Unholy Histories: The Humanist Heritage Podcast from Humanists UK

Episódios

• The "open conspiracy": how 94 humanists rewrote Britain’s moral laws 15.07.2026 50min

  For all references to people, places, and events in this episode and the full series, visit heritage.humanists.uk/podcast When we think of the progressive reforms of the 1960s, we often picture youth in revolt, the sexual revolution, and a sudden explosion of freedom. But what if the real blueprint for change arose from something quite different? What if it was meticulously plotted across decades by a remarkable network of intellectuals, activists, and friends — co-conspirators in a plot to c...
• Building the common good: humanism and the British welfare state with Neil Kinnock 08.07.2026 57min

  In 1942, at the height of the Second World War, the economist William Beveridge published his report identifying five giant evils facing British society: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. From that report grew the National Health Service, the post-war welfare state, and a new vision of what a country owed its citizens. But the welfare state did not appear from nowhere. Behind it stood a long tradition of ethical and philosophical thought – from the British idealists of the ninet...
• Imagining better futures – humanist thought and the radical power of science fiction 01.07.2026 53min

  In her 1818 novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley asked what it meant to make a person – and what we owed to the beings we create. Two centuries later, the questions she opened are still being asked, in the time machines and starships and feminist utopias of the science fiction tradition. Humanism has long found a home in speculative fiction: a genre where the supernatural is set aside, where the world's contingency is laid bare, and where, as this week's guests put it, we can test-drive our...
• Can they suffer? Humanism beyond humans and the British animal rights tradition 24.06.2026 1h

  In 1789, the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham asked a deceptively simple question: not whether animals can reason or talk, but whether they can suffer. That question opened a long argument about how a secular, humanist ethics should reach beyond the human — an argument that Victorian reformers like Henry Salt and his Humanitarian League turned into a campaign for animal rights, vegetarianism, the abolition of vivisection and the reform of zoos and blood sports, and that runs in a long line ...
• Radical Empathy: Civil Rights and The Humanist Ideas That Changed Two Nations 17.06.2026 58min

  In February 1965, James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr. faced each other across a packed Cambridge Union, debating whether "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro." Baldwin won the vote by a landslide. But that famous moment was one flashpoint in a much wider struggle. Across the United States and here in Britain, activists, writers and thinkers were challenging injustice, confronting systems of power, and asking fundamental questions about equality, dignity and how we ...
• The First Atheists: How Ancient Greece Questioned the Gods and Influenced Modern Thought 10.06.2026 49min

  Long before the Enlightenment, ancient thinkers were already questioning the gods. In the Greek world of the seventh to fifth centuries BCE, medicine, weather and the natural world began to be explained without divine intervention. Philosophers asked whether the gods existed at all, whether ethics could rest on human reason alone, and whether a meaningful life required belief in an afterlife. The answers they gave — Epicurus on the consolations of mortality, Protagoras on the limits of knowle...
• Britain's Most Secular Parliament and the Battle That Built It 03.06.2026 42min

  In 1880 a newly elected MP walked into the House of Commons and refused to swear an oath to God. Parliament refused to let him take his seat. He was re-elected four times. The standoff lasted six years. Charles Bradlaugh's fight ended with the Oaths Act of 1888, a turning point in the recognition of non-religious conscience in British public life. This episode traces that struggle from Bradlaugh's Northampton victory to the 2024 General Election, the most secular Westminster has ever returned...
• Who Really Wrote Human Rights? The Humanist Roots of the UDHR 27.05.2026 51min

  In the aftermath of two world wars, a new vision for humanity began to take shape, one grounded in shared dignity, freedom, and cooperation across borders. At the heart of that vision were humanist thinkers, from H.G. Wells, whose Rights of Man helped inspire the movement, to Julian Huxley, the first Director-General of UNESCO. This episode traces the ideas that shaped the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asks why it still matters, and considers what challenges lie ahead for the univers...
• Born of Mary: LGBT+ Rights & Humanism Shared Fight for Freedoms 20.05.2026 57min

  Join Humanists UK: humanists.uk/join Throughout modern British history, the movements for sexual freedom and freedom of belief have often converged, challenging moral orthodoxy and religious authority in the name of human dignity. This episode traces how humanism and LGBT activism have evolved side by side, and what that shared legacy means today. Guests: Lesley Hall, historian and retired archivist, specialising in sexuality and gender in 19th and 20th century Britain. Author of Sex, Gender ...
• Good Without God: The Fight for Secular Education 13.05.2026 50min

  Education has always been central to humanist thought, from the founding of the Moral Instruction League in 1897 to Margaret Knight's scandalous 1955 BBC broadcasts on raising children without religion. This episode traces the long humanist tradition of moral and civic education in Britain, and asks how children form their identities and worldviews in an increasingly non-religious society. Guests: Dr Lois Lee, senior lecturer in secular studies at the University of Kent, whose research examin...
• Atheists Before the Enlightenment: Doubters Before the Age of Reason 06.05.2026 49min

  Many people assume humanism began with the Enlightenment. But sceptical, rational, human-centred ideas have a much longer history. This episode travels back to the centuries before the so-called Age of Reason to meet the freethinkers, doubters, and proto-humanists who challenged religious orthodoxy when doing so could mean prison, exile, or death, and asks what their courage tells us about the slow erosion of religious certainty. Guests: Professor Michael Hunter, Emeritus Professor of History...
• Heroines of Freethought: The Women Who Defied God and the Patriarchy 29.04.2026 58min

  Throughout history, women have been leading voices for reason, equality, and human progress, even if their stories have too often been overlooked. Taking its title from Sara Underwood's 1876 collection, this episode sheds light on some of the women who defied religious and social convention, and asks what their legacy means for humanism today. Guests: Nan Sloane, historian, trainer, and author of Uncontrollable Women: Radicals, Reformers and Revolutionaries. nansloane.comAnnie Laurie Gaylor, ...
• Introducing Unholy Histories: The Humanist Heritage Podcast from Humanists UK 25.03.2026 2min

  Unholy Histories is the new Humanist Heritage Podcast from Humanists UK and inspired by the research of the Humanist Heritage Project. Join Andrew Copson and Madeleine Goodall as they uncover the rebels, reformers, and freethinkers who shaped a more open and compassionate Britain. The first episodes go live very soon. Subscribe now via your preferred podcast app to be notified the moment new episodes are released. Join Humanists UK: humanists.uk/join Discover more Humanist Heritage: heritage...