The Skeptics Guide #1099 - Aug 1 2026
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What is the history and significance of CSI discussed at the start of the live Buffalo show?
You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Friday, June 12th, 2026, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody.
Hey.
Tara Santamaria. Howdy. Jane Novella. Hey, guys. George Traub.
Tatanka.
And we have another guest on our show this week, Richard Wiseman. Richard, thank you for joining us.
It is lovely to be here.
So we are live from Buffalo, Saigon. This is the 50th anniversary of CSI. uh so i brought a couple of pictures so um this is first picture for those of you listening at home so this is a picture from the first meeting that we were summoned to buffalo for that we were then just running a local group and and this is a meeting of the local groups you could see in that picture closest to the to the camera joe nickel And then Barry Carr, then Paul Kurtz, then a mystery guy told Barry, who's this guy? And he said, he'll find out for me. I said, great, we need him for the show. Was that Joe Cain? No, that's not him. Okay, never mind. So then I just went up to him before the show. And I'm like, do you know who the guy is?
He's like, yeah, I'll find out later. I have to go to my office. We're going on in like five minutes. So that doesn't help me. And then there's Bob, me, Evan, and Perry was with us at that time. Here's a picture of me and Paul Kurtz. So this is the first CSI meeting that I went to. And Paul was great. He didn't know me from anything. I was nobody. And he spoke to me for 10 minutes, told me all about secular humanism and CSI and everything.
And you could see the remnants of Steve's brown hair before it went fully gray.
And then this was the first meeting that I spoke at CSI for. This was on alternative medicine. And now this is when we have color photos at this point. I think it's been colorized. We've been doing this for 30 years, but of course CSI has been doing it for 50 years, and definitely they get credit for really kick-starting the modern skeptical movement, and they are still going. They're still chugging along 50 years later. They are absolutely essential to everything that we do. It's one of those organizations where if it didn't exist, somebody would have to invent it, right? Richard, you've been interacting for a long time with the skeptical movement, with CSI. Tell us a funny British anecdote.
I knew Paul quite well, and the first time I went to headquarters, we can edit this out, can't we, if it's inappropriate. I can. So I went to see Paul, and a lovely, lovely man, and amazing, and raised lots of money and so on. Anyway, he said, I'd like to give you a book. And he took down one of his books from the shelf and he wrote to Richard, one of the world's greatest skeptics, Paul Kurtz. I said, that's so lovely. Went outside and I turned the page. On the next page, it said to John, one of the world's greatest skeptics, Paul Kurtz.
That was my main memory from that trip. Yeah, but the good news is that we've been doing this for 50 years collectively. And, you know, we've gotten rid of anti-vaxxers. Global warming denial is gone. And there's no more pseudoscience. It's really all on the fringe, like astrology and all that stuff. UFO, belief in UFOs. Those things will never come back now because we've pretty much eradicated pseudoscience.
We have top thinkers in the U.S. government, guys.
That's why we're turning into a sports podcast.
Yeah.
How about teams?
I think it's like when you're at school, though, a lot of teachers would say to me, you've achieved nothing, but you've tried your best.
You did your best.
Oh, my God. That, to me, is what it's all about. We've tried our best, we've had fun, and we've achieved very, very little.
So that's a conversation we tend to have at these meetings. I was sitting with a few fellow skeptics. And the thing I hold on to is the completely unfalsifiable counterfactual of how much worse the world would be if we weren't doing this. And you can't prove that that's not true. So therefore, I can believe it if I want to.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the history and significance of CSI discussed at the start of the live Buffalo show?
0:00–24:59
2
Who is on the Artemis III crew and what are the mission's objectives and risks?
24:59–51:44
3
Could alien megastructures be hidden around red dwarfs and white dwarfs?
51:44–53:01
4
How did the evolution of sex drive the Ediacaran to Cambrian diversification?
53:01–56:38
5
What practical climate solutions does Michael Mann recommend and how effective are they?
56:38–1:04:55
6
Which Buffalo facts are true in Science or Fiction: Dingus Day, Niagara power, or Teddy Roosevelt's inauguration?
1:04:55–1:46:19