Daniel (00:00)
Hey everybody, it's Daniel, and welcome to another episode of There Is No God and We're All Gonna Die. It has been about seven months since my last episode, and I'm excited to be back, so let's start the show.
Daniel (00:34)
Hey everybody, so it's really nice to be here. As I said in the intro, this is my first episode of There Is No God and We're All Gonna Die in about seven months. And this is gonna be a really short episode. I'm not gonna try to do some big long-winded thing. I really just wanted to get my feet wet again and basically say that I recorded an episode. I'm gonna I made a little list. This is basically gonna be a list episode. I'm gonna
List off the reasons why I haven't posted an episode in a while and also what my thoughts are gonna be moving forward for this podcast. I almost didn't start it again, and then I decided over the last couple weeks that it really was something that meant a great deal to me, so I I decided to start recording these episodes again.
But you know how it is when you stop doing something, like if you stop going to the gym or you stop doing something that you know you should be doing, but then you just stop. And then the habit of starting up again sometimes can be really difficult. And so I definitely ran into that, but there were some very real reasons why I stopped doing doing all this. and I'm gonna get into those just so, you know, you don't think I'm like this big flake, or you can think I'm a big flake, and that's
Totally fine too. but regardless. we'll get into why I didn't. And but before I do that, I I also want to say that this weekend, it is right now, I'm just gonna do a little bit of self promotion. This weekend I will be doing a workshop at the Nanacon convention, which is happening here in Tennessee. So if you happen to be in this area of Tennessee, there's a big
I wouldn't call it an atheist convention. It's there's definitely a lot of atheists who go to that, but there's humanists, there's agnostics, there's people and then there's even very progressive Christians. I went last year and one of the best speakers I heard was actually a very progressive Christian who had left basically that MAGA Christian nationalism extremism and, you know, learned that through a lot of things happening in her life that, you know.
A lot of the stuff that we liberals like to talk about actually are pretty spot on. and so she had a she gave this beautiful thing, and she still believes in God. for those of you who have never listened to my podcast, I am my name's Daniel. I live in a little tiny town in Tennessee. I am a gay, liberal atheist living in the Bible Belt. Now, that sounds like a lot of labels, but really.
That's just like a really small part of who I am. I'm also a dog dad. I'm a neighbor. I'm a friend. I'm I help guys in early recovery. I've been sober for seven and a half years. I am the survivor of a very violent gay bashing that, you know, made me go to the hospital. I am a PTSD survivor. I'm a musician. I'm an artist. I kinda had like a little bit of a
music career way back in the nineties didn't really amount to much, but I did get to work with some of my favorite people like Elton John and Daryl Hall and some other people. So, you know, I had did some cool things earlier in life. I still make a lot of music. I still make a lot of art. and yeah, I live out here in Tennessee. I live amongst a lot of people who don't
vote the way I vote. I live like amongst a lot of Trump supporters and MAGA people. And I I live amongst a lot of people who are very religious. This is the Bible belt. And so I know that I'm kind of the odd man out in a lot of situations. There's a lot of times that I'll go somewhere, even like the meetings that I go to to stay sober. And I will clearly be the only person who's an atheist. And that's okay. It's it's made me learn
a lot about my own self and, you know, prejudices that I might bring to the table. And so that's kind of what I started this podcast for was to like learn how to be a spiritual person and to treat people, you know, to be the love that I want to see in the world, even if I don't have something like a God or a higher power that I pray to. So
I'm gonna get into all that. This is again gonna be a very short episode. It's just me getting my feet wet to
claim my space and say that I did this. actually I have to leave because I need to go to an orientation for this this this conference. I have to go I have to leave here in about twenty minutes, actually. So I'm it's kinda crazy that I'm actually doing this right now.
Anyways, I'm just gonna list off all the reasons why I stopped doing the podcast, just for anybody who's interested. Because I know a bunch of you have written to me asking, like, hey, why aren't you posting the podcast? Okay. Reason number one, life got really busy with clients. I don't make any money off this podcast. this is a labor of love. If if anything, it actually costs me money. You know, this software costs money, that the platform that gets me onto things like Spotify and Apple Podcasts and all that.
