In this episode I’m continuing to look at consciousness and cognition and the working memory that sets humans apart from all other animals. Human working memory can be roughly quantified to hold about 7 items at once in a sequence and allow conscious manipulation, consideration, and attention to about 4 of them at a time. These numbers are surprisingly consistent across all humans. The size of working memory in humans is much larger than in our nearest relatives the great apes. The ability to remember sequence information also seems to be unique.

Today I’m interviewing a researcher who studies the evolution of the human capacity for cognition. His vocabulary and working memory are both immense.  I need to stretch my working memory to the limit just to parse some of his most elegant utterances.  For example, in a recent exchange he opined the following gem: “However, as Karl Friston reminded us, the mathematical itinerancy of stochastic genetical and epigenetical mechanisms in ergodic systems can explain the appearances, disappearances, and reappearances of some technological outcomes of Early Pleistocene human behaviours from a far more rational scientific basis than can any self-justifying assertion that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’.”

Professor emeritus Michael Walker is a paleoanthropologist with degrees in Medicine, Physiology, and Prehistoric Archaeology from Oxford University including his doctorate on the prehistoric physical anthropology and archaeology of the southeastern Spanish region of Murcia. He established systematic two important Palaeolithic excavation sites, one with fossil remains of fourteen Neanderthals in deep sediments with dates from 130,000 to 40,000 years ago, and a very much older site dating to between 900,000 and 772,000 years ago where he discovered burning in the cave, as well as abundant stone artefcts among which is the earliest stone hand-axe from Europe. The unique hand-axe reawakened Dr. Walker’s interest in neuroscience and, in particular, about how cognition might lead to surprising manual behaviour that was not passed on culturally. This hypothesis, based on the Free Energy Principle, has implications on the evolution of human cognition and calls into question time-honoured interpretations by anthropologists about human cultural transmission.

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In this episode I’m going back to look at consciousness and cognition, and specifically one aspect of our mental capacity that sets us apart from other animals.  It’s our ability to recall items in a sequence, for those of you who are software buffs, basically we have a short term memory buffer that acts like a linked list. We can remember a list of numbers (about 7 or so), or letters, or items in a particular order over a short timespan if we are not too distracted. This capability is called working memory.

Working memory can be roughly quantified to hold about 7 items at once in a sequence and allow conscious manipulation, consideration, and attention to about 4 of them at a time. These numbers are surprisingly consistent across all humans.

The size of working memory in humans is much larger than in our nearest relatives the great apes. The ability to remember sequence information also seems to be unique.

Some scientists speculate that the evolution of working memory is what separates humans intellectually from other intelligent animals. Working memory capacity is strongly correlated with fluid intelligence.

Héctor Manrique: graduated in Psychology in 1999, then he started his scientific career by studying ethanol metabolism in the brain and its effect on memory in rodents and got his PhD in Psychobiology in 2005. Hmm sounds a lot like my graduate work inadvertently studying the effects of alcohol on my brain.  In 2008 he joined The Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) where he investigated the cognition of the four species of great apes. After having occupied different positions in several Spanish universities he currently holds a professorship in Developmental Psychology at Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain.

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This episode is a recording of a live social media broadcast on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Riverside.fm where the Scott brothers revisit their previous disagreements over manifestation and magical thinking. Will they come to an agreement or will it come to fisticuffs? Manifestation is the idea that by aligning our thoughts and expectations with our goals we can better achieve success. Many people take this idea to a magical extreme whereby the proper series of mental gymnastics will change one's circumstances independent of other actions.

Kevin Scott is the founder of the Effortless Alpha brotherhood "To inspire, and create space for men to access their own potential through the bond of brotherhood where no man feels alone". His life-transforming work with men has sparked the Masculine Expansion, creating space for men to lead themselves and become a role model in their communities with power, honour, discipline and respect.

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In this episode I return to my investigation of the physical and philosophical bases of consciousness. Today I will be taking on a new perspective from a leading expert in both philosophy and artificial intelligence.

Bernardo Kastrup is the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy and another Ph.D. in computer engineering specializing in artificial intelligence. As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories.

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In this episode I am returning to one of my favourite topics—the clean energy transition.  Today I wanted to explore the life cycle greenhouse gas footprint of the shift to electric vehicles.  Many governments are using a transition to electrified transportation as the foundation of their GHG emissions reduction programs.  Today I’m going to an expert to find out how effective this transition will be on our society’s GHG emissions profile.

Dr. Gerfried Jungmeier holds a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering and received a PhD studying the Greenhouse Gas Balance of Bioenergy Systems. He is an future energy systems researcher at Joanneum Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH. He lectures at Vienna University of Technology, Danube University Krems, and University of Applied Science Kapfenberg. He is an expert in the life cycle assessment of energy and mobility systems.

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On my episode today I will be exploring a fun topic—science fiction, with a friend an colleague who is also an up and coming science fiction author. We will discuss themes of communicating science and our shared love of science fiction.

Eric Choi is a writer, editor, and aerospace engineer in Toronto. He has twice won the Prix Aurora Award – Canada’s national prize for excellence in science fiction and fantasy – for his short story “Crimson Sky” and for the anthology The Dragon and the Stars, and he was the first recipient of the Isaac Asimov Award (now the Dell Magazines Award) for his novelette “Dedication”. His short fiction has appeared in more than two dozen publications in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Japan. He holds a B.A.Sc in engineering science and an M.A.Sc in aerospace engineering, both from the University of Toronto, and an MBA from York University. In 2009, he was one of the Top 40 finalists (out of 5,351 applicants) in the Canadian Space Agency’s astronaut recruitment campaign.

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In this episode I am continuing my investigation into the so-called hard problem of consciousness. I’ve spoken to several people who believe that consciousness arose in single celled organisms and is somehow integrated at higher levels through electrical synchronization or intercellular molecular transport into a unified experience. Hindus and Buddhists believe that there is a Universal consciousness of which we all partake. This is similar in some ways to Sir Roger Penrose’ theory of consciousness called Orchestrated Objective Reduction, where microtubule organelles in the brain’s neurons have evolved to concentrate the diffuse universal consciousness present in the collapse of quantum superpositions. Some of these folks believe that the randomness at the heart of quantum mechanics is necessary for free will and volition. Others like Bertrand Russel believe that we act in accordance with our will even if our actions have past causes and the future is pre-determined. Today I’m honoured to be interviewing an expert who pushes the limits of human knowledge in terms of our understanding of the implications of quantum computing in regards to artificial intelligence.

Scott Aaronson is David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, and previously at MIT.  He received his bachelor's from Cornell University and his PhD from UC Berkeley. Aaronson's research in theoretical computer science has focused mainly on the capabilities and limits of quantum computers.  His first book, Quantum Computing Since Democritus, was published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press.  He's received the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, the United States PECASE Award, the Tomassoni-Chisesi Prize in Physics, and the ACM Prize in Computing, and is a Fellow of the ACM.

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In this episode I continue my exploration into the nature of consciousness and awareness.  I’ve learned a lot in my exploration to date. I’ve learned about Hindu and Buddhist ideas on awareness, and I’ve delved into the underlying quantum mechanical nature of reality. I’ve discussed ideas of quantum computing and biological links to the mysteries of quantum mechanics. My guest today is an expert on the cellular basis of memory and cognition.

Michael Levin received dual B.S. degrees (computer science and biology), followed by a Ph.D. (Harvard University). After post-doc training (Harvard Medical School), he started his independent lab at Forsyth Institute focusing on the biophysics of cell:cell communication during embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer. In 2009 he moved his group to Tufts, where they use biophysical and computational approaches to study decision-making and basal cognition in cells, tissues, and synthetic living machines. Levin holds the Vannevar Bush chair, and directs the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts, working to crack the morphogenetic code for applications in regenerative medicine, bioengineering, and artificial intelligence.  Recent work includes the modulation of native bioelectric circuits to control embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer, and the creation of novel synthetic living proto-organisms.

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In this episode I continue my exploration of consciousness, exploring a field of enquiry that has focused almost exclusively on consciousness and awareness for hundreds of years.  Although it is not science, Buddhism has a uniquely close relation with physics and physicists being oft quoted. 'The Tao of Physics' comes to mind, as well as ‘The Dancing Wu Li Masters’ as examples.  I hope you enjoy this foray into the Buddhist mind.

Dr. John Dunne serves on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he holds the Distinguished Chair in Contemplative Humanities at the Center for Healthy Minds.  He is also distinguished professor in the Department of Asian Languages & Cultures, where he currently serves as department Chair.

Dr. Dunne's work focuses on Buddhist philosophy and contemplative practice, especially in dialog with Cognitive Science and Psychology. His publications appear in venues ranging across both the Humanities and the Sciences, and they include works on Buddhist philosophy, contemplative practices and their empirical examination and interpretation within scientific contexts.

John Dunne speaks in both academic and public contexts, and he occasionally teaches for Buddhist communities, including the Gomde centers of Denmark and Austria and Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe. In addition to serving as core faculty for the Center for Healthy Minds, he is a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, where he has previously served on the Board of Directors, and he is an academic advisor to the Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal.

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Quantum Mechanics is a strange theory. Richard Feynman said “I think it is safe to say nobody understands quantum mechanics”. So why is it so popular if nobody understands it? How is this the basis for all of our physical knowledge of particles and their interactions?

A recent innovative experiment fires neutrons through a double slit and proves that each neutron goes through both slits at the same time.

Prof. Holger Hofmann, studied physics in his hometown of Stuttgart, Germany, then went to Tokyo University for a post-doctoral fellowship in 1999. Now at Hiroshima University, his research is focused on the way quantum theory describes observable phenomena. He believes that the key to a proper understanding of quantum mechanics can be found by exploring the practical means that we need to employ to achieve optimal control over a physical system.

Dr. Hartmut Lemmel studied physics in his hometown Vienna and graduated at the Vienna University of Technology in the group of Helmut Rauch who is the "father" of neutron interferometry. After his PhD in 2007 he stayed in the group and was posted to the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble as instrument responsible for the neutron interferometry setup.

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In this episode I am lucky to be able to talk to an expert in the lifeblood of modern civilization, our electrical grid. The grid is the pulse that sustains civilization. It provides us with the energy to run our labour-saving appliances, it provides us with lights, it empowers our computers, it heats our homes, it refrigerates our food. Without it we would be tossed back to 19th century living conditions.  It powers all of modern technology and allows us to communicate around the globe. The grid is also a curse. It is an industrial behemoth that emits dangerous pollution into the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels kills millions of people around the world every year from particulate pollution, and is one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas accumulation that is forcing the climate into a state it hasn’t been in since homo sapiens evolved half a million years ago. My guest will tell us about the hidden fragility of our electrical grid.

As a working chemist, Meredith Angwin headed projects that lowered pollution and increased reliability on the electric grid. Her work included pollution control for nitrogen oxides in gas-fired combustion turbines, and corrosion control in geothermal and nuclear systems. She was one of the first women to be a project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute. In semi-retirement, she became an advocate for nuclear power (one of the most environmentally sound forms of energy) and began to study and take part in grid oversight and governance. For four years, she served on the Coordinating Committee for the Consumer Liaison Group associated with ISO-NE, her local grid operator. She teaches courses and presents workshops on the electric grid.  Her previous major book was Campaigning for Clean Air: Strategies for Pro-Nuclear Advocacy. Meredith’s newest book, Shorting the Grid, The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid should be required reading for any politician in office today who needs to decide how to transition away from fossil fuels and fulfil our society’s obligation to future generations.

She and her husband George live in Vermont. They have two children and four grandchildren who live in the New York City area.

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In this episode I am looking forward to exploring more about alternate interpretations of Quantum Mechanics.  In previous episodes exploring consciousness, I’ve encountered several people who believe that Quantum Mechanics is at the root of consciousness.  My current thinking is that it replaces one mystery with another one without really providing an explanation for consciousness.  We are still stuck with the options of consciousness being a pre-existing property of the universe or some aspect of it, vs. it being an emergent feature of a processing network. Either way, quantum mechanics is an often misunderstood brilliant theory at the root of physics. It tells us that basic particles don’t exist at a specific position and momentum—they are, however, represented very accurately as a smooth wavefunction that can be used to calculate the distribution of a set of measurements on identical particles. The process of observation seems to cause the wavefunction to randomly collapse to a localized spot. Nobody knows for certain what causes this collapse. This is known as the measurement problem.  The many worlds theorem says the wavefunction doesn’t collapse.  It claims that the wavefunction describes all the possible universes that exist and the process of measurement just tells us which universe we are living in.

My guest is a leading proponent of transactional quantum mechanics.

Dr. Ruth E. Kastner earned her M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Maryland. Since that time, she has taught widely and conducted research in Foundations of Physics, particularly in interpretations of quantum theory. She was one of three winners of the 2021 Alumni Research Award at the University of Maryland, College Park (https://tinyurl.com/2t56yrp2). She is the author of 3 books: The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Theory: The Reality of Possibility (Cambridge University Press, 2012; 2nd edition just published, 2022), Understanding Our Unseen Reality: Solving Quantum Riddles (Imperial College Press, 2015); and Adventures In Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality (World Scientific, 2019).  She has presented talks and interviews throughout the world and in video recordings on the interpretational challenges of quantum theory, and has a blog at transactionalinterpretation.org. She is also a dedicated yoga practitioner and received her 200-Hour Yoga Alliance Instructor Certification in February, 2020.

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In this, my 100th episode, I continue to explore consciousness, but I’m stepping out of my comfort zone a little and seeing what I can learn from the religious viewpoint on consciousness. The idea of an eternal soul is central to many religions, and the Hindus especially believe in reincarnation. I want to learn what they think the soul entails, and what are the parallels between religious thought, philosophy, and the findings of neuro-biology.

Dr. Sangeetha Menon is Professor and Head of the Consciousness Studies Programme, and the Dean of the School of Humanities at National Institute of Advanced Studies, in Bangalore. There she developed the NIAS Consciousness Studies Programme along with BV Sreekantan to study consciousness with an interdisciplinary and a multidisciplinary mandate. Her major area of research is philosophy of psychology. She holds degrees in biology and philosophy. One of her primary contributions in consciousness studies is in presenting and engaging with the concept and experience of self from the neurobiological and philosophical points of view. She was awarded the Gita Puraskaram in 1998 for research studies on the Bhagavad Gita. She is an honorary fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. She currently heads the NIAS Consciousness Studies Programme and is the Professor and Dean of the School of Humanities at NIAS.

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In this episode I’ve decided to wade into another highly polarized topic, the morality of abortion. This has become a hot political topic with the Republicans stacking the supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade. In many people’s opinion this is a large step on the way to Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale where women’s rights to self determination are overridden by making them subservient to the greater rights of their unborn progeny.

The debate over this topic is a question of ethics. Is this a job for The Rational View? Can we claim a rational basis for morality or does it need to be subjective, or derived from objective laws handed down from a value code invented by a greater power.

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This episode continues my series on consciousness—are we just biological robots? Following on from my exciting interview last week with quantum biophysicist Dr. Luca Turin, I dig further into competing quantum theories of consciousness.  The famous Sir Roger Penrose and his partner Stuart Hameroff have proposed the Orchestrated OR theory.  This theory posits a modification of the incomplete theory of quantum mechanics that underlies half of physics. They argue that consciousness arises from moments of wavefunction collapse that are objectively linked to certain aspects of quantum superpositions.  They further argue that biology has evolved a mechanism to orchestrate these wavefunction collapses in tiny subcellular structures called microtubules. My guest today has been doing experiments in the lab to determine if physical processes in microtubules respond to anesthetics.

Professor Jack Tuszyński obtained his Ph.D. in condensed matter physics in 1983 from the University of Calgary. From 1983 to 1988 he was a faculty member at the Department of Physics of the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s. He moved to the University of Alberta in 1988 as an assistant professor, between 1990 to 1993 he was an associate and then full professor at the Department of Physics. Between 2005 and 2020 he has held the prestigious Allard Chair in Experimental Oncology at the Cross Cancer Institute where he leads an interdisciplinary computational drug discovery group. He is also a Fellow of the National Institute for Nanotechnology of Canada. He has held visiting professorship and research positions in China, Germany, France, Israel, Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland. He is widely published in the scientific literature providing frequent invited talks on his ground-breaking work.

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This episode continues my series on consciousness—are we biological robots?  Today I’m getting into some real science talking to a biophysicist who brings the esoteric world of quantum mechanics to bear on the topic. His groundbreaking work in the lab provides us with some real measurements that provide tantalizing hints at the previously unknown quantum processes tied to consciousness.

Dr. Luca Turin was born in 1953 in Beirut, Lebanon, to Italian-Argentinian parents and was brought up in France, Italy and Switzerland. He studied Physiology and Biophysics at University College London, PhD in 1978. Dr. Turin worked at the CNRS 1982-92, then became a lecturer in Biophysics at UCL 1992-2000. He is best known for his work on olfaction, in which he proposed a quantum mechanism for odorant recognition by receptors. For 8 years he was CTO of a venture company designing odorants for fragrance and flavors with a success rate 100 times the industry average. After returning to full time research in 2009, in collaboration with Makis Skoulakis in Athens, Greece, he has shown that both flies and humans can detect molecular vibrations by smell.  His current interest is in quantum electronics in neuroscience. He is the author of three perfume guides, a collection of essays and a popular science book on how smell works. He is currently a Professor in the Medical School at the University of Buckingham (UK).

