Home

UPCOMING SKEPTALKS

Benjamin Radford

Weird New Mexico: Aliens, Bigfoot, Ghosts, and the Hum

Describing New Mexico as weird is at once both vaguely insulting and self-evidently true. The Land of Enchantment has long drawn artists, dreamers, scientists, pioneers, cranks, cultists, writers, outlaws, and others. All states are strange in their own ways, but New Mexico embraces its weirdness. Investigator Benjamin Radford will highlight strangeness in his home state, drawn from his books Mysterious New Mexico and the just-published Weird New Mexico (both from the University of New Mexico Press). From miracles to monsters, ghost stories, to urban legends—and of course more than a few UFO crashes—Radford investigates the mysteries using critical thinking, folklore, sociology, history, and forensic science.

WHO:  Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and a Research Fellow with the non-profit educational organization the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He has written thousands of articles on a wide variety of topics, including urban legends, the paranormal, critical thinking, and science literacy.

He is author of fourteen books including Media Mythmakers; Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries; Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore; Big—If True: Adventures in Oddity, and most recently Weird New Mexico: More Miracles, Magic, and Monsters in the Land of Enchantment. Radford is also an award-winning filmmaker and co-host of the podcast Squaring the Strange.

Radford holds a Masters degree from Dartmouth in Public Health, a Masters from SUNY-Buffalo in Education, and a Bachelors in Psychology from the University of New Mexico.

Radford has appeared on the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, the Learning Channel, CBC, CBS, BBC, CNN, and other networks with three letters.

WHEN:  Thursday November 11 @ 7:30 PM Pacific  (GMT-8)

HOW:  Online HERE.

Join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is little_logo.gif

SkepTalk Library:

