How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, including in the United States

Political violence rips apart several towns in southwest Texas. A far-right militia plots to kidnap the governor of Michigan and try her for treason. An armed mob of Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists storms the U.S. Capitol. Are these isolated incidents? Or is this the start of something bigger?

Barbara F. Walter is a professor of political science and an expert on international security, with an emphasis on civil wars. Her current research is on the behavior of rebel groups in civil wars, including inter-rebel group fighting, alliances and the strategic use of propaganda and extremism. She has spent her career studying civil conflict in places like Iraq and Sri Lanka, but now she has become increasingly worried about her own country.

Perhaps surprisingly, both autocracies and healthy democracies are largely immune from civil war; it’s the countries in the middle ground that are most vulnerable. And this is where more and more countries, including the United States, are finding themselves today. A civil war today won’t look like America in the 1860s, Russia in the 1920s, or Spain in the 1930s. It will begin with sporadic acts of violence and terror, accelerated by social media. It will sneak up on us and leave us wondering how we could have been so blind.

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Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media

Hailed as the “first freedom,” free speech is the bedrock of democracy, and it is subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat.

In this episode, based on the book Free Speech, Michael Shermer and Jacob Mchangama discuss the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of the principle, how much we have gained from it, and how much we stand to lose without it. Mchangama reveals how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech, too, is a constant.

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The Science Behind Why Some of Us Can't Grow Big Muscles After Turning 50

There is perhaps no better way to see the absolute pinnacle of human athletic abilities than by watching the Olympics.

But at the Winter Games this year – and at almost all professional sporting events – you rarely see a competitor over 40 years old and almost never see a single athlete over 50.

This is because with every additional year spent on Earth, bodies age and muscles don't respond to exercise the same as they used to.

I lead a team of scientists who study the health benefits of exercise, strength training, and diet in older people. We investigate how older people respond to exercise and try to understand the underlying biological mechanisms that cause muscles to increase in size and strength after resistance or strength training.

Old and young people build muscle in the same way. But as you age, many of the biological processes that turn exercise into muscle become less effective.

This makes it harder for older people to build strength but also makes it that much more important for everyone to continue exercising as they age.

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The 30 Best Ways to Get a Flat Stomach

Losing the fat around your midsection can be a battle.

In addition to being a risk factor for several diseases, excess abdominal fat may make you feel bloated and discouraged.

Luckily, several strategies have been shown to be especially effective at reducing your waist size.

If you dream about having a flat stomach, this article may be just what you need.

Here are 30 science-backed methods to help you reach your goal of a flat stomach.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/get-a-flat-stomach#TOC_TITLE_HDR_1

UAPs, UFOs, Conspiracies, and Cover-ups

Shermer speaks with author, journalist, and TV personality Nick Pope about: what it was like working for the Ministry of Defense as their UFO expert; The Believer’s Paradox; separating two questions: Are they out there? Have they come here?; SETI science vs. UFO/UAP science; Roswell; Bayesian reasoning about UFOs and UAPs; the quality of evidence in evaluating UFO claims; the US military UAP videos and what they really represent; The Disclosure Project; why we should keep an open mind; the odds of ETIs being out there vs. the odds of ETIs having visited here; an answer to Fermi’s Paradox: Where is everyone?; conspiracies and conspiracy theories, and more…

Nick Pope ran the British government’s UFO program for the Ministry of Defense, leading the media to call him the real Fox Mulder. He’s recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on UFOs, the unexplained, and conspiracy theories. Nick is the media’s go-to person for UFOs. He’s made appearances on numerous TV news shows and documentaries, including Good Morning America, Nightline, Tucker Carlson Tonight and Ancient Aliens. He’s also written for the New York Times, for the BBC News website and for NBC’s technology and science site, and has acted as consultant and spokesperson on numerous alien-themed movies, TV shows, and video games. Nick Pope gives talks and takes part in academic conferences, fan conventions, and debates all around the world. He’s spoken at the National Press Club, the Royal Albert Hall, the Science Museum and the Global Competitiveness Forum, and has debated at the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union Society. Nick Pope lives in the US.

