 It's Monday, November 28th, 2011, and this is For Good Reason. Welcome to For Good Reason, I'm DJ Grohthy. This show is the radio show and the podcast produced in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation, a non-profit whose mission is to advance critical thinking about the paranormal, pseudoscience, and the supernatural. My guest this week is James Randi. He's a world-renowned magician and skeptic and investigator of paranormal claims. He's had a central role in the development of the worldwide skeptical movement which the James Randi Educational Foundation supports. He's perhaps best known for issuing a million-dollar challenge to a number of paranormal claimants around the world, especially the celebrity psychics. He's appeared very widely in the media, including on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show at least 22 times, and has been a regular on Penn and Teller's old Showtime series, Bullshit. He's received a number of recognitions, including a MacArthur Genius Grant and the Forum Award from the American Physical Society for promoting the public understanding of the relation of physics to society. He's the author of a number of books, including Truth About Uri Geller, and also The Faith Healers, Flim Flam, and An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. Randi, welcome back to For Good Reason. Always good to be here, DJ. Randi, we have a lot of new listeners to the show, so if you don't mind, let's start off with the basics. The James Randi Educational Foundation. We push being skeptical. We say skepticism is a good thing to be. You've been named actually the leading skeptic of the 20th century. So to begin, let's just start off with what the heck is skepticism? Well, let's not mistake it. There can be a confusion here. A lot of people who are cynical think that they're skeptical. They may also be skeptical, but cynicism is not skepticism at all. Skepticism, and I don't think we have to go back to the Greek roots of it, skeptos and whatnot. It is simply insisting that evidence be offered for claims, particularly claims that are not likely to be true, claims of flying sausages and dowsing with sticks to find oil underground, and things like that, oil and water, or lost children or whatever. These are claims that are unlikely to be true, and I think they deserve skepticism by their very nature. Now that doesn't mean Asia-Synic would say, there's no such thing I don't want to talk about it, and they just walk away from it. And the cynic also ascribes ulterior motives to people who believe these things or who push them. And it may just be ignorance. It may just be lack of sophistication that makes people accept these things or leads them to accept these things. So skepticism has to be thought of as not cynicism. I think we should never let that enter our spectrum of thought and activity. And I certainly don't let it enter mine whatsoever. And the James Randi Educational Foundation should be devoted to skepticism as defined as I've just described it, I believe. So skepticism is a kind of open-minded inquiry. That's what you're getting at. That's right. Bertrand Russell has this great line. You know, you should believe only those things for which there's adequate evidence. That's what you just said. But to me, that seems sort of uncontroversial. So if skepticism is just thinking critically about things, only believing stuff for which there's adequate evidence, doesn't everyone actually buy into that sort of skepticism? I mean, I can't imagine anyone who actually promotes the value of being gullible. Everyone, even the person who says she believes in UFOs, you know, you often hear these people say, well, I'm a skeptic, I only believe this because of the evidence. Well, let's get into the definition of evidence. This seems to be the operating word here. What is evidence? Now that we've tried to tell our folks what skepticism is and it's proven by evidence, that is, it can be examined using evidence only. Then the definition of evidence comes into view. And that's perhaps a little more difficult to arrive at. Evidence is something that stays no matter how much you examined it, no matter how much you test it and you tease it and try to pull it apart and negate it and defy it and whatnot, it remains there. Four plus four equals eight, if I remember my arithmetic correctly and I believe I do. Now you can test that by taking four cantaloupes and four Volkswagen's and put them in a huge box and mix them up. Now the cantaloupes won't do too well in the mixing, I'm sure. But if you count them afterwards, if you can pick out the pieces, there are still four plus four, which equals eight. There are eight objects in that box. And I don't know how I came up with cantaloupes and Volkswagen's. I have no idea whatsoever if that's the way my evil mind works. But that is a thing you can test again and again and again. And it will never give you a different result. That four objects, distinct objects added to four other distinct objects will always result in a total of eight. So that would constitute good evidence for me. But evidence has to be something that can be tested that way. No, not that simply or simplistically, I should say. No, sometimes it's much more difficult to examine evidence. But we've got to take some lessons in examining evidence, I think. And that's one thing that the JRAF has promoted for years. How do you know that something is true? How do you examine evidence for it? And we frequently run into the problem and we offer solutions. So it seems like you're touching on the point that the evidence needs to be objective, independently verifiable. There's this notion of intersubjectivity. So various people could have the same experience of the evidence as well. So it's not just a matter of taste or personal preference