About the talk: With stressful competition and very little actual evidence to go on, TV smash hit The Traitors is a masterclass of flawed reasoning and leaps of logic. In this talk, Jim will look at some of the shakiest arguments contestants across the world rely on when hunting traitors, to see if we can learn from their mistakes.

About the speaker: Jim is one of the hosts of the Fallacious Trump podcast, where he and co-host Mark Levermore explain logical fallacies using examples from Trump (as well as pop culture and UK politics)

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Anna Fieldwalker (she/her) is a postdoc research associate at Great Ormond Street Hospital, working on a new pain management programme for young people with all kinds of chronic pain. Her background is in psychology, with a keen interest in pain, VR, music, videogames, and swearing at computer screens.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Mike Hall is a web developer and Doctor Who fan (not in that order). He is a founding member of the Merseyside Skeptics Society, where he currently serves as secretary and treasurer. Since 2009 he has been producing and presenting the popular skeptical podcast Skeptics with a K, the longest running skeptical podcast in the UK. He is also on the organising team for QED, the UK's premier skeptical conference, which is now in its final year.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Cass Peters is a former professor of sociology and current professional sick person. In between migraines he continues to research subjects that take his fancy, with a particular emphasis on disability, identity, and stumbling head first into random historical and cultural rabbit holes. He maintains that his pets are cuter than yours and will not be taking any questions at this time.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Rebecca is an Austrian Studies Scholar who one day woke up as a marketing executive. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London, where she has previously been a lecturer in German and European Studies, as well as a literature enthusiast and a material culture geek. Her main areas of interest are Austrian literature and culture, consumer culture, and the construction and portrayal of identities. In her PhD research (completed in 2021 at King's) she examined consumer objects, identities, and author brands in post-2000 Austrian literature, unpicking the emergence of the national brand of Austria and introducing the concept of ""Consumer Literacy"" - the skill of reading the narrative value of consumer objects - to literature research.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Noah Lugeons is a podcaster, author, and atheist activist. He’s the host of The Scathing Atheist, the 2014 Podcast Award winner for Best Religious Podcast, and God Awful Movies, which has been recorded live at the largest atheist conferences in the US, the UK, and Australia. He’s the author of several books on the subject of atheism. His most recent book, Outbreak: A Crisis of Faith - How Religion Ruined Our Global Pandemic examines religion’s role in America’s error riddled response to the COVID-19 crisis. He temporarily resides in rural South Georgia, but not temporarily enough.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Kavin Senapathy is an award-winning science journalist and author of The Progressive Parent: Harnessing the Power of Science and Social Justice to Raise Awesome Kids (Hanover Square Press). Senapathy’s writing can be found in SciShow, Scientific American, SELF, Salon, Forbes, and more. A member of the National Association of Science Writers and the American Society of Journalists and Authors, their work delves into a slew of seemingly disparate but interconnected beats, from genomics to racism in society and medicine to food and health.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Will Gervais (Centre for Culture and Evolution, Brunel University London) is a cultural evolutionary psychologist and has been a global leader in the scientific study of atheism for over a decade. Dr. Gervais’s research has been featured in media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, Der Speigel, Psychology Today, Vox, and Scientific American. His interdisciplinary work, lying at the intersection of cultural evolution, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive science, has garnered international scientific recognition. He was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science and is the recipient of the Margaret Gorman Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association and the SAGE Young Scholar Award from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology. Will likes cooking, camping, and his dog.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: In spite of advancements in the field of forensic science, questionable practices and outright unproven methods still often get admitted into American court rooms. We'll explore some examples of this happening, some intractable problems in some methods that may seem reliable, and the reasons why there's even a chance of nonsense being admitted into court.

About the speaker: Ben O'Brien (BSc, MSc) has a masters in Forensic Science from Virginia Commonwealth University and currently works as a forensic DNA analyst for a private company based out of northern Virginia, primarily analyzing sexual assault kits to aid Illinois State Police in preventing backlogs by ensuring all cases have evidence processed within 6 months.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: 1 in 8 people globally are affected by a mental disorder, yet despite research, knowledge and awareness efforts, mental health is still increasing at an alarming rate. Could there be something misleading us in the data, an underlying reason why so many are identifying as mentally ill these days that is being overlooked? I will explain the concept of the “psychiatrization of society” as a possible explanation, in particular exploring social media’s role in the increasing pathologization of normality.

About the speaker: Shayna is a PhD student at the University of Birmingham studying the gendered nature of modern mental health discourse & the psychiatrization of society. Her goal is to uncover and expose pseudoscience and sexism within psychiatry.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: The dubious rants of an aging teacher, regarding discipline and punishment in schools and why we've never had it so bad, or good, depending on who you listen to.

About the speaker: Caradoc is returning to Skepticamp for another year, hoping to prove that quantity is not necessarily quality. This year, fresh from joining a new school in September, he is embarking on his 24th year destroying the hopes and dreams of children in education. A keen lover of sport, vegetables and politics, he is extremely glad his brother lasted longer as Welsh First Minister than Liz "Lettuce" Truss. Will His daughters get a mention in this year's talk? Who knows! His favourite Gladiator is Fury

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: Last year prison lawyer Emma ran a long way to make an over-laboured point about prison conditions. The sequel calls for an even more ridiculous stunt... So Emma will be running in circles at a prison for 52 miles. Our prisons are full to bursting. The situation is so bad that by soon thousands will be released before they have served even half of their sentence. In this talk Emma will clear up exactly how we got here, how it has been brewing for a long time and the facts about 'early' release.

About the speaker: Emma is a former QED main stage speaker and solicitor specialising in prison and public law. She regularly represents prisoners before the Parole Board. In what is left of her spare time, Emma enjoys running and boring other people about how much she enjoys running.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: Proponents of AI promise that AI will lead to the the democratisation of knowledge, but it is ultimately owned by various companies and investors. Who are these people and what are their goals for AI?

About the speaker: Phil is a professional software engineer and an amateur board member of the Merseyside Skeptics Society and The Skeptic magazine

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: A talk about my experience literally losing the plot with Postnatal Psychosis and what it's like to experience psychiatric care on the NHS

About the speaker: Karin is a artist/skeptic based in Liverpool.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: From where do the stories about sea serpents, draugr, and trolls originate? In the case of one of Europe's oldest lake monster, the story seems to originate from misinterpreting a historical artifact. So what happens when the church, king, and bureaucracy get involved in a monster hunt, and does the monster really exist?

About the speaker: Fredrik is an archaeologist who investigates Ancient Aliens, alternative history, and even monsters. He hosts a podcast on the Archaeological Podcast Network called "Digging up Ancient Aliens." Fredrik's specialty is the Scandinavian Viking Age, and their specialty is the view of childhood. However, due to unforeseen events, he is now telling people online that Pakistan was not nuked by aliens. Or that dragons are not real.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: Nearly 1 in 4 Britons has some form of disability and, at least in theory, has access to a system that is designed to get them the accommodations that they need. However, we know that many people underutilize or even fully reject these accommodations, often causing themselves undue pain, suffering, and frustration. This talk will take a look at the research behind why this rejection happens and what we can do about it, ending with a call to action for good skeptics everywhere.

About the speaker: Cass is the queer, trans, disabled immigrant that the Daily Mail warned you about. He’s a sociologist by training, and he taught undergraduates for years before health issues cut his PhD program short. These days he still gives occasional talks on subjects that take his fancy, particularly those related to disability, queerness, and identity. In between migraines he likes to make extremely sparkly art and take care of his many animals, all of whom are cuter than yours.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: In 1978, German pop group Boney M released their single Rasputin. The lyrics cemented the reputation of one Grigory Rasputin, one of the most loathed men in Russia, for all time.

