Point of Inquiry
Episodes
Phil Plait - #Notpocalypse!
08 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
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 e...
Scott Sigler - Encouraging Critical Thinking Through Science Fiction
02 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Ronald A. Lindsay and Michael De Dora - Mr. Science Goes to Washington
27 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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—...
David Brin - Uplifting Existence
20 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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 celeb...
Bill McKibben - Do the Math
13 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney When we last had Bill McKibben on this show in 2010, I was mainly treating him as another bestselling science author—one who ha...
Samuel Arbesman - The Half-Life of Facts
04 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskontas Because we live in an uncertain world, we arm ourselves with facts to gain a sense of control and therefore some modicum of comf...
Steven Novella - Exposing Medical Nonsense
27 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney One of the first people I ever got to know in skepticism was Steven Novella. He was a professor at Yale, just starting out as an or...
Michael Gordin - The Pseudoscience Wars
20 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Before the "complementary and alternative medicine" fad, and before UFO craze, lived a man whom you might call the first modern pse...
Jacques Berlinerblau - How to Be Secular
13 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney On this show, we often debate the state of American secularism—covering topics like the rise of the so-called "nones," or the une...
Oliver Sacks - Hallucinations
06 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskotnas Despite our individual differences, highlighted especially during an election, much of what we see, hear, smell or feel is share...
Special Double Episode: Jon Ronson and Richard Wiseman, with Indre Viskontas and Chris Mooney
31 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Hosts: Indre Viskontas and Chris Mooney At the 2012 CSICON conference in Nashville, Tennessee, your Point of Inquiry hosts Indre Viskontas and Chris M...
Bruce Hood - Superstitions in Baseball
23 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskontas The month of October is associated with falling leaves, autumn winds and hallowe'en. But for sports fans in the US, it also sign...
Science and the 2012 Election - Shawn Otto and Matthew Chapman
16 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney In this show, we talk to two founders of ScienceDebate, a nonprofit organization that in the last two election cycles has pushed to...
Lisa Randall - Knocking on Heaven's Door
08 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Lisa Randall, the Harvard theoretical physicist and one of the most heavily cited and influential researcher...
Massimo Pigliucci - Living Philosophically
02 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is a return guest of the show, Massimo Pigliucci. We last heard about his book Nonsense on Stilts, which was ...
Dan Ariely - The Honest Truth about Dishonesty
25 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskontas There is no doubt that our world is populated with cheats and liars. Most of us, slaves to the availability heuristic, think of ...
Phil Zuckerman - The Sociology of Irreligion
18 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney How many atheists are there in the world? Where do they live? What kind of people are they, and how do they get that way? Are they ...
Rick Hayes-Roth - TruthMarket
10 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to make American politics just a little more rational, just a little more evidence based? W...
Peter Ditto - Morals, Facts, and Libertarians
04 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Several times on this show, we've discussed the topic of ideological asymmetry. In other words, are people of all political persuas...
Temple Grandin - The Science of Livestock Animal Welfare
28 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskontas According to the USDA, Americans produce and consume more beef, veal, and chicken than any other nation in the world. As a resul...
Arie Kruglanski - The Science of Closed-Mindedness
21 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Arie Kruglanski. He's a Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland Colle...
Joe Romm - Language Intelligence
13 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney This week's guest is Joe Romm. You may know him as a top blogger on global warming and energy—but that's not why we're having him...
Peter Montgomery - 12 Rules for Mixing Religion and Politics
07 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Peter Montgomery, senior fellow with People for the American Way and author of a new report entitled Twelve...
Christopher diCarlo - How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass
01 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskontas In an election year, it is especially important that our critical thinking skills be sharply honed. We have to sift through fact...
Kerry Emanuel - Conservative for Climate Science
24 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Kerry Emanuel is a leading atmospheric scientist and a self-described conservative. As a result, lately he's been at the forefront of trying to convin...
David Niose - Nonbeliever Nation
16 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Can people who care about secularism take America back from the religious right? Of all the questions that concern us on this show,...
Tina Dupuy - Skepticism Meets Comedy
10 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest is Tina Dupuy—the reporter, comedian, skeptic, and editor-in-chief of the startup publication SoapBlox. Dupuy appears f...
Special In Studio Episode: Jamie Kilstein, Ed Brayton, and More
04 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney For this episode of Point of Inquiry, we tried something a little different. At Center for Inquiry headquarters in Amherst, NY, we ...
Stuart Firestein - How Ignorance Drives Science
25 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskontas The idea that science moves forward by carefully peeling back layers of the onion of truth, one by one, in a deliberate fashion,...
Chris Hayes - Twilight of the Elites
19 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's Up With Chris Hayes and editor at large of The Nation. Hayes has come out wit...
Cara Santa Maria - Talk Nerdy to Us
12 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Cara Santa Maria, the senior science correspondent for the Huffington Post and the personage behind its "Tal...
Will Gervais - This is Your Brain on Religion
04 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney In late April, a study came out in Science that really got the secular blogosphere hopping. It was a paper showing that something...
Christof Koch - Consciousness and Free Will
29 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskontas Recently, there has been a flurry of neuroscientists declaring that free will is an illusion in the popular press. But before we...
Johan Braeckman - The Rise of Islamic Creationism
22 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend the 2012 World Skeptics Conference in Berlin. It's important to keep tabs on our...
Greta Christina - Why Are You Atheists So Angry?
15 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest this week is Greta Christina, a leading atheist blogger, speaker, and commentator, and a regular contributor to AlterNet.org. Christina is ...
M.G. Lord - The Accidental Feminist
30 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskontas In developed countries at least, the status of women has improved considerably in the last century. But in science, technology, ...
Naomi Oreskes - Neoliberalism and the Denial of Global Warming
24 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney This week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a conference convened entitled "Science Writing in the Age of Denial." The keynot...
Austin Dacey - The Future of Blasphemy
16 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney This week, our guest is a return one: Austin Dacey. He's a philosopher, a writer, and a human rights activist, and the creator of t...
Chris Mooney - The Republican Brain
10 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Guest Host: John Shook In this special episode of Point of Inquiry, we interview our host himself—about his new book, The Republican Brain: The Sc...
Neil deGrasse Tyson - Space Chronicles
02 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney This week, Point of Inquiry is thrilled to welcome back one of our most popular guests: Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famed astrophysici...
David Morrison - Cosmic Impact Hazard
26 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskontas The end is nigh. 2012 is a banner year for doomsday prophecies, though there still seems to be debate concerning precisely how l...
Jonathan Haidt - The Righteous Mind
19 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Why is it that some of us are religious, some of us not... some of us liberal, some of us not? If you've been paying attention, the...
Ari Rabin-Havt - The Fox Effect
12 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney If there's one thing Point of Inquiry is concerned about, it's ensuring a rational, sensible conversation in politics, in public l...
Sean Faircloth - Attack of the Theocrats
06 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney A common goal of freethinkers, humanists, skeptics, and atheists is to preserve Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation" between chu...
Gerald Woerlee and Susan Blackmore - Near-Death Experiences and Consciousness
28 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Indre Viskontas One of the costs of being conscious is that, once in a while, we are forced to contemplate the fact that we are mortal. Ironical...
Michael Mann - The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars
20 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Michael Mann, the prominent climatologist and, above all, leading defender of his field—and himself—agai...
Dan Kahan - The Great Ideological Asymmetry Debate
14 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney So who's right, factually, about politics and science? Who speaks truth, and who's just spinning? It's kind of the million dollar q...
Lawrence Krauss - A Universe from Nothing
07 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney We had Lawrence Krauss on Point of Inquiry less than a year ago, to discuss his recent book on the scientific works of Richard Feyn...
Brian Malow - The Science Comedian
30 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Earlier this month, Point of Inquiry host Chris Mooney attended Science Online, the premiere science blogging conference, in the re...
Eugenie Scott - Defending Climate Education
17 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Eugenie Scott is no stranger to Point of Inquiry, or to the secular community. Her endless travails to defend the teaching of evolu...
Brian Greene - The Fabric of the Cosmos
03 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney It's the beginning of a new year here at Point of Inquiry, and we've got a pretty good guest to kick it off. He needs no introducti...
