Susan Huckle is a comedian and author of The Earth Is Flat?! And other things my mother told me. She grew up in an evangelical home, experienced peak purity culture. Later in life her parents began to believe conspiracy theories including a flat Earth. She tells her story with comedy, join and poignancy.
Susan Huckle is an actor in Los Angeles, but that wasn’t self-indulgent enough, so she wrote a memoir. She grew up in Santa Maria, CA, and earned her B.A. in Journalism and Dramatic Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a Master of Sustainable Tourism from Arizona State University. Her TV credits include Jane the Virgin, The Mindy Project, Nickelodeon shows, and hosting L.A. This Week for the city of L.A.
Matt Sanderson is the author of I Wonder: Notes on Spirituality without the Supernatural. My conversation with Matt is poignant and vulnerable touching on his loss of faith, the loss of his mother and his search for meaning without dogma and the supernatural.
Matt tells us his faith journey from an atheist upbringing into evangelical/charismatic Christianity, drawn by community and an intense prayer experience, then later unraveling beliefs after being challenged, doubling down, and gradually deconverting through wider reading (philosophy, neuroscience) without a dramatic exit. Matt explains the book began as an attempt to sort through accumulated ideas, intensified after his mother’s death and his reflections on grief without belief in an afterlife. He discusses religious experiences as common human phenomena (via William James), religion’s techniques for evoking awe, non-reductionism, meaning as created (influenced by Viktor Frankl), the value and challenges of secular community, and joy/comedy as truth-telling. He frames wonder as both questioning and awe.
Author Stella McCormick has written a powerful memoir, Deliver Us From Mother: Faith, Fear, and the Family Cult That Broke Me. The story she tells in the book and shares with us on the podcast is one of surviving a single family cult, purity culture, sexual assault and desconstruction.
Stella is more than a survivor. She has thrived. Today she is a sexual assault advocate for the Army where she helps other victims of sexual assault process their experience.
Growing up, Stella McCormick believed her family was different because they were more faithful than everyone else. Homeschooled in a deeply controlling religious environment, she was taught that unquestioning obedience was a virtue, suffering was sanctifying, and the outside world was something to fear. Every rule, punishment, and sacrifice was justified as God’s will.
What if women mattered, really mattered, to the authors that wrote our Bible? Not just the queens and concubines, harlots and handmaidens, and barren women in need of a son’s miraculous birth; not just the unnamed mothers, wives and daughters; but all women?
Clearly Written for Boys is a book about the Bible, and Christianity, and the problematic relationship both have had with women throughout their histories. Karis and David come from Christian backgrounds and are “cleaning up their own house.”
Join me in hearing from these two amazing authors and the critical message they have about women in Biblical history and for women of today.
Steve Ghikadis is a Humanist Officiant, who conducts secular marriages, memorials, and many more meaningful life-affirming celebrations.
Raised as a freethinker, Steve has been married to a Christian for over a decade. He and his wife, Cindy, believe in the importance of bridging the gap between believers and non-believers. Their two young children are being raised in an interfaith household and are free to choose their own path.
He serves as an Ambassador for Humanist Canada, Recovering from Religion, and Sunday Assembly.
Julia tells her story of deconstructing the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the expected life of suburbia.
Julia was torn between two grandmothers: an evangelical and a Jehovah’s Witness. She became a Jehovah’s Witness and was all in. She got married and had kids and supported her husband who was an Elder. That is when the boredom set it. She wanted more, she wanted to travel and be a need-greater. Before they were to leave to Ecuador, her husband tragically died of cancer refusing blood transfusions along the way.
Julia’s life became messy as she started a long process of deconstruction. This included low-lights like having her children tell on her to the elders. And highlights going out on her own to travel and meet people’s needs with out dogma.
Today Julia is free. She kayaks, bikes and travels internationally. She says “I wake up every day thinking, ‘I love this world, and I love this life.'”
