Point of Inquiry

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.