or one man's hidden or a cult or secret knowledge, but that it's open to everyone's objective scrutiny. And one thing that we find all the time too, and I'm sure you've run into it, DJ, well, we've all run into it, is people who say, oh, I just know that's true. I don't need evidence. And I don't want to see that. I don't want to see the page number in there. No, no, I don't want to see the book. Close that book. No, that's not necessary. I just know that what I just told you is true. And that is not just knowing. That is wishful thinking in many cases. Now, it may be true. The premise that's being examined here may be true. But just knowing it is not sufficient. And many people can't follow that and they don't follow that. They seem to think that they've got some sort of inner knowledge or inspired knowledge. And of course all religious claims are exactly that sort of thing. There is no evidence for religious claims. There is evidence for certain claims that may be dubbed religious, but when they're examined carefully, they either don't apply to religion or they aren't true. So you touched on religion, and I'd like to get into that a bit more later, whether or not God is within the purview, claims of God's existence well within the purview of the kind of skepticism you're talking about. But let's stay on this evidence notion. So skepticism is believing only those things for which there's good evidence, and evidence is this kind of knowledge arrived at through observation that is objective. It's not just a matter of personal preference or taste. And all of this sounds kind of scientific. This is the language scientists use. Yes, it is. Well, the actual, I would say, is somewhat more accurate that mathematics is the language of science. But the premises of science are all based upon the gathering and evaluation of evidence and coming to a conclusion based upon that evaluation. But you're absolutely right. No, science is a logical, rational process, and it can be the experiments that either prove or disprove a premise in science can be arrived at many different ways. In fact, there are many different ways of establishing each one of those premises. And we would take days of evaluation here on these microphones trying to define that, I guess, and to limit it. But it is pretty well limitless. There are so many ways to come to a conclusion, a conclusion based on reason, rationality, and if you will, mathematics. And if they don't agree, then there's something wrong with at least one of them. And there's something wrong with the process of reasoning. What? Skepticism is continuous with the methods, the processes of science, they're all of a piece. And that's why not only do you have some magicians being skeptics, but you have scientists. You know, they're the group of people that we look to to kind of push this sort of skepticism that James Randi Educational Foundation holds up. Yeah, of course. And science is something that so many people are afraid of. They say, oh, he's talking science again. Click, and that's the end of the listening in. This is very frightening to me that people will turn away from it when they hear the words science brought in. But science is a logical, rational way of approaching problems in the world. It's not a mysterious thing. It's not a religion itself. It has very strict rules and such, and any scientist steps outside those rules and adopts the attitude, and I've heard of many of them who do, that we need to investigate that this is acknowledged. Well, I want to know whether it's acknowledged or not. Is that really the square root of 16.4 or whatever? Yeah, moving on then, really about the specific focus of the JREF. We're not a science education organization only. We don't teach people astronomy or biology, et cetera. We support scientific literacy, and we focus on the paranormal, on pseudoscience in particular. Why that focus? Why not just be pro-science in general? Well, science itself is pro-science. There are many, many agencies and many individuals, many groups out there that are handling scientific problems and coming to conclusions via scientific means. But the JREF is much more dedicated to those very highly questionable things that really amount, in many cases, to nothing more than superstition or fond ideas that people would like to be true. And those things are very dangerous. They're insidious in that they can separate people from their sanity, for one thing, and certainly separate them from their money. And I think that that is the major job of the James Randi Educational Foundation that is to inform people that there may be alternate answers to the questions they're asking, if they're asking any questions at all, and to be very, very wary of what you find on apparently definitive and authoritative and dependable sources. Now, that doesn't apply to Google, of course, because Google, as we know, knows everything in the world. There's no question of that. But you notice that Google entries and such, and they are subject to correction either by readers or whatever. Agencies of various kinds. You've got to be very careful of accepting the corrections as well. So we are faced with a matter of judgment. And there is such a thing as good common sense, DJ. It does exist. There's no question of it. I hear people saying, oh, that's just an expression. Old ladies use that. Oh, it gets common sense. Well, it may be something for little old ladies to handle, but little old ladies sometimes know a lot. And we better listen to them, too. Common sense is an actual thing. It's something, well, first of all, it appeals to the intellect, it appeals to the rationality of people. But very commonly, very often, common sense can be wrong if it's based upon the wrong premises and the wrong education, the wrong background. And certainly, a religious