 Welcome to the Randy show. I am the James Randy educational foundations outreach coordinator Brian Thompson and with me once again is James Randy I am incredibly excited because this December the JRF is hosting another cruise we've done a few cruises in the past and this December we're doing a cruise of the beautiful Mayan Riviera so are you are you as excited as I am you look pretty excited well you know you said the Mayan Riviera I thought the Mayans were gone a long ago but now that they're back you've just announced that to me I'm more excited than I was a moment ago I can tell you by the way when you're you're excited you I don't say jumping up and down to a drumsticks or anything like that it's hard to tell you're excited we had some complaints from the neighbors so I'm not allowed to use my drumsticks anymore oh yeah oh yeah the new dance that you used to carry on at the window yeah I remember yeah there there were reasonable rejections I must say well I'm fighting it in court but so we're going to we're going to Belize we're going to Honduras we're going to Mexico we're launching out of Tampa Florida obviously the theme of this cruise is is the Mayans and there's this belief out there that the Mayans predicted the world would end at the end of this year so we got to get in as much fun as possible before that happens what do you know about this this prophecy a prophecy at all it's simply a made-up thing the Mayans didn't make any such prophecy there's nothing on record anywhere and Mayan hieroglyphs are pretty well figured out now that they said anything about the world ending in 2012 what happened was they made a huge calendar stone and they ran out of space and there was no stone left so they stopped the calendar at that point which was was quite sufficient for them because of their empire had lasted up until today they'd still be doing okay that is until the end of the year but this is ridiculous I think someone should return the damn thing over and on the other side maybe that's fine 200 and time 2013 part via 2014 etc maybe they'll find those other things on the back or if you keep looking around in the same place in Mexico City where they unearthed this thing I mean there's a wonderful artifact I must admit come on that doesn't mean that since we don't have calendars printed for the year at the 2060 yet at least I don't think any calendar companies out there that started printing them does that mean the the world ends before that just because we don't have printed calendars what a ridiculous premise but hey the media got into in touch with they said oh this is something we we've got to keep hold of because we can make some sort of news out of this and tired editor said yeah go ahead write the end of the world prophecy about to be fulfilled or something and the media ran with it of course because they don't have much better to do yeah I was pretty terrified last year when my bunny a day calendar ended on December and I didn't know if I'd have any more bunnies but well I went to the calendar store is there a calendar store I just made that up yeah I I figured you did right and you got that glazed expression in your eyes that's a real right through your glasses it shows it's a real hey by the way Ben Redford said going to be there and you've got lots of very interesting views on things that some of which differ with mine and that that's always a subject of a bit of controversy between the her controversy whichever your way you wish it between the two of us but Ben's always got provocative things to say and looking forward to seeing him again if you go to if you go to amazing meeting dot com slash cruise you can see our whole lineup of speakers like you said we've got a Ben Radford we've also got another another person another expert on the list Jennifer Michael Hect now eight that's HEC HT she's been to many towns and we've spoken together many times and had a few lunches along the way and back in I think it was 2004 three 2003 she came up with this book called doubt that's a whole survey of the the skeptical community and the skeptical world if you don't have that your library should have it I'm going to go also out to my library here and make sure that we've got it in the Isaac Asimov library which I feel we do so we'll be able to keep some company with this Ms. Hect HT so there you go and I'm looking forward to that as well we've got Carrie Poppy our communications director here at the James Randy education first by the way she's turning out to be quite a character and very happy with her and she she spoke very very well at town I thought and there are a few panels there and it's very proficient at it and I think that's a bit of a bonus for us yeah she's the co-host of a very popular skeptical podcast called Ona Ross and Carrie we've also got our starboard president DJ growthy is going to be speaking on who DJ growthy oh I remember him yeah he's a he's a younger fellow I believe younger than I but then I think almost everybody in the world is younger than I am that's easy to think that when you live in Florida very true very true my neighbors look upon me as the whippersnapper in the area you know oh there he goes again Sally wonder he doesn't look all that old you know and then they say that I don't look all that old you can imagine how old they are exactly we've also got 20 van Pelt the director of the public policy director for the Institute of Science and human values and and somewhere on the list is somebody who looks like me and shares my name but that must be some kind of mistake you know I guess the mistakes I said typo obviously you can get all the information at amazing meeting.com slash cruise it's December 9th through the 16th maybe it would make a good stocking stopper for somebody yeah yeah it's hard to get those boats into stockings I can tell you that but nonetheless I think we should give it a try so yes I would seriously like to encourage our our viewers our listeners to look into this because this should be a very interesting one I have not been to this part of the world the Mayan runes and such I've I read all the catherwood cothik not up catherwood books when I was just a kid a weeds had to be the guy about what about this big come to think of it I read all about that I read it in catherwood wrote on it and wonderful discovery you know that catherwood actually uncovered some ruins and made sketches of me cleared away the vines and trees that made sketches of them and those are compared with photographs of the actual artifacts they're so exact that it's on Earthly just about and the other thing that's interesting but it he made some sketches of some stuff that he then walked away from and the jungle grew right back over it again and these things have not been rediscovered and that's always gotten archaeologists a little bit annoyed you know why did he do a better clearing or put some weed kill in there or something but catherwood catherwood was a great explorer and a great artist no question of it yeah anybody who comes on the cruise can can follow in those footsteps we can all pretend we're great explorers even if we're just looking at things that people have already seen before I've got to look up catherwood in my library here and I will promise to bring along my copies of catherwood books in fact I'm going right out of the library as soon as we hang up here and I'm going to look those books up and I would have put them aside and I will bring them along for interested to J refers to consult with great looking forward to it and and people really need to know that space is limited so you really should go to the website and register as soon as possible register right now drop everything and go register amazing meeting comm slash cruise and spend a few days on the high seas with James Randy and Ben Radford Jennifer Michael Hecht Tony Van Peltz a bunch of other enthusiastic skeptics and DJ somebody really and DJ somebody yes always give you a run for your money there's no question it's going to be the best time that anyone has ever had it's going to be a lot of fun the Randy show is a production of the James Randy educational foundation to learn more about how we promote science and critical thinking go to randy.org