The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott cover image

The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott

Latest episodes

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Sep 24, 2022 • 1h

Lutz Jaitner proposes a scientific basis for Cold Fusion

In this episode I am continuing my investigation into cold fusion, looking into potential scientific explanations of the excess heat and fusion products hinted at by Dr. Edmund Storms in my last podcast. There seems to be a dedicated research group that is working on these theories and I am eager to find out whether or not their hypothesis about condensed plasmoids can stand up to skepticism. Lutz Jaitner from Hamburg Germany is the father of three adult daughters. He holds a Master of Science degree in physics from the University of Hamburg. Lutz started his career as a designer and developer of multiprocessor hardware. After which he worked as a consulting engineer. Lutz is the programmer and operator of a public cloud service for neighborly help groups: Obelio eLETS Service Around 2006 Lutz started to evaluate the available literature about LENR research. By 2015 he found an explanation, how the reaction is facilitated by an ultra-dense plasmoid state of matter. It took him until 2019 to work out a quantum-mechanical model of this state, to program a simulation tool for it, perform the simulation runs and document this theory on this web site. Follow me at www.therationalview.ca Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #coldfusion #LENR #condensedplasmoids #science #skepticism
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Sep 17, 2022 • 1h 2min

A review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (Cold Fusion) with Dr. Edmund Storms

In this episode I start my investigation into the Cold Fusion controversy. In 1989 Pons & Fleischmann announced in a hastily convened press conference, the discovery of a new clean energy source that would revolutionize power grids and save humanity from climate change. They had measured the production of excess heat and neutrons in a room temperature electrolytic reaction using heavy water and a palladium cathode.  It shortly became evident that their claims were not entirely correct. After many attempts it was discovered that their experiment could not be replicated and mainstream science dismissed Cold Fusion as a pathological science. Despite this lack of acceptance, many have continued to try to replicate their work and strike it rich. Now after more than 30 years, a pattern of unexplained anomalous results has emerged from the rubble.  Is there something to the newly renamed Low Energy Nuclear Reactions field?  I’m interviewing an expert who has been involved in reviewing the work in this field since the very beginning. Edmund Storms obtained a Ph.D. in radiochemistry from Washington University (St. Louis) and is retired from the Los Alamos National Laboratory after thirty-four years of service. His work involved basic research in the field of high temperature chemistry as applied to materials used in nuclear power and propulsion reactors. He presently lives in Santa Fe where he is investigating the "cold fusion" effect in his own laboratory. An authority in the field he has published 2 books, over 100 papers and four complete scientific reviews of the field over the years. In May 1993, he was invited to testify before a congressional committee about the "cold fusion" effect. In 1998, Wired magazine honored him as one of the 25 people in the US who is making a significant contribution to new ideas. He was awarded the Preparata Medal by the International Society of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science and honored as Distinguished Scientist by University of Missouri. His large collection of literature about LENR was used to create the website www.LENR.org where information about the phenomenon is available. His recent work has focused on understanding LENR and making the effect reproducible. Follow me at www.therationalview.ca Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #coldfusion #LENR #science #electrolysis #palladium #nuclear #nuclearpower
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Sep 10, 2022 • 33min

Is Cold Fusion pathological science?

In this episode I’m reviewing the fine line between science, pathological science, and pseudo-science. In most cases the line is not fine at all.  There are, of course, many pseudo-scientific practices that are clearly not based on the principles of honest scientific investigations including things like Creationism, Homeopathy, Astrology, and Flat-Earthism.  Some of these pretend to be scientific, but it is pretty clear in all cases that they exist not because of evidence, but instead are based on faith, profit, or other motives. There are several beliefs or ideas, however, that are not so clear-cut, and actually have some non-biased scientific support, although they are verboten for members of the scientific community.  I have looked at electromagnetic hypersensitivity, for example, in a past episode. I came away unconvinced that EM is causing the health problems of sufferers, but there is something unexplained going on. In this episode I want to explore the scientific community’s response to a couple different radical ideas and ask if it was rational, and what the evidence tells us. Follow me at therationalview.podbean.com Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #pathologicalscience #coldfusion #lenr #EMdrive
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Sep 3, 2022 • 47min

Laser Fusion Ignition with Drs. Hurricane and Zylstra

In this episode I’m starting to explore another interesting scientific topic that has recently made a big media splash—nuclear fusion.  For decades the promise of nuclear fusion has been held out as the ultimate in clean energy sources—the same energy as the sun, with no transuranic radioactive waste stream.  Just fusing hydrogen together to make helium and boundless energy.  The problem is that it is very difficult to simulate the sun.  Even in the core of the sun where temperatures are measured in millions of degrees, and the pressure is higher than anywhere in the solar system, fusion is not a fast or efficient process.  I guess that’s good for us.  If it were the sun would rapidly burn out in a huge supernova.  As it is, the sun will happily burn hydrogen for about 10 billion years before it starts running short. A proton in the core of the sun can bounce around freely for billions of years without ever getting fused to another proton.  It is this challenge that researchers on earth have been trying to solve for the past 50 years, without much success. Today I’m going to be interviewing a team of researchers working on this problem to find out just how close we are to practical fusion. Omar Hurricane is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. Omar received a Ph.D. in Physics from UCLA in 1994, staying on as post-doc until 1998. Omar is a Designer at LLNL, working on topics of stockpile stewardship and High Energy Density Physics, and became Chief Scientist for the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program. In 2009, Omar was awarded the U.S. Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for National Security and Nonproliferation. Omar became a Fellow of the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics in 2016 and in 2021 was awarded the Edward Teller award and medal from the American Nuclear Society for leading efforts to obtain fuel gain, alpha heating, and a burning plasma in the laboratory. Dr. Alex Zylstra received his bachelor’s degree from Pomona College in 2009 and his Ph.D. in plasma physics from MIT in 2015. From there he joined the Los Alamos National Laboratory as a Reines Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow working on developing novel inertial fusion concepts. He joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2018 as the experimental lead for the “Hybrid E” campaign, which subsequently produced the first laboratory burning and ignited plasmas. Follow me at www.therationalview.ca Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #fusion #ignition #laserfusion 
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Aug 27, 2022 • 50min

Dr. Larry Katz on why we are too competitive

I’ve recently begun to suspect that we, as a society, favour competition over cooperation to our detriment.  As children we are trained to compete. We play competitive board games like Sorry, and Monopoly where you win by sabotaging the other players. We fetishize competitive sports, spending 100’s of billions of dollars watching athletes violently punish each other. It would seem that these attitudes carry over into the political arena.  States and religions and corporations all compete for power, leaving a trail of bloody conflict in their wake. And yet it can be argued that competition brings out the best in people. The dominant capitalist economic system is based on the concept of a group of self-interested players who collectively and competitively comprise the market where the success of the top players advances by exploiting those less successful. Some of our most significant scientific and engineering advances came as a result of intense development work motivated by man’s most deadly competitive endeavour, war.  Radar, jet planes, Nuclear technology, and the Apollo program to go to the moon were essentially the result of this competition between nations.  But cooperation also has its value. The Space Station was a cold war cooperation between the US and Soviet Union. The Megatonnes to Megawatts program that used soviet nuclear warheads to power US nuclear reactors was a successful cooperation. The EU is a huge cooperative governance model. Universal Healthcare is a cooperative program to share the burdens of treating the sick. I want to ask the question: can we envision a world where negative competition becomes socially unacceptable? One in which we compete without sabotaging others, or perhaps even one where nations cooperate? Should we work to bring this about? An award-winning developer and producer of interactive multimedia applications, Dr. Larry Katz is Professor Emeritus, Adjunct Professor, Head of the innovative pedagogy and Sport Performance program, and Director of the Sports Technology Research Laboratory, Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Calgary. An Educational Psychologist, he is interested in how people learn and how they can improve their performance using innovation and technology. His research interests include, performance analysis, educational technology, data analytics, virtual environments, multimedia design, collaborative online learning, pedagogy, and health and wellness education. A former competitive athlete, coach, coaching instructor, referee, and volunteer leader, Dr. Katz has first-hand experience with intense competition and the impact of competing when cooperation is mutually beneficial. For over 20 years, he worked on and recently patented his trademarked Move Improve ® mobile platform for peer-to-peer, self-directed, and consensus learning. Follow me at https://www.therationalview.ca Join the Facebook group @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Insta @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #competition #cooperation 
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Aug 20, 2022 • 1h 5min

