Gaia Vince (@wanderinggaia) is an award-winning science writer and author. She is particularly interested in the interaction between human systems and Earth’s planetary systems. Her research has taken her around the world. Gaia’s latest book is Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World. We are already at 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, with significantly more to come. The four horsemen of the anthropocene – fire, heat, drought, and flood – will lead human migration on an unprecedented scale. Gaia describes what we must do, individually and collectively, to prepare.

Podcast for Inquiry is hosted by Leslie Rosenblood and brought to you by the Centre for Inquiry Canada. Join today! Support Podcast for Inquiry on Patreon: https://patreon.com/PodcastforInquiry. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@centreforinquiry.ca.

Maureen Bulbrook and Christina Ninham are Indigenous lawyers who know from direct experience that Canada has never stopped discriminating against its First Nations people, from the Doctrine of Discovery at the time of contact to current day (with Prime Minister Harper arguing that residential school records should be destroyed even as he apologized for Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples and Prime Minister Trudeau failing to deliver on his promise of clean drinking water in all Indigenous communities). Canada passed a law in November 2024 banning forced sterilization because of the ongoing commonplace practice of doing so to primarily Indigenous women. 

 For reliable information about First Nations people, visit:

• Canadian government websites

• First Nations community websites 

• APTN https://www.aptn.ca/ 

• Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations

• Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women final report 

 Podcast for Inquiry is hosted by Leslie Rosenblood and brought to you by the Centre for Inquiry Canada. Join today! Support Podcast for Inquiry on Patreon: https://patreon.com/PodcastforInquiry. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@centreforinquiry.ca.

Paco’s thesis is a provocative one: plants are, in a meaningful sense, intelligent. Paco discusses what intelligence is, and how we might recognize it in other beings. People used to believe that only humans are intelligent. Over time, other mammals were deemed to also think and feel. Today, most people grant that many animals, such as birds and octopi, exhibit intelligent behaviours. Paco extends this to  plants by detailing what science has to say – both theoretically and empirically – about the hypothesis of plant intelligence. The conversation concludes with some thoughts about the moral and philosophical implications if plants are found to be truly intelligent.

Podcast for Inquiry is hosted by Leslie Rosenblood and brought to you by the Centre for Inquiry Canada. Support Podcast for Inquiry on Patreon: https://patreon.com/PodcastforInquiry. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@centreforinquiry.ca.

Why do scholars now refer to early Christianities instead of early Christianity? How has the meaning of the word “Heresy” changed from its original definition to taking on its current connotations? Why did Christianity grow from a fringe cult with few followers and disdained by the intelligentsia and people in power to becoming the largest religion in the world today? What did humanity lose with Christianity’s rise? 

Catherine Nixey answers all these questions and more as she discusses her new book, Heresy, on Podcast for Inquiry. 

Podcast for Inquiry is hosted by Leslie Rosenblood and brought to you by the Centre for Inquiry Canada. Support Podcast for Inquiry on Patreon: https://patreon.com/PodcastforInquiry. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@centreforinquiry.ca.

Leslie Rosenblood, CFIC board member, and host of Podcast for Inquiry, was a guest on the Apostate Sisters podcast. The conversation is lively and wide ranging, including segments about parenting, activism, secularism, Humanism, and how to create the conditions for human thriving. 

You can watch the conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw6UemTePBs.

All life on earth ultimately depends on energy and how it flows between biological and geochemical systems on the planet. Katherine Richardson and her team identified nine boundaries which need to be respected if our planet is to remain conducive to human thriving. Climate change is just one of them.

We are exceeding six boundaries, and in recent years they are all getting worse.

Katherine discusses how she and her team identified the nine planetary boundaries and why it is essential to consider how they interact, instead of viewing them as independent issues. The effects of exceeding planetary boundaries are affecting life today, disrupting air travel, causing severe flooding, and contributing to more frequent and powerful storms. (For the most up to date overview, read Planetary Boundaries guide humanity’s future on Earth, published in Nature magazine on November 8, 2024.)

We have the knowledge and technology to live within the planetary boundaries; the question remains whether we have the will, and the time, to implement them.

The nine planetary boundaries are:

• Climate change

• Biosphere integrity

• Stratospheric ozone depletion

• Ocean acidification

• Phosphorus and nitrogen biogeochemical flows

• Land system change

• Freshwater change

• Atmospheric aerosol loading

• Novel entities

Podcast for Inquiry is hosted by Leslie Rosenblood and brought to you by the Centre for Inquiry Canada. Support Podcast for Inquiry on Patreon: https://patreon.com/PodcastforInquiry. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@centreforinquiry.ca.