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 borderlines 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?

Massimo, our topic today is something that was sparked by the recent incident that took up about three weeks of time in the atheist and skeptic communities.

That was Elevator Gate.

Oh, Gossips.

Yes.

So the incident has been thoroughly discussed on many, many blogs and comment threads and articles.

I wrote an article about it myself for religion dispatches.

But the episode's not about

elevator gate per se. It's just sparked by elevator gate. We want to talk about women in skepticism

and whether there are things that are happening in the skeptic movement that make women feel

less welcome or more broadly why women are less fully represented in the skeptic movement and in science in general.

And we're lucky enough to have a woman as a co-host on the show.

Oh, cool. Where is she?

We don't need to talk about that.

No, but you're right. So part of the issue here is actually a broader underrepresentation of women, not just in skepticism,

but in sort of science-related stuff, including science itself.

And they're totally not independent issues either, because a lot of the leading figures in the skeptic movement are scientists or science writers.

And a lot of the material that gets covered in the skeptic movement is about science.

...