heretics.

Justin Brooks is the co-founder of the California Innocence Project, which is a non-profit that is part of the California Western School of Law in San Diego. Catch me (plus maybe Justin) on Discord on Thursday 11th Feb at 8pm GMT (Noon in California). Here's the link: https://discord.gg/RWH7fs6ygb Justin Links: http://twitter.com/justinobrooks http://instagram.com/justinobrooks https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Public-Figure/Justin-Brooks-160642841283018/ http://californiainnocenceproject.org Andrew Links: http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok http://andrewgoldpodcast.com http://facebook.com/ontheedgewithandrewgold http://youtube.com/andrewgold1 http://patreon.com/andrewgold - for bonus content! They do the most remarkable work, which is to provide pro-bono legal services to exonerate wrongly convicted inmates. I can’t think of much worse than being put in prison for decades, no hope of parole, when you didn’t even commit the crime for which you’re there. It’s a horrible thought that in all probability, there are thousands of people in this situation. So, Justin is one of those people I’m so happy exist. Justin was recently played by actor Greg Kinnear in the movie Brian Banks about its namesake former American footballer who was wrongfully convicted of rape. We talk about the movie and what it was like being shadowed by a famous movie star, as well as some of the heartbreaking cases and the problems with our legal system. We talk as well about the racial inequality in the US, which is an important topic, especially given that this coming Saturday the 20th February is World Day of Social Justice. I’ve added a little over ten minutes of bonus content for my Patrons. In it, we talk about silly things like accents, and Justin’s family in Derby and Liverpool, as well as some serious stuff relating to race, impartial news channels and some differences between the UK and the US. Find that on Patreon.com/andrewgold. There’s even a teaser for the bonus material in the outro. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nikole Mitchell recently made headlines around the world, when she went from being a Baptist pastor to an OnlyFans stripper, often posing nude for her paying subscribers for photos and also helping them with life coaching. Today, she talks to me about what it was like growing up in a religious Southern Baptist community, how she spent many frustrated years celibate, before taking the plunge and waking up as a new convert to the religion of sexy photos. Come chat to us on Discord on Thursday 11th Feb at 8pm GMT (Noon CA, 3pm NY, 9pm Germany and ... very early in Australia - sorry!). Free to use, so pop by and just say hi, it'll be my first time on it. Here's the link: https://discord.gg/ztymPF4S5G Nikole Links: https://nikolemitchell.com/ OnlyFans.com/nikolemitchell https://www.facebook.com/nikole.s.mitchell/ https://twitter.com/MitchellNikole https://www.instagram.com/mitchellnikole Andrew Links: http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok http://andrewgoldpodcast.com http://facebook.com/ontheedgewithandrewgold   I’ve added a new feature to Patreon.com/andrewgold for bonus content, so additional moments that wouldn’t usually make the cut, often as we’re saying hello or goodbye on the Zoom call. Today, I’ll include the small bonus section, it’s only one minute today but will be longer in future episodes. Just so you know what it’ll be like, so stay after the end for that. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nimko Ali is on the show today to talk about Female Genital Mutilation or FGM. I planned this episode to appear now, as I saw it’s International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation on February 6th, and it’s something I wanted learn about. I’d often heard about FGM but didn’t actually know all that much about it. Was it a religious custom or a cultural tradition, or simply a barbaric act carried out on girls by some patriarchal groups. It appears to be the latter. Nimko Links: Book - What we're told not to talk about: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rude-There-Such-Thing-Over-Sharing/dp/024129262X Five Foundation: https://www.thefivefoundation.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/NimkoAli Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nimkoali/ Andrew Links: Patreon.com/andrewgold twitter.com/andrewgold_ok instagram.com/andrewgold_ok facebook.com/ontheedgewithandrewgold In any case, Nimko is of Somali heritage and was herself cut as a child. She is the co-founder of the Five Foundation, so make sure to get on there and donate, share and support however you can to help to end FGM. She also has a prestigious OBE, was named in the BBC’s 100 Women, won Red Magazine’s Woman of the Year and won the International Women’s Rights Award at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. I read and loved her book What We’re Told Not To Talk About – link in the show notes. Split into categories labelled periods, orgasms, pregnancy