Resisting Christian Nationalism with Empathy, Community and Creators - Fish Stark

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Gary and Leon open Season Two with updates on the World Humanist Congress — now just two months away and on track to sell out in Ottawa — alongside news of a new Latin American Membership Development Officer, an upcoming Human Rights Council session, and Humanists International's participation in EU dialogues on artificial intelligence in Brussels.

This week's guest is Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association — one of the co-founders of Humanists International and a co-sponsor of this year's World Humanist Congress. Fish talks about why humanism is the right cause for this moment in America, the fight against white Christian nationalism and threats to church-state separation, and two bold new initiatives: the American Empathy Project — a national day of service backed by $100,000 in grants — and the AHA's humanist creator fund, investing in secular content creators to reach young Americans where they are.

In this episode we cover

• Congress updates, Latin America expansion and EU AI dialogues
• Why humanism is growing in America — and what the AHA is doing about it
• Fighting white Christian nationalism and defending church-state separation
• Pete Hegseth's removal of humanists and atheists from the DoD recognised belief list
• The American Empathy Project — the biggest humanist mobilisation since the Reason Rally
• The AHA creator fund — backing secular influencers to grow the movement

Further reading and references

• American Humanist Association: https://americanhumanist.org
• Fish Stark — AHA Executive Director: https://americanhumanist.org/what-we-do/speakers-bureau/stark/
• The American Empathy Project: https://www.americanempathyproject.org
• How to Humanist Podcast — AHA: https://americanhumanist.org/thehumanist/how-to-humanist-podcast/
• European Humanist Services Network (EHSN): https://humanistservices.eu
• World Humanist Congress 2026 — Ottawa, August 7-9: https://humanists.international/event/world-humanist-congress-2026/
• Global Alliance for Human Rights — OHCHR: https://www.ohchr.org
• Luxembourg Declaration on Artificial Intelligence — Humanists International: https://humanists.international/congress-declarations/

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🎶Music: Horizon by Simon Folwar

Podcast transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided to make our content more accessible, but should not be considered a fully accurate record of the conversation.

Transcript

Welcome to Season Two of Freedom of Thought

Leon Langdon 0:04

Welcome to Freedom of Thought, a podcast by Humanist International. With me, Leon Langdon. And me, Gary McClelland. Each week in season two of our podcast, we'll be discussing news, research, policy developments, and campaigns related to freedom of thought around the world. This is, in fact, season two. Somehow we've been renewed. I don't know how. But honestly, jokes aside, season one, I think Gary, you'll agree was a great experience for us. But honestly, I think it it got a really great reception. We're into thousands of listeners. We have great reach among our members. We've gotten great feedback. But also, you know, even I don't know if you want to offer any reflections, even on the last episode we did where we got questions from around the world and saw really concrete engagement from people.

Gary McLelland 0:45

Yeah, that was really an amazing episode for me. And to see the list of questions that we barely scratched the surface on. So I would definitely like to do some more of those QA type sessions. But I think even just the type of questions, because one of the questions was about how are policy priorities set within Humanists International. And that's a really interesting question, which is, I think, easier to explain the systems and processes through a bit more of a long-form conversation rather than in a text or an email or so on. So that was really interesting. And yeah, like you say, the range of engagement of different countries around the world was truly amazing. So we we think that most of the listeners to this podcast are likely to be leaders, officers of humanist organizations around the world, but obviously much broader than that. But it means that we're speaking directly to the people who are the ones driving forward humanist organizations all around the world, and that's really, really amazing.

Leon Langdon 1:34

For me, what I was really struck by is actually the people who weren't involved in members. And I'll also take a side note here and say you could be involved in a member depending on the country you're in, or you know, you can always reach out to our team and look into sort of setting up a member organization given safety and things like that, obviously, is a concern. But that actually was one thing that I found really interesting was reaching new people, reaching people where we don't have presence on the ground, where it might not be safe for us to have presence on the ground. I think you know the value of podcasting as a medium really shone through for me when I saw that. It's been, I think, about eight weeks, nine weeks since season one ended, since we had that episode.