background is going to lead people to come to very strange conclusions. In many cases, if their religion is so much a part of their philosophy that they cannot deny it, and they use it first before they use anything else, look at the candidates for the position of president of the United States that we've been seeing on TV. It is incredible. Hardly any of them can say anything in saying good night or goodbye than God bless you, or God bless the so-and-so party or whatever. And that party has a lot of so-and-so's in it, but we won't get into that. Yeah, that is such a pervasive thing, this belief first in religion and then on a logic in science and rationality. This is a very dangerous way to go. So I hear you saying that we focus on the paranormal, on pseudoscience in particular, because, one, we're doing it in the public interest. So there aren't really a lot of other organizations that focus on that. So we're filling a niche, and it's primarily because these beliefs are harmful. It's not just that we go after nonsense beliefs when they're trivial, we focus on this stuff because they can harm you in the ways you mentioned. Separate you from your money, from your sanity, that kind of lead you to being gullible and deceived by, you know, scurrilous people. So the point is it's the harm issue. Well, you know, I have constant proof of the value of the JRF. I'm not speaking about my personal value at all. I have a certain amount of that. I maintain a certain amount. I'm not scratching my own back here, but I must say that I get email every day. I get letters every day. I get phone calls every day. Information comes to me from people out there who literally say this kind of thing, you know, until I read your book so and so, or until I heard you on so and so, until I read this side of the other thing on Swift, I rather doubted that you were barking up a tree that had a raccoon in it. But by golly, I think you do, and I look closely at that tree and there are lots of raccoons up there. So let's go after them. I get letters of encouragement like this from people who are saying, you made a great difference in my life. And at the amazing meetings, the TAMS as we call them TAMS. These are the annual conferences that the James Randi Educational Foundation puts on. The one in Vegas this last summer attracted 1,672 people from all over the world, yeah? 35 countries, remember that? Right, right. We didn't attract the whole country, but we attracted people from 35 countries internationally speaking. But no, the position that we have to take in these things, the viewpoint from which we see them from our position as skeptics, sort of standing back from the whole thing is there are people suffering out there and those are the people who write me when they've received some relief from something that we've said, something we've published, or something that occurred at a TAM. And that happens so often. At TAMS, you and I have both had the experience of being stopped in the halls by somebody who looks a little hesitant, that wants to buttonhole you or me or any of our personnel, of course, and just say, I just want to thank you. You know, you changed my mind about so and so. And at that point, DJ, and I'm sure you do it too, I will examine it further with them and say, now are you sure that what we said about this subject is more definitive than what you firmly understood? And I would like to thrash it out with them a little bit because I don't want anybody to start believing what I say, simply because it's me saying it, and because I write books and because I make a lot of public appearances on TV and whatnot. That's not a good reason. The good reason is the proof of the pudding is in the tasting of it. So taste that pudding before you accept it. If a skeptic is a skeptic because of the authority of James Randy, that's not a very good reason. No, not a good reason at all. Randy, some folks not just at our amazing meetings or at the grassroots when we put on workshops or events all over the country, but online and elsewhere, they've argued, especially a bit more recently, that progressive social issues, say, like gay rights or civil rights, income inequality, maybe some environmentalism issues or issues surrounding feminism or sexism, that these issues are much more important than the kinds of topics you just talked about that the J-Ref focuses on, the paranormal and pseudoscience. They seem to argue we should be focusing on those things more than the trivial stuff, the things that go bump in the night. Well, I disagree with that very strongly, DJ, because we have our expertise. My specialty, obviously, as a magician is that I know how tricks are done and we're examining instances and situations where people are being tricked. So there are people out there who talk about the environment all the time. Individuals and huge groups of people, organizations that do this all the time, and the gay issues and the existence or non-existence of God and such, all of these things are being handled already, but the thing that people find so attractive is this paranormal, supernatural occult sort of a thing, and it's insidious. That's something that we have to specialize in going after, because that's where our strength is. And I don't want to get spread out too thin. Otherwise, we'll be talking about the price of Pepto-Bismol or whatever at the local drug store and arguing over the thing and finding whether it's fair and just. It's bad enough to have homeopathic medicines in drug stores now, but we don't want to spread our talents too thin. I think the JRF is where it is, and properly so, because of its specialization. I hear you saying that an organization that tries to do everything ends up doing nothing well, so we have our focus, our unique qualifications to focus on the paranormal, on pseudoscience