The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott Al Scott

In this episode I’m responding to the political tension we are witnessing in the US with a historic election looming on the horizon. Many see this as some sort of battle royale between good and evil. But for some reason the options on the table for our neighbours to the south are four more years of increasing inequity in a reasonably well-off country vs. a wrecking ball to the heart of the institutions that keep us all safe. How did we get here? Why are these the only options available?  The problems are significant, and we are all being fooled by the rich and powerful oligarchs that rule both parties. We are being hacked by those who would destroy us. And not only literally, but also psychologically. Bad actors are exploiting our human reactions, and our emotions, to paralyze our rationality. This is a job for The Rational View!
 
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Today I’m taking a step back from science and addressing politics. I know certain of my listeners do not like to hear my opinions on this topic and I respect that, so if you need to stay in a silo to protect your political narratives please stop listening. This is your trigger warning. 
It was recently announced that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is inadmissible to use evidence from a president’s actions to prosecute them. The founding fathers of our friends to the south are spinning in their graves.
It is sad that I’m here talking about getting out the popcorn to watch the trainwreck happening to our neighbours in the south. I never thought that I would watch the most prosperous nation on earth choke on the hate generated by social media clickbait, alternative facts from purveyors of putred partisan apologetics preying on the vulnerable and the venerable with their faux outrage engines. The 2025 Presidential Transition Project claims that it is the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for "the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025". This is the partisan document published by Conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, that outlines their plans for the next Republican presidency. I will provide a Rational View on what this document contains.
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In this episode I will be discussing the topic of abortion with a philosopher who has studied the moral arguments on both sides of the issue. I am interested in rational bases of moral decision making. I’d like to be able to work out moral rules from a set of socially acceptable first principles, but often I find that my moral intuition conflicts with what I derive as a rational morality. Is our morality wrong if it is not totally consistent, or is morality not derivable from precepts? I’d like to understand how these ideas apply to the topic of abortion ethics.
Bonnie Steinbock is professor emerita of the Department of Philosophy at the University at Albany/State University of New York. A Fellow of the Hastings Center, she has been a visiting professor at Santa Clara University (2012), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2015) and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia (2017). In addition to 70 articles, she is the author of Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos (Oxford University Press, 1992, 2011) and the editor or co-editor of several collections, including Killing and Letting Die (1980, 1994), New Ethics for the Public's Health (1999), Public Health Ethics: Theory, Policy, and Practice (2006), the Oxford Handbook of Bioethics (2008), and Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 4th - 8th editions. Her latest book, co-written with Paul Menzel, is Bioethics: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2023).
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In this episode I’m delving into the weaponization of space. The space race was originally a military flexing competition between the US and the Soviet Union. Since that time space has been consistently used for surveillance, similar to early airborne operations, but weaponization of space has been off limits through treaties.  Now the space race seems to be evolving. China, Russia and the US have all tested weapons that can blow up satellites.  I will be interviewing an expert who can tell us about what is going on and whether the space race is heating up again.
Clayton Swope is the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Before joining CSIS, Swope led national security and cybersecurity public policy for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, an initiative to increase global broadband access through a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit. While at Amazon, he also worked on cloud policy issues. Prior to his time at Amazon, Swope served as a senior adviser on national security, space, foreign affairs, and technology policy issues for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He also worked for more than 14 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, serving largely in the Directorate of Science and Technology. He holds a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from the University of Notre Dame.
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This episode is a recording of a live social media broadcast on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Riverside.fm where the Scott brothers revisit their previous disagreements over manifestation and magical thinking. Will they come to an agreement or will it come to fisticuffs? Manifestation is the idea that by aligning our thoughts and expectations with our goals we can better achieve success. Many people take this idea to a magical extreme whereby the proper series of mental gymnastics will change one's circumstances independent of other actions.
Kevin Scott is the founder of the Effortless Alpha brotherhood "To inspire, and create space for men to access their own potential through the bond of brotherhood where no man feels alone". His life-transforming work with men has sparked the Masculine Expansion, creating space for men to lead themselves and become a role model in their communities with power, honour, discipline and respect.
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In this episode I’ve decided to wade into another highly polarized topic, the morality of abortion. This has become a hot political topic with the Republicans stacking the supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade. In many people’s opinion this is a large step on the way to Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale where women’s rights to self determination are overridden by making them subservient to the greater rights of their unborn progeny.
The debate over this topic is a question of ethics. Is this a job for The Rational View? Can we claim a rational basis for morality or does it need to be subjective, or derived from objective laws handed down from a value code invented by a greater power.
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