Update on World Humanist Congress Ottawa 2026

Leon Langdon 2:08

Do you want to give our members or our listeners more generally some updates on what you've been up to, what the team's been up to, what Page I've been up to?

Gary McLelland 2:15

Yes, well, the big thing is that we are now full steam ahead in final preparations for the World Humanist Congress, which at the time of recording takes place in exactly two months at the start of August. So, yeah, so we're now in the final stages, so we're working really closely with our partners in Humanist Canada and with our sponsors and all of our speakers and staff and so on. So I can tell you it is going to be a fantastic event. Um, there is still just about a few spaces left, but um, we are definitely on track to be selling out. So this will be a sold-out World Humanist Congress. Again, changed at relatively short notice from being in Washington, DC to being in Ottawa. And again, we're incredibly grateful to the team at Humanist Canada for how quickly they've responded to our quest and managed to pull off what is going to be an incredible Congress. We've got an amazing range of speakers, which are now all the website. And for those who have got a gala dinner ticket, I can tell you that we've got a packed programme. It's going to be absolutely jam-packed full of entertainment.

Leon Langdon 3:10

So that's going to be a very interesting event. For those who who might not even know, the world Humanist Congress was meant to be in Washington, DC. And I think the fact that Humanist International, alongside Humanist Canada, were able to turn it around in such a short amount of time. This coming from someone who's not been involved at all in the organization is a real testament to the work of those involved. But also later in the episode, we'll be able to hear about how things are going on down in DC, as we'll have Fish Stark speaking to us in a really great interview, being the executive director of the American Humanists Association, who is really coming up against a lot of the issues that unfortunately caused us to have to move it from DC in the first place.

Gary McLelland 3:43

Yeah, absolutely. And along with the American Atheists, American Humanist Association is one of the co-sponsors of the Congress, so they've really been helping us to be able to put together this program. So we're incredibly grateful. And as you will hear later in the podcast, also one of the founders of Humanists International. So a very important organization to Humanists International.

Leon Langdon 4:01

And I believe one of the other sponsors, if I'm not mistaken, is the European Humanist Services Network. And Gary, you were up in Oslo not too long ago at one of their meetings, really seeing the great work going on there.

Gary McLelland 4:11

That's right. We had a actually the Norwegian Humanist Association hosted the Humanists International Board to have our board meeting in Oslo. I mean, was this at the start of May? So about a month ago now. And that coincided with the Nordic Humanist Meeting and a meeting of the European Humanist Services Network. So the Nordic Cooperation, as you might imagine, is a slightly loose connection of Nordic humanist organizations that meet once a year and the EHSN, which is the European Humanist Services Network, which is an initiative of members of Humanists International in Europe who are working together to build and improve their ability to offer humanist services such as weddings and chaplaincy and so on. And they're doing incredible work. So there's going to be a session with EHSN at the Congress. They are the primary sponsor of this year's World Humanist Congress. So we're incredibly grateful to them and for the support that they've given us to pull off this Congress. And you will hear a lot more about the type of work that they're doing and the services that they offer at the Congress. So yes, it was great to see all of our European colleagues and also just to spend time with the board and with other staff from different European organizations in Oslo. It was uh fantastic.

Policy frontlines at UN and EU

Gary McLelland 5:15

But an only on for you, it's going to be a busy time ahead as we gear up for another session of the Human Rights Council. So tell us what's on the agenda there.