About the speaker: One half of the Retrospecticus podcast, Tom is a PhD-trained scientist with a passion for modern history. Also known as skepticism’’s resident vexillologist (flag nerd), you’ll find him hanging out with The Merseyside Skeptics Society, blasting out some terrible karaoke or streaming on Twitch.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: Electrification is transforming transportation at a fast pace. With over 40 million electric cars on the roads as of 2023, and a growing number of electric trucks and buses, the shift towards greener travel is clear. Electric trains have been around for almost two centuries, yet, as of 2024, there's only one serial production electric aircraft, and it can only carry two people. How close are we to the dream of zero-emission flights to Skepticamp and QED?

About the speaker: Daniel is a PhD student at Uppsala University in Sweden, researching electric aircraft and the electrification of airports. He holds an M.Sc. in Electric Vehicle Engineering and has previously worked on the development of electric trucks, cars, and scooters. Daniel also holds a commercial pilot's licence and is a flight instructor. Naturally, he is also a member of the Swedish skeptics' association.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: According to many, your handwriting, the way you draw your letters, says a lot about your personality. But what does science have to say about it? And what could it be useful for anyway?

About the speaker: A biology teacher and jazz singer by training, currently working as a tour director and guide, András has been a skeptical activist in Hungary for 25 years. He’s an original member and current president of the Hungarian Skeptic Society, a member of Susan Gerbic’s Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team, board member of the European Council of Skeptical Organisations, intiator and co-host of the European Skeptics Podcast as well as the host and editor of the Hungarian ‘Hogy is van ez?’ podcast.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: In a world where humans can literally fly, somehow the word "technology" has come to mean violating labour laws to undercut taxi firms and dressing it up as "innovation" by bolting on a phone app. The tech industry is revered by the media as inspirational, miraculous and futuristic, it has almost unlimited money, and many extremely clever engineers work in it — so why does nothing work properly? Let's discuss some of the very silly ideas pushed from above by bosses, and from below by developers.

About the speaker: Andrew has been touching computers for long enough that you'd think he'd know better, been a professional developer since 2012, and is now the tech lead at a small web company. He is also a longtime member and organiser of Manchester Skeptics.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: The rise in the number of stray dogs has sparked fierce reactions from conspiracy influencers. Between violent interventions like shooting strays and deporting volunteers who feed these “scary monsters,” some escalated the issue to the point of declaring it a national security threat. But why has such an everyday issue been dragged to its most radical form? This talk explores how conspiracy networks use everyday issues and radical narratives to advertise themselves.

About the speaker:

About the speaker: Serdar Basegmez is a former Istanbulite and a new Londoner skeptic. Since 2010, Serdar has been actively involved with Yalansavar, a Turkish grassroots skeptical movement that promotes scientific reasoning and critical thinking, serving as a blogger, podcaster, meet-up host, and speaker. He is also part of the organizing committee for Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub and occasionally writes for The Skeptic UK. In his free time, Serdar runs his own company, developing business applications.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk: No people ever called themselves “the Vikings” and the history of Scandinavian culture didn’t start with the raid of Lindisfarne. There were kings, well-established communities, and even countries in the geographical area that we now call Denmark, Sweden and Norway, thousands of years before “the age of the Vikings”. Recent archeological finds and historical research paint a very different picture of the lost history of Northern Europe compared to what most of us learn at school.

About the speaker: Pontus Böckman co-hosts the European Skeptics Podcast (the ESP, former president of the Swedish Skeptics (VoF) and the current president of ECSO, the European Council of Skeptical Organisations.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk:

A gramme of human excrement contains one trillion bacteria, so how can we selectively culture a poop sample to hunt for our most wanted faecal felons? Enter our intrepid Biomedical Scientist Laura Eggo to conduct a defecation investigation. This talk will take you through the process of finding the scatological equivalent of a needle in a haystack.

About the speaker:

Laura Eggo has seventeen years of microbiology experience, starting as medical lab assistant, and working her way up to become a Specialist Biomedical Scientist at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. She is a QED stalwart, appearing in one of the panels last year to highlight medical misinformation following her cancer diagnosis.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

About the talk:

Learn of the benefits of drinking your own urine! Marvel at how it treats conjunctivitis if you pour it in your eyes! Discover if you really should be peeing on your jellyfish sting! This talk considers whether there is any scientific evidence for the benefits of urine therapy (spoiler: there isn’t), what might lead people to believe in it, and contains horrible pictures of the results caused by indulging in this practice.

About the speaker:

Heidi owns many cats, all of which prefer to use the high class facilities of the indoor litter trays rather than the slum of the garden flower beds, and therefore she thinks about the best way to dispose of urine quite a lot. None of these ways has yet involved drinking it, strangely enough. She likes science fiction conventions, singing, and is currently trying to learn more than four chords on the ukulele.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Elonka Dunin is an author, cryptographer, game developer, and management consultant. She is a lifetime member of the International Game Developers Association, Chairperson Emerita and a founding member of the IGDA's Online Games SIG, and a co-Director of the Global Game Jam from 2011–2014. Elonka's lifelong interest in cryptography became public in 2000 when she was awarded a prize for being the first person to crack the PhreakNIC Code, an up-until-Elonka unsolved puzzle created by the hacker group se2600. After the attacks of September 11th, Elonka helped out with the war on terrorism by teaching government agents about cryptography and what types of codes that Al Qaeda might have been using. From 2012–2022 she was on the Board of Directors for the National Cryptologic (Museum) Foundation. From 2015 to 2018 she chaired the Nashville 2600 Organization, a Tennessee 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Corporation.

Elonka is co-founder and co-leader of a group of cryptographers who are working hard to crack a code on the famous Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters, and led the international team that cracked the related KGB Cyrillic Projector Cipher in 2003. She maintains a list of the World's most famous unsolved codes on her elonka.com site, and in 2006, published The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms. As of 2023, her elonka.com website has had over 6 million page views. Bestselling author Dan Brown honored Elonka by naming one of the characters in his Da Vinci Code sequel, The Lost Symbol, after her. Elonka is also an avid Wikipedian, having been elected to administrator status in 2007, and written or expanded over 500 articles on Wikipedia. In 2020, she co-wrote a book with prolific crypto-blogger Klaus Schmeh, Codebreaking: A Practical Guide. In 2023, they co-wrote the Expanded Edition of Codebreaking with US publisher No Starch Press. It was released on Amazon on September 19th.

