Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 125: The DJ Grothe Spectacular

Episode Date: November 18, 2013

Special thanks to DJ Grothe. Help the JREF: The JREF’s Youtube:

Want to stream Cognitive Dissonance to your Android or iPhone? Buy the app! Go to DissonancePod.com and click on the link on the right-hand side of the page. Each purchase helps support the show. Hi guys, this is Christopher from Sweden. I would just like to let you know that in Sweden, a politician mentions that he believes in actual demons and that some other politician is the Antichrist.

He will actually lose votes, and no one will listen to him. Please fix your country. It's scaring us. Glory home. There was an old priest from Birmingham Who'd fuck little boys while confirming them They got on their knees, he did as he pleased. And pumped his episcopal sperminum. Go on, you ho.

Hey, guys. Showdown and great. It's that time of year again. I don't know why you guys are so down on it. I think not. I think it tastes great. I mean, yeah, I mean had a mouth extra, whatever mouth, whatever they call it. A little odd, I get that, but I'm having some right now, and it's good, you know? I mean, I love it,

and it, I don't know, like I say, I just don't understand what, what, oh, yeah, sorry, my roommate just did. What? I'm having eggnog. The eggnog from the fridge. What do you mean we don't? What is that? It's the bottle, the quart bottle. What? Ugh.

Um, sorry, guys. Never mind. False alarm. I guess it's something I didn't realize. Hey, listen, like I said, the show's great. Glory hole. Talk to you later. Why the hell do you have a plan of hard statements? We'll label it next time! Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended.

The explicit tag is there for a reason. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence To any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat This is episode 125 of Cognitive Distance This is finally the DJ Grothy episode Yay! That episode. Yeah,

that's exciting. Yeah, that is exciting. I almost did my super Elmo voice. Just now. Very happy to be on. No, wait a minute.

You can't get off, but out and fucking do the super. I'm going to got a super Elmo voice. It is required. Oh my gosh. It's been years. I think Bible college last time I looked it out, the super Elmo voice.

I mean, so anyway, maybe we'll save it till the end. That's fine, you can whip both of them out at the end, it's fine. There's a promise of a Super Elmo. You mean Elmo and Super Elmo, right? Whatever you call it is fine,

DJ, that's fine. Well, very happy to be on the show, finally. It's been a little hit and miss, and so it's great to be finally on. Well, thank you very much for being here. So we wanted to talk about a story. There's a story from the Sun Sentinel that we wanted to talk to you about. I think it fits.

Psychic accused of bilking $100,000 from grieving woman. This is just a ridiculous story on all fronts. The gist of it basically is that a psychic took advantage of a grieving woman and told this poor woman that she was cursed and kept coming after her for bits and drips and drabs, finally bleeding her of $100,000 before she was finally stopped taking advantage of this woman. This sort of shit is exactly up the J-Ref's alley, isn't it? Right. It's one of the things that fills us with a little moral indignation, righteous ire.

It's the stuff that Randy's been waging war at for decades. And the psychic that you mentioned, the recent story, is not the only one the past few months. the recent story, is not the only one the past few months. So the Marx family, M-A-R-K-S, Marx family of psychics, sort of a Romani tribe run by Rose Marx. Randy's been waging against them, waging a sort of war against them for many years, and they were finally tried and convicted. She's going to prison as are her, really all of her family members. She was the matriarch in this clan of psychic frauds doing exactly what this recent story is all about too. It's a numbers game. They find grieving or hurting people who are looking for a little help or direction in their lives, and they do what's called walking them up the ladder. You have to

come back another session to either remove a curse or to get a blessing or to get whatever help you need, maybe contact with a dead relative or help with your son's drug addiction or advice, relative or help with your son's drug addiction or advice, financial advice, you just sell the house, et cetera. And the reason I say it's a numbers game is because the lion's share of folks who go to these storefront psychics, these are the ones with neon signs in every city. They don't keep coming back. They just go, you know, for giggles, whatever, plop down your 25 or 50 bucks, you get a reading, and it's something to have done. But it's the one, it's the very rare person, one out of 100, one out of 1,000, that is the right mix of vulnerability and gullibility that the psychic charlatan can prey on. It's important to underscore really that all psychics are not made the same.

So these psychics, I think, are known frauds. They use deceptive methods, what people often call cold reading, which is really a complex set of many psychological deceptive methods to make it appear that the psychic knows specific things about an individual when in fact they just know general things about human nature and describe those generalities and become more specific based on the reaction of the sitter and they also might fish for specifics in the course of conversation etc these are the sorts of psychics that come out of the Romani culture, what used to be called in less PC times, gypsies. And the matriarchs in these clans train and teach the younger women in these communities, these families, to use deceptive methods, not just words, in other words.

It's not just words, in other words. TV psychics, James von Praag, Sylvia Brown, John Edward, they don't use any physical demonstrations of psychic abilities. They just use words. But these Romani psychics, these storefront neon sign gypsy psychics, they will do magic tricks during their readings. during their readings. And the case that you just mentioned, there were claims of removing curses by bringing, what, a jar of water from home. The victim brought a jar of tap water that, when prayed over, turned black, which represented the evil and the curse leaving the person's life. Other scams, other physical demonstrations of this sort of charlatanry abound. So bring in the egg from home and you cast a spell to remove a curse over the person's life and when the eggs cracked it's black and smells of sulfur inside. Or there's the switches of cash where you bring $10,000 or $1,000 or however much it is, wad it up in a towel and pray over it to remove curses from your money.

And then, of course, don't open up this package of money until you get back home. And when you get back home, you realize it's been switched out for paper. These are, in other words, sort of overt charlatans, not the sort of counselor types that you'll get at a new age fair or even on TV. It seems like, you know, like in particular, this woman here, she's lost a hundred thousand dollars and you can, and when you read this article and you hear what she has to say, she has this feeling like, I didn't want to go to the police because I felt, I felt embarrassed for what I had done. I had felt like I was really embarrassed about my own, uh, my own gullibility and my own credulity. And then, you know, I wonder if, you know, this is a time we

heard about $100,000, but I wonder how many people out there are too embarrassed to go, and we don't ever hear their stories. If you just Google, have your list, if your listeners Google the word psychic fraud, you realize just in the past few months there have been dozens of arrests along these lines. Every month there are so many, but they're not on our radar, really even as skeptics. And that's because of what you just mentioned. People are embarrassed. People are embarrassed. And I think sometimes precisely because of asshole skeptics who say, oh, they deserved it. You know, everybody knows that stuff's fake. They're idiots. In other words, you sort of shame the victim. Can I use that language? You blame the victim. I don't know. you how hard it is to get folks to come forward when they've been victimized. And this is sort of an unusual case, maybe because of the Marx trial or because of this, the tide will turn and people

will come forward and say, hey, I was scammed too. But it was revelatory in the Marx trial where I think, was it Jude Devereaux, a romance novelist who gave over a million dollars to Rose Marks. She said, you know, once I started giving, it's almost like a gambling addiction, right? Once you start giving, you want to tell yourself you're going to get something out of it. You're spending gobs of money, and no one wants to admit that they've been conned. And that's the con man's biggest asset, right? Or one of the two biggest. I guess the other is, you know, you think you're going to be getting something for next to nothing. You're going to be getting a leg up.