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This episode continues my series on the Rational art of war on social media.  Following on from my great interview a few weeks back with Dr Lee McIntyre, author of Talking to Science Deniers, he suggested I interview his colleague Dr. Andrew Norman who is actively working to inoculate the world against anti-science thinking.

Dr. Andy Norman is the award-winning author of Mental Immunity: Infection Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think. His work has appeared in Scientific American, Psychology Today, Psychiatric Times, Skeptic, Free Inquiry, and The Humanist. He has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, NPR, the BBC’s Naked Scientist, and now the pinnacle—The Rational View. His research illuminates the evolutionary origins of human reasoning, the norms that make dialogue fruitful, and the workings of the mind’s immune system. He champions the emerging science of mental immunity as the antidote to disinformation, propaganda, hate, and division. He is the founder of the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative (CIRCE), a global think-tank leading the effort to inoculate humanity against cognitive contagion.

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In this episode I continue my investigation into consciousness interviewing an advocate for artificial intelligence. He advocates for a form of physicalistic idealism that is both highly speculative and incredible, by his own words.  He supports the equations of physics as a complete description of reality, and posits that minds arise in quantum superpositions of neurons.  A quantum superposition is a non-intuitive situation that arises in the equations of physics where a system can seemingly exist in two different physical states at the same time as long as it is isolated from observation. This was highlighted in the famous Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment where the cat was in a superposition of being both alive and dead as long as the box it was in was not opened.

David Pearce is author of the Hedonistic Imperative (1995), which advocates the use of biotechnology to abolish suffering throughout the living world. In 1998, he co-founded the World Transhumanist Association (H+) with Nick Bostrom. Transhumanists believe in the use of technology to overcome our biological limitations.

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In this episode I begin my investigation into the topic of consciousness with an interview.  The field of consciousness research is broad and interdisciplinary, with active researchers in philosophy, psychology, physics, neuro-biology, computer science, and even theology.  My first interview is a psychologist who wrote a book claiming that bacteria are sentient.

Dr. Arthur Reber is an American cognitive psychologist, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for Psychological Science (APS), a Fulbright Fellow, and an avid curling fan. Known for introducing the concept of implicit learning and for using basic principles of evolutionary biology to show how implicit or unconscious cognitive functions differ in fundamental ways from those carried out consciously. His most recent work has been on the "Cellular Basis of Consciousness" theory that maintains that all life is sentient, including unicellular organisms.

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This episode delves into the topic of consciousness and why it is seen as a problem by some philosophers. We briefly touched on this in our series on AI, but it also touches the topic of science and religion.  This is an issue that is dealt with in science fiction. Star Trek, especially TNG has several episodes that bear directly on this issue of what it means to be sentient with the character ‘Data’ striving to be more human, and being treated as an object rather than a sentient being due mainly to human chauvinism.  This is also explored by AI researcher David Kelley in his mediated artificial superintelligence, Uplift.  One’s opinion of the answers to these questions have significant impacts on what one expects from the field of AI, and how one might treat and interact with a potentially sentient AI system.  It begs the question of what moral footing underlies our approach to these systems, or even to non-human species in some cases. It bears on the topic of free will, and could influence one’s approach to crime and punishment.

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This podcast covers a very topical concern as Russia is now embarked on the conquest of the Ukraine, and there is much concern globally about the risk of nuclear power plants coming under fire. Should we be afraid of nuclear reactors in a war zone? (First Published March 19, 2022)

I review the risks of nuclear war for a new generation, and I contrast it with the risks of nuclear reactors in a war zone.  The conclusions may surprise you. Reactors in a war zone are not a significant health risk. Lack of reactors would be a bigger problem.

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In this episode I talk to a philosopher and best selling author who may be the world’s expert on bridging the gap to talk to science deniers.  This is the second podcast in series on how to change minds and influence people using the Rational Art of War to spread The Rational View.

Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, McIntyre is the bestselling author of POST-TRUTH (MIT Press, 2018)  -- along with thirteen other works of fiction and nonfiction, including DARK AGES (2006), and THE SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE (2019).

McIntyre has made appearances on CNN, PBS, NPR and the BBC -- and has spoken at the United Nations, the Aspen Institute, and the Vatican. He starred in the docu-series INFODEMIC: Global Conversations on Science and Misinformation. In November, 2018, McIntyre went undercover at the Flat Earth International Conference in Denver, Colorado, as research for his newest book, HOW TO TALK TO A SCIENCE DENIER (2021), which resulted in over a hundred media appearances including this one.

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The next couple podcasts are meant to be a battle manual for the everyday person who wants to join the fight for what they believe in, but doesn’t have the resources of Google or Facebook to identify thousands of folks who might be swayed to your viewpoint.

We know that on any sufficiently polarized political issue there is likely to be funded propaganda attempting to influence public opinion. Audit applications that track inactive and fake accounts show that a significant fraction of politicians’ followers are not real people.

Why would anyone listen to me? I don’t have a lot of followers. I’m not swaying thousands of people by data mining your social media footprint.  Persuasion starts with a one on one conversation. This is how we persuade others of the virtues of our arguments.

I started my podcast to train a Fellowship of like-minded rational warriors to fight the relentless hordes of influence bots that otherwise tend to dominate social media discussions.

I want this podcast to be the Art of War for the digital generation and I will be your Sun Tzu.

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This episode wraps up my podcast series on Evolution and Creationism.  I summarize the insightful interviews I've had with many great guests including Dr. Niles Eldredge, the co-creator of Punctuated Equilibrium. Topics range from theology to biology and everything in between.

For my upcoming podcasts I’m looking at a couple directions to explore with you. I want to discuss communicating science, and I also want to expand on some of my previous themes—Artificial Intelligence and Science/Religion cross over in the discussion of consciousness.  Can a computer be self-aware? Are we just biological computers?  Stay tuned for more insights.

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In this episode I will be talking to an author and screenwriter who has taken up the potentially poisoned chalice of popularizing nuclear energy for the world. Let’s see what he is planning to share with the world.

The son of a career naval officer, Mike Conley has lived in Japan, Hawaii, and all over the US and has backpacked through Thailand and Cambodia. Out for Blood is his first solo effort as a novelist. His screenplay Wicked Wonderland is based on the novel and has been optioned for feature production.

As a lifelong science nerd, Mike became interested in nuclear power in 2010, and quickly saw that the field was in dire need of writers who could explain the technology to the average reader. So he joined the Thorium Energy Alliance, met dozens of scientists and engineers, and made them an offer: “You explain it to me and I’ll explain it to the world.”

The first published book from this years-long effort will be Earth is a Nuclear Planet, and its short companion book The LNT Report. The third book in the series, Roadmap to Nowhere, will be released in the fall of 2024. Power to the Planet will be the fourth book, to be released in 2025. The books are written for the non-technical reader as a basic but comprehensive (and entertaining) education in nuclear power, renewables, and energy-related issues.

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This episode was meant to continue my series on Evolution and Creationism but it went another surprising direction.  I hope you enjoy exploring the questions raised as my guest strides fearlessly into controversial moral territory.

Genetic libertarian Razib Khan writes extensively on evidence surrounding human migrations and genetics. He has written for The New York Times, India Today and Quillette, and runs two weblogs, Gene Expression and Brown Pundits. His newsletter is Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning.

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In this episode I interview a psychologist who teaches critical thinking, using Creationism as an example for her students. She also analyzes behaviour from an evolutionary perspective.

Prof. Lynne Honey received a BA in Psychology from Algoma University, and then a PhD at McMaster University, specializing in learning and behaviour from a physiological and evolutionary perspective. She tended bar, drove a taxi, and cleaned apartment buildings to pay for her expensive education habits. She has been at MacEwan University since 2003, where she is a Professor in the Department of Psychology. She is an award-winning educator who teaches a variety of courses related to learning and behaviour, including Evolutionary Approaches to Human Behaviour. Her published research includes work in animal learning and behaviour, human mate choice and competition, and postsecondary education. Her family says that she is annoyingly good at board games.

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Continuing in my series on evolution and creationism. In this episode you’re in for a treat. I’ve managed to score an interview with a special guest—a celebrity in the field of evolutionary biology.  Sit back and enjoy!

Dr. Niles Eldredge has been a paleontologist on the curatorial staff of the American Museum of Natural History since 1969. His early work focused on the evolution of trilobites—a group of extinct arthropods that lived between 535 and 245 million years ago. Eldredge is the Curator responsible for the content of the major exhibition Darwin, which opened in New York, London, Rome and Lisbon in time to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth in February 2009. His book Darwin. Discovering the Tree of Life (2005) accompanied the exhibition.

Eldredge’s main professional passion has always been evolution. Throughout his career, he has used repeated patterns in the history of life to refine ideas on how the evolutionary process actually works. The theory of “punctuated equilibria” developed with Stephen Jay Gould in 1972, was an early milestone. Eldredge went on to develop a hierarchical vision of evolutionary and ecological systems, and in his book The Pattern of Evolution (1999) he has developed a comprehensive theory (the “sloshing bucket”) that specifies in detail how environmental change governs the evolutionary process. Other works include Unfinished Synthesis (1985) and Eternal Ephemera (2015). A critic of gene-centered theories of evolution, Eldredge’s Why We Do It (2004) presents an alternative account to the gene-based notions of “evolutionary psychology” to explain why human beings behave as they do.

Concerned with the rapid destruction of many of the world’s habitats and species, Eldredge was Curator-in-Chief of the American Museum’s Hall of Biodiversity (May, 1998), and has written several books on the subject—most recently (1998) Life in the Balance. He has also combated the creationist movement through lectures, articles and books—including The Triumph of Evolution...And The Failure of Creationism (2000).

Eldredge who is also an amateur jazz trumpeter and avid collector of 19th century cornets, lives with his wife, his dog and cat, and 500 cornets in Ridgewood, New Jersey—but repairs to the Adirondack Mountains to hike, think and write as often as possible. He is currently writing Gaian Homilies, an account of his experiences witnessing the nature of Gaia and the negligent Gaiacide committed by Homo sapiens.

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This episode continues my series on creationism and evolution. I’m excited to talk to a virologist to get the inside scoop on how viruses mingle with our DNA at the molecular level.  This is one of the evidences for evolution and common descent that I referenced in the series opening podcast.

Welkin Johnson, Ph.D. is a virologist with a particular interest in paleovirology. Dr. Johnson’s research team works on molecular level virus-host interactions, and the impact of these interactions on the evolution of both the viruses and their hosts.

A Michigander by birth, he attended UC Berkeley, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree in Microbiology & Immunology. After working for a year as a lab tech at UC San Francisco, Welkin moved to Boston, where he obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology & Microbiology from Tufts University School of Medicine. He was a postdoctoral fellow and later faculty in the Dept. of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School. In 2011, he joined the faculty of Boston College, where he currently serves as the Chair of the Biology Department. He also serves on the Board of Scientific Advisors for the National Cancer Institute, and is on the editorial boards of several journals.

