Hello and welcome to this skeptics guide to the universe. This is your host, Steven Novella,

president of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today as always are Bob Novella.

Hello everyone. Harry DeAngelus. Good evening all. And Evan Bernstein. Hello everyone.

Good job. Guys thanks again for joining me on the skeptics guide.

I wouldn't be anywhere else. This is a small milestone. This is our 20th episode.

Number 20. Only 330 more to catch the Simpsons.

Oh we are well on our way. How many podcasts make a season?

Uh, what? 22 is the standard for sitcoms?

Uh, 22. Course HBO. It's 13.

I guess we get to define it. This is new character. We get to define it.

I think we get to 20. So we're concluding our second season.

Alright, we've got to find a second season.

Okay. I'm fine. It can't be that season too.

In a few minutes we have a guest that will be joining us tonight. Tom Clark,

founder of Naturalism.org. But first we're going to just talk about a couple of news items.

So a couple of quick updates on our favorite topic, intelligent design. It's been so active,

you know, culturally in the news recently. It's obviously a very important topic for us

as scientists and skeptics that we can't help talking about it.

Two news items caught my eye this week. The first is a story about a new course being taught

at the University of Kansas. Now if you recall, it's the Kansas State School Board, which a few

years ago voted to remove evolution from the state's science standards for their public schools.

The board who made that vote was largely voted out. The new board reversed that decision.

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