Dr. Marc Wortman discusses Admiral Rickover of the nuclear navy

In this episode I’m exploring the story of the father of atomic power, Admiral Hyman Rickover.  This was based on a suggestion from a listener. Thanks Loki! Rickover is best known for his role in developing the US nuclear submarine program in the 1950’s.  His ground-breaking work demonstrates that Small Modular Reactors are a safe and effective method of generating clean carbon-free energy.  Today I will be interviewing an author who has recently published a biography of Rickover. Marc Wortman received a doctorate in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. Dr. Wortman is an independent historian and freelance journalist living in New Haven. He is the author of four book on American military and social history, most recently Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power (Yale University Press, 2022). As an award-winning freelance journalist, Marc has written for many publications, including Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, Time, Air & Space, and The Daily Beast. He has spoken to audiences around the country and has appeared on CNN, NPR, C-SPAN BookTV, History Channel, and other broadcast outlets. He has taught at Princeton, Quinnipiac Universities and a college program at a maximum security prison. He was the recipient of a New York Public Library Research Fellowship and was the 2014 Jalonick Memorial Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Texas Dallas. Follow me at https://therationalview.podbean.com Facebook @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #nuclearpower #SMR #atomicpower #greenenergy #nuclearnavy
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Aug 13, 2022 • 1h 15min

Andy Vasily with deep thoughts on life and podcasting

This is a fun joint podcast with co-host Andy Vasily of the successful ‘Run your life’ podcast.  Andy is a friend from way back. We went to public school together. Andy helped me set up my podcast a couple years ago and get started with a few helpful hints. His Run Your Life podcast is focused on physical fitness and self realization. In this episode we reminisce a bit and share the wisdom we have gathered over the forty or so years since our last meeting. We chat about how we both ended up in podcasting, and how we each are on a quest to find meaning in our lives. Andy's podcast can be found at www.runyourlifepodcast.com Follow me at www.therationalview.ca Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #podcasting #selfrealization #pechakucha
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Aug 6, 2022 • 48min

Dr. Ellen deLara discusses bullying

In this episode I book-end my two episode investigation on the impacts of bullying with someone who has interviewed victims of bullying to attempt to characterize the impacts.  I recently did a podcast that reviewed my experiences with bullying as a child and how it seemed to have impacted my personality and my life. From a high level, Dr. deLara’s results resonated with me. It felt good to identify an external reason for why I found it hard to interact with others.  But let’s be careful and question our assumptions. Life is difficult and challenging for everyone. Can victims blame their entire life experience on bullying? No. We need to be careful about confirmation bias. It is difficult to guess how life altering these events really were.  Perhaps I would have turned out shy and socially awkward anyways.  Any good science includes a control group to contrast. Let’s find out what the evidence says. Dr. Ellen Walser deLara is an associate professor emerita in the School of Social Work at Syracuse University. She is also a practicing family therapist. Dr. deLara received her doctorate from Cornell University in educational psychology and was a post-doctoral fellow at Cornell focused on child maltreatment. Her areas of research address adolescent development, child maltreatment, school and community violence, and bullying from systemic and developmental perspectives. Currently, Dr. deLara is investigating the long-term consequences of childhood bullying on adult relationships and mental health. She has presented widely at national and international conferences and speaks frequently to the media on bullying and school violence. Dr. deLara’s books include: Bullying Scars: The impact on adult life and relationships (Oxford University Press), And Words Can Hurt Forever: How to protect adolescents from bullying, harassment, and emotional violence (Simon & Schuster) and School-based Intervention Programs (Houghton-Mifflin) co-authored with Dr. James Garbarino. Subscribe at https://therationalview.podbean.com Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #bullying #mentalhealth 
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Jul 30, 2022 • 14min

Escaping my bully

In this episode I want to share something personal about my life. This episode is about bullying and its lifelong effects. My bully made me who I am today. I hope if you are experiencing bullying that you take the time to listen. I learned a lot in school, and most of it in the schoolyard. I learned to run fast, and dodge. I learned that there is no justice in the world. I learned the world is a harsh place and the good guys lose. I learned to be self sufficient. I learned to escape into fantasy. My life was shaped by a series of bullies.  I’m only now learning to stick up for myself. To value myself. To not run from conflict when it is necessary. To speak up for my rights. Do I have regrets?  Sure. Today I like who I’ve become and I wouldn’t change a thing now that I have worked through the pain. Do we need adversity to make good strong people willing to stand up and take a risk for others?  Check out transcripts at www.therationalview.ca Facebook @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View #therationalview #podcast #bullying #mentalhealth #adversity #personalgrowth 
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Jul 23, 2022 • 32min

What I’ve learned about the hard problem of consciousness

In this episode I summarize my investigation of consciousness. I’ve been interviewing several experts and there is a huge diversity of thought on the topic of thought. It is called ‘the hard problem of consciousness’ to explain why we have a subjective experience of existence. What have I learned? The problem is hard because people don’t agree on an objective set of criteria about what consciousness entails.  If there is no clear definition, it is no surprise it is hard to explain.  Philosophers fall back on the word ‘Qualia’ meaning those set of 1st person experiences which evade any objective definition. Www.TheRationalView.ca Facebook @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #consciousness #sentience #thought

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