53. David B McLaughlin on Five Humanistic Values for Living Well

“Human dignity is really the foundation for reasoned morality — there’s nothing we can do to increase it or decrease it. Even the worst people still deserve it simply because they’re human.”  - David B. McLaughlin

David B. McLaughlin, leadership coach and author of Humanism: Five Values for Living Well, joins us to map a practical, hopeful framework for meaning without dogma. From life in the U.S. Bible Belt to boardrooms wrestling with equity, we explore how meaning, dignity, reason, compassion, and justice work together to guide everyday choices and systemic change.

Connect with David B. McLaughlin

• Website – pendulumcoaching.com
• Newsletter – exploringhumanism.substack.com
• LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/in/davidbmc

Topics we cover

• Dignity as a moral floor you can’t earn or revoke
• Spotting dehumanisation and resisting it
• The Pillar Model of meaning
• Rituals beyond religion: building habits that anchor values
• Reason + compassion: escaping autopilot and widening concern
• Justice at work: equity, fair policies, and psychological safety
• Seeing hidden power: systemic awareness for better decisions
• The “reverse wager of humanism”: urgency to do tangible good now

Resources & further reading

• Humanism: Five Values for Living Well – David B. McLaughlin  – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Humanism-Five-Values-Living-Well/dp/B0FNRP5GKR
• Pendulum Coaching Podcast – Conversations on modern leadership – https://www.pendulumcoaching.com/podcast
• “Pale Blue Dot,” Voyager 1 image & essay – background on Sagan’s perspective – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet David B. McLaughlin
• 1:18 Why An Invitation To Humanism, Now?
• 4:30 Humanism Across The Bible Belt
• 6:59 Dignity As the Ethical Bedrock
• 10:35 Spotting Dehumanisation In Public Life
• 12:12 The PILLAR Model For Meaning
• 16:03 Rituals Beyond Religion
• 16:46 Reason Working With Compassion
• 19:39 Justice And Equity At Work
• 22:24 The SEED Model for Justice
• 24:27 The Reverse Wager Of Humanism
• 29:00 Do Something: Small Steps Matter
• 31:05 The Pale Blue Dot Cover Story
• 32:21 Changed Minds on Songwriting

Transcript

James Hodgson: 0:01

Welcome to the Humanism Now Podcast. I'm your host, James Hodgson. Our guest today is David B. McLaughlin, who has spent over 20 years as a leader in human resources and organizational development. David is the founder of Pendulum Consulting and the Modern Leadership Research Lab. With a background in organizational consulting, he coaches mindfulness and emotional intelligence amongst leaders and is currently studying for a PhD in leadership and adult education. David has now shifted his focus towards the world of humanism, and his latest book is Humanism: Five Values for Living Well. It's an introduction and an invitation to anyone who may be curious or seeking to find meaning in an increasingly secular world. David B. McLaughlin, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

David B. McLaughlin: 0:50

James, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor for me. I have started listening to your podcast a while back, and I've even gone back to the beginning, and I think I've only got three or four episodes left to catch up on. And I just love what you're doing.

James Hodgson: 1:05

So thank you for having me on. Thank you very much, David, and wonderful to hear that you've been listening to the show. And likewise, I've had the pleasure of having an early copy of the book, Humanism, a guide for living well. You've described this book as an invitation to humanism. For anyone who may be curious or may have considered humanism, why do you feel like now is an essential time to accept an invitation to humanism?

