Despite the fact that the United States was founded as a secular state, government neutrality toward religion remains a tumultuous and controversial issue -- a conversation-stopper in most public policy discussions. This week on the show, Lindsay Beyerstein welcomes Ronald A. Lindsay, president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry, the organization responsible for Point of Inquiry. Ron joins us to discuss his just-released book, The Necessity of Secularism: Why God Can’t Tell Us What to Do , in whi...
Dec 08, 2014•34 min
Alan Turing was a true visionary. Founding what we understand today as computer science, he was also a mathematician, a philosopher, and an early trailblazer for gay equality. Without his genius for codebreaking, the Second World War might have gone in a much darker direction. He saved millions of lives and potentially the world as we know it, yet his efforts for humanity were not enough to spare him the inhuman treatment he received for his sexual orientation. Andrew Hodges was one of the first...
Dec 01, 2014•29 min
As a nation, the U.S. prides itself on at least aspiring to the ideal of equality, even if it often falls short. The educational, health care, and legal systems, are plagued by institutional biases against racial minorities. The good news is that these disparities are likely not due to hateful intent, but caused by a combination of factors that include implicit bias, racial anxiety, and stereotype threat. To make sense of this, Point of Inquiry welcomes Rachel D. Godsil, research director of the...
Nov 24, 2014•44 min
As the threat posed by radical Islamists like those of ISIS grows in popular awareness, Islam itself becomes more of a target for criticism; some of it fair, and some of it based in ignorance or bigotry. Can efforts to defend Islam and Muslims from discrimination and racism go too far, and keep us from having an honest discussion about something of such critical importance? This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, an Iraqi refugee turned activist, and founder of the Global Sec...
Nov 19, 2014•35 min
The English language is often treated as delicate and precious, and disagreements about what is “proper English” go back as far as the 18th century. Then as now, style manuals and grammar books placed innumerable restrictions on what is and isn’t “correct,” as "Language Mavens" continue to delight in pointing out the unforgivable errors of others. To bring some fresh perspective to this remarkably heated topic (and to let some of us who are less than perfect, grammatically speaking, off the hook...
Nov 10, 20140
There’s no doubt that Ebola is an incredibly dangerous and genuinely lethal virus, but it’s also a highly manageable one, though you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise given the kind of hyperbolic coverage we’ve seen of the epidemic. In order to sort fact from fiction about the real threat posed by Ebola, and to better understand its origins and wider implications, Point of Inquiry presents a special episode, recorded before a live audience in New York. We begin with a presentation by Dr. Jon ...
Nov 03, 20140
Harry Houdini, the most famous illusionist the world has ever known, spent the later part of his career fascinated with spiritualists and mediums. This led him to become a dedicated skeptic and investigator. In this special Halloween episode for 2014, Point of Inquiry’s new producer Nora Hurley chats with Joe Nickell, the world’s leading paranormal investigator, and a former professional magician himself. Together, they conduct the Center for Inquiry’s 18th Annual Houdini Séance. Listen in as Ni...
Oct 31, 20140
Given the divisive nature of the debates over abortion, the subject is understandably not the best table-talk material. But despite the fact that abortion is a normal and often necessary (one in three women will have an abortion before menopause), even those who are staunchly pro-choice feel compelled to hedge their support by making sounds about how abortions are "horrible" and "unfortunate." When both sides of the controversy associate abortions as immoral and shameful, much of the conversatio...
Oct 22, 20140
Our universe is made up of billions of galaxies. The cosmos is so mind-bogglingly vast, that it’s hard not to suppose that we aren’t alone, that life must exist somewhere else besides our own planet. Last month, some of the world’s leading scientists gathered at an Astrobiology Symposium run by NASA and the Library of Congress to discuss where we stand in our search for extraterrestrial life. This week on Point of Inquiry , Steven J. Dick, the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in...
Oct 14, 2014•30 min
The rise of ISIS, the self proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has sparked debate about the role of religion — specifically Islam — in violent extremism. This week, Dr. Adam Silverman offers us a glimpse into the theology of ISIS, and tackled some difficult questions; What does ISIS believe and how do its religious beliefs shape its political choices? What about the notorious video-taped beheadings and reports of rape as weapons of war? How does ISIS want the United States to react, and ...