Stuart Robbins - The End of the World as We Know It
27 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow Dr. Stuart Robbins is a postdoctoral researcher in astronomy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His work focuses on planeta...
John Cook - The Debunking Handbook
20 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney How do you successfully debunk misinformation? The question is a deceptively simple one—which is precisely the problem. Debunking...
Daniel Dennett - The Scientific Study of Religion
13 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Guest Host: John Shook Recently, the Center for Inquiry held a conference titled "Daniel Dennett and the Scientific Study of Religion: A Celebration o...
Robert McCauley - Why Religion is Natural (And Science is Not)
05 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Over the last decade, there have been many calls in the secular community for increased criticism of religion, and increased activi...
Scott Gavura - Dispensing Skepticism
29 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow Scott Gavura is a registered pharmacist in Ontario with a personal and professional interest in improving the way we use medicat...
Jonathan Weiler - Authoritarians Versus Reality
21 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Jonathan Weiler, a political scientist and director of global studies at the University of North Carolina, C...
Tom Flynn - The Trouble With Christmas
17 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price Ebenezer Scrooge once called Christmas "a false and commercial holiday." Is it? Should Humanists refuse to observe it? Should they ...
Bill Nye - In Praise of Reason (and Skepticism)
08 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Recently in New Orleans, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry held the very first CSICON—the conference dedicated to scientific in...
Seth Shostak - ET, Call SETI
01 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow Dr. Seth Shostak is the Senior Astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI). Seth is the author o...
Jonathan Moreno - Our New Biopolitics
24 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Human cloning. Synthetic biology. Mood (and mind) altering drugs. Personalized medicine. Such topics are rarely at the top of the p...
Richard C. Johnson - Religion: The Failed Narrative
19 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price Richard C. Johnson Ph.D. is a retired chemist and serves as Treasurer for Freethought Arizona. For some 25 years, the company he fo...
Shawn Otto - The Assault on Science
11 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney In recent months, political attacks on science have been back in the news. Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman even fam...
CSICon - The Conference Dedicated To Scientific Inquiry And Critical Thinking
06 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Adam Isaak This October-on Halloween weekend-the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry is holding a conference: CSICon. It's the latest in a line of ...
Indre Viskontas - The Miracle Detective
04 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow Indre Viskontas is a neuroscientist, a soprano, and a skeptic. She is a host of the television show The Miracle Detectives that ...
Austin Dacey - Rock the Theocrats
27 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney This coming October, in Kabul, Afghanistan—on a date, and in a location, that remain undisclosed—there will be a rock concert t...
Lee Salisbury - From Faith to Critical Thinking
20 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price Lee Salisbury was at one time an up-and-coming Charismatic Christian pastor, even a healer! Then how did he wind up actively involv...
Rachel Tabachnick - Exposing Dominionism
12 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney We've heard a lot in the news lately about Dominionists—Christians who believe, basically, that they ought to be running this cou...
John Dodes - The Tooth About Dentistry
07 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow John Dodes is a dentist with a special interest in dentistry and pseudoscience. He is one of the founding fellows of the Institu...
Scott Atran - Violent Extremism and Sacred Values
30 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney In less than two weeks, the ten year anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil—9/11—will be upon us. In the past ...
Dan Barker - U-Turn on the Road to Damascus
23 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price Host Robert M. Price felt uncannily as if he were talking to himself when he interviewed Dan Barker, the two share so much in commo...
Did Reason Evolve For Arguing? - Hugo Mercier
15 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Why are human beings simultaneously capable of reasoning, and yet so bad at it? Why do we have such faulty mechanisms as the "confi...
Donald Prothero - The Psychology of Cryptozoologists
08 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
My guest this week is Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College, and Lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technolog...
David Frum and Kenneth Silber - Conservatives and Science
01 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney When it comes to the U.S. political right, it often appears that the opposition to science-and reason in general-is everywhere. Fro...
Jaco Gericke - Confessions of a Died-Again Christian
25 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price A couple of student hecklers once reproved Marlowe's Dr. Faustus: "Faustus! Plumb the depths of that which you profess!" Many evang...
