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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Peter Boghossian: How to have IMPOSSIBLE conversations! (#141)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.71.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2021

⏱️ 75 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In How to Have Impossible Conversations, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay guide you through the straightforward, practical, conversational techniques necessary for every successful conversation -- whether the issue is climate change, religious faith, gender identity, race, poverty, immigration, or gun control. Boghossian and Lindsay teach the subtle art of instilling doubts and opening minds. They cover everything from learning the fundamentals for good conversations to achieving expert-level techniques to deal with hardliners and extremists. This book is the manual everyone needs to foster a climate of civility, connection, and empathy. Support our Sponsor LinkedIn Jobs! Use this link to post your first job ad for FREE LinkedIn.com/impossible In our current political climate, it seems impossible to have a reasonable conversation with anyone who has a different opinion. Whether you're online, in a classroom, an office, a town hall -- or just hoping to get through a family dinner with a stubborn relative -- dialogue shuts down when perspectives clash. Heated debates often lead to insults and shaming, blocking any possibility of productive discourse. Everyone seems to be on a hair-trigger. Peter Boghossian is a full-time faculty member in the philosophy department at Portland State University and an affiliated faculty member at Oregon Health Science University in the Division of General Internal Medicine. He is a national speaker for the Center of Inquiry and an international speaker for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. He is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists. He lives in Portland, Oregon. James Lindsay holds degrees in physics and mathematics, with a doctorate in the latter. He has authored two previous books: Everybody is Wrong about God and Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating And please join my mailing list to get resources and enter giveaways to win a FREE copy of my book (and more) http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 📝 🎥 🎥 Watch my most popular videos🎥 🎥 Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/3z8RqKMQHe0?sub_confirmation=1 Weinstein and Wolfram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI0AZ4Y4Ip4?sub_confirmation=1 Sheldon Glashow: https://youtu.be/a0_iaWgxQtA?sub_confirmation=1 Michael Saylor The Physics of Bitcoin https://youtu.be/CaN_CDKqXOg?sub_confirmation=1 Sir Roger Penrose, Nobel Prize winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMuqyAvX7Wo?sub_confirmation=1 Jill Tarter https://youtu.be/O9K9OBd3vHk?sub_confirmation=1 Sara Seager Venus LIfe: https://youtu.be/QPsEDoOTU6k?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM 🏄‍♂️ Find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔥 Find me on Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating 📖 Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA 🔔 Subscribe for more great content https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 ✍️Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 📧Join my mailing list: http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 👪Join my Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/losingthenobelprize 🎙️Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-impossible/id1169885840?mt=2 🎙️Listen on all other platforms: https://wavve.link/into A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/ Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Any sufficiently advanced technology is

0:05.0

from magic.

0:07.0

Welcome everybody to the impossible.

0:10.0

Welcome everybody to the Into the Impossible Podcast.

0:14.0

The Into the Impossible Podcast is a production of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination

0:19.9

at the University of California San Diego, where I am the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Physics,

0:25.5

and I talk to people in all different capacities

0:28.6

from billionaires, brainiacs, and thought leaders. And today I'm speaking to someone who's all three of those a billionaire a

0:36.5

a brain I don't know not yet right Peter you say the first billion is the hardest right

0:40.8

Yeah, I think I'd rather be the first and the second of the third.

0:45.2

So Peter Vagosian is a professor at Portland State University.

0:50.5

We're going to get into aspects of academia, but this is meant to be a conversation that I've long wanted to have and that involves the difficulties and

1:04.0

discussing difficult, sensitive, thought-provoking ideas and concepts,

1:09.0

but wanting to do so with comity, and maybe some comedy too and Peter exemplifies that and is is really

1:18.0

Kind of a rare breed someone who seeks to achieve not agreement but clarity and I think that's a rare trait.

1:25.2

So Peter, thank you so much for joining us on the Into the Impossible Podcast.

1:29.1

Thanks for having me and I appreciate it and I'm eager to kind of test some my ideas as a as my

1:36.9

unlettered opinions in physics if I can and I was hoping maybe we could start that

1:42.1

way yeah okay we're I'm happy to And I was hoping maybe we could start that way.

1:43.0

Yeah, okay, we're I'm happy to do that as and just to remind folks that we will take questions from the clubhouse happy if you want to start off I am more than happy to do it and otherwise I would we

2:04.7

will stay tuned though because we will do what's called live action role playing

2:10.1

using astronomy and this I don't know if you can see Peter this is a finger puppet of Galileo Galaei

...

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