Noelle George is a secular activist interested in making a tangible difference in the world, rather than simply arguing about religion behind a keyboard. She founded the SECULAR Center in Houston and is the Director of Special Projects for Foundation Beyond Belief (a group I work with). But her latest endeavor is aimed at helping those people who most need it.

It’s called Secular Avenue. The group will assist those who are unsafe at home because they are no longer religious, living under religious extremism, victims of domestic abuse, or coming out as LGBTQ. Secular Avenue will offer those people financial help, counseling, and legal assistance, among other things.

We spoke with Noelle about how people in need can get help, what we can do to pitch in, and why it’s so important for atheists to find a way to volunteer.

Check out our longer interview with Noelle and please consider making a donation to her organization.

Katherine Stewart is an investigative journalist who has written for Rolling Stone, The Nation, The New York Times, and the Guardian. She may be best known as the author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, about an organization bringing religious fundamentalism to elementary schools across the country.

She recently published a piece in The Nation about the movement to put a church in every public school.

We spoke with her about the evil genius behind the “4/14 Window,” whether a “Better News Club” for children of atheist parents is a good idea, and how writing about religious fundamentalism is like going back to a bad boyfriend.

David Niose has been the president of two major organizations, the American Humanist Association and the Secular Coalition for America. He currently serves as the AHA’s legal director. He’s also a lawyer who has argued in front of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court about why the Pledge of Allegiance shouldn’t be recited in public school classrooms. And he’s the author of the fantastic book Nonbeliever Nation. His latest book is called Fighting Back the Right: Reclaiming America from the Attack on Reason.

We spoke with David about how we can convince unreasonable people to embrace reason, why the election of President George W. Bush was a turning point for organized secularism in America, and which atheist ad campaigns are the most effective.

Parisa Tabriz is Google’s self-described “Security Princess,” a euphemism she created in part because “hired hacker” sounds kind of evil. Her job is to figure out the problems with Google Chrome and fix them before the bad guys do. That’s a pretty amazing job for anyone, much less a 31-year-old woman, which isn’t exactly the norm in the tech world. Last July, Elle magazine ran a long profile on her.

(Full disclosure: I knew Parisa in high school and we had classes together, though we haven’t talked much since graduating.)

We spoke with Parisa about how she gets into the mind of a hacker, how we can get more women into this field, and how ignorance really isn’t bliss in her world.