Leon Langdon 5:22

Yeah, June, July is slightly quieter than March for us. So I'm a little grateful for that. Also, I've got new team members on board, so it should be more manageable than March was. Freedom of expression is on the table, so we'll be looking to sort of strengthen that resolution alongside resolutions potentially on decriminalization of homosexuality, and which we unfortunately expect to face fairly significant opposition. And as well as that, we'll also be looking at the renewal of different special rapporteurs and then also the resolution on early enforced marriage. So we'll be hoping that goes through with some strong language, particularly around the way that religion is used for that. As well as that, along the sidelines, we've got the launch of the Global Alliance for Human Rights. This is a new initiative that's been launched by the High Commissioner for Human Rights. We've been asked to be involved in, so we're excited for that. As well as that, I'll be speaking at the Faith for Rights meeting. So every quarter, Faith for Rights has an initiative of, again, of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights brings together faith and belief, and also us, you know, non-religious actors as well as civil society who care about the right to freedom of religion or belief. They come together. So Ivan put down speak alongside people from the Vatican, speak alongside people from Al-Azzar University in Egypt, which has not necessarily said nice things about humanists and atheists in the past. So we'll see how this goes in an increasingly polarized time. It's important to be part of these initiatives and to be at the table and to make sure that our voice is heard. So yeah, it's going to be a busy month as it always is, but but hopefully manageable in that sense.

Gary McLelland 6:48

And we've also got an event happening today and tomorrow as we record in Brussels, which actually are for our members, if we can just recall for a moment, the General Assembly we had last year in Luxembourg passed a declaration on artificial intelligence, and this became one of the high-level policy papers of Humanists International. And tell us, Leon, what's happening today and tomorrow in relation to that?

Leon Langdon 7:10

So, for those who who aren't familiar, the European Union, in one of its kind of foundational treaties, has Article 17, and Article 17 mandated that European institutions have to have engagement with, I think they say, religious and non-confessional actors. Now, for what it's worth, we oppose this. We don't think that religious actors or non-confessional ones should have any sort of special privileges, any special position relative to general human rights organizations, civil society, etc. With that said, this exists. We're considered a partner in it. And so we continue to engage through a critical lens. But basically, today there is a European Commission meeting, and tomorrow our European Parliament meeting on very similar topics, which is on artificial intelligence, how it relates to society at large, how it relates to health and well-being. And we get to put forward speakers. And so Jonas, our European advocacy and research officer, has been coordinating representatives from Humanist UK and also from the German Humanist Association to go and speak on that. A really good opportunity for our members to speak at your European institutions, but also for Humanist International to be at the table, even if we're sort of critical of that. And then beyond Europe, I think Europe's gotten a lot of attention. Gary,

Growing Humanists International in Latin America

Leon Langdon 8:17

we've we've had some developments in Latin America.

Gary McLelland 8:19

That's right. So we've been working with the board for um a good 18 months now on the different proposals that we've been working on internally around focusing on regional development. So there's been various different considerations and discussions about what to do. But what we decided upon was that we should try to focus some effort in Latin America on developing and growing our members and investing in their members. So that has resulted in us hiring for a new Latin American membership development officer to be based in the region to really focus some of our efforts in the work that we do in that region. And we had, I think, initially a hundred candidates. We whittled that down to 10, and then there was a two-stage interview process. And I'm very happy to say that the person who has been successful in that role is one of our former board members, David Panida, who may be known to some of our listeners. And so he's already started this week, or actually last week, I think, in that position. So we'll be working with him on a very ambitious plan over the next six months and to see where the areas for growth in Latin America are. So it's a very exciting time. It's the first time in recent years that we're focusing our efforts on this type of regional development activities.

Leon Langdon 9:25

So there's a lot more news and hopefully exciting outcomes to come from that. I think ambition is the name of the game at the moment, Gary. I think there's there's a lot going on, and that's only scratching the surface. Obviously, a lot of team members not hosting this podcast. So there's a lot to go through and to get be

Request for question and feedback

Leon Langdon 9:40

getting on with. Before we introduce our guest fish, we'd also just like to invite people to send in any feedback. We want to be receptive to our audience. And obviously, as we've both mentioned, we had a QA episode at the end of last season. So if you have any questions, if you have any thoughts, any comments, we'd really love to hear from our audience. We'd love to hear what you think of the podcast, we'd love to get any reviews. We we we just want to hear from you and we really want this podcast audience to be representative of our members, but also of the worldwide, the global humanist and atheist and non-religious community, and we'd really love to hear from you. Absolutely. Wonderful. Thanks, Leon.

