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Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition

Center for Inquiry

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition brings the insightful articles from Skeptical Inquirer magazine directly to your ears. Covering topics in science, skepticism, and critical thinking, each episode features narrated versions of our most thought-provoking content. Perfect for those on the go, SI Audio Edition allows you to stay informed and inspired wherever you are. Support our work and subscribe to the print magazine at skepticalinquirer.org Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition is produced at the

society & culture

All Episodes

08:38

One Man's Midlife Crisis in a NatGeo Docuseries

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/09/18

Brian Kerby reviews Limitless: Live Better Now. National Geographic Docuseries, 2025, arguing that the National Geographic docuseries is less a serious exploration of science than a celebrity's "midlife crisis" built around Chris Hemsworth's personal experiments with brain health, chronic pain, and risk-taking. Read this article and find accompanying references at: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2026/08/one-mans-midlife-crisis-in-a-natgeo-docuseries/ About the Author: Brian Kerby is producer and

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04:05

Sounding the Alarm about Medical Misinformation

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/09/16

Katie Suleta reviews Everyone Else Is Lying to You: How Our Medical Establishment Weaponized Doubt to Spread COVID, Normalize Quackery, and Undermine Public Health by Jonathan Howard. Redhawk Publications, 2025. Read this article and find accompanying references at: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2026/08/sounding-the-alarm-about-medical-misinformation/ About the Author: Katie Suleta is a public health researcher and science writer. Suleta is known for her work in countering medical misinformation

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08:35

The Ghost in the iPhone

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/09/14

Christopher B. Steiner traces the history of nineteenth-century "spirit photography," focusing on William H. Mumler's famous photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the supposed ghost of Abraham Lincoln. By having students recreate the image using an iPhone long-exposure app, Steiner demonstrates how photographic effects and digital technology can reproduce seemingly supernatural images, highlighting the continuity between Victorian photographic trickery and modern digital manipulation. Read this

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13:03

Selling Immune Tolerance as Disease

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/09/11

Andrea Love argues that direct-to-consumer "food sensitivity" tests are a lucrative form of pseudoscience that misrepresents IgG antibodies—markers of exposure and immune tolerance—as evidence of disease. She explains how these unvalidated tests can lead to unnecessary dietary restrictions, health anxiety, and delayed medical care, and argues that the broader lesson is how wellness marketing can strip legitimate science of its context to create and sell solutions to problems consumers don't actually

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19:07

Our AI Crisis Is Just a Symptom. It's Time to Fix the...

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/09/09

Melanie Trecek-King argues that the current panic over generative AI is largely a symptom of a much older media literacy crisis, not the root problem itself. She calls for replacing outdated tools like the CRAAP Test and blanket restrictions on information with stronger habits of lateral reading, calibrated skepticism, and understanding how algorithm-driven feeds blur the lines between reliable information, misinformation, advertising, and entertainment. Read this article and find accompanying

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11:27

Why Worry? Unwarranted Concerns—and What a Practical...

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/09/07

Mick West argues that skeptics should help people distinguish between legitimate risks and unfounded worries without simply replacing one anxiety with another. Using examples ranging from UFO and alien-invasion fears to sharks and the supposed significance of 2027, he emphasizes that facts and statistics alone may not overcome emotionally driven fears, and concludes that practical skepticism should prioritize reassurance, understanding, and reducing worry rather than shaming people or redirecting

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05:08

Critical Thinking as a Collective Endeavor: The 2026...

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/09/04

Carlos Orsi recaps LiliCon 2026 at California State University Fresno. Read this article and find accompanying references at: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2026/08/critical-thinking-as-a-collective-endeavor-the-2026-lilicon/ About the Author: Carlos Orsi is a journalist and writer, the director of Instituto Questão de Ciência, and author of What Science Says about Astrology (Columbia University Press, 2026). Subscribe to Skeptical Inquirer: https://skepticalinquirer.org/subscribe/

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07:21

The Science behind the Ouija Board: The...

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/09/02

Malorie Mackey and Michael Maldonado explain how the ideomotor response provides a neurological and psychological explanation for Ouija boards and other divination tools. They argue that our desire for control and our expectations can trigger tiny, unconscious movements—likely involving brain regions associated with anticipated actions and agency—that move planchettes, pendulums, and dowsing rods without conscious awareness, creating the compelling illusion of supernatural forces. Read this article

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14:16

Debunking The Telepathy Tapes: The Role of...

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/08/31

Janyce L. Boynton argues that The Telepathy Tapes revives long-discredited facilitated communication (FC) by mistaking facilitator-generated cues for evidence of telepathy. She points to physical, visual, and verbal cues—including movements of letterboards, hand signals, touch, and verbal prompts—and argues that the podcast's experiments fail to properly blind facilitators, making rigorous authorship testing essential before accepting claims of psychic communication. Read this article and find

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21:46

Telepathy via Facilitated Communication in Profound...

