Oh, look - it's nearly 4pm - the dog probably realises that people start getting hungry around then and come home to eat, which seems like a more reasonable explanation than telepathy.
Dog spends x time in one position and y time in another position I have arbitrarily designated the "master is coming home" position. Must be psychic powers at work here.
Good comments here, I'm totally not convinced either.
The experiment has to be double-blind as well. Is the dog unaware of the experiment? The cameras are well hidden and nobody ever talked about this in his presence? I doubt that very much !!
What is enlightenment?Need to go a little deeper?psychic powers, telepathy, precognition, it is all real.THE-HIDDEN-SPIRITdotCOM It is time to change the world.
This is a pretty silly video. To do the experiment properly, the person leaving has to be BLIND about the return time, AND the return time has to vary significantly (say, 30 minutes to 15 hours).
The person would have to agree to leave for an INDEFINITE time, and be signaled to return by a RANDOM, ELECTRONIC generator. Anything less is a meaningless test.
On the look for real spiritual guidance?Tired of running endlessly into the same useless information?Unlock your true spiritual and psychic potential.THE-HIDDEN-SPIRITdotCOM it is time to wake up.
Great post. This was also done in a film- seven experiments that could change the world. Another experiment from that film was to move the hutch (home) of homing pigeons, while they were flying miles away- out of sight of their hutch. They flew right back to where it got moved to without hesistation, miles away from its original location. Cool beans, eh?
slow down there what's this result stuff - sounds like utter rubbish - the dog gets up and gets excited when the homer gets home ? What gets up when the owner leaves work - so the dog walks 4 feets to sit down again and say my owner will be home in 30 minutes. Rubbish my dog is always asleep upstairs or watching TV and only comes downstairs after I 've arrived home and I have treats, so if she was so clever she be waiting on the stairs, for the doggie snacks.
I once had a hunting dog that would look deep in the woods for an Opossum. When it found one it would run ahead or take a shortcut so as to beat the Opossum to its hole, and would dig it up before the possum got there. When my squirrel dog scents squirrels in a tree, it rolls onto its back and puts as many paws in the air as there are squirrels. Once it put its tail up its butt because one squirrel ran into a hole.
@scienceandmusiclover I once had a dog that would attack dickheads on sight. I don't know why ( I do actually), but tonight I felt its presence going at the screen whenever your comments appeared.
@kkkaldav It's easy to see why you got rid of it. What you felt was your lips watering when any male comments appear. Your reply to this nonsense will let you have the last word. This is as siily as your other posts, and it will stop with your reply.
My mothers dog will do this quite often, and my mother works both a night shift and several day shifts - I often dont know when she will come home. I've learned to start making food when the dog goes to sit by the door.
I also believe that my dog is communicating telepathically with me. A sudden specific thought regarding the dog will interupt what I was doing, and I will find that it indeed was something she wanted help with; fresh water, food, a walk, getting in from the garden, you name it.
The video omits a few important details: namely, the time owner comes home has to be randomized in order to distinguish the phenomena from simple learning.
Does the owner come home at the same time every day, or around the same time, errands aside? It would be nice to see this experiment done at night. As it stands, this video has little credibility.
I would urge the people involved in this experiment to consider more concepts than just "psychic" abilities. Synchronicity, time/space related stuff, maybe even quantum mechanics.
Either way, rather interesting experiment. If you ask me, animals are just more in tune with the nature of reality than humans are, though not necessarily aware of it.
This also works with horses. Both with human and horse, and between horse and horse. It would be interesting if Mr Sheldrake made an equine study. Great posting, thank you.
I have experienced this countless times in my life with my dogs, for me it is proven fact.
When I was a kid my mother used to know when I was coming home from school or when I'd come in from playing by the reactions of the dog minutes before, regardless of the time of day.
In my working life my wife would say the exact same thing, the connection I believe is love.
There is too much doubt in the world of the spiritual connection between living and non living entities.
My dog is always waiting for me by the door when I get home from work. My wife was amazed by the fact the about 2 minutes before I got home the dog gets excited and starts heading for the door to wait.
So I tried a little experiment and called her as I was driving home (not always the same time) and asked her when the dog got up. Sure enough it was as I was driving on a perpendicular road about 50 feet from the house. When I went a different route she did not get excited 2 min out.
And this is Sheldrake describing his encounter with Dawkins:
Soon before Enemies of Reason was filmed, the production company, IWC Media, told me that Richard Dawkins wanted to visit me to discuss my research on unexplained abilities of people and animals. I was reluctant to take part, but the company's representative assured me that "this documentary, at Channel 4's insistence, will be an entirely more balanced affair than The Root of All Evil was.
She added, "We are very keen for it to be a discussion between two scientists, about scientific modes of enquiry". So I agreed and we fixed a date. I was still not sure what to expect. Was Richard Dawkins going to be dogmatic, with a mental firewall that blocked out any evidence that went against his beliefs? Or would he be open-minded, and fun to talk to?
The Director asked us to stand facing each other; we were filmed with a hand-held camera. Richard began by saying that he thought we probably agreed about many things, "But what worries me about you is that you are prepared to believe almost anything. Science should be based on the minimum number of beliefs."
I agreed that we had a lot in common, "But what worries me about you is that you come across as dogmatic, giving people a bad impression of science."
He said that if it really occurred, it would "turn the laws of physics upside down," and added, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"This depends on what you regard as extraordinary", I replied. "Most people say they have experienced telepathy, especially in connection with telephone calls. In that sense, telepathy is ordinary. The claim that most people are deluded about their own experience is extraordinary. Where is the extraordinary evidence for that?"
