Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial

Public distrust of science is higher than at any time since the Enlightenment. New Yorker writer Michael Specter argues how our anti-science bias and our irrationalism about everything from genetically modified foods to climate change to childhood vaccines endangers our future.

And remember when… a look back at scientists who at first pooh-poohed plate tectonics… meteorites, and quantum physics. How the evidence turned them around.

It’s Skeptic Check… but don’t take our word for it.

Listen to individual segments here:
Part 1 - Michael Specter
Part 2 - Read Montague
Part 3 - Michael Specter (continued)
Part 4 - Crop circles
Part 5 - Spencer Weart
Part 6 - Checkout Line Press

Swimming in Denial - Michael Specter

Part 1 of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, featuring Michael Specter, writer for The New Yorker and author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.

Swimming in Denial - Read Montague

Part 2 of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, featuring Read Montague, Director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine and author of Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions.

Swimming in Denial - Michael Specter (continued)

Part 3 of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, featuring Michael Specter, writer for The New Yorker and author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.

Swimming in Denial - Crop Circles

Part 4 of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, featuring a discussion on crop circles and how, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, some believe them to be of extra-terrestrial origin.

Swimming in Denial - Spencer Weart

Part 5 of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, featuring Spencer Weart, historian of science, discussing how even scientists at first pooh-poohed plate tectonics, meteorites, and quantum physics, and how the evidence turned them around.

Swimming in Denial - Checkout Line Press

Part 6, the final segment of Skeptic Check: Swimming in Denial, wherein Seth and Molly peruse the tabloids and read that dolphins descended from aliens who came to Earth 100,000 years ago.