Shows / Skeptoid
Skeptoid
The true science behind our most popular urban legends. Historical mysteries, paranormal claims, popular science myths, aliens and UFO reports, conspiracy theories, and worthless alternative medicine schemes... Skeptoid has you covered. From the sublime to the startling, no topic is sacred. Weekly since 2006.
Episodes
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #188: Student Questions: String Theory, the Asian Flush, and the Peltzman Effect
Skeptoid answers some questions sent in by students around the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #187: Emergency Handbook: What to Do When a Friend Loves Woo
How you can help a friend or loved one with a potentially harmful pseudoscientific belief Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #186: More Things I'm Wrong About
Going back over a few previous Skeptoid episodes to correct errors (head is hung in shame). Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #185: Is Barefoot Better?
Some advocate that going barefoot is better for the health and strength of your feet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #184: The Antikythera Mechanism
This ancient device, 1000 years ahead of its time, neither proves alien visitation nor disproves history. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #183: The Naga Fireballs
These fireballs actually do rise from the Mekong river each year -- and we know exactly what causes them. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #182: Listener Feedback X
Another dip into the listener feedback files for Skeptoid. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #181: The Baigong Pipes
Modern metal pipes found buried in ancient China are neither pipes nor evidence of ancient alien visitation. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #180: Vaccine Ingredients
The claims made about the dangerous chemicals in vaccines are all either false or misrepresented. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #179: The Scole Experiment
Said to be the best evidence yet for the afterlife, the Scole Experiments were actually just a hackneyed performance. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #178: Student Questions: The Montauk Monster and Bee Sting Therapy
Skeptoid answers some more questions sent in by students, on a variety of short topics. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #177: The Bloop
This mysterious sound captured by NOAA hydrophones was not a sea monster. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #176: Network Marketing
Call them Network Marketing, Multilevel Marketing, or MLM, these pyramid schemes are proven not to work. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #175: Shadow People
These shadowy apparitions we sometimes see can be terrifying, but aren't supernatural. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #174: More Medical Myths
More myths about the human body that you've always heard, and probably believe. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #173: All About Astrology
Astrology neither has plausibility nor any test data showing that its predictions are better than random chance. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #172: Daylight Saving Time Myths
All the reasons you've ever heard for Daylight Saving Time are nonsense. Here is the real one. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #171: The Battle of Los Angeles
At the beginning of WWII, the American defense forces in Los Angeles fought a battle against a UFO. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #170: It's Raining Frogs and Fish
Waterspouts have nothing to do with popular stories of frogs and fish falling from the sky. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #169: Bride of Listener Feedback
More replies to some of Skeptoid's more colorful listener feedback. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #168: Decrypting the Mormon Book of Abraham
Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith allegedly translated the adventures of Abraham in Egypt. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #167: Should Science Debate Pseudoscience?
When scientists publicly debate promoters of pseudoscience, they often do more harm than good. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #166: Organic vs. Conventional Agriculture
Organic agriculture provides no benefits whatsoever over science-based farming. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #165: Real or Fictional: Food and Fashion
See if you can tell whether these food and fashion products are named after real people or fictitious people. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #164: What's Up with the Rosicrucians?
Believed by many to be an ancient mystical order, but really just a mail-order New Age literature business. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #163: How to Make Skepticism Commercial
Critical thinking offers the opposite of what seems to be popular, yet we can still make it commercial. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #162: Locally Grown Produce
The idea of locally grown produce as nowhere near as green as its proponents seem to think it is. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #161: Listener Feedback Episode VIII: No New Hope
Some more jabs and punches between Skeptoid and its most vocal listeners. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #160: Sarah Palin Is Not Stupid
Good arguments often go unused because poor arguments like ad hominems are so much easier. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #159: The Mothman Cometh
A skeptical look at the Mothman, an alleged prophet of disaster. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #158: Student Questions: Swine Flu and Depleted Uranium
Skeptoid answers questions sent in by students all around the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #157: High Fructose Corn Syrup: Toxic or Tame?
A skeptical look at whether high fructose corn syrup is really any worse for you than sugar. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #156: Falling into Mel's Hole
Mel's Hole is said to be a mysterious bottomless pit in eastern Washington state. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #155: NLP: Neuro-linguistic Programming
Some regard Neuro-linguistic Programming as a psychotherapy breakthrough, some as a New Age self-help trend. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #154: Was Chuck Yeager the First to Break the Sound Barrier?
Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947, but others almost certainly did so before him. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #153: Revenge of the Listener Feedback
Another peek into the mailbag to see who loves us, and who hates us. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #152: Attack of the Globsters!
Mysterious blobs of flesh washed up on the world's beaches have been called everything from sea monsters to Cthulhu. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #151: The Placebo Effect
A look at the placebo effect: What it can do, what it can't do, and what you need to know about it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #150: Screwed!
A secret recording of an actual meeting of the Illuminati. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #149: Coral Castle
Although urban legends say the creator of Coral Castle had supernatural help, the photographs tell a different story. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #148: Student Questions: Zero Point Energy and Missing Time
Skeptoid answers some interesting questions sent in by students. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #147: Binaural Beats: Not Digital Drugs
The science behind binaural beats: What they are, what they are claimed to do, and what they can actually do. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #146: How Old Is the Mount St. Helens Lava Dome?
Young Earthers point to an infamous dating error as evidence that the Earth is only as old as the Bible says. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #145: FEMA Prison Camps
A skeptical look at the claim that FEMA maintains a network of prison camps in readiness. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #144: The Case of the Strange Skulls
A collection of bizarre human skulls from around the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #143: The Lucifer Project
Some believe that NASA is trying to turn Saturn or Jupiter into a small sun. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #142: Student Questions: Sugary Behavior, Secondhand Smoke, and Wal-Mart
Answering more questions sent in by students. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #141: Listener Feedback 6: I Want to Believe
More fun from the listener feedback files. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Skeptoid #140: The Bosnian Pyramids
Belief that this hill in Bosnia is an ancient pyramid is driven by New Age woo and pathological science. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #139: Alkaline Water Systems: Change Your Water, Change Your Bank Balance
Sellers of new-age water treatment products charge outrageous prices for a product with zero plausibility. Learn about your ad choices…
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #138: Is He Real, or Is He Fictional?
Guess whether these popular characters from history were real or fictional. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #137: The Angel of Mons
The facts behind the story that a heavenly host saved a small group of British from a large German force in WWI. Learn about your ad choices…
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #136: Student Questions: Light Therapy, the Bermuda Triangle, and Isaac Newton
Skeptoid answers another round of questions submitted by students. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #135: The Rendlesham Forest UFO
Hard to believe, but it wasn't space aliens that caused blinking lights in Rendlesham Forest in 1980. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #134: Who Is Closed Minded, the Skeptic or the Believer?
Skeptics and believers both tend to accuse each other of closed-mindedness in their thinking. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #133: Chasing the Min Min Light
The Australian outback's mysterious jack o' lantern has sparked some good stories, but some even better science. Learn about your ad choices…
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Skeptoid #132: The Sargasso Sea and the Pacific Garbage Patch
We cast our skeptical eye upon two vast hazards to navigation said to lurk in the centers of the two great oceans. Learn about your ad choices…
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #131: The Bohemian Club Conspiracy
Wealthy and powerful men gather annually at the mysterious Bohemian Grove -- but not to plot global domination. Learn about your ad choices…
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #130: Space Properties for Sale
If they're offering extraterrestrial real estate or star-naming rights for sale, chances are it's a ripoff. Learn about your ad choices…
- Skeptoid
Skeptoid #129: The Oak Island Money Pit
This mysterious treasure pit on a Nova Scotia island has a fascinating natural explanation. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices