New author joins Rationally Speaking: Welcome Julia Galef

Dear Readers,

Over the past few weeks you have seen posts by my friend Julia Galef, who will also be the co-host of the soon to be released Rationally Speaking podcast (produced by Benny Pollak for New York City Skeptics). Her guest posts, “Love, a skeptical inquiry,” “Provably nonsense, part I” and “Provably nonsense, part II” have so far gathered a whopping 165 comments (and counting), which as usual for this blog range from the well-intentioned but somewhat vitriolic to the constructive and almost agreeable...

I have now asked Julia to join the Rationally Speaking team (which includes our editor-in-residence, Phil Pollack) to make this blog even more stimulating and intellectually varied.

Julia is a journalist with a B.A. in statistics from Columbia. After graduating in 2005, she spent several years as a research assistant in social science at Columbia, Harvard and MIT, including a year writing case studies on international economics for Harvard Business School. She is now a full time writer and editor based in New York, covering science, religion, and culture for publications including Science and The Humanist.

Most importantly for this blog, Julia’s background in science and philosophy — coupled with her significantly different take on things compared to my own (especially regarding philosophy), makes her an exciting contributor to the expanding RS universe.

From now on, Julia will blog at Rationally Speaking independently of me, though her first contribution as a resident author will be a critique of the idea of moral philosophy, to which I will respond a few days later. We will also both independently publish our selected “Picks” each week, which again will have a different focus, reflecting our distinct interests.

As David Hume famously put it, “truth springs from argument amongst friends”. So welcome Julia, I look forward to many friendly arguments to start the new decade on a good rational footing.