Stay ConnectedPoint of Inquiry is the Center for Inquiry’s flagship podcast, where the brightest minds of our time sound off on all the things you’re not supposed to talk about at the dinner table: science, religion, and politics.
Guests have included Brian Greene, Susan Jacoby, Richard Dawkins, Ann Druyan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Eugenie Scott, Adam Savage, Bill Nye, and Francis Collins.
Point of Inquiry is produced at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, N.Y.
Copyright: © Center for Inquiry
Richard Wiseman is Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in England. Richard began his career as a professional magician before pursuing a career in psychology, and developing a reputation for research into luck, deception, the paranormal, humor, and the science of self-help.
Wiseman joins Jim Underdown in London where they both attended the presentation of the Richard Dawkins Award to Ricky Gervais. Wiseman was the interviewer of Dawkins and Gervais on stage at the event. Jim talks with Wiseman on his history in the skeptics movement and how he got started, his work performing psychology experiments on the people of Britain, debunking the myths of misconceptions around positive psychology, and why he continues to be involved in the movement.
In the second part of this two-part series on the prison system reform, Jim Underdown speaks with Andrew Glazier, president of Defy Ventures, on the high recidivism rates in prisons, how Glazier and Defy Ventures are improving prison inmate rehabilitation, and what happens to communities when people are kept locked up indefinitely.
Defy Ventures is a nonprofit organization that helps current and formerly incarcerated adults with career-readiness and entrepreneurial training programs. You can learn more about the work Defy Ventures is doing by visiting their website or follow them on Twitter.
How humane are prisons in the U.S.? And what is their purpose – to punish or to rehabilitate?
This is part one of a two-part series that dives into the prison system, what it looks like from the inside, how it destroys the lives of black and brown folks who have been overpoliced and tossed into the prison system for decades, and the work being done to counteract that system.
After a field trip to a California state prison, Jim Underdown spoke to Steve Hill about his frank experiences as a prison security guard and what he thinks about the future of the prison system. Steve Hill is an atheist activist, Comedian politician, a former marine, and former prison security guard who worked in the California penal system as a prison guard for ten years.
Even though there's growing awareness that race is a social construct — it defies biological definition — it's really hard to let go of a concept that feels so real. There's also a temptation for progressive, more or less decent human beings, who wouldn't consider themselves racist, to define racism as something that happens on the far right, among Neo-Nazis, the KKK, and people sporting MAGA hats.
Turns out that's not the case. At all.
One of the most pervasive issues when it comes to race is the science. What does the history of race science have to do with today's science on human variation? Why do modern scientists need to grapple with the legacy of racial definition and oppression? How does the centuries-old mythology of race impact the practice of medicine well into the 21st century?
On this episode of Point of Inquiry, Kavin Senapathy speaks with author Angela Saini about her book Superior: The Return of Race Science. The Telegraph advises "philosophically and historically uneducated scientists" along with those with "more murky motivations" to read this "brilliant and devastating" book.
While you're here, we'd like to give a shout-out to the Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia. While Kavin was researching the episode, she realized that Superior didn't have a page on Wikipedia. She alerted GSoW's Rob Palmer and their team had a page up within 48 hours!
The Scientific American blog post mentioned in the episode, "The Internet Is a Cesspool of Racist Pseudoscience," can be found here.
Point of Inquiry co-host Kavin Senapathy has covered food and agriculture for years, and if she's learned one thing, it's that people's views on farming are rife with misconceptions. The conversation around food is complex, and involves a slew of gray areas and mountains of data.
Enter Dr. Sarah Taber. She's the host of the Farm to Taber Podcast, a farm and food systems strategist, and one of Twitter's most prolific and eye-opening agriculture myth-busters. Taber's work has included food safety, regulatory compliance, crop care, and making work flows as efficient as possible in farms and facilities.
