Point of Inquiry

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Barbara Ehrenreich, award-winning columnist and essayist, and author of 21 books. In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America , she went undercover as a minimum wage worker and in Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America , she took aim at our punishing national obsession with positive thinking. Her new book Living with a Wild God: A No...

This week,  Point of Inquiry  is delighted to welcome Ann Druyan, co-writer and co-creator of both the original  Cosmos: A Personal Voyage , starring her late husband Carl Sagan, as well as the new series,  Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey , starring Neil deGrasse Tyson. In a wide-ranging discussion, Druyan talks to Josh Zepps about how the first  Cosmos  series   came to be, her efforts to translate t...

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Meredith Dank, PhD, Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute. Dank is the co-principal investigator on several international and domestic human trafficking projects, including the new study, " Estimating the Size and Structure of the Underground Commercial Sex Economy in Eight Major US Cities ”, which attempts to put dollar figures on prostitution in At...

Following the death of the Westboro Baptist Church's Fred Phelps, Josh Zepps discusses the state of religious fundamentalism with Frank Schaeffer, the  New York Times  bestselling author of  Crazy for God: How I grew up as one of the Elect ,  Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics-- and How I learned to love Women (and Jesus) Anyway , among many  others .  Hav...

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes David Gorski, MD, PhD: cancer researcher, surgeon, and managing editor of the  Science-Based Medicine  blog, aka "Orac" of  Respectful Insolence .     Gorski and Beyerstein discuss a pair of exposés of cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski in the March/April issue of the  Skeptical Inquirer , one by Gorski and one by skeptical activist  Robert Blaskiewicz .  Gorski...

Rebecca Goldstein,  a professor of philosophy and the author of five novels and a collection of short stories, joins us on  Point of Inquiry  to discuss atheism, philosophy and her new book,  Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away . Along with some of her weightier philosophical works she has also recently published  36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction , a novel...

This week Point of Inquiry welcomes Daniel Loxton, longtime Editor of  Junior Skeptic , the 10-page kids' science section bound within Skeptic magazine, author and illustrator of the national award-winning kids' science book  Evolution: How We and All Living Beings Came to Be , and a series of illustrated books subtitled  Tales of Prehistoric Life . Loxton has published two major essays on skeptic...

This week  Point of Inquiry  welcomes Gabriel Sherman, writer and contributing editor for  New York Magazine  and author of the new book  The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News - and Divided a Country . The book takes an indepth look at Roger Ailes, the conservative mastermind and president of Fox News Channel, and the effect he has had on American c...

This week,  Point of Inquiry  looks into midwives, home births, and what they mean for a safe delivery for child and mother. Our guest is skeptic, obstetrician, gynecologist, and author of  How Your Baby is Born ,  Dr. Amy Tuteur.      Dr. Tuteur, a graduate of Harvard and the Boston University School of Medicine, and former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, joins us to talk about som...

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Stanton Peele, PhD., J.D.. Dr. Peele, an addiction expert and author of 12 books on the subject, discusses his views on the current ‘disease model’ view of addiction and the recent tragedy involving actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Peele holds the somewhat contrarian position that, depending on the person, abstinence or moderation are valid approaches to treat exc...

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Greg Dworkin, MD. Dr. Dworkin is a founding editor of Flu Wiki ( http://fluwiki.info .) an international , wiki- format clearinghouse of Influenza information designed to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic. He’s an expert on pandemic Flu preparedness and is joining us to discuss the Flu, the vaccine and stayin...

This week  Point of Inquiry  discusses satire in politics and American life with J.R. Havlan, eight-time Emmy Award winning writer on  The Daily Show .  J.R. was previously a stand-up comic, including a stint doing crowd warm-up for  Politically Incorrect  which led to writing jokes for that show's monologues. He's also co-author of the  New York Times  best-selling books  America: The Book ,  Ear...

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale and co-author of a provocative essay in last week’s New York Times entitled  Is the United States a ‘Racial Democracy?   Dr. Stanley and his co-author, Dr. Vesla Weaver, argue that the disproportionate surveillance, imprisonment, and post-conviction voter disenfranchisement of black Americans threatens the very int...

