Point of Inquiry

This week, Point of Inquiry is delighted to welcome Ann Druyan, co-writer and co-creator of both the original Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, starring her late husband Carl Sagan, as well as the new series, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, starring Neil deGrasse Tyson. In a wide-ranging discussion, Druyan talks to Josh Zepps about how the first Cosmos series came to be, her efforts to translate the majesty of science into relatable and accessible storytelling, and how we've progressed toward making a more reasonable and humane society. We also get a little bit of insight into what it was like to get to know Carl Sagan for the first time. Ann Druyan co-wrote with Sagan the books Comet, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and sections of The Demon-Haunted World. Their twenty-year professional collaboration also included NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message (the famous "Golden Record" aboard the Voyager spacecraft) along with many articles, speeches, and other written works. She is co-founder and CEO of Cosmos Studios, as well as Program Director of Cosmos 1, the first solar sailing spacecraft mission. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey premiered March 9, 2014 simultaneously in the US across ten FOX networks in 125 countries, and on National Geographic networks in 180 countries, making it the largest global launch of a TV series in history.

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Meredith Dank, PhD, Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute. Dank is the co-principal investigator on several international and domestic human trafficking projects, including the new study, "Estimating the Size and Structure of the Underground Commercial Sex Economy in Eight Major US Cities”, which attempts to put dollar figures on prostitution in Atlanta, Denver, San Diego, Seattle, and other major municipalities. Point of Inquiry goes behind the headlines to interrogate the methodology and meaning of this three-year study, which uses a complex statistical model to extrapolate the size of sex markets from interview data from 73 incarcerated pimps and sex traffickers. We explore questions such as whether the interviewees are representative of the sex industry as a whole, and the role of trafficking in sex work.

Following the death of the Westboro Baptist Church's Fred Phelps, Josh Zepps discusses the state of religious fundamentalism with Frank Schaeffer, the New York Times bestselling author of Crazy for God: How I grew up as one of the Elect, Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics-- and How I learned to love Women (and Jesus) Anyway, among many others. Having recovered from being raised in a fundamentalist Christian family, and having written multiple novels about growing up in that world, Schaeffer has a fascinating perspective on what he sees as the psychological damage inflicted by angry fundamentalism, and helps us examine how we, as atheists, might respond to the death of those we despise.

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes David Gorski, MD, PhD: cancer researcher, surgeon, and managing editor of the Science-Based Medicine blog, aka "Orac" of Respectful Insolence. Gorski and Beyerstein discuss a pair of exposés of cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski in the March/April issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, one by Gorski and one by skeptical activist Robert Blaskiewicz. Gorski explains why Burzynski's urine-derived antineoplaston therapy is worthless; how the doctor strong-armed the FDA into letting him peddle these expensive and potentially dangerous drugs for over 30 years; and how the treatment may have killed a little girl. Gorski also discusses Blaskiewicz's report on skeptical activists who banded together online to warn the public about Burzynski's quackery and push back against his attempts to silence his critics.

Rebecca Goldstein, a professor of philosophy and the author of five novels and a collection of short stories, joins us on Point of Inquiry to discuss atheism, philosophy and her new book, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away. Along with some of her weightier philosophical works she has also recently published 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, a novel that is both deep and playful in its examination of apologist positions. Goldstein, who will be a guest at the upcoming Women in Secularism III conference, has written five novels -- including the recent 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction -- as well as a number of short stories, essays, and biographical studies. As someone with a distinguished career teaching Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Mind, and as the recipient of a MacArthur Fellow "Genius Award", and the Humanist of the Year award, she is in an exciting position to discuss historic, current and developing ideas in thought and the field of philosophy.

This week Point of Inquiry welcomes Daniel Loxton, longtime Editor of Junior Skeptic, the 10-page kids' science section bound within Skeptic magazine, author and illustrator of the national award-winning kids' science book Evolution: How We and All Living Beings Came to Be, and a series of illustrated books subtitled Tales of Prehistoric Life. Loxton has published two major essays on skeptical activism; "Where Do We Go From Here?" in 2007, dealing with the focus and direction of the new generation of skepticism, and which helped to inspire the SkeptiCamp community organized conferences on scientific skepticism; and "What Do I Do Next?" in 2009, providing ideas and suggestions for individual involvement in the skepticism movement. Recently, Loxton, along with co-author Donald R. Prothero, has written an entertaining, educational and definitive text on cryptids, presenting the arguments both for and against their existence. Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids systematically challenges the pseudoscience that perpetuates these myths, and examines the nature of the science and pseudoscience within cryptozoology.

This week Point of Inquiry welcomes Gabriel Sherman, writer and contributing editor for New York Magazine and author of the new book The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News - and Divided a Country. The book takes an indepth look at Roger Ailes, the conservative mastermind and president of Fox News Channel, and the effect he has had on American culture. Sherman interviewed over 600 people and spent years compiling a history of Ailes, from the 1960s when Ailes was a producer for the "Mike Douglas Show," through Ailes' time with the Nixon administration, all the way to his reign at Fox News. This week we venture into the mind, motivations and mission of the heart of right wing news.