Who wouldn't want to be able to go to a soothsayer, tells her the future, tells him the future. That's a sure competitive advantage over other people. And even now, and this is jaw dropping, you get a new thing on Wall Street called corporate psychics, corporate psychics. I think that's corporate malfeasance. If a board of directors hires a psychic for advice, business advice, someone without an MBA, someone who doesn't actually consult to businesses, shareholders should, there should be an uprising for corporate malfeasance. So this is a much bigger problem than most people imagine. You know, it strikes me that if you're, if you're in the corporate world and like your big play is be like, hey, guys, I got a great one.

We'll bring in a psychic. It's like, well, that guy's got ideas. We don't need you. We don't need this guy anymore. That seems like a great way to be like, my career is over. Yeah, for you and me, it really seems like that. But think of even the politicians who have consulted astrologers. People really aren't

steeped in the critical rationalist way of looking at the world that we are, and the promise of having access to secret or occult knowledge to give you a leg up, it's very attractive. Now, I'm not saying that's precisely why the victims of Rose Marks or the victims of this other case you mentioned, I don't think that's why they specifically were going to these gypsies, these Romani psychics. Instead, they were going because of other problems in their lives they were seeking help with. And that's what really gets my goat. It's not just the scam. And that's what really gets my goat. It's not just the scam.

It's not just the lie that someone's saying, give me money and I'll use psychic powers and tell you things that no one else can tell you. Of course, that gets under my skin as a skeptic. All of these psychics, not just the Romani, not just the gypsy type psychics, but the New Age psychics and the shut eyes, the people who honestly believe they're psychics, the spiritualists, all of these folks, they pretend to a certain level of expertise that they don't actually have. So if you're having family problems, rather than going to a family counselor, you go to a psychic, you're going to get really shitty advice on how to deal with your problems. Or if you have anxiety about, you know, your son's drug addiction, or should you sell the house or what investment to make? You don't go to a financial planner or a drug addiction specialist. You go to some woman who's pretending to some expertise, but she has no schooling. You know, she doesn't have a master's degree in financial planning, or she doesn't know anything about drug addiction. She's just giving you her, in the best case scenario, she's giving you her aw shucks advice that you can get, you know,

calling your grandma. And in the worst case scenario, she's a con artist who's going to do magic tricks and spook the hell out of you to separate you from your fortune. Yeah, like any good advice is purely accidental at that point. Like any good advice that you get, it's like, yeah, that was good advice. Oh, I got it from a psychic on accident. Well, and if you look at the studies of therapeutic relationships, right, skeptics are sometimes skeptical of even going to a psychoanalyst, say, right? What works in a therapeutic relationship isn't necessarily even the advice. It's just the relationship, the unconditional positive regard you get from a person you're talking to once a week about your problems.

Just that can have a very positive effect on someone's life. Forget the actual advice, right? Just being able to vent and that therapeutic relationship. from someone who went to college, got a master's degree in counseling psych, than some gypsy who, by the way, for additional money, will light some candles and remove a curse from your life. Do you think, and now obviously you don't have a scientific answer to this, but just an opinion answer, do you think that giving psychics airtime, like that little Oompa Loompa Caputo, giving her airtime on television somehow lends some credence to this sort of thing and gets people to believe it a

little more? Well, not just somehow. I think that's the chief means by which this BS is propagated out there, right? Now, it's cyclical. So there was, you know was a time when Sylvia Brown was on TV all the time. Montel pushed Sylvia Brown and so did Larry King. James Von Praag was on a lot. So it's cyclical. Prague was on a lot. So it's cyclical. Fortuna's Wheel applies to even the psychics. They go up and they go down. But right now, what? Teresa Caputo was on The Ascendant. And her stuff is vile. It's reprehensible. And so she's half to blame, right? But the other half are the producers, the TV execs who are making money for their network. What is it? I think on sci-fi or wherever it is.

It's on TLC, I think. Making money. TLC. Oh, that's right. That's crazy because it's on the learning channel which contains no actual learning. Yeah. Because she looks at people and she tells them they see their dead relatives standing around them. And that stuff's raw. That's the real

sin in all this. Especially the spiritualist mediums, the people like Caputo, you know, she's not giving advice by, you know, looking at the stars or tarot cards. She's a one-trick pony. She just does this, you know, talking to dead people thing. But what's really bad about that is it keeps people stuck in their grief. You know, there's a normal process of letting go of loved ones when they die, sort of emotionally getting past it. There are stages of grief. And when instead of going through that natural process, you're talking to some New Jersey woman with big hair and big nails who is a who lacks all regard and all human decency for people who are grieving. And and she tells you stuff, you know, about a locket or, you know, your your dad's still around. And that's why you felt chilly last night when you

went downstairs. It's keeping people stuck in their grief. It's keeping them from moving on. It's actually stunting the emotional development of these folks. And I think it's reprehensible. It's gross. It, you know, makes me sick to my stomach. That's a good point. That's something I hadn't even considered. I always thought, you know, obviously, you know, she's, she looks, she's doing all the things of like cold reading. She'll look in a whole room and she'll say whose mother died. And you're like, if nobody's mother died in this room, this is the most unique room of 70 year old people I've ever seen, you know, but she'll say some crazy thing like that. It's something so simple that somebody's going to say, you know, who was in a car accident?

You know, those sorts of things. You know, it's very simple stuff. And I never really considered that she was keeping them in their grieving process. That's a really great point because, you know, I feel like she's an emotional vampire and I watch her do stuff and I'm repulsed by it. But I can't I never could put my finger on why. And I think that's a really good point. Yeah, so the skeptics get upset at the brute facticity of the lie, right? We think, oh, well, that's nonsense, and we don't like when people peddle nonsense.

But I think the real way to think about this is not just that people are pushing untrue things, but that the untrue things cause real and measurable harm. It might be important to draw a distinction here. I am of two minds about Teresa Caputo on the following point. I think she may actually believe her stuff, right? It depends on where a psychic practitioner or a professional psychic comes from to suggest whether or not they believe their stuff is real. And so the psychics, the mediums, et cetera, that come out of spiritualism, which is a sort of world religion, although it's not very worldwide anymore, it's on the descendant, but cropped up around the Fox sisters, late 19th century. This is the world religion that used to do seances and Houdini battled. A lot of those folks, they grew up in that religion and they

believe it, right? They may unknowingly and unwittingly have sort of taught themselves these skills of call it cold reading and not even know that they're, you know, it's not like they read a manual on how to cheat and beguile others, right? They sort of just learned the skill of saying general things and then getting more specific and all the other methods. But they believe that their stuff is real. There are, though, other psychics who, you know, in the back room will talk about their marks, and that's the gypsy. That's the Romani culture where they learn deceptive methods from the get-go. And so I'm sort of of two minds about Teresa Caputo. I think that she, despite the reprehensible, the repulsive stuff that she does, she may actually buy it.

I know some other skeptics would hoot and holler at me saying that, and we always like to vilify and imagine intent. Like Sylvia Brown is just in some back room smoking her cigarettes with her long nails, cackling about the people she's hurt. I don't think that actually happens. I think some of these folks believe they're doing good. And here's why. There is in the transaction between the sitter, the person getting the reading, and the psychic giving the reading, there is a lot of exchange of mutual validation, right? So if you're a psychic and you think you have this gift and you do your, you know, your stupid reading, but someone tears up and says, Oh my God,

you helped me so much, right? You can sleep at night because you're getting incessant validation that you're like doing something really good. And so, um, I don't think all of these people are villains. I think none of them are real. Another way of saying it is all psychics are fake, but not all psychics are frauds. You know, it's funny that you say that. Cause I was going to make the psychic fraud joke being like, that's redundant, but, um, it's redundant. But it's I do agree with you. You look at something like this and there's there's an obvious like the story from the Sun Sentinel. There there is an obvious attempt to just fucking steal stuff like she's just like that's that's all she's doing. She's just she's a thief thief she's not accidentally believing her own bullshit right she's manufacturing things out of whole cloth for for money yeah that sort of psychic stuff is organized crime exactly you know uh it in jurisdictions all over the country you know there are the law enforcement considers this organized crime The women in those clans do the psychic fraud stuff, the knowing fraudulent stuff. And the men in those clans do those fake home improvement scams. You see them on 2020 hidden camera stuff. finds out that you're going to be away on vacation for a week, well, that's a great house to rob.

