This episode was recorded at The Cultures of Unbelief Conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in May 2019. The conference marked the end of the major Understanding Unbelief research programme run by the University of Kent and partners over three years involving 22 projects globally. The conference also marked fifty years since another conference convened by the Vatican, called The Culture of Unbelief which was the first academic conference on atheism.
The guests are Will Gervais and Penny Edgell. Will Gervais is an evolutionary and cultural psychologist, who is interested in why people believe what they believe about the world, and what this means for them psychologically. Penny Edgell is a cultural sociologist with an interest in the growth of the non-religious in America.