The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott

In this episode, I’m exploring the topic of the Outrage Industry. Who else is growing inured to over-the-top tirades of outrage and offense? This seems to be a relatively new phenomenon whereby click-bait memes generating outrage are monetized by social media networks into clicks. Let’s explore how this impacts society and what we can do to counter it.

Richard Thompson Ford is a Professor at Stanford Law School. He has written about law, social and cultural issues and race relations for The New York Times, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Slate, and has appeared on The Colbert Report and The Rachel Maddow Show. He is the author of the New York Times notable books The Race Card and Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality. He lives in San Francisco.

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In this episode I’m interviewing a researcher who has been studying the impacts of methane on the greenhouse effect, and trying to assess whether burning natural gas is helping or hurting the climate. His most recent paper suggests that it should not be considered an improvement over coal.

Robert Howarth is an Earth systems scientist and ecosystem biologist with a Ph.D. jointly from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He joined the faculty of Cornell University in 1985 and was appointed the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology in 1993. He also is an Adjunct Senior Scientist at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, MA, and is Co-Editor in Chief of the journal Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research. He has published over 250 scientific papers, reports, and book chapters and has edited or authored eight books. His peer-reviewed papers have been cited more than 85,000 times in other peer-reviewed literature, making him one of the most cited environmental scientists in the world. Howarth’s research is broad ranging and includes climate effects on nutrient pollution in lakes and coastal ecosystems, nitrogen effects in coastal marine ecosystems, sources of methane from natural gas operations and agriculture, atmospheric ammonia pollution, alternative energy policies, and lifecycle assessments for hydrogen, liquefied natural gas, and renewable natural gas. He is one of 22 members of New York’s Climate Action Council, the group charged with implementing the State’s ambitious climate goals laid out in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019.

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In this episode I’m interviewing the leader of a new Canadian political party, the Canadian Future Party. Their website has the following statement that I liked, “The CFP believes people from every corner of the country want to be united behind a common set of ideals: democracy, the rule of law, collective action, and individual rights. A country where you can live as you like, love who you want, and in exchange, you work hard, and we collectively agree on a common set of rules to let us live our different lives, together. Where decisions are based on evidence.” This sounds like they’ve been listening to my podcast.

Dominic Cardy is the leader of the Canadian Future Party. Dominic Cardy brings a wealth of experience in international affairs and Canadian politics, having served as Minister of Education and then as an independent MLA, committed to public service and policy innovation. Born in the UK and raised in Fredericton, Dominic was elected as the Progressive Conservative MLA for Fredericton West-Hanwell in 2018 and re-elected in 2020. He served as Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development until 2022. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Dalhousie University.

Dominic’s career spans roles with the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, the National Democratic Institute, and the Forum of Federations, working across Asia and Africa. He also led the New Brunswick NDP from 2011-2016 and served as Chief of Staff to the Leader of the Opposition from 2017-2018. Additionally, Dominic has been a flying instructor since 1994 and is a member of the editorial board of Inroads, a Canadian policy journal.

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In this episode I'm dipping my toes into a new topic a little bit outside my range, but we can still use the tools of science and evidence to assess. The economy and Modern Monetary Theory. It is a new idea that clashes with classical economics. It can be summarized as the idea that governments whose dollar is not linked to a gold standard don't need to worry about deficits. It encompasses the idea of guaranteed employment for all. The discussion will also explore the failure of the capitalism system. My guest is an expert on this topic. Let's get grounded in the facts.

Jamie Merchant is a writer living in Chicago who writes about political economy and radical political theory. His writing has appeared in many publications including The Baffler, The Brooklyn Rail, The Nation, and In These Times. His book, Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline, was published by Reaktion Books in 2024.

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In this episode I am interviewing a neuroscientist and a writer who has done a lot of work on synesthesia, or the melding of sense perceptions. His most recent book delves into how we can take back control of our attention from addictive social media. This should be of interest to most of us, and especially to parents of young children and teenagers who don’t know what to do to help their kids put down the devices and engage with life.

