The Skeptic

I vividly remember the first time I listened to Bill Hicks. It was on a road trip with my dad, and we were both so blown away that we stopped off at one of the strip malls that Bill hated so much to buy the rest of his albums. It was this bit from Rant in E Minor about taking...

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 7, Issue 1, from 1993.

Current historical evidence gives no indication of regular playing-cards being used for card games in Europe before 1377, and no mention of Tarot cards before 1440. In fact, Tarot cards were designed for play, and not for telling fortunes. There are many variations of the...

In recent years, it has become common and socially acceptable to hear that “the patient has the right to choose their treatment”, that “everyone knows what’s best for them”, or that “the final decision is always the patient’s.” This seemingly liberating and democratic discourse works very well in an era of growing distrust in institutions and a valorisation of individuality. ...

The Skeptic podcast, bringing you the best of the magazine’s expert analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal since its relaunch as online news source in September 2020.

On this episode:

Naomi Wolf’s career as a writer and public intellectual looked like it was all set. Having been born in San Francisco, to an anthropologist mother and an author father, academia was arguably in her blood. She went to Yale, and became a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford – though, she explains, she was dissuaded from submitting her PhD thesis while studying there, attr...