 It's Saturday, January 23rd, and this is For Good Reason. Welcome to For Good Reason, I'm DJ Grothy. For Good Reason is the radio show and the podcast produced in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation, an international nonprofit whose mission is to advance critical thinking about the paranormal, pseudoscience, and the supernatural. Before we get to this week's guest, James Randi, here's what's going to be a regular feature on For Good Reason, Jamie Ian Swiss, The Honest Liar. What's it mean to be an honest liar? The magician Carl Jermaine, a famous American stage performer at the turn of the 20th century, said that conjuring is the only absolutely honest profession. The conjurer promises to deceive and does. So you see, if I didn't tell you first, I'd be in advertising or maybe politics. But Jermaine nailed it. Once I used the word magician, I'm saying, I'm going to fool you. But it's okay. It's my job. Whereas a phony psychic, well, that's redundant, but a self-proclaimed psychic or a mind reader is being a dishonest liar. He's lying about the fact that he's lying. He's saying, no, honest, I'm telling you the truth, it's not a trick, it's supernatural powers. Well, I say, screw that lying son of a bitch and the unicorn he wrote in on. Now sometimes people wonder why someone who makes his living as a professional deceiver might get upset about people being deceived. Well, it's because magicians make an honest living as honest liars. And some of us, not all of us, but many magicians are offended when people misuse the tools of our honest living to mislead people about the way the universe works. People who want to manipulate your worldview for prestige, power, or profit. Now it turns out that magicians have been speaking out about this subject for a very, very long time. The first book published in English that included explanations of magic tricks was called The Discovery of Witchcraft by Reginald Scott, published in England in 1584. But Discovery of Witchcraft, discovery in that time and usage meant explanation of, is not a book about magic tricks. It's a book of rational inquiry. Scott wrote the book to debunk the witch burnings that were prevalent in the time of Jamesy in England. In fact, when James I subsequently took the throne in 1603, he declared the book heretical and ordered all copies burned, an unmistakable sign of a good book. Now Scott doesn't claim in the book that witches don't exist, rather he questions the evidence. He says that the evidence being presented was insufficient to convict people of witchcraft, and he provides a brief chapter explaining magic tricks to make the point that people can be deceived, but that seeing a magician perform a trick like, well, the cups and balls should not be sufficient cause to burn him at the stake. Thankfully my job is a little safer these days. Scott was in effect foreshadowing a basic credo of critical thinking popularized by Carl Sagan among others to wit, Dying Extraordinary Claim, Requireth that Thou Presenteth Some Extraordinary Provingeth, whatever. So that's more than four centuries that magicians and skeptics have been conjoined at least in the literature, and it's likely that our role as critical thinkers and debunkers of paranormal claims long predates even that. But skip ahead now, 250 years to the mid-19th century and the age of spiritualism when seances in all manner of communication with the dead became a growth industry. Enter Harry Houdini, the world's most famous magician who would become notorious for busting phony seance mediums. Houdini would even attend seances in disguise and then at the appropriate moment suddenly a lighter match in the dark and unmask the medium as a fraud, catching her in flagrante philatia as it were, emblazing trickery, illuminating the medium at the very instant when she had secretly untied her bindings and was waving about bells and tambourines on sticks. By the time Harry Houdini died in 1926, spiritualism was gasping its final breath as well, and the use of physical phenomena, spirits moving objects in the seance room, writing on slates and other ghostly manifestations, would fall all but dead as it were for the next 50 years. Until that is, an obscure Israeli magician arrived on the scene who claimed he could bend silverware just by thinking about it, as long of course as he could get his grubby paws on it and fiddle with it for a while too, and just as a spiritualist at the turn of the century had to contend with Harry Houdini, the metal warpers of the 1970s were challenged by the most important skeptic of our time, James Randi. For myself, I've known Randi first as an inspiration, then as a colleague, and finally as a friend. As a boy, I saw him perform magic on a local New York children's program called Wonderama hosted by Sunny Fox. I saw Randi perform magic and I knew that's what I wanted to do too. Later when I was in my early 20s, Randi wrote a book entitled The Magic of Yuri Geller. That book didn't tell me much I didn't already know about Geller and what he was doing. I've been doing magic since I was 7 years old, I was probably a skeptic by the age of 11, but Randi's book opened my mind to the implications and the dangers of the gallows of the world. The cost and lost time and resources in pursuing false beliefs. The cost of lost money and perhaps even personal fortunes to purveyors of phony supernatural claims. I'd go into bookstores that didn't carry the book and insist they order it. I'd order half a dozen copies, give them away to people, then order another batch somewhere else. Randi raised my consciousness, my sense of moral outrage. He radicalized me, and he taught me the difference between honest lying and dishonest lying. He taught me