Articles tagged with "show"

The Doomsday Comedy shows in London earlier this year were a hit, and now New Zealand can see what the fuss is about!

The article from Aaron Davies about blind testing diet colas is a really interesting one for me. As a little background info for you, Aaron is an ex Jehovah's Witness and was a NZ Skeptics committee member a few years ago. In the article I'm the “Mark” mentioned in the testing. So, if you've read the article already, you'll know that when challenged with picking out my favoured beverage, Diet Coke, from a line-up of identical looking drinks in identical looking cups, I successfully identified the Diet Coke.

John Campbell recently released a new TV show on TVNZ where he investigates the controversial Destiny Church and its leader, “apostle” Brian Tamaki. The show is called Under His Command, and it's quite short - running to five episodes, each only around 15 minutes long.

A couple of months ago, the YouTube algorithm (correctly) decided that I would be interested in several videos where YouTube content creators dunk on TikTokers. But instead of spilling cold tea on influencer gossip, YouTube gave me a conman magic show that would make Randi spin so fast in his grave that he would be considered a renewable source of energy.

Unfortunately Mailchimp failed me last night, and refused to let me login to their website to send out the newsletter. But we're back up and running now, bringing you skeptical news from New Zealand and beyond.

Watch it on Amazon Prime | Microsoft

Recently there has been a bit of media coverage about the show 'Country House Hunters' New Zealand being faked. It has been proven that at least some of the house hunters were already the owners of the properties they were viewing.

As I talked about in my introduction, I managed to catch an episode of Black Mirror on Netflix - an episode titled Joan is Awful. I'm going to discuss various plot elements, so SPOILER ALERT!

There's a trend among some of the longer-running US TV shows of, after a few seasons, releasing a musical special. I guess once a show's creators know they're on safe ground, and that their show isn't going to be cancelled in the near future, they can take the risk of making a themed episode - and music seems to be a common theme. Shows that have had their cast break out into song for an episode include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Community, Psych and Scrubs. And, although I'm not a fan of musicals, this issue of our newsletter will be focusing on music and audio.

Alex Jones has been sued by parents for his claims on his TV show that the Sandy Hook school massacre was faked by the government as a way to take away people's gun rights. These parents are suing because, as a result of Jones' rhetoric, they have spent years dealing with abuse up to and including death threats - and this is after they lost their children in a massacre that Jones has been telling people never happened.

On Friday evening we had a national online Skeptics in the Pub meeting (Skeptics in Cyberspace), which going forward will be happening every four weeks. If you're interested in joining us, check your local Skeptics in the Pub's MeetUp group, or the Wellington group if you don't live somewhere with an active Skeptics in the Pub group. Although we usually talk about a lot of skeptical topics, because of our shared interest in science and skepticism we often end up recommending TV shows and movies to each other as well. We're not 100% agreed on what's good and what's not, but there's definitely a lot of cross-over. Documentaries and science fiction are both frequently recommended.

I have three school age kids, and so I'm no stranger to Blue's Clues. I've watched many episodes with both Steve (Steve Burns) and Joe (Donovan Patton) hosting the show alongside the animated dog Blue, following the clues each week. Steve left the show back in 2002, but he made the news recently when he released a feel-good video:

This week NZ Skeptics submitted our view on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill. This bill proposes prohibiting so-called conversion therapies which aim to change a person's sexuality, gender identity or gender expression. Curiously, the direction of conversion seems to be exclusively in the direction of becoming “straight” or identifying with and expressing the gender which aligns with the genitals you were born with.

We've talked about purported psychic medium Thomas John before. He's a shady character whose real name is Thomas John Flannagan. Previously convicted of stealing security deposits from renters after posting bogus apartment ads on Craigslist, and having also worked as a drag queen, he's moved on to being a celebrity psychic medium.

A work colleague reached out to me the other day with an interesting question. One of his close family members has fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole, and now spends a lot of time talking about QAnon, the "Deep State", etc. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with these kinds of rabbit holes, it's not entirely benign - the family member has now branched into COVID vaccine denial, which has a real chance of negatively impacting on their health.