That all costs money. So I've actually invested money in this, but I have not made one red cent. I'm I I mean I've I think I've sold a couple t shirts on my website, but you know, pretty much this is just something I do because I feel passionate about it. so when actual work comes in that pays my bills, I have to that has to come first. And my last episode was at the end of December of last year, and then in January I just I got a ton of new clients and I became overwhelmed.
So I had to take a little time off. also reason number two, life got really busy with my music and my art. At the same time, I started doing a ton of art fairs and I got a bunch of commissions for my art. And then in my music, I started meeting with more music supervisors and I've been meeting with them on a regular basis and a bunch of my music has almost gotten some placements recently, which is very exciting to me. you know,
When I started doing music again, I you know, my days, I'm fifty-seven years old, so I'm not expecting to be a rock star at this point. I mean, th th those days are kind of gone. But you know, I my goal is to reach a point where my music could supply me with an income that would allow me to just keep making music. And so, you know, music placements and TV and film are a big part of doing that now for musicians. And so I've been really fortunate lately to be meeting with a bunch of music supervisors and
sharing my songs with them and you gotta program all this metadata into the the the things so your music is searchable. So if they type in love song, goth, piano, and even like lyrics, like the song will come up. You know, kind of like any searchable database. So I've had to program and I have hundreds of songs. So I've I've spent a lot of time just entering metadata about my music. and that was very time consuming as well.
the third reason, which is the really fucking horrible reason, and I don't even like bringing it up, but I will. our eldest dog Phantom in March started throwing up all the time and he wasn't keeping any food down and his fur got really brittle and he was already blind and deaf. He was like twelve years old. he had been deaf his whole life, mostly blind, but completely blind the last
you know, couple of years. And and then he suddenly couldn't keep any food down. And so
man, this I I hate talking about this.
What's going on here? I th I thought my music was playing. Anyways, so he couldn't keep any food down. And so basically what happened was we w we took him to the vet and it turned out that he had like advanced kidney disease and it was going to kill him. And so the vet said, you know, there's a couple things you can do to prolong his life and you know
th it's not a cure, but to just give him a little more time and one of the things was d doing like daily injections where we pump him full of fluid and the fluid goes through his body and so it's very time consuming and but that's what we did. We ended up for a couple months, you know, pretty much just
As a family we'd all get together and, you know, we'd have to poke him with a needle, which I didn't like, but you know, there was this big ivy bag and we would fill his body up with fluid and his skin would kind of puff out and then we'd have to massage the fluid throughout his body and his body would get the hydration it needed. And you know, for two months we had our old dog back. Like he he was his eyes were bright, his fur became soft again, he was eating, we had to
change his diet, like I had to be steaming vegetables for him and all this other stuff. And you know, and I'm really grateful for that. and so after two months, one of the one of the what's the word drawbacks to this thing is it can cause hypertension when you i you know when you're giving people fluid like that and so he ended up having a stroke and once he had the stroke
we realized, okay, mm that's that. And so it happened really fast. He had the stroke and within twelve hours we were putting him down and it was very heartbreaking. And it was right around the time I was planning on starting this podcast again. And you know, I I I was planning on starting it in March and then he got diagnosed with all that. And then that kind of ate into my time 'cause that was a couple hours a day. And then and then when he
Passed away. I have to be honest with you. I kind of had a
very dark month. you know, when people die, especially as an atheist, I, you know, to me, I don't really believe that there's a heaven or anything like that. And so it's hard when when people or animals die because I don't think I'm gonna see them again. Now I may be wrong, and if I'm wrong, I've said this many times. I hope I'm wrong.
Because if I'm wrong, that means maybe I will get to see him again and maybe I'll get to see my parents again and we'll all fly around in the sky and there'll be some dude in a robe and if that is actually what happens, sign me up for it. Like I would love it. But that's not how my brain works. My brain's very literal. I think that we're all just organic matter and when we die our cells break down and become other life, but this like our thoughts cease to be. And it's it's kind of a bummer.
I've talked about that a lot in my old episodes. Like my belief system isn't a feel-good belief system, you know, but it's what I believe. it's I wish it was a feel-good belief system, but it just happens to be like how my brain works. So which brings me to number four. the other reason why I stopped filming this for a while was because I kind of got sick of explaining to people that I don't hate anybody. I had a lot of religious people reach out to me.
