September 5, 2016
EP. 140 — How Liberals Are Accidentally Fueling Science Deniers
We’ve never known more about our world and our universe, but at the same time it feels like there are more people who completely ignore science than ever before. They can come in all shapes and forms of crazy. There are anti-vaxxers, climate change truthers, and for some reason we’ve still got flat-earthers. Flat-earthers! C’mon people what year is it?! Didn’t Magellan put that one to rest, like, 500 years ago?
Surely this all comes down to religion, right?
Not exactly. A Gallup poll found that about 40% of Americans believe Earth was created by God less than 10,000 years ago. However, of that group, 23% don’t go to church. So almost a quarter of young-Earthers aren’t even religious. What’s going on? What are the sociological forces keeping these ideas so strongly rooted in so many people’s heads?
On this week’s podcast Jack O’Brien is joined by Cracked editors Soren Bowie and Alex Schmidt to cover the modern history of science deniers. We ask where they come from, why they are so prominent now, and if we have to think of science and myth as contradictory.
Also, make sure to come to our next live podcast taping on Saturday, September 10th at the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles, where Jack and the Cracked staff will flip-off movies like ‘Sully’ and ‘Deepwater Horizon’ and pitch some insane true stories that should be made into big Hollywood movies instead. Tickets are only $5 and are available here: https://goo.gl/VP9riY
Footnotes:
Live Science: 4 in 10 Americans Believe God Created Earth 10,000 Years Ago: http://goo.gl/Ck3ijG
New Yorker: The Denialists: http://goo.gl/M6aEmQ
New Yorker: The Mistrust of Science: http://goo.gl/pGuAio
New Yorker: I Don’t Want To Be Right: http://goo.gl/7NXaoP
New Yorker: Ben Carson’s Scientific Ignorance: http://goo.gl/a0ZsGc
Cracked: 5 Dark Sides of the Tech Industry No One Ever Talks About: http://goo.gl/uI0pYy
NYT: A Confession of Liberal Intolerance: http://goo.gl/3wlDbt
The Guardian: Exxon Knew of Climate Change in 1981: https://goo.gl/1Lx4SU
Cognitive Dissonance: https://goo.gl/KUvQ9
Scientific American: It’s Time for Scientists to Stop Explaining So Much: https://goo.gl/KUvQ9
Cracked: 6 Mind-Blowing Ways Zombies and Vampires Explain America: http://goo.gl/CQICP
New Scientist: The Maddeningly Magical Maths of John Dee: https://goo.gl/izlNgx
Come see us at the Now Hear This podcast festival: nowhearthisfest.com
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace.
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