Michael Shermer explains how psychic James Van Praagh appears to talk to the dead by using such mentalism tricks as cold reading and hot reading.

The best evidence that UFOs represent spacecraft from other worlds consists of grainy photographs, blurry videos, and anecdotes about things that go bump in the night. In this episode Michael Shermer shows how easy it is to fake UFO photographs, enlisting the help of children and disposable cameras to create convincing photographic evidence that even fooled experts!

A review of Michael Drosnin’s The Bible Code.

In 1859 John Taylor published a book entitled The Great Pyramid, in which he discovered that if you divide the height of the pyramid into twice the side of its base, you get a number close to Π. This, and other relationships he found to be deeply meaningful. Soon after, others began to turn up similar “discoveries”, such as that the base of the Great Pyramid divided by the width of a casing stone equals the number of days in the year, and that the height of the Great Pyramid multiplied by 109 approximately equals the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

Humans are pattern-seeking animals. At Skeptic magazine we routinely receive calls from people who see the Virgin Mary in the shadows of a tree, the face of Jesus in a partially burnt tortilla, Mother Teresa in a sweet roll, or a face on Mars. JFK lives in stone profile in Hawaii. Eagle Rock sports a giant winged boulder overlooking the city. Patterns are everywhere. But which patterns are meaningful and which are not? (continue reading…)

Michael Shermer discusses Carl Sagan, science, pseudoscience, and the paranormal on PBS’s Charle Rose, during his book tour for Why People Believe Weird Things.

Michael Shermer discusses Carl Sagan, science, pseudoscience, and the paranormal on PBS’s Charle Rose, during his book tour for Why People Believe Weird Things.