HELP US CONTINUE PAT LINSE’S LEGACY
A Note from Michael Shermer — Executive Director of Your Skeptics Society
2021 has shaped up to be one of the most dramatic in recent history as we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdown of the economy. The Skeptics Society has been busier than ever dealing with the fallout of QAnon and rigged-election conspiracy theories, along with those that claim 5G causes COVID-19, that SARS-CoV-2 was invented by Bill Gates, that Big Pharma created a pandemic in order to sell us drugs and vaccines, not to mention antivaxxers and vaccine hesitancy.
On top of all, and tragically, we lost our beloved and respected co-founder of the Skeptics Society and Art Director of Skeptic magazine, Pat Linse. Pat and I founded the organization and the magazine in 1992 and it became our life’s work.
In Skeptic 26.3 we devoted a special section to honoring Pat, including her on both the front cover (in upper-left corner) and back cover, along with tributes from myself, Daniel Loxton, Bill Nye, Carol Tavris, and many others whose lives she touched. Download and read the 18-page tribute to Pat Linse in PDF format.
In episode 233 of my podcast, in remembrance of my friend and business partner of 30 years, I recorded a video tribute to Pat, and shared my thoughts on life and death. You can watch my tribute to Pat by clicking on the image below.
Going forward we shall continue publishing Skeptic per usual, and maintaining our mission of promoting science, reason, and critical thinking. But we can’t do it without your support.
Donate $50 or more and we’ll send you a hardcover copy of Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown.
To this end, I ask you to please pay tribute to Pat Linse and help us continue her legacy of science and skepticism by making a donation to the Skeptics Society so that we may carry on into the future, long after any of us who run it now.
Your tax-deductible donations go not only to the day-to-day operation of the organization, but to our growing endowment so that the Skeptics Society may continue in perpetuity. Many years ago, I set up a stock investment portfolio that has grown in proportion to the market itself (even better, actually, as it is weighted in tech stocks).
Donate instantly online using the link above, or over the phone by calling 1-626-794-3119, or by mailing us a cheque along with your completed printable donation form to P.O. Box 338, Altadena, CA 91001.
Thank you,
Michael Shermer
Executive Director, Skeptics Society
Publisher, Skeptic magazine
EPISODE # 237
David Wengrow on The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike — either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.
In this conversation, based on the book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Shermer speaks with professor of comparative archaeology, David Wengrow, about his pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology that fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society.
If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.
