On the eve of Rosh Hashanah we talk with Paul Golin, executive director of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, an organization which promotes the concept of being Jewish  absent a belief in God.But as with so much of Judaism, it's not that simple. Jews and their history are laden with baggage. For starters, is it a religion, a race, an ethnicity or a culture? Are Jews obligated to adhere strictly to biblical scripture or read the Talmud for interpretive guidance?Is marrying outside the faith a betrayal of those who died in the Holocaust?Is it even possible to be a Jew without God?Does being sympathetic to the Palestinian cause make you anti-Jewish? Does anti-Zionism equate with anti-semitism? If so, what are we to make of Jewish anti-Zionists?That's a lot to unpack. But we dive in. On this episode of Unreasonable.

Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry.On the one hand, a typical Donald Trump speech is comedy gold. No sentient human actually speaks like that, and the words, not to mention the syntax, are often a spew of laughable preposterousness. (Alec Baldwin was good, but nowhere near as hilarious as the original!) Still, he has an audience that takes him straight, no irony. And then they act out on those words. And then, as a democracy, we want to cry.But as each of our guests have demonstrated, we can cry, or we can do something.  For nearly 20 years, comedian and activist Pete Dominick has brought his political activism to the airwaves, first on Sirius Satellite Radio (later Sirius XM) and now on his immensely popular daily podcast "Stand Up with Pete Dominick." We invited Pete to join us on Unreasonable because, frankly, we needed a good laugh. And he delivered. And, like any good social commentator, he left us with plenty to think about, too, from politics to parenting.

While some politicians — who had never given a thought to God or Christianity or had ever committed an act of forgiveness or charity toward others that anyone could recall — were disingenuously embracing Jesus for their own craven ends, others were working across multiple, nonviolent, nontheistic, and legal approaches to protect children, fight on behalf of women’s bodily autonomy, and litigate to restore true religious freedom and equality for all Americans, regardless of their belief system. By their iconography, you might not recognize that these people, under the banner of Satanism, are actually the ones doing God’s work.Lucien Greaves is the co-founder of The Satanic Temple, whose mission is “to encourage benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense, oppose injustice, and undertake noble pursuits.” Sounds good to us.

The New Apostolic Reformation is a loose network of independent congregations untethered by the dogmas of traditional denominations and many of their leaders, or self-anointed “apostles,” make claims so outlandish you wonder how anyone in their right mind would believe them. NAR was also a primary driver of J6.Never heard of NAR? You need to, because its membership and belief system – as crazy as it will sound to you – is alive and viral in the halls of Congress and local governments. And the acceptance of this religious movement, invented only a couple of decades ago, is metastasizing not just here but around the world, into the hundreds of millions.There’s a fine line between harmless, deeply held religious belief, and certifiable madness. At the top of this episode, you will hear an audio clip by a Florida NAR pastor who uses the violent language of the Gospel to call for Joe Biden’s beheading. As Dr. Taylor points out, “they walk right up to that line. But they definitely know where the line is in order to be protected by the First Amendment.”Become aware of the horrifying world of the New Apostolic Reformation. Because it just might be the world we all inhabit after November 5th, 2024.

How did the faux “grassroots” organization Moms For Liberty metastasize in just a few years to attract hundred of followers, as well as extremist presidential candidates, to their summit in Philadelphia last month? Money. Crazy money.We know about Barre Said, we know about Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society. There are plenty of deep-pocketed dark-money sources we don't know about. So where’s our money? Who’s funding our movement in support of the secular nation our founders intended? We’re living under the tyranny of the minority because the minority are willing to spend whatever they have to reduce our country to a superstitious backwater nation.As it turns out, there are lots of secular folks who are putting their money where their values are, but you have to know where to look. We looked no farther than the American Humanist Association. Never heard of them? Well, you should. Their PAC, the Center for Freethought Equality, identifies and supports secular candidates. And that's key to preserving our democracy. They don’t have a lot of money, but what they have often seeds successful campaigns. Ron Millar runs the PAC. His professional life has been dedicated to supporting progressive movements, and we’re delighted to share our conversation with him about how progressives can counter the billions conservatives pour into political races, on this  episode of Unreasonable.