Rebecca Watson - Skepticism and Feminism
19 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Rebecca Watson, the founder of the Skepchick blog. Recently, she's been at the center of an explosive cont...
Richard Wiseman - Paranormality
11 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow Richard Wiseman is Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in England. Richard be...
Matthew Chapman - The Ledge
05 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney It's not often that Hollywood takes up the subject of atheism directly—much less sympathetically. Even rarer is finding this in a...
D.M. Murdock - The Christ Conspiracy
28 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price D.M. Murdock, who also goes by the pen name "Acharya S.," is the author of The Christ Conspiracy, the most controversial of modern ...
Rick Perlstein - Is There a Republican War on History?
20 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Recently, we've seen a spate of news stories—and news incidents—involving conservative politicians and activists getting detail...
Jean Mercer - Child Development: Myths and Misunderstandings
14 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow This week’s guest is Jean Mercer, a Developmental Psychologist and Professor Emerita at Richard Stockton College. She is the a...
Michael Shermer - The Believing Brain
06 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine and head of the Skeptics Society, and a longtime commenta...
Scott Lohman - Star Trek and Humanism
31 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price Do you often wish you lived in the far future? Or on a different planet? Do your friends and family think you belong there, too? Ch...
Jonathan Kay - Among the Truthers
24 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney From Birthers, to Truthers, to Deathers—to occasional Liars—America seems to be crawling right now with fevered conspiracy mong...
Robert Sheaffer - It's a Conspiracy
18 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow Robert Sheaffer is a Committee for Skeptical Inquiry fellow and author of the "Psychic Vibrations" column for Skeptical Inquirer...
Chris Mooney - Accommodationism and the Psychology of Belief
11 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Special Guest Host: Ronald A. Lindsay In this special episode, Chris Mooney changes places and becomes the interviewee—and then finds himself facing...
Bo Bennett - Christian Nontheism
03 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price Robert "Bo" Bennett wears many hats (author, motivational speaker, black belt Karate master, businessman, etc.) but manages not to ...
George Lakoff - Enlightenments, Old and New
25 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney George Lakoff is a cognitive linguist at the University of California at Berkeley. But unlike many of his scientific peers, he's kn...
Josh Rosenau - The Evolution Revolution
20 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow Our guest this week is Josh Rosenau, the Programs and Policy Director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), and w...
Nuclear Risk and Reason - David Brenner and David Ropeik
11 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney When the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan last month, it left behind not only mass destruction, but also a nuclear c...
August Berkshire - Minnesota Atheist
05 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price One of the outstanding leaders of organized atheism in our day is a man named August Berkshire. He is a non-believer of broad sympa...
Lawrence Krauss - Quantum Man
28 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Physicist Lawrence Krauss has written numerous popular books about science, including the bestselling The Physics of Star Trek. But...
Cheryl Russell - Society, Statistics and Skepticism
21 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow My guest this week is Cheryl Russell, a recognized authority on statistics and demographics. Cheryl is the editorial director of...
Spirituality: Friend or Foe? - Adam Frank and Tom Flynn
15 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Recently, it has come to light that many scientists—scientists who don't believe in God--nevertheless claim to be "spiritual but ...
Frank Zindler - The Christ Myth
07 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price One of the most effective (not to mention hilarious) speakers for atheism and secular humanism today is Frank Zindler, author, ling...
Neil deGrasse Tyson - Communicating Science
28 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week needs little introduction—he may be our most famous public communicator of science. He's Neil DeGrasse Tyson,...
Michael Cicchini - Myths, Misconceptions, and the Law
21 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Karen Stollznow Michael Cicchini is a criminal defense attorney and a skeptic. Through extensive research and writing in the field of criminal l...
Dan Kahan - The American Culture War of Fact
14 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Why do Americans claim to love science, but then selectively reject its findings when they're inconvenient? And why do some cultura...
Don Webb - Devil's Advocate
07 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Robert Price The nineties witnessed an outbreak of "Satanic Panic," with psychologists dredging up false memories of "Satanic ritual abuse" whic...
Art Caplan - Bioethics Comes of Age
31 Jan 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Arthur Caplan, sometimes called the country's "most quoted bioethicist" and director of the Center for Bioet...