Ben Radford: Welcome to Squaring the Strange, the podcast that examines all manner of the mysterious and the mundane through a critical lens. So let’s square the strange.

Pascual Romero: Welcome to Squaring the Strange. This is Pascual Romero and with me as always is…

BR: Ben Radford here.

PR: And we’re here at episode 19 and we’re going to be talking about outrage today. We all know it. We’ve all experienced it. We all have Facebook accounts probably. So we’ve all seen it. But we’re going to break down some of the details about it and some of the nuance and some of the misconceptions about the things that outrage us and how useful outrage can even be in the first place. But first, what are you skeptical about this week, Ben?

0:01:13
BR: Well I think that the most recent thing that came across my mind was a follow-up to something we discussed a few weeks ago, which is the…

PR: Not the blue whale.

BR: Not the blue whale.

PR: Okay.

BR: We’re not dipping into that pool again. At least until something else happens.

PR: Yeah, we’ll talk about it later, but go ahead.

BR: We’ll go there. No, no, this is the Amelia Earhart pseudo-documentary.

0:01:36
PR: Oh, okay.

BR: And as I’m sure you recall, and as many of our listeners do as well, the History Channel, I use the term loosely, aired a piece on Amelia Earhart, lost evidence revealed or lost evidence found or whatever it was. And as you may recall, it was hinged upon a photograph that had been found allegedly deep in the National Archives under lock and key, armed guard.

PR: They had to sneak it out like the movie National Treasure.

BR: Exactly, exactly. And this was big, you know, of course much hyped, and it turned out about, I think, three or four days after the documentary aired that some guy spending a half hour who can read Japanese found the photo and turned out to almost certainly be not Amelia Earhart.

0:02:31
Even if it was Amelia Earhart, it has nothing to do with her disappearance because it was taken in 1935 or earlier.

PR: Well before the actual disappearance.

BR: My reason for bringing it up is that the History Channel, to their credit, I was going to say apologized. They did not apologize. That would really be to their credit. No, they said something along the lines of, well, we’re reviewing the new evidence and we look forward to establishing it and we’ll be transparent in our findings.

0:03:03
So again, within, I think it was about a week of it coming out, I think the suits at the History Channel were like, okay, this is not going to go away. This is a problem. You know Ben and Pascual talked about this on squaring the strange, we’re done.

PR: It was a debacle.

BR: Exactly exactly, just throw in the towel guys And here we are actually at this. I think it’s either been a month from the day we’re recording it or or within day or two and Much to no one’s surprise the history channel still has not come forward with a full explanation of exactly how they botched this whole thing.

0:03:43
Whether it was a hoax or somebody just hadn’t done their due diligence research, whatever it is. And as you may recall, I wrote a piece for Skeptical Inquirer online, a CSI website, and of course, we did a show on it and so I I basically broke broke down a lot of the problems with the show and of course could have been ten times longer, I’ve only got so many waking hours to parse out the the abysmal research…

PR: And also real quick while and for those wondering Who haven’t heard the episode and are wondering where to find it –

0:04:22
Yeah, it’s it’s a bonus episode at patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange.

BR: So you got a cough up a couple bucks to hear hear us opine about it. Yes as well you should and so Again as of as of today anyway the history channel has not made made any of their research public explaining exactly where Where this whole thing ran off the rails and it occurred to me that this might be a good time to just talk a bit about the importance of follow-up. I think it’s vital, particularly for skeptics and critical thinkers, to keep asking for it because it’s all too easy, particularly with a show like this where it aired, it’s gone, it’s not going to be reruns, and the History Channel would prefer that everybody just forget about it.

0:05:14
Just move along folks, nothing to see here. And I think as skeptics and critical thinkers and journalists and frankly just as a public that should care whether what they’re giving us is true or not, it’s important to keep their feet to the fire. And contact them every couple days, every couple weeks, every couple hours if you’ve got the time, and say, hey History Channel, how’s that coming? Where’s, how’s it going?