He produced no evidence at all, apart from generic arguments about the fallibility of human judgment. He assumed that people want to believe in "the paranormal" because of wishful thinking.
We then agreed that controlled experiments were necessary. I said that this was why I had actually been doing such experiments, including tests to find out if people really could tell who was calling them on the telephone when the caller was selected at random. The results were far above the chance level.
The previous week I had sent Richard copies of some of my papers, published in peer-reviewed journals, so that he could look at the data.
Richard seemed uneasy and said, "I'm don't want to discuss evidence". "Why not?" I asked. "There isn't time. It's too complicated. And that's not what this programme is about." The camera stopped.
The Director, Russell Barnes, confirmed that he too was not interested in evidence. The film he was making was another Dawkins polemic.
I said to Russell, "If you're treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. If telepathy occurs, it's not irrational to believe in it. I thought that's what we were going to talk about. I made it clear from the outset that I wasn't interested in taking part in another low grade debunking exercise."
Richard said, "It's not a low grade debunking exercise; it's a high grade debunking exercise."
In that case, I replied, there had been a serious misunderstanding, because I had been led to believe that this was to be a balanced scientific discussion about evidence. Russell Barnes asked to see the emails I had received from his assistant. He read them with obvious dismay, and said the assurances she had given me were wrong. The team packed up and left.
Richard Dawkins has long proclaimed his conviction that "The paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it to us are fakes and charlatans". Enemies of Reason was intended to popularize this belief. But does his crusade really promote "the public understanding of science," of which he is the professor at Oxford? Should science be a vehicle of prejudice, a kind of fundamentalist belief-system? Or should it be a method of enquiry into the unknown?
This is awesome. I think one of my dogs can do this. I need to check your website and see how to set up a camera to do this. Great video. I think most dog owners have are aware of this. Thanks for doing some research on it!
Thx for the kind words about the experiment. You can follow-up on our progress at skeptiko [dot] com. We're working with researchers at the University of Florida to prove this conclusively. If your dog turns out to be good at this let me know :)
Wow! I had heard about this! And this is a clever way to prove it! Wow! I must make my parents to this so they can check if their dog has this connection :D
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I checked the pdf of his paper (1998). He only tested this in 3 trials, no? Can you draw statistical comparisons comparing 60 "her car" trials against 3 "taxi" trials? For example in her car trials the dog failed to anticipate 11.6% of the time. In the taxi trials the dog failed 33.3% of the time. If you wish to draw conclusions from those trials, then it's clear the dog's hit rate dropped quite a lot.
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Why does the dog deem it necessary to move to a waiting spot at all. If the dog has telepathic power, why does he not get excited as soon as he is aware his owner is on her way or, if the dog is too smart for this, just stay wherever he is and wait till the car is within sound. What is the point of the "waiting area."
"Why does the dog deem it necessary to move to a waiting spot at all."
What do you expect him to do, ask the dog why he does what he does? Before asking a question like that why don't you educate yourself as to the research Rupert Sheldrake has conducted and spend some time going over the follow up research skeptico is doing. If you're not willing to educate yourself and choose to remain ignorant you probably should not comment- especially if your comments are as silly as the one above.
& by educating yourself I mean reading Sheldrakes peer reviewed papers- not some hatchet job done by closed minded dogmatists who are essentially the flip side of religious fundamentalists. The Randis/Dawkins of this world are akin to fundamentalists- and will do whatever it takes to try and defend their world view. This is what Sheldrake has to say about Randi
The January 2000 issue of Dog World magazine included an article on a possible sixth sense in dogs, which discussed some of my research
In this article Randi was quoted as saying that in relation to canine ESP, "We at the JREF [James Randi Educational Foundation] have tested these claims. They fail." No details were given of these tests.
I emailed James Randi to ask for details of this JREF research. He did not reply. He ignored a second request for information too.
I then asked members of the JREF Scientific Advisory Board to help me find out more about this claim. They did indeed help by advising Randi to reply.
In an email sent on Februaury 6, 2000 he told me that the tests he referred to were not done at the JREF, but took place "years ago" and were "informal". They involved two dogs belonging to a friend of his that he observed over a two-week period. All records had been lost. He wrote: "I overstated my case for doubting the reality of dog ESP based on the small amount of data I obtained. It was rash and improper of me to do so."
Randi also claimed to have debunked one of my experiments with the dog Jaytee, a part of which was shown on television. Jaytee went to the window to wait for his owner when she set off to come home, but did not do so before she set off. In Dog World, Randi stated: "Viewing the entire tape, we see that the dog responded to every car that drove by, and to every person who walked by." This is simply not true, and Randi now admits that he has never seen the tape.
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I caught the pcast but it didn't answer many of my questions or I missed something. This is the problem with putting your protocols in your podcast. Memory is not persistent. I'm a little confused about how you controlled for the dog simply realizing irregular departures of mom = she's probably gone for about 1h. If not an 1h, then the dog knows to check back in 2h. If not in 2h then the dog knows to check back in 4h. The whole timing of this vid matches with the "check in 1hr" cue. see next
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I think the best way to control for the dog simply picking up on "mom is leaving at an unexpected time, I've learned that means a 1h jaunt, if not check back in another h" is train the dog to learn mom departs every Saturday at 2 and returns exactly 1h later. Then run your rnd() trials. Have mom leave & then rnd() return 2-5h. If the dog is using esp, he would not take up his waiting position at the 1h mark, right ? A lot of work, but real scientists hoe the row no matter how long. see next
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RE people in the house, which you said improves hits because this is some pack comm. How do people in the house improve this? While that's a great just so story, it is also good evidence of leaks. Even if the ppl in the house don't know when mom is coming home, they do know ppl tend to operate to clocks. She's been gone about 1h, she might be coming back soon. The dog could well be picking up on this kind of cueing.
