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Sungazing, or staring directly at the sun, is definitely not good for your health

Alice Howarth
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Sungazing, or staring directly at the sun, is definitely not good for your health

It is officially autumn, and it’s starting to get darker and colder. I hate it. I really, really struggle during the darker months. I’ve had real difficulties with sleep ever since I was little, and it gets worse in the winter months. Getting out of bed is a challenge.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world where I can work with my natural sleep needs, so I have to wake earlier than my body would like and I find it physically painful. When I wake earlier than my natural sleep pattern my whole body hurts; my head hurts, my eyes hurt, my jaw hurts. It takes me at least two hours to really feel part of the world.

When I moved into my current house, I took drastic inaction. When we moved in, the curtains in the bedroom were white, thin, linen curtains. They do not block out any light, whatsoever. That’s a bit of a downside when the residential care home across the street has a very bright light on all night, which shines directly into my window. But the upside is that I am exposed to the natural rhythm of daylight.

Our sleep/wake pattern is regulated by our circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is an endogenous cycle which exists within us. Each cycle lasts roughly 24 hours, and various processes in our body do slightly different things at different phases within those 24 hours. There are a few things that are so consistently variable during the phase in our circadian cycle that we can measure them to assess the cycle – that includes core body temperature, which reaches its minimum temperature around 5am (or two hours before waking time), and has been shown to vary by around two hours based on chronotype. In young adults, ‘morning people’ reach minimum core body temp at around 4am, while ‘night owls’ reach this point at around 6am.

Chart showing changing cortisol levels over the day, rising sharply shortly after waking, then slowly tapering off across the the day until sleep.

We can also measure plasma cortisol levels, which are high when we wake up, and then rise for about 30-40 minutes. After this our cortisol levels drop quite rapidly for a few hours and then then continue to drop at a slower pace until we go to sleep. Then they gradually rise as we sleep, until they’re quite high when we wake up, and peak again not long after waking.

The other thing we can see consistently change is our melatonin levels. Melatonin is either completely absent or too low to detect during the daytime, but at around 9pm it starts to be produced by the pineal gland in response to daylight dimming. Melatonin levels peak in the middle of the night and decrease until they are very low in the morning. Research has shown that in adolescence, our melatonin cycle shifts slightly – rising a little later in the evening and reaching low levels a little later in the morning. This may be why teenagers struggle so much with mornings.

We’re not 100% sure how melatonin levels are regulated by light, but we think it’s due to cells in the retina called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells. These cells send a message to the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus in the brain, which is the controller of our circadian rhythm, and sends off signals to lots of other places, including the pineal gland. It’s actually a blocking signal: lots of light to the eye, and the signal goes to the hypothalamus so the hypothalamus can tell the pineal gland, “We’re all good, no need to make any melatonin thank you”. When daylight reduces, the signal reduces, and the pineal gland is no longer inhibited so it goes off and makes melatonin until it’s told to stop again.

Melatonin does lots of things, but one of the things it does is tell us when it’s time to get some sleep. A lack of melatonin tells us it’s time to be awake. So, if being awake is hard for you, doing things to help increase your melatonin in the evening – such as reducing exposure to daylight and certain other types of light – could be helpful. Similarly, you might benefit from reducing your melatonin in the morning, via early exposure to daylight.

All of this is why I’m happy to continue using my terrible white curtains. I have absolutely no trouble getting to sleep, albeit on a slightly later schedule than the average person, but I do have trouble waking up.

@infinitelight_369

#sungazing #fyp #spirituality #manifestation

♬ Emotional Love – Azwar

Which leads me onto another TikTok trend – sungazing. This is a meditative practice, where people look directly at the sun at dawn or dusk. As one TikTok user who goes by “Infinitelight_369” explains, “Sungazing is an ancient Egyptian practice that will drastically improve your life on all levels. Mentally, physically and spiritually”. He goes on to tell us that during “the 30 minute window when the sun ‘rises’ and the sun ‘sets’ it is actually safe to stare at the sun”.

He uses those air quotes for sun ‘rising’ and ‘setting’, because he explains the sun doesn’t actually rise or set – it just comes in and out of our perspective. Which, to be fair him, is true – the sun isn’t actually going anywhere, the Earth is just moving in relation to the sun. That is the full extent to which he is right here.

The benefits of sungazing, according to this user, are that it improves dream recall, boosts energy, increases melatonin and serotonin, fights fatigue, increases pineal size, improves quality of sleep, helps seasonal affective disorder and improves endocrine health. This is incorrect.

Infinitelight_369 goes on to explain that the ancient Egyptians realised how important sungazing was, as they depicted it in their imagery and iconography. As he explains this, he shows an engraved tablet with a person sitting beneath the sun, with rays coming down towards their eyes – though, notably, the person is not actually looking towards the sun. The person in the depiction, it turns out, is Akhenaten, a pharaoh who reigned from the around 1350-1330 BCE.

  • Screenshot of a TikToker speaking in front of a green screened image of Egyptian carvings. The caption reads "now the ancient Egyptians realise how important sun gazing is"
  • Screenshot of the same TikToker speaking. The caption continues from before: "as they depicted it in their iconography"

This is an altar relief from a house, and it shows the suns rays extending symbols of life to the family. It is true that the ancient Egyptians believed the sun was important. The sun god, Ra, was believed to bring light and life to the world. A lot of Egyptian art has depictions showing Ra or Aten, related solar gods. It also makes sense that ancient people worshipped the sun – humans are quick to understand that the sun brings life, and we know that the sun helps grow our food, keeps us warm and allows us to see. All of those things are fundamental to life. That doesn’t mean they thought staring directly at the sun was the key – and we can tell that, because the figures depicted here are not staring directly at the sun.