0:05:42
We’re still, you said you were gonna, you said you were gonna evaluate exactly how your program went so terribly wrong. We appreciate your being above board about that. How’s it coming? And, you know, because the thing is that humans are usually very poor about follow-up. You know, we tend to focus on the latest news cycle. It’s like the squirrel, right?

0:06:07
The shiny things, right? What new crisis is filling up our social media issues of the day? And so, we don’t often think to go back to whatever happened to that story. Whatever happened to that thing that that person said? Because, you know, we’re focused on the immediate thing and not something that happened two weeks ago, two months ago, a couple years ago. But like I said, you know, follow-up is essential because as they say, time will tell. And predictions made today usually can’t be reliably truth determined.

0:06:45
We talk about things happening, we make predictions, and whether those actually materialize oftentimes can’t be determined in the short term. They may take weeks, months, or years to find out, well, is this in fact true or not? This goes back to, I think it may have even been the first episode, I’m forgetting, you may remember, but when we were talking about Boko Haram. And you know the bring back our girls campaign which was huge news, you know four or five years ago you know international global news for for weeks and months and then slowly faded away and by the time that I was talking about it had essentially vanished and people all that that sort of thing All right, and and so that’s why I was important. Ok let’s go back there.

0:07:39
This is what they said, this was all the rage, and this is what was gonna go on, and whatever happened. And that was why I think it was important to touch on that. But the other thing that, I’ll tell you a quick story about my, one of my favorite follow-up stories is a piece that I wrote in 2009 for, it was about, as you may recall, there was a film called Orphan. And it came out in 2009, and it was about, it was sort of a grade B horror film.

0:08:16
As you maybe will tell from the title. And what was interesting about it, and I wrote a piece about this for Discovery News, I think it was later rebranded Seeker, so you can probably find it if you look for it. There were several adoption agencies that expressed concern over the film. Now, if you’re wondering why are adoption agencies worried about a grade B horror film? Well, funny you should ask. The answer is that, and it wasn’t just adoption agencies, there were actually three senators and three members of Congress. They wrote a letter to I think it was Warner Brothers who were outraged – and this will tie in with the later episode – about the film.

0:09:03
And for those wondering where this is going, like “why are they outraged”? Funny story. The short answer is that the adoption experts, and I use the term loosely, and these members of Congress were concerned that this horror film, and there are spoilers here, so if you haven’t seen the film and you want to, number one, rethink your taste in entertainment. Second of all, pause it now, but basically the film was about an evil child, the omen, I mean, there’s lots of bad seeds.

0:09:41
PR: The evil kids, man.

BR: Exactly. Long tradition. The Midwich Cuckoos, did you ever see that?

PR: No, I haven’t seen that.

BR: Oh, it’s a great classic, I think it was a British film like 1965 or 1962. Yeah, the midwich cuckoos. Anyway, so there’s a long tradition of these evil child movies. And in that tradition, the concern was that that that the couples considering adoption who see this film will choose to remain childless out of fear that the the young child they adopt is actually a serial killing dwarf posing as a child.

0:10:16
I’m not making this up. This is it sounds absurd. And it is.

PR: It’s funny I was never aware of this I’m familiar with the film I never saw it a friend of mine was actually one of the acting coaches for the kids and I but I and I didn’t know the premise of the film but now I do I know the twist which is fine –

BR: Sorry!

PR: But no hi but but you know the yeah it’s like I I mean I’m always, you know, every day I’m surprised at the things people will think and act on because of the weird things they think.

0:11:00
But this one is, I mean, that’s pretty astounding. I’ve got to be honest.

BR: It is pretty astounding. So here’s how this ties in, because I’m sure people listening are wondering. So here’s the deal. So as is often the case, you take these things seriously, right? So I said, okay, fine. If it is true that the release of this film, this grade Z horror film, and it wasn’t a bad, you know, it’s Popcorn Muncher, I’ve seen worse.

