Point Of Inquiry

Andrew Mayne is a magician, paranormal illusionist, inventor, TV producer and skeptic. One of the most creative and innovative minds in magic, Andrew has written and produced over 40 books and DVDs. Both creator and consultant, he has worked with a number of artists including David Blaine, and Penn & Teller. Andrew’s performance material ranges from close-up and stage, to mentalism and illusion, and he is infamous for his brand of tricks, effects and stunts known as "shock magic". Far from pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Andrew’s shock magic is described as "disturbing", "evil", "frightening" and "deadly". In this conversation with Karen Stollznow, Andrew speaks about being a Magician’s Magician, making multimedia magic, and not only inventing illusions but reinventing classic illusions. He explains the link between magic and skepticism, and how magic offers practical insight to protect us from charlatans, con-artists, and ourselves. Andrew shares stories of his paranormal investigations for the Weird Thin

When President Obama was inaugurated in January of 2009, he pledged to “restore science to its rightful place” in the U.S. government. And true to his word, the president promptly staffed his cabinet with distinguished scientific leaders, liberated embryonic stem cell research from the Bush era restrictions, and released a  memorandum on “scientific integrity” intended to reverse the kinds of problems seen in the Bush years. Since those days, however, the "scientific integrity" agenda does not seem to have filtered through the federal government as hoped. And according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times, some scientists are having problems in this administration when it comes to speaking with the media, or having their research results properly handled by their superiors. To put these developments in context, Point of Inquiry called upon Francesca Grifo, director of the Scientific Integrity Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. As Grifo explains, claims that the Obama administra

Tom Quinn has spent the past 15 years as a documentary TV writer and producer for Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic and others. He has traveled the world producing programs that explore and deconstruct urban legends, psychic claims, religious myths and conspiracy theories, and has worked with the likes of James Randi and Michael Shermer. He's a graduate of the American Film Institute, he's been a film critic, a story analyst for Universal Studios and HBO, and, in 2005, he received two Emmy nominations for his History Channel special, Beyond the Da Vinci Code. He has subsequently done programs for Discovery Shark Week and on the book, Angels and Demons. Tom is the author of a new book, What Do You Do with a Chocolate Jesus? An Irreverent History of Christianity. He also gives humors lectures on all of these subjects, and blogs at choco-jesus.blogspot.com. In this conversation with Robert Price, Tom talks about his new book and how satire can be an effective education tool. He disc

Our guest this week needs no introduction for those in the skeptical and secular world. After all, he has a frakkin' asteroid named after him. He’s Phil Plait—science blogger extraordinaire for Discover Blogs, where he authors “Bad Astronomy.” Recently, Plait joined Point of Inquiry for a wide ranging conversation about standing eggs on end, Apollo moon landing deniers, wacky yet endearing Hollywood bad science, something called “spaghettification”….and the end of the world. Phil Plait is a skeptic and an astronomer, and former president of the James Randi Educational Foundation. He lectures widely across the country and is the author of two books, most recently Death from the Skies: These Are the Ways the World Will End.

Adam Savage is an artist, actor, educator, special effects designer and co-host of the Discovery Channel's TV show Mythbusters.   Adam has a diverse background in animation and design, and for almost two decades he has concentrated on the special effects industry for film, theater and television.    A prominent skeptic and atheist, Adam lectures in science education and is a strong promoter of critical thinking.   Karen Stollznow spoke with Adam in Las Vegas at The Amaz!ng Meeting, the annual conference of the James Randi Educational Foundation.   In this conversation, Adam spoke about his identification as a skeptic and atheist, and his work to promote science and skepticism to the public. He talked about his experiences on Mythbusters; why the show appeals to skeptics, and how he applies skepticism to his experiments.    Adam talks about testing pseudoscience and the paranormal, how myths and legends develop, and how the public reacts when their cherished myths are busted. 

Recently in Amherst, New York, two of Point of Inquiry’s hosts sat down for a special in-studio episode of the show. One was a conservative (Robert Price), one a liberal (Chris Mooney)—and both were atheists. The topic they tackled: Is there any necessary correlation between one’s disbelief in God and one’s place on the political spectrum? The result was a fascinating—and notably civil, and frequently entertaining—conversation ranging across foreign policy, abortion, stem cell research, animal rights, and many other topics. In the end, the discussants actually found not only much disagreement, but also some common ground. Robert M. Price is Professor of Biblical Criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute as well as the editor of The Journal of Higher Criticism and a host of Point of Inquiry. His books include Beyond Born Again,  The Widow Traditions in Luke-Acts: A Feminist-Critical Scrutiny, Deconstructing Jesus, andThe Incredible Shrinking Son of Man.   Chris Mooney is a science and political journalist

Tom Flynn is Executive Director of The Council for Secular Humanism, Editor of Free Inquiry magazine, Director of Inquiry Media Productions, and Director of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum. A journalist, novelist, entertainer, and freethought historian, Flynn is the author of numerous articles and editorials for Free Inquiry magazine. In addition to The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, his books include two black comedy science fiction novels, Nothing Sacred, its prequel Galactic Rapture, and The Trouble With Christmas, a secularist critique of the holiday. He has made hundreds of radio and TV appearances in his role as the curmudgeonly "anti-Claus." In this conversation with Robert Price, Tom explains how he transitioned from his conservative Catholic youth Secular Humanist he is today. He talks about the part Mormonism played in his transition to non-belief. Perhaps one of the most consistent secularists around today, Tom elaborates on the problems he has with rites of passage ce

Global warming, we're often told, is an issue we must address for the sake of our grandchildren. We need to cut carbon because of our moral obligation to future generations. But according to Bill McKibben, that's a 1980s view. As McKibben writes in his new book Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet, the increasingly open secret is that global warming happened already. We've passed the threshold, and the planet isn’t at all the same. It's less climatically stable. Its weather is haywire. It has less ice, more drought, higher seas, heavier storms. It even appears different from space. And that’s just the beginning of the earth-shattering changes in store—a small sampling of what it’s like to trade a familiar planet (Earth) for one that's new and strange (Eaarth). We'll survive on this sci-fi world, this terra incognita—but we may not like it very much. And we may have to change some fundamental habits along the way.   Eaarth, argues McKibben, is our greatest failure. Bill McKibben is

Tim Farley is a computer software engineer, skeptic, and creator of the popular website What’s the Harm? His site answers this salient question with over 670,000 stories of people who have indeed been harmed, damaged, injured, or even killed by pseudoscience and the paranormal What’s the Harm’s catchphrase is: “368,379 people killed, 306,096 injured and over $2,815,931,000 in economic damages.” However, these statistics are calculated from randomly-caught, modern cases documented in English-speaking countries. Many stories are left untold. How much bigger could the problem be? In this interview with Karen Stollznow, Tim reveals the real-life dangers, and the hidden dangers, of these beliefs and practices. He treats the lack of regulatory bodies for these industries, and what recourse can be taken when harm is done. Tim talks about the question “What’s the Harm?” as used in defense of pseudoscience and the paranormal, and why this is wielded as a “checkmate” argument. He discusses the power

This week’s guest is Naomi Oreskes, co-author with historian Eric Conway of the new book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Through extensive archival research, Oreskes and Conway have managed to connect the dots between a large number of seemingly separate anti-science campaigns that have unfolded over the years. It all began with Big Tobacco, and the famous internal memo declaring, “Doubt is our Product.” Then came the attacks on the science of acid rain and ozone depletion, and the flimsy defenses of Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program. And the same strategies have continued up to the present, with the battle over climate change. Throughout this saga, several key scientific actors appear repeatedly—leaping across issues, fighting against the facts again and again. Now, Oreskes and Conway have given us a new and unprecedented glimpse behind the anti-science curtain. Naomi Oreskes (Ph.D., Stanford, 1990) is Professor of Histo

