I wrote last month about Sanal Edamaruku, the Indian skeptic who has had to flee his country because of death threats after he dared to point out religious nonsense that was hurting people. Now, another Indian rationalist has been assassinated. Narenda Dabholkar had led a campaign to get one local government to pass legislation banning superstitious […]
There’s a big piece in Newsweek today, “James Randi, The Amazing Meeting, and the Bullshit Police,” by Michael Moynihan, who was at the annual TAM get-together I attended last month, where he interviewed Randi, Jamy Ian Swiss, Michael Saunders, and other important skeptics. He spends a little too much space on disagreements within the skeptical […]
I spent the weekend in Las Vegas with my daughter at The Amazing Meeting, an annual conference of skeptics, scientists, magicians, and other rational thinkers, presented by the James Randi Educational Foundation. This was my eighth TAM, and one of the best, thanks to a lineup of speakers that included Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer, […]
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of “The Believing Brain” and “Why People Believe Weird Things,” joined me on my America Weekend show today to talk about his new Great Courses class, “Skepticism 101.” We talked about teaching people to think rationally and about the scientific method, how thinking goes wrong, whether America […]
At Harvard’s commencement last weekend, Oprah Winfrey was awarded an honorary doctorate before addressing the crowd. That didn’t sit well with some members of the Harvard community, including Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medicine and sociology, and Erika Christakis, an early childhood educator and Harvard administrator. In an op-ed for Time, they blasted the university’s […]
During CNN’s coverage of the damage from the tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma, Wolf Blitzer interviewed a woman holding a baby who had managed to escape. Blitzer asked, “I guess you got to thank to the lord, right?” The woman paused and looked at her child as Blitzer asked again, “Do you thank the lord […]