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I'll look forward to them. But I should note if you're not controlling for the items listed, you can do all the trials and you may still be measuring something *other* than dog ESP. To wit, engine noise (will the trial test car return vs foot return vs rental car?) or the dog figuring out a non standard departure (she must make those in her normal life, right?) means she'll be back after 1 h during the day or 2 h during the night...
Interesting stuff. Like the other commenters I would be interested in hearing/reading about the details of your test arrangements - things like 1) how you control for possible sensory leakage and 2) how exactly do you to measure success i.e. what constitutes a hit
and so on. After all, the devil is in the details.
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Instead of answering, you're back with "listen to my podcast". I looked at your web site. There's a lot of material there. I'm not sure why you're not offering a simple answer to a simple question: can you define what is a hit? If it's on that opensource page, could you provide a link to the exact page that clearly defines a hit vs a non hit? Thanks.
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So if the dog takes up the waiting position 45 minutes before mom's return and mom is still running her errands and not on the way home, that is not a hit. Right? It's only a hit IF the dog takes the position for the *first* time and this matches some portion mom's actual trip home? Does the dog take up the position exactly at the moment mom starts her trip home? What is the leeway there? If the dog takes up the position 5 minutes before mom starts her trip, is that a hit? (see next)
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How do you know exactly when mom starts her trip home? Does she log it? If mom starts for home and the trip takes 20 minutes, it is a hit if the dog takes the position 20 minutes to 0 minutes? What is your cut off to ensure the dog is not tuning into the engine noise beyond human hearing? Do you have published studies showing the limit's of a dog's hearing so you can properly set the cut off?
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Here's an idea.
Alex could experimentally test how far dog's can hear cars.
The hypotheses that somebody does not explore are revealing. Is Alex attempting to find an explanation for the phenomenon or is he attempting to prove that telepathy is real?
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Exactly. You first have to demonstrate you're really trying to measure what you think you're measuring. No one could believe bats could use sonar or birds could use the magnetic field to navigate or sharks could use electrical fields. If someone suggests a dog might be able to sense an engine's high pitch much farther away than we think, then this needs to be tested. You can't answer this question in science with the retort "come on". (see next)
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I would like to see hard data. What is the dog's limits of conventional perception? Merely saying some dog experts have advised you isn't published data. What they think is a dog's limit isn't the same as the published scientific measure. Right? You said previously 3 minutes is a good buffer. Based on what science? When a scientist introduces a control, he references a scientific paper to justify that control. Did you anywhere? (see next)
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Given maybe the lack of published data of a dog's ability to pick out mom's engine, have you also considered running as a control mom returning on foot. The dog can sense when she's returning home in car 20 minutes out, right? Does this effect hold up if she's coming home 20 min out on foot? Have you tried with a rental car?
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That is not a rigorous definition of what constitutes a "hit".
If the dog has any information about the rough time when the owner is going to come home then it would be expected to on average spend more time "waiting" during the homecoming than in previous period.
If the dog is really as accurate as the video supposedly demonstrates then why not define a "hit" as the dog starting this behaviour within two minutes of the start of the return trip?
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I've seen this before, it was a Discovery channel show. The dog knows you are coming home because they can hear the car engine from up to 5 miles away. The engine whine is distinct on each car and the dog hears it clearly from miles away. Dogs are not telepathic and your study is like a 5th grade science project. Why don't you expand the distance, try 20 miles and see that the dog doesn't move until the engine whine gets close enough.
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so they drove 10 miles in 10 minutes? They live off an offramp on the highway? The dog hears MILES AWAY, the distinct engine whine is like a symphony to them. This has already been debunked by the Discovery channel show over a decade ago, they did the study to disprove idiotic claims of dog telepathy. They showed the owner walking home from 1 mile away and the dog did not react until the owner was there. Try it with a bike or a walk, . Your argument is disproven and it is silly to continue.
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Before you publish your second trial, could you define a hit? How many minutes before "mom" comes home is a hit? If he took his spot an hour before she came home, that's clearly not a hit. Right? If he takes it 10 minutes, well, okay I'd call that a hit. If she's away for 4 hours is 20 minutes a hit but not a hit if she's away for 60 minutes. So what is your figure and what is your justification for it?
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Again, I have no way of know when the waiting spot was defined. Any scientist from this one video is going to suggest first the "texas sharpshooter fallacy". This video at least sets the criteria. This surely won't change? And 10 minutes is your window? If the dog sets down at the 12 minute mark, is that also a hit? If the dog sets down at the 20 minute mark, is that also a hit? How long before the return is a hit.
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So lets say 10 min before the return is a hit. 11 minutes is not. Lets say the dog lays down in the spot 20 min before. Not a hit. But then gets up, goes and gets a drink out of the toilet, and then goes back at the 10 minute mark. Is that still counted as a hit? Your blog makes no mention of even this simple, simple definition of a hit vs not a hit.
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Further, you've given us one trial. As I noted, wouldn't a dog come to learn an afternoon "wearing jeans" departure means to prepare roughly every hour? If it is not routine for the woman to leave the house Saturday for brief errands, has not the dog learned that non routine departures = gone for about an hour if not back in an hour check back next hour? How many trials have been run? How many were hits? (Remember a hit needs both a waiting spot AND a window of waiting defined before hand.)
