With Reason

In the last two decades, the UK has deported thousands of people to Jamaica, many of whom left that country as children and grew up in the UK. Luke de Noronha talks to Alice Bloch about his moving and urgent study of four such young men. How have racism and inequality shaped their lives? What hope remains? And why does language matter when we talk about ‘foreign criminals’? A conversation about borders and exclusion, citizenship and listening. For readers of Paul Gilroy, Gary Younge, Amelia Gentleman, Les Back and Reni Eddo-Lodge.

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

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:
 
‘Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica (2020) Luke de Noronha

‘The Windrush Betrayal’ (2019) Amelia Gentleman

‘Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ (2017) Reni Eddo-Lodge

‘Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands’ (2017) Stuart Hall, with Bill Schwarz

‘Rethinking Racial Capitalism’ (2018) Gargi Bhattacharyya

‘Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control’ (2013) Bridget Anderson

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

‘Teaching Racial Tolerance’ (1972) Research Report, New Humanist Magazine

What’s the relationship between people’s personal faith and their political activism? What extra dimension does religion bring to social movements and to contemporary cities? How might being a person of faith shape one’s attitude to environmentalism and to caring for life beyond the self? Moving way beyond the stereotypes of the peace-loving Quaker and the evangelical conservative Christian, Alice Bloch talks to Sydney-based sociologist Rosie Hancock about the fascinating intersection of religious belief and political action.

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

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

Further reading:
‘Islamic Environmentalism: Activism in the United States and Great Britain’ (2018), Rosemary Hancock

‘Religion in Coalition: Balancing Moderate and Progressive Politics in the Sydney Alliance’ (2019), Religions, Rosemary Hancock

‘Is there a paradox of religion and liberation? Islamic environmentalism, activism, and religious practice’ Journal for the Academic Study of Religion (2015) Rosemary Hancock

People, Power, and Change: Movements of Social Transformation (1970) Luther Gerlach and Virginia Hine 

On Social Control and Collective Behaviour (1967) Robert Park 

‘Ecological Humanism’ (1979) Don Marietta, New Humanist Magazine

In the era of #MeToo, it’s assumed that the empowered woman can and must express her desires clearly. But in ‘Tomorrow Sex Will be Good Again’, Katherine Angel argues that this an unreasonable burden to place upon women. She explains why to Niki Seth-Smith, as the two of them discuss questions such as: How do we make sex good again, while attending to power and violence? What's at risk in speaking out about sex? And how can we really research our innermost wants and desires? 

A discussion about sex and pleasure, feminism and consent. For readers of Susie Orbach, Vanessa Springora, Emilie Witt and Michel Foucault. 

Hosts: Niki Seth-Smith and Samira Shackle
Producer: Alice Bloch
Music: Danosongs
Photo: Matthew Sperling

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:

'Tomorrow, Sex Will Be Good Again: Women And Desire In The Age of Consent' (2021) Katherine Angel

'Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult To Tell' (2012) Katherine Angel 

'What do Women Want: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire' (2013) Daniel Bergner

'The History of Sexuality: 1: The Will to Knowledge' (1976, 1978) Michel Foucault

‘The Female Sexual Response: A Different Model’ (2000),  Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, Rosemary Basson

‘Reconceptualising women’s sexual desire and arousal in DSM-5’ (2015),
Psychology & Sexuality,  Cynthia Graham

'Untrue: why nearly everything we believe about women and lust and infidelity is untrue and how the new science can set us free', (2018) Wednesday Martin

‘Why I'm Glad My Daughter Had Under-age Sex’ (2004), New Humanist Magazine, Sally Feldman 

Looking back in anger at ‘Cool Britannia’ with Jason Arday 

The 1990s are remembered for Britpop and New Labour. But it was also a time of inequality and racism. Sociologist and Oasis fan Jason Arday draws on his South London teenage years to interrogate the period from an ethnic minority perspective that has for too long been neglected.

A discussion about music and identity, inclusion and exclusion, racism and resistance. For readers of Reni Eddo-Lodge, Robin DiAngelo - and Oasis fans, too.

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

Presenters: Samira  Shackle & Alice Bloch
Producer: Alice Bloch
Music by Danosongs

Reading/Listening List: 

• Jason Arday (2019) 'Cool Britannia and Multi-Ethnic Britain: Uncorking the Champagne Supernova'
• Jason Arday & Heidi Mirza (2018) 'Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy'
• bell hooks (2004) 'We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity'
• Kimberle Crenshaw (2017) 'On Intersectionality : Essential Writings'
• Skin (2020) It Takes Blood and Guts
• Oasis (1994) Definitely Maybe
• Lauryn Hill (1998) The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 
• Bloc Party (2005) Silent Alarm

The co-author of ‘Work Want Work: Labour and Desire at the End of Capitalism’ on how the logic of work has crept into all we do, and how we might untangle ourselves. Will the Covid-19 pandemic offer a way out? Or will it simply increase the twin blights of under- and over-employment – not to mention our addiction to digital labour online?

For readers of David Graeber, Donna Haraway, Aaron Bastani, Paul Mason and David Frayne.

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.

