Skeptoid

Skeptoid dives into the mailbag to answer some emails from listeners. Recorded live at the 250th Episode party at the University of California, Irvine.

A trip through the centuries to see how human knowledge is reflected through music.

Today Skeptoid answers questions from students about airport X-ray machines; claims made by shampoo companies; the safety of non-stick cookware; cloth diapers vs. disposables; and what effects the Moon has on us.

Anneliese Michel is only one of many thousands of people who have been killed by exorcism rites. Does this prehistoric ritual have any place in modern psychiatric care?

A young man's amputated leg was said to have been miraculously restored in 1640, with plenty of hard evidence to back it up. But is this really the best interpretation of that evidence?

Skeptoid revisits another batch of episodes with errors, and rights the wrongs.

When Sir Walter Raleigh sent a colony to settle in America on Roanoke Island, every person disappeared. What happened to them?

Some say that the atmospheric smoke from fires following a nuclear war will create devastating global cooling; others say this is grossly exaggerated.

Skeptoid answers student questions on perpetual motion machines, electronic voice phenomena, semen retention, the authenticity of Shakespeare's works, and the value of antioxidants.

Scientology is notorious for opposing psychiatry, for a bizarre apace opera dogma, and for suing its detractors. Is there more to the story than that?

In 1897, the newspapers reported that an alien spacecraft crashed in Aurora, Texas, and that the pilot's body was buried in the local cemetery. Can we simply dig it up and find out the truth?

Mystery spots all around the world, both natural and manmade, purport to be places where gravity works wrong. Is this truly the explanation, or might there be something else at foot?

Some people are sensitive to gluten and must adopt gluten free diets, but what about the rest of us? Do we also need to be concerned about gluten?

Skeptoid takes a look at another batch of rumors from classic Hollywood, including a deep examination of the story that John Wayne's cancer death was caused by filming downwind of the Nevada Test Site.

Fancy legends come from nowhere if not from Hollywood. Classic Hollywood has produced more than its share of myths, and Skeptoid looks into them to see whether they're true, or just more show biz.