@jaykaizen

Reply to @throwawaythrowaway The benefits of sungazing 🌞🌱 #learnontiktok #spiritual #witchtok #advice #spiritualawakening

♬ Blade Runner 2049 – Synthwave Goose

InfiniteLight_369 isn’t the only TikToker to mention ancient Egypt in relation to this sungazing trend. “JayKaizen” says the practice “might be a bit hippy” but that “Western society has led us to believe that the sun is bad for you, when in reality when you harvest the sun’s energy properly it will change your life forever”. He reassures us that “sungazing is an ancient Egyptian practice when you stare directly into the sun, but this can only be done at sunrise or sunset to avoid damage being done to your eyes by the UV rays”. Here we have again, an appeal to ancient wisdom: the ancient Egyptians were so much more enlightened than us.

These claims aren’t solely the preserve of TikTok. For £1.99, Amazon will sell you the ebook “SUN GAZING: How Millions Of Ancient People Used The Sun To Heal Themselves And Perform Miracles!” by Bob Finklea (an author I can currently find nothing else about), which claims: “all cultures on Earth – old and new, dead and surviving – maintain their own stories, beliefs and curiosity about the sun”, and “both ancient Eastern and Western cultures have maintained beliefs and practices that demonstrate their subscription to sun-gazing and its healing effects”, and “most of these beliefs to the therapeutic benefits of sunlight to humans can be traced to the fact that many of these ancient civilisations were sun worshippers! Or were they?”

So were those ancient cultures really worshipping the Sun? InfiniteLight_369 isn’t convinced:

These people did not worship the sun like you have been indoctrinated to believe, worshiping is something that Christians do with Jesus, they understood that without the sun there would be no life on earth and in turn they paid their endless gratitude and respect towards the sun and this is exactly why we have been indoctrinated since birth to fear the sun

What about worries that the sun causes cancer, or that we should wear sunglasses and sunscreen? Once again, InfiniteLight_369 isn’t convinced, claiming “it’s all bullshit because they know that the sun will upgrade your DNA and elevate your consciousness, and it will tap you into your true divinity” which he says why ancient Egyptians were able to “create wonders” and he says “being afraid of the one thing that gives live to everything on this earth is the highest form of manipulation and brainwashing”.

As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that the ancient Egyptians stared at the sun – in fact, they were aware that damage to the eyes could cause issues with vision. Pepi Ankh Or Iri, who lived between 2270 and 2210 BC, is recognized as the first documented ophthalmologist in history. Whether they knew the sun could damage the eyes is unclear, but I think it’s safe to say that they would have been concerned about protecting the eyes.

We can trace the modern trend for sungazing not to ancient Egypt, but to America in the 1950s, when physician William Horatio Bates proposed the practice as part of his ‘Bates Method’ for treating vision problems without glasses. Bates was thoroughly discredited even in his own time – in 1956, optometrist Philip Pollock wrote The Truth About Eye Exercises, explaining:

Dr Bates disputed the statements of opthalmologists that staring into the sun is harmful. He claimed that people with normal vision can do this for an hour or even more with no discomfort of ill effects… The Bates system, as the reader probably has suspected by now is riddled with fallacies.

It seems likely that sungazing has jumped from a pseudomedical system proposed by a disgraced physician, to a spiritual one – and the spirituality extends beyond false attribution to ancient Egypt, too.

Back on TikTok, JayKaizen explains that sungazing can help with fatigue, because:

sungazing does more than increase energy, do you know about the pineal gland… your third eye, seat to the soul… sungazing is said to decalcify and grow the pineal gland meaning you will feel more spiritually connected to the world around you

The pineal gland is pretty evolutionarily ancient. It exists in all vertebrates, and in some cases it is connected to a parietal eye, also known as a pineal eye or ‘third eye’. This is a photosensitive eye at the top of the head, and is found in most lizards, frogs, salamanders and a few other non-mammals. It’s always covered with skin, and detects light differently to the vertebrate eye. But it’s nothing spiritual, it’s just a different way of regulating the circadian rhythm – we take light from our eyes, to the hypothalamus and into the pineal gland; other animals take light from the parietal eye directly to the pineal gland.

But we do sometimes refer to the parietal eye as a ‘third eye’. And when that comes into contact with spiritual beliefs that happen to talk of a third eye allowing us to perceive things beyond sight, it makes sense that there might be cause for confusion.

In any case, mammals do not have a parietal eye; we definitely do not have a third eye. Nor do we need one to explain the ways in which we might sense things unconsciously. We have a far greater understanding of our senses and of how we pick up on emotions and situations in a subtle, unconscious way.

As for sungazing, is it true that it is harmless?

Absolutely not. Glancing at the sun once in a while for a few seconds at a time is probably ok, but staring at the sun for extended periods of time will definitely damage the eyes. That damage can be gradual and difficult to notice – for example, I have a scar in the back of my eye that doesn’t impair my vision at all. But repeated damage will start to become noticeable eventually, and people will have irreversibly worse eyesight because of it.

From the archives: Psychic Questing – The People of Hex and Gothic goings on

Lucy Fisher
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From the archives: Psychic Questing – The People of Hex and Gothic goings on

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 6, Issue 1, from 1992.

It is not easy to say exactly what psychic questing is. It all ties in with a mishmash of the Tarot, ley lines, reincarnation, archaeology and the old gods. It’s like a medieval pilgrimage – an excuse for a jaunt with your mates. Together you travel around the country to destinations which have been indicated to members of the party by dreams, meditations or omens.

Meditation in this context takes the form of one person describing a vision or image while the others visualise it. Sometimes the image is projected onto a real landscape, and this can lead to hallucinations, or visions. When you arrive at one location, further meditations and omens will direct you to the next. Meanwhile, by a process of midrashic interpretation, you try and impose some kind of pattern on, or see some purpose in your wanderings, ideally with a specific end point. You may find significant artefacts along the way. It’s rather like a treasure hunt with cryptic clues.