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This episode continues my series on science and religion. In previous episodes I’ve interviewed the director of the Vatican Observatory, and a nuclear engineer. On this episode I delve more deeply into one of the leading firestorms in that debate. Creationism vs. Evolution. Dr. Swamidass was raised in a religious evangelical family of young earth creationists. After learning the scientific evidence behind evolution he realized he was being lied to. Now he works within the religious community to challenge the theological basis of anti-science beliefs such as this. S. Joshua Swamidass MD PhD, a physician and a scientist, is an Associate Professor of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine at Washington University in St Louis. His group uses artificial intelligence to advance science at the intersection of biology, chemistry, and medicine. He is the author of The Genealogical Adam and Eve and the founder of Peaceful Science (https://peacefulscience.org/). Register for my newsletter at www.therationalview.ca Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Instagram @The_Rational_View Twitter @AlScottRational #therationalview #podcast #evolution #creationism #genesis #youngearth #science #genetics #evidencebased

This episode is an introduction to a series on Evolution and Creationism.  The Theory of Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biological science, providing a cohesive framework that explains how the diversity of life that we observe today came about.  It has been borne out again and again through the discovery of previously unknown fossils with traits intermediate between extant varieties.

Genetic science has exploded in recent years due to the advances from the human genome project. Scientists now have the ability to sequence entire genomes and run statistical analyses to test theories of common descent.  

In this episode I provide some of the interesting discoveries and highlights that I hope to explore in coming weeks with the help of experts in the field.  Stay tuned for more!

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In this episode I interview Dr. Jessica Lovering and analyze her essay with Suzanne Baker, 'Can Nuclear go Local?'.  In this work they discuss ways that nuclear advocates and nuclear industry can address some of the main concerns of environmental opponents.

Dr. Jessica Lovering is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Good Energy Collective, a new organization working on progressive nuclear policy. She completed her PhD in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She is a Fellow with the Energy for Growth Hub and the Fastest Path to Zero Initiative at University of Michigan. She was formerly the Director of the Energy Program at the Breakthrough Institute.

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In this episode we dig into the science and politics associated with spent nuclear fuel.

The public policy debate around the energy transition is one of the most polarized and critical to the future of our society.

The IPCC reports provide an ongoing review of the status of the science on this topic.  IPCC pathways to net zero all include significant nuclear power, yet the public policy debate has not yet caught up. The European Union Joint Research Council has researched green energy sources and has confirmed the scientific consensus—nuclear causes no more environmental harm than any other power source.

In my previous episode I answered the question 'What about Fukushima'. 'What about the waste' is the second most common 'gotcha' response that people are conditioned to ask in response to the possibility of expanding nuclear energy. 

Listen as I summarize my discussions with several experts on nuclear waste management. You may be surprised at what you hear.

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Nuclear energy has now been recognized by a UN expert committee as the lowest carbon intensity of any major energy source. Anyone who has been involved in climate advocacy will have heard the common refrain ‘what about Chernobyl and Fukushima?’ We all know about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  It caused roughly 100 deaths and thousands of cases of preventable thyroid cancer.  But what about Fukushima Daiichi?

In this episode I will summarize my interviews with several nuclear and radiation health experts on the subject.

Dr Philip Thomas is a professor of risk management at University of Bristol. Dr. Thomas has extensive experience in the chemical and nuclear industries and is co-author of the NREFS study which developed an objective method of risk assessment in nuclear accidents.

Dr. Gerry Thomas is Professor of Molecular Pathology at Imperial College London, and an expert on the molecular biology of thyroid cancer. She established the Chernobyl tissue bank in 1998, and is an author of a number of reviews of the health effects of radiation exposure following nuclear accidents, having contributed to IAEA publications on the Fukushima accident UNSCEAR publications on the Chernobyl accident.

Geochemist and Energy scientist Dr. James Conca is Senior Scientist for UFA Ventures, Inc. in the Tri-Cities, Washington, an Adjunct Professor at Washington State University in the School of the Environment, a Trustee of the Herbert M. Parker Foundation, an Affiliate Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a Science Contributor to Forbes on energy and nuclear issues.

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In this episode I'm continuing my exploration of the intersection of science and religion. These represent two seemingly incompatible paths to truth, one of which values skepticism, the other which values faith. I interview a professor of applied nuclear physics who believes that quantum mechanics is not inconsistent with the influence of the supernatural in the universe.

Jan Blomgren is CEO and founder of INBEx (Institute of Nuclear Business Excellence), focused on nuclear power leadership. He is also CEO of KraftAkademin, a centre of excellence on nuclear power technology. He has previously been a professor of applied nuclear physics at Uppsala University, nuclear competence strategist at Vattenfall, and Director of the Swedish Nuclear Technology Centre.

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In this episode I will be talking more about how to debate Creationists. I have taken this topic on in the past, in my original episode on how to debate Creationists, and I have also interviewed well known evolutionary scientist Dr. Niles Eldredge who was one of the founders of the Punctuated Equilibrium theory of evolution alongside Stephen J. Gould.  Today I will be interviewing someone who I saw debating Kent Hovind a leading Young Earth Creationist.  The debate was not what one comes to expect from these affairs and was more like a courtroom interrogation than the usual grandstanding and Gish Galloping that one might expect from a Creationist debate. Let’s see if we can all learn something.

Mr. Anderson is a practicing Canadian lawyer who focuses on litigation.  Having spent years in and out of the courtroom cross-examining witnesses and analyzing arguments, he has recently turned his talents on proponents of pseudoscience and dogmatic thinking on the internet.

He is most well known for his attacks on creationists such as Kent Hovind, and has recently started a YouTube channel where he breaks down the techniques he uses to force evasive and pugnacious individuals to come to grips with facts and arguments that they would prefer to ignore. 

His style, for those of you who have never seen his videos, is very reminiscent of a cross examination, so his debates look very different from what you are likely used to seeing online, and he joins us here today.

