Derek Colanduno

Derek Colanduno (born January 19, 1974 in Albemarle, North Carolina) is an American skeptic and podcaster. Derek is currently employed as a software engineer for a wastewater engineering firm in Atlanta, GA, where he currently resides.

In the early 1980s when Colanduno was in elementary school, he developed an interest in computer science with encouragement from his father, a computer programmer at Burroughs Corporation. After high school, his family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada where Colanduno attended University of Nevada, Las Vegas, majoring in Computer Science. He worked as an engineer for a national Sports Radio network and a privately owned Alternative Rock Station (KEDG) during late night, where he would occasionally fill in as an on-air broadcaster.d

Colanduno first began streaming RealAudio content in the 1990s, prior to the podcasting boom of the 2000s. He has contributed to several other podcasts including The Pickle Round-Up for Podcast Pickle and AMP'd, the weekly music review show for the Association of Independent Music Podcasters, a group of music podcasters from around the world who promote and support independent musicians through the web. He is the also the Director for Skeptrack at Dragon*Con.

Colanduno became interested in skepticism after picking up a copy of Skeptic Magazine with a photo of Carl Sagan on the cover in the 1990s. Mainly due to his notoriety of Skepticality, he has been interviewed numerous times on the subject of Skepticism. He has appeared on the XM-Sirius show & podcast Slice of SciFi, the podcast Disability 411 The Skeptic Zone podcast and for the website Cuddly Atheism, among others.

On September 8, 2005, during a dinner celebrating Skepticality being mentioned during a Steve Jobs speech, Colanduno suffered a massive stroke after which he spent six weeks in a coma. His doctors were unable to determine with certainty whether what he suffered was a proper stroke or a burst aneurysm or arteriovenous malformation (AVM). The damage to his frontal lobe was extensive and resulted in severe executive function disorder, which is now under control following years of rehabilitation and a regimen of drugs.

In 2008, Derek and Robynn McCarthy launched a new sub-conference at Dragon*Con called the Skeptrack. Daniel Loxton, a panelist at the 2009 Skeptrack Conference describes it as follows: "Skeptrack is a remarkable achievement whose potential cannot be overstated. In its second year, Skeptrack is already a full-blown skeptics conference, offering more programming to a larger audience than did TAM2 (referring to the James Randi Educational Foundation’s “Amazing Meeting” (TAM) conference). And, because Skeptrack is embedded within Dragon*Con, it offers unique assets — and unique promise for growth and outreach."

In an interview in 2012, Colanduno stated that his stroke greatly affected the part of his brain that is responsible for a psychological phenomenon called Pareidolia. This is a normal brain's way of interpreting vague or random stimulus as being significant, such as seeing an animal or a face in a cloud or seeing the "Man in the Moon." He also suffered significant Aphasia which affected his ability to speak. Colanduno chose to use Music Therapy to improve (or re-learn) his speech pattern, word formation and word-finding abilities. Speaking a nursery rhyme, for example, to the beat of the music using a metronome helped his condition significantly. Colanduno was also told he would never walk again, however he very adamantly persevered until he was able to walk again. The drug L-DOPA or Levodopa also expedited his recovery.