0:11:28
It’s a horror genre, there you go, right? If it is, again, let’s just take it seriously because several members of Congress and Senators took it seriously. Several members of high-profile members of the adoption community took time out of their day to write a protest letter. Now, if their concerns are valid, and to be fair, they’re the experts, not me, apparently. If their concerns are valid, then we should see a drop in adoptions shortly after the film premiered in 2009. That’s the premise. That’s what they’re concerned about. They’re concerned that this film will lead to fewer people being adopted because they saw this film. So again, falsifiable, right? So this is where follow-up comes up. It’s now been eight years since the film came out. It came in 2009.

0:12:18
After my article came out, a woman contacted me and she said, no, no, this is a real problem and you know you’re you just wait and see. I said “okay” so every year about once a year whenever i remember i contact her because i still have her email address and i say dear uh i won’t give her name but dear adoption expert uh back in 2009 you assured me that that that you know again seven eight years now and if what you said is true, then we should see Demonstrable actual drop in rates. I mean we you could you can you – this is testable. And to the best of my knowledge because I’ve done a little bit digging into it. There was no drop in adoptions around the time that the film Orphan came out or in the months afterwards.

0:13:20
There just wasn’t. I’ve seen no evidence of that. If any listeners have information of the contrary, please contact me. But I’m pretty sure I’m right about this.

PR: Now dwarf child violence is through the roof right now.

BR: It is. Well right. To be fair.

PR: I mean dwarf adult child imposter violence. Sorry.

0:13:40
BR: Yeah. Let’s be very clear about that. So yeah, so again, I’m always very, very polite. Like we corresponded earlier. This is what you said would happen. I’m wondering if you have any evidence for this because presumably it’s in the course she ignores me. So in fact, now that it’s about time for me to email her. My point here is that critical thinking and skepticism need context to claims, to understanding whether a claim is true or not.

0:14:09
And that context can often only be established through time and going back to see, you know, you made this claim X number of months, years later, this did or did not come true. And I think that, you know, I wish that more journalists would do that. More journalists would go back and revisit claims made by economists, sociologists, psychologists, adoption agencies, and go back and say, okay, well, is this true? Is this not true? And again, it’s not about being mean. It’s like, you said this was a legitimate problem. Was this true or not? And if it’s not, then maybe you should retract it, or maybe at least in the future, people should think twice about becoming outraged over such a silly thing.

PR: Yeah, well, I think the first thing we have to keep in mind is that if the 20 people that saw that movie were affected by that, the sample size is too small anyway.

0:15:06
Second of, I think people get really wrapped up in their own idea of what’s going to happen or what they think the implications are of something like this. And I kind of worry that they’re not really thinking of what they’re insinuating by saying these things. Now, and this is like, when you want to talk about being respectful to groups of people and stuff, this is actually an important thing to mention. It’s that in the movie, in the context of the movie, it was a little person or presumably who impersonates and kills. But that’s not, as far as I know, not an epidemic issue with little people.

BR: That is not an epidemic issue. It is not.

PR: And so by taking a piece of very obvious and trying to turn it into a real fear, you’re also just being really insensitive towards little people by saying that this is something that people are worried is gonna happen.

0:16:08
Because I cannot fathom that any reasonable person would honestly be worried about that in approaching adoption. I mean, there are very real things people worry about. Is this child gonna have genetic health issues? Is this child going to be emotionally stable, assuming maybe they came from an abusive home or something? There’s a lot of very real things that we do need to worry about and that do require attention. And yet, serial killing little people are just not on the radar.

0:16:49
BR: And yet, six members of the Senate and Congress took time out of their busy schedules to write an outrage letter about this.

PR: Took time out of their busy schedule of NOT running the country.

BR: I just think it’s important to follow up on things and keep the History Channel’s feet to the fire. Send a polite email or two every couple weeks, every couple months, and say, how’s that coming?

