The Podcast For Inquiry

Apr 16 2025 90 ep. 61 mins 42
The Podcast For Inquiry artwork

A podcast for scientific, skeptical, secular, rational and humanistic inquiry. They’ve got answers? We’ve got questions.

  Science  Society & Culture
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Nigerian Nightmare: The personal toll of being a Humanist, with Mubarak Bala

Apr 16 2025 76 mins  
Mubarak Bala was born in Nigeria's Kano State, on the southern coasts of the Sahara Desert, in 1984. He was schooled in both the Islamic and modern education system. This makes him an outlier, since most families believe the two school systems are mutually exclusive. Boko, Western Education, is Haram, or unIslamic. When Mubarak started doubting the existence of demons, he was tol

Cell phones, Cinemas, and Comestibles: Canada’s Conundrum with Monopolies, with Vass Bednar

Apr 02 2025 74 mins  
Vass Bednar is the Executive Director of McMaster University’s Master of Public Policy program, and the co-author of The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians. Our conversation starts with the observation that many sectors in Canada’s economy are dominated by one or only a few firms. Vass and Leslie discuss whether that is good or bad for Canadians, includin

Trials and tribulations trying to bring a refugee to Canada

Mar 19 2025 50 mins  
In 2019, Brian and Brent (members of the Calgary-based Rocky Mountain Atheists) joined a “Group of Five (G5)” sponsorship committee (one of the ways Canada allows private citizens to resettle refugees in Canada) to bring a UN recognized refugee, Omer, to Canada. When Omer expressed doubts about his faith, he had to flee his native country of Pakistan due to threats on his life.

Distinguishing jargon from gobbledygook - Dr. Jonathan Stea on evidence-based medicine over wellness industry misinformation

Mar 05 2025 65 mins  
Jonathan Stea (BlueSky, Facebook) is a full-time practicing clinical psychologist and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary. In today’s episode, Jonathan reveals that many mental health practitioners have no scientific grounding for their treatments, which can lead to disaster - yet it can be very difficult for an layperson to

Burkas, beatings and bicycles - The life of Yasmine Mohammed

Feb 19 2025 67 mins  
Yasmine Mohammed is a human rights activist and author of Unveiled: How the West Empowers Radical Muslims. Yasmine is one of the most prominent and vocal figures supporting persecuted freethinkers across the globe, from elevating the voices of marginalized freethinkers on her podcast, to creating a global network of allies across religious and political divides through the CLARITy

Everything you always wanted to know about the solar system* (*but were afraid to ask), with John E. Moores

Feb 05 2025 56 mins  
John E. Moores (X, Bluesky) is a planetary scientist and associate professor at York University. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, formerly served as the Science Advisor to the President of the Canadian Space Agency and has contributed to five NASA and ESA-led space missions. He is the co-author of Daydreaming in the Solar System, which imagines a future when visiting

Gaia Vince identifies the four horsemen of the Anthropocene

Jan 22 2025 59 mins  
Gaia Vince (@wanderinggaia) is an award-winning science writer and author. She is particularly interested in the interaction between human systems and Earth’s planetary systems. Her research has taken her around the world. Gaia’s latest book is Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World. We are already at 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, w

Canada has not reconciled with its Indigenous peoples, say Maureen Bulbrook and Christina Ninham

Jan 08 2025 83 mins  
Maureen Bulbrook and Christina Ninham are Indigenous lawyers who know from direct experience that Canada has never stopped discriminating against its First Nations people, from the Doctrine of Discovery at the time of contact to current day (with Prime Minister Harper arguing that residential school records should be destroyed even as he apologized for Canada’s treatment of Indig

Paco Calvo considers the possibility of plant intelligence

Dec 18 2024 62 mins  
Paco’s thesis is a provocative one: plants are, in a meaningful sense, intelligent. Paco discusses what intelligence is, and how we might recognize it in other beings. People used to believe that only humans are intelligent. Over time, other mammals were deemed to also think and feel. Today, most people grant that many animals, such as birds and octopi, exhibit intelligent behavi

Heresy: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God, with Catherine Nixey

Dec 04 2024 65 mins  
Why do scholars now refer to early Christianities instead of early Christianity? How has the meaning of the word “Heresy” changed from its original definition to taking on its current connotations? Why did Christianity grow from a fringe cult with few followers and disdained by the intelligentsia and people in power to becoming the largest religion in the world today? What did