21 Steven Novella - No, GMOs Won't Harm Your Health

Inquiring Minds

Science, Society & Culture, Neuroscience, Female Host, Interview, Social Sciences, Critical Thinking

4.4 • 848 Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2014

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

With historic drought battering California's produce and climate change expected to jeopardize the global food supply, there are few questions more important than what our agriculture system should look like in the future. And few agricultural issues are more politically charged than the debate over genetically modified organisms. Even as companies like Monsanto are genetically engineering plants to use less water and resist crop-destroying pests, activists are challenging the safety and sustainability of GM foods.On this week’s episode, we speak with Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale University. Novella is a prominent voice in the skeptical movement, a scientific movement that, as he describes it, focuses heavily on explaining the truth behind "common myths—things that people believe that aren't true." So we asked him to help sort out fact from fiction when it comes to industrial agriculture in general—and GMOs in particular.This episode also features a discussion of the US Olympic team's new high-tech ski suits and analysis of disturbing new evidence that Americans are increasingly likely to confuse astrology with science.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Friday, February 14th, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds.
0:05.5	I'm Chris Mooney.
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1:02.0	So Chris, as you know, California is going through an historic drought at the moment. Some people say
1:06.3	it's the worst in 500 years. And much of the produce that is eaten in our country actually comes from
1:13.4	California, in particular, you know, the interior. And that's where people have been suffering
1:17.1	from the drought the hardest. So it got me to thinking, as the climate changes and the world
1:23.2	gets warmer, these droughts are probably going to increase in frequency. And of course,
1:26.7	how we generate food is going to have to change. And I thought about what science might do to sort of
1:33.9	navigate this problem. And then, of course, that led me to thinking about genetically modified
1:38.0	foods. And genetically modified foods are something that a lot of us have misconceptions about,
1:43.6	but there might be something
	...

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