Watch on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6nmBRECzJ0

Transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vmJkAiVSrYE5x9_HcljOCwRkNAXE21Q_/view?usp=sharing

Today’s episode will address several questions:

(1) What is the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement? We will get some insights from a recent MAHA Action press-conference and get a sense of the death and suffering that may come from MAHA policies. We will resume where we left off in Episode 1, but this episode is self-sufficient if you don’t want to go back.

(2) What is the MAHA Commission? What are the influences from Project 2025 in it? What is Project 2025 anyway? As we will discuss, Project 2025 is the latest edition of a decades-long conservative strategy spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. But – they are not the only influence – there is also America First Policy Institute. And how does Kennedy’s MAHA fit into all of this? Were these conservative think tanks looking for Kennedy to be the secretary of HHS? Or were they as surprised as the rest of us?

(3) And what if this MAHA commission, and Kennedy’s MAHA agenda overall, does not end well – for patients, for science, and for the conservative movement in particular.

Today we will hear some of these answers from my recent conversation with Ed Fuelner, the Founder and CEO of the Heritage Foundation from 1979 to 2013.

Full video is available here: https://youtu.be/TOunWyNiJFI

And an abbreviated transcript (intro only) here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hkFVGShLRG9G1KDqtuxyKZY9vAOafpIc/view?usp=sharing

We have an amazing guest today - Dr Stephan Lewandowsky, a leading cognitive scientist and an expert on misinformation. We will examine the roots of our current crisis of science in the US, and its implications for the future.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is the Chair of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol in the UK. His research examines the consequences of the clash between social media architectures and human cognition, for example by researching countermeasures to the persistence of misinformation and spread of “fake news” in society, including conspiracy theories, and how platform algorithms may contribute to the prevalence of misinformation. He is also interested in the variables that determine whether or not people accept scientific evidence, for example surrounding vaccinations or climate science.

Our conversation touches on Dr Lewandowsky's career journey, his current work and what it means to be a cognitive scientist. We talk about the current US administration and the crisis of science, implications for the future, and some novel research directions that give him hope.