The conference is night, streaming docs and twin flames, Dunedin Skeptical History

Mark Honeychurch - 20 November 2023

20 November 2023

Hi there

This past couple of weeks has been pretty busy for me. We’re now very close to our NZ Skeptics Conference in Dunedin this coming weekend - 24th - 26th November. It’s going to be an amazing weekend of talks and entertainment and fun.

Friday night starts off with a skeptical pub quiz put together . I’ve done a couple of Mark’s quizzes in the past, and, if this one is anything like the previous ones, it will be quite a challenge to the skeptical mind.

The Saturday and Sunday will feature interesting talks from local and international speakers, and on the Saturday night, we’re having our gala dinner, which will feature entertainment, and the annual NZ Skeptics awards.

As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve got a couple of international guests coming to add to our already great lineup of local speakers. Our international guests are Melanie Trecek-King and Susan Gerbic.

Melanie and her husband Anthony arrived in New Zealand a couple of weeks early, and I was pleased to host them at my place for a couple of nights, and show them around Auckland. They’re big fans of New Zealand, and would dearly love to be able to immigrate. They came long to the Auckland Skeptics in the Pub and got to meet with a bunch of Auckland-based skeptics. A lot of fun!

Melanie and Anthony have been to New Zealand before and had met some people here, who they invited along to the Skeptics in the Pub meeting. That turned out to be quite interesting, as her friends were definitely not in the skeptical camp - with one of them relaying various “facts” she’d heard about climate change, and claiming that her husband had psychic powers!

Melanie has a wealth of knowledge about how to spot misinformation, and how to change people’s minds, and reviewing the meetup she expressed that her friend seemed to be using some of Melanie’s anti-misinformation tools quite well in her professional life, even if those appeared to be unused in her personal beliefs. It certainly reminded me of how much of an outlier we skeptics are with our approach to thinking and wanting evidence for things. But before I get too far on my high horse, I’m sure there are probably things I’m not clear on in my thinking. The challenge is to identify those and make sure they don’t trip me up.

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to hearing Melanie speak, and having her meet all the other skeptics attending the conference.

This week Susan Gerbic flies in - again into Auckland, and again, I’ll be picking her up from the airport and hosting her for a couple of days and showing her around Auckland. We’re holding another Skeptics in the Pub on the night she arrives - so if you’re anywhere near Auckland and would like to meet up with Susan in advance of the conference, come along.

Another thing to watch out for is Susan appearing on TVNZ Breakfast. I contacted them last week, and they’ve asked to have her in for an interview. So that’s going to be on this Wednesday morning - 8:20 am at this stage, so that will hopefully be a fun watch.

The Sunday lunchtime of the conference will be the time for our AGM. More detail on that below, and after that, we’ll be having a live recording of our Yeah… Nah! podcast.

So, if this talk of the conference has got you excited, and you still haven’t got your ticket, you can correct this failure by visiting the conference website.

Now, onto what I’m covering this week. There are a couple of streaming documentaries I want to point out, including a fascinating, if disturbing look at the Twin Flames Universe cult.

And, Bronwyn has provided a great item looking at a skeptical history of Dunedin - right before our conference. How convenient!

Craig Shearer