Rationally Speaking Podcast

Guests Jacob Appel and Jennifer Michael Hecht discuss bioethics dilemmas in the podcast. They touch on choosing gender and sexual orientation of babies, ethical conflicts in medical care, assisted suicide, genetic enhancements, and the impact of media on public skepticism towards science. The conversation explores personal beliefs in healthcare, ethical challenges in genetic engineering, and the balance between autonomy and societal values.

The podcast discusses the values embedded in scientific practice, ethical issues in research, lack of diversity in science, deciding on which scientific questions to pursue, and considering societal consequences before publishing research.

Vegetarianism is a complex set of beliefs and practices, spanning from the extreme “fruitarianism,” where people only eat fruits and other plant parts that can be gathered without “harming” the plant, to various forms of “flexitaranism,” like pollotarianism (poultry is okay to eat) and pescetarianism (fish okay). So, what does science have to say about this? What is the ethical case for vegetarianism? And, is it true that vegetarians are more intelligent than omnivores? Not unexpectedly, the answers are complex, so the debate will rage on.

Cordelia Fine joins us from Melbourne, Australia to discuss her book: "Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences." Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory, yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles increasingly defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. That’s the reason, we’re told, that there are so few women in science and engineering and so few men in the laundry room — different brains are just better suited to different things. Drawing on the latest research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology, Fine sets out to rebut these claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific finery, are helping to perpetuate the sexist status quo. Cordelia Fine studied Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, followed by an M.Phil in Criminology at Cambridge University. She was awarded a Ph.D in Psychology from University College London. She is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Agency, Values & Ethics at Macquarie University, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Her previous book is "A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives."

In a continuation of episode 28, Massimo and Julia sit down for a Q&A session in front of a live audience at the Jefferson Market Library in New York City. The audience's questions include whether economics and evolutionary psychology are really science, what's the deal with the placebo effect, the influence of corporate money on scientific research, and how can some scientists publish legitimate research and still believe in pseudo-science. Also, vegetarianism: is it about science, ethics, or both?

Philosopher and author, Massimo, discusses science, non-science, and pseudo-science in front of a live audience. Topics include reliability of qualitative vs quantitative sciences, intelligence of physicists, biologists, and psychologists, fixation of evolutionary psychologists on sex, and more.

Historian Timothy Alborn joins the hosts to discuss the arbitrary nature of anniversaries. They cover various events from Christmas to Royal Jubilees, questioning their significance. The conversation also touches on politically charged anniversaries and the creation of new holidays. Exploring the importance of commemorating figures and the demotion of Pluto add a fun twist to the episode.

Exploring the tensions between physical and cultural anthropology, and the implications of removing 'science' from the American Anthropological Association's mission statement. Debate on the balance between scientific research and advocacy, challenges in producing generalizable knowledge in anthropology and psychology. Comparing the scientific validity of anthropology to other fields, and the importance of experiments in generating insights. Exploring the origins of Christmas traditions and the controversy surrounding the birthdate of Jesus.

Massimo and Julia answer listeners' questions, as they try to stay away from politics. In this installment the topics include: is quantitative research more scientific than qualitative one, can philosophers really claim to have expertise on something, is skepticism just another name for intelligence, what about feminist philosophy, bayesian reasoning, and what are M&J's anti-akracia strategies?

The term meme was introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 bestseller "The Selfish Gene."Dawkins was trying to establish the idea that Darwinian evolution is a universal, almost logically necessary phenomenon. He couldn't, however, point to exobiological examples to reinforce the concept of universal Darwinism, so he turned to cultural evolution, renamed “ideas” as “memes” (in direct analogy with genes), and voilà, the field of memetics was born. Despite staunch support by authors such as Susan Blackmore and Daniel Dennett, among others though, serious questions can be raised about memes and memetics as a viable concept and field of inquiry. To begin with, how is this different from classical studies of gene-culture co-evolution? Second, what, exactly are memes, i.e. what is their ontological status? Third, how do memes compete with each other, and for what resources? Is it even possible to build a functional ecology of memes, without which the statement that the most fit memes are those that spread becomes an empty tautology? Could this explain why the "Journal of Memetics" closed shop, or is it that they discovered everything there was to discover about memes?