Fascinating!: Deconstructing Conventional Wisdom to See the World with New Clarity
Step into a universe of sharp wit and deep insights with Fascinating!, where your host Rik from Planet Vulcan explores the dominant narratives shaping our world. Through the lens of evolutionary thinking, Fascinating! deconstructs conventional wisdom on economics, social justice, morality, and more. Each episode cuts through the noise of collective illusions—what Rik calls ecnarongi (ignorance backwards)—and exposes the pervasive hangover of pre-Darwinian thought patterns, often seen in the form of intelligent design or deus ex machina thinking. This outdated framework extends far beyond theistic religion, influencing everything from economic systems to societal structures.
Fascinating! offers an intellectually stimulating and often humorous exploration of ideas. If you're ready to see the world through fresh eyes, tune in for conversations that provoke, inform, and enlighten.
Fascinating!: Deconstructing Conventional Wisdom to See the World with New Clarity
Latest Episodes
Fifty Shades of Red
Protestant Christianity split into many different sects following the big split with the Roman Catholic Church, with the salutary result that oppression by religious authorities, while still a problem within many localities, is far more difficu...
Cognition and Consciousness: Learning from Cognizant Jellyfish
Slime mold has been a subject of discussion on the podcast since Season 1. Senior contributing editor Prego de Nada originally used slime mold, aka physarum, as an example of spontaneous emergent order in nature, with the purpose of demon...
Book Review: The End of Doom
Science journalist Ronald Bailey, who is also a trained economist, continues his career of debunking predictions of impending doom, which he began in his 1993 Book "Ecoscam", which demonstrated that predictions in the 1972 publication "The Limi...
Mount Stupid: The Dunning-Kruger Effect
Contributing editor Slainte na Zdorovya submits an essay on the much-discussed and widely applicable Dunning-Kruger effect, focusing on its relevance to the theme of evolutionary thinking that is the theme of this podcast. David Dunning a...