In 1875, a flame-eyed creature picked at the lead in a window pane to let himself in to a remote farmhouse in Cumberland. The Beast of Croglin Grange has entered our folklore as one of England’s very few homegrown vampires. So let’s take a look at the story see if we can work out what really happened.

This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.

Denialism has been around for years, but recently Covid denialism and denial of Trump’s election loss have become mainstream. Dr Keith Kahn-Harris will argue that we are now seeing both the triumph of denialism and its end — but will it leave a truth-filled utopia, but something even worse?

This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.

Evolutionary perspectives of mothering create a dilemma. Mothers behave in ways that clearly discount the notion of a maternal instinct, but despite advances in our understanding of parenting, the overwhelming majority of students continue to believe in a maternal instinct. We discuss these ramifications and emphasize the need to explore variation in maternal love.

This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe’s history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe.

This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.

Mental health awareness is a very big concern in 2021, particularly with the impact of the pandemic and lockdown. But while being aware that mental health can and does go wrong is important, very little attention is paid to how and why this happens. In his new book, Psycho Logical, neuroscientist, author, and former Psychiatry lecturer Dr Dean Burnett explores all that and more.

This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.

Although music surrounds us for a large proportion of our time it doesn’t seem to serve an obvious purpose. This talk will primarily explore the role of music in social bonding, and whether music is best understood as the alternative to language.

This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.

Do only irrational people fear things like WiFi, artificial sweeteners, and fluoridated water? There have been legitimately dangerous products sold as safe in the past. We'll look at products throughout history that killed, and the marketing campaigns that went along with them.

This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.

In what sense does ‘prison work’? Does the claim stand scrutiny? Phil Scraton will address the harms of imprisonment, critique the reformist ‘rehabilitation’ agenda and explore the potential for prison abolition.

This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.

According to TV shows like "Ancient Aliens", the monumental buildings of the past were created not by our ancestors but by aliens or extradimensional beings. At first glance this appears harmless, but those claims are deeply rooted in creationist and racist ideas.

This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.

How can we mitigate the risks of AI while preserving scientific inquiry and openness? Who is responsible for anticipating the impacts of AI research, and how can they do so effectively? What changes, if any, need to be made to the peer review process?

This event will be online, on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch channel.