Citation Needed - James Randi

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician[3][4][5] and scientific skeptic[6][7][8] who extensively challenged��paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.[9] He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, which he collectively called "woo-woo".[10] Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from his foundation at 87.

And so I say, fine, don't wear the sandals, just give me a pair you already own. And that's when she tased you. No, she doesn't tased me till way later in the story. Way later. Way later. What? Yeah. Finally, Eli and Cecil.

Or are they? Yes. No, they are Eli and Cecil. So you say. What's up with Noah, guys? Yeah. It and so so you say. What's up with Noah guys? Yeah, it's this week's essay. Eli just had to write about James Randy and now Noah's going all like super skeptic about everything. If that is my name, it is your name or is it?

Cecil, can you do something about this? Why do I have to do something about it? I don't know. You're both old, right? That's true. You are both very old. Okay, thanks, yeah, thanks. Like super old. Very old.

I get it, I get it. 40s. Noah, yes, Cecil. If that is your real name. Today's gonna be a fun episode, but this isn't skepticism, okay? You're just questioning everything that you already know is true, so that's not gonna work. So, sure you're not gonna trick me.

No, not at all. Okay. I mean it, from the bottom of my heart, I won't. We'll see about that! Whoa! Whoa! Ah! Nice! You want to go flip the days till one of us died sign, back to zero?

Then we see no intentions here at all, just blood! Yeah, I'm on it. Yeah, man. We see. Inventory. Yep. Hello and welcome, the Citation Needed! Podcast where we choose the subject, read do a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts.

Is this the internet? And that's how it works now. I'm Heath, and I'll be hosting this... Ah, comedy magic show on a podcast. Because I made it. For Steve. And joining me is my panel of wizards. First up, we have two men who look like a heavy metal themed magic act called Spoonle tap

I have the world's tiniest armadilla down my trouser All I'm saying is you'll never catch two podcast editors cranking anything up to 11 to podcast editors cranking anything up to 11. And also joining me is the ghost of James Randy past and his trusty henchman Eli and Tom. Woo, you hear that, Tom? We're men, men who hench. Finally, all of my goon training pays off. All right, let's get right into it. Eli, what person plays, thing concept phenomenon or event?

Are we gonna be talking about today? We'll be talking about skeptic, magician, and legend, James Randy. Great. You decided to talk about one of the most influential skeptics of all time right after his death, so you're's a super duper fuck that up. Indeed, I am, he for while many paid thoughtful tribute to Randy after his death. Only I can bring the whimsical relationship to truth to this story that one iTunes reviewer has called quote, the heart and soul of this podcast. I mean, what was it you?

Are you the reviewer? That's neither here nor there. He felt it's here. It's both here and plus I am going to make a bunch of vaguely problematic gay jokes. So I don't know that the problematicness will be vague. Yeah. Cool. So no, you want to quit the podcast with me?

Let's quit the. He then write or no illusions. No, you don't. Born Randall Swinge on August 7th of 1928 in Toronto, Canada, the oldest of three children, James Randy, did not belong in suburbia. Oh, I'm sorry, is Toronto now a suburb, Eli? In suburb? Curious and fascinated by magic and the science behind it, he invented a pop-up poster at the age of nine. At a mere 19 years after they were invented.

When interviewed, his sister recalled the time he accidentally destroyed their kitchen floor, doing a chemistry experiment in the basement, and much to his parents' dismay would often accidentally interrupt the radio reception of the whole neighborhood with his short-wave radio. Nice. His family were, as he so would call them, normies. And Eli wouldn't take any notes from them on company. I appreciate it.

I would not. Eli, you know, Muggle represents a slur word, right? In those natural that's what that is. You're less woked than JK rolling. Just to be clear, that's why that. If you want this, it take a hard, right turn into why Voldemort was right. It, and I didn't, what just, please just go on with 13 pages of argumentation. Anyways, Randy's family were ordinary folk, simple, happy, dead,

I'd ordinary folk. So they worried about Randy's family were ordinary folks. Simple, happy, dead-eyed ordinary folks. So they worried about Randy's experiments and curiosity. They sent him to Toronto's General Hospital for psychological testing. The hospital reported back. Finds the bourbon hospital. Yeah. The hospital reported back that he was perfectly normal

with the exception of having an IQ of 168. Well, that's Canadian. Right, that's Canadian. Right. That's probably metric. Ersa, he's like 123 in America. Kind of smart. Okay, but in America, 123, that's like, we're down to 74 in Japan. Yeah.

Racist. Racist. You're all ranking the racists. At the age of 15, he got his first taste of his life's calling. When he was invited to a local spiritualist church, where the preacher would divine the prayers of his parishioners despite the prayers being sealed in envelopes. Now, Zimpoche is a pretty basic magic trick. And when Randy stood up at the service and accused the preacher of cheating, he was arrested

for disturbing a religious meeting. And as Time Magazine would so deathly put it in their article about him, quote, at the police station, he vowed that he would someday fight back against those who defiled his art. And quote, his art, right? Unlike real artists of magic who sell some lights and poison balloons for the lines of the children and toys. Out of integrity.

That child died before the poison balloon lawsuit was settled and you know it. He's right. I know it's wireless settled. At 16 he attended Oakwood Collegiate where he finished everything but his finals because according to him, quote, I didn't like one of of the questions so I decided I wouldn't do it. And thus the protest vote was created. Okay, Rady, you can fly when you want to. You just don't want to right now.

It's just that we're in a time for you to fly. We're in sight. But Randy's lifelong passion for magic wouldn't be truly cemented until at the age of 17. He got hit by a car while riding his bike and broke his back. Oh, I knew I should have picked a safer spot for the reappearance part of my act. Now, I should mention that at this point in every article I read on Randy's life, it says that the doctor said he would never walk again, but that's anti-scientific bullshit. People say to make their recovery seem more miraculous and and Randy wouldn't want that. So

it's not like the doctor's fucking threw him out with the garbage and they came back the next morning to finding doing jumping jacks. Randy was in a full bodycast for 13 months or one COVID crisis. Well, optimistic. Yeah. Extremely. While Randy was stuck in bed, he read magic books, practiced his lock picking, and invented his very own illusions. Okay. The coin is behind your ear. You're just going to have to trust me until I got out of this cast, but it is there.

Yeah. When the doctor removed the cast, he cut the legs off first, spun him around a few times. As soon as he recovered, he ran away and joined the carnival. Would we say, ran though? At that carnival, he performed as Prince Ibus, not in blackface. What you're saying. I know I've done a lot of essays about magicians over the years and I just wanted to say

that Randy proves it is possible to do magic not in blackface at some point in your career. So you could have been prime minister of Canada. That's a tab. So it was at this time while working at the carnival that Randy established himself as an escape artist. According to Randy's account in the Toronto star, a fine suburban newspaper. He was quote, one night in Greg City, I met two policemen who recognized me, showed me a pair of handcuffs and asked, can you get out of these?

I got in the squad car on one side and came out on the other with them off. The policemen were totally amazed. So they took me to jail and I showed them that I could break out of a cell and quote Now he would go on to break out of more than two dozen jail cells He broke Harry Houdini's record for fastest escape from underwater coffin and escape from a straight jacket as he hung upside down Five stories above the ground. It was at this time. He also changed his name to James Randy because let's be honest Who the fuck wants to go see Randall's winch do anything. You gotta go into the doorhanging business with a name like that.

Swing his hinges guys. That'll go. And then another problem like if people started like chanting more, Swinge more, Swinge, then something would rhyme with Orange and the whole fucking dimension starts to collapse. He moved to New York, where he appeared regularly on the TV shows It's Magic and Wonder Rama. He toured with Alice Cooper's billion dollar baby story and he did several illusions for the show, where he played both the dentist and the executioner. What? Why would those be two of the characters? Because a dentist invented the electric chair. No one did anything. He even had his own show on New York radio for a couple of years. Though he did quit that show when the Archbishop of New York complained

that he had called Jesus Christ a religious nut on the You think Jesus is a religious nut way to meet his followers guys I'm just gonna skip right over the part where he was a radio magician like I mean, I I guess that does sound like the three of clubs if you listen How would you describe Eli's job. Not musician. The road life was not for Randy. Instead, he started giving talks on the paranormal with an eye, especially for debunking those who would pass off magic tricks as real magic powers.

As he put it, I started to say, what am I doing? Two girls in net stockings and a van full of rabbits. Um, Caliente? Yeah. And everything like that, what am I doing? Traveling with all of us. I'd say Caliente. I feel like you could just question the rabbits.

No question, Mark. Can we get a Caliente quorum? I need a Caliente quorum. What am I doing traveling with all this crap? When carrying an atte, a Shay case, it just means showing up at the airport and they pick me up. I do the thing and I get on the plane and come back and get exactly the same money and not only that,

but I'm accomplishing something. I come away with the feeling that even if I didn't convince anybody, I made them know there's an alternate point of view available to them. End quote. Uh, I mean, I know he's acting like it's rhetorical, but the answer to that question is two girls in net stockings and a vent full of fucking rabbits, Kalle.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, he's locked in Kalle. Yeah. I remember he was in a big fan of the girls in the net stockings. So what kind of rabbits? You're seeing how he's enormous like Danish ones or whatever. Yeah.

One of those in net stockings. Anyway, it was Bugs Bunny? Yeah, it was just run off the rails. Back to my tribute to James Randy. That in 1972, Randy found his white whale, the Joker to his Batman, the healthy eating to his Eli Bosnick, the Grinch to his homeless Santa Claus. That's right. Now, I already did an essay on Erie Geller, so I'll just give folks who missed that, the

highlights. Erie Geller is a shitty magician who during the 1970s took the world by storm by bending shit when people weren't looking. And so Randy was like, hey guys, he's just bending it when you're not looking. Just look and you'll see what I mean. To which the 1970s were soundingly responded, what was that? I was looking at this giant pile of cocaine I was snorting. Holy shit, that dude bent my spoon with his mind.

And then they were like, a bent spoon. Now I can do hair on it. Exactly. And to give you an example of just what Randy was up against, here's a story straight from his Wikipedia page. Well, according to James Alcock, at a meeting where Randy was duplicating the performances of Erie Geller, a professor from the University at Buffalo shouted out that Randy was a fraud. Randy said, yes indeed, I'm a trickster, I'm a cheat, I'm a charlatan, that's what I do for a living. Everything I've done here was done by trickery. The professor in turn shouted back,

that's not what I mean. You're a fraud because you're pretending to do these things through trickery, but you're actually using psychic powers. Jesus reading us by not writing it. Oh, the perfect crime. Oh, shut up. The perfect cry. I'm like this. 100% guarantee that guy would not be wearing a mask. Oh, no, my God. No, and it didn't just happen once.

It continues, quote, a similar event involving Senator Clauorn Pell. God, Jesus. Oh, I'm over in psychic phenomenon. When Randy Clauorn Pell, sorry. Yeah, get the fuck out of here. Your name's not Fuck you when Randy personally demonstrated to Pell that he could reveal a simple trickery a concealed drawing that been secretly made by the senator hell refused to believe that it was a trick saying I think Randy maybe a psychic and doesn't realize it. He's a fuck.

Oh, and three of those. Okay. Hey kids, you could also grow up to be a Craigilus dip shit and be a six-term Rhode Island son. Wow. Wow. Six months.

We let those 16 people have a fucking senator or two, huh? Weird. Why was a country where that guy went back to the Senate after saying that surprised about the Trump thing? Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And of course, as we covered on the Erie Geller episode, when Randy unequivocally exposed Geller

as a fraud on the Johnny Carson show, so good. The consequence was that Geller was booked the following week on Merv Griffith. Yep. So, in 1976, Randy approached Ray Heimann, a psychologist, who you might remember for pointing out how fucking stupid the so-called scientific test done on Gellerware and suggested that they create an organization dedicated to combating pseudoscience together. Together, with fellow magician, scientific American columnist and 100% bachelors, crazy

person, Martin Gardner, they formed the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal or Psychop. Nice, all right, well, looks like James Randy found the spoon man to his black hole son and rallied up a posse. And that means it's time for a quick break for no reason. Paul, I propose nothing. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Oh, you must be the show's husband. I'm Brad. Oh, I'm Nick. Nice to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you, man. So, Brad, what do you do? Oh, I'm a plumber, actually. Oh, actually, oh, you know what? I hope you don't mind, but I'm having an issue with the radiator in my upstairs bedroom.

Did they all have a 10 by 1.5 thread? Is there a way to measure that? Oh, yeah, just just plum, undemand. Like, that's not how it works. You can't. No, no, no. The mood has to be right. It has to be the right day.

The mood's a big part of it. It's important. Are you saying I'm not a plumber? Is that coming out? No, I'm not a plumber. Are you a plumber? Yes,'m not a plumber? Is that coming out to the other plumber? Are you a plumber? Yes, I am a plumber, obviously a plumber. Like for a living.

Yeah, yes, for a living. Okay, okay, how are you a plumber for a living if you can only do it sometimes though? Well, most people I work with aren't so close-minded about their plumbing needs, that's big part of that. Wait, so you can only be a plumber for open-minded people? No, that would plumbing needs. That's big part of that. Wait, so you can only be a plumber for open-minded people? No, that would be does.

