Edinburgh Skeptics Presents...

The podcast returns for one week only! (Probably. Hopefully a few more before the Fringe).

Join Mark, Sean & Heather as they go through each night of the Skeptics on the Fringe 2017 lineup and discuss the people, the topics, and generally lark about for 50 minutes.

Skeptics on the Fringe 2017 began in 2009 and is our contribution to the world's biggest arts festival. We bring a dose of scientific skepticism, critical thinking, and rationalism to the city during the month of August.

Skeptics on the Fringe will be at its usual venue - The Banshee Labyrinth on Niddry Street (just off the Royal Mile). We'll be in the Chamber Room at 7:50pm. Details of the complete lineup can be found on the usual places:

Website: http://www.edinburghskeptics.co.uk/ Twitter: @EdSkeptics Facebook: We're on as Edinburgh Skeptics MeetUp: http://meetup.com/EdinburghSkeptics/

In this interview with EdSkeptics Science Festival speaker Emma McClure we delve deeper into some of the issues with the reliance on certain types of forensic evidence, hear about her journey into skepticism, and find out what happened to her first pet - featuring special guest star Emma's mother.

Emma McClure is a solicitor specialising in prison and public law whose work sees her regularly representing prisoners during parole hearings and bringing judicial reviews against public bodies. She has given talks around the country on the way in which over-confidence in the veracity of forensic science can lead to miscarriages of justice and has gone undercover to investigate psychics, faith healers and Mind Body Spirit fairs.

Follow Emma on Twitter: @Emmemmemma

We're back but also we never really went away or something. For this double episode of the podcast we have a talk and an interview with prison lawyer Emma McClure. In this talk, she examines the issues with forensic techniques, highlighting the amusing, confusing and sometimes tragic consequences of failing to take a skeptical approach to evidence in the field of forensic science.

Emma McClure is a solicitor specialising in prison and public law whose work sees her regularly representing prisoners during parole hearings and bringing judicial reviews against public bodies. She has given talks around the country on the way in which over-confidence in the veracity of forensic science can lead to miscarriages of justice and has gone undercover to investigate psychics, faith healers and Mind Body Spirit fairs.

Follow Emma on Twitter: @Emmemmemma

For the podcast this week we have some bonus content for you while we pin down some of our Science Festival speakers for interviews. We have a recording of a talk given at one of our monthly cinema nights.

Over eight million tonnes of plastic enters the ocean each year, killing sea life. Now new evidence says it's entering our food chain with unknown health effects. Dr Mark Hartl - Associate Professor of Marine Biology, Director, Centre of Marine Biodiversity & Biotechnology - discusses the implications. Microplastic contamination is now ubiquitous in the (marine) environment. Efforts to put mitigating government policy measures in place require a monitoring programme to establish baseline concentrations in order to gauge impact and effectiveness.

Follow Mark on Twitter at: @M_Hartl

(Sorry for the slightly dodgy audio... - Ed)

Time reasons scuppered our chances of having a nice chat with our old friend, QI Elf, and ex-copper Stevyn Colgan. So, to go along with his Science Festival 2017 talk we're dusting off the archives and bringing you a EdSkeptics classic - our interview with Stevyn from QED 2016.

Stevyn Colgan is an author, artist, public speaker and oddly-spelled Cornishman. He has, among other things, been a chef, a brewer, a comics publisher and – for three decades - a police officer in London, during which time he was set on fire twice, was sworn at by a royal, met two US Presidents and a Pope, was kissed by Princess Diana and let Freddie Mercury wear his helmet. He is a visiting lecturer at a number of UK universities and is a regular speaker at UK and international events such as TED, HybridConf, 5x15, QEDcon, the Ig Nobel Prizes, Latitude, the Hay Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe.

He has appeared on numerous podcasts and radio shows including Freakonomics, Do The Right Thing, Ex Libris, No Such Thing As A Fish, Little Atoms and Josie Lawrence's Short Cuts. He is also one of the 'Elves' that research and write the multi award-winning BBC TV series QI and was part of the writing team that won the Rose D'or for BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity.

Find him on Twitter @StevynColgan.

The podcast returns! And we're back with a corker - the first of our run of talks under the banner of the Edinburgh International Science Festival. First up is QI Elf and ex-London copper Stevyn Colgan. Stevyn was a police officer in Scotland Yard for 20 years, as part of the Problem Solving Unit finding imaginative solutions to quell tensions in communities, from dog shows to lollipops.

Stevyn Colgan is an author, artist, public speaker and oddly-spelled Cornishman. He has, among other things, been a chef, a brewer, a comics publisher and – for three decades - a police officer in London, during which time he was set on fire twice, was sworn at by a royal, met two US Presidents and a Pope, was kissed by Princess Diana and let Freddie Mercury wear his helmet. He is a visiting lecturer at a number of UK universities and is a regular speaker at UK and international events such as TED, HybridConf, 5x15, QEDcon, the Ig Nobel Prizes, Latitude, the Hay Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe.

He has appeared on numerous podcasts and radio shows including Freakonomics, Do The Right Thing, Ex Libris, No Such Thing As A Fish, Little Atoms and Josie Lawrence's Short Cuts. He is also one of the 'Elves' that research and write the multi award-winning BBC TV series QI and was part of the writing team that won the Rose D'or for BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity.

Find him on Twitter @StevynColgan.

For our final trip down the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe memory lane we're heading back to 2/3rds through the run for our Mid Fringe Binge! We always have a few nights at the Fringe where we invite our old friends to come back and do something for us, plus we scout the Fringe to find some sufficiently nerdy or sciencey shows happening elsewhere to promote to our audience.

First we have some nerdy pirate-themed music courtesy of our old friends and Fringe legends Jollyboat. Arrrrghhhhhh! The boys have played for us many times and they never fail to bring the house down.

Then we find out how to lead a happy life courtesy of stand-up comedian, GP, Private Eye journalist and actual man-off-the-telly Dr Phil Hammond. And some Clangers.

We'll be back over the next few weeks with some recordings from our crime-themed 2017 Edinburgh International Science Festival talks. We hope you've enjoyed these Fringe podcasts, but it'd be even better to see you in person. We're planning our 2017 Fringe run right now, and we'll let you know what's going on later this summer.

For our last talk from the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe we're having a look at how online and offline spaces work both for and against democracy courtesy of Ella Taylor Smith. If we think of social media as spaces – like rooms – we get a new perspective on what's going on and why. This talk looks at what people are doing when they're doing democracy, in online and offline spaces. What is it about these spaces that makes them useful or worrying for our democracies? Spoiler alert – going to talk about spaces being public or hidden and who pays for what.

Ella Taylor Smith has been researching how people use/could use the Internet to get involved in democracy, since 2001, at Edinburgh Napier University's School of Computing. Last century she moved to Edinburgh in 1988, where she went to Art College, then worked as a chef.

Many, many, many months after his talk, Claudia Schaffner sits down with Charles Cockell to talk in more detail about life throughout the universe. And how the hell we're going to find it...

Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology. His academic interests are life in extreme environments and the habitability of extraterrestrial environments. He is the author of the undergraduate text book, 'Astrobiology: Understanding Life in the Universe' published by Wiley-Blackwell. He is first or co-author on over 250 scientific papers and he's Chair of the Earth and Space Foundation, a non-profit organisation he established in 1994. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Find out more at www.astrobiology.ac.uk

Will we find life elsewhere in the Universe and what are we really looking for? Why has this question suddenly become more interesting? In this talk from the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Charles Cockell guides us through the possibilities and tells us what could be out there and how we can try to find it.

Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology. His academic interests are life in extreme environments and the habitability of extraterrestrial environments. He is the author of the undergraduate text book, 'Astrobiology: Understanding Life in the Universe' published by Wiley-Blackwell. He is first or co-author on over 250 scientific papers and he's Chair of the Earth and Space Foundation, a non-profit organisation he established in 1994. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Find out more at www.astrobiology.ac.uk