Gary McLelland 10:14

Well, on to this week's guest.

Introducing Fish Stark And AHA

Gary McLelland 10:16

Fish Stark is executive director of the American Humanist Association and a lifelong humanist dedicated to advancing belonging, flourishing, and social justice. An organizer, educator, and social entrepreneur. He has led international programs, education initiatives, and youth development projects. Fish holds degrees from Harvard University and Yale University and is also an award-winning stand-up comedian. Welcome to Freedom of Thought Fish.

Fish Stark 10:40

Thank you so much, Gary and Leon, for having me. I am super excited to be here with you.

Leon Langdon 10:44

Thanks so much for joining us today, Fish. It is really great to have you on and thanks for taking so much time out of your incredibly busy schedule.

Why Humanism meets today’s needs in America

Leon Langdon 10:52

Given your background, you know, as Gary said, your lifelong attachment to humanism and social justice, why do you think humanism is the right cause for you at this time, given everything in the world?

Fish Stark 11:04

Many people in the United States humanist movement and some people around the world know that my dad, Pete Stark, was the first member of the US Congress, our national legislature, to come out as an atheist back 20 years ago. But the thing that actually led me to humanism, and especially this role at the AHA, was my time spent studying developmental psychology at Harvard and Yale. One of the things I learned there and learned in my career building mental health apps for kids in the tech startup world before I came here was that people's identities and their beliefs are what drive them to action. And so humanism is this beautiful way of living that encourages us to be more attuned to the world as it is and each other, to celebrate and lift up and take joy in humanity in the way some people might find joy in or have love for a god and live our lives in a way that is ethical and responsible, but also makes the most of this incredible gift of the one life that we have. In other words, I think humanism leads us to more fulfilling lives and more social responsibility. And we're at a time in American history where our country is rapidly secularizing. 30% of Americans have no religion. And these 30% of Americans are more likely to struggle with meaning and purpose or be lonely than their peers who are religious. I don't think the answer is for those people to go back to religion. They left it for a reason. Something wasn't resonating with them. Everyone, though, needs something to believe in. And so what's exciting to me is that we're in this moment where there is a lot of darkness in America. There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of anger, there's a lot of hatred. And there are a lot of people looking for something different. And we represent a philosophy that says actually, the way you build a better world is not by looking at other people as dangerous or sinful and trying to suppress who they are, but instead looking at people as neighbors and wanting to unleash their gifts. And so I think there's an opportunity in growing humanism in America to build a home for people where they didn't think they had a home, they didn't know they belonged anywhere, to help them find a sense of purpose and to bring together a lot of people who want to fight back, you know, against what I would say is an administration and a movement running our country where the only thing that binds the MAGA coalition together really is dehumanization. Because if you think about it, the bigots and the billionaires and the right-wing Christian bishops, they don't agree about things like Israel or H1B visas or abortion rights or a whole lot of issues. All they can agree on is that our country has allowed too many people to matter too much for too long. And they'd like to see us narrow our window of compassion to focus on people more like them. I think Americans are tired of that. I think it's why we see membership in the AHA growing. I mean, we've been around for almost a hundred years, and our membership was up 20% in just the last year. And so our goal is to keep pushing that number aggressively. We're evangelizing humanism. I'm not afraid to say it, because we think humanism has always been a movement that has changed America, whether it's the role of humanist abolitionists or humanist feminists and winning equal rights for people, or whether it's the humanists who co-founded Apple Computers or the humanists who created the polio vaccine who made modern life America what it is. And so I'm excited to be building a bigger movement so that humanism can make its next big contribution.

Gary McLelland 14:13

It's interesting, Fish, that you're a psychologist because you join quite a large number of psychologists who are leaders within the humanist movement. So I wonder if there's an interesting similarity that draws people with from that background to the humanist leadership.

