The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Origins Podcast Wishful-Thinking Holiday Edition Part 1: A Dialogue with Augusten Burroughs: A Witch or Not A Witch

Episode Date: December 25, 2022

I want to be upfront. I love Augusten Burroughs. I fell in love with him when I first read Running with Scissors, and every time I have picked up anything he has written, I have that warm feeling knowing I will delight in the scrumptious experience that is associated with reading his work. Shortly after creating the Origins Podcast in 2019, I discovered that Augusten was going to have a new book coming out, and I contacted him to ask if he might come by the studio and do a podcast if his book tour passed nearby. To my great happiness, he said he would love to come by and would send me a prepublication copy of the book so I might prepare. So it was that I received Toil and Trouble: A Memoire, and discovered to my surprise that it was a memoir describing his, and his mother’s experiences as witches. I read the book carefully and tried to decide what to do. The dilemma was somewhat similar to that I faced when I wrote The Physics of Star Trek. I didn’t want to write a book that would simply say “This won’t work” over and over again. Similarly, I didn’t want to offer blanket denials of Augusten’s claims. Instead, I decided I would try and use the opportunity to discuss science and skepticism and apply those ideas to various examples in the book. After we finished the podcast, we weren’t sure when the right time to release it would be. I didn’t want to cast any negative shadows on the book during its initial release, and I wanted to time it appropriately after we had amassed a catalog of podcasts with scientists and artists that would give some perspective on the discussion we had. When we thought about a holiday edition podcast the dialogue with Augusten came to mind. I confess I had forgotten the details and was a little worried. I needn’t have worried, however. I had forgotten how much fun it was, and how much fun any conversation with Augusten can be. Moreover, he comes at almost all ideas and experiences with the characteristics of a scientist. He is realistic, skeptical, and willing to be wrong. It is so refreshing. We began the podcast by once again discussing his dysfunctional childhood, which he covers so beautifully in a number of his books. It is a fascinating dive into issues of mental illness, and victimhood, the latter of which he happily demonstrates is in the eye of the beholder. But the purpose of this discussion is to put in context the discovery, when he was a young boy, that he was a witch. A discovery revealed by his mother, who told him that he came from a long of witches after he has an experience that he would describe as a sort of remote sensing, associated with an accident his grandmother had. From there we discuss more modern examples. I truly enjoyed listening to Augusten again in the podcast, which presents, in my mind, a good example of how to have a difficult but respectful conversation, and how science and skepticism can and should be applied to wishful thinking—something that Augusten would certainly agree with. As Richard Feynman once said, after all: The easiest person to fool is yourself. Throughout, Augusten is charming and enjoyable, and listening to him describe his own experiences is alone worth the listen. I hope you enjoy this part 1 of our Holiday Podcast. Part 2 will be released after Xmas, and is a special holiday edition of Science Matters, where I discuss wishful thinking associated with a scientific development that dominated much of the media earlier this month. I hope you enjoy both, complementary discussions. As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Hi, and happy holidays. This is Lawrence Krause, and you're listening to The Origins Podcast. This holiday edition of the Origins Podcast is with one of my favorite writers, and when I met him, one of my favorite people, a remarkable, enjoyable man, Augustine Burroughs, whose memoirs have left me laughing out loud so many times. It's hard to describe how many. and I was incredibly excited to be able to meet with him. Now, we met a while ago, in fact,

when the podcast was just beginning, Augustine came by Phoenix on a book tour for his then new book, Toil and Trouble, a memoir. And we sat down, we met for the first time and sat down and talked for a long time. And we've been holding on to this podcast to try and figure out the right time to release it. And I thought over this holiday period, it's a good time to do that. Because it's really about wishful thinking in some ways.

In spite of the fact that Augustine is a remarkable realist in certain ways, I was incredibly excited to get the new book at the time and read it in advance of publication so that I could have a chance to talk with Augustine. discovered the book was really a memoir about his view initiated by his mother when he was younger that he was a witch and i really did not know how to address that issue and i've just relisten to the podcast again and i forgot how much fun it was to talk augustin's memoirs of his own life he had the most dysfunctional childhood of anyone I could possibly imagine. And in spite of that, and in spite of being victimized in many occasions, he doesn't think of himself as a victim, and we talked about that at

great length. He has a remarkable attitude about the world. And it's a lot of fun to talk to him because he is such a wonderful writer and has a wonderful turn of phrase, as I quote very, parts of his writing during the conversation. But then the rest of the conversation is really a good example of sort of science and skepticism because it's a series of examples where Augustine feels he's presented evidence for why he's a witch and why I present arguments for why I think it's a coincidence. And you can decide back, you can decide which would you like better. But it's a kind of fun, respectful back and forth at the same time enjoyable because he's such a wonderful human being. I really, really enjoyed this conversation and it's kind of a fun holiday listen.

We've supplemented this episode also with a special episode of Science Matters, also on wishful thinking in a way, although it relates to a bit of science that's been in the news in the last month. And so we're releasing this around Christmas Day for you to enjoy during the holidays. And shortly they're afterwards releasing the episode of Science Matters. So I hope between the two of them,

you'll have a lot of fun listening over the holidays. Again, hopefully you can watch this without commercials by going to Critical Mass, our suspect site, and subscribing. And paid subscribers to that can watch ad-free versions of this podcast. And if you, alternatively, you can watch it on YouTube, or of course, you can listen to it on any of the standard podcast listening sites. No matter how you listen to it or watch it, I hope you'll enjoy it.

And I hope you'll consider supporting the Origins Podcast for the Origins Project Foundation, the nonprofit foundation that runs the podcast, the public events we run, and the travel adventures for people. And in any case, I hope you have a one. wonderful holiday and a great new year. Thanks. Well, Augustin Burroughs, thank you so very much for coming to join me today. It's a pleasure, sort of. It's completely a pleasure for me. 100%. The reason it's a pleasure for me, sort of, is that I have fallen head over heels in love with you reading your books over the years so many times. And then you told me you're writing new book.

And you come, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and it frustrates the hell out of me that I have to talk to you. Yeah. That I have to talk to you. on this subject, which I want to talk to you about. And we'll get there. Yeah. But it's frustrating for me. You know what? That's why I've written eight memoirs first and then this,

because I was never going to write about it. Because when I was a little boy and I learned about it, my mama told me, don't you tell people about this because they're going to think you're a fool. Or crazy. Or crazy. Yeah, well, I think, you know, I think that's, but the fact that you actually, it's equally hard for me because you've written eight memoirs. Because I want, this is an origins podcast, so I wanted to start with your origins, but I know more about your origins than my origins.

I think because of eight memoirs. And so that's the other part that makes it so difficult. There's so many goddamn things to talk about. And I'm trying, I want to try and hold it together. And I'm going to, we'll see how well it does. But so what eight, I'm glad I counted. I actually wrote down eight memoirs, which is what I count. It's pretty good.

I can count up. So this is the ninth now. This is the ninth now. Which is too many for anybody. And you know, well, it's amazing that you can write the nine. It's a lot. Yeah, it is. But, you know, I had the pleasure of going through a number of them again, ones I hadn't read, and ones I had.

And they're mostly consistent. Right. Which is, which says it probably somewhat accurate, which is really. Well, they are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I, it's really impressive to me when I looked at one and said, oh, yeah, this is a story that made into here. but it's really pretty much the same. And I think people, most of us, when we remember our lives,

tend to remember differently at different days. Well, now, see, that's the thing. When I'm writing about the past, if I'm writing about the distant past, like I can't write about the recent past very accurately. Yeah. Because I kind of have a terrible memory. I've always thought of it. But if I'm running about the distant, distant past,

at first, there's nothing. I think I don't remember anything about being four. Nothing. So I wait. And I've got to be at my laptop. when I do this. And all I need is one thing. One little thing.

And you know what? Right now, okay, I actually have a thing. Oyster shell. An oyster shell my mother had. It's an oyster shell. So she used to use clamshells as ashtrays, but she had an oyster shell with a barnacle on it. And I can remember the looking at the barnacle

and thinking that feeling the little ridge and thinking it looked like a volcano. So if I'm writing that, now I haven't thought of that probably since the day it happened. And I don't doubt that memory. I'm sure that happened. So I can go back and back and back

and it's like watching a movie. So I've got to write. I don't even think of myself as a writer. I'm a watcher. And I watch, I rewatch whatever I'm writing about and I try to type fast enough to get it out.

Are you talking to yourself? Are you writing to tell yourself what happened? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I'm like as opposed to an audience. I'm never writing for an audience. Yeah, well, I mean, that's right.

Never. Because I wouldn't be able to. Yeah, well, I think all of it. Well, I like, when I do science, I'm doing it for myself too. And a lot of people think people are doing things to save the world or otherwise. but we tend to do things for ourselves.

But in your writing, I think that's one of the reasons I like it so much because we were talking beforehand. When I write, I tend to write like I'm talking, like I would talk to myself to try and explain something myself. And when I read your stuff, partly, and now I reflect, partly it's come from journals, which I assume you were writing for yourself, right, when you were younger. And so that, that, it kind of allows a person to eavesdrop into your talk to yourself,

which is one of the reasons I think it's so popular. There's a bunch of other reasons. And you mentioned one yourself, which I want to get to in a minute. So I'm trying to think, how can I talk about your life in a way which anyone couldn't get from eight memoirs? And I thought I'd pick and choose things that I found interesting because I find them interesting. Okay. And hopefully they'll lead us to where I want to go because we will get to your new book, which I know you're on two or four in any case. But first thing that's interesting is you left school after grade four.

Right. And that is unusual. Well, that's the last grade I completed. did. Because I did go. I mean, I later, because back then in the old days of the 70s, there was a compulsory education law in Massachusetts, which stated you had to attend school until you were 16 years old.

So I repeated the third grade twice. And the fourth grade was the, you know, Schuttsbury Elementary School's production of Alice in Wonderland, and I was the Mock Turtle with an orange canvas mid-century modern chair

cover as my show. And that was my triumph academically. after that I went to Amherst Regional Junior High School and had didn't do well and was tested by the school psychologist who determined that I had an IQ of 80 and she put me in a class with kids who had special needs and they had like Down syndrome and I loved it. That was the only good day of school that I ever, ever had. It was the best day of school I ever had. and when I was done, I went into her office and I said, you are a failure as a psychologist. I mean, when you talk to me, do I seem to you like someone who has an IQ of 80?

Does that seem to match up? Does my personality match up to your numbers? You are a terrible psychologist, and she began to cry. And she said she never wanted to be a psychologist. And I said, okay, so that's totally. appropriate for you to be crying, right? And I'm never coming back. So I never went back to school.

What I did was I enrolled at the University of Massachusetts in a couple courses because I knew now I would be going to court. And sure enough, I'm in front of a judge and I'm saying, yes, but I'm enrolled in these courses at the University of Massachusetts. And I'm only auditing them, but the professors have agreed to give me grades. So here, and she was like, it doesn't matter, you have to go back to school. So transferred from the first seventh grade into eighth grade for a couple, you know, a month or so. And then 10th maybe for a week. And then I decided I was just going to be, I would let the law chase after me, you know. That was it, you know, so I never, never went back again.

