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Episode 28 - An Interview with Daniel Dacombe & Andrew Copson
109 Plays8 days ago
In today's episode, Humanist Canada's Daniel Dacombe sits down with the President of Humanist International, Andrew Copson.
They discuss current events, past accomplishments with Humanist International, and the upcoming 2026 World Humanist Congress, happening in Ottawa this year!
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, the reason we're holding it in Canada is because we didn't want to hold it in the United States. And why that? I don't know why that could be.
Podcast Introduction
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to The Voice of Canadian Humanism, the official podcast of Humanist Canada. Join us as we delve into thought-provoking discussions, explore critical issues, and celebrate the values of reason, compassion, and secularism through the humanist lens.
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation.
Meet the Guests: Daniel Dacom & Andrew Copson
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello everyone, my name is Daniel Dacom and I'm one of the hosts of the Voice of Canadian Humanism podcast. On this podcast, we like to feature the voices that are involved in leading or important to humanism in Canada and beyond. And I'm very pleased to be joined by today's guest, Andrew Copson.
00:00:57
Speaker
ah Andrew Copson is a British humanist leader, civil society activist and writer. He's the chief executive of Humanists UK, a former president and current ambassador of Humanists International, and the author of a number of books, including The Little Book of Humanism and Secularism, A Very Short Introduction. um His writing on humanist and secularist issues has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, and New Statesman, as well as in various journals. And earlier this year, he was appointed an officer of the order of the British Empire.
00:01:25
Speaker
Andrew, welcome to our humble podcast. Thank you for having me. We've been looking forward to this conversation for a little while. You and I have been having some conversations about the upcoming ah World Humanist Congress, which we'll talk about it in a few minutes.
Andrew Copson's Humanist Upbringing
00:01:41
Speaker
But I thought we'd start off by inviting you to tell us a bit about your background. That's usually what we do to start off for interviews, asking people to share about the cultural and religious environment they grew up in. So could you tell us a bit about yourself?
00:01:54
Speaker
Of course, well, I grew up in a humanist family, which is not the norm for all humanists, because, of course, since I started working in humanist organisations, I realised that many, many humanists grew up in religious families and came to their humanist worldview as a result of their own ah thinking and and and changing in in in values. But I always say that I'm much less of a free thinker than them because I obviously just swallowed all the things that I was taught when I was a child and remained remained a humanist. um So that was the the family context in which I grew up. And I think I suppose the family context that I was in was reinforced by my wider social context. I grew up in a very working class environment um in a former mining town and light industrial. area of Midlands in England, um the West Midlands, in case your listeners are familiar with that from Canada. So the closest cities to where grew up were places like Birmingham and Leicester and Coventry. and That's the sort of geographical region where i grew up. And that culture, of course, of working class culture, especially white working class culture, was very secular as well. So...
00:02:53
Speaker
You know, the the social institutions that existed in in that sort of society were not faith based in any way. They were the miners welfare and the civil schemes and the civic um authorities that existed, local councils that ran things and so on and so forth. So both my immediate family.
00:03:11
Speaker
environment and my wider social environment was very humanistic, very secular in that way. And then that all was, I suppose, in terms of formative influences on me early on, that was all reinforced by the sort of schooling that I
Educational Journey from Working-Class to Elite School
00:03:26
Speaker
experienced. So outside the family, I went to a very and a very different experience um there was a scheme in england at the time where if you passed a certain exam which your school put you in for um you would get that the state would pay for you to go to have quite an elite education ah whatever your local private school was and that's what happened to me so was plucked out of a um
00:03:52
Speaker
family where no one had been, no one in my immediate family had been to university, for example, I'm not sure many of them had gone to education after 16 either, um to go off to this very elite sort of education where my favourite subjects were things like ancient history, Latin and Greek. And so, again, a very humanistic culture in in in some respects there as well, at a completely different sort of social scale from where i from the humanist culture around. family, but again, a very humanistic culture. So I feel like they're looking back on it I always feel like they're the sort of influences that shapes me most of all.
