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Dan McClennan interview
Interview – Dr Dan McClellan on the Hebrew Bible

Interview – Dr Dan McClellan on the Hebrew Bible

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My guest today is Dr Dan McClellan. Dan is the presenter of the Data over Dogma podcast and a public educator who has won the Society of Biblical Literature’s 2023 Richards Award for Public Scholarship for his YouTube and TikTok videos on the academic study of the Bible. He is also the author of The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues (2025). Dan holds a Masters in Jewish Studies from Oxford and did…

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Tom Schmidt
Interview – Dr Thomas C. Schmidt on Josephus’ Testimonium

Interview – Dr Thomas C. Schmidt on Josephus’ Testimonium

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My guest today is Dr Thomas C. Schmidt of Fairfield University. Tom has just published an interesting new book through Oxford University Press: Josephus and Jesus – New Evidence for the One Called Christ. In it he makes a detailed case for the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum; the much disputed passage about Jesus in Book 18 of Flavius Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews. Not only does he argue that Josephus wrote about Jesus as this point in his book,…

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Kipp Davis interview
Interview – Dr Kipp Davis on Jewish Apocalypticism

Interview – Dr Kipp Davis on Jewish Apocalypticism

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My guest today is Dr Kipp Davis. . Kipp is a biblical scholar and an expert in early Jewish literature and history, with a focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester (2009), has held several professional academic appointments in Europe and North America, and has published widely on the topics related to the Bible, its creation, development and transmission in the Second Temple period. His work on manuscript forgeries in private collections…

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Hypatia - Myths and History
Hypatia – Myths and History

Hypatia – Myths and History

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The story often told about Hypatia of Alexandria was that she was a great scientist, rationalist and scholar who was brutally murdered by a mob of Christians who hated her knowledge and learning, with her death ushering in the Dark Ages. But this story is mostly nonsense and the real history is far more complex and much more interesting. Contrary to the myths, she was not a modern-style scientist, she was far from an atheist or what we would regard…

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Andrew Henry
Interview – Andrew Henry on Easter and “Pagan Origins”

Interview – Andrew Henry on Easter and “Pagan Origins”

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My latest guest is Dr Andrew Henry, who is an adjunct professor at George Washington University in Washington DC and a specialist in late antique Mediterranean religion. He is also the writer and presenter of the excellent Religion for Breakfast YouTube channel, where he has several videos debunking claims about the supposed “pagan origins” of Christian festivals. In this conversation we discuss the various claims about the supposed “pagan origin” of the date of and customs surrounding Easter. We go…

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Cats and the Black Death
Cats and the Black Death

Cats and the Black Death

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Some atheists and even some prominent scientists claim that the Black Death was caused or at least made worse by a wholesale massacre of cats ordered by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. But is this true? And where did this strange story come from? In this episode on the History for Atheists video channel we look at this claim and several others associated with it, examine the history of the pandemic of the 1340s known as the Black…

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Interview - The Conflict Thesis
Interview – David Hutchings & James C. Ungureanu on the Conflict Thesis

Interview – David Hutchings & James C. Ungureanu on the Conflict Thesis

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My guests today are David Hutchings and James C. Ungureanu, co-authors of Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World. David is a physicist, science teacher and writer and James is a historian of science and religion. In this interview we discuss their book and the origin and impact of the Conflict Thesis – the pervasive but erroneous idea that religion and science have always been in conflict down the ages. To buy the book: Of…

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Is Easter Pagan?
Is Easter Pagan?

Is Easter Pagan?

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Every year fundamentalist Christians, New Agers, neo-pagans and many atheists loudly agree that Easter was not originally a Christian feast and was a pagan fertility festival stolen by Christianity. Unfortunately, despite what endless memes and pop history articles claim, this idea is complete nonsense. So is the claim that Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny are also originally pagan. It is rather ironic that a set of false historical claims about the origin of Easter and its customs are propagated…

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Lambert
Interview – Derek Lambert on Jesus Mythicism

Interview – Derek Lambert on Jesus Mythicism

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My latest guest is Derek Lambert, the presenter of the excellent Mythvision video channel and podcast. Derek has been kind enough to have me on his channel several times over the last two years to discuss atheist bad history in general and Jesus Mythicism in particular. But today we are going to hear from Derek about his very interesting personal journey regarding his thoughts and conclusions about the historical Jesus. As he’ll detail for us, Derek began as a fundamentalist…

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Constantine
Constantine and the Bible

Constantine and the Bible

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The historical myths surrounding the emperor Constantine, his conversion to Christianity and the claim he created the Bible at the Council of Nicaea are persistent and continue to be propagated in popular culture, despite being total nonsense. Unfortunately, leading atheists also perpetuate these silly ideas, with everyone from Richard Dawkins to Joe Rogan insisting that Constantine was not really a Christian, that he pretended to convert for political reasons and that it was he who set the canon of the…

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