In today’s world of endless information at our fingertips, it has become increasingly crucial (and difficult) to be able to tell apart fact from fiction.

In his bestselling book The Certainty Illusion, Timothy Caulfield lifts the curtain on the forces contributing to our information chaos and unpacks why it’s so difficult—sometimes even for experts—to escape the fake.

Hear Timothy in conversation with bestselling author and renowned science communicator Dr. Jen Gunter, for an important conversation on how to recognize and combat the bad actors that are trying to add confusion to our lives, often for nefarious ends.

Timothy Caulfield is a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health, and Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. He was the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy for over 20 years (2002-2023). He has won numerous academic, science communication, and writing awards, and is a Member of the Order Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He contributes frequently to the popular press and is the author of national bestsellers: The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness (2012) and Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash (2015), and Relax, Dammit!: A User’s Guide to the Age of Anxiety (2020). Caulfield is also the co-founder of the science engagement initiative #ScienceUpFirst and has written, hosted and produced documentaries, including the award-winning TV show, A User’s Guide to Cheating Death, which has been shown in over 60 countries, including streaming on Netflix in North America.

Dr. Jen Gunter is a Winnipeg-born, Canadian-trained OB/GYN and a passionate science communicator often called the Internet’s OB/GYN. She is a bestselling author and her books The Vagina Bible, The Menopause Manifesto, and Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation have been translated into 25 languages. Her TED Talk, “Why Can’t We Talk About Periods?” was the third most viewed TED Talk of 2020. She hosted the popular CBC GEM/Amazon Prime Series Jensplaining and the TED Audio Collective podcast, “Body Stuff with Dr. Jen Gunter.” She blogs at The Vajenda. 

The bookseller for this event is Book Warehouse, and you can order a copy of The Certainty Illusion here.

BC Libraries Present is a virtual author series that brings exciting conversations to library users in every corner of British Columbia.

This series is a project of BC’s public library federations, coordinated by Public Library InterLink, with the generous financial support of the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

Timothy Caulfield: The Certainty Illusion