Massimo Pigliucci (Italian: [ˈmassimo piʎˈʎuttʃi]; born January 16, 1964)[1] is an American philosopher and biologist who is professor of philosophy at the City College of New York,[2] former co-host of the Rationally Speaking Podcast,[3] and former editor in chief for the online magazine Scientia Salon.

[11] In 1997, while working at the University of Tennessee, Pigliucci received the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize,[12] awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution[1] to recognize the accomplishments and future promise of an outstanding young evolutionary biologist.

[13] Pigliucci has written regularly for Skeptical Inquirer on topics such as climate change denial, intelligent design, pseudoscience, and philosophy.

[9] Pigliucci has criticized New Atheist writers for embracing what he considers to be scientism (although he largely excludes philosopher Daniel Dennett from this charge).

Pigliucci viewed the article as a monologue rather than a dialogue and, in a response personally addressed to Pope Francis, wrote that the Pope only offered non-believers "a reaffirmation of entirely unsubstantiated fantasies about God and his Son...followed by a confusion between the concept of love and truth, the whole peppered by a significant amount of historical revisionism and downright denial of the ugliest facets of your Church.

[28] Pigliucci said he always felt Stoicism was part of his Italian heritage, but he came to practice it after being disenchanted with Buddhism, though he finds both schools of thought to share similarities.

I actually tried to study Buddhism for a bit, but the parts I managed to get exposed to felt too alien, couched in cultural, linguistic, and conceptual terms that did not resonate with me.

[29]In 2021 Pigliucci announced[30] a shift of interest away from Stoicism and towards, as he said, "a new synthesis, something that I have called Neoskepticism, and which uses the combined insights of the ancient Skeptics and Stoics to craft a better way to think about and especially live one’s life."

[33] Starting in February 2010, he co-hosted the bi-weekly Rationally Speaking podcast with Julia Galef, whom he first met at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, held in September 2009.