Klaus Schmeh is the most-published cryptology author in the world. He has written 15 books (in German) about the subject, as well as over 200 articles, 25 scientific papers, and 1500 blog posts. He is also a member of the editorial board of the scientific magazine Cryptologia. Klaus’s main fields of interest are codebreaking and the history of encryption. His website Cipherbrain is read by crypto enthusiasts all over the world. Klaus is a popular speaker, known for his entertaining presentation style involving self-drawn cartoons and Lego models. He has lectured at hundreds of conferences, including the NSA Cryptologic History Symposium, HistoCrypt, the Charlotte International Cryptologic Symposium, and the RSA Conference in San Francisco. In his day job, Klaus works as a crypto expert for the global IT security company Eviden.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Jim Cliff is an author, video editor, and former BBFC examiner who’s always been fascinated in why people believe crazy things. He’s the producer and host of the podcast Fallacious Trump, where he and other host Mark explain logical fallacies using examples from Trump, pop culture and British politics. If he gets his arse in gear, his latest book, 2000 Mules and One Big Lie, will be released at the beginning of September.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Dr. Aaron Adair (Physics PhD., The Ohio State University 2013) is a scholar of science education, popular culture, and especially science and religion–having published multiple books and articles on the topic, especially the rationalizations of religious myths, namely the Star of Bethlehem. He has presented in conferences internationally, such as the American Association of Physics Teachers, the Society of Biblical Literature, and a special conference on the Christmas Star at the University of Groningen. He is a research affiliate at MIT in physics education research, while working as a data scientist in the defense sector. He is an area chair at the Southwestern Popular and American Culture Association (SWPACA) on science, science fiction, and fantasy. Formerly a professor at Merrimack and Babson Colleges, he lives in the Greater Boston Area with his wife, Janice, and they are currently working together on a book concerning Godzilla. Dr. Adair is also currently working on articles and a book concerning the biblical Exodus tradition. His current books are “The Star of Bethlehem: A Skeptical View” and (co-authored with Jonathan MS Pearce) “Aliens and Religion: Where Two Worlds Collide: Assessing the Impact of Discovering Extraterrestrial Intelligence on Religion and Theology.”

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Katharina Grabowski (BSc, MSc) is a Research Assistant and Matteo Putra (BSc, MRes, MScR) a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh who are working with the Oxford Vaccine Group and Department of Biochemistry on an upcoming Controlled Human Malaria Infection clinical trial. This study aims to understand how people become immune to malaria so that we can learn how to protect the most vulnerable from disease. And as bizarre as this may sound, we think controlled infections are the answer! This ground-breaking approach to malaria control was recently awarded an Medical Research Council Experimental Medicine Grant. You can find out more at malariaimmunology.com.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Robert Llewellyn is a British actor, presenter and writer, famous for his thirty-year stretch as the rubber-masked mechanoid Kryten in the much-loved science fiction comedy, ‘Red Dwarf’. With his interest in engineering, Robert then turned his hand to presenting the long-running TV gameshow, ‘Scrapheap Challenge’ and also ‘How Do They Do It?’ and ‘Carpool’. In 2010, after being blown away by early Electric Cars, Robert launched Fully Charged, a YouTube channel focussing on the future of electric vehicles, of all shapes and sizes, and clean energy. Fully Charged has exceeded 55 million views around the world and Robert was recently acknowledged as ‘Tech Legend’ at the T3 Awards.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Dr. Christopher Labos is a cardiologist with a master’s degree in Epidemiology. He is a columnist with the Montreal Gazette and Medscape, featured on the Sunday Morning House Call on CJAD radio, and has a regular TV segment with CTV Montreal and CBC Morning Live. He is an associate with the McGill Office of Science and Society and co-hosts the award-winning podcast “The Body of Evidence.” He is the author of “Does Coffee Cause Cancer?” published by ECW press, a story about food epidemiology and why food headlines are usually wrong. He occasionally practices as a cardiologist so he can buy groceries. To date no one has asked him for his autograph.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Emma Chapman is a Royal Society research fellow and fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, based at Imperial College London. She is among the world’s leading researchers in search of the first stars to exist in our Universe, 13 billion years ago, and she is involved in both the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands and the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in Australia, a telescope that will eventually consist of a million antennas pointing skywards in the desert. Emma has been the recipient of multiple commendations and prizes, the most recent of which was both the 2018 Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellowship and STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship, two of the most prestigious science fellowships in the UK. She won the Institute of Physics Jocelyn Bell Burnell Prize in 2014, and was runner-up for the UK L’Oreal Women in Science award in 2017. In 2018 she was also the recipient of the Royal Society Athena Medal. Emma is a respected public commentator on astrophysical matters, contributing to the Guardian, appearing on BBC radio and regularly speaking at public events. Among others, she has spoken at Cheltenham Science Festival, the European Open Science Forum and at New Scientist Live.

You can buy Emma’s book at https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Emma-Chapman/First-Light–Switching-on-Stars-at-the-Dawn-of-Time/24856473

Emma is on platform formerly known as twitter at https://twitter.com/DrEOChapman

Emma has been involved in challenging and ending sexual harrassment in science. You can find out more about her work in this area here: https://dr-emma-chapman.com/diversity-work/

Information on the LOFAR telescope is available at https://www.astron.nl/telescopes/lofar and the Square Kilometer Array at https://www.skatelescope.org

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Adrienne, a retired high school mathematics teacher, has been a volunteer educating teachers, students and community members about Tourette Syndrome and its comorbid disorders (TS+) since 2005. She is a board member and educational consultant for the Tourette OCD Alberta Network. Her personal journey as a mother of three children includes two who have been diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome +. Beyond her involvement with the network, Adrienne actively contributes as a board member to Susan Gerbic’s nonprofit organization, “About Time.” She also volunteers as a Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia editor and is a regular reporter for “The Skeptic Zone” podcast. Her written work has been featured in publications like The Skeptic (Australia) and Skeptical Inquirer magazines.

https://cumming.ucalgary.ca/resource/tourette-ocd/tourette-ocd-alberta-network

https://www.zonegiggler.ca/

This episode includes the empathy exercise, for which you will need a pen and paper, and this section of a poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carrol:

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Dr Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist, lecturer, author, blogger, podcaster, pundit, science communicator, comedian and numerous other things, depending on who’s asking and what they need. Previously employed as a psychiatry tutor and lecturer at the Cardiff University Centre for Medical Education, Dean is currently an honorary research associate at Cardiff Psychology School, as well as a Visiting Industry Fellow at Birmingham City University. However, Dean is currently a full-time author, previously known for his satirical science column ‘Brain Flapping‘ at the Guardian, which ran from 2012 to 2018. This led to his internationally acclaimed bestselling debut book ‘The Idiot Brain‘, which has resulted in several further books and even more interesting brain stuff.

You can buy one of Dean’s excellent books at https://www.hive.co.uk/Search?Author=Dean+Burnett (by buying from Hive you also support local indendent bookshops).

It’s okay to not be okay. Here are some helpful places to talk and get help when you need it. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/your-mental-health/getting-help.

If you need someone to talk to there is a free active listening service at https://www.7cupsoftea.com they cannot offer advice but can be useful if you need soneone to talk to annonymously,

Dean is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/garwboy. He writes a blog at https://cosmicshambles.com/words/blogs/deanburnett and his website is https://www.deanburnett.com/.

The slides used by Dean are available here.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Jim Al-Khalili CBE FRS is a distinguished professor of physics at the University of Surrey and a well-known author, broadcaster and science communicator. He received his PhD in theoretical nuclear physics in 1989 and has published widely on few-body quantum scattering methods to study nuclear structure, particularly as applied to the study of exotic nuclei. He has more recently focussed on the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum thermodynamics and quantum effects in biology. He currently leads an international interdisciplinary research collaboration on the arrow of time in quantum mechanics. Jim is a prominent author and broadcaster and has written 15 books on popular science and the history of science, between them translated into twenty-six languages. He is a regular presenter on TV and hosts the long-running weekly BBC Radio4 programme, The Life Scientific. He is a past president of the British Science Association and a recipient of the Royal Society Michael Faraday medal and Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medals, the Institute of Physics Kelvin medal and the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. He recently served as the only non-engineer judge on the QE Prize for Engineering and is a commissioner on the board of the 1851 Royal Commission.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Dr Jacques Launay is an expert in music and social bonding, and has worked on this from a range of perspectives, including the origins of music making, the health benefits of singing in choirs, and the neuroscience of moving to sounds.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

David Frank

David Frank is a marketer, a writer and a former radio show host. He is a former event organiser for Perth Skeptics in Australia, and Edinburgh Skeptics here in the UK. Pre-COVID he has toured talks across a dozen Skeptics in the Pub groups here in the UK, on such topics as “how to market yourself on online dating”, and “how big tobacco circumvents marketing restrictions” (the latter of which you can watch on his website). He has a Master’s of Science in Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University, and is currently based in Seattle. David is free range, organic, with no added hormones or unnecessary antibiotics.