Dr. Richard E. Cytowic, a pioneering researcher in synesthesia, is Professor of Neurology at George Washington University. He is the author of Synesthesia, The Man Who Tasted Shapes, The Neurological Side of Neuropsychology, and, with David M. Eagleman, the Montaigne Medal–winner Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia. His new book is entitled, ‘YOUR STONE AGE BRAIN IN THE SCREEN AGE: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload’.

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In this episode I’m returning to the mysterious and challenging topic of consciousness and awareness, the elusive theory of mind that philosophers have chased for centuries, and is now coming to heel under the tools of neurobiology and the framework of modern physics. My guest today has performed experiments on rats that lend credence to the intriguing idea that quantum mechanics could play a basic role in the function of the mind. Are our brains quantum computers? This is a question for The Rational View.

Dr. Micheal Weist received his PhD in Theoretical High-Energy Physics from University of Michigan and is an associate professor of Neuroscience at Wellesley College. His research is focused on learning about the physical basis of consciousness. What is it about the matter in a living brain that makes it experience perceptions, feelings, and thoughts? His research focuses on sensory integration in rats, attempting to understand how neural activity in different parts of the brain gets combined or coordinated to generate a single coherent perception.

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In this episode we’re going to chat with someone who understands the value of a good civics education. This comes at a time when observers are rating the US as a flawed democracy, and a current presidential nominee has been indicted for insurrection. Gerrymandering of districts is rampant, voter suppression bills are common, and a significant minority of voters seem to feel this is just fine.

Dr. Lindsey Cormack is an associate professor of Political Science and Director of the Diplomacy Lab at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. She earned her PhD in Government from New York University and is raising a daughter on the Upper East Side. She currently serves as the Secretary for Community Board 8 in Manhattan. She created and maintains the digital database of all official Congress-to-constituent e-newsletters in the DCInbox Project. Her research has been widely published. She is the author of the new book, HOW TO RAISE A CITIZEN (And Why It’s Up To You to Do It).

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In this episode we’ll be discussing polarization and the idea of moral narcissism. My guest has published an article in a substack newsletter discussing this idea that people today are taking on absolute moral stancess in polarizing issues because of the status it gives them in their tribe, irrespective of the cost. In her blog she makes an analogy of a group who believes eating blue cheese is immoral so they outlaw it. As a result of their banning blue cheese, people start dying from eating unregulated blue cheese. There is another group who believe the group outlawing blue cheese is evil. They ostracize members of the group from society resulting in some members of the group being radicalized and resorting to violence. Both groups are holding their moral purity above the lives of people. She calls this behaviour moral narcissism.

After years of serving as a high school government and law teacher, Sharon McMahon took her passion for education to Instagram, where more than a million people (who affectionately call themselves “Governerds”) rely on her for non-partisan, fact-based information as “America's Government Teacher.” Sharon is also the host of the award-winning podcast, ‘Here’s Where It Gets Interesting’, where, each week, she provides entertaining yet factual accounts of America’s most fascinating moments and people. In all that she does, Sharon encourages others to be world-changing humans. She has led her community in various philanthropic initiatives that have raised more than $9 million for teachers, domestic violence survivors, terminally ill children, medical debt forgiveness programs, refugees, and more. In addition, she is the author of ‘The Preamble’, a Substack newsletter about politics and history.

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In this episode I’m going to be sharing with you an earlier interview with Dr. Micheal Levin that I found to be really mind bending. In it I wanted to explore the cellular basis of consciousness, and we delved into that a little bit, however the part that I found really interesting was his discussion of how cells work together and communicate to build macroscopic structures like bodies and hands, and maintain your shape over long time periods. I find it inspiring to realize how much we have yet to learn. Are individual cells conscious? How can this be? And If they are how does this cellular consciousness come together to form a unified experience in a single organism? Are human cells like ants in a colony? Is our mind a hive mind? I hope you enjoy this discussion.

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’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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