Oct 06, 2014•53 min
Josh Zepps is off, and since this week is the 5th International Blasphemy Rights Day , we're rebroadcasting this interview by Chris Mooney with Austin Dacey, CFI's former UN representative and an expert on the subject of blasphemy laws. *** This week, our guest is a return one: Austin Dacey . He's a philosopher, a writer, a human rights activist, and the creator of the Impossible Music Sessions , which we featured in a past show . Austin's books include The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs...
Sep 29, 2014•41 min
This week Point of Inquiry welcomes journalist Mark Oppenheimer. Mark writes the Beliefs column for the New York Times, and is the author of the e-book The Zen Predator of The Upper East Side . He is an expert on how religious and philosophical communities deal--or refuse to deal--with allegations of abuse in their ranks. Mark joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to talk about a feature he wrote for BuzzFeed entitled "Will Misogyny Bring Down The Atheist Movement? " , a discussion (as he puts it, "from...
Sep 22, 2014•36 min
It’s National Chicken Month! But rather than celebrating the consumption of fowl, Point of Inquiry is asking what exactly is going on in America's meat industry? Is the way we consume meat at all rational? Joining us this week is Christopher Leonard, investigative journalist whose work has appeared in Fortune , Slate , and The New York Times . He is a fellow with The New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute in Washington, DC., and the author of The Meat Racket: The Secret Ta...
Sep 17, 2014•40 min
Point of Inquiry welcomes Caitlin Doughty, creator of the cult classic web series Ask A Mortician , which gives unvarnished answers to questions about dead bodies and the death industry. Caitlin has tackled topics ranging from " What to say to a grieving person? " to " How could my titanium hip implant end up as part of a road sign in the Midwest? " Caitlin is the author of the new book Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: and Other Lessons from the Crematory , the story of her stint as a crematory operator...
Sep 08, 2014•30 min
It’s been ten years since the publication of Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith kicked off the cultural phenomenon of “new atheism,” bringing frank criticism of religion into mainstream conversation. In the decade since, Harris has emerged as something of a maverick among nonbelievers and progressives, frequently at the center of controversy with his opinions on Islam and extremism, science’s role in morality, and his embrace of a kind of “spiritualism” grounded in science. It is this last item ...
Sep 02, 2014•50 min
This week Point Of Inquiry welcomes Dr. Adia Benton , a professor of medical anthropology at Brown University. She joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to talk about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Medical anthropologists bring a unique expertise to epidemics because they study both the physiology of illness and the cultural factors that influence its transmission. That's why the World Health Organization has deployed med anthros to combat prior Ebloa outbreaks. They ask questions like: "How do peop...
Aug 25, 2014•39 min
Point of Inquiry's hosts are off this week, so we're running Lindsay Beyerstein's excellent interview from earlier this year with Dr. Paul Offit. Dr. Offit will be the Center for Inquiry's special guest on September 6th in Amherst, NY , as he is awarded the Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking. * * * Paul A. Offit, MD is best known as a co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine and a staunch, public supporter of vaccination and opponent of pseudoscientific alternative medicine. His most recent...
Aug 18, 2014•39 min
One hundred years ago, Great Britain declared war on Germany, joining in what we now refer to as World War I, a conflict which cost more than 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians their lives, and shaped the the world we know today. How did reasonable people let "The Great War" begin, and what can reasonable people today learn from it? Joining us this week is Christopher Capozzola, an MIT professor in political and legal history, war, and the military, and author of Uncle Sam Wants You: W...
Aug 11, 2014•30 min
This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Laurel Braitman, a TED fellow with a PhD in History and Anthropology of Science from MIT, and the author of Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves . It might sound strange to say that animals suffer from mental illness but the brain systems that regulate anxiety, attachment, and arousal are evolutionarily ancient. If faulty neurochemistry compounded by stress can lead to mental illness in h...
Aug 04, 2014•36 min
How do we rationally assess risk? Following a terrible series of horrifying air travel disasters, reasonable people begin to question what we consider to be "safe." But should we? To answer this question, our host Josh Zepps is joined by David Ropeik, an international consultant and expert on the subject of risk perception and communication, and author of Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding Whats Really Safe and Whats Really Dangerous in the World Around You and How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Ou...
Jul 29, 2014•31 min
On March 15, 2000, over a dozen whales beached themselves in the Bahamas in one of the largest multi-species strandings in history. Suspicion turned to U.S. Navy sonar, but at first there was no proof. This revelation brings us into the detective story told in War of the Whales: A True Story . Point of Inquiry welcomes the author, Joshua Horowitz. We discuss the history of the U.S. Navy’s use of high-intensity active sonar; the cover-up of sonar in the Bahamas; and the titanic struggle between t...
Jul 21, 2014•38 min
Point of Inquiry is taking a week off and filling in with a classic episode. After Saudi Arabia recently tried to silence the Center For Inquiry's UN representative, Josephine Macintosh, as she delivered a statement critical of their repeated assaults on freedom of religion, belief and expression, we felt that our Austin Dacey episode was fitting to fill in during our week off. Austin Dacey serves as a respresentative to the United Nations for CFI, and is also on the editorial staff of Skeptical...
Jul 14, 2014•24 min
To discuss last week's Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Point of Inquiry welcomes Dr. Brian Leiter, law professor and philosopher at the University of Chicago. He's the author of several books including Why Tolerate Religion? . He blogs at Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog . Leiter and host Lindsay Beyerstein discuss what the Hobby Lobby decision means for women's health, corporate personhood, and the separation of church and state. In 2013, Leiter headlined a daylong symposium ...
Jul 07, 2014•39 min
Best known for his 17 years as a talk show host, Montel Williams is now bringing his name and dynamic personality to activism on behalf of U.S. servicemen and women. Raised during the height of the Civil Rights Movement and into the tumultuous sixties, he joined the Marines as a young man and enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy, earning a Bachelor of Science in Engineering. After spending years as a motivational speaker and talk show host he returns to his roots in supporting U.S. military men an...
Jul 02, 2014•34 min
We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in caves rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than wear sneakers—or did we? These, along with many other questions about what is or is not "natural" for humans from an evolutionary perspective and is the subject of the new book by biologist, Dr. Marlene Zuk, Paleofantasies: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live . The book was recently long-listed for the Royal Society's Winton Prize, one of the most book pri...
Jun 23, 2014•34 min
Few intra-party political battles have been as astonishing and unexpected as last week's primary loss by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to religious-conservative challenger David Brat, who was quickly embraced by the Tea Party after his victory. To discuss what this means for the future of the GOP, and how religion has waxed and waned as a factor in American politics, Point of Inquiry welcomes the great political analyst Howard Fineman. Howard Fineman is the editorial director of The Huffingt...
Jun 16, 2014•33 min
This week POI welcomes bestselling author and trans rights activist, Janet Mock. Janet is the author of the new memoir Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More , which recounts her emotional and physical transition from an infant sexed male at birth in Hawaii in 1983, to a young woman in New York City. Some traditionalists accuse trans activists of playing games with language when they insist on the right of trans people to be called by their preferred pronouns ...
Jun 09, 2014•41 min
This week, we welcome Negin Farsad, a groundbreaking Iranian American comedian. A TED speaker and TED Fellow, she was named one of the Huffington Post 's 50 Funniest Women. She's been seen on Comedy Central, MTV, CNN, MSNBC, and in her movie The Muslims are Coming! , a documentary following some of the funniest Muslim comedians as they travel America's Red States, cracking people up and demolishing stereotypes. Host Josh Zepps and Farsad discuss everything from the gray areas in religious identi...
Jun 03, 2014•47 min
This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor and Legal Correspondent for Slate , where she writes the "Supreme Court Dispatches" and "Jurisprudence" columns. Her legal commentary won her a National Magazine Award in 2013. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School and she joins Lindsay Beyerstein to talk about the crisis facing capital punishment in the United States. Almost all executions in the United States are performed by lethal Injection but America's go-to lethal inje...
May 27, 2014•34 min
Our guest this week is Farzana Hassan, a Pakistani-Canadian political scientist, a columnist for the Toronto Sun, whose new book is Prophecy and the Fundamentalist Quest: An Integrative Study of Christian and Muslim Apocalyptic Religion . Hassan joins Point of Inquiry' s Josh Zepps to talk about issues surrounding Islam, in particular the difficulty in honestly dealing with terrorism and extremism and their relation to Islam, and the fine line between legitimate criticism and Islamophobia. Hassa...
May 20, 2014•36 min