Presenters: Samira Shackle & Niki Seth-Smith
Producer: Alice Bloch
Music by Danosongs

Reading List:

• Mareile Pfannebecker and James A. Smith (2020) 'Work Want Work: Labour and Desire at the End of Capitalism'
• David Graeber (2018) 'Bullshit Jobs'
• Aaron Bastani (2019) 'Fully Automated Luxury Capitalism'
• Paul Mason (2019) 'Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being'
• Tiqqun (1999/2012) 'Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl'
• Donna Haraway (1985) 'A Cyborg Manifesto'
• Sophie Lewis (2019) 'Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family'
• New Humanist magazine (2019) 'Fighting for the Future' by Niki Seth-Smith

Why do we value some forms of knowledge over others? Minna Salami discusses her bold new book ‘Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone’ and its radical call to move beyond the damaging confines of the ‘euro-patriarchal’ to embrace a deeper way of knowing.

A conversation on decolonisation, iconoclasm, sisterhood, sexism and gender. For readers of Audre Lorde, bell hooks, James Baldwin and W E B Du Bois.

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.

Presenters: Alice Bloch & Samira Shackle
Producer: Alice Bloch
Music by Danosongs

Further reading:
-  Minna Salami (2020) ‘Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone’
- Audre Lorde (1984) ‘The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House’
- Audre Lorde (1979) ‘An Open Letter to Mary Daly’
- Mary Daly (1978) ‘Gyn/Ecology’
- W E B Du Bois (1903) ‘The Souls of Black Folk’
- James Baldwin (1956) ‘Giovanni’s Room’
- Nikesh Shukla (ed) (2016) ‘The Good Immigrant’
- New Humanist magazine (2020) - Charting Black Lives in the Fin de Siecle, by Lola Okolosie

Society praises those who give, but the ‘good glow’ benefits the giver. Sociologist Jon Dean unpicks how charity operates in the real world, from the wave of Covid-19 volunteering to the new fear of ‘humblebrag’. Can effective altruism help us out of this tangled mess?

For those interested in charity, philanthropy and how to be truly virtuous. Featuring reflection on the Poppy Appeal, the NHS, Donald Trump and more.

If you like listening to With Reason, you'll love reading New Humanist magazine. There's a big discount for podcast listeners: head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON to get a year's subscription for just £13.50.

Presenters: Niki Seth-Smith & Samira Shackle
Producer: Alice Bloch
Music by Danosongs

Further reading:
Jon Dean (2020) ‘The Good Glow: Charity and the Symbolic Power of Doing Good’
David A. Fahrenthold ‘Trump boasts about his philanthropy. But his giving falls short of his words’, Washington Post,  October 29, 2016.
Anand Giridharadas (2018) ‘Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World’
William MacAskill (2015) ‘Doing Good Better’
Peter Singer (2015) ‘The Most Good You Can Do’
New Humanist magazine (1972) - 'Charities and the Pious Fraud', by Jeremy Sandford

Will future sex tech be more inclusive? What’s at stake in the design and distribution of sex robots? And what role could they play in our relationships? Kate Devlin, author of ‘Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots’, discusses her research on technology and intimacy.
 
For fans of Blade Runner, Black Mirror, Ex Machina and anyone curious about the future of artificial intelligence, sex, love, feminism and relationships. 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.

Presenters: Niki Seth-Smith and Samira Shackle
Producer: Alice Bloch

Further reading:
Kate Devlin (2018) ‘Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots’
Julie Carpenter (2016). Deus Sex Machina: Loving robot sex workers, and the allure of an insincere kiss. In John Danaher & Neil McArthur (eds) (2017) ‘Sex Robots: Social, Legal and Ethical Implications’
New Humanist Magazine - Will Wiles (2016) ‘Dawn of the Replicants’

Music by Danosongs

Anthropologist Joe Webster discusses his research amongst Protestant groups in Scotland, from Brethren fishermen to the sometimes-controversial Orange Order. We talk about apocalypse and conspiracy, faith and fraternity, hate and masculinity – and why it's vital to listen to others, even if we don’t always like what we find.
 
For fans of Louis Theroux and Clifford Geertz alike. A conversation on ethics and representation, listening, community and more.  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

Presenters: Alice Bloch & Samira Shackle
Producer: Alice Bloch 

Further reading:
Joseph Webster (2020) ‘The Religion of Orange Politics: Protestantism and Fraternity in Contemporary Scotland’
Joseph Webster (2013) ‘The Anthropology of Protestantism: Faith and Crisis Among Scottish Fishermen’
Clifford Geertz, "Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti-Relativism." American Anthropologist, New Series, 86, no. 2 (1984): 263-78.
James Laidlaw (2013) ‘The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom’
New Humanist magazine - Eleanor Gordon-Smith (2019) ‘The Sleep of Reason’

Music: 'Lost in the Cinema' by Danosongs

With Reason offers intelligent thinking for turbulent times, from New Humanist magazine and the Rationalist Association. Enjoy interviews with writers, researchers and academics who speak to our age – on subjects including religion, belief, race, politics, sex, technology, science, work and more. 

Hosted by New Humanist editor Samira Shackle, deputy editor Niki Seth-Smith, and series producer Alice Bloch.