Rationally Speaking Podcast
266 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 464 ratingsRationally Speaking is the bi-weekly podcast of New York City Skeptics. Join host Julia Galef and guests as they explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense, likely from unlikely, and science from pseudoscience. Any topic is fair game as long as we can bring reason to bear upon it, with both a skeptical eye and a good dose of humor!
We agree with the Marquis de Condorcet, who said that in an open society we ought to devote ourselves to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them."Rationally Speaking was co-created with Massimo Pigliucci, is produced by Benny Pollak, and is recorded in the heart of New York City's Greenwich Village.
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Episodes
Rationally Speaking #65 - Philosophical Shock Tactics
July 15, 2012 14:00 - 47 minutes - 32.8 MBWhy do philosophers sometimes argue for conclusions that are disturbing, even shocking? Some recent examples include the claim that it's morally acceptable to kill babies; that there's nothing wrong with bestiality; and that having children is unethical. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Massimo and Julia discuss what we can learn from these "Philosophical shock tactics," the public reaction to them, and what role emotion should play in philosophy.
Rationally Speaking #64 - Jesse Prinz on Looking Beyond Human Nature
July 01, 2012 16:00 - 46 minutes - 32 MBNature vs. Nurture? Massimo and Julia revive the age-old debate in this episode of Rationally Speaking, with special guest Jesse Prinz. Jesse is a professor of philosophy at CUNY and the author of several books, most recently "Beyond Human Nature." The trio debate Jesse's argument that human behavior is far more culturally determined than evolutionary psychologists would have you believe, and in the process explore the question of where morality comes from and how to distinguish between natu...
Rationally Speaking #64 - Jesse Prinz on Looking Beyond Human Nature
July 01, 2012 16:00 - 46 minutes - 32 MBNature vs. Nurture? Massimo and Julia revive the age-old debate in this episode of Rationally Speaking, with special guest Jesse Prinz. Jesse is a professor of philosophy at CUNY and the author of several books, most recently "Beyond Human Nature." The trio debate Jesse's argument that human behavior is far more culturally determined than evolutionary psychologists would have you believe, and in the process explore the question of where morality comes from and how to distinguish between ...
Rationally Speaking #63 - Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
June 17, 2012 15:00 - 48 minutes - 33.5 MBWill all knowledge eventually be united? And what does that even mean, anyway? In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Massimo and Julia explore the topic of consilience, or the "unity of knowledge," a concept popularized by biologist and theorizer E. O. Wilson. Along the way they discuss whether all phenomena can be explained in terms of physics, the importance of precise language, and the seductive dangers of the "deepity."
Rationally Speaking #62 - Patricia Churchland on What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality
June 04, 2012 12:13 - 55 minutes - 38 MBThe Rationally Speaking podcast is proud to feature another certified genius: Patricia Churchland, a philosopher well known for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of the mind, was professor at the University of California San Diego from 1984-2010, and won the MacArthur Genius Grant in 1991. In this episode, she, Massimo, and Julia discuss what philosophy has to say about neuroscience, what neuroscience has to say about philosophy, and what both of them have to say about m...
Rationally Speaking #61 - Willpower
May 20, 2012 14:00 - 48 minutes - 33.2 MBThis episode of Rationally Speaking is all about the age-old problem of willpower: why don't we do what we know is best for us? Massimo introduces some of the early philosophical approaches to this puzzle, and then Massimo and Julia go over more recent scientific research on the issue (for example: does resisting temptation deplete your reserves of willpower, or does it strengthen your willpower "muscle"?). They also examine possible solutions to the problem, including betting and precommitme...
Rationally Speaking #60 - Q&A With Massimo and Julia
May 06, 2012 14:00 - 1 hour - 43.6 MBMassimo and Julia answer listeners' questions. In this installment the topics include: how much do works of fiction affect people's rationality, Bayesian vs. frequentist statistics, what is evidence, how much blame do people deserve when their actions increase the chance of them being targeted, time travel, and whether a philosophically examined life is a better life. Also, all about rationality in the movies, from Dr. Who to Scooby-Doo.