PR: Yeah, it’s been long enough. They probably do need to be put in check a little more.

BR: There you go.

PR: Hey, strangers.

0:17:24
We love sharing our podcast with you, but it takes substantial time and money to produce and release each episode. If you think our podcast is worth a buck or two, please head over to patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange and consider becoming a patron not only will you be helping us but you’ll also receive some cool perks again That’s patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange. Enjoy the show

PR: Hey friends Pascual here, I just wanted to hop in real quick and explain to you what we were gonna be doing this week so instead of the central topic being about outrage, we’re gonna go ahead and give you guys some bonus content that we had recorded for our patrons. The reason for this is that no sooner than two days after we finished recording this episode, criticizing overblown internet outrage and things like that, the attack in Charlottesville, Virginia happened.

0:18:24
Now, for those who aren’t familiar with the situation, a bunch of white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and KKK, a number of other organizations, got together and were protesting the removal of a Confederate monument. As one would expect, there were pretty big counter-protests, and things got very tense over there and eventually one of these white nationalists drove a car into a crowd of people, injuring many people and unfortunately killing a woman. While we do plan on releasing the episode at some point, we felt the timing was just a little poor for this to be our topic of the week. We understand the outrage around this situation and don’t believe that it is necessarily unwarranted. I think that it might unnecessarily trivialize the public reaction to this very understandably outrageous situation. So, let’s go ahead and get to the bonus content. Enjoy.

0:19:37
PR: So this week’s email comes from our friend Andrew in the UK. He writes, “I was thinking about the Facebook echo chamber issue, so popular in skeptic circles. I wondered, do their algorithms necessarily create echo chambers? Obviously the algorithms are hidden, but surely there’s no way they can filter to show you content you agree with. I highly doubt they can predict that. I feel they must instead focus on showing you either content they predict will interest you, for example content they predict you’ll click on, which could be something you agree with or disagree with, or else they will focus on showing content they predict you will share, which I suppose is more likely to lead towards echo chambers. Of course a bit of both is likely the real answer, and I suppose a gradual drift effect would cause the echo chambers just the same.”

0:20:56
Thanks for the email, Andrew. That is a really good question, and I decided to do a little bit of research myself. As many of you regular listeners know, I often mention intentionally maintaining an echo chamber in social media. I’ll start by explaining myself a bit because I’m sure that sounds a little intellectually dishonest and unskeptical of me to say I want an echo chamber. To say that my social media is an echo chamber is not to say that it’s the only place I get my info from. I use it as a jumping off point if a topic catches my eye, but I’m not ignoring different viewpoints. I simply prefer not to have a bunch of anger and disagreement in the same social sphere that I share posts about my family and personal life.

0:21:41
Really it’s just that I like to keep a wide gulf between my personal life and social media squabbles. So let’s get to the question of how the echo chamber is cultivated. Naturally I tend to befriend people online or in real life with whom I have much in common. I think that suggests that the echo chamber starts with human nature. We seek and connect with those we share attitudes and ideals with. Communities center around this, including the skeptic community, and it’s not a far stretch to hypothesize that my echo chamber is simply a reflection of my social inclinations. Now, where does that put Facebook and their algorithm? Per my own research, it appears that Facebook tailors your timeline based on a few factors. First your interaction history, things you’ve clicked like on, commented on, or followed the links on are tied to your account and Facebook uses these interactions to suggest and preferentially display certain content. Second there’s something called cross-cutting. Cross cutting is used in this context as a term to describe when a person shares content from a perspective that is not their own.

