Point of Inquiry Center for Inquiry

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California may be the world's premiere space exploration facility. From the earliest days of rocketry, JPL has been at the vanguard of designing and building rockets and spaceships.

But the lab has a colorful history, and some of its founders broke the stereotypes of what a rocket scientist might be. Satanism? Friendships with L. Ron Hubbard? The Red Scare? Those only scratch the surface of this fascinating place.

And who better to talk about all this than MGLord, author of AstroTurf: The Private Life of Rocket Science, and host and creator of a podcast called Blood, Sweat, and Rockets. Host Jim Underdown chats with MG as they delve into the weird and wonderful history of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Many of us who are happy to live outside religion still suffer from a lack of things religion gives its members,” writes historian and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht. “It seems to me the remedy to this suffering is a shift in the way we think about ritual and the poetry of our lives.”
 
Hecht is our guest on this episode of Point of Inquiry. She’s the author of books such as Doubt: A History, The Happiness Myth, and Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It. Her most recent book is The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of our Lives. In it, she shows us how encounters with poems can help us get through our toughest moments, enrich our celebrations, and cultivate a sense of awe and meaning—all without appeals to the supernatural. In a conversation with Free Inquiry editor Paul Fidalgo, Hecht discusses how poems offer all of us—secular and religious alike—a way to think and feel more deeply, and provide us with a foundation for ritual to mark the milestones of life. 

And keep an eye out for the June/July 2023 issue of Free Inquiry magazine, which will feature an excerpt from The Wonder Paradox: “On Choosing a Code to Live By.”

Graham Cooks and his team at Purdue University have discovered a chemical process that has exciting implications for people who believe that life could have emerged spontaneously and through natural means. The idea that the building blocks of life started in a primordial ocean now has a competitor: airborne tiny water droplets.
In this episode of Point of Inquiry, Jim Underdown speaks to chemistry professor and researcher Graham Cooks about his work in mass spectrometry and his discovery that adds an important piece of the puzzle of how life came to be. Does this find have religious implications?

Realizing the faith you've had your entire life is wrong can be devastating for some people. The process of deconversion can lead to panic attacks, depression, and more. What does it take for someone to get through that complicated process?

Our guest is Alice Greczyn, author of the memoir Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity. She's an actress, author, and founder of Dare to Doubt, which provides resources like mental health professionals, aid organizations, and peer support groups to help heal the damage from indoctrination. Her own story includes a painful but rewarding transition out of evangelical Christianity.

In a conversation with Jim Underdown, Greczyn dives into her early life living in a strict religious household and how she began to see the faults of Christianity. She also details her journey of walking away from her faith completely and how she hopes to help others do the same.Greczyn recently released her memoir Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity as an audiobook, read by her!

You can also read her cover story published in Free Inquiry, Excerpts from Wayward—A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity.

What do we do when television shows dealing with extraordinary events focus on the ridiculous to bolster views? In today's episode, we take a behind-the-scenes look at two people with experience in the industry and what they've done to create a more focused skeptical point of view on the air.
Our first guest, whose name has changed to protect their identity, currently works on magazine/news shows, where he works on booking more balanced guests, skeptic-wise, to speak about UFOs/UAPs. Jim Underdown and the guest dive into what it takes to make these kinds of shows,  the conceptualization of ideas, their execution, and what's being done to inject more science into the entire process.
The second guest is Steve Muscarella, who has worked on shows such as Unsolved Mysteries, Sightings, It's a Miracle, and Scariest Places on Earth. Underdown and Muscarella speak about his time working on Scariest Places on Earth, how he worked to make things "real" for the participants, and how magic, misdirection, and mentalism played a vital role in bringing it all together.