A Holistic Offensive against Fake Medicine

Throughout the pandemic, hucksters have been convincing consumers to throw away their money and risk their health on false cures and unproven treatments, and included among the horse dewormers and televangelist-endorsed colloidal silvers is lowest of all the snake oils, homeopathy, a literally useless form of “alternative medicine.” Despite the obvious fraud of homeopathy, the industries that profit from it have enjoyed little to no regulatory oversight, and only one organization is doing something about it: the Center for Inquiry.

CFI is taking on homeopathy from every available angle, including:

• Retailers: CFI is in the thick of two landmark consumer-protection lawsuits against megaretailers Walmart and CVS over their deceptive sale and marketing of homeopathic products. It has been a years-long endeavor to challenge these powerful corporations in profiting from the betrayal of their customers’ trust, and after months of throwing up roadblocks, Walmart and CVS finally met CFI in federal court in January 2022. The fight is far from over, and CFI remains undaunted.
• Pharmacists: CFI opened a dialogue with the Joint Commission of Pharmacy Practitioners, asking pharmacists to honor the trust consumers have placed in them by refraining from recommending homeopathic products and being honest with them about what homeopathy actually is and why it does not—and cannot—treat any ailment or condition.
• Regulators: CFI urged the Food and Drug Administration to reverse the previous administration’s hands-off policies toward the regulation of homeopathy and take seriously their obligation to protect consumers from fake medicine.
• The Secret Bible of Homeopathy: CFI filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit demanding that the Department of Health and Human Services grant the public access to the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States, the “book of magic potions” that serves as the basis for federal regulation—or lack thereof—of homeopathic junk.

Shining on Spotlight on All the Ways that #ScienceSaves

Science has improved human life in countless ways, and its importance has perhaps never been more apparent than it is right now. Nonetheless, trust in science is relentlessly undermined by a wide array of forces that stand to profit from the confusion and denial.

In 2021, in partnership with freethought leader and philanthropist Todd Stiefel, CFI launched #ScienceSaves, a long-term, multifaceted campaign to promote the innumerable ways that science has made our lives longer, healthier, easier, and more fulfilling.

Skeptical Inquirer Presents: Master Classes in Reason

The Center for Inquiry brings the leading lights of reason and science into the homes and onto the screens of thousands of viewers with Skeptical Inquirer Presents, a series of free live online talks from a wide array of experts in science, investigation, medicine, media, communication, and advocacy—all devoted to the cause of advancing science over pseudoscience, media literacy over conspiracy theories, and critical thinking over magical thinking.

Launched in 2020 as a way to keep the skeptic activist community connected during a time of lockdowns, Skeptical Inquirer Presents has blossomed into a true phenomenon unto itself, reaching audiences who might otherwise never have thought of attending a “skeptic event.” Hosted by comedian Leighann Lord (herself a newly-anointed Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), Skeptical Inquirer Presents featured a truly impressive roster of distinguished presenters in 2021.

Many more talks are slated for additional events throughout 2022. Learn more.

A Renaissance Follows the Dark Ages

Skepticism is having, as they say, a moment. They also say that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, and people are feeling a palpable lack of reason and rationality in the world today.

The Center for Inquiry is uniquely positioned, more than any other organization, to be a voice of reason and an amplifier for those most precious of resources: truths, facts, and critical thinking. The growing skeptic community, with Skeptical Inquirer as its home base, is experiencing a rebirth. And this renaissance of reason is led by the Center for Inquiry.

Skeptical Inquirer Magazine: The Flagship of Reason

Upholding a legacy that goes back more than forty years, when the minds of luminaries such as Paul Kurtz, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, and James Randi first met to confront an age of unreason, today Skeptical Inquirer magazine is the flagship of the reality-based community. Throughout the year’s blizzard of misinformation, pseudoscience, paranormal claims, and conspiracy theories, no publication from any organization was better suited to meet this moment. In a media landscape mired in confusion and credulity, Skeptical Inquirer stood tall.

