This is your host, Michael Sherman, and you're listening to Science Salon, a series of conversations

with leading scientists, scholars, and thinkers about the most important issues of our time.

Well, let's get rolling. You're here in America for your show, a secret.

I ask.

Congratulations on the extension of the dates, I understand, that's through late June, right?

So that's good.

Yeah, it's very, very, it's very exciting.

It's been a real delight.

American audiences are quite fantastic, so it's lovely.

So, well, I thought before we get into your book, which I have here, happy, which really

surprised me, it's a really deep thoughtful book and I want to get into the depth of that

in a little bit, but you know because

skeptic audiences are so fond of magic and magicians and there's been this long

relationship between say going back to Houdini and the debunking of phony

psychics and and all the way up through the amazing Randy and the founding of

the modern skeptical movement and you know Penn and teller and as classic debunkers and

their show bullshit and all that now you so I'm just curious to your thoughts I

mean were you always a skeptic and and and by the way we're also doing this this is our

25th anniversary of Skeptic magazine so we're doing a when did I become a

card-carrying skeptic thing so maybe you'd like to throw in there you know I'm I became a card-carrying

skeptic win something like that I well I became a card-carrying skeptic I think

after university so I I was a Christian when I was growing up and became quite a sort of happy clabby Christian by the end of that.

...