Skeptics in the Pub Online Podcast

The spread of harmful misinformation is a defining characteristic of this pandemic. It has led to deaths, financial loss, increased stigma, health policy challenges, and added to the chaotic information environment. We must counter this “infodemic” with evidence-based communication strategies. Despite concerns about the “backfire effect” and debunking works, if done well! Timothy Caulfield is a Ca...

Are the brains of women and men the same or different? Or maybe it’s the wrong question? Does the binary division extend beyond the genitalia into the human brain and mind? And why do we care? I devoted the past decade to answering these questions. With my lab members, we analyzed the structure of over 20,000 human brains, and the psychological characteristics of over 10,000 people. In this talk I...

Brenna Hassett explores how evolutionary history has shaped a weird and wonderful phenomenon that everyone on the planet experiences – childhood. Paleoanthropological science has revealed that we have one particular thing that sets us apart as a species: our uniquely long childhoods. This book looks at how we have diverged from our primate roots to stay ‘forever young’ – or at least what seems lik...

Science writer and broadcaster Dr Adam Rutherford will talk about his new book, How to argue with a racist: History, Science, Race and Reality, a vital manifesto for a twenty-first century understanding of human evolution and variation, and a timely weapon against the misuse of science to justify bigotry. In his characteristically robust style, Adam will discuss how the appeal to science to streng...

Will breastfeeding save the planet? Are parents being hoodwinked by Big Formula? Join us on an infant feeding journey to determine fact from fiction around feeding our wee ones. Dr Erin Williams is a Reproductive Biologist at the University of Edinburgh and co-Founder of independent infant feeding charity, Feed. She started life as that annoying child who constantly asked her Mammy ‘but how?’ and,...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) was founded in 1830 by New Englander Joseph Smith. The Book of Mormon, the foundational scripture authored by Smith, claims to be a history of Christian Israelites who settled the American continents from 2500 BCE – 420 CE. Within a decade of creation, Mormonism established extensive missionary efforts in Europe, eventually forming the Pe...

Perhaps now more than ever, the skeptics’ movement can’t afford to ignore racism and race pseudoscience. Kavin Senapathy learned this firsthand during her stint with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) and its parent organization the Center for Inquiry (CFI) speaking at its conferences, writing a column, and hosting the Point of Inquiry podcast. As one of the most visible skeptical organizat...

The talk will be split into two parts Part 1 Using Paranormal Phenomena to Explain the Workings of ScienceHoroscopes, ghosts, dowsing, psychics, tarot readers, the research of paranormal ability is so last century... for skeptics. To the people to whom we try to communicate science, these topics have a kernel of truth. No one wakes up one day believing the Earth is flat or that BigPharma is puttin...

Brazil has surpassed the UK in the number of confirmed cases and deaths of Covid19. Still, the federal government refuses to acknowledge reality and relies on magical thinking and denialism, promoting miracle cures, withholding information, spreading lies and inciting riots. Join Natalia Pasternak for a look at the Brazilian response to the pandemic, and what happens when a government embraces pse...

In the pursuit of knowledge, efforts in science have brought about some of the most disastrous, shocking, and even hilarious results. But how do we know!? Because… SCIENCE! Megan Crawford, PhD, will take on the role as Resident Scientist Shocker and present how it’s possible that the very system responsible for humanity’s biggest failures, shockingest shockers, and cheekiest surprises, is oddly st...

Cara Santa Maria is a Los Angeles Area Emmy and Knight Foundation Award winning journalist, science communicator, television personality, author, and podcaster. Cara is the science correspondent on National Geographic’s popular television series Brain Games as well as the creator and host of the weekly science podcast Talk Nerdy with Cara Santa Maria. In addition to co-hosting the long-standing Sk...

The universe literally encompasses everything we were, are and will be, everything we knew, know and can know. When we decide to understand the universe as a whole, new truths come to light, and unexpected perspectives illuminate our take on life. 30-Second Universe explains all the tantalising concepts, principles and theories that make up our knowledge and it explains these astrophysical answers...

Two of the most pervasive myths that I spend my time deconstructing are (1) that humans have a specific part of their brains devoted to sex and (2) that humans have an innate “drive” to be sexual. Neither of these things are true, and it’s important that people understand that. When folks believe these misconceptions, it can make it feel like there’s something wrong with them or their relationship...

The Grand Unified Theory of Bullshit suggests that no matter where it’s from, all bullshit smells the same. From Alternative Medicine to the insurrection in Washington, the underlying cognitive biases that make us all susceptible to grifters and bad actors are similar. No matter how silly or harmless bad ideas may seem at first, because they all reinforce and rely on bad thinking, they are all act...

The skeptical movement rightly suggests that people should place more faith in peer-reviewed scientific articles than in YouTube videos or written claims made by random people on the Internet. However, science is not always particularly reliable either. In this talk, I will give some examples of how peer-reviewed scientific work that may attract a lot of public attention and even influen...

The Director of The Science Media Centre, Fiona Fox, examines some of the stories that hit the headlines for the wrong reasons – Frankenfoods, Climategate and more – but tells a positive story of how over the last two decades more scientists have engaged openly with the press and how this has helped transform the way science is reported. But Fox argues that not everything has moved in the right di...

The UK has declared a ‘climate emergency’ and pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050. So how do we get there? Drawing on actions, policies and technologies already emerging around the world, Chris Goodall sets out the ways to achieve this. His proposals include: -Building a huge over-capacity of wind and solar energy, storing the excess as hydrogen. -Using hydrogen to fuel our trains, shipping,...

Join journalist and science historian Kit Chapman on an adventure across chemistry as he shares the bizarre stories behind the names of the building blocks of science. Which element got its name thanks to a D&D monster? Why couldn’t a German team call the discovery after the nearby town? And how did Lemmy from Motorhead almost end up on the periodic table? Kit Chapman is an award-winning scien...

Cornerstones of modern medicine are at risk due to drug-resistant infections, with routine surgery, common illnesses and minor injuries becoming potentially life-threatening. People are already dying from drug-resistant infections, and as more drugs stop working, more lives will be put in danger. Everyone is at risk. Sian Williams will discuss the causes behind this major public health issue and h...

Alternative medicine proponents have become really good at building a body of research that looks more and more like good science to the casual observer. In the face of positive randomized clinical trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, the skeptic’s approach has to become more sophisticated to crack this façade of believability. We will go through three cases that illustrate how convincing...

Since 2015, the long-running conspiracy theory of a flat Earth – that we live on a flat plane, under a flat dome, or on a planet circled by a ring of ice – has increasingly gained a foothold in the mainstream. What was once a concept on the fringes of society, seen as a long-running joke and kept to niche message boards, pamphlets, and blogs, is now a widespread idea held by millions of people, in...

Where does theoretical physics stand at the end of the second decade of the 21st century? Are we finally approaching the end of physics, when the rich tapestry of the universe will be revealed to us and we will finally understand the true nature of reality? If we are honest then we must admit that, while what we do know is dazzlingly impressive, there is much we have yet to grasp, from the nature...

Racing Green is a fascinating exploration of how science in motorsport extends its reach far beyond the track. The efforts of engineers to go a hundredth of a second faster ripples into our daily lives. We use the aerodynamics of a Formula 1 car to keep our food cool in the supermarket and stop skyscrapers wreaking havoc; we can thank crash helmets and rear view mirrors to keep us safe; and the cu...