This week Point of Inquiry is discussing Death. Specifically, Brain death and the efforts of some areas of the religious right and their attempts to eliminate whole brain Brain Death as the legal standard for death in America.  To aid in that,Lindsay Beyerstein welcomes, head of the division of bioethics at New York University's Langone Medical Center, Arthur Caplan, PhD. Dr. Caplan is the author...

This week on Point of Inquiry we welcome Chris Emden, a Columbia Professor who's helped design New York City's public school policy, a leading science education researcher, and Harvard Hip Hop Archive Fellow. Chris Emden is a favored guest of Josh Zepps on Huffpost Live, and for good reason. They chat about the state of American science education, and the ways in which Emden is trying to shake thi...

As the War on Christmas wages on, our host, Josh Zepps, interviews Rob Boston, Senior Policy Analyst for American's United for the Separation of Church and State, Editor of  Church & State  magazine and author of   Close Encounters with the Religious Right : Journeys into the Twilight Zone of Religion and Politics.   Together they get to the bottom of the War on Christmas. They explain how saying...

Joining Lindsay Bernstein this week is Kathryn Joyce, one of the foremost reporters chronicling the Religious Right today.  She made “Quiverfull” a household name with her first book,  Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. Her new book is called  The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption.  The book is the product of four years of reporting from four di...

This week on Point of Inquiry, Josh Zepps welcomes P.J. O’Rourke, humorist, cultural commentator, and best selling author of sixteen books. An early proponent of “gonzo journalism” and is a self-described libertarian, O’Rourke has served as editor-in-chief of National Lampoon, and has spent 20 years reporting for Rolling Stone and The Atlantic as the world’s only “trouble spot humorist,” going to...

This week on Point of Inquiry, Lindsay Beyerstein talks with Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.  He is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, and a strong advocate of separation of church and state. The conversation focuses on the Supreme Court's recent decision to hear the Hobby Lobby contraception mandate case. This is the most hi...

This week's Point of Inquiry features Gadadhara Pandit Dasa, first ever Hindu Chaplain for Columbia University and New York University, the interfaith chaplain at Union Theological Seminary, and author of Urban Monk: Exploring Karma, Consciousness, and the Divine. Pandit, who teaches courses on Hindu scriptures, has spoken at a recent TEDx Conference and was featured in the NPR piece "Long Days an...

This week’s guest on Point of Inquiry , Paul A. Offit, MDis best known as a co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine and a staunch, public supporter of vaccination and opponent of pseudo scientific alternative medicine. His most recent book,   Do you Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine points a critical eye at the alt-med industry, one than takes in 34 billion dollars a y...

Famed educator, engineer and "Science Guy," Bill Nye Joins our host Josh Zepps for this week's Point of Inquiry.  They discuss Bill's start as an Engineer and part time stand up comedian to his groundbreaking work in television educating a generation on science. They also delve into Bill's view into the future of science, science education, as well as  how to become excessively rich using the tool...

Point of Inquiry , the flagship podcast for the Center for Inquiry, presents a special episode recorded before a live audience at the 2013 CFI Summit in Tacoma, Washington, with new co-host Lindsay Beyerstein. The fundamentalist, Christian right's influence and impact on our schools and the educating of our children is the subject of the new book The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth A...

Point of Inquiry, the flagship podcast of the Center for Inquiry, relaunches with a special episode recorded before a live audience at the 2013 CFI Summit in Tacoma, Washington, with new co-host Josh Zepps of HuffPost Live. Our unconscious minds offer us something of a paradox. On the one hand, we'd be lost without it, as it processes information without us ever being aware of it — it's how we dea...

Point of Inquiry is on a short hiatus right now as we transition to a new podcast team. In the meantime, enjoy these classic episodes from the POI archives, featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Susan Jacoby, and other luminaries in the science and secularism movement. Our guest this week needs little introduction—he may be our most famous public communicator of science. He's Neil DeGrasse Tyso...