and menopause, it collects haunting and inspirational stories from women around the world. It goes into intense and surprisingly vivid, or disgusting, detail, which is one of the book’s strengths, it’s a lot of fun to read and I found myself both laughing and crying. We discuss what it was like for Nimko to be cut, and how it affects her life today. And although this is a very serious topic, Nimko is able to talk at times with humour. So, we delve into her previous fancy for English football player Michael Owen and her current interest in Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is a bit of a dark horse to say the least. If you get to the end, Nimko tells the men listening how they can get in touch with her to ask her on a date, because she hasn’t been with someone seriously for five years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is quite possibly the most bad-ass, to borrow an American expression and pronunciation, person I’ve had on the podcast. Professor Sue Black is a distinguished forensic anthropologist and dame from Inverness, Scotland. She’ll explain exactly what that is, but she is the President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and a leading professor at Lancaster University. As an expert in human anatomy, she took two tours of Iraq, worked on the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification of bodies operation, and speaks of how she waded through piles of melted dead corpses in Kosovo. Anecdote after anecdote, she had me absolutely floored, and appreciative that there are people like her doing the work they do, because I sure as hell couldn’t, and we couldn’t function as a society with them. Sue Links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/profsueblack Written in Bone book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Written-Bone-hidden-stories-behind-ebook/dp/B084KJBPZB Andrew Links: Twitter: http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok Instagram: http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok Video clips: http://youtube.com/andrewgold1 Join my Patreon: http://patreon.com/andrewgold Later, she became known for her vein pattern analysis, where she found that no two hands appear to have the same pattern of veins, as well as marks, wrinkles and folds. This helped her prove the identity of a father whose hands were caught on film as he molested his daughter. The research has continued and helped to catch many other child sex offenders. I was fascinated to get inside the mind – briefly, at least – with a person who is regularly confronted with the horrors of child sex abuse material and mutilated bodies from murders and wars. I wanted to know how such images change a person and their outlook on life and death, their relationship with their daughter, their views on humanity. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to an episode of On the Edge with Andrew Gold with today’s guest, award-winning science author and TV presenter Dr. Stuart Farrimond, who’ll be talking about how to live the perfect day, from your sleep and your coffee in the morning, to your work habits and commutes, and your exercise and evening routine. Stuart Links Buy the Science of Living Book (UK): https://amzn.to/2XjVmRu Buy the Live Your Best Life Book (N America): https://amzn.to/3boCHMu Surviving Terminal Cancer by Ben Williams: https://www.survivingterminalcancer.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/RealDoctorStu Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realdoctorstu/?hl=en Andrew Links Support the show on patreon.com/andrewgold Follow me on Twitter.com/andrewgold_ok Follow me on Instagram.com/andrewgold_ok See podcast video clips on Youtube.com/andrewgold1 Stuart is talking about the themes of his book, The Science of Living: 219 reasons to rethink your daily routine. In the US and probably Canada, it’s known as Live your Best Life – link in the show notes. It’s a gorgeous book, really beautifully designed, and would make for a wonderful present for someone. Each page has a question, such as Why is waking up so hard, why do I have bad breath when I wake up, will skipping breakfast make me fat, will wearing a coat indoors mean I’m colder when I go out and is my phone ruining my sex life. Each question and page is adorned with lovely images and graphs that are really accessible and easy, even for someone of my limited neural capacities. We have a fun and interesting chat. Things do get a little heavier in the final third of today’s episode, as Stuart talks about undergoing surgery for a brain tumour. He speaks emotionally but also informatively about the subject and provides some inspirational pearls of wisdom to end on. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m delighted to welcome onto the show the pre-eminent human rights activist and ex-Muslim Yasmine Mohammed. She’s the creator of the #FreeFromHijab hashtag and the founder of the Free Hearts Free Minds organisation that helps ex-Muslims transition out of Islam, a little like what Episode 3’s guest Emily Green does for Orthodox Jews. Links to her website, as well as her book Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam and her social media pages, in the show notes. Yasmine Links: Free Hearts Free Minds Organisation: www.freeheartsfreeminds.com Yas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/YasMohammedxx Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam: https://www.waterstones.com/book/unveiled/yasmine-mohammed/9781999240530 Andrew Links: Twitter: http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok Patreon: http://patreon.com/andrewgold Insta: http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok Website: http://andrewgoldpodcast.com As you’ll hear, I mention Hasidic Judaism and Catholicism a few times in the discussion, partly as a reminder that the podcast isn’t picking on Islam in particular. We’ve already done episodes with former members of the Hasidic Jews, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Westboro Baptist Church. And yet, Yasmine will point out a few places where Islam is unique, not only its own characteristics, but how it is perceived and, in her mind, given a free ride, by the liberal western media. Yasmine is a Canadian professor and member of the Center for Inquiry, who has also been interviewed by esteemed speakers Seth Andrews and Sam Harris, who we talk about a lot towards the end of the interview. She talks about how her personal story runs parallel to that of modern Islam, in that things were more secular, and then got a whole lot more religious and oppressive very suddenly. She was forced to marry an al-Qaeda operative, before fleeing with their daughter, something unimaginably awful for most of us. We talk about the situation of Australian ex-Muslim Zara Kay, who has been arrested in Tanzania. We’ll speak about why eminent writer Salman Rushdie got the Fatwah – which was a religious call to have him killed – and why he was singled out for that treatment.  Also, at the end, we have a funny chat about Hugh Grant and Fargo that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the conversation, but stay after the de de de de at the end, as I’ll play those couple of minutes as part of the outro. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To start off 2021 on the On the Edge with Andrew Gold podcast, we’ve got scientist Dr. Andrew Steele to talk about living forever, and how we might cure ageing in the coming decades and centuries. What better way to start the year? Although, if it’s anything like 2020, you may not want to live forever. Anyway, Andrew’s new book Ageless has just come out – get it on andrewsteele.co.uk/ageless. It made for a fascinating read – I was up all night hoping to find the answers, because I’ve always loved the idea of staying young and living forever – many of us like that concept, while others don’t, and we’ll discuss why. What I would say…most of you listen to this on audio-only, but if you’re ever going to check out the YouTube page, this is the time to do it, because Andrew’s video is absolutely gorgeous, shot with a pair of top-of-the-range cameras. It makes such a difference editing something so lovely. So just Google YouTube On the Edge with Andrew Gold or type youtube.com/andrewgold1 to find it – do subscribe to the channel while you’re there. And subscribe to Andrew Steele’s page, youtube.com/drandrewsteele, where you’ll find incredible 4k beautifully shot science videos explaining things in a way that makes sense … even to idiots like me! In today’s episode, we talk about why people are so hostile to the idea of living forever – why it’s always portrayed as a negative, selfish and unattractive thing, while death seems to be a positive, heroic and noble thing. We look at tortoises, jellyfish and worms, gene therapy (not Levi’s), and how we might overcome such potential immortality issues as overpopulation and a poor/rich divide. We talk about whether it’s possible to die of a broken heart and whether women will be able to have babies at much older ages, and we discuss something called cell senescence, which is when cells in our body stop dividing (apparently they normally divide, but when they stop dividing, that’s a big part of what we’d call ageing). And we look at how we ourselves might extend our lives and live into the coming millennia. Next week’s episode is with Canadian ex-Muslim human rights activist Yasmine Mohammed. Andrew Steele Links: Buy Ageless: andrewsteele.co.uk/ageless Twitter: https://twitter.com/statto Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrAndrewSteele YouTube: youtube.com/drandrewsteele See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen Knight is an atheist who has made a name for himself online and in the media as both a friend of comedian Ricky Gervais, and an outspoken critic of woke culture and critical race theory. The host of the Godless Spellchecker podcast, which goes by the Knight Tube on YouTube. Do check out his podcast, he’s had some really big names on it, including Douglas Murray and Sam Harris to Ricky Gervais and…well, me. The lucky so-and-so. I was on his podcast just a couple weeks ago, so do check it out.   We talk about how Ricky – who is a hero of mine – first approached Stephen (link to his Twitter) to come on his podcasts, which makes for a really great story. We also go into the problems with religion, and we talk a lot about class, which is particularly funny and strange in the UK. Stephen is from a working class background in Manchester, and believes that if anything does make us unequal, it is class rather than race or gender. But even so, he wouldn’t want to play that card, as he prefers to judge people as individuals.   I have to respect that my listeners come from a range of backgrounds and viewpoints. This discussion might put some of you off at first, but do stick with it – I don’t think we are that disrespectful to woke culture or religions, and maybe we’ll find some common ground. This podcast came at the opportune moment – just this week, prominent write Julie Burchill had her book about the problems with woke cancel culture…cancelled after she joked about Islam online. And a school in the US is being sued after trying to force white students to publicly recognize their innate racism and privilege, threatening them with failing grades, if they refused to comply. Where does this end, according to Stephen? Well, some pretty dark places. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As we come to the end of a year most of us would be keen to forget, I thought it was time to have a look at…time. Today on the show, I’ve got physicist Julian Barbour, who has a new theory about the Big Bang and time, which he elucidates in his latest book, The Janus Point: A New Theory of Time.This one gets a little more complex than a typical episode of On the Edge with Andrew Gold, so I’m going to break down a few things I think I’ve learned. Firstly, Julian (official website) posits that the old Newtonian view of time is not entirely right, because it puts us inside a box. Thinking outside the box, Julian believes time is not necessarily a thing on a map like some of us thought…the only thing that time is, is a series of changing shapes of the universe. To differentiate between the past and the future, it’s just a case of seeing things like atoms and particles becoming less simple and structured, until complex things like us are able to exist. One of the most amazing parts of Julian’s theory however, is that time goes back to the Big Bang – and then goes the other way. So before the Big Bang is just another timeline going in the other direction. Bit weird, right?I always edit down the interviews a fair bit to make them quick and accessible, so I’ve lost some of Julian’s most intriguing – yet complex – material, so if you are interested in more, make sure to get hold of the Janus Point: A New Theory of Time on Amazon. There, you’ll get to the real thermodynamics and theories and historical stuff.Many of you are going to be fascinated, and I’m proud to have such a remarkable mind on the show. Others of you might find it difficult – I would suggest you stay with it, because we do go into other fun things like aliens, what happens at the end of time, whether it’d be good to live forever, and whether we have free will (or are things all decided for us) in the latter part.If you enjoy the show, please take a look at my Patreon website and consider signing up to a tier. It takes SO much time to get this ready each week, and I appreciate the support a lot. Lots of cool benefits too! Here's that link again, patreon.com/andrewgoldSee acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m honoured to be joined today by one of the UK’s most impressive speakers and mental health advocates in the form of Jonny Benjamin MBE, who made headlines after sparking a national campaign called Find Mike – with the goal of tracking down the man who talked him down from a bridge. Jonny talks candidly about his own experience with schizoaffective disorder, which has led to him hearing a voice in his head that used to take on the form of an angel, before becoming the devil. He’s passionate about mental health and how we all need to talk more openly, and you can find the charity he founded, Beyond, on wearebeyond.org.uk. He’s also created a mental health festival for schools called Now and Beyond. Jonny also tells me how his relatively conservative Jewish upbringing made it harder to talk about his issues, while also feeling he had to keep his homosexuality secret. We also spoke about fellow schizophrenia sufferer Elyn Saks, whose Ted Talk you can find here. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram, both andrewgold_ok, and have a browse of the different perks you can get from a membership on patreon.com/andrewgold --- Episode sponsored by the wonderful Pink Moon Interiors, they really make some great stuff that I've personally visited. Check out and follow their instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/pinkmoon_interiors/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices