Before I tell you about the beginning of a new era, I’d like to tell you about the end of one. The year was 2017. After spending a few years working my way out of the financial oblivion I had accidentally created for myself, I began to experiment with a comeback. I felt my “break” from podcasting was over, and I wanted to embark on a new journey. I sent out a number of emails to my most loyal listeners, saying that I was bringing the show back. Reactions were mixed. Many of their criticisms spoke of my inconsistency, and in my past failed promises of going back to podcasting. I appreciated their honesty, but it was somewhat of a deflating experience to say the least.

Alas, this was the least of my problems. Unbeknownst to me, the credit card that I had used to renew my domain had expired, and as a result, so had my ownership of the domain thegoodatheist.net. A web company had purchased it from under me (no doubt paying a pretty penny for it), and had created a fake version of my site. They had stolen my intellectual property, and were pretending to be me, albeit with a strange religious twist. Their slogan was “leave God alone”, which made absolutely no sense. I suspected them to be a religious group, but I had no proof of it. When I contacted them, they demanded an exorbitant amount of money to regain control. I told them to fuck off, and if they kept on mimicking my site, I would sue them. They agreed to take this mutated version of my site down, but kept the domain name. We were at a stalemate.

There were two options: a) either I would have to pay money to what I considered a group of scumbags, or b) I would have to create a brand new site, and start over from scratch. I chose option c): I gave up.

As time went on, I also became very disillusioned with the internet, and podcasting in general. The medium had never been more popular, but this popularity had created a massive glut. Everyone and their dog (sometimes literally) had a show, and as YouTube grew in popularity, so too did the variety of content. A whole new generation of voices were being heard, and honestly, what they had to say annoyed me more than inspired me.

In the mid to late 2000’s, it was practically impossible to make a living podcasting. Back when I first started, competition was thin. It took a certain level of expertise to set up, such as knowing how to create RSS feeds and manage websites; things that were generally out of the realm of the average person. Today, it’s as basic as turning on your phone and just flapping your gums, and people make millions doing it. You would think that this would inspire me to suddenly want to get back into it. It did exactly the opposite.

At first, I wasn’t sure why. I just felt a general sense of disdain for most content on the web. Hell, I even hated the word “content”. It’s only recently that I came to realize that what I despised about the state of modern podcasting is the carelessness of those involved. There is such a pressure to produce that people are often speaking on matters that they have very little understanding in. It’s similar what happened to news when it became a 24 hour broadcast. Rather than have proper journalists take the time to understand a story they report on, shows are nothing more than talking heads speculating and gossiping about events as they happen.

My view began to change, however. About a little over a year ago, a coworker had searched me on the internet, and found an old podcast I had put up on YouTube that spoke talked about child witchcraft accusations in his native Nigeria. At work, he said he has listen to the whole episode, and was surprised that he had never known about these types of tragedies happening in his own country. This made me see that there was more to my show than I had first realized.

Choosing option “B” was not simple. I had no official database backup of the site, which meant that I would have to manually re-create the whole thing, one article, and one podcast at a time. With over 340 shows and 1,300 articles, this was no easy task. In fact, it took a year just to get everything done. A big part of the reason was because over 60% of all my links and other references were dead. This forced me to find either new sources, or search the internet wayback machine to find them. If you know anything about me, you know how much importance I put on being able to cite my sources. There were quite a few articles I had to unpublish specifically because all sources had disappeared, and I could not in good conscience post anything that I couldn’t back up. Information loss is real, and it should terrify people.

The whole process made me see the fragility of information. We think that the internet is forever; it is anything but. Over half of all atheist blogs that I regularly linked to are gone, either due to lack of maintenance or for perhaps similar reasons to my own. It was a reminder that one must always fight entropy, and that in this world, if you aren’t growing, you’re dying.

And so it was time to start over. But where to begin? When I first started my podcasting journey, I was a 26 year old man, with lofty ambitions and close friends equally hungry for success. Atheism was on the rise, and it felt fresh to speak out on this issue. Times have changed. I’m in my 40’s now, and my friends have their own lives. Some are even reluctant to speak out against religion, as the Internet has a way of interfering with a person’s living. I know first hand that employers are not very understanding when it comes to speaking out.

I began by registering a new domain, thenewgoodatheist.com. I built a new website, and slowly, article by article, I reposted them all, making sure that the dates, topics, and categories were all done in such a way to make it easy to find. I sent out a few messages to those that had never given up hope in me. It was a small group. Over the span of over a year, I testing out a variety of different formats. I dabbled with trying to find a new cohost, and while the shows were fine, I realized that if I was to start the project anew, I needed to simplify how I produced them, lest I be stuck in a similar situation down the road. I also didn’t want the show to be an imitation of itself. It takes a long time to develop the kind of chemistry I had with friends I knew all my life.

I used to categorize the podcast as a comedy. This was done out of pragmatism, since there is no category for atheism. To classify the show as “religion and spirituality” also felt wrong. I’ve now placed it under the category of “News”, as it reflects the new direction the podcast is aiming for. It’s also done in a way that closely resembles an audiobook. Since I can’t really make you laugh in the same way, I’d like instead to focus on making enjoyable, easy to listen to shows that keep you informed on the important events happening around the world. The shows will also contain all the writings and links in the meta, meaning that you’ll be able to read all the same source material I quote. It was a feature I often did in the past, and I’m sticking with it.

Now comes my PBS style pitch. You might be familiar with this drill. Heck, TGA practically invented the idea of patronage. In the early days online payments, we sometimes used to have people mail in checks to pay for their membership. It was a chaotic mess back in those days. It seems while I was away, the rest of the world caught up to these ideas, and made it easy.

If you’re reading this rather than listening to it, it means that you were sent a Newsletter from the old contacts I had when my old website still worked. To you, this will be the first and only forced message you receive. You’ll need to confirm to subscribe, so that I won’t be constantly bombarding you if you have no interest, or if you’ve lost faith in me. Those of you that decide to stay, I’d like for you all to consider becoming a patron, starting at a buck a month. If I reach my goal patron goals, then the show will become weekly, with more to come. The specifics are on the Patreon page. For more information, simply search for “The Good Atheist” on the site.

At the time of releasing this, 3 months worth of shows will also be instantly available. I felt it was necessary to have this many months of consistent, daily production before I could even justify asking for your hard earned money to support this endeavor. Plus, with today’s streaming services, it’s become expected to have a good amount of content to bite into in order to have a proper taste of a show before committing financially.

Lastly, I’d like for you to consider the following: The Good Atheist, both the website and the podcast, represents an important catalog of religious wrongdoing. It’s a resource for myself and others to fight back against the stupid notion that religion does no harm. If you agree with me that it’s important to support these kinds of resources, then I would be honored if you were to join me on this quest.