Point of Inquiry

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.

Maria Konnikova, a doctoral candidate in psychology and author, shares insights from her book on thinking like Sherlock Holmes. She emphasizes active observation versus mindless perception and the science behind Holmes’ intuition, reflecting on how these methods apply today. The conversation touches on the importance of solitude in a noisy world and the balance between mental and physical health for cognitive performance. Konnikova also critiques the clash between skepticism and belief, showcasing how Holmes' logic is still relevant amidst modern distractions.

Host: Chris Mooney This is our first show of 2013, and notably, we're still here. A lot of people actually thought the world was going to end at the end of last year, which, presumably, means that now it's rejoicing time. And also reflection time. Time for reflection on all the things that people are capable of believing, as well as the things that might really lead to global catastrophe someday. To help us in that process, we've invited back our expert on all things related to the world ending and not ending: Phil Plait. He needs no introduction, except to say that he's the Bad Astronomer. He's the Bad Astronomer at Slate, on Twitter, and on every other platform you can imagine. Phil Plait is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope data and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. His two books are Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax" and Death from the Skies! These Are the Ways the Universe Will End.

Host: Indre Viskontas It's become almost a truism that in their spare time, skeptics tend to gravitate towards TV shows, novels and games that portray the very monsters, myths and conspiracies that they work so hard to debunk. A great story is just as entertaining to the most hardened skeptics as it is to the rest of the population. And because they are often more knowledgeable about the history of a particular monster or myth, skeptics might even enjoy fictional depictions of pet topics more than the uninitiated general public. A case in point is author and podcaster Scott Sigler, whose fascination with monsters led him not only to read and watch stories about monsters, but even to invest all of his creative energy and talent into writing horrifying and thrilling science fiction novels. But is there a risk of propagating myths through storytelling? Does science fiction help or hurt critical thinking? To get some insights into these questions, we talked to Scott about his writing process, his characters and what truths we can learn about ourselves through fiction. New York Times best-selling novelist Scott Sigler is the author of Nocturnal, Ancestor, Infected, and Contagious, hardcover thrillers from Crown Publishing, and the co-founder of Dark Øverlord Media, which publishes his Galactic Football League series. Before he was published, Scott built a large online following by giving away his self-recorded audiobooks as free, serialized podcasts. His loyal fans, who call themselves "Junkies," have downloaded over fifteen million individual episodes of his stories and interact daily with Scott and each other in the social media space. Scott reinvented book publishing when he released Earthcore as the world's first "podcast-only" novel, harkening back to the days of serialized radio fiction. He's been covered in Time magazine, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, and The Huffington Post, among others. He still records his own audiobooks and gives away every story-for free-to his Junkies at ScottSigler.com.

Host: Chris Mooney We usually record Point of Inquiry at a distance. Over the phone. Skyping. But for this show, I packed up my gear and hailed a cab—to the Center for Inquiry's brand new Office of Public Policy in downtown, Washington, D.C. The Center for Inquiry is here to literally make this country listen to reason... and science. It's a sensibility that is simply in far too short of a supply in this town. So I sat down with Ronald A. Lindsay, CFI's president, and Michael De Dora, head of the Office of Public Policy, to talk about their plans to make our legislators and leaders just a little more rational and science based. Ronald A. Lindsay is president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry and its affiliates, the Council for Secular Humanism and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He has led the organization since 2008. Michael De Dora is director of the Center for Inquiry Office of Public Policy and its representative to the United Nations.

Host: Chris Mooney It's rare that I can say about a guest that, I read his books when I was a kid. But David Brin is just such a guest. He's the celebrated science fiction author of the Uplift novels, The Postman, and many other books—most recently, Existence. I read the Uplift books when I was tearing through sci-fi as a teenager. But on top of that, Brin is also a trained scientist and public policy commentator. And in his commentary, as in his novels, he's concerned with the same themes that motivate this show: How can we protect science from the forces that want to do it in? And, can people really be rational? So, we're excited to have him on the show.