August Social
Join us from 7.30 pm on Tuesday 5th August in the Library at the Town Wall on Pink Lane, near Newcastle Central Station, to meet fellow skeptics and to shape the future of skepticism in the North East.
Come for drinks, casual debunkings and maybe even some skeptical gaming!
When healthy eating turns harmful: How ultra-processed food panic fuels anxiety and disordered eating – Maeve Hanan
Thursday 14th August 2025, 7.30pm (doors at 7pm)
Tyneside Irish Centre, Gallowgate St. NE1 4SG
Pay-as-you-feel ticketing (suggested price £5)
All civil humans welcome!
Buy tickets here!
“When healthy eating turns harmful: How ultra-processed food panic fuels anxiety and disordered eating.”
From best-selling books to viral TikToks and food documentaries, ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have become public enemy number one in the world of nutritional ‘wellness’. But is the panic justified – or are we being fed a different kind of harmful message?
In this talk, registered dietitian Maeve Hanan will break down what UPFs actually are, the roots of UPF panic and what the evidence really says about them. We will also explore how the cultural obsession with purity and perfection in eating can do more harm than good, all too often spiralling into food anxiety and disordered eating. This talk challenges black-and-white thinking around food, encourages a more balanced perspective, and asks: what if our fear of food is more dangerous than the food itself?
Maeve Hanan is a Registered Dietitian who specialises in disordered eating and food freedom. She’s the founder of DieteticallySpeaking.com, a platform offering evidence-based information, practical tools, courses, and one-to-one support to help people build a healthier relationship with food. Maeve advocates for a compassionate, weight-inclusive approach to nutrition, and is passionate about cutting through the online noise by sharing clear, evidence-based messages (primarily via her newsletter and Instagram page via @dieteticallyspeaking).
September Social
Join us from 7.30 pm on Tuesday 2nd September in the Library at the Town Wall on Pink Lane, near Newcastle Central Station, to meet fellow skeptics and to shape the future of skepticism in the North East.
Come for drinks, casual debunkings and maybe even some skeptical gaming!
The Natural History of Narratives: how stories evolve, spread and survive – and how they decay and die
Thursday 11th September 2025, 7.30pm
Tyneside Irish Centre, NE1 4SG
Pay-as-you-feel tickets (suggested £5)
All civil humans welcome!
Buy tickets here.
Storytelling is a universal human behaviour and a unique characteristic of our species. This talk will begin by discussing how our capacity to imagine and share fictional worlds was central to the evolution of human sociality and culture, before turning to some of the recurrent themes and plots that are found in diverse traditions around the world.
Professor Tehrani will focus especially on so-called “international folktales”, which include such tales as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Beauty and the Beast. He will show that cross-cultural patterns of continuity and variation in these folktales reflect basic evolutionary processes of mutation, selection, and inheritance as they get transmitted from generation to generation and spread into new “habitats”. He will also show how variations in the plots and characters of these stories can be analysed in a similar way to sequences of DNA, enabling us to reconstruct the deep history and dispersal of these traditions.