As mainstream space tourism grows ever more likely, New Yorker writer Nicholas Schmidle tells Niki Seth-Smith about life inside the new space race, as explored in his new book 'Test Gods'.  What motivates men like Bezos, Branson and Musk? How does the approach to risk in private business compare with that at NASA? And should we be looking to space at all, with so much unresolved here on planet earth? Plus, Nicholas reflects on fatherhood and masculinity, including the life of his father: a fighter pilot and Top Gun grad.

Podcast listeners get a year's subscription to New Humanist magazine for just £13.50 by using the offer code WITHREASON. Subscribe now.

**Recorded in August 2021**

Further reading:

'Test Gods: Tragedy and Triumph in the New Space Race' (2021), Nicholas Schmidle

'The Right Stuff' (1979), Tom Wolfe

'In Praise of Astronauts' (2013) Paul Sims for New Humanist magazine

Racism is not an externality to British policing but is integral to its history, says sociologist and ex-youth worker, Adam Elliott-Cooper. He tells Samira Shackle about the ideas behind his book ‘Black Resistance to British Policing’. Recognising racism as far more than just interpersonal or about prejudice alone, he connects it to colonialism and the state, and highlights the role of resistance - including by women of colour who have long championed justice and radical change.

Plus: why the tendency in the UK to see racism as "something that happens somewhere else"? What’s obscured when we talk about “knife crime”? And why must we insist on continuing to talk about whiteness?

Podcast listeners can get a year's subscription to New Humanist magazine for just £13.50. Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON

Hosts: Samira Shackle and Alice Bloch
Executive producer: Alice Bloch
Sound engineer: David Crackles
Music: Danosongs

Reading list:

‘Black Resistance to British Policing’ (2021) Adam Elliott-Cooper 

W.E.B Du Bois (1868-1963) collected works

‘Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order’ (1978) Stuart Hall et al.

‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics’, (1972) Stanley Cohen 

‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ (1987) Paul Gilroy

‘Women, Race and Class’ (1981) Angela Davis 

Frantz Fanon (1925-1962) collected works 

‘And Still I Rise’ (2006) Doreen Lawrence

 ‘Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays’ (1950) George Orwell 

‘Leviathan’ (1651) Thomas Hobbes 

‘On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life’ (2012) Sara Ahmed

‘Assembly’ (2021) Natasha Brown

‘In Search of Whiteness’ (2017), Lola Okolosie for New Humanist magazine, with Vron Ware

What does it mean to contemplate 'motherhood' in a world that values some bodies - and some decisions - over others?  Behavioural scientist Pragya Agarwal tells Alice Bloch about her experiences as a woman of South Asian heritage - from abortion, to pregnancy, to surrogacy - and the social, historical and scientific factors that shape how we talk about motherhood. How have women been controlled and contained through history? And how does that continue, worldwide, today? 
 
A candid conversation about maternity and reproductive justice, asking what motherhood means in a world of inequality, prejudice and control.

Hosts: Alice Bloch and Samira Shackle
Exec Producer: Alice Bloch
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music: Danosongs
Image artwork: Ed Dingli
 
If you want access to more fresh thinking, why not subscribe to New Humanist magazine? Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON to get a whole year's subscription for just £13.50

Reading list:

'(M)otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Woman' (2021) Pragya Agarwal

Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias (2020) Pragya Agarwal

Alice Bloch, Review of 'Childless Voices' by Lorna Gibb (2019) New Humanist Magazine 

Carlo Rovelli, the globally celebrated physicist and bestselling storyteller of science, talks to Niki Seth-Smith about the history - and sheer wonder - of quantum theory. How did a feverish young man named Werner Heisenberg, working alone on the North Sea island of Helgoland in 1925, develop a radical insight that would shake the world of physics? What’s its legacy for how we think about the nature of reality and perception itself? And how does the ‘relational’ interpretation of quantum mechanics transform the way that we might see not only the physical world, but our relationships and politics, too?

A fascinating conversation about collaboration and mentorship, our attachment to truth and certainty,  and the humbling power of science.

Podcast listeners can get a year's subscription to New Humanist magazine for just £13.50. Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON

Hosts: Niki Seth-Smith and Samira Shackle
Exec producer: Alice Bloch
Sound engineer: David Crackles
Artwork: Christopher Wahl (photograph), Ed Dingli (artwork)
Music: Danosongs

Further reading:
'Helgoland' (2021), Carlo Rovelli

'There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness' (2020), Carlo Rovelli

'The Order of Time', (2018), Carlo Rovelli

'Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity' (2016) Carlo Rovelli

'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics' (2015), Carlo Rovelli

'‘‘The beauty in physics is the kind of beauty that people have embodied in art’’
A Q&A with Frank Wilczek (2015) by Daniel Trilling, New Humanist magazine.

A special episode from the How To Academy Podcast. Human rights lawyer and award-winning author Philippe Sands QC meets the Dutch historian and viral superstar Rutger Bregman to hear a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good.

How To Academy is London’s home of big thinking. In livestream and through live events, they host the world’s biggest thinkers, artists, entrepreneurs and leaders – from Ai Weiwei to Malcolm Gladwell, Bill Gates to Patti Smith, Isabel Allende to Denis Mukwege. Each week, their podcast offers an in-depth interview with their most exciting recent guests. The show's available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just search for How to Academy. 