Now, I'm not accusing any specific person of doing that, but you just dig around. That's really the MO of some of these clans. It's organized crime. Teresa Caputo, Sylvia Brown, despite her conviction for selling fake gold or whatever it was, and John Edward, they are not part of organized crime. They're part of a sort of organized religion. You might chuckle and say, what's the difference? But even if they're deceiving people, they're not doing it like the Romani storefront psychics do it. So let me ask you this, just out of curiosity, have you ever gone to one of the storefront psychics just to. So let me ask you this just out of curiosity. Have you ever

gone to one of the storefront psychics just to go? Have you had that like, hey, what the hell experience? Have you done it before? I've done it many, many times. I'm writing a book on the topic right now. In Hollywood, where I live with my partner, there are a ton of storefront psychics. And again, these are the gypsy sort of psychics. I've gone to a number of these, sometimes with my partner. And number one, they never pick up that I'm gay, so that's disappointing. And and what was really impressive to me was because I left the right amount of breadcrumbs in the reading, how quickly the I'm thinking of one psychic in particular did what's called moving me up the ladder. The reading, which was sort of generic, ended and she said, oh, I am I am seeing something else. There's some negativity in your life. You know what I'm talking about. I can remove that negativity, but you'll have to come back next week. I don't have the candles here now. I can get them, but it'd be an additional $20 a candle, light a candle and do the prayer. And the reason I say it's a numbers game, when I mentioned that earlier,

is because if I came back the next week, then that would be a strong indication that I'm a great candidate for bamboozling out a big money. And when you keep coming back, the client, the sitter gets ever more invested. And the psychic charlatan is ever more motivated to devote more and more sort of performance resources on that one client. You know, these frauds don't need many clients to do really well in life. You know, you just need one or two in the course of a year. Rose Marks stole over $25 million from her clients, along with her daughter and her granddaughter and the other women in her tribe or clan or whatever, this Romani circle. And that's over a number of years. but it's not like every client who walks in one of these storefronts needs to be gullible enough to make a psychic rich. You just need the one out of a million, one out of a great number.

I can't believe they didn't have the candles. That to me is like going to the mechanic. I can understand the mechanic saying, I don't have a muffler for your car, but but that's like him saying i don't have a fucking wrench you know i don't even i don't have a socket you know you would think that those things would be necessary for the entire endeavor tools of the fucking trade yeah really you don't have a you don't have the right candles so i i'm actually very impressed with the whole racket. It's not given as much attention as I think it should. And the intersection of the various kinds of psychics and how they communicate with each other sort of socially and the weird divisions between them. So the new age psychics hate the storefront psychics.

They think they give them a bad name. Psychics hate the storefront psychics. They think they give them a bad name. And you'll find websites of psychics who spend a lot of energy exposing the fake psychics because they think they're real psychics. Do they ever curse each other? Because that would be awesome. And then they have to pay each other to take the curses off of each other. Exactly. I think the new age psychics, they don't really do the curses and stuff. They do the more sort of emotional consolation of people who go to a psychic fair or something.

But I think that's a really interesting turn that you'll find websites of real psychics, in quotes. psychics, in quotes, I mean, the point is they believe that their stuff is real, who get really upset at the Romani, the storefront, the, you know, the neon sign psychics, because that makes the real stuff they're doing look bad, right? The power of self-deception, I think, is more evident on the side of those new age psychics than it is the Romani psychics. You know, it's also another, it could just be another power play though. Like, cause if you're the guy exposing the other ones, you know, like saying, it's like saying like, you know, Hey, all those other guys, I can show you why you shouldn't go there. It seems like it could just be clever marketing too. Well, it depends on how effective they are, but yeah,

that's exactly right. I mean, if you go to a, here's advice for your listeners, if they ever want to see a psychic, you go to any psychic and if they talk about negative energy in your life that they can remove, or they talk about someone at work who doesn't like you or someone who gave you the evil eye, then they're a knowing fraud and you should, you know, run to the hills. Now, if, if they're instead talking about spirit guides and your aura, and they're just like saying nice stuff, but doesn't amount to much, they're probably, uh, self-deceived new agey type psychics, um, who aren't going to do a magic trick to get your fortune, but they'll happily take your 45 bucks every week for the rest of your life. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. So if you're looking for the rest of DJ's interview,

it's going to be at the end of the show. We're going to do a few news stories in between, and then we're going to have DJ back on to talk about both Tam and the JREF and his work with both of those, both those fine pieces of work that, that the J ref puts on. We Lord, we just asked it to be covered with the blood of Jesus.

Open hearts, Lord, open hearts. So see, so this story comes from K A T U cat who.com to see them die without any care. It's hard on us such a weird thing to choose to title your story by the way it gives no fucking details about what you're about to get into what you're about to get into um is a story out of boise idaho where they're talking about faith

healing and i had to object immediately on twitter because it's like, it's not faith healing. That would imply there was some healing going on in faith healing. It's faith ignoring. Right. It's faith hoping. Yeah. You know, it's faith watching. Faith burying. It's faith ostriching.

Right. It's faith ostriching. Yeah. At some point, it's faith burying. It's faith weeping. There's definitely a burying going on. There's going to be some faith grieving. Yeah, at some point it's faith burying. It's faith weeping. There's definitely a burying going on. There'll be some faith grieving. Yeah, man.

You go through a lot of kids when all you do is faith heal. That's why they got to have so fucking many of them. God. Because you just run through them. You got to spare them. It's like the fucking 1800s again. We're here just shitting out kids so they die. Right?

It's like you don't need like fucking two dozen of them to work your farm anymore you just need two dozen of them so you can end up with three because between the not vaccinating and right healing right like you may as well just fucking dunk three of them in boiling oil the minute they're born it's ridiculous it's so funny because it's like it's like back when kids used to die like consumption and the fucking whoop or whatever. You'd be like, okay, well, poor kid's got the croup or whatever it is. You'd be like, oh, well, he's fucked. That kid's going to die.

I better pump out another one. Oh, well, that one got the consumption. He's going to die. Maybe just fucking leave him on the mountain like Sparta. he's gonna die maybe just fucking leave him on the mountain like sparta like you're just gonna you literally have to be birthing babies every moment of your life in order for any of them to carry on your genetic material like you're just you're just constantly walking around shitting out children you're like a fucking you're like a fucking uh siberian husky you have so many kids litter you just have a litter of children you're You're like, as what ends up happening is you have like a specific evolution, like the island evolution, but it just takes place in Idaho and other enclaves of like crazy faith healing nuts.

