How the curious science of the oddities of everyday life yields new insights
Using an index finger, trace the capital letter Q on your forehead. Which way did the tail of the Q slant?
What an odd thing to ask someone to do. Exploring weird things and why people believe them, however, is what I do for a living. Coming at science from the margins allows us to make an illuminating contrast between the normal and the paranormal, the natural and the supernatural, and the anomalous and the usual. The master at putting uncanny things to the experimental test — the man I call the Mythbuster of Magical Thinking — is University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman. His new book, Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things (Basic, 2007), presents the results of his numerous (and often hilarious) experiments on all matters peculiar. (continue reading…)
The famous theoretical physicist and science popularizer Dr. Michio Kaku interviews Skeptic publisher and science writer Dr. Michael Shermer, in which they explore a variety of topics between science and pseudoscience, the normal and the paranormal, the natural and the supernatural.
Michael Shermer tries his hand at firewalking barefoot across 1000-degree red hot coals and doesn’t get burned. Dr. Shermer provides a scientific explanation for the mysterious phenomenon.
Michael Shermer travels to Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada, to strap on the “God Helmet” in neuroscientist Michael Persinger’s lab that duplicates out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, alien abductions, and other paranormal phenomena.
