James Hodgson is an entrepreneur, community organiser, podcast host, and proud father. He is the current chair of the Central London Humanists (CLH), a member group of Humanists UK & Humanists International, assuming the role in 2024 having previously been a committee member responsible for live events. James launched the Group’s Humanism Now Podcast in 2023, where he acts as the regular hosts. Professionally, James runs a software company and promotes ‘tech for good’, leveraging innovation to address social issues. He also sits in SteerCo for the Humanists in Business network under Humanists UK.
Here we talk about Humanism Now and working on a podcast.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We are here today with James Hodgson, the co-founder or founder of Humanism Now, the podcast. How did you come up with the idea of a Humanist podcast? It is niche.
James Hodgson: Well, yeah, thank you, Scott. I am happy to be here and having this chat. I was inspired by other podcasts I had heard, particularly Humanize Me, a podcast by Bart Campolo. He is an interesting character and a fantastic host based out of the US. He is a former Evangelical Christian Pastor, his dad is a very famous Christian Pastor in the US, and there is a great movie to watch about the two of them and their journey since Bart left to become a humanist and he was hosting Humanize Me. That merged with the fact that we have an active group at the Central London Humanists, of which I am on the committee. I live and work in London, and the Central London Humanists is one of the most active local branch groups within the UK that represents the charity representing nonreligious people in the UK. We were having great talks with exciting speakers; we were doing live online discussion groups that were testing kind of the edges of people’s beliefs and opinions, trying to draw out in a good faith atmosphere like “Okay, we have these set of values, but what is the best way to advocate or what do we think about these perhaps more challenging topical issues?”
It is a lively group, but like everybody and many social groups after the pandemic, we struggled for numbers and thought we were getting all this great content and discussion. It is just going off into the ether. I have been a big audiophile for a long time; I love podcasts. I listen to far too many every week, and there was probably space for another humanist podcast. I am interested that you said it is quite a niche because I thought that was why we had yet to do it sooner. After all, there are plenty of other ones out there. Humanists UK does a semi-regular series. I think there are a lot of atheist podcasts: The ThinkingAtheist, Cosmic Skeptic, and those kinds of guys. So, I thought, “Okay, there is a lot of online content about this.”
The other reason we did not do it soon was that a lot of those podcasts or series came out of fighting back against something, and we are not fighting against anything. We are trying to create community, and we are providing more information about what Humanism is for anyone who might be searching and, maybe, has heard of the term but needs more information. So, we tried it and got a great response from initial guests to interview. It is a magazine format; we discuss our members, then an interview, and then we close again with another discussion. It is never a struggle to find topics, it is never a struggle to find exciting interviews, and it is a labour of love for me. It is a fun project, and it is a lot of work, but I think we are seeing a growing audience, and what is fascinating is seeing the stats of where people are listening and that when they do listen, they tend to go back and go back through the previous episodes. So, we are in the early days, but it is exciting.
Jacobsen: When it comes to the back end of working on a podcast, where do you find the most substantial work to keep things running and to have a system in place that you can continually follow episode by episode?
Hodgson: Yeah, one of the barriers to getting into podcasting is that there is not one platform where you can record, edit, publish, host, and market. You do have to investigate quite a few SAS platforms to have. So, regarding recording, we have found a specialist platform called Boom Catcher, which works quite well for capturing both the audio and the video. What that does, different from some of the more mainstream products, is also separating the individual audio lines. So, I work with a producer; one of our other members has volunteered to do the audio production and edit the episodes together; he has got a history as an audio producer. So, he can do that. Having the individual audio lines from each speaker makes a big difference, so you do not get that annoying clash when people talk over each other or have to edit a little bit to help because there is too long a pause; it is just audio. You add the individual tracks together, and that helps.
Then, finding somewhere to host it has been straightforward, using a service called Buzzsprout, which feeds into all the main podcasting platforms like Apple, Spotify, Google, and others. And then, for planning, we use Notion; I am a huge advocate for Notion as a tool for any project or joint project management. It is adaptable and flexible for creating tasks and tracking and gathering notes on any information. The next phase for us is building the website and getting some form of Patreon or similar membership structure, but there has been a lot to learn. The key is briefing your interviews well in terms of knowing what to expect for the recording experience, but not over-briefing them so that the interview sounds too scripted and just trying to keep it as conversational as possible. So, getting good-quality audio is the main thing.
Jacobsen: Regarding the editing process, how much do you do on the audio?
Hodgson: I am not involved in the editing; it all goes to our producer, but it may take him two hours for an hour-long episode. So, you are usually looking at twice the length of the episode for time; twice as much time spent to edit than the episode eventually is.
Jacobsen: Who were your dream interviewees or participants at the start of the podcast?
Hodgson: That is a good question. I do not necessarily have a dream list. I envisage it to be a way to meet my heroes. I went to the Humanist UK Convention this year. I ended up talking to Adam Rutherford, now the current president of Humanist UK and a prominent science communicator here. He is fascinating, a brilliant presenter. I was fortunate enough to have a drink at the bar with him afterward; he was just fascinating—any key patrons like him, Alice Roberts, Jim Al Khalili. For most people in the UK, Sandi Toksvig or Stephen Fry would be a dream interview because they are prominent Humanist patrons of Humanist UK and just fascinating people. Still, I am not sure a half an hour interview could do the service there.
The late Christopher Hitchens was one of my inspirations and made me realize I need to be more publicly open and active as a humanist. Of course, he could not be our dream guest, but he was one of the inspirations for this. If I could choose anyone from history, it would be to spend an hour with Christopher Hitchens. It could have been a great time.
Jacobsen: Was it based on the strength of his oratory?
Hodgson: Yes. I had an interesting experience with him because, when I was younger, I saw him and Richard Dawkins speak. I was put off from calling myself an atheist because of the strength of their arguments and the forcefulness of their arguments. I came to it later as an adult and listened to those same debates or presentations again. I was just compelled and blown away by that. So, it is an interesting experience. I could have brought into the idea that they were too aggressive and rude to people, and then you listen to it again and go, “No, they are not being aggressive; they are pushing back, and they are using the skills available to them which is English language and as you say wit and irony and these clever tricks of language.”
I always felt with him more than the other writers or the Horsemen. He was very much advocating; I felt like he was a freedom fighter. If you look at the theme of Christopher Hitchens’ work, it had always been political and anti-authoritarian. He was very much coming at this not from science, not from some of the other angles that most humanist atheists do. The reason it was so forceful was just him saying this is oppression at every level; it is not just the fundamentalist, very hardline religions. I found that even more spiritual ideas are authoritative once I revisited God is Not Great. It is a compelling argument and made in such a great way.
I think, as we were talking before the interview about people like James Randi when you lose these people, you do wonder, with someone like Christopher Hitchens, like he was so quick and had such a great recall of anecdotes and quotes, anything just perfectly to encapsulate the argument. I worry about where the next character like him will come from, who is strong on all these topics and stays true to the cause.
Jacobsen: Do you think people like that when they are guests on shows or have this quick wit for improvised answers to respond to queries or sharp arguments from the opposite side? They were a product of a lot of their time because, in the United Kingdom, most of the population is not Christian. In his generation, it was not necessarily the case. So, more combativeness is required to push back against that. What do you think?
Hodgson: Yes, quite possibly. I heard someone say the other day that the influencer has replaced the idea of the public intellectual. So, you do not have to be quite as well-read or educated to suddenly become popular in the realm of talking about ideas, which is, in a way, good, I suppose, because I think it probably was quite an elite space that only those who had been to the right schools and then through the right university system and, maybe, had the economic freedom to focus on debate and reading who get into that space. Now, people get the clicks online, and the video views are not necessarily as widely read and informed. Usually, it is a narrow political agenda, and there are some great… I will not name names here, but there are compelling speakers online. I think that is the point. Just because someone is a compelling speaker and can form an argument does not mean that their argument is correct or that it is something to agree to.
Again, it comes back to the point of the podcast. We are a small volunteer group of professionals working in London. We have quite a range of backgrounds, but some fascinating people around London are doing some amazing things, and it is just elevating those voices. Moreover, as much as we would like to have those dream guests on, I love it when we can get on… A couple of weeks ago, we got a postgraduate student from the University of Sheffield doing the world’s first research project into apostasy-based claims in asylum systems. It is focused on the UK, but as far as we know, it has not been investigated anywhere. Moreover, the lack of understanding when it comes to asylum claims going through the home office in the UK, if someone is coming based on apostasy or blasphemy… she has not published research yet, but what she was able to share in the interview was that there is such a lack of understanding there. So elevating those voices, I think, is important in the cluttered world of online content.
Jacobsen: How much prep do you do beforehand for your interviews so that when you are ready, you can ask the interviewee questions competently?
Hodgson: I would leave it up to the listeners whether I can ask questions competently. I have set myself the goal of having done 100 interviews before assessing how good I am at it. So, this is a learning curve. We just published our 10th episode, but it is important not to over-prep the guests. Some guests will ask for a list of very precise list of questions, which I am happy to share, but I think it is important as well to allow the conversation to go where it leads and pick up on the really interesting points and maybe something unique that has not been said before. There is a risk with things like what we do in talking about Humanism, secularism, and human rights around nonreligious people. There are some obvious campaigns and some major topics. So, there is always a risk of being quite repetitive.
So, I think if someone says something that is “Okay, that is a new point. I have not heard that before,” then follow that where it leads, but I think I am always surprised by how quickly the time goes, which as well usually to me means it is a good conversation and a good interview. So, it is having two or three good jump-off points and two or three quick-fire questions to wrap up if you need to pad for time. Still, apart from that, it is going with the interviewee and not necessarily letting them get across what they want to say because you want to take them in a direction they may have yet to go themselves to uncover something new.
Jacobsen: What do you hope people take away from Humanism now, and how can they get in contact or involved or watch or listen?
Hodgson: To listen and watch, search for Humanism Now anywhere you have your podcasts. We are also going to launch the Humanism Now podcast on YouTube. We will have full episodes, clips, and just the interviews cut there. Then, we will have Humanize Live, which will be the website. I can share that with you afterwards. What I hope is that if you are active or curious, that is what we will say; if you are curious about what Humanism is, if you think you are the only person in the world who is questioning, then hopefully, this will provide some sense of community and opportunity to converse. If you are a humanist, it gives people a chance to hear from new voices, and we hope to hear from as many people as possible. We have an open mailbag open mailbag; we want to spread the word. We are looking for supporters as well. So, if anybody would like to support the cause and be involved in the conversation or add something new, we would love to hear from them.
Jacobsen: Thank you.
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Photo credit: Photo by Samuel Pollard on Unsplash.