00:04:28
Speaker
I think it's fascinating to to hear about that journey in Canada. We do have, I think our our institutions have been, you know, operated by and influenced by the the church kind of generationally. There's been things that we've talked about, like the residential school crisis and a number of other issues where the the church and government were kind of heavily involved. And many of the hospitals are still operated by or in partnership with religious groups. So our environment is a little bit different than that kind of ah secular working class that you're describing growing up. And I think it's very interesting how you you came from that working class mining town, essentially, and then wound up at ah through that program you're describing
How Background Shapes Activism
00:05:10
Speaker
at Oxford. How much did that working class background influence your later activism, do you think?
00:05:17
Speaker
Oh, I don't know, really. haven't really been very introspective about that. um I never, well, I suppose that my immediate family was political in in in the in the generic sense that at the time sort of people supported Labour, know, because that's what they supported. Apart from my great grandmother who supported the Conservatives because she thought the people with the money knew what to do. which is a different sort of working class culture from the more different things and the than the self-assertive things, but still recognisable to many people who share a background cra like mine. um That was her view. And ah so there was that element to it. I suppose I just took certain things for granted as a result of my immediate family upbringing, which is things like a certain social solidarity. i mean, a lot of that was based on
00:06:05
Speaker
ah cultural homogeneity as well, of course, which is another thing. All the English Midlands by this point was quite mixed ethnically. I mean, at my my schooling until yeah primary level um because of lots of immigration that had occurred, especially in industrial areas was relatively diverse.
00:06:22
Speaker
um ah Nonetheless, there was also cultural homogeneity, which led, I think, to a sort of assumption of solidarity, which you know Everyone is in everyone's business and sort of there's a concept of mutual support that was around. So I suppose that influenced me very much.
00:06:39
Speaker
And yeah, I think that's that's mainly the thing. i mean, I suppose um I've always cared a bit more about people who...
00:06:51
Speaker
ah are born without advantages socially than I have cared about people who are born with advantages socially. And that's obviously partly because of my own background. So that has obviously informed my future work. I suppose a sense of fairness that is rooted in, you know, this world and and immediate economic circumstances. And I've always, I suppose, when I'm looking at a a social issue or political issue, I tend to go to a socioeconomic analysis of it rather than an intellectual analysis of it. I think that's part of the results my upbringing too. Like often, you know, people will write sit back and give interesting history of ideas type approaches to how this bit of British culture came to be like it is, or this issue is informed by this. I often will think, well, you know, who's got the money and how can people get it and who's got the power and where does it sit? to Rather than thinking that it's, um you know, there's sort of material factors, I think, as background where often material things were lacking. um I think maybe i become I'm more sympathetic analytically to material explanations for things as a result rather than intellectual explanations for things. But I don't that's the first I've thought about that. So you've asked me a question that's made me think about something i've not thought about before. and But I would say that that was, broadly speaking, at least a beginning of an answer to your question. I think it was a very good one. And, um you know, it's interesting ah you describe the things that you take for granted are things like ah solidarity with your community and thinking about how money and class influences things. and You're the second guest on this podcast that that I've interviewed that ah that went to Oxford, but both of you came from very working class backgrounds. The other would be Dr. Sarah Wilkins-LaFlamme, the sociologist who grew up in in rural Quebec to a family that also didn't send a lot of people to university to hear her describe it.
00:08:40
Speaker
I actually think that now about 18% of our guests went to Oxford, which is not indicative of the, you know, general population. ah But both of you kind of described the same sort of thing that it it made you kind of appreciate um the fact that you were able to go and do this, which is a little bit out of the norm, made you appreciate some of the things that perhaps other students going there who come from that silver spoon background might not recognize. Maybe they don't notice as much the things that ah contribute to the, you know the working class, working class. maybe I wouldn't want to lean too hard on that because I think that everyone is capable of imagination and can, think about other people's situations and lives, but maybe that's true.
00:09:22
Speaker
Well, I hope you're right. I would like to see more of that ah from some of the folks that I know who grew up with a little bit more and who, when I asked them, so why did you, know, why do you think you're so successful in life? And they say, because I worked hard knowing that they, you know, ah luck and birth and ah how many generations of wealth there were in your family have a lot to do with it too. Yeah, it does have a lot to do with it, but so it is hard work.
