Lauren Lane

Hello Skepticoners!

Introducing Rose Eveleth to the Skepticon 11 Speaker Lineup!

Rose Eveleth is a producer, host, reporter and writer based in Berkeley. She’s dabbled in everything from research on pelagic invertebrates to animations about beer to podcasts about fake tumbleweed farms. These days, she explores how humans tangle with science and technology.

She has a degree in ecology, behavior and evolution from UC San Diego where she did some research on krill, which really was just a front for hanging around in the Pelagic Invertebrates Collection at Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

Then she moved to New York City to get her graduate degree in journalism at NYU. At school, she edited the program’s online magazine, built an iPad app, interned a bunch of places, and tried not to get car doored too many times on her bike.

Since then, She’s been a columnist for WIRED, BBC Future and Motherboard, the producer of the Story Collider, the special media manager at Nautilus, a new digital magazine about science, culture and philosophy and the managing editor for LadyBits, a place where women are smart about science. She also edited the Smart News blog at Smithsonian Magazine, and founded Science Studio, a home for all the best science multimedia on the web. Even before that she was an editor of all things animated at TED Education, and a contributing editor at Smart Planet. Most recently she helped ESPN’s award winning documentary series 30 for 30 launch their podcast.

These days she’s the producer and host of Flash Forward, a podcast about the future.

Speaker Twitter, Website, Instagram, Flash Forward Podcast

We can’t wait to see them on our main stage and hope you’re excited, too!

Love,

Skepticon

P.S. — Please consider donating to Skepticon today and help us continue to keep this event FREE!

Hello Skepticoners!

Introducing Indre Viskontasto the Skepticon 11 Speaker Lineup!

“I’m an opera singer who came of age during the decade of the brain. I’ve always been pulled both by art and by science and have finally found ways to integrate the two in my work. I finished a Masters of Music degree in Voice Performance and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience and currently enjoy faculty positions at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the University of San Francisco. I’m passionate about communicating ideas to the public, by giving compelling lectures about the brain, hosting two podcasts and performing and directing contemporary opera.”

Speaker Website

We can’t wait to see them on our main stage and hope you’re excited, too!

Love,

Skepticon

P.S. — Please consider donating to Skepticon today and help us continue to keep this event FREE!

Hello Skepticoners!

Introducing Miri Mogilevsky to the Skepticon 11 Speaker Lineup!

Miri is a writer, speaker, activist, and social worker based in Columbus, Ohio, originally from Israel by way of the Midwest, originally-originally from Russia (but she’s never been there). Her blog, Brute Reason, covers social justice, psychology, mental health, sexuality, and other stuff she cares about. Most of her writing touches on issues like consent and autonomy, direct communication, community building, and rational thinking. Her writing has appeared in the Daily Dot, xoJane, Everyday Feminism, Friendly Atheist, Salon, and other outlets.

Speaker Twitter, Website, Blog

We can’t wait to see them on our main stage and hope you’re excited, too!

Love,

Skepticon

P.S. — Please consider donating to Skepticon today and help us continue to keep this event FREE!

Hello Skepticoners!

Introducing Megan Kenny and Rajani Gudlavalleti to the Skepticon 11 Speaker Lineup!

As a team, we have held workshops for the National GLSEN conference and the National Secular Student Alliance (SSA) conference. Our goals in these conversations are: 1) to provide participants with tools for honest conversation about implicit racial bias, structural racism, and white supremacy as both conscious and unconscious practices; 2) to encourage participants to reflect on their own identities, specifically racial and gender-related identities, in the context of advancing social justice; and 3) share lessons learned on building, challenging, and strengthening multi-racial friendships and relationships.

Speakers Website, Megan Twitter, Rajani Website

We can’t wait to see them on our main stage and hope you’re excited, too!

Love,

Skepticon

P.S. — Please consider donating to Skepticon today and help us continue to keep this event FREE!

Hello Skepticoners!

Introducing Dr. Juhem Navarro-Rivera to the Skepticon 11 Speaker Lineup!

DR. JUHEM NAVARRO-RIVERA is one of the leading scholars at the intersection of race, religion, and politics in the United States. He is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Humanist Studies, the co-chair of the Latinx Humanist Alliance, and member of the board of directors of the American Humanist Association. Born in Puerto Rico, Navarro-Rivera holds degrees in Political Science from the University of Puerto Rico (B.A.) and the University of Connecticut (M.A., Ph.D.). He lives in the Washington, DC metro area and is the managing partner and political research director of Socioanalítica Research.

Speaker Twitter

We can’t wait to see them on our main stage and hope you’re excited, too!

Love,

Skepticon

P.S. — Please consider donating to Skepticon today and help us continue to keep this event FREE!

Hello Skepticoners!

Introducing Cora Harrington to the Skepticon 11 Speaker Lineup!

Cora Harrington is the Founder and Editor in Chief of The Lingerie Addict as well as the author of In Intimate Detail: How to Choose, Wear, and Love Lingerie. She has been featured as a lingerie expert on CNN, Headline News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Allure, Bloomberg, Vogue, and dozens of other publications.

Speaker Instagram, Twitter, Lingerie is for Everybody Instagram

We can’t wait to see them on our main stage and hope you’re excited, too!

Love,

Skepticon

P.S. — Please consider donating to Skepticon today and help us continue to keep this event FREE!

Hello Skepticoners!

Introducing Marissa Alexa McCool to the Skepticon 11 Speaker Lineup!

About Marissa:

Marissa Alexa McCool is an LGBT-rights activist and speaker, multiple podcast host, author, columnist, and stage performer whose goal is to speak out, speak loudly, and bring visibility to LGBT issues. She hosts the Inciting Incident and The Cis Are Getting Out of Hand podcasts, and is the author of seven books as well as numerous articles. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017 and is now an MFA student at Augsburg University.

Speaker Website, Spreaker Profile

We can’t wait to see them on our main stage and hope you’re excited, too!

Love,

Skepticon

P.S. — Please consider donating to Skepticon today and help us continue to keep this event FREE!

Hello Skepticoners!

Introducing Ashton P. Woods to the Skepticon 11 Speaker Lineup!

About Ashton:

Unapologetically Black, same gender loving, HIV positive & atheist. All of these descriptors speak to the identity of the New Orleans native who at age fifteen took part in the founding of one of the first Gay/straight alliances ever in a New Orleans area high school. That was the genesis of his work as a civil rights activist. He knows what being marginalized looks and feels like which informs his philosophy that Black liberation and justice must be inter-sectional. Ashton’s belief in Black liberation and inter-sectional justice is highlighted by his active involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement, racial justice, feminism, LGBTQ rights and secular activism. ​ Ashton is currently based in Houston, TX and is The Co – Founder & lead organizer for Black Lives Matter: Houston. When he isn’t organizing, Ashton acts as Co – chair for the Black Humanist Alliance, which is a coalition of secular activists under the American Humanist Association. In the LGBT community Ashton is very involved in the fight for equality and his efforts led to a recent appointment to the City of Houston’s first LGBT advisory board. As the founder of the Strength In Numbers Project and blog he writes about issues affecting the Black community while implementing the tenets set forth in the main project (more info). In addition to his own blog, Ashton writes as a blogger for POZ magazine and has contributed to many publications like The Humanist, The Body, Houston Press, and many others on a myriad of subjects.

Speaker Website, Twitter

We can’t wait to see them on our main stage and hope you’re excited, too!

Love,

Skepticon

P.S. — Please consider donating to Skepticon today and help us continue to keep this event FREE!

Hello fronds!

Registration is now open for Skepticon 11!

We’re looking forward to hosting our first ever con in St. Louis and hope you can join in on the fun. HERE WE COME GATEWAY TO THE WEST!

Love,

Skepticon

HELLO SKEPTICON FRIENDS!

O. M. G. have we missed you! What have you been up to? Did you do cool things? I certainly hope so.

We’re writing to you today from our hibernation caves to give you a little update on Skepticon 11. As we mentioned at the end of our last conference, we’re moving! While this is certainly exciting (are you ready St. Louis?!) — it’s taking some time. We’re not going to be able to host an event in 2018 so look for updates towards the end of this year regarding SK11 in 2019!

In the meantime our leadership team is going to take a small break and maybe take up knitting or karate or yoga or something. We certainly won’t be too far (after all, we’ve got some fun surprises coming up this summer! JUST YOU WAIT!), and we hope that you won’t wander to far away, either!

If you’re feeling it — send us a love note via Facebook, Twitter, Email, or carrier pigeon. OH, and donations are always welcome (lol lawsuits while lol fundraising).

We’re also always looking for fresh new faces to our leadership team, and if that could be you then drop us a line! We’d love to talk more.

Love always,

Skepticon