Articles tagged with "podcast"

Tena koutou katoa. A warm welcome to all who are attending this AGM during our conference lunch break.

It's less than two weeks until our conference in Christchurch, and we're busy sorting out the last few loose ends. We now have tickets available for our Saturday evening soiree, so if you're coming to the conference and want to chill out with other skeptics, the committee of the NZ Skeptics, the SGU and some of our other weekend speakers, make sure you grab your tickets soon! It's only $40 for an evening featuring entertainment, canapes, and cheap booze.

We're back to our normal schedule after taking something of a break over Christmas, so those of you who listen to our podcast should see our next episode come out next weekend. Given that we've skipped a couple of episodes there are quite a few articles to talk about, so it might be a long one!

Tena koutou katoa. Before I commence my report, I want to begin by thanking the 2025 committee and acknowledge the contributions of those who left the committee since the last AGM: Daniel Smith, Brad MacClure, and Margaret Coe.

The Telepathy Tapes is a 10+ episode podcast series that was released in September 2024. Created and hosted by Ky Dickens, Season 1 is described as daring to… “explore the profound abilities of non-speakers with autism - individuals who have long been misunderstood and underestimated”. But Dickens doesn't content herself with the common trope of autistic savantism and instead goes full paranormal. Specifically, as the podcast name indicates, Dickens presents incidents of telepathy, but also astral projection (see episode 3), mediumship (see episode 2), talking to god (see episode 7), and prognosticating (see episode 5 and 7).

Just over a week ago we hosted two segments of the second annual Global Skeptics in the Pub Online - an event organised by Californian skeptics to coincide with their annual conference. It was a fun event again, with some really interesting perspectives, and it's always nice to hear what other skeptical groups are up to.

In lieu of my usual blathering, this week we have an update from our chair, Bronwyn, about our plans for our conferences this year and next:

The Telepathy Tapes is a 10+ episode podcast series that was released in September 2024. Created and hosted by Ky Dickens, Season 1 is described as daring to… “explore the profound abilities of non-speakers with autism - individuals who have long been misunderstood and underestimated”. But Dickens doesn't content herself with the common trope of autistic savantism and instead goes full paranormal. Specifically, as the podcast name indicates, Dickens presents incidents of telepathy, but also astral projection (see episode 3), mediumship (see episode 2), talking to god (see episode 7), and pronosticating (see episode 5 and 7).

We received an email the other day from none other than (in)famous ex-Christchurch street preacher and evangelist Ray Comfort. Ray had found Bronwyn's article about him and emailed us, very briefly, to let her know that he liked the article:

Thank you to everyone who filled in our recent survey about the possibility of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast hosts coming over to New Zealand next year, and whether this might have an effect on our conference plans for this year and next. We've been discussing your responses as a committee, and will be able to let everyone know fairly soon what our plans are.

After having written in the last issue about the committee's hesitance to let people submit articles for inclusion in the newsletter that include significant AI content, I wasn't totally surprised to receive an email from Peter Harrison, who we've had on our podcast before talking about AI. What did surprise me, though, was the formal tone of his letter - which at first I took to be a little passive-aggressive. However, this and the Americanized spelling still didn't tip me off as to the real author of the email:

We've had a bit of a changing of the guard over the last couple of weeks - Craig Shearer has decided to step back from his major responsibilities with the NZ Skeptics, as he plans to focus more on some of his other hobbies and endeavours. Craig will no longer be writing regular articles for us or hosting and editing our podcast, although he has said that he'll write something for us if and when he feels sufficiently impassioned by something annoyingly unskeptical, and he's planning to remain on the committee.

A few months ago Bronwyn wrote an article about Sex.Life, a New Zealand podcast by Morgan Penn, a “somatic sexologist”, and Hayley Sproull, a comedian. The first season of the podcast is of interest to skepticism, as it details Morgan's 10 day visit to Highden Temple (outside of Palmerston North), owned and run by Bruce Lyon. Bruce claims to channel the spirit of a long-dead spiritual master, and also runs Sex Magic classes - part of the International School of Temple Arts (ISTA).

It's weird not having had a newsletter out last week. Hopefully you didn't miss us too much! As our sole editor I'll be keeping to a biweekly schedule for now - although if we get more content coming our way from readers and committee members, who knows, I may be able to return to producing the newsletter on a weekly basis. For now, you can expect to read something from myself, Bronwyn and Craig every fortnight, and then we'll be recording our podcast in the days following the newsletter's release, and chatting about either our articles or something else that tickles our fancy. If you feel moved to write an article for us, just send your article to news@skeptics.nz and we'll let you know if we plan to publish it, which is very likely to be the case as we love reading all your thoughts on skeptical topics, and I'm sure our audience does too. And, once your article's been published, we'll probably want you to join us on the podcast to talk about it as well - but only if you're comfortable with doing that.

It's been a couple of weeks since the final episode of this season's (!!) Sex.Life podcast aired with a less than revealing Q&A. The poor folks at the Culty Conversations facebook page have had to endure my stream of consciousness written but you, lucky skeptics, get to benefit from the cliff notes.

Because it has been a hot second since I wrote about Highden/ISTA, I thought it was time to provide an update on what's been happening since RNZ published their piece on Sacred Sexuality in October 2022.

This week I've looked at what might be behind a funny story about combat-ready mermaids, and found out that it's not the answer I thought I was going to find. I also did a silly thing, and joined a Multi Level Marketing scheme - but don't worry, it's all above board. Just email me if you'd like to join my downline or buy some of my scrapbooking products, and I can give you my affiliate link.

This week's been a busy one for me, with Skeptics in the Pub in Auckland on Tuesday night, recording and editing our podcast on Wednesday night, and various other activities.

I was listening to Steve Hassan speaking on a podcast recently, A Little Bit Culty - hosted by ex NXIVM cult members Sarah Edmondson and her husband Anthony Ames. Steve is well known by now for his BITE model of control in cults, and I've written about this model and its usefulness before.

This is my first newsletter for the year. I had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year and had some nice time off from work.

It's been an action-packed week this week, with lots of interesting things happening in conspiracy circles, both here and overseas. And a lot of it seems to be in the right direction, with prominent anti-vaxxers and conspiracy mongers like Robert Kennedy Jr and Chantelle Baker having their social media accounts removed, the parliament protest something of a fizzle, the operators of Counterspin being arrested, and Billy TK and Vinny Eastwood having their day in court.

It's nice to be reminded sometimes that the number of skeptics in society is likely to exceed the number of Skeptics in our Society by several orders of magnitude. I was reminded of this recently after seeing a couple of interactions on social media, one where a friend tackled misinformation, and another where it was the friend that was spreading misinformation. In both interactions, the misinformation was quickly and easily debunked, with references given to sources. The first one was about Ukraine's president Zelenskyy being a Nazi, as “proven” by a picture of him holding up a football (I'm from England, so for all you kiwis I mean soccer here) shirt with his name and a swastika on it. The second is about the recent parliament protest, with an image of a child who had supposedly been pepper sprayed by the Police.

I hope everyone is having a great Valentine's day, and that none of you are stuck in a muddy field somewhere dealing with sanitation issues ;)

Over the past couple of weeks, I've seen articles about Dominic Bowden on a new podcast about “wellbeing” called WellBeings. Dominic Bowden is a bit of a celebrity - having appeared on The Bachelor NZ amongst other shows.

In 2008, the This Week In Tech podcasting network had been going for three years and a number of related topic podcasts started up on the network including one called Futures in Biotech. Modelled on the idea of having a weekly podcast on a specialist subject, a new podcast split away by Professor Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University called This Week In Virology (TWIV). It was inspired by this Week In Tech and given virus is also used in technology, the new podcast developed the tagline “the podcast about viruses – the kind that make you sick”. The first episode was on West Nile Virus and as someone who had no previous interest in viruses, the show fascinated me and fourteen years later I'm still a regular listener as I both enjoy science as well as having gotten to know the team well over the years.

Thanks to everyone who joined our online Skeptics in the Pub meetings over the last two weeks. We've had such a good time chatting with skeptics who we usually only see once or twice a year that we've decided to make our national online meetings a regular event.

Sorry to harp on about anti-vaxxers, but there's another story this week that has emerged about prominent American anti-vaxxer Del Bigtree. Bigtree runs ICAN - the Informed Consent Action Network, and has a slickly produced video podcast called The Highwire.

My personal journey into skepticism began back in the early 90s before the internet was publicly available, but podcasts now form a significant chunk of the skeptical content that I consume. My particular favourites are The Skeptics Guide to the Universe (a great weekly roundup of science and skepticism), Oh No, Ross and Carrie (weird and often humorous investigations into fringe groups and claims of the paranormal), and Sawbones (fascinating medical history of dubious devices and cures, but firmly science-based). But there are many others, and tastes vary.

In case you've missed it there is an awful lot going on in the Skeptical world all the time, right here in New Zealand.

I love the summer because it means road trips. And road trips mean podcasts and audiobooks. And podcasts and audiobooks usually mean an hour or so of debate and discussion with whoever is unfortunate enough to be stuck in the car with me. Usually it's over something frivolous, like how an audiobook episode of Doctor Who couldn't possibly work because, you know, time travel. Other times it's something more serious, and then fun time is over.

One of my favourite podcasts is this seasonal offering from British skeptical activists and science communicators Brian Cox and Robin Ince. This is a BBC Radio 4 production – oooh get me! – but the podcast version is 10 minutes longer. As Robin says, “this show contains extra material which wasn't considered good enough for the radio.” In exactly that sort of way, Robin provides the banter and is the gleeful layman. Brian, on the other hand, brings it all back to reality, reining-in tangents and correcting any guest who dares oversimplify a bit of physics.

Hosted by Fraser Cain of AstronomyCast, this hour long magazine-style show takes listeners through the previous week's space news. Each episode has an assortment of guests who take it in turns to present, each with their own topic, and with Fraser asking the questions and expanding the stories. Each week a cast of regular voices tend to appear, and there's a wider community of more infrequent guests.

I found out what a skeptic is when I was living in London. My husband Mark listened to a weekly podcast called The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe hosted by a bunch of brothers and their friends. After Mark finally persuaded me to arrive at the 21st century and purchase myself an iPod, the first thing he did was subscribe me to the podcast.

Completely Unnecessary? Hardly. New Zealand's own Completely Unnecessary Skeptical Podcast is celebrating its fourth birthday and has established a niche for itself in the country's digital airwaves.

www.pointofinquiry.org

Skepticality is a hugely entertaining podcast that explores rational thought, critical thinking, science and the de-bunking of the supernatural and pseudo-science. It features interviews with favourite skeptics such as James Randi and Tom Flynn, as well as scientists, such as Phil Plait and Michael Shermer. The podcast also features general discussion of all things sceptical with its two intelligent hosts Swoopy and Derek.