Christmas Podcast – Listen Now

Back in October I extended an invitation to fellow non-believers to be a guest on a ‘planned’ podcast which would focus (mostly!) on the Christmas experience. Thankfully, I received plenty of interest from people far and wide. Phew.

The idea was to create something which would allow people to hear what Christmas means to other non-believers with varying cultural backgrounds, traditions and opinions.

My only hope is to provide the opportunity to learn something, laugh a little and reinforce the knowledge that religion needn’t be the only reason for the season.

All Episodes will be released throughout December for free via iTunes  and Youtube.  Click below to listen now:

Although these will remain available for free, if you do enjoy them, please consider making a contributory donation below.  Your contribution will be used to supplement ongoing hosting & production costs, new equipment for further shows and possibly Scotch.  Yeah.  Definitely Scotch.

Click To Support This Podcast

It’s been a huge pleasure and privilege to talk to so many different and interesting people. Finding the time to juggle full-time employment, unforgiving time differences and a laborious editing process has been a challenge, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  It’s with regret that I haven’t been able to reach out to everyone that took the time to contact me, but I’m incredibly grateful to have heard from you all the same.

Trolling, Men Are Raised To Hate Women and Other Confusing Statements.

Twitter has been big news of late, with reports that they plan to implement an abuse reporting function.  I’ve been asked a few times what my thoughts are on the matter, and I’m all for it.

Threatening and unlawful behaviour is completely unacceptable and those who engage in such a manner should be held accountable.  I displayed my willingness to side with this sentiment recently by reporting a clearly threatening tweet (not to me) to the police.

My only concern is: how will this be regulated?  Will Twitter have the manpower (or women!!!!!) to efficiently distinguish abusers and trollers from genuine disagreement or attempts to engage in meaningful discourse? Given the vast numbers of Twitter users and the seemingly unrealistic task of policing it, is it likely to be an unmanned,  automated process?  An algorithm simply reacting to multiple ‘abuse reports’? Only time will tell.

‘Troll’ seems the buzzword of late.  The problem is, that “troll” in the context of the internet has no unified definition.  I personally take trolling to mean the act of intentionally making insincere statements to an individual, or individuals in order to provoke a response, or as they would call it,  a “victory”. Others use it simply to describe an individual who seeks out arguments online.

I’m trolled daily in the former sense. People will tweet me en masse with clearly disingenuous statements in the hope that I may respond.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.  It often depends on how dull my commute to work is that morning.