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Step into a universe of sharp wit and deep insights with Fascinating!, where your host Rik from Planet Vulcan explores the dominant narratives shaping our world. Through the lens of evolutionary thinking, Fascinating! deconstructs conventional wisdom on economics, social justice, morality, and more. Each episode cuts through the noise of collective illusions—what Rik calls ecnarongi (ignorance backwards)—and exposes the pervasive hangover of pre-Darwinian thought patterns, often seen in the form of intelligent design or deus ex machina thinking. This outdated framework extends far beyond theistic religion, influencing everything from economic systems to societal structures.
Fascinating! offers an intellectually stimulating and often humorous exploration of ideas. If you're ready to see the world through fresh eyes, tune in for conversations that provoke, inform, and enlighten.
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Send us Fan Mail Playing and having fun is a widely observed phenomenon amongst many of Earth's creatures. Why did it evolve? Why do some creatures play and others do not? Contributing editor Prego de Nada has looked into this phenomenon and has penned this essay.
Send us Fan Mail A review of the 16 podcast essays, and one interview, from Season 5. Hopefully you will find some of the short descriptions in the recap sufficiently interesting so that you will listen to them in their entirety. Have a look at the recently published book by friend of the podcast Eric Moon, titled "Cultivating the Sociome: Governance Without Governors", now available on Amazon. cultivatingthesociome.com
Send us Fan Mail If you have bought a recent model automobile, you have undoubtedly noticed that you do not have the option of steering the car without some "help" from robot-assisted lane tracking. There is no setting that allows you to steer your car without at least some tugging on the steering wheel by the robot. The reason for the ubiquity of the technology is a mandate by regulators in the EU, which effectively mandates it for the rest of the world. Listen to find out why th...
Send us Fan Mail In a first for the Fascinating! series, we present an interview. The interviewee is Cary Gray, an up-and-coming young Earthling friend of mine. Cary is first and foremost a poet, and that is his passion. He has had an adventurous past, from doing long-distance touring on a purpose-built unicycle of his own design, to living for three months in a giant redwood in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Cary will soon be starting his own podcast, tentatively titled "The Poe...
Send us Fan Mail Frederic Bastiat was an economist and essayist who lived and wrote in France in the early 1800's. He came to prominence at the age of 43 because of his satirical takedown of producers who were arguing for tariffs and other protectionist measures in trade with England, pointing out that the true effect of protectionism is mostly to transfer money from domestic consumers to domestic producers. His career took off and he went on to write about broader issues in law a...
Send us Fan Mail Although Marx's labor theory of value has been thoroughly trashed by Occam's razor and no longer enjoys any intellectual respectability, it still persists in the form of a quasi-religious dogma, kept alive by a disturbingly large number of otherwise intelligent Earthlings. This dogma cannot be questioned or challenged, because without it there is nothing left of the critique of capitalism as a system that exploits workers that stems from it; and Marxians are unlikely ev...
Send us Fan Mail This essay was inspired by a quote from the eminent scientist Edward O. Wilson, the man who coined the term "sociobiology" and wrote a book with that title. The quote was: "The real problem of humanity is the following: we have peleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology". For an optimistic appraisal of the prospects for civilization on Planet Earth, listen to senior contributing editor Prego de Nada's essay, which begins with an enli...
Send us Fan Mail Leviathan is the title of a book written in 1651 by the Englishman Thomas Hobbes during the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War, in which Hobbes argued that in the absence of a powerful sovereign the life of the average person was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". In this essay, senior contributing editor Prego de Nada challenges the conventional wisdom which says that, because of the enormous power Leviathan can wield, he can be enlisted to do much mor...
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Rik calls attention to a very special Earthling, Richard Feynman. Feynman's contributions to the science of physics by itself were enough to place him in the same category as Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. And this fascinating human also made a huge contribution to the philosophy of science, even though he claimed to be not much interested in the philosophical side. He has been quoted as saying words to the effect that the the philosophy...
Send us Fan Mail Thomas Henry Huxley is known to history as "Darwin's bulldog" for his powerful advocacy of Darwinian thinking while Darwin's ideas were being attacked and even ridiculed by those in the entrenched religious and academic establishments of 19th century Britain. In this episode, contributing editor Slainte na Zdorovya argues that evolutionary thinking, although it has been widely accepted in the world of natural science, is still facing stiff opposition from many modern in...
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, senior contributing editor Prego de Nada continues his queries with the chatbot about the evolution of Chinese civilization as Taoism and Confucianism, two opposing philosophies, each found a role in society. The purpose of this investigation is to cast light on the contest in our time between the evolutionary thinking that stems from the scientific study of nature, and the intelligent-design thinking that is the legacy of Europe's feudal period. ...
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, the first of a two-part series, senior contributing editor Prego de Nada proposes to demonstrate some interesting parallels between the philosophy stemming from Darwinian evolutionary thinking in modern times and the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism. Prego then traces the co-evolution of Confucian and Taoist philosophies in Chinese civilization beginning many centuries ago, all of this in a fruitful session of queries and replies with a chatbot.
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Rik from Planet Vulcan examines the concept of a living wage, something that, incredibly, many otherwise intelligent Earthlings seem to believe is a good idea! Those who advocate living wage legislation are thereby placing themselves squarely in the tradition of the White Man's Burden, the belief that a select few must coercively intervene in order to "help" the world's benighted, which inspired the era of European colonialism, and which is now part and...
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Rik from Planet Vulcan reports on the ongoing research into the behavior of Physarum, aka slime mold. The behavior of slime mold is an awe-inspiring and humbling example of the evolved wisdom of nature. This simple superorganism forages efficiently and knows when it is time to produce spores, all based on mechanical and chemical signals. Listen to find out the latest!
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Rik from Planet Vulcan reviews the collaborative effort of Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel to pitch their scheme of confiscatory taxation in their new book, in the name of the nebulous concept of equality, for the undefined and undefinable "common good", in order to counter the effects uneven luck distribution, the machinations of an imaginary malicious oligarchy, and perceived patterns of accidental historical processes. They back up their pitch with claim...
Send us Fan Mail The short answer to this question is "no". Listen to this episode for details. The Federal Reserve Bank (the "Fed") stands as an example of the collateral messiness, and the distortions, that inevitably accompany intelligent design projects. In this episode, Rik from Planet Vulcan explains why the Fed has always failed, and always will fail, in its mandate to stabilize prices; and why, rather than containing systemic risk, the Fed has itself been a major SOURCE of...
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, senior contributing editor Prego de Nada proposes that Earthlings would be happier, and life on Earth would be better, if they were to jettison the practice of characterizing their choices as between "good things" and "bad things", and instead adopt the practice of viewing the expected consequences of their choices as tradeoffs, where decisions are made by comparing values and costs. Tune in for details.
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, contributing editor Slainte na Zdorovya considers the tale of Alice meeting Tweedledee and Tweedledum in the Dark Woods. This tale is from the second Alice book, "Through the Looking Glass". Slainte's aim in this essay is to spread the word to Earthlings that they can liberate themselves from a lot of unnecessary worry by learning to recognize the insignificant, and to ignore it. Remember that Tweedledee and Tweedledum are motivated by a des...
Send us Fan Mail Nobody's right if everybody's wrong, in the words of the Buffalo Springfield song. In today's world it is difficult for an Earthling of a scientific bent to choose who or what to support in the political arena, when ecnarongi (i.e, ignorance in reverse, "knowing" that which is not true) prevails on all sides. In this episode, Rik from Planet Vulcan argues that better education of young Earthlings must take place before political participation on your planet can be cons...
Send us Fan Mail In this final episode of Season 4, Rik from Planet Vulcan reviews his mission on Planet Earth, which is to advocate for a world view based on the scientific investigation of natural processes; and reviews the essays published during Season 4. Rik and his little female Earthling pal are traveling to the the land of Aloha until winter has passed in the Smoky Mountains, with plans to return with more essays in the spring.
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