This week, Point of Inquiry looks into midwives, home births, and what they mean for a safe delivery for child and mother. Our guest is skeptic, obstetrician, gynecologist, and author of How Your Baby is Born, Dr. Amy Tuteur. Dr. Tuteur, a graduate of Harvard and the Boston University School of Medicine, and former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, joins us to talk about some of the misinformation and unscientific theories being peddled to expectant mothers, and the harm that can come from them. Dr. Tuteur's blog is The Skeptical OB.

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Stanton Peele, PhD., J.D.. Dr. Peele, an addiction expert and author of 12 books on the subject, discusses his views on the current ‘disease model’ view of addiction and the recent tragedy involving actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Peele holds the somewhat contrarian position that, depending on the person, abstinence or moderation are valid approaches to treat excessive drinking or other substance abuses. He argues that 12-step programs may do more harm than good and that there is no evidence that they perform any better than “quitting cold turkey.” Peele also suggests that the current model of addiction treatment may even violate standards of medical ethics. In Dr. Peele’s most recent book, Recover!: Stop Thinking Like an Addict and Reclaim Your Life with The PERFECT Program, he describes mindfulness techniques to stop the behaviors which are detrimental to your life without becoming addicted to the recovery program itself.

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Greg Dworkin, MD. Dr. Dworkin is a founding editor of Flu Wiki (http://fluwiki.info.) an international, wiki-format clearinghouse of Influenza information designed to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic. He’s an expert on pandemic Flu preparedness and is joining us to discuss the Flu, the vaccine and staying healthy this H1N1 season. Dr. Dworkin is Chief of Pediatric Pulmonology and Medical Director of the Pediatric In-patient Unit at Danbury Hospital in Danbury CT, where he has been in clinical practice for eighteen years, and serves on the Danbury city and school Pandemic Flu Task Forces. Dworkin holds academic appointments as Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at New York Medical College and Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor of Allied Health Science at Quinnipiac College.

This week Point of Inquiry discusses satire in politics and American life with J.R. Havlan, eight-time Emmy Award winning writer on The Daily Show. J.R. was previously a stand-up comic, including a stint doing crowd warm-up for Politically Incorrect which led to writing jokes for that show's monologues. He's also co-author of the New York Times best-selling books America: The Book, Earth: The Book, and wrote for the 2006 and 2008 Academy Awards. Most recently, J.R. began his own podcast called Writers' Bloc, on which he interviews other television and film comedy writers about their backgrounds, beginnings and influences with a focus on the process of writing comedy. Perhaps no other popular television show does more to defend rationality and to fight B.S. than The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. How do the show's writers think about their role in American culture? Does the show actively seek to oppose Fox News and the religious right? How does it use comedy to defend reason and secularism? As the show's longest-serving writer, J.R. Havlan has worked on the show longer than even Jon Stewart has. He gives us an exclusive glimpse inside one of the most culturally influential shows in America.

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale and co-author of a provocative essay in last week’s New York Times entitled Is the United States a ‘Racial Democracy? Dr. Stanley and his co-author, Dr. Vesla Weaver, argue that the disproportionate surveillance, imprisonment, and post-conviction voter disenfranchisement of black Americans threatens the very integrity of our democracy. On any given day, 5.85 million people are unable to vote because they are in prison, on parole, or disenfranchised as felons. A disproportionate percentage of them are black. Of the nation's 2.3 million prisoners, about 1 million are black, despite the fact that black people represent just 13% of the population. If current trends continue, 1 in 3 black men born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime. You don't even have to get arrested to be affected by the surveillance state. New research shows that any unwanted contact with police, even something as relatively brief as a stop-and-frisk, makes the target less likely to vote. Approximately 85% of those who were stopped and frisked in New York City last year were black or Latino. The essay raises pointed questions of interest to any skeptical citizen: Why do we strip prisoners of the right to vote in the first place? Does our fervent belief in democracy and equality blind us to the realities of our political system? How does racially-charged propaganda advance certain views while subtly stifling conflicting perspectives? Racial Democracy was a surprise breakout hit from the Times' philosophy blog. It rapidly became the ninth most-emailed and twelfth most-tweeted item on the entire New York Times website. Rarely does an essay that cites Plato, Aristotle, and Dewey beat out the Modern Love column, but this is an unusual essay.

This week Point of Inquiry is discussing Death. Specifically, Brain death and the efforts of some areas of the religious right and their attempts to eliminate whole brain Brain Death as the legal standard for death in America. To aid in that,Lindsay Beyerstein welcomes, head of the division of bioethics at New York University's Langone Medical Center, Arthur Caplan, PhD. Dr. Caplan is the author of 32 books and over 600 papers on bioethics as well as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Centering on the recent high-profile cases in recent months with brain dead people being kept 'alive' by machines long after total irreversible loss of brain function. They discuss these cases specifically but also the idea of Brain Death in general and what keeping a corpse alive on machines entails. What can and should you do to avoid putting your family through this ordeal if you were to fall into the dead zone of Brain Death? Of course, the unreasonable fear of organ thieves which seem to creep their fictitious noses into this discussion whenever it comes up, is discussed for any still afraid of that fate.