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surely she must have hours of unedited recordings??
You really have to randomize the return time..assuming its arbitrary doesn't count. You also should not necessarily be turning off the camera when she comes home. It would be meaningful if after the initial excitement of the return the dog then returned to his waiting area. A ran dance always works if you dance until it rains.
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Even if the correlation is there, it will take a lot more to convince anyone (who isn't already a believer) that it is a result of something paranormal, and not just some problem with the experimental design, or a natural cause that hasn't been considered and/or ruled out. Unexplained does not automatically equal unexplainable. We have seen these dog experiments before already--it's time to move on to more specific experiments that test the actual theory behind the telepathy (if one exists).
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Consider as well: we have to take the family's word for it that's the dog's waiting spot. We could have the texas sharpshooter fallacy here. The last spot the dog is on the video the family pronounces his favorite waiting spot. Also, is this the only video? Are the misses not being reported? We don't know.
Also, are there still people in the house? You made no mention of that. Did the woman make a cell phone call home? The dog would pick up on that too.
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Again, we have to trust the dog owners are being honest. A psychic dog is sure something to talk about. It is not beyond belief people might fudge their dogs favorite waiting spot after the fact. You talk about a family but only mention the owner leaving. These are not unreasonable questions to ask. They need to be asked. They should be included in the original video.
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Perhaps the dog is simply picking up on the way she is dressed and the time of day. She's not in her work clothes. It's not morning. Jeans at 3 pm on a saturday means she's out of the house for about an hour. The dog has figured this out.
It's a little early to call this an example of telepathy.
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Work this through: she's wearing her "running errands clothes". It's saturday. The dog may have learned that when she's wearing jeans and leaving in the afternoon she goes out for an hour or two hours or three hours. So the dog gets in his waiting position roughly every hour. If she came back two hours later or three hours later, maybe we'd see the dog take that position once every hour.
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Do you have a link explaining your protocols? Seems to me science isn't done through podcasts. Not many people want to rake through an hour of babble to find out the information that should be in text.
Oh, look - it's nearly 4pm - the dog probably realises that people start getting hungry around then and come home to eat, which seems like a more reasonable explanation than telepathy.
frostek 1 month ago
Confirmation bias much?
authorless 1 month ago 3
Dog spends x time in one position and y time in another position I have arbitrarily designated the "master is coming home" position. Must be psychic powers at work here.
nightofhero 1 month ago 3
Good comments here, I'm totally not convinced either.
The experiment has to be double-blind as well. Is the dog unaware of the experiment? The cameras are well hidden and nobody ever talked about this in his presence? I doubt that very much !!
Leeuwy 1 month ago
@Leeuwy "The cameras are well hidden and nobody ever talked about this in his presence?" so apparently dogs can understand english?
DStrike0083 1 month ago
@DStrike0083 This almost sounds like as if you’re taking my comment serious, please tell me you didn’t.
Leeuwy 1 month ago
@Leeuwy i can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not
DStrike0083 1 month ago
I am not convinced. the dog just moved sleeping to another spot
MsH1h1h1h1 5 months ago 2
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What is enlightenment?Need to go a little deeper?psychic powers, telepathy, precognition, it is all real.THE-HIDDEN-SPIRITdotCOM It is time to change the world.
ErlindaWeiner 7 months ago
This is a pretty silly video. To do the experiment properly, the person leaving has to be BLIND about the return time, AND the return time has to vary significantly (say, 30 minutes to 15 hours).
The person would have to agree to leave for an INDEFINITE time, and be signaled to return by a RANDOM, ELECTRONIC generator. Anything less is a meaningless test.
GetMeThere1 8 months ago 2
On the look for real spiritual guidance?Tired of running endlessly into the same useless information?Unlock your true spiritual and psychic potential.THE-HIDDEN-SPIRITdotCOM it is time to wake up.
ArielSebastianikx 1 year ago
@ArielSebastianikx - If people woke up, they would stop going to sites like that.
frostek 1 month ago
Great post. This was also done in a film- seven experiments that could change the world. Another experiment from that film was to move the hutch (home) of homing pigeons, while they were flying miles away- out of sight of their hutch. They flew right back to where it got moved to without hesistation, miles away from its original location. Cool beans, eh?
newton2013 1 year ago
slow down there what's this result stuff - sounds like utter rubbish - the dog gets up and gets excited when the homer gets home ? What gets up when the owner leaves work - so the dog walks 4 feets to sit down again and say my owner will be home in 30 minutes. Rubbish my dog is always asleep upstairs or watching TV and only comes downstairs after I 've arrived home and I have treats, so if she was so clever she be waiting on the stairs, for the doggie snacks.
theapeman10 1 year ago
i saw this evidence in the documentary 'something unknown...'. i say this is hard evidence, strange that it's not been widely known before...
SweetSoundOfGrace 1 year ago
I once had a hunting dog that would look deep in the woods for an Opossum. When it found one it would run ahead or take a shortcut so as to beat the Opossum to its hole, and would dig it up before the possum got there. When my squirrel dog scents squirrels in a tree, it rolls onto its back and puts as many paws in the air as there are squirrels. Once it put its tail up its butt because one squirrel ran into a hole.
scienceandmusiclover 1 year ago
@scienceandmusiclover I once had a dog that would attack dickheads on sight. I don't know why ( I do actually), but tonight I felt its presence going at the screen whenever your comments appeared.
kkkaldav 1 year ago
@kkkaldav It's easy to see why you got rid of it. What you felt was your lips watering when any male comments appear. Your reply to this nonsense will let you have the last word. This is as siily as your other posts, and it will stop with your reply.
scienceandmusiclover 1 year ago
My mothers dog will do this quite often, and my mother works both a night shift and several day shifts - I often dont know when she will come home. I've learned to start making food when the dog goes to sit by the door.