You know, that thing about the psychologist is amazing, but it reminded me of something I read, which I just brought back a memory that I wasn't going to talk about, but I was blown away by the way you talk to your math teacher. The substitute teacher? The substitute teacher? You're not a teacher. I just... I'm very polite.

You know, I would never be a dick. Never. I mean, and even when people are assholes to me, I will remain, you know, I'll try to take the higher road. But in that particular case, I had this math teacher in elementary school who, you know, bullied me. I mean, I didn't understand. math and no one ever had questions and it was arithmetic it's not like i'm taking you know calculus

it's elementary school it's great school and i still didn't get it none of it made any sense to me and she just was the substitute future and she was would always pick on me you know she would call me einstein yeah and the kids would laugh and so i was already bullied to begin with and so now in one day she wrote down this formula on on chalkboard we actually moved from our normal this is irrelevant, but we moved from our normal little roundtable over to the chalkboard area of the school, the 70s, so it was all little groups. Yeah. And she wrote down a thing on the board that had letters in it and, like, way worse than just,

you know, five, straight line, horizontal line, 72. This was like now new things. And she said, wouldn't anybody like to solve this equation? And there was no buddy. And then she, you know, said, why don't you try, you resident math genius? And I just looked at her like, what did I do to you? Yeah.

Why do you hate me so much? But then I was distracted by the chalkboard because everything had changed. And I saw shapes right in front of the chalkboard, just right in front of it. I mean, just, and they were, you know, in the air, probably, I don't know, like, yay big, so 10 inches big. I don't know how big they were, but they were. rotating in three dimensions, like rotating slowly. And there was a bunch of them,

like a line of them, and they were in pale colors. And I counted the sides. So that, you know, like the triangle. And I just counted them and went through all the shapes and counted them on my fingers, you know, and was like 39.

And I had never spoken in class before. and I felt like, wow, you know what? It's like better to like say something and be wrong than to say nothing, but I wasn't wrong. I was actually right. And she was in sense. I mean, she just got like, how did you do that? How did you do that? I did not teach you.

I have not taught the class how to do this. I have not taught. I did not teach you how to do that. And I just, that was it for me. I was like, no, you have not taught me anything. Because you are not a teacher. You are the substitution for a teacher. You stand in front of the chalkboard in place of a teacher.

And she gave me this look of just open-mouthed rage. I mean, I could just... Usually the kids would laugh whenever she said anything to me because I was a joke. Not now. No one did. And you could just see she wanted to hit me. And then I said something really, really strange that I just came out of me. But when I said it, it was one of those things I felt it in my bones.

And I told her, you have the soul of a cashier. And she reacted as though I squirted her with an air gun. Flash forward. Many years later, you know, my alcoholic glory, I'm an advertising asshole, you know, the dick with the biggest cell phone before. people had. I decided to go out to Western Massachusetts, my old stomping ground. And I'm surprised that Wally's is still there in Northampton, Massachusetts. And I, of course, you can't smoke unless you drink, so I smoke. And I go into my cigarettes from Wollies, which I'm still blown away

that it's still there. I walk in to pay for him, and there she is. She's there, ready to ring up my charges. The cashier. Doesn't recognize me, but I recognized her. And I was like, wow. Yeah, you lived up to your... Yeah, well, look, that was actually... That's a story, and that's how I'm coming. But that's an insignificant story to me. Well, except it was one of the examples that you used to suggest... Well, yes.

In fact, we'll talk about... Ah, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to get to... I heard what you just said. Yeah. And no, no. Coincidence. We're going to talk about coincidence.

We'll get there. Yeah, we are going to get it. You know, you wrote very cogently about coincidence. But things have happened since I've written the book that I need you to tell me... Great. to explain. Good. I was hoping we'd get

after the point to a certain point where you could ask me questions. You see, I'm very, I'm a strange creature in that, um,

it's not that I have lack emotions. I have them. I do. I'm human. Yeah. But I'm also a very clinical. And, um,

I have no beliefs in general. I don't really believe in things. I mean, you know, I don't really, unless I know there's a thing, unless I, but even when I know a thing,

I know that, that I'm a creature that is made out of very specific materials, so my knowledge of the thing could be completely flawed. The only thing that matters to me is the elemental truth of whatever it is, no matter what it is, everything, no matter what, the indivisible elemental, fundamental, rock, bottom, bottom, bottom truth of things. And I am not prone

to talking myself into something or believing in something because, probably partly because of how I was raised, you know, as my parents were, I mean, my mother was mentally ill later. My father was drunk and it couldn't raise me. And so I didn't have any adults in my life that were, I couldn't go and ask for help or assistance. I was on my own, you know. And when you are on your own from really early age,

and I was also molested as a kid. Yeah, we're going to go all those places. Well, we are. No, but the reason I mentioned that is because all the adults were useless to me. So I come from a perspective where you're all fucking useless. So I have to figure it out myself and it's inefficient to lie to yourself. Sure. It's not practical because you're going to bump up against your own wall.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, of course. So no matter how hideous something is. That's why you are so frustrating to me because you have the soul of a scientist in that sense. Right. But at the same time as and I keep, a line from Richard Feynman kept coming up to me when I read this. I have to admit.

Yeah. Which is that the easiest person to fool is yourself. Yeah. I believe that. I totally believe that. I believe that. So, and that's why beliefs are dangerous things. to have?

Sure. You know, and if you do have them, it's okay to have them, how can I say this? A belief is like an old house. You're the caretaker of it. You can have it, you know, until the next person comes. Or until it's no longer valid, then you've got to get rid of it. Well, most people, that would be nice if most people did. I think the problem is really hard to discover for people to discard beliefs.

But I find it exciting to discard beliefs. Oh, you see, that's why you should do this. That's what you're going to have to do. That's right. Yeah. Okay, good. Because I'm going to try and I'm going to try and help with that. But also other things, because that is exactly what being a scientist is learning how to be wrong.

Right. And enjoy it. Right. See, I actually like to be wrong. Well, me too. Because it's baggage that you now have shed and you're closer. Even if you're adrift, once you know you're wrong and have deep, and you've, and you've, left a belief behind, you may be in limbo, but you are now closer to the truth.

Absolutely, because it means something new to learn. It means because, you know, if you actually knew everything, well, it wouldn't be worthwhile, you know, you wake up and what the hell would you do every day? And, in fact, I often think when it comes to really advanced civilizations, when people talk about why we haven't been communicated with, I think at some point, if there was a sufficiently advanced civilization, they wouldn't bother communicating with anyone. Yeah. They probably especially pity us.

Yeah, well, they would. I don't think they'd even care. No. Yeah. But, okay. You said in one book, this surprised me, and this was one of the few things I didn't trust, said you started reading at 24. And I know, look, but you started writing it.

I understand that I could read. Yeah, of course you could read. I could read. But, and I read as a child, I think I read, you know, I read a house with a clock in its walls. And I read, what's that thing with the pig? Oh, oh, a Charlotte's Web? Right. But

So my mother gave me away to her psychiatrist To me as a house filled with chaos And I mean now, you know, eccentricity in quotes But it was, you know, a lunatic asylum It was definitely And there was no privacy So when you think about it In order to read, you've got to have

Space, time, peace, quiet And I didn't have that So reading was like a luxury that I couldn't have And didn't have So I wrote instead Yeah, well, that's what amazes me because that's what I find fascinating. You wrote all of you, you've written

all of your life. Oh, yeah. I mean, from a time you're... And writing without reading is a very surprising thing, because I think most writers would say they became writers because they really like to read. And you love to write. Now, I

surmise, as your psychiatrist, that you had this to most of and unpredictable life. And writing gave you some much-needed order and focus that you could turn inward on. That's correct. Yeah.

And in fact, actually, one of the questions I was jumping way all over the place, I was going to ask you if you think writing saved your life. Because later on, there's this wonderful description in one of your books, which is called, I've got to remember the name. Whatever. Yeah, well, no, no, because I want to remember. I think I'm going to refer to it again in a bit, so I want to get to it. But about the time when you were an alcoholic and you read this thing by Eisenhower,

and you started to write. Right. And it's, you stopped drinking. And it looked to me like that it saved your life. Possible side effects. I think that's the book that. And there's a, you know, I was going to read a few paragraphs from it because what it clearly did is it sort of focused you. and then every day you seem to drink less and less,

and you wrote more and more, and you ended up writing your first novel as a result. Right. So I had always written in some sort of form, you know. And then when I was living with the psychiatrist, it became a constant thing because I was writing in a journal, so it was a physical book by hand,

and that created a wall, this, you know, little 45-degree opaque, wall behind which I could hide. And writing is... I was never writing with a capital of W to be a writer. My mother was a writer. She was a poet and she had not been published. And to me, I associated writing as a career with complete failure at misery and mental illness. So I was never... I was not going to write.

I was writing to understand, you know, what I felt and what to do about it and, you know, And also just writing, too, what was going on. To try and understand what was going on, to try and internalize to be able to have that going. Yeah, yeah. So it's always been the most, it's a natural thing. Now, I think that both parents spoke in grammatically complete sentences. And that is helpful. You know, I was always corrected.

Yes, yeah. To whom. Yes, there's a few places. Into which my mother or your aunt. Always being corrected. So, yeah, I mean, I guess that was. you know, early on. That was just something that was ingrained. Well, but you, I mean,

you know, alluded to it and it's possible to not know anything about you, not know you had the most dysfunctional childhood imaginable. Kind of. Mother who was ultimately indeed mentally ill, who then eventually caused you not only to spend much time with her psychiatrist, who was also crazy, but eventually gave you up to him

as a legal guardian, lived in this crazy house full of real kids and adopted kids, mostly adopted kids were also his former patients. Current psychiatric patients, yeah. So you were living in a house full of psychiatric patients who were basically given more or less free reign without any supervision. That's right.

And he had toilet bowl rings where he would scoop his turds out of the toilet. Yeah, there's that great thing where he was looking at God. And we'll talk about turds and God. Right. Because I tend to associate those things a lot anyway. He did Bible dips where he would open them. Everyone did Bible dips. Yeah, the Bible dips.

Well, you see, I was going to talk. Yeah, I want to read. Now, the Bible dip thing is interesting because what they would do is say, basically it's magic eight ball. Yeah. So should I go to the mall today and open the Bible, put your finger down, and God would, what you landed on, that word was your answer from God. And that really is the magic ape ball. Except the eight ball says things like yes or no. And this says a random word.

And then you'd need either one of your sisters, quote unquote, or the doctor. So whatever it was, it looked, of course, it would be interpreted in terms of how they wanted to interpret whatever they wanted to do, which is great. I mean, if you're going to use it as a guide, you might as well have a reason to do exactly what you're going to do anyway. Right. And I think there's, you know, I read something in the new book and it hit me and I'll read it. It says, it takes extreme horror for me to feel better about my own life, which now that I think about it is what people are always telling me I do for them. Right. So screw it.

And then I thought, shit, that is the reason I'm drawn to you. And I'm wondering if it's a reason we're so damn popular because we all have to. dysfunctional childhood. Not at your scale. And it's so refreshing. It's so refreshing when you feel sorry for yourself and your dysfunctional childhood to see someone whose childhood just blows yours away in dysfunctionality. I know.