(1) My parents weren't religious at all, but both of my grandmothers were very religious. One was Baptist, and the other was one of Jehovah's Witnesses. As a child, I didn't realize they were both trying hard to influence me to be their religion. My parents had a lot of issues, so my childhood was unstable and chaotic. My grandmothers' homes were my safe havens. They both had a really positive impact on me and cultivated in me an interest in spiritual things. When I was with my Baptist Grandma, I went to her church. She paid for me to go to Bible camp out of state every summer. I also went with her to the North American Baptist triennial conferences throughout the 1980s, traveling to Niagara Falls in 1982, Anaheim in ‘85, and Calgary in ‘88. When I was with my Jehovah's Witness grandma, I went to the Kingdom Hall, which is what they call their place of worship, and I attended Bible assemblies and conventions if I was with her when they were going on. (2) I'd always been curious about the Bible and religions. As a teenager in foster care, I ended up living with a family who required me to attend church, so I started going to their Catholic church. But when my Jehovah’s Witness aunt found out, she offered to bring me to the Kingdom Hall instead. After a little while, her husband offered to study the Bible with me. I brought a notebook full of questions to the first study. My uncle told me they'd all be answered eventually in their study book, You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth. Through that Bible study, I was shocked to learn that Christmas wasn't in the Bible, God had a name, and many holidays had pagan roots. I felt like I'd found "the truth." I took to heart everything I learned and started to conform, including not celebrating birthdays and holidays. (3) The summer before 11th grade, I moved 200 miles away. A sister, which is the term for a female member, from a local Kingdom Hall contacted me and offered rides to the meetings at the Kingdom Hall. She picked up where I'd left off studying in the Live Forever book. I started going out in field service, which is the door-to-door preaching work. It was nerve wracking knocking on doors. I think a lot of people felt like I did, hoping no one would be home or answer, so we could just tuck a tract or Watchtower or Awake magazine in the door and move on so we could “get our time in.” Back then we had to log our monthly hours and placements, but in November 2023, they stopped requiring detailed reports.(4) At my high school, I met a boy from another congregation. We started talking a lot, and we even arranged to be in some of the same classes. This caused panic in his family because I wasn’t raised in the religion, I was “worldly.” Witnesses only date other baptized Witnesses, and only with the intention of getting married. By the summer after 11th grade, I had progressed to the point of getting baptized. My Baptist grandma was so upset about it that she told me I was being removed from her will. Looking back, I think I gravitated toward the religion because I didn't want to end up like my parents. As a welfare kid overseen by the state, I wanted to know how to have a better life. The Witnesses guaranteed a better life now, and forever in the future. (5) A year after graduating, when I was 18, we got married. It’s pretty common for Jehovah's Witnesses to marry young because you can't have sex before marriage. We had two children. My husband eventually became a ministerial servant, which is like an assistant to an elder, and later he became an elder. We became a model family, being interviewed and even acting out demonstrations on stage in front of thousands of people at Bible assemblies and conventions. (6) As a Witness, I lived in a bubble, associating only with other Witnesses. I tried hard to be a good, submissive wife, and thankfully, my husband gave me a lot of freedom. He owned a business, so I worked for him in our home office while homeschooling our kids. As a mother, I was strict. I didn't want my kids contaminated by the world, so we rarely watched TV or movies. Our life revolved completely around the congregation. At that time we met a minimum of four times a week, and with preparing, attending, and preaching, there was little time for much else. (7) Around 10 years in, boredom really set in during the meetings. There wasn't much intellectual stimulation. To stay focused, I started taking incredibly detailed notes and turned it into a game, trying to predict the scriptures the speaker would use next. I actually got quite good at it because the same information was constantly recycled.In their literature and talks, we were often told we are the happiest people on earth. But the truth was, I wasn't happy. I would wake up every single day thinking, “I hate this world, and I hate this life.” But I had to shrug that thought off, and just power through the day. I didn't know the term for it then, but I later learned that it was cognitive dissonance. (8) I wanted a different life. I dreamed about selling everything we owned and moving to a foreign country. I felt inspired by stories of 'need-greaters,' which is what the organization