Point of Inquiry

This week, the scope of Point of Inquiry expands to include politics and more particularly, the fount of misinformation that is Glenn Beck of Fox News. This TV and radio personality is ushering in a new reign of ignorance in our national discourse—and even has the gall to liken his efforts to those of Martin Luther King, Jr. But investigative journalist Alexander Zaitchick has pinned Beck to a wal...

Andrew Mayne is a magician, paranormal illusionist, inventor, TV producer and skeptic. One of the most creative and innovative minds in magic, Andrew has written and produced over 40 books and DVDs. Both creator and consultant, he has worked with a number of artists including David Blaine, and Penn & Teller. Andrew’s performance material ranges from close-up and stage, to mentalism and illusion, a...

When President Obama was inaugurated in January of 2009, he pledged to “restore science to its rightful place” in the U.S. government. And true to his word, the president promptly staffed his cabinet with distinguished scientific leaders, liberated embryonic stem cell research from the Bush era restrictions, and released a  memorandum on “scientific integrity” intended to reverse the kinds of prob...

Tom Quinn has spent the past 15 years as a documentary TV writer and producer for Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic and others. He has traveled the world producing programs that explore and deconstruct urban legends, psychic claims, religious myths and conspiracy theories, and has worked with the likes of James Randi and Michael Shermer. He's a graduate of the American Film I...

Our guest this week needs no introduction for those in the skeptical and secular world. After all, he has a frakkin' asteroid named after him. He’s Phil Plait—science blogger extraordinaire for Discover Blogs, where he authors “Bad Astronomy.” Recently, Plait joined Point of Inquiry for a wide ranging conversation about standing eggs on end, Apollo moon landing deniers, wacky yet endearing Hollywo...

Adam Savage is an artist, actor, educator, special effects designer and co-host of the Discovery Channel's TV show Mythbusters .   Adam has a diverse background in animation and design, and for almost two decades he has concentrated on the special effects industry for film, theater and television.    A prominent skeptic and atheist, Adam lectures in science education and is a strong promoter of cr...

Recently in Amherst, New York, two of  Point of Inquiry ’s hosts sat down for a special in-studio episode of the show. One was a conservative (Robert Price), one a liberal (Chris Mooney)—and both were atheists. The topic they tackled: Is there any necessary correlation between one’s disbelief in God and one’s place on the political spectrum? The result was a fascinating—and notably civil, and freq...

Tom Flynn is Executive Director of The Council for Secular Humanism, Editor of Free Inquiry magazine, Director of Inquiry Media Productions, and Director of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum. A journalist, novelist, entertainer, and freethought historian, Flynn is the author of numerous articles and editorials for Free Inquiry magazine. In addition to The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief ,...

Global warming, we're often told, is an issue we must address for the sake of our grandchildren. We need to cut carbon because of our moral obligation to future generations. But according to Bill McKibben, that's a 1980s view. As McKibben writes in his new book Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet , the increasingly open secret is that global warming happened already. We've passed the thresho...

Tim Farley is a computer software engineer, skeptic, and creator of the popular website What's the Harm ? His site answers this salient question with over 670,000 stories of people who have indeed been harmed, damaged, injured, or even killed by pseudoscience and the paranormal What's the Harm's catchphrase is: "368,379 people killed, 306,096 injured and over $2,815,931,000 in economic damages." H...

This week's guest is Naomi Oreskes, co-author with historian Eric Conway of the new book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming . Through extensive archival research, Oreskes and Conway have managed to connect the dots between a large number of seemingly separate anti-science campaigns that have unfolded over the years. It...

S. T. Joshi is a leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and other writers, mostly in the realms of supernatural and fantasy fiction. He has edited corrected editions of the works of Lovecraft, several annotated editions of Bierce and Mencken, and has written such critical studies as The Weird Tale and The Modern Weird Tale . His award-winning biography, H. P. Lovecraf...

This week, we learned that J. Craig Venter has at long last created a synthetic organism—a simple life form constructed, for the first time, by man. Let the controversy begin—and if New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter is correct, the denial of science will be riding hard alongside it.   In his recent book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Thr...

George Hrab is a composer, professional musician, singer, songwriter, podcaster, and skeptic. George is the Host and Producer of the Geologic Podcast , a popular weekly show about music, comedy, science, and skepticism. The drummer in the band Philadelphia Funk Authority, he is a successful multi-instrumentalist musician who has performed on-stage with Elton John, and given a performance in the Wh...

It’s hard to think of an issue more contentious these days than the relationship between faith and science. If you have any doubt, just flip over to the science blogosphere: You’ll see the argument everywhere.   In the scholarly arena, meanwhile, the topic has been approached from a number of angles: by historians of science, for example, and philosophers. However, relatively little data from the...

Lois Schadewald's interest in both science and pseudoscience rubbed off on her from her brilliant brother Robert J. Schadewald, a prolific author and debater. When Bob died a decade ago he left behind a legacy of published essays and book chapters, as well as much unpublished material including a complete manuscript on the history of the Flat Earth movement. Lois has seen to the publication of man...

For many of us, chemistry is something we remember with groans from high school. Periodic Table of the Elements—what a pain to memorize, and what was the point, anyway? So how do you take a subject like chemistry and make it exciting, intriguing, and compelling? With her new book The Poisoner’s Handbook , Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Deb Blum has done just that. Blum takes a page from the "CS...

Dr. Robert Todd Carroll is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and author of The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions . He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Sacramento City College, where he taught Logic and Critical Reasoning, Critical Thinking about the Paranormal, Law, Justice and Punishment, and World Religions. He...

For two decades now, we’ve failed to seriously address climate change. So the planet just keeps warming—and it could get very bad. Picture major droughts, calving of gigantic ice sheets, increasingly dramatic sea level rise, and much more. Against this backdrop, the idea of a technological fix to solve the problem—like seeding the stratosphere with reflective sulfur particles, so as to reduce sunl...

Thomas J.J. Altizer burst onto the religious scene in the 1960s with his book The Gospel of Christian Atheism . He was one of the "Death of God" theologians discussed in the famous TIME cover story, "Is God Dead?" Altzier holds an M.A. in theology and Ph. D. in History of Religions from the Universeity of Chicago. Now 83 years of age, Altizer remains a Young Turk among radical theologians, insisti...

Paul Kurtz is founder and chair emeritus of the Center for Inquiry and founder of a number of other organizations. A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, chairman of the Committee for the Skeptical Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and Prometheus Books. He is the author or...

Dr. Scott Lilienfeld is Professor of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta. Scott is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a Consulting Editor for Skeptical Inquirer and the Founder and Editor of the CSI journal Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice . He’s a regular contributor to Scientific American Mind , and is Psychology Today's Skeptical Psychologist, where he investigate...

Victor Stenger is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Hawaii and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is also founder of Colorado Citizens for Science. He’s held visiting faculty positions at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and at Oxford in the United Kingdom, and has been a visiting researcher at Rutherford Laboratory in England, the National N...

We live in a science centered age—a time of private spaceflight and personalized medicine, amid path-breaking advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology. And we face science centered risks: climate and energy crises, biological and nuclear terror threats, mega-disasters and global pandemics.   So you would think science journalism would be booming—yet nothing could be further from the case. If y...

Robert J. Miller is Rosenberger Chair of Christian and Religious Studies at Juniata College in Pennsylvania.  A Fellow of the Jesus Seminar since 1986, he was Scholar-in-Residence at Westar Institute in 2001.  He is the of author numerous books, including Born Divine: The Births of Jesus and Other Sons of God , The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics , and editor of The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate  and...