Highlights from Skeptical Inquirer in 2021:

• Life, the Quniverse, and Everything: Once a conspiracy theorist herself, Stephanie Kemmerer has emerged from the darkness to provide invaluable insight into the mythology behind our time’s most insidious conspiracy theory, QAnon.
• UFOs: Beliefs, Conspiracies, and Aliens: The conviction that aliens are among us is no mere passing fancy. Mick West, one of today’s most-cited experts on UFO belief, warns that setting out to prove we are being invaded is not a scientific pursuit, but an indulgence in conspiracy theory.
• Environmentalism and the Fringe: The planet’s environmental crises are too often met by an activist movement that embraces fantasy and fringe beliefs. David Mountain confronts environmentalism’s penchant for needless hostility toward science and technology.
• How to Repair the American Mind: In the midst of a misinformation crisis that threatens science, democracy, and our shared understanding of reality, journalist Guy P. Harrison lays out his ideas for elevating critical thinking to a national educational norm to serve as a kind of “cognitive vaccine.”

25,000

Skeptical Inquirer circulation (print, digital, and newsstand)

Rationality Unfiltered: Skeptical Inquirer Web Columns

• Behavior & Belief: Psychologist Stuart Vyse, an expert on irrational behavior, addresses a wide range of issues in science and skepticism, with a particular focus on the impact and origins of superstitious beliefs.

• Guerrilla Skepticism: The driving force behind Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia, 2019 Balles Prize winner Susan Gerbic chronicles her dogged efforts to expose tricks and machinations of celebrity psychics and mediums.

• A Closer Look: The skeptic community’s unofficial chief inspector of gadgets, Kenny Biddle investigates how technology is used to make claims about detection of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs, and other paranormal experiences.

• SkepDoc’s Corner: No health fad, wellness pseudoscience, or medical quackery can escape the critical eye of retired U.S. Air Force physician and flight surgeon Harriet Hall.

• The Well-Known Skeptic: Providing opportunities to get to know his fellow well-known skeptics, Rob Palmer’s 2021 column included an interview with Star Trek actor and champion of secularism John de Lancie.

• But What Do I Know: The insatiably curious Ada McVean takes us through whimsical explorations of the things we’ve taken for granted and busts the myths we never even knew needed busting.

• Letter to America: Profiles of skeptic leaders and activities on the other side of the Atlantic by the founder of The Skeptic magazine, Wendy M. Grossman.

Unsubstantiated Fantasy Objects: Skeptical Inquirer Takes On the UFO Craze

Politicians and the news media became suddenly obsessed with UFOs in 2021 as the Pentagon prepared to release a report on so-called UAPs, or “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Anticipating what was sure to be an avalanche of overblown reporting and wishful thinking, CFI's Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (publisher of Skeptical Inquirer magazine) released a handy "tip sheet" for journalists and other members of the media to help them process and accurately communicate the facts about what we do and do not know about unidentified flying objects.

Several CFI staff, Fellows, columnists, and contributors were sought by the mainstream media to bring a skeptical, reality-based perspective to a topic that was ripe with speculation and over-interpretation. CFI-affiliated experts appeared in outlets, such as Religion News Service, The New Yorker, Reuters, The Guardian, NBCNews.com, The Hill, Boston Review, Wired, and the Virginian-Pilot.

Daffy Docs, Beware the Duck! CFI's Quackwatch

Dr. Stephen Barrett founded the groundbreaking truth-telling website Quackwatch in 1996, establishing an institution that would prove to be a reliable and frequently cited resource for protecting consumers from the fraud of health-related pseudoscience and fake medicine. In 2020, Quackwatch became a part of the Center for Inquiry, and it turned out to be a perfect fit.

In 2021, the Quackwatch website is better than ever, housing decades of research and information for medical professionals, consumers, and the media. Every week, Dr. William London publishes Quackwatch’s Consumer Health Digest newsletter, and the site regularly features original articles and exposés on the latest health scams, snake oil, and pseudoscience.

Paranormal Powers Put to the Test: CFI Investigations Group

The CFI Investigations Group (CFIIG) is the largest paranormal investigation organization in the world, with allied groups and field investigators in several countries, offering $250,000—the largest active prize of this nature on the planet—to anyone who can prove under scientific testing conditions they have paranormal superpowers.

In February, OneZero (the primary technology publication of Medium.com) published a major story on CFIIG and one of its aspiring applicants, “Hex Factor: Inside the Group Offering $250,000 for Proof of Superpowers.” This kicked off a deluge of coverage about the group from local news sites and outlets.