The ‘Third Great Psychic Questing Conference’ was held at Conway Hall on the 9th and 10th of November 1991. On the first day there were lectures and a party, followed on the second by visits to ‘sites of historic, magical and mystical interest across Central London’, plus ‘meditation and psychic work’. I attended the first day (but not the party). The lecture-room was packed, with the younger members of the audience tending towards leather jackets, Megadeth T-shirts and Gothic silver jewellery. The conference was organised by Andrew Collins, inventor of the concept of ‘psychic questing’ and author of The Seventh Sword, just released by Century as a follow-up to The Black Alchemist, The Brentford Griffin, The Knights of Danbury and others.

Collins is from Essex, as were the other conference speakers. He put on a good performance. His platform style, like his book, was matey, down to earth and effective. The other speakers (all male) also put on displays of ordinary blokishness. One who referred to himself as a pagan resembled Mike Reid (‘Stone me! An apport. Blimey, it’s a big one.’) The ‘I too couldn’t believe it at first’ rhetorical device was used quite frequently. The speakers seemed unsure whether or not to emphasise the strangeness of what they claimed; in fact they tried to have it both ways. You have to stress the strangeness if you want to hold on to your audience by creating drama, but making out it’s all frightfully ordinary might compel belief. Yet again, incredibly mundane happenings like opening a book and seeing the word ‘Ewelme’ are ‘amazing’ and ‘really freak one out’.

Sooner or later, the other speakers all mentioned ‘my friend and colleague Andy Collins’ and ‘a talented psychic called Debbie’. No women spoke, yet there was a strong female presence in the accounts of the psychic questers’ adventures. It was women who ‘channelled’ the ancient druids who told the gang where to go next (‘Before we knew it, Debbie had gone into a trance in the middle of the motorway.’)

3D render of a medical background with DNA strands
Collins formed the ‘psigenic’ theory: that psychic ability is transmitted in the genes.

Andrew Collins, the star of the show, began his talk by saying that: ‘Psychic questing needs a little bit of definition,’ and promised to reveal ‘what brought us into the whole business in the first place.’ In the 70s he was a UFO researcher, but he became more interested in the witnesses than their testimony (‘Were these people liars? Did they have a vivid imagination that ran riot? They were very genuine people but seemed to live in a very strange world.’) He found that many were of Irish, Gypsy and Jewish descent and had undergone other psychic experiences, as had their families. Instead of concluding that there was a cultural connection, he formed the ‘psigenic’ theory – that psychic ability was transmitted in the genes.

In this way he became interested in the psychic world, and instead of watching telly after coming back from the pub he and his friends would do a spot of hypnosis and meditation. The group started discovering artefacts. They wanted to be involved in psychic research, but couldn’t relate to the methods of the Society for Psychical Research. They wanted to bring it into “the day to day context, taking it out of the cliche, stereotyped idea of people round a table with a crystal ball and a woman in a gypsy headdress saying ‘Is anybody there?’. It’s obviously a thing of Edwardian antiquity. We couldn’t handle that. We thought, let’s do it in a more streetwise manner. So psychic questing was born.” It was a “mystical history of spirituality making a cohesive story that stretched back through thousands of years. It was given to us snippet by snippet in the form of messages, synchronicities and omens. Dreams revealed certain information we weren’t previously aware of… creating this idea of gallivanting around the landscape looking for artefacts.”

Revealing a story in snippets helps to keep up the suspense. He added that looking for artefacts is a ‘carrot dangler’ to make you go out and do something. So, the idea of psychic questing was established: “Those involved in this are agents of fate. Once you say to the forces that be, ‘OK, hit me with the dreams’, you are led on a personal course of enlightenment. It may take years to understand what is going on,’ but ‘there’s plenty for everybody in it”.

Every good story needs a baddie, like SMERSH or the Mafia: “The story gets bigger and more awesome as time goes on, but we are beginning to understand the whole web of intrigue involved.” In the case of psychic questing the enemy is “a sinister group called the People of Hex”. Unseen but leaving clues, they perform dark rituals at sacred sites all round the country. Debbie had a vision of a druid, which led them to a pond barrow: “This druid was basically saying “Come down ‘ere, summink ‘eavy’s ‘appening.”‘ At the barrow, they found a bone inscribed with strange characters – evidence of the People of Hex. ‘People were pumping up the energies in relation to ancient warriors causing a considerable imbalance of energies.’ The People of Hex perform negative rituals and ‘we had to stop it. It was like unblocking the plughole.”

The second speaker, Paul Weston, had a slightly apologetic manner. Was he afraid of looking a fool? Afraid of people saying ‘Leave it out, John’? Had he been persuaded into all this by Andy Collins – or Debbie? In March 1990, he said, ‘strange phenomena abounded. The general climate was such that we were prepared to believe that anything was possible. One night in my living room, everything was very relaxed, candlelight, spacey music and all that.’

Then a strange phenomenon happened: an electric fire turned itself on unaided. Debbie was sitting right by it all the time and saw nothing. But she did see a cat goddess, a woman with a cat’s head, in the house. ‘This was an enigma for me. I didn’t know what to make of it. This of course to me meant nothing – it was non-reality. This was meaningless to me, but I was willing to be open to the possibilities. I was willing to go further with it.’

Debbie then discovered a gateway to Ancient Egypt in Paul’s bedroom (audience laughter) including the step pyramid of Saqqara and a temple to the Ancient Egyptian cat goddess Bast. ‘I mean what can you say? It’s a load of bollocks? This was non-reality. But I was willing to believe that something could come out of it. I said show me, prove it to me. But it would never have become reality to me if I hadn’t kept a dream diary.’

The Great Pyramid at Giza
They discovered a gateway to Ancient Egypt in Paul’s Bedroom. Skeptical?

Paul started getting dream messages about seven holy wells of Isis at the source of the Thames. ‘You won’t find this in the conventional history books. But I was prepared to take it on board. I was talking to Debbie about it and she said ”This is a clue”.’ He performed Bast rituals in his bedroom. ‘I was talking to a brick wall. I was aware of the absurdity.’ After one of ‘these little spectaculars’ he opened a book at random and saw the name Ewelme. I focused my attention on Oxfordshire. I had a dream of a sign saying Godstow.’

