Unholy Histories: The Humanist Heritage Podcast from Humanists UK
Join Andrew Copson and Madeleine Goodall, along with expert guests, as they uncover the hidden histories and untold stories of the people, places, movements, ideas, and events that helped shape British humanism, secularism, and freethought. From radical reformers to forgotten dissenters, Unholy Histories explores how reason, skepticism, science, and activism helped build modern Britain. The podcast is produced by Humanists UK and showcases the Humanist Heritage Project.
Episodes
The "open conspiracy": how 94 humanists rewrote Britain’s moral laws
For all references to people, places, and events in this episode and the full series, visit heritage.humanists.uk/podcastWhen 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 b
Building the common good: humanism and the British welfare state with Neil Kinnock
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 stoo
Imagining better futures – humanist thought and the radical power of science fiction
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
Can they suffer? Humanism beyond humans and the British animal rights tradition
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, th
Radical Empathy: Civil Rights and The Humanist Ideas That Changed Two Nations
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 in
The First Atheists: How Ancient Greece Questioned the Gods and Influenced Modern Thought
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
Britain's Most Secular Parliament and the Battle That Built It
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 Bradla
Who Really Wrote Human Rights? The Humanist Roots of the UDHR
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
Born of Mary: LGBT+ Rights & Humanism Shared Fight for Freedoms
Join Humanists UK: humanists.uk/joinThroughout 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,
Good Without God: The Fight for Secular Education
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.Gue
Atheists Before the Enlightenment: Doubters Before the Age of Reason
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 slo
Heroines of Freethought: The Women Who Defied God and the Patriarchy
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
Introducing Unholy Histories: The Humanist Heritage Podcast from Humanists UK
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 episode