0:22:52
So it would be like a liberal person posting a piece from Fox News or me sharing something from Natural News. The more cross-cutting there is, the more diverse the timeline becomes. But researchers have found that only about 24 to 35 percent of news pieces shared could be described as cross-cutting. So when you combine that with the previous part of the algorithm, the interaction history, you find that these stories don’t end up getting much visibility. Third, simply who your friends are. Keeping in mind that people seek like-minded people, the largest contributing factor is simply that we don’t tend to befriend people with major opposing viewpoints. Of course, there are many exceptions to this, as I’m sure a few of you have that outspoken uncle who drives you crazy at Thanksgiving or some old high school friend who has some strong opinions on 9-11 and chemtrails.

0:23:47
It still stands that in the big picture, you’re going to have more friends you agree with than otherwise. Fourth, self-tailoring of the timeline. Occasionally, I find that there’s someone I do like and enjoy being friends with who post content that I just can’t stand. Rather than unfriend them and complicate future interaction, I simply unfollow them or use the in-post drop-down to suggest Facebook show me less of a certain type of post. I use that feature a lot when people post conspiracy theories. I just don’t like going down that rabbit hole with my friends. Ultimately, I think the algorithm isn’t to blame for the echo chamber effect necessarily. It simply amplifies it.

0:24:34
The echo chamber starts with the company you keep, and that kind of echo chamber has existed since the dawn of human society. Social media simply makes it more visible. I imagine it’s safe to assume just about anyone listening to me right now is a skeptic, so I’m sure it’s nothing new for me to say that it’s good to do your own challenging of ideas. Whether we exist in an echo chamber on Facebook is independent of the idea that you should look outside of your social circle for new ideas and angles on thought, and always be aware of things that challenge your perspective. So Andrew, I think you are on the right track. The algorithm certainly does try to predict what will interest you but the important factor is that it’s based on the social network you keep. So it’s really the people you’re bringing into your social network and how you’re interacting with them that’s creating the echo chamber. And again to speak to my preference of sort of wanting an echo chamber, I think that there’s not anything wrong with that. The people I spend my time with in real life are people who agree with me. That’s a result of being a social animal and how we tend to bond with people. We share a lot in common. We listen to the same music, maybe.

0:26:21
We’re politically similar. We have the same ideological views. Ultimately your social network is just an extension of that and I don’t really see a problem with that being fairly fenced in as long as you can be intellectually honest with yourself and admit that you are in an echo chamber and that the ideas that you are getting from that echo chamber are biased and kind of insulated. So thanks again, Andrew, for sending that email. It was a lot of fun to kind of dig into it and figure out exactly what was going on with Facebook. For anyone else who is interested in sending us a question, and very likely getting it read on air, make sure to email us at squaringthestrange at gmail.com or you can contact us through Facebook or our website squaringthestrange.com.

0:27:00
PR: So we’re going to do a little something that we haven’t done so far.

BR: We’re going to mix it up. Keep you guys guessing.

PR: And this is going to start out as patron-only content, so welcome subscribers. So we’ve got a segment that we’re calling Tales from the Road, and Ben and I both have spent extensive time on the road. So let’s go ahead and kick it off. Ben, tell us a tale from the road.

0:27:40
BR: A tale from the road. Okay, I have one in mind. It involves the Clive Barker directed film Hellraiser.

PR: Oh, that’s a great movie. I love it.

BR: Yeah. Great film. Written and directed, of course, by Clive Barker, the British horror novelist. And at DragonCon about, I don’t know, maybe five or six years ago, I met Doug Bradley who played Pinhead. And I remember I like the series. I’m not a huge fan, but I’ve seen all of them. It’s good. But I remember one particular line that Pinhead had, and I don’t remember which film it’s in, but there’s a great line, and Pinhead is being challenged, I think, in the netherworld or something, in the land of Cenobites, if I’m not mistaken. And someone references God to him.

0:28:41
And he says, Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks? And I would just love that line. It was just, it was just delivered this like, this like, do I look like someone who cares what God thinks? Whoever wrote that line just, anyway, so, so I met Bradley at Dragon Con, and I actually got his autograph for a friend of mine. And I mentioned to him, I said, you know, that’s my favorite line of the Hellraiser series. And he said, really?