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Pandemic Politics: How 2020 Impacted Americans’ Social and Political Attitudes

BY ANONDAH SAIDE, KEVIN MCCAFFREE, AND MARSHALL MCCREADY

In mid-2020, the Skeptics Society launched the Skeptic Research Center¹ (SRC) —a collaboration between the Skeptics Society and qualified researchers. The SRC was created to better understand what misconceptions most divide our society, and to empower the public with the knowledge necessary to think critically about current events. In the December 2020 issue of Skeptic, we reviewed the reports released from our first collaboration. In this article, we will review the findings from our second collaboration.

The Skeptic Research Center collaborated again with the Worldview Foundations Research Team,² composed of sociologist Kevin McCaffree, psychologist Anondah Saide, and research assistant Marshall McCready. For this second collaboration, called the Civil Unrest and Presidential Election Study (CUPES), the team examined Americans’ social and political attitudes in light of the substantial social and economic unrest of Summer 2020. CUPES investigated how events such as the presidential election, the George Floyd protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the attitudes of fourteen hundred Americans regarding a variety of topics.

Our findings were released across nine reports published by the SRC between November 2020 and March 2021. The reports, as well as detailed supplementary statistical information, are freely accessible on the Skeptic Research Center website. The titles of these reports reflect the study’s key topics:

• Did Political Disunity Change in 2020? (#1)
• Intolerance Is Lower Than You Might Think (#2)
• Inequality and the Economy: Pandemic Tradeoffs (#3)
• Trust in Institutions (#4)
• Censorship Attitudes and Voting Preferences (#5)
• Outside of Politics, What Else Predicts Attitudes
• Towards Censorship? (#6)
• How Informed are Americans about Race and
• Policing? (#7)
• Why Are People Misinformed About Fatal Police
• Shootings? (#8)
• Has Time Spent with Family and Friends Declined? (#9)

Below, we will discuss six central themes we identified across our findings. We’ll refrain from commenting about the potential implications of what we found because we elicited the interpretations of these findings from Skeptic readers such as yourself. These reader responses can be found at the end of this review.

Theme 1: Intra-Party Unity

In a study we conducted in 2019, we found greater political disunity among Democrats than Republicans.³ In response to the question, “If you had to choose, which political group do you think is most different to your own political views, currently?” Democrats were statistically as likely to select the Democratic Party as they were to pick the Republican Party. However, in our follow-up study, we found that this in-group bickering amongst Democrats had begun to reverse. Between 2019 and 2020, it seems that the Republican Party became less unified, while Democrats became more unified.⁴ For example, from 2019 to 2020 there was a 5 percent increase in Republicans choosing their own party as being opposed to their political views, along with a 11 percent drop in Republicans choosing Democrats (see Figure 1 below). In contrast, the percentage of Democrats who reported greater political disagreement with their own party dropped about 10 percentage points during the same period.

Theme 2: Gender and Politics

Men and women differed systematically across several dimensions in our 2020 study (CUPES). Gender was related to support for freedom of speech and freedom of thought such that women, regardless of partisan affiliation, expressed significantly lower support than did men.⁵ We also found gender to be related to changes in socializing during the COVID-19 pandemic. We asked how often respondents spent time with friends and family in 2019 and 2020. Compared to their male counterparts, women of both political parties reported significantly greater reductions in time spent with friends.⁶

Republican women and Democrats of both genders reported similar reductions in time spent with family. In fact, only Republican men reported no decrease in time spent with family from 2019 to 2020. Finally, we found that women reported significantly lower levels of trust in institutions than men.⁷ Republican women, in particular, reported the lowest overall trust in the news media, political officials, hospitals and doctors, and educational institutions (see Figure 2).

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