00:09:50
Speaker
Absolutely. um You, ah i think while you were still... I you talk about working class, you know, messages. I mean, I don't think my grandparents would be very pleased to hear that people's achievements wasn't based on their hard work because they thought that working hard was very important. Absolutely.
00:10:06
Speaker
I agree. A lot i few generations of ah electricians and other engineers and farmers and such in my family well. All very hard work. Absolutely. And soldiers too, which I'm sure is true for a lot of families in ah England and Canada. Yeah.
Why Join the British Humanist Association?
00:10:22
Speaker
um You joined ah the British Humanist Association, which is now i think Humanists UK, while you were still at university. um What made you want to get involved in activism at that age?
00:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, I did join then. I mean, I was obviously aware already of of humanism and the humanist Humanist Association, as it then was, because my mum had been a member. And of course, we know I knew about the humanist approach life from my family and from my school, actually, where were taught it in the religious education syllabus. But i I signed up, you know, nailed my college to the master, as it were, in 2002 when I was at university, vicus because really what was happening then in wider politics. So this was the...
00:11:03
Speaker
time of the Blair government in ah the UK. Blair government was obviously a great government in lots of ways. Human Rights Act, Equality Act, lots of wonderful freedom of information, lots of progressive um changes that were very humanistic, you know, in their their effects and sometimes in their intention. But there's one big thing they were doing around that time that I just was completely um opposed to, which was they were increasing the number and the kind of...
00:11:32
Speaker
state funded faith schools so in about a third of our public schools so i mean the state schools are run entirely paid for by the state 100 funded by the state but they're run by religious groups churches and others right and that's a sort of historic consequence it's always been controversial um even from when it started but it started in 1944 so it's a historic consequence of how our state education system was set up And, you know, largely had the number and the number of children educated in the state religious schools was declining and the number of children educated in the state community schools, so the ones without a religious character, was increasing. And then the Blair government decided and they wanted to increase the religious component of the state school system. And I just, you know, remember thinking this just completely crazy. Not only was it
00:12:22
Speaker
the opposite of the expectation of of any person who came of age in the progressive, secular, optimistic 90s. But it was was a great time, the 1990s, as young people like us to never stop to talk telling them about. But um the it's, and so i will for the rest of my life say how wonderful the nineteen ninety s were. Not only was it a yeah a shock, a sort of destiny disrupted type moment, I thought, how can this be happening? This is not the trajectory of history that I thought ah would be going along. It was just wrong in so many ways, you know, it leads to more social division, leads to more ethnic division, leads to more um religious division, of course. And so I say against it
Career Path to Chief Executive at Humanists UK
00:12:58
Speaker
that the group that I saw speaking out about it at the time was the British Humanist Association, as then was, and so i signed up as a member.
00:13:06
Speaker
You signed up as a member and then ah began working for them. And then I think we were in 2010, you became the youngest ever chief executive they'd had.
00:13:17
Speaker
is that Is that right? That is true. Yes. So I i was ah um a succession of fortunate retirements led me to finally be able to apply for them.
00:13:27
Speaker
I started volunteering there. Then I was a research officer. Then I was a education and research and then I was the director of public affairs and education and then the chief executive retired and so I thought well I'll have a go I mean you know if I didn't get that job I was probably sort of on the way out because I was young and trying to get started in my working life and everything else and the next thing should have been a a move up not to a chief executive I didn't think but anyway I thought I'm here um give it a go so I did and so i um i was actually appointed you're right that I was the youngest when I was appointed when I was 28, unbelievably.
00:14:05
Speaker
Because it was the day before my 29th birthday in 2009. And so although although I was 29 when I became chief executive in the 1st of January in the following year, 2010, I was appointed when I was 28 the day before my 29th birthday. So definitely the youngest. I think the next youngest was a woman called Zona Valance in the eighteen ninety s who was in her 30s so um which probably was quite old actually in the 1890s i don't know i'm not sure what the relative she did she didn't live longer than her 40s so um there we go uh but uh she was the next next youngest after me um it was i mean
00:14:48
Speaker
I think the humanist movement, employment wise, at least in the UK, has a good claim to not being ageist in any way, because we've got a good, we've always had a good range of staff members from sort of the age of 21 to the age of people who come out of retirement in their early 70s to do a job. So um thankfully, I think we've always been very meritocratic in our appointments. That's what I'd like to think anyway. Of course, I were because i was appointed. So of course, it must have been meritocratic. Must have been on merit, right? Well, i I tell myself the same things much of the time. And um I know that you you were there for several years.
Role as President of Humanist International
00:15:21
Speaker
And then in 2015, I hope I have the date right, you were elected president of, well, at the time was International Humanist and Ethical Union, yes but is now Humanist International, which um is just based on my own experience
00:15:37
Speaker
you know knowledge of it, a very active organization. The Freedom of Thought Report is one that I'd been ah very curious about for a while, but there's ah there's an awful lot that Humanist International does. Do you mind telling people a bit about it? Sure, it's a huge range of work. I mean, so this was a role that I took on in parallel to my employee employed role Humanist UK. This is the, you know, an unpaid additional role. I became president of Humanist International. Humanist International is the um global umbrella body for humanist organizations in different countries, so you know over 100 organizations in a very large number of countries.
00:16:13
Speaker
And you're right that it's a lot of its work is based on advocacy and human rights. So it does produce the Freedom of Thought report. and That's probably its landmark product, really, where it surveys the legal and um policy situation for non-religious people in every country of the world in a number of different areas, from family law to education law, criminal law and so on and so forth. So it's really that's an incredible resource.
00:16:38
Speaker
And they use that, Humanist International use that. I say they now because after 15 years, I'm no longer actually directly involved. But they use that um as an advocacy tool in the places where they have Humanist International representation. So at the UN in Geneva and in New York, um at the OSC.
00:16:58
Speaker
um at the Council of Europe and the African Commission and various other international forum, multilateral forum. So there's that element to it. But Humanist International also supports humanist groups directly. So especially in the global south, I was very pleased during my time as president that um the number of humanist organisations in the global south, so Latin America, Africa, Asia, especially Southeast Asia, really expanded at an exhilarating rate.
00:17:23
Speaker
And... You know, we were able, when I first joined the Humus International Board, everyone was a white European. Right. One North American, actually. And by the time I left, there were board members from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and had been for some time. You know, they they weren't even the first. they but When I left the board, they were the successors of the first generation of the... of those people from the Global South. So I think that was really important development in the time that I was there and um was a direct consequence of that purpose that Humanist International has in addition to its global advocacy work, which was to foster and support the development of humanist organisations and humanist leaders all over the world, but especially where their own capacity in terms of financial resources lacking in the Global South, because the the Europeans will sort of be OK. You know, I mean, Europeans and North Americans, they might need support in networking together for things like...
00:18:12
Speaker
provision of services like chaplaincy or ceremonies or education in humanist international also does that brings the more um affluent humanist organizations together for those sorts of purposes but the real value added at least i thought in in the time that i was there was humanist international's role in supporting emerging new growing humanist organizations in the global south yeah when i when i was doing the some of the preparation for this interview i noted that generally all the commentary about your time at Humanist International indicated that ah you were part of the driving force for reducing the Eurocentrism of the yeah international humanist movement. And um I think that that's ah that's a very timely thing for us to start ah paying a great deal more attention to, especially as you know climate change is disproportionately impacting the
Diversifying Humanist International
00:19:04
Speaker
global south. And many economic issues are disproportionately impacting the global South. I i think it's a very um it's a very good thing that we've started to to see that and that you and those at Humanist International were ah so focused on expanding that. ah What do you think remains to be done as far as expanding representation and ensuring that ah non-European, non-Western nations are more included or play more of a role in the future of the humanist movement?
