Chris Mooney

This is a beta site, in development. I’m not currently blogging here regularly. If you want to see my latest work, check me out at Mother Jones and at Point of Inquiry.

Also, check out my books at bottom right–and follow me on Twitter, where a lot of the action is currently happening.

Finally, here’s a video of a recent talk:

Amanda Marcotte

The latest Point of Inquiry just went up. Here, I’m previewing the upcoming Women in Secularism conference in D.C. by interviewing Amanda Marcotte, a fantastic writer who has, like me, regularly covered the conservative “war on science”–but also writes more broadly on politics, pop culture, and feminism.

Our conversation had some range, but the central theme was exploring irrationalities on the Christian Right, and also at times in the male secular world, when it comes to women and feminism.

I do want to note one disagreement with Marcotte: She challenged whether there are gender differences when it comes to a personality trait like empathy/compassion. But it looks to me like the science supports this idea.

Overall, though, hope you enjoy the show!

I’m flying back to the east coast today, after a weekend and a bit more in Arizona, at the Tucson Festival of Books and then speaking to the Phoenix Area Skeptics Society.

Audience at the Tucson Festival of Books

It was a great series of talks and proves that interest in The Republican Brain remains high. Plus, I got to meet co-panelists Rafe Sagarin, author of Learning from the Octopus, and John Nichols of the Nation, who snapped this picture of the packed audience at one of our sessions.

I wrapped things up with a talk to Freethought Arizona and packed talk last night in Tempe to the Phoenix Area Skeptics Society. Overall, the experience fired me up to work on trying to get out a paperback version of the book, which is now about a year old.

Thanks, everyone!

Tucson Festival of Books, 2012

The Republican Brain is just about a year old now–but sales and interest are not flagging. It’s my most reviewed book on Amazon by far, and that’s not just because of all the 1 star reviews from right wingers who haven’t read it!

This coming weekend, I’ll be giving a multitude of talks about the book in Arizona–first, at the magnificent Tucson Festival of Books, and then outside it. So here is a list of events: (more…)

Obama: Alan Freed / Shutterstock.com, dinosaur: DM7/Flickr

Following on the last post, I can now share my written Mother Jones rebuttal to Michael Shermer on the left, the right, and science.

Shermer penned a piece on the “Liberal War on Science” in Scientific American–I explain why he’s way off. This, in particular, is noteworthy:

“Shermer’s article ends with a statement that, as far as I can tell, is just incorrect: ‘Surveys show that moderate liberals and conservatives embrace science roughly equally,’ he writes. I’m not sure where he gets this, but for a direct rebuttal let me point you to a recent study in the American Sociological Review by Gordon Gauchat, which finds that unlike liberals or moderates, conservatives have lost trust in science rather precipitously over the past several decades.”

You can read the full item here.

A few nights back I was on the Agenda With Steve Paikin, alongside Michael Shermer and Mark Lynas, discussing the “anti-science left.”

My view is that while there are anti-science views on the left wing, they’re swamped by what’s on the right, and that’s really the nature of things–liberals and scientists are allies (and conservatives and scientists are opposed) due to their psychology.

So I didn’t agree with the centrist, pox-on-both-houses framing of the show (and the opinion of Michael Shermer, who argues this). Still, it was a good, meaty discussion: