So far I’ve spent about half of my life in the US, half in Turkey. The populations of both countries are insane. That is, the vast majority in both countries are too fond of religious and nationalist forms of enthusiasm for my taste.

Sometimes, though, I really don’t know how to respond to a particular example of weirdness. I hear that a Turkish TV channel is going to put on a reality show in which representatives of world religions get to compete in order to convert an atheist each time. This could be seriously crazy, brilliant, or anything in between. I’m not a TV person—I’ve never watched a reality show, and I am even more cut off from the Turkish TV scene than the American one. So I have no clue how this is going to end up. But it could be interesting.