The Skeptic

I was recently alerted to a lecture discussing how to “double your dog’s lifespan”. It is an understandable topic of interest. Every dog owner wants more time with their companion and, more importantly, we want those extra years to be healthy, comfortable, and with a good quality of life.

The Skeptic podcast, bringing you the best of the magazine’s expert analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal since its relaunch as online news source in September 2020. On this episode: Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or to support the show, take out a small voluntary donation at patreon.com/theskeptic. The Skeptic is made possible thanks to support from our readers.

If skepticism can be said to have majors like a university, UFO skepticism is certainly among one of the pillars, along with the supernatural, CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine), and conspiracy (my specialty). There is, of course, a Venn diagram where these majors overlap. I only deal with UFOlogy when it overlaps into my conspiracy world, where it readily does. I stay out of the search for extraterrestrial life because, at its very basic, it does not trouble me at all.

Many conspiracy theories talk about the government pulling the wool over our eyes, from Covid-fuelled anti-vaxxers to the gold-standard-obsessed fiat currency conspiracists. Browse such circles long enough and you can find people who believe that government itself is intrinsically “them” and has been from the start: Government was the hand of the enemy in the very beginning and it has been since.

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 7, Issue 3, from 1993. In the late 1970s several of my friends suddenly found themselves a guru. In the wake of the Beatles and the counterculture this was hardly novel. Mystics, gurus and oriental cults were then the fashion – as they still are – and the Hare Krishna tribe still chanted and sang up and down Charing Cross Road. But the guru my friends embraced was not like any other.

In 1941’s ‘The Lungfish and the Unicorn: An Excursion into Romantic Zoology’, German-born science writer Willy Ley described a mysterious and terrifying inhabitant of the Timor Sea, a relatively shallow body of water to Australia’s north: This sea, the natives claim, is inhabited by a large, ferocious man-eating shark. It is larger they say, than the well-known man-eating shark.

The Skeptic podcast, bringing you the best of the magazine’s expert analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal since its relaunch as online news source in September 2020. On this episode: Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or to support the show, take out a small voluntary donation at patreon.com/theskeptic.

The goal is to look like I have nothing on. The warmth of my fingers works primer into my skin, so it appears smoother. Concealer, to erase imperfections. A cream blush, for a light flush. A tinted lipgloss, so my lips appeared freshly-bitten. Leave no visible trace of any of them. This routine has many names: “Invisible makeup“, “I Woke Up Like This“, “Your skin but better“.

‘I Eat The Stars’. Image: Hay House The buzz word at the 2023 World Economic Forum was ‘polycrisis’, Collins Dictionary’s word of the year. Historian Niall Fergusson’s response was that we already have a word for that: it’s called ‘history’. Simultaneous disruption from pandemics, war, inflation and famine, he argued, is the baseline state of human history. In ‘I Eat the Stars; how to live fully and beautifully in a collapsing world’, Sarah Wilson is convinced that this time it’s different.

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 7, Issue 3, from 1993. The course tutor was demonstrating a particular method of hypnosis at the front of the class. The room was very brightly lit by a low winter sun. Behind the tutor and his subject was a light cream-coloured wall. The session lasted about half an hour with the subject being brought slowly back to reality at the end. Then followed an unexpected discussion.