The David Pakman Show - 4/18/23: Dominion vs Fox trial starts, Elon Musk's Tucker interview is wacky

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

-- On the Show: -- James Underdown, Executive Director of the Center for Inquiry, joins David to discuss his $500,000 offer to anyone who can prove supernatural powers in a controlled environment -- Dominion Voting Systems refuses to settle its defamation lawsuit against Fox News, and the trial will start today -- Democrats are increasingly turning on Senator Dianne Feinstein and encouraging her to resign -- Elon Musk is interviewed by Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson, and it's as bad as anyone could imagine -- Donald Trump's team rages over new polling that shows Trump failing in swing states in hypothetical polling against Joe Biden, as compared to Ron DeSantis who is leading many of those races -- Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis threatens to build a prison next to Disney World in his continued battle against the theme park -- Republican Greg Steube bizarrely announces that he is supporting "Donald J. Chump" for President -- Voicemail caller suggests that maybe David is better looking off camera -- On the Bonus Show: Republicans line up against replacing Dianne Feinstein, SCOTUS can restore religious liberty in the workplace, George Santos announces 2024 re-election campaign, much more... 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 🪒 Henson Shaving: Use code PAKMAN for FREE blades at https://hensonshaving.com/pakman 🌞 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp online therapy: https://betterhelp.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get 20% OFF a mattress + 2 free pillows. Go to https://helixsleep.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 We start today with the beginning of the Dominion Voting Systems Fox News defamation trial. This is a trial that could have such far ranging impact, and we're going to be watching it extraordinarily closely. Now, the trial was originally scheduled to start yesterday. There was the announcement that there would be a delay and there was the suspicion that the delay might be because Fox News wanted to settle the case and prevent it from going to trial. Whether or not that's what the cause of the delay was, the case is not being settled and the trial is set to start today. CNBC

reports Fox News and Dominion trial kicks off with opening statements in defamation suit. Dominion has accused Fox of intentionally and falsely blaming it for President Donald Trump's loss to Joe Biden by airing false claims that the company rigged the 2020 election. Fox has maintained the statements made about Dominion on air are protected by the First Amendment. The case has led to the release of troves of private messages and testimony from top Fox News figures, including Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch and opinion host Tucker Carlson. So there's a couple different things here that are of absolutely critical importance. First of all, the mere fact that Fox News is asserting First Amendment protection isn't

unique. And it's really important to understand that there are many circumstances in which there is defamation alleged. And as a defense, the First Amendment is given. That doesn't make this case special. It doesn't particularly make it about actually actual free speech. This is a case in which you are alleging defamation, meaning incorrect claims knowingly made, which are harmful to the reputation in this case of Dominion, with the counterpoint that you can always issue as a defense to defamation the truth of the claims made. If it were true that Trump won in 2020, but because of a rigging done involving Dominion voting systems, Joe Biden

became president. If you could demonstrate that, then it would by definition not be defamation. And we're going to get back to that in a moment. We are going to see, among other things, likely even more documents and text messages and communications come out. These are the very communications through which we learned that there are some true believers on Fox News staff, including people like Maria Bartiromo, that there are people on Fox News staff like Tucker Carlson who despise Donald Trump passionately was the word Tucker used to describe his hate for Donald Trump. And on some level, this is sort of lose lose for Fox now that it's gotten to this point. And what I mean by that is if Fox were to settle, they might avoid what now might be

four to six weeks of disastrous headlines as more evidence comes out in the trial. But they would be to some degree admitting guilt. And the alternative is, well, you don't settle, but you now have six weeks of potentially disastrous headlines. And at the end of it, you still might lose, but you now have six weeks of potentially disastrous headlines. And at the end of it, you still might lose, oh, a whole bunch of money and your reputation could be irreparably damaged. Now to get back to that, a defense to defamation is proving the facts. Donald Trump's suggestion, which he posted yesterday or the day before yesterday, we

talked about it yesterday to Truth Social Central was that Fox indeed do that and say, hey, it's not defamation. Trump really won. Trump's idea posted on Truth Central in all capital letters was, quote, If Fox would finally admit that there was large scale cheating and irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, which would be a good thing for them and for America. The case against them, which should not have existed at all, would be greatly weakened. Back up those patriots at Fox instead of throwing them under the bus. And they are right. There is so much proof, like mass ballot stuffing caught on government cameras, FBI colluding

with Twitter and Facebook, state legislatures not used, et cetera. Now there's a couple interesting things about this. First of all, as I mentioned, defamation is a legal term, false statements harmful to someone's reputation. Someone accuses you of defamation. One defense is prove that what you said is true. The problem with Trump's idea, other than the fact that Trump didn't win the November of 2020 election, and so you can't prove something that's not true.

This particular case is narrowly focused on the allegedly defamatory statements made about Dominion voting systems involvement. Many of the things Trump is talking about here, ballot stuffing, FBI colluding with Twitter. Even if Fox tried to prove that in this trial, it wouldn't be a useful defense because the allegations in question that are allegedly defamatory are the ones about Dominion voting systems specifically. Imagine the circus that that would be, though. Fox News didn't defame anyone because Trump did win and Dominion voting systems did do whatever Mike Pillow says that they did with the machines. Like imagine the circus that that would become. Side story here. That's an

important story that I do want to mention as well. Angelo Caruso from Media Matters, who we've interviewed on the program. He has a really good Twitter thread explaining an additional issue for Fox News that could be disastrous and will link to the Twitter thread in the description for the YouTube video where I'm talking about this. Angelo writes that parallel to this trial, Fox News is going to be renegotiating and gearing up to renegotiate renewals on Xfinity, Charter and Cox. These are three different cable carriers. Fox News is the only commercial news. And even you could even go further than that commercial TV channel that doesn't actually

need ads because they make a lot of their money. Because if you have a cable subscription, even if you don't like Fox News, even if you don't watch Fox News, some of your monthly bill goes directly to Fox News behind ESPN. Fox News is the second most expensive channel on every cable bill. You can't change that. Consider the situation where you now have a beleaguered Fox News, to put it lightly, in the middle of a defamation trial, and they are going to have to go and negotiate with these cable carriers and say, we want the same amount of money per subscriber that you're giving us now, or we want even more money per subscriber than you're giving us now.

And a lot of these subscribers are going to look at Fox potentially and say, wait a second, it's not even really clear. Much of our customer base wants your channel. Here's evidence that not that many people are watching. And in addition, you guys are hugely damaged right now. We don't even know what the future is of Fox News. The last thing we're going to do is commit to paying however many dollars a month you want us to pay.

This is a parallel story to the Dominion lawsuit that could be a disaster for Fox News. And we're going to be watching it as well. The trial will not be televised. Many people writing to me saying, David, will it will be streamed live? It will not. But there will be reporters in the courtroom and we are going to get daily updates. Let's see how the first day goes. Democrats are increasingly turning, some are saying, on Democratic senator from California,

Dianne Feinstein, and demanding that she resign. Let me remind everybody what is going on. And there's a lot of sad stuff going on in this story. Dianne Feinstein is currently the longest serving member of the U.S. Senate. She is 89 years old. She is she has announced she is not seeking reelection in 2024. There have been many concerns. I want to be as respectful as possible, but also be accurate. There have been many concerns for years now about Dianne Feinstein's cognitive state. There are public examples. Tough to watch. I admit public examples of Dianne Feinstein asking a witness during a Senate hearing a question. Hearing an answer from the witness and then looking down at her papers and asking the exact

same question a second time, seemingly forgetting that she just asked that question. There are endless reports from staffers and people in D.C. who work at the Senate saying Dianne Feinstein regularly will meet someone that she has met many times before, even recently, and has no recollection of having met that person. So listen, I mean, we don't have a diagnosis here, but there have been concerns for years about this. As far as Dianne Feinstein goes, it is the right decision at this point to get a great run to not run for reelection in 2024. What has surfaced in the wake of this is that there is a primary in California in which three members of the House of Representatives have decided to run for Dianne Feinstein Senate seat. That's Adam Schiff, who we've interviewed

Barbara Lee, who we're going to interview, and Katie Porter, who we would like to interview, but so far has not responded to our requests. You can't run for House and Senate at the same time, meaning that while all three of them, Barbara Lee, Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, who are mid 70s, early 60s and around 50 years old, respectively, while they are all competing for the Senate seat, their congressional seats are now going to be open because they can't run for both at the same time. Dianne Feinstein, on top of this, as is reported by Newsweek, has recently been out with shingles. And this is particularly impactful because Dianne Feinstein is on the Judiciary Committee. And when you have such a divided government the way we have right now, where Democrats

barely control the Senate, judicial appointees are one of the relatively few ways that Democrats can assert power, use their majority and try to assist Joe Biden in getting things done. Because of Dianne Feinstein's absence from that committee, it has effectively made it impossible for Senate Democrats to continue confirming Joe Biden's judicial nominations. So both because it would potentially allow a different dynamic in the primary, which would be better for Democrats. And because of this issue on the Senate judiciary, more and more Democrats are saying that they and Feinstein should resign right now. If Dianne Feinstein did resign and Farron Cousins talked about this one filling in

for me last week to some degree, the governor of California, currently Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, would get to replace appoint a replacement to fill the vacancy. Now, you have to understand that there are different dynamics in California depending on how long it is until the next general election. If Dianne Feinstein were to resign within six months of the general election, there wouldn't be a special election for the seat. You would just wait until the general election when you have under I'm sorry, when you have more than 180 days left, then you would do a special election right now because we have more than 180 days until the 2024 election.

If Dianne Feinstein resigned today, you would see the appointment by Gavin Newsom and then you would see a special election. That is potentially a much better path forward, both, number one, because of its impact on the Senate Judiciary Committee and number two, because it might actually change the game with regard to so many Democratic open seats in the House of Representatives that increasingly Democrats are saying that is exactly what should be done. It doesn't appear as though right now there is big momentum for Dianne Feinstein to actually do that.