S. T. Joshi is a leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and other writers, mostly in the realms of supernatural and fantasy fiction. He has edited corrected editions of the works of Lovecraft, several annotated editions of Bierce and Mencken, and has written such critical studies as The Weird Tale and The Modern Weird Tale. His award-winning biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, has already become a collector's item. But critical, biographical, and editorial work on weird fiction is only one aspect of Joshi's multifaceted output. A prominent atheist, Joshi has published the anthology Atheism: A Reader and the anti-religious polemic, God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong. He has also compiled an important anthology on race relations, Documents of American Prejudice. In this episode of Point of Inquiry, Robert M. Price talks with Joshi about Lovecraft and how his writings were an impetus toward Joshi's atheism. Along with discussing Lovecraft's v

This week, we learned that J. Craig Venter has at long last created a synthetic organism—a simple life form constructed, for the first time, by man. Let the controversy begin—and if New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter is correct, the denial of science will be riding hard alongside it.   In his recent book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, Specter charts how our resistance to vaccination and genetically modified foods, and our wild embrace of questionable health remedies, are the latest hallmarks of an all-too-trendy form of fuzzy thinking--one that exists just as much on the political left as on the right.   And it’s not just on current science-based issues that denialism occurs. The phenomenon also threatens our ability to handle emerging science policy problems—over the development of personalized medicine, for instance, or of synthetic biology. How can we make good decisions when again and again, much of the public r

George Hrab is a composer, professional musician, singer, songwriter, podcaster, and skeptic. George is the Host and Producer of the Geologic Podcast, a popular weekly show about music, comedy, science, and skepticism. The drummer in the band Philadelphia Funk Authority, he is a successful multi-instrumentalist musician who has performed on-stage with Elton John, and given a performance in the White House for Bill Clinton. For the past fifteen years he has also been a solo artist, releasing his music independently. George’s songs tackle science, the paranormal and pseudoscience, from the Occasional Songs for the Periodic Table in which he sings to each element, to an ode to the coelacanth. George’s latest album Trebuchet includes the songs God is Not Great, Everything Alive will Die Someday, and Death From the Skies, featuring “Bad Astronomer” Dr. Phil Plait. In this episode of Point of Inquiry, Karen Stollznow speaks with George about the “intersection” of music and skepticism, and how musi

It’s hard to think of an issue more contentious these days than the relationship between faith and science. If you have any doubt, just flip over to the science blogosphere: You’ll see the argument everywhere.   In the scholarly arena, meanwhile, the topic has been approached from a number of angles: by historians of science, for example, and philosophers. However, relatively little data from the social sciences has been available concerning what today’s scientists actually think about faith.   Today’s Point of Inquiry guest, sociologist Dr. Elaine Ecklund of Rice University, is changing that. Over the past four years, she has undertaken a massive survey of the religious beliefs of elite American scientists at 21 top universities. It’s all reported in her new book Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think.   Ecklund’s findings are pretty surprising. The scientists in her survey are much less religious than the American public, of course—but they’re also much more religious, and more “spir

Lois Schadewald's interest in both science and pseudoscience rubbed off on her from her brilliant brother Robert J. Schadewald, a prolific author and debater. When Bob died a decade ago he left behind a legacy of published essays and book chapters, as well as much unpublished material including a complete manuscript on the history of the Flat Earth movement. Lois has seen to the publication of many of these pieces in the collection Worlds of their Own: A Brief History of Misguided Ideas; Creationism, Flat-Earthism, Energy Scams, and the Velikovsky Affair. In this episode of Point of Inquiry, Robert M. Price asks Lois to outline some of her brother's research in Flat Earth and Hollow Earth "science" as well as to relate some stories of his association with important "alternative science" figures like catastrophist Immanuel Velikovsky. Schadewald talks about her brother's unique approach to dealing with promoters of pseudoscience, and what he gained from it. She discusses the timeline of Bob's res