I also believe that my dog is communicating telepathically with me. A sudden specific thought regarding the dog will interupt what I was doing, and I will find that it indeed was something she wanted help with; fresh water, food, a walk, getting in from the garden, you name it.
DODwebdotorg 1 year ago
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LIZA294 1 year ago
The video omits a few important details: namely, the time owner comes home has to be randomized in order to distinguish the phenomena from simple learning.
SexyMelon 1 year ago
Does the owner come home at the same time every day, or around the same time, errands aside? It would be nice to see this experiment done at night. As it stands, this video has little credibility.
Arieh85 2 years ago
I would urge the people involved in this experiment to consider more concepts than just "psychic" abilities. Synchronicity, time/space related stuff, maybe even quantum mechanics.
Either way, rather interesting experiment. If you ask me, animals are just more in tune with the nature of reality than humans are, though not necessarily aware of it.
RinpooKatt 2 years ago
This also works with horses. Both with human and horse, and between horse and horse. It would be interesting if Mr Sheldrake made an equine study. Great posting, thank you.
anotherblonde 2 years ago
I have experienced this countless times in my life with my dogs, for me it is proven fact.
When I was a kid my mother used to know when I was coming home from school or when I'd come in from playing by the reactions of the dog minutes before, regardless of the time of day.
In my working life my wife would say the exact same thing, the connection I believe is love.
There is too much doubt in the world of the spiritual connection between living and non living entities.
Peace
123backinyerface 2 years ago
My dog is always waiting for me by the door when I get home from work. My wife was amazed by the fact the about 2 minutes before I got home the dog gets excited and starts heading for the door to wait.
So I tried a little experiment and called her as I was driving home (not always the same time) and asked her when the dog got up. Sure enough it was as I was driving on a perpendicular road about 50 feet from the house. When I went a different route she did not get excited 2 min out.
wheelst 2 years ago
alex whats the latest with your experiments, thanks
ProudToBLoud 3 years ago 2
We're been working through the University of Florida's Canine Cognition Lab. We've done some testing, but nothing to report yet.
Hope to re-start some testing with Tommy later this month or in Nov.
newdvd123 3 years ago 5
Is this account owned by Alex Tsakiris? If it is, congratulations for the skeptiko podcast from Brazil! Keep up the good work.
hplima85 3 years ago 4
And this is Sheldrake describing his encounter with Dawkins:
Soon before Enemies of Reason was filmed, the production company, IWC Media, told me that Richard Dawkins wanted to visit me to discuss my research on unexplained abilities of people and animals. I was reluctant to take part, but the company's representative assured me that "this documentary, at Channel 4's insistence, will be an entirely more balanced affair than The Root of All Evil was.
asdffd 3 years ago 4
She added, "We are very keen for it to be a discussion between two scientists, about scientific modes of enquiry". So I agreed and we fixed a date. I was still not sure what to expect. Was Richard Dawkins going to be dogmatic, with a mental firewall that blocked out any evidence that went against his beliefs? Or would he be open-minded, and fun to talk to?
asdffd 3 years ago 4
The Director asked us to stand facing each other; we were filmed with a hand-held camera. Richard began by saying that he thought we probably agreed about many things, "But what worries me about you is that you are prepared to believe almost anything. Science should be based on the minimum number of beliefs."
I agreed that we had a lot in common, "But what worries me about you is that you come across as dogmatic, giving people a bad impression of science."
asdffd 3 years ago 4
He said that if it really occurred, it would "turn the laws of physics upside down," and added, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"This depends on what you regard as extraordinary", I replied. "Most people say they have experienced telepathy, especially in connection with telephone calls. In that sense, telepathy is ordinary. The claim that most people are deluded about their own experience is extraordinary. Where is the extraordinary evidence for that?"
asdffd 3 years ago 4
He produced no evidence at all, apart from generic arguments about the fallibility of human judgment. He assumed that people want to believe in "the paranormal" because of wishful thinking.
We then agreed that controlled experiments were necessary. I said that this was why I had actually been doing such experiments, including tests to find out if people really could tell who was calling them on the telephone when the caller was selected at random. The results were far above the chance level.
asdffd 3 years ago 5
The previous week I had sent Richard copies of some of my papers, published in peer-reviewed journals, so that he could look at the data.
Richard seemed uneasy and said, "I'm don't want to discuss evidence". "Why not?" I asked. "There isn't time. It's too complicated. And that's not what this programme is about." The camera stopped.
The Director, Russell Barnes, confirmed that he too was not interested in evidence. The film he was making was another Dawkins polemic.
asdffd 3 years ago 5
I said to Russell, "If you're treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. If telepathy occurs, it's not irrational to believe in it. I thought that's what we were going to talk about. I made it clear from the outset that I wasn't interested in taking part in another low grade debunking exercise."
Richard said, "It's not a low grade debunking exercise; it's a high grade debunking exercise."
asdffd 3 years ago 6
In that case, I replied, there had been a serious misunderstanding, because I had been led to believe that this was to be a balanced scientific discussion about evidence. Russell Barnes asked to see the emails I had received from his assistant. He read them with obvious dismay, and said the assurances she had given me were wrong. The team packed up and left.
asdffd 3 years ago 6
Richard Dawkins has long proclaimed his conviction that "The paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it to us are fakes and charlatans". Enemies of Reason was intended to popularize this belief. But does his crusade really promote "the public understanding of science," of which he is the professor at Oxford? Should science be a vehicle of prejudice, a kind of fundamentalist belief-system? Or should it be a method of enquiry into the unknown?
asdffd 3 years ago 8
This is awesome. I think one of my dogs can do this. I need to check your website and see how to set up a camera to do this. Great video. I think most dog owners have are aware of this. Thanks for doing some research on it!
asdffd 3 years ago 3
Thx for the kind words about the experiment. You can follow-up on our progress at skeptiko [dot] com. We're working with researchers at the University of Florida to prove this conclusively. If your dog turns out to be good at this let me know :)
skeptiko 3 years ago
Wow! I had heard about this! And this is a clever way to prove it! Wow! I must make my parents to this so they can check if their dog has this connection :D
Great idea!
realicee 3 years ago 12
- more trials coming
skeptiko 3 years ago
Thanks for posting this video.
lukeev 3 years ago 9
- I hope to have another video up i the next few days.
- this is ongoing, we're doing more trials
skeptiko 3 years ago
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That isn't answering my question.
Is the dog's performance this good in all of the trials or is it much more variable than you are implying?
eprnoble 3 years ago
- in Sheldrake's original research they used taxis and cars unfamiliar to the dog
skeptiko 3 years ago
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What was the dog's hit rate then? Improve, drop, or stay the same? It should stay the same, right?
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
- yes it did. Check out his website.
skeptiko 3 years ago
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I checked the pdf of his paper (1998). He only tested this in 3 trials, no? Can you draw statistical comparisons comparing 60 "her car" trials against 3 "taxi" trials? For example in her car trials the dog failed to anticipate 11.6% of the time. In the taxi trials the dog failed 33.3% of the time. If you wish to draw conclusions from those trials, then it's clear the dog's hit rate dropped quite a lot.
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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In another trial where she returned home by bicycle the dog began "signalling" 20 minutes before the start of the 15 return journey.
None of these trials used randomised return times. So it is not clear whether the performance would have decreased further with extra controls.
eprnoble 3 years ago
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Why does the dog deem it necessary to move to a waiting spot at all. If the dog has telepathic power, why does he not get excited as soon as he is aware his owner is on her way or, if the dog is too smart for this, just stay wherever he is and wait till the car is within sound. What is the point of the "waiting area."
Deadpool2123 3 years ago
"Why does the dog deem it necessary to move to a waiting spot at all."
What do you expect him to do, ask the dog why he does what he does? Before asking a question like that why don't you educate yourself as to the research Rupert Sheldrake has conducted and spend some time going over the follow up research skeptico is doing. If you're not willing to educate yourself and choose to remain ignorant you probably should not comment- especially if your comments are as silly as the one above.
asdffd 3 years ago
& by educating yourself I mean reading Sheldrakes peer reviewed papers- not some hatchet job done by closed minded dogmatists who are essentially the flip side of religious fundamentalists. The Randis/Dawkins of this world are akin to fundamentalists- and will do whatever it takes to try and defend their world view. This is what Sheldrake has to say about Randi
The January 2000 issue of Dog World magazine included an article on a possible sixth sense in dogs, which discussed some of my research
asdffd 3 years ago
In this article Randi was quoted as saying that in relation to canine ESP, "We at the JREF [James Randi Educational Foundation] have tested these claims. They fail." No details were given of these tests.
I emailed James Randi to ask for details of this JREF research. He did not reply. He ignored a second request for information too.
I then asked members of the JREF Scientific Advisory Board to help me find out more about this claim. They did indeed help by advising Randi to reply.
asdffd 3 years ago 2
In an email sent on Februaury 6, 2000 he told me that the tests he referred to were not done at the JREF, but took place "years ago" and were "informal". They involved two dogs belonging to a friend of his that he observed over a two-week period. All records had been lost. He wrote: "I overstated my case for doubting the reality of dog ESP based on the small amount of data I obtained. It was rash and improper of me to do so."
asdffd 3 years ago 2
Randi also claimed to have debunked one of my experiments with the dog Jaytee, a part of which was shown on television. Jaytee went to the window to wait for his owner when she set off to come home, but did not do so before she set off. In Dog World, Randi stated: "Viewing the entire tape, we see that the dog responded to every car that drove by, and to every person who walked by." This is simply not true, and Randi now admits that he has never seen the tape.
asdffd 3 years ago 3
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And it gets funnier every time I see it.
Ill male sure to check again later to see if I still LOL.
Muttzippy 3 years ago
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I caught the pcast but it didn't answer many of my questions or I missed something. This is the problem with putting your protocols in your podcast. Memory is not persistent. I'm a little confused about how you controlled for the dog simply realizing irregular departures of mom = she's probably gone for about 1h. If not an 1h, then the dog knows to check back in 2h. If not in 2h then the dog knows to check back in 4h. The whole timing of this vid matches with the "check in 1hr" cue. see next
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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I think the best way to control for the dog simply picking up on "mom is leaving at an unexpected time, I've learned that means a 1h jaunt, if not check back in another h" is train the dog to learn mom departs every Saturday at 2 and returns exactly 1h later. Then run your rnd() trials. Have mom leave & then rnd() return 2-5h. If the dog is using esp, he would not take up his waiting position at the 1h mark, right ? A lot of work, but real scientists hoe the row no matter how long. see next
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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RE people in the house, which you said improves hits because this is some pack comm. How do people in the house improve this? While that's a great just so story, it is also good evidence of leaks. Even if the ppl in the house don't know when mom is coming home, they do know ppl tend to operate to clocks. She's been gone about 1h, she might be coming back soon. The dog could well be picking up on this kind of cueing.