And it's unclear whether that is going to change. The other aspect to this that's being discussed is what about appointing a replacement on the Judiciary Committee for Dianne Feinstein? I don't have a lot of news to give you about that right now, but it is certainly something that is being discussed. My leaning right now is that it would probably be a good idea for Dianne Feinstein to resign. What exactly the timing of that would be and this issue of the replacement versus getting back to the Senate Judiciary Committee, I don't know.

It's not about again, it's not about stigmatizing. It's not about making fun of any. It's not about any of these things. It's about a political expediency. And Feinstein has had an incredible run in the Senate, has accomplished so much, iconic in so many different ways. Nothing is being taken away from her. In my mind, if she did resign, Republicans are jumping all over this and saying she should not resign. And now Democrats are being bad in some way by urging her to do so. This is, of course,

Republicans concerned only with self-preservation and realizing that it's actually been a great thing for them that Joe Biden's judicial nominees have been held up as a result of this. So I quite frankly could not care less what Republicans say. They just want whatever is best for them. It does seem overall that what's best for the Senate and what's best for Democrats would be for Dianne Feinstein to resign. I'm willing to change my mind if you disagree with me. Simply let me know in a comment, in an email, in a tweet.

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That's H.E.N. S.O.N. Shaving dot com slash Pacman. Use code Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. The David Pakman Show is an audience funded program. We primarily depend on your support to fund what we do to pay staff salaries, health insurance, connectivity, the plants that are behind me, all of it. Yes, all of it is funded directly by you. You can sign up at join Pacman dot com. We do an extra show every single day for our members called The Bonus Show. We also offer

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I have to tell you that there is an irony to the contingent that has become the strongest defenders of Elon Musk. And I'm going to explain why in a moment. But one of the most notable things about this interview billed as a two night special night one was last night. Night two is tonight. So if you just couldn't get enough last night, there will be more of this tonight. Much of the interview was spent by Tucker Carlson just sucking up to Elon Musk. And you do get the sense, you know, Tucker in those Dominion voting systems texts exposed as hating Trump passionately. You get the feeling that Tucker is really desperate for Elon to like him. And much of what that includes is Tucker doing the maniacal laughter when Elon tells pretty

mediocre jokes. Check this out. How did it get this way? You funded it at the beginning. What happened? Yeah, well, that'll be ironic. But the most ironic outcome is most likely, it seems. I'm feeling that that's good.

That's actually a friend of mine,. I came up with that one. I actually have a slight variance on that, which is the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. But that's entertaining as viewed from a third party viewer like this. This was a lot of the interview. It really was. And we're going to get to more substantive things. But I later in the interview, I tuned back in and Tucker is still sucking up to Elon

Musk. We are times of their of their badge this morning. And then you called them diarrhea. You did. You did. I'm just I'm just quoting you. You described their Twitter feed as diarrhea. I said it was the Twitter call and Twitter call into diarrhea.

It's not literally diarrhea, but no, it's a, you know, it's a metaphor. Hey, OK, so very entertaining to Tucker, as you can see, and it's all great and very, very exciting. Eventually, the subject matter did turn to Twitter. Now, Twitter, by any objective measure, I hate to go back into toilet humor, but it's been flushed significantly since Elon Musk took over advertisers fleeing Twitter engagement down this disastrous for you feed that promotes mostly right wing nonsense. Twitter blew where you can pay to be verified. And that went completely backwards. It's been very bad. And arguably, based on not even arguably based on the belief that Elon Musk was trying to raise money at a

20 million dollar valuation, you can make the argument that Twitter's value has declined by more than 50 percent since Elon Musk purchased it. OK, so here Elon Musk says he's sort of in the matrix because he's been heavily on Twitter since 2009. Since I've been a heavy Twitter user since 2009, um, my it's, it's sort of like I'm in the matrix. I mean, I can see like things do things feel right. Do they not feel right? What, what tweets am I being shown as recommended? Like I get a feel like what accounts are making comments? Where are the comments eerily similar?

And he's really he's really managing by feel, which is interesting given that these are the facts. Don't care about your feelings. People look at the account and it's just obviously a fake photo. And, you know, it's just obviously a bought cluster over and over again. So I started to get like just more and more uneasy about the Twitter situation. Yeah, he was uneasy. And as you can see here from Tucker's expression, Tucker is very concerned. You can tell from Tucker's expression that he's very, very concerned about this. The topic of Twitter's role in upcoming elections did come up. And Elon Musk says that not only in domestic elections, but even internationally, Twitter is going to play a major role.

I'm just saying, but you're kind of exposed in your other businesses. So this is just in case reviewers aren't following us. This is, you're not just like a journalist taking a stand on behalf of the First Amendment. You're a guy with big government contracts giving the finger to the government. Do you think Twitter will be as central to this presidential campaign as it was in the last several? I think it will play a significant role in elections,

not just domestically, but internationally. The goal of new Twitter is to be as fair and even handed as possible. By the way, doesn't new Twitter sort of remind anybody else of new Coke? This was a disaster, corporate disaster where Coca-Cola had a new Coke. And I've read about it in so many business case studies. I don't remember what the differences were, how it was flavored or sweetened or was it the color? I don't.