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In this episode I interview the head of the Vatican Observatory, Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, PhD to discuss the intersection of science and religion. I ask him if he sees a conflict between faith and skepticism. You might be surprised at the answer.

Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ, is a Jesuit brother, Director of the Vatican Observatory and the President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation whose research studies meteorites and asteroids. He is a native of Detroit, Michigan, received SB and SM degrees from MIT, and earned his PhD in Planetary Sciences from the University of Arizona in 1978. Along with more than 200 scientific publications, he is the author of six popular astronomy books. In 2014 he received the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences for excellence in public communication in planetary sciences

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In this episode I summarize my research on the linear-no-threshold model of radiation health effects, replaying key excerpts from my past interviews with leading experts on the topic.

These include thyroid cancer expert Professor Geraldine Thomas of Imperial College London, Dr. Edwin Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, radiation dosimetry expert Dr. Blake Walters of Canada's National Research Council, and nuclear accident expert Dr. Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management at University of Bristol.

I hope you learn as much as I have!

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In this episode we’re going to learn about cancer radiotherapy, the use of radiation to treat cancer. So many people are afraid that nuclear radiation causes cancer, and yes this is possible if you receive a sudden megadose of radiation, but it is very difficult to get enough just enough radiation to increase the risk of cancer while not getting too much dose and dying from acute radiation sickness.  In the real world, radiation is used to kill cancer cells and save lives. I’m going to interview one of the world experts in this field of medicine.

Dr. Blake Walters received an M.Sc. in Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto in 1992. He joined the Ionizing Radiation Standards Group at the National Research Council of Canada in 1994. He received a PhD in Medical Physics from Maastricht University, The Netherlands, in 2017.

With the NRC, Blake helped to develop new computational techniques to greatly improve the accuracy of cancer radiotherapy. This work helps to spare healthy tissue while maximizing the dose to the tumour. This work has been adopted in radiotherapy clinics around the world, and has become the gold standard for accurate radiotherapy planning.

Currently, he continues his work for the NRCC, developing and implementing Monte Carlo techniques to meet the increasingly complex demands of current radiotherapy technologies.  He is also the in-house physicist, specializing in dose calculations for low energy X-rays, for a company that designs and manufactures pre-clinical and clinical irradiators sold around the world.

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Nuclear power is a polarizing issue and there is a lot of misinformation that we can debunk through familiarization. A significant fraction of the public, for example, think Nuclear power adds to carbon dioxide pollution. Many more feel that nuclear waste storage is a uniquely dangerous problem. Many more don’t understand that Ontario’s electrical grid is one of the cleanest in the world thanks to nuclear power which produces 60% of our electricity. I wanted to go to the source and understand a bit about the history of CANDU reactors and nuclear power in Ontario.

In this episode I am interviewing two key figures from Canadians for Nuclear Energy who bring a wealth of experience on the electrical grid and nuclear energy.  

Tom Hess is a retired Independent System Operator with 31 years of experience at Ontario Hydro and its successor company, the Independent Market Operator, which is now the Independent Electric System Operator (IESO).

Chris Adlam is an electricity system and power generation enthusiast whose interest stems from a familial history in power generation as his great grandfather Hubert R. Sills was a hydroelectric engineer for General Electric. Hubert worked on some of the largest hydro installs in the world. Chris' interest in nuclear power began around the time of the disastrous Ontario Green Energy Act. Chris is an IT professional who has been working in the healthcare industry for over 15 years.

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On this episode I’m interviewing an entrepreneur who is also trying to spread a Rational View by supplanting the AI-driven social media echo chamber with a  new idea. I hope you like it.

Farzad Khosravi is the co-founder and CEO at Cicero. Farzad is an entrepreneur looking to build humane, civic-oriented technology that improves our world. He believes that we need to reverse the trend of misinformation and hate we see online if we are to save our society. A scientist at heart and immigrant who grew up in Kentucky, Farzad learned early on the value of skeptical inquiry.

Discover podcasts, articles, videos and more from world-leading thinkers at Cicero.ly

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In this episode I’m continuing in a bit of a ‘space science’ theme to interview Professor Emeritus Don Gurnett, the Primary Investigator on the plasma wave instruments onboard both Voyager spacecraft. These amazing nuclear-powered spacecraft were launched in 1977 and are now the most distant manmade objects known, having recently left the solar system on their way into interstellar space.

 

Prof. Gurnett started his science career by working on spacecraft electronics design as a student employee in The University of Iowa Physics Department in 1959. After completing his B.S. in electrical engineering at Iowa in 1962, he transferred to physics, where he received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1963 and 1965. He was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa in 1965 with subsequent promotions to Associate Professor and to Full Professor in 1968 and 1972. Prof. Gurnett is considered by many to be the founder of the field of space plasma wave physics and has participated in over 30 spacecraft projects, most notably the Voyager 1 and 2 flights to the outer planets, the Galileo mission to Jupiter, and the Cassini mission to Saturn. Prof. Gurnett has received numerous awards for his research spanning two millenia. These include the 1978 John Howard Dellinger Gold Medal from the International Scientific Radio Union, to the 2005 Hannes Alfven Medal from the European Geosciences Union. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 

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This episode wraps up my exciting two-part interview with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium. We discuss climate change mitigation, public perceptions and misperceptions of nuclear power and society's progress towards decarbonizing the economy. We chat about the imminent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope and justifications for funding of big space astronomy projects.

I hope you enjoy it!

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The Rational View is proud to present an interview with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. This is the first in a two-part series. 

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, and witty director of the Hayden Planetarium,  is joining Dr. Scott.  Selected as one of the 100 most influential persons in the world by Time magazine in 2007, Dr. Tyson was awarded the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication in 2017. In this interview we discuss communicating complex scientific issues with a polarized public. Dr. Tyson addresses his non-judgemental approach to spreading rational evidence-based perspectives to inform public policy. 

