What do Linux, Netflix, and the Oxford English Dictionary have in common? They've all benefited from the power of crowdsourcing, in which a task is outsourced to a group of hundreds or thousands of disparate people. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Julia and Massimo discuss the phenomena of crowdsourcing, and ask: What makes it work? Is it ever unethical? And what are the limits to the wisdom of crowds?

Rationally Speaking #77 - Victoria Pitts-Taylor on Feminism and Science

Rationally Speaking is the bi-weekly podcast of New York City Skeptics. Join host Julia Galef and guests as they explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense, likely from unlikely, and science from pseudoscience. Any topic is fair game as long as we can bring reason to bear upon it, with both a skeptical eye and a good dose of humor!
We agree with the Marquis de Condorcet, who said that in an open society we ought to devote ourselves to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them."Rationally Speaking was co-created with Massimo Pigliucci, is produced by Benny Pollak, and is recorded in the heart of New York City's Greenwich Village.