did you do on the... This is a little bit of a rabbit hole compared to the main thrust of the subject, but I think they discontinued shipping the natives. What is the name? Give me the name of the Canadian... No, it's not Iroquois, is it? No, that's America. No, no, there's just all kinds of indigenous populations in BC alone. There's probably, you know, the better part of 50 different nations, right? Yes. I'll use the word indigenous. Thanks for that. Yes. Yeah. I think they stopped actually grabbing the children and putting them into these residential schools in the mid-70s. Yeah, there are people who are still alive who are part of that generation. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But I think the last one closed, it wasn't very long ago, just a matter of years ago. But like you say, John, it's kind of pulling away from the main subject I was trying to present. Yes. Like I drive, I take a long drive, a five and a half hour drive between the big city of Vancouver along Highway. And what I see increasingly is the number of crosses that are being erected on the roadsides to mark where somebody has had an accident or a fatality. And these things are getting more and more elaborate as people, you know, I guess, enshrine their grief to the level that they can afford it. And so it's now becoming a continuous cemetery. And this is what I mean by death is spectacle or grief is spectacle is that we all suffer loss to one of us. And that, you know, there's got to be sort of a point at which we say, you know, we appreciate and sympathize and empathize with your grief, but you have to get through it. You can't make it everyone else's continual responsibility to share that grief with you. Or does that make any sense? Dreb, can I just add some little color to that? It's not so much get over and move on. It's more of like, what's the healthiest way that we can actually come to terms with the loss that you suffered and is a public display of religious icon, the best way to do it for everybody, or maybe we can seek better therapy and have some better understanding, maybe conversations needed. And there might be better avenues to actually resolve this sense of loss that you have, then iconography that might be not only potentially used by media to aggravate something that may not necessarily be the intentions of the departed, but actually could be used to further propagate an agenda that nobody wants to subscribe to just because it appears that with the icons that we're using, we are cheering for a particular team. George, do you want to feed on that? Yeah, I mean, exactly. I just, you know, and I agree. It's not like it's I'm not to say that. Sorry. It's all right. There's a little bit of lag. We can anticipate that. George, would you mind filling in? Yeah, I actually, in response to what Dread Pirate has been saying, I had three three comments came to mind. So the first the first one is that I want to say that I have long been an admirer of Canadian media. And I want to say about the the the church and the unmarked graves absolutely depressed me. And I mean, I felt a sorrow at reading about these children. And what came to my mind was that your media has been very good about it, I think, and I thought all the way back to, you know, the first revelations of abuse of children by priests in the Catholic Church came out of Canada. It was in Nova Scotia, in particular, where the media got onto it. And I don't know how I'm going back to the what the 1990s, I think. So the other thing is that I have lived in urban areas, almost all my life, or most of my life. And death is a spectacle as you're talking about it, Dread Pirate has not been a part of the urban landscape. I only discovered this when I made a visit to Montana, which is very close to where you live, finding crosses on the highway. And I had to ask, what is that all about when it was explained to me for the first time in my life? And this, this, of course, marks the spot where there has been a fatal car accident in the cities. We just don't have that tradition. And I thought, why is that? And part of this is that people are simply like in New York, where I grew up, they're just walking to the subway. There there is no highway, you know, people aren't driving. They don't have highway accidents like this. And for some reason, it's just it's not an urban phenomenon that I'm aware of. But it has become that. And I think within the black community, in response to, let's say, a killing of a person by a cop will be will be memorialized by a bunch of flowers in the location. And so that's similar. You know, in, in so in the cities, we have that just recently, though. I'm done. Would you mind if I throw a question up out to John before we continue? Sure. So, John, what do you got? I saw your comment. Well, it's a cultural change that's happened during my lifetime in this part of the world, because we used to be very private about disease and as children, we didn't get taken to funerals even. It was just a thing that adults did. They went along. It was all very quietly done. They came back and we've gone with our lives. But then in 1998, Princess Diana, and there was a sort of a pouring of grief. And you could have seen the pyramids of flowers that were laid outside Buckingham Palace by people. And on the actual location in Paris that she died. Yes, and probably outside Kensington Palace, where she was living, too. And so this was the American media, by the way. Yeah. It was in the American media, too. Yes, yes. The displays of the flowers and all that in England. Yes, yes. I know you probably like our royal family more than we do. But the thing is that seems to have started this ball rolling. And now we do see bunches of flowers at junctions where people have wrapped themselves around a tree or had some terrible accident. John, just to weigh in on that a little bit more because it got it became sort of a genuine means of emotion with flowers. Then there was commemorative coins and then like magazines that were like, here's the lifestyle of Diana, here's the pictures of her final moments. Here's the pictures of her funeral. Here's the pictures of her crying family each for like $17 and 99 cents because there's an upsell on everything. And it starts to get a little creepy like the commercial. It's too commercial. And I and that's one agenda. Like that's people trying to make a profit. But I feel like there's also other there's also other agendas based on ideas and ideologies that see an opportunity to slowly sneak themselves into the cultural mainstay. I don't know. I don't know whether the stoic