Fish Stark 14:27

If you look at American history, right, the best-selling author still in American history is a guy named Ben Spock, who wrote Baby and Child Care, the book that revolutionized how we care for babies in America and worldwide, humanist. Everyone, even people who don't know much about psychology, can tell you about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Abraham Maslow, humanist. Carl Rogers, who created the field of client-centered therapy. If you've ever had a good therapist, thank a humanist. John Dewey, the psychologist who helped create the modern American public school, was a signer of our original humanist manifesto. And so you had in those days a group of people who were in charge of the field of psychology who were very much operating from a Christian-influenced framework that said people were inherently broken, right? This concept of original sin, we aren't enough as we are and we need something to come in and cleanse us. And Rogers and his team were like, whoa, wait a minute. Actually, people have within themselves what they need to build meaningful lives. And the role of a therapist isn't to fix a broken person, it's to help a person build a better image of what they could be and then support them in moving toward that goal. And so I actually don't think it's surprising at all because good psychology is like humanism. Humanism isn't just a set of beliefs about what's true and not, it's a theory of change and this idea that we can get to a better world by harnessing the best of humanity, by taking a positive outlook on humanity rather than trying to view humanity as inherently dangerous and suppress it.

Gary McLelland 15:56

Yeah, amazing. I totally agree with you. As you mentioned as well, AHA is a very old, well-established organization. It was actually the American Humanist Association in collaboration with four other organizations around the world that founded Humanists International back in the 1950s. So I mean, I'm curious to know what's it like to be running an organization with as much of a history and pedigree as as AHA. And how

Community power against White Christian Nationalism

Gary McLelland 16:20

how do you go about setting the priorities for AHA in the in the years ahead, given, as you mentioned, the challenges that you're facing in the United States at the moment?

Fish Stark 16:27

It's a good question. So we're trying to do two things at once, and they seem incompatible, and they're actually more compatible than you'd think. The first is we are trying to beat back white Christian nationalism. I was just talking with one of our summer interns. We have six full-time students working with us this summer at the AHA. And he was talking about how Donald Trump's immigration thugs hauled away someone on his own college campus last night. I mean, we are actively seeing an administration that doesn't just hate humanism, although Pete Hegsith, our Secretary of Defense, famously called secular humanism an infection that is destroying the military. We're seeing a president and administration that are staking their political beliefs on this basic idea of dehumanization, that some people's lives don't count as much as other people's. And so part of what we need to do, we need to fight for our rights as secular people. We need to fight for the rights of every religious minority community and every human being on the basis of their universal dignity in the wake of this terrifying backslide against democracy. And we want to build a community for people who have humanist beliefs. And we estimate that's about 16% of American adults. And right now, they don't feel like they belong anywhere. And we want to provide a place where they can connect with people, feel like there are other people who care about the same things they do, feel stronger in what they know and value. You would think these two things are separate. But actually, these people want to be part of something that's going to fight back hard against the dehumanization, the bigotry, the lack of compassion that they're seeing. And the only way you defeat a movement that is run with so much emotion is not with policy papers, but with building a community of people who like and trust each other and are willing to stick out the tough fights. So that's how we're looking at it, that ultimately building community is not just this long-term aspiration that we do after we get done with this work of fighting the Trump administration in the courts and in state legislatures. Actually, the more we've built our community, the more people have come to us and said, we want to be a plaintiff in a lawsuit, we want to fight back against this bad bill. So, you know, we're recognizing, I think, what humanist activists throughout history have recognized, right? People like A. Philip Randolph, the humanist who planned the march on Washington, where I know many of your listeners will know Dr. King's famous I have a dream speech. That was done at an event planned by an open humanist. And Randolph talked about solidarity, right? That you don't build power, you don't defeat evil unless you have a community of people who trust each other and are united by a common purpose. And so we're working on strengthening that purpose and helping more people understand what it means to be a humanist because that helps us win those fights with Donald Trump.