After a sequence of events which were rather hard to follow, he decided to try and ‘accomplish something with the River Thames… sacralising the river… I was going along the river of darkness. I took it as a little experiment with creativity. I turned the Lady of Shallot into the Goddess Isis by using imagery from Apuleius’s Golden Ass.’ He read out Apuleius’s description of lsis in the ruins of Reculver: ‘Gothic ruins by moonlight, very fetching. Some kind of meditation was in order.’ After this, ‘We were completely shattered. People could hardly walk. Something very powerful was going on here.’

They went on to another site: ‘Some of the people I was with thought this place was well dodgy and like something out of an HP Lovecraft story (knowing laughter from the audience). Make of that what you will. I ended up doing a Basil Fawlty, holding my head and barking like a dog. This to me was just so bizarre.’ However, ‘The climax of the whole thing was very inconclusive.’ They ended up in a pub in Oxfordshire where he had a vision of a Toulouse Lautrec cafe. ‘I tranced out. I got really melancholy, I really spaced out. I wasn’t happy about it any more, I didn’t feel right. I felt I had lost the concept of resacralising the river. This Bast thing – what the hell was it all about? But finally its emergence seemed to stimulate the dredging of my subconscious.’ Long-buried memories returned that ‘would tax the ingenuity of a Marcel Proust or a James Joyce’. He decided it was ‘part of Jung’s individuation process. I’m grooving on that now.’

Psychic questing is a romantic pursuit. You make contact with ancient civilisations who had a superior aesthetic sense to post war town planners or speculative builders. It’s a way of repossessing Britain (Albion), looking for the real land under its hideous disguise of bloodless suburbs, emasculated town centres, shopping malls and heritage industry. It’s a way of turning your own life into a story, an outlet for your fantasy, imagination and feelings. You have an opportunity for dressing up (Celtic jewellery, black leather) and play-acting (performing rituals).

The quest plot is one of the oldest, but what seems at first sight to be an occult version of Tinker, Tailor, turns out to be not an enigma with a solution, but a prolonged tease, more Twin Peaks than John le Carre. There is always ‘more work to be done’. ‘Information comes out all the time’ and the bandwagon keeps rolling. The artefacts are part of the tease, not an end to the quest. Could the ‘carrots’ be ‘salted’? A quester must keep his or her reputation, and a leader must keep his followers.

Ultimately it’s all strangely pointless – and Paul Weston seemed to sense this. It’s like the Great Secret or the Holy Grail. When you find it all it says is ‘The All is the One’ or ‘There’s no Place Like Home’.

NAD the answer? Behind the marketing hype of life-extension supplementation

Brian Goncus
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NAD the answer? Behind the marketing hype of life-extension supplementation

Few things have the ability to provoke a response in the way that fear might, and few things seem to provoke fear in the way death can. Death anxiety seems to be the most discussed topic in all of human history, inspiring work from every time period and culture. Methods for addressing or managing this fear vary wildly, but the most obvious method to remove the fear is to remove death itself. History is full of ill-fated attempts to circumvent death or, even better, rejuvenate the body to a younger state.

We have all heard the stories – Gilgamesh seeks out the secrets of immortality after witnessing the death of his friend Enkidu, Juan Ponce de León’s search for the fountain of youth, and alchemists attempting to produce the elixir vitae. These stories represent the hopes of our ancestors for longer, more youthful lives, and for as long as these hopes have existed, there have been people there to sell the hopeful a variety of treatments for aging. I probably don’t need to mention that none of these treatments were effective.

More recently, scientists have taken an interest in aging as a biological process and have wondered what interventions, if any, could slow, halt, or even reverse the ravages of aging. In the last 30 years, the field of aging research has experienced immense growth, moving from a small fringe of researchers to becoming a mainstay of biological investigations that attracts both NIH and billionaire funding.

Scientists have achieved great success in extending the life span of multiple species in the laboratory, including nematode worms, flies, and mice. These achievements suggested that aging was dynamic, and they enticed scientists to continue looking for an anti-aging treatment for humans. Dozens of interventions have been investigated in the lab, but despite the continued success with animal models, an effective treatment for human aging remains elusive.

A wine glass being filled with red wine from a bottle which is out of shot
Resveratrol, found in small amounts in red wine, is touted as an anti-aging supplement despite the lack of good evidence.

Yet, the nuances of scientific research rarely matter to those looking to cash in early on something that seems promising. Fifteen years ago, resveratrol was touted as a potential ally in the fight against old age, and it seemed promising. Studies indicated that it might work as a sirtuin activator, helping to regulate metabolic activity and thereby slow aging, similar to how some have suggested caloric restriction might slow the process. Formulations of resveratrol are still being researched for various potential medical benefits, but more than a decade and a boatload of research funds later, the hype was a bust.

The lack of confirmatory research did not stop profiteers from selling resveratrol as soon as various media outlets gave superficial reporting on the potential of the molecule. Despite the subsequent fifteen years of research showing no benefit to human health or aging, you can still buy a “six months’ supply” for $189.00 from online retailers. Resveratrol has firmly taken its place among other hyped “medicines” that turn a profit but confer no benefit. Resveratrol is not the first molecule or intervention that has had this trajectory, and it is doubtful that it will be the last.

Recently, promotions of NAD precursors among the supplement salesmen have been on the rise. NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is an extremely important metabolic coenzyme, primarily involved in redox reactions, and is found in all cells and is necessary for cellular function. The basic claim that is seen circulating is that natural levels of NAD decrease as we age and, further, the decrease is directly related to various disease states associated with aging. The thought is simple from here: restore more youthful levels of NAD in older individuals, and we will delay the aging process or slow the progression of age-related disease.