This week on Point of Inquiry we welcome Chris Emden, a Columbia Professor who's helped design New York City's public school policy, a leading science education researcher, and Harvard Hip Hop Archive Fellow. Chris Emden is a favored guest of Josh Zepps on Huffpost Live, and for good reason. They chat about the state of American science education, and the ways in which Emden is trying to shake things up. Josh and Emden talk about how we can make science education more interesting and culturally available for students across the country, how to introduce children to science as a personal discipline in life – not just a subject in school – and how to bring about a more scientifically literate population.

As the War on Christmas wages on, our host, Josh Zepps, interviews Rob Boston, Senior Policy Analyst for American's United for the Separation of Church and State, Editor of Church & State magazine and author of Close Encounters with the Religious Right : Journeys into the Twilight Zone of Religion and Politics. Together they get to the bottom of the War on Christmas. They explain how saying "Happy Holidays" is a violation of Christian liberty and explore the vast number of schools banning red, green, and jolly old men. Is the War on Christmas a fact or is it fear-mongering and imagined persecution among the Christian media elite? This week, an amusing, year end, episode of Point of Inquiry which actually delves into some serious Church-State, First Amendment issues along with some festive humor.

Joining Lindsay Bernstein this week is Kathryn Joyce, one of the foremost reporters chronicling the Religious Right today. She made “Quiverfull” a household name with her first book, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.Her new book is called The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption. The book is the product of four years of reporting from four different countries. Joyce found that adoption has become the hot new spiritual fad among U.S. evangelicals, often with devastating consequences for children and families at home and abroad. Evangelical adoption crusaders sell the idea that there are tens of millions of orphans just waiting to be “saved” by devout American parents. But the true number of orphans is much smaller. With pastors in mega-church pulpits exhorting their flocks to adopt, adopt, adopt, the demand for children now outstrips the supply leading to dubious activities. Orphanages in countries like Ethiopia and Guatemala have come under pressure to produce phony orphans for baby-hungry American consumers. Birth mothers are tricked into signing over their children. Most American families prefer young children with clean bills of health. So, adoptive parents are told their children are younger and healthier than they really are. International adoption can be a Wild West where almost anyone can adopt any number of children. Some parents adopt several children at a time because it's cheaper in bulk. Not all adoptive parents are up for the challenge and our guest discusses some cases involving abuse, neglect and death of children at the hands of their supposed saviors.

This week on Point of Inquiry, Josh Zepps welcomes P.J. O’Rourke, humorist, cultural commentator, and best selling author of sixteen books. An early proponent of “gonzo journalism” and is a self-described libertarian, O’Rourke has served as editor-in-chief of National Lampoon, and has spent 20 years reporting for Rolling Stone and The Atlantic as the world’s only “trouble spot humorist,” going to wars, riots, rebellions, and other “Holidays in Hell” in more than 40 countries. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and a frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! In this episode they discuss everything from abortion and privacy, to the party following the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the looting of the Baghdad Museum. They are, however, able to steer clear of the dicey topic of free will.

This week on Point of Inquiry, Lindsay Beyerstein talks with Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, and a strong advocate of separation of church and state. The conversation focuses on the Supreme Court's recent decision to hear the Hobby Lobby contraception mandate case. This is the most high profile case challenging the birth control mandate, one of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Lynn explains how Hobby Lobby's court challenge could open the door for Jehovah's Witness-owned companies to refuse to cover blood transfusions, or for Christian Scientist-owned companies to refuse to cover any medical care. ** Due to recording problems minutes 1:30 through 2:40 of Mr. Lynn's portion of the recording are slightly distorted. We apologize for the inconvenience and assure you that the remainder of the recording is clear and that, throughout, the discussion is in-depth and educating.

This week's Point of Inquiry features Gadadhara Pandit Dasa, first ever Hindu Chaplain for Columbia University and New York University, the interfaith chaplain at Union Theological Seminary, and author of Urban Monk: Exploring Karma, Consciousness, and the Divine. Pandit, who teaches courses on Hindu scriptures, has spoken at a recent TEDx Conference and was featured in the NPR piece "Long Days and Short Nights of a Hindu Monk." He appeared in a PBS documentary on the Bhagavad Gita, and is also a regular contributor for the Huffington Post. Host Josh Zepps frames this episode’s interview as a conversation between an atheist and a believer. Pandit discusses his views on science and faith, inter-religious conflict, and the perspectives of a believer on atheism.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This week’s guest on Point of Inquiry, Paul A. Offit, MDis best known as a co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine and a staunch, public supporter of vaccination and opponent of pseudoscientific alternative medicine. His most recent book, Do you Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine points a critical eye at the alt-med industry, one than takes in 34 billion dollars a year with little to no regulation. Are patients being harmed, and is it any worse or better than so-called “Big Pharma”? Dr. Offit talks with our host, Lindsay Beyerstein, about all of this and much more on this week’s Point of Inquiry. Dr. Offit has published over 130 scholarly articles on the rotavirus vaccine and vaccine safety and efficacy in general. He has also authored or co-authored many books on pediatric medicine, childhood vaccination and opposing pseudoscience in Medicine. He is also the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as well as a member of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Offit is also a Founding Board Member of the Autism Science Foundation (ASF).

