Humanists UK has launched Unholy Histories, a new podcast series uncovering the hidden history of the people, movements, and ideas that shaped humanism, secularism, and British society.

Hosted by Chief Executive Andrew Copson and Humanist Heritage Manager Madeleine Goodall, the podcast features expert guests each week and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, and all major podcast platforms.

The first episode, Heroines of Freethought, is out now, and takes its title from an 1876 collection by writer Sarah Underwood, who celebrated eleven women who defied religious and social convention – and who noted that the word ‘freethinker’ had long implied a particular censure when applied to a woman. Joining Andrew and Madeleine to explore that history are historian and author Nan Sloane (Uncontrollable Women) and Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and editor of Women Without Superstition.

Together, the four discuss the extraordinary and largely forgotten women who helped build the modern humanist and freethought movements – and who paid a heavy price for doing so. Among those highlighted are Frances Wright, the Scottish-born writer who became the first woman to lecture to mixed-gender audiences in the United States; Ernestine Rose, who lobbied for married women’s property rights in 1830s New York; and Emma Martin, whose public lectures challenging biblical authority drew both acclaim and fierce backlash. The episode also covers Jane and Mary Ann Carlile, who took over a radical London bookshop after Jane’s husband was imprisoned for blasphemy – and were themselves imprisoned in turn.

A recurring theme is the double burden these women carried: facing hostility not only as freethinkers, but specifically as women who had arrived at their views independently. The outrage directed at them often stemmed less from the opinions they held than from the fact that they had formed those opinions themselves, rather than deferring to fathers or husbands. Many were denounced in the press with colourful contempt, their reputations attacked and their legacies later quietly erased – even in the obituaries of women who had given decades of service to humanist organisations, their freethought was omitted in death as it had been suppressed in life.

The episode also asks why these women remain so little known today – and makes a case for their continuing relevance, at a time when the battles they fought, over reproductive rights, marriage reform, freedom of conscience, and the role of religion in public life, are far from settled.

The episode is available now on all major podcast platforms. New audio episodes of Unholy Histories arrive every Wednesday, followed by video versions on the Humanists UK YouTube channel every Thursday.