Virginia Ng

Virginia is a food microbiologist and is the Director of Regulations and Food Processing at the Seafood Products Association in Seattle. She has a Masters of Science in Biological Sciences from California State Polytechnic University – Pomona, where she studied toxin formation and sporulation patterns in various Clostridium botulinum strains. In her day job, among other things, she is a sensory expert using organoleptic analyses to keep good quality seafood on the shelves. She has previously given talks on food preservation. ​Virginia’s favorite vices include ice cream, the extra dose of cosmic radiation that comes with flying, and movie marathons.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Phil Scraton PhD, DLaws (Hon), DPhil (Hon) is Professor Emeritus, School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast. He has held visiting professorships at Amherst College, USA, the Universities of Auckland, Monash, New South Wales and Sydney. Widely published on critical theory, incarceration and children/ young people his books include: In the Arms of the Law – Coroners’ Inquests and Deaths in Custody; Prisons Under Protest; ‘Childhood’ in ‘Crisis’?; Hillsborough The Truth; Power, Conflict and Criminalisation; The Incarceration of Women; Women’s Imprisonment and the Case for Abolition. He co-authored reports for the NI Commissioner for Children and Young People (Children’s Rights) and the NI Human Rights Commission (Women in Prison) and a member of the Liberty Advisory Committee on deaths in custody. He led the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s research and was principal author of its ground-breaking 2012 Report, Hillsborough. Seconded to the families’ legal teams throughout the 2014-2016 inquests, in 2016 he published a revised edition of Hillsborough: The Truth. Consultant on, and contributor to, the 2017 BAFTA winning documentary Hillsborough, he holds a Leverhulme Fellowship addressing the unique work of the Panel and the legal processes that followed. In 2018, with Rebecca Scott Bray at the University of Sydney, he initiated a community-based international research programme on coroners’ inquests into deaths in custody. He was a member of the JUSTICE Working Party into inquests and public inquiries: When Things Go Wrong: The Response of the Justice System (2020). Also in 2020 he edited ‘I Am Sir: You Are A Number’: The Report of the Independent Panel of Inquiry into the Circumstances of the H-Block and Armagh Prison Protests 1976-1981. He is lead investigator for the Irish Council of Civil Liberties’ research project Deaths in Contested Circumstances and Coroners’ Inquests. Having refused an OBE, he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Liverpool in recognition of his Hillsborough research.

Drawing on biology, ecology, and the latest findings on the lives and behavior of dogs and their wild relatives, Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff—two of today’s most innovative thinkers about dogs—explore who dogs might become without direct human intervention into breeding, arranged playdates at the dog park, regular feedings, and veterinary care. Pierce and Bekoff show how dogs are quick learners who are highly adaptable and opportunistic, and they offer compelling evidence that dogs already do survive on their own—and could do so in a world without us.

Jessica Pierce is with the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical School. Her most recent book is Who’s A Good Dog? And How To Be A Better Human. For more information, go to www.jessicapierce.net.

Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder. His books include Dogs Demystified: An A-to-Z Guide to All Things Canine. His website is marcbekoff.com and his Twitter is @MarcBekoff

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Mike Rothschild is a journalist and conspiracy theory expert whose work has examined scams, frauds, moral panic, conspiracy theories, and how their impact has gone from the online world into everyday life. He has written two previous books, including The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything, which examines the roots and the impact of the QAnon movement. Rothschild has been interviewed by CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times among many others to discuss conspiracy theories; has testified to Congress on the threat of election disinformation; and appeared in numerous documentaries and podcasts.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission

Mirko Gutjahr is an archaeologist and historian working at as a scientific advisor at “Luthergedenkstätten”, a Martin Luther memorial foundation with five museums and UNESCO World Heritage Sites at three locations in Saxony-Anhalt. He also produces German language podcasts about curious facts from history. One of his podcasts has been translated into English at https://play.acast.com/s/secretcabinet

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Rosie Campbell leads the Safety-Critical AI program at the Partnership on AI, a multistakeholder nonprofit shaping the future of responsible AI. Her main focus is on responsible publication and deployment practices for increasingly advanced AI. Previously, she was Assistant Director of the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley, a Research Engineer at BBC R&D, and cofounder of Manchester Futurists. Her academic background spans physics, philosophy, and computer science. Rosie is also a productivity nerd and enjoys thinking about how to optimize systems, and how to use reason and evidence to improve the world.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Jo Marchant is an award-winning science journalist. She has a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, London, and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College. She has worked as an editor at New Scientist and Nature, and her articles have appeared in the Guardian, Wired, Observer, New York Times and Washington Post. She is the author of Decoding the Heavens, shortlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, and Cure, shortlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books and longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission

Travelling to the world’s earliest known human settlements, analysing the latest research findings in science and archaeology, and tracing cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, she overturns simplistic universal theories to show that what patriarchy is and how far it goes back really depends on where you are.

Despite the push back against sexism and exploitation in our own time, even revolutionary efforts to bring about equality have often ended in failure and backlash. Saini ends by asking what part we all play – women included – in keeping patriarchal structures alive, and why we need to look beyond the old narratives to understand why it persists in the present.

Angela Saini is an award-winning journalist based in New York, known globally for her work on race and gender. She has presented science programmes on BBC radio and television, and her writing has appeared in National Geographic, Wired, the Lancet and Nature. She is the author of four books, including Superior: The Return of Race Science, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, which has been translated into fourteen languages. Both are on university reading lists across the world. Her latest book The Patriarchs, on the origins of patriarchy, has been hailed as a highlight for 2023 by the Financial Times, Guardian and New Statesman. Angela has a Masters in Engineering from the University of Oxford and has been a Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Humboldt Foundation in Berlin. In 2020 she was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine. She has delivered distinguished lectures and keynotes at Oxford, Yale, Princeton and CERN in Geneva.

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Jennifer Wadsworth is an astrobiologist who did her PhD at the University of Edinburgh and recently completed her postdoc at NASA Ames Research Center, California. She’s particularly interested in how microbes can survive extreme radiation environments … or not, as the case may be! She enjoys long walks on the beach, and subjecting bacteria to a plethora of lethal conditions. For science.

In this talk, Dean takes us on an incredible journey of discovery, stretching from the origins of life to the end of the universe. Combining expert analysis, brilliant humour and powerful insights into the grieving process, Dean uncovers how, far from holding us back and restraining logic and reason, our emotions make us who we are and allow us to think at all.

Dean Burnett, neuroscientist, lecturer, author, blogger, podcaster, pundit, science communicator, comedian and numerous other things, depending on who’s asking and what they need. Previously employed as a psychiatry tutor and lecturer at the Cardiff University Centre for Medical Education, Dean is currently an honorary research associate at Cardiff Psychology School, as well as a Visiting Industry Fellow at Birmingham City University.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Lou Safra holds a PhD in cognitive science awarded by the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris in 2017. She is currently assistant professor in political psychology at CEVIPOF-Sciences Po and an associate researcher at the Institut d’Études Cognitives (Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives & Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationelles, École Normale Supérieure, Paris).

