Host: Chris Mooney

Our guest this week is a return guest of the show, Massimo Pigliucci.

We last heard about his book Nonsense on Stilts, which was about how to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. But his newest effort is in some ways even more ambitious.

It's called Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to a More Meaningful Life. And in it, Pigliucci lays out an approach that he calls "sci-phi." It involves assessing the science of an issue—like, say, the biology of romance—and then also weighing an array of philosophical considerations, before figuring out how to negotiate this life domain.

It's quite the heady undertaking—but, well, that never stopped us here before....

Massimo Pigliucci is a professor in the Philosophy Program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and was formerly a biology professor at Stony Brook University. He is the author or editor of eight previous books, most recently Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk. He lives in New York City.