Book Review:- The Scope of Skepticism

    

Kylie Sturgess is a powerhouse..really..I just looked at her "About Me" page and I just went Wow, she's busy...
She writes for the Skeptical Enquirer, has been the co-host for the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne in 2010 and 2012, she also writes for Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, appears on The Skeptic Zone podcast and The Pod Delusion, all this while teaching philosophy and studying psychology.
 
I first came across Kylie when looking for podcasts that feature scientists, and found the  Token Skeptic podcast and she has just produced a book about some of the people she has interviewed on the show.

The book is titled:-

The Scope of Skepticism: Interviews, Essays and Observations From the Token Skeptic Podcast

Kylie started the Token Skeptic podcast on 26th December 2009, and now has about 15,000 downloads a month. Episodes can be from 20 minutes to over an hour, and encompasses a wide variety of guests over the 137 (Another one!) 138 episodes she has done so far. 

Token Skeptic episodes include interviews with Andy Lewis of the Quackometer, Dr Steve Novella and his talk at QEDCon (highly recommended), Robin Ince, members of StoptheAVN, Laurence Leung, Dr Richard Wiseman, and Warren Bonett of Embiggen Books. (Warren gets a special mention as he put my suggestion in a window display once.)

The book is a collection of interviews that include Tim Minchin, Stephen Fry, Daniel Loxton, Dr Pamela Gay, Dr Petra Boynton (who I follow on twitter), with 18 interviews in total.

I enjoyed reading many of them, Tim Minchin, Steven Fry are well known and totally wonderful, others I have not heard of before, such as Benjamin Radford, Liz Liddell and some who I didn't know by name, but by what they did such as Sharon Hill of doubtful news.

I admit I did find the one with Caroline Watt to be most interesting and also about the online parapsychology course that she runs (Started 24th September so a bit late now if anyone was interested, sorry).

There was one interview where I'm thinking "What?...what?..call yourself a skeptic?.... You have to buy the book to find out who that was...It's not expensive...so go ahead.. 

If that is not enough Kylie, also blogs at Free Thought Blogs

Do yourself a favor and add the Token Skeptic podcast to your podcast list.


“Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism" - David Suzuki 

Token Skeptic image used with permission of Kylie Sturguess