what it meant to be an honest liar. This is Jamie Ian-Swiss, and I am the Honest Liar. Thanks, Randi. See you next week. Honest. I'm really happy that my first guest on For Good Reason is James Randi. Of course, he's a world-renowned magician, skeptic, investigator of paranormal claims. He's really the central figure in the founding of the worldwide skeptical movement, along with other folks like Carl Sagan, Paul Kurtz, Isaac Asimov others. Perhaps he's best known for his $1 million challenge, in which the James Randi Educational Foundation will award $1 million to anyone who's able to show evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event under mutually agreed-upon conditions. He's appeared widely in the media, including on Johnny Carson, some 22 times. He's also a regular on Penn and Teller's Showtime series, Bullshit. He's received a number of awards and recognitions, including the MacArthur Genius Grant and the American Physical Society's Forum Award for promoting public understanding of the relation of physics to society. He's the author of many books, including The Truth About Uri Geller, Flim Flam, and The Faith Healers. James Randi, welcome to the first episode of For Good Reason. It's good to be here. Let's catch up our listeners on some recent news. First, you've finished with your chemo regimen. You're feeling better than ever, right? That's correct, and I've managed to beat it very well, mostly due to attitude and following the instructions. It was medical science, not homeopathy, prayer, chanting, or symbols or anything like that. Right. Thank God for medical science, right? Exactly, yes. OK. In this whole process, I know from conversations we've had off the air, you're kind of stunned by how much junk science, how much quack medicine is pedaled to cancer patients. Yes, and particularly through the NIH, who in every one of their publications, they mention the possibility of acupuncture as a means of combating side effects of chemotherapy. Now, this is total nonsense, because acupuncture doesn't work. And yet the NIH is giving passive approval to it by mentioning it in all of their literature. Now, I've been over to several cancer treatment places here, and I can build this place and whatnot. Very good places to visit when you're undergoing this ordeal. And I've looked through all of the literature, and almost invariably anything published by the NIH, the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., an official organ of the U.S. government, will mention the fact that you should ask your physician about acupuncture. That is nonsense. It's, as I say, passive approval of acupuncture. And I'm trying to do something about that. Why do you think that the federal government would support something like that? Is it moneyed interests? Is it just that they're being open-minded despite the evidence? What is it? I think it's being politically correct, because there are people, now I find people at this place, even when we sit around in the evenings and we chat among ourselves, and I find people say, oh, no, acupuncture has worked beautifully for me. Before acupuncture, oh, I had all kinds of side effects. And you can't put that sort of in these people are convinced that since they show some signs of improvement or lack of side effects, it must be due to the acupuncture. Nonsense. Well, I know I speak for so many others when I say how thrilled I am that you're back in the saddle, you're feeling a lot better. And at the end of this month, you're going to, we're hoping you'll get a clean bill of health and then kind of get out there speaking more, doing what you love to do. Oh, yes. And I prefer to do it now, but my physicians have told me, just wait till you get the pet scan, which is going to scan my coral body. And it's going to tell me whether there are any nodules of cancer still in my lymph gland or some hidden place like that. But it's a very good test. It's painless. I fall asleep in the cylinder. And they wake me up an hour later and the pet scan is already done. So it's another triumph of medical science. Other recent news, Randy. Well, just yesterday it happened that James McCormick, this huckster who was selling the dowsing devices that supposedly detected bombs, he was arrested in the UK on fraud charges. Yes. Well, that's only one make of the dowsing things, except that they're all exactly the same. They're junk science and what they are. They excuse people get away with this. Oh, there are no electronics in there that really work. No, because it's dowsing, you see. And they seem to believe in dowsing. Now, I have, as I explained on the video, which is now up on Swift, as you know, I explain in detail that it was I that was responsible and therefore the JRF that was responsible for directing the Department of Energy to investigate the reality or lack of reality of the so-called dowsing rock that were being sold by these con artists like McCormick, who has, as you mentioned there, has now been apprehended. He's been charged with fraud in the UK. Of course, you'll get out and he's got millions of dollars to fight it. And he may even run, which as I say clearly, that would be the best outcome of this whole thing that McCormick would plead to escape prostitution. That would make him an internationally sought fugitive, and it would prove our case. He doesn't have anything to say, lots of claims, lots of noise, but he has refused to accept the million-dollar challenge of the JRF for one thing. And it seems odd that a fellow wouldn't want to make it for about 20 minutes of his valuable time, make an investigation of this artist, this dowsing stick that he sells to see whether or not it worked. He can make one million dollars, DJ. One million dollars, since