Edinburgh Skeptics Presents...

So our sixth Skeptics on the Fringe draws to an end, and we celebrate with our now legendary last night party. Recorded on the 28th August 2015 we bring you our End of Fringe Binge!

Join us when as we invite friends and Fringe performers to do 10 minute turns and the best advice we can give to the audience is to keep a tight grip and expect the unexpected.

In this recording we hear from:

@mmaarrow @BBWMelody @stickybiscuits @harrybakerpoet

We'll be back with some recordings of our 2016 Fringe later this year! Stay tuned!

After their amazing performance for us at our 2015 End of Fringe Binge, David Frank sits down with Sticky Biscuits to discuss their music, their influences and their slightly disgusting name.

@stickybiscuits

The time has come to release our 2016 Skeptics on the Fringe lineup, and we thought we'd try something a little different. Join 4 of our committee Ewan Leeming, Mark Pentler, Claudia Schaffner and Sean Slater as we preview the lineup, discuss the topics and take the piss out of Skeptics With A K a wee bit...

We'll be taking a break during August to actually run the Fringe show, which takes place from 6th-28th August. Every show starts at 7:50pm at the Banshee Labyrinth on Niddry Street (just off the Royal Mile). Shows are free to attend, but we do ask for donations to help cover the cost of putting on events and running the society.

Skeptics on the Fringe is part of PBH's Free Fringe.

www.edinburghskeptics.co.uk/ www.twitter.com/EdSkeptics

Like science fiction in general, Star Trek is a show of ideas, with a number of episodes exploring such philosophical questions as: What is it to a person? What is it to be the same person over time and change? Dr Clio Bellenis entertained at our June monthly Skeptics in the Pub with a fantastic talk about the philosophy of Star Trek - a talk which included FAR too many clips from the show for us to be able to use without getting legal letters, sadly. She also asks if some of the characterisation in the show might be loosely drawn from Ancient Greek Philosophical ideas. Vulcans, for example might seem particularly Stoical!

Since we couldn't bring you the recording, here is our very own Claudia Schaffner chatting to Clio about her talk, along with some of our more infamous questions...

Dr Clio Bellenis has worked in the NHS all her life, as a child and adolescent psychiatrist for the last 25 years. She officially retired in October but hasn't managed to get away yet.

In 2006 She completed an MA in Philosophy with the OU, and learned that it is a way of thinking that doesn't come easy to someone with a scientific background! Her thesis was on the Theory of Mind and Autism.

Twitter: @CBellenis

After an excellent talk during our 2015 Fringe line up, we interviewed Thomas Hind a full 10 months later (!) to find out more about the physics (or not) behind all kinds of ghosts. We also find out about his father, who - remarkably - was an exorcist for the Church of England in their "Ministry of Deliverance" department. We are not making this up.

Thomas Hind is a former physicist turned science communicator turned comedian. He studied Physics at the University of Glasgow and followed it up with an MSc in Science Communication and Public Engagement at the University of Edinburgh as well as briefly working at CERN

Twitter: @ThomasHind

In the most haunted pub in Edinburgh, we ask "What are ghosts made of?" and follow up by asking why do they haunt specific places? How do they move around and go through walls and throw things across rooms when nobody is looking?

The obvious answer is they don't – but what if they did? How would it work?

All of these questions and more will be answered, interweaved with real life ghost stories from Thomas' granddad's 50 years as an exorcist with the Church of England. These will be debunked, bunked and debunked again and you might learn a thing or two about Quantum Tunneling theory in the process.

Thomas Hind is a former physicist turned science communicator turned comedian. He studied Physics at the University of Glasgow and followed it up with an MSc in Science Communication and Public Engagement at the University of Edinburgh as well as briefly working at CERN

Twitter: @ThomasHind

Climate Change is the largest challenge facing the world right now. Each year Skeptics on the Fringe has looked at different aspects of climate change, such public policy, or how to measure its impact. This year we've invited one of Edinburgh's PhD students to share with us her research into an unusual approach which may help us tackle it.

Under extreme conditions, such as high temperatures or pressures, materials behave differently to how they do at the conditions we experience everyday. For example, graphite transforms into diamond, oxygen becomes a metal and water 'freezes' at room temperature. In this talk, you'll find out what happens when you you squeeze ice and gases to high pressures, and how this may help combat climate change.

Mary-Ellen Donnelly is a final year physics PhD student at the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions in the University of Edinburgh studying what happens when ice and hydrogen mixtures are squeezed to high pressures.

Join EdSkeptics regular Kitty Johnstone as she sits down with Lucy Pickering to talk public toilets, knickers, and cottaging (yes, really).

Dr Pickering is a lecturer in medical anthropology at the University of Glasgow. She first got interested in toilets during fieldwork with countercultural Americans in Hawai'i, and having to get used to using a composting toilet. She has since published on composting toilets, and on toilet use in heroin use and recovery.

She has recently shifted her focus towards public toilets in the UK and the ways in which people manage being out and about in public through their access to toilets. She is committed to increasing access to public space through public toilet provision and highlighting the ways in which toilet access can be a hidden form of inequality in the UK today.

Twitter: @AwfullySensible

Why do fringe goers spend so much time looking for a loo? Why can't we just wee in the street? Where do homeless people wash? In seeking to answer these and other questions, Lucy explores that most mundane of objects: the toilet. Today every home has one, but they are increasingly vanishing from our streets. In their place have appeared toilets in department stores and cafes, pay-to-use toilets in stations and the like. But is a toilet in a shopping mall public? Who can easily use it? Who can't? By bringing together the history of hygiene with contemporary urban planning (and a little bit of sociology), Lucy explores how toilets – and in particular public toilets – profoundly shape our lives and the societies we live in.

Dr Pickering is a lecturer in medical anthropology at the University of Glasgow. She first got interested in toilets during fieldwork with countercultural Americans in Hawaii, and having to get used to using a composting toilet. She has since published on composting toilets, and on toilet use in heroin use and recovery.

She has recently shifted her focus towards public toilets in the UK and the ways in which people manage being out and about in public through their access to toilets. She is committed to increasing access to public space through public toilet provision and highlighting the ways in which toilet access can be a hidden form of inequality in the UK today.

Twitter: @AwfullySensible

Smart people don't like the idea of IQ testing. Even though the tests are some of the most useful measures we have in psychology, they have a toxic reputation: mention IQ in polite company and you'll be accused of being an elitist, or perhaps worse.

This talk will first make the case that IQ scores are meaningful: we'll discuss the evidence from a century of research in psychology, neuroscience, genetics, and medicine. Then, we'll discuss the history of the 'IQ controversy'. Why are these tests so maligned? How much of the criticism is deserved? What does the future hold for the science of human intelligence?

Stuart Ritchie has spoken for us on topics ranging from Shakespeare to pornography. He is a postdoctoral fellow in the Psychology Department at the University of Edinburgh, researching how intelligence changes across the lifespan, and how it relates to genetics, the brain, and education. His research has been published in journals such as the Current Biology, Journal of Neuroscience, and Psychological Science.

Stuart has a book that was published around the time of this talk: Intelligence: All that Matters, and he's on Twitter at @StuartJRitchie