David B. McLaughlin: 1:30

Thank you. That's a great question. First of all, let me say thanks to you for writing a little promotional blurb about the book. And it's on the back cover of the book and in our marketing material. So I deeply appreciate that. But yeah, the word invitation was actually not in the original draft. I sent the book out to a few friends and let them read it. One of my friends, Greg, messaged me back and he said, Hey, this is so good. It's interesting, it's impactful, but what do you want me to do? Like he didn't really see a call to action in it. And so I wrote another draft, and that's when I came up with the term an invitation. And one of the first things I say in the book is, this is an invitation for you to be a humanist. And I'm going to spend the rest of the book explaining what that means and what it looks like. And so that's where the term invitation came from. But I think it's the right time for an invitation to humanism for several reasons. First, I think it's always a good time to invite people to adopt humanistic values, right? Second, there are more and more people who are either leaving religion and so they're post-religious, or they're just more people who are being raised in a secular environment. And some of them are looking for some kind of belief system or thought system that aligns with the way they think. And I think that is a good reason because there are just more and more people who are looking for some concept other than religion to align themselves with. It's interesting. Several people who've read this book have told me, David, I didn't know I was a humanist until I read this book. And then I realized, oh, I'm a humanist. And then the third reason I think it's a good time is I live in the United States and we're going through a quite an interesting time in our government and leadership. And it seems like we just see more and more acts of dehumanization. And that's incredibly concerning to me and a lot of other people. I don't know what how people view the United States, but if they think everybody's on board with that, that is not the case. In fact, it's not even split 50-50. I've seen recent polls that if people could revote, they would probably 60 to 70 percent would choose a different path. So I just think seeing the dehumanization in not only the United States, but other places of the world is a time to call people to humanistic ethics.

James Hodgson: 4:08

Yeah, and I think you're right. I think there's a there's some very pressing current events that are happening, but just increasingly people are seeking as well. And so that's what we're trying to do here on the podcast. And obviously, it's great to have more books like yours out there as well. Just giving that soft introduction to, as you say, humanistic values. No one has to associate necessarily with the term. And so it's great to hear that it's already had a bit of an effect on some people. How have you found the invitation to be received by those perhaps who wouldn't have considered themselves humanists previously?

David B. McLaughlin: 4:41

Yeah, it's been people are saying positive things to me. They may be saying other things behind my back. I don't know, but people are saying very kind and positive things to me about it. I think it's interesting, particularly where I live. I live in Oklahoma, which is very much part of the Bible belt across the United States. And for people who don't really understand humanism, it's almost like saying you're from Mars and you're the devil, and they don't really understand what it means. But then once you explain it to them, they're like, Oh, yeah, I'm I may be a Christian, but I think I'm also a humanist, or I may be whatever they call themselves around here, it's mostly Christian, which is fine. And that's one of the things I talk about in the book. I know that, like from a probably a traditional hardcore humanist definition, it's very non-theistic, which I'm that way myself. Although I was raised very much in fundamentalist evangelicalism. But I think that the way I portray it in the book is maybe a little softer, where I say, as long as we align on human dignity, progress, those kinds of things, it doesn't matter if you are in another group, whether a religious group or whatever, we're still trying to elevate humanity. And that's the most important thing. Now, there are some concepts within various religions that do not align with those goals. And I state in the book, in that sense, for me, I'm going to go towards the humanistic values rather than anything else.

James Hodgson: 6:23

Very good point. Yeah, as much as it is about convincing those who may be curious or offering an identity for people who may be lacking one, actually, just that informing those who are of faith, but maybe share many of our values in other ways, that actually, yeah, we're not a threat. We're very much aligned and we agree. I think that's just as valuable. I can imagine, as you say, in particular areas where religion is still very has a stronghold in society. It's that humanizing process, again, of saying, yes, we may disagree on this one belief over here, but actually we share all this uh all these great traits and values for the good of humanity. So that's great. Now you identify five core values. We may get time to go through all of them, but if we could start perhaps by looking at dignity, which highlights as kind of the core ethical foundation of humanism. Why did you focus so much on dignity and how does that feed into the other values?

David B. McLaughlin: 7:15

Yeah, so just real quickly, we don't have to define them or explain them, but the five values I talk about are meaning, dignity, reason, compassion, and justice. And it took me a long, it took me several years to get it down to that. I'm not trying to rewrite any of the humanist statements out there, but for me, that's where what it boiled down to. For dignity, I struggled with what order to put those in, like which should come first. I have an education background, and that was difficult for me. I finally just resolved there wasn't a perfect way to do it. But I think dignity is one of the most essential aspects of this human dignity. I have talked, I do a lot of training on leadership, I coach businesses, I consult with businesses, I do this thing, and I have explained to people for years that when we look at people, we assign value to them in various ways. And I talk about this in the book. I talk about one of the ways, especially in the business world, is we evaluate people's value based on their market value. What skills do they bring to the organization? What experience do they bring? And then we pay them according to those things. So that's a market value that we bring. There's also the social value that we bring. James, you're a better looking guy than I am. You in society probably have a higher social value than me because of your good looks and charm, right? And then that can all our social value can also change based on how kind we are to people, how friendly we are. So, and how we adapt with those social norms. So there are all kinds of ways that we can increase or decrease our social value. And then the last one, which probably should be the first one, but is just intrinsic value. And that is the idea that human dignity is really the foundation for reasoned morality. The fact that we exist, just the mere fact that we exist, means we have dignity. And there's nothing we can do to increase that intrinsic dignity or decrease that intrinsic dignity. Even the worst people, I talk in the book about my brother who just retired recently from being a deputy detective, and his job was to investigate and prosecute sex crimes, particularly sex crimes against children. When you think of people who commit sex crimes against children, that's just the worst of humanity. And this is more along the lines of justice, but we can lock those people up, but we don't want to violate their human dignity, even though they've done everything they possibly can to give us no reason to respect them. We still should honor their human dignity just because they're human. And this goes with war crimes and all kinds of people. There are things we want to do to get retribution or whatever. But when we lower people's intrinsic human dignity, that's a downward spiral for all of us in society.

