September Social
Join us from 7.30 pm on Tuesday 2nd September in the Library at the Town Wall on Pink Lane, near Newcastle Central Station, to meet fellow skeptics and to shape the future of skepticism in the North East.
Come for drinks, casual debunkings and maybe even some skeptical gaming!
The Natural History of Narratives: how stories evolve, spread and survive – and how they decay and die
Thursday 11th September 2025, 7.30pm
Tyneside Irish Centre, NE1 4SG
Pay-as-you-feel tickets (suggested £5)
All civil humans welcome!
Buy tickets here.
Storytelling is a universal human behaviour and a unique characteristic of our species. This talk will begin by discussing how our capacity to imagine and share fictional worlds was central to the evolution of human sociality and culture, before turning to some of the recurrent themes and plots that are found in diverse traditions around the world.
Professor Tehrani will focus especially on so-called “international folktales”, which include such tales as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Beauty and the Beast. He will show that cross-cultural patterns of continuity and variation in these folktales reflect basic evolutionary processes of mutation, selection, and inheritance as they get transmitted from generation to generation and spread into new “habitats”. He will also show how variations in the plots and characters of these stories can be analysed in a similar way to sequences of DNA, enabling us to reconstruct the deep history and dispersal of these traditions.
October social
Join us from 7.30 pm on Tuesday 5th August in the Library at the Town Wall on Pink Lane, near Newcastle Central Station, to meet fellow skeptics and to shape the future of skepticism in the North East.
Come for drinks, casual debunkings and maybe even some skeptical gaming!
Sexy Evolution: What the Pope Doesn’t Know About Human Sexuality
Thursday 9th October 2025, 7.30pm
Tyneside Irish Centre, NE1 4SG
Pay-as-you-feel tickets (suggested £5)
All civil humans welcome!
Buy tickets here.
Why are there different penis shapes and sizes? Why are female genitalia so different between species? What are the sexual strategies of chimps, humans, and bonobos? Why does human sex last so long? How does all of this relate to religion?
Hear Dr. Darrel Ray speak on his favorite topic – sex. Learn and laugh about religion’s crazy sexual ideas. Explore the role of sex and sexuality in religious infection and learn how common ideas that seem natural are often deeply related to religious control. Even people who were not raised religious retain religious beliefs about sex and sexuality. How do these impact your sex life and sexuality? Dr. Ray discusses this and much more in this engaging and entertaining presentation.
In 2009, Dr Darrel Ray founded Recovering from Religion (RfR), a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting individuals dealing with religious trauma, doubt, and non-belief. Throughout his career, Dr Ray has been a vocal advocate for secularism and mental health, emphasizing the importance of science-based approaches to therapy and the challenges faced by individuals leaving religious communities.