It's harder if they're not, I can't explain the whole thing exactly. Okay, all right, wait, okay. So, do you even know? So, you know, thousands of plumbers were killed in the Holocaust. Thousands of them. What the hell is happening right now?

Plumber bigot, you are a plumber bigot. That's outrageous! Okay. And we're back. When we left off, James Randy was a real wizard pretending to be a skeptical narc who exposes illusionist pretending to be real wizards.

Mm-hmm. But who watches the Watchmen, Eli? You watch the Watchmen. So what's next? The FBI for a little bit in the 1970s. All right, so from the formation of Psychop forward, the amazing, yeah, they thought Randy was a communist. It was a fun thing. The amazing Randy did one job for pretty much the rest of his life.

He debunked broadsters, con men and hocksters, often on national television and saved countless lives and livelihoods in the process. In 1981, he exposed psychic con man and child molester, James Hydrick on the television show, that's my line. So Hydrick very convincingly could turn the pages of a telephone book by blowing through the gap in his two front teeth. Like the whole trip.

Yeah. I saw this video. It's like, that's the whole thing. That's it. That's it. He's got a haircut, but just like, he looks a little like a Caucasian Bruce Lee. Yeah, he does. He's got a weird kung fu outfit. He does. He does a mom game a bowl haircut before he made a big

phone. He's like a kung fu pilgrim kind of. Yeah. So Randy is like, yeah, it looks like he's fucking blown on that. There is big fucking teeth. So he's surrounded the telephone book. What big teeth you have. So he's surrounded a blow you. So Soran is surrounded telephone book with Styrofoam peeps. Yep. And the resulting. So it's amazing. That's amazing. It's so amazing. It is available on YouTube. And it is just some of the wonderful comedy. James Randy left his play. It's so good.

He's walking, he's pacing back and forth like a lion and a king. He's like, he's like a little kid try to explain the magic world in a wardrobe isn't open on Saturday. So that's why he gets it. That's why that's the reason. The first part is watching James Hydrick have to, you know, he realizes he's foiled and he has to still, you know, try to move the page knowing it's. Yeah. He goes up to, he takes different angles at it. I need to move these peanuts. Oh, it's so good.

So much. To electricity problem, guys. Yeah. It's exactly what he said. He said, charge between the lights. He picks up the pages and he's like, look, see, if you hold the page up and then you let it go, the static makes it fall. And everybody's like, that's fucking gravity, man.

What are you talking about? What? Did you fuck a bunch of kids? No. No. No. No. I'm just saying, no.

We wish he had said, no. Now, not everyone Randy Tester was a fraud. This is one of my favorite things. It's quote from Wikipedia. In 1982, Randy verified the abilities of Arthur Lintkin, a Philadelphia doctor who was able to identify the classical music recorded on a vinyl LP solely by examining the grooves on the record.

It's awesome. However, Lintkin did not claim to have any paranormal ability, merely knowledge of the way that the grooves form patterns on particular recording. And you gotta admit, that's a pretty awkward aftertalk. Right. Wow, five for five. You really do have magic music reading powers.

No, no, no, no, I don't have powers. I just know what a few records look like so I was able to do so So you just have a like a hobby a hobby. Yeah, really? Yep Well, that's stupid. Yeah, super stupid. How old's your husband again? Hey fuck you, you know, you know Fuck you. I record things real. It's cool Great, I didn't answer And record things real. I was happy. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and Google. So in 1986, she's the second legal legal. He was legal. Is it like legal or like legal? Oh, legal. Okay.

So solid. You find with it. So in 1986, Randy was a war. I was a war. I was. It's sent to ring adults. So in 1986 Randy was a war he's It's Whether they're brother and sister it's half your age minus seven right?

Randy and he then like this So in 1986 Randy was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship which he dedicated almost entirely to exposing his least favorite kind of con man, Faithealers. Specifically, W.V. Grant, Ernst Engley, and Peter Popoff. Once again, on the tonight show with Johnny Carson, Randy exposed the pop-off made use of a secret earpiece and prayer cards gathered by his assistants for his divine revelations. Playing the audio, he and his team had picked up with a radio scanner over the footage of pop-up. That's it.

The resulting news coverage led to many TV stations dropping pop-up show and he declared bankruptcy in September of 1987. But don't feel too good. As recently as 2005, pop-off was back on the griff and reportedly pulling in 23 million dollars of pop. Robert Duckies gonna do 100% true selling get out of debt holy water that you could charge

to your overburdened credit. Wow. See so I cannot believe people will swallow that. They must be wet behind the ears. That's it. H-2-0. Oh. Credit. They owe the money. They owe the money. They behind the ears. That's sick. H-2-0.

Oh. Credit. They owe them money. Thank you, Susan. I got you, bro. I got you. H-2-0 is the chemical sim... Go ahead. Ah!

Ah! Randy also set up several hopes. Paps do do is also watch. Yeah! Ah! All right, that's a good one. That's good. Randy also set up several hopesaxes of his own.

With Project Alpha, Randy exposed the problem with untrained scientists, supposedly testing psychic powers by including two young magicians in the test. Unsurprisingly, those young magicians fooled the scientists testing them. But Randy was nice enough not to claim he'd disproved all of women's studies with his hoax. Pfft. Pfft. Okay, but where'd the conceptual penis come from? But Randy was nice enough not to claim he disproved all of women's studies with his hoax.

Okay, but where did the conceptual penis come from? Classic move. Yeah, Eli, you say faith healers were his favorite people to expose and that's true, but people with advanced degrees that were dumber than him. That was a close second, I think. Yeah, we definitely more attacks on the highly educated. That is America's biggest threat. We got to. Can't be when they think they're smarter than they are. Exactly. Can't be when we can fool them with blowing on a compass.

In 1986, Randy exposed the gullibility of the media by teaming up with Australia's 60 minutes. Yeah, same show as the US version. It just runs backwards. So he put out a press release for the spirit channeler Carlos, who was actually Randy's partner, the artist Jose Alvarez. Now, the point of the hoax was that without the extensive and unskeptical media coverage, they wouldn't have sold any tickets, but they did get that coverage. So they did sell those tickets. Well, and it was truly amazing about this one to me is that he would have somebody come like

after Carlos did his little demonstration. Somebody would come in and say to the media, no, no, no, no, here's it's bullshit. Let me show you how we just did that. And the media would still run the credulous fucking for it. Yes, it's lame. And media. But then on June 7th of 1989, James Randy presented his first and only debunked acular, a two hour live special called exploring psychic powers. The show offered $100,000 to anyone who could prove they had genuine psychic powers. Spoiler alert, that money was safer than the time Conor McGregor fought Floyd

Mayweather. Whoa. That is literally the most unabashedly masculine joke I have ever heard you make, Eli. Nice job, man. I'm gonna go with you some mango nectar. I've already got a huge glass of it though, right here. I'ma drink some to celebrate. That's a bad radio. Don't do that. First up, the astrologer Joseph Merryweather attempted to guess the star signs of 12 people by talking briefly with them.

He got zero correct. That's the same price he's every time. I mean, admittedly, if it was one person and he had 12 tries he would get it right. I don't know the way you guarantee that. Wait, are you sure it wasn't Sagittarius? He just says that 12 times in a row. Noah said to keep saying Sagittarius chair. This is a cost.

It's different. It's not exactly the fuck you. So next up, psychic Barbara Martin's ability to read auras was tested. So 10 large screens were placed in front of her and she was asked to identify based on the auras, which of the screens had people behind them. Oh, that's brilliant. She claimed that all 10 screens had people behind them. Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah, she claimed that all 10 screens had people behind them. When in fact, there were only four people behind the screen.

So, but that's the one I just said. Yeah, I see it every time. That's the thing. I love people that we know of. Yeah, but Eli, she wasn't allowed to stand close enough to see them. It's a classic Mike Cousin Vinny gambler. Oh, no.

Maybe the screens have auras, also. After that, a dowser for his base tried to find water in a bottle inside a sealed cardboard box and a psychometric psychic Sharon McLaren straws. Something's probably related to key. Yeah. That's a lot of psychic in the future. She tried to match keys to their owner. They were Imperial keys.

So it's like a matter of the work. Yeah. But my favorite fail of the evening was professional Crystal Healer, Valerie Swan. Who attempted to use ESP to identify the symbols on 250 Zener cards? She got 50 correct.

Oh, amazing. Nice. For those of you who are not math nerds or aren't familiar with Zener cards, is exactly as good as random chance. She said high seas every time. So that's a tie. Not bad.