Then there was like clear Pepsi. The all the new Twitter. It's you're calling it something, but really it's just sort of like bad Twitter. So not favoring any political ideology, which is hard to believe, given that the for you feed is almost exclusively right wing propaganda. Just being being being fair at all. Yeah. The topic then turned to artificial intelligence, an interesting topic.

And I actually do think Elon Musk has we finally have gotten to something where I think Elon Musk has interesting things to say. Let's listen to what he said about AI, although it's a little bit a little bit woo woo. It is fundamentally profound in that the the smartest creatures, as far as you know, on this earth are humans is a defining characteristic. Yes. We're obviously weaker than, say, chimpanzees and less agile, but real smarter. So now what happens when something vastly smarter than the smartest

person comes along in silicon form? Right. That's pretty scary, at least as far as Elon Musk wants you to be concerned. So his idea is to create rather than chat GPT, truth GPT, truth, sensual, not truth, not truth, truth, GPT. We're going to start something which you call truth, GPT or a maximum truth seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe. And I think this this might be the best path to safety in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe. There you go.

Now, this stuff is actually sort of interesting. The problem with the entire interview is obviously the sort of hero's welcome that Elon Musk is getting from people like Tucker Carlson, despite the fact that I listen, I don't I don't take the side that Elon Musk is some extreme right wing nut who is aligned with the hardcore MAGA right on every issue. In fact, the truth is very different. And it's interesting to see how many of the people now defending Elon Musk and sort of fanboying out around him, hate electric cars. And Elon Musk, of course, owns Tesla, think space exploration is a really stupid waste of money.

And Elon Musk has SpaceX like it's not lost on me that Elon Musk is actually involved in a lot of really interesting companies that are antithetical to what many on the right want. I've also said that I'm a longtime I used to own Tesla stock for years and years, although I've gotten out of it now. And I'm a longtime Tesla driver, although I've gotten out of it now. And I'm a longtime Tesla driver, although I do plan to go in a different direction when my current lease is up for reasons I've explained that have nothing to do with Elon Musk specifically. So I don't have this kind of black white view of Elon Musk. The real issue with Musk right now is that through whatever series of events, is it kind of cozying up to Joe Rogan and Texas Republicans like Greg Abbott and just kind of being in that environment? And this has shifted

his view or based on who is signal boosting him on Twitter. He's sort of like become adjacent to some horrible right wing people for whatever reason, he's getting the hero's welcome from the right at this point in time. And he is expressing some pretty horrifying views, including like everybody should vote for Republicans in the midterms and all these different things. But the irony isn't lost on me that he also does stand for, at least as far as many of his businesses go, things that the right actually hates. And yet they love him because of the hero's welcome that right wing media has decided that he should get. So that was only night one of this blockbuster interview with Tucker Carlson. Night two will be tonight. If there's anything interesting, I'll have it for you tomorrow. The Trump team is raging over poll numbers that

increasingly show Donald Trump failing in swing states where Ron DeSantis is actually doing pretty well. There's a Newsweek article that summarizes it. Donald Trump's campaign team has dismissed the finding of a poll that suggests Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would be the preferred 2024 candidate against Joe Biden in key swing states. The Newsweek article writes a survey from Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies shows that DeSantis, who isn't even officially running yet, but is expected to announce soon, would beat Biden in Arizona and Pennsylvania in a hypothetical 2024 faceoff by 48 to 42 and 45 to 42. Poll of 500 registered voters in Arizona and Pennsylvania also showed Trump would lose to Biden in the key states if they faced off again in 2024. So the the Trump war room

account is just attacking the poll. They put out a tweet saying, quote, Public Opinion Strategies POS tried desperately for days to try to pitch this fake poll to other outlets, but they refused to disclose their disclose their ties to other 2024 candidates and would not release their crosstabs data. Truly a POS poll. Now, I have to tell you, the reality is this is not a unique result. I've been telling you for a while that the polling suggests that while Trump is doing really well in the primary polling, DeSantis does better against Biden in much of the general election polling. And if you

take a look at recent polls, you see that, for example, in a morning consult poll, Biden leads DeSantis by one, but Biden leads Trump by three. That's a general election poll. If you look at that, then we have the public opinion strategies poll. There's a whole bunch of different polls you can look at where Biden does generally better against Trump, with a few exceptions. So really, the dynamic here isn't unique to the POS poll. Most polls right now suggest that Republican voters are supporting the guy who would do worse against Joe Biden. And that's a problem that the Republican Party needs to deal with one or two more of these. And he'll start calling voter fraud a year and a half out.

And we'll deal with that when we come to it. But this is this is a problem of its own making. DeSantis, by all measures, would perform better in a national race against Joe Biden. But can DeSantis actually get himself into that position? The Republican primary polling increasingly suggests that DeSantis cannot win a national primary against Trump. And we are going to continue following those numbers. But the Trump team for now, furious that anybody would dare to report on that poll. One of our sponsors is better help.

I am a huge believer in therapy. The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. Help will match you with a therapist based on your specific needs and preferences. The sessions can be on the phone, video call, chat, anytime, anywhere from your couch at home, from your office at work. And if your therapist isn't the right fit, you can switch anytime at no charge. My audience gets 10 percent off your first month at Better help dot com slash Pacman. That's better. H.E.L.P. dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. Today, I'm going to be speaking with James Underdown, who's executive director for the Center for Inquiry West in Los Angeles and the chair and founder of the Center for Inquiry Investigations Group. He's also the host of the upcoming web series Skepta Lab. The bunk stops here. James, really great to have you on. I appreciate it.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. So one of the things that your organization has done is you have offered money five hundred thousand dollars for definitive proof of superpowers or of a supernatural ability. And the money continues to be available. It's never it's never been collected on. So let's first to understand what are the parameters of the offer? Well, yeah, the offer is half a million dollars for anyone who can prove paranormal ability under scientific test conditions.

And that means that you can't just call us up and say, you shot a video of something weird happening, send me a check, or just take it on their word alone. You have to be able to show up, show us in person, and control conditions mean that we're going to make sure, to the best of our ability that you're not cheating or using some ulterior means to achieve whatever effect you're talking about. Okay. How many, let's go through the funnel. How many people have gone through the proper process of applying? Well, uh, we average a couple of years ago we had over 250 applications. We average between one and 200 applications a year.

And usually it does whittle down when people find out what they're going to have to do. I think it's self eliminates the people who are planning to cheat. Okay. I think it self eliminates the people who are planning to cheat. OK, so and in fact, as long as I'm on that subject, no one has ever tried to cheat during a test. Anyone who shows up actually believes that they have these superpowers. So but but it goes from so it goes from a hundred to 200 a year applying and we only test like probably half a dozen by the time all is said and done and everybody understands each other. The negotiations, we figure out what the test is going to be, what they say they can do,

what we're comfortable with. And uh, then we're off to the races. So the fact that people don't try to cheat suggests that these are true believers. They genuinely believe they have whatever power they claim to have. Absolutely. So far, 100 percent of 100 percent of them. Now, of course, we do plan for people cheating. So we we treat everyone as if, you know, we, we close off these avenues of cheating, but yeah, everyone who shows up thinks they're going to succeed. And a lot of them are really sort of surprised that, you know, they can't define millions to one

odds in, in their telepathic ability. OK, so let's talk about that when they fail. Give us a sense of some of the reactions. Do does anybody say, hey, you know what, I actually can't do this thing, or do people blame the test conditions? Do they say it was an off day? Yeah, there is. I mean, I I keep keep saying I'm going to start this, the big book of excuses. Yeah. A lot of them say, you know, too much skeptic energy in the room. Right. Some of them say, oh, this test wasn't fair, even though they agreed to it, you know, five minutes earlier. Some of them, it takes a few days for them to say that they were cheated or somehow wronged. You know, so it varies there. And let's see. So we've been

testing people at this point for 23 years. And there are probably been two or three who have come back and said, you know, maybe I need to rethink this a little bit and reconsider what's going on. What sorts of claims have you tested? Are there types that are the most common ones? Yeah, probably the most common test we do is telepathy. So this is people thinking that they can project their thoughts into someone else's mind. That's most common. Some people think that they can receive thoughts. Lately, we've been getting a lot of

people who say they can, telekinesis is a big one. So the ability to move something with your mind without touching it physically or anything. So a lot of people have been sending in claims about moving clouds or doing things to the sky. Dowsers, we've tested a couple of dowsers, some healers. It's really all over the map. Some people, I mean, we've had people say that they could create a rainstorm in the middle of a desert. So like for that one, do you go out to the middle of the desert? Well, what we in these sort of predictive sort of claims, we make it very clear that, look, you know, this can't be in the Amazon jungle. It can't be on an island in Hawaii.

It's got to be somewhere that doesn't have rain very often. You have to predict the exact time and the exact place that this is going to happen. So we close these windows down. So it's not just a chance occurrence of something that would happen anyway. Right. How do you deal with I mean, I'm guessing, although you can tell me if my assumption is wrong, that sometimes people who are struggling with mental health issues come to you and say, I can do this, that or the other thing. How how does that happen? How do you deal with that? It actually happens fairly commonly, especially with the telepaths. So if you're experiencing voices in your head, you're seeing some hallucination or you're convinced that everyone can hear your thoughts or that, you know, you can hear their thoughts. Those are symptoms from the DSM, the Diagnostical Statistical Manual from the mental

health world. Those are known conditions and symptoms. So, you know, we try to gently suggest to people what you're experiencing is consistent with some forms of mental illness, please consider that that may be what's going on here. We'll test you anyway, but know that this is probably what's happening. And by the way, this isn't just me, some layman saying this. We have three psychologists on our team and a psychiatrist. So they're all in full agreement that these are common symptoms that people suffering from mental illness sometimes experience when people come in. There are instances of this sort of thing where the people who assert these abilities will say that they are by their nature not really testable in this way.

