The Science & Belief in Society Podcast

In this episode, we welcome Dr Alexander Hall, who discusses his research into the popular media representation of science and religion in the 20thcentury. He introduces us to ways of presenting science which became common on television and radio over the second half of the 20th century, which he calls the ‘evolutionary epic’ and the ‘humanist blockbuster’: grand, sweeping stories about nature and evolution, that takes us from the earliest moments of creation to now, and which in many ways echo religious creation myths. Alex will help us trace the history and development of these ways of presenting science, through influential figures such as David Attenborough, Julian Huxley, and the archetypal work of Jacob Bronowski, to help us understand where this kind of storytelling style comes from, and why it’s so common in Science and Nature TV. Alex will also tell us why it’s so important to investigate media presentations of Science and Religion if we want to understand the relationship between science and belief in society – and as a bonus he’ll also recommend his favourite science and religion TV and radio programmes!

The Pew Research Centre is a fact tank which focuses on issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. They study U.S. politics and policy; journalism and media; internet, science and technology; religion and public life; global attitudes and trends; and U.S. social and demographic trends. To carry out such research, the team at Pew Research Centre conduct public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. You can read more about Pew Research Centre on their website. In this episode, we speak to Drs Cary Funk and Courtney Johnson. Cary is the director of science and society research at Pew Research Centre, where she leads the Centre’s efforts to understand the implications of science for society.  She has authored or co-authored a number of reports focused on public trust in science, scientific experts and science news and information. Dr Courtney Johnson is a research associate at Pew Research Centre whose work focuses on interrelation between science and society. Cary and Courtney discuss some of the research conducted by Pew into public perceptions of the relationship between science and religion, and in particular, on beliefs about evolution. Focusing on the methodological approach taken at Pew, our guests reflect on the importance of survey design and how the way in which questions are asked can impact the data generated.

In this episode, Dr Renny Thomas introduces his research on science and religion in India. Renny explains how his ethnographic work in Indian laboratories allowed him to explore belief systems among Indian scientists. He discusses some of the challenges of ethnographic research in scientific settings, from gaining access to negotiating insider/outsider status in the field. Renny’s work challenges orientalist assumptions and helps us to move beyond science and religion literature dominated by Western perspectives by examining the science-religion relationship in spaces and places that have been previously overlooked. In considering the experience of Indian scientists, Renny rethinks what atheism(s) mean in such contexts, how we think of culture in relation to religion and the key role Science and Technology Studies (STS) can play in investigating science and religion. Dr Renny Thomas is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi (India). Renny received his PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and was the 2017-2018 Charles Wallace Fellowship in Social Anthropology at Queen’s University, Belfast, UK. 

Our guest for this latest instalment of the Science & Belief in Society Podcast is Dr. Kimberly Rios, Associate Professor at Ohio University, whose research explores the relationship between science, religion and identity from a social psychological perspective. In this episode, Kim talks about how our perception of things as seemingly fixed as the length of a straight line are shaped by group pressures, discusses the differential impacts membership of majority and minority social groups have on our identity and the potential for us to ‘choke’ under pressure, and even introduces us to her dog Jimmy!

Recently, we caught up with Dr Tom Aechtner, Senior Lecturer in Religion and Science at the University of Queensland, to record an episode for the Science & Belief in Society podcast series. That episode, on Tom’s work around persuasion tactics in science and religion mass media communication, will be launched in Summer 2021. Tom has also been researching vaccination scepticism and anti-vaccination movements and media. Given that this is such timely work in the winter of 2020, James, Rachael and Will also discussed this with Tom, and we are sharing this discussion with the network now as a separate Science & Belief in Society Podcast: COVID, Conspiracies & Vaccines Special.

In this episode, we talk with Dr Shiri Noy about the value of quantitative and qualitative methods in understanding public attitudes to science and religion in the US; how theoretical insights from political and cultural sociology help to better make sense of this relationship, and, for reasons that will become clear, we also talk quite a lot about Battenberg cake. Dr Shiri Noy is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at Denison University, Ohio. Her research interests are in political culture, globalization, and development.

In this episode, Professor Fern Elsdon-Baker introduces the Network and explains the importance of multi-disciplinary and international research into science and belief. Professor Fern Elsdon-Baker is the Director for the International Research Network for the Study of Science and Belief in Society and the Principal Investigator on the Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum of Global Perspectives project. She is a Professor in Science, Knowledge and Belief in Society and is the Director of the Science, Knowledge and Belief in Society Research Group at the University of Birmingham.

Trailer for the Science and Belief in Society Podcast.