Superheroes of Science: CSI Elects 14 New Fellows in 2021

In a time of misinformation, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories, the role of the public skeptic has never been more critical. Those at the forefront for the advancement of science, reason, and critical thinking are indispensable. It is those champions of reality who we honor as Fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

In 2021, fourteen remarkable men and women were newly elected to join the ranks of distinguished scientists, scholars, activists, authors, and creators, such as Richard Dawkins, Ann Druyan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jill Tarter, Elizabeth Loftus, Bill Nye, and Steven Pinker.

Recognizing Great Works of Skepticism

Each year, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry honors the creators of the published work that best communicates the importance of skepticism and empirical science with the Balles Prize in Critical Thinking. Normally presented at CSICon conferences, the prizes for 2019 and 2020 had gone unawarded.

Finally, the long-overdue Balles Prizes for 2019 and 2020 were bestowed during special Skeptical Inquirer Presents events in 2022.

• For 2019: Susan Gerbic, skeptic activist, for her meticulously crafted operations to expose the fraud of so-called psychics and mediums and her tireless organization of the Guerilla Skeptics on Wikipedia project.

• For 2020: Timothy Caulfield, science communicator, for his role as the happy warrior of reason and science throughout the infodemic, using multiple media platforms to advance an inclusive, affirming, and fun approach to countering misinformation and advancing the role of science.

In Memory of Our Memory Keeper: Tom Flynn (1955–2021)

On August 23, 2021, the world lost a towering figure of the freethought movement, and the Center for Inquiry lost a dear friend and colleague, when Tom Flynn died suddenly at age sixty-six.

Tom held numerous leadership roles throughout his more than thirty years with the Center for Inquiry, most recently as the visionary editor of Free Inquiry magazine, director of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum and the Freethought Trail, and former executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism.

He was the beating heart of American freethought. In a special tribute issue of Free Inquiry dedicated to his memory, renowned journalist Susan Jacoby dubbed Tom the “memory keeper” for his passionate devotion to keeping alive the history and values of secular humanism and radical reform movements. He was also beloved for his encyclopedic intelligence, his prolific scholarship, and his cantankerous wit. As CFI Board Chair Eddie Tabash put it, Tom was “our conscience against irrational action and thought.”

Upon his death, the Center for Inquiry invited friends, colleagues, and all those who appreciated Tom’s lifetime of work to share their thoughts and memories on our website at the Tom Flynn Remembrance Wall.

A Humanist Response to the Afghanistan Crisis

Through its Secular Rescue program, CFI works to save the lives of atheist activists who face threats of harm or death due to their expressions about religion or nonbelief. In September, CFI began a partnership with Silicon Valley entrepreneur and CFI Board Member David Cowan to respond to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan, as the Taliban rapidly took control of the country, curtailing even basic freedoms and endangering countless lives.

Our Afghan Rescue Fund raised over $300,000, which was put directly toward extracting dozens of Afghan atheists whose lives were immediately threatened. Also, with Cowan’s help, hundreds more Afghans who simply wanted to live free of religious extremism and oppression were flown to freedom on a charter flight out of the country.

“This is a time to look beyond our national identities and embrace the opportunity to help our fellow human beings. An entire nation collapsing under the weight of theocratic oppression is a moral emergency, and all of us—atheist and religious alike—are called to action. Our community will answer that call.” — Richard Dawkins, CFI Board Member, founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science

Every Life Saved Is a Triumph: Secular Rescue

Since 2015, the Center for Inquiry’s Secular Rescue program has been striving to provide emergency assistance to atheist writers, bloggers, publishers, and activists in high-risk countries who face threats due to their beliefs or expressions regarding religion. The global pandemic, the resulting economic fallout, and increased tensions and violence over blasphemy and apostasy—from both governments and angry mobs—has made the work of Secular Rescue all the more necessary.

From its inception, Secular Rescue has helped dozens of individuals and families from places such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Sri Lanka, with financial, logistical, and even psychological support. Requests are thoroughly vetted for validity, and CFI works directly with the applicant and other aid agencies to help bring individuals to safety.

Secular Rescue fielded an overwhelming number of requests for help in 2021. And amid all the turmoil, there were some truly inspiring successes—stories of real people in mortal danger with nowhere else to turn, now safe and free.

