In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Western New York State—including the city of Buffalo—was the breeding ground for a surprising number of new religious movements, utopian communities, and superstitious ideas. The Fox sisters launched spiritualism in the Rochester area, but several other threads of the spiritualist movement stem from Western New York. Finally, long before the Center for Inquiry was founded, this area provided early examples of skeptical tests of paranormal beliefs. Stuart Vyse will take you on a tour of this fascinating burned-over district.
","frontmatter":{"title":"Welcome to the Burned-Over District!","location":"SkyView 5","paid":false,"fullspkr":"Stuart Vyse","slug":"welcome-to-the-burned-over-district","day":"Friday","speakers":["vyse-stuart"],"startTime":540,"endTime":570}},{"html":"A half-century ago, a rising tide of pseudoscience and paranormal belief swept the Western world. In response, a small group of scholars, magicians, science writers, and others alarmed by the dearth of reaction from the scientific community banded together to found the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). This marked the beginning of the modern skeptical movement. While the Committee’s survival for fifty years is in itself a signal accomplishment and reason for celebration, one cannot fully appreciate the passion and urgency with which it was founded, nor comprehend the magnitude of its achievements, without first understanding the societal context in which it took form. James Alcock knows that context well; he was there.
","frontmatter":{"title":"Fifty Years of the Modern Skeptical Movement","location":"SkyView 5","paid":false,"fullspkr":"James Alcock","slug":"talk2","day":"Friday","speakers":["alcock-james"],"startTime":570,"endTime":600}},{"html":"In 1987, the Bay Area Skeptics (BAS) conducted an exposé of faith healer W.V. Grant in San Francisco and Oakland. Eugenie Scott played a character named Victoria Patmore, who was there with her arthritic uncle, John, hoping to be healed of blindness. Victoria’s secret, of course, was that she was maybe a little nearsighted but was far from blind. Nonetheless, Grant employed a crowd-pleasing bit of theater to “cure” Victoria of her blindness. How did BAS pull off this exposé, and what were the repercussions? What lessons should skeptics take away from exposés of charlatans and scam artists?
","frontmatter":{"title":"Victoria’s Secret (No, Not That One)","location":"SkyView 5","paid":false,"fullspkr":"Eugenie Scott","slug":"talk3","day":"Friday","speakers":["scott-eugenie"],"startTime":600,"endTime":630}},{"html":"","frontmatter":{"title":"Break / Book Signing with Mary Roach","location":null,"paid":false,"fullspkr":null,"slug":"afternoon-break-friday","day":"Friday","speakers":null,"startTime":630,"endTime":null}},{"html":"Following the historical presentations by Stuart Vyse, James Alcock and Eugenie Scott, these speakers will be joined on the stage by Barry Karr (the longtime executive director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquirer), Ruth Frazier (the widow of Skeptical Inquirer’s longest-running editor, Kendrick Frazier), and Ronald A Lindsay (editor of Free Inquiry). Together this panel will discuss fifty years of struggles and successes. Stuart Vyse will serve as the panel’s moderator.
","frontmatter":{"title":"History Panel (James Alcock, Eugenie Scott, Barry Karr, Ruth Frazier, Ronald A. Lindsay, and Stuart Vyse)","location":"SkyView 5","paid":false,"fullspkr":null,"slug":"talk4","day":"Friday","speakers":["alcock-james","scott-eugenie","karr-barry","frazier-ruth","lindsay-ronald-a","vyse-stuart","lindsay"],"startTime":660,"endTime":735}},{"html":"","frontmatter":{"title":"Lunch On Your Own","location":null,"paid":false,"fullspkr":null,"slug":"lunch","day":"Friday","speakers":null,"startTime":735,"endTime":null}},{"html":"We all see it: an AI-driven scampocalypse is coming … and it looks an awful lot like we’re not prepared. In this session, Brian Brushwood and Perry Carpenter will briefly outline two important concepts to understand as part of a defensive arsenal: myth-direction, where scammers embed their payload inside familiar stories and worldviews, and wolfmasking, Brian’s deceptive roleplay technique that reveals the narrative tricks of fraudsters. With quick, surprising examples, they reveal how easily even careful, skeptical thinkers can be steered off course. You’ll leave with a sharper sense of how these tricks work—and a stronger instinct for resisting them.
","frontmatter":{"title":"Myth-Direction and Wolfmasking: Urgent Solutions to the AI Scampocalypse","location":"SkyView 5","paid":false,"fullspkr":"Brian Brushwood and Perry Carpenter","slug":"talk5","day":"Friday","speakers":["brushwood-brian","carpenter-perry"],"startTime":840,"endTime":870}},{"html":"From pandemics to the climate crisis, humanity faces tougher challenges than ever. Whether it’s the health of our people or the health of our planet, we know we are on an unsustainable path. But our efforts to effectively tackle these existential crises are now hampered by a common threat: politically and ideologically motivated opposition to science. Michael Mann discusses his collaboration with public health scientist Peter Hotez, examining the five forces—plutocrats, pros, petrostates, phonies, and the press—behind the modern-day anti-science movement, informed by their decades of experience on the frontlines of the battle to convey accurate, reliable, and trustworthy information about science in the face of determined and nihilistic opposition. Focusing in this first talk on the climate crisis, Mann will discuss how we can be empowered to promote scientific truths, shine light on channels of dark money, dismantle the corporations poisoning the planet, and ultimately avert disaster.
","frontmatter":{"title":"Science under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World (Part 1)","location":"SkyView 5","paid":false,"fullspkr":"Michael Mann","slug":"talk6","day":"Friday","speakers":["mann-michael"],"startTime":870,"endTime":900}},{"html":"For a second talk on pandemic denialism, we have seen how antivaccine activism that first accelerated in the early 2000s finally erupted to cause widespread COVID-19 deaths in America. This was especially apparent in states, such as Texas, where the antivaccine movement combined with libertarian “health freedom” rhetoric. In all, at least 200,000 Americans needlessly perished because they refused COVID-19 vaccines during waves of the delta and BA.1 variants in 2021–2022. They became victims of a coordinated health and science disinformation campaign championed by the Murdoch media, their allied podcasters, and even some extremist members of the U.S. Congress. This went beyond protesting vaccine mandates; they falsely discredited the effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines and then targeted COVID-19 scientists to portray them as public enemies. Piling on was a wellness and influencer industry that pedaled anti-parasitic drugs (e.g., ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine) as viable alternatives even though they do nothing to prevent or treat COVID-19. This dark aspect of the wellness influencers now pervades the U.S. government’s current Make America Healthy Again agenda. Yet there’s still time to fix this and rescue our national biosecurity.
","frontmatter":{"title":"Science under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World (Part 2)","location":"SkyView 5","paid":false,"fullspkr":"Peter Hotez","slug":"talk7","day":"Friday","speakers":["hotez-peter"],"startTime":900,"endTime":990}},{"html":"","frontmatter":{"title":"Break / Book Signing with Michael Mann & Peter Hotez","location":null,"paid":false,"fullspkr":null,"slug":"afternoon-break-friday","day":"Friday","speakers":null,"startTime":930,"endTime":null}},{"html":"The cohosts of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe (SGU) podcast—Steven Novella, Jay Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Bob Novella and Evan Bernstein—will be joined by Geroge Hrab (host of the Geologic Podcast) for a live recording of the show. The SGU recently celebrated twenty years of podcasting and was featured on a recent cover of Skeptical Inquirer.
","frontmatter":{"title":"The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe Live Podcast","location":"SkyView 5","paid":false,"fullspkr":null,"slug":"talk8","day":"Friday","speakers":[],"startTime":960,"endTime":1050}},{"html":"","frontmatter":{"title":"Dinner On Your Own","location":null,"paid":false,"fullspkr":null,"slug":"dinner-friday","day":"Friday","speakers":null,"startTime":1050,"endTime":null}},{"html":"You may know Banachek from Project Alpha, when he teamed up with Michael Edwards and James Randi to deceive parapsychologists into believing he and Edwards had real paranormal abilities. Or perhaps you know Banachek from the last CSICon, where he performed his mentalism show called “Mind Games.” During the 2026 CSICon, attendees will be amazed by his other show called “Telepathy.” Banachek includes audience participation in his shows, so be ready to have your mind read (and blown).
","frontmatter":{"title":"Banachek’s Telepathy Show","location":"SkyView 5","paid":false,"fullspkr":null,"slug":"talk9","day":"Friday","speakers":["banachek"],"startTime":1185,"endTime":1245}},{"html":"A Skeptical Extravaganza of Special Significance is an interactive stage show from the award winning Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast. With musician and fellow podcaster George Hrab as your host, the team uses improv games, illusions, and playful challenges to reveal how easily perception and memory can be fooled. The audience takes part throughout, solving puzzles, joining experiments and trying to beat the SGU at trivia. Expect sharp improv, live music, and counterintuitive tests to see just how easily their brain can fool them. Suitable for curious minds and families with older kids. Typical runtime is about two hours. The cast includes the co-hosts of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast – Steven Novella, Jay Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Bob Novella and Evan Bernstein.\nAdmission for this event is $99.
","frontmatter":{"title":"Skeptical Extravaganza","location":"SkyView 5","paid":true,"fullspkr":null,"slug":"skeptical-extravaganza","day":"Friday","speakers":[],"startTime":1275,"endTime":1395}}]}}}