Famed educator, engineer and "Science Guy," Bill Nye Joins our host Josh Zepps for this week's Point of Inquiry. They discuss Bill's start as an Engineer and part time stand up comedian to his groundbreaking work in television educating a generation on science. They also delve into Bill's view into the future of science, science education, as well as how to become excessively rich using the tools of science to change the world.

Point of Inquiry, the flagship podcast for the Center for Inquiry, presents a special episode recorded before a live audience at the 2013 CFI Summit in Tacoma, Washington, with new co-host Lindsay Beyerstein. The fundamentalist, Christian right's influence and impact on our schools and the educating of our children is the subject of the new book The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children. Its author, Katherine Stewart, is our guest on this edition of Point of Inquiry, available in both video and audio editions. Stewart has publiched two novels about 21st Century parenting, worked in investigative journalism, written freelance for such publications as Newsweek International, Rolling Stone, The New York Observer, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Bloomberg View, and Religion Dispatches. What are these "Good News Clubs" and what is their influence on schools across the nation?Evolution and sex education are just two of the avenues these religious organizations are using to inject their brand of far-right Christianity (and Judaism and Scientology, surprisingly) into our public schools. Next week we'll bring you another episode of Point of Inquiry, as co-host, Josh Zeps interviews Bill Nye, The Science Guy.

Point of Inquiry, the flagship podcast of the Center for Inquiry, relaunches with a special episode recorded before a live audience at the 2013 CFI Summit in Tacoma, Washington, with new co-host Josh Zepps of HuffPost Live.Our unconscious minds offer us something of a paradox. On the one hand, we'd be lost without it, as it processes information without us ever being aware of it — it's how we deal with the real world in real time. But on the other hand, we don't always have a complete picture, so the unconscious mind can often draw mistaken conclusions, even though they may feel right at a "gut level."This is the subject of the work of Leonard Mlodinow in his most recent book Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior, for which he won the 2013 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for a book of literary nonfiction on the subject of the physical or biological sciences. In this interview, Mlodinow explains how we have trouble poking holes in our own suppositions.Leonard Mlondinow is a physicist, author, and screenwriter best known for coauthoring (with Stephen Hawking) the New York Times number-one best seller The Grand Design and the international best seller A Briefer History of Time, as well as The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, a New York Times notable book of the year.Next week we'll bring you another episode from the CFI Summit, as our second new co-host, journalist Lindsey Beyerstein, interviews Katherine Stewart, author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children.Copyright 2013

Point of Inquiry is on a short hiatus right now as we transition to a new podcast team. In the meantime, enjoy these classic episodes from the POI archives, featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Susan Jacoby, and other luminaries in the science and secularism movement. Our guest this week needs little introduction—he may be our most famous public communicator of science. He's Neil DeGrasse Tyson, renowned American astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, and the host of PBS's NOVA ScienceNow, which just completed a new six part season. Tyson is also the author of 9 books, most recently Death By Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, which was a New York Times bestseller, and The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet. In this double length episode, Tyson discusses a wide range of topics: the just finished 2011 season of ScienceNow; how to restore a science "Zeitgeist" in our culture; Bill O'Reilly's recent foot-in-mouth comments about how the world works; this million-view YouTube clip of Tyson and Richard Dawkins; and much more.

Point of Inquiry is on a short hiatus right now as we transition to a new podcast team. In the meantime, enjoy these classic episodes from the POI archives, featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Susan Jacoby, and other luminaries in the science and secularism movement. Recently in New Orleans, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry held the very first CSIcon—the conference dedicated to scientific inquiry and critical thinking. The main honoree: Bill Nye the Science Guy, who was given CSI's premiere "In Praise of Reason" award. The next day, Point of Inquiry caught up with Nye, a guest who really needs no introduction... at least not to the thousands upon thousands of kids who saw a little show called Bill Nye the Science Guy. Since then, Nye has been involved in many other endeavors and television programs to improve science teaching and understanding in our country, including his latest show on Planet Green, "Stuff Happens". Nye is an engineer, inventor, author, comedian—a supporter of clean energy, and above all a skeptic.

Point of Inquiry is on a short hiatus right now as we transition to a new podcast team. In the meantime, enjoy these classic episodes from the POI archives, featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Susan Jacoby, and other luminaries in the science and secularism movement. It's the beginning of a new year here at Point of Inquiry, and we've got a pretty good guest to kick it off. He needs no introduction. He's Brian Greene—celebrity physicist, bestselling author, television star and all around science communication maestro. Officially: Greene is co-founder and director of Columbia University's Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, author of the bestselling books The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, and co-founder of the World Science Festival. We caught up with Greene to discuss the recently aired four part NOVA special based on The Fabric of the Cosmos, as well as, well, sciency things in general.

Point of Inquiry is on a short hiatus right now as we transition to a new podcast team. In the meantime, enjoy these classic episodes from the POI archives, featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Susan Jacoby, and other luminaries in the science and secularism movement. According to the USDA, Americans produce and consume more beef, veal, and chicken than any other nation in the world. As a result, the status of animal welfare in the meat production industry should be of some concern to all Americans, regardless of dietary habits. One of the world's leading experts in livestock handling practices is Dr. Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University. In addition to gaining international recognition for her research on animal behavior and designs of feed yards and slaughterhouses, Dr. Grandin is also arguably the most famous high-functioning autistic adult. Her story has inspired countless individuals and families who have been touched by autism spectrum disorders, as well as other conditions that cause sensory hypersensitivity. In 2010, Claire Danes won both Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her portrayal of Temple in the critically-acclaimed HBO biopic Temple Grandin. This week on Point of Inquiry, we talk to Grandin about science, animal behavior, autism, ethics, and much more. Temple Grandin teaches courses on livestock behavior and facility design at Colorado State University and consults with the livestock industry on facility design, livestock handling, and animal welfare. She has appeared on television shows such as 20/20, 48 Hours, CNN Larry King Live, PrimeTime Live, the Today Show, and many shows in other countries. She has been featured in People Magazine, the New York Times, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, Time Magazine, the New York Times book review, and Discover magazine. In 2010, Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people. She has also authored over 400 articles in both scientific journals and livestock periodicals on animal handling, welfare, and facility design. She is the author of Thinking in Pictures, Livestock Handling and Transport, Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals, and Humane Livestock Handling. Her books Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human were both on the New York Times best seller list.

Point of Inquiry is on a short hiatus right now as we transition to a new podcast team. In the meantime, enjoy these classic episodes from the POI archives, featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Susan Jacoby, and other luminaries in the science and secularism movement. Susan Jacoby is the author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, now in its tenth hardcover printing and recently published in paperback. Freethinkers was hailed in the New York Times as an “ardent and insightful work” that “seeks to rescue a proud tradition from the indifference of posterity.” Named a notable nonfiction book of 2004 by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, Freethinkers was cited in England as one of the outstanding international books of 2004 by the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. In this interview with DJ Grothe, Jacoby talks about the role that freethinkers played in American social justice movements, and discusses the forgotten history of Robert Green Ingersoll. Also in this episode, Tom Flynn asks Did You Know?, detailing facts about Robert Green Ingersoll and new data about nonbelievers from University of Akron, and Lauren Becker shares some thoughts on Darwin and Oliver Sacks and what these scientists teach us about ourselves.

Point of Inquiry is on a short hiatus right now as we transition to a new podcast team. In the meantime, enjoy these classic episodes from the POI archives, featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Susan Jacoby, and other luminaries in the science and secularism movement. Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of America’s leading spokespersons for science. The research areas he focuses on are star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. In addition to many scholarly publications, Dr Tyson is one of America’s most respected science writers, and he writes a monthly column for Natural History magazine simply titled the “Universe.” Among his eight books is his memoir The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist; and also Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, co-written with Donald Goldsmith. His most recent book is Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries. He is the on-camera host of PBS-NOVA’s program ScienceNow, which explore the frontiers of all the science that shapes our understanding of our place in the universe. He is the first occupant of the Frederick P. Rose Directorship of the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan, where he also teaches. In this conversation with D.J. Grothe, Neil deGrasse Tyson examines various approaches to informal science education, his experiences teaching science through pop-culture media outlets, and controversies regarding science popularization. He explains his views on the implications of science for religious belief, questioning the strategy of science educators who seem to equate science and atheism. He also recounts the direct influence of Carl Sagan on his professional development.

Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is an inspiring thinker whom we've wanted to get on the show for a long, long time: Ethan Zuckerman. He's the director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and works at MIT's Media Lab. He's also the co-founder of Global Voices, a community of global bloggers—and has worked in the past at Geekcorps and Tripod. We're here to discuss his new book Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection—which among other things argues that the technological ability to communicate with someone does not inevitably lead to increased human connection. In other words, it's about nothing less than how to use the Internet to open, rather than close, your mind.

Host: Chris Mooney One thing we often forget about great scientists, especially as they are lionized and mythologized: they made mistakes. Sometimes big ones. Sometimes, even, brilliant ones. Charles Darwin, for instance, didn't understand genetics. He and Gregor Mendel were as ships passing in the night. Granted, Darwin eventually realized that he needed a better theory of heredity in order for his idea of natural selection to work—so he came up with "pangenesis," a completely wrong idea that... well, the less said about it the better. But Darwin isn't the only one. From Linus Pauling to Albert Einstein, many of history's greatest thinkers have blundered badly on occasion. They've made major mistakes—sometimes outright embarrassing ones. And now, acclaimed scientist and science writer Mario Livio has compiled these cases together into an intriguing narrative that helps us understand the importance of mistakes to science itself, and to how we think about it. Mario Livio is a senior astrophysicist at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute, and the author of more than 400 scientific papers. On top of that, he's also a popular science writer, author of books including The Golden Ratio, The Equation that Couldn't Be Solved, and Is God a Mathematician? His latest book, Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein, Colossal Mistakes By Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe, is the subject of our interview.