Clearly, who had not listened to my podcast and, you know, asked why I hated religious people so much and why was I so mean? And I was like, have you listened to any of my episodes? If anything, I want to be loving to everybody. you know, I have friends, my best friend is a very devout Christian. He believes that Jesus is the Son of God, he's a deacon at a church.
I actually am gonna hang out with him all weekend. Like we're g he's actually going with me to this convention, like, 'cause he was just curious. He's not threatened by it. And I'm not threatened by him having the faith he has. I love that he has that faith. I don't wanna take that away from my friend. Like that that would make me a fucking douchebag. And my goal is to not be a douchebag. So, I don't know. I just I I kinda needed to take a break from explaining that to people and
You know, if people still wanna think that about me, that's fine. I invite everybody to listen to this and even call in. I'm gonna be talking about that in a second. number six, I started questioning the purpose of this podcast. you know, I I was when we react to things in a really small space of time, like if we're doing a podcast every week, sometimes we kind of lose focus of
what it is we're trying to do. and so I found myself trying out a bunch of different things in the first group of episodes. I think there was like twenty episodes. you know, I did all these different little segments and I wasn't sure if I was trying to be like a current event show or like talk about politics or this or that. And what I realized is that there's a lot of podcasts that are al already doing that much better than me.
and there are th they they've got people doing research and they've got, you know, staffs and stuff and you know, current events change so fast that like you know, that brings me to my next th th the other reason why I st reason number eight.
It got to the point where current events were happening so fast and I was like, okay, I'm gonna talk about this current event. I think the current event I was gonna talk about in January before I decided to stop was the girl who had written the term paper slamming transgender people and she got her and she made it all about the Bible and then she got her transgender professor fired for failing her be and she clearly didn't do the assignment.
And so I was all up in arms about that. But then Good got shot. And Alex Pretti got shot. And it was just like every day, it was just one more atrocity after the next. And so I would go to think about filming an episode, and then something even worse would happen. And so it made me think like, okay.
Does the world really need to know what I think? I mean, of course I'll talk about things. Like if things happen, I'm gonna talk about them, but it's gonna happen organically. I I don't wanna come on here like, you know, Connie Chung or like some news reporter and be like, you know, here's all the stuff that they did and like have this list, because quite honestly, I'm not a news person. I'm just some fucking guy living out in the middle of nowhere who has some thoughts, you know? And if that's all I am and people wanna listen and think like, okay, this guy, you know
He doesn't really have much substance. I'm fine with that. You know? I'm just sharing from the heart, you know, what I think it means to be somebody who has my belief system but lives among people who don't share my belief system. Like can I still find areas of love and harmony and, you know, understanding, even with people who sometimes make me want to scream, you know, and
That's a question I'm gonna continue to try and answer as we do these episodes. so you know reason eight, nine, and ten had to stop for my mental health, had to stop for my sobriety, and I had to stop for my loved ones. There was like a lot of things like I I I my life got so busy that I also realized that sometimes we just need to take care of ourselves.
And y we can't do everything. And so I had to admit that I did have limits to like what I was able to do. reason eleven. This needs to be a joy to do, or I don't need to do it. Like that this I was putting so much effort into like putting a green screen up and like doing all these graphics and making like, you know, going through afterwards and like cleaning up.
like everything. I don't have time to do that. Like whatever I say now, that's what I'm gonna post on Spotify. At least for now. Maybe if this became like this hugely successful podcast, I could hire a team of people to clean it up for me, but I don't have time to clean it up. So i this podcast moving forward is gonna be a little bit more rough around the edges and I'm okay with that. If if people listening aren't okay with that, I can't do anything about that. So I just need to let it go.
And number twelve, I needed to do this podcast ultimately once I was rested and I was ready to do it. You know, I knew that it wasn't time because I just kept putting it off. Like, have you ever had one of those things where like you you have a to-do list and then you have this one item that just keeps getting moved back to the next day and then the next day, and then months go by and you just keep
moving that same item d like over another day and I finally r like stopped I was doing that with podcast. I would be like podcast. And then like the day would just get away from me and then so I'd have to put it on the next day. Podcast. Finally I was just like, you know what, I need to just let this go for now.
One other thing that I will say that that I have struggled with is because I have so many friends from all different types of faith, including a lot of people who are very devoutly religious and who I love, doing a podcast called There Is No God and We're All Gonna Die, two two thoughts that are actually very spiritual to me. Those are those are very spiritual concepts to me. The fact that there is no God, that's what I believe.
means that I if if I want something, I need to go and try to get it. hopefully in a way that doesn't hurt other people, hopefully in a way that is still helpful to everybody else, like that I don't do it in a way that's you know, self-involved or mean spirited. however, you know, I believe we we make our own heaven and hell. Like if I wanted to live in hell, I could be that person who just goes and takes whatever I want, regardless of who I'm hurting.
And you know, if I could live with myself, well, great, but I would not be able to do that. So as somebody who actually
loves other people, you know, and also doesn't believe there's some God who's just gonna like magically make things happen for me, I've had to like learn how to live a life where if I want something, I need to just go and and work for it and hopefully do it in a way that will still be helpful to other people. Anyway, so that's why and then
We're all gonna die. Well, yeah, we are all gonna die. Like that's just that's inevitable. That's something that bonds us all together. We all have the beginning where we're born, and then we're all have the end where we die. And to me, I truly think it's lights out. And so it makes me very aware of how I spend my moments here. Like,
I think like if I just died, like if I just had a brain aneurysm and died, what would I want my last thing alive be like w would I want my last moments to be moments of love or would I wanna be like telling somebody off on Facebook and calling them an idiot and you know, like typing out a bunch of like swear words to them because, you know, they voted for Donald Trump or whatever?
Now, I'm not saying I don't do stuff like that. I I have been known to argue with people on Facebook. It's something I'm trying to work on. I'm not perfect at all. But you know, I I've you know, I I do think about that. Like, what if I died in the middle of typing this horrible thing that I'm like saying to this person? Like, what if I died in the middle of doing this? Like, this would be the last thing of all the beautiful things of my life, this would be the thing I would end on.
And that kind of makes me really aware of my actions, you know, so you know, because I don't think that there's gonna be more. Now again, if I'm wrong, sign me up for that. Like if there is an afterlife and we get to go somewhere and fly around and glow and all that stuff, like yeah, fucking sign me up for that. It sounds awesome, but it's not what I believe. Okay, so very quickly, because I do have to ha make this a very short welcome back episode. And I've already talked for 21 minutes.
I just wanna quickly say what I want this podcast to be. I'm very proud of myself for for sticking with my guns and actually doing this today because I I was putting this off today as well. what this show is not going to be moving forward. This is not gonna be perfect. a lot of times you're just gonna see me talking in this room. There won't be a green screen or anything. It's just gonna be me talking. the less setup, the better.
this is natural sunlight. I didn't even set up any lights. this is just the sun coming through the window. This is also not a political show. It's not a current event show. If I bring them up, it's gonna happen organically. I'm not gonna, you know, I may not even be doing the asshole of the week. I may do it every once in a while. But you know, for the most part, like, you know, I'm not gonna be making a list of current events because that shit
Other people are doing it much better. That's not what this show is supposed to be. this sh isn't a show attacking any specific group for no good reason. Like I'm not just gonna come on here and be like, all religious people are stupid or all Republicans are stupid. Like I don't have any interest. There's already enough people doing that as well. my goal is to truly find ways to still find love and peace in this world. I mean, i I think the world needs more of that.
And you may think that's simplistic, but that's what I believe. Alright, so it doesn't mean that I won't bring up stupid things that certain groups do. Like, listen, like if somebody is gonna be calling for all gays to kill themselves or like that, you know, all women should like not vote anymore, like, yeah, I'm gonna say something about that because that's a bunch of fucking bullshit. you know, so if I see bullshit, I'm gonna talk about it.