The majority of products that claim to boost NAD levels are actually precursors such as NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide) and NR (nicotinamide riboside). Precursors are used due to their bioavailability compared to NAD itself. Nevertheless, NAD is synthesized from these precursors (among others), and they have been shown to increase NAD levels.

Studies in mice were very promising and included protection from neurodegeneration, improvements in lung function, improvements in immune cell function, reduction of chronic inflammation, and protective effects against photodamage caused by UVB. Humans, however, are not mice, and it has been noted in many studies that trials in animals rarely translate to humans. NAD precursors have undergone some clinical trials, and it is a sure thing that researchers hoped to replicate some of the success seen with lab mice, but the results seem lackluster. Little of the improvements and protective effects observed among the mice were seen in the human clinical trials.

There were some positive results with clinical trials, which included increased insulin sensitivity for prediabetic women, modest improvement in muscle performance, and increased telomere lengths. Further, the doses of administered NMN seemed to be well tolerated and safe. There were, however, no significant positive results for sleep quality, eyesight improvement, cognition improvement, or insulin sensitivity among men.

A white lab mouse hand in hands wearing latex gloves
Studies in mice are promising, but people are not mice.

While these results are indeed interesting, there is a lack of large-scale, long-term clinical trials looking into more indicators of health than are currently available. Safety concerns alone are enough to justify the need for further research. Current trials deem most NAD precursors as ‘safe’, but these studies are done in the short term, while people usually take supplements for a very long time – in this case, likely for the rest of their lives. Further, more research is needed looking into subpopulations. It may be the case that NAD precursors are safe for older individuals but not for younger. It could also be the case that the current clinical trials weren’t large enough to detect adverse effects that would become apparent in the general population.

As of 2020, the NMN market was worth some $250 million worldwide, and it is expected to grow in the upcoming years. It is certainly possible that NMN or NR supplementation will be doctor-recommended and science-approved in the future for various complaints arising from the aging process, it is also certainly possible that it will go the way of resveratrol and turn into another great disappointment in our search to lead longer, healthier lives. Either way, it is too early to tell, and the results of current clinical trials don’t justify the amount of money currently being invested in such products.

We all hope for some magic pill that can keep us younger for longer, but for now, we might have to be content to save our money and wait for the science to do its work.

The Skeptic Podcast: Episode #027

The Skeptic Podcast
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The Skeptic Podcast: Episode #027

The Skeptic podcast, bringing you the best of the magazine’s expert analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal since its relaunch as online news source in September 2020. 

On this episode:

Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or to support the show, take out a small voluntary donation at patreon.com/theskeptic.

Sacred Cloths? Flags, outrage, and the skeptical mindset

Gabriel Andrade
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Sacred Cloths? Flags, outrage, and the skeptical mindset

Flags have taken centre stage in news coverage on both sides of the Atlantic this week. In the United Kingdom, there has been a major surge in the display – and even painting of – the St George’s flag across cities and towns, with streets, lampposts, and even roundabouts in England and Wales being adorned. Supporters claim the flags are a show of national pride, though critics argue the display is linked to heightened immigration tensions and far-right activism. Meanwhile, in the United States, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order proclaiming that anyone found guilty of burning the American flag would face a mandatory one-year jail sentence. The move openly defies longstanding Supreme Court precedent protecting flag burning as free speech, sparking significant debate about constitutional rights and the scope of presidential power.

Thanks to the rise of modern nationalism, flags have become powerful symbols — so powerful that many people are literally prepared to sacrifice their lives in their defence. As Tim Marshall discusses in his book Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags, flags serve to condense collective identity, evoke deep emotional responses, and often act as rallying points in moments of national tension or division, with individuals seeing them as embodiments of their nation and its values. Marshall explains that flags’ provocative power is such that, even in a globalised world that aspires to unity, flags still channel “our traditional tribal tendencies and notions of identity – the idea of ‘us versus them’,” making them more than just pieces of fabric but potent embodiments of belonging and, potentially, conflict.

This everyday potency of flags ties directly to what sociologist Michael Billig calls “banal nationalism”: the subtle, often unnoticed ways that national identity is reinforced in daily life. Banal nationalism is reflected in the routine presence of flags in public spaces, national colours on sports jerseys, common references in news and advertising, and countless other ordinary practices that keep national identity constantly in the public consciousness. Unlike the spectacular displays of nationalism in parades or protests, banal nationalism works quietly, ensuring that the nation is always present in people’s minds – normalising allegiance and making the symbols feel so “natural” that defending them, sometimes fiercely, seems an unquestionable part of everyday life.

It is inevitable that modern societies require strong symbols to promote cohesion, and flags fulfil this need exceptionally well, acting as accessible representations of shared history and collective values. However, there is a clear distinction between healthy civic pride and the kind of irrational zeal that can arise when emotional attachment to the flag overrides the ability for critical thinking. When reactions to flag desecration become extreme or disproportionate, it often stems from a failure to apply skepticism and reason – turning a useful symbol of unity into an object of near-sacred indignation. In this context, promoting flag display is very different from reacting with outrage or punitive fervour when a flag is desecrated; the former encourages community, while the latter can signal an uncritical, even dangerous, escalation of symbolic nationalism.

In essence, flags in modern societies function strikingly similar to totems in traditional ones. Early anthropologists such as Émile Durkheim and James Frazer were fascinated by totemism – a system found in many tribal societies where groups identified symbolically with animals, plants, or objects regarded as sacred ancestors or emblems. Totems, they observed, served as visible symbols of group unity and identity, reinforcing social bonds and embodying the “spirit” of the community. Yet these scholars were often perplexed, and sometimes even bemused, by the intense reverence and the sometimes seemingly irrational taboos accompanying totems – how violating or disrespecting the totem was thought to bring about dire consequences or provoke communal outrage.