given your background and the expertise the background of the JRF staff. We're almost unique among organizations with this laser-like focus on pseudoscience and the paranormal and investigating those sorts of claims in the public interest. And not only that, TJ. As I said earlier, the feedback I get from people, either at a meeting or a lecture that I do or as a result of a television show or radio broadcast or even here on the internet, the reaction I get from people shows that that's the right way to go. People do appreciate it and they do benefit from it. It's a service which is needed. It's certainly not trivial when I was in the Midwest with you at one of your talks and no exaggeration. A young man came up to you and this is going to sound a little cult of personality, but he teared up as he was talking to you about how your work has changed his life for the better. Some people go around in a cloud of goalability and they stumble upon James Randi, whether it's our YouTube channel or your writings or your public appearances and their light bulbs go off and they are really benefited from this new kind of skeptical perspective. So I've seen that firsthand. I've seen people with shaky, quivering voices come up to you and thank you for changing their lives. Well, they're thanking in the long run, they're thanking the JRF because this is an organization of people. It's not just me, I happen to be the figurehead out there and I do have a very attractive beard and that all adds up. I tell you, you can't deny that, but they're not necessarily thanking me personally. They're thanking the fact that the JRF exists and the JRF, when it came into existence, I thought, oh, this is going to take an awful lot of work off my back. Wrong! It is just meant that I have to work harder and faster and longer in order to get the same sort of things done. But I've got good people like you, for example, working with me on these problems and Sadie and all the rest of them. I'd better not start naming names or someone will get left out along the line. But the things that everyone connected with the JRF has done reflect on the organization and they don't reflect on me at all. Well, I think a lot of people are inspired by your decades of work, your continuing work, exposing these charlatans in the public interest, you're exposing frauds to help people out because undue credulity and these harmful paranormal claims, well, it hurts people to believe the nonsense and that's what gets your eye up. Randy, earlier you mentioned religion, you mentioned God. Let's just touch on that real quick. We kind of get it from both ends. This is not a dirty joke here, but if you're getting it from both ends, you must be doing something right just folks who really get mad at the JRF for not solely focusing on the God belief. And we have religious supporters. There are a number of religious supporters who say, I love what the JRF does. Yes, I believe, say, in the salvific power of Jesus or something, but I love that JRF exposes the charlatans, the fake faith healers, et cetera, and we have not only religious supporters, but you have some religious allies. There are religious skeptics who have worked in common cause with the JRF. And so we kind of cast a wide net in that way. We're a big tent organization. There's no statement of non-beliefs you have to sign in order to support the work that we do. Point is we get it from both sides, but two groups are saying you're not enough of X to please me. The atheists say you're not atheist enough, and the religious people say, some of them anyway, you're too atheistic. So where do you come out? Is the JRF an atheist organization or are we just like an organization with atheist staff? No, we are not specifically an atheist organization. I am a devoted atheist. I always say an atheist of the second kind because Webster's Dictionary, one of them that I have here, gives two definitions of atheism. The first one says the philosophy that says there is no deity. And the second definition, or not definition, but usage in this particular Webster says someone who does not find sufficient evidence to make a convincing case for the existence of a deity. So you're a skeptic of God's existence like you're a skeptic, say, of ghost's existence. You haven't found sufficient evidence. It's not that you know there is no God. It's that you don't believe there is a God because there ain't no good evidence. That's right. That's right. And you show me good evidence and I am willing to change my mind. Mine is going to have to be very good evidence, not because of my particular cut of mind, of course. At least I hope not. It's just that I have examined this since I was a tiny child. I remember at the age of eight and nine having arguments with babysitters, some of whom were evangelical types who used to mind me and my brother and sister when my parents went out and I did the theater or whatever. And I would give them a very good argument, pardon me, and they'd consider it a bad argument because the devil had gotten in touch with my tongue somehow, you see. And they would complain to my parents when they came home, oh, this child is dreadful. He argues about the existence of angels, for example. So I've had my experience of this from a very, very early age. I must say my parents never tried to really sell me on religion. They were Anglicans, which is sort of watered down Catholic in Canada. And they're going to love that. I can just hear people groaning now. But they never really tried to sell me on religion. I'm sure I told you my episode going to Sunday School. You have mentioned it again for our listeners. Oh, I'll read very briefly then because I tell my stories over and over again. I'm an old guy, you know. We tend to do that. They sent me to Sunday School and they were still a bed