A weekly podcast about building great relationships, cultivating wonder, and making things better for other people. Hosted by veteran community-builder Bart Campolo, Humanize Me features friendly, thoughtful conversations with a wide array of scientists, activists, artists and oddballs.
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Humanize Me is a production of Jux Media.
You can be forgiven for not being familiar with ‘pyrotheology’, the lifelong philosophy project of Peter Rollins.
In this episode of Humanize Me, Bart Campolo attempts a philosophical deep dive with Pete, a friend of the podcast for years. It’s a very lively, argumentative conversation on the differences between Bart and Pete on human drive and desire, humanism, religion, death, meaning and meaninglessness.
Along the way, the pair touch on dialectics, human evolution, dual instincts, psychoanalysis, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, ontological antagonism, fundamentalism and the death of God.
We recommend Pete’s podcast, The Fundamentalists, where he lays out his ideas to the keen interest of his friend, the comedian Elliott Morgan. For more on pyrotheology and everything Pete, go to PeterRollins.com.
One of our listeners read an interview with Conan O’Brien in the New York Times last week. He sent us this excerpt:
NYT: Is this how you want to go out, with a show that gets smaller and smaller until it’s gone?
Conan: Maybe that’s O.K. I think you have more of a problem with that than I do. [Laughs.] At this point in my career, I could go out with a grand, 21-gun salute, and climb into a rocket and the entire Supreme Court walks out and they jointly press a button, I’m shot up into the air and there’s an explosion and it’s orange and it spells, “Good night and God love.” In this culture? Two years later, it’s going to be, who’s Conan? This is going to sound grim, but eventually, all our graves go unattended.
NYT: You’re right, that does sound grim.
Conan: Sorry. Calvin Coolidge was a pretty popular president. I’ve been to his grave in Vermont. It has the presidential seal on it. Nobody was there. And by the way, I’m the only late-night host that has been to Calvin Coolidge’s grave. I think that’s what separates me from the other hosts.
I had a great conversation with Albert Brooks once. When I met him for the first time, I was kind of stammering. I said, you make movies, they live on forever. I just do these late-night shows, they get lost, they’re never seen again and who cares? And he looked at me and he said, [Albert Brooks voice] “What are you talking about? None of it matters.” None of it matters? “No, that’s the secret. In 1940, people said Clark Gable is the face of the 20th Century. Who [expletive] thinks about Clark Gable? It doesn’t matter. You’ll be forgotten. I’ll be forgotten. We’ll all be forgotten.” It’s so funny because you’d think that would depress me. I was walking on air after that.
Our listener takes this idea of Conan’s and asks: “I wonder why he finds it liberating and I find it depressing?”
Bart Campolo has lots to say about this, and in conversation with John Wright this episode attempts to give an answer. Along the way, hear references to this chess article and this poem.
James Croft is the Outreach Director of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, a longstanding humanist congregation, and one of the largest in the world.
In this conversation with Bart Campolo, James talks about what his congregation is doing to engage with the issues of St. Louis, a place which has made many headlines in the past number of years for racial strife. James subscribes to ‘deed before creed’, an interest less in what people believe and more in what they commit to doing. His congregation is creating safe places to ask questions that people are worried about asking, or which may be loaded, in areas like LGBTQ matters or on topics like white fragility. In addition, he and Bart get into a discussion on the usefulness of protests and revolutions versus better conversations (spoiler alert: they eventually agree that both are of use).
The Ethical Society of St. Louis can be found online at EthicalStL.org. He is on Twitter @JFLCroft.
And, on this episode, we go out with a song! Eric Bachmann’s song ‘Mercy’ is very much in keeping with the spirit of this podcast. For more info, go HERE.
It’s a new year! A time for fresh ideas and new beginnings, and so much has been happening in Bart Campolo’s life that this episode serves as an update and a reflection on various themes, including:
- How helping a parent cross life’s finish line can focus the mind and change your plans
- How the birth of a first grandchild a few days later can turn the whole thing into a ‘circle of life’ motif, while turning attention on the kind of world they’re being born into
- How suddenly becoming aware of your own habits and behaviors can give you a desire to change them.
Also, Bart talks about the expectations we have to react in certain standard ways when going through life’s journey, and how authenticity can cut through those expectations.
A quick Christmas greeting from Bart Campolo, urging secular folks like himself to embrace the holiday for what it is, and be their best humanist selves during the season.
Bart Campolo’s oldest and closest friend, Matthew Rodreick, is this week’s guest on the podcast. Matthew’s life has been shaped by his son Gabe’s spinal cord injury, sustained around a decade ago when Gabe was 16.
The conversation in this episode begins by exploring the relationship between father and son and the multiple roles one must play in that event, and validating Matthew’s own experience as Gabe’s father as a valid and important one.
It finishes entirely differently: with a moment of revisionist history for Bart as he is reminded that he did not support Matthew’s choice to reconnect with his birth father at the beginning, and the two friends playfully mull over Bart’s old advice, what he got wrong and why.
Matthew’s organization, Unite 2 Fight Paralysis, can be found at u2pf.org.
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Included in the outro of this episode is a 5-minute excerpt from a longer philosophical debate between Bart and Roman Campolo. Check out the full bonus episode (link) over on Patreon! Not a supporter yet? Join up at Patreon.com/HumanizeMe and get this episode and lots of other extra content for it!
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