On this episode, your hosts:

• Patrick Beja from France (notpatrick on Twitter)
• Turki from Saudi Arabia (saudi on Twitter)
• Jen from the US (seinneann on Twitter)
• Kerwin from the UK (kerwindatu on Twitter)

Talk about:

• the Olympics
• Natural disasters
• Greece
• Halal fastfood joints
• Respectable Foxnews articles

And more…

Listen to the show:

And to find out more about our wonderful hosts, go here:

Turki : A Saudi Life
Kerwin : The Global Urbanist
Jen : Jennifer Hazel

Join us for next episode: March 27th.

Florent’s note : It’s the episode 22. Sorry Patrick.

On this episode, your hosts:

• Patrick Beja from France (notpatrick on Twitter)
• Turki from Saudi Arabia (saudi on Twitter)
• Tom Merrit from the US (acedtect on Twitter)

Talk about:

• Haiti
• the iPad

And other things, and then get rudely interrupted by a technical mishap that ate the second half of the show. It was really good too, with a great discussion about the Burka, among other things. Very sorry about this folks, we’ll be back next month.

Listen to the show:

And to find out more about our wonderful hosts, go here:

Turki : A Saudi Life
Tom : Tom Merritt .com

On this episode, your hosts:

• Patrick Beja from France (notpatrick on Twitter)
• Turki from Saudi Arabia (saudi on Twitter)
• Scott from the US (extralife on Twitter)
• Kerwin from the UK (kerwindatu or globalurbanist on Twitter)

Talk about:

• The climate summit in Copenhagen
• Stories of 2009
• Women’s achievements in Saudi Arabia
• Snow in Europe

And more…

Listen to the show:

And to find out more about our wonderful hosts, go here:

Turki : A Saudi Life
Scott : FrogPants Studios!
Kerwin : The Global Urbanist

As you can imagine, this show talks about Atheists and their views.
When I mentioned I wanted to do a show on the topic, I got more interest from readers and followers than ever before. Many offered to be on the show, which I am very thankful for; I am sorry I couldn’t include everyone who offered their input. We did manage to assemble an excellent panel though, and while we did tackle Atheism in all the ways I hoped we would, we also talked about many topics related to it. It is inevitable I suppose; as this is one of the most debated issues I know, we couldn’t really expect to focus solely on that one idea. I hope that listeners will get both information and entertainment out of the show, and I do welcome any comment on the blog. Each time we have discussed a controversial topic after one of my blog posts, we have managed to keep things civilized and polite, and my wish for this one (if people wish to discuss) is that it stays that way. I’m confident we will (because we’re all so awesome but it bears repeating…
Thanks again to the panelists, and thanks even more to you for listening.

Listen to the show:

And to find out more about our wonderful hosts, go here:

• Patrick from France
• Julio from Argentina / Netherlands : Alternaria.tv
• Kirsten from US : The Bird’s Brain
• Tom from US : Tom Merritt .com
• Shawn froms US : Shawn Coons

On this episode, your hosts:

• Patrick Beja from France (notpatrick on Twitter)
• Turki from Saudi Arabia (saudi on Twitter)
• John from the US (copperdome on Twitter)
• Randy from Canada (Randydeluxe on Twitter)

Talk about:

• The Berlin Wall
• The climate change summit in Copenhagen
• Security in France
• Wars and floods in Saudi Arabia
• Turki day in the US !

And more…

Listen to the show:

Join us for next episode: December 12th.

This is a special “filler” episode. Scheduling issues prevented the group from doing a regular show this time, so Patrick decided to go ahead and ramble on one of his favorite issues for half an hour: Net Neutrality.

That’s probably not the last time you hear about it, but it’s a good place to start. And if you want to learn more and do something about it, you can visit the “savetheinternet” website.

The illustration for the article is an “extreme” case of the “losing net neutrality” scenario, from Gizmodo.

Listen to the show:

The next episode: November, 28.

A special episode all dedicated to healthcare, with:

• Patrick Beja from France (notpatrick on Twitter)
• Julio Aprea from Argentina / Netherlands (aprea on Twitter – alternaria.tv)
• Maria from Sweden (pagga on Twitter)
• Randy Jordan from the US (randydeluxe on Twitter)
• Samantha Jane from Canada (samjane on Twitter)

Listen to the show:

Yesterday I got an email by a listener of The Phileas Club. I often get emails and answer them privately, but after writing this one I thought that it was summarizing my thoughts on the topic enough that I should make a blog post about it. So here is the original email, and my answer.
Quick note: the topic is sensitive, and in the past we have managed to keep these kinds of debates very civilized on this blog. If you chose to comment, please keep that tradition alive, thanks!

B.’s email:

I recently started listening to your show and started from the beginning and have been slowly catching up to the recent shows. I was a little disappointed at the sara palen talk because of the anti religious tone it took but let it go because i figured that was going on in the media at the time as well. Then I got to episode 10 and was completely offended at the comment you made that something should be done to people that preach the young earth theory. Evolution is not fact, it might be the majority view but remember that the majority also thought the world was flat at one point. There are scientists that use the same research as evolutionist and show it to back the theory of a young earth. I don’t expect you to change your view on this subject but I think you should know that our comment upset me.

And my answer (I didn’t address the Sarah Palin comments or the other details, as I thought they weren’t really the core of the issue):

Hi B.,

First of all let me thank you for taking the time to write to me; I really appreciate it.

That being said, I’m very sorry but I’m afraid that I cannot subscribe to what you’re saying… The “young earth theory” is not a theory, it’s a belief. The people who support it aren’t scientists, they’re spokespeople for organisations that have other agendas. A theory is supported by verifiable fact, and no fact comes to support the idea that the earth is 6000 years old. No scientist worth their salt, and no one who understands the meaning of the word, will give any credit to it.

This is my whole argument: by treating this “idea” as a theory, we validate it and lead people to believe that there might be some truth to it. There isn’t, and we should stop indulging it altogether. Don’t get me wrong: you are of course free to believe whatever you want, but believing something like that is very simply ignorance and missinformation, not “just another theory”.

It’s very ironic that you would use the “flat earth” example as a comparison, because you are on the very side of the people who defended it for so long, and they did it for the exact same reasons! How saddening is it that hundreds of years later we have to be fighting the same fight against the same people in the same way? Thankfully no one is getting burned today…

Also, I have to say that I don’t understand why some people need to discredit evolution in order to be comfortable with their faith. I think this agenda comes from a very literal reading of the bible that some people need to maintain in order to follow other literal interpretations also. I guess their thinking is: “if you discredit this one, then maybe the other ones aren’t valid either!”. So they will do everything they can to maintain it, no matter how ludicrous or just plain silly. But why couldn’t have God planted, planned and even executed evolution? Why couldn’t he be watching our every move, tweeking and adjusting his creations and their DNA to take them where he wants to take them? He could, and that’s probably what he did.

Evolution is NOT incompatible with faith. It is only incompatible with a very narrow and literal view of the bible, which only the more extreme want to uphold. The bible is a guide and a light to help you grow, not an instruction booklet for mindless drones who should follow it blindly and be forbidden to think about the meaning.

I know that you won’t believe me and I won’t change your mind, and that’s absolutely fine. We can disagree and stay civilized, but I won’t treat that idea as just a theory, because it devalues us and our progress: if we indulge ignorance, we start regressing as a society. And by the way, even the pope says that this concept is ridiculous and acknowledges evolution beyond the shadow of a doubt… Who am I to disagree with the pope?

Anyway, that’s my two cents about the topic. I hope I didn’t offend you (too much) and I’d like to thank you again for writing to me about this. I might sound harsh but I truly appreciate the fact that you would want to let me know how you felt rather than just being angry at me in your corner of our beautiful (round) planet!

On this episode, your hosts:

• Patrick Beja from France (notpatrick on Twitter)
• Turki from Saudi Arabia (saudi on Twitter)
• Jen from the US
• Kerwin from the UK

Talk about:

• Swine Flu
• 9/11 and the Afghan War
• The G20 in Pittsburg
• Carbon Taxes
• Saudi Universities and Terrorists
• Noynoy Aquino
• The 9/12 March

And more…

Listen to the show:

With Patrick travelling and not much news awareness on his part, this show focuses on something incredibly important to all of us: girls. And boys too, to an extent. From PMS to the dreaded “you’re such a good listener” sentence, Kelly and Gita teach us a thing or two about what being a girl is all about.

Stick around, you might learn something!

Listen to the show: