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2 minutes ago
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...
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Tue June 11, 2013 at 8:26 PM
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...
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Tue June 4, 2013 at 4:48 PM
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,...
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Thu May 23, 2013 at 3:37 AM
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...
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Tue May 14, 2013 at 4:29 PM
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...
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Wed May 8, 2013 at 4:17 AM
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...
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Wed May 1, 2013 at 1:19 AM
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...
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Tue April 23, 2013 at 3:03 PM
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...
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Tue April 16, 2013 at 4:58 PM
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...
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Tue April 9, 2013 at 12:14 PM
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...
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