A Background Interview Featuring the Origin Story of How I Discovered Skepticism

I am so grateful for the opportunities that have arisen through my work with skeptical activism. Since the start of this blog, I have found and joined a local Skeptics in the Pub meetup group and took part in the establishment and founding of a non-profit educational organization, the Phoenix Area Skeptics Society (PASS). For the most part, it is quite rare to find people doing things they are passionate about with intentions of receiving praise or recognition for them. The work is the reward. However, sometimes positive attention and the constructive criticism from peers can have a profound impact on validating efforts. So, I was proud to take part in this interview with the deputy editor of the Skeptical Inquirer, research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and the go to scientific paranormal investigator Benjamin Radford. He is author or co-author of six books and over a thousand articles on skepticism, critical thinking, and science literacy. Topics that he covers include urban legends, the paranormal, and media literacy. The newest book from Mr. Radford is titled, The Martians Have Landed: A History of Media Panics and Hoaxes. Amongst all of this great work educating the public, he also finds the time to be a columnist for Discovery News and LiveScience.com.

Seeing my name and this blog under the Center for Inquiry banner displays to me a respect for Native American beliefs that rarely get acknowledged. The voices from the First Nations of people in America got just a bit louder.

You can follow the link to the entry on the CFI website by clicking in the text or by going here.    

This interview originally appeared in the Skeptical Briefs newsletter, Volume 21.3, Fall 2011, which featured a longer version. 

Reason Rises in the Valley of the Sun with Newly Established Phoenix Area Skeptics Society

The majority of the content in this particular post was inspired in light of the 2007 article by Canadian writer, illustrator, and Editor of Junior Skeptic magazine Daniel Loxton titled, "Where Do We Go From Here" [PDF]. This also helped serve for some background on the purpose of the newly established Phoenix Area Skeptics Society (PASS). It clearly lays out the future of skepticism and some of the reasons why, "skepticism is a movement with a mission: to organize an effort to discover reality, to expose fraud — and to help people."  

“Our underlying interest is not the paranormal per se, but the larger topics and issues such as how our beliefs in such things arise, how our minds work to deceive us, how we think, how our critical thinking capabilities can be improved.” (Loxton 2007)

In the end,

• We can decrease the total number of scams and help clear up confusions. 
• We can reduce the total amount of harm suffered by victims and potential victims. 
• We can make things less profitable or more difficult for specific kinds of scam artists." (Loxton 2007)