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/08/28

Katharine Beals traces the persistence of facilitated communication (FC) and its modern variants to a convergence of social, educational, and cultural forces, arguing that profound autism's communication challenges create fertile ground for the belief that hidden language abilities can be "unlocked." Read this article and find accompanying references at: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2026/08/telepathy-via-facilitated-communication-in-profound-autism-a-21st-century-delusion/ About the Author:

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18:35

The Telepathy Tapes: A Portal into a World of Woo

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/08/26

Stuart Vyse argues that The Telepathy Tapes has evolved from promoting dubious claims about telepathy among nonspeaking autistic people into a broader platform for paranormal and New Age pseudoscience. Read this article and find accompanying references at: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2026/08/the-telepathy-tapes-a-portal-into-a-world-of-woo/ About the Author: Stuart Vyse is a psychologist and author of Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition, which won the William James Book Award of

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03:41

How The Telepathy Tapes Silences Voices

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/08/24

Stephen Hupp previews the upcoming issue of Skeptical Inquirer, titled The Telepathy Tapes Silences Voices. Read this article and find accompanying references at: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2026/08/how-the-telepathy-tapes-silences-voices/ About the Author: Stephen Hupp, PhD, is the executive director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and the editor of Skeptical Inquirer. Subscribe to Skeptical Inquirer: https://skepticalinquirer.org/subscribe/

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03:38

California Endorses Dangerous Autism Pseudoscience

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/08/19

Stuart Vyse argues that California's State Council on Developmental Disabilities has endorsed discredited communication methods such as facilitated communication, rapid prompting, and spelling to communicate despite overwhelming evidence against their validity and warnings from major professional organizations. He warns that the policy could legitimize pseudoscience, encourage public funding and institutional accommodation of these techniques, and expose autistic people and others with

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04:14

The ABC's of Belief: Aliens, Bigfoot, and Chupacabra

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/08/12

Benjamin Radford examines public beliefs about aliens, Bigfoot, and chupacabra through recent polling data, finding that belief varies widely between these legendary creatures. Read this article and find accompanying references at: skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the-abcs-of-belief-aliens-bigfoot-and-chupacabra/ About the Author: Benjamin Radford, M.Ed., is a scientific paranormal investigator, a research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, deputy editor of the Skeptical Inquirer, and

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10:22

The Commodification of Science: "The Last da Vinci"...

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/08/07

Nick Tiller argues that modern science communication risks becoming science commodification when evidence is transformed from a process of inquiry into a product designed for attention, profit, and influence. Read this article and find accompanying references at: https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the-commodification-of-science-the-last-da-vinci-offers-insights-about-aspartame/ About the Author: Dr. Nick Tiller is an exercise physiologist, researcher, and writer covering health, performance,

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13:10

A Visit to the Center of the Spiritualist World

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/07/29

Stuart Vyse visits Lily Dale—the world's largest Spiritualist community—to explore the history and enduring appeal of Spiritualism while examining the methods behind famous mediumistic phenomena such as slate writing, spirit trumpets, and precipitated spirit paintings. Although he concludes that these practices are better explained by deception and psychology than the paranormal, he argues that Lily Dale remains an important historical site for understanding how Spiritualism developed and why

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09:52

When the Doctor Says Stop, But the Fight Goes On

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/07/22

Nick Tiller argues that a recent UFC fight in which medical advice was effectively overridden illustrates the dangerous erosion of respect for expert judgment, especially when entertainment and a culture of performative toughness take precedence over athlete safety. Using the incident to examine combat sports more broadly, he contends that ringside physicians—not referees, promoters, or fighters—should have the final authority on medical decisions to prevent avoidable, potentially life-altering

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10:05

Percival Lowell and the Canals on Mars

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/07/17

Terence Hines reviews The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America. By David Baron. Liveright Books/W. W. Norton, 2025. Read this article and find accompanying references at: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2026/06/percival-lowell-and-the-canals-on-mars/ About the Author: Terence Hines is professor of psychology at Pace University and adjunct professor of neurology at New York Medical College. He is author of The Psychology and Science of Pseudoscience

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09:56

The Lost Art of Scientific Inquiry

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/07/15

Aymen I. Idris reflects on how modern academia has transformed scientists from hands-on experimenters into grant writers, managers, and administrators, eroding the craft of direct inquiry that once defined scientific discovery. Drawing on his own career and conversations with researchers worldwide, he argues that the future of science depends on reclaiming time at the lab bench, protecting curiosity-driven research, and resisting a system that values metrics and funding over genuine exploration

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13:32

The Cottingley Fairies and James Randi's Marionette...

Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition ·

2026/07/13

Benjamin Radford investigates the claim that James Randi wrongly concluded the famous Cottingley Fairies were suspended as marionettes, tracing the allegation through decades of sources and finding no evidence that Randi ever made such a claim. Instead, the article shows how a tentative early image analysis by other investigators evolved into a persistent myth, illustrating how careful historical research can correct misconceptions—even about prominent skeptics. Read this article and find

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