In today’s episode, Bridget talks about her book, Little Bosses Everywhere, a deep dive into pyramid scheme companies. She starts with defining what a pyramid scheme is, and why multi-level marketing firms – to use their preferred terminology – are more like a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme than a traditional company selling products. Bridget covers how MLM firms exploit their employees financially, the psychological techniques they use to keep them engaged and invested, and the political and legal machinations that have allowed them to thrive over the decades.

Bridget Read is a features writer at New York magazine. Her subjects include the powerful and the powerless, scammers and their marks, and regular people in ridiculous circumstances. Her writing has also appeared in The Cut, Vogue, The New York Review of Books, Bookforum, n+1, The New Republic, and Vice.

Find out more about pyramid schemes at pyramidschemealert.org.

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

Dr. Adam Becker is a journalist and astrophysicist. Adam is the author of What is Real, a history of quantum mechanics. His most recent book is More Everything Forever, which dismantles tech billionaires’ grandiose delusions about the future of AI and humanity. In addition to his writing, Adam is the creator and host of the podcast Dreaming Against the Machine, where he hosts conversations about what a good future could look like.

In today’s episode, Adam talks about the physics of Newton, Einstein, and Quantum Mechanics. This of course leads to a discussion about Schroedinger’s Cat, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”. Quantum mechanics is both incredibly accurate and self-contradictory, which is why what it means – what is real – continues to be fiercely debated among physicists today.

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

Dr. Darragh McGee (Instagram) is an academic at the University of Bath and the author of Imitation Games. He details the deceptive practices gambling companies employ to entice new customers, and how they are encouraged to place bets habitually. In-play betting is very different from simply wagering on the outcome of a match – which leads to a discussion about the nature of addiction and its relationship with problem gambling. Like many firms, gambling companies prioritize profit above people, and Darragh compares gambling firms with Big Tobacco. Darragh describes how gambling firms make it trivially easy to sign up, and deliberately challenging to leave.

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

Yasmine Mohammed is a human rights activist and author of Unveiled: How the West Empowers Radical Muslims. Yasmine is one of the most prominent and vocal figures supporting persecuted freethinkers across the globe, from elevating the voices of marginalized freethinkers on her podcast, to creating a global network of allies across religious and political divides through the CLARITy Coalition.

Yasmine shares how her childhood was dramatically changed when her mother became an unofficial “second wife” to a devout Muslim man, and how Canada failed to protect her due to the bigotry of low expectations. She describes her journey from non-practicing Muslim to becoming an open atheist, and how the trauma of her childhood continued to haunt her as an adult. We also discuss how countries suffer under Islamic rule, the particular hatred of Jews that is a core element of Islam, and the origin of and problems with the term Islamophobia.

Learn more about Yasmine and support her efforts:

Free Hearts Free Minds

Yasmine Mohammed Podcast

Unveiled: How the West Empowers Radical Muslims

Clarity Coalition

Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky

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

Even as a young teenager, Dr. Steven Pinker (@sapinker) prized rationality as a virtue, and considered himself an anarchist. He changed that belief, however, when evidence indicated that anarchy was not a path to human flourishing. In this special episode, a co-production with the New Enlightenment Project, previous Podcast for Inquiry guest Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson returns as a co-host. Together, Lloyd and Leslie explore with Dr. Pinker whether universities are betraying their mission, how the human brain spectacularly fails while also working wonders, the loose connections between science and technology with social and moral progress, and what humanity needs to do to continue to thrive for the next 50-100 years.

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

Dr. Kelly Weinersmith (@FuSchmu) is the co-author (with her husband Zach) of Soonish and A City on Mars. Kelly maintains that while having humans living off Earth would be awesome, we’re simply not ready for it yet. She answers many of Leslie’s questions: Why can’t we go to Mars if we have the will? Why can’t we all just get along? Why should we expand? Why is building a habitable space station harder than settling on Mars or the moon? What laws would apply in any off-Earth settlement? Where should we focus our space research efforts?

Kelly also goes on a rant about Helium 3.

There are two great conferences taking place in Ontario in August 2026:

• World Humanist Congress August 7-9 in Ottawa https://www.worldhumanistcongress.org/

• BAHACON August 21-23 in Sarnia https://bahacon.com/

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