Rationally Speaking
Summary: Rationally 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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- Artist: New York City Skeptics
- Copyright: (c) 2010-2019 New York City Skeptics
Podcasts:
Philosopher and author Rebecca Goldstein discusses her latest book: "Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away." Also, the value of philosophy in modern science and whether it makes sense to designate experts in ethical reasoning.
M&J discuss the ethics of suicide through the lens of several major philosophies. They also explore the social science of suicide: how does one person's suicide affect the community?
Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs for short, have been hailed as the next wave in secondary education. M&J discuss how to measure MOOCs' effectiveness, separating the hype from the genuine promise. Also, other forms of alternative higher education.
Theoretical physicist and author Lawrence Krauss chats with M&J about whether the laws of the universe demand some kind of explanation, whether string theory should be deemed a failure, and how he ended up featured in a geocentrist documentary.
Atheist activist Greta Christina and M&J disagree over the boundaries of the atheist movement, and discuss how cognitive biases make it hard to asses whether people regret coming out as atheists and what should atheist communities be modeled after.
Mathematician Edward Frenkel, author of "Love and Math," talks about how the subject seduced him as a young man, how he believes it's generally mis-taught in schools, and how you can find beauty -- even romance -- in mathematics.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses the question of whether he should call himself an atheist. In a Big Think video he explained that he avoids that label because it causes people to make all sorts of unflattering (and often untrue) assumptions.
Guest Zach Weinersmith, author of SMBC, the popular “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal" webcomic, clarifies his position in the ongoing philosophy vs. science fight, the ethics of offensive jokes, and discusses BAHFest and his movie ”Starpocalype."
Physicist Max Tegmark joins us to talk about his book "Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality" in which explains the controversial argument that everything around us is made of math.
Q&A recorded live at the Jefferson Market Library in NYC. Topics range from science, philosophy and the borderlands between the two. The questions push the hosts to think on their feet, and even to admit their ignorance on stage!
Psychologist Judith Schlesinger explains why she thinks that, despite the impression you'd get from TV, movies, and plenty of common wisdom, the "mad genius" archetype is simply the result of folklore, misunderstanding, and bad research.
Dr. Jerome Wakefield, psychiatrist and PhD in philosophy, discusses the arbitrariness of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and the controversies around various mental disorders, including depression and sexual fetishes.
Ethicist Peter Singer discusses his utilitarian arguments about how we should treat animals, why we have a moral obligation to give to charity, whether infants should count as "people," and more that have won him widespread fame -- and notoriety.
Psychiatrist Sally Satel and psychologyst Scott O. Lilienfeld discuss their book "Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience" and how much explanatory power does neuroscience really have on areas such as love, morality, addiction.
Philosopher Gerard O'Brien from the University of Adelaide, who specializes in the philosophy of mind, discusses the computational theory of mind and what it implies about consciousness, intelligence, and the possibility of uploading people onto computers