on a Sunday morning and they'd give me a quarter which was to put into the offering plate, so to speak. And they would send me off to Sunday School. I went the first time and got into arguments with the teachers right away. How do you know that's true? It's in this book. Oh well. I mean, who wrote that book? God wrote this book and Jesus wrote this book, et cetera. Well, I wasn't too convinced by that argument and I went the second week and I gave in the quarter, interestingly. But I went the second week and on that episode anyway I went the second week and I was finally thrown out of the class because I was making a lot of trouble and the other kids were not listening and they were listening more to me. So I was tossed out and the third week I discovered this wonderful fact which I've never forgotten and I've never quite gotten over. The 25 cents at Purdy's Drugstore on Bayview Avenue in Toronto would buy a two-flavor ice cream sundae and a tall tulip dish and that was a delay. It was much better than Sunday School. I can tell you that. Well, there you go, proving those fundamentalist Christians realistic in both senses of the term atheists who cared more about the here and now than the there and then. And probably so, probably so. Okay, so the JREF is not an atheist organization. You said that, but you're also a super big atheist yourself. Square that circle for me. Make sense out of this notion that we're not an atheist organization but I think almost all of us are atheists. Well, I'm willing to argue with anyone to discuss the matter if you will about the existence of a God. And I have done this at various meetings, lectures and after lectures that I have presided over the years. I will argue the matter and I won't give much ground on it and if they finally throw up their hand to say, well, there's no sense arguing with you. That's the best words I hear in the whole day because that means I'm finished with that one. And there is no point in arguing with somebody who insists that evidence be produced to support any premise. And that is what I insist on doing or I don't argue. Where is your evidence? Do you have any, first of all? And if so, where is it and how strong is it and let's discuss it. So I'm willing to do that at all times. I think that the God dosion and that's what I call the chapter in my forthcoming book, A Magician in the Laboratory and I'm sure you'll all rush out and buy several copies of as soon as it's published. The God delusion is the name of that particular chapter and it deals, it's a long chapter I will admit in my forthcoming book, but it is an important thing because so much of the misinformation that we have and the lack of reasoning and rationality that pervades our society is attributable to religion and look at wars. Look at the recent wars, look at wars back through history. The reason that most of these wars took off as they did is because of religious differences. Examine them carefully and you'll find that that's very true. I think that's true even in the 20th century but only if you define religion to include state religions like Nazism or Stalinism, Communism, something. So the chapter in your book The God Delusion should also be said that that's the title of one of our favorite books written by Richard Dawkins The God Delusion. You zero in on God belief as a topic well within the purview of the skeptical enterprise. Very true. So I maintain that this is to my mind and in my estimation and in my philosophy it is the greatest cause of misunderstanding of reality. That is the existence of religion because it's basically in my estimation again it's basically wrong and it can govern people to the point where they don't admit anything that doesn't admit anything to their philosophy or their reasoning processes if it doesn't embrace religion as well. I think that is a leading mistake. And so this is something that J.Ref does focus on but it's not our only focus and we don't zero in on solely on God belief or church state separation or something. You mentioned the reason why earlier I want to go over that again you're saying it's because other organizations do that, that's their focus and we have a niche focus when it comes to these testable claims these paranormal or religious claims where we can get in there and examine them. We have supernatural belief systems governing one's life a new age believer or a believer in psychics or a believer in some fundamentalist religious creed that's a world view it kind of covers all the bases in his or her life and consequently it kind of makes skepticism unable to kind of penetrate that unless the person gets open-minded enough to start examining this, that or the other belief. In many cases led people from their religious point of view to the point where religion only colors but does not rule their thinking process because I believe we can get them to that point just having a coloration in their thinking process that pretty soon that color gets fainter and fainter and pretty soon is called transparency. I like that turn of phrase but I also say, I don't know I'm not trying to pick a fight but I sometimes feel I have even more in common with a liberal religious person than some die-hard atheist who happens to be homophobic and sexist and racist and kind of believes in alt-med and denies the moon landing and all that other stuff. So atheism to me is not enough I tend to favor a skeptic who more broadly applies skepticism than just kind of being a one-note Johnny and only ever talking the God-belief. Yes, I would tend to agree with you on that, DJ. I tend that way too but I get into some different arguments than you might and so the approach and the result will be somewhat different. Right. So to finish up, Randy you're talking about the focus of the JRef, the work that we do we've talked about how you know we've both seen people talk to you about how the work of the JRef and your work has changed their lives under your leadership the last couple years we've undertaken a number of new projects let's finish up by highlighting a couple of those for our new listeners. Please, yes. First of all the record attendance that we had at the last Tam in Las Vegas there I think we can be very justly proud of that you know one thousand six hundred and seventy two people that's a huge crowd we had been doing things that for example we sponsored that what they called the 1023 it should be 10 to the 23rd power I'm a stickler on that the anti-homiopathy campaign we were the US sponsors of that anti-homiopathy campaign and you issued a challenge actually to the pharmacies who peddled that stuff and you know even the pharmacy business they just throw up their hands with no shame whatsoever and say yes but people want to buy it you know and then Mike my response to that of course is oh you will sell heroin then if they want it and they will pay the money for it and they say oh no no no that's against the law oh then it's a case of if it's still legal and you can still get away with it you'll do it because it makes you money it stops rather abruptly so we sponsored that national campaign we issued the million dollar paranormal challenge to the claimants of homiopathy but we also issued the million dollar challenge to a number of other folks this year yes we did indeed some specific people Jay von Krog hasn't been heard much of lately you notice well DJ why don't you tell us about the project that you did on behalf of the national course with your zombies we had fun with and this is on our YouTube channel which is one of the most subscribed non-profit YouTube channels and all of YouTube history there will be a link to it on our website forgoodreason.org Randy we got a group of J-Ref volunteers here in Southern California to do a I don't know would it be called a zombie flesh mob maybe that maybe flesh mob means something else we basically crashed one of James von Krog's parties took careful attention not to be disruptive of of the proceedings or to challenge or confront any of the attendees because remember these folks who go to see James von Krog he's one of these psychic mediums who says he could talk to deceased relatives well they're going because they're grieving they've just lost a loved one I think what James von Krog does it offends both reason the conscience when you think of how well from my vantage he's taking advantage of the grieving of the bereaved and it's ugly it's gross to me so rather than just kind of trying to stick it to him we issued him a million dollar challenge we won some national press attention for that million dollar challenge but of course he ignored that challenge so we said if he says he could talk to dead people and he won't talk to the James Randy National Foundation we'll bring some dead people to his spirit circle where he makes tens of thousands of dollars a night pretending I think pretending to talk to people's dead loved ones well we brought some zombies some dead people to see if he would talk talk to us and of course he didn't but that little stunt and we're unapologetic about it being a stunt look we're trying to raise the public's awareness about these irresponsible harmful claims that people like James von Krog make well it garnered national media attention in the LA Times in Forbes in AOL news a number of places and what you know shortly after that zombie flesh mob or whatever we want to call it James von Krog changed his policy and on his website now he has an ironclad policy I think in an attempt to keep more things like this from happening pretty evidently I believe so you're right that's one thing we did but we had fun doing a number of other things this year you literally traveled the world giving talks in a number of countries as an example well with Brian Thompson my faithful assistant we traveled all over Europe for one thing and well I did that with Sadie at Crabtree of course and then when we got back here I went across Canada from Vancouver all the way to Halifax and that's from west to east and you can't really miss anything along the way that was a nine city lecture tour to sold out audiences throughout Canada yes that was nine cities in nine days that's the most important part of it we had one day extra in Halifax and they sort of hung me up on the clothesline and just let me hang there for 24 hours I was totally exhausted by it but it was good work it was such good work because we met all kinds of enthusiastic people in another country that's my original birth country of course as you know and I was happy to be there but the media attention the amount of press we got on the thing the amount of attention and as you say the turn away crowds in every case was really something it was very very it was a good move on behalf of the JRF and I was very proud to be at the head of that you also gave talks in Spain and you mentioned the Norway tour you were a national spokesperson for anti superstition and anti paranormal campaign there in cooperation with the national humanist organization in Norway so the point is you literally were everywhere this year you were on the road a lot we also did a number of things this year and Tam your speaking tours but we also appointed a number of new research fellows yeah and research fellows are very handy to have around because they can take up some of the slack when you've got other things to do Tim Farley and Kyle Hill now Dr. Ray Hall there's a find right there and senior fellow Dr. Stephen Novella now we've been connected and attached to Stephen Novella of course Dr. Novella I should say for quite some time but he's now a senior fellow of the JRF and he heads up the our new science