James Hodgson: 10:34

Would you start making those excuses for one group or one person? That then you see that as a slippery slope.

David B. McLaughlin: 10:42

We can talk about, and when we've seen through history, you know, you have World War II, the classic example, obviously. One of the first things Hitler did was he dehumanized the Jews. He talked about everything he could while they're the reason for the problems of society. We see it today in various places. We criticize immigrants and talk about how they're taking our jobs and they're doing all these terrible things. If we can dehumanize people's intrinsic dignity, it makes it easier to treat not only them, but other people as well in horrific ways. We've just seen it all throughout history. And so we just don't want to go down that spiral. It doesn't mean that we allow all kinds of horrific behavior. We can have justice, but we also have to preserve the human dignity of every single person.

James Hodgson: 11:37

Yes, and it's spotting when you're being exploited and being tricked into trying to remove thinking in of others in terms of, as has been discussed, less than human, using those uses of dehumanizing language, that the idea that they don't deserve dignity. It's being able to notice when that rhetoric's being used and how it might be being used to exploit you as a person to act and think in a certain way.

David B. McLaughlin: 12:02

Yeah. So when I dehumanize someone else, it lowers all of humanity and then it ends up coming back on me as well.

James Hodgson: 12:17

You frame um much of the book around the pillar model. Could you explain the pillar model and how it's applied? Sure.

David B. McLaughlin: 12:25

In each of the chapters, based on those core values, I have an acronym for each of those that just helps people understand the concept. And then the chapter on meaning, I talk about the pillar model. And this, it's interesting you'd ask about this one because this model seems to be the one that resonates with most people. Each of the letters just stands for something. So P stands for purpose, I is interconnection, L is learning, the other L is legacy, A is authenticity, and seven is ritual. So when we talk about purpose with the P, that's really how do I contribute to something bigger than myself? Like just recognizing, and this from the way I was raised in Christianity, this was a big important thing that we were making eternal rewards. We want a rewards ahead of us in heaven. And what we do here credits us towards rewards in heaven. But in a humanistic sense, I just want to leave this world a better place, right? And so that we but we can all another real important part of that is that we all create our own meaning. What I find meaning in may be different from what you find meaning in, but it's not given to us in a divine book or talk. It's what we create out of our own experience. So that's purpose. And then interconnection is just how we build meaning with each other. If we just live as a hermit in a cave somewhere and don't interact with anybody, it's there, there's not a whole lot of value that we're bringing. But the way we interconnect with each other really helps us build meaning. And then learning is just about personal growth. Hopefully, we're all growing, getting better, learning as we go. And so that personal growth is important. Then legacy, what am I creating? What am I doing that just leaves the world a better place than when I got here? And that's a real important part for me. And then authenticity, I have my inner values, but do my inner values align with my outer behaviors? And when they're not in alignment, I'm inauthentic. When they are in alignment, I'm more authentic. And then finally, ritual. This is one of my favorites too, because growing up in religion, we have communion, we have baptism, we have these sacred rituals that we engage in. And it's one of the things when people leave religion, they really start to lose their footing here because they're like, even if they don't directly realize it, they feel kind of unmoored a little bit because what are our rituals? What are the things that we do? And so there are all kinds of things outside of religion that we have rituals. We have birthday parties, we celebrate people's birthdays, we do all these things. One of the things I think of, just a couple of examples, is like you get together with friends on a Friday night and play games. And so that game night is actually a ritual because it's something you do on a regular basis. Friendship, I started this thing a couple years ago where I started awarding my best friends friendship awards. And I call them the Mackie Awards, a long explanation on why that name is there. But I gather a group of people and I take them out to dinner. I give them actual awards, and we have a nice dinner, and I give them some merch, like David's friendship hat and stuff like that. And it's just a ritual that I've developed. It's meaningful to me and my friends, and it's just a way of increasing the meaning in our life.

James Hodgson: 15:56

I think that is one ritual, and it is the one where you can look at it and go, that's one we haven't managed to replicate in a positive way in secular groups. As you say, people have other things in their life which are regular and they get a lot of joy from, but they probably don't consider them rituals. But framing it as such, I think gives it a whole new level of meaning, which I guess is the purpose.

David B. McLaughlin: 16:22

I think it's just being aware that, oh, this is a ritual. I may not think of it as a ritual, but it is a ritual.

James Hodgson: 16:28

I'm gonna start thinking more about those things that I can do on a regular basis and turn them into rituals. And then you feel more committed to doing them as well, I think, if rather than just this is something that we regularly do. This is good tip there, thank you. So moving on then to the next couple of chapters in the book. How does humanism ensure that reason works in partnership with compassion? These are two things that we talk about a lot here as well, as pillars of our beliefs here at humanism, certainly what we advocate for on the podcast. But yeah, I'm interested in how you link those two together in the book.

David B. McLaughlin: 17:00

Yeah, so reason is really how we use our minds in the service of both truth and ethics. And when I think about reason, I just come from my education background, I always think of opposites. What's the opposite of this thing? And so the opposite of reason, I really thought about this, isn't being irrational. Really, I think the opposite of reason is just acting automatically without thinking. Whether it's just because this is how we were raised, this is what we were taught, where we grew up, we're just going to autopilot versus using our reason to really figure out what is true, what is good, those kinds of things. The way that relates to compassion is reason increases our awareness of things. And one of the things, hopefully, it increases our awareness of is that people suffer. People are suffering, and there are a lot of religious ideas that compel us to show compassion, and then from a religious standpoint, we do that more out of because we're commanded to do it, or we'll be rewarded in heaven for doing that. Humanism just says we can reason and recognize that compassion is useful, it lifts us up, it helps all of us the more compassionate we are. And that's a good enough reason. We don't need another reason to be compelled to be compassionate. Just the idea of caring about each other, being concerned for each other, and lifting each other up is reason enough.

James Hodgson: 18:53

The more we think about things, the more we engage with the world and we try to think, consider, and question our own decisions as well, we might that then that raises our awareness, not only of our own thinking, but hopefully of others as well.

David B. McLaughlin: 19:05

Yeah, I think that's the key component. In my business coaching that I do, I do a lot of my coaching around self-awareness and emotional intelligence. And one of the things I'm always, whether whatever I'm talking about in life, it's awareness is the key. The more self-aware we are, the more other aware we are, it just sets us on the path of being better and growing.

James Hodgson: 19:33

Final two values that you touch upon justice and equity. Again, and perhaps focusing on your business coaching career to date. So how have you incorporated justice and equity? How does that translate into organizational leadership and how you've seen again those values be used in the workplace to create better performance?

David B. McLaughlin: 19:59

Yeah, there is actually a ton of research data on this in the business world. We think of justice mainly in a punitive sense, like we're punishing someone. I talked about my brother. He's catching the bad guys and we're giving them their due punishment for their behavior. But justice is even broader than that. I always say it's where our values meet the world, and it's applying ethics to systems and organizations, companies, especially business organizations, but any kind of organization, there are intrinsic systems within that organization. And applying justice to those organizational systems can look a lot of different ways. One example is equity. We recognize that there are systemic injustices that occur towards certain groups of people, whether they're women, people of color, people with different neurodivergent ways of thinking, whatever it is, the more equity we can bring, which doesn't mean we're making everybody equal. It's just more about fairness. We have this myth of meritocracy, and we talk about it like people get promoted because of the merits. No, they absolutely do not. And it doesn't mean that people who land a job or get promoted don't have good merits, but we have to recognize the injustices happening in the system that are preventing people who have equal merit from even being considered. So I think that's a great example of looking at how we can rebalance systemic injustices. And organizations, when they address these injustices, there's all kinds of data that shows they get better outcomes, they get higher engagement from their employees, they make more profits, they reduce turnover and on with metric after metric. The more you work to create equity in your organization, the more benefits come to the organization.