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In How to Make the World Add Up, Tim Harford draws on his experience as both an economist and presenter of the BBC’s radio show More or Less. He takes us deep into the world of disinformation and obfuscation, bad research and misplaced motivation to find those priceless jewels of data and analysis that make communicating with numbers worthwhile. Harford’s characters range from the art forger who conned the Nazis to the stripper who fell in love with the most powerful congressman in Washington, to famous data detectives such as John Maynard Keynes, Daniel Kahneman and Florence Nightingale. He reveals how we can evaluate the claims that surround us with confidence, curiosity and a healthy level of scepticism. Using ten simple rules for understanding numbers – plus one golden rule – this extraordinarily insightful book shows how if we keep our wits about us, thinking carefully about the way numbers are sourced and presented, we can look around us and see with crystal clarity how the world adds up.

Tim is an economist, journalist and broadcaster. He is author of The Next Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy, Messy, and the million-selling The Undercover Economist. Tim is a senior columnist at the Financial Times, and the presenter of Radio 4’s More or Less, the iTunes-topping series ‘Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy’, and the new podcast ‘Cautionary Tales’. Tim has spoken at TED, PopTech and the Sydney Opera House. He is an associate member of Nuffield College, Oxford and an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. Tim was made an OBE for services to improving economic understanding in the New Year honours of 2019.

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The wellness industry has become ever more popular in an age where chronic illnesses can go undiagnosed for years and access to medical support for mental ill-health is either prohibitively expensive or subject to long wait times. Women and other marginalised people are sometimes dismissed or overlooked in healthcare – where resources are already stretched and spending time really listening to a patient can be difficult even without biases.

To fill the gap, we often turn to the wellness industry; an amorphous, indefinable collection of well doers, businesses and practitioners who offer patients control over their health, empowerment to make medical choices that suit their needs and the gentle ear of a practitioner who’s always willing to listen.

But does the wellness industry really provide answers? Are women really empowered by the range of choices available to them? Is there really a solution to “wellness”?

Dr Alice Howarth is a scientist and skeptic who is also disabled and chronically ill. She’s spent years navigating the healthcare system while trying to learn how to manage her health conditions at the same time as working in academia and juggling a bunch of roles in the skeptical community. As a podcaster with Skeptics with a K and writer for The Skeptic, Alice has researched a wide variety of wellness industry hacks and products and practitioners, and the reasons people might feel encouraged to make use of them.

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Pixie Turner is a registered nutritionist (RNutr) and psychotherapist (MBACP), and director of The Food Therapy Centre, where she specialises in food and body image issues. She is the author of several books, including 'Food Therapy' which was released this year. In 2020–21, she co-hosted (alongside cardiothoracic surgeon Nikki Stamp) 'In Bad Taste', a podcast that casts a critical eye over the content and claims of health documentaries.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Fear not, however, because we're pleased to say that ghosts don’t actually exist. But if ghosts aren’t real, why do so many people believe that they’ve seen one? How can we explain the supernatural experiences people have reported? How do places develop a reputation for being haunted? What are those things that go bump in the night?

Richard Wiseman is a psychologist and author. For years, he has researched the science behind the paranormal. He will be discussing the natural explanations behind the supernatural and showing how the paranormal is perfectly normal. Richard will be Interviewed by his good friend Chris French, Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths.

Professor Richard Wiseman has been described by a Scientific American columnist as ‘…one of the most interesting and innovative experimental psychologists in the world today.’ His books have sold over 3 million copies and he regularly appears on the media. Richard also presents keynote talks to organisations across the world, including The Swiss Economic Forum, Google and Amazon.

He holds Britain’s only Professorship in the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, is one of the most followed psychologists on Twitter, and the Independent On Sunday chose him as one of the top 100 people who make Britain a better place to live.

Richard is a Member of the Inner Magic Circle, a Director of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and has created psychology-based YouTube videos that have attracted over 500 million views. He also acts as a creative consultant, including work with Derren Brown, The Twilight Zone and the hit television show, Brain Games.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Dr. Shiri Lev-Ari is a cognitive scientist studying language from a social perspective. She is particularly interested in how language evolution is shaped by the social needs of the society. She holds a PhD from The University of Chicago and is currently a lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Britt Hermes is a writer, scientist, and a former naturopathic doctor. She practiced as a licensed naturopath in the United States and then left the profession after realizing naturopathy is a pseudoscientific ideology. Since this time, Britt has been working to understand and communicate how she was tricked by alternative medicine, so others do not repeat her mistake. She now writes to expose issues with naturopathy, the current rising profession in alternative medicine. Her work focuses on the deceptions naturopathic practitioners employ to scam patients and contrive legitimacy in political arenas. She hopes her stories will protect patients from the false beliefs and bogus treatments sold by alternative medicine practitioners. Hermes is currently living in Germany where she is completing her doctorate in evolutionary genomics.

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Dr. Lora Adair is a senior lecturer in psychology at Brunel University London, a member of the Centre for Culture and Evolution, and lead of the Gender, Sexuality, and Relationships working group. Her research applies feminist and evolutionary theory to investigate topics relevant to romantic relationships, intimate partner violence, and reproductive decision-making. Her research is highly engaged with the West London and broader UK community, through advisory work with NHS CCGs and research collaborations with reproductive health clinics. She is a member of The Bridge, a women’s health community advisory group and serves on the editorial board for Culture and Evolution.

Dr. Nicole Lozano is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Angelo State University. Nicole leads the Cultivating Advocacy, Relationships and Equity (CARE) Lab at Angelo State using feminist and intersectional qualitative methods to explore people’s relationships with gender, parenting, trauma, and reproductive decision making. Nicole has secured approximately $250,000 in grants for a variety of research work, including exploring STEM education, reproductive health care, creativity and parenting, and developing feminist teaching methods. In addition to her research, Nicole maintains a part-time clinical practice utilising telehealth, focusing on high functioning clients experiencing depression, anxiety, and perfectionism.

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Aaron Rabinowitz is a lecturer in philosophy at Rutgers University, and host of the Embrace The Void and Philosophers in Space podcast.

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Carrie Poppy is an independent journalist who investigates fringe science, anomalous experiences, and psychology. She co-hosts Oh No Ross and Carrie, a podcast wherein she and her friend Ross try out all kinds of strange treatments, fringe theories, and secretive groups. Carrie's bachelor's degree is in philosophy (University of the Pacific) and her master's degree is in journalism (University of Southern California). She is working toward her Topics in Human Behaviour graduate certificate from Harvard Extension School, where she is also a recurring guest lecturer in Pseudoscience and Mental Health. She is co-editing a psychology textbook for Routledge and for three years has been writing a deeply-reported, disturbing and occasionally hopeful book about the trauma industry.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Brooke Magnanti is a scientist and author. She is writer of the bestselling Belle de Jour series of books, which were adapted into the hit ITV show "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" starring Billie Piper. She is also the writer of crime thrillers The Turning Tide and You Don't Know Me. Brooke was born in west central Florida in 1975. She earned a Ph.D. in the Forensic Pathology department there, specialising in human decomposition and postmortem identification. She has worked in forensic science, epidemiology, chemoinformatics and cancer research.

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Jack Lawrence, played an instrumental role in uncovering signs of research misconduct in several high-profile ivermectin for COVID-19 studies after stumbling upon fabricated data in a major ivermectin study during a university assignment. Following his discovery, Jack teamed up with a group of scientific data sleuths to examine further ivermectin studies. In his talk, Jack will outline the history of ivermectin and the lessons we can draw from its rise and fall as a potential COVID-19 cure. He will also take us behind the scenes of his journey into the world of scientific fraud and how he spotted what passed the notice of many.

