This episode of The Writers' Pod drops you right into the mix: ideology, apostasy, 9/11, the collapse of the New Atheist movement, and the cultural schizophrenia of post-Trump America — all through the lived experience of Ali A. Rizvi, author of The Atheist Muslim and one of the few writers who actually paid the personal price for blasphemy in the 2010s.
Over a sprawling, brutally candid and uproariously funny conversation, Ali and host Mookie Spitz trace the decade-long arc of Ali’s book: from its birth in the shadow of ISIS and the Charlie Hebdo killings to its strange afterlife in a world drowning in misinformation, outrage porn, and algorithmic noise. Ali explains, without irony, what it meant to grow up secular-minded in Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and how 9/11 ripped open the fault line between “Islam the ideology” and “Muslims the people.”
You’ll hear:
- How the book blindsided both sides — the Western right that wanted to criminalize Muslims, and the Western left that infantilized them.
- Why separating humans from their doctrines matters now more than ever.
- How the internet accidentally secularized an entire generation, from Tehran to Karachi to Toronto.
- Why co-opting a religion terrifies fundamentalists more than leaving it.
- Why the atheist movement blew its shot by selling rationality and ignoring meaning.
- How Trump beat the Enlightenment with a story, not an argument.
- Why “making secularism sexy” isn’t optional — it’s survival.
- Why the human brain is (isn't!) a sophisticated LLM.
And of course they can't help themselves, going all the way into the weeds: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, the Muslim ban, Obama’s shockwave election, ISIS fanboys, Woody Allen as the archetype of the secular Jew, Busy Beaver numbers as quasi-religious ecstasy, Denmark cartoons, Middle Eastern censorship, and how long-term memory might be the evolutionary engine behind humanity’s obsession with meaning.
If you want polite NPR babble, this isn’t your show. If you want a raw, historically grounded, intellectually vicious tour through religion, identity, polarization, free speech, and the strange new world where everyone’s shouting but no one knows a damn thing, then welcome to the fifth installment of Ink vs. Algorithm.
The Guest
Ali A. Rizvi is a writer, physician, and musician. He is the author of “The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason," and host of the Unlicensed Therapist podcast, and all-round sh*t disturber.
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