with Julia Galef
March 10, 2013 If you’re an ethically minded consumer, you should buy organic because it’s better for the environment, right? Actually, the case isn’t so clear-cut. But you should certainly buy fair-trade because it’s better for foreign laborers, right? Well… that’s complicated too. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Julia and Massimo talk about how … Read more
February 24, 2013 “Medicine is broken,” warns Ben Goldacre, the British physician, academic, author of the Guardian’s Bad Science column. In this live episode of Rationally Speaking, Massimo and Julia interview Ben about his new book, Bad Pharma, and how the evidence about pharmaceutical drugs gets distorted due to shoddy regulations, missing data, and the influence of drug companies.
February 10, 2013 In honor of the passing of Dear Abby columnist Pauline Philips, Massimo and Julia talk about the history and philosophy of advice. How do you rationally evaluate advice, and how do you give rational advice? Along the way they discuss some of Dear Abby’s snarkiest moments, the origins of the advice column … Read more
January 27, 2013 Can science denialism be blamed on a “Republican brain”? In other words: is there something about the psychology of Republicans that makes them inclined to reject the scientific consensus on topics like evolution and climate change? Special guest Chris Mooney argues there is, elaborating on the thesis in his popular book, “The Republican Brain: The … Read more
January 13, 2013 What’s your IQ? Are you an ENTJ, or maybe an ISFP? What’s your Openness score, your Conscientiousness score, your Neuroticism score? And just how seriously should you take all those test scores, anyway? In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Massimo and Julia discuss the science — and lack thereof — of intelligence … Read more
December 30, 2012 In this episode, Massimo and Julia discuss sociology and feminism, with special guest Victoria Pitts-Taylor, professor of sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Victoria explains how feminists in sociology are dealing with results in neuroscience and evolutionary biology, especially regarding the question: How much inborn difference is … Read more
December 16, 2012 What do Linux, Netflix, and the Oxford English Dictionary have in common? They’ve all benefited from the power of crowdsourcing, in which a task is outsourced to a group of hundreds or thousands of disparate people. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Julia and Massimo discuss the phenomena of crowdsourcing, and ask: … Read more
December 2, 2012 We look to scientists to keep us informed about risks, such as: is this medicine effective? Is that level of toxicity harmless? How severe should we expect this upcoming storm to be? But when lives are at stake, tricky questions arise about how much responsibility falls on scientists’ shoulders to get those … Read more
November 18, 2012 Massimo and Julia visit Indianapolis for a heated debate, in this live episode of Rationally Speaking. At a symposium organized by the Center for Inquiry (CFI), they join up with John Shook, Director of Education and Senior Research fellow at the CFI, and the author of more than a dozen books on philosophy … Read more
November 4, 2012 In this episode Julia interviews Massimo about his new book, Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life. Massimo’s central idea is that a combination of science and philosophy, what he calls “Sci-Phi,” is the best guide to the big questions in life, from issues of … Read more