Jack Lawrence obtained a Master’s degree from St George’s, University of London in July 2022. His research was focused on improving pancreatic cancer treatment options. He currently works on projects to improve research integrity and transparency. During the COVID-19 pandemic Jack discovered scientific misconduct and fraud in several influential papers purporting to show strong benefits for using ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

However, rewind a few years and you’d meet a very different Seth Andrews. As a former evangelical Christian he was once a captive of right-wing media, and Fox News in particular. In his new book he examines the Fox News culture, its influence on public opinion, and how it fuels public outrage, bigotry, and fear.

Join us for an open discussion with Seth where we’ll dip our toes into this murky pond, and perhaps find out how he escaped. You can also take the opportunity to ask your own questions. To find out more about Seth: Website: https://www.sethandrews.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seth.andrews.31 Twitter: https://twitter.com/SethAndrewsTTA

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

How to respond to conspiracy narratives? Why do people believe them in the first place? Are some more susceptible to it than others? What are good conversation strategies? Should you break off contact? What if it involves close relatives? How can we connect despite different world views?

Ulrike Schiesser is a psychologist and psychotherapist working at the Federal Office for Cult Affaires (Bundesstelle für Sektenfragen) an Austrian state-run office who who deals with cults and various problematic developments in the field of esotericism, personality cults, authoritarian and monopolizing group structures and conspiracy theories. She does counselling of family members of conspiracy affiliated persons and public stakeholders and accompanies people through rethinking and change processes.

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In "Take the Redpill" her latest publication with @GJIA_Online, Samantha Kutner answers a different question: How does the Proud Boys redpill entry into recruitment make them susceptible to conspiracy theories?

Samantha Kutner received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and master’s degree in communication studies from the University of Nevada, Reno. She studies violent extremism and the gender dynamics of radicalization. Her research has been published in the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism Studies in the Hague and Georgetown University's Journal of International Affairs and referenced in Rolling Stone, Truth or Fiction, Miami New Times, The Daily Beast, and Nation of Change.

As an independent consultant, Samantha provides training presentations informed by her ethnographic research with Proud Boys and Antifascists. To learn more about Samantha, her research, and Glitterpill, visit proudboyswhisperer.com and follow her on Twitter: @ashkenaz89.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

To find out more about Iszi: Website: https://iszi.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/iszi_lawrence Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iszi.lawrence/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iszi_lawrence/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKr5IYVneZl1SBVFInBL6wA

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James Ball is the author of The System: Who Owns The Internet And How It Owns Us. He is the global editor of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, where he oversees the not-for-profit’s international reporting projects. He also works as a freelance writer and broadcaster, and is a weekly columnist for The New European.

He was previously a special correspondent at BuzzFeed UK and special projects editor at The Guardian, where he played a key role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, as well as the offshore leaks, HSBC Files, Reading the Riots and Keep it in the Ground projects.

At WikiLeaks he was closely involved in Cablegate – the publication of 250,000 classified US embassy cables in 2010 – as well as working on two documentaries based on the Iraq War Logs. He lives in London with two cats.

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Join Richard Firth-Godbehere explores a fascinating and wide-ranging tour of the central and often under-appreciated role emotions have played in human societies around the world and throughout history.

In this talk, Richard focuses on desire and disgust as he draws on psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, art, and history. He vividly illustrates how our understanding and experience of emotions has changed over time, and how our beliefs about feelings profoundly shaped us and the world we inhabit.

Richard Firth-Godbehere, PhD, is one of the world’s leading experts on disgust and emotions. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions, Queen Mary University of London. He received a first-class degree from the University of London, during which time he won two awards for academic excellence, alongside a Masters (MPhil) from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from Queen Mary, University of London, where he was a Wellcome Trust Scholar. His award-winning interdisciplinary research walks the line between history, psychology, linguistics, philosophy and futurism. He examines how understandings of emotions change over time and space, and how these changes can influence the wider world.

Already translated into nearly a dozen languages, Richard’s latest book, A Human History of Emotion: How the Way We Feel Built the World We Know, is available from all good bookstores.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

What’s driving the rising rates of mental illness and neurodegeneration and what, if anything, can we do to turn the tide?

In this talk, Chartered Psychologist Kimberley Wilson will present an overview of the evidence and discuss the role of modifiable risk factors in brain and mental health.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Build-Healthy.../dp/1529347025

Kimberley Wilson is a Chartered Psychologist and visiting lecturer working in private practice in central London. She is a Governor of the Tavistock & Portman NHS Mental Health Trust and the former Chair of the British Psychological Society's Training Committee in Counselling Psychology - the group responsible for monitoring and assessing the standards of Counselling Psychology training across the UK. She formerly led the therapy service at HMP & YOI Holloway, which at the time was Europe’s largest women’s prison (closed summer 2016).Kimberley believes the way we think about mental health – as separate from physical health – is flawed. Her philosophy of Whole Body Mental Health is a comprehensive approach to mental health care; integrating evidence-based nutrition and lifestyle factors with psychological therapy.

A former finalist on The Great British Bake Off and an award-winning food producer with a degree in nutrition, Kimberley's work looks at the role food and lifestyle plays in our mental health, including disordered eating, the gut-brain axis and our emotional relationship with food.

Passionate about the power of psychology to transform lives, Kimberley is committed to demystifying the theories and putting the information into the hands of the people who need it through social media, her Stronger Minds Podcast, live events and regular appearances on expert panels.

Kimberley was the featured mental health expert on several Channel 4 documentaries throughout Spring 2020; Coronavirus: How to Isolate Yourself, Living With Coronavirus, and When Will Lockdown End?

Kimberley's first book, How to Build a Healthy Brain was published in March 2020 by Yellow Kite.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Emma is a STFC Webb Fellow, which means she has been hired to do science with Webb, but also to take the public along the journey. Emma has mostly worked with space telescopes, like Hubble, to peer into the very distant, and early, Universe and has been preparing for JWST for the last seven years. Since Emma’s PhD she has worked in Edinburgh, Paris and Cambridge, but is now based at the University of Hertfordshire. She has been working there to bring Webb to the public with an exhibition of first images at the Galleria shopping centre, and local libraries, as well as giving talks like this one to various groups and communities.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Seirian is a Professor of behavioural ecology at University College London. She studies social insects to understand their behaviour, ecology, evolution and role in ecosystems. She is especially fond of wasps, and is working hard to give them a PR makeover. As part of these efforts, she co-founded the Big Wasp Survey in 2017 – a citizen science project to engage the public with social wasps in their back yard. And in May 2022 her book ‘Endless Forms: The secret world of wasps’ – was published, giving everyone a reason to better appreciate wasps.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

You’ve also got to seek their permission to film the encounter, and post it to YouTube for the world to see. Anthony Magnabosco has been doing just that for nearly a decade now. His YouTube channel now contains hundreds of these conversations. In this interview we’ll be turning the tables on him somewhat to find out what on earth made him decide to do this, how effective it is, and how we can adopt similar techniques.

Anthony Magnabosco is a skeptic and atheist from San Antonio Texas. As well as his well documented conversations on YouTube, he has appeared on The Thinking Atheist, The Atheist Experience, Cognitive Dissonance, and The David Pakman Show, to name a few. He is also a Founder and the current Executive Director of the new nonprofit organization Street Epistemology International. Anthony has given countless talks and workshops at conferences and events across the United States as well as internationally. Perhaps the most notable of these International appearances for our audience were his packed out workshops at QED in 2017.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Junaid is a mathematician turned educator, writer and speaker. He has spent the past decade developing innovative learning technologies and is currently working with bestselling science author Simon Singh on developing the world’s largest online maths circle at parallel.org.uk. He is author of Mathematical Intelligence: What we have that machines don’t, which examines the role of mathematics in the age of AI. Junaid has a DPhil in mathematics from Oxford and a Master’s in Education from Harvard. He earned fleeting fame in 2008 as a series winner of television game show Countdown.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker. She is the author of How to Code a Human and the critically acclaimed Herding Hemingway’s Cats: Understanding how our genes work. Kat has spent more than 15 years working in science journalism and communication and was a key part of the science communications team at Cancer Research UK for more than a decade, co-founding the charity’s award-winning Science Blog, and acting as a principal national and international media spokesperson. Kat also presents the popular Genetics Unzipped podcast for The Genetics Society and has fronted several BBC Radio 4 science documentaries including the recent series Ingenious, looking at the stories behind our genes.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Aaron Rabinowitz is a secular moral philosophy educator with 10+ years experience helping students develop their capacities for flourishing and value centered community organizing. He’s currently working on a PhD in education at Rutgers University, with a focus on developing a new pedagogy of luck. The new approach centers the problem of moral luck as a way to short circuit compulsive meritocratic behavior and replace it with greater compassion, humility, and personal fulfillment. He’s also the host of two philosophy podcasts, Embrace the Void, and Philosophers in Space which he co-hosts with Thomas Smith. His extended research interests include emerging technologies, personhood, conspiracism, and counterculture memetics.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Anthony Warner is a professional chef, blogger and author of The Angry Chef, a Guardian Best Food Book of the Year and winner in the Health and Lifestyle category at the inaugural Hearst Big Book Awards. He was once asked on Moral Maze if he would eat his own dog, and regularly appears on Radio 4. He lives in Lincolnshire,

Website: angry-chef.com Twitter: @One_Angry_Chef.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Dr Steve Barrett is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Liverpool. His research interests have centred around the applications of imaging and spectroscopy to fields such as nanoscience, geomaterials, biomedical imaging and infrared spectroscopy. He is an expert in image processing and image analysis and has written image analysis software that has been used by researchers throughout the world.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Timothy Caulfield is a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health, and Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. His interdisciplinary research on topics like stem cells, genetics, research ethics, the public representations of science and public health policy has allowed him to publish over 350 academic articles. He has won numerous academic and writing awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He contributes frequently to the popular press and is the author of two national bestsellers: The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness (Penguin 2012) and Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash (Penguin 2015). His most recent book is Relax, Dammit!: A User’s Guide to the Age of Anxiety (Penguin Random House, 2020). Caulfield is also the host and co-producer of the award winning documentary TV show, A User’s Guide to Cheating Death, which has been shown in over 60 countries, including streaming on Netflix in North America.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Daphna Joel is a professor of Neuroscience and Psychology, at the School of Psychological Sciences and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel-Aviv University. She studies questions related to brain, sex and gender. In her research, Joel uses various analytical methods to analyze diverse datasets, from large collections of brain scans to information obtained with self-report questionnaires. In a series of papers, she has described and tested the ‘mosaic’ hypothesis. Other studies focused on the perception of gender identity and its relation to sexuality. Ongoing studies attempt to characterize the relations between sex and brain structure and function. She is also the author of Gender Mosaic: Beyond the Myth of the Male and Female Brain (2019, Little Brown, NY; Octopus, London).

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

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 like forever – and how the evolution of childhood is a critical part of the human story.

Brenna Hassett PhD is a biological anthropologist and archaeologist whose career, first at the Natural History Museum London and now at University College London, has taken her around the globe, researching the past using the clues left behind in human remains. Her research focuses on the evidence of health and growth locked into teeth, and she uses dental anthropological techniques to investigate how children grew (or didn’t) across the world and across time.

Her first book with Bloomsbury – Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death – was well received by critics at the LA Times, the Guardian, and The Times, which named it one of the top 10 science books of 2018.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

In his characteristically robust style, Adam will discuss how the appeal to science to strengthen racist ideologies is on the rise – and increasingly part of the public discourse on politics, migration, education, sport and intelligence for scientists and non-scientists alike. Although this is potentially treacherous terrain, he will argue that, if understood correctly, science and history can be powerful allies against racism, granting the clearest view of how people actually are, rather than how we judge them to be.

Dr Adam Rutherford studied genetics at University College London. During his PhD on the developing eye, he was part of a team that identified the first genetic cause of a form of childhood blindness.

He has written and presented many award-winning series and programmes for the BBC, including the flagship weekly BBC Radio 4 programme Inside Science and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry with Dr Hannah Fry.

He is the author of Creation, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Prize, A Brief History Of Everyone Who Ever Lived, The Book Of Humans and, now, How To Argue With A Racist.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

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, thus far, hasn’t yet stopped.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Bryce Blankenagel hosts Naked Mormonism and Glass Box podcasts as a full-time Mormon history researcher. He has presented and published on “Life of Frederick G. Williams,” “Mormon Satan, Brother of Jesus,” “By His Own Hand, the Best-Worst Mormon Scripture,” “Sidney Rigdon, Forgotten Hero of Mormonism,” and “Revelation Through Hallucination: A Treatise on the Smith-Entheogen Theory,” and produced the “Proper Channels” documentary. He has been an invited guest speaker on dozens of podcasts totalling hundreds of thousands of listeners telling the outside world how interesting Mormon history is. He has attended or presented at Sunstone, ReasonCon, John Whitmer Historical Association, and QED as an independent researcher and is a current member of the John Whitmer Historical Association article awards committee.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Kavin Senapathy is a writer, journalist, and speaker covering science, health, food, and parenting at outlets like SELF Magazine, Slate, The Daily Beast, Forbes, SciShow, Undark Magazine, and more. She’s also co-founder and contributing editor at SciMoms.com. She’s based in the midwestern United States (ope!) where she is currently quarantine co-parenting a 3rd grader, a 1st grader, a puggle, and an Italian Greyhuahua. Find Kavin on Twitter @ksenapathy. Read Kavin’s article on this topic here: https://undark.org/2020/02/20/center-for-inquiry-race-pseudoscience/

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

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 putting chips in vaccines. The building of irrational beliefs and anti-science beliefs is a process.

We, as skeptics, have to deal with many more pressing issues, such as climate change, the need for nuclear power, and the safety of new vaccines. Can you explain that anthropomorphic climate change is happening, and we know it based on the scientific consensus when the person you speak to doesn't understand the concept? Can you explain how we know that new vaccines are effective and safe to someone who's never heard of double-blinded studies?

That's where the skeptic-starter-kit topics come into play. They are a great way of grabbing attention and creating rapport with the person with whom you are speaking. The mistakes made while researching these paranormal topics are lovely teaching tools to explain crucial ways how and why science works and is done these days.

Part 2 TW: Due to recent events, Claire will also be speaking about the various types of hate we, as skeptics, face, including threats of bodily harm and death threats.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Join Natalia Pasternak for a look at the Brazilian response to the pandemic, and what happens when a government embraces pseudoscience in the face of an international health crisis.

Natalia Pasternak is a biologist, with a PhD and post-doctorate in Microbiology, in the field of Molecular Genetics of Bacteria at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She is the former director in Brazil of the international festival of scientific communication “Pint of Science”, invited columnist for the Brazilian national newspaper “O Globo”, Brazilian “Health” magazine, and for the UK Skeptic magazine. She is currently a research fellow at the University of São Paulo, publisher of Question of Science magazine and president of Question of Science Institute, the first Brazilian Institute for the promotion of skepticism and rational thinking.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Megan Crawford is a Lecturer in Data Science and Director of the Futures & Analytics Research (FAR) Hub at Edinburgh Napier University. She earned her PhD at Strathclyde University, a MSc in Behavioural and Economic Sciences from Warwick University, and BAs in Cognitive Psychology and Philosophy from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Karen is an astronomer/astrophysicist researching galaxies in the Universe. She is particularly interested in investigating how the internal structures we see in some galaxies (the spiral arms, galactic bars and rings) affect and reveal the cosmic history of their host galaxy.

Karen works with many large collaborations to do this – most recently the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which is a collaboration of hundreds of astronomers across almost all continents working together to map the Universe. She is particularly involved in the MaNGA (Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory) part of SDSS, but as the SDSS-IV Spokesperson she works with all areas of the survey and the scientists to facilitate scientific collaboration and communication.

 Karen is also the Project Scientist of the Galaxy Zoo project (which is part of the Zooniverse group of Citizen Science Projects). Check out our Galaxy Zoo affiliated projects, Galaxy Zoo: 3D and Galaxy Builder.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Angel Russell aka: Professor Sex, (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, ACS Certified Sex Educator, research sexologist, certified sexual assault victims advocate, and author. Their research interests focus on the intersections between social and personality psychology, particularly as they relate to sexual identity, orientation, and behavior. In 2019 their research on Individual Differences in Coming Out as LGBT+ received a professional paper award nomination from Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA). Angel is a member of the Community Sexual Health Education and Research Initiative (CSHERI), a sexuality education provider for the Jacksonville Center for Sexual Health, and a member of the editorial board for Journal of Counseling Sexology & Sexual Wellness: Research, Practice, and Education. Additionally, Angel is the “A” in Sex from A to Z™, a sex science podcast co-hosted with Dr. Rob Zeglin. To learn more and find them online head to ProfessorSex.com.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Tom Curry and Cecil Cicirello began the Cognitive Dissonance podcast in 2011 to cover news and current affairs from a skeptical, secular and political perspective. In 2022, they distilled what they’d learned from over 600 shows into their first book: The Grand Unified Theory of Bullshit, which they’ll be discussing in conversation with Michael Marshall.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Ten years ago, Nick Brown was a British IT manager living in France. Now he is an Irish psychologist living in Spain. He received his PhD from the University of Groningen in 2019, with his thesis being entitled “Can Positive Emotions Improve Physical Health?” (spoiler: there’s no good evidence). His work on debunking bad science has been featured in The Observer and Science, but nobody has paid him any money for it yet.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

But Fox argues that not everything has moved in the right direction and highlights the way the government is exerting ever more control over the communication activities of publicly funded scientists – resulting in a worrying blurring of lines between scientific data and government ‘messaging’.

As founding director of the Science Media Centre, Britain’s independent science press office, Fiona Fox works closely with scientists, press officers and science journalists alike in order to improve the public’s access to and understanding of science. Fiona has received many accolades for her services to science, including an OBE, honorary fellowships of the Academy of Medical Science, the Royal Society of Biology and the British Pharmacology Society, and a special award for promoting openness in animal research. She has a blog on science and the media and writes for science publications and other media.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

-Building a huge over-capacity of wind and solar energy, storing the excess as hydrogen. -Using hydrogen to fuel our trains, shipping, boilers and heavy industry, while electrifying buses, trucks and cars. -Building a huge over-capacity of wind and solar energy, storing the excess as hydrogen. -Using technical solutions to capture CO2 from the air, and biochar to lock carbon in the soil.

This episode also includes a bonus Q&A that we recorded afterwards due to having so many excellent questions from our audience.

Chris Goodall is a businessman, author and expert on new energy technologies. His expertise lies in low carbon energy generation, low carbon heat, electric cars, storage and geoengineering.

His début book “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life” won the 2007 Clarion award for non-fiction. His second book, “Ten Technologies to Fix Energy and Climate” (2008), was one of the Financial Times’ Books of the Year. His other works include “The Green Guide for Business” (2010), “Sustainability: All That Matters” (2012) and “Switch” (2016).

His latest book, “What We Need to Do Now For a Zero Carbon Future” was published in February 2020.

Goodall operates the website Carbon Commentary. He has also written for The Guardian, The Independent, Abundance and the Ecologist. He has spoken at literary festivals around the UK, at the British Library, the Science Museum and many universities.

He is an alumnus of the University of Cambridge and Harvard Business School (MBA).

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Kit Chapman is an award-winning science journalist with bylines in the Daily Telegraph, Nature, New Scientist and Chemistry World, among others. His first popular science book, Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table, was shortlisted for the AAAS SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books. Kit is currently completing a PhD in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Sunderland.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Sian will also explore why we’re not seeing new antibiotics entering the market, the ethical dilemmas involved in the decision to prescribe new drugs, and how we could help GPs stop over-prescription of antibiotics.

Sian Williams is a Policy Officer with the Wellcome Trust’s Drug-Resistant Infections priority programme, a team with a £175m commitment to address the challenge of antimicrobial resistance. The programme works with scientists and policy makers to advocate for and support evidence-based decision making globally. She earned a 1st class honours degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College London.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Jonathan Jarry is a science communicator in Montreal, Canada with the McGill Office for Science and Society, dedicated to separating sense from nonsense on the scientific stage. He brings his experience in cancer research, human genetics, rehabilitation research, and forensic biology to the work he does for the public. With cardiologist Dr. Christopher Labos, he co-hosts the award-winning medical podcast The Body of Evidence, which aims to contextualize findings in the realm of health research and answer the public’s most pressing questions about the biomedical sciences while also being funny and entertaining.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Kelly Weill is a journalist at the Daily Beast, where she covers extremism, disinformation, and the internet. As a leading media voice on the role of online conspiracy theories in current affairs, she has discussed Flat Earth and other digital fringes on ABC’s Nightline, CNN, Al Jazeera, and other national and international news outlets. She lives in New York.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Jim Al-Khalili OBE FRS is a quantum physicist, author and broadcaster and one of the best-known science communicators in Britain. He holds a Distinguished Chair in Physics at the University of Surrey where he teaches and conducts his research. He received a PhD in nuclear theory in 1989 and has since published over 100 research papers. He has written twelve books on popular science, between them translated into over twenty-six languages, as well as his first novel. He is a regular presenter of TV science documentaries and the long-running Radio 4 programme, The Life Scientific. He is a recipient of the Royal Society Faraday medal, the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and the Stephen Hawking Medal. His latest book, on which this talk is based, is The World According to Physics, published by Princeton University Press.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.

Kit Chapman is an award-winning journalist and adventurer. He is a lifelong motorsports fan who has previously worked with Virgin Racing’s Formula E team to cover the chemistry and material science of their racing cars. With more than a decade of experience writing for titles such as Nature, New Scientist, Chemistry World, Physics World and the Daily Telegraph, his work has taken him to more than 60 countries as he seeks amazing tales from the cutting edge of science. He has interviewed more than a dozen Nobel prize winners, been inside the world’s fastest computer and once convinced an Oscar-winning actress he was a cyborg. Kit’s first book, Superheavy, was shortlisted for the AAAS/Subaru Prize for Excellence in Science books.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.