[irrelig]Surprise! Kirk Hastings’ recent email drew me out of (semi-)retirement. After recovering from those withering electronic insults, I sat down with expert Hovindologist Matt W to review Hastings’ magnum opus, “What Is Truth?” We examined his many and varied claims about truthology, and how they relate to science and most especially “Darwinism.” In this episode — part one of a three-part series — we discuss Kirk’s conversion process and his absolutely unshocking failure to grasp even the basic principles of science and mathematics while he attempts to take down Darwinism. This series could also be entitled, “We read Kirk Hastings’ shitty rehashed creationist screed so you don’t have to.”

Kirk does get an A for effort, though, and should he succeed in his quest to demolish Darwin’s theory of evil-ution, he may ultimately end up with a Nobel Prize. History (or maybe the next episode, where we finish talking about the science portion of his book) will have to render a verdict on that score.

[chuck]Over at the Church of Awesome I guest on a podcast about fad diets, why they don’t work, and how to actually go about losing weight in a sustainable fashion. They had me on to be the “expert,” but take my dietary and nutritional advice with a huge grain of salt because it is outside my area of expertise — docs don’t get a whole lot of nutrition training, our education is mostly filled with physiology of disease, evidence-based treatments, histology, microbiology, pharmacology, etc etc. Not much room left over in the curriculum for carbs, proteins, and lipids. I feel much more at ease reducing dislocated shoulders, treating high blood pressure, and telling patients why they don’t need antibiotics.

So let me know how many mistakes I made. Re-listening to it yesterday, I think it was more than a few. Maybe I should have communed with the spirits of energy drinks like last time instead of tap water?

[chuck]So I get frequent emails about when Unapologetics is going to make an appearance, questions about why it’s taking so long, and general exasperation over the wait. I take it as a sort of back-handed compliment — hey the good news is that there’s an eager, vocal listening base built-in — but I did want to update you on where things stood and why it has taken this long so far.

Research for the first episode (on the empty tomb) is complete, all I need to do is nail down some format issues and record the thing. Research on the second episode (the art of argumentation) is just about done, most of it done by a listener who did all the groundwork and found some great examples of fallacies for me. I’d like to have 4 or 5 episodes in the can before I begin, but for once the research time isn’t the issue.