Now, of course, the problem for organizations like yours is that, well, then then we're dealing in an unfalsifiable type of claim. It's I'm asserting this and it's not even the type of claim you can evaluate. What do you get some of those? And then are you just not able to move forward in that case? Yeah. Do you what do you get some of those and then are you just not able to move forward in that case? Yeah. So it could be some people say that, you know, this just happens every once in a while and

I can't put my finger on it. I say when we say, look, we're not going to follow you around 24 hours a day. You have to be able to do this sort of on demand. So yeah, it's just by the nature of it. We're not going to fly to you in Istanbul and, you know, spend six weeks with you until this pops up again. So and by the way, we do we test people from all over the world. Just the other day we tested a guy who was in Spain who said he could hypnotize us into making us roll our eyes up into our head, you know, like you're going into a coma or something. Yeah. So some of these things can be tested via Zoom or Skype or

whatever. And we're willing to do that if it if the test lends itself to that. Speaker 1 That's convenient. So you don't have to necessarily fly around to then have your eyes not roll up into the back of your head. Speaker 2 Yeah, that could be dangerous if you're on the road. Speaker 1 Um, so the new show Skepti Lab, the bunk stops here. It debuts in just a couple of days, I believe, with three episodes on telekinesis, astrology and telepathy. Yeah, we're we started shooting this web series.

You know, we've been doing this. My group, the Center for Inquiry Investigations Group, has been doing this for twenty three years now since 2000. And, you know, we just decided to, we have these scads of experiences with these people and the benefit of decades of information from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Skeptical Inquirer Magazine, all these people that we work with and are a part of. We thought, why not try to get some of this debunking information out there? We actually got a little bit of a grant to help us out with getting it produced.

And I know some people here in Hollywood who are mostly on our side in terms of getting science education out to the public. So, you know, we got some of these celebrities to help out and they're funny. And so we get the information out there with a little bit of humor and then bring in some experts to to add to the mix and really try to convince people that this stuff isn't what it seems to be. Yeah, I love this stuff. So I'm really looking forward to it. Astrology in particular is interesting because with a lot of that, that's about personality traits and vague horoscopes and these kind of Barnum type statements.

What how do you debunk that? Yes. Some of the things are a little tricky. Astrology was kind of fun. We had the help of Julia Sweeney, who was a star on Saturday Night Live a while back. And one of the things we did was we went out to Hollywood Boulevard and set up a table and said free astrology readings. And we put all the star signs and little bins in front. And people came up and got their reading and read it on camera. Then they scored the reading and said, you know,

how well did it do on describing you, the Libra that it pretends to describe? And they're giving it nines and tens out of ten. And then we'd say, okay, now pick up an Aries, and it's the exact same astrology reading, star reading. So what does that tell you? And a lot of them admitted right on the spot, you know, that you could write something that applies to just about everybody, and it really isn't predictive at all. It's just a general statement well written toward that end.

Yeah. And what's interesting about that is in some sense, you could say that doesn't really debunk it, because if you just write a statement that applies to most people, everybody would accept it. I guess there would be another way to test it, which would be with different statements and kind of like randomizing them and controlling it. You know, you could do a more complex test, too, I'm sure. Right. Right. You could you could set up you could get 12 people together and say, OK, talk to them

a little bit and pick out which one is the Sagittarius. Right. You know, based on your discussion. But we added one other thing to this discussion. And this is what we try to do on Skeptolab is we got Phil Plait, who is a working astronomer. And we said, you know, look, talk about these constellations out there, which are meant to be the driving force behind astrology, talk about, you know, the influence, the physical influence they have on Earth. And Phil went and talked about how far they are, the fact that just because it might look like a crab up in the sky doesn't mean these stars are anywhere near each other. They're not the same distance or anything. He talked about the gravitational pull of, you know, like a boss

going by who has a bigger gravitational pull than, you know, some star light years away. So there's a lot of other, there's ways to think of why astrology is is not real. Do you get into not so much more in the direction of some of the medical stuff? Like for example, you know, acupuncture is one that's been looked at extensively and it seems as though in most tests so-called sham acupuncture works as well as, quote, real acupuncture. The idea being that the process of having someone listen to your symptoms and then maybe the endorphin release from the from the needles, no matter where you place them, does have an effect. But it's no different with real versus do you get into that stuff at all? We do. You know, we're not, my group isn't involved in that sort of research per se.

But yeah, you're right. I mean, there are aspects of a lot of the faith healing kind of stuff and the alternative medicine sort of stuff that is, you know, the power of suggestion, the placebo effect have a great deal to do with people feeling better. Now we do test healers. And in fact, just a month or two ago, we had a guy come in to test for the half million dollars who said he could heal a lipoma on one of our guys neck had a little lipoma on there there so we measured it and we got all these cameras you know watching it as he's as he's doing it and he couldn't do it so you know if you

can if your claim is that you can heal it on the spot and have visual incontrovertible evidence right now that it's healed. That's fine. But, you know, you get these you get like Benny Hinn and these televangelist healers who say they're making their healing people and we just punch a lot of holes and why that's not really happening. What happens to all the video footage of these failed tests? Speaker 2 You know, we're getting better at since we got the cameras for Skepta Lab, we're trying to get a little bit better. We are we do shoot a lot most of this stuff,

but I don't know how to edit or anything. So it's sort of being stored right now and we're using some of it for the Skepta lab. OK, and we'll use it in the future as well. I hope it's it's fascinating stuff. So if there's someone in the audience, there is a five hundred thousand dollar reward available to you and you can find out more by looking into the Center for Inquiry. We've been speaking with James Underdown. The upcoming web series debuting in just a couple of days is Skeptilab. The bunk stops here. James, really appreciate your time today. Thanks for having me on, David. It's been a pleasure. One of our sponsors is Helix Sleep. I have been sleeping on a Helix mattress at home for years

now. I couldn't be more happy with it. I recommend it to everybody. The other day, even though she's not allowed in the big bed, I put my baby daughter on the mattress and even she loved it. Helix Sleep is the premium mattress brand offering tailored mattresses based on your unique sleep preferences. Take the Helix Sleep quiz. It asks you about your body type, your sleeping position. Do you get hot at night? Do you have back pain? And then Helix will match you with the mattress that's perfect for you. Most people don't know where to begin when shopping for a mattress, including me. Helix makes it simple and less risky because, you know, you're getting a mattress that fits your needs. It ships free. You can try it for 100 nights to see if you like it. And it comes with a 10 or 15 year warranty. Unlike many mattress companies, all Helix mattresses are made in the USA by a skilled

production team. So you are supporting good jobs. Helix sleep is giving my audience up to 20 percent off plus two free pillows. What other mattress company is going to give you 20 percent off? Go to Helix sleep dot com slash Pacman. That's H.E.L.I.X. Sleep dot com slash Pacman for up to 20 percent off and two free pillows. The link is in the podcast notes. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's war with Disney World has now gone up yet another notch with DeSantis threatening to build a state prison right next to Disney World, which is hard to even say with a straight face that this guy is so petty and so vindictive. But he is.

Let me remind you the back story here. Disney faced internal pressure some time ago to come out and criticize what is known as the don't say gay bill in Florida and the don't say gay bill in Florida. And the don't say gay bill in Florida is this bill signed into law, which places restrictions on what can be taught in Florida classrooms about gender identity and about sexual orientation as applied to kindergarten through third grade. There was internal pressure at Disney for them to come out and say we are against this law. So Disney did that. And DeSantis and Florida Republicans flipped out. They said that Disney is going woke and they subsequently decided to punish Disney, including by taking

control of that district, which basically operated as a private municipal government by Disney. And it contained Walt Disney World and some other parks. And this has continued to grow and grow and grow. This is not really a battle I think DeSantis can win, because even though I hate theme parks, I'm aware that tons of people love them and tons of people love Disney and the movies. And Disney is generally very well liked. And so this is a risky thing for DeSantis to do. In addition now to saying that he is going to start sending inspectors to look at the rides at Walt Disney World, he now threw out the idea during an event yesterday that maybe he will build a prison next to Disney World.

Take that district. You know, one of the things they tried to do was was put restrictive covenants on the land that the district owns. So if you look at this whole special district, Walt Disney Corporation obviously owns a lot of it. But the district owns other land. You know, quite frankly, I wasn't even thinking about that land. This was not something that was really important one way or another. We just wanted them to live on those

same rules, pay the debt, pay the taxes, all that stuff. Oh, but come to think of it, now people are like, well, there's, what should we do with this land? And so, you know, it's like, okay, kids, I mean, people have said, you know, maybe maybe have another maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks. Someone even said, like, maybe you need another state president. Who knows? I mean, I just think that the possibilities are endless. And so that is now going to be analyzed to see what would make make the most sense.

OK, so he's it's we're having fun. He's joking. The crowd's laughing. It's all super, super interesting. This should actually be chilling. This shouldn't send a tingle down your leg the way Chris Matthews once said. This should really send a chill down your spine, because what we are talking about here is a guy who claims to have an ideology of not interfering with businesses, being against regulation, welcoming the tax revenue that comes from businesses. I mean, what we're talking about, like the state's largest tourist attraction by far and antagonizing them is certainly an interesting economic and political decision.

But this is yet another example. It's another data point of how they immediately and with total reckless abandon will get away from their stated principles if it's not convenient or if they're upset or if they want revenge or if they want to ruin somebody's day because they don't like politically the things that are going on. He is openly using his political power. He has already done it and he is threatening to do more of it against his perceived enemies, including corporate enemies. This is extraordinarily dangerous stuff. And despite all the claims that it's the Democrats

that want to overregulate and hurt business and all these different things. I've never seen anything like this openly and overtly and brazenly. So is he literally going to propose building a state prison right next to Walt Disney World? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. It's not totally clear, but this is exactly the stuff that we've been talking about when we say these are not only hypocrites, but they are dangerously, dangerously hypocritical. And remember, it's all over. Don't say gay. That's how this all started. Disney said, hey, we don't like this. Everybody's welcome here. By the way, Walt Disney World, I've never again,