And I thought I'm just one of those, I'm just one of those Oxen Burroughs groupies who just enjoys learning about how miserable. You like me and I like elevators that swallow people whole when they reach the top as they toss their babies to the onlookers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, well, okay, that must, it makes us all feel better to find out how miserable other people are, I guess, at some point.

Now, let's just go into your mother for a little bit because she wasn't just mentally ill. She was fascinating as well as to me. She was fascinating and she was brilliant. But there was a clear, there was Mother 1.0 and Mother 2.0. So Mother 1.0, you know, was a sadness about her. She was unhappy. She was not happy with my father. My father proposed to her by threatening suicide.

so already things are, you know, not good. It's not a good way to begin. Not happy. But she was brilliant. Yeah. And she was creative, but she was also scientifically minded. Then she became mentally ill, and it was sort of a seasonal in the fall. Yeah.

I have a psychotic episode. Sorry, as I pulled the microphone cord around. But in, in, little time it was it just completely it was no longer seasonal it just took over

her mind was basically shattered you know and she had a stroke and after she had a stroke she never had any more psychotic episodes which is kind of interesting interesting right from a

yeah but she you know she was awful in other ways you know she I mean she was awful but you know it's clear that there's this amazing admiration and love at some level.

Early young. Young. And then you're quite open about later on. I want to read it. It shocked me. Basically, I have no regrets about letting her go

in the last years of my life. Yeah, I know. I had no contact with her for the last, whatever it was. Did she, I was trying to remember what age she just gave you to the legal guardianship of this great, of the Dr. Finch

who we now know with someone out of that. I wrote down 12. That's good. I was good at that. Okay. Must be the cosmic thing. Right. But actually, there was something,

you know, me, I have to ask you. So it was a crazy house, this doctor later on in your books, you talk about how your husband has now went to a, you were in Connecticut, now went to a doctor's at Yale and Yale medicine meant a lot. And it hit me. Wasn't Dr. Fitch, Mel? And I thought, it's amazing this. Because you said, because you would think that Dr. Finch as a Yale Medicaid, Yale educated doctor would not give you the same admiration for Yale medicine that you seem to have now. I was kind of surprised by that. You know, I think that in the beginning, and I don't know, this because I didn't know him.

But I had, I've spoken to people who did know him in the very beginning. And in the very beginning, I think, when he was a young doctor, allegedly he showed promise. And he was, he was intelligent. Oh, yeah, some of the things you said when at least he was, you know what he was? He was like a, he was a cult leader. Yeah. Really. He really, really wanted to be, he really wanted a religion.

He surrounded himself by low self-esteem women that, um, were deeply devoted and he had numerous wives. Yeah. Did he have, did he, it's not explicit. It looked to me like he might have affairs with many of his patients. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

And people tithed to him, which I didn't put in the book because I just forgot, I forgot about it, but everyone tived. Yeah, everyone tithed him. That's what, that's what he made. Okay. And that was the house you're put in, as I say, and it's utterly crazy a man. And the, and not only was your mother, you know, write poetry,

sort of abandoned you at some level and full of psychotic episodes. But she also, and this we don't learn until memoir number nine, she also told you at a young age that she was a witch and you're a witch. Right. And I, you know, I want to get there because I think that I've said that... It's disturbing, I know. Well, no, I've said that religion is child abuse. because you talk to kids about things before they are able to treat.

These are deep concepts. I agree with you. And so I can't help to think that your willingness to abandon or to abandon disbelief regarding witchiness is somewhat related to the fact that you were told very young that this is what you are. And we'll get to. And, you know, I hate to jump to conclusions, but that's what I'm about to do. Right. Now, I'm with you. Okay.

Now here's, let me just read you two things about two quotes about your mother. because one of them, I think, is very important. Anyway, she said, I'm not tortured or torn apart by leaving my mother. I don't feel guilty for giving her none of me, and I don't wish I could change anything that happened. I believe the only difference between my mother and mothers who kill their own kids is one really extra shitty day. She didn't drive into a lake with me strapped to the back seat,

but probably because she couldn't find her car keys. That's right. Okay. Okay, so I thought that was a beautiful way of sort of reflecting your view of your mother I mean, in there are three books you can read it about that. But then I thought there's another aspect to her that I think, I think must be very important when I read it anyway, and I could be wrong. But you'd say, my mother has been a perpetual victim.

Everything was always somebody else's fault. That's right. This sickened me, and I resolved to never play that role. Right. And I think that's so important. Yeah. This notion of victimhood because you could. Even if you've been victimized.

No, that's the point. Because your life, your early life is a history of victimhood. And the canonical thing you would read today, we live in a culture of victimhood. Unfortunately. That's what people gets them through the day. And if anyone could say they were a victim, you could. And it seemed to be she saved you in some sense by providing herself as a foil. She kind of did.

She threw herself into the teeming water filled with sharks in a way. Yeah, yeah. By being a victim so that I could see the gore that resulted. Because, I mean, you were basically raped as a 13-year-old, I mean, more or less. Yeah, totally. And had a relationship with this 33-old man who was one of the... who was insane. Horrible.

And people nowadays would basically say they're scarred, traumatized for life, they can't work, they can't do this. And I, in no sense, at least do I get the sense when you're writing that you're trying to say, I feel sorry for yourself. It's more like, well, here's a really fucking crazy life. My feeling is that the things that happen to us, the horrible things that happen, they they are a they

they are once a horrible thing has happened it is it is unalterable it is an unalterable fact it is an unalterable fact it is it now part of you if you were a ballet dancer and you ran the Boston

marathon on the day that the Boston Marathon was attacked and your legs were blown off and you were a dancer there is no sense in in seeking understanding or seeking an apology.

Yeah. Even though even though no one in the world would begrudge you the search for understanding or an apology,

no humane person would ever say, you who lost your legs in the Boston Marathon, you know, how dare you, how dare you want an apology? You know,

but the reality is that if you were a dancer and you lost your legs in Boston Marathon, on, you have to accept now that you don't have legs. So what does that mean? What you have to do is take a fresh inventory of yourself because now you are new. You are new now.

On the surface, it may seem that you'll never dance again. But you don't know that. Because Boston's pretty close to Cambridge and Cambridge is MIT. and there might be some 24-year-old there who's invented a really cool new polymer that and maybe there's a way that you can dance and you know maybe it's not going to be the way you envisioned dancing but perhaps you can dance but you're never going to get to that you're never going to get you're never going to have that meeting at MIT if you are fixated and stuck on the moment the bomb blew up and the moment you're legs exploded. Yes, it's horrible. And whatever it is that's happened, yes, it's awful, but there's nothing that can alter it. So, and not only is there nothing that can alter it, whatever has happened to you has changed you. And it's been my experience that inside of every horrible thing is a good thing.

is a good thing that you have to find. Really, you kind of have to make out of the horrible thing. It can lead you. If you can no longer dance, perhaps you end up teaching. And in the process of teaching, perhaps you save somebody's life or something. You know what I'm saying. So being a victim, even though you've been victimized, has always replaced. repelled me because it's inefficient.

It's just like people who say they are haunted by the past. Well, yeah. A lot of people can't get over the past. They say, you know, they can't get over the bad childhood they had, you know, the past. And if you really think about it, the past doesn't haunt us. Past is no longer here. There is no such thing. Once the thing has happened, my zipper just hit the desk.

But that's gone from the world. now. That moment where my zipper hit the desk no longer is part of the world. In fact, there's no evidence of it. Well, except there on the camera, there's a picture of it and there's a sound, but it's no longer a real thing. So it doesn't haunt us. What happens is maybe it's the smell of a new shampoo we bought that, you know, reaches our limbic system and triggers a memory from high school that's traumatic and we go back and we think about it and we think about it and we get all those hormones activated and we get trapped. We haunt the past. The past doesn't haunt us. You know, that's why so much therapy is useless and based on bogus science. Much talk therapy is useless.

going over and over and over a thing is pointless because understanding is not woven into the weft and weave of the universe it's impossible to understand because it's impossible to know what the other person was thinking in it there's just so many variables and then once you if you did understand it

what good is it to have understanding it doesn't change whatever it is that's happened Well, look, this is, you know, your review on therapy. Did you ever go into, did you ever do therapy? Were you ever forced to do it? Yeah, I mean, I've been in, yeah. And it's not been helpful. Now, you know, the interesting, I've had a long discussion.

One aspect of therapy. Most things you can fix yourself. Now, I want to say, there are some things you can't. Yeah. I mean, like if you've got borderline personality disorder, yeah, you need to be in therapy. There's some things, you know, therapy is very useful for. Yeah. So I don't want to dismiss therapy.

You know, it's some people need it and it's absolutely useful for some people. You've got to realize that it's a product and you've got to go in there with a specific goal in mind. I want to not be this way. So you, therapist, I'm going to give you this money and you are going to motherfucking fix it. And if you can't do it, then you need to, you know, you have to, y'all's how when you go to therapy, you got to understand it's a business and they want to keep you there. Yeah, sure. Repeat business is always good for you. Well, they all.

Yeah, yeah. I mean and yeah so someone remaining sick. So you got to always you know you can't just you can't go into therapy hoping it'll fix you. Do you think by the now it just occurred to me as you're talking but that attitude towards therapy of course when I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier is you were observing a therapist for I mean

doctor quote unquote Finch. Oh yeah. I mean so you were observing it and observing him have patients for an extremely long time and I don't know I mean I can't presume whether whether the goal was to cure them or to keep them tithing. Yeah. Did that impact? Oh, you know, probably.

But I think the thing that had the most impact was really being on my own and realizing that I have to figure, I have to solve my own problems. And when I realized I was going to live in this house, that it was not just for a day or two or a week, but that it was like my new permanent life. Yeah. there was a period where I felt I was going to die. Not that I was going to kill myself, but I felt like little kids need their mothers. So don't you like, isn't, I just, I just kind of assume that I would die.

Like a heart attack or something, you know. And the more I thought about it, you know, I thought about it a lot. And I thought, you know, back when we took a trip to Mexico when I was a kid, I was five, my mother, her best friend, her best friend, her best friend. her best friend's kid who was my age, he got lost on the streets. We eventually found him. But I was thinking, you know, once I was living in his house for good,

I was thinking, if that had been me, and I hadn't been found, and I was five, would I die? Well, my mother, no mother, no father, and I thought, well, you know, probably could find someone down there in Mexico that would, if not love me,

at least put up with me, maybe I'd do work for them and they'd take care of me. But if I didn't find them, I could have crawled around, you know, found food. People were wasteful. I could have found food, you know, in dumpsters and things. And it's hot, so I'm not going to freeze to death. And I realized it would have really sucked, but I wouldn't have died. And that's when I kind of had the epiphany that parents are really ill.

luxury. You don't really need them. I mean, after a certain point, once you can walk and think, you don't need them. It's better if you have them, I think, probably. What depends. I think it depends on the parents.

Yeah. I mean, you know, for the most part, if you've got a good one, if you have one parent who is good and loves you, and that doesn't mean buying you the coolest clothes, it just means that they, that's great. If you've got two, you know, that's parent lotto.

But if you have none, it does not doom you. Yeah, it doesn't doom you. And it's interesting. You know, it's funny because... And it's more upsetting to people who have parents. I resonate because when I think about, when I said, asked you about your mother's foil for victimhood, when I grew up, my mother was a foil for me. I looked at the things she did and said, I don't want to be that way. And she was very useful, not by training me to the way I should be.

