Welcome to Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub!
Greenwich SitP is currently the only branch of SitP in South East London. The idea is simple: Once a month, we all meet up in a pub to hear a guest speaker and enjoy a drink or three.
Our regular meet-up spot will change as of the start of 2025. We’ll now be gathering at The Duke of Greenwich (91 Colomb St, SE10 9EZ) on the second Wednesday of each month, unless otherwise noted. Talks will begin at 7:30pm. Although the talks are free and open to all, we would appreciate a small contribution towards covering speakers’ expenses (suggested donation: £4).
Stay updated on our latest events right here on our website, or connect with us on:
- Meetup: Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub
- Twitter: @greenwichsitp
- Bluesky: @greenwichsitp.bsky.social
- Mastodon: @GreenwichSITP@mastodon.world
- Facebook: Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub
We look forward to seeing you at one of our informal gatherings soon!
Our Next Talk
How to Transform a Tea Towel into a Chicken
and Other Mysteries
Professor Richard Wiseman,
University of Hertfordshire
14 May 2025 Wednesday 19:30
The Duke of Greenwich
91 Colomb St, Greenwich – SE10 9EZ
Join Professor Richard Wiseman as he takes a deep dive into the secret world of magic and illusion. Witness some of the world’s great optical illusions, explore the secret psychology of magic, discover what happens when you put the paranormal to the test, find out why learning to perform the impossible is good for you, discover how to transform a tea towel into a chicken, and much more. An informative and (hopefully) entertaining romp through a lifetime of academic adventure.
NB: As space is limited, this talk is ticketed.
Please reserve your spot via our Eventbrite page.
June 2025
Historic Building Mythbusting
James Wright
Buildings archaeologist
11 June 2025 Wednesday 19:30
The Duke of Greenwich
91 Colomb St, Greenwich – SE10 9EZ
Go to any ancient building and there will be interesting, exciting, and romantic stories presented to the visitor. They are commonly believed and widely repeated – but are they really true? These stories include those of secret passages linking ancient buildings, spiral staircases in castles giving advantage to right-handed defenders, ship timbers used in the construction of buildings on land, blocked doors in churches which are thought to keep the Devil out and claims to be the oldest pub in the city.
James will explain the development of such myths and investigate the underlying truths behind them. Sometimes the realities hiding behind the stories are even more interesting, romantic, and exciting than the myth itself…
James Wright (Triskele Heritage) is an award-winning buildings archaeologist. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the medieval period. He is the author of the popular Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog and his book Historic Building Mythbusting was released via The History Press on 6 June 2024.
July 2025
Has Elvis Really Left the Building?
A Short History of Celebrity Séances
Dr Kate Cherrell
Writer and broadcaster
9 July 2025 Wednesday 19:30
The Duke of Greenwich
91 Colomb St, Greenwich – SE10 9EZ
Since the creation of the modern celebrity, séance and the supernatural have been unhappy bedfellows, allowing audiences to incite or imagine interactions with their idols. Mediums and psychics have built careers on the backs of dead celebrities, with many long-dead pop stars unknowingly spurring an entire subsection of psychic memoirs and after-death experiences. Neither Elvis, John Lennon nor Princess Diana have had restful afterlives, but have experienced decades of public appearances and sightings, captured on film, vinyl and countless paperback books.
Para-social relationships are an inherent part of the celebrity/consumer cycle, but they do not finish at the point of death. Rather, they transform and elevate, where personal ideas, beliefs and senses of self can be projected onto a spectral blank slate. Looking at popular culture within the history of celebrity séance, we can learn more about ourselves and our societal needs than what Oscar Wilde and Michael Jackson had for breakfast. This lighthearted talk takes a sideways look at the weird world of celebrity seances in western history, from Elvis’ spectral adventures in Watford to Mark Twain’s post-mortem literature.
Dr Kate Cherrell is a writer and broadcaster specialising in paranormal history and popular seance. Her academic interests include 19th century gothic, periodical culture and modern spiritualism. She is the author of Begotten (2025) and Buried England (2026) and writes commercially on supernatural history. As a paranormal historian, she has co-hosted Haunted Homecoming (Discovery, 2022, 2024) and Unexplained: Caught on Camera (Discovery, 2023), and has provided historical expertise on upcoming television shows for major broadcasters. She has edited the blog Burials and Beyond since 2017 and can usually be found in some dark, dusty corner with a big glass of wine and a good book.
August 2025
Examining the Realism of AI-Generated Media
Dr Sophie Nightingale
University of Lancaster
13 August 2025 Wednesday 19:30
The Duke of Greenwich
91 Colomb St, Greenwich – SE10 9EZ
Details to follow.
September 2025
Using Data to Counter Quackery and Alternative Medicine
Michael Marshall
Project Director of the Good Thinking Society
10 September 2025 Wednesday 19:30
The Duke of Greenwich
91 Colomb St, Greenwich – SE10 9EZ
As skeptics, it’s easy for us to warn people about the harms of alternative medicine at an individual level, but what can we do when quackery is being pushed by authorities, or when the problem is too widespread for a one-on-one approach? From NHS homeopathy to midwifery alt-med, via quack charities and dubious overseas cancer clinics, professional skeptical investigator Michael Marshall will explain how a dogged approach to analysing publicly available data can help us understand what we’re up against, and provide the media with the evidence they need to publish stories that make a difference.
Michael Marshall is the Project Director of the Good Thinking Society, Editor of The Skeptic, and President of the Merseyside Skeptics Society. He regularly speaks with proponents of pseudoscience for the Be Reasonable podcast, and presents investigative reporting on the Skeptics with a K podcast. His work has seen him organising international homeopathy protests, going undercover to expose psychics and quack medics, and co-founding the popular QED conference. He has written for The Guardian, The Times, The New Statesman and New Scientist.
October 2025
How They Hide the Truth from You
Meirion Jones
Investigative journalist
8 October 2025 Wednesday 19:30
The Duke of Greenwich
91 Colomb St, Greenwich – SE10 9EZ
Twenty years ago the Freedom of Information Act was just coming into effect. It was going to be a new dawn of open government. Hoorah! For a brief window Whitehall’s deepest secrets were on view – some of them revealed by Meirion – and then Tony Blair realised that the last thing he needed was the cat out of the bag.
Find out how the Cabinet Office has managed to run a Clearing House – AKA Blocking House – concealing national and local government corruption and wrongdoing ever since. It is at its worst under Rishi Sunak but could we persuade a new government to let the sunlight in?
Meirion is best known for investigations into Bogus Bomb Detectors, Jimmy Savile, Vulture Funds and the Fake Sheikh. His stories have led to changes in the law and bad people going to jail.
Jeremy Paxman accused Meirion of exhibiting that “obsessional, slightly nutty commitment that marks out all successful investigative reporters”.
November 2025
The quacks and charlatans of medicine
Dr Jenny Lange
Neuroscientist
12 November 2025 Wednesday 19:30
The Duke of Greenwich
91 Colomb St, Greenwich – SE10 9EZ
Scientific research in medicine has led to many groundbreaking discoveries, from the development of vaccines to the treatment of many previously fatal diseases. Today our chances of surviving serious illness are better than ever, thanks to significant advances in medical knowledge. Yet history is littered with sham doctors, charlatans and quacks peddling bogus medicines and preying on those people desperate for a cure. In the age of social media and in the wake of COVID-19, the distrust in scientific experts has resulted in a new wave of fake medicines and false information that is spread at a rapid pace.
In this talk, Dr Jenny Lange delves into the history of grifters who capitalised on a lack of medical knowledge, selling fraudulent medicines that at best had no effect and at worst resulted in the death of their victims. From John R. Brinkley, the bizarre ‘goat-gland doctor’, to those who used radium therapy as a cure for everything from diabetes to impotence, to more recent fake medicines such as those promoted by the ‘Church of Bleach’, this talk will examine how easy it is to fall prey to medical quacks even today.
Dr Jenny Lange is a neuroscientist who specialises in uncovering the mechanisms of rare neurological disorders. Initially en route to becoming a psychologist, Jenny became intrigued by the field of psychopharmacology and completed a PhD in Neuroscience at King’s College London. She’s currently working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the UK Dementia Research Institute, University College London, as well as writing for PET Bionews.
December 2025
TBA…