Today, these early anthropologists are rightly criticised for paternalistic and ethnocentric attitudes towards what they deemed “primitive” societies. However, there remains enduring insight in their recognition that totems evoked deep, sometimes irrational, emotions within the group. It is important to note that the fetishistic attachment they observed is not confined to the societies they studied; it is vividly alive in our modern attachment to national flags. Whereas the tribal totem might have been a carved animal or sacred plant, the flag has become the “modern totem” – a mundane object imbued with potent meaning, around which communities rally with both pride and, at times, a curiously irrational defensiveness when it is threatened or disrespected.

The cognitive fault in fetishising totems and flags often stems from a form of animism, where people unconsciously attribute agency or spirit to inanimate objects – treating a piece of cloth, for example, as if it were an actual agent deserving of protection and care. This animistic thinking parallels the magical beliefs seen in practices like causing harm to a poppet or doll to harm the person it represents – both rest on the assumption that harm done to a symbol somehow affects the thing symbolised.

A silhouette of a boy holding a flag Photo by Dennis Schmidt on Unsplash

Our modern Western world has taken a positive turn thanks to the gradual process of secularisation that gained momentum after the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Spinoza, and Diderot championed reason and individual liberty, emphasising that genuine progress required tolerance and freedom of speech – even when it entailed protecting views, expressions, or acts that a majority might find offensive. This liberal spirit has underpinned reforms that decriminalised many acts previously punished for offending social or religious sensibilities, such as homosexuality, on the understanding that being repulsed by an act is not the same as being harmed by it. In this context, freedom of speech includes protecting acts like flag desecration that might shock or offend but do not constitute real harm against others.

Today, there is concern in Europe and North America that some migrants from Muslim-majority countries seek to enact blasphemy laws that criminalise insults to religious symbols – a move widely resisted by those who value secular principles. Yet, it is a sad irony that many who rightly oppose blasphemy laws are often the first to demand harsh penalties for flag desecration. In essence, laws punishing flag desecration are functionally a form of blasphemy law: they criminalise symbolic offense rather than real injury, and treat a secular “sacred object” much as societies once guarded religious icons. This contradiction calls for a more consistent application of Enlightenment values, recognising that the true test of freedom is the protection of expression – however unsettling – so long as it causes no substantive harm.

There can be a reasonable argument for outlawing flag burning, not due to the symbolic act itself, but because it has the potential to incite riots or imminent violence. This pragmatic approach is explicitly echoed in President Trump’s recent executive order, where he justified strict penalties by stating: “When you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before. People go crazy”. The analogy underpinning this argument is famously drawn from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who asserted that freedom of speech does not protect falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre – a metaphor pointing to the boundaries of free expression when it poses a clear and present danger to public safety.

However, the “fire in a theatre” analogy has often been criticised and misused as a pretext for unnecessary censorship, obscuring the line between genuine incitement and the mere stirring of offense or discomfort. Even if restrictions on flag desecration are justified on the grounds of preventing violence, it is crucial that such laws be applied strictly and transparently, motivated solely by the imperative to avoid real-world harm. They must never serve as vehicles for the irrational, fetishistic attachment to a piece of cloth – an impulse that, historically, has far too often been the true driver behind punitive laws targeting desecration of symbolic objects.

AI isn’t killing literature – it isn’t even close to replacing professional writers

James Machell
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AI isn’t killing literature – it isn’t even close to replacing professional writers

It’s February 2023. ChatGPT has just become the fastest-growing consumer software application in history, and Clarkesworld Magazine, a leading publisher of original short fiction, shuts down for the first time. Why? Spam. So much spam that the human voice became nothing more than a whisper in a synthetic gale of AI-generated content.

But the gates reopened after just a few weeks and Neil Clarke, its editor, won a Hugo Award the same year. We continue to enjoy a wealth of new writing while AI wails like an upset toddler, producing much more noise than everyone else, but getting less attention.

Markets for first publication rights to short fiction, poetry, and non-fiction bustle with over a hundred pro-paying (0.08c per word) magazines opening their submission windows throughout the year. However, an editor’s job now doubles with robopsychologist as they decipher which authors are real and which are used for unearned profit.

The first question to ask when performing a Voight-Kampff test on a black and white page is whether ChatGPT and other forms of AI can actually write well. It’s an unfortunate yes, and not just well – better than most humans. Join an adult creative writing group and in most cases, the best writers there will be in its own members’ coat pockets.

AI understands and conforms robotically to the rules of story structure. This alone produces a more enjoyable read than a great deal of amateur fiction. First readers are exhausted by narratives with no stakes, and seeing events connected by “ands” rather than “so’s”. There is also a frequent issue with pacing. It takes a human author a long process of repetition to grasp when and where to hit certain narrative beats.

However, while the likes of ChatGPT may write smoothly, with twists in the right places and a clear sense of beginning, middle, and end, it doesn’t cringe at cliché. It doesn’t know how to invert expectations, because it relies on conforming to them. Generated stories are underdeveloped, rushing towards an end. They are unable to grasp nuance or imply, telling every story with the same winking tone that leaves a reader feeling patronised.

A humpback whale skeleton in the National Museum Cardiff, with a reconstructed pectoral fin.
A humpback whale skeleton in the National Museum Cardiff. An animal like Migaloo, the famous white humpback whale, may have inspired Melville. Via Amgueddfa Cymru on Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA-2.A

Compare the last lines of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick with the rewritten version I used ChatGPT to generate as research for this article: “It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.” is transfigured by a smug algorithm into “Captain Ahab got his revenge. Or became part of it.”

Overall, however, the literary merit of AI in its current stage is comparable to that of your average creative writing undergraduate. Apply a university mark scheme to ChatGPT and it shows up roughly in the middle of the class. Editors have therefore taken a strong stance against AI (perhaps to preserve humanity, or perhaps out of a subconscious fear of being usurped themselves) and consider its use to constitute plagiarism.