Leon Langdon 19:03

I'm really struck by the fact that you see those two things as so connected, fish. I think I'm really resonates with me the idea that it is in community that we can do the litigation, that we can do the important work. Um, for anyone who has you or or AHA on LinkedIn, you do these sort of updates and the amount of work you guys are are up to is monumental and far too much to cover in this short podcast. But

Church-State separation and legal strategy

Leon Langdon 19:27

when people around the world think about the US, I know one of the things that often comes up is the idea of church-state separation and that sort of real bedrock of the US Constitution. I say people, maybe it's it's me with a legal background more so than most, but if I could just ask you to elaborate on the sort of policy work, on the litigation, on the fight back against the challenges to church-state separation and the right to freedom of religion or belief across the US.

Fish Stark 19:50

Absolutely. So I think that there was a pessimism that set in in our movement when Trump got elected because he had surrounded himself with right-wing religious wing nuts, and people said, oh, the separation of church and state is gone. And it's not. We are we are defeating the Christian nationalists in federal courts and state courts. We're defeating them in state legislatures. Here are two really important truths that people need to understand about church-state separation in America and why I think it's ultimately going to be easier to protect it than people think. Number one, Christian nationalism is the least popular part of the MAGA agenda. People did not vote for Donald Trump because they wanted prayer in their public school. They voted for Donald Trump because he made a convincing and ultimately incorrect case to them that he was going to lower their gas prices, lower their home prices, and lower their grocery bill. And when people, even people who voted for him, see these massive wastes of money, like holding a giant prayer revival on the national mall, all but the most ardent conservative evangelical Christians are looking at that and saying, This wasn't the point. This isn't what I want. Solve the real problems in this country. Even a majority of Christians oppose Trump's fake anti-Christian bias commission. So there's not this massive movement in America to overturn the separation of church and state. It's a small number of very conservative evangelicals who Trump owes favors because they looked the other way at all of his, you know, manifest sinning. And what that means is actually the more we keep up the drumbeat about church-state separation, the more we as humanists can undermine the entire authoritarian project. We have a special role to play because more public sees them as focused on issues that aren't their economic quality of life, the less trust they're gonna have. And so that's exciting. And the other thing is that people are starting to wake up to the fact that church-state separation is a grift. Otherwise, why would billionaires like Elon Musk, who has never set foot in a church in his life, be talking about God and supporting the Christian nationalists? And the truth is, and we're trying to tell this story better now. For decades, the billionaire class in America and the right wing evangelicals have worked in cahoots because ultimately they want the same thing. They both want To privatized public services that working people rely on. So billionaires get a tax cut and then have those services farmed out to private companies, which could be run by the billionaires, or they could be Christian organizations run by the evangelicals. Then the evangelicals get to deny service to whoever they want to and call it religious freedom. Fewer working Americans can rely on services we used to be able to count on, like public schools, and the billionaires and the Christian right get to take a percentage. Now, more and more people are waking up to the fact that that's a f scam and they don't want to deal with it. So for your listeners who don't know a whole lot about American political geography, some of the most Trump-aligned states in the United States are places like Nebraska and Kansas. And our legislative team this year has won, has struck down bad bills in places like Nebraska and Kansas that would take money out of the American public school system and send it to religious private schools. Because ultimately, even a lot of very conservative Christian Americans say, sure, I believe in prayer, but I don't want you touching my kids' public school money and sending it to some religious wingnut to open a private school that I can't even go to because it's two hours away from where I live. So I don't want to sugarcoat it. There's a lot of signaling coming on from the administration about, you know, America is Christian this and Christian that. And it does make people, it even makes me feel like a stranger in my own country sometimes. That's the intent. Just can't win unless they make some people feel othered and they can't beat us unless they demoralize us. But ultimately, a lot of what they're doing is just show. And we've been able to hold back the tide on some of the worst excesses, in part because this is not what Americans want.

Gary McLelland 23:35

Thanks, Fish.

America’s place in the world

Gary McLelland 23:36

I'm curious to get your view on America's place in the world. Thinking most of our audience for this is around the world and not in the US. So as an international organization, working at the United Nations and so on, for a long, long time, the US has been one of the major players when we think about things like freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and thinking about opposing blasphemy laws at the UN and different things. The US has been a major actor there. And I'm also thinking about kind of further afield to USAID, you know, the kind of soft power that the US would have had around the world. Obviously, there'll be many of our listeners that will be very, very critical of America's role in the world. But it seems that we're living through quite a big change in America's place in the world and where it wants to be in the world. I just wonder if you have any reflections on where you think that might land or how you see the future of America's place in the world.

Fish Stark 24:26

You know, one of the things I think is of value to me as a humanist is interdependence, right? The idea that the decisions that we make have an impact on other people. We have to recognize that impact. I think any country with the material wealth that we have and the soft power, the sort of media influence that we have, has an obligation to think about how it uses those resources responsibly. And so, you know, when I see things like pulling back on international aid and giving vaccines to children who would otherwise die from malaria, or when I see us taking the things that used to define America to the world, like freedom of the press and freedom of religion, as Congressman Jamie Raskin often says, we invented constitutional religious freedom. So for us to backslide on that, I don't mean to be Americentric, but I do think that there's been a role that we've played in the world where we say, no, we hold these values and we will fight for them and we believe in them. And that's given other people around the world who are in those fights hope to say, actually, this is the kind of country we want to be like. I don't know what kind of model we are now when it comes to civil liberties, free speech, freedom of religion. I can't see someone in a repressive country being like, you know what? What I want is to be like America under Donald Trump on freedom of religion. As an American, that makes me ashamed. I'm proud of my country. I don't want people looking elsewhere when they think about what place provides you with the most freedom to follow your conscience, believe what you want to believe, and be yourself. But that appears to be where this Trump administration wants to take us. Just last week, Pete Heggsith, the Secretary of Defense, who's the biggest cheerleader for Christian nationalism in the administration, revised the code of the Department of Defense and unrecognized humanism and Unitarian Universalism and atheism and a bunch of different belief systems. They're being very clear that they think there are only a small number of acceptable ways to believe in America. I think that's fundamentally anti-American. I think a lot of people around the world agree. And I think that's part of why I see us winning this fight in

The American Empathy Project and creator engagement

Fish Stark 26:25

the long term.

Leon Langdon 26:25

I guess against all that backdrop fish and to kind of go back to the idea of community, I know there's a couple of things you've been doing lately that I'd love for you to talk about. So one is you've recently run the American Empathy Project, which I think has been a huge success. And secondly, is also sort of engaging in a new media ecosystem as it were. I know you've got the podcast yourselves, the How to Humanist podcast, and but also our spearheading engagement with humanists and atheists content creators. So I'd love if you if you could tell us a little bit about that.

Fish Stark 26:52

Absolutely. So just about a month ago on May 2nd, we had the biggest mobilization of humanists that we have seen anywhere in the US since the Reason rally, which, you know, turned out tens of thousands of people to Washington, DC in 2012. We had thousands of humanists across the US working on service projects, helping out seniors, doing cleanups, feeding the homeless in their community. We called it the American Empathy Project. And we gave out $100,000 worth of grants to people to do service projects in the name of humanism on this day. Now, we called it the American Empathy Project because the religious right has declared direct war on empathy. They say it's a sin. Elon Musk goes on a podcast and said it's suicidal. Pete Hegzith, I keep coming back to this guy, but he's the emblem of the rotten America. Pete Heggsith's personal pastor, Doug Wilson, went on a podcast years before this administration and said, empathy is a sin because empathy causes you to turn away from God for the sake of the neighbor, which is exactly what we think about empathy. We think empathy matters because morality isn't written on stone tablets. It comes from understanding the needs of our neighbors. And at a time where most Americans say we need more empathy, we're gonna go fight for it. So we mobilized humanists. We brought a bunch of new people into the movement, thousands of people, community groups that said, I didn't know we were a humanist group. And when we heard from you guys about this grant, I realized that's exactly what we are, because we're out here serving our neighbors outside of a church because we didn't want to go to a church to serve our neighbors. And so we're showing that you can bring more people into the humanist movement when you meet people's material needs, when you are loudly and proudly against the kind of bigotry and hatred that is going on in this country, and when you work fast and give people something to do. You know, I think there's this idea that an 85-year-old organization always needs to move slowly and ponderously. And that's just not true, right? We're humanists. We believe you can just do things. We're running the AHA like a startup, and it's working really well. And I think there's no better example of that actually than this creator fund that we created last summer in response to calls to action from our community that said, hey, the religious right has been investing for decades in propping up people like Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro and Barry Weiss and Andrew Tate and all of these other nasty influencers. Young people are forming their identities and getting their news from the internet. And what is the secular movement doing to invest in those spaces? So, you know, in the same way Charlie Kirk got his YouTube channel started with $10,000 from a right-wing mega donor, we're investing $10,000 a month to find the Charlie Kirk of the humanist movement. And we are supporting humanist creators to get their first professional editor or get new camera equipment or grow their audiences. And we are running ads about humanism on their channels. Millions and millions of people have watched these videos that we've sponsored, and many of them have become members of the AHA as a result. Our email list growth is almost double what it's been in previous years since we started this program. And it is less than 5% of our budget. So, all to say, you know, one thing that we know is that the religious right has been using the strategy and it's been working. And we know that this is where young people get their news. They don't get it from magazines. And so at a certain point, we said we could sit around talking about the problem. Or I had a mentor who used to say to me, less research, more testing. We could just get in the field and start solving the problem and see what we learn. And I have to give a shout out to Shay Leonia and Jake Via and Court Bayer, uh team leads on this project in the AHA. They have done a really splendid job building relationships with creators, some of whom didn't even know what humanism was and are now excited to talk about humanism. And I think a lot of the growth we're seeing is attributable to this. I liken it with some of our older donors. I liken it to when McDonald's had a big slump in the 90s, they weren't making as much money, and they started paying rappers to put the Big Mac in their music videos. Like we know where the attention economy is. We know what young people are watching and listening to. We know that the influencer economy is shaping people's views of the world and their identities. If we're not participating, we are losing the fight by forfeit. You know, I'm I'm I'm okay with losing fights that we've really got in and fought really hard. I'm not okay with humanist movement losing by forfeit in America anymore.

Gary McLelland 31:12

Amazing fish. Very, very, very interesting times ahead.

Meet Fish at the World Humanist Congress

Gary McLelland 31:16

Thank you so much for your time and for explaining these exciting projects to us. Listeners will be able to hear more from Fish at the World Humanist Congress. We're very grateful that AHA is one of the co-sponsors of this year's World Humanist Congress in Ottawa. So thank you once again for your time, Fish. Really just a last chance if you have any final words for our audience.

Fish Stark 31:34

I'm excited to hopefully see many of you at the Congress in Ottawa. A lot of our team is going to be there. It's going to be fun. If you haven't got your tickets, go get your tickets. Thanks to everyone listening to this for all you do, whether you can be loud and proud and public about your humanism, or whether it's something you have to maintain quietly and under threat of danger. Ultimately, as long as we still believe in a movement centered around the needs of other people and reason and compassion, if we think science tells us what's real and compassion tells us what's right, then that light's never gonna go out. So thanks for being a humanist. Thank you, Fish.

Leon Langdon 32:05

Thank you. Talk to y'all soon. If you found this episode useful, please share it with others. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a rating and a five-star review. It makes a big difference in helping new listeners find the show. If there's a topic you'd like us to cover or someone you'd like to suggest as a guest, you can contact us via the link in the show notes. To find out more or join Humanist International, visit humanists.