James Hodgson: 22:17

Two um of the values, probably where there's there's going to be the biggest diverse range of understanding interpretation of what justice equity might look like. Probably more so injustice, I would say. So again, you use one of your acronyms, the seed model for justice. So how should we think about justice in humanistic terms?

David B. McLaughlin: 22:38

Yeah, in the seed model, it's really about looking at and evaluating power structures. What are the power structures we have in the organization? What are the policies and procedures we have in an organization? And just noticing where there are inequalities or even potential for inequalities. And when we look at that with an open mind, we find them. One reason it may be hard, if you're the group who's in power, it's a little harder to see the power injustices. I heard something a long time ago, actually, just saw this where I had posted it. I don't remember who said it, but it was a few years ago, and I just saw where I had posted it. But they said if you're a white person, which I am, and you're in the United States where we have a lot of racial issues, it's definitely gotten better, but it's definitely not where we need to be either. But if there's if you're a white person, you don't recognize the injustices because you're the power group. You have to be outside of the power group to even recognize the injustices. And when I learned that, I was like, oh my goodness, that's so accurate, right? You have to be in the outside group to see what's wrong with the other group. It's very difficult to be inside the group. So we evaluate those power structures, the policies, the procedures, we find those inequalities, and it just forces us, systemic awareness forces us to notice those, acknowledge them, and then fix them.

James Hodgson: 24:10

Well, back to that bridge of awareness again, being the key practice, I suppose, that underlines all of these values and traits as well. No, thank you very much for that. You speak in the book of the reverse wager of humanism. And I really enjoyed this section. So, what is the reverse wager of humanism and how does it give life more urgency?

David B. McLaughlin: 24:33

So, James, I am very rarely proud of myself, but I was proud of myself for this one because I probably heard it somewhere else. And when I hear things other places, I always give credit. But this just hit me driving down the road. I was listening to something, and some Christian apologist or something was talking about Pascal's wager, which of course Blaise Pascal is a 17th century philosopher, and he's most famous, at least in Christian circles, for his wager, which is a bet. He says, if you do believe in the God, you win, right? If there is a God and you don't believe in a God, then you lose. Therefore, the safest bet is to believe in a God. Now, I used to talk about this back in my Christian apologist days and thought it was so good. And then I finally realized just what a horrible argument it is for multiple reasons. Number one being, wouldn't this God know we were pretending to believe just for the benefit of winning the game? That's one issue. But the bigger issue is which God? Think as if there's a God, okay, which God? There are like 3,000 of them, and of course, he's arguing for the Christian version of God. But using his own wager, we would say, but if I don't believe in the Islamic God, if I don't believe in the Zoroastrian God or whatever, the wager still stands. I lose if I don't believe in that God. So therefore I'd have to believe in 3,000 gods to win, covering the spread, I guess they call it in gambling. I'm not much of a gambler, but you'd have to cover the spread to really win his wager. But I started thinking of it differently, and I called it the reverse wager because what if there is no God? Then I really start thinking, how do we live our life on earth? James, one of the things that I know from being in evangelical fundamentalism and coming out of that group is there's this obsession with the afterlife. We always think about what am I doing now that's adding up my treasure in heaven? We don't have to worry about climate change because we're going to be rescued out of here and go to heaven. But if we reverse Pascal's wager and say, what if there is no God? Then what we've done is we've really squandered our life here on earth. We could have been making the world a better place for everybody, not just the chosen few. We could have been making, we could have been dealing with these issues that we have on the planet, such as climate change and other things. Instead, we were more concerned about escaping. So to me, that's the reverse wager is what if there's not a God? If there's not a God and we live by humanistic values, all we've done is left the world a better place for everybody. And there's no way to lose that. All you can do is win.

James Hodgson: 27:34

And presumably, if we were wrong at the end of the day, uh, but we dedicate the lives, as you mentioned, to helping others, trying to create a better world, trying to lead the world better than we found it, continuing the scientific covery of the universe and learning more about ourselves and the world around us. You know, if you live live by those principles, you would hope that uh whomever might be on the other side would would respect that.

