Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host Sean Carroll.

As you've heard, climate change is happening. The Earth is getting warmer in various other

aspects of our climate and our ecosystem are being affected, and human activity is an extremely

important, but most important cause of it. This much is scientifically clear. But, as you've

also undoubtedly heard, not everyone agrees with this, not everyone accepts the scientific evidence.

This is especially true in the United States, where there's a powerful movement that denies

the scientific consensus on climate change. You can even go to Wikipedia and there's a whole

page on climate change denial. So one can ask the question, where did this come from? Why especially

here in the United States? And today's guest Naomi Aresskis is an historian of science who has

investigated this question. She's the co-author of a very influential book, Merchants of Doubt,

which was later made into a documentary film. And I'm not going to give away too much of what we

talk about because it's a fascinating road to go down. But one of the most interesting aspects

of the story is that a lot of the climate denial movement can be traced to a small number of

scientists who are also involved in other denialist movements, like denying that smoking causes cancer.

Why did these people choose to make this their life's cause? The story is tied up with issues of

capitalism and communism and the Cold War and it's just an incredibly interesting intricate story

that was worth following up on. So we're going to talk about that. I talked about that with Naomi

and also how things have evolved since Merchants of Doubt was published. It's a very important look

at how our discourse is shaped. One that is only going to become more relevant to social policy

and communication policy is time goes on. So let's go.

Naomi Erskins, thank you so much for being on this podcast. You're welcome. Pleasure to be here with you.

Now you work in areas about history of science but specifically disinformation,

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