(Also see About my Images.)

<h3>The Inoculated Mind</h3>

This was the name that I came up with for my Aggie column back in 2002, which referred to a mind that has been “infected” with ideas, as opposed to a “sterile” mind. Mental sterility with regard to a subject is synonymous with ignorance, and thus it became my mission to “inoculate” people with facts and ideas about scientific topics. The title lent itself to so many useful metaphors that I decided to keep it for my future writings. Indeed, as I continued to use it, I started to think about certain thoughts being “pathogenic,” as in, not only false but detrimental to the people that carry them. Arguments against these ideas would be analogous to a vaccine - inoculating people against infection. False and harmful ideas may include pseudosciences such as creationism and astrology, harmful social practices, and dead-end investigations that distract us from the real issues that concern us. And some, that some philosophers describe as “memes,” are ideas that spread not because there’s any evidence for them, but just because they get passed on, can a useless idea really be harmless?

Interestingly enough, in the middle of my first year writing for the Aggie, the Editor in Chief decided to remove the fun titles that everyone had under their column mugshots, but since my column was deemed “educational” I got to keep mine.

Some people have taken “inoculated” to mean “smart,” but it just means “full of ideas” or “infected with ideas” (good or bad). It is also sometimes funny when people show up on my website and take it to mean something that it does not, like indoctrination, or plain hostility to other ideas. But the biggest problem I have come across is spelling - “Inoculated” is spelled with one N, however, many people think of innocuous which has two N’s, and spell it as: innoculated. Someday, if I “own” the word “Inoculate” (Third on the google rank for “inoculated”!), I may be able to help everyone spell it correctly. The perils of choosing a title that’s hard to spell!

But everyone I talk to really likes the sound of the name, so I’m keeping it.

In 2005, I elected not to continue writing for the Aggie to pursue other interests. I wasn’t getting paid very much to do it, and I was very limited in the things I could include in my column. I couldn’t even add pictures! Plus, by freeing up the column position to other students, it would allow them to get the training and exposure that I enjoyed. It is a student paper, after all. However, I didn’t want to stop writing. So I put together this weblog, and gave it the same name as my old column and radio show (see below), featuring fMRI scans of my own brain, and my thoughts rolling out underneath.

In 2004, a new community radio station opened up in town, KDRT, and I was one of the first to hop on board and host a show. Now over 2 years running, The Inoculated Mind Radio & Mindcast combines weekly science news, interviews with scientists and intellectuals, wrapped up in rotating theme music selected from science fiction films, shows, and video games. I tacked Mindcast onto the title when he launched the podcast version of the show in August, 2005. Before the mindcast, every show began with “Citizen’s of Davis.” (and UC Davis, because if you live on campus you are not technically a resident of Davis.) Now, every episode begins with “Citizens of Earth…” While I was still in Davis, my show aired live every Thursday evening from 1800-1930 hours, and Sunday evenings it replayed from 2100-2230. (6-7:30 pm live, 9-10:30 pm sunday replay)

As of May 2007, I put the show on hold so I could skip across the country to enroll in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison to study plant genetics (and science journalism). As of February 5th, 2008, I re-launched the Mindcast, currently only as a podcast, although a local radio station is considering adding it to their lineup.

My future plans for the show include making it available for other radio stations to download and broadcast, and to recruit a team of communicating scientists of different fields and make the show better than ever.

http://www.inoculatedmind.com/audio/mindcast.xml Subscribe the the podcast of my radio show by entering this page into your podcast aggregators (iTunes, iPodder, etc) Or for iTunes, you could try the Direct link.