but it's gonna happen organically. It's not gonna be like me like making all these big lists and like checking them twice or anything like that. this podcast is not meant to exclude anybody. If you are religious, welcome, if you're Muslim, if you're Christian, if you're Wiccan, if you're atheist, if you're agnostic, if you're MAGA, welcome. I'm glad you're here. you may hate everything I'm saying, you may disagree with it, but I hope you stay and just hang out because
You know, I always like to go to parties where there's a bunch of people. You know, it's kind of boring if it's just me. So, you know, I'm gonna invite you all to call up. and you can go to you can go to my website, danielcartier.com. I think it I need to look at the webs web address now. I should have done this before I started filming, and I didn't. I'm sorry, you guys. Okay, Daniel Cartier.com. And then you go to
Podcast. Okay, Daniel Cartier.com slash podcast. And then there's a thing there. You can just say leave me a voicemail. And you click on that, leave me a voicemail, and it will take you to speakpipe.com. There is no god and we're all gonna die. And you can leave a voicemail. This is a lot of me like saying like addresses to you. All you need to remember is Daniel Cartier.com. That's my name. Daniel, like Daniel in the lion's den.
Cartier, like the Jewelers, noRelation.com. DanielCartier.com. Just remember that. And when you go there, you'll see a, you know, in the menu, you'll see podcast. Click on podcast and there's a button that will allow you to leave me a voicemail. That's the other thing that I want this to be. I want this to be a place to hear what what's on your mind. I want you to call and ask questions, to question me on my own beliefs.
And I want this to be a dialogue. You know, I you know, I don't care what you believe, you can call up and say that you hate everything I believe in. I I would still love to hear from you, and I'd love to respond to that. I also want this to be a forum. What did I say here? I said r I wrote down something kind of poetic. Good Lord. I want this to be a forum for the hopeless, a place to examine spirituality from all angles.
A place to shine light on hypocrisy and injustice. It may not change much, but at least we'll know. I got long-winded here. But but at least we'll know. I didn't finish the thought. At least we'll know that we're talking about it. Okay. it's also gonna be a place to interview others about their journey, even people I not s may even people I may not see eye to.
so yeah, I'm gonna bring people on to interview them. I would love to have somebody come on who doesn't share my beliefs. That would be wonderful. I would love to talk to you and see if we can still find things that we have in common. This is not just so just so you I I I need to to re kind of clarify one thing. When I say all this, I'm not saying that I I wanna bring neo-Nazis on or like people who are fascists or anything like that. so I'm not
I'm not saying that I'm gonna like be making friendship bracelets for the Proud Boys or for, you know, Nazis or fascists or Donald Trump or anybody like that. There's a lot of people in this world that I really don't have any interest in giving a forum to. But if it's somebody who is living a good life and they kind of share some of the same values that I do, like they want, you know, their loved ones to be okay. They they want to live in a community where like people are kind to each other and everything and and they're horrified.
Hopefully they're horrified that our government has been shooting people in the street, And, you know, I want to talk to those people, even if they don't share all my same beliefs, because I, you know, I I still think at the end of the day, you know, we're not carbon copies. Like everybody has individual beliefs. And it's it's been my experience that
Even people who on the outside may look like I don't have anything in common with them, when we start talking and actually talking respectfully, we'll realize
that we have more in common than we realize. And so, you know, it again, it's not gonna like bring the world together. I don't expect us all to like, you know, join hands and sing we are the world or anything like that. But, you know, at least it's something. It's something and something is better than nothing. So
So I want to answer, I want I want you to call and I want you to leave me voicemails. So again, Daniel Cartier.com slash podcast, or just go to Daniel Cartier.com. You'll see how to navigate to it. you I I'm I I assume you've used a website before. and I'm just gonna end with this. I I want this to be a place to talk about ways to find joy in a world that seems to tell us joy is not possible.
I'm gonna end with that. That's what I want this podcast to be. And so that's what I'm gonna try to make it. And so now I'm gonna go off and I'm gonna go to the orientation. If again, if you're in Tennessee this weekend, Nanacon is happening. this is the weekend of July 31st, 2026. all weekend long, Nanacon's happening at Montgomery Bell State Park. you can go online, N-A-N-O-C-O-N Nanocon.
Yeah. And you can find all the information there. I am giving a workshop tomorrow, at three on Saturday. I guess a lot of people have signed up for it. but on coexisting with people who don't share our beliefs. so I'm excited to give that workshop. I'm I'm looking forward to seeing what people have to say. And with that I'm sending you all a bunch of love and I will see you
In my next episode, the new newly relaunched There Is No God and We're All Gonna Die. Alright. Have a great day, everybody. Bye.