I've been to Disney once when I was like 18. I guess they're known for all sorts of corporate events where you can I don't know if the park is closed down or what, but they do everything from corporate events to Pride Day to Gay Weekend or whatever else the case may be. It's also profitable for Disney. Whatever you assess to be Disney's political view, like does Disney have a political view? Is Disney pro gay? I don't know, but they certainly know that their bread is buttered by all sorts of different people, including LGBT groups and tourists and travelers and whatever else the case may be. So this is as much out of self-preservation as it is about whatever Disney thinks is right and fair and good. I don't know that the Santas can actually win this one, but it's certainly clear he's willing to try

just about anything in order to take a shot at that. Here is something just unbelievable. This is I don't even Donald J. Chump. What do you think of that? Sounds like an insult, right? Sounds like something that detractors of Trump would say. Greg Stubbe, a Republican congressman who has made the decision against the wishes of Florida Republicans to come out and endorse Trump now, went on Newsmax, his big announcement, and he says, I am proud to endorse Donald Trump. Yeah. And Rob, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about this

on your show. And I'm happy and honored to endorse Donald J. Trump. This is this is such a backfire in so many ways. So let me give you the back story of what's going on here. NBC News article. Ron, this is from six days ago. Ron DeSantis's team tries to stop Florida Republicans from endorsing Trump. The governor's team has reached out to at least six Florida congressional Republicans over the past week trying to stop the bleeding. The idea here is as follows. DeSantis hasn't announced yet. He may announce at some point over the next three to four months is what's for some reason July keeps being talked about. OK, if a bunch of these Florida Republicans jump out and endorse Trump right now, it's not great for DeSantis. DeSantis is going to want to

build his base of support with endorsements, presumably starting with a Florida Republicans. Greg Stubbe decided, I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to get in Trump's good graces. I'm going to try to get an attaboy from Trump. So I'm going to proudly go on Newsmax and announce that I am indeed endorsing Trump. And then you get his name wrong. And not only do you get it wrong, you use an insulting term, chump. Yeah. And Rob, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about this on your show. And I'm happy and honored to endorse Donald J. Chump. This is your big moment to get on Trump's good side to try to get attention. Barely anyone cares what Greg Stubbe ever says.

And you go out there and you call him a chump. Now, he also attacked Ron DeSantis. And this is where it starts to get a little bit more interesting beyond just the cartoonish nature of chump. The attacks on DeSantis are also starting to be coordinated. That's that is one thing that I hear from a lot of people that I know. I got a lot of friends in Florida, and they say that when DeSantis talks about, you know, or when they think DeSantis is going to run,

they're mortified because they don't want to lose him in the Sunshine State. Yeah, he hasn't even been elected, reelected for six months. And while we're in legislative session right now, and the state legislature is doing their business, he's in South Carolina and Iowa. I think he's up here in Washington tomorrow meeting with people where his focus should be in Florida. Floridians want him to be focused on Florida.

That's what he signed up for his job for reelection to do. So this is telegraphing and predicting what is going to be a big line of attack from anti DeSantis Republicans. They showed us these cards. They showed us that this was the hand they were going to be playing even before the election. We had clips of Carrie Lake and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, by the way, want to be Trump's VP, saying DeSantis needs to do his work for the people of Florida. DeSantis has been reelected to be the governor. DeSantis should commit to serving the full term, which DeSantis has been reelected to be the governor. DeSantis should commit to serving the

full term, which DeSantis opted not to do during his debate in the twenty twenty two midterms. So this is going to be a line of attack. This is a guy who should be doing what he told Floridians he was going to do. He is disloyal or he is some way doing the wrong thing by not staying and serving his term. This is going to be a line of attack. It's abundantly clear. Will DeSantis announce? I don't know.

We'll know very soon. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. You can call the voicemail number any time of day. And many people do. Here is a caller suggesting, you know, David, maybe you're better looking off camera. Maybe it's not really that bad. Take a listen to this. Speaker 4 So I was thinking you're like television world. So when somebody is not like really

great on television, like in real life, maybe you're like better looking than you are on camera. I don't know why I find this so funny. I just a lot of people are and you know, I feel like there's something against people who just aren't good on camera. Yeah. And it's like there's nobody holding you accountable. Well, listen, I you should look at my inbox. There are many people holding me

accountable for my physical appearance. You should see many of those people are peddling an anti-Semitic commentary about my appearance, which I will not indulge any more specifically right now. But no, no, no. Plenty of people are holding me accountable for my physical appearance. Rest assured, if you were concerned, we have a great bonus show for you today. We talked at the top of the podcast about Democrats saying Dianne Feinstein should resign. We are going to talk on the bonus show about Republicans lining up to say Dianne Feinstein should not be replaced on the Judiciary Committee. This is a big issue. It's becoming a huge flashpoint in Joe Biden's first term and judicial nominations. Secondly, we are going to talk about the Supreme Court and the potential restoration

of religious liberty in the workplace. Those sound like dangerous buzzwords, don't they? Yes, absolutely. They are. And George Anthony DeVolder Santos has announced he's running for reelection to serve the people of the what is that? The third district of New York, I believe. Um, why is he doing it? Does he have a shot? What the hell is that? The third district of New York, I believe. Why is he doing it? Does he have a shot? What the hell is going on with this guy? We will talk about all of these stories and more on today's bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. We're going to try to make some money on the bonus show. Join us by signing up at join Pacman dot com. I will see you then. on the show.