Richard Dawkins Honors Tim Minchin

Each year, CFI honors an individual who publicly stands for the values of secularism, rationalism, and scientific truth with the Richard Dawkins Award. In October 2021, that distinction was bestowed upon an artist who has won the hearts of audiences around the world with his razor-sharp wit and unapologetic advocacy for compassion and reason over self-serving myth and fantasy, Australian musician and comedian Tim Minchin.

Tickets to the event at the Sheldonian in Oxford, in which Richard Dawkins and Tim Minchin engaged in a live, unscripted conversation introduced by CFI CEO Robyn Blumner and moderated by CFI Board Member David Cowan, sold out almost immediately. The complete video of the event is now available free online.

Free Inquiry: Radical Thinking for a New Era

In many parts of the world, atheism is no longer the taboo it once was just a few short years ago. The religiously unaffiliated are rapidly on the rise. Yet religious zealotry is as potent and dangerous a force as it has ever been. Free Inquiry magazine is the publication in which issues important to secular humanists are explored with clarity and courage.

Highlights from Free Inquiry in 2021:

• The Power Worshippers: Katherine Stewart exposes the movement for theocratic dominionism bent on rewriting American history, seizing control of the legal system, and undermining democracy itself.

• Atheism and Self-Reliance: Sociologist Phil Zuckerman espouses the resilience and resourcefulness that comes with a lack of religious belief.

• Wayward—A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity: Alice Greczyn’s personal story of a life entrenched in extremist Christian “purity culture.”

• The New Myths of Transhumanism and the Dark Mountain: Paul Fidalgo contrasts the prophecies of techno-optimists and “collapsitarians."

13,600

Free Inquiry circulation (print, digital, and newsstand)

Forkosch Award Honorees Tell the Stories of Radical Movements

Every year, CFI’s Council for Secular Humanism recognizes the previous year’s best humanist writing with the Forkosch Awards. In 2021, the honors went to two women whose works shined a spotlight on two very different political movements.

The Morris D. Forkosch Award for Best Book of 2020 was awarded to journalist Katherine Stewart for her exposé The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (Bloomsbury), a powerful and disturbing portrait of the authoritarian, divisive movement sometimes inadequately described as the religious Right.

The Selma V. Forkosch Award for Best Article for 2020 was given to historian Judith Wellman for her essay in the August/September 2020 issue of Free Inquiry, “What Can Historic Sites Tell Us about the Movement for Women’s Suffrage in New York State?” The article explores the role of historic sites in interpreting the history of the woman suffrage movement, which began in west-central New York State in 1848.

Secular Celebrants: Marking Life’s Milestones (No Myths Required)

Nonreligious Americans deserve the right to have their life milestones officiated by someone who shares their secular lifestance and humanist values. In recent years, CFI has won landmark legal victories allowing CFI-trained and certified Secular Celebrants to solemnize marriages in Indiana and Illinois, laid the groundwork for Secular Celebrant legislation enacted in Oregon, and successfully moved the administration in Michigan to extend the state’s marriage laws to include Secular Celebrants.

Early in 2021, CFI faced a legal setback in Texas, as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed our challenge to the state’s exclusion of Secular Celebrants from the list of those permitted to solemnize marriages. CFI remains undaunted, and our legal team is eager to continue this fight on behalf of nonreligious couples and celebrants in Texas. Learn more about the Secular Celebrant program.

“Nonreligious couples in Texas deserve the same rights as the religious—a principle so obvious is should hardly need stating, let alone litigated.” – Nick Little, CFI Vice President and Legal Director

Celebrating Robert Ingersoll and Freethought Heroes

Under the care and curation of the late Tom Flynn, CFI maintains the historic Freethought Trail, a collection of real-world locations and a comprehensive website that tells the story of nineteenth-century Western New York’s pivotal role in the history of American secularism, abolitionism, and woman suffrage.

The cornerstone of this work is the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum in Dresden, New York, which honors the life and legacy of Ingersoll, the era’s greatest orator, known as “the Great Agnostic” for his courageous and eloquent speeches and essays on secularism, science, and human rights. Thanks to unprecedented donor enthusiasm for this labor of love, in May 2021 the museum achieved an endowment of over $400,000, securing the Museum for generations to come.

Museum Director Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry magazine and former executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, died very suddenly in August 2021. The Museum is now overseen by Flynn’s chosen successor, CFI Director of Libraries Tim Binga.

