I am back from an almost three week trip to LA, Sydney and Christchurch. Sorry I did not have time to keep up with my blog over that period – in which we recorded four live SGU shows, produced three days of conference content, put on two stage shows, and hosted several other events. It was a tremendous amount of fun, but also a great deal of work. I am now jet-lagged and fighting off the remains of a viral infection I picked up along the way.

Such trips always reinvigorate my dedication to science communication and scientific skepticism. I appreciate every conference-goer who came up to tell me about their personal journey and the role the content I have helped produce had played in it. I thought I would share some further observations from the trip.

First, while the skeptical movement, such as it is, has been through a lot, it is still alive and well. The crowds we are able to attract to these events remain robust, and in fact are larger than many past events. There is a lot of enthusiasm for science and critical thinking. There is also a deep hunger for developing the skills to navigate our increasingly complex world. How do we deal with what social media, growing misinformation, deep fakes, and now artificial intelligence has wrought?

People also have a deep desire for community – the kind of community that comes from getting physically together for a shared purpose, not just online.  The number of people we can reach in these physical conferences and meetings is much smaller than online, but I think it remains a critical complement to online content. It also reinforces what I think many of use have learned from the “social media” phenomenon. Online communities are not the same as in-person communities, just online. People interact differently in person and online. The dynamics of social media were simply not what many of us expected. I don’t think we should abandon social media (although I know people who make a reasonable argument that we should), but rather we need to have a more realistic view of its strengths and weaknesses, its vulnerabilities and psychological effects.  Continue Reading »