The Beliefs Podcast, a podcast of Religious News Service, promotes itself as an exploration of ideas behind the news of religion. On June 26, 2020, the podcast released an episode featuring Susan Jacoby. This episode appears to be a follow-on to a conversation from one year ago.

Jacoby is well known for Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (Metropolitan Books, 2004) and The Age of American Unreason (Pantheon, 2008) and for her association with Center For Inquiry.

On the podcast, Jaboby discusses secularism, humanism and

atheism in context of US politics, growth of non-religiously affiliated population in the US, ignorance and other issues of the past year. Notably, Jacoby argues that politics is not a substitute for religion.

“Attributing ethical qualities on the basis on religion or non-religion, I wouldn’t do….. Some humanists are atheists and some humanists are not. Some atheists are humanists are atheist and some atheists and some, like Ayn Rand, are not. Someone who is a humanist doesn’t think the question of whether there is a god or not is very important….or whether they make decisions based on that.”