I did 20 minutes. But he doesn't want that. Now anybody who doesn't want a million dollars to 20 minutes of work is intellectually and documentally challenged, I would say. I'd like to let our listeners know that you can find the link to that video where Randy shares his extensive remarks on McCormick and these bomb detection devices on our website forgoodreason.org. Randy, what amazes me about all of this is that even after your public exposé of McCormick's and other similar devices, government officials in the UK, in the US, and in Iraq, they all got snookered. McCormick sold something like $85 million worth of these things, these ADE 561 bomb detection devices. How can they buy into that even when you're so clearly showing the stuff's bunk? Well again, there's a lot of political correctness involved. For example, we know that in Iraq alone, that they sold so many of these things and they were sold, incidentally, through a general, an army general there who insisted that thing works, naturally he insisted it works because he's got a share of the profits of selling this thing. And they're selling them for up to $60,000 a unit, something with no working electronics in it, no battery whatsoever, is supposed to work on the human aura and the human magnetic field and such. Total nonsense, quackery of the most advanced nature. So McCormick, he's getting your ire up, but you reserve much of your indignation for these gullible government officials who bought the things. Some folks often charge us with doing trivial stuff. Oh, that skepticism stuff is trivial. Here's an example though, Randy, of how untrivial it is. Belief in these untested pseudoscience claims, they actually cost lives. If you think the gizmo is going to detect bombs and it doesn't, people will die. Well, for example, the ADE 651, which is the one that McCormick has been currently selling, this is the one which is used at all entrances and exits of every major access to the city of Baghdad. For example, that's only one example of where it's used. All over the Middle East, in cafes and police departments, in military depots, on access points, on roads and at intersections, but they want to inspect vehicles. And often, these vehicles leave that scene and half a block away, they blow up because they've got bombs aboard them. The ADE 651 machine, and it's not a machine, it's just a force. This is somewhere, very similar to all the other machines including the quadro and the mole and these various other so-called dowsing rods. It does not work and it costs lives of civilians and militia all over the country. All over the world. Randy, let me ask you, why are you, this magician kind of critical thinking advocate, why does it fall to you to raise the alarm bells about these dowsing devices that purport to save people's lives by detecting bombs when they don't actually work? Why does it fall on a magician critical thinking skeptic rather than some governmental body or some watchdog group? I mean, everybody else is asleep at the wheel is what I'm saying, it falls on you to do this. Why is that? Well, I really wish I knew, DJ, I don't quite understand it yet, except again, for the political correctness rule, all the army and military forces all over the world are subject to commanding officers. If the commanding officer says, this is something we should look into or this is something we should buy, no one dares make any questions about it or offer any objections, they simply buy the thing. Now, I have a couple of contacts and I won't tell you within what agency because I don't want to expose these people. Right, we don't want to make that public. Well, we don't want to make it public because we would betray these people's confidence, but I've heard from them privately, quite a few people just two days ago, for example, and from other agencies, again, that we won't mention, who are saying, yes, you're absolutely right, Mr. Randy, I wish I could get somebody here to do something, but they're helpless because there's somebody is at a higher rank than they are that believe that this stuff works or even if they don't believe it works, they want to say, I did the correct thing, they're very much like lawyers, whose answer is always no, don't do this, and then they try to get around the possibilities of errors that they might find in their procedure, but the safe answer is no, I don't look into this thing, don't go any further with it. So, as I was suggesting earlier in our conversation, if anyone wants a concrete crystal clear example of how skepticism matters, this kind of skepticism, your work here will actually save lives. If it weren't for you raising the alarm bell about McCormick, he wouldn't have been investigated, he wouldn't have been arrested on fraud charges, that's the way I see it. That's very true. So, I wanted you on our first show, not only so we could touch on some of these recent news items, but so that we could let our listeners know what's in store for them at the James Randy Educational Foundation. You and I have had some long discussions over the last couple months about strategy for the foundation going forward. We're excited to build on the great track record of the foundation, even while we're really revved up to try some new things to increase our impact. What's getting you excited looking into the future of the foundation? Well, almost everything, DJ, I must say, since you came aboard, we've had a big changes made here. You've had to initiate some... Well, I was gonna say unfortunate, not unfortunate, but difficult to swallow adaptations and changes in the general setup of the JRF. And I have stood back and I've watched you do this sort of thing. You've done it with grace and with delicacy. And I must say, and I think you'll admit, our staff has taken these adjustments. They have accepted what you've said that there hasn't been any problem involved in it. Now, a couple of the, well, maybe minor disappointments and changes, but nothing is going to affect the operation of the JRF. In fact, the JRF is soaring ahead. You've made a great change and I thank you for that. Well, I appreciate you saying that. And I couldn't agree with you more about the staff. It's a great team, a lot of innovative ideas, energy, enthusiasm and the commitment level is really impressive to me. What's amazing about the staff is how just fiercely loyal they are to your vision for advancing critical thinking and skepticism out there. And they work long hours, as you mentioned, we've instituted some just nonprofit business management practices, but everyone's revved up and excited and we're all rolling up our sleeves to do the important work of the foundation. I'm excited, you're excited. Let's talk about some of the specifics. Well, first is the million dollar challenge. It's not going away. In fact, we're going to continue it and even work to expand it in various ways, right? Yes, that's right. And then many people have bricked me, but the challenge is being terminated. They don't read the page carefully, obviously, because quite some months ago, I came up with an announcement that because the woo-woo's out there, we're celebrating the fact that the million dollar challenge was off. And as you know, DJ, it's very obvious to anyone. This is the one factor that they consider in their way. They can't get away with their flummary unless they get rid of the million dollar challenge because they don't have an adequate response to it. Why don't you take the million dollar challenge? Now, the regular won't answer that. And the other people that John Edward don't answer, when I wrote to John Edward's representative at the network when he was on American television with his regular program crossing over, I got a letter from this press agent which really said, dear sir, that's me, apparently, John Edward does not respond to criticism, period. You're Australian, find it. This is an answer. He doesn't want a million dollars. Now, if John Edward doesn't want a million dollars for doing 20 minutes of a test of these powers, I think the man is intellectually advertising previously judgmentally challenged. Who doesn't want a million dollars? I know that I'd be chomping at the bit to get it and I think there'd be a lineup outside my home or outside the JRAP office this very moment. But there isn't. This isn't that strange. It's crazy if there's a million dollars on the table and someone has an ability or can substantiate a claim to get that million dollars and then they walk away from it. That doesn't make any sense, I agree. So our plans to expand the million dollar challenge, we wanna take it on the road, not just take applications, but do some live tests. Really, it's our chief means of raising awareness about these, I think, irresponsible claimants or at least the irresponsible claims. It's also the big way we have of raising consciousness among the public about their own responsibility to be skeptical about all this stuff. Another thing though, DJ, I'm most intractive for just one second. I'm increasingly now, in the last few weeks, I've gotten notes from people that say, I have this wonderful power, but I don't want my name used and I don't wanna be tested in public. I just wanna do this all very privately and I don't want anyone to know my identity. Get out of here, come on. You want a million dollars, you gotta go along with the rules. I won't make an exception to those rules. Or will you, of course, these are firmly established rules that are right on the webpage. You can find that by clicking in on million dollars challenge. You'll see all the rules there. At least people decide, oh, but I'm special because I really got the power. I'm not like the earlier, thanks, you see. I'm the one that's got the power, so I want exceptions. They won't get any exception. You do it our way or you don't do it. You're not offering a million dollars. We're offering a million dollars. Right, and on that point, sometimes we're challenged by claimants who say, oh, the deck is stacked, your rules are unfair. No, in fact, the rules are public. We just want a way to shine the light of the public on the process. That's why everything's public. That's why we want people to reveal their names. If they're making a claim that should overturn the laws of physics, say, well, they should be willing to stand up and take credit for it, right? I would think so and take the price. And more than that, the tests that we conduct are conducted under mutually agreed upon scientific circumstances. So it's not that the JREF has these challenges or these tests that no one has a say in. No, it's mutually agreed upon if some claimant comes and tries for the million dollars. We actually want someone to win the million dollars if it means that they're real and we've discovered some, as yet unreported, amazing claim. Well, I can see that a Nobel Prize here, at least, can't you, D.J.? Emphatically, yes. And it just so happens that in all the years you've offered the million dollar challenge, no one has ever come forward with evidence to substantiate their claims. That's correct. It's been tested for more than 10 years now and none of these people have beaten the odds at all and the odds are very fairly stacked in their direction, in their favor. Our statisticians make sure that that's the case and yet no one can beat the odds so far. Now, maybe tomorrow or maybe in the next 20 minutes, somebody will come forward and maybe this broadcast itself will stimulate