The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott

I initially found the idea of “decolonizing science” troubling. Does it mean treating personal revelation as equal to evidence? Does it require rejecting the scientific method because it developed largely within European institutions?
Rather than argue against a caricature, I spoke with Innu astrophysicist Dr. Laurie Rousseau-Nepton.
We discuss what decolonization actually means in science, how culture influences the questions researchers ask, and whether Indigenous oral traditions can preserve legitimate astronomical knowledge.
We also explore dreams, scientific bias, the controversy surrounding telescopes on Maunakea, and the difference between scientifically explaining the universe and finding meaning within it.
Can science include more perspectives without compromising evidence and rational inquiry?

Is being a billionaire morally defensible?
In this episode, Dr. Al Scott digs into extreme wealth, corporate power, executive pay, inherited fortunes, and the way modern capitalism rewards people at the top.
He looks at how much a billion dollars actually represents, why CEO compensation has exploded, how companies squeeze workers and customers in the name of growth, and why basic necessities still feel out of reach in societies with enormous wealth.
The episode also gets into philanthropy, wealth taxes, universal basic income, the Nordic model, and the argument that billionaires create jobs and drive innovation. Find out who benefits from the current system, who pays for it, and what a fairer economy might theoretically look like.

This episode is a fun book review with a new author who provides a comprehensive review of astrology, the source of generic horoscopes and perhaps serves as a gateway drug to astronomy for the anti-science crowd. We’ll find out about the history of this occult practice and why people believe that the month of their birth might have an impact on who they should date.
Carlos Orsi is an award-winning Brazilian journalist with more than thirty years of experience in science writing. He’s currently editor-in-chief of Revista Questão de Ciência (Question of Science Magazine), author of the Substack Idea Smasher, and the author of several books of science popularization in Portuguese, with essays translated into Spanish and English. What Science Says About Astrology is his first book in English.

Welcome to The Rational View, where we apply evidence and critical thinking to the biggest issues of our time. Trump declared on election night, "I'm not going to start wars. I'm going to stop wars," while warning that a victory by Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate at the time, would lead to "World War III." He has repeatedly referred to himself as the "President of Peace" and is obviously unable to deal with the fact that President Obama got a Nobel Prize. This comes as no surprise as he has been unable to follow through on his promise to end the Ukraine war on day one, and day two and all the other days of his presidency, while he threatens to forcibly annex allied countries like Greenland and Canada.
Groups seeking quid pro quo favours have since showered him with second hand peace prizes including FIFA and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado who presented her 2023 Nobel Peace Prize medal to U.S. President Donald Trump during a White House meeting to recognize his support for her country's freedom hoping to trade for a return to democratic elections.
After that, he sent US forces to attack Iran. What motivated the sudden change of heart and total flip flop from election promises?
Today’s episode tackles this rapidly unfolding and deeply consequential question:
The United States is now at war with Iran.What led to this? Is it legal? What are the claimed strategic goals and do they make sense?And—controversially—is this connected to domestic political distractions like the Epstein files?
Time for A Rational View.

This podcast is my opinion on the Republican regime’s anti-democratic and corrupt behaviour. As Steve Bannon said they are going to push against all of the guardrails and flood the zone with questionable behaviour. They are doing this because they are only popular with a small minority of Americans, and if everyone voted they would be out. No surprise. Pam Bondi is slow-walking the court-ordered release of the Epstein files after Kash Patel’s FBI stopped New York Investigations into Epstein’s pedophile ring and redacted the names of the abusers rather than the victims. The president of peace and Pete Hegseth started a war with Iran to distract from his government’s blatant contempt of court orders. These people are out of their depth.

In keeping with its Donroe doctrine, the Republican Regime recently captured the president of Venezuela and ferreted him away in a New York prison to face charges on drug trafficking and weapons possession. Open flaunting of international law is now a thing as all of the guardrails are being tested in a full court attack on democratic institutions and international law and order.
Welcome to 2026! I’ve taken some time off from producing content to catch up on some personal time, to do some reading and relaxing. Every time I start to write about some completely unprecedented issue, a new and more egregious one comes up. It is difficult to stay focussed, and that is the strategy ladies and gentlemen.
This move is being justified in the right wing media echo chamber using many of the same arguments used by previous republican regimes to invade Iraq and topple Sadam Hussein. They tried to portray fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, despite evidence that a negligible fraction of US fentanyl comes from Venezuela. They claim it is immoral to suffer a socialist dictator. Apparently only capitalist dictators are allowed in the Republican morality.  It is widely known that Maduro fixed the election, imprisons his political opponents, and takes bribes from shady actors to enrich his family. These are all things Trump seeks to emulate.
Lets dig into the spin, and the geopolitics and get a Rational View to understand what is really going on.

This episode was originally a live interview discussing podcast 249 with Mike Conley where we explored claims that the linear no threshold theory of radiation health effects was politically motivated and is not supported by evidence. In this podcast I speak with author Mike Conley, and subject matter experts Steve Curtis, and Dr. Stephen Boyd. Please join us for an informal discussion on an important topic.
 

In this episode I want to dig into a source of injustice in the world—hidden markets—where who you know is often more important than what you know. My guest has spent his life highlighting these hidden systems that silently maintain inequity. Strap in for The Rational View on hidden markets.
Judd B. Kessler is an award-winning teacher and the inaugural Howard Marks Endowed Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. In 2021, Kessler was awarded the prestigious Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize for his path breaking scholarship. For his work on the hidden market of organ allocation, Kessler was named one of the “30 under 30” in Law and Policy by Forbes. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Harvard Business Review, Politico, and Freakonomics, among others. He’s just published a new book, ‘Lucky by Design’.

In this episode I am continuing to look at pathways to save us from the slow motion economic collapse of late stage capitalism. Today we’ll be talking to an author who has a roadmap to a new system the calls Dynamic Capitalism. Let’s see if we can find a Rational View to a solution.
A passionate advocate for entrepreneurship and long-time venture capitalist, Seth Levine, works with venture funds and companies around the globe. His day job is as a partner at Foundry, a Boulder, Colorado-based venture capital firm he co-founded in 2006. He is also the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of GoodBread, a small business lending platform. He has just published "Capital Evolution: The New American Economy" with co-author Elizabeth MacBride.
Come find me on Facebook and add your 2 cents to the discussion.

In this episode I’m going to be diving into a topic of interest to everyone in the nuclear energy field. It is a scandalous expose on the history of the dreaded ALARA principle regarding radiation exposure regulations (As Low As Reasonably Achievable), based on the idea that no amount of radiation is safe. What is the scientific basis behind this idea and is it supported by the evidence, or has there been a massive multi-decadal conspiracy? My guest today has published a book that suggests the ALARA principle is a regulatory roadblock paid for by big oil, and implicitly supported by scientific review panels that may have been more intent on shutting down open air nuclear weapons testing than following the evidence.
Returning guest and friend of The Rational View, author Mike Conley has lived in Japan, Hawaii, and all over the US and has backpacked through Thailand and Cambodia. As a lifelong science nerd, Mike became interested in nuclear power in 2010, and quickly saw that the field was in dire need of writers who could explain the technology to the average reader. So he joined the Thorium Energy Alliance, met dozens of scientists and engineers, and made them an offer: “You explain it to me and I’ll explain it to the world.”
The first published book from this years-long effort was Earth is a Nuclear Planet. Its short companion book The LNT Report is now available. The LNT report is based on detailed investigations by Dr. Edward Calabrese into scientific misconduct underlying the history of the Linear No-Threshold radiation regulatory regime. This work brings to light a decades-long scientific scandal that helped to derail the nuclear revolution and entrench fossil fuels and climate change over the past 50 years.
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