Dr. Leigh Eric Schmidt is the Edward C. Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. He joined the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics in 2011. He previously taught at Harvard and Princeton. He has appeared in and on all kinds of media to talk about his work and he’s the author of several books. His latest is Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation.

We spoke with Leigh about whether we were ever a “Christian nation,” why the “New Atheists” really aren’t new at all, what we can learn from a cartoonist who lived a century ago.

In another life, Frank Schaeffer would probably be an evangelical leader and someone with a powerful position in conservative politics. His father was the influential Christian theologian Francis Schaeffer and Frank himself, along with his father, helped create the modern Religious Right.

Frank is the author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back and, more recently, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God.

We spoke about his role in creating the Religious Right, why evangelicals are flocking to Donald Trump when he shares almost none of their values, and what he would say to anyone who might vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein.

Notes:

Frank was the subject of a New York Times profile and also did a powerful interview with Rachel Maddow

You can see the documentary Let Me Be FRANK right here.

Dr. Karen Garst is the former executive director of the Oregon Community College Association and Oregon State Bar. She writes at the website Faithless Feminist, and she’s the editor of a new book called Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life Without Religion.

We spoke about how women are uniquely affected in a negative way by religion, what’s stopping more women from leaving their faith, and why we don’t see more women celebrated as atheists.

Britt Marie Hermes is a former naturopathic doctor who now speaks out about the pseudoscientific ideology.

Hermes is currently obtaining her Master of Science degree at the University of Kiel. Since her departure from her previous career, she has been working to understand her former biases within naturopathic medicine. She hopes her stories will protect patients from the false beliefs and bogus treatments sold by alternative medicine practitioners.

We spoke about how she went from studying naturopathic medicine to fighting against it, what caused her to change her mind, and what she would say to patients who reject western medicine.

Notes:

Be sure to check out her petition: “Naturopaths are not doctors: stop legitimizing pseudoscience.”