Believe it (or not)

What’s real? What’s not? How can you tell?

Bigfoot. Sea monsters. UFOs. Psychics. Ghosts. These aren’t just stories — they’re a test of how we think. In this series of summer courses, kids take a brains-on adventure through the strangest claims in the world, learning the tools to separate fact from fiction.

Each year, we tackle a new mystery:

Summer 2024: Bigfoot
Summer 2025: Sea monsters
Summer 2026: UFOs
Summer 2027: Psychic powers
Summer 2028: Ghosts

Each summer camp is online, and lasts 90 minutes for five days, Monday to Friday. They’re for students 8 and up.

“Sea Monsters” is coming up this summer.

Dates:

Monday June 23 – Friday June 27, 2025

Times:

Morning class: 12pm Eastern / 9am Pacific

Afternoon class: 4pm Eastern / 1pm Pacific

They’re 90 minutes each.

If you can’t join live, sign up for the recordings, which will be uploaded each evening.

You can stream last year’s five lessons from “Bigfoot” right now.

Q: Isn’t this just a bunch of pseudoscience?

This course doesn’t tell kids what to think — it teaches them how to think critically about extraordinary claims, just like real scientists do.

Q: Will my kid be told what to believe?

We take every idea seriously — examining the best arguments for and against, and putting them to the test with real scientific methods.

Q: Is this a serious educational experience?

These are our most intense courses on scientific reasoning. 

Q: What if my kid already believes in one of these things?

Curious believers, hardened skeptics, and total newcomers are all welcome. This course is about testing ideas, not shutting them down.

Q: How interactive is this? Will my kid actually engage?

This isn’t a sit-and-listen class. Like all of our small-group seminars, it’s a brains-on, hyper-interactive experience where kids engage, debate, and challenge their own reasoning in real time.

Q: Do they have to watch them in order?

They don’t need to… but they’ll probably be lost if they don’t.

These aren’t “debunking” courses, and they’re not about “blind belief” either. It’s about thinking like a scientist, which means using Bayes’ theorem. It’s not much to look at…

…but, to many scientists, it’s the secret path to rationality.

We teach Bayesian reasoning throughout the topics. In “Bigfoot”, you’ll see Bayesian reasoning introduced and used to show something truly surprising. In “Sea Monsters”, you’ll get fluent at using it. In “UFOs”, it’ll become second nature. By “Psychic Powers” and “Ghosts”, you’ll marvel that you haven’t always thought like a Bayesian.

Throughout this, you’ll stop thinking in black-and-white, yes/no categories, and think probabilistically. What are the odds that Bigfoot really is tromping around California? It’s not 100%… but it’s not 0%, either. Is it closer to 10%? To 1%? To 0.0001%? How could you tell?

This will get you to weigh evidence, challenge your assumptions. You’ll learn to think like a scout, steelman the side you disagree with.