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

Julia, what are we going to do today?

Well, Massimo's today is a very special episode.

We're recording live at the third annual Northeast Conference on Science

and Skepticism. Come on guys, show the listeners what they're missing.

Woo! Right! This day is making me a little nostalgic because this is actually

a two-year anniversary on which I met Mathema. I was in the audience at the very

first Nexus. That's how this whole shebang got started. So it's been a great conference

so far, a lot of interesting talks, a lot of sharp objects going in people's noses and mouths.

And since this is the first nexus with double, with twice the number of days, we decided to celebrate and have twice our usual number of guests.

So we have two excellent guests with us today, one old, one new.

Do you mean age-wise?

No, no, I definitely don't mean age-wise.

So let me introduce our guests.

Jennifer Michael Hecht is our first repeat guest on rationally speaking, which is quite an honor.

Usually with us, it's all wham-bam, thank you, ma'am, and we're on to the next guest but Jennifer was so good we had to

come back for more so for those of you who don't know her she is the author of three history books

doubt a history the end of the soul scientific modernity atheism and anthropology and the happiness

myth as well as two volumes of poetry

...