Scott Trimble

On my thirtieth birthday on 15 April 2007, I truly entered the world of podcasts when my then-girlfriend gave me an iPod. As I tried out various shows, I soon found The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe which quickly became my favorite of all of them.

By the time I got to episode #98, I decided that I would listen to entire series, starting all the way back with episode #1 from 4 May 2005. Now, this was not the first time I’d gone back to listen to a whole series. I did that too with Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips for Better Writing, but those shows are less than five minutes long. Each of the weekly “Skeptics’ Guide” episodes averages about seventy-five minutes. This was a big endeavor that I was undertaking!

I am proud to say that not only did I catch up on the previous ninety shows, but I also caught up on the most recent shows that I’d missed while listening to the archives. Thus, as of this morning, I’ve now heard every single show from the first one through #105. That totals an approximate listening time of over 130 hours (or 5½ days if I’d listened to them back-to-back without any sleep). That just goes to show how much time I spend location scouting, commuting to movie sets, and working on the computer!

This science podcast is hosted by Dr. Steven Novella (president of the New England Skeptical Society), Robert Novella, Rebecca Watson, Perry DeAngelis, Evan Bernstein, and Jay Novella. Besides the NESS, it is also produced in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation. James Randi, by the way, is one of my heroes and somebody I hope to meet someday.

I’ve been a skeptic for most of my teenage and adult life, but, at some point, I’ll have to write about how it was only in the last two years I learned that I fall within this so-called “skeptic” label or category. It was similar to my other relatively recent discoveries that I am actually a Libertarian (instead of “middle of the road” or “part Republican, part Democrat”) and Atheist (instead of “Agnostic, leaning towards Atheism”). It’s comforting to learn the correct labels and that there are other people out there with the same beliefs.

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