By behaving exactly the opposite way of the way I wanted to be. And then similarly, I guess for me, just around the time my parents got divorced and there were huge fights, I suddenly realized, you know, I'm, yeah, they're kind of just adults having troubles, and I happen to live in the same house as them. But that's sort of an accident of circumstances,

but it sort of totally changed my view towards them as parents. Right. And I saw them as just human beings that were incredibly... That's an incredible moment. Yeah. When you see your parents as people. Yeah. Yeah. And my mother won't be listening to this, so I can talk about it.

But one thing did come up with therapy, actually, when you brought it up that came to my mind when I was reading the Toil and Trouble Book, which is about the fact that you're a witch in case I haven't said it. Right. Or that you think you are. Right. Which is more accurate in my opinion. Right. Well, no, but I am. You're going to change your mind.

You're going to change me, sure. It's the word is problematic. The definition of the word is interesting. No, well, we're going to, there's a lot of different definitions of which here that I found fascinating. And, you know, an hour five will get to them. Yeah. But the, so, yeah, so there's that. But now where I was it?

Now my mind has gone about what I was going to hit you with. Oh, yeah, the therapy, the therapy thing. Right. Because one of the people I've talked to is Elizabeth Loftus, who was a very well-known psychologist who played a key role in this, you may remember this era of these recovered memories where, therapists were telling these kids with their parents had did weird sexual things, and their parents were putting in jail, and it was all

being input by therapists. Yeah. I would be immune to that. Would you? Because when I read some of the memories, right, I can't help wonder in terms of, I'll put it in the most blunt terms, in terms of the damaged childhood of being told your witch, I

often wonder whether whether you view the memories in that kaleidoscope and say, okay, I remember it in that context. Sure. But it wasn't as amazing as it really seemed to be after the fact. You know what?

The answer to that is that no, my memories are accurate, but I'm perfectly fine dismissing every example in the book. And we'll say that... I can count a 26th. We'll say that every single thing that I remember in the book will just say for argument's sake is completely incorrect and will only discuss which in the context of things that have happened since I've written in the book, where my memory is not only more accurate and fresher, but they're witnesses.

Okay, good. Okay. And film. Yeah, no, okay. So just so you know, I don't want to dismiss it at all, but I want to reflect on it because the book, look, it's like, to make it clear, it's fascinating. like all your books, it's a fascinating memoir of remarkable experiences. And these experiences remarkable. But you see, here's the thing too that it's,

I wouldn't believe it either. And that's why I didn't write it because Yeah. I mean, I don't want people picturing me in a velvet cloak burning sage. Yeah, sure. And if you don't mind,

in a little bit when we talk about witches, you wrote me a note when you first warned me about the book. Right. Do you mind if I read it? No, go ahead. Okay, we'll get there. But I want to, but I don't want to leave your father untouched.

Okay. Because, you know, this is your kind of therapy session. Right. So we've hidden your mother who was a foil, but also an example. Because she's creative. So she's both. Her good qualities were an example. Her bad qualities help you avoid them.

And I really, you really kind of get the sense of that when you read about it. Your father, however, as far as I can see, was universally negative. He was useless. Yeah. And he, and I love this description. It's in running with scissors. which I read. It says, my father was otherwise occupied in his role of highly functional alcoholic professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts. And he's actually philosophy, but it's in the book.

Oh, legal. Okay. Legal. Okay. So that would be, okay. That's right. I forgot about that. Sorry, but, okay. Anyway, he had psoriasis that covered his entire body and gave him the appearance of a dried mackerel that could stand upright and wear tweed. Right. And he had the loving, affectionate and outgoing personality of petrified wood. I thought that was just a great. And so as far as I could tell, I've never in any of the books seen an example that, I mean, that's, there was never,

he was never anything but that, right? So my father was very, very frustrating to me because as a young child, you know, he was, he was very serious and sort of always grading papers. And I, you know, I remember asking him what philosophy was. And he would never give me a definition.

He would, you know, I was too young to understand. So at some point, I had a lot of questions. And at one point, I asked him about the universe. And we were at the kitchen sink. And he drew a bubble of the universe. And he said, well, no, it's not the galaxy here. It's that there's many other galaxies, you know,

and that they, I suppose now they believe it's expanding. and I said, so, and it was like he drew a bubble like you had a talk bubble. And I pointed to the space above the talk bubble and I said, what's that? And he said, well, that's just, nothing. I just the paper. And I said, no, but I mean, if that's the universe, what's that right there above it? Well, nothing. And I said, but what is nothing?

Well, so nothing is nothing. And I said, but what is nothing? I didn't believe in nothing. It's, you know, so. Nothing's really close to my heart. It was It just It shut the whole conversation down

Instead of trying to get you thinking Instead of trying to get me thinking about what nothing was It was just It was just Don't bother me Yeah The answer and So I was left with questions all my life

And left on my own To try to figure them out Because I think of I live I'm uncomfortable In so many ways I'm uncomfortable physically all the time

But I'm uncomfortable mentally all the time Much more because of and it's been, you know, since childhood, what's, I've always, I loved watches. I loved digital watches, LCD. But I was also pretty alarmed by watches because. We give it the pun. What are the, oh, right.

You see, I see. That's why I was bad at tests. I don't get things like that. Because what are they, what are they keeping track of? Like, what is it? Like, I get that, okay. It's from one o'clock and now it's two o'clock. But that's us naming a thing.

What is the thing? Like, what is it? What is it? Like, where is it? What's manufacturing? So it seems like, and trying to understand what it is and why there's always more of it. And then where, like, it's gone on. Oh, what?

Look, there's another chunk. We get to be here to go. There's another chunk. It's never, it's never. stops coming at us. And it reminds me of being in advertising years ago when I was at the Charleston shoe factory in Boston. And Charleston shoes are made on really, really old machines, custom made for the manufacturing of Charleston shoes. So, the thick latex-like formula is extruded onto a moving conveyor belt on either side of which are dual razor blades that, you know, that, you know,

As the goo passes along the belt, the blades cut away the excess. So the process of creating a Charleston chew leaves residual matter dangling over the sides. You know, and that's like, is that what time is? Is it just because like, if the universe is expanding, is it, that's what we'd, why we get more time? Is it like Charleston shoe residual? I mean, what the fuck is it? We're going to get there. Because, you know, I mean, I hope this solves things for me today.

I really do. We were going to, I want to, after I've, after I've eviscerated, I want to allow you the chance to chat with me because I know you have lots of questions. Because you're fascinated by science and, and as I say you, in many ways, you have a scientific spirit. I wondered when I, so as I look at your parents and so your father is this universal piece of wood who is no use to you. Well, he wasn't very curious, which was really disappointing to me. He was just not a curious man. Which is interesting. You'd think an academic would be curious.

And it was just such a disappointment. Whereas your mother was a curious person. Very. Exactly. And as a role model, and you're a curious person. I'm wondering whether, though, that, because I read that, and I also read about your brother, who's a little older, who was also very sort of down-to-earth mechanical, scientific. And you said my, but you also said in, in, I think, running with scissors. My brother was hopelessly without style or any sense of what was going on in the world culturally.

Ask him who Deborah Winger was and he'd say, is she another one of those freakish finches? But ask him to explain how a particle accelerator worked and he could talk uninterrupted for hours. He could even draw you a diagram with his mechanical pencil. It pained me. And I'm just wondering whether there are all their foils in another way. They represent this sort of straightforward reason, rational, academic view of the world. and they were people that you didn't view as role models. And I'm wondering whether they were foils for you

just as much as your mother was in saying, I want to dispense with the organized, academic, rational, reasoned world. No, I actually loved going to the university. I loved my father's peers. Ah, interesting. His peers were very warm, and I loved then, as I do now,

the environment of a kid. campus. I find it very comforting. My brother, so my brother was, and we don't have a relationship now, he, you know, was... He's seven years older or something like that? Seven years older, autistic. But you say you're on the edge of autism. At least you've written that. I mean, I've been, you know, something. Yeah, yeah, you know, something.

So not we didn't, what I wanted to dispense with was not the logical thinking. It was the lack of camaraderie, the lack of a brother. There was no, there was no like, I have had much more affection for early think pads than I did with my brother ever. I still remember one of my first think pads, and I just love that thing. And, you know, I never had that feeling for him, and I know he never really had it for me. Oh, interesting. So we're similar in that way, I think. And I'm actually similar to my father, just, you know.

Well, it's hard for me to imagine that. Well, he could be logical. But, you know, he was very contained, not curious. But contained. But he was logical, but he was not, but he was contained. Well, okay. Okay, well, it's interesting that I was wrong about that then. But is also interesting, it seemed to me, if I try and relate to the current book,

that your brother was this sort of analytical, at least far as I can tell, analytical, mechanical, scientific. Very mechanical. Mechanical. Mechanical. Soidering. But at the same time, when your mother told you, you were a witch. Right.

It made quite clear early on that your brother wasn't a witch. Right. And I'm trying to ask myself, when your mother told you were a witch and you want to be a witch because your mother, and because there's a lot of neat things about being a witch. Oh, no, I didn't. Well, hold on. There's a lot of neat things about being a witch. It's exciting. You know, you weren't Samantha as you talk about and wiggle your nose.

But there are lots of, but the idea of being able to make things happen, it's got to be very exciting for anyone. And I'm wondering, so whether, whether the fact that you're. when she told your brother isn't a witch, that that was added further alert to the fact that she was and you were, that the creative, artistic side of you was tied in some ways to witchiness. I'm just a question.

No, I think it was because the reason that she called me a witch was because something very specific occurred that had never occurred with her first son. There had never been a witch. an occurrence with him. And until that day, when I was eight, with me either. So she really thought... The occurrence was, by the way,

your grandmother, you saw her forehead on a school bus. You can, you probably tell better than me. Well, I liked the hump seat on the school bus. And I was prone to, and still am, prone to staring at a shape or out of car, just staring. And, at nothing

and I will have not a thought in my head and in fact when I'm backstage often I'll get snapped out of my nothing empty-headedness by someone saying sorry to disturb you you look so deep in thought and I sort of inwardly laugh because it's like

I literally do not have a thought in my head I'm not thinking anything so I was staring out the window and we had two small wooden bridge. I lived on dirt road. Two small wooden bridges that were pretty close to each other. So, you know, and the, and they were small, though. So, but there was a little bump. And I, you know, who doesn't love a bump? Yeah. And on the second bump, at the moment of the second bump, I saw my

grandmother's head in my, in front of me, like an image. As right now, if I say basketball to you, do you suddenly see orange? Some people don't. I see basketball. Okay. Well, some people, aren't really visual so they don't even see basketball. I'm pretty visual, so I do physics. Mostly pictorially. So most people, you know, when you say, if people are visual, if you suggest coffee mug, people will quickly visualize it. So when I say I saw my grandmother's head, it was like that.

And there was a laceration on her forehead. And it was accompanied by the knowledge that something bad, bad, wrong. I mean, kind of like those two were bad, wrong, what? The second bridge was very close to. to the bottom of our driveway where the driver stopped. So I ran up, rang the doorbell. My mother opened the door.

