Why I Left the Washington Post with Kate Cohen
Summary
In this episode of One Nation Indivisible, Andrew talks with Kate Cohen, author of 'We of Little Faith,' about her decision to leave the Washington Post. Cohen explores how billionaire owner Jeff Bezos's influence led to a compromised editorial independence at the Post.
They also discuss the crucial role of secularism and free thought in contemporary America, the importance of personal integrity, and the ongoing struggle to maintain the separation of church and state. The conversation covers the importance of factual truth in education, the challenges of building local atheist communities, and the critical need for moral leadership during these times.
Episode Resources:
Meet The Guest
Kate Cohen
Kate Cohen is a former Washington Post columnist and author of We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too), from Godine.
She wrote her first book, The Neppi Modona Diaries: Reading Jewish Survival through My Italian Family (UPNE), soon after receiving her bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. The Neppi Modona Diaries tells the sometimes conflicting stories of a family of Jews who suffered under Fascist racial laws in Italy and went into hiding to survive the Nazi invasion. It also explores Kate’s own perspective as a post-Holocaust, non-believing Jew at the end of the twentieth century. In A Walk Down the Aisle: Notes on a Modern Wedding, she chronicles her wedding to a man with whom she had lived for eight years, examining each facet of the American wedding ritual, as hard to resist as it is functionally outdated.
Three kids and twenty years later, she wrote We of Little Faith, which chronicles Kate’s journey to outspoken atheism and argues that nonbelievers should be more vocal, for the good of the country. For this work and for her numerous columns inspecting America’s outsized deference to religion, the Freedom from Religion Foundation honored her with its “Freethought Heroine” award in 2023. She has spoken to groups large and small around the country, and recently gave the keynote address for the inaugural Congressional Reason Reception in Washington, D.C. She lives with her husband on a hay farm in Albany, New York.
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