Like the women start to have like nine nipples. Because they have to breastfeed so many kids and it's like oh all at the same time they're like awesome the the uh the the midwife or the doctor or whatever is like a one a two a three they start pouring out like a fucking faucet yeah well the kids the kids there have such short life plans because the people don't take them to medical care when they need it and i'm not going to get into these children dying people say that we talk about this too much on our show and they give a shit about it they're always like i have to shut your show off when you're talking about

kids dying or whatever and it's like well look problem is, is that the kids keep fucking dying. I know, right? Like, I'll stop talking about it when people stop fucking pretending that praying over someone is gonna actually fucking heal them. When they call 911 when their kid is fucked up. When they're, you know, there's one story

where they're holding the kid by the oven just to warm him up because the kid is like fucking deathly cold and breathing every few moments. You know, that's a sign you gotta dial 9-1-1 you just gotta bite the bullet and be like you know what god i'm just gonna i'm gonna just gonna go for it here and i hope you're not mad right you're not trying to melt butter you know what i mean you're not trying to caramelize onions you're trying you're trying to make a delicious braise and truthfully like why even if you just take this why why even warm them up why even give a kid a blanket why even feed them just we'll do faith

feeding faith everything if you can yeah i don't know if god is gonna fucking intervene why would you do anything it seems like just like it's like the it's what i don't understand about the amish right so the well there's a lot i don't understand about the amish right but i don't understand how those beards even stay up lots of glue what do they have like a chin strap on this what is going on but like you know like they just stop at a certain point in technological history like we're gonna do buttons and not zippers then why do the buttons why even do buttons we're gonna do horses but not cars well why do horses horses are a technology you just chose an arbitrary path to stop at and the faith healing seems to me the same thing like you're just choosing an arbitrary

stopping point about what you're going to allow and what you're not going to allow. Like you have an interventionist God and the interventionist God's like, ah, don't fucking sweat it. I got this shit. And you're like, okay, well then why go to work? Why make money? Why plant crops? Why eat food? Like fucking, I'll just wait wait i'll just lay back with my fucking mouth open and wait for my intervention as god to fucking poop manna into it doesn't happen it should a baby in there what i wonder is i mean it's absolutely tom you're 100 right it's it doesn't make any sense at all it's like why don't they when they just have have the kid, they just throw the keys at it and be like, drive me home.

Right? You know, God's going to do it. God's going to do it. You know, it's just like, if you're hungry, kid, go get a job. You're fucking, you're six hours old. I left some canned goods out. It's time to start hitting the fucking pavement. Hit the bricks, kid.

Jesus. If you fucking wanted something, Hit the bricks, kid. Jesus. If you fucking wanted to say something, you should have spoke up. Yeah. Infant. Infant. Yeah, this is a sad, sad thing.

The thing that I think is the saddest is I'm going to read from the end of this katu.com article. I love good old katu. In traveling across Idaho, and this is the reporter saying,

we talked to a lot of people, many of whom did not want to judge the followers of Christ. When we told a man who lives across the street from the cemetery that we were looking into it, he replied, kids die every day. We said, yeah, but not this way. He said, that's your problem, not mine.

Well, fucking get that guy the nobel peace prize uh it says here underneath that it says there's a movement happening in idaho however this year the state has launched a new child death review committee oh my god let me just say i know it's 2013 right there should even, those fucking words in that order should not exist. That should not be a thing. A new child, a new child death review committee. That's a whole, I mean, you know, here's your fucking religion is fucking pumping out that many dead kids. You got a problem.

You have some serious problems and the problem is nobody is ever answering to this and what else does a religion have to do wrong right like if if the test of a religion is did it make my life better i don't know did my fucking son or daughter die because of it oh it did oh my life is so much so. Like, that's not a religion for me anymore. Like, the guy who lives across the street from the cemetery, of course he doesn't care. He's probably like the fucking coffin maker. Like, he makes tiny little coffins. Like, that's what he does.

Like, he's like, I like making little coffins. It's less work, same pay. It's a great deal. Yeah, he doesn't give a shit. But, like, the parents should be the ones who give a shit. You would think they would look around and be like like the evidence is everywhere that this is not working how they how faith healed my kid how'd it work fucking tragically my fucking heart is broken irreparably because i kind of loved my child now it's fucking dead that's my fault oh how do you

feel well i don't feel like this my fucking religion anymore that's how i feel i feel like even if they're like even if that god was real wouldn't that just think what like as an atheist is like well god's not real i didn't act the kid died god's still not real not mad at god there's never a god to be mad at but if i were religious how does that not make you embittered towards your god how does that not make you so fucking mad at your god at that point i don't even understand like how you can be like oh fucking kid died well fucking live and learn back to church like that doesn't i can't get there from here Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. So this story comes from thefreethinker.co.uk.

Young Nebraska Muslim accused of using a crowbar to attack his sister because she's a lesbian. This is a Nebraska Muslim hate crime, honor beating thing. Dot org Nebraska, Nebraska. I know. I thought the same thing.

That's actually a big part of why I wanted to tweet it because, you know, of course the, you know, one of the criticisms, um, that, that criticisms that you and I get, you know, for talking about stories about, you know, Islam and what have you is there's a constant confusion between race and religion. This dude is just a guy, like, he's just some dude in nebraska he's not this is not a race issue islam is not a race of people he's not like oh they're the great race of islam it's a set of

real bad ideas that sometimes means you attack your sister with a crowbar i just i can't wrap my fucking head around this like i just your sister is you know what's the worst the i mean i would imagine that the worst thing you would do is be like okay well i'm just never gonna talk to her again or something like why would you physically try to hurt your sister because she you know she doesn't like the dick maybe you want to give her the dick you are in nebraska i mean that's the only thing i can think of right or he mistook her for like a wall that needed to get torn down. Maybe he was reading the Koran and the zombie survival guide at the same time. Oh, yeah.

And he got all fucking mixed up. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know. Do I hit lesbians with a crowbar or do I stone zombies? I don't know what to do. I don't know. Well, there's a lesbian and I got a crowbar, so we're just going to improvise. Crowbar it is!

You know, there's always these people who are like apologists, right? They say, oh, you know, you shouldn't be talking about their culture. It's their culture. It's what they choose to do. You know, we shouldn't be, you know, judging. It's sort of what their ideals lead to this, and that's sort of off limits. You're not allowed to touch that. Bullshit, man.

There's a person being hurt in this equation. Being physically attacked by someone else in this. I can't – why shouldn't I be able to look at this practice of honor whatever the fuck it is? Honor killings or honor beatings or honor fucking maimings or honor crowbar rings and look at those and be like you know this is not a fucking good there's no fucking moral good that is found in this people shouldn't be beat for anything that's just not a thing that should be happening period so why should this act be protected by, you know, I mean, what should be an intelligent group of people, but they just, they somehow think that this act should be sacred in some way.

Yeah. Well, I think the sacred word is the word to focus on there, right? Like, because what it, what, what, what ignoring this stuff does is it enshrines this violence into a culture. It says this is an untouchable part of our culture. It's a sacred part of our culture. We can have these hateful, mean-spirited, fucking misogynist bullshit views. And as long as they are couched in some kind of, you know, religious language, they're an untouchable view. And that's horrifying.

And to keep these things sacred just means more people get attacked with crowbars. In the name of Jesus, we speak that. This next story comes from Seattle Pie, the most delicious pie in Seattle. Two arrested in alleged California exorcism kidnapping. A father and son are in custody in California on suspicion of kidnapping the father's ex-wife to perform an exorcism. I like, Cecil, that they went after the ex-wife. Because that just means you still really care. What the fuck? Right? Man, that's a dangerous person to be married to before huh no kidding my goodness you're glad you left

and then he's like yeah yeah i'm gonna exercise you yeah uh you gotta exercise oh yeah i was just on the treadmill oh no no i mean no no no. No, there's an O in this one. Right. It's an exorcism. No, that's great. Yeah, that exercise is really going to come in handy when we tie you to a chair to shake holy water at you. One thing that really is just something about this is there were priests involved. priests involve. So you show up with a package, a person strapped to a chair, not on their own volition. That is like, God, I probably got a gag in their mouth. You take them out of the trunk

and the priests look and they're like, yeah, we're still in. Right. Yeah. We're saying bring her down in the basement. Does seem a little shaky. You would think the priests would be like, yeah, sure. Bring her down and then be like hurriedly dialing 911 or something. But instead they're just like, yeah, sure, we'll go through with it. But next time you ask her to show up. Did you ask nice? Did you use your words? Jerry.

Take her downstairs. Jerry, use your words. Take her downstairs. What have we told you about the shocking and kidnapping people? Put the taser down. That's not how we do religion. Now, do you have any young boys laying around? Because that's how we do religion.

Because she goes down there. She goes down there to be tortured and exercised. And then the two boys that were in the trunk go into the back of the shed for them for later. It's like payment. Well, the priest actually looks at it like, hey, a little something for you, a little something for me. We're not going to let all this sacred oil go to waste.

Oh, I know. I mean, come on. There's got to be some nubile-y little frame that needs to get lubed up right now. You know, what I don't understand about this whole thing, I mean, all of it, let's just say all of it. Yeah, I'm kind of curious what you do understand about this whole thing. I don't understand much of it. But, I mean, the ex-wife part is the part that I'm just sort of, I mean, what do you have to deal with her for?

I saw, I saw that too. And it's interesting that they say it's a father and a son and they refer not to this woman as the son's mother, but they refer to this woman as a father, ex-wife. So it leads me to believe that there's no relationship between the son and this woman.

So yeah, like it's just like, that's just how you show you still care like yeah we've got divorced it was an amicable thing you know every now and again we're still friends you know we're still friends i call only divorced because of the demon sometimes i kidnap her sometimes she kidnaps me it's just it's like what we do we got to keep the spice alive in our non-marriage. You know, it was the demon.

The demon that spread us apart there, sweetheart. Demons will do that to you. They put a rift in relationships all the time. Fucking I know what it was, Cecil. Divorce demons. Remember the micro demons? You're totally right. Like the demons, like the sugar demons and the you know like special k with no raisins demons like all the little demons of bad stuff like you know like the fucking my shoelace broke while i

was trying to tie it demon right that's right or or it was the demon from last week and she works his nose. I'm still waiting for my sandwich. And an invitation to the White House. Tap, tap, tap, tap. These baked ladies aren't going to eat themselves, guys. I'm watching my unholy figure. Lucifer ran this world. Yeah, that's exactly correct. And that is what they're seeking to bring back in the last days.

That is the world government. That is the last beast. That is the fourth beast that is coming. It is a resurrection of the pre-flood Luciferian government. So this story comes from Right Wing Watch. Eric Rush wonders if Obama is in a satanic cult. Conservative columnist Eric Rush believes that celebrities such as Jay-Z and Beyonce are part of a little known, because he made it up, satanic cult. And therefore, President Obama might be involved

in Satan worship too. And the quote here is, and I love this quote, it's my very favorite quote, and then I'll turn it over to you. Quote, other than Obama himself being manifestly evil and a supporter of Muslim Brotherhood killers, I have it on very good authority that satanic worship has gone on quite close to the sphere of this White House.

I didn't know. What? The White House is evidently a sphere now. Like, it's not a dome. What is this word? Luciferiferarianism luciferianism luciferianism i love it i almost felt like he was messing it up with like uh rastafarianism or something like that he's like oh that's luciferianism that's what that is he's talking about anton lave in this and he's also talking about alistair crowley he's just like gluing a

bunch of shit together so that he can come back to say that um there's a satanic group called ordo temp templi or orientis i don't know whatever fucking he just made that up too and he's like he's picking fucking letters on the scrabble bag at this point and he says which which has picked up where lave left off rapper jay-z off. Rapper Jay-Z, his mentally deficient wife, Beyonce. Big slam on Beyonce out of nowhere. And it says, and rap artist Peaches are among those celebs who are reported members of this group. Beyonce routinely

flashes satanic signs and her latest album cover features a satanic goat head of Baphomet. Baphomet. You could actually summon him in Final Fantasy 7. cover features a satanic goat head of Baphomet. Baphomet. Baphomet. You could actually summon him in Final Fantasy VII. You just, you fucking just, I mean, I'm not kidding.

He's got the Scrabble bag out. He's playing words with friends, and this is what he was dealt. Why is Beyonce mentally deficient? I don't know. He's just mad that he didn't get to put a ring on it. Good lord. That's what he's fucking mad about. Mentally deficient.

That's so mean. And you said earlier, it was hilarious. You're like, he's just trying to group black people with Obama. They just happen to be black performers. Right. He's just trying to group them all together. I'm surprised Sammy Davis Jr. isn't on this list. What I think he's doing is he's just assuming that all black people know each other, too.

All black. I think Jay-Z does know the president, though. Does he? I think he does. That's pretty funny, actually. Yeah, I think they hang out on occasion. They just get together sometimes and talk. Now they drink gin and juice and they sit on the steps for the White House.

Right? Because they're black. I mean, that's what black people do, right? They just collect welfare. Oh, shit! I mean, because Obama gets a government check. He does. Obama is living off the government teeth.

Yeah. I mean, he's getting fucking rich on our time. I can't say it. They have lost all of the arguments, basically. They've lost every argument because they don't even want to try to talk about his policies in any real sense. All they want to do is literally demonize him. With actual demons. And the demons are all upset.

They're just like, it's not our fault. Yeah. Look, we didn't code the website. I had nothing to do with it. I was at Quiznos. Yeah, Whitehouse.gov website. We did not code it. I was at Quiznos. Whitehouse.gov website. We did not code it. I don't have a login. Okay, so we're back with DJ at the end of the show here.

We want to talk to DJ about the JREF and his work there. DJ, if our listeners have never heard of you, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Sure. Well, I'm president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, but for the past 15 years or so, I've been working in the skepticism racket. You're trying to push critical thinking and rationality about these supernatural and paranormal claims to various publics. And the James Randi Educational Foundation is really one of the premier organizations devoted to that. And I'm starting my fifth year as president of this little nonprofit. Before that, I was with the Center for Inquiry for 10 years. And what really turns me on about the JREF is our focus on education, James Randi Educational Foundation, especially as it relates to youngsters.

So we produce a suite of resources for teachers and parents to promote this critical thinking point of view and method to junior high and high school students, provide free lesson plans to educators, courses online, all of that stuff. And that's unique, I think, among the options out there for skepticism. But of course, the other thing that is sort of unique about the James Randay Educational Foundation is not only our focus on educating youngsters about critical thinking, but that we actually take the fight, so to speak, where it is. That means we challenge paranormal claimants in the public eye. For 18 years now, we've offered a million-dollar paranormal challenge. Other organizations offer money, too. I think the Australian Skeptics, there's some in Europe. The Independent Investigations Group offers $100,000, and we're happy to work with all these outfits really putting claimants on notice. Now, that's not how science works. Science doesn't say, hey, prove it and you win a prize.

But we do it like that in order to raise awareness both about the irresponsible claims and about the responsibility of the general public to evaluate those claims before they assent to them. We think if someone really had paranormal abilities, they'd step right up, they'd prove it, and they'd get the million. They'd demonstrate their paranormal or supernatural or their fringe science claim, whatever it is, under mutually agreed upon scientific conditions, and it changed the world. They're not knocking down our doors.

We get half dozen, sometimes a dozen applications a month, and out of those, just one or two is actually something we're following up on. You'd be surprised how many of these paranormalists can't fill out an application. You would think their spirit guide would be able to help them through that process. You know, like you just ask your spirit guide, your spirit guide would then give you the insight

you need to fill out a form correctly. Is it possible they're using ghost writing to fill these things out? Right, well, not all the paranormalists are spirit guides. Some of them, one, we had this chap who believed that UFOs revealed to him the hidden language behind all language. That's sort of a hard claim to test because he's the only one that could verify if it was real. So he wasn't making any ESP sort of spirit guide claims. He was making other sorts of claims. And it runs the gamut, dowsers. And in fact, we get a lot of dowsers for some reasons. People think that they could

bend coat hangers and then find hidden objects. And we don't make it our business to debunk that. If someone makes a claim that we can test, we're very happy to test it. And that's why we offer the Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge. Let me ask you about that real quick because Cecil and I were at – we were at TAM, not TED. We were at TAM this year. Yeah, TAM, the TED of skepticism. Yeah. And we watched the Million Dollar demon you know the show that was

that was when you guys tested the the person who supposedly was he was he was all the way overseas he was in the middle east somewhere wasn't he and he was going to do a remote viewing yeah if i remember wasn't he in algeria he was in algeria that's right. A remote viewer, and he had his representative here. And we went through a really difficult protocol. We owe a lot to Richard Saunders from the Australian Skeptics who helped us pull all that together. And, of course, Banachek and Jamie and Swiss and Chip Denman and the whole team for working to put on that challenge. Swiss and Chip Denman and the whole team for working to put on that challenge. And what really impressed me about that live challenge, we like to do these every year,

is one, the respect the audience showed for the claim. So no one was boo hissing. No one was sort of making fun at the belief. We took it seriously in the spirit of science to see if this remote viewer could demonstrate his claimed abilities. Second thing that impressed me is when the remote viewer failed and failed miserably, like spectacularly, after we jumped through all these hoops, it was impressive to me that there was no weaseling around. No one said, well, on second thought, you should have

done it that way, or someone's negative energy ruined it. Instead, it was sort of, well, I gave it my best shot. I really thought I was going to be able to demonstrate my psychic abilities, and I wasn't able to. And if you remember, the representative, who's a big believer in this remote viewer, from stage said, you know, I still believe in remote viewing, but I had such a good experience at TAM. I think you could call me a skeptic. Right. And that got a sort of aw shucks and warmed everybody's heart in the audience. So I was impressed with that challenge. So I wanted to ask you. in the audience. So I was impressed with that challenge. So I wanted to ask you, so I'm a jerk, right?

And I would be- If you say so. I am, no. I bet you probably have. This is definitively proven. Science has proven this at this point. If there was a million dollar challenge, he would have cashed in long ago. It wouldn't have taken you guys-

You need some jerk dough. Yeah, you can measure it. And all those things that you just described about how, you know, the audience was kind and respectful. I have to admit, I would be fucking exhausted by the bullshit, the constant never-ending stream of lies and bullshit. You know it's not. DJ, you know it's not going to work. You know it. Let me speak to that because I hear that loud and bullshit. You know it's not. DJ, you know it's not going to work. Let me speak to that because I hear that loud and clear and we feel that beleaguered state a lot.

You know, it's the Sisyphean task, rolling the boulder up the hill. Yet another paranormal believer. But hey, we're an educational foundation whose job it is to inform the public with reliable information about pseudoscience and the paranormal. Somebody's got to do it. Right. But don't you ever just want to say, look, what's in my fucking pocket? Before we go through all this bullshit, what's in my pocket? You know? So that's a sort of challenge that you could do sort of at a bar.

Right. Just don't bump into a magician because one worth his salt can do some amazing stuff along those lines, and that's not a come on. Like, what's in your pocket? Turn your head and cough. So, you know, Randy has been for decades. This is the 25th year he's done it full time, not as a magician but solely as a skeptic. But for decades, actually, even before that, he has tirelessly fought the fakers. And you just mentioned something about, you know, how tiring it must be to have all the

lies, right? People lie about their claims or whatever. I think at least in terms of the applications, the people submitting the applications, I think the lion's share of those people are not lying. Now, they're not telling the truth because they're self-deceived. They're wrong about their claims and their abilities, but they're not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. That's why the second aspect of the challenge is where we really take the challenge on the road. We challenge people out there. We don't wait for them to fill out an application and let us test their claimability. We instead challenge irresponsible claimants who we think are harming people out there. A couple of examples. It doesn't just have to be individuals. It could be institutions. You know, two national nursing associations will certify you and train you in something called therapeutic touch, healing touch it's also called, which is neither healing nor touch.

Is that like Reiki? Yeah, it's a certain sort of energy work where you wave your hands in the general direction of the patient. You're supposed to be cleaning up the auras. We think that's really harmful. Some insurance companies pay for this. It's harmful. Just like chiropractic is also based on this mumbo jumbo energy, um, uh, theory, you know, that the body emanates certain energies. And, you know, if your spine's out of whack, it's disrupting the flow of energy. And that's why you have to get your spine back in shape. All of these, you know, some of these

are institutions and all of these are harmful. Some of these institutions push this, you know, there's a university that we're looking at going after that turns little autistic kids into like walking Ouija boards. What are you, what, what? Through facilitated communication. That's a metaphor, not an actual Ouija board. But you know, on a Ouija board, there's that planchette that seems to move on its own, but it's actually the ideomotor effect, the same sort of thing that makes dowsing rods move.

motor effect, the same sort of thing that makes dowsing rods move? Well, there are some, in quotes, scientists, I'll use the term generously, who believe that they can communicate with severely autistic kids by holding their hand and moving their hand on a board with these electronic buttons representing words. Wasn't someone doing that with someone in a coma too? Yeah, they also do facilitated communication in a coma. Well, leave it to Randy to say, well, okay, let me ask the kid or the person in the coma a question only they should know but not the facilitated communicator. They should know, but not the facilitated communicator. And that's a great way to debunk this really, I think, harmful practice that universities get funding for and charge an arm and a leg from hurting parents who are all sorts of anxious about their disabled kids. So it's institutions even that can be challenged by the million dollars.

We say if you can prove facilitated communication, we got a million dollars for you. Or if you could prove that therapeutic touch is real, we've got a million dollars for you. And often those institutions, those organizations ignore us, but the silence is deafening. It's a great way to show the public that this stuff, that they're running from examination and that this stuff can be harmful if you believe it. I got to say one thing, though. I mean, you did list a bunch of different charlatans there, and I'm behind you on everybody except for the chiropractors. Chiropractors have to be real or they wouldn't ask you to come back every week. Right.

