A researcher claimed that the chupacabra can be traced back to legends of the nightjar bird. I respectfully disagreed, which he then responded to, and which I then replied to. If you want to see two educated adults (one of them right and one of them wrong) kick each...
Investigation
Guesting on “StarTalk Radio” with Smart Science Folks!
For those who missed it, I was recently a guest on "StarTalk Radio" with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and the irrepressible Seth Shostak! Topics included UFOs, conspiracy theories, and whether a shortage of cow anuses on other planets is the cause of mysterious...
The Crop Circle Mystery: A Closer Look
My overview article on crop circles is now up at LiveScience.com, check it out! Crop circles — strange patterns that appear mysteriously overnight in farmers' fields—provoke puzzlement, delight and intrigue among the press and public alike. The circles are mostly...
Broom Balancing on the Equinox
We are just past the 2017 summer solstice (June 20 and 21 were the longest days of the year for anyone living north of the equator), and amid the celebrations, pagan rituals, and Stonehenge treks, there were many who performed a trick seemingly unique to that day....
Daily Beast Interviewed Me on Gubmint Mind Control
I was interviewed last year for an article on government mind control conspiracies. Or was I? Find out HERE. You can find more on me and my work with a search for "Benjamin Radford" (not "Ben Radford") on Vimeo, and please check out my podcast Squaring the...
Was the Nightjar an Early Chupacabra?
Following up on my book Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore, I have occasionally written about varied speculativepseudohistories of the chupacabra, and indeed the subject is ripe for conjecture. In a blog titled "The Secret...
‘Motherboard’ Interview About Pokemon Panic
I was recently interviewed for Vice media’s popular Motherboard site about my investigation into the 1997 Pokemon seizure mass hysteria incident, which was published both in the Southern Medical Journal and also in Skeptical Inquirer magazine sixteen years ago this...
Squaring the Strange: Episode 3, Psychics
Did you miss an episode of Squaring the Strange? We talk about what we're skeptical of recently, as well as take a close look at psychics and the law. Please check it out!
Case Study in Flawed TV Ghost Investigation: ‘Kindred Spirits’
My new CFI blog examines a case study in TV ghost hunting illogic and pseudoscience. "This show aired in 2016 when the two stars have, they claimed, a combined thirty years of ghost hunting experience. In any other career, a third of a century experience would result...
Can EMFs Create Ghosts? A Closer Look…
My Skeptical Inquirer column about the purported links between EMF fields and ghosts is now online! Many ghost hunters, including the T.A.P.S. team on the television show Ghost Hunters, use EMF detectors to search for electromagnetic fields because they believe that...