00:19:34
Speaker
Well, it was a personal priority for me. You're right. And I'm pleased if people have commented on that. I'm glad to hear it. um
00:19:44
Speaker
When you say about what lefts to be what's left when you ask about what's left to be done, I suppose it implies that one day this process might be over. And I think that's not right. I do think that um this is a constant dynamic. And for me,
00:19:59
Speaker
It was never really a priority that we must sort of, you know, nominally include people from the global south or just like include a few people by the global south. It was a priority for me that we should be inclusive on the basis of our entire global movement. Right. the sort of reforms that I encourage the General Assembly to pass, which they did pass, were really structural. So they were about guaranteeing that.
00:20:22
Speaker
um the the formal structures of Humans International would always include people from those different regions. You you can't say you're a global human unless you're drawing drawing your leadership on a diverse basis, diverse across the world, because that's the nature of a global human. And I think then the perspectives follow. I mean, I'm always a little bit, you know, that when you when you set off down a road like this, you've got to be aware of lots of things. one of the things you've got to be aware of is tokenism. I mean, there's no point of being tokenistic about these things and say, well, here's someone from Africa, here's someone from Asia, here's someone from Latin America, you know, job done, everyone's now in the room. And so, but, but, but an important part of that nonetheless is getting everyone in the room. And one of the ways tried that was, was structural. um
00:21:05
Speaker
I'm a bit of an institutional thinker in that sense. That's the way I tend to solve problems rightly or wrongly, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, I guess. So a lot of structural work I did do. I think also a lot of cultural work. I mean, there was...
00:21:20
Speaker
I think actually you you you you sort of ask about Western nations as if they want category there. I think that's some ways they are. But actually, I think that British and North American organizations are often much more keen on global diversity than some other European organizations, to name those specific names. And whether that's because we tend to be, um our cultures are a bit more globally informed or because of the history of empire or of even before empire of travel and trade and um cosmopolitanism to put a positive spin on on the on the history of it, of course, negative spin as well in terms of empire, but more cosmopolitan societies.
00:22:02
Speaker
I think that there is a a natural tendency to want to be inclusive and a specific sort of inclusion that says, well, I'm just going to, you know, treat everyone as a humanist rather than to right ah say, or this person might know a bit more about this because they're from a European background and the Europeans know more about what's what and what's money. So I think it was a firstly a structural a series of structural changes to make sure there was adequate diversity. And then secondly, hopefully a cultural change that just met everyone um on ah on an even basis.
00:22:34
Speaker
a field as a humanist from a humanist organization. That was what any way the culture informed it. Because I never wanted, I never was like, oh, right, you know, let's um ah increase ah diversity in some sort of tokenistic way. I wanted to write something that people actually didn't experience in that way, but just thought, good well, here is someone who's got experience of so you know of human rights campaigning in Nigeria. They might have a lot to teach them about how I can do that in the Netherlands.
00:23:00
Speaker
Right. Right. It's not sort of like, oh, let me reach out to you, African humanist, and to bring you in, um as if that's a sort of privilege to be granted. Right. It's a connection to make peer-to-peer, in my view. And that was what was missing, I think, from a lot of the way we did business. And that was what I tried to introduce. I tried to model it myself to my own behavior, but I also tried to encourage others to behave that way.
00:23:22
Speaker
Mm-hmm. What I'm hearing in your response is, um so you've emphasized like a lack of tokenism, like you're actually, you don't you don't just want to tick a box somewhere on ah on a sheet to say you've got the the right and a number of people from a certain country.
00:23:36
Speaker
It sounds like the the intent was to actually include perspectives that were different, to actually listen and to ah respect and to learn from people who might have different things to say than we've been hearing already, which I think is incredibly valuable and something that here in Canada in the public health sector where I'm working, we often want to include Indigenous perspectives in what we're doing. But the shift in recent years has been away from, you know, let's just make sure that there's an Indigenous person on the committee to ah what
00:24:08
Speaker
are the things that the indigenous communities we're working with want us to learn and what do they want to learn and how can we actually in some cases step back and let them be ah be the leaders that we follow because that's something that we have a I think a responsibility to do in the you know in the aftermath of colonialism we run the risk of you know trying to swoop in with more solutions that are all of our own origin. Whereas here in Canada, the indigenous communities have had some incredibly compelling and ah innovative suggestions for how to do things differently, both in public health and beyond. So i think it's I think it's fantastic that that's the direction Humanist International has been going. And speaking of the kind of global movement, in 2026, there's the ah World Humanist Congress happening here in Canada,
World Humanist Congress in Canada
00:25:01
Speaker
actually. yeah
00:25:02
Speaker
I know we are running a little low on time, ah but do you mind telling people a little bit about what the Congress is and and why we're holding it in Canada this year? Absolutely. Well, the reason we're holding in Canada is because we didn't want to hold it in the United States. And why that? i don't know why that could be.
00:25:21
Speaker
It was originally scheduled for Washington DC in 2026. So maybe we'll say something so about what it is. So the world hum moves around the world as the name implies. Last year we were in Luxembourg, the year before in Singapore, and we've been in... um ah every continent actually in different years. And it's the opportunity for the global movement to come together, but it's also an opportunity for the host country to learn from their fellow humanists from everywhere else. And so we were heading to Washington, DC in 26 in an event that was going to be organized by the American atheists, the American humanist, association and then of course a pretty disastrous thing happened which was the election of the current american ah regime and this caused a lot of problems for us firstly we simply didn't believe that many of our delegates would be able to gain access to the country in order to attend a congress um we've been talking about humans from the global south um we you know
00:26:20
Speaker
I say we because I was then a decision maker, obviously, in Humanist International at this question. We didn't think that that was a very plausible outcome that they would all be able to get in with no problem to to DC. Yeah. We also were aware that the current American regime itself was quite an is quite anti-humanist. Congressional Republicans caused a lot of problems for humanists under the last administration, even then, um satiously subpoenaing members of humanist international staff, raising completely...
00:26:51
Speaker
um groundless accusations against humanist international of promoting atheism with american public money and so on and so forth which was completely baseless and uh in general with their christian nationalist agenda have used humanist values and humanists as a whipping boy for um uh the ills of America as they perceive it, which are really, of course, good things like liberal democracy, human rights, the rule of law and human progress, but they don't like that. So there was that element to it as well. Would ah would our humanists be safe, feel welcome or want to be in DC? And when you've got a newly elected liberal government just over the border, um which is playing its part in bringing some sort of light and hope and optimism to the world, um there was a no-brainer about jumping over the border into the arms of our canadian brethren and so that's what we decided to do and i think it was the bet you know it was the make lots of decisions at humans international which people barely noticed but this was so popular people were liking it and replying to it and saying this is great and email after email and response after response online on different social media showed that our global community really thought this was the right decision. And so we're back in Canada.
00:28:06
Speaker
we We haven't been in Canada since we were in my at Montreal. um When would that have been? 2012. So we're in Canada for the first time in 14 years and very much looking forward to it. And I think the theme of the Congress, which is humanism as resistance,
00:28:24
Speaker
It couldn't be more timely, both for all the reasons we've just discussed in relation to the current situation in the United States, but also our general global picture, which, of course, though we must never allow our hope to be dimmed, is not as we would wish it to be in terms of the global um status of human rights, democracy and science and human progress. So I think it will be a very timely Congress with a very appropriate theme in the best of locations, don't you think?
00:28:53
Speaker
I agree. I'm hoping to be there. i'm hoping to meet you in person when it happens. um And I think that the the theme that's been decided is a really is a really astute one and really timely, like you said. We're glad to be hosting you. um The current government here in Canada seems pretty supportive of the kinds of values we're doing now. Admittedly, Canada has a bit of a Poland and the late 1930s vibe to it right now with everything happening outside the border. We're... We're, you know, we're crossing our fingers and we're hoping for we're hoping for better futures. But I'm when we talk about, you know, not letting our light be dimmed and not not losing hope and and staying, ah you know, staying the course. I'm reminded of a.