They are real. They're real fakes, right? It's harmful stuff. Now, I'm not speaking about a specific chiropractor, but if you go to a chiropractor and they talk about energy or they do, they put a herb in your hand and then decide whether or not you need it by, uh, doing, um, it's called applied kinesiology where they press on your arm and see if there's tension. I mean, all of it's mumbo jumbo and it's a racket. I mean, uh, that's another impressive thing about chiropractic is, uh, it's not really a highly regulated field. And there are courses that chiropractors take on,

much like these psychics who walk them up the ladder, there are courses on how to get, sort of stack your clients to build your income. It's very predatory, at least the sorts of chiropractors I've studied. So buyer beware when it comes to alternative medicine. You had said earlier when you were talking about the fortune tellers, how they get you to come back every week. The first thing that popped into my head is a chiropractor.

The first – because that's the same – it's the same idea. Like get them coming back every week and I can get a boat. Right. Exactly. Well, they do a lot better than that. I mean, chiropractors, make more money off your clients by keeping them coming back, that should make all chiropractors have a second thought about, uh, you know, their therapeutic modality, if you want to call it that. What's been the, the, the one claim now you say you don't, you, you, you know, you were saying that

you were on stage, everybody was on stage, you were very respectful. Has there ever been any claims that have come in and you just laughed out loud? One of these JREF, like people coming in to send a million dollar challenge and you read it and you're like, somebody didn't really just submit this. I think the, he sued us, so I can't mention. I don't want to be too specific. But there was one about UFOs that was really entertaining. A couple weeks ago, I got a call from a psychic who was very upset that we rejected his application, one of these like not complete applications, was calling himself the one, right? And he was angry at me.

He like, I think I'm a nice guy. I think I'm nice to believers. And, but he just thought that I didn't like him. And he, you know, he threatened me with psychic powers and that was pretty angry. Wow. You know, so. Well, you had a, there was a guy at TAM this year who was supposedly attacked by a guy who was going to cast a death spell on him on stage for like an hour. The the gentleman from India who was there. Oh, that death spell attack is the funniest thing I've ever seen.

Was that so now? Yeah, he was he was on TV and somebody had said that they could kill him with their with their spells. And he said, OK, fine, let's do it. And for an hour, this guy is trying to kill him. And he's – yeah. If some of that – especially like the chi practitioners and like the martial arts people, if that can, you know, like the old Street Fighter video game, you know, rather than punching you, like throw an energy ball or something. You know, people believe that and they can do some really harmful stuff and get hurt, right? Not to mention lose a lot of money because of unwarranted belief. But that can be really entertaining. When a skeptic stands there and gets all of the negative energy thrown at him and he just walks away.

There are great YouTube videos about that. I've got to send you a link of my all-time favorite entertaining YouTube video about paranormalists, and that's when James Von Praag did a reading in Australia for a TV show. And he was wrong like 25 out of 26 times, and the audience starts laughing, and you almost feel sorry for the guy. That's definitely worth watching. There's a video I'm thinking of where this, and I actually did feel sorry for the guy. There's this guy who thought he had like the chi kung fu powers. And somebody calls him out that actually is like an MMA fighter and is like, yeah, well, let's fight. Let's fight. And the guy gets in there.

That's what I loved about the amazing meeting this year. We had a Brent Weidman, who is a big, he's an MMA superstar. You know, he's won, uh, nationally televised, uh, mixed martial arts matches and all that stuff. Um, and he speaks out in that world for science and critical thinking because, uh, and, and that's a point to make to make, that this undue credulity, this paranormal woo-woo belief, Randy likes to call it woo-woo, it is insidious and it infiltrates every domain of inquiry, belief, hobbies, professions, it's everywhere. And that's why the skeptic's job is never done.

Here's an example. You'd never really think ESP and psychics and woo stuff would like, um, intersect national defense. Um, but, uh, James McCormick was just convicted for selling dowsing rods to the UK, the U S government and the government of Iraq for use at bomb security checkpoints. They are gizmos. There's not even any working parts inside of them. And you leave it to a magician, James Randi, to cut the thing open and do a little sleuthing and find out that the innards are just remote control innards cut in half with wires that aren't even attached, right? troll innards cut in half with wires that aren't even attached, right? He made 60 million, what was it? Just tens of millions of dollars bamboozling three nations. No nation looked into this, right?

Talk about taxpayer waste. But this paranormal falderal is everywhere. It's not just the silly stuff that people dismiss out of hand. It is insidious and it's pervasive. cars you know and people and vehicle whatever were scanned by this not scanning device this bullshit is you know may as well fucking have a rock that keeps tigers away this stuff has real life and death consequences singapore just did a big buy of these because someone in the one of the higher-ups in the government there believed in this sort of stuff for use in disaster recovery scenarios. The U.S. Coast Guard has bought them for disaster relief scenarios. The U.S. Coast Guard has bought these things? The government of Mexico has bought these sorts of things at drug checkpoints.

Imagine the civil liberties implications if your car is searched because of a freaking dowsing rod, a guy who's trained to shuffle his feet on the ground to align the energies, uh, to see, you know, to see if, uh, well, that's not the ADE 651. There are different models you can imagine. They're all based on a, uh, uh, a joke golf ball finder from years before. But this stuff is everywhere. It's not just a hobby for sciencey types who want to bicker about things that don't go bump in the night, right? Instead, these are real world implications. That's why skepticism is so relevant to everybody's lives. So if people were going to, like, let's say the JRF does some amazing work. So let's say one of our listeners wants to help somehow support the JRF. What could they do? We're about to launch what's called the Season of Reason, something we've been doing every year that I've been president here at the Randy Foundation. It's our end-year fundraiser,

here at the Randy Foundation. It's our end-year fundraiser where people, if they want to help our little educational nonprofit get more of these resources in the hands of more kids in classrooms or offer more free courses in this stuff online, they can go to randy.org starting tomorrow or maybe next week and get involved in our season of reason. That's one thing. They can get involved at the local level through a growing network of local skeptics groups, skeptics in the pub and, you know, like Nantucket skeptics. These are local community-based organizations that look to advance the JREF's mission in their neck of the woods. And the third thing you could do is get involved, call it on the social networks, right? JREF makes available so many free resources online. Our YouTube channel is one of the most popular non-profit YouTube channels in the history of YouTube, we're told. Share those videos. I wasn't joking when I said Ted of skepticism earlier, we have

at the amazing meeting, our annual conference, some of the leading lights of the day, educating people about these topics. And then we make available all of that content for free online. So find a favorite video and share it with your buddies. That's a great way to sort of spread the gospel of skepticism. Well, I'll tell you, it was great having you on our show, DJ. It was the stuff, you know, is pretty amazing. I, I, you know, you used to have a podcast. I mean, you have any consideration about starting something back up again? Well, I, I did something like 250 episodes of Point of Inquiry.

That was a lot of fun. I get a lot of credit for that, but I actually don't deserve it. My partner, Thomas Donnelly, did all the hard work in that, you know, did the editing and all. Yeah, I just had an interesting conversation once a week. I did about 75 episodes of For Good Reason, which is the podcast I've been doing at the James Randi Educational Foundation. But over the past year, a little more than a year, we've been really swamped as we're, you know, all hands are on deck developing the foundation.

And so that's become less of a priority. But I do think in the months ahead, I'll be doing some more projects along those lines. For good reason, something along those lines, yes. Well, it was great having you on the show. and thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Guys, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Great conversation. Thank you very much, DJ.

So we got a lot of email, but we ran pretty long here, so we're going to try to get through a few emails here. First, we want to thank Jason for his generous donation. Thank you very much for giving us money. Your hard-earned dollars go a long way to making sure the podcast happens. We pay for server space. We also pay for monthly hosting bills. And sometimes if we get enough, we pay for new equipment. So thank you very much for donating. Sometimes if we get enough, we pay for new equipment. So thank you very much for donating. So we want to talk.