Host: Indre Viskontas Having spent 50 years as an influential thinker, Daniel Dennett has earned the right to tell us how to think. His latest book is a collection of 77 tools for thinking, which every self-respecting critical thinker should consider, if not actively use. American philosopher and author Daniel C. Dennett is perhaps best known in cognitive science for his multiple drafts (or "fame in the brain") model of human consciousness and he is among the most influential philosophers of our day. He is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, and the author of 16 books including Elbow Room; The Intentional Stance; Consciousness Explained; Darwin's Dangerous Idea and most recently, Intuition Pumps and other Tools for Thinking. Prof Dennett has also published more than 300 scholarly articles and was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contributions to society in 2012.

Host: Chris Mooney From 9-11, to the death of Osama bin Laden, to the Boston Bombings, there's been a consistently bizarre and troubling reaction by some members of the public. We're referring to the people—a minority, to be sure, but a surprisingly large one—who always seem to think there's some kind of cover up. The U.S. government, they feel, was really behind the attacks on, uh, itself. And as for Bin Laden—well, he isn't really dead. These people are called conspiracy theorists, and, their particular form of irrationality is uniquely befuddling. It has been often denounced, but rarely understood. That's too bad, because conspiratorial thinking clearly plays an important role in science denial, on matters ranging from the connection between HIV and AIDS, to the safety of vaccines, to global warming. Fortunately, conspiracy mongers are now becoming the subject of research and study—and our latest guest is helping to lead this inquiry. His name is Stephan Lewandowsky, and he's a professor at the school of psychology at the University of Western Australia, and at the University of Bristol in the UK. And he's the author of a recent study with the delicious title "NASA Faked the Moon Landings, Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science (PDF)"—which drew some small amount of attention, especially when it was followed by a second study of the conspiracy theorists who rejected the first study for, yes, conspiratorial reasons.

Host: Chris Mooney Over the weekend, the Center for Inquiry's Women in Secularism II conference unfolded in Washington, D.C.—and we caught up with one of the event's most distinguished speakers, the feminist poet and author Katha Pollitt. You probably know her "Subject to Debate" column in the Nation—always both insightful and also hilarious to read. It has been called, by the Washington Post, the "best place to go for original thinking on the left." The column won the National Magazine Award in 2003. Pollitt is also the author of four essay collections—most recently, Learning to Drive and Other Stories—and two books of poetry, the latest being The Mind Body Problem. In this interview, she discusses her talk at "Women in Secularism II" on the subject: "Sexism and Religion: Can the Knot Be Untied?"

Host: Chris Mooney A few months back on this show, we heard from Bill McKibben, the celebrated environmental writer and, more recently, leader of a mass movement around preventing climate change that has focused on blocking the Keystone XL pipeline. McKibben makes a compelling case that our climate system is at dire risk. But many thinkers who fully accept the science of climate change nonetheless take a very different approach to climate and energy policy. And as someone who personally sees strengths on both sides of this question, today I want to feature one of them. So today we feature one of the smartest and most thoughtful of these environmental moderates: Michael Levi. He's author of the new book The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future—in which he talks favorably about natural gas drilling through "fracking" and even, yes, the Keystone XL Pipeline. Michael Levi is the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and director of the CFR program on energy security and climate change. He holds an MA in physics from Princeton University, where he studied string theory and cosmology, and a PhD in war studies from the University of London (King's College).

Note: You can watch this episode on Youtube. In this special episode of Point of Inquiry, Chris and Indre speak with the Pulitzer Prize winning Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Dr. Diamond is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles and has traveled extensively to New Guinea for his research. His observations there form the foundation of his new book, The World Until Yesterday: What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies, which is the subject of this interview. Afterwards, Chris and Indre debate aspects of Diamond's new book that they found both surprising and, on occasion, frustrating.

Host: Indre Viskontas In the science section at your local bookstore, you'll find plenty of books on everything from the brain, to the climate, to the cosmos. But how many books will you find that take you on a tour of the digestive tract—from our mouths, to our stomachs, to our intestines? Popular science writer Mary Roach's new book, Gulp, does just that. Decoding the science of taboo topics like vaginal weight-lifting, amputee bowling leagues, and how much food it takes to burst a human stomach has become the signature style of Roach, who has been described by the Washington Post as "America's funniest science writer." Mary Roach writes about human bodies in unusual circumstances and does not shy away from things that are gross. Her previous best-selling books include: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, and Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void but today we’ll be discussing Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.

