Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.

For more information, please visit us at NYCCEptics.org.

Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I am your host, Massimo Piliucci, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Julia Galev.

Julia, what are we going to talk about today?

Oh, Massimo, today we have a very special guest in studio with us.

We have here Jennifer Michael Hacht.

She is a philosopher and a poet who has a PhD

in the history of science from Columbia University. She's also the author of some excellent books,

including most recently, Doubt, a History, the Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation,

from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson, and also the happiness myth,

the historical antidote to what isn't working today. Jennifer, welcome. Hi, thank you. Yeah, it was a

pleasure of reading both of those books, as you know. We talked about that in the past. So let's

get right down to it. I guess we're going to be talking about both books and as well as some of your

current projects. And let me start with Doubt because we've got some comments on our,

on the podcast website about that particular book. And that is, as you know, because you wrote it,

doubt also includes a history of religious skeptics in the sense of people who actually are religious and are skeptic.

And a lot of skeptics think that that is not quite exactly an oxymoron perhaps, but something strange.

That somebody cannot possibly be a religious person and

also a skeptic. Obviously, you have a different take on it. Oh, sure. My interest in the history of

doubt was partially just that I was and am an atheist and I was very much aware that some of the

most brilliant ideas, most exciting intellectual ideas

...