236. Fernanda Pirie on The Rule of Laws: A 4,000-Year Quest to Order the World

When economist Angus Deaton immigrated to the United States from Britain in the early 1980s, he was awed by America's strengths and shocked by the extraordinary gaps he witnessed between people. In this conversation based on his new book, Economics in America, the Nobel Prize-winning economist explains in clear terms how the field of economics addresses the most pressing issues of our time—from poverty, retirement, and the minimum wage to the ravages of the nation's uniquely disastrous health care system—and narrates Deaton's account of his experiences as a naturalized U.S. citizen and academic economist. Deaton is witty and pulls no punches. In his incisive, candid, and funny book, he describes the everyday lives of working economists, recounting the triumphs as well as the disasters, and tells the inside story of the Nobel Prize in economics and the journey that led him to Stockholm to receive one. He discusses the ongoing tensions between economics and politics―and the extent to which economics has any content beyond the political prejudices of economists―and reflects on whether economists bear at least some responsibility for the growing despair and rising populism in America. Blending rare personal insights with illuminating perspectives on the social challenges that confront us today, Deaton offers a disarmingly frank critique of his own profession while shining a light on his adopted country's policy accomplishments and failures. Shermer and Deaton discuss: the science of science is economics • winning a Nobel Prize • what economists do, and how they determine causality • Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand • why a college education matters • meritocracy and "Just World" theory • minimum wage • healthcare • poverty • inequality • opioid crisis, alcoholism, suicide • inflation and interest rates • modern monetary theory • think tanks. Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Princeton University. He is the author (with Anne Case) of the New York Times bestselling book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality, and his new book Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality, all from Princeton University Press.

5 Dec 20231h 18min

Why are we here? What's the point of existence? On the 'big questions' of meaning and purpose, Western thought has been dominated by the dichotomy of traditional religion and secular atheism. In his pioneering work, Philip Goff argues that it is time to move on from both God and atheism. Through an exploration of contemporary cosmology and cutting-edge philosophical research on consciousness, Goff argues for cosmic purpose: the idea that the universe is directed towards certain goals, such as the emergence of life. In contrast to religious thinkers, Goff argues that the traditional God is a bad explanation of cosmic purpose. Instead, he explores a range of alternative possibilities for accounting for cosmic purpose, from the speculation that we live in a computer simulation to the hypothesis that the universe itself is a conscious mind. Goff scrutinizes these options with analytical rigour, laying the foundations for a new paradigm of philosophical enquiry into the middle ground between God and atheism. Ultimately, Goff outlines a way of living in hope that cosmic purpose is still unfolding, involving political engagement and a non-literalist interpretation of traditional religion. Shermer and Goff discuss: • living in a computer simulation • the universe itself as a conscious mind • cosmic purpose • fine-tuning • free will • consciousness (the ground of all being?) • morality and the Is-Ought Fallacy • What is mypurpose in life? • religious vs. secular answers to the purpose question • awe and how to be spiritual but not religious. Philip Goff is Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. His research focuses on consciousness and the ultimate nature of reality. Goff is best known for defending panpsychism, the view that consciousness pervades the universe and is a fundamental feature of it. On that theme, Goff has published three books, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, and a co-edited volume, Is Consciousness Everywhere? Essays on Panpsychism. Goff has published many academic articles, as well as writing extensively for newspapers and magazines, including Scientific American, The Guardian, Aeon, and the Times Literary Supplement. His new book is Why: The Purpose of the Universe.

2 Dec 20231h 57min

Why are so many of us wrong about so much? From COVID-19 to climate change to the results of elections, millions of Americans believe things that are simply not true―and act based on these misperceptions. In Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, expert in media and politics Dannagal Goldthwaite Young offers a comprehensive model that illustrates how political leaders and media organizations capitalize on our social and cultural identities to separate, enrage, and―ultimately―mobilize us. Through a process of identity distillation encouraged by public officials, journalists, political and social media, Americans' political identities―how we think of ourselves as members of our political team―drive our belief in and demand for misinformation. It turns out that if being wrong allows us to comprehend the world, have control over it, or connect with our community, all in ways that serve our political team, then we don't want to be right. Over the past 40 years, lawmakers in America's two major political parties have become more extreme in their positions on ideological issues. Voters from the two parties have become increasingly distinct and hostile to one another along the lines of race, religion, geography, and culture. In the process, these political identities have transformed into a useful but reductive label tied to what we look like, who we worship, where we live, and what we believe. Young offers a road map out of this chaotic morass, including demand-side solutions that reduce the bifurcation of American society and increase our information ecosystem's accountability to empirical facts. By understanding the dynamics that encourage identity distillation, Wrong explains how to reverse this dangerous trend and strengthen American democracy in the process. Shermer and Young discuss: how do you know if you are wrong, or that someone else is wrong • the evolution of reason: veridical perception or group identity? • the 3 "Cs" of our needs: comprehension, control, community • open-minded thinking • intellectual humility • political polarization • echo vs. identity chambers • social media • lies • disinformation • Donald Trump • democracy • science and morality • solutions to identity-driven wrongness. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young is a professor of communication and political science at the University of Delaware. Young is an award-winning scholar and teacher, a TED speaker, an improvisational comedian, and the author of Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States. Her new book is Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation.

