As the world enters another month dealing with the deadly coronavirus that has dominated headlines, killed hundreds, and sickened thousands, misinformation is running rampant. For many, the medical and epidemiological aspects of the outbreak are the most important and...
Benjamin Radford
Sylvia Browne’s Bogus Coronavirus Prophecies
In recent weeks there’s been many rumors, myths, and misinformation about the current coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19. One of the most curious is the recent resurrection of a posthumous prediction by psychic Sylvia Browne. In her 2008 book End of Days,...
Squaring the Strange #117: Testing Psychic Detectives in Real Time (Part 2)
The new episode of Squaring the Strange is now out, for those who want a break from virus bad news. Celestia, Kenny Biddle, and I tracked psychic detectives's involvement in current cases. In this part 2 of the show, I talk about my examination of a 14-year-old Ohio...
Fear Itself: Covid-19, Media Literacy, And Social Media Distancing
There’s a natural—almost Pavlovian—tendency to follow the news closely, especially during times of emergency such as wars, terrorism, and natural disasters. People are understandably desperate for information to keep their friends and family safe, and part of that is...
Squaring the Strange # 116: Testing Psychic Detectives in Real Time (Part 1)
The new episode of Squaring the Strange is out! The first of a two-parter, in this episode Celestia and Kenny Biddle each examined recent (then-current) missing person cases and closely examined how psychic detectives "helped" (or interfered) with...
Squaring the Strange # 112: Literary Hoaxes!
Our recent episode of Squaring the Strange is about literary hoaxes! I discuss some "misery memoirs," stories of victims triumphing over incredible hardships (Spoiler: "Go Ask Alice" was fiction). Celestia discusses newspaper reports of horny bat-people on the moon,...
On Russian TV Talking Monsters! “Не факт! Фантастические твари.”
For my Russian-speaking friends, I present my appearance on a Russian television show talking about monster folklore. Though Moscow paid for it, I promise my part (around 19 minutes in) is not Putin's dezinformatsiya, and I got no Shill Rubles for it! You can see it...
Equatorial Misinformation Misadventures
I was recently editing a piece by Rob Palmer (perhaps better known as “The Well-Known Skeptic”) on the subject of misinformation he encountered in the middle of the world. Or, put another way, bogus information on the equator in Ecuador (a country named...
Squaring the Strange #114: The Minnesota Iceman
The recent Squaring the Strange is even more awesome than most! We talk with expert Ron Pine about the Minnesota Iceman, a "sasquatchcicle" hoax of truly epic proportions. How did a sideshow gaffe fool two prominent cryptid researchers, and make it all the way to the...
Quoted on Bigfoot in ‘The Mountaineer’
So this is cool: I'm quoted in an article on Bigfoot in The Mountaineer: If you wear a size 14 shoe, chances are some of your high-school classmates called you “Bigfoot.” But that doesn’t mean you are an ape-like beast who may — or may not — just be a...