 Welcome to The Randy's Show. I am the James Randy Educational Foundations Field Coordinator, Brian Thompson, and with me as always is James Randy. How are you doing today? My pleasure to be here, Brian, and we're going to handle power bracelets, I understand. Wow. Yeah. How is your balance? Well, mine is doing just fine, but theirs isn't doing all that well. We've got to give, first of all, before we get into the power balance thing, we've got to get full credit to our Australian colleagues in the skeptical movement down there because they really took after power balance and they got it investigated to the point where it's out of business now and, of course, there are other companies selling exactly the same sort of silly, I think I've got some sitting around the top of the desk if I could find them, to balance my desk, of course. There are some simple plastic things with holograms on them, but power balance is essentially out of business and they owe something like $160 million at some fantastic sum of money that they have to reimburse to all people who bought the device. Yeah. For the few people who don't know, power balance, they make these, like you said, these like silicone or plastic bracelets with a hologram on them and they're supposed to better your balance, they're supposed to give you more flexibility, more energy. I'm not sure what that means. Well it gives them more money, that's for sure. This is true. This is true. Yeah. Yeah. I guess money is a kind of energy. I'm sort of looking around for my power balance here, I don't want to be without it for very long as you don't hold on one second. Just looking at the drawer here, I'm sure I have some of them. Oh, maybe I'm out of power balance and that happens every now and then. It's a very critical time for you, of course. Well, I guess most of the people that have been in my office have walked away with a power balance as a souvenir because it just doesn't exist anymore, but the battle against that particular manufacturer has been very successful. Yeah. Yeah. In Australia, like you said, they've been completely put out of business and we'll get back to that later. The big news right now is that they have filed for bankruptcy in the United States because they've been sued by a class action lawsuit. I don't know how many people are in the class action, but they've basically been ordered to pay back all of these people who bought power balance bracelets because of false advertising. And this is a $57.4 million class action lawsuit. It's endangered a lot of things. Apparently power balance bought the naming rights to the Sacramento Kings NBA team arena. So they're not really sure what's going to happen with power balance arena. Yeah, there are going to be some big signs changed, I believe. I hope they weren't done in neon already because otherwise it'll just be something to go on eBay and I may even buy the damn thing. Yeah, actually, that would be a great collector's item. Oh, hell, yes. They could sell that and maybe pay back some of their debts. Yeah, exactly. They owe $400,000 to the NBA star Kobe Bryant for a celebrity endorsement. So they're not in very good financial condition right now, although they do say that they're not necessarily going to stop making power balance bracelets. Oh, of course. For the few that haven't heard the news, perhaps. But these sports figures who endorse the thing, you got to ask questions about them too. Are they fooled by it or did they just agree through their agent that they would accept a fee of X number of dollars in order to say, yes, it's great, I use it all the time and then wear one because that's usually the way these things happen, Brian. They don't actually test them. Yeah, well, you know, I don't know about power balance and the NBA, but I do know anybody who watches baseball has seen that almost every player these days is wearing these braided titanium ionic energy necklaces and easy for you to say, I haven't written down a little card. Yeah. And they I think that that company just sent boxes and boxes and boxes of these things to different teams just, you know, free, sure, and the players, you know, wear them and see if they work or see if they feel better and I did talk to one in MLB player who asked to remain anonymous, who said that he doesn't believe that those necklaces actually do what they say they do, but he was wearing them while his team was winning. So now it's just a lucky charm. This must say something about the IQ or the dishonesty, perhaps, of the average sports star, then, or not the average, but certainly some sports stars, if they involve themselves in this sort of thing without actually meaning it and without having tested the device. Of course, the tests, you've seen some of the tests that they offer on TV for these things, including the power balance thing, their tests of balance and they're so easily faked. These are things that were done by the Georgia magnet way back in the 1800s here in the United States that was Lulu Hearst, their same for you. And she made a fortune. There are several imitators of her that travel all over the world and she even fooled Crooks, the scientist in England. It wasn't too difficult to fool him because he believed in spiritualism and survival after death and the whole thing. But nonetheless, Lulu Hearst was the Georgia magnet. These were the tests that she did with people on stage. It was a matter if she was a little girl in her teens and then very small, very diminutive and she would get huge guys up on stage. Of course, they had to be huge or it wouldn't work properly. Not only did it not look good, but she had the advantage of leverage on them. Sure. If people search YouTube, they can find demonstrations of some of the power balance thing. And then that I saw that was the most, I guess probably the most personally impressive to someone who's taking part in it, but the one that's most easily explained by just a couple of minutes of common sense. It's when they have people hold their arm out at length, let me see if I can get it in the camera here. Yeah. And they hold their thumb up and they're told to just sort of spin around as far as they can, move their arm back like this and hold it there. And then they're given a power balance bracelet. They put it on their shoulder, on their head because it doesn't matter where you put it. And then they're told to try to move a little bit more this way. Oh. And they always can. And you didn't even have a power balance bracelet on there. It shows how strong you are. Well, I mean, I have them surgically embedded under my skin. There you go. So let's get back to the situation in Australia, because like you said, Richard Saunders and the Australian skeptics spearheaded a movement to get the Australian government to actually ban power balance sales because they make false claims about what they can do. Why is it that in Australia, in other countries, the government has the power to do that and takes action? And in the United States, it has to be the result of a civil suit like this? Well, they not only have the power to do it, but they have to have the initiative to do it. You have to, you know, we had Claude Pepper here in the state of Florida. You could go to Senator Claude Pepper and you could convince him of all kinds of frauds that were taking place, and he would do something about it. We no longer have Senator Claude Pepper, unfortunately. But we need more people who represent the people, the people of the United States, their constituents, that we can go to and have them do something about it. If you don't have that kind of connection, Brian, if you don't make that kind of connection and go to the right people, then you're not going to get anywhere. You have to have somebody who's brave enough to stand up and do this. What do you think that the proprietors of the Power Balance Corporation can do now that that business is over? Obviously, we don't want anyone to go without employment in this economic apocalypse. So what's next for them? I think that there are lawyers scurrying all over the place and rubbing their hands together, trying to find some way to get out of it and continue to sell the thing. All they have to do is not make the advertisements so blatantly false and say something at the end of the advertisements. There is no medical value, no physical value or effect from power bracelets whatsoever. But if you wish to buy them, now you're free to do so here is the place where you can buy them. If they make some statement like that, that takes them off the hook, technically, but also legally. And the law, of course, doesn't work well for us. It really does not work well for us in that it doesn't protect us by making itself clear that a statement like that should damn the whole thing but doesn't. 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.