Host: Chris Mooney Back in the summer of 2011—just before the 10 year anniversary of 9/11—this show welcomed on Scott Atran, an anthropologist who is a leading expert on terrorism and violent extremism. Now, in the wake of the Boston bombings and the dramatic capture of suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, we called Atran back to discuss the first large scale U.S. terrorist bombing since 9/11. As Atran's research shows, the Tsarnaev brothers share many parallels with other young, disaffected men who opt for extremist violence around the world. But Atran's broader conclusion from the past week may be an unsettling one: When we devote such massive societal attention to a few homegrown terrorists, we may not ultimately be doing ourselves any favors. Scott Atran is an anthropologist and an expert on terrorism with appointments at John Jay College, the University of Michigan, and Oxford. He is author of the book Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (un)Making of Terrorists, and in his research has personally interviewed mujahidin, Hamas, and the plotters behind the Bali bombing.

Host: Chris Mooney We've all heard the claim: Academia is liberal. And it indoctrinates students. It kills their religious faith and basically—or at least, so the allegation goes—transforms them into unkempt, pot-smoking hippies. As it turns out, this claim is precisely half true. Yes, academia is really liberal. But no, this has virtually nothing at all to do with ideological brainwashing. That's the provocative claim of a new book by Neil Gross of the University of British Columbia. It's entitled Why Are Professors Liberal? And Why Do Conservatives Care? And basically, it's a powerful data analysis to bandy about whenever Ted Cruz, or Rick Santorum, start talking about liberal academic indoctrination mills. Neil Gross taught at the University of Southern California and Harvard University before joining the University of British Columbia faculty in 2008. Trained at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Ph.D., 2002), and holding a BA in Legal Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (1992), Gross has special interests in sociological theory, politics, the sociology of ideas and academic life, and the sociology of culture. He is the editor of Sociological Theory, a quarterly journal of the American Sociological Association.

Host: Chris Mooney Remember all the greatest hits of religious apologists—the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments for God's existence? You may have learned how to refute them in college—but not, perhaps, with the zest and humor shown by renowned philosopher A.C. Grayling in his new book The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and For Humanism. But Grayling isn't just making a negative case—his book is about how to live, and flourish, without religion in your life. It's about how to be good—and in the end about why, to find meaning, it's important most of all to think. A.C. Grayling is master of New College of the Humanities, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy and other topics—including The Good Book, Ideas That Matter, Liberty in the Age of Terror, and To Set Prometheus Free.

Host: Chris Mooney You hear it a lot from religious believers: Faith is about doing good works, bringing about good in the world, and showing compassion. In fact, some go further and argue that you can't really be moral without religion. Well, says primatologist Frans de Waal, they really ought to take a look at our close cousin the bonobo—in his new book The Bonobo and the Atheist. For that matter, De Waal continues, those defending a faith-only version of morality ought to look at any number of moral, empathetic behaviors throughout the animal kingdom, in species ranging from dogs to elephants. De Waal's conclusions from all of this, for atheists, though, are controversial. He wants a more secular morality, but also thinks you can't just wipe religion away, because it is too closely wrapped up with our evolved morality and our group allegiances. So we wanted to interview De Waal about the latest science on morality—and about what it means for those who want the world to try running a more secular operating system. Frans de Waal is a celebrated primatologist who directs the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and is the C.W. Candler professor of psychology at Emory University. He has written widely about our primate relatives, in books that include Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape and The Age of Empathy.

Host: Indre Viskontas Back in February, Yahoo! President and CEO Marissa Mayer made a decision that pushed gender issues and the work/life balance back into the headlines: she mandated that her employees can no longer work from home. It's a decision that impacts families with children in a big way—and puts a focus on women in the workplace. Are decisions like Mayer's related to a broader cultural bias against women? Do biological differences between men and women account for the gender disparity in leadership positions in many industries? What do we even know about gender differences? Does science have answers to any of these questions yet? To find out, we invited Carol Tavris, a noted social psychologist and a pioneer of gender studies, to join us in this week's episode. Carol Tavris received a PhD in social psychology from the University of Michigan, and has taught psychology at UCLA and the New School for Social Research. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science and the Center for Inquiry. Her articles, book reviews and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. The themes of Tavris' work include critical thinking, feminism, and criticism of pseudoscience. Her books include four psychology textbooks, The Mismeasure of Woman, and Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), co-authored with Elliot Aronson.

Host: Chris Mooney Later this year, May 17 to 19 in Washington, D.C., the Center for Inquiry will convene its second "Women in Secularism" conference. There are a host of great speakers, many of whom we've had on this show before, like Susan Jacoby, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Greta Christina, and Rebecca Watson. And we're going to be there covering it. But in the meantime, to get you ready, we've invited on one of the featured speakers ahead of time—Amanda Marcotte. Marcotte writes for and manages the blog Pandagon, blogs for Slate's Double X, and has two books out: It's A Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments and Get Opinionated: A Progressive's Guide to Finding Your Voice (and Taking a Little Action). She's written about politics, pop culture, and feminism for outlets such as Slate, Salon, the LA Times, the Guardian, and the American Prospect.

