As I was reading your post, I thought exactly the same thing. I would be nice to have a round table hosting, but perhaps the guest would feel more intimidated talking to three as opposed to one person. Especially if it is a skype interview, as most are nowadays.
As I was reading your post, I thought exactly the same thing. I would be nice to have a round table hosting, but perhaps the guest would feel more intimidated talking to three as opposed to one person. Especially if it is a skype interview, as most are nowadays.
Well, Skeptics Guide to the Universe does “round table” skype interviews; they go very well, and are more chatty and informal. But I suppose it depends on what sort of tone they want to set.
As I was reading your post, I thought exactly the same thing. I would be nice to have a round table hosting, but perhaps the guest would feel more intimidated talking to three as opposed to one person. Especially if it is a skype interview, as most are nowadays.
Well, Skeptics Guide to the Universe does “round table” skype interviews; they go very well, and are more chatty and informal. But I suppose it depends on what sort of tone they want to set.
Yes, but usually it is just Steven Novella doing the actual interview. Righteous Indignation does round table interviews very well, but I don’t know what their format is.
The little hints at a deep underbelly of personality politics within CFI always disturb me. DJ apparently was willing to continue as host and also suggested the joint hosting, and while there may be sound reasons for not going ahead with that, there also seems to be some territoriality within CFI that doesn’t reflect well on an organization devoted to a rationalist world view.
I am familiar with Chris Mooney’s work, and he seems an excellent choice. I don’t really know anything about the other two new hosts.
Well the deep underbelly of personality politics within CFI have been pretty public lately - discussed on the blog, for example.
I was a big fan of Chris Mooney’s The Republican War on Science and Storm World, but with Unscientific America and the barrage of mass media articles that accompanied it (that dude has access), things changed. He’s been saying tendentious, unfair and inaccurate things about people he chooses to call ‘the New Atheists’ (or things like ‘the New Atheist Noise Machine’) in mass circulation magazines and newspapers ever since last May - the biologist Jerry Coyne prominent among them. I think this makes him a very non-ideal host for Point of Inquiry - not least because by now so many people cordially loathe him.
I’m afraid I agree with Ophelia on this one. Chris Mooney damaged his credibility with Unscientific America and has been digging himself into a deeper hole since publication. I’ll keep my iTunes subscription to PoI, but DJ Grothe set the bar very high and I will be surprised if Mooney can maintain that standard.
Well, so much for POI. There’s no way I’m listening to it with Mooney hosting. DJ made the show. Thank goodness the JREF has launched a new podcast, For Good Reason with DJ hosting: http://www.forgoodreason.org/... Now, granted, I should probably give the new hosts a chance (and I like Stolltznow), but, then, I listen to lots of podcasts already and, essentially FGR is POI, with another name. And POI is now something else.