We got an email from Mike. And Mike says, thanks to the entertainment guys, most podcasts I listen to involve interviews with leaders in the movement and not just a couple of guys giving their opinions. You guys keep it entertaining week after week. Except for that episode about the little girl getting raped to death. I had to skip ahead several times. Couldn't stomach the thought. Yeah, well, we wish sometimes we could skip ahead too, Mike. Mike did send a picture, though, of Pat Robertson run through the walking dead generator.

And I can't, I don't really notice a difference. Yeah, I thought it was broken. Like, clearly it was not working at that time. We'll have to run it through there again and let me know when it's actually up and running. Yeah, let us know when Pat Robertson actually doesn't look dead. All it seems to have done is just cleared up his skin a little. Yeah, I know. It makes his eyes look like they have less cataracts. They're bright and shiny for the first time in years.

We're going to put this on as the image for this episode, so thanks, Mike, for sending it in. Got an email from Isaac, Tom. Pretty good sort of uplifting email. We get these on occasion. Yes, this is, I've been listening for about a year and a half or so. I was brought up in the Church of Christ and around 14 fell off due to the high school party. At 19, I had somewhat of a mental break due to abuse of LSD. Broken and confused, I went back to church. Living with a constant paranoia in my mind of hell and punishment didn't sit well, so away I go. Fast forward to 34, after stints with Buddhists and other spiritual worldviews, I was a default agnostic. Then came the iPhone and podcasts. So with the lingering question of, is there a God? I found your podcast

with other podcasts recommended on your shows, SGU, Thinking Atheist, just to name a few, and various books. I am not only an atheist, I would consider myself a skeptic, rationalist, and free thinker. I have a two-year-old son who is vaccinated and I now have tools to pass on to help him navigate life. Thank you. What you do matters so much. I think he meant to send this to someone else. Yeah, he probably did. Yeah, I would just readdress that to Stephen Novella. Like, dear Stephen and or Seth Andrews.

Like, that would be, could not possibly be meant for us. But despite its being misaddressed, we certainly appreciate it. We'll take the credit. Yeah. Are you kidding me? I'm not throwing it out. Look, man, if I find 10 bucks, I find 10 bucks. Yeah. Fucking A. That's my $10. That's mine. So we got an email from from Jason and he says, Hey guys, so my wife and I are both atheists. She has actually only been to a church about two times, only for funerals. She recently had a funeral to attend for a distant relative and had to sit through the whole Mass. What my question is, how do you and your other listeners act in such a situation? Do you get on your knees for Jesus when everyone else does, just not stand out to

make a statement? Do you do the amen macarena along with the others? Personally, I sit quietly and ignore the dance routines of crazy, but I'm curious what others do, or if I'm just being a dick. Now, this is a question, if you have an answer to this question, put it on our comments for this episode 125, or you could put it on the Facebook for this post, or you could tweet it at us. And if people are interested, you could take a look at some of these answers that people have. We might read some of the interesting ones next week. Tom, I will tell you that what I do is I stand when they stand, because I think that not standing is a little disrespectful.

When they're standing up, I should stand. They think it's the right moment to stand up. So if I'm in their church playing their game, I will stand. However, I draw the line at kneeling. So what I do is I stand and I sit, and when they kneel, and if I go to a Catholic ceremony, that kneeling happens a lot more often than it does in other ceremonies. I do not kneel, I sit. I think that I'm at the same level that they are, because most of them, when they're kneeling, they actually might even be a little taller than me, me sitting

down, so I don't think it's as noticeable or as sort of in front, but I don't bother to kneel. I also never go up for communion. They say that you can go up and put your arms across your chest or whatever, and the guy just won't give you anything. But what I do is I follow them out the one side, and then I walk back to my seat. I don't ever go up into the line to get the communion, because I don't think, again, I don't think that that's a viable thing for me to do. Or do I think it's respectful to them for me to go up and get their communion? Yeah. So if I'm at a... I've only been to a handful of Catholic ceremonies, because my family's not Catholic. But I've gone to a few of them. What I'll typically do

is throw down in the middle of the aisle, like an Islamic prayer mat and just start being like, you know, just start screaming my head off. Yeah, no, that's good. Yeah. Um, that works. That's pretty good. That's, uh, I get kicked out. I don't get invited to a lot of things as it turns out. Um, no, you know, I, I'm kind of similar when they kneel. What a lot of times I'll do is kind of scooch forward a little bit. So I do an action, like I'm still sitting and everybody kind of scoots forward and kneels and I'll scoot forward a little bit, but I don't kneel either. I've never even gotten up out of my pew during the communion thing. Yeah. I get up so that people can get past me because they have to walk past. That didn't even occur to me. I just figured like communion's not for me. So

that's just not for me. you just i'm just gonna sit here and quietly think other thoughts um but i mean i i can tell you on one hand with fingers left over how many times i've been in a catholic church during during a mass i think it's like it's only been weddings and funerals and maybe one or two i also don't kneel before i get in the pew like there's normally people will come in, they'll kneel, they'll do the sign of the cross and then we'll get in the pew. I do not do that. I walk to the pew and I walk in. I also do not sing and I do not repeat any of the words that they say because I don't think, again, I feel like it's insult to them for me to even try to

sing or repeat the words that they say. I will shake the hands of my neighbors because I think that that is actually, you know, that's a thing I can participate in and be genuine in and say, you know, I normally say like, nice to meet you or, you know, peace be with you or whatever. Cause I really do. I mean, I genuinely do think, you know, I wishing peace upon these people. So I think that's okay. But the rest of it is all, I don't do any of that other stuff. What about like when you're like at dinner, you know, and people like bow their head, or you just... I take my, I always take my hat off. So I'm always, first, I don't eat, I eat with Catholics a lot. So I don't take my, I take my hat off whenever I walk into a church or whenever I'm

sitting at a table. So if I'm sitting at a table and they're going to be eating, it's disrespectful to have your hat on when you're around Catholics, so I take my hat off always. And then I also, when they do their prayers and they do the sign of the cross and then they say things, I don't ever say anything. I just bow my head and put my hands in my lap. I think that's totally fine. I'm not even mentally reciting your prayer. I'm just letting you do it and not interrupting you and not being disrespectful. Because again, I just don't think like there's, I think there's a time for vigorous debate about whether or not someone is going to be religious or thinking like what Peter said with faith and whether or not faith is a good way to look at the world and whether or not

faith is even useful, et cetera. But I feel like if somebody's going to be practicing a ritual, it's not up to me to break them from that ritual. Yeah, that's not the time and place. So that wraps it up for this week. We want to urge people, if you're interested in what DJ had to say, JREF is a wonderful organization. JREF has, Obviously, they have ways in which you can donate, ways in which you can help. Go to randi.org and you can find out all about the JREF. You should follow those people. Like he said, if you want to go on YouTube and just share a video, that's the easiest type of activism there is. I mean, it's armchair activism at its best. You can do this on your smartphone right now,

is go find a video and tweet it. I mean, that is not a difficult activism at all. It's not even asking for money or anything. So definitely follow DJ's suggestion there. And if you guys do have some money and you want to donate it to the James Randi Educational Foundation, that is not a place where your money is going to go to waste. That's not a place where your money is going to be squandered. These people do good work, and they should definitely continue to have funding to do that good work. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. We want to thank DJ for coming on our show again, and we're going to leave you, as as always with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit.

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