51 Battlegrounds: CFI Takes Its Mission to the States

CFI’s new Director of Government Affairs Azhar Majeed hit the ground running in 2021, processing fifty states’ (and one District’s) worth of legislative and regulatory activity, and developing a custom bill tracker to monitor dozens of bills in statehouses across the country on issues dealing with science and church-state separation.

Be a voice for reason in your own community. Sign up for CFI’s action alerts.

TIES Evolution Education Program: Teachers Helping Teachers

For more than six years, the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES)—a program of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science—has provided middle school teachers with the content knowledge and teaching tools they need to effectively cover their state’s evolution standards and navigate the often perilous cultural waters surrounding evolution education.

In 2021 alone, striking a careful balance between virtual presentations and safe in-person events, TIES held more than forty workshops for teachers in nineteen states, connecting with teachers face-to-face on their home turf.

For example, in July, TIES Director Bertha Vazquez held a day-long workshop for teachers in Brandon, Mississippi, and received a very warm response—particularly from those teachers who had been struggling with how to process conflicting (and often false) information about evolution. By meeting with teachers where they are (face-to-face), she was able to build trust, clear up misconceptions, and share resources.

TIES added a wealth of new free resources for teachers to its rapidly growing website and began its expansion into elementary and high school level education. In August, Vazquez showcased TIES’s new student-guided units on evolution, one for middle school teachers and another for high school teachers. These new units included free materials, such as student response sheets, answer keys, exams, and dozens of other resources.

A New Chapter for the Translations Project

A groundbreaking program of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, the Translations Project produces professionally translated versions of landmark books on science and evolution into several languages, including Arabic, Urdu, Indonesian, and Farsi. These books can be downloaded free of charge from TranslationsProject.org to help share the light of reason and the wonders of science with as many people around the world as possible, no matter where they are.

To date, eighteen books have been translated, which have been downloaded over 17,000 times in eighty-six different countries. In 2021, the Translations Project published its first children’s book translations and produced subtitled versions of short, shareable videos from some of Richard Dawkins’s classic science lectures.

The Blogosphere’s Bastion of Sanity

CFI’s Free Thinking blogs continue to provide timely analysis of critical issues, offering a necessary dose of realism within an informational environment beset by confusion and conspiracy theories. Some of the year’s columns and contributors included:

Reality v. Bloody Nonsense: CFI’s Legal Director Nick Little produces sharp-witted commentary and analysis on the major legal issues central to our movement.

A Skeptic Reads the Newspaper: Benjamin Radford brings his expertise in folklore and media criticism to bear on current events.

Searching for Better Angels: Angel Eduardo provides a fresh, counterintuitive perspective to moral and ethical issues.

The Rationality of Science: Jamie Hale gets to the nuts and bolts of how we arrive at truths and how to be better critical thinkers.

Hollywood Reality Check and Ask the Atheist : CFI West Director Jim Underdown’s wry reflections on religion, the paranormal, and the entertainment industry.

“Full of Bull” Campaign: A Wall of Shame for the Shameless

In the spring, CFI launched a new annual award to highlight prominent individuals who profit off misleading the public with lies, misinformation, and pseudoscience: the Full of Bull Award. Visitors were invited to review the track records of deception and misinformation from six egregious offenders and then vote on who is the worst. The 2021 nominees who didn’t win were pseudoscience profiteer Gwyneth Paltrow, unhinged conspiracy peddler Alex Jones, religious-Right disgrace Jerry Falwell Jr., anti-vaxxer-in-chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and fake-psychic Thomas John. The abundance of scoundrels really put the “embarrassment” in “embarrassment of riches.”

Voters overwhelmingly chose former mayor Rudy Giuliani as the most Full of Bull for his ceaseless trumpeting of the "Big Lie" about the 2020 presidential election and his cynical promotion of pseudoscientific treatments for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Deep Conversations about the Big Questions: Point of Inquiry Podcast

Since the earliest days of podcasting, Point of Inquiry has been presenting deep, insightful conversation with some of the brightest minds of our time. Hosts Leighann Lord and Jim Underdown engage with innovative thinkers, authors, and experts on the big questions in science, religion, politics, and culture.

Highlights from Point of Inquiry in 2021:

• Carl Zimmer, science writer for the New York Times and author of the new book Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive
• Julia Sweeney, beloved actor, comedian, playwright, and Saturday Night Live veteran, guest-hosted a special episode to interview David G. McAfee, author of Hi, I’m an Atheist!
• Illusionist and mentalist Banachek, on his life as a performer and skeptical investigator
• Ryan Burge, the social scientist who has become the authority on the “rise of the nones”
• Philosophers Massimo Pigliucci and Skye Cleary on how to live a good life.
• Annabelle Gurwitch, award-winning actor and author, on her life as a performer and her thoughts on new-age religions and cults.
• QAnon expert Stephanie Kemmerer on what goes on in the mind of a conspiracy theorist.
• Psychologists Gale M. Sinatra and Barbara K. Hofer on the roots of science-denial and what can be done to encourage critical thinking and scientific literacy.
• Joe Manno, pastor of the Revelation Church in Florida, on bridging the divides between believers and atheists.
• GOD HIMSELF!!! Actually, Daily Show writer David Javerbaum, who poses as the almighty on Twitter as @TheTweetofGod.

And more!

Heresy, Now and Forever!

Every weekday (mostly) for ten years now, CFI Communications Director Paul Fidalgo has been keeping us up to date on the issues we care about most with The Morning Heresy, the blog and free email newsletter that rounds up news, opinion, and analysis relevant to the skeptic and secular movement. Today our inboxes are overflowing with email newsletters, but with The Morning Heresy’s focus on the current events that matter to the reality-based community, filtered through Paul’s wry humor, there is nothing else like it.

In 2021, The Morning Heresy expanded its empire from text to sound, with the introduction of the new podcast Heresy Now! Every Friday, Paul takes the best (and worst) news items from the week and packages them in a fun and informative broadcast, perfect for getting caught up with all the madness happening all around us, and what the Center for Inquiry is doing about it.

“I continue to be amazed at the assembled content and engaging writing in The Morning Heresy email. I joyfully devour it! … it’s so well-crafted and jam-packed with fresh stuff that I’ve missed or want to explore further. … The humor is a true bonus that I relish.” – Marshall Benveniste, PhD

Inquiring Closer to Home: CFI Branches

CFI West in Los Angeles is the Center for Inquiry’s west coast base of operations, home of the CFI Investigations Group, the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Theater, and—unveiling in 2022—the Freethinkers Mural. Painted in the summer and fall of 2021, it’s the largest mural in the world honoring luminaries of freethought, science, and humanism. Among the twenty-three historical figures depicted are freethought heroes, such as Carl Sagan, James Randi, Zora Neal Hurston, Giordano Bruno, Matilda Joslyn Gage, John Lennon, and others.

Based at the Center for Inquiry’s transnational headquarters in Amherst, New York, CFI Western New York was able to safely return to in-person lectures at the Center, as well as events such as community potluck dinners, movie screenings, solstice celebrations, and a Secular Book Club.

CFI Michigan continues to host enriching programming, in person and online, and revived its Secular Service program to beautify the local environment and help those in need. CFI New York City has hosted a weekly Sunday online Food for Thought program, as well as a discussion session after each Skeptical Inquirer Presents event for venturing deeper into the weeds of each episode’s topic.

Though usually an in-person training event, CFI Indiana held a successful Civic Day in February over Zoom, and continues its English as a Second Language classes, also online. CFI Tampa has maintained a very active schedule of Zoom-based lectures and events, working alongside other freethought groups in Florida.

Each CFI branch is responding to the needs and wishes of its local community, so a “return to normalcy” will mean something different for every location, whether they’re deep in the heart of Texas with CFI Austin, sipping coffee with CFI Portland, or riding the cable car to CFI San Francisco. Join one of our communities, and find your local Center for Inquiry.

Virtual Meet-and-Greets with the Real People of CFI

Just as Skeptical Inquirer Presents allowed us to bring some of our CSICon conferences to audiences at home, the CFI Insider online series of live events introduced our community to the people who work every day to advance CFI’s mission. CFI Insider presented four new interviews in 2021 before wrapping up the series, each hosted by Melissa Myers.

2021 CFI Insider Events:

• Kendrick Frazier, editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine for more than forty years
• CFI West Executive Director Jim Underdown on the history of the CFI Investigations Group
• CFI Vice President and Chief Counsel Nick Little on CFI’s legal efforts on church-state separation and consumer protection from pseudoscience
• CFI Director of Libraries Tim Binga and a tour through “what’s in the basement” of CFI’s incredible collections