What is it about human behavior that allows con artists to pull off elaborate scams in which they fool thousands? Moreover what is about those thousands of people — many of them intelligent and sophisticated — that make them so vulnerable them to being scammed? New Yorker contributor Maria Konnikova joins us today to talk about her new book, The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for it Every Time . Konnikova analyses the tactics that con artists use to appeal to our sensibilities, gain our trust, and...
Mar 07, 2016•33 min
We know more and more about how repressive attitudes about blasphemy and religious criticism in parts of the Islamic world can become explosive, as with the Charlie Hebdo attacks or the murder of secularist bloggers in Bangladesh. But these extreme instances don’t tell the whole story. This week our guest is Jessica Davey-Quantick, who spent several years in Qatar as a reporter and editor for Qatar Happening and Time Out Doha . She experienced first hand the often laughable degrees of arbitrary ...
Feb 29, 2016•37 min
Most of us have no problem operating under the notion that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us. But what do we make of people who do go well beyond that, while asking for nothing in return? Why are often perplexed by those who are willing to put their health and well being on the line for complete strangers? Today’s guest is Larissa MacFarquhar, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of the new book Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choice...
Feb 23, 2016•31 min
Jaclyn Friedman is a writer, speaker, and sex education activist, challenging misconceptions about what it means to have consenting, satisfying sex. She’s the author of What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex & Safety , and she joins us on this special Valentine’s Day episode to bring some freethought to love and sex. In addition to having written extensively on the topic of healthy sexuality and the myriad hang-ups and myths surrounding sex and pleasure, she’s ...
Feb 14, 2016•30 min
The freethought movement has seen two of its most respected and influential institutions combine into what has been called a “supergroup” for secularism. The Center for Inquiry, the organization that proudly produces this program, announced in January that it would merge with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, and that Robyn Blumner, the Richard Dawkins Foundation’s president and CEO, would take over from Ronald A. Lindsay as CEO of CFI. Both Robyn Blumner and Ron Lindsay a...
Feb 08, 2016•37 min
In ancient Greece, did everyone unquestioningly believe in the gods of Olympus? Was there no one in classical Athens to write the equivalent of “The Zeus Delusion”? According to our guest this week, the Greeks’ religious beliefs were as varied and nuanced as they are today. Tim Whitmarsh is a classicist and professor of Greek Culture at University of Cambridge. In his newest book, Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World , he explores the skeptical aspects of ancient history that are ofte...
Feb 01, 2016•33 min
The “nones” are on the rise in the U.S. with 33 million Americans identifying as having no religious affiliation. Atheists shouldn’t get too excited, though, because 68% of the unaffiliated indicate that they do believe in some sort of god. What kind of god do the nones believe in? This week’s guest, Rabbi Mark Wildes, wants it to be the God of Abraham. Rabbi Mark Wildes is the founder and director of the Manhattan Jewish Experience, a program for young Jewish professionals in their 20s and 30s ...
Jan 25, 2016•42 min
This week Point of Inquiry welcomes Dr. David Grimes, a board certified physician in obstetrics and gynecology and author of the new book Every Third Woman in America: How Legal Abortion Transformed Our Nation . Dr. Grimes talks with host Lindsay Beyerstein about the enormous good that’s been done as a result of the legalization of abortion, and the horrors that women used to face — and face anew — as access to abortion services is chipped away. A powerful movement is relentlessly fighting to tu...
Jan 19, 2016•30 min
Throughout history, humans have looked to religion to explain why the world is the way it is. Thanks to the development of science, we now have more concrete ways of understanding the world, ways that do not rely on faith. Despite our progress, however, in 2016 faith and religion are still considered to be prime ways of knowing for billions of people. Our guest this week suggests that these feelings of faith may be harder to shake than those of us who are already secular might think; in fact the...
Jan 12, 2016•38 min
During the perennial War on Christmas, certain Christians often feel the need to remind the rest pf us what the holiday season is really about. It’s Jesus Christ’s birthday and we’re all invited to the party… if by “party” you mean sitting reverently in pews at Christmas mass. Something as little as changing the seasonal decorations on a cardboard coffee cup is enough to put some Christians on edge, as some felt the new red and green Starbucks cups insufficiently acknowledged the role of Christ....
