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2015 Episodes
- December 15th: A Moment With Edell
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Derek presents an interview with Dr. Dean Edell recorded at The Amazing Meeting (TAM) 13. Dr. Edell had an impressive array of popular media shows on radio and television over the course of his career. He promoted science based medicine to the masses and fought against shoddy medical reporting and pseudoscience throughout his time communicating to the public. Back in 2010, he announced his retirement from his media career. Derek got to catch up with Dr. Edell at TAM to talk about his retirement, and what drove him to keep fighting against anti-science and promoting well-founded medical information when much of the mainstream media seems so lax to do so.
- December 1st: Don’t Mess With Her Pumpkin Spice Lattes
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Derek presents another interview from his trip to The Amazing Meeting 13, an interview with Yvette d’Entremont, a.k.a. SciBabe, an analytical chemist with a background in forensics and toxicology. Before working full-time as a science writer and public speaker, Yvette worked as a chemistry professor and a toxicology chemist researching pesticides for safety. She now runs her own blog/website, SciBabe, dedicated to debunking pseudoscience. Find out how SciBabe came to be and why she ended up focusing on clearing up misinformation about science, food and nutrition.
- November 17th: Based on The Bible
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Derek chats with author/filmmaker Chris Matheson about his recently released book The Story of God: A Biblical Comedy about Love (and Hate), which is a funny look at the events described in the Bible from the perspective of God and how the divine fumbles its way through the origins of reality and all we know. Find out more about how the man who helped create and film classic movies featuring Bill and Ted came to write a story which has a supreme being as its main character.
- October 27th: Good Thinking
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Derek has a discussion with past guest Guy P. Harrison on his latest book, Good Thinking: What You Need to Know to be Smarter, Safer, Wealthier, and Wiser. In this book, Guy took on the challenge of discovering more about human brain evolution, and sought out what the current, best science is on how we can keep our brains healthy and working optimally. Maybe you shouldn’t be eating that extra scoop of drive-through ice cream after-all…
- October 6th: The Dr. Bo Show
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Derek chats with Bo Bennett, popular author, motivational speaker, entrepreneur, and co-host of The Humanist Hour, along with several other critical thought podcasts and radio shows. Find out more about Bo’s journey into the world of critical thought, skepticism, humanism and activism, in this episode of Skepticality—The Official Podcast of Skeptic Magazine.
- September 22nd: More About James Randi
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In this episode of Skepticality, we present a live recording of Derek speaking with James Randi on stage at Skeptrack 2015 this past Labor Day weekend at Dragon Con in Atlanta, GA. Derek and Randi discuss the origins of “The Amazing Randi” and his work exposing fakers and other harmful charlatans over the years.
- September 1st: Future Climate Thoughts
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Derek digs into a recording which he conducted in California in May at the Skeptics Society conference “In the Year 2525: Big Science, Big History, and the Far Future of Humanity”. Derek interviews Dr. Donald Prothero about the current state of the climate, how we know that humans are causing massive change, and what we might be able to do to help mitigate and, possibly, improve things going forward.
- August 18th: A Conservative Skeptic
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Derek brings another interview from his trip to The Amazing Meeting 13: a discussion with Edwina Rogers. Edwina is currently the CEO for the Secular Policy Institute where she is helping bring more critical thought into the halls of American Government. Find out more about how a conservative from rural Alabama came to be such a major champion for science and critical thinking.
- August 4th: Squatchin’ Time!
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Derek continues his series of special content he recorded while attending The Amazing Meeting 13. Just after she gave her talk on stage, Derek sat down with Natalia Reagan: anthropologist, writer, actress, and comedienne. Using her specialized knowledge in primatology, she was one of the judges on the television show, “10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty.” Find out a bit more about how Natalia decided to leverage her advanced science degree and experience into a form of skeptical outreach which has been seen by millions.
- July 21st: Hello Reality
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With The Amazing Meeting ending only a couple days ago, Derek doesn’t wait to give you the first recorded interview from the event. Derek talks with Jim Baggott, author of many books on the nature of reality and physics. In his latest work, Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth, Baggott argues that there is no observational or experimental evidence for many of the ideas of modern theoretical physics: super-symmetric particles, super strings, the multiverse, the holographic principle, or the anthropic cosmological principle. These theories are not only untrue, they are not even science. It is fairy-tale physics: fantastical, bizarre and often outrageous, perhaps even confidence-trickery.
- July 7th: Off to The Amazing Meeting!
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This week on Skepticality, Derek talks a little about his upcoming trip to The Amazing Meeting, and runs some news and updates from the band of Skepticality Contributors.
- June 9th: Science-ing: The League of Extraordinary Scientists
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This week Derek gets back from his trip to the Skeptics Society’s Conference at Caltech and gets right back to ‘work’ by talking with Sunny Fugate and Jeane Wong. Jeane founded The League of Extraordinary Scientists (LXS), a community effort to bring quality science education (‘science-ing’) to K–5th grade classrooms in the San Diego area. Find out how the LXS is determined to bring their proven method into the science classrooms of the youngest students, and how they believe they can make it happen across the world.
- May 12th: A Skepticality Decade
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Derek, Swoopy, and Tim Farley jump on stage at Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta, GA for a live recording of the 10th anniversary episode of Skepticality. Learn some fun facts about the show and its hosts. There‘s even a surprise return of some of their original segments! What are Derek and Swoopy’s grand plans for the next ten years? Find out in this episode, celebrating 10 years of Skepticality!
- April 21st: A Skepticality Guide to the Universe
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This time around Derek has a light-hearted conversation with Dr. Steven Novella, clinical neurologist and assistant professor at Yale University School of Medicine. (Oh! …and the host and producer of ‘The Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe’ podcast.) Derek and Steve started their skeptical shows within the same week about 10 years ago, around this time of year. In this episode of Skepticality, they discuss a bit about the landscape of the skeptical movement, the impact of new media, and some current skeptical news.
- April 7th: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia
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In this episode of Skepticality, Derek interviews Laura Miller, one of the original co-founders of the popular online site Salon.com about her first book, The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia. The book is a personal story about her experience re-reading her favorite series of books, The Chronicles of Narnia, uncovering the meanings embedded in them by C.S. Lewis, and realizing how one can still find immense joy in books, even when one does not agree with some of the messages contained with them.
- March 24th: Defending Darwin
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This episode marks the 250th episode of Skepticality. The 10th Anniversary of the show is coming up very soon! Derek announces where you can see the 10th anniversary episode, in person, when it is recorded. Later, he joins evolutionary biology professor Jim Krupa to discuss his latest article which was recently published in Orion magazine. Find out more about this award winning science professor and defender of evolution.
- March 10th: Skepticality: On The Side
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Skepticality is almost a decade old. In light of the upcoming landmark, Derek and the show’s usual crew of contributors decided they needed to start bringing to listeners different content to supplement the standard format. Today, we present the first installment of Skepticality: On The Side in which you can listen in on Derek, Susan Gerbic, Tim Farley, and Bob Blaskiewicz as they discuss the history of Skepticality, and some of the hot topics they have been following in the realms of skeptical thought and pseudoscience.
- February 17th: Arcing Toward Morality
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In this episode of Skepticality, Derek has a conversation with Dr. Michael Shermer about his recently released book, The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom. Find out more about how a shift in society which led to the Enlightenment, abstract reasoning and skepticism, have moved humanity toward a more just and moral world.
- February 3rd: UndeNYEable
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In this episode of Skepticality is featured a Skeptics Society sponsored talk which was given by the well known science communicator Bill Nye. Nye talks about the topics covered in his latest book, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation, then afterwards sits down with Dr. Michael Shermer to talk one on one about how Nye got into science communication and the interesting journey he took on his way to become “The Science Guy” most know him as today. You can watch the lecture for free on skeptic.com, recorded live at Caltech on January 25, 2015.
- January 20th: Let Your Soul Go
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In this episode of Skepticality, Derek has a conversation with Julien Musolino. Julien is an associate professor of cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics and Rutgers University and the author of the book The Soul Fallacy: What Science Shows We Gain from Letting Go of Our Soul Beliefs. In this interview, Julien describes why he argues that the existence of the soul is a testable hypothesis—one that’s failed time and time again to hold up against the weight of scientific evidence. And, despite these findings, why he, and everyone else, should not be sad, or depressed by this fact, but embrace it and lead happier and more productive lives.
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