Point of Inquiry

Harry Houdini, the most famous illusionist the world has ever known, spent the later part of his career fascinated with spiritualists and mediums. This led him to become a dedicated skeptic and investigator. In this special Halloween episode for 2014, Point of Inquiry’s new producer Nora Hurley chats with Joe Nickell, the world’s leading paranormal investigator, and a former professional magician himself. Together, they conduct the Center for Inquiry’s 18th Annual Houdini Séance. Listen in as Nickell follows traditional séance protocol to call upon the spirit of Houdini to communicate with us beyond the grave. While summoning the dead, Nickell explains how Houdini’s background as a magician allowed him to expose fraudulent mediums and spiritualists, who were using illusions and trickery to profit off the grief of innocent people. Joe Nickell continues to honor Harry Houdini, not just with annual séances, but more importantly by carrying on his investigative work.

Given the divisive nature of the debates over abortion, the subject is understandably not the best table-talk material. But despite the fact that abortion is a normal and often necessary (one in three women will have an abortion before menopause), even those who are staunchly pro-choice feel compelled to hedge their support by making sounds about how abortions are "horrible" and "unfortunate." When both sides of the controversy associate abortions as immoral and shameful, much of the conversation ground is yielded to anti-abortion advocates. This week on Point of Inquiry, columnist and activist Katha Pollitt discusses her new book, Pro: Reclaiming Reproductive Rights. With clinics closing at record high rates, unapologetically reclaiming women's reproductive rights may be the best way to keep the conversation - and the clinics - open.

Astrobiologist Steven J. Dick discusses the progress in the search for extraterrestrial life, the possibility of intelligent life in the universe, and the sociological and cultural implications of discovering alien life. The podcast also explores the concept of teleology and its relation to life's purpose, and discusses the evolution of human civilization and optimism for the future.

The rise of ISIS, the self proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has sparked debate about the role of religion — specifically Islam — in violent extremism. This week, Dr. Adam Silverman offers us a glimpse into the theology of ISIS, and tackled some difficult questions; What does ISIS believe and how do its religious beliefs shape its political choices? What about the notorious video-taped beheadings and reports of rape as weapons of war? How does ISIS want the United States to react, and how should we? Dr. Silverman has just completed a four-year stint as Cultural Advisor to the U.S. Army War College. He holds a doctorate in Political Science and Criminology from the University of Florida and he deployed in Iraq in 2008 to interview Iraqi religious and political leaders to better understand their culture and values.

Josh Zepps is off, and since this week is the 5th International Blasphemy Rights Day, we're rebroadcasting this interview by Chris Mooney with Austin Dacey, CFI's former UN representative and an expert on the subject of blasphemy laws. *** This week, our guest is a return one: Austin Dacey. He's a philosopher, a writer, a human rights activist, and the creator of the Impossible Music Sessions, which we featured in a past show. Austin's books include The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life and, just out, The Future of Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights. This show focused on Austin's new book on blasphemy. But he helped enhance the discussion with a few pieces of music that have been called blasphemous—which is why we wanted to distribute them as widely as possible.

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 communities deal--or refuse to deal--with allegations of abuse in their ranks. Mark joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to talk about a feature he wrote for BuzzFeed entitled "Will Misogyny Bring Down The Atheist Movement?", a discussion (as he puts it, "from an outsiders' perspective") about sexism and sexual coercion in organized secularism and skepticism, a phenomenon that he concludes is a threat to the movement's potential to grow and achieve mainstream acceptance. They explore this tumultuous topic both in terms of current debates, as well as in context of the freethought movement's broader history.

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 week is Christopher Leonard, investigative journalist whose work has appeared in Fortune, Slate, and The New York Times. He is a fellow with The New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute in Washington, DC., and the author of The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business. Leonard and host Josh Zepps explore the morality of super-industrialized meat production, the iron grip of certain large corporations, and how the centralized system of factory farming is, to Leonard, “Soviet-esque.”

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 grieving person?" to "How could my titanium hip implant end up as part of a road sign in the Midwest?" Caitlin is the author of the new book Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: and Other Lessons from the Crematory, the story of her stint as a crematory operator in Los Angeles. She went on to become a licensed mortician to launch a one-woman crusade to change our culture's attitudes about death.

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 since, Harris has emerged as something of a maverick among nonbelievers and progressives, frequently at the center of controversy with his opinions on Islam and extremism, science’s role in morality, and his embrace of a kind of “spiritualism” grounded in science. It is this last item that is the subject of his latest book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, in which he seeks a rational approach to transcendence; one that puts the supernatural aside in favor of an honest, scientific exploration of the mind, altered states of consciousness, and other (as he puts it) “spooky phenomena.” On this special episode of Point of Inquiry, Harris talks to host Josh Zepps about his foray into the mystical. In this fascinating interview, Harris asserts that experiences such as bliss and transcendence must be removed from the realm of sectarianism, but that “one of the great holes in secularism” is that “we don’t have a ready answer for someone who wakes up tomorrow morning with an extraordinary change in their conscious life which they deem positive.” Harris talks about the search for this answer, as well as the illusion of the self, expanding our moral circle to include other creatures, and an evaluation of the progress secularism has made since the time “new atheism” was still new.

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 to epidemics because they study both the physiology of illness and the cultural factors that influence its transmission. That's why the World Health Organization has deployed med anthros to combat prior Ebloa outbreaks. They ask questions like: "How do people think a disease is spread?," "What role do traditional healers play in this culture?," and "Do people trust Western medicine?" The answers can be used to craft more effective public health messages. These are urgent questions for the current Ebola outbreak, where some are resisting quarantine, attacking hospitals, and blaming the outbreak on doctors and nurses. In a crisis, culturally competent care can be a matter of life and death.