0:29:10
I said, yeah, it’s just, you know, the way he delivered it… he said, I think I could do better. And he stood up, he took off his glasses, he looked me dead in the eye. And I can’t give his delivery, but it was just, he said, I think I can do better. And he just, I think he did a more sort of, more deadpan.

0:29:34
Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks and it’s the shivers even there in crowded dragon con it was just it was this really cool moment like “Thank you sir that was so cool!” Anyway, so just really cool guy and I just that’s just what a tale from the road. Awesome, tell me a tale from the road.

PR: All right, so this one was when I was on tour in the fall of 2009. This would have been probably sometime in October. I was in a van with a band called Divine Heresy, which is a band of the guitarist Dino Casares, who is a pretty famous guy in the metal world. He’s got his own signature guitars and he’s very, very high profile, highly credited for where metal music went in the 90s in fact. But he and I, so we were on tour together. We were in a van pulling a trailer on this tour and we had a long overnight drive from Denver, and the next show was in Vancouver.

0:30:48
So that was about 21 hours, you know, nonstop. And somewhere in the middle of it, it was along the Oregon Trail. So we were coming into a town called La Grande, Oregon, which is a very small town, but it’s along the Oregon Trail. And we stopped at a gas station and I hopped out and I looked around the trailer and I noticed a lot of red on the rim of the trailer. Now, when you see red on a rim of a vehicle, that means a bearing has spun. The metal shavings, basically, they turn red. I think it oxidizes when it gets thrown along the rim.

0:31:26
So I see the red, I immediately know what it is, and I know there’s nothing I can do about it because you need tools for this and you need parts. So we hobble on over to a small, actually a tire shop, and it was about the best we could do given the circumstances. So, and they actually said that normally they would have a bearing for just about any kind of vehicle but the axle itself needed to be replaced on the trailer, which was like, it had to be specific to that trailer.

0:31:58
And so, but they seemed very kind of quick with us and they were like yeah, yeah, no, don’t worry about it We’ll figure something out for you and then and they were like you can leave your trailer here and rent a u-haul next door or u-haul trailer and and you know, we worked it out. We were renting the trailer from a from a transport company which there’s music industry has a lot of these people that rent trailers and rent buses and vans and the owner of the company agreed that we could leave it there and that he’d send someone to get it once it was repaired. And so we went ahead and we rented the trailer. Everyone just seemed like they were really friendly, but they were like, it seemed like they were trying to rush us out of there. It was really weird.

0:32:39
And sure enough, we take off, we repack the new trailer, we drive off, go get something to eat real quick, and then start heading onto the on-ramp headed towards Portland. We get pulled over. There’s a cop behind me and just lights me up right as we’re getting on. I’m driving and I can’t tell what’s going on because they’re sitting there and nobody’s come up and approached the vehicle yet. It had been probably a couple minutes. So I roll down the window and I kind of lean towards it and see if someone’s saying something. And then sure enough, I hear someone over the PA saying, take the keys out of the ignition and step out of the vehicle and walk towards me slowly. Now, we were coming around a corner at that point, so I couldn’t really see past the van or trailer.

0:33:29
So I wasn’t entirely sure what I was walking into, but me being me, I was very cautious. And I approached the back of the trailer. And as I rounded the trailer I look and there are I think about five police cars there and most of them have officers with their guns drawn sitting behind their doors and I and at that point, you know, I was kind of being casual about it -I didn’t have my hands up or anything as casual as one is. Yeah Nobody said like put your hands up or anything. So I was like okay I’ll just walk towards them.

0:34:07
BR: Maybe that was implied.

PR: Yeah I immediately put my hands up. Once you see guns you put your hands up. I put my hands up and a female officer approached me and restrained me. Did not cuff me but she held my hands behind my back walked me to the squad car and just sat me in it like immediately.