Math one, that lady one. Side note about this, exposing psychic powers that TV show was the start of my favorite rumor about James Randy. Yes, even better than he had psychic powers and pretended not to. It was that he had anti-psychic power. Yes. And then he uses them on people when he debunks. What? A rumor that became so common that later on, Randy had to agree not to know certain tests

were going on. So then he couldn't use his anti-matto problem. This is literally an argument somebody's made while talking to me about this. They brought that all the time. Well, there's a lot of anti-psychic. He could have been blocking. You know, he could have used the anti-magic as like a blanket spell before,

even if he didn't know about it, he could have just done that at a time. Yeah, and then the psychic has to cast an interrupt and it becomes a whole fucking tap all the mana at a time. Magic the gathering. Yeah, nice. But it turns out that offering people money

if they could do what they say is an excellent way to prove that people can't fucking do what they say. So starting in 1996, the newly formed James Randy Educational Foundation or J-Ref offered a prize of $1 million to anyone able to demonstrate a supernatural ability under scientific testing criteria agreed to buy both sides.

Now several popular psychics were asked if they would accept the challenge, including Rosemary Altia, John Edwards, Sylvia Brown, said yes, actually, but then never showed up. So, J.R.F. kept a clock on its website, recording the number of weeks since Brown had accepted the challenge without falling through. And they kept that clock on their website until Brown's death in November of 2013. Okay, okay, but knowing Sylvia Brown, that doesn't mean she's still not going to take the challenge. Now, I will point out, there is a public log of everyone who ever participated in the million dollar challenge, complete with video for those who actually showed up and we win

uh... no but despair you going through dozens of website pages they all pretty much went like this i i'm a psychic and i would like one million dollars please uh... sure just uh... tell us what you can do and let us watch you do it. I quit the challenge fuck you! Uh okay now be fair Ela that's not how they all went. Seven of diamonds? I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it.

I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm oh, but hey, for what it's worth, same challenge, but I'll give you a billion dollars. Okay. A billion. A trillion.

Fuck yeah. Yeah. Why not? There's so much more Randy's stuff we could talk about. He arranged conferences. He wrote for and produced several skeptical publications. He even got his own documentary. And on October 20th of 2020, he died of what the James Randy

Educational Foundation Riley called age-related causes. Which is a really nice way to say he was fucking- Oh! Yeah, it was really old. Yeah, it was. Which was. But he was also a legend, and he will be sorely missed.

Absolutely. And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? Anyone who claimed to be a psychic from 1996 to 2015 is a liar evil or both. Pretty much both. Also all the other years. Are you ready for the quiz? Yes, and I can prove it. I don't know. James Randy changed his name because it didn't fit his occupation. What other names and occupations could he have tried? A, a purveyor of shitty

beer, James Shandy. A pyrotechnic artist flames Randy. A cow rustler, James Brandy. A person who frequents shady massage parlors, Robert Kraft. I'm gonna go with C, James Brandy. You can, yeah, because he can also lead the nixie him cult that way. All right, Eli psychic powers aren't real, but if they were, which won't be the best to have for our show? Hey, automatic writing, which is the act of writing without conscious intent. Otherwise, no one has the Eli.

What are you just heard? That's the one That's it. That's it. That's the one for the show. Easy for you because there's just the one choice. Okay. Um, so I have one last question for you. Ely, I like everybody else on the show.

I am a big fan of James Randy and I was fortunate enough to meet him briefly on two occasions. So my question to you is on those two occasions, which of the following things did James Randy actually do? A, accused me of stealing. B, challenged me to a fight. C, told my wife she was too good for me or D. All of the above. Oh my god, please tell me you subscribe. James Randy. No, fuck out of James Randy. Oh, give me that D. No, give me that D Noah give me that D. Oh you it is D sir. It is D. It's So yeah, yeah, all right well regardless you beat up James Randy Noah Except but I'll let dial let Cecil go next so that he so that somebody who won't accuse me of

Beat no right well for Tom Noah Cecil go next so that he so that somebody who won't accuse me of Beatnobal right well for Tom know Cecil and Eli I'm he thank you for hanging out with us today We'll be back next week and by then Cecil will be an expert on something else Who now and then you can hear Tom and Cecil on cognitive dissonance and you can hear Eli know and myself on God Often movies scathing atheist skeptic rat and. Occasionally we do video, but mostly audio. And now I want you all, everybody listening, want you all to think of a card. Got it? Seven of diamonds.

If I nailed it because I'm magic, you can make a purpose or donation it. Patreon.com slash meditation pod. And vastly increase our donation batting average, which is well below one in 52. that T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T Oh, okay, tell you what, tell me what kind of plumbing you can do, do it, and I'll give you a million bucks. No. Hey, you're not a fucking plumber, are you? No, I'm not. I didn't think you were a plumber.