I am in total and complete awe of Dr. Novella, but I identify most with Evan. We both seem to have the same type of personality:  generally quiet, but always ready with a quick retort when appropriate.

There have been so many great interviews, but I'm a big Joe Nickell fan. I really enjoy his stories.

Psychics who take advantage of people's grief.

I'm not much of a blog reader, but I try to check out Rebecca's and Steve's blogs when I have time.

I really love meat, but I'm starting to become more aware of the way that food animals are treated. I'm actually considering going vegetarian, but I need to give it a little more thought. More to come!

David Copperfield, or pretty much anything Dickens.

Countdown, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Red Dwarf, The Simpsons, South Park.

"Is it in?"

I was born in Los Angeles in 1958. My father was a disc jockey, so we moved around a lot from town to town (up and down the dial). He was an outspoken agnostic and liberal, and he frequently found his mouth getting him into trouble (and out of a job). He was a very intelligent and articulate man, but not formally educated and lacking in critical thinking skills. Thus, he tended to believe whatever he read... if it's in a book, it must be true.

I only mention this because I worshipped my father, and I believed everything he told me. It wasn't until I was in junior high school that I began to realize that he was wrong about a lot of things. I wondered how it could be that such a smart-sounding person could be so misinformed about the world.

In the 8th grade I had a science teacher who taught me about the scientific method and critical thinking. Then I understood. My father just never learned to question information. I remember the first time that I confronted him on an issue. He had long maintained that different races represented different levels of human evolution (he was a benevolent bigot, but a bigot nonetheless). When I asked him what his proof of this was, he looked rather hurt that I would actually question him about it. He didn't really have an answer. He just said that he read it somewhere and it made sense to him. That was the first in a long series of very frustrating attempts to open his mind.

Since then I've struggled not only to find truths about the world, but also to find the best ways of learning those truths. I knew about critical thinking, but I never really thought about logical fallacies until I started listening to the SGU podcast. Now I take delight in trying to spot them in other people's arguments (and also my own... I've found that I am a veritable font of such errors).

Politically, you could call me a progressive socialist. Philosophically, a secular humanist.

I'm a pretty quiet, shy person. I'm not a good conversationalist. It's difficult for me to find words to express my thoughts. This has a lot to do with the fact that I was essentially deaf for the first four years of my life. Years of tortuous speech therapy gave me the ability to speak normally, but I don't really think in terms of words. So I have to think carefully about what I want to say.

I choose my friends as carefully as I choose my words. I've met some wonderful people in my travels, and maintain correspondence with many of them.

Anyway, that's me in a nutshell.