Point of Inquiry

Austin Dacey

The Future of Blasphemy

Mark Oppenheimer on Misogyny in the Freethought Community

This week Point of Inquiry welcomes journalist Mark Oppenheimer. Mark ...

This week Point of Inquiry welcomes journalist Mark Oppenheimer. Mark writes the Beliefs column for the New York Times, and is the author of the e-book The Zen Predator of The Upper East Side. He is an expert on how religious and philosophical...

Factory Farming and the Meat Racket: Christopher Leonard on our Irrational Meat Industry

It’s National Chicken Month! But rather than celebrating the consumption ...

It’s National Chicken Month! But rather than celebrating the consumption of fowl, Point of Inquiry is asking what exactly is going on in America's meat industry? Is the way we consume meat at all rational?    Joining us this...

Ask a Mortician: Caitlin Doughty on the Death Industry's Dirty Secrets

Point of Inquiry welcomes Caitlin Doughty, creator of the cult ...

Point of Inquiry welcomes Caitlin Doughty, creator of the cult classic web series Ask A Mortician, which gives unvarnished answers to questions about dead bodies and the death industry. Caitlin has tackled topics ranging from "What to say to a...

Sam Harris: Seeking Transcendence Without Religion

It’s been ten years since the publication of Sam Harris’s ...

It’s been ten years since the publication of Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith kicked off the cultural phenomenon of “new atheism,” bringing frank criticism of religion into mainstream conversation. In the decade...

Dr. Adia Benton on The West African Ebola Outbreak

This week Point Of Inquiry welcomes Dr. Adia Benton, a ...

This week Point Of Inquiry welcomes Dr. Adia Benton, a professor of medical anthropology at Brown University. She joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to talk about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.Medical anthropologists bring a unique expertise...

Paul Offit, MD - Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine

Point of Inquiry's hosts are off this week, so we're ...

Point of Inquiry's hosts are off this week, so we're running Lindsay Beyerstein's excellent interview from earlier this year with Dr. Paul Offit. Dr. Offit will be the Center for Inquiry's special guest on September 6th in Amherst, NY, as he is...

Christopher Capozzola: 100 Years After the Great War, Lessons in Reason

One hundred years ago, Great Britain declared war on Germany, ...

One hundred years ago, Great Britain declared war on Germany, joining in what we now refer to as World War I, a conflict which cost more than 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians their lives, and shaped the the world we know today. How did...

Laurel Braitman on Animals and Mental Illness

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Laurel Braitman, a TED ...

This week, Point of Inquiry welcomes Laurel Braitman, a TED fellow with a PhD in History and Anthropology of Science from MIT, and the author of Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand...

David Ropeik: Airplane Disasters and the Psychology of Risk

How do we rationally assess risk? Following a terrible series ...

How do we rationally assess risk? Following a terrible series of horrifying air travel disasters, reasonable people begin to question what we consider to be "safe." But should we?    To answer this question, our host Josh Zepps is joined...