people out there to say, oh, well, I've got the power. I guess I can easily prove it. Read the rules, first, please. Don't bother us with all kinds of factuous claims that you're too shy or you've got something in the oven that you can't reveal. Come on, do the thing, perform, do your thing, collect a million dollars and go home laughing. So when you hear a claimant dismiss the million dollar challenge as just a publicity stunt, your response is, well, there is a publicity aspect about it. We want to raise people's awareness, their consciousness, but it's not that we're disinterested in discovering successful paranormal claimants. Yes, there's a publicity element, but we also are genuinely inquiring to try to find out if any of these claims are real. That's true. Now, I don't expect any of them to be quite frank with you. You said earlier that we want someone to win the million dollar prize. Now, my personal impetus is not that I want someone to win the million dollar prize. Now, I frankly don't expect it because I've been in this business. Well, I'm 81 now going on at 82. I've been in the business since I was about 14 years of age. I've been investigating these things and that experience over all those decades. I'll let you do the subtractive because I'm not that great at mathematics. So after you do the subtractive, you will find out the number of years that I've actually had this offer up in front of people though it wasn't always a million dollars at one time. It was only a thousand dollars, and then it was 10,000, and then became a million. But we've had this offer out there all the time. I don't expect that anyone's going to be able to beat it. It won't be because we stacked anything against them. This is done in the open, as you say, very plainly. Frankly, in the open, everybody can see it. They can see the development of it and they can judge it for themselves. It's done 100% fairly and in very, very large majority of cases, I'm not involved, you're not involved. In fact, no one from the JREP has actually involved. These are usually done in other countries, in the homeland of the people who are making the claims, as far as Russia and Argentina and Canada, all over the United States and Europe, of course, it's done there by people who are certified as having the ability to conduct fair tests. They're all academics, they're statisticians, they're scientists, and you can't question their integrity or their ability. So we have nothing to do with it, we just get the report from these people saying, oops, they failed. Not much of a surprise to us, but there it is. Yeah, but on that point, so you've been around the block, you think it's unlikely any of these claimants are real, but you're not so close-minded that if someone won, they wouldn't get the million dollars. I mean, it's really there for the taking, if anyone proves it. Well, it's not only that. We are legally committed to seek by law. If you examine our webpage, we'll be promised this sort of thing. I've done it in my books, I've done it in my articles, I've done it in all of my public lectures and speeches around the world. I have declared the presence of this million-dollar child. It's there, the million dollars is with Goldman Sachs in New York City, it's on deposit there, it gathers interest for us every year. I forgot what it's at, now it's a 1.4 million or something right now, and we can take that excess off the top to help run the foundation if and when we might need it. We don't usually do that because the rate of interest is very good on such an account. The money is there, the price is real. It's all on offer and we are legally committed to paying the million dollars. Any lawyer will tell you that. We have compared ourselves publicly and out in the open. We are declared. Now there's a fellow in Australia who you'll be, you'll know the name, Samet. This man has been saying for years now, there's no million dollars, there's no such offer, that he is lying and such. In fact, we post the Goldman Sachs statements on our website, yeah. That's right, and if we did that and it was not proper, Goldman Sachs would certainly be suing our ass immediately. They wouldn't stand for anything like that. Samet in Australia is a lawyer, now retired I believe, but this guy has been claiming that it's not a legitimate offer and he's wanted this to make a firm commitment with a document. Now I drew up the document, I had lawyers help me do it. I filled it off to him and said, we will sign this document, is this satisfactory? Silence, DJ. Silence, we haven't heard from Samet since that point. He now knows he's confronted with the fact we will sign the document as presented and it is legally binding internationally in school. And yet he won't approve of that document. He won't correspond with us in any way whatsoever. So Samet, he knows and he won't admit it. Well, of course he won't accept the document because he gets more play out of making the baseless charge that the million dollar challenge is fake than actually working with us to use the million dollar challenge to ferret out unsuccessful or possibly successful claimants. So touching on just a couple other things, Randy, looking forward to the future of the JREF, we've decided to renew our investment in the grassroots, grassroots skeptical organizing, and this means regional workshops, more resources to local skeptics groups. You really see the grassroots as the future of organized skepticism. Oh, absolutely, there's no question of that. And I think that your presence, DJ, has done a great deal to promote this attitude and this venture within the James Randy Educational Foundation. It's pretty well due to you and I give you full credit. Well, as you mentioned earlier though, you