Science
Massimo Pigliucci and Susan Blackmore on Scientism and Subjectivity
April 18, 2019This week’s episode of Point of Inquiry is our final episode recorded from CSICon 2018. We’re closing this series of interviews with Professor Massimo Pigliucci who discusses his ideas on scientism and how it’s used by people like Sam Harris, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Richard Dawkins with host Kavin Senapathy. Also featured on this episode …
The Battle for Young Minds – Bertha Vazquez on Teaching Evolution in Schools
January 24, 2019As science standards across the country improve to include middle school standards on evolution, more and more teachers are teaching evolution for the first time and the battle to teach sound science moves into the individual classrooms themselves. The Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES) is a program of the Center for Inquiry. TIES seeks to …
Adam Conover and Tim Caulified on The Algorithm, Gwyneth Paltrow, Netflix at CSICon 2018
January 10, 2019Adam Conover is the creator and host of Adam Ruins Everything, an informational comedy show that debunks common misconceptions and encourages critical thinking. The New York Times calls it “one of history’s most entertaining shows dedicated to the art of debunking” and refers to Adam as a “genial provocateur”. He is a founding member of the …
Trying to Throw Science at Them: Yvette d’Entremont and Kavin Senapathy on Food, Fads, and Fear
December 29, 2017We are living in a land of confusion, as the band Genesis warned us back in 1986, but even they could not have predicted just how much more confusing things would get 31 years later. With a storm of misinformation engulfing almost every field of human endeavor, 2017 was ripe with confusion. And one of the most …
Space Reporter Loren Grush: Hope and Hubris in Space Exploration
July 18, 2017The U.S. space program is both beloved and neglected. It brings us breathtaking pictures from distant worlds and drives the human species to push itself farther out into the cosmos. But at the same time, it is subject to terrestrial political concerns, and without the urgency of a Cold War-era “moonshot” to galvanize the public’s …
Paul Offit: The Fate of Science in an Age of Darkness
April 4, 2017While science was once the force that propelled humanity into an age of enlightenment, a pernicious fear of science and the unknown threatens to plunge society to into an age of darkness. So says Dr. Paul Offit, a groundbreaking immunologist, and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Offit’s new book, Pandora’s Lab: Seven …
Lawrence Krauss: Accidental Origins
March 6, 2017Fate. Purpose. Design. These are words that hang over many of our heads as we navigate the everyday chaos of life. Religion is often given exclusive purview over the discourse surrounding these concepts, but what if science was able to answer some of these same deep existential questions? We may not always like the answers …
Science, Stopped at the Border: Jen Golbeck on Science in Trump’s America
February 6, 2017The Trump administration’s orders to halt federal science publication and public communication has American scientists racing against the clock to back up their data in fear of it being eradicated. Meanwhile, the scientists who come to America from all over the world face new roadblocks, as the travel ban from select Muslim-majority nations is reeking …
Daniel Dennett: The Magic of Consciousness…Without the Magic
January 17, 2017Daniel C. Dennett is one of the most influential philosophers of our time, perhaps best known in cognitive science for his multiple drafts (or “fame in the brain”) model of human consciousness, and to the secular community for his 2006 book Breaking the Spell. Author and co-author of two-dozen books, he’s the Austin B. Fletcher …
Comprehending the Incomprehensible: Samuel Arbesman on Rapidly Accelerating Technology
November 7, 2016We live in a digital era in which science and technology have revealed new frontiers never before possible. In developing the complicated technologies that permeate our lives, is it possible that humans have failed to grasp the magnitude of the complexity they have created? This week’s guest is a complexity scientist, Samuel Arbesman, author of …