8 Oct2026 The Truth About Peptides – Peter Koshland
10 Sep2026 Time in Ancient Egypt: Astronomy & Religion among the Stars – Foy Scalf
13 Aug2026 UFOs and Life Out There – Andrew Fraknoi
  9 July2026 How Bad Science Travels into the Regulatory Domain – Sasha Kaurov
14 May2026 A Field Guide to Getting Swindled – Quico Toro
9 Apr2026 Ghosts Busted: The Science Behind Ghostly Encounters – Susan Hough
12 Mar2026 Buckle Up! Teaching Evolution in the Bible Belt – Wesley Roberts
12 Feb2026 Evolution Gone Wrong – Alex Bezzerides
  8 Jan2026 The Myth of the “Homeless-Industrial Complex” – Carrie Sager
11 Dec2025 From Ghost Hunts to Pseudoscience Fairs: Building Better Skeptics – Rodney Schmaltz
13 Nov2025 Evolution & Sexual Diversity in the Animal World – Nathan Lents
  9 Oct2025 Airborne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe – Carl Zimmer
11 Sep2025 James Randi in Australia – Richard Saunders
10 Jul2025 Confessions of a Former Conspiracy Theorist – Coleman Watts
12 Jun2025 Kitzmiller v. Dover 20 Years Later – Nick Matzke
  8 May2025 How Intelligent Design Nearly Won – Thomas Nelson
10 Apr2025 Apes, Men, & Morons: Eugenics, Evolution, and the Scopes Centennial – Paul Lombardo
13 Mar2025 Deliberation Corrects: The Case of Conspiracy Theories – Gordon Pennycook
13 Feb2025 Can Star Trek Teach Us about Evolution? – Mohamed Noor
  9 Jan2025 Lone Survivors: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Us – Ann Gibbons
12 Dec2024 The Problem with Scientism & the Nature of the Skeptic Community – Massimo Pugliacci
14 Nov2024 Mis- & Dis-Information During the 2024 Election – Darren Linvill
10 Oct2024 How Total Eclipses Influence Changes in Animals – and Humans – Adam Hartstone-Rose
12 Sep2024 Skepticism or Denial? The Erosion of Trust in Scientific Expertise – Gale Sinatra
  8 Aug2024 Climate Change and Climate Solutions – Peter Sinclair
13 Jun2024 Are Americans Really Anti-Science? – Jon D. Miller
  9 May2024 From Creationism to QAnon – William & Susan Trollinger
11 Apr2024 The Birth of the Science Communicator – Dave Farina
14 Mar2024 Unforced Errors During the COVID Pandemic – Paul Offit
  8 Feb2024 A Child’s Garden of Climate Change Denial – Glenn Branch
11 Jan2024 You Can’t Beat an Extinct Horse – Carl Feagans
14 Dec2023 Skepticism’s Time Warp. Are we winning or losing? – Craig Foster
  9 Nov2023 The Science behind Social Media and Political Behavior – Jennifer Pan
12 Oct2023 PotHoler54 in Discussion with Eugenie Scott – Peter Hadfield
14 Sep2023 Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic – Michael Woroby
10 Aug2023 Is Sports A Breeding Ground For Pseudoscience? – Nicholas B. Tiller
  8 Jun2023 Improbable Research & the Ig Nobel Prizes – Marc Abrahams
11 May2023 ¿Extraterrestrial Life? – Alex Filippenko
13 Apr2023 ¿Did paleo people actually eat Paleo? – Briana Pobiner
  9 Mar2023 Netflix’ Ancient Apocalypse: Confronting Mainstream Pseudoarchaeology – John Hoopes
  9 Feb2023 The Cultural Logic of Vaccine Refusal – Jennifer Reich
12 Jan2023 Racism, Not Race: Answers to Questions Even a Skeptic Might Ask – Joseph Graves
  8 Dec2022 Gods and Robots: Imagining Artificial Life in Antiquity – Adrienne Mayor
10 Nov2022 Science Education in an Age of Misinformation – Jonathan Osborne
13 Oct2022 Science vs… History? – Wendy Zuckerman & Sebastion Major
  8 Sep2022 How to Effectively Push Back Against Misinformation – Jonathan Jarry
11 Aug2022 What Does Evidence Do – Jenny Rice
  9 Jun2022 How to Talk to a Science Denier – Lee McIntyre
12 May2022 Superstitions, Aliens, and Conspiracies: The Frontlines of Astronomy Outreach – Mike Simmons
14 Apr2022 Confidence Men: How 2 Prisoners Made History’s Most Remarkable Escape – Margalit Fox
10 Mar2022 The Reality of Reality TV – Yau-Man Chan
10 Feb2022 Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls – Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
13 Jan2022 Weirdness!: What Fake Science & the Paranormal Tell Us about the Nature of Science – Taner Edis
  9 Dec2021 Dangers of the “Lost Civilization” Trope – A.J. White
11 Nov2021 Machineries of Doubt: Climate, Cigarettes & Confusion – John Mashey
  9 Sep2021 The Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project – Richard Saunders
12 Aug2021 What To Do About Misinformation (in Four Dimensions) – John Cook
  8 July2021 Tilting at Strawmen & Other Tricks of Climate Denial Enablers – Mark Boslough
10 Jun2021 The Truth Behind False Memories – Jill Yamashita
13 May2021 Vaccine hesitancy in the era of COVID – Tara C. Smith
  8 Apr2021 Why storytelling is vital to science communication – Sara ElShafie
11 Mar2021 Haunted Humanity: The Fringe Is Not Fringe, and That’s a Big Deal – Daniel Loxton
11 Feb2021 From Junk to Genes: The birth of new miRNA genes in the human genome – Nathan Lents
14 Jan2021 The Continuing Relevance of America’s Eugenic Legacy – Paul Lombardo
10 Dec2020 Deepfakes, GANs and Visual Misinformation – Nick Dufour
12 Nov2020 The Debate about Dark Matter:  Is the Matter Settled? – Don Lincoln
  8 Oct2020 Facilitated Communication: Holding on to (False) Hope – Janyce Boynton
10 Sep2020 Mad Myths: The Case for Using Persuasion to Promote Critical Thinking – Jay Diamond
13 Feb2020 Big Data: What it is, how it’s used, where it’s headed – Mike Olson
12 Dec2019 Are you sure that sippy-cup is safe? – Layla Katiraee
  7 Nov2019 Why Do People Reject Good Science? – Eugenie Scott
10 Oct2019 Shit Students Say: Chem trails, hollow earths, and other strange ideas – Steven Newton
12 Sep2019 Successful Skepticism: Creating Lasting Community – Tucker Phelps
  9 May2019 The Bitter M&Ms of Climate Change: Misconceptions and Misinformation – Brad Hoge
11 Apr2019 The Year in Anti-Science-Education Legislation – Glenn Branch
14 Mar2019 Australia’s Psychic Detectives and Psychic “Predictions” – Richard Saunders
14 Feb2019 What Would Darwin Say to Today’s Creationists? – Eugenie Scott
10 Jan2019 Common Misconceptions About CRISPR Genome Editing – Kevin Doxzen
13 Dec2018 BAS BAH Fest
  8 Nov2018 A Skeptic’s Guide to Planet Hunting – Josh Lofy
11 Oct2018 Beyond a Candle in the Dark – Mick West
13 Sep2018 When a Biology Meets a Biology – David Almandsmith
10 May2018 Common Misconceptions in Anthropology – Julie Hui
12 Apr2018 Skepardy! — Bill Patterson
  8 Mar2018 A Quirky Colloquium Quashing Quantum Quackery — Miriam Diamond
  8 Feb2018 The Human Drive to Explain — Tania Lombrozo
14 Jan2018 Neuroscience and the Great Questions — Ransom Stephens
14 Dec2017 Top Ten Myths of Homelessness — Carrie Sager
  9 Nov2017 Myths of Mass Extinctions — Kevin Padian
12 Oct2017 Hurricanes and Heat Waves: Is This Climate Change? — Brad Hoge
11 May2017 Beyond the Choir – Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia — Susan Gerbic
13 Apr2017 An Invisible Plague: the Growing Threat of Tuberculosis — Lauren Popov
  9 Feb2017 Are Saturated Fats Bad for You? Separating Fat from Fiction — Kent McDonald
12 Jan2017 Harry Houdini vs. Psychics & Mediums — Mark Tarses
29 Dec2016 Too Good to be True? – Richard Saunders
10 Nov2016 Myths of Astronomy — Thomas Targett
10 Sep2015 Angle Trisection: A problem many tried to solve — Paul Stepahin
  9 Apr2015 Herding Cats and Teaching Science — Dan Pemberton
12 Feb2015 Quantum Pseudoscience and the Nature of Mind — Russel Willcox
  8 Jan2015 The Manson Family, Cults, and the Psychology of Commitment – Dr. Patrick O’Reilly
10 Oct2012 Writing About Vaccines When Evidence Doesn’t Matter — Liza Gross
12 Sep2012 Gay Conversion Therapy: You Make Me Sick — Sheldon Helms
  8 Aug2012 Documentary & Skype — “In God We Teach”
11 Apr2012 A Skeptical View of Climate Change Skeptics — Mark McCaffrey
14 Nov2011 Climate Change: From the Biotic to the Exotic — Minda Berbeco
12 Oct2011 A Unicorn in Your Tank: Magic Tablets That Won’t Improve Gas Mileage — Yau-Man Chan
14 Sep2011 Catastrophes! — Don Prothero