28 Nov 20231h 41min

A conversation with Warren Commission Assistant Counsel Burt W. Griffin, Case Closed author and Lee Harvey Oswald scholar Gerald Posner, and JFK conspiracy theory debunker Michel Gagné. Shermer, Griffin, Posner, and Gagné discuss: the nostalgic myth of "Camelot" • Lee Harvey Oswald and why he killed Kennedy • Cuba, Castro, the Bay of Pigs debacle • the CIA and why it is rational to be skeptical of their activities • the "magic bullet," pristine or predictably damaged? • James Hosty and the FBI's files on Oswald before he killed JFK • CIA and FBI coverups • General Edwin Walker • Jack Ruby • Bernard Weissman, • common themes in conspiracy theories • witness intimidation • planted evidence • evidence tampering. Burt W. Griffin, Warren Commission Assistant Counsel was the assistant counsel to the president's commission on the assassination of President Kennedy (popularly known as the Warren Commission) and had primary responsibility for investigating and writing the section of the commission's report (1964) on whether Jack Ruby was engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate either JFK, Lee Oswald, or both. He lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Gerald Posner is an award-winning journalist who has written twelve books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. His 2015 book, God's Bankers, a two-hundred-year history of the finances of the Vatican, was an acclaimed New York Times bestseller. Posner has written for many national magazines and papers, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, Newsweek, and Time, and he has been a regular contributor to NBC, the History Channel, CNN, CBS, MSNBC, and FOX News. His other books include Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection; Mengele: The Complete Story; Hitler's Children: Sons and Daughters of Third Reich Leaders; Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret Societies — the New Mafia; and Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, author Trisha Posner. Michel Jacques Gagné teaches courses in critical thinking, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and ethics in the Humanities Department of Champlain College Saint-Lambert, a junior college (CÉGEP) located near Montreal, Canada. He has an M.A. in History (Concordia University, Canada, 2005), with a thesis on civil rights protests in Northern Ireland during the 1960s, and undergraduate degrees in Education (McGill University, Canada, 1999) and History and Political Science (with joint-honors, McGill University, Canada, 1995). He has published articles in Skeptic, the National Post, the Encyclopedia of Religion and Violence, and is the author of Thinking Critically About the Kennedy Assassination: Debunking the Myths and Conspiracy. He is also the creator and host of the Paranoid Planet podcast, which discusses conspiracy theories and related phenomena. He resides with his wife and two children in Montreal, Canada.

22 Nov 20231h 55min

Everyone is curious about life in the Universe, UFOs and whether ET is out there. Over the course of his thirty-year career as an astrophysicist, Adam Frank has consistently been asked about the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. We've long been led to believe that astronomers spend every night searching the sky for extraterrestrials, but the truth is we have barely started looking. Not until now have we even known where to look or how. In The Little Book of Aliens, Frank, a leading researcher in the field, takes us on a journey to all that we know about the possibility of life outside planet Earth and shows us the cutting-edge science that has brought us to this unique moment in human history: the one where we go find out for ourselves. Shermer and Frank discuss: origin of Life • Drake Equation • Fermi's Paradox • UFOs and UAPs • Projects Sign, Blue Book, Cyclops, Grudge • AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program) • Alien Autopsy film • SETI & METI • technosignatures & biosignatures • aliens: biological or AI? • convergent vs. contingent evolution • interstellar travel • Dyson spheres, rings, and swarms • Kardashev scale of civilizations • aliens as gods and the search as religion • why aliens matter. Adam Frank is the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester. A Carl Sagan Medal winner from the American Astronomical Society, he is also the author of Light of the Stars and was the science advisor for Marvel's Doctor Strange. Frank is the principal investigator on NASA's first grant to study technosignatures — signs of advanced civilizations on other worlds — and his current work focuses on the evolution of life and planets, the "Astrobiology of the Anthropocene," and the long-term trajectory of civilizations.

18 Nov 20231h 37min

On November 11, 2023, my friend, colleague, and hero Ayaan Hirsi Ali released a statement explaining "Why I am Now a Christian". What follows is my response, "Why I am Not a Christian," and why in any case the alternative to theistic morality is not atheism but Enlightenment humanism—a cosmopolitan worldview that places supreme value on human and civil rights, individual autonomy and bodily integrity, free thought and free speech, the rule of law, and science and reason as the best tools for determining the truth about anything.

15 Nov 202330min

14 Nov 20231h 14min

Get tickets for our event: https://skeptic.com/event For much of history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. It is no surprise that many who passionately believe in social justice came to believe that members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity to resist injustice. But over the past decades, a healthy appreciation for the culture and heritage of minority groups has transformed into a counterproductive obsession with group identity in all its forms. A new ideology aiming to place each person's matrix of identities at the center of social, cultural, and political life has quickly become highly influential. It stifles discourse, vilifies mutual influence as cultural appropriation, denies that members of different groups can truly understand one another, and insists that the way governments treat their citizens should depend on the color of their skin. This, Yascha Mounk argues, is the identity trap. Though those who battle for these ideas are full of good intentions, they will ultimately make it harder to achieve progress toward the genuine equality we desperately need. Shermer and Mounk discuss: the identity synthesis/trap • Israel, Hamas, Palestine • why students & student groups are pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel • the rise of anti-Semitism in recent years • proximate/ultimate causes of anti-Semitism • the rejection of the civil rights movement and the rise of critical race theory • overt racism vs. systemic racism • the problem of woke ideology • Trump and the 2024 election • the possibility of another Civil War • What should we do personally and politically about the Identity Trap? Yascha Mounk is a writer and academic known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy. Born in Germany to Polish parents, Mounk received his BA in history from Trinity College Cambridge, and his PhD in government from Harvard University. He is a professor of the practice of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, the founder of the digital magazine Persuasion, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of numerous books, incl. The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure (featured on President Barack Obama's summer reading list).

11 Nov 20231h 43min