Inquiring Minds

In recent decades, there have been countless infringements, and attempted infringements, upon accurate science education across the country. The "war on science" in national politics has nothing on the war playing out every day in public schools, even if the latter is usually less visible. The attacks are diverse and ever-changing, showing an array of tactics and strategies that almost rivals biological life itself. "If nothing else evolves," explains evolution defender Eugenie Scott on this week’s episode, "religion does. Creationism does."
Scott spoke to us on an auspicious occasion: She is stepping down as the director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), an organization she founded in her basement 27 years ago, and that has since become the chief tracker of attacks on science education across the US. Joining the conversation was Scott's successor Ann Reid, who led the sequencing of the 1918 flu virus at the Army Institute of Pathology in the mid 2000s, and most recently served as director of the American Academy of Microbiology.
This week’s episode also features a discussion looking back at the science in the last three State of the Union addresses, and examines a recent science-of-memory study, which suggests walking through doorways might actually be making us forget things.
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We talk to French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene about his new book How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine ... for Now.

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We talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Cohen about his new book The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks.

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We talk to oncologist, professor of medicine, and director of the MDS Center at Columbia University Azra Raza about her new book The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last.

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

Evidence is mounting that Greenland is melting at a faster and faster rate. We talked to Josh Willis—senior scientist at NASA JPL’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project—about how changing water temperatures in our oceans are affecting the Greenland ice sheet.

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds