Thanks, everyone, thank you for listening in.

I don’t believe in God and every day that goes by, especially lately, convinces me that he doesn’t exist. And, no, it’s not because we continue to have bad things happening to good people, or yet another self-righteous pastor who preached about family values but is now arrested for having sex with a child, or Microsoft Word and WordPress persisting in being the most disorganized and user-unfriendly softwares imaginable. No, it’s not these horrific aspects of this 6,000-year-old earth that was created in six days.

It’s mostly because I mock him every chance I get, even though I’m an atheist. One time I even asked him to kill me on the spot to prove that he was impotent, I mean omnipotent, and I sat in my comfortable leather armchair and waited for my inevitable fate until my coffee got cold. That was a few years ago and here I am with a podcast episode calling out his shit in public. I’ve called his wife, or whatever Mary is, the surrogate mother of the—just give me a sec so that I can say this with a straight face and not have to do multiple takes—the, the, sa—the saviour of the world—oh, fuck, that was an effort, I think I may have pulled something in my neck—I’ve called her a whore live on stage at a comedy club. And as for the holy bastard Jesus himself, I can’t even estimate how much time I’ve spent mocking him.

So here’s my point. If you’ve read the Old Testament, and I know you probably haven’t, but God is a straight-up insecure narcissistic psychopath in that book. He’s done more killing that Benjamin Netanyahu when he’s been on a roll in Palestine and there are children and babies in his path. And so I combine this with the fact that Christians, the people who tout this book as the book of books, the Holy Book with both those words in capitals, they either believe every word in it literally or they tacitly support it, like someone at the office who looks down at their shoes when they’re asked to vote on the strategic plan by their incompetent manager.

He’s got a temper in the Old Testament, and that’s like saying it’s a tad chilly in Antarctica. So, and I’m finally getting to my point, why doesn’t he crush the living shit out of me? I’m asking for it. I’m taunting him. But I wait and then have to go and put more coffee on.

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But enough about that fraud. Let me talk about something I think I’ve noticed about human beings, about people. This may fall into the category either of something that has not been sufficiently studied by scholars, or in fact has been studied but I just haven’t done the research. It’s about communication. Or not even something as grand as that word implies. I’m talking about conversation. If you think about it just even lightly for a couple of minutes, conversation should have a couple of characteristics. Like, there are a couple of criteria that apply before you can call something a good, or a great, conversation. I think you need four things:

1.     Each person has to be curious about what the other person has to say

2.     Each person has to listen when the other person is talking and not interrupt

3.     Each person has to not only listen, but also prod the other person with follow-up questions when they say something interesting that deserves further information in order for you to get to the heart of what they are getting at

4.     Each person has to be aware of the balance between talking themself and letting the other person talk

I think that’s approaching a comprehensive list, and if not, it’s a good start in the sense that if two people follow these guidelines, the result is going to be more than chit-chat or small talk.

Now think about the last conversation you had, you know, one where you went for coffee and a scone with a person and you two were talking for like an hour or two. Presuming you are good at conversation, how did it go with the other person you were talking to? How many of the guidelines did they follow?

In my own case, I’ve been interrupted so many times that if it were a form of birth control I would be sexually unsatisfied and childless. This may be just my own experience, perhaps I’m boring as fuck and no one gives a shit what I say and all they’re doing is rushing through the conversation and sipping that coffee fast so that they can get out of there. That’s always a possibility, but at the risk of showing some self-love and self-awareness, I will say that I don’t think that’s the case.

I sometimes have a childlike fascination about why conversation is so difficult for people. You say something, I say something, we let each other finish our sentences, and we ask for more information when something is really interesting. That doesn’t seem complex like whatever that handsome astronomer Brian Cox is going on about on Bluesky about that new book he has out. No black holes. No light years.

As I said, I haven’t done research, at least in the sense of searching a database about this and finding articles written by frustrated gregarious academics. But like most people, I’ve been involved in thousands of conversations, and I’ve tried to come up with a number for the percentage of people who actually know how to converse. I have a number in my head now. I’ll pause a while so that you can review your own experience for a bit and come up with your own number. [Pause.] Okay, I can hear some laughter and tittering in the crowd, in the sense that I can’t hear it because I’m writing the script for this podcast episode alone in my home office at my computer.

Anyway. For me the number is 5%. That’s how few people know how to, well, talk. If you have numbers that are substantially higher than that, I really wish this were a club and I could buy you a beer and we could talk about it. What’ll you have?

And that’s my time. Thanks for listening and I hope to see you here again next week.