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 NYCCEceptics.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?

Massimo, today's episode was inspired by an experience which I think a lot of us in the skeptic movement are involved

in some regard with the skeptic movement have had. I know I certainly have. Our producer has.

I'm curious if you have. In which the issue of skepticism comes up. And so, you know, you bring up

the skeptic movement or you bring up skepticism, and people interpret it,

people who haven't heard of the skeptic movement, they interpret it usually in one of two ways.

Either they think that being a skeptic just means you're a cynic, so you like debunking things

and disbelieving things, or they have heard of skepticism sort of in this classical, like,

philosophical context, and they think that it means believing that there's no possibility of knowing anything, for sure.

And so we wanted to talk today about this sort of classical skepticism and what it is, what the arguments are for and against it, and also the degree to which it is actually underlying the sort of modern-day scientific skepticism that the skeptic movement practices.

I do have an instance in which this came up in a kind of a funny way.

This was years ago when I was in Knoxville, Tennessee. And on behalf of the local

skeptic group, I invited Michael Shermer to give a talk. He had a new book out. And as part of the

event, we also, both of us were guests on a local talk radio show.

And the host was, you know, very gracious, very nice.

He talked to us before the show.

And then he started the show.

And the first thing he says was, well, I'm really surprised.

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