Hello and welcome to Quick Fix, how-to's Slate Plus episode. In this week's main segment,

we talked to the listener who was trying to figure out whether she should quit her dream job.

But we also found that the expert, Vanessa Zoltan, was particularly fascinating because she's

an atheist chaplain. And we wanted to know more about that.

What does that mean?

How does one decide to do that?

And what about all the atheists who hate religion?

So here is my convo with Vanessa Zoltan, where she answers all of these questions and more.

I was a teacher.

I was a high school teacher. And at some point, I was like, oh, we know how to

fix education in this country. We just don't want to. I was like, we just like don't want

poor black and brown children to learn in this country. And that seemed to me like a soul problem

and not like a logistical education problem.

I was like, there's something deeply broken in us as Americans that, and I think it's globally true, that we just like don't see humanity across difference.

And I was really sort of heartbroken by that. So I found myself at

divinity school because I was like, I want to understand this soul problem. I did not notice

that it was weird that I wanted to go to divinity schools and atheists until I was there.

Is that because, wait, I went back up there. Is that because you thought there would be more

people that were there for primarily

intellectual reasons, maybe even spiritual reasons?

And you were surprised by the number of people that were there for like motivated by actual

religious affiliation.

...