BR: And what’s Dino doing?

PR: And Dino, everyone in the band is just in the van still so I’m like what’s going on? And she’s so then she starts asking me who’s in the van with you, and what are you doing?

0:34:33
I’m like well, we’re with a band called Divine Heresy. We’re on tour – there should be four other people in that van right now and then she’s like who’s the big guy and Dino’s a very big guy. He’s large in stature and he –

BR: Maybe they mistook you for Willie Nelson’s tour bus?

PR: Yeah, our busted up blue van with the with the U-Haul trailer, but we so you know I explained the situation His name’s Dino Casares. He’s a very well-known guitarist and We’re on tour right now. I mean you can ask him and he’ll confirm all this and and she’s like, okay We’ll just stay put and she shuts the door. It’s starting to rain at this point and she’s like, you know I’m not arresting you. I just want you to know that I put you in the car so you’re out of the rain. Fine, you know, whatever. I’m not someone who doesn’t comply especially in podunk towns in the middle of Oregon. But mind you this officer was actually incredibly polite. She went ahead and just stood by a few other officers. They actually put their guns away once I had explained who we were so it seemed like things de-escalated. But they went up to the van.

0:35:41
I just kind of sat there for about 15 minutes, and everyone comes back, clears the scene. Nobody’s being led away in handcuffs. And then the officer apologizes to me, and she said, well, your guitarist matched the description of a murder suspect in the area, and the people at the tire station or the tire store called us because they were sure it was him. And you know it’s one of those moments where I’m like, you know, I mean first off that’s crazy. Obviously he didn’t kill anyone in La Grand, Oregon. But just the fact that, you know, the things that could have happened if we didn’t handle ourselves well and if those officers to their credit were not so professional.

BR: Could have gone sideways very easily.

PR: Yeah, and just thinking about how casually I kind of strolled around the back of the van, I’m like, man, had I not even been thinking about that, that could have ended horribly for me.

0:36:42
But yeah, that was a very tense and scary kind of situation in terms of walking around a corner to guns drawn. And I’ve actually never, despite who I am and how I look, I’ve never actually been arrested. So it was the only time I’ve actually spent any time in the back of a police car. Wasn’t comfortable, I’ll say that.

BR: Sounds like you handled it with aplomb.

0:37:08
BR: Hey Squaring the Strange fans! Word around the campfire, that is, unconfirmed rumor, is that patrons are loving their Skepticrates. Hold on, what’s a Skepticrate, Pascual?

PR: The Skepticrate is a special bonus gift our $5 and up patrons get once per month. And what are the details of the Skepticrates, Celestia?

Celestia Ward: The rumors are true. People are loving their Skepticrates. For anybody subscribing at a $5 or over level, once a month we will send out to you a Skepticrate. Now, it’s not actually a wooden crate containing live chupacabras or anything like that. We can’t quite afford that yet. But we’ll send you at least three items that have something to do with skepticism, one of our recent episodes, or something from the personal collection of one of our lovely hosts.

0:38:06
So keep an eye out for your goodies and sign up at patreon.com.

BR: It’s time once again for Ben’s Fan Mail. Very exciting, yes.

PR: Maybe I’ll edit something in there.

BR: Do you put in something dramatic and sensational.

PR: Or just this conversation.

BR: Yeah, great, great. uh… so this is a from a a man named leo uh… who uh… is writing me regarding the fatima miracle of the sun okay and uh… i i’ve written about the the Fatima miracles is a roman catholic miracle uh… and those uh… in family it’s it is to complex not going to go to the thing it’s a whole thing in but what’s interesting that you know i get i get letters and emails like this probably once a month or so. And what happens is that someone will, they’ll see me on TV or they’ll read a blog that I wrote or they’ll hear this show. And I’ll get email from someone who like that’s the first introduction to that topic. And so I’ll get stuff like, “In your show you said X” who are you and what show are you talking about?

