Rationally Speaking #15 - Q&A With Massimo and Julia
In the first of what we hope will be a regular feature of Rationally speaking, Massimo and Julia answer listeners' questions. These range from what are M & J's sacred cows, to how we should approach m...
15 Aug 20101h 2min
Rationally Speaking #14 - Jennifer Michael Hecht on Science, Religion, Happiness, and Other Myths
Author, science historian, philosopher, and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht discusses her views on science, religion, and skepticism. She talks about her book "The Happiness Myth", showing how the very co...
1 Aug 201033min
Rationally Speaking #13 - Superstition, Is It Good For You?
Is it possible that superstition is actually good for you? Well, it turns out that superstition may, at least some of the time, have beneficial effects. A paper published in 2008 in Science for exampl...
18 Jul 201029min
Rationally Speaking #12 - What About Thought Experiments?
Philosophers are often accused of engaging in armchair speculation, as far removed from reality as possible. The quintessential example of this practice is the thought experiment, which many scientist...
4 Jul 201033min
Rationally Speaking #11 - Guest Eugenie Scott on the Status of the Creationism and ID Wars
Our special guest this episode is Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, the premiere organization fighting for sound scientific educational standards in this ...
20 Jun 201037min
Rationally Speaking #10 - Nonsense on Stilts
The focus of this episode is Massimo's new book, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk. The book, broadly speaking, is about what philosopher Karl Popper famously called the demarcation pr...
6 Jun 201031min
Rationally Speaking #9 - When Smart People Endorse Pseudoscience
It's very easy to make fun of not-so-educated people who reject evolution, but what happens when one of the most prominent contemporary philosophers, Jerry Fodor, writes a book about "What Darwin Got ...
23 Mai 201031min
Rationally Speaking #8 - The Anthropic Principle
The Anthropic Principle (AP), in its many forms, attempts to explain why our observations of the physical universe are compatible with the life observed in it. From the Weak AP (WAP), which in one for...
9 Mai 201033min
