In this episode we sit down with Joey Rodman (@okiespacequeen), a science educator in Oklahoma whose recent Twitter thread about using a portable planetarium to reach out to flat earthers went viral thanks to their counterintuitive advice about how to discuss science denial and conspiracy theories with people who may have never interacted with a scientist before.

After years of on-the-ground, one-on-one conversations, Joey has developed a technique similar to those we’ve discussed on the show, including street epistemology, motivational interviewing, deep canvassing, and even the socratic method. It shares elements with all of these, but was developed in-person through conversations with people who met with Joey in their communities and home towns. 

In this episode, we sit down with Henry Ernest Gee, the paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and senior editor of the scientific journal Nature. 

I was honored to get the opportunity chat with one of the absolute titans of science journalism and science communication about his new book: A Very Short History of Life on Earth, 4.6 billion years in 12 chapters.

In this episode we sit down with expert in behavioral economics Evelyn Gosnell, who is also the managing director of Irrational Labs, an organization that uses social science to help other organizations make big decisions, fight misinformation, and design better products and services.

In this episode, Dr. Jud Brewer, a neuroscientist and addiction psychiatrist, discusses the biological origins of anxiety and how to unwind our feedback loops using techniques derived from his lab’s research.

Since his last appearance on the show, Dr. Jud has written and published a book which is now a NYT bestseller titled Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind which he describes as, “a clinically proven step-by-step plan to break the cycle of worry and fear that drives anxiety and addictive habits.”

In this episode, we sit down with neuroscientist David Eagleman to learn how brains turn noise into signal, chaos into order, electrical spikes into meaning, and how new technology can expand subjective reality in ways never before possible.

In his new book, Livewired, Eagleman explores how brains come into the world “half baked” so they can create reality out of the inputs and experiences available. Thanks to that plug-and-play plasticity, not only can we return senses to those who’ve lost them, but add to anyone new senses that we have yet to imagine.

In this episode we sit down with Jordan Ellenberg, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

His writing has appeared in Slate, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe, and he is the New York Times bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong – but in this episode we will discuss his new book, Shape: The hidden geometry of information, biology, strategy, democracy and everything else.