0:39:17
But to them, it’s fresh in their mind because they just saw the TV clip. They just stumbled across the blog I wrote eight years ago. And they think that I’m, well, I guess I know what you’re talking about.

PR: Maybe they think it’s the only thing you’ve done.

BR: Right, right. Dear Mr. Radford. I know the only thing you did was that chupacabra thing. And so I wanted to discuss that. All right, fine, whatever. So it is just, it’s an interesting sort of little twist there where again, people will assume that their introduction to me is all that’s on my mind. Whatever hot button topic they’re pissed off about, or they think that I got wrong, they need to inform me right away.

0:39:59
And so, I may have written it 15 years ago, but hey, get on it. So he writes, he says, in your research, was there any evidence that before the miracle of the sun, over 50,000 people were walking in heavy rainstorm up to their ankles in mud, and after the miracle of the sun, 10 minutes later, the ground was absolutely dry and everyone’s clothes on the site were dry and cleaned. So that was the question and again the whole story of the miracle of the sun is far too complex and I’m not even going to try and summarize the whole thing but basically it was a Marian apparition and there are many miracles associated, sort of secondary miracles associated with this vision. One of them was that apparently, depending on who you talk to, hundreds or thousands saw the sun move in the sky, like literally dance around the sky.

0:40:53
That’s one of the claims associated with this particular miracle and sighting. Of course, in that case, we can verify that because we know for a fact that the sun did not dance around in the sky. We had people in other parts of the world that weren’t at that place who did not see the sun dance around in the sky. So therefore, it was a very localized sun, or there was an optical illusion, mass hysteria, contagion, I mean, hallucination. There’s other explanations, the least likely of which is that the localized sun over that particular field happened to dance around.

0:41:30
So there’s a variety of claims. I’m not going to go into all of them. But that’s one of them. Another one is apparently that these people walking heavy rainstorm and up their ankles in mud and then after the vision, the ground was dry and everyone’s clothes were clean and dry. So I wrote back just very briefly, very politely, I said, thanks for getting a hold of me, good to hear from you. Apparently, I’m realizing that apparently that’s my standard reply.

PR: So if you get that, it’s not actually Ben, it’s just a robot.

BR: Yeah, it’s my autofill.

0:42:08
It’s an interesting question and I know of no evidence whatsoever that before the miracle of the sun, all those people were walking in a rainstorm up to their ankles in mud and 10 minutes later the ground was dry and everyone’s clothes were cleaned. I suspect this is one of many secondary legends that often crop up around famous miracles and events. I’ve seen very similar examples from many other cases, and of course, one should take such stories with a grain of salt until proven through investigation. So, you know, I hope that answers his question. I mean, one of the things that happens to me is that I’ll get emails from people who sort of insist, either implicitly or explicitly, that I drop what I’m doing, investigate what they want me to investigate.

0:42:53
It’s like, you know, I get emails all the time, well, you know, my cousin saw Bigfoot in the Tennessee woods five years ago. Explain that. Ummmm, no. I appreciate the tip. I actually have a pretty full plate at the time, and while I do appreciate people bringing mysterious events to my attention, whether it’s some hairless dog in Texas that mistaken for a chupacabra or whatever it is, I genuinely do appreciate that’s how I get information and tips and I appreciate that.

0:43:32
That being said, just because you have some mystery that you think hasn’t been adequately explored or explained doesn’t obligate me to stop what I’m doing and focus on what you want. I don’t have time for that. Ain’t nobody got time for that. So as an investigator, I have to choose what cases I’m going to research because oftentimes these can take days, weeks, months, or years. The Chupacabra investigation took me five years. So you know, these cases can be very time consuming and consume a lot of resources and energy and interviewing people.

0:44:12
So, you know, I have to be, how I choose cases, I tend to choose the ones for which there’s the best evidence. You know, if I’m going to spend my time and energy on a case, in some cases, