r/SGU • u/assumptioncookie • 21h ago
r/SGU • u/theskepticsguide • Jun 28 '26
Megathread [Megathread] Evan and SGU’s response
To limit the number of duplicate or very similar posts from flooding the subreddit let’s move all future (and current conversations plz) to this post. In the words of Ringo Starr “peace and love peace and love no new posts ✌️ and ❤️ ”
r/SGU • u/Queasy_Carpet_9962 • Jun 16 '26
SGU response to the Evan issue
Hey, everyone.
We wanted to clarify the situation so that you don't have to speculate about the many questions it raises.
First, we all unequivocally denounce the views that Evan expressed on his feed. None of us share them or anything close to them. We have made it clear to Evan that such views are unacceptable and fail at a basic level of critical thinking and humanity. Also, no one on the SGU knew that Evan was harboring these views. We
have discussed this extensively over the last couple of days, and it's clear he was keeping this compartmentalized and did not feel comfortable discussing it with us. None of us are on X, so we are all as surprised as anyone.
But we have also known Evan for years as a friend and colleague, so we are trying to understand how he got here (not to minimize or excuse, but to understand). As we put this together it seems that Evan allowed himself to be radicalized following the events of Oct. 7th and the ensuing polarization. As a Jewish person this was extremely emotional for him, he felt that his people and identity were under existential threat, and he needed to do something. But he never engaged with the people who perhaps might have helped him the best work through this. Instead he found an online community that shared his views, with unfortunately predictable results. None of this is an excuse - he should have known better, he should have checked in with his colleagues, and he should have recognized the pattern, he should have shown more humility. But he didn't.
To be clear - none of our concerns are about Evan's politics per se. There is a range of political ideology on the SGU, and we value what diversity of background and perspective we have (it's not enough, frankly). We also all feel that the skeptical movement should be a big tent when it comes to political background, ideology, belief, and identity - as long as we all share this common journey of skepticism, rationalism, love of science, and critical thinking. However, Evan's political views crossed a line, violating core skeptical principles and dehumanizing "others".
So where do we go from here? Evan has stumbled hard on his skeptical journey, and he is starting to recognize and wrestle with how badly he has failed. But as we often say on the show, we see our job as helping people on this journey, to educate, nurture, and guide. We do not shame, blame, and cancel. So our instinct is to try to pick Evan up and help him get back on a more skeptical path. He knows he has a lot of hard cognitive and emotional work to do, to unravel his views, grow as a person, and regain the trust of the community and his fellow Rogues.
For now Evan is taking a break from recording the show, to give us all time to work through this more. We are all actively working with him, and will just have to reassess day by day. We will see how it goes.
We are all sorry for the strife this has caused within our community. We all care very deeply about the SGU community and take our responsibilities very seriously. We will fix this one way or the other, and hope we have earned enough trust over the years that you will give us the time to make sure we get this right.
Sincerely,
Steve and the SGU crew.
r/SGU • u/ConsciousLaw3940 • 20h ago
The Most Obvious Belief, Yet the Stupidest One
Are energy, auras, and vibrations just old superstition repackaged in scientific-sounding language?
r/SGU • u/No_Dragonfly_5337 • 1d ago
Gallup - Does the test work?
I'm interested in understanding and hearing feedback from people who took this test, did it help you? or do you know similar tests? Or are all these tests complete nonsense?
r/SGU • u/W0nderingMe • 2d ago
Ep 1111 discussion
I liked Alice, she was a nice addition.
WTW is always fun for me.
The discussion about MS was great, lots of additional context was provided that could apply to a lot of situations. I really appreciate both Cara and Steve's perspectives.
Ultraprocessed food -- good conversation but I didn't really take anything new away from it.
Superworm- I thought it was hilarious when Cara finally said she was obviously just asking the question because she wanted to share her own favorite, and i was pretty surprised that the human skull wasn't Bob's favorite. Like, as soon as she asked the question, I answered "well obviously the one Steve got for Bob!"
Leap second was covered well but I don't care at all. No offense.
Wellness - great topic and coverage.
WTN - one of my dogs was fascinated by Steve's noisy.
S or F - really surprised by Cara's insistence on eyes. That's a very western- centric approach. The rogues has a convo a while ago (Rebecca era) about how emoticons vary based on culture, with eyes being the focus on the west and mouths in the east.
Quote - always happy to see Carson represented.
Side note: I'm up to episode 215 in my replay, and it's still saying produced by the NESS. Also, interesting to hear them talk back then about range EVs and how they just weren't going to have market penetration until they could solve the range dilemma. Amazing to think about how far the industry has come since then.
r/SGU • u/Ranger_E • 3d ago
#1111 Alice
It was lovely to hear Alice on the show this week. Really great to hear the English accent (not that there’s anything wrong with the rest of the team’s accents! 😄).
r/SGU • u/OaklandSpiel • 3d ago
#1111 Processed? Ultraprocessed?
I was so glad to hear SGU push back on the terms processed and ultra processed food. Every time I read an article or post on the subject, I come away feeling like the term is defined by a list of examples, rather than a clear list of processing steps.
Or the article falls back on ingredients: “Processed foods are high in sugar and salt“. I don’t need a category for that. I can just look at the label.
I’m not ready to declare the category imaginary. But I need something more.
r/SGU • u/redditbylukey • 4d ago
Agnosticism
Can anyone help me find the episode/segment where Cara mentions that everyone is technically agnostically atheist or agnostically theist because I made this point to my friends the other day and they didn’t agree but I remember her having solid points for that statement
r/SGU • u/saltkjot • 7d ago
Scary Halloween decoration
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Is this one of Bob's? It looks familiar.
r/SGU • u/Viking_dot • 7d ago
Does this book fall into good skepticism? - Make me well by Xand van Tulleken
#1110: the true scourge of the planet
A discussion of the consequences and benefits of AI / LLMs made me recall a film from 1966, What On Earth!.
Around the 1:15:30 mark, the comments turned briefly to cars, and one of Cara's comments was "They're a scourge on the planet." Of course we know it's really us instead.
Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyQ3SEb9GTA
Spock was not the only one who lied to us.
instagram.comA group of good people sold their public image to fraudsters, using them to bilk the masses. Not surprised, just kinda frustrated.
r/SGU • u/I_Malumberjack • 11d ago
No more leap seconds.
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (abbreviated BIPM because they're based in France) concluded its 2026 General Conference yesterday with 7 resolutions. Number 5 decreed that Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) will be continuous starting 20 May 2027, which means no more leap seconds. They replaced it with a leap hour, which wouldn't be needed for centuries to millennia from now.
If the BIPM hadn't done this, we'd be looking at the first ever negative leap second sometime around 2035 [edit: fixed the date]. Since positive leap seconds are already risky in this day and age, a negative leap second might have been catastrophic.
Since there are lots of places where local mean solar time is more than an hour off from the time zone in that location, people should be able to handle a drift of less than a minute over a lifetime. Also, Global Navigation satellite Systems ignore leap seconds, so UTC might as well too. (GPS uses 1980 time, which is 18 seconds off UTC.)
r/SGU • u/ManuelHS • 12d ago
Steve and MS
Hello all,
I was diagnosed with MS earlier in the year, im trying to find some literature of MS by Steven Novella, but cant find anything, also anyone know of an episode where they discuss MS?
Ty
r/SGU • u/guitar2adam • 13d ago
Dogs seem to associate ‘bouba’ with round shapes and ‘kiki’ with spiky shapes, study of 70 dogs finds
sciencealert.comI think this would be a fun one for the team to break down! There are definitely limitations, but sounds are characteristics of physical objects so its possible.
r/SGU • u/CautiousEmergency367 • 15d ago
Saw this and it pretty much sums up Reiki
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r/SGU • u/W0nderingMe • 14d ago
Xpost from TIL ... Buddha Boy and the Breatharians are not new!
skeptic.org.ukr/SGU • u/W0nderingMe • 16d ago
🔥 A humpback whale calf takes its first breath
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Given this week's S or F ...
r/SGU • u/ObligationOk7431 • 16d ago
Toronto Show?
They’ve mentioned in the live streams a couple times that a Toronto show might be in the works. Is there anymore information on that? Are there many people here that would be able to attend one?
r/SGU • u/danydandan • 16d ago
SGU show in Ireland.
What's the likelihood of an SGU show being hosted in Ireland?
Us Irish listeners would love to get the Rogues over across the pond.
r/SGU • u/NarrowSalvo • 15d ago
Is Zelensky committing war crimes? And does the skeptical community have a moral obligation to speak out?
Much like climate change, we cannot say definitively the singular cause of this war crime. But, I think we all know that this stuff is the inevitable consequence of Evan Bernstein's war crime advocacy. As skeptics, do we have a moral and ethical obligation to get involved, since we didn't put an end to that quickly enough?