David B. McLaughlin: 27:58

You would hope that. I don't know if you've ever watched uh the TV sitcom called the good place, but it's very enlightening. And it really talks about this idea of are we adding up enough points to get into the good place? The Christian response to that would be you can't get enough points, you can't do enough good things to earn salvation. Jesus died for your sins, and that's the only thing that's going to get you into heaven is accepting him. Okay, lots of people believe that. I understand. But if you can't be convinced of that, going back to Pascal's wager, if you just can't be convinced that's accurate, the least you can do, which in my mind is a lot, I can leave this world a better place. I can do all the good here that still makes it a better place for me and everybody else.

James Hodgson: 28:53

Of course, I want to ensure that all of our listeners do go out and buy the book and read it. As I said, it's a really enjoyable read. But if there is one sort of actionable takeaway that you would like listeners to adopt or take with them, what is the main takeaway you would like to promote with this book?

David B. McLaughlin: 29:11

James, when I write these chapters on each of the values, I try to give examples of people modern and not too far in the past, but people we can recognize, you know, Victor Frankel, Malala Yousafse, I never know if I say her name right, all of these people, Carl Sagan, whoever it is. But when I describe them in the book, the things they do just seem so amazing. And I got thinking after I was reading it back to myself, like some people are gonna say, yeah, David, but I can never be Carl Sagan. I can never be someone like that. But here's what we can do, each of us can do. And this is what I hope really comes through in the book. You can do something. There's a chapter where we talk it about after I talk about the five values. I have a chapter called Becoming More Human, and I list in it the 20 top problems in The world and society. You have things like global change or uh climate change, extreme poverty, global health, anti-intellectualism, which is just a hugely growing problem, technological risks, all kinds of things. And whatever it is that you see is wrong in the world that you're passionate about, just take a small step towards working on that one thing. You can't fix all 20. None of us can. But I can pick my one or two things that I'm passionate about and do something. I can volunteer in my community. I can join an organization that's working towards these things. I can send them a little bit of money. Maybe I don't have a lot of money. I can send them just a little bit, but when everybody sends a little bit, it adds up to a lot. So there are just some small things that we can do, even though we can't all be Victor Frankel or Carl Sagan or one of these amazing image.

James Hodgson: 30:58

Well, thank you once again. And speaking of Carl Sagan, we just had a glimpse of the book soon to be published, and you got that fantastic image, my favorite photo of all time, the pale blue dot image on the front of the book as well. Out of curiosity, uh, did you have to request approval from I guess NASA owns the rights that to the photo? Did they have to grant approval for you to use that?

David B. McLaughlin: 31:21

Yeah, I actually didn't have to write anybody. I just did a little bit of research on it and found out that it showed how to credit it and everything. And since NASA is publicly funded, then things they have are publicly available. And my son does the graphic designs on all my books and stuff. And we talked about the idea for a cover. And I talk about that pale blue dot image that Carl Sagan pressed NASA to take from 3.7 billion miles away, and Earth is just this little dot. And it's just such an amazing thing that he writes about in his book, and just that the picture was taken. So I loved using that for the cover, and my son did an amazing job on that. But no, if you just credit them, you can use it. And so it was a courtesy of NASA and Caltech.

James Hodgson: 32:06

It's not only an honor to be quoted in your book, but to be quoted next to an image taken by NASA and as directed by Carl Sagan. So, David, thank you so much for your time. Before we go, our standard closing question: what is something which you've changed your mind about recently and what inspired that change?

David B. McLaughlin: 32:24

Yeah, I love this question every week and listening to people's answers. I thought two for me, sorry to double down, but the first is just for me coming out of the closet about being a humanist. It's it may sound crazy living in Oklahoma, just saying you're a humanist. Now people may not want to hire you to do business with them or something like that because they don't understand what that means. And so just coming out of the closet as a humanist was a big thing for me. And the other thing, which is kind of silly, is I decided that I could write songs. I grew up as a musician and I played music and I actually made a couple of blues albums, but they were all cover versions of old famous blues songs. And I'm writing now, I've probably written about 40 songs. I don't know, maybe five of them are good, but I just decided that, hey, other people can write songs I can write songs too.

James Hodgson: 33:17

David B. McLaughlin, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

Humanise Live: 33:21

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