Rationally Speaking #59 - Live at NECSS: David Kyle Johnson on the Simulation Argument
April 25, 2012 01:11 - 1 hour - 47.7 MBIn this special live episode recorded at the 2012 Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, Massimo and Julia discuss the "simulation argument" -- the case that it's roughly 20% likely that we live in a computer simulation -- and the surprising implications that argument has for religion. Their guest is philosopher David Kyle Johnson, who is professor of philosophy at King's College and author of the blog "Plato on Pop" for Psychology Today, and who hosts his own podcast at philosophyan...
Rationally Speaking #58 - Intuition
April 08, 2012 18:00 - 47 minutes - 32.5 MBWhen your intuition tells you something, should you listen? That depends! Relying on intuition can be anything from a highly effective strategy used by experts, to an excuse not to require evidence for your beliefs. In this episode, Massimo and Julia talk about what people mean by "intuition," where our intuitions come from, and when intuition can beat careful reasoning.
Rationally Speaking #57 - Peer Review
March 25, 2012 14:00 - 48 minutes - 33.2 MBIf you value scientific evidence you're probably familiar with the idea that having "peer-reviewed" studies is crucial to the legitimacy of any new claim. But what does "peer-reviewed" entail, anyway? In this episode, Massimo and Julia open up the black box of peer review, explaining how the process originated, how it works, and what's wrong with it. They also try brainstorming ways it could be fixed, and ask: how is the Internet changing the way we do research?
Rationally Speaking #56 - Howard Schneider on Science News Literacy
March 11, 2012 14:00 - 46 minutes - 32.1 MBM & J discuss science communication with Howard Schneider, dean of the school of journalism at SUNY Stonybrook and former editor of Newsday. A guest at previous skeptic events, including the first annual Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, Schneider has argued in the past that skeptics lay too much blame at the feet of the media for public misunderstandings and misconceptions about science. Julia and Massimo question him on this point, and ask him for his thoughts on what *can* be...
Rationally Speaking #55 - Spirituality
February 27, 2012 01:00 - 55 minutes - 37.9 MBIs "rational spirituality" a contradiction? In this episode, Massimo and Julia try to pin down what people mean when they call themselves "spiritual," what inspires spiritual experiences and attitudes, and whether spirituality can be compatible with a naturalist view of the world. Are there benefits that skeptics and other secular people could possibly get from incorporating some variants on traditional spiritual practices -- like prayer, ritual, song, communal worship, and so on -- into thei...
Rationally Speaking #54 - The 'isms' Episode
February 12, 2012 15:00 - 52 minutes - 35.8 MBn this episode Massimo and Julia ask, "Is the fundamental nature of the world knowable by science alone?", looking at the issue through the lenses of a series of related philosophical positions: determinism, reductionism, physicalism, and naturalism. All of those "isms" take a stance on the question of whether there are objectively "correct" ways to interpret scientific facts -- like physical laws, or causality -- and if so, how do we decide what the correct interpretation is? Along the way, ...
Rationally Speaking #53 - Parapsychology
January 30, 2012 00:34 - 57 minutes - 39.3 MBIn this episode, Massimo and Julia take on parapsychology, the study of phenomena such as extrasensory perception, precognition, and remote viewing. Its practitioners claim that there is more evidence for it than there is for other areas of scientific inquiry, such as string theory for which there is no empirical data at all. Yet string theory is taken seriously as a science whereas parapsychology is not. So, what is the scientific status of parapsychology? What does the best academic literat...
Rationally Speaking #52 - Donald Prothero on the Holocaust-Deniers' Playbook
January 16, 2012 00:25 - 49 minutes - 33.9 MBGuest Donald Prothero joins us to discuss the common tactics and thinking of science deniers and the implications of this assault on science for our future. The denial of scientific realities in issues like global warming, creationism, vaccine safety, and AIDS, is growing in our society. Not only is our acceptance of scientific "inconvenient truths" under attack, but even scientists themselves have been threatened. Donald R. Prothero is Professor of Geology at Occidental College and Lectur...