As part of the masthead for Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, I have been part of several discussions about spotting AI submissions. AI detectors have so far proven ineffective at diagnosing content as artificially generated – it still requires a human to see through words into the mind (or lack of one) behind them. As time moved on, one of our fiction editors observed there was actually no need to focus on spotting AI – merely focusing on quality was enough. As a pro-paying market, we never have a shortage of submissions, and AI just doesn’t have what it takes to escape the slush pile.

Masses of generated content aren’t really a threat to writers who are used to having their work consistently chosen over fierce competition. (Sturgeon’s ratio of 90% bad art to 10% good might now be amended to 99:1). Few creative writing students ever go on to have a paid publication, and AI has the same trouble. It doesn’t take long to tell if a story or poem has potential, so an editor is merely tasked with sending more rejections.      

There has only been one instance of plagiarised content escaping the nets of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, and that came about through traditional plagiarism. A serial offender with other publishers, using the same pseudonym as if to mock the trust of diligent editors, sliced extracts from longer poems which were only available to read in print, and passed them off as their own. It took a human masquerading as another human, rather than a machine imitating one.

If there is any real threat posed by AI to literature, it’s psychological. I discussed this during an interview with award-winning artist, John Picacio (his work has appeared as cover art for several Michael Moorcock books). He describes AI as “a potentially fatal thing for civilisation.” This isn’t because he feels threatened as an established creative, but for fear of diminished human connection and a devaluation what constitutes good.

When I graduated with an MSc in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh, I still wasn’t at a stage where I could write confidently. It took years of reading and practice before serial rejection letters became acceptances. I wonder if I would have had the motivation to learn if, as a teenager, I could animate my ideas by describing them to a chatbot.

A man sits on a wall in the street, wearing a black Adidas cap, necklace and grey t-shirt, writing in an A4 notepad
Human writing is driven by inspiration, purpose, creativity and other qualities the machine cannot possess. Image by Brad Neathery, via Unsplash

The fight against AI is, however, being won. There will always be an audience for good writing, if publishers continue to seek and pay for it. The conflict is therefore swayed by the consumer. If the market for new literature diminishes, there will be less incentive for writers to learn, or editors to provide feedback and clarify success with publication.

Britain’s longest-running science fiction magazine, Interzone, recently dropped its pay rates and ceased print publication, presumably due to lack of funds. The threat to literature isn’t AI, but in the struggle to nourish art at its roots. My fear is that while people may continue to enjoy the classics, there will be fewer new books on the shelves. Or worse, the books that sell will come from authors with the biggest profiles or who invest the most into advertising.  

The industry for new writing is changing. Social media and donation platforms have become integral to launching careers. Writers don’t just sell their work, but also themselves through community engagement. AI’s lack of personality means it doesn’t come with expectations, and part of the pleasure of reading N.K. Jemisin, for example, is knowing you’re in for a rollercoaster of emotional intensity and social commentary. It can, however, be used by an author to generate social media posts, or even describe their own work without threatening the creative process itself.

Afterall, George Orwell’s first rule of writing was to “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” AI borrows from the treasury of existing literature and therefore can’t help feeling familiar. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray would not have made the same impact if it was published today, nor would James Joyce’s Ulysses or Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Presuming AI continues to develop, it still can’t keep up with constant innovations in style and subject matter. T.S. Eliot’s aphorism that “Good poets borrow, great poets steal” could now, more than ever, do with the addition of “average poets regurgitate.”

No end of faith: how do religions survive a devastating truth bomb?

Tim Jokl
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No end of faith: how do religions survive a devastating truth bomb?

In 1914, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were very confident that Jesus would return and the world as we knew it would end. Previous ‘end-times’ predictions for two dates in the 1870s had failed to produce the goods, but thing were going to be different this time.

They were wrong. When the Kingdom did not in any obvious way establish itself, the Jehovah’s Witnesses quietly abandoned the end times part of that prediction. Later, and for a long time, they claimed He had actually returned, and at the stated time. They claimed He’d just wanted to chill in the background a while and get acclimatised before making His big moves.

Decades on, when the Kingdom continued to be a no-show, they abandoned another key prediction: that people alive in 1914 would live to see Christ’s Kingdom on Earth.

End times, gentlemen

Most world religions have a belief in end times. But for the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons, the idea is particularly front and centre. The events of 1914 were hugely triggering, especially as ‘wars and rumours of wars’ were a key end-time prophecy pointed out in the New Testament.

Ignoring the reality that there are always wars, rumours of wars, earthquakes, signs in the heavens, and all the other things followers are told to look out for, the idea of everyone on Earth burning to death is just so rapturous! For churches and the movies, it’s a draw.

What happened to the membership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses after this failed apocalypse? What happened in 1915? Was there a mass departure to the Methodists? Did they demand their money back? And their birthdays?

Jehovah's Witnesses in France offering bible courses. A man in a flat cap speaks with a woman in a mustard coat on the street, both standing behind the stand holding copies of the religion's literature.
Jehovah’s Witnesses in France offering bible courses (Source: Tim Jokl)

Quite the opposite; membership grew from roughly 50,000 in 1914 to nearly nine million today. However, that growth was somewhat challenged in 1975, when their next emphatically predicted end date came and went, again without the Earth being barbecued and the wicked being destroyed. Approximately one million members left. Perhaps, for some, the failed predictions of 1874, 1878, 1914, and finally 1975, followed a sort of ‘three or four strikes and you’re out’ rule. It was clearly the last straw for many, but by no means the majority.

In the years preceding 1975, some members had defaulted on their mortgages, or simply given their money away. Many had taken their kids out of school, believing conventional education had no future. It was a truly seismic non-event, and a major embarrassment as that year passed. Later, all references to the 1975 prediction were removed from teaching material and never mentioned again in The Watchtower.  Ironically, anyone joining the Jehovah’s Witnesses after 1975 was more likely to hear about it from a door-knocking Mormon than their own authority figures. 