calls people who move to countries where there's a greater need for preachers. We applied to go to an international Bible convention in Ecuador, and I was thrilled when we got accepted. I was trying to convince my husband to make it a month-long trip, but shortly after, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. So instead of Ecuador, he was in the hospital recovering from surgery. He spent a total of months in the hospital, and I stayed with him in the room. Because my husband refused blood transfusions, the surgeon questioned his sanity and ordered a psychiatric evaluation just to prove my husband was competent to refuse blood. The surgeon was totally baffled by the logic, asking, 'If you'll take blood fractions, why won't you take the donated whole blood they come from?' Hearing him try to reason with my husband, I began to think, this doesn't make sense. But accepting a blood transfusion is considered a serious sin, you would be disfellowshipped for, so multiple surgeries proceeded without it, adding greatly to his suffering. In March 2026, the Governing Body changed the rule on this. Members can now store their own blood for later use, but you still cannot accept another person's blood. Medically speaking, this policy change is practically useless. Stored blood expires within a few weeks, so it won't help in an emergency. Plus, doctors can't draw blood from someone who is already weak or fighting cancer. It is an extremely rare circumstance where pre-storing your own blood would even be an option. While in the hospital, family members came to visit. One of my in-laws said, 'We just need the New System'—the term for a future paradise on earth after God slaughters everyone who isn't a Witness during Armageddon. I had never focused on that; I was more interested in the Bible’s practical advice for daily life. An anger blazed up in me, and I yelled that the New System didn't solve anything for us right now. My husband needed life-saving treatments today! They left shocked and shaken up.Long stays in the hospital actually brought relief from our obligations, like attending meetings. When a couple of elders came to visit us in the hospital, they opened their Bibles and read a scripture about “the God of all comfort.” Something in me just snapped. I held up my Bible and yelled, “There isn't anything in this book that is going to help my husband.” Then I threw my Bible across the room, almost hitting one of the elders. (9) After my husband passed away, I took my kids on a biblical tour through Turkey, Greece, and finally Bulgaria, where we attended an international Bible convention. When we got home, I decided to finally chase my dream of being a 'need-greater.' I packed up the kids and we spent two months traveling through Colombia and Ecuador, preaching. I remember crossing this raging river in Colombia on a wooden board wedged between boulders, thinking, my ministry dreams have finally come true. But back home, something really started to bother me. I was giving rides to a couple of single moms who didn't have cars, and even delivering food shelf items to one whose abusive husband had just left her. But I was criticized because they weren't “making progress” in their Bible studies, which forced me to cut them off. It was so awkward and painful, and they had no idea why. Having to cut off moms in crisis just because they stopped “progressing” felt completely wrong. (10) About a year after my husband died, I started feeling unstable. I was also having distressing physical symptoms that I couldn't control. I confided in the elders, and I went to doctors, but nothing helped. Then I started hanging out and drinking with Witnesses who were judged “spiritually weak.” Prior to this, I had only drunk alcohol a handful of times in my whole life. My kids were suspicious of my unusual behavior, so they went on my phone, read incriminating text messages, and told the elders. In Witness culture, we are taught to narc on each other. My own kids were trained to be informants. (11) After that, the elders asked to meet with us as a family. When they questioned me alone, I didn't hesitate to tell them the truth. That’s when they told me they would form a judicial committee—three elders who would decide whether or not I would be “removed from the congregation.”I felt very guilty and was extremely sorry for what I did. But during my judicial meeting, the elders pointed to their private book of procedures, Shepherd the Flock of God, and told me I was not repentant. I was stunned. It was at this moment that I began to question if the elders were led by God's spirit, because if they were, surely He would've revealed to them I was truly sorry. Sitting there, I told them that I felt like I was a wounded lamb being thrown to the wolves. They just looked at me with blank faces. They wouldn't even conclude with a prayer. The public announcement was made at the midweek meeting. After 27 years of being a faithful Jehovah's Witness, I was expelled. I've always felt like the elders were basically spiritual police officers. When I committed a 'crime,' they sentenced me to a minimum of one year of solitary confinement. At a time when I most needed support, I was cut off from everyone I knew since I was 16 years old. It was actually harder for me to deal with than the death of my husband, because I was alive but everyone treated me like I was dead. (12) And then, I dove head-first into a dumpster fire. I became what one relative described as a “hot mess.” And it was a messy, chaotic, but also transformative couple of years. Being thrown into “the world” against my will was a very disorienting experience. It was a massive learning curve for me because I was naive and culturally clueless. My religion was my whole identity. I didn't even know how to talk to people in the world. There were a handful of Witnesses who secretly kept in contact with me. But I quickly learned some were living double lives. One sister “helped” me by introducing me to people at bars, which was a pretty wild place to start for someone as sheltered as I was. It was really weird to me that some Witnesses started confiding in me about the ‘naughty’ things they were doing. It's like I became a human confessional for the underground Witnesses. During these years, I made many trips to Central and South America, bringing large suitcases full of things for poor communities. I created “people projects” that I didn't consciously realize at the time were fulfilling my need to feel needed. It felt wonderful to help people without an underlying agenda. (13) After one year, I wanted to get accepted back so I resumed attending every meeting, and while being shunned, no one there would even crack a smile at me. To get reinstated as a member, I had to meet with the same elders that disfellowshipped me.I was nervous about meeting with them because I was still struggling with some things. But to my relief, they decided I would be reinstated. I was also in disbelief. It struck me again that the elders could not be divinely guided because I didn't feel like I should be reinstated! When the announcement was made, I felt flat. The second the meeting ended, all these people who treated me like I was dead for 2 years suddenly rushed up to me. I just wanted to bolt. I ended up leaving the state to spend time with a terminally ill relative, which was a perfect excuse to get away. (14) I was still having conversations with people about the Bible, and because of me a couple of people started going to the Kingdom Hall. One even started studying with an elder. But after a couple months, he shocked me by saying that the “best thing that could happen to me was getting kicked out again, because the religion was toxic.” My knee-jerk response was, “No way, I do not want that to happen.” I didn't want to be cut off from my adult children—they were what I cared about the most. After this, the elders wanted to meet up with me. Because I was traveling frequently, it was put off. Eventually, I ended up in a group-text with three elders who were trying to pin me down on a day that would work. I was checking my calendar, and one elder accidentally replied to the entire group instead of texting the others privately. The message said, “Don't tell her what we want to talk to her about.” I was shocked. It felt like I was trying to be trapped. I immediately blocked all their numbers. Then, a painful dismantling began. I had suffocated doubts for so long. All the little things I had filed away for years began to surface. Comments householders made to me. Things acquaintances said. Statements made in a memoir I read a decade prior about a girl escaping an extreme Mormon cult. How I'd always felt about shunning and the procedure for handling child sexual abuse. The rule about not going to university. The intolerance for questioning policies, interpretations or rules. Learning the parallels between Christianity, ancient Egyptian beliefs, and Greek mythology—ironically on a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York given by a Jehovah's Witness. I admitted to myself that I didn't like the cruel, jealous, violent God of the Bible. The scales fell off about Jesus, Mary, and Paul. And I thought about the Witnesses who were quietly breaking the rules in private, because they are afraid of losing all their friends and family.Other things came to mind too. I wondered if my Jehovah's Witness grandma even really loved having me around, or was she just logging field service hours? Was that my aunt's motivation, and the others who studied the Bible with me? I began to wonder if all the love and friendship I was ever shown were merely out of duty. Deconstructing felt like trying to get out of a straightjacket. I was wrestling with many upsetting thoughts and conclusions, but I was also trying to rebuild who I wanted to be. A moment of self-realization happened when I was playing a question card game, the kind you use for icebreakers. I pulled a card that read, “When you look in the mirror, what kind of person do you see?” I just stared at that card, and felt a longing to get back to the person I was at heart. From that moment on, I started living authentically, without the dogma. Then my kids started pulling away. I kept reaching out, staring at unanswered texts and emails. The thing is, I actually