On this episode, Kavin speaks with Dr. Taber on agriculture and the myth of the destruction of family farms. Part of this myth involves tackling whether big agribusiness destroyed these farms, and what sharecropping has to do with it. Topics also include how racism against various ethnicities displaced our country's farmworkers, what really separates family and corporate farming, and the current narrative around field automation.
This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes actor, comedian, and former Jehovah's Witness, Jerry Minor. Minor has been a cast member and writer on Saturday Night Live and appeared on HBO's Mr. Show and various other television and film spots throughout his career. He joins Jim Underdown to dive into his life during and after being a Jehovah's Witness. They also get into how the Jehovah's Witness religion drove Minor to attempt suicide, the different Christianity sects and how Minor views them as cults, and how his past faith has shaped his career as a comedian and entertainer.
Together with friend, Tony Ortega, Underdown and Minor host their own podcast, The Cult Awareness Podcast, where they explore the latest in cult news.
Please share this episode either through a tweet, email, facebook, postcard, or letter with friends and family. Your support helps the show and we appreciate it.
How well do you think you can assess risk? The evidence is clear that humans are innately poor at assessing risk in our personal lives, in part due to how our brains are wired, and that can make it challenging to make informed decisions about everything from vaccines and medicines to diet and children's safety. Errors in risk perception can be a problem when we worry more than the evidence says we need to, or less than the evidence says we should.
On this week's episode, Kavin Senapathy speaks with neuroscientist Alison Bernstein and biologist Iida Ruishalme, who teamed up to write a series of articles titled "Risk In Perspective." The interview takes listeners through key concepts in risk and risk perception, including the difference between hazard and risk, and whether zero risk is ever really possible. How can putting risk into perspective inform regulatory actions? How does environmental justice tie into health and risk perception? How are marketers taking advantage of our inability to accurately assess risk? One thing is clear—you won't want to risk missing out on this conversation.
ison's piece on how "Safety" is defined in a regulatory setting.
What was that great music you heard?"Wahre" by Blue Dot Sessions / CC BY-NC 4.0
This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes comedian, monologist, and atheist, Julia Sweeney. Many may know Sweeney from her time on Saturday Night Live, her appearances on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!, and from her current roles on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Hulu's Shrill.
Jim Underdown sat down with Sweeney at CFI West to discuss her time working on SNL, dealing with her catholic faith after the passing of her brother to cancer, how Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, and CFI helped her become an atheist, her experiences navigating Hollywood as a non-believer, and her conflicting opinions surrounding the Me Too movement after her good friend, Al Franken was accused of misconduct.
If you've never seen it before, Sweeney's, "Letting Go of God" talk is highly recommended for those who became atheists after living with a religious point of view. You can find Sweeney on twitter: @JIsbackintown.
Why do people love the taste of Umami but avoid monosodium glutamate (MSG), which is the purest form of Umami on Earth? In this episode of Point of Inquiry, Kavin Senapathy speaks with experts on MSG— which was first isolated by Japanese chemist Dr. Kikunae Ikeda— to explore this culinary and scientific disconnect.
Tia Rains, PhD, is currently Senior Director of Public Relations at Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition (Ajinomoto was founded in 1907 to manufacture and sell Ikeda's MSG). She has over 20 years of experience in the fields of food and nutrition.
Mary Lee Chin MS, RD, has been involved in dietetics for over 40 years. She consults with food industry and commodity groups; including Monsanto, Ajinomoto, and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.
In 1968, a letter was published in the New England Journal of Medicine about "numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, and general weakness and palpitation" after eating food from Chinese restaurants. The letter spurred decades of research into the so-called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome." What does the science say about MSG, what roles do marketing and branding play, and what do mice have to do with all of this?
Links Mentioned in this EpisodeThe Truth About MSG and Your Health - Written by Kavin Senapathy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERVRjAYBOp0
Accent Flavor Enhancer - https://www.accentflavor.com/product/flavor-enhancer
Does monosodium glutamate really cause headache? : a systematic review of human studies - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4870486/
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