Point of Inquiry
649 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 758 ratingsPoint of Inquiry is the Center for Inquiry's flagship podcast, where the brightest minds of our time sound off on all the things you're not supposed to talk about at the dinner table: science, religion, and politics.
Guests have included Brian Greene, Susan Jacoby, Richard Dawkins, Ann Druyan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Eugenie Scott, Adam Savage, Bill Nye, and Francis Collins.
Point of Inquiry is produced at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, N.Y.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Professor Elizabeth Loftus on False Memories
February 20, 2020 11:30 - 52 minutes - 72.7 MBCan our memories be trusted if they are easily manipulated by suggestions? Where is the line between repressed memories that bubble up to the surface and false memories that never existed? In this week's episode, Jim Underdown speaks to Professor Elizabeth Loftus on what happens in the courtroom when a person's memory of events are a result of suggestion or coercion. Loftus recounts various legal cases she's been involved with where wrongful convictions resulted from false memories implant...
Where Are We In The Battle For Church State Separation
February 06, 2020 12:00 - 44 minutes - 61.7 MBWhere does the separation of church and state stand with a conservative majority in the Supreme Court? The short answer: not great. In this week's episode, Jim Underdown speaks to CFI board member, lawyer, atheist, and human rights activist, Eddie Tabash on how the Founding Fathers viewed religion and law, the religious ties of the newest Supreme Court justices, and where we go from here.
Is a Good God Logically Possible? | James Sterba
January 23, 2020 11:30 - 46 minutes - 64 MBJames Sterba is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, USA. His book, Is a Good God Logically Possible? deals with the Argument from Evil and whether a God who is all good and all powerful is logically compatible in a world where moral and natural evil exists. Sterba sits down with Underdown to discuss the arguments for and against the existence of God, how Sterba's history as a member of a religious order and later Professor of Philosophy led him to write his book, and t...
Playwright and Actor Ian Ruskin on Thomas Paine
January 09, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 97.7 MBIan Ruskin is a producer, writer, actor and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He has starred in theatre, television, and film in both the UK and the US. He has written and performed in various one man plays, From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks which details the life of Australian-born American union leader, Harry Bridges and To Begin the World Over Again: The Life of Thomas Paine. To learn more about or contact Ian Ruskin visit: www.ianruskin.org In this week's inte...
Dawkins on his new Book Outgrowing God
December 12, 2019 12:00 - 45 minutes - 62.6 MBRichard Dawkins is the recipient of a number of awards for his writing on science, including the Royal Society of Literature Award and the LA Times Literary Prize, he has also been awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Award for the furtherance of the public understanding of science. He is the author of a number of critically acclaimed books, such as The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Devil’s Chaplain, and The Ancestor’s Tale. In this week's interview wi...
Professor Chris French - Anomalistic Psychology and Conspiracy Theories in Politics
November 29, 2019 11:30 - 33 minutes - 46.3 MBChris French is a British psychologist and prominent skeptic focusing on the psychology of paranormal beliefs and experiences. He is currently Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, is head of their Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit which he founded in 2000, and former Editor-in-Chief of The Skeptic (UK) magazine. Jim talks with Chris on the trajectory of the skeptics movement in the UK and US and how they both became involved, what it's like to run Skeptic...
Richard Wiseman on the Skeptics Movement and Tricking People
November 14, 2019 11:30 - 39 minutes - 54 MBRichard Wiseman is Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in England. Richard began his career as a professional magician before pursuing a career in psychology, and developing a reputation for research into luck, deception, the paranormal, humor, and the science of self-help. Wiseman joins Jim Underdown in London where they both attended the presentation of the Richard Dawkins Award to Ricky Gervais. Wiseman was the interviewer of Dawkins an...
ECSO President, Claire Klingenberg on the State of Skepticism
October 31, 2019 10:00 - 48 minutes - 67 MBThe European Council of Skeptical Organisations (ECSO) is an umbrella of skeptical organizations throughout the EU that investigate claims of pseudoscience, and defend scientific integrity and practice in research, education, medicine, and public policy. Point of Inquiry co-host Kavin Senapathy attended the 2019 European Skeptics Congress in Ghent, Belgium, where she presented during the session on "Green Skepticism." While there, Senapathy had the opportunity to put her head together ...
How Defy Ventures Reduces Recidivism with Rehabilitation
October 17, 2019 10:00 - 37 minutes - 51.5 MBIn the second part of this two-part series on the prison system reform, Jim Underdown speaks with Andrew Glazier, president of Defy Ventures, on the high recidivism rates in prisons, how Glazier and Defy Ventures are improving prison inmate rehabilitation, and what happens to communities when people are kept locked up indefinitely. Defy Ventures is a nonprofit organization that helps current and formerly incarcerated adults with career-readiness and entrepreneurial training programs. You c...
Former Security Guard and Atheist Activist Steve Hill on the Prison System
October 03, 2019 10:00 - 43 minutes - 60 MBHow humane are prisons in the U.S.? And what is their purpose – to punish or to rehabilitate? This is part one of a two-part series that dives into the prison system, what it looks like from the inside, how it destroys the lives of black and brown folks who have been overpoliced and tossed into the prison system for decades, and the work being done to counteract that system. After a field trip to a California state prison, Jim Underdown spoke to Steve Hill about his frank experiences as ...
Angela Saini on the Return of Race Science
September 19, 2019 10:30 - 51 minutes - 71.5 MBEven though there’s growing awareness that race is a social construct — it defies biological definition — it’s really hard to let go of a concept that feels so real. There’s also a temptation for progressive, more or less decent human beings, who wouldn’t consider themselves racist, to define racism as something that happens on the far right, among Neo-Nazis, the KKK, and people sporting MAGA hats. Turns out that’s not the case. At all. One of the most pervasive issues when it comes to r...
Dr. Sarah Taber on the Myth of the Destruction of Family Farms
September 05, 2019 10:00 - 55 minutes - 75.9 MBPoint of Inquiry co-host Kavin Senapathy has covered food and agriculture for years, and if she’s learned one thing, it’s that people’s views on farming are rife with misconceptions. The conversation around food is complex, and involves a slew of gray areas and mountains of data. Enter Dr. Sarah Taber. She’s the host of the Farm to Taber Podcast, a farm and food systems strategist, and one of Twitter’s most prolific and eye-opening agriculture myth-busters. Taber’s work has included food s...
Jerry Minor - From Jehovah’s Witness to Comedian
August 22, 2019 09:00 - 1 hour - 108 MBThis week, Point of Inquiry welcomes actor, comedian, and former Jehovah's Witness, Jerry Minor. Minor has been a cast member and writer on Saturday Night Live and appeared on HBO's Mr. Show and various other television and film spots throughout his career. He joins Jim Underdown to dive into his life during and after being a Jehovah’s Witness. They also get into how the Jehovah's Witness religion drove Minor to attempt suicide, the different Christianity sects and how Minor views them as cu...
Clearing Up the Concept of Risk Assessment
August 08, 2019 10:00 - 44 minutes - 50.5 MBHow well do you think you can assess risk? The evidence is clear that humans are innately poor at assessing risk in our personal lives, in part due to how our brains are wired, and that can make it challenging to make informed decisions about everything from vaccines and medicines to diet and children’s safety. Errors in risk perception can be a problem when we worry more than the evidence says we need to, or less than the evidence says we should. On this week’s episode, Kavin Senapathy sp...
Julia Sweeney on Atheism, Saturday Night Live, and Me Too
July 25, 2019 10:00 - 48 minutes - 44.4 MBThis week, Point of Inquiry welcomes comedian, monologist, and atheist, Julia Sweeney. Many may know Sweeney from her time on Saturday Night Live, her appearances on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!, and from her current roles on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Hulu's Shrill. Jim Underdown sat down with Sweeney at CFI West to discuss her time working on SNL, dealing with her catholic faith after the passing of her brother to cancer, how Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, and CFI helped her become an ath...
Why Do People Love Umami but Fear MSG?
July 11, 2019 10:00 - 1 hour - 65.3 MBWhy do people love the taste of Umami but avoid monosodium glutamate (MSG), which is the purest form of Umami on Earth? In this episode of Point of Inquiry, Kavin Senapathy speaks with experts on MSG— which was first isolated by Japanese chemist Dr. Kikunae Ikeda— to explore this culinary and scientific disconnect. Tia Rains, PhD, is currently Senior Director of Public Relations at Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition (Ajinomoto was founded in 1907 to manufacture and sell Ikeda’s MSG). She has o...
Diving into the Lawsuit Against Walmart and Fraudulent Homeopathic Medicines
June 27, 2019 09:00 - 36 minutes - 33.5 MBThe Center for Inquiry has filed a lawsuit against Walmart for deceiving its customers with marketing, labeling, and product placement that present homeopathic medicines as equivalent and effective alternatives to science-based medicines with tested active ingredients. The lawsuit argues that this is not only consumer fraud, but also endangers the health of the people who purchase homeopathic remedies thinking that they contain actual medicine. The suit against Walmarts comes just a few m...
Meet Science for the People
June 13, 2019 08:00 - 48 minutes - 44.9 MBScience for the People began as a group in 1969 that grew out of the anti-war movement and lasted until 1989. SftP has been rebirthed for a new generation of SftP members to explore the history of radical science and to rebuild the movement for today. In this week's episode of Point of Inquiry, Kavin Senapathy speaks with two SftP members, biologist, Ben Allen and neuroscientist, Katherine Bryant. If science is a form of knowledge production and the knowledge being produced only focuses...
Matt Walsh On The Road To Hollywood, His Secular Wedding, and More
May 30, 2019 08:00 - 54 minutes - 49.7 MBOn this week's episode of Point of Inquiry, Jim Underdown speaks with longtime friend, actor, writer, and comedian Matt Walsh. This episode may be different from what you're used to as we take a break from examining science, culture, and religion and instead give you the chance to get to know one of Point of Inquiry's new hosts. Underdown has been close friends with Matt Walsh for over 30 years. Many may know Walsh from his role as Mike McLintock on the show Veep, which recently aired its ...
Dr. Jenny Yip on OCD, Anxiety, and Mental Health
May 16, 2019 09:00 - 53 minutes - 49.4 MBOn this week's episode of Point of Inquiry, Dr. Jenny Yip discusses OCD and anxiety and the widespread impact these can have on our lives as well as how they're exhibited in different people. Kavin Senapathy and Dr. Yip share their own experiences with OCD and anxiety disorders and Dr. Yip shares her insight into effective and ineffective treatments for OCD and anxiety. You can find out more about Dr. Yip's work by listening to her podcast, The Stress-Less Life. You can also follow her on T...
Carol Tavris And Avrum Bluming On The Myth That Estrogen Causes Breast Cancer
May 02, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 63.7 MBThis week’s episode of Point of Inquiry Jim Underdown speaks with Carol Tavris, social psychologist and author of Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) and Avrum Bluming, hematologist, medical oncologist, and emeritus clinical professor at USC about the common myth in the medical field surrounding the link between breast cancer and estrogen. The talk centers around their recent book, Estrogen Matters which examines the practice of administering estrogen to women suffering from symptoms of ...
Massimo Pigliucci and Susan Blackmore on Scientism and Subjectivity
April 18, 2019 12:00 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBThis week's episode of Point of Inquiry is our final episode recorded from CSICon 2018. We're closing this series of interviews with Professor Massimo Pigliucci who discusses his ideas on scientism and how it's used by people like Sam Harris, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Richard Dawkins with host Kavin Senapathy. Also featured on this episode is Professor Susan Blackmore who discusses her out of body experiences and whose research has centered around consciousness, memes, and subjectivity. Pro...
The Secret Sting Operation to Expose Celeb Psychics with Susan Gerbic
April 04, 2019 11:00 - 43 minutes - 39.9 MBOn this week's episode of Point of Inquiry, we are thrilled to have friend of the Center for Inquiry, Susan Gerbic to talk about the recent New York Times featured story that detailed Gerbic and her team's work exposing celebrity psychics. Kavin Senapathy and Gerbic also explore why exposing fake psychics and mediums is important, the methodologies Gerbic and her team employ in these kinds of sting operations, how psychics performed hot reads before the days of the internet (and exactly wha...
Mark Boslough on the Dangers of Climate Change and Destructive Asteroids
March 21, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 64.6 MBMark Boslough is a Caltech-trained physicist and CSI Fellow who spent 34 years at Sandia National Laboratories doing research on hypervelocity impacts, energetic materials, explosions, and global risk from asteroid impacts and climate change. He has participated in many science documentaries with field expeditions to airburst locations including the Libyan Desert of Egypt in 2006, Tunguska in 2008, Chelyabinsk in 2013, and the Nevada Test Site in 2017. Underdown sits down with Boslough to...
