Brian Dunning (author)

Brian Dunning
Skeptoid 250th Episode party at UC Irvine, California, 2011
Born	1965 (age 51–52)
Residence	Laguna Niguel, California
Nationality	American
Occupation	Writer, producer, author
Website	skeptoid.com

Brian Andrew Dunning (born 1965) is an American writer and producer who focuses on skepticism. He has hosted a weekly podcast, Skeptoid, since 2006 and is an author of 5 books on the subject of scientific skepticism. The Skeptoid podcast has been the recipient of several podcast awards including the Parsec Award and Stitcher award. Skeptoid currently (as of May 2014) attracts 161,000 listeners weekly. Dunning has also created a spin-off video series and has written several books based on the podcast.

Dunning co-founded Buylink, a business-to-business service provider, in 1996, and served at the company until 2002. He later became eBay's second biggest affiliate marketer; he has since been convicted of wire fraud through a cookie stuffing scheme. In August 2014, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release for the company obtaining between $200,000 and $400,000 through wire fraud.

In 1996 Dunning co-founded and was chief technology officer for Buylink Corporation. Buylink received venture capital funding from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. In 2000 he participated in a presentation on Buylink at The Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum called Bricks to Clicks in the New Internet Reality. He discussed the company on CNNfn's Market Call, in Rhonda Schaffler's Maverick of the Morning segment. In 2002, Dunning left his position as CTO of BuyLink.

Between 1997 and 2005 he was technical editor for FileMaker Advisor Magazine, and contributing editor of ISO FileMaker Magazine, 1996–2002, winning one of the FileMaker Excellence Awards at the 2001 FileMaker Developers Conference.

Since 2006 Dunning has hosted and produced Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena, a weekly audio podcast dedicated "to furthering knowledge by blasting away the widespread pseudosciences that infect popular culture, and replacing them with way cooler reality." He is also the author of the book of the same title and a sequel. He produced Here Be Dragons, a free 40 minute video introduction to critical thinking intended for general audiences, and received an award from the Portland Humanist Film Festival for this in November 2011. He was also winner of the 2010 Parsec Award for "Best Fact Behind the Fiction Podcast". In August 2010 he received an award recognizing his contributions in the skeptical field from the Independent Investigations Group (IIG) during its 10th Anniversary Gala.