Dec 07, 2015•32 min
After the Paris attacks, tensions are running higher than they have in many years over the threat posed by Islamism, how we should talk about it, and how policy should respond to it. One of our most difficult cultural challenges is distinguishing the acts of violent Islamists from public attitudes towards Muslims in general, and specifically how heated and often ugly rhetoric impacts how we confront the massive refugee crisis. To discuss this thorny and emotionally charged issue, Josh Zepps talk...
Nov 30, 2015•37 min
You don’t have to be paranoid to recognize that privacy isn’t what it used to be. The government can get access to our phone calls and emails, video surveillance is becoming a norm in public places, and nearly everyone has the ability to record at will, discreetly from their cellphones. It’s no wonder that paranoia is becoming a common phenomenon. But at what point does a healthy suspicion become delusional denial? Today’s guest is clinical psychologist David Laporte, a professor of psychology a...
Nov 23, 2015•34 min
It used to be that autism was considered to be the result of poor parenting, but starting in the 1930s, it was understood to be a hereditary condition, and the behaviors often associated with autism turn out to be present, to one degree or another, in most of us. Though attitudes about autism have changed over the decades, the stigma attached to it lingers on. To discuss our evolving understanding of autism, Point of Inquiry welcomes award-winning science journalist Steve Silberman, author of th...
Nov 17, 2015•33 min
Is smoking pot a fundamental human right? On Wednesday, November 4th Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that four individuals involved in a private cannabis club have the constitutional right to grow, sell, and smoke cannabis based on <a href=" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/05/mexicos-supreme-court-rules-that-smoking-weed-is-a-fundamental-human-right/ ">“the right to the free development of one’s personality.”</a> The ruling was limited to the specific individuals who...
Nov 10, 2015•47 min
Most people know Harry Houdini as the world famous magician and illusionist, but in addition to his life as a performer, Houdini was also known to have a deep fascination with the afterlife. So much so he spent the later part of his career investigating spiritualists and mediums. With the help of his undercover assistant Rose Mackenberg, he was able to investigate spiritual claims and assess if they were in fact actual paranormal occurrences or mere illusions, much like the ones he preformed as ...
Oct 31, 2015•25 min
This week Josh Zepps chats about the 2016 Republican presidential primaries with journalist Sarah Posner, a senior correspondent for Religion Dispatches and the author of Gods Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters . She is an expert in the political machinations of the religious right in the United States. The current GOP field has Seventh-day Adventist Ben Carson and the newly Bible-loving Donald Trump battling for the top spot in polls, despite their theological d...
Oct 27, 2015•31 min
Myths and pseudoscience do not only apply to the realms of religion, alternative medicine, and the paranormal. One area of our lives in which science and a little myth-busting can do enormous good is…cooking! This week Point of Inquiry welcomes Kenji Lopez-Alt, managing culinary director of the website Serious Eats. Kenji suggests we take the scientific methods we’ve learned in school and bring them into our kitchens in his new book The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science . Chatting wi...
Oct 19, 2015•34 min
With misinformation about vaccines proliferating among certain groups in the U.S., diseases that had previously been thought eradicated are creeping back into American life. As far as the law is concerned, whether or not a parent chooses to put their own child at risk by denying them vaccinations remains, largely, their personal choice. But this hands-off attitude toward vaccinations, particularly among children, puts everyone else at risk. Here to talk about the threat posed by the anti-vaccina...
Oct 12, 2015•31 min
Brains, the means by which we scrutinize our world, are themselves inscrutable, and no more so than when things are going wrong. Just ask our guest this week, award winning medical journalist Jon Palfreman. After spending years of his life studying Parkinson’s in order to write the classic book, The Case of the Frozen Addicts , Palfreman was himself diagnosed with the very disease he built his career around understanding. Palfreman’s new book is called Brain Storms: The Race to Unlock the Myster...
Oct 05, 2015•31 min
When the public school board in Cobb County, Georgia, placed a disclaimer describing evolution as “just a theory” (in the non-scientific sense) and not a fact, citizen and author Jeffrey Selman knew he had to take a stand for the integrity of his son’s education. This week on Point of Inquiry Josh Zepps talks to Selman about his new book, God Sent Me: A Textbook Case On Evolution vs. Creation , which is Selman’s personal account of reaching out to the ACLU and taking the entire school board of C...