Carl Zimmer and Paul Offit on Genetics, Race, and Vaccinations at CSICon 2018
March 07, 2019 13:00 - 33 minutes - 30.8 MBWe find ourselves in the information age among many who, although have the access to proper and accurate scientific information, choose not to believe it. What causes the parents of a newborn to avoid vaccines? Where do the misconceptions of genetics originate? Today on Point of Inquiry, Kavin Senapathy talks with Carl Zimmer and Dr. Paul A Offit while at CSICon 2018 about their research into vaccinations, science denial, and how some groups in the US have tried to use genes and heredity t...
The New Stars of Skeptical Investigation
February 21, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 59 MBThe world of skeptical investigation is full of interesting personalities full of stories about their run-ins with ghost chasers, debunking charlatans, and dealing with "magic". Today on Point of Inquiry, Jim Underdown talks with Massimo Polidoro and Kenny Biddle while at CSICon 2018 about what they've been through as two of the top investigators in the skeptic movement. In this episode, Massimo speaks about the fascinating details around the life of genius, Leonardo da Vinci and about his...
Twitter’s Resident Gynecologist And The Crusher Of The Gender Binary
February 07, 2019 13:00 - 39 minutes - 36.2 MBDr. Jen Gunter is an OB/GYN, pain medicine physician, and Twitter's resident gynecologist. She blogs and also writes The Cycle, a column on the intersection sex, science, and society, for the New York Times. One day she hopes to ask Gwyneth Paltrow for the physics equation that explains how a jade egg can be recharged with lunar energy. Abby Hafer is an author, scientist, educator, and public speaker. Her scientific career includes a doctorate in zoology from Oxford University and teachi...
The Battle for Young Minds - Bertha Vazquez on Teaching Evolution in Schools
January 24, 2019 13:00 - 38 minutes - 43.6 MBAs science standards across the country improve to include middle school standards on evolution, more and more teachers are teaching evolution for the first time and the battle to teach sound science moves into the individual classrooms themselves. The Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES) is a program of the Center for Inquiry. TIES seeks to helps teachers teach evolution by providing them with the content and resources to do so effectively. In just three and a half years, TIES...
Adam Conover and Tim Caulified on The Algorithm, Gwyneth Paltrow, Netflix and more
January 10, 2019 13:00 - 38 minutes - 43.8 MBAdam Conover is the creator and host of Adam Ruins Everything, an informational comedy show that debunks common misconceptions and encourages critical thinking. The New York Times calls it “one of history’s most entertaining shows dedicated to the art of debunking” and refers to Adam as a “genial provocateur”. He is a founding member of the sketch group Olde English, who performed at HBO’s Comedy Fest in Aspen and was named “Best Sketch Group on the Web” by Cracked.com. As a standup comed...
The Odyssey of the Plutophiles: Alan Stern and David Grinspoon on the Voyage of New Horizons
May 17, 2018 19:34 - 50 minutes - 46.3 MBIn July of 2015, a spacecraft called New Horizons gave humankind its first close-up view of a small, misunderstood world called Pluto. It took almost 10 years for New Horizons to soar across more than 3 billion miles of space and give us our first meeting with Pluto and its family of moons. But that journey is just a small part of a much bigger and more harrowing story of how New Horizons came to be. It was a mission that was decades in the making, an endeavor that endured several near-dea...
Trying to Throw Science at Them: Yvette d'Entremont and Kavin Senapathy on Food, Fads, and Fear
December 30, 2017 00:22 - 59 minutes - 54.7 MBWe are living in a land of confusion, as the band Genesis warned us back in 1986, but even they could not have predicted just how much more confusing things would get 31 years later. With a storm of misinformation engulfing almost every field of human endeavor, 2017 was ripe with confusion. And one of the most bewildering subjects is also one of the most personal: our health. With celebrity gurus pitching pseudoscientific nonsense, conflicting news stories about what will and won't kill yo...
Margaret Sullivan: Reckoning and Redemption for the Reality-Based Press
December 06, 2017 19:49 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBIn the post-truth world, the mainstream media is beset on all sides. Peddlers of propaganda, misinformation, and conspiracy theories seek to strip the media of its authority by creating parallel realities and fomenting anger and mistrust. At the same time, poor editorial judgments and a toxic culture of sexism have landed countless self-inflected wounds. How can a reality-based press ever hope to fulfill its mission to seek the truth, hold power accountable, and leave the public more informe...
Lee Billings on the Search for Life in a Silent Universe
September 27, 2017 18:47 - 58 minutes - 53.3 MBIt’s a big cosmos out there. It wasn’t too long ago that we couldn’t be sure that any planets existed anywhere outside of our own solar system. But in just the past handful of years, we’ve learned that planets orbiting stars are the rule, not the exception, which suggests that there may be 200 billion planets just in our galaxy alone, and trillions upon trillions of planets throughout the known universe. Surely, many of the planets in the Milky Way must be home to life forms, and even techno...
Be Not Constrained: James Croft on Humanists’ Responsibility to Fight Oppression
August 24, 2017 22:15 - 1 hour - 54.9 MBThe modern conception of secular humanism arose in large part as a response to the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust, and the evils of racism and bigotry. Humanist Manifesto II, written in 1973, called for “the elimination of all discrimination based upon race, religion, sex, age, or national origin,” and envisioned a world in which all human beings were given equal dignity within a global community. It is now two weeks since newly emboldened white supremacists, including Nazis and Ku Kl...
Space Reporter Loren Grush: Hope and Hubris in Space Exploration
July 18, 2017 16:31 - 49 minutes - 45 MBThe U.S. space program is both beloved and neglected. It brings us breathtaking pictures from distant worlds and drives the human species to push itself farther out into the cosmos. But at the same time, it is subject to terrestrial political concerns, and without the urgency of a Cold War-era “moonshot” to galvanize the public’s enthusiasm, U.S. space policy is at times directionless, and always underfunded. To talk about the state of space exploration, Point of Inquiry host Paul Fidalgo ...
Elizabeth Kolbert on Coming to Grips with a Warming Planet
June 12, 2017 16:15 - 48 minutes - 44.1 MBWe want to believe that climate change can be stopped, that humanity can summon the political will to take decisive and meaningful action to avert disaster and save civilization. But the difficult reality is that even if we make our very best efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, climate change is coming. The real question now is how bad are we going to allow it to get? There is perhaps no one better suited to discuss humanity’s unwitting impact on the planet than this episode’s gue...
Carl Pope on Trump, Paris, and the Climate: We’re Going to Be Okay
June 02, 2017 20:40 - 30 minutes - 27.6 MBOn June 1, President Donald Trump declared that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord, an international agreement meant to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit the global average temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. For those who accept the reality of the threat posed by climate change, the news has sparked a good deal of anger, outrage, and not a small amount of despair for the fate of our planet. Despair not, says ou...
Show Update - Get Ready for Point of Inquiry: The Next Generation
May 03, 2017 19:59 - 5 minutes - 12.3 MBDon’t touch that podcast! Yes, Lindsay Beyerstein and Josh Zepps have moved on to new endeavors, but a new chapter for Point of Inquiry is about to begin, with new hosts and a new format. In this quick update the hosts-to-be will tell us a little bit about themselves and preview what they have planned for Point of Inquiry’s new direction. So stay subscribed to Point of Inquiry in your podcast app of choice, and look for new episodes starting in June.
Is Anybody Listening? Jill Tarter on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
April 24, 2017 18:23 - 48 minutes - 44.2 MBJill Tarter holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA where she also served as the former director of the Center for SETI Research. She was also a Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program and has conducted a number of observational programs at radio observatories worldwide. Since funding for NASA’s SETI program was cut in 1993, she has worked to secure private funding so that SETI may continue to explore...
Sarah Posner: How Trump Got His Hands on the Religious Right
April 11, 2017 16:48 - 30 minutes - 27.5 MBHow did a man living an ostensibly godless, hedonistic life become the champion of the very groups who one would expect to denounce his behavior? Being a real estate mogul and reality TV star, it’s no secret to anyone that President Trump has spent far more time in country clubs than churches. A man who’s had several wives, owned casinos and bars, and had multiple accusations of sexual assault leveled against him is hardly the pinnacle of virtue the religious right professes to yearn for. T...
Paul Offit: The Fate of Science in an Age of Darkness
April 04, 2017 18:24 - 40 minutes - 37.4 MBWhile science was once the force that propelled humanity into an age of enlightenment, a pernicious fear of science and the unknown threatens to plunge society to into an age of darkness. So says Dr. Paul Offit, a groundbreaking immunologist, and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Offit’s new book, Pandora’s Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong, comes at a time when the fundamental concepts of evidence, facts, and truth itself are being smothered by a miasma of misinformat...
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Check Your Privilege-Checking
March 28, 2017 17:05 - 26 minutes - 59.8 MBOften when we talk about privilege, we’re referring to the systemic advantages some groups of people have over others, by virtue of their race, gender, or orientation. Having social awareness of privilege like this is an important part of fostering a more equal and inclusive society. Why then do people who value inclusiveness feel insulted when their own privilege is pointed out? Writer and editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy joins us to discus her new book, The Perils of “Privilege”: Why Injustice ...
Mile-High Violence: Judith Matloff on Mountain Conflict
March 20, 2017 17:31 - 38 minutes - 87.9 MBPeople living at mountainous high altitudes account for only 10 percent of the world’s population, spread out over roughly 25 percent of the Earth’s surface, and yet they also are responsible for a huge portion of the world’s most violent and persistent conflicts. The reason for this correlation between altitude and violence isn’t entirely understood, but there are several factors contributing to the effect the geography of mountain living undoubtedly plays in conflict. Journalist and forei...
Tweaking the Travel Ban: Dahlia Lithwick on Trump’s Revised Executive Order
March 14, 2017 18:50 - 26 minutes - 60.9 MBPresident Trump’s travel ban aimed at select Muslim-majority countries (with exceptions for Christian minorities) was first framed this past January as an urgent action to protect the nation from the imminent danger of foreign terror attacks. With airports in disarray over the unprompted and unclear executive order, the directive was quickly taken to court, and it became clear that Trump’s dire warnings about national security threats were lacking one very important thing: evidence. Th...
Lawrence Krauss: Accidental Origins
March 06, 2017 18:02 - 30 minutes - 68.8 MBFate. Purpose. Design. These are words that hang over many of our heads as we navigate the everyday chaos of life. Religion is often given exclusive purview over the discourse surrounding these concepts, but what if science was able to answer some of these same deep existential questions? We may not always like the answers that science has to give us. Laurence Krauss is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, professor, author, and science communicator, and an honorary member of the Cent...
The Pains of Justice: David M. Engel on Why Americans Don’t Sue
February 27, 2017 20:52 - 26 minutes - 60.8 MBAmericans have a stereotype of being somewhat lawsuit-happy. Any disagreements, no matter how small, wind up in court and we will sue the pants off our neighbors at the slightest scrape or bump. David M. Engel, author and law professor at University at Buffalo, objects. His newest book is The Myth of the Litigious Society: Why We Don’t Sue, where he explains that contrary to popular belief, most American injury victims never so much as contact a lawyer, let alone file a claim. Engel lays ...
James McGrath Morris on Ethel Payne, First Lady of the Black Press
February 20, 2017 18:05 - 28 minutes - 66.3 MBEvery significant turn towards progress has had its trailblazers, and history can easily forget these pioneering individuals who have helped get us to where we are today. One of the most important figures at the height of the civil rights movement was activist and journalist Ethel Payne, who played a pivotal role as a trailblazer for both women’s rights and civil rights in general, rising to become the first black female commentator employed by a national television network. James McG...
Gary Taubes: The Bittersweet Truth about the Dangers of Sugar
February 13, 2017 20:09 - 34 minutes - 79.3 MBDiabetes and obesity are on the rise in America in epidemic proportions, but we don’t respond to it with the urgency of an epidemic. Sugar industry lobbyists work hard to keep regulations at bay, and today sugar can be found in everything from baby formula to cigarettes. There is no customer too young or too old for the sugar industry, and the earlier in a person's life a dependency is developed, the better. Renowned journalist and author Gary Taubes doesn’t sugarcoat how bad our sugar pro...
Science, Stopped at the Border: Jen Golbeck on Science in Trump’s America
February 06, 2017 18:28 - 37 minutes - 85.4 MBThe United States leads the world in science and innovation, but there’s no guarantee that this will always be the case. The Trump administration’s orders to halt federal science publication and public communication has American scientists racing against the clock to back up their data in fear of it being eradicated. Meanwhile, the scientists who come to America from all over the world face new roadblocks, as the travel ban from select Muslim-majority nations is reeking havoc on scientists ...
Murder, Chaos, and Cover-Ups After Hurricane Katrina, with Ronnie Greene
January 30, 2017 18:02 - 30 minutes - 70.5 MBRonnie Green is a Pulitzer-winning journalist and author whose latest book is Shots on the Bridge: Police Violence and Cover-Up in the Wake of Katrina. His book follows the true story of an innocent family seeking help and security in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but was instead ambushed by New Orleans police officers’ gunfire. Further outrage comes not just from the massacre itself but that the officers and their supervisors at the New Orleans Police Department planted evidence in a...