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
- there will be (and already have been) many trials of differing lengths
skeptiko 3 years ago
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I'll look forward to them. But I should note if you're not controlling for the items listed, you can do all the trials and you may still be measuring something *other* than dog ESP. To wit, engine noise (will the trial test car return vs foot return vs rental car?) or the dog figuring out a non standard departure (she must make those in her normal life, right?) means she'll be back after 1 h during the day or 2 h during the night...
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
Interesting stuff. Like the other commenters I would be interested in hearing/reading about the details of your test arrangements - things like 1) how you control for possible sensory leakage and 2) how exactly do you to measure success i.e. what constitutes a hit
and so on. After all, the devil is in the details.
Gridane 3 years ago
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My comment got deleted?! That speaks volumes right there.
2323skidoo 3 years ago
- dialog :) rudeness :(
skeptiko 3 years ago
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Instead of answering, you're back with "listen to my podcast". I looked at your web site. There's a lot of material there. I'm not sure why you're not offering a simple answer to a simple question: can you define what is a hit? If it's on that opensource page, could you provide a link to the exact page that clearly defines a hit vs a non hit? Thanks.
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
- A "hit" is time spent in the waiting position. The dog doesn't spend time there when the owner is away, only during the ride home.
- Check out the original research done by Rupert Sheldrake (very easy to locate at his website)
skeptiko 3 years ago
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So if the dog takes up the waiting position 45 minutes before mom's return and mom is still running her errands and not on the way home, that is not a hit. Right? It's only a hit IF the dog takes the position for the *first* time and this matches some portion mom's actual trip home? Does the dog take up the position exactly at the moment mom starts her trip home? What is the leeway there? If the dog takes up the position 5 minutes before mom starts her trip, is that a hit? (see next)
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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How do you know exactly when mom starts her trip home? Does she log it? If mom starts for home and the trip takes 20 minutes, it is a hit if the dog takes the position 20 minutes to 0 minutes? What is your cut off to ensure the dog is not tuning into the engine noise beyond human hearing? Do you have published studies showing the limit's of a dog's hearing so you can properly set the cut off?
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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Here's an idea.
Alex could experimentally test how far dog's can hear cars.
The hypotheses that somebody does not explore are revealing. Is Alex attempting to find an explanation for the phenomenon or is he attempting to prove that telepathy is real?
eprnoble 3 years ago
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Exactly. You first have to demonstrate you're really trying to measure what you think you're measuring. No one could believe bats could use sonar or birds could use the magnetic field to navigate or sharks could use electrical fields. If someone suggests a dog might be able to sense an engine's high pitch much farther away than we think, then this needs to be tested. You can't answer this question in science with the retort "come on". (see next)
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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I would like to see hard data. What is the dog's limits of conventional perception? Merely saying some dog experts have advised you isn't published data. What they think is a dog's limit isn't the same as the published scientific measure. Right? You said previously 3 minutes is a good buffer. Based on what science? When a scientist introduces a control, he references a scientific paper to justify that control. Did you anywhere? (see next)
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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Given maybe the lack of published data of a dog's ability to pick out mom's engine, have you also considered running as a control mom returning on foot. The dog can sense when she's returning home in car 20 minutes out, right? Does this effect hold up if she's coming home 20 min out on foot? Have you tried with a rental car?
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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That is not a rigorous definition of what constitutes a "hit".
If the dog has any information about the rough time when the owner is going to come home then it would be expected to on average spend more time "waiting" during the homecoming than in previous period.
If the dog is really as accurate as the video supposedly demonstrates then why not define a "hit" as the dog starting this behaviour within two minutes of the start of the return trip?
eprnoble 3 years ago
- you see to be referring to the botched debunking of Dr. Richard Wiseman
- it's an arbitrary criteria and not a good way to measure this behavior
skeptiko 3 years ago
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I've seen this before, it was a Discovery channel show. The dog knows you are coming home because they can hear the car engine from up to 5 miles away. The engine whine is distinct on each car and the dog hears it clearly from miles away. Dogs are not telepathic and your study is like a 5th grade science project. Why don't you expand the distance, try 20 miles and see that the dog doesn't move until the engine whine gets close enough.
jesuspuncher 3 years ago
- The owner was more than 10 miles away when her trip began.
- In our second trial (soon to be published) the owner was 20 miles away
- We ignore the last 3 minutes of the trial to account for the dog hearing the car.
- I've interviewed several canine researchers and have devloped our protocol based on their advise.
- listen to Skeptiko and you'll understand what's going on
skeptiko 3 years ago
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so they drove 10 miles in 10 minutes? They live off an offramp on the highway? The dog hears MILES AWAY, the distinct engine whine is like a symphony to them. This has already been debunked by the Discovery channel show over a decade ago, they did the study to disprove idiotic claims of dog telepathy. They showed the owner walking home from 1 mile away and the dog did not react until the owner was there. Try it with a bike or a walk, . Your argument is disproven and it is silly to continue.
jesuspuncher 3 years ago
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Before you publish your second trial, could you define a hit? How many minutes before "mom" comes home is a hit? If he took his spot an hour before she came home, that's clearly not a hit. Right? If he takes it 10 minutes, well, okay I'd call that a hit. If she's away for 4 hours is 20 minutes a hit but not a hit if she's away for 60 minutes. So what is your figure and what is your justification for it?