Rationally Speaking #51 - Joseph Heath on Economics Without Illusions
January 01, 2012 15:00 - 46 minutes - 32.2 MBGuest Joseph Heath, author of “Economics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism,” joins us as we turn our skeptical eyes toward the treacherous dual terrain of economics and politics. We discuss the ways in which, with his book, he attempts to raise our economic literacy and empower us with new ideas. In it, he draws on everyday examples to skewer the six favorite economic fallacies of the right, followed by impaling the six favorite fallacies of the left. Heath leaves n...
Rationally Speaking #50 - Neurobabble
December 18, 2011 15:21 - 53 minutes - 36.7 MBThe media is increasingly bombarding us with reports of advances in neuroscience which claim all sorts of amazing feats, like allowing us to read our thoughts and intentions. It sounds like neurobabble. Most of these reports though are either based on bad science, reach false conclusion, or are based on conceptual misunderstanding of how our psychology works. To be fair, much of this is manufactured by the popular media but, unfortunately, some of it comes from the neuroscience community itse...
Rationally Speaking #49 - Eugenie C. Scott on Denialism of Climate Change and Evolution
December 04, 2011 15:00 - 47 minutes - 32.3 MBOur guest Eugenie C. Scott joins us to talk about a new initiative of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) to tackle denialism of global warming. Both evolution and global warming are “controversial issues” in the public sphere, but are not controversial in the world of science. There is some overlap between the two issues, but far more people are climate change deniers than evolution deniers. What is interesting to skeptics, however, is the similarity in the techniques that are ...
Rationally Speaking #48 - Philosophical Counseling
November 20, 2011 15:00 - 46 minutes - 31.6 MBOur guest Lou Marinoff joins us to discuss philosophical counceling, a recent trend to use philosophy as a type of talk therapy. Now, despite the provocative title of his best-selling book, “Plato, Not Prozac!: Applying Eternal Wisdom to Everyday Problems,” the idea is actually not to replace psychiatric medications with chats about the ancient Greeks. Rather, as he puts it in the introduction to the volume, you should take your medications if you really need them, but once your brain is bac...
Rationally Speaking #47 - SETI
November 06, 2011 15:00 - 54 minutes - 37.4 MBIs the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, solid science, pseudoscience, or something else, as Massimo argues in his book "Nonsense on Stilts"? What are the theoretical foundations and empirical evidence that justify a multi-decade research program, and what are its chances of succeeding? Have we learned anything thanks to SETI? Also, if the universe is infinite, what problems does this pose for utilitarian ethics?
Rationally Speaking #46 - The Varieties of Skepticism
October 23, 2011 14:00 - 52 minutes - 36 MBAll of us who are involved in the skeptics movement are regularly confronted with one of two reactions when revealing ourselves as skeptics: either that we are cynics, or that, like the classic skeptics, we don't believe that anything is knowable. In this episode, Massimo and Julia take us trough the history of skepticism. From its roots in ancient Greece, to Descartes, the last rationalist, to David Hume, the father of modern skepticism, and to today's modern skeptic movement. Also, is anyth...
Rationally Speaking #45 - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on Spinoza, Göedl, and Theories of Everything
October 09, 2011 14:00 - 54 minutes - 37.4 MBOur guest Rebecca Newberger Goldstein joins us to talk about Baruch Spinoza and Kurt Gödel, the subjects of her books "The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel" and "Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us Modernity." The topics include the idea of "Spinoza's God" and his concept of a theory of everything, their views on the limits of reason and objective reality, Gödel's theorems and its repercussions in philosophy and mathematics, and his legendary friendship with Albert Einstein. She a...
Rationally Speaking #44 - Fluff that Works
September 25, 2011 14:22 - 52 minutes - 35.8 MBIn this episode we tackle the curious case of pseudoscience or mysticism that works, or seems to, at least some of the times. From acupuncture to chiropractic, from yoga to meditation, what do we make of instances where something seems to have the desired effect for the wrong reasons (e.g., acupuncture), or might otherwise be a perfectly acceptable technique which happens to come intricately bundled with mysticism (e.g., yoga)?
Rationally Speaking #43 - Women in Skepticism
September 11, 2011 14:00 - 51 minutes - 35.1 MBNo, this episode is not about "elevatorgate" or the Watson-Dawkins debacle, but we do use these recent (in)famous events as a springboard for a broader discussion of women in skepticism and science. Is there a misogyny problem in the skeptic and atheist communities? Why aren't there more more women involved in these communities? Also, Julia tells us about her own experience as a young woman skeptic.
Rationally Speaking #42 - On the Limits of Reason
August 28, 2011 14:00 - 51 minutes - 35.2 MBFollowing up on their interview with Robert Zaretsky on the dispute between David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau about the limits of reason, Julia and Massimo expand the topic to include a discussion of the failure of “foundational” projects (e.g., the quest for the ultimate bases of scientific reasoning, or of logic and mathematics). Also, our take on a recent paper on the evolutionary psychology of reasoning that has made mainstream news.
Rationally Speaking #41 - Robert Zaretsky on Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding
August 14, 2011 14:11 - 50 minutes - 34.5 MBImagine a time when a dispute between two philosophers was the talk of high society. That is the time that our guest, Robert Zarertsky, describes in his book "The Philosophers' Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding." He tells the story of the short and dramatic friendship between Hume and Rousseau. Hume, who championed the progress of the sciences and arts, and Rousseau, who questioned progress, wondering whether it was just another word for moral decay and despair. ...
Rationally Speaking #40 - Q&A With Massimo and Julia
July 31, 2011 14:00 - 1 hour - 44.8 MBMassimo and Julia answer listeners' questions. In this installment the topics include: what would they teach in a class in critical thinking, their view of analytics vs. continental philosophy, the ethics of profiteering from a drought in examplistan, how do they compartmentalize their rationality, how does modern technology affect the way we think about things, and what is or should be the primary purpose of our species. Also, is there really a rational argument to prove the divine origin of...
Rationally Speaking #39 - The Science and Philosophy of Free Will
July 17, 2011 14:00 - 48 minutes - 33.1 MBIn this episode we tackle the never ending debate about free will, which David Hume famously defined as “a power of acting or of not acting, according to the determination of the will.” We do this with a couple of twists. We begin by examining the concept of free will from the standard philosophical perspective, then ask what — if anything — modern neuroscience can tell us about it, and come back to the interface between philosophy and science to explore how the two approaches may complement ...
Rationally Speaking #38 - Holden Karnofsky on Evidence-based Philanthropy
July 03, 2011 14:00 - 43 minutes - 30 MBOur guest Holden Karnofsky joins us to discuss Givewell, the nonprofit organization he founded. Givewell is devoted to investigating charities and NGOs to determine how much of an impact they’re having. You could call it “evidence-based philanthropy.” He discusses how Givewell evaluates charities, and what the research has to say about various controversies as well as the conventional wisdom in the nonprofit world: Can large charities be efficient? Is the percentage of the donation that goes ...
Rationally Speaking #37 - The Science and Philosophy of Happiness
June 19, 2011 14:00 - 48 minutes - 33.4 MBDebates over what’s important to happiness — Money? Children? Love? Achievement? — are ancient and universal, but attempts to study the subject empirically are much newer. What have psychologists learned about which factors have a strong effect on people’s happiness and which don’t? Are parents really less happy than non-parents, and do people return to their happiness “set point” even after extreme events like winning the lottery or becoming paralyzed? We also tackle some of the philosophica...
Rationally Speaking #36 - Why Should We Care About Teaching the Humanities?
June 05, 2011 14:51 - 50 minutes - 35 MBUniversities all around the country are closing programs in the humanities, at least in part because of the increasing widespread attitude that higher education should be treated as a business, and that programs that bring in money in the form of high tuitions from students and external grants are to be prioritized. SUNY Albany, for example, announced in the Fall of 2010 that the departments of French, Italian, Classics, Russian and Theater Arts were being eliminated. So, what is the point of...
Rationally Speaking #35 - What is Philosophy of Science Good for?
May 22, 2011 14:00 - 48 minutes - 33.7 MBIn this episode we explore philosophy of science: What is it about, and should it matter to scientists? Massimo and Julia also discuss some of the most important questions in philosophy of science now, and some historical debates between leading philosophers of science, like Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper, over how science should or does work. So is philosophy of science, as Richard Feynman famously quipped, "as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds?" Or was philosopher Daniel Denne...
Rationally Speaking #34 - Celebrities and the Damage They Can Do
May 08, 2011 13:00 - 50 minutes - 34.7 MBIf the recent hoopla about the royal wedding wasn’t enough to remind you, we live in a culture of celebrity, one where famous people command our attention and often pontificate on things they know nothing about. Obvious examples include the nonsense spewed out by Prince Charles about alternative medicine, and the former model Jenny McCarthy and her dangerous notion that vaccines are harmful because they cause autism. But these, of course, are easy targets. What are we to make of Ray Kurzweil...
Rationally Speaking #33 - Live at NECSS: New Dilemmas in Bioethics
April 24, 2011 14:00 - 1 hour - 44.2 MBIn this one hour episode, recorded live at the 2011 Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, Massimo and Julia discuss bioethics with two special guests: Jacob Appel, doctor, author, lawyer and bioethicist; and Jennifer Michael Hecht, poet and historian of science. Topics covered included: Should parents be allowed to select the gender and sexual orientation of their babies? Should pharmacists and physicians be allowed to refuse to provide treatments that violate their own religious or...
Rationally Speaking #32 - Value-free Science?
April 10, 2011 13:00 - 49 minutes - 34.3 MBWe all think that science is about objectivity and “just the facts, ma’am.” Not so fast, philosophers, historians and sociologists of science have been arguing now for a number of decades. To begin with, there are values embedded in the practice of science itself: testability, accuracy, generality, simplicity, and the like. Then there are the many moral dimensions of science practice, both in terms of ethical issues internal to science (fraud) and of the much broader ones affecting society...
Rationally Speaking #31 - Vegetarianism
March 27, 2011 13:00 - 51 minutes - 35.6 MBVegetarianism 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 ...
Rationally Speaking #30 - Cordelia Fine on Delusions of Gender
March 13, 2011 17:32 - 49 minutes - 34 MBCordelia 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 ar...
Rationally Speaking #29 - Q&A Live!
February 27, 2011 15:00 - 1 hour - 45.9 MBIn 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, o...
Rationally Speaking #28 - Live! How To Tell Science From Bunk
February 13, 2011 15:30 - 49 minutes - 33.9 MBMassimo and Julia sit down in front of a live audience at the Jefferson Market Library in New York City for a conversation about science, non-science, and pseudo-science. Based on Massimo's book: "Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk" the topics they cover include whether the qualitative sciences are less reliable than quantitative ones, the re-running of the tape of life, and who is smarter: physicists, biologists, or psychologists? Also, why are evolutionary psychologist so fi...
Rationally Speaking #27 - The Perihelinox Episode, With Historian Timothy Alborn on Anniversaries
January 30, 2011 15:00 - 47 minutes - 32.5 MBIn honor of our first anniversary we invited Historian Timothy Alborn to help us understand the arbitrary nature of anniversaries, both those that mark events of personal significance and those that have a wider societal impact. We chose to record this episode on a very special "holiday": Perihelinox. If you've never heard of it it's because it was recently made up by our producer, Benny Pollak, to celebrate the night of the year when the earth is closest to the sun. Nothing is sacred in thi...
Rationally Speaking #26 - Is Anthropology Still a Science?
January 16, 2011 18:00 - 46 minutes - 31.8 MBIn a recent article in the New York Times, Nicholas Wade reported that the American Anthropological Association had decided “to strip the word ‘science’ from a statement of its long-range plan.” Is this just a reflection of the long standing division between physical and cultural anthropology or is there more here? The revised statement says that “the purposes of the association shall be to advance public understanding of humankind in all its aspects,” a wording that opens the possibility for...
Rationally Speaking #25 - Q&A With Massimo and Julia
January 02, 2011 18:00 - 1 hour - 43.3 MBMassimo 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?
Rationally Speaking #24 - Memetics!
December 19, 2010 18:00 - 47 minutes - 32.7 MBThe 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...
Rationally Speaking #23 - Carol Tavris on Everybody Making Mistakes, Except Us...
December 05, 2010 18:00 - 48 minutes - 33 MBOur guest, Carol Tavris discusses her book (co-authored with Elliot Aronson) "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts." In it they describe how our powerful cognitive dissonance engine of self-justification gives us the incredible ability to rationalize events and beliefs so that we always end up being better than average at being right. Also, how we are forced into these rationalizations by our absolute need to somehow square our m...
Rationally Speaking #22 - Steven Novella on Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science
November 21, 2010 18:00 - 47 minutes - 32.8 MBOur Guest, Dr. Steven Novella discusses a recent article in The Atlantic in which researcher John Ioannidis shows that 40% of papers published in top medical journals are either wrong or make exaggerated claims (and those are the top journals!). He also discusses the difference between Science and Evidence based medicine. Also, Zombies: are they epidemiologically possible? Steven Novella is an academic clinical neurologist at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is the host of the Sk...
Rationally Speaking #21 - Joshua Knobe on Experimental Philosophy
November 07, 2010 19:48 - 45 minutes - 31.3 MBOur guest, Joshua Knobe, is a philosopher interested in cognitive science, so interested, in fact, that he has contributed to establishing a whole new branch of inquiry known as experimental philosophy — and he plausibly claims that the name is not actually an oxymoron! The idea is summarized in this way on one of the major web sites devoted to the enterprise: "Experimental philosophy, called x-phi for short, is a new philosophical movement that supplements the traditional tools of analyti...
Rationally Speaking #20 - Q&A With Massimo and Julia
October 24, 2010 17:00 - 1 hour - 43.7 MBMassimo and Julia answer listeners' questions. In this installment the topics include: can political discourse be rational, who changed M&J's opinion on something and when have they changed someone's opinion, how do they guard against biases when they debate people, the morality of bestiality, and did Samir Okasha really solve the induction problem? Plus, M&J's favorite sources for philosophy: - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - philpapers.org ...
Rationally Speaking #19 - Brendan Nyhan on False Beliefs that Refuse to Die
October 10, 2010 17:00 - 30 minutes - 21.2 MBEver notice how some beliefs only seem to become stronger, even as they're repeatedly debunked? For example, the belief that Barack Obama is a Muslim, or that Bush banned all stem cell research in the country. Brendan Nyhan tells about what he's learned from his research studies and his experience maintaining Spinsanity, a watchdog blog monitoring political misinformation. Is there any hope of clearing up false beliefs if denials simply make the problem worse? Brendan does offer hope, but it...
Rationally Speaking #18 - Evolutionary Psychology
September 26, 2010 16:00 - 31 minutes - 21.3 MBYou’ve heard the claims: men are inclined to cheat on women because natural selection favors multiple offspring from multiple mates, especially if you don’t have to pay child support. Even rape has been suggested to be the result of natural selection in favor of “secondary mating strategies” when the primary ones fail. Welcome to evolutionary psychology, a discipline curiously situated at the interface between evolutionary science and pop psychology, where both wild and reasonable claims see...
Rationally Speaking #17 - Transhumanism
September 12, 2010 17:00 - 33 minutes - 23.3 MBWhat's so great about being human, anyway? The transhumanist movement -- epitomized by organizations like Humanity+ and blogs like Accelerating Future -- advocate the pursuit of technologies to fundamentally change the human condition, tinkering with our brain, bodies and genomes to make ourselves smarter, stronger, happier, and longer-lived. But many people worry that tampering with human nature could have dire consequences for individuals and society alike. In Our Posthuman Future, polit...