00:29:37
Speaker
of a quote from Star Trek when, which I know you and I are both fans. Absolutely. Yes. love Live long and prosper. it long ah There's that episode, the drum head, which you are probably familiar. Yes. i I just watched it with my teenagers to kind of give a bit of an illustration of what's happening in the world today. it's And if you want people over there, haven't seen it, they should just go watch it. But there's ah a bit at the end where Captain Picard is talking to others on his crew and um this says just how close we are sometimes from slipping back from this wonderful you know humanist future that Star Trek exhibits into ah into the prejudices of the past. and And he says, eternal vigilance is the price we must continually pay for the future that we have. And that's something that ah that this Congress is making me think about, that the the work that Humanist International and Humanist Canada and our partner organizations around the world is making me think about and and happy to be a part of and happy to throw my weight behind, as I know you have been ah for for many years.
00:30:42
Speaker
um I know we're we're a little over our time now, so I thought I'd... ah I just ask if if you could summarize in just one sentence where you would like the humanist movement to be in a decade, ah what would that sentence be?
00:30:59
Speaker
Out in front. Out in front. I think that the moment now is for the humanist movement to lead our values and the that this age needs. So yeah, the humanist movement should be out in front.
00:31:11
Speaker
Great. I like that. i think we should put that on some T-shirts. um So, ah Andrew, I can't tell you how lovely it has been to chat with you again. um i hope that we can get you back on again. We can just talk about Star Trek. Well, I think that's wonderful. I mean, the drumhead, the episode that you mentioned, was that is actually used in a part of London, one of the educational authorities in London, in all schools to teach about humanism in the religious education classes.
00:31:35
Speaker
really yeah it's on the curriculum it's on the curriculum in Ealing or at least it used to be i mean it might have changed now but it it certainly was um oh that's lovely that's been uh very good well I look forward to seeing you at the the congress and all of your listeners too but you know what you said um just before we started the recording that one of the things you asked all your guests was what their favorite book and favorite band was and so I've been yes i'm i'm right I've got that right here on my screen oh I see i closing question I'm not I'm not gonna forget because I need i need my reading list to expand so Andrew What is one book and one band that you would recommend for our listeners?
Cultural Recommendations by Copson
00:32:09
Speaker
I recommend a long book to you okay because partly it's by a novelist from my own hometown of Nuneaton and partly because it's she's one of the greatest humanist novelists in history um and and and also because it is the greatest novel ever written in English, which is Middlemarch by George Eliot.
00:32:25
Speaker
um And it is the great humanist novel. OK, Middlemarch by George Eliot, you Middlemarch by George Eliot. She's a wonderful writer. and you'll enjoy that.
00:32:36
Speaker
And then band, I don't know, you know, I'm listening recently a lot to, um because so as I said, I came of age in the 90s. So recently I've been re-listening to a lot of 90s music because I found that such an optimistic time. And today I need to somehow recall and remember and revive the optimism of my late teen years. So I've been doing lots of 90s music recently. I suppose um most blur, I've been listening to lots of blur.
00:33:03
Speaker
Blur, okay. Big fan of Blur. And you know, Blur, lots of their 90s songs are a bit dystopian. And you know they sort of sing about this world where, oh, it's going to be terrible in the future because we're just going to want to just eat and drink and stay at home and be happy.
00:33:20
Speaker
um And I thought, wow, if that was our idea of dystopia in the 1980s. And now look. Yeah, now look. but You and I are just about of an age, I think. We're both a couple of years of each other. And um i grew up listening to a lot of the same music. and reading a lot same books and watching the same, obviously television shows. obviously ah But I do think it is, um it is good to kind of revisit the things that give us comfort these days. And, um and just pursuing that, just whatever ridiculous joy you can find in your life, just grab onto it and agree and keep it going. And I have strong hope for the work that the you're doing, that we're all doing out in front. Sounds like a great,
00:34:04
Speaker
a great rallying cry. And I hope that all the folks out there of goodwill that we want to work with in whatever organizations or religions or wherever they happen to be can can get ah in this with us because we're all in this together.
00:34:19
Speaker
You know, we're we're on one planet. We don't actually have the Starship Enterprise to take us anywhere else. So we might as well make the best of it while we're here. Andrew, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. Thank you very much.
00:34:33
Speaker
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00:34:52
Speaker
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