For centuries, we’ve had an intuitive sense that connecting with “nature” is good for our wellbeing. But what’s the hard evidence? What exactly is “nature” anyway? Should we be wary of it being prescribed as a catch-all cure for complex problems? And what impact does nature writing itself actually have? Science writer Lucy Jones talks to Alice Bloch about her prize-winning book ‘Losing Eden’, which surveys the mass of research – from the work of Carl Jung to cutting-edge neurology, medical and social science – on why our minds need the wild.

If you want access to more fresh thinking, why not subscribe to New Humanist magazine? Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON to get a whole year's subscription for just £13.50

Hosts: Alice Bloch and Samira Shackle
Exec Producer: Alice Bloch
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music: Danosongs
Image: Gemma Brunton (photo), Ed Dingli (artwork)
 
Reading list:

Lucy Jones (2020) ‘Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild’

Richard Mabey (2005) 'The Nature Cure'

Mary-Jayne Rust (2020) 'Towards an Ecopsychotherapy'

Carl Jung, collected works.

Richard Smyth (2019) ‘In search of the "nature cure"’, New Humanist magazine. 

Alice Roberts, one of the UK’s leading public scientists, talks to Samira Shackle about what we can learn from the burial sites of the earliest Britons, as explored in her new book ‘Ancestors’. What does our prehistory – cannibalism and all - tell us about who we are? How does the way we mark death illuminate our perspective on life? And how are genetics and archaeology shaping each other today? Plus, Alice tells Samira how she came to be a humanist, and discusses the value of storytelling and science communication in our pandemic age, and beyond.

Podcast listeners can get a year's subscription to New Humanist magazine for just £13.50. Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON 

Reading list: 

Alice Roberts, ‘Ancestors: A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials’ (2021)

Alice Roberts and Andrew Copson, ‘The Little Book of Humanism: Universal Lessons on Finding Purpose, Meaning and Joy’ (2020)

David Reich ‘Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human’ (2018)

Peter Forbes ‘What Ancient DNA says about us’, New Humanist magazine (2018)

‘Digging for Britain’ presented by Alice Roberts

Alice Roberts is President of Humanists UK

Hosts: Samira Shackle and Niki Seth-Smith
Executive producer: Alice Bloch
Sound engineer: David Crackles
Music: Danosongs
Image: Photo by Dave Stevens, artwork by Ed Dingli

Polarisation is seen as a threat to democracy - and social media is seen as a cause. But what can be done? Does the blame really lie with tech alone? And what could the virtual public square look like if we dared to hit "reset" and redesigned our apps from scratch? A radical and counter-intuitive conversation between Chris Bail, head of the Polarization Lab at Duke University, and Samira Shackle, editor of New Humanist magazine, on tribalism,  extremism, and not logging off. For fans of Azeem Azhar, Jonathan Haidt, Nick Srnicek and Shoshana Zuboff.

Podcast listeners can get a year's subscription to New Humanist magazine for just £13.50. Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON

Hosts: Samira Shackle and Niki Seth-Smith
Executive producer: Alice Bloch
Sound engineer: David Crackles
Music: Danosongs

Further Reading:

"Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing" (2021) Chris Bail

www.polarizationlab.com

"Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Fringe Organizations Became Mainstream" (2014) Chris Bail

"The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" (2012), Jonathan Haidt

"The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (2018) Shoshana Zuboff

"Platform Capitalism" (2016) Nick Srnicek

"Does the Left Have a Problem with Empathy?" (2020) Nicola Cutcher, New Humanist Magazine

The poet, author and broadcaster Michael Rosen almost died of COVID-19. He talks to Samira Shackle about that experience, described in his new book ‘Many Different Kinds of Love’. They discuss the value of kindness, touch and practical atheism, and reflect on liminality in life and literature. Plus, Michael describes his anger at the “unethical and immoral” decisions made by the British government, and urges against the dangerous devaluing of some lives over others, amidst our present pandemic.

Hosts: Samira Shackle and Alice Bloch
Producer: Alice Bloch
Music: Danosongs

If you want to access more fresh thinking, why not subscribe to New Humanist magazine? Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON to get a whole year's subscription for just £13.50

Further reading:
 
“Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death and the NHS” (2021) Michael Rosen

“In A Word: Quarantine” (2020) Michael Rosen, New Humanist Magazine

“In A Word: Wellbeing” (2018), Michael Rosen, New Humanist Magazine

“In A Word: Deniers” (2021) Michael Rosen, New Humanist Magazine 

"King Lear" (c1606) William Shakespeare

“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (1916) James Joyce

“Ulysses” (1922) James Joyce

The Poetry of William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

"Alice in Wonderland" (1865) Lewis Carroll 
 

What do we gain when we gaze at the stars? How has cosmology shaped our politics? Why take the celestial seriously? And why is awe a feeling that we can’t afford to lose? Acclaimed science writer Jo Marchant takes Niki Seth-Smith on a dazzling and surprise-filled journey through the history of science, mythology and our view of the night sky. For fans of Brian Cox, Carlo Rovelli, Robert Macfarlane and Gaia Vince.

Hosts: Niki Seth-Smith and Samira Shackle
Producer: Alice Bloch
Music: Danosongs
Sound Engineer: David Crackles

To support what we do and access more fresh thinking, why not subscribe to New Humanist magazine? Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON to get a whole year's subscription for just £13.50

Further reading:

‘The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of the Stars’ (2020) Jo Marchant

‘Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body’ (2016) Jo Marchant

‘The Order of Time’ (2017) Carlo Rovelli

‘They Didn’t Come From Outer Space’ (2013) James Gray, New Humanist Magazine