Graeme Hill, longtime broadcaster and a good friend of science, skepticism and common sense thinking, now has an evening slot on MagicTalk radio. As part of his show, Graeme usually interviews knowledgeable people about a wide range of fascinating topics. A few years ago I was lucky enough to have been invited to join Siouxsie Wiles as a regular guest to talk about skeptical issues, and I'm now privileged to have been asked back to talk on Graeme's new show as he hosts Magic Nights.

How to be a Global Warming Skeptic

You may remember an article we published about unreasonable fears around nuclear power. It argued that the price of energy in human lives has been much higher in other forms of energy, with coal as the clear leader in causing harm.

Dr Oz is up to his usual nonsense, promoting an author who claims that astrology can predict your health. Rebecca Gordon believes that the Vitruvian Man may hold the key to how the signs of the zodiac map to parts of our body and indicate health issues, and has a new book: "Your Body and the Stars: The Zodiac As Your Wellness Guide".

On 23rd February 2018 Buzzfeed.com broke the news that the prominent atheist and skeptic Lawrence Krauss had been accused of sexual assault. Later we learned that this news had a New Zealand connection as Professor Krauss was not going to be attending the show in Christchurch with Richard Dawkins. Looking at Skeptics in the pub message boards I can see attendance may be affected by people's feelings toward the remaining speaker's attitudes to women.

A while ago I was contacted by an older gentleman, Cedric, who told me over the phone that he'd heard me on the show and wanted to know if I was interested in a theory he has about the origins of the Māori race. Of course I was, I said, and after a while I received a self-published 32 page book about the theory.

Emails have been released about the show Sensing Murder from OIA requests, and have brought to light (unsurprisingly) that the show has not materially helped the Police, and in some circumstances is considered to be a potential problem for ongoing cases.

Alex Jones, anchor man of the news outlet InfoWars in the US, hosted Robert David Steele on his show this week, and talked about Robert's theory that NASA are holding slave children on Mars. This has led to NASA officially denying the accusation, along with another recent claim that there are no active rovers on Mars.

"I have no evidence of whether it is real or not real"

Here are my notes from this year's NZ Skeptics conference:

Shepherd Bushiri has claimed in a video that he is walking on air.

In 2014, NZ Skeptics had the pleasure of hosting the rogues of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast at the NZ Skeptics Conference. As they say on their show, here's a quickie with Bob.

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.

In spite of the quality international line-up of scientists and science communicators at September's annual NZ Skeptics Conference in Wellington, it's probably not surprising that most of the media attention on the event focused on the presence of medium Sue Nicholson (see NZ Skeptic 93). Many in the audience seemed bemused to see her there, and Nicholson, for her part, didn't seem to have much idea of what the Skeptics were about. "My Dad was as sceptical as anybody," she said. "He had no time for black people."

Apparently mediums and the paranormal have replaced cop shows as the latest television drama genre of choice -- if you are to believe TV3's marketing, whether news or promo puff pieces, there's fact behind the fiction. Yeah right....

These are nervous times. By an astounding coincidence, as I wrote that line and paused to think of what to put next, I had a call from a friend to tell me there was a Sars case at the Waikato Hospital and to ask whether, in my other role as a subeditor at the Waikato Times, I would want to pass that on.

TVNZ's Holmes show has taken this year's Bent Spoon Award from the New Zealand Skeptics for promoting extraordinary and untested claims regarding cancer treatments.

Rats carrying the deadly bubonic plague will overrun Los Angeles, sparking mass evacuations - Patsy Ramsey will confess that she and her husband killed JonBenet Ramsey - Bill Cosby will quit show business and become a born-again preacher

The Mysterious Origins of Man showed earlier this year on TV3 as a "documentary". It is likely to be a contender for this year's Bent Spoon Award.

A selection of the song competition entries presented at the Skeptics Conference.

And there was the perhaps inevitable clairvoyant, offering to point out the location of the gold for a share of the spoils (he eventually told Kelly that he was looking miles away tom the right place). Kelly had never placed his faith in clairvoyants and he was not likely to now, but he allowed himself to be convinced that this one, a young African man, should be allowed a trial. In the event, all they got out of it was a memorably hilarious day.

The first Wellington psychic Mary Fry knew of her terminated contract with Radio New Zealand was when a friend rang up and said her husband had seen it in the newspaper.