Host: Chris Mooney I'm a big defender of the proposition that when it comes to abusing science, the political left and the political right are very different beasts. But that doesn't make the left innocent of science abuses—and one man who knows that very well is Mark Lynas. He's a British environmentalist and author, and he recently gained dramatic attention for his public conversion on the issue GM crops—denouncing his prior allies, and also his prior self, on the issue. Lynas had been an anti-GM activist and even a destroyer of crops. Now, he thinks science leads to a very different conclusion. He's also a defender of science on other issues where one can make a pretty serious case that the Left gets it wrong—like nuclear power. So I wanted to bring Mark on to discuss anti-science on the left—and finally, to weigh the irrationality of the political poles and see if the scales are really balanced... or not. Mark Lynas is a British journalist and environmental activist. He is the author of three books, most recently The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans.

Host: Indre Viskontas Even the hard-core skeptics believe in magic, says Matthew Hutson in his new book The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep us Happy, Healthy and Sane which has just been released in paperback. Most of us have some sentimental objects that would seem to lose their importance if replaced by an exact copy. We imbue our pets with human personality traits. We are disgusted at the thought of eating a cake that looks like fecal matter. We expect that what goes around comes around. All of these are examples of magical thinking, Hutson argues. A skeptic and an atheist, Hutson claims that ‘our ongoing flirtation with supernaturalism is a relationship that we depend on for survival.' I'm not convinced. In a lively discussion, we delve into magical thinking, its pitfalls and potential benefits. Matthew Hutson is a former editor at Psychology Today, and has a B.Sc. in cognitive neuroscience from Brown University and an M.S. in science writing from MIT. His work has appeared in Wired, Discover, Scientific American Mind, Popular Mechanics, The Boston Globe, The New York Times and the New York Times Magazine.

Note: You can watch this episode on Youtube. Since the horrendous massacre of children and teachers in Newtown, CT last year, gun control and the second amendment have been frequent topics of the national conversation. Point of Inquiry would be remiss if we didn't add our signature long-form interview style to the discussion. To that end, we interviewed Steven Pinker whose recent book suggests that we are, contrary to popular belief, living in the most peaceful time in humanity's existence. Steven Pinker is professor of psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of eight books, including How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Language Instinct and most recently The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. He is a two-time Pulitzer-prize finalist, one of Time's 100 Most Influential People and one of Foreign Policy's top 100 Global Thinkers. Also featured is an interview with Tom Di Liberto, meteorologist at NOAA and winner of the 2013 America's Science Idol contest. This episode was recorded live at the 2013 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston and was produced by Adam Isaak. The event was sponsored by the Center for Inquiry and the National Science Foundation.

Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Susan Jacoby. She's the bestselling author of a number of books about secularism and American culture, including Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism and The Age of American Unreason. Jacoby started her career at the Washington Post, and her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Newsday, Harper's, The Nation, Vogue, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the AARP Magazine, among other publications. Her latest book, just published and the subject of our interview, is The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought.

This year's flu season has been dubbed the worst in recent history, despite the fact that the flu vaccine is fairly effective and readily available. But of course, not everyone experiencing flu-like symptoms actually has the flu—with so many cold viruses and bacterial infections being passed around, it seems that everyone has been sick this January. Long nights, low humidity, holiday parties all combine to create the perfect breeding ground for the tiny organisms that make us miserable. Singers like myself are particularly sensitive to illnesses that make it impossible for us to do our jobs and so, as I traveled to Raleigh last week for a conference of science writers, journalists, bloggers and broadcasters, I couldn't help but think about bugs and viruses in between hand washings. It's no surprise then, that when I had the opportunity to chat with one of the most prolific and popular science writers in the world—Carl Zimmer—we climbed through the looking glass and into the microscopic realm of germs. Carl Zimmer is an award-winning science writer whose work is often published in the New York Times, National Geographic, Time, Scientific American, and other outlets. His books include a history of neuroscience called Soul Made Flesh, Parasite Rex, and Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed. He is also a co-author of 3 critically-acclaimed textbooks on evolution and his popular blog The Loom is now hosted by National Geographic. A popular public speaker and a frequent guest on Radiolab and This American Life, Zimmer is also the only science writer after whom a species of tapeworm has been named.

Host: Chris Mooney We are thrilled by our guest this week, who is not only one of the world's most famous economists and economics commentators, but also a Nobel Laureate in his field: Paul Krugman. In case he needs any introduction: He is a professor of economics at Princeton and a columnist for the New York Times, as well of the author of the blog on its website entitled "The Conscience of a Liberal." The occasion for our interview is the release of his latest book, End this Depression Now, in paperback. It is just out and, besides being a very lucid explanation of our current economic predicament, it is also a work that goes straight at the heart of a central concern of this show—what is science, and what isn't, in a field that is perhaps even more political than other aspects of science... economics.

Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Sean Carroll—theoretical physicist at CalTech, and skilled science communicator. I've known Sean and his work for almost a decade, and I've invited him on to talk about his latest book: The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World. Sean Carroll is a physicist at the California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on theoretical physics and cosmology, especially the origin and constituents of the universe. He has contributed to models of interactions between dark matter, dark energy, and ordinary matter; alternative theories of gravity; and violations of fundamental symmetries. Carroll is also the author of From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time. He has appeared on TV shows such as The Colbert Report and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and frequently serves as a science consultant for film and television. He blogs at Preposterous Universe.