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
... or better yet, get involved at OpenSourceScience
skeptiko 3 years ago
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Owner defines waiting behavior
Owner is part of the experiment
Owner determines return time
Owner controls all 'data'
Owner controls which 'data' is seen publicly
Owner interacts with dog just before leaving
investigate all you want but surely you don't consider this a controlled trial?
CleveDan 3 years ago
- of course the owner defined the "waiting behavior"... they know their dog
- owner is part of experiment???
- owner had no control of data, or what was published
- owner interacts with dog before leaving???
This is ongoing research. Listen to the podcast if you want to know what going on.
skeptiko 3 years ago
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Again, I have no way of know when the waiting spot was defined. Any scientist from this one video is going to suggest first the "texas sharpshooter fallacy". This video at least sets the criteria. This surely won't change? And 10 minutes is your window? If the dog sets down at the 12 minute mark, is that also a hit? If the dog sets down at the 20 minute mark, is that also a hit? How long before the return is a hit.
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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So lets say 10 min before the return is a hit. 11 minutes is not. Lets say the dog lays down in the spot 20 min before. Not a hit. But then gets up, goes and gets a drink out of the toilet, and then goes back at the 10 minute mark. Is that still counted as a hit? Your blog makes no mention of even this simple, simple definition of a hit vs not a hit.
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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Further, you've given us one trial. As I noted, wouldn't a dog come to learn an afternoon "wearing jeans" departure means to prepare roughly every hour? If it is not routine for the woman to leave the house Saturday for brief errands, has not the dog learned that non routine departures = gone for about an hour if not back in an hour check back next hour? How many trials have been run? How many were hits? (Remember a hit needs both a waiting spot AND a window of waiting defined before hand.)
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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what determined "return time" exactly who recorded this time and when?
CleveDan 3 years ago
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surely she must have hours of unedited recordings??
You really have to randomize the return time..assuming its arbitrary doesn't count. You also should not necessarily be turning off the camera when she comes home. It would be meaningful if after the initial excitement of the return the dog then returned to his waiting area. A ran dance always works if you dance until it rains.
CleveDan 3 years ago
- we record the entire trip and edited for YouTube
- randomizing (over some pre-determined window) will be done... this was non-routine return time
- what happens after the trial is over may interest you but it isn't (nor should it be part of the experiment
skeptiko 3 years ago
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Even if the correlation is there, it will take a lot more to convince anyone (who isn't already a believer) that it is a result of something paranormal, and not just some problem with the experimental design, or a natural cause that hasn't been considered and/or ruled out. Unexplained does not automatically equal unexplainable. We have seen these dog experiments before already--it's time to move on to more specific experiments that test the actual theory behind the telepathy (if one exists).
skunkboy13 3 years ago
"it's time to move on to more specific experiments that test the actual theory behind the telepathy (if one exists). "
There have been many succesful telepathy exepriments worked on since the late 19th century.
RavenXGhost 3 years ago 7
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'There have been many succesful telepathy exepriments worked on since the late 19th century.'
...cool, cite them
CleveDan 3 years ago
It is discussed in The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds, and I know there are other books on them.
lolz. Do the research.
RavenXGhost 3 years ago 7
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"It is discussed in The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds, and I know there are other books on them.
lolz. Do the research."
Radin books?? I thought we were talking about scientific research?
CleveDan 3 years ago
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Consider as well: we have to take the family's word for it that's the dog's waiting spot. We could have the texas sharpshooter fallacy here. The last spot the dog is on the video the family pronounces his favorite waiting spot. Also, is this the only video? Are the misses not being reported? We don't know.
Also, are there still people in the house? You made no mention of that. Did the woman make a cell phone call home? The dog would pick up on that too.
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
- dog owners know where their dogs wait... come on
- misses??? l... the control period is time she's away
- no one else was in the house... no calls were made
- we'll post more trials soon
skeptiko 3 years ago
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Again, we have to trust the dog owners are being honest. A psychic dog is sure something to talk about. It is not beyond belief people might fudge their dogs favorite waiting spot after the fact. You talk about a family but only mention the owner leaving. These are not unreasonable questions to ask. They need to be asked. They should be included in the original video.
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
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Perhaps the dog is simply picking up on the way she is dressed and the time of day. She's not in her work clothes. It's not morning. Jeans at 3 pm on a saturday means she's out of the house for about an hour. The dog has figured this out.
It's a little early to call this an example of telepathy.
familyfilmfest 3 years ago
Think that through... no way that accounts for such a close correlation. You'll see more trials in the future and it will be more clear.
skeptiko 3 years ago
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Work this through: she's wearing her "running errands clothes". It's saturday. The dog may have learned that when she's wearing jeans and leaving in the afternoon she goes out for an hour or two hours or three hours. So the dog gets in his waiting position roughly every hour. If she came back two hours later or three hours later, maybe we'd see the dog take that position once every hour.
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago
- listen to the podcast and you'll hear more about the background of these trials... this is not what's going on.
skeptiko 3 years ago
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Do you have a link explaining your protocols? Seems to me science isn't done through podcasts. Not many people want to rake through an hour of babble to find out the information that should be in text.
gokoreapodcast 3 years ago