The Podcast For Inquiry

Leslie's conversation with Sarah starts with the connections between mathematics and literature, including references to Shakespeare, Herman Melville, George Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Douglas Adams, and more. Good writing has structure, and structure can be understood in mathematical terms, and Sarah explains how mathematics can greatly enrich one's enjoyment of literature. Sarah also describes how ma...

Donald Robertson ( Substack ) is a writer, cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist, and trainer. He is one of the founding members of the Modern Stoicism nonprofit, and the founder and president of the Plato's Academy Centre nonprofit in Athens, Greece. Leslie's conversation with Donald traces the path from ancient Stoicism to the modern day. The word stoicism had come to mean something very differe...

Justin Ling (@ justinling.ca ) is an investigative journalist who writes the Bug-eyed and Shameless newsletter and recently published the book The 51st State Votes .  The conversation begins with the right wing media ecosystem, and its effect particularly on US politics. Justin explains why there isn't really a counterpart on the left, and what makes Canada different from the United States in this...

Sabrina Little is a philosopher, ultra-runner, and the author of The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners. She is a five-time U.S. National Champion in trail and ultrarunning, a former American Record Holder, and World Silver Medalist.  In today's episode, Sabrina answers the question: Why do good people make better runners? What are the performance enhancing virtues, and do they outw...

What is Private Equity, and how does it work? Gretchen Morgenson ( @gmorgenson ) is a Pulitzer-winning journalist whose latest book is These are the Plunderers. Gretchen exposes the bad and often illegal activities of Private Equity firms, and tries to explain why they have been allowed to get away with it for so long. She explains how Private Equity firms operate behind the scenes to ensure the l...

Catherine Nixey is the author of The Darkening Age, which documents how early Christians burned texts, defaced or demolished statues, and became increasingly intolerant of any thought or behaviour that deviated from their interpretation of Scripture. Catherine and Leslie discuss religious pluralism in the Roman Empire and how it changed after the Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity -...

Seth Andrews ( @SethAndrewsTTA ) is the host of The Thinking Atheist , a very popular podcast and online resource for nonbelievers. Seth talks about his life as an evangelical Christian and what led him to leave his faith. He and Leslie talk about how many Christians embrace seemingly un-Christian beliefs and policies, and what Humanists need to do to make the world a better place. Podcast for Inq...

There are many critiques that people have made about the AI industry: privacy, piracy, electricity and water usage, hallucinations, and more. Leslie focuses on one aspect he doesn't understand at all: Where does the money come from? Each AI datacentre costs tens of billions to build - hundreds of billions have been spent across the industry. And answering each question, or generating each image, s...

PfI is on hiatus for the summer, so we're bringing you some of our favourite episodes from our back catalogue. New shows will resume in September. Phil Zuckerman is a professor of Secular Studies at Pitzer College. Phil describes what the Secular Studies program entails from philosophical, political, and sociological perspectives. Phil is the author of What It Means to be Moral, and he and Leslie...

Leslie speaks with Aaron about many issues related to transgender people, or the Trans+ community. They discuss how the perceived binaries of sex, sexual preference, gender, and gender expression are more complicated and nuanced in reality. Aaron details how many people identify as transgender and nonbinary in Canada, and provides insights into many current controversies including pronouns, sports...

If uranium in a nuclear power plant emits so much radiation it boils tons of water, how safe is it for workers? Given the huge facilities required and massive mining efforts, is nuclear truly carbon neutral? Is there enough uranium in the earth for nuclear energy to be a long term source of electricity? If we build more nuclear plants, will we retire fossil fuel sources of electricity or simply in...

The fourth BAHACON is coming in a little over two month's time. Leslie speaks with Jeff Brooks about the conference's location, speakers, and other attractions that makes the Bluewater Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics conference so popular for attendees from across North America. Learn more and register at https://bahacon.com/ Podcast for Inquiry is hosted by Leslie Rosenblood and brought to you...