Sep 29, 2015•41 min
One of the United States’ most prominent and respected advocates for secularism is a reverend, and that of course is our guest this week, Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Few have more experience untangling religion from government as Rev. Lynn, who has spent a career making the case that a truly free country requires a secular government, and true religious freedom requires church-state separation. He and host Lindsay Beyerstein discuss...
Sep 21, 2015•35 min
Last week marked 14 years since the attacks of 9/11, the reverberations of which will certainly be felt well into the future. But for all the impact and tragedy of the attacks, there is still so much that remains unanswered, and unanswered for. Here to lend some insight is American journalist Craig Unger, whose bestselling books include House of Bush, House of Saud , a book that explores the relationship between the Bush family (including its various advisors and functionaries) and the Saudi roy...
Sep 14, 2015•31 min
Corporate outsourcing is so common in the U.S. that it’s become exceedingly difficult to avoid consuming products made by unregulated and unethical means. But this has not always been the norm, as several decades ago America’s working class economy was booming, and with the advent of unions, labor laws, and environmental protections, the American dream seemed alive and well. Here to talk about the history of corporate outsourcing in America, and the effects it has had on the economy, the environ...
Sep 08, 2015•33 min
Ten years ago on August 29, 2005, nearly 80 percent of New Orleans found itself underwater. Over the following months, the New York Times sent its correspondent Gary Rivlin to live in New Orleans and report on the city’s effort to rebuild. To this day, much of New Orleans are still in shambles and few outside of the city understand the nature of the chaos that ensued during and after the storm. In his new book Katrina: After The Flood , Rivlin reveals how the story of Katrina, and why its impact...
Aug 31, 2015•30 min
Our very special guest on Point of Inquiry this week is Eugenie Scott, the former director of the National Center for Science Education who has been waging and winning battles against creationism and pseudoscience for years, and has become one of the most venerated luminaries of the skeptic and secular movements. A Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, in 2013 she was honored with the Center for Inquiry Lifetime Achievement Award . Scott is getting back to her roots as a biological anth...
Aug 24, 2015•38 min
Happy cows and chickens grazing in pastures, we see them plastered all over our milk and egg cartons at the grocery store. While most of us realize these images are more marketing than reality, the truth about how animals are treated in factory farming is far worse than most of us imagine. It’s not even clear exactly how much better animals fare when packaging advertises things like "cage-free," "natural" and "vegetarian-fed.” This week on Point of Inquiry , Paul Shapiro, the vice president of f...
Aug 17, 2015•35 min
Every year technology produces more innovative ways to entertain us. Everything from Twitter to Candy Crush and from billboards to viral commercials, the information that engrosses us on a daily basis makes dull tasks such as waiting in line at the post office pass in the blink of an eye. But what happens when the distractions of technology don’t disappear when you leave the queue? Here to talk about the difficulty of unplugging our brains from our media-drenched world is author and contributing...
Aug 10, 2015•29 min
This week on Point of Inquiry , our guest is Ta-Nehisi Coates, a renowned journalist and celebrated essayist on culture, history, and politics. He’s a senior editor at The Atlantic , where last year he ignited national introspection and heated debate with his cover feature, http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/ "> “The Case for Reparations.” He is also author of the new bestseller, Between the World and Me , a book he wrote for his son about surv...
Aug 03, 2015•31 min
As difficult it is to accept, there may be no loosening of the grip ISIS currently holds over its territory, at least not any time soon. Our guest, Stephen M. Walt, begins to come to terms with this unpleasant situation in a new article for Foreign Policy magazine, “What Should We Do if the Islamic State Wins?” His answer is not an inspiring one, but one based on the facts as he sees them: We will have to live with it. On Point of Inquiry this week, Walt, a professor of international affairs at ...
Jul 28, 2015•33 min
This week, Lindsay Beyerstein chats with medical ethicist Dr. Barron Lerner, author of the new book The Good Doctor: A Father, A Son and the Evolution of Medical Ethics . Lerner’s father Myer Lerner was a renowned infectious disease specialist who practiced medicine during what many consider to be the golden era of American medicine. Being a generation apart, Barron and Myer Lerner where taught very different approaches to medical ethics, especially when it came to patient autonomy and end-of-li...
Jul 20, 2015•38 min