based medicine project which is important because medical quackery I think it's a very very important subject that the JRF deals with and when you're talking about harm that's a perfect example of how undue credulity harms people if you have your appendix rupture and you go to a quack doctor you'll die right yeah oh yes in many cases you will I know way back you debunked you exposed sorry the psychic surgeons when you look at folks like Peter Sellers or Andy Kaufman both of these men had cancer and they went to psychic surgeons instead of oncologists and they died as a result yeah and Kaufman himself actually reported after seeing them in their performance he saw exactly how it was being done and he found himself laughing on the operating table this man was dying and he died shortly after that as a matter of fact these people are well they're just heartless they're using their position as apparent physicians and or magicians to deceive these people and you wouldn't think that someone like Peter Sellers or Andy Kaufman would fall for this sort of thing but they do or even a more contemporary example there's speculation that Steve Jobs may have increased the likelihood of his death from pancreatic cancer because of his belief in alt-med practices yes I believe that's true and if you if you had the intellect of a Steve Jobs and you still fall for this sort of thing I think that's an object lesson for us here we've got to step up our resources and our activities we've done very well in this last year though DJ and we should be very proud of it so I know one thing that you're really excited about is our new effort to digitally publish important works of skepticism including many of your titles oh yes indeed because this is the way to go I'm sure that the forests are sighing in relief knowing that they're not going to be chopped down as viciously as they have been in past years just to supply paper so that that can be thrown away in the garbage as well I think that the the whole digital thing is so important nowadays it is taking over everywhere and I'm happy to see it and so the the real goal here also and in addition to the environmental interest that you just mentioned is that we hope to reach new audiences with these e-books for the iPad for the Kindle and Nook so your books Flimflam, Faith Healers, Truth about Uri Geller, Your Encyclopedia of Claims of the Paranormal a number of new titles are in the works those four titles are now available and for our listeners you can get copies of those books for your iPad or Kindle or your Nook at forgoodreason.org Randy as we're finishing up here we talked about your international travel the campaigns we've launched the expose or the challenge to James Von Prague we talked about TAM our digital publishing right now is what we call the season of reason at the James Randy educational foundation this is part of our annual fundraising so that we can continue our efforts into 2012 even expand them and so I want to let our listeners know that you can support the James Randy educational foundation by going to randy.org and Randy if someone contributes to our work during the season of reason we're doing something special for them aren't we yeah and if you give $100 or more and the or more is very important there to the J.O. Season of Reason campaign our thanks will consist of well for one thing this lady named Amy Roth she represents what is a Surly Ramex yes she's a good friend of J.Refs and last year for her generosity a number of women got to attend TAM on grants but yes you were saying Surly Ramex is providing yeah they're providing these little tree ornaments if you still have a tree if you're at a vistic to that point but if you still have a tree there that isn't going to be turned into paper but instead into a Christmas tree you can actually get one of these little red businesses that say an ornament that hangs with the tree and it's actually got a caricature of me not looking terribly happy but it says woo woo woo happy holidays and I'm looking very Surly there but the picture that goes along with it makes me laughing uproariously at something or other but these are collector's items now DJ as you know and people are just clowering to get them and so if you make that kind of a donation to us that's what you'll get these are collector's items and hundreds of J.Refs supporters participated in the 2011 Season of Reason and by doing that this year you'll add to your collection so don't miss your chance to keep your collection and the J.Ref going strong please folks will you? Okay so that sounded sufficiently infomercial thank you Randy. The point here is it's our way of saying thanks to folks who help support our effort to fight unreason to combat harmful pseudoscience. The same work you've been doing for decades we want to continue doing we want to expand and we can't do that without folks support. That's absolutely right and so this is our appeal and we hope that you'll pay some attention to the folks please do. You can make a donation at randy.org. Randy thanks for the discussion it was good to kind of get into some of these topics about both what skepticism is what the J.Ref does thanks a lot I enjoyed it. Holly was a lot of fun DJ and we'll do that again very soon I'm sure. Thank you for listening to this episode of For Good Reason. To get involved with an online conversation about today's show join the discussion going on at forgoodreason.org views expressed on the show aren't necessarily the J.Ref's views questions and comments on today's show can be sent to info at forgoodreason.org For Good Reason is produced by Thomas Donnelly and Brian Thompson and recorded from Los Angeles California. Our music is composed for us by Emmy award winning Gary Stockdale. Carrie Poppy contributed to today's show. I'm your host DJ Growthy.