This is the podcast version of the Skeptics in the Pub Online live-streamed talks. We take the audio and give it to you in a nice easy podcast feed for you to listen at your pleasure. All of the talks are still available on our YouTube channel if you want to see any visuals/slides/etc. We release the live shows as we do them on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month and on weeks when there isn't a live show, we release an episode from the archive.
Podcast
Skepticamp 2024 – Talk 7 – Electric aircraft – just around the corner or a distant dream? – Daniel Buvarp
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This audio is a part of the Skepticamp 2024 event, that happened on October 18th 2024 in Mercure Piccadilly Hotel, Manchester and was livestreamed at https://www.twitch.tv/sitp
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.
Skepticamp 2024 – Talk 6 – Are you one of those who cross the line? – Andras Pinter
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This audio is a part of the Skepticamp 2024 event, that happened on October 18th 2024 in Mercure Piccadilly Hotel, Manchester and was livestreamed at https://www.twitch.tv/sitp
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.
Skepticamp 2024 – Talk 5 – Why Your Computer Is Like That – Andrew Taylor
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This audio is a part of the Skepticamp 2024 event, that happened on October 18th 2024 in Mercure Piccadilly Hotel, Manchester and was livestreamed at https://www.twitch.tv/sitp
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.
Skepticamp 2024 – Talk 4 – How Stray Dogs Became a Threat to National Security – Serdar Basegmez
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This audio is a part of the Skepticamp 2024 event, that happened on October 18th 2024 in Mercure Piccadilly Hotel, Manchester and was livestreamed at https://www.twitch.tv/sitp
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.
Skepticamp 2024 – Talk 3 – Forget the Vikings! – Pontus Böckman
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This audio is a part of the Skepticamp 2024 event, that happened on October 18th 2024 in Mercure Piccadilly Hotel, Manchester and was livestreamed at https://www.twitch.tv/sitp
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.
Skepticamp 2024 – Talk 2 – Laura Eggo – Poop Detective
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This audio is a part of the Skepticamp 2024 event, that happened on October 18th 2024 in Mercure Piccadilly Hotel, Manchester and was livestreamed at https://www.twitch.tv/sitp
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.
Skepticamp 2024 – Talk 1 – The Woo of Wee – Heidi Mounsey
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This video is a part of the Skepticamp 2024 event, that happened on October 18th 2024 in Mercure Piccadilly Hotel, Manchester and was livestreamed at https://www.twitch.tv/sitp
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.
The Voynich Manuscript: The World’s most Enigmatic Book from a Skeptical Perspective – Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh
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The Voynich Manuscript is a handwritten book that probably dates back to the late Middle Ages. It is written in a script that no one can read. The Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both the First and Second World Wars. Still, the manuscript has never been demonstrably deciphered, and the mystery of its meaning and origin has excited the popular imagination, making it the subject of speculation and pseudoscience. This presentation explores the background behind the manuscript and its cryptic features. The most important scientific and pseudoscientific theories are covered.
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.
2000 mules and one big lie: A stubborn conspiracy theory – Jim Cliff
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In May 2022, conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza released 2000 Mules, a film which attempts to show that the 2020 US election was stolen by Democrats, and to provide a mechanism by which this took place – a coordinated effort to ‘harvest’ ballots and distribute them around ballot drop boxes in battleground states using paid ‘mules’. The film is based largely on assumptions, anomaly hunting, assertions without evidence and previously debunked claims. Where evidence is presented it has frequently been misinterpreted or taken out of context, or simply doesn’t support the conclusions the filmmakers claim. This talk provides a brief window into Jim’s obsession with debunking the film’s fractal wrongness.
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.
God and ETI: The Future of Human Religion – Dr Aaron Adair
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In 1543, Copernicus made us no longer the center of the universe. Science today shows we are one planet of billions in just one galaxy of billions, so can we be all alone? And if we are not alone, what does that make us is in relation to God? There are significant issues for parochial earthly religions if we have cosmic neighbors, including thorny problems such as: Are the aliens closer to God than us? Do aliens need salvation? Did Jesus visit just us or does he visit every planet with a civilization on it? Does the problem of evil become worse now that there can be cosmic-levels of suffering? How does the end of the world work if there are billions of worlds? These questions and more emerge when one wonders, what will the Pope say to Mr Spock?
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.