Prof. Jason Donev is tenured at the University of Calgary. He leads the world's largest and most used energy resource for adults,  www. EnergyEducation.ca . As a reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Prof. Donev works to help people understand nuclear power's role in providing reliable energy without emitting greenhouse gases. Jason talks about how much energy people around t...

Mark Lynas is the author of several environmental books, including Seeds of Science (2018), Our Final Warning (2020), and the forthcoming Six Minutes to Winter. Until 2024 he was research and climate lead with the Alliance for Science at the Boyce Thompson Institute, an affiliate of Cornell University. Mark is now the policy lead with the pro-science environmental campaign network WePlanet, launch...

Mubarak Bala was born in Nigeria's Kano State, on the southern coasts of the Sahara Desert, in 1984. He was schooled in both the Islamic and modern education system. This makes him an outlier, since most families believe the two school systems are mutually exclusive. Boko, Western Education, is Haram, or unIslamic.   When Mubarak started doubting the existence of demons, he was told that displayin...

Vass Bednar is the Executive Director of McMaster University's Master of Public Policy program, and the co-author of The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians. Our conversation starts with the observation that many sectors in Canada's economy are dominated by one or only a few firms. Vass and Leslie discuss whether that is good or bad for Canadians, including an analysis of cin...

In 2019, Brian and Brent (members of the Calgary-based  Rocky Mountain Atheists ) joined a "Group of Five (G5)" sponsorship committee (one of the ways Canada allows private citizens to resettle refugees in Canada) to bring a UN recognized refugee, Omer, to Canada. When Omer expressed doubts about his faith, he had to flee his native country of Pakistan due to threats on his life.  Omer has been li...

Jonathan Stea ( BlueSky , Facebook ) is a full-time practicing clinical psychologist and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary. In today's episode, Jonathan reveals that many mental health practitioners have no scientific grounding for their treatments, which can lead to disaster - yet it can be very difficult for an layperson to distinguish be...

Yasmine Mohammed is a human rights activist and author of Unveiled: How the West Empowers Radical Muslims. Yasmine is one of the most prominent and vocal figures supporting persecuted freethinkers across the globe, from elevating the voices of marginalized freethinkers on her podcast, to creating a global network of allies across religious and political divides through the CLARITy Coalition. Yasmi...

John E. Moores ( X , Bluesky ) is a planetary scientist and associate professor at York University. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, formerly served as the Science Advisor to the President of the Canadian Space Agency and has contributed to five NASA and ESA-led space missions. He is the co-author of Daydreaming in the Solar System, which imagines a future when visiting other planets...

Gaia Vince ( @wanderinggaia ) is an award-winning science writer and author. She is particularly interested in the interaction between human systems and Earth's planetary systems. Her research has taken her around the world. Gaia's latest book is Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World. We are already at 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, with significantly...

Maureen Bulbrook and Christina Ninham are Indigenous lawyers who know from direct experience that Canada has never stopped discriminating against its First Nations people, from the Doctrine of Discovery at the time of contact to current day (with Prime Minister Harper arguing that residential school records should be destroyed even as he apologized for Canada's treatment of Indigenous peoples and...

Paco's thesis is a provocative one: plants are, in a meaningful sense, intelligent. Paco discusses what intelligence is, and how we might recognize it in other beings. People used to believe that only humans are intelligent. Over time, other mammals were deemed to also think and feel. Today, most people grant that many animals, such as birds and octopi, exhibit intelligent behaviours. Paco extends...

Why do scholars now refer to early Christianities instead of early Christianity? How has the meaning of the word "Heresy" changed from its original definition to taking on its current connotations? Why did Christianity grow from a fringe cult with few followers and disdained by the intelligentsia and people in power to becoming the largest religion in the world today? What did humanity lose with C...

All life on earth ultimately depends on energy and how it flows between biological and geochemical systems on the planet. Katherine Richardson and her team identified nine boundaries which need to be respected if our planet is to remain conducive to human thriving. Climate change is just one of them. We are exceeding six boundaries, and in recent years they are all getting worse. Katherine discuss...