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forward slash Cosmic Skeptic. Oh, So welcome back everybody to the Cosmic Skeptic podcast for a time the

number two philosophy podcast in the United Kingdom and I'd like to remind you again that the reason for that is because of your ratings on iTunes

so if you wouldn't mind going over there and only take a second

get us to climb those accolades once again.

These podcasts are an opportunity to have more long-form

conversations than usual and usually with interesting guests and joining me

today in the studio is Andrew Copson who is the chief executive of Humanists UK, as well as the author of secularism,

politics, religion and freedom, a book I'm currently holding in my hands and hoping to discuss today.

So thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, so it's going to be fun. I'm not sure how familiar people who are listening will be with

secularism. Everybody I think has heard of the concept and they probably see it as a virtue, at least my audience does.

But I think a lot of people fail to understand the actual nature of what it is and how it relates to other concepts like humanism and

liberalism, which are other views that often kind of come out with it.

You know, they kind of come as a package.

Is sexualism something that you identify with?

I don't think it's a matter of personal identity.

I mean the sort of secularism I'm talking about in the book and the way in which the word is mostly used in UK English, which is a bit different from US English and internationally,

is to describe a certain approach to politics, a certain approach to the ordering of the affairs of nations or communities or states.

So being an approach to how we order our political life,

...