She was on the phone, which was, you know, in the prehistoric days of technology where the phone was attached to the wall with a long cord. And I said, my grandmother's name was Amma. And I was upset. And I said, something happened to Amma, something bad. What happened to Amma? What happened to Amma?

And I was, you know, really upset. And she was startled. She, you know, continued speaking for a little bit and got off the phone pretty quickly. And she said, what did you say? And I said, something bad happened to Amma. What happened to Amma? How did you know this?

I was on the bus and went over a bump. And I saw her. And she said, that was your uncle Mercer on the phone. And he's calling from the hospital. Your grandmother has been in a car accident. and she has a punctured lung and she has a scalp laceration on her forehead

but she's going to be okay and I said okay I felt relief but at the same moment I felt scared and I said

mom how did I know that and she got this look on her face of like I don't know it was sort of I guess

sort of love but surprise and almost mischief. My mother could be funny. My mother could be very funny, but she was not funny, but she bent down, she bent down, and she said, you knew because you are my son, which wasn't really a helpful answer. She said, you know, what a witch looks like.

And I was like, you mean like, on the Wizard of Oz, like the horrible, dumb one and the cool one who could, like, train monkey? I mean, well, which looks like your grandmother and looks like your Aunt Curtis and looks like me and looks like you. And so began.

So began me. My mother telling me that I had come from a long line of witches and what it meant and what it didn't mean. What it didn't mean. So my mother believed not in spells and incantationationation. and herbs.

My mother believed that we and perhaps many people contain what in some people is a dormant sensory apparatus and that

there was nothing supernatural about a witch. That a witch, you know, it was not this. It's not that. It's not that. I remember having a dream as a child that I was floating in a room at a party hovering. Sure.

And trying it. You know, and like being upset. Like, why couldn't I do this? And she said, because people cannot, you can't hover. A witch can't do anything that defies the laws of physics, you know. But she can do many things that people believe defy the laws of physics. So

it was you know, after No, go ahead. Well, I mean, you know, when you say it that way, I mean, if I was a kid and I could learn that I had that opportunity and possibility, I would be enthralled. I would be so excited. I didn't really know what it meant. It explained some things to me about myself that I had experienced as a young kid, but never. never really talked about.

But it was also unreliable. And it was something that I couldn't always control. Excuse me. And the part of it that seemed strongest... So, okay, so one of the things my mother would talk about was creating something. And that's really the part that's... and I hang but I hang on to it because I think it's useful so my mother would talk about want for nothing

yeah we don't we don't want for something but through focus and and and pure pure focus we cause a thing to occur yeah And that resonated with me. After I got over the disappointment that it didn't mean I could make a new bike appear. The idea that with pure focus and concentration, I could accomplish that which I desired to accomplish was useful. Of course. It's useful.

My mother told me, you can do anything you want. But you work at it. You can do anything you want. Now, it's not necessarily true, but it gave me the confidence to do that. Now, that, whether I would have achieved or obtained the things I did beneath the umbrella of being a witch or out from under the umbrella is completely old. Perhaps. Perhaps exactly. You're open to that in the book.

I want to give some quotes where you say, well, this might have happened anyway. All of it. Yeah. All of it. And all of it. And all of it. And my response to because I'm naturally skeptical. Yeah, it might have happened anyway.

Right. And, and, and, and well, I want to. But regardless, focus, though, whatever you call, that's a very good thing. And focused, pure focus is important. It's a wonder. No matter what. And, and so is understanding the thing that, um, that, um, that, that you. you want versus the thing you wish you wanted or want to want.

So all of those things are useful. Oh, sure. And I think that's the point to me, if I'm reading this, is that there are lots of useful things that have allowed you to do things you've done. And there are other things that you interpret in certain ways, which I'm skeptical of. But the end resulted is the same regardless of the way you view it, I guess. And I want, anyway, you were going to say something. I was going to say the part to me that is most interesting and significant is the part where I will take physical action, often illogically.

I will take physical action in circumstances that don't warrant the action only to find out later that I was reacting to something that has now occurred. Yeah, yeah, that you did something and you didn't know reason why you're doing it and you refer to this bunch on the book and afterwards it turned out if you hadn't done that, something disastrous could have happened or at least negative. or something good happened because of this action that appeared to have no relationship to what was going on. And we'll talk about some examples. But what frustrates me, you see what I love about the conversation and what I love about your attitude, but frustrates me at the same time, is that you're not like a gullible.

You're a skeptical person. I want to get to that. In fact, I want to get to that next, except there's two questions I have to ask you about your origins, just because I'm interested. How many dogs have you had? I mean, it seems to me the whole life is like full of dogs. It has been. Not a funny question. Yeah.

I mean, all my life. I count, yeah. So, me, six, I count a six or eight. No more than that. Yeah, yeah, must be. And the point is, they're also all just, most of them are dysfunctional. And so I'm wondering if that's just a, if that's just, you're enjoying their dysfunctionality. It's just like I'm enjoying yours.

Our dogs are never trained. You know, we don't train them. Yeah. They're customized. You know? Yeah. So they're all very, and they've never fight. They get along great.

But they're, you know, they're funny creatures. Well, they're a part of your, part of, key part of your life. And they all seem to be, many of them started as mistakes. And then later on, they're lovely and they're one or they're a central part of your life. But you recognize them as mistakes. I mean, we had, you know, we gave one away recently, which is something we never did. We had one, a Rhodesian Ridgeback that had a, it had an overbite. And it would look at us with such disdain.

And its ridgeback to us became a mullet. And it would look at us. And if it could speak, that ridgeback would have said, I hate you. But when our friend Sherry would come over, it loved her. He loved her. So if I went to cuddle with him on the couch, I would get growled at. Oh, interesting. But so one day, you know, Sherry was going through a rough patch.

and she said, can I take him Gumpther home for the night? And Christopher and I didn't discuss it. And we both said, you know what? Keep him. Take him. Keep him. So he still visits us. He hates visiting us.

He'll put up with it. But. But yeah. I just, I love dogs. But it was amazing to me how many you have. And no matter how many you have, you seem to always have more. Well, there's a, you know, I got to replenish him. Yeah.

If I could have more. Not just replenish him. But, I mean, there's a, you had two. once then you got a third and then you got a fourth. Yeah. And I thought, never had more than four at once. Never had more than four at once.

Well, anyway, it really hit me. So, and, but let's, I, I did that for me because I digressed because I was fascinated. But I want to get back to the fact that you're, from the moment you were young, you had a skeptical nature. And yeah, the greatest example, I love this. It's from side effects is the reaction you had when one of your grandmother's, when you had a loose tooth when you were a kid.

And she told me about the tooth fairy. I got to read this. You say, The tooth fairy is a fairy like Tinkerbell? You know Tinkerbell, don't you? I did know Tinkerbell. The irritating cartoon insect. Yes, I said, I know that thing.

I frowned. Well, the tooth fairy is like Tinkerbell. And whenever you lose a tooth, you place it under your pillow at night before you go to bed. And then the tooth fairy slips into your room and takes your tooth away and leaves some money in its place

right there under your pillow. Real money, sweetheart, that you could spend on whatever you like. Carolyn. And you said, I was horrified. I imagined that creepy bug woman with her devil wand sneaking into my bedroom at night while I was sleeping and taking my teeth and leaving things under the pillow that shouldn't be there.

Cash, which my father said was very limited and something I knew I shouldn't have. And I have to say this one too. Then I climbed to the bed and prayed to Jesus. At this point, I wasn't sure where I stood Jesus-wise. although my parents never attended church or mentioned Jesus, except when they screamed at each other, and then they used his full name, Jesus fucking Christ. They did explain that he was a man who lived in the sky and granted wishes to certain people, people he liked.

So I prayed, dear Jesus, please keep it out of the room. Please, I promise, promise, promise, I'll be honest and very nice to everybody, and I love my mother and father and brother and all my relatives here and all over in Cairo, Georgia, and I love everybody I know, and even people I don't know now, but we'll know someday. and I promise everything, but please keep it out of my room and away from me. Thank you, Jesus fucking Christ. Right. So to me that, I mean, captured both because you're, you know, this thing that you're supposed to love,

you immediately sort of thought of as skeptically, why would I want to have this thing crawl in my room? And of course, there's a religious aspect of Jesus fucking Christ. Clearly, don't take that seriously either. You know, it's funny because there was a period in my life where I wanted to be religious. Yeah. I really, really wanted to be religious. And I also got Santa and Jesus confused. Yes, yes, yes.

I read about that. Yeah, I did. I think I did. I did write that in one of them. Because it's very, you know, when you're a little kid, you can't really tell which one's the one that sends you, you know, gives you presence. Yeah. And which one's the one that's bleeding on it. Well, I think you said you.

I mean, like, but it's funny when you said that, a reason I remember it is because my attitude towards religion, it was very much like my attitude towards Santa Claus. When I was young, of course, wanted to believe. And then you grew out of it. You just simply grow up. of it. Yeah. And it's like, you can't. Yeah. And it's a disappointment. Yeah, it is. But there's no big brother. There's no one going to peek up from the mall in the sky. And in fact, that's what's important. When when you talk about being a witch, you say at the very beginning of the book, here's a partial list of things I don't believe in. Right. God, the devil, heaven,

hell, Bigfoot, ancient aliens, past life, life after death, vampire, zombies, Reiki, homeopathy, Rolfing, reflexology. And so it's clear you're not by nature a sort of person who falls for this thing. And that's why the witch thing makes it even more interesting. Of course, if it fell for it naturally, it would be less interesting. Yeah, no, right. And so I get it.

Yeah, yeah. For me, I find that that exposition particularly frustrating because there's two things that that I think of. One, when you talk about this, is it was from the X-Files, Fox Mulder says, I want, but, well,

it's not, you haven't missed this. Everyone says, I should. Well, the one part you should see is where above his

desk where he says, we, I want to believe. Oh, because that's, we all want to believe. I mean, we're hard-wired

to want to believe, I think, and we want to believe those stories. And I, and I kept in the context of the wishing stories, I think,

I thought of, we want to believe. That was one thing. But the other comes from a scientist. When I, when I read the very, well, you want to say something.

No, honestly, it's not that I want to believe. I want to know. Well, you know, that's what Carl Sagan said, by the way. He said, I don't want to believe, I want to know. Oh, okay. Well, there you go. You see, I told you're a natural scientist. I want to know.

But Richard Feynman. And which, you know, the thing about which, too, is I like the word because it's historical and it's just. But as my husband says, it needs a new word and a PR agent, you know, because he's Swiss. He is like, when I told him aspirin came from. trees willow but he's like uh no it comes from a drugstore yeah i mean he had never experienced coincidence uh-huh until he met me interesting well you know but you but it shouldn't need a better you were an advertising executive you should be able to do the job right but maybe that's what this is to try and to try and give witchiness a different a new to give it a new yeah a new a new a new a new

twist well yeah or try to understand like what one aspect of it yeah what one aspect and and there's so many aspects and I want to try and get to them and then to the science, I hope. The, the, but when we talk about that particular initial experience that you had of, of, with your grandmother, it resonated with me or hit me and my skeptical side immediately. Right. For a variety reasons, but also, but specifically, because of an example of the Richard Feynman, who is a physicist I have always greatly admired, used. Feynman used to go up to people and say you won't believe what happened in me.

