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Dr. Donald Prothero
 Interview: Dr. Donald Prothero
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Derek releases another interview which was conducted at The Amazing Meeting 2013. This time he sits down with Dr. Donald Prothero to discuss another of his books which were released in the past few weeks, 'Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future'. Find out why Dr. Prothero has dedicated so much of his time attempting to ensure the public becomes more scientifically literate, and what he fears will happen if it doesn't happen.
Show Notes
 

– Date – September 10th, 2013
– Send your cool ‘SCIENCE!’ shout-outs to
.
– Theme song by Steve Seamans of the Daisy Dillman Band. Get the song HERE.
– Thank you to everyone who has been purchasing books, Skepticality stuff, or using our Amazon link to help us!

– Big thanks to everyone who came out to speak at the Skeptic Track at Dragon Con!
– Our previous guest, Jon Hotchkiss, is offering a 50% discount to our listeners. Just go to: thisvsthatshow.com and click "see the series" and enter the promo code 'skepticality' when prompted.

Skepticism, Past and Future [1:15]
– The US National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program went into effect October 1, 1988.
– The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1996 went into effect October 3, 1996.
– The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 went into effect October 25, 1994.
– Websites that let you search and track Congressional legislation include Congress.gov, Govtrack.us and OpenCongress.org.
– The site Scout by Sunlight Foundation provides an umbrella search linking to all three of the above sites plus more. Sunlight also operates Open:States which tracks state-level legislation. (Sunlight offers other tools and APIs as well).
– Sunlight also offers free smartphone apps for tracking Congress (both iPhone and Android) and a smartphone version of Open:States as well (iPhone only currently).
– The Center for Inquiry just launched a handy new bill tracker web page last week.
– Two bills that skeptics should be tracking right now are H.R. 1757 Vaccine Safety Study Act as well as H.R. 2817 Protect Patient Access to Quality Health Professionals Act. Follow those links to create an alert or tracker on any of the sites linked here.
– Skeptic History facts are posted daily on social media find out where on this page at Tim’s blog.

Wikipedia [8:05]
– Learn about the guerilla skepticism story surrounding Sylvia Browne on Wikipedia.
Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia Blog.
– You can find Susan Gerbic at her website.

Skeptical Humanities [12:37]
Monsters and Dragons and Dinosaurs, Oh My!
– Find out more at skepticalhumanities.com.

The Universe Verse [17:40]
Check out the project on Kickstarter and help bring more, cool, science to kids!

Interview: Dr. Donald Prothero [19:55]
– Lots of people accept science when it is convenient, then don't when it doesn't seem to be.
Similarities between climate change denial and evolution denial is obvious.
– Dr. Prothero doesn't work on Dinosaurs, he works with fossil mammals more Dr. Dino than Kent Hovind.
– Until recently, environmental issues were quite popular with both Democrats and Republicans.
– The environment became unpopular around the time of the Kyoto meetings in the 90's.
– Sadly, science denial crosses party lines in the United States.
– Back before recent times the Democrat party used to be the party of the religious hard liners.
Nixon ushered in the era of GOP religious fervour and 'Under God' from the position of the President of the United States.
– The Republican party used to be the party of science and spending for the common good.
– Scientology might have a good idea by attempting to get their message on the Super Bowl half time show.
– Get the book, Reality Check, from Skeptic Magazine directly!

Outro Music [40:33]
– Outro music donated by Trent Brusky of Dropfox.



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