As atheism grows in popularity, Americans are increasingly seeking out programming centered on the topic. This month, two nonreligious organizations are teaming up to satisfy that audience with a podcast series about reason and compassion without belief in God.
"This isn't radio evangelism in reverse," said Duncan Crary, co-host of the Humanist Network News podcast. "We don't deliver atheist sermons and we don't proselytize. But we do interview some of the best minds of our day about religion, ethics and culture. And most of our guests openly identify as humanists or atheists."
The Humanist Network News is a monthly one-hour talk show podcast dedicated to humanist thought, with topics ranging from politics to pop culture. Produced by the Albany, N.Y.-based Institute for Humanist Studies, the two-and-a-half-year-old podcast has attracted more than 10,000 listeners per month since October.
The audience could soon double, thanks to a new partnership.
This April, the American Humanist Association (AHA) adopted the Humanist Network News as "the official podcast of the AHA." The oldest and largest humanist organization in the country, the American Humanist Association is promoting the show to its 10,000 members and 130 chapters and affiliate groups across the nation.
"We could have just created our own podcast," said AHA Executive Director Roy Speckhardt. "In the past, freethinkers and their organizations have been fiercely independent. But partnerships like this one are becoming more common, and they demonstrate a willingness among nonreligious Americans to work together on shared goals and to show their strength in numbers."
Speckhardt and Crary both see the podcast as a powerful tool to introduce humanism to the roughly 30 million Americans who report to have "no religion."
The Humanist Network News podcast has featured face-to-face interviews with such luminaries as Salman Rushdie, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Julia Sweeney (of Saturday Night Live fame).
This month, the Humanist Network News traveled to Harvard University to interview Greg Graffin, lead singer of the punk rock band Bad Religion.
On April 26, Graffin received the lifetime achievement award in cultural humanism, given by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, a local chapter of the AHA.
"A lot of podcasts feature hard-to-hear phone interviews," Crary said. "But we're out there interviewing people in person. The sound quality is better and it's more fun for the listeners because they feel like we're taking them along with us."
Using a portable setup, Crary and his co-host Jes Constantine have recorded interviews in all sorts of locations: celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz on a Harvard staircase, best-selling author Christopher Hitchens in a hotel bar, and folk singer Holly Near in a college campus alley. Other on-location interviews have featured children at a secularist summer camp and humanist students in India and Belgium.
Another feature that sets the podcast apart from similar programs is its audio advice column for humanists, "Sweet Reason." Salman Rushdie had his question answered by "Sweet Reason" last May.
"We're dealing with heavy topics like atheism, bioethics and the separation of religion and government," Crary said. "But we also have a laid back humorous side, too."
To listen to the Humanist Network News podcast, visit: http://humaniststudies.org/podcast or http://americanhumanist.org/podcast.
Transcripts of past programs are available.
For information, contact Duncan Crary, Institute for Humanist Studies director of communications, 518-432-7820 x 5 or Fred Edwords, American Humanist Association director of communications, (202) 238-9088.
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