have a great team there already and we're all working together to implement this kind of vision at the grassroots. I'm excited like you are. One last thing I wanna mention before we finish up, and I know you're incredibly enthusiastic about this prospect, it's the expansion of the amazing meetings around the world. Last year saw our first international amazing meeting in London. We're repeating that this year as well as expanding into Australia, very excited about that. Then next year, hopefully into Europe. So question about this international expansion. People everywhere are asking us. I've seen the emails, I've gotten some myself. People want us to come into their countries and do a national conference on critical thinking, an amazing meeting in this, that, or the other country. Why do you think there's all this new interest in amazing meetings around the world, Randy? Well, I think that people are getting more aware of the JRS, of course, and of our work in general. Certainly Switzerland isn't very much aware, but I've got a lot of good friends in Switzerland, and they have been emailing me, oh, I hear you're coming to Switzerland. That's the European connection that you referred to a moment ago. And I can't wait to get to Switzerland again, not only is it a beautiful country, but wonderful, wonderful people who are very curious, very scientifically minded people who really want to see something like this happen. It'll happen in 2011, I believe, in Switzerland, that's the present plan. It'll take a while to get that underway, but I can't wait to expand internationally, and we have some possible affiliations with other skeptical groups coming up as well, but we won't speak about that because that's all information, right? Exactly, we can say we're very excited about strategic alliances with groups around the world. A lot is in the works, and I could not be more optimistic, even as a skeptic, you know, not a cynic, but a skeptic about the future of the James Randy Educational Foundation and with your kind of vision and inspiring folks, both at the grassroots and at the foundation, it's just nothing but critical thinking, success going forward. Well, before leaving, DJ, I'm gonna give our listeners a little bit of a secret about you. Oh. You see, I must say that I think that, I may be wrong about this, but I think that you were saying, for example, when you announced to me privately and in the confidential emails, some of the changes that were really made at the JREF, and you wondered on those correspondences with me, you just wondered whether or not the staff was going to take it correctly, and I assured you that there was no problem, that they were flexible, that they were willing to accept. I think you were a bit surprised to find how easily it went down with the staff because they're all thinking, rational people, and they're accepting. They know that you're the new boss here, and you were just a tad surprised, I think, that they took it that easily. Am I correct? You're correct, you must be a mind reader because when I took up the helm of the JREF, as everyone knows non-profits, not just the JREF, but non-profits all over the place, sometimes have to make minor course corrections to have more increased impact for their missions, and coming into an organization that I hadn't been a part of, I had these questions as you recount, I have been incredibly impressed with both the enthusiasm and the commitment, but also the stick-to-itiveness of the staff. People are rolling up their sleeves saying, okay, let's figure out what we need to do to take the JREF to the next level, so you're absolutely right. There's not only a lot of enthusiasm, but there's a lot of just kind of nose-to-the-grindstone mentality, and that's what we need if we're going to continue growing like the JREF needs to grow in order to respond to all of these irresponsible claims in society. We were talking about the ADE-561 bomb detection devices earlier and how the government bought into all of that, and it was up to you to ring the alarm bells. That's why the JREF is so important. It kind of stands between all the credulous masses out there who believe nonsense, some of which is actually harmful, stands between the nonsense claims and the public. We do a vital work and I'm excited about the team we have to do that work. So Randy, thanks for having me aboard and nothing but good stuff to report for the future. Well, welcome to the group, DJ. It's been a great pleasure having just a bit of a broadcast. I must say, your last remark there, you said the government, but you're talking about governments all over the world because in every country of the world, they have accepted these so-called dowsing rods, and I think we're doing all those folks a great favor as well. I certainly hope so. Well, thank you, Randy, and we look forward to talking to you next time you're on the show. Great discussion. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this first episode of For Good Reason. I want to especially single out Richard Dawkins and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science for generous initial underwriting support to make For Good Reason possible. To get involved with an online conversation about today's show, join the discussion at forgoodreason.org. Views expressed on For Good Reason aren't necessarily the views of the James Randy Educational Foundation. Questions and comments on today's show can be sent to info at forgoodreason.org. For Good Reason is produced by Thomas Donnelly and recorded from St. Louis, Missouri. Our music is composed for us by Emmy Award-nominated Gary Stockdale. Contributors to today's show included Jamie Ian-Swiss and Christina Stevens. I'm your host, DJ Growthy.