You won't believe what happened to me. People say what? He said, absolutely nothing. And because he said, you know, you can dream and you can have so many things and they're nonsense and their nonsense and nonsense and you dream one night that your friend is going to break their arm or be in a car accident. And you find the next day that they broke their leg and they, you know, they fell off a horse. And it has significance. The law of really large numbers. Well, we want everything that happens to us to be significant.

Yeah, I know that. And I know. And we're wired to below. You talk, in fact, with great authority, you read the paper. Yeah, by bad condition I know well about law of large numbers and coincidences. But we make those things if we have something that works. It's not just the coincidence happened. That's not what I'm getting at.

That happens. It's that when they resonate, we remember them. When they don't resonate, we don't remember them. So if you would have had that experience and you went and said, what's wrong with Anna? And your mom said, oh, she's fine. I'm just talking around the phone right now. I wouldn't have read about it in the book. Right.

And so the thing, my natural suspicious part is, do you pick and choose the things that work and remember them and not remember the things that don't? What do you think about that? Yeah. I think that I totally understand that question. But I have a high level of self-awareness and of skepticism with respect to everything. Everything, it seems to me, except... So... Well, even this. You were skeptical about a lot of them.

I will give you an example. Okay. And And this is a good example This is a good example So neither of these are in the book Okay I don't know no no one of them is

One of them is One of them is And it was when One day So we lived in Battery Park City Which is you know Very tip of Manhattan Yeah

My husband worked uptown In his apartment So he would leave in the morning For work Now there have been periods of my life where I am I don't I'm not paying any attention to media at all. I'm in a blackout mode. Oh, yes.

Okay. So you know what I'm talking about here and this. And so it was one of those periods where I just had Turner Classic movies on, you know, didn't leave the house. My little, my phone, what do you call it, the Fitbit thing app on my phone, had 50 steps, you know, from taking the dog out to the front. But I, on this particular morning. just freaked out. I just was like, oh my God. We live on like on an island.

Like on an island, if something happens, we're going to be trapped. I need a Zodiac boat. Like, I just freaked out. So I went to the bank and I got cash. And I went into Soho and I bought, I needed like a cross-shoulder bag

that was discreet where I could put, you know, I have a lot of jewelry. I need to be able to stash it away in there with cash. Went to the Army Navy store. got a Navy seal knife and a tactical flashlight, went home, realized, packed it up to see if it all fit, it did, then realized I should probably have a suitcase and keep it packed. So I packed a suitcase.

And then went on Amazon looking for Zodiac boats and then ways to pump up a Zodiac boat if there's no power, like a foot thing. And, you know, didn't get the job done. Christopher came home and was like, oh, good, you're packed. And I was like, oh, you bet I'm packed. I'm ready now. Bring it on.

But he was looking at me like, Okay, let's go. And I was like, go where? And it was this weird, sort of awkward like, you have your, you're packed. I mean, get up, let's go. And I was like, go where? And he said, have you, have you not seen the new, do you, have you seen anything today? Have you heard anybody talking?

Have you? And I was like, no. And he said, okay, so there's a storm coming called Sandy. And there's a mandatory evacuation of Battery Park City. We have to go uptown. And I was like, oh, okay. So I told you to forget everything in the book. Yeah.

Let's say that I heard someone discussing Sandy in the steel. One thing I noticed living in a high-rise, when I put my head in the pillow, I could hear, I could hear distant. Other people. Well, little, I couldn't hear anything enough to make it out words, or at least not on a conscious level. Yeah, I'm not a conscious level. But let's say that that's what happened. Yeah, my thought was sometime in the day when you walk the dog away. Exactly.

You don't hear people coming up the stairs or something. And that I wasn't aware of it. Let's say that subconsciously I overheard someone say it, right? Let's say that happened. So here's something that happened since the book. A couple things. Okay. So this was, I don't know, shortly after the book had been sent off to the publisher.

So my office, we live in, like I mentioned, an old, you know, 200-year-old house. It's got an attic. Yeah. Really cool attic. Everyone kind of wants that you see in movies no one ever has, right? I have my office. Floor under that bedroom. And there's a back old stairway.

So I go down that back old stairway in the morning and go through the dining room, which is a brief room, into the kitchen for coffee, which I then take up the back stairs into my office. So this was just an ordinary day. Nothing unusual about it. And as I approached the edge of the dining room table, blocking my vision suddenly was a diagonal black line. And like I described seeing my grandmother's face. with the knowledge that I may have trouble getting to my office,

something blocking the office, something. So I turned around and I went upstairs. And for the second time in my life, I packed. jewelry and everything of value into the black suitcase that I had actually packed clothes in before, but that's irrelevant. And I took it downstairs and I put it under the dining room table. So this is the second time only that I have ever packed a suitcase for no reason. I've never packed a suitcase for the sake of packing a suitcase.

Unless I have severe brain damage and have in fact repeatedly packed suitcases. But let's assume that's not the case. The psychiatrist that I saw once said that people like me that he sees with this, wherever he called it, sensory. process, which is, you know, one of those things that they, when they have the collection of symptoms that I have, tend to have memories that extend deep, deep, deep into childhood. We don't lose, adapt the memories, you know, that most people get rid of anyway. So, so for the second time I packed this suitcase, and I went and I went to a living room

with my coffee and I went lengthwise on the couch. So my back was against the arm of the couch, stretched out laptop. And not long, not long, you know, later. And I really don't remember how long it was, but, you know, a couple hours. I heard what just this, just, it was a loud enough sound that I jumped off the couch. It just was like the roof falling. I jumped off the couch. And as I did, glitter just.

the floor was just sparkling. I turned around in a fucking tree branch had punched not just the window, but the frame. The old houses are plaster. You know, they're tough. Yeah. I mean, you know, old chestnut is like steel.

Sure. But there's a big branch and it punched into the room. So I went outside. And I was like, oh. Why? Why today? But the problem is that the tree branch here is not, it's not, obviously not big enough. So I go around the house and I see that it had split in half. Because there's another half of it on the patio, but it doesn't appear to have done any damage over there.

Patio is, what do you call it? That stone, some whatever. Yeah. Old rock. Sheet rock, no. So I go upstairs to the attic. And I'm pleased to discover that, in fact, there is no vertical line. There is no branch through the attic.

Okay. And as a matter of fact, there is no hole in the attic. That's a relief. Yeah. However, everything that was on that side of the room, including a chair, is now on that side of the room. Which means that... If I had not taken irrational action, the result would have been thousands of dollars in damaged jewelry because the jewelry would have shot across. Would have shot and bounced across a wall and that would have damaged stones.

So a lot of these items were on as a shelf. It's over the window, which is sort of, you know, and this is the apex of the roof, I would say the shelf is about whatever. that is three feet from the apex of the roof. So it's a high shelf, you know, and that's where the trinkets are. Everything over there, opposite side of the room. And so here's another thing that's occurred. So when reading the book, you know, you know that we had a tornado. We had storm. Yeah, you had a lot of problems with your trees. That damaged, we had some damage to the fence. So the house, you know, had a fence that's been there since the 90s, a wooden cedar fence. we repaired it.

And just recently, you know, had it finished and fixed. So now that I own a online jewelry store, I have a workshop in the basement because sometimes things need to be polished. For example, jade beads. So, you know, it requires, you know, I've been doing it for years. It requires, you know, diamond paste and a certain level of, you know, of skill, but it's not something that requires thought. But it requires very

specific eye and hand stuff. So often I just daydream, you know, or space out. Sure, why not? Right? And this was right before tour. And I, a truck

has knocked the fence out as I'm arriving home from somewhere. I see this tractor trailer pulling away. I'm shouting at him and he drives off. Fucking fence just had fixed is down. So I'm on the witness stand. And lawyer is saying, but Mr. Burroughs, I have to ask you, is it not possible

that there were in fact two trucks traveling in tandem on this day? And that my client was in the second truck. inspecting the damage, unfortunately inflicted by the first truck. Would you not acknowledge that that is a possibility? And I, in my daydream, replied, well,

I don't believe it's possible for me to give you a 100% accurate answer because I'm not a mathematician, or a statistician. So I will have to give you a human non-professional answer. And what I can tell you is that, A,

I work from home, and B, I don't ever like to leave home, which is to say, I never go to movies. I don't go shopping. We don't have things to shop at. so I go to the grocery store. So I am home more often than the average person.

And I'm always aware of traffic patterns because it's so close. So in the years, the four years that we've occupied the house, I've observed that between one and on a heavy day three box trucks will travel down this road, which is a narrow road. And probably twice a month a tractor trailer will turn off the main road and attempt to go down this narrow road and reverse. I've never seen a pair of box trucks or any trucks other than maybe pickup trucks, cars. Never seen a pair of trucks traveling on this road. Now, on the road next to it, yes. In fact, there was a period where there were regular convoys of trucks

as they were assembling the power station down the road. but on this road I've never observed a pair of trucks so a pair of trucks appearing on the very same day that our fence which has been standing

since 1997 is taken out seems to me to be so improbable as to be beyond the realm so for all intents and purposes is no. It's not actually a possibility. And I had this whole, and I was getting like all, you know, angry about like, and then I snapped out of it and, you know, went upstairs and out to the grocery store for dinner and came home. And there's a fucking trailer truck parked in front of our goddamn house and there are two cars. And I say, Christopher, stop the fucking car. That truck has taken out the fence, but it hadn't. You could see. but you could only see

the fence curves and I said no no he's taken out the fence quick stop I got out walked over motherfucker had taken out the fucking fence and so I started yelling hey get out of the

drove off you know all the cops cops came over making dinner later and so we sit down we eat in the living room like college students washing

you know whatever and then I remembered oh I forgot to tell you so when I was downstairs I was working on that necklace I just had this like fantasy thing so I actually saw it occur

what three and a half hours before it did and he said or I said what do you mean or his meaning was or I caused it And I was like, no, I didn't cause it.

I didn't cause it. But I definitely saw it. So that, those are two examples that have occurred since the book, you know. But my, and I understand your point about all the coincidences that do not bear fruit. Not being mentioned. or remembered or noticed because we all have crazy dreams or thoughts or daydings.

But I don't believe we are all as focused on the significance or as aware of coincidences from such an early age as I am. Yeah. So. But do you think that? Even one that was not beneficial or did not bear fruit. I'm skeptical that I would overlook it. Okay. Because I, my question, yeah. Because I would love to find out that it's in fact completely meaningless.

Now, here's the other thing. I'm a catastrophist, so I'm always expecting the worst possible thing to happen. And then, you know, when something... When it does happen, right? So how do you know? and an interesting thing is that the times that I take action of some sort even if I don't know why I'm taking the action those seem to be the times where it's a good thing I took the action

so what could be a possible now with my grandmother for the sake of argument for the sake of argument let's say, let's pretend that my memory is in fact accurate. That in fact, if we had a recording of that day, we would see a small child, an eight-year-old on a bus reacting and upset and, you know, let's just for the sake of argument and say that. How is it possible that I, would be aware of my grandmother's accident.

And to me, it doesn't seem remotely peculiar. Because imagine our earliest days as humans. When mom's in the cave with the little cubs. You know, or the house or the little hut, right? Maybe she's got a new one in the oven, so she's kind of not too steady on. her feet and the mate is out over in the valley there

gathering up berries and small animals and squirrels on sticks to bring home for a feast but mom mom sees this very curious cat

large not terribly friendly friendly looking cat circling you know back and forth mom needs a way to text the husband, the mate, and say, you got to get your ass home.

Shit's going down. And it would benefit our species if we had a way to do that. Yeah, sure, it would. Wouldn't it? Yeah, but just because it would benefit doesn't mean this. But, you know, some moms get eaten. But, but, okay. But let's look at it this way.

So the sounds that my dog can hear. Yeah. Right? So your dog can hear things you can't. Look, I know where you get. Okay. Because, of course, I mean, the book, your discussions are eminently scientific. I don't have time, unfortunately, to read the wonderful definitions of witchcraft, which are not, you know, levitating and doing all that.

It's just, it's a kind of sensory, sensing a world that's underneath the world of our, of our, of our, of our senses. There's more to the world than we see. And, of course, that's what the science I do is all about. Well, I'm not doing justice. No, but if we had another hour, I would read all of your descriptions, which are very, in fact, the ones your mother gave you are particularly scientific sounding. There's energy, there's signals and things like that.

But the point is that that, but you also said when it talks about how it would benefit us, and somewhere I was very heartened when you said, you know, the earth isn't flat whether you like it or not. Right. not. And just because you want something to be that way in the world, that doesn't mean it is. Right. And it would be great if we had that characteristic, but doesn't

mean it is. And I guess, so I'm going to throw out, I'm going to jump ahead and throw out to you some of the reasons I'm scientifically skeptical of having this capability to do things that would just sense the structures that are going on in the world beyond

our ability normally to do it. And that some people might be able to be particularly sensitive. Now, I do think, by the way, jumping ahead a little bit, that people, some people are particularly sensitive to cues. And I suspect in spite of... Human cues. Human cues and cues of the

people around them, yeah. And in spite of the statements you make about being awkward, artistic, I suspect, you're probably much more sensitive to the cues of the people around you than you imagine. And you strike... Oh, no, I think I'm very... I know that I'm very sensitive to views. And I think that sensitivity, you know,

can often... You can be sensitive things. You didn't even know you were sensitive to, but part of the problem of this knowing what's happening in a distance, one of the many reasons that a scientist would be skeptical. Okay, yeah. Is that there are, first of all, there are two properties of signaling. Okay, good. One is that the ability to see it goes down with distance, usually distance squared.

Okay? So one of the real problems with people having remote sensing or telepathy or knowing what's going on on the other side of the world is that even if such a sensitivity, existed, any physical mechanism, any physical mechanism to translate a signal from one into the other would decrease in its efficiency with distance. It would increase in its power with the square of distance, it turns out, because it would spread over time. And so one of the real problems that many of us have with the kind of... Well, that's not a good argument because you wouldn't know the threshold for that distance. No, but you just... You don't know how strong a signal

would be for the nerve neurons to be able to pick it up. Yeah. And, and but, okay, but in general, One would find to be much less efficient to know what's happening. Well, less efficient. I may not know what she was wearing at the time of the accident. But now we go. But now let's talk about threshold. Okay. So the amazing thing is that we are, of course, limited in our sensory abilities.

But we as scientists have produced devices that are amazingly sensitive. Yes. And for example, take the Erocebo radio telescope. I use this example. So if there were a light bulb on top. Pluto, we'd be able to, and someone turned it on, we'd be able to detect it. And so we can sense things at a level of a sense of a that is unbelievably small that are happening at the other end of the universe.

And it is highly implausible. I'll put it that way, because in science, things are either not too false, or either probable or not probable. it's highly, highly, highly improbable that if there was something that was so produced a signal that was detectable by this, by your brain or your body in some way, that it would evade the ability of any of our amazing devices that can sense things at not thousands, not millions, not billions, not even trillions, but but many trillions of times less sensitivity than we have. And we also know that if there was some mechanism, that you have to have a mechanism in physics. So if there's something, and your mother talks in terms of signals and energy, we can measure energies. And we can measure these things at levels that are so much smaller than the levels that would cause the cells in your brain to have a chemical reaction and produce a thought. that if there were such things that did that,

it's highly amazing to someone like me that we wouldn't have other ways of detecting it. It's just so so remarkable that you'd be able to do that. But don't a lot of things, isn't measurement something inherently difficult in your field? Yeah, and while you talk about quantum mechanics in the book in an interesting way,

and you say, well, if we measure something, we change it. And it's a wonderful, in fact, the end of the book, It's a wonderful paragraph about basically just that, that somehow, you know, there are mysteries. Let me read it because I loved it. And something, and let's see, it's just before the owls. It's, I inherited from her something people say cannot be real. Something that defies logic and science. It is something that cannot be measured in a laboratory.

yet in science the closer one examines something the more impossible it becomes to measure it that and then you say we in the last we live in a physical world where the mere active observation alone is enough to alter that which is observed to change it from one form to another what is that if not magic is it so hard to believe what a witch can do right and and i and i and so i i i love the intent of that yes the problem is it's not true right in the sense that quantum mechanics when you measure things you can change them. But the closer you look at something, it depends. The better you can measure it. There are variables you can't measure as well. If I try and measure the position of an object with more and more accuracy, I'll be able to do that. I won't be able to know its momentum.

I won't be able to know where it's going. So measurement is an issue. But we can measure with unbelievable precision that I can measure. I was just talking yesterday to a group of a black holes. I can measure the light from a black hole, 55 million light years away. Are we certain that distance is what we think it is? Are you certain that distance is what you think it is? I'm trying not to be certain of anything.

Do you think that our machines, and it's like internal logic, that do we know that distance is a thing? Well, we only know. Really? We can only, hold on. And it makes sense with our measurements, which we create and interpret. Yeah. You can say that everything is subjective, except.

And it is, to some extent, distance is relative, as Einstein showed, but the problem is that we, what we do is we test that idea. We don't assume it's true. So we find many independent ways of doing things to see if they gave the same answer. So we don't trust that one distance measure in the universe is right. We make a big point of saying, let's try and find something that's totally independent that, in fact, could falsify the first observation. And that's, by the way, something else I want to talk to you about in terms of the science

of what you're talking about, which is falsifiability, which is a key part of science. Tell me what that is. Well, it means, can I, well, let me, let me ask, let me put it in this question, let me, let me illustrate it to you

by asking you this question. What could I say to convince you that you're wrong? You could explain to me with the recent examples, for example, why I,

packed a suitcase of valuables on a day that the valuables turned out to be in danger. Why did I do that? Okay. Now, as I like to say to religious people, lack of understanding is not evidence for God. It's evidence of lack of understanding. Okay, that's fine. So I'm willing to say, I don't understand that. But then I can ask myself, well, what might, what possible, what might, what might have?

because again, I think it's significant that I haven't done it. Oh, sure. But what do you think might be a good... I can give you lots of arguments I wasn't there and I may not have a good explanation. One is that it's not the first time a tree has hit your house. It seems to happen a lot at your house. You have big trees surrounding your house a lot if I read the book. That's one supposition I might have.

But before, instead of giving you... Let me read you... Because the question you're asking, when we first wrote about doing this, and I said, great, you're writing a new book, I can't wait. I know. And you said, and then he wrote me, I thought, oh, no. And he wrote me and said, it's about being a witch for a long line of them, which is something I would not believe in. I don't believe in homeopathy or God or ghost, but I know witchcraft. I know witchcraft is real.

It suffers from a name issue, needs a new PR agent. I believe the thing called witchcraft and the various ways in which it's manifested in my life have a neurological basis that is not known. Right. And you read the book, you will either think I'm lying about everything, or it'll be forced to admit that at least some of it, some, if not all people, some clusters of neurons are able to receive information that would seem impossible to receive given our current map of the brain. I was surprised I wrote the book, frankly, because it's something I've never told anyone. I totally get how delusional it may appear, but I offer startling examples. It's why I've studied physics my whole life. I'm very suspicious of physical distance. Everything we observe, we do so with limited equipment. I agree with you 100%.

But then I said, oh, I'm a little skeptical. And you responded, I would be totally skeptical too. I would love to have an explanation that doesn't require so many question marks. Right. Now, so let me, when I thought of that, once again, I'm going to give you an example from Feynman. Okay. It has to do with UFOs. I've talked to a lot of people who told me amazing experiences with UFOs.

There was a time when I used to debate UFO people. I don't do it anymore. But there was a time when I used to. And they tell me about their experiences. I saw this and how can you explain that? And the answer is I can. People who have seen them or been some, not necessarily the ones who've been abducted, okay, but the ones who've seen them, seen amazing things in great detail.

Okay. How can you explain what I saw hovering among my yard that 25, that silver object that hovered and then went down and a bright light came and it zoomed off and came back and then sort of neurological? And I couldn't move at the same time. You know what? Transmitter? No.

Screw up. Well, yeah. I can try and come up with a lot of explanations. But what Feynman pointed out, at least I think I learned it from Feynman, is I may not have any explanation. But I will ask the question, what is more plausible? Right. Given what I know about the universe, is it more plausible that those were aliens? Like Matthew McConaughey and Jody Foster.

Yeah, yeah. And the point is ultimately I'll say, given the laws of physics to understand him, almost any other explanation as ridiculous as it sounds is actually more plausible than the one that appears to be the obvious one. And so when I, as a scientist, when I, when I think of the, of the, of many of the, of the, of the things you talk about, which are startling and amazing, I ask myself, well, like, it's weird. I can't explain that.

But I, I don't necessarily try. I have to ask, if I accept it to be true. then what other implications does it have for what I know about the universe? And when it defies everything I know about the universe, not what we don't know, because there's a lot we don't know. But what's really important for people to know

is there's a lot we do know. And if it conflicts with what we do know, then I become highly suspicious that there is some explanation that I don't understand. Well, I feel like it can't possibly conflict with what we do know because we know it. So how do you work it in? That's the thing.

It's like, you got to think, You got to make it. How do you make it work? How do you figure out like what is it? Well, I mean, it can't defy it. Well, you can try and study it. If we know, if we know certain things. But some of the, but here's one of the problems. Some of the things you discuss don't have falsifiability.

What do you mean? Okay. Namely, I can't by, by fault. There's no way to show that they're wrong. Let me give you some quotes from the book. Okay. Well, I hate to be so contrary. I love it. Okay. But it's useful for me because I think it's talk, I talks about the nature of science. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. So it's okay. Okay. So your mother explained, nothing works on everyone 100% of the time. Magic itself never works 100% of the time. And some people are

highly resistant to outside influence. Either they're so fully preoccupied with ongoing static of their own thoughts and worries and to-do lists that there's no entry point or they're dim-witted and their neurological system simply isn't equipped to receive our high energy signals and instructions. So now when you try something and it doesn't work, what does that mean? Well, now there's a note because it's other person's fault. I can't prove. I agree. Okay, that one example.

Let's go to another. Chaos magic. Okay. So basically, it demands you shape shift. If, so here's, how you do, Cape, I love this description. You know where I'm going, but I'm going to read it anyway. If, because the audience doesn't yet, if what you're doing isn't working, do something else. And if that doesn't work, do something else again until something works.

So the point is, well, if I just keep not working and I eventually work. See what sticks, yeah. Okay. Nootles on the wall. Let's try another one. You talk about, you know, again, it's with Christopher and Valerie Harper in this case. And you know, and you said, doesn't always work. It doesn't always work.

Sometimes I simply guess, and this invariably fails. But if actually see the misplaced thing, it always works. Well, the question is, how do I know when it doesn't work that you saw it, but you don't remember seeing it? Okay. Maybe that's too suspicious. But let me go to the last one. I've just picked a bunch. But it happened, okay. Let me finish and then we'll go.

It happens with a greater frequency. Oh, but he, okay, here's the one that really surprised me the most. Right. Because, and I think it has to do with Christopher and his illness or potential illness. And what is wonderful of the look is it's full of innate skepticism. I have seven quotes from the book of where you're skeptical of yourself and even ultimate moment of doubt. In fact, there's this great moment of doubt where you say, it's a reminder that I am impulsive, destructive, prone to periods of paranoid, delusional, obsessively, traffic thinking, and then I'm afraid of the unknown and all that I cannot control,

and I've chosen to live according to the supernatural belief system, indoctrinated me by my severely mentally ill and benzodiaphine-addicted, narcissistic, and bipolar mother. Exactly. And it's this moment of self-duff. Maybe this is, and of course, then what you later on show is that doubt was misplaced. Right. Okay. That doubt was misplaced.

But what you say near the end of the book is, I won't always be right, but I won't always be right, but I will never doubt myself again. And that's the most disturbing thing to me, because if you don't doubt yourself, if you, that implies some kind of level of certainty, then everything that happens has to be as explainable in terms ultimately rationalized in terms of what you know to be true. I know what you mean.

And that's the problem with religion, right? Because you know it's true. And whatever happens, it always fits in because you know the answer before you ask the question. Mm-hmm. And that's... You're right. No, I think that's...

I think you're right. That's not the best wording. Well, I mean, it's intriguing to me because if there's always those outs, then there's no way I can really test. See, I can try and explain something, but that's not... Science isn't post facto explanation. That's storytelling. Right. Okay.

What science is is prediction. Mm-hmm. And prediction and testing. Right. What science can do is prove things to be wrong. It can't prove things to be right. And so if I, if there's nothing, if there's no experiment I can do to prove something to be wrong, then I can't test it, then it's not science.

And so that's at the heart of this. And if there's always an out, if there's always an out, well, you know, really it was this. I mean, it's like the people. Yeah, totally get it. And, you know, really, it's not with you, but it's with the charlatans who, when I talk to, say, people like my friend Pendjolette or the amazing Randy, who's on a life as a magician of showing people like these spoonbenders or are right and and

they're always and mind readers they always say oh today you know when you actually put them in a in a situation where you can do a really true double blind test it doesn't work and they say oh but you know it it never works when I'm in a room with doubters you know and you say

well okay when I and so I'm not you're not that I'm not putting you on that level and so this is my concern and it's an interesting one. So I can't ignore what I want to try and explain the amazing, remarkable things that have happened to you. I would just want to say that saying you'll never doubt it is not a good thing. I mean, it may give you the power.

See, maybe you shouldn't doubt yourself, or at least you should. That's the important thing is to say. Exactly. That's why I said. I agree. I've misworded that. Yeah, because I'm full of, full of questioning myself constantly. And it's clear when you read you, you are.

That's what I find so frustrating because you are innately questioning yourself. Throughout every book of yours I've read, you're questioning yourself, you're skeptical of yourself, and you're skeptical of others. Let me, let me put it in a different context. There's an amazing story in, and I think, oh yeah, no, of course, in running with scissors about hope and her cat. Oh, God. Right. Okay. Okay.

We're going to go to Hope and her cat. Now, want to put yourself in Hope's place. Right. Okay. So, um, okay. Now, sorry, I feel awful. Oh, no, don't. Okay.

So I've got to get to the right book here. So let's, let's go to running with scissors. Um, and, uh, and here we go. It's a great. It's a great. Oh, I got so frustrated when I read it because of what, okay. So, so Hope woke up. And she woke me up 15 minutes ago, he said,

I was dreaming of her, dreaming that she was eaten by a white glob. It was just awful, you guys. It was a nightmare, and all of a sudden I woke up. And there she was curled up right next to me, her cat, purring. And we said, Hope, what are you talking about? Natalie laying a pillow over her head, covering her eyes. Don't you guys get it? Get what I said?

Get you, you've finally gone completely insane? No, Freud was sending me a signal through my dreams. She was telling me she was dying. And then what did Hope do? She ultimately was sure. She knew that she was sensing that Freud was dying. She took Freud down to the basement, put him in a hamper, and lie with him for four days until he either starved to death or whatever. And he died validating her thing.

Now what, now the question I have for you is, how would you to, so hope, here's the problem. Right. Hope knows the cat's going to die and the cat dies. How could, there's nothing you could possibly ever tell. Well, she knows the cat's going to die and then she takes it down. But no, but for her point of view, she said it was leukemia or whatever. But from her point of view, she knew the cat was going to die and it died. There's nothing you can do probably that will convince her that...

No, right. Let me give you another example, that Carl Sagan used. Okay. It's a miracle at lords. You know, at what? At lords, this cathedral in France. Oh, oh. Okay.

So all these people go into the lords of France. and to get, bathe in the waters because of miracles, because the Virgin Mary produces miracles, you know. And people, you know, get cured from doing this. Now, the Catholic Church actually keeps statistics on this, okay? And they try and see how many people got cured. And no one's ever, you know, ever gained an arm or a leg, right? But there are some people, for example, who said cancer,

they go in the lords and they come out and their cancer goes in remission. But aren't many medications, isn't the placebo effect in certain medications just exactly? It is. But in the case of Lourdes, it's even worse. This is the neat thing. The Catholic Church keeps the statistics. And they say, okay, how many people have been cured of cancer of the 120 million people have gone to Lourdes, you know, and it's like 23 or something?

And you work out the ratio of people who've gone into... It's the same as people who would... No, it's worse. Oh. It's worse. So it's harmful. But, no, not. It's just an accident.

But here's the point. If you, if one of those people comes out of lords and their cancer goes into spontaneous remission, there's no frigging way that you're ever going to convince them that it wasn't a miracle. And there's no way I could. Right. Okay. And that's the problem with, with, that I see with sort of non-falsifiability. Of course things happen that I can't explain.

I can't say why you go into remission from. cancer. I can't, you know, there are many, many reasons. But all I can say is, if I look, if I say it's a miracle, then what does it imply about the rest of the world? And when I look at the rest of the world, I say highly unlikely. Right. And, and I think that that for me is the, is, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, is the, I, I, I can't explain things. I can't explain. And I, and I, and I love mysteries. I love not knowing. It's, It's the best situation to be in. It's what scientists want to be in. And I suspect it's it's what you love.

I mean, when you write to me, he said, I love, you know, it's a fascinating mystery. And anyone who continues to be curious loves not knowing. But not knowing, not understanding is not equivalent to seeding the existence of God or the existence of, you know, UFO phenomena, or the existence of hope. you know, hope's cat dying. And so what would you say, not to yourself, but what could you say to Hope that would stop her believing that she had a dream? And look, the cat died.

That's the situation I want to put yourself that I feel into some extent when I'm talking to you, although I don't put your what's happened to you in the same way as Hope killing her cat in a hamper. I don't know if there's a resolution of this, but I just want to leave you with that thought. Mm-hmm. And no, I totally get it. And because, yeah, it's something I've always, I don't want to say struggle with, but it's, what is it? It's like, what is it?

I mean, forget the word. Yeah. Forget the word. Yeah, of course, I don't care what's just, what is going on in the world and aren't there strange things we don't understand? And of course, that's why I'm a physicist, because there's strange things happening out there we don't understand. And that, I want to end on a positive note. I don't want to end on a, because there has to be, okay, so like was it, uh, what year is it now? 219, right?

I think 2019 is I recall. 18. So seven, 2017, we discovered we, you scientists. Uh-huh. The largest organ in the body, right? I don't remember the name of it. Maybe. Well, we did. Okay. So how long we studied anatomy? Okay. So there are new things to be discovered under, I, look, if you're going to tell me, under our noses, there are new things to be discovered all the time. There are, I do an episode of this podcast called Science Matters, and point out how even the close, even in the most mundane things, there are amazing things to be discovered.

There are, in fact, let me, how do you put it in an extra wrap? And here's the thing. I do not believe in any sort of predestiny. No, okay. Good. I mean, I don't. There's a quote at the beginning of magical thinking. I think it's magical thinking.

of one of your epigraphs. And not that one. Well, maybe it isn't magical thinking. Well, no, maybe it's this book. It's trial trouble. The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for a wits to grow sharper. I've actually used that in one of my books.

It's such a gorgeous line. I've used that line in one of my books. Because it is, the world is waiting for magical things to discover. I agree with you. They just can't conflict with what we know. Yeah. But it doesn't, shouldn't turn us off. And we should remain skeptical,

but as you point out, we shouldn't have closed minds. Right. And so here's a quote near the end of your book, which I just think takes me back to the first book of yours I read, okay? And it says, what I'm certain of is that there's something wonky going on beneath the surface of what we call reality. Things are most definitely not as they appear. Things are much, much more.

And then I remembered a line from the end of running with scissors. Where Natalie says to you, Don't you ever feel like we're chasing something, something bigger? I don't know. It's like something that only you and I can see. Like we're running, running, running. And you said, yeah, I said, we're running all right, running with scissors. In a positive way, is this discussion of Whitcraft.

Just a continuation of now running with scissors, looking for the magical properties of the universe that maybe only you can see. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. I don't need to have any proprietary. No, I don't mean only you. I don't mean by you.

I shouldn't. What I'm saying is, is there not a connection between, I mean, what was wonderful about running with scissors? I mean, it was, the life you lived was dysfunctional and tragic in so many ways. But the beauty of it was the freedom to discover and explore, and that's what she's talking about. Right. There's something, you know, the excitement that you both had, you and Natalie, that there's something bigger out there to yet discover.

And I find a connection. That's why I find so heartening. Instead of the negative aspect, I find what's heartening about this book is it carries the same sense of wonder that there is something wonderful out there. And I share that with you. And I don't want to dismiss or belittle the wonder that comes in this book. So I guess I want to end by sharing saying. that the message I take from this book, in spite of my skepticism, is that the world is a wonderful, magical place,

and we can work together to discover wonderful things, and there's a lot of neat stuff out there, even if it isn't the stuff we want it. The world is the way it is, whether we like it or not. And you have made my world better by being here, and I want it not just being here, but by everything you wrote. You keep running with those scissors. You keep running and finding a magical world,

and I'll eat it up. And I am just so thankful that you're here. Oh, I'm so grateful to be here. I'm such a huge fan. And vice versa. I wish she's going for hours and hours. Well, I hope we have a chance, if not here in private, to go on for hours and hours. It was great.

Thank you very much. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. This podcast is produced by the Origins Project Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to enrich your perspective of your place in the cosmos by providing access to the people who are driving the future of society in the 21st century and to the ideas that are changing our understanding of ourselves and our world. To learn more, please visit Originsproject Foundation.org