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Scientology has been described in the States as “ruthless, litigious and lucrative” and in this country as “corrupt, sinister and dangerous”, yet it boasts global success and has made hundreds of millions of dollars.

Thanks to the Internet, it now faces an unprecedented global opposition. The scary secrets of Scientology and its recruitment methods will be exposed in this talk.

It will be useful for anyone wanting to set up their own lucrative cult.

Martin Poulter first encountered skepticism while a teenager. He has a Philosophy and Psychology degree from Oxford University and a PhD in Philosophy of Science from the University of Bristol.

He has been a Scientology-watcher since 1995, when he was threatened with legal action over material he posted online. He is an ordained minister in the Church of the SubGenius, which offers eternal spiritual salvation or triple your money back.

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 Can our minds heal us? It’s a controversial question – alternative therapists routinely claim that our emotions and beliefs dramatically influence physical health, while sceptics from the world of conventional medicine insist any idea of “healing thoughts” is dangerous quackery. Science writer Jo Marchant, author of the New York Times bestseller Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body, takes an evidence-based approach, tracking down researchers defying conventional scientific opinion to investigate mind-body links in situations from autoimmune disease to cancer. In this fascinating talk, she travels from a lab 3,500 metres above sea level in the Alps, where she meets a neuroscientist studying the role of the mind in altitude sickness; to the Minnesota home of a woman whose spinal fracture appeared to heal after she received fake surgery; to the University of Washington’s experimental pain lab, where a virtual reality ice canyon called “Snow World” is helping patients with severe burns. She concludes that both the advocates of alternative treatments and the sceptics are missing a vital piece of the mind-body puzzle—and creating a dangerous rift in how we approach medicine. Drawing on the latest research, she reclaims the mind from the grasp of pseudoscience, and explains how we can make use of these findings in our own lives. Jo Marchant writes on everything from the future of genetic engineering to underwater archaeology for New Scientist, Nature, The Guardian, and Smithsonian magazine, and has been shortlisted for the Royal Society Prize twice, for Cure (2016) and for her previous book Decoding the Heavens (2009).

What is it that helps both scorpions and cyclists to survive? What do raw eggs and gyroscopes have in common? And why does it matter? In an age of string theory, fluid dynamics and biophysics, it can seem as if the science of our world is only for specialists and academics. Not so, insists Helen Czerski – and in this sparkling new book she explores the patterns and connections that illustrate the grandest theories in the smallest everyday objects and experiences. Linking what makes popcorn pop to Antarctic winds, coffee stains to blood tests or ketchup bottles to aliens in space, every thread you pull in the fabric of everyday life shows you something new about the intricate patterns of our world. Read "Storm in a Teacup" and you will see and understand the world as you never did before.

Helen was born in Manchester (UK), to parents who were both inquisitive about the world and encouraged Helen and her sister to find out about the world for themselves. In her teenage years, when the questions got too much, Helen’s mum frequently said 'I don’t know. You go and get a university education and then come back and tell me'. So she did. Churchill College, Cambridge, was her home for eight years, and now she knows the answer to at least some of those questions.

Sports have played a large part in Helen’s life, and she’s always happy to learn new ones. Current favourites are badminton, running and swimming, with sailing and diving thrown in when she gets the chance.