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This episode includes a talk I gave to the Canadian Association of Physicists at their annual conference, in a special session focused on industrial physicists. It discusses the responsibility of scientists to communicate their work to the public and engage with society. Society sees scientists as disconnected elites who are isolated in academic ivory towers. We need to counter this opinion and show that we are also people who fight similar issues. We also need child care. We also worry about how to put food on the table. To communicate effectively and get society to a 'Star Trek' future we all need to listen and empathize and step out of our social media echo chambers.

Also, please stay tuned for an upcoming episode where I will be interviewing the famous Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson!

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This episode is full of Cool Science. The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s next flagship observatory, is now scheduled for launch on December 18th of 2021. This infrared observatory with a 6.5 metre segmented deployable primary telescope will rocket off to a distant Lagrange point where it will deploy a tennis-court-sized multi-layer foil sunshield to allow it to cool to -223 degrees Celsius. The mission cost over $10 Billion to put together.

René Doyon obtained his PhD in astrophysics from the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medecine in 1990. He is a full professor at the physics Department of the Université de Montréal, Director of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets and the Mont-Mégantic Observatory. His research activities focus on the search and study of exoplanets, young stars and the development of state-of-the-art astronomical instruments for ground- and spaced-based observatories.

He is principal investigator of the Canadian-built instrument onboard the James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched in 2021. His research team led the development of novel imaging techniques that contributed, in 2008, to obtain the first images of a multiple planetary system outside the Solar system. His distinctions includes the 2009 Polanyi award, and prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and more recently the 2018 Killam Research Fellowship.

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In this episode I’m continuing my investigation into Universal Basic Income as the natural solution to the AI and robotics revolution. One day we should be able to work because we want to improve the world and our situations, and not do it because we are under risk of death. The problem is that the intermediate period between having all of our needs taken care of by our robotic assistants, and having to compete with them for wages to put food on the table is not at all a clear path. My guest today chaired a committee that investigated UBI as an option for the BC government.  Their conclusion was that augmenting current social programs would be a better approach. It’s time for The Rational View.

David Green is a professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at UBC. His areas of research interest include income inequality, immigration, the impact of technical change on the labour market, and labour market policies. He is a former editor of the Canadian Journal of Economics and an International Research Associate with the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. He has served on the editorial boards for the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy. His work has been published in leading journals, including Econometrica, the American Economic Review, and the Review of Economic Studies. He was also a member of the BC Expert Panel on Basic Income and has served as the President of the Canadian Economics Association.

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In this episode Dr. Scott discusses society's apparent need to spend wads of money performing security theater.

Security theater is an insidious phenomenon whereby people are pressured into pointless and irrational acts of theater in the name of security. This inevitably happens as a result of a seemingly preventable tragedy, followed by a politician or security official who feels pressured to act. Society spends billions of dollars on out-of-proportion security theater every year. The entire US TSA is one example of a security theater that makes people feel safe to fly. Another common example is the driving need to cycle through arcane passwords that nobody can remember every couple months. How about the hygiene theater of scrubbing down everything with disinfectant to supposedly prevent the spread of COVID-19?

How does one fight security theater when it is so easy to cast opponents as monsters who don't care about the safety of children? The answer is that we all need to ask our elected representatives to engage in a rational public policy discussion before we give away our money and our freedoms in pointless acts that are unlikely to provide the desired results.

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#therationalview #podcast #securitytheater #TSA #COVID #freedom #rational #sciencebased 

The Rational View welcomes Edgardo Sepulveda back to discuss the interactions between social inequality and COVID-19. Edgardo has co-authored a paper on the topic providing evidence that societies with higher inequity also suffer higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352827321001798?dgcid=rss_sd_all

It is not immediately clear why this might be the case, and it is difficult to tease out a correlation amidst all of the other confounding factors. This discussion is an interesting exploration of the application of statistics and the scientific method.

Edgardo Sepulveda has been a telecommunications economist for 25 years, the last 15 with his consulting firm in Toronto, Canada. He was born in Chile and has an MA in Economics. As part of his civic policy-related engagement, he also writes about electricity, inequality, COVID-19 and other issues, including at the Progressive Economics Forum, where he wrote the blog that we’ll be discussing on this episode. Edgardo has been the guest on a number of other energy-related podcasts. His Twitter handle is @E_R_Sepulveda.

“The Spirit Level” by UK social epidemiologists Picket and Wilkinson is the book that came out in 2009 and popularized the idea that social and economic inequality negatively affects individual and population health.  It has its own Wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level_(book and is highlighted in the Equality Trust (a social NGO set up by them) here: 

https://equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/the-spirit-level

The Economist covered some of the COVID-inequality work in an article in its July 31, 2021 edition in the Finance section titled: “Why have some places suffered more covid-19 deaths than others? Income inequality is a big part of the answer”. 

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/07/31/why-have-some-places-suffered-more-covid-19-deaths-than-others

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As part of my series leading up to the Stand Up for Nuclear events coming up in September I'm interviewing another Canadian organizer and a nuclear industry professional. We discuss the controversy over Canada's Deep Geological Repository. One of the leading options for long-term mitigation of nuclear waste hazards.

Sheila Whytock is a nuclear operator at Bruce Power, in Ontario Canada. Sheila got her BA at Laurentian University, her Bachelor of Education at Wilfrid Laurier University, and completed a power operator apprenticeship while working for Bruce Power. She was raised on a beef farm in Orillia, and now resides in Teeswater, one of the potential host sites for Canada’s deep geological repository.


Sheila is co-founder of “Willing to Listen”, a grassroots group interested in pursuing the facts and benefits associated with potentially hosting a DGR in their community. Along with this, she is also host of the podcast “Willing to Listen”, board member of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, local contact for Mothers for Nuclear Canada and local organizer of Stand Up for Nuclear events within Ontario.

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