taught them to be motivated by religious rules, not love. One time, I stopped by my daughter's place, and she told me not to show up unannounced again. I thought it was really ironic for a Jehovah's Witness to say that. What helped me the most to deal with the painful rejection was a book by Dr. Joshua Coleman, The Rules of Estrangement. To sort things out, I journaled a lot, went to therapy and had some sessions with someone familiar with Jehovah's Witnesses. I learned phrases like love-bombing, religious trauma, complex PTSD, and high-control religion. I read books and listened to podcasts about people going through faith crises. And I came to realize, the unhappiness I felt as a Witness had layers. It wasn't just about a heavy religion. I didn't like living the typical suburban life script. Solo life is where I thrive. Being shunned helped me learn so many things about myself, Christianity as a whole, and the world. After years, I finally arrived at this wonderful state of being: indifferent. I lost a lot of labels that identified me, but I don't care to acquire new ones. If you ask me what I believe… I believe life is amazing. I don't need to accept any of the current answers to questions man has been trying to figure out since the beginning of recorded history. I don't need a blueprint to appreciate a house. I'm fascinated by science and nature, and I'm deeply grateful to be alive.Today, I live completely aligned with my values—basically like a Christian, but without the branding. I still find value in the Bible too. Off the religious treadmill, my time is my own. I do things I truly enjoy—reading and writing, being in nature, studying plants, observing wildlife, kayaking, and biking. I still travel internationally and stay involved in “people projects,” but these days, I spend more of my time traveling all over the USA in my self-built camper van. I feel so much peace and contentment. I now have friends who love me for who I am, not out of obligation or for what I believe. It's amazing to me that even though we think or feel differently on subjects that can divide a whole nation, they just acknowledge our differences and we remain friends. I learned how to exchange ideas rather than try to convince someone to think or feel the same way I do. And, I'm a lot less judgmental than I used to be. Now, I have more empathy, compassion, and understanding for people, inside and outside of the religion. Personal autonomy is a foreign concept to Jehovah's Witnesses. The religion dictates how you dress, how you speak, who you can love, and what you are allowed to think. But now I live completely autonomously, and it feels so liberating. I wake up every day thinking, “I love this world, and I love this life.” ❤️❤️❤️
In this solo episode I discuss Artificial Intelligence. Should we agree with Richard Dawkins that Claude is conscious? Probably not, for several reasons. I talk about how LLMs work, why I don’t think they are conscious and how a humanist should respond.
Topics:
(Semi) Technical description of how Large Language Models work
LLMs are trained on the sum total of human hopes and fears
Why all the intelligence in AI systems is from human sources
Why I do not believe LLMs can be conscious in principle
The Hype problem
The Humanistic response to AI
Links
Here are several source material links from my research for this episode:
When Dawkins met Claude Could this AI be conscious?
Liam is a friend and a colleague of many years. He is a member of the Religious Society of Friends often called Quakers. Liam and I have shared deep conversations before and after my deconversion. I respect the way Liam holds and lives out his beliefs.
You might be surprised. The British Liberal Quakerism Liam lives out on a daily basis is very close to my version of Humanism, Secular Grace. He is a great example of a religious humanist who cares about people over dogma.
I recently read Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading by Nadia Asparouhova and it blew my mind. Just reading the intro I knew I needed to do an episode on the subject. Almost everything about deconstruction and deconversion is antimememetic. It is a significant idea that resists spreading.
All of the following are antimemetic:
Doubt
Deconstruction
Deconversion
Atheism
Humanism
Secular Grace
Amazon Paid Links
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Mark Anthony Diaz is the author of Reedkeeper’s Journey and one of my best friends. Mark and I grew up together. We had the same sarcastic friend group in high school. We did ministry together. Crucially, Mark stuck with me after my deconversion.
Mark is a person of deep conviction, and while he’s a talented EMT, author, and podcaster, it’s his personal journey that truly resonates. Growing up with severe asthma made for a challenging childhood, but Mark’s story is one of overcoming.
Mark is very much a believer and I respect Mark’s faith. Mark lives up to the honesty contest ethos of the podcast. I wanted to have him share his life’s story with us because I believe every human being’s story is powerful.
Search for his serial podcast “Readkeeper’s Journey” wherever you get your podcasts.