Rewriting history

A religion getting it wrong in real time, then covering it up for subsequent followers, is one thing, but what about when a religion tries to rewrite its own well-documented, widely shared and studied history?

In 2014, the Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) published a ‘revised’ version of its own official history, replacing the longstanding ‘wholesome’ account with a relatively candid admission of deception. The revised Mormon origin story admitted plainly that the founder of the religion, the ‘Prophet’ Joseph Smith, had practiced polygamy. In fact, he’d married many women, possibly as many as 40. This includes some already married to other men, and one 14-year-old girl.

A screenshot of the BBC News website, the headline "Mormon church polygamy: Joseph Smith 'had up to 40 wives'" And below, two paintings, of Smith and his first wife, Emma, a marriage previously claimed as his only.

Academics and historians had long known the church had spared its members some significant and rather juicy details. They knew, too, of the numerous conflicting versions of key events. On top of that, they knew that Mormons are trained to distrust and ignore academics and historians. Long before the term ‘Fake News’ was coined, Mormons had learned to chirp the words ‘Anti-Mormon literature’ when confronted with any uncomfortable scholarly study.

It’s easy to persuade your followers not to read academic papers. For this reason, academics and Mormons had remained safely segregated. As a casual observer, you might think: what’s the big deal? I always knew the Mormons practised polygamy. But before 2014, the Mormons were taught that polygamy came later. In the version explained to me at Mormon Sunday School, polygamy was introduced by the church’s second leader-prophet, Brigham Young, not by the courageous founder, Joseph Smith. The reputation of Joseph Smith was beyond reproach. Smith was the golden boy, and in Mormon estimations second only to Christ Himself.

Three of the same plate photographs of Brigham Young with his signature below
Brigham Young (Source: US Congress Archive)

Mormons were taught that Polygamy was practiced out of necessity, after revelation came from God. Also, the poor harried men of the church didn’t want to practise it – but had to obey a direct commandment. The rationalisation commonly given was that there were way more Mormon women than men in the late 1840s and 50s – due to violent persecution. There were many fatherless children. Framed this way, it made enough satisfactory sense, especially if you tried not to think about it again. 

I know this to be true

Every month, Mormons are asked to stand in front of their local congregation and testify that their church is the one true church. (Mormons use the word ‘true’ way more than any other group. If you hang around with them it starts to sound like, ‘Chrewww!’)

But here’s the rub. In 2013, you stood in front of your fellow Mormons to swear that you know in your heart what is true. Then suddenly, in 2014, it is not true – even though you were quite certain – and now you have to get up and swear that the new thing is true, and has always been true. And it’s so true it burns like fire in your soul!

It raises obvious issues: imagine it’s 1999 and you are an enthusiastic but inquisitive Mormon. Nothing would shake your faith, but your own studies reveal certain hidden realities. You speak up about these. You’re told to shut up. You refuse to shut up. You are excommunicated from the church and disfellowshipped. Your world falls apart. Your family ostracises you.

Then in 2014 you are vindicated. So what should happen now? Should your membership be restored? Is some compensation due for the mental torment? Will your tearful wife/husband and kids come running back?

For many who decided to leave, it was the 14-year-old wife detail that caused the biggest reputational damage. Commentators estimate around 100,000 Mormons left the church following the 2014 revisions, though the church does not publish membership data. And unless a member expressly demands to be taken off church records, they remain on the books as ‘inactive’ – even if they never go near a church again.

Anecdotally, about a quarter of my own extended family decided to exit. The rest are as faithful as ever. Around 19 million other Mormons were happy enough with whatever the truth is, was, or might become.

Consistent inconsistencies

The ‘when did polygamy start?’ question is just one of many revisions in the new version of Mormon church history. Various topics yet to be clarified include, for example, the four distinct and different versions of the First Vision – the 14-year-old Joseph Smith’s first meeting with God in the woods near his home. It’s something you might have thought he’d remember. But he told various groups and individuals a different version of the story, the details improving and expanding with each telling.   

Also not adequately covered in the revision is the well-documented account of Joseph Smith the convicted felon, the smooth-talking fantasist, and the boy who saw visions in his upturned hat revealing the locations of buried gold.

The Mormons no longer need to worry about riding this out. It has already passed, and the hit has been taken. It will be interesting to see if the Mormons do what the Jehovah’s Witnesses did and quietly remove all references to the awkward ‘earlier’ version of Mormon history. Perhaps years from now they will state emphatically that the ‘new’ version was always the one and only version, and censure anyone who refers to the old version.

Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany warning about End Times. A woman holds a sign with alarming red and yellow graphics and Russian text. Another behind her hands out literature.
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany continuing to warn about End Times (Source: Tim Jokl)

Leaving faith

The trauma of leaving a religion is a subject of its own. Many of those who left would have spent years trying to rationalise and live with their decision. Thinking about the relatively small proportion of Jehovah’s Witnesses who left after 1975, and the Mormons who left after 2014, it is too simplistic to say the ones who stayed were all happy with that choice.

We might think they were unable to process new information. Many must have stayed despite the awakening jolt to their reality; others stayed despite already having doubts. However, followers can choose to stay or leave for a thousand different reasons. The benefits of a secure community and support network, and a lifetime of shared stories and experience, will often tip the scales in a church’s favour.

For those who do want to leave the Mormon church, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, there is no end of hard evidence that contradicts their core doctrines. Latching onto this, one can ease oneself away. I experienced it as a feeling of ‘recovering from’ a religion, rather than simply leaving.

And there’s help aplenty in the digital world. YouTube has a trove of material. And there are many websites, like exmormon.org which has actively offered support for the past 30 years.

The Skeptic Podcast: Episode #026

The Skeptic Podcast
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The Skeptic Podcast: Episode #026

The Skeptic podcast, bringing you the best of the magazine’s expert analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal since its relaunch as online news source in September 2020. 

On this episode:

Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or to support the show, take out a small voluntary donation at patreon.com/theskeptic.

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Expert skeptical analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal.

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