Soon after a university cheating scandal recently broke, a meme declared that “White privilege is REAL,” and gave three examples presumably illustrating that premise. The first shows a photo of actress Felicity Huffman and states that “Feds will seek 4 months jail...
News
Squaring the Strange: MLMs with Special Guest SciBabe!
For those who didn't see it, special guest SciBabe recently joined us to examine Multi Level Marketing (MLM) and pyramid schemes on the new episode of Squaring the Strange. MLM crap annoys us so Celestia spent plenty of time bleeping out choice curse words! Ben and...
‘Bring Back Our Girls’ At 5: Boko Haram’s Forgotten Captives
It was a bold and brash attack on innocent girls that outraged the world and spawned unprecedented online activism: Boko Haram, an extremist Muslim group in Nigeria, abducted about 276 schoolgirls from a rural secondary school in the town of Chibok on April 14, 2014....
The ‘FBI Bigfoot Investigation’: Where’s The Beef?
Breathless headlines last month referred to the “FBI Investigating Bigfoot,” a clickbaity phrase if ever social media saw one, along with the promise that newly-declassified FBI files shed light on the mystery. As intriguing and sensational as it sounds, it turns out...
The Perils of Recycling News
I've been seeing links to this news story widely shared over the past few months, about the U.S. voting against a U.N. resolution condemning Nazis. It's being shared as evidence of our current government supporting white supremacists-- except that it happened in 2016...
Misleading Memes As Cloaked Propaganda
Soon after a university cheating scandal recently broke, a meme declared that “White privilege is REAL,” and gave three examples presumably illustrating that premise. The first shows a photo of actress Felicity Huffman and states that “Feds will seek 4 months jail...
‘Why Isn’t The Media Covering This Story?’—Or Are They?
Distrust of the news media is, or at least seems to be, at an all time high. A recent report by Gallup and the Knight Foundation found that 42 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of independents, and 94 percent of Republicans say they have lost some trust in the media....
Guest Appearance on ‘Destination Unknown’
I was recently in Puerto Rico shooting an episode of “Expedition Unknown.” I can’t give many details before the show airs, but here’s a photo of me with host Josh Gates interviewing an eyewitness to something weird....
Popobawa Returns: As a Toy?
For those who didn't see it, Russ Dobler wrote an interesting piece on the popobawa, a skeptic-raping bat/ghost/djinn I investigated in East Africa years ago. I had no idea it had been featured on a kids TV show! You can read it HERE!
Who Are Mass Shooters?
My new CFI media literacy article examines the demographics of American mass shooters. Many people believe that most mass shooters are white males, but in fact it varies by type of shooting; there is no single representative or predictive demographic, other than being...