British nature has modified, mutated into something more emotional. I don't know. Hmm. Daughter five, go for it. Yeah, you could say it's capital is capitalism. And since we have a guest, he's not from a capitalistic country. Maybe we should ask Tim. Yeah, yeah, Swedish Steve, you live in a socialist slash communist country, don't you? Now, that's I say that that way because in America, in America, you say socialism and they think communism. Yeah. What can you tell us a little bit about the socialism in your country? Do you think I'm T for a socialist? So yeah, yeah. Oh, how we deal with this. Yeah, how do you guys deal with that in general? Very differently. But the typical Swede. Yeah, we'll not be very public about it. Is there a King Carl Memorial Day? Yeah, nobody cares about those. It's it's we have King Carl, there is a Swedish royal family and you can like nobody cares about like they are just a joke. Well, you didn't get out the guillotine's form. That's one thing that's that's an improvement. No, but there are emotions that he should be the royal family should be under the historical department of the Swedish government. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When there is a sudden loss in Sweden, like what would be the typical assurances given by the media or would there be displays? Like, what does that look like culturally over there? It depends on if the media catch it up. It's because it's a slow news day. I mean, we we lost some. I think she was a princess or something, but it was the same time as Black Lives Matter riots. So they didn't type about right about it. But I have to say about this, that this grieving outwardly and making profit of it. It's all boiled down to social media. Yeah, in my opinion. I see as an opportunity for somebody to get either more likes, more money or more attention, which is. Yeah, yeah, John, what do you got? Well, if you go to other countries like Ghana, for example, they make a really big meal out of a death. In fact, relatives can come and live with you as a, you know, you're the the ancestor of the deceased in order to help you grieve. And actually, they're sponging off you. You know, they they found themselves somewhere to live free of charge for the next several months because they're helping you to grieve. And it goes to the extreme that for the ceremony, which might be some months later, you can actually hire professional whalers. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's common in Arabic countries as well. Yeah, you have them too in America. We do. We have seen them on Fiverr. Can we just stop this for a little bit? I want to I want to pause on just this topic for a little bit. So, sweetest Steve, for whatever reason, you were down a rabbit hole on the Internet where you were looking at American Fiverr, professional grievers. Could you could you inform me so I know what's going on in my own country? What's going on here? So for five bucks, I can get somebody to cry at my my funeral. It's more than that. It's like, you want the premium package? Oh, my gosh, you 10 bucks, huh? Yeah, he will. The one I was checking on. He was like, yeah, claiming to your casket and whaling and everything like that. And this could be like a stranger that nobody else knows about. Yeah. Oh, there are some interesting ideas there. Dred Pirate, I see you have a hand raised. What's up? Yeah. Well, you know, I guess in sort of rounding out my thoughts about this is is actually a continuation of something you were saying. Like the idea of my bringing up this thing about crosses, lining the highways and byways of our of our province. It's not about going out there with a bat and in a shovel and taking these things up and getting rid of them. It's about trying to figure out a better way for people to, you know, process their grief, right, as opposed to wearing it on their on their sleeves for everyone to see. Because in a sense, you know, and certainly the media's got a lot of responsibility in this is the enabling of people's continued continued grief and the you know, again, almost commercializing it and making it again a spectacle. I'm also dread. I'm also going to throw this out to I know it's something that you're not saying what you want to say. But like if this was a pacifarian that died on the side of the road, there's no chance that there's going to be a picket of the spady flying spaghetti that will be tolerated by people on the side of the road. They're going to be like exactly crosses up. But no, my religious icons are up, but everyone else's aren't. And so right that we know we live in. You don't see anything. Yeah, you don't see any Muslim iconography or Buddhist iconography. But certainly or Wiccans, right? You don't see pentagrams up there for every Wiccan that died at the side of the road because of an accident. So exactly. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, George, you had a comment. What's up? Yeah, I wanted to mention that there is a about professional mourners. There is a tradition in the Jewish religion of that. And there you can also hire somebody to sit by the by the dead body for an appropriate period of time. But the about the mourners. There is a comedy video on YouTube that I can recommend showing a couple of Jewish mourners talking about being afraid of missing the bus home after the funeral. Hey, listen, you guys, we have seven minutes left in the show, and I would be I would be very embarrassed if I didn't subject Swedish Steve to the same questions that I applied to Isaiah when he came on and we knew he was a Christian. So I do want to throw this out to Swedish Steve. You had mentioned that you're an atheist. Would you mind telling me why you're an atheist? And maybe we can just touch on that. Why are you an atheist? That's the idea of. Ignoring the world is not a possibility for me. I am a strong believer in what Marx said about religion and that it's an opium for the people. It clouds the mind and make them artificial, happy, give them an answer to everything they can't understand. Nice. OK, man. Dred, do you even have? Oh, John, comment. Yeah, not directly related to what Steve said, but part of this problem is because we we think of death as a taboo subject. We're not prepared to talk about it prior to it happening. We're not prepared to believe that it's going to happen to us, you know. And really, that's psychologically very bad. We should actually accept this as a fact and prepare ourselves for it and prepare the family and the friends. And yes, you know, I like it round table. What's the best way to grieve in a situation like that? I just recently lost a family member to covid and it was one of my aunts. And I maybe we can talk more about that later on a future show. But we are taking our time to process it privately within the family to give respect as we just have the logistics of how we distribute, you know, her belongings and like making sure her family is OK and her sons and daughters are all right. We didn't make it a public thing for cloud or for sympathy. We're really doing our best to try to respect, you know, just the ongoings of life being a process and death being a process. And so no no flags for us, but it was never a condition for our part. So our yeah, I'll get more details later. But basically, we try to keep private, try to keep it respectful. Because I'm sure she would want the same thing, too. And Dredd, what would be what would be your ideas of best ways to agree? Well, you know, and the difference I see often is, of course, what's going on. So if it's a sudden if it's a sudden death, you know, preamble like a car accident, it tends to have a larger impact and people are far more out of sorts. My my mom, on the other hand, she's Alzheimer's and it's a slow, gradual decline, where in fact the morning process has already or the grieving process has already started for me because, you know, I I see that my mom is declining and that eventually she'll be gone. So in a sense, I'm being prepared for that just in my relationship with her. So again, it's about having tools, tools to deal with these emotional crises that we should be better equipped with in order to to deal with it in either circumstance, whether it's sudden or gradual. And I agree, we have better tools. So we should really spend, especially in the situation where two people die and one can't afford a giant cross and the other one can't. Like we have to be able to do stuff like that. Doubter five, how are you going to grieve when I die? Well, given our age difference, it's probably going to be the other way around. But I think it's important to I live fast and loose. You don't know about me. You burn the candle at both ends, is that? Yeah, I got I got some I got some black hairs to burn still. Yeah. No, I think it's a real wake, isn't it? What? Wait, wait, hold on. What? I'll be awake. OK, OK. Yeah. Doubter five, no, it's it's important to process it. The last thing you want to do is repress it and and ignore it. You want to process it, get through it and also take the message from it that you need to engage with those that are still alive while they're alive. Yes. And resolve any problems that you may have with them so that you can enjoy their company while they're here. And that's so much more. Yeah, that's very true. Swedish Steve, any comments on Best Ways to Grieve? No, but I would suggest to take up the tradition of Ektelstupa. We're going to have to translate that, you know, that corn. It's when you're old and getting a burden to your village or something, you go up to the tallest mountain and just jump off. So I forgot to mention that, Steve, it comes from a Viking culture. Just a quick thing in Sweden. This surprised me. There's no word Swedish. Let me finish the story. There's no word for please. You just say thanks. So like if you need water, you just take water and be like, talk, talk, talk, thoughts and talk. You just take it and you say thank you. And it's such a completely different dynamic. There's no excuse me. Can I have this? Can I get in here? It's like, no, you take it and you say thank you and you just move on. And that's it's like better to ask for forgiveness. There's no either. Like, can I take your village, please? Thank you. All right, I appreciate it. Village pack. Guys, we're nearing the end of the show. What I like to do is a little bit of shout outs. We'll start with John Richards. You got on so many different shows. What would you recommend that we check out before next week? Free Thought Productions channel on YouTube. Nice. Wonderful. Free Thought Productions YouTube. Dred Pirate, what do you got for us? What do we recommend? Well, this week, of course, in last week I wasn't able to stream. I'm in a remote location and dependent on my my phone and local connections. And that's just not enough. So what I would suggest, people pick up the portable atheist, which is an anthology of writings put together by Christopher Hitchens, who introduces each piece of writing and it goes from Lucretius to Plato to Aristotle to Einstein, Mark, Stephen Hawking. It's just a huge anthology of people writing with atheism or secularism as the subject. So it's a great book. George Brown, would you recommend that we check out anything before the next week rolls in? No, I have no recommendation this week. Thank you. Totally fine. I do have a recommendation and it is Zed Bars. Actually, I just got an announcement. Zed Bars just sent me a tweet. They said they denounce everything they say. They are not an atheist, of course. So I never saw that happening. So we no more Zed Bars, by the way, this package is empty anyway. We'll take it all back. But now I'm out of all illusion. Now I'm out of laws because they said they didn't like atheism. I'm like atheism. What is that? And what is it even about? Doubt or five can help me out with that. Oh, yeah. But I think we should give a Swedish Steve. Oh, my bad, my bad, my bad. Swedish Steve, is there anything that you'd recommend we check out before next week? Reality. Nice idea. And in my reality, I don't know what atheism is and what it's all about. Doubt or five can help me out. Yeah, I happen to have a book that addresses that directly. It's atheism. What's it all about? It's available on Amazon. It basically is a book of counter to religious apologetics. So if you need something for your atheism, arsenal for arguments and stuff, I would check that book out. Also, just go to digitalfreethought.com slash blog, which is my blog, which basically you can read the entire book in the articles that I have listed on the blog. So just go check that out at that part is free. Also have a YouTube channel search for Doubt or Five or Larry Rhodes. And if you have any questions for our show, you can send them to askanatheist at Knoxvilleatheist.org. And we'll answer them on future shows. If you are having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, you can get help at recoveringfromreligion.org. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. This has been the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we will see you next week. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. So I heard a voice in my head that told me atheism is true.