For many of us, chemistry is something we remember with groans from high school. Periodic Table of the Elements—what a pain to memorize, and what was the point, anyway? So how do you take a subject like chemistry and make it exciting, intriguing, and compelling? With her new book The Poisoner’s Handbook, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Deb Blum has done just that. Blum takes a page from the "CSI" franchise, and moves that familiar narrative of crime, intrigue, and high tech bad-guy catching back into the early days of the 20th century. There, in jazz age New York, she chronicles the birth of forensic chemistry at the hands of two scientific and public health pioneers—the city’s chief medical examiner Charles Norris, and his chemistry whiz side-kick Alexander Gettler. And while chronicling their poison-sleuthing careers, Blum also teaches quite a bit of science. Her book is a case study in science popularization, and one we should all be paying close attention to. Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer-prize

Dr. Robert Todd Carroll is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and author of The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions. He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Sacramento City College, where he taught Logic and Critical Reasoning, Critical Thinking about the Paranormal, Law, Justice and Punishment, and World Religions. He is also author of the textbook Becoming a Critical Thinker. Bob is the creator of the popular website Skepdic.com, which features numerous essays and book reviews, and the Skeptimedia blog where he provides a commentary of media coverage of pseudoscience and the paranormal. But the focus of the site is the original online version of the Skeptic’s Dictionary, containing hundreds of entries on topics ranging from “abracadabra to zombies”. This is the resource for defining skepticism. In this episode, Karen Stollznow talks with Bob about the importance of defining the topics of which we are skeptical. They discuss the i

For two decades now, we’ve failed to seriously address climate change. So the planet just keeps warming—and it could get very bad. Picture major droughts, calving of gigantic ice sheets, increasingly dramatic sea level rise, and much more. Against this backdrop, the idea of a technological fix to solve the problem—like seeding the stratosphere with reflective sulfur particles, so as to reduce sunlight—starts to sound pretty attractive. Interest in so-called “geoengineering” is growing, and so is media attention to the idea. There are even conspiracy theorists who think a secret government plan to geoengineer the planet is already afoot. Leading scientists, meanwhile, have begun to seriously study our geoengineering options—not necessarily because they want to, but because they fear there may be no other choice. This week's episode of Point of Inquiry with host Chris Mooney features Eli Kintisch, who has followed these scientists’ endeavors—and their ethical quandaries—like perhaps no other journalis

Thomas J.J. Altizer burst onto the religious scene in the 1960s with his book The Gospel of Christian Atheism. He was one of the "Death of God" theologians discussed in the famous TIME cover story, "Is God Dead?" Altzier holds an M.A. in theology and Ph.D. in History of Religions from the Universeity of Chicago. Now 83 years of age, Altizer remains a Young Turk among radical theologians, insisting that only Christians can be true atheists and must proclaim the death of God.   In this conversation with Robert Price, Altizer delves into Death of God theology. He explains the difference between saying "There is no God" and "God is Dead." He discusses his interactions with other theologians and what they thought of his work. Altizer gives his opinion of contemporary public atheists and what he likes and dislikes about them. He relates stories from his career involving other thinkers such as Paul Tillich and Mircea Eliade—including a personal "initiation" experience. He explains how he formerly debate

Paul Kurtz is founder and chair emeritus of the Center for Inquiry and founder of a number of other organizations. A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, chairman of the Committee for the Skeptical Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and Prometheus Books. He is the author or editor of almost fifty books, including his new title Exuberant Skepticism. Throughout the last four decades, Kurtz has been a leading defender of science and reason against the prevailing cults of irrationality in our society, and has been interviewed widely in the media on a wide range of subjects, including alternative medicine and communication with the dead, to the historicity of Jesus and parapsychology. In this, the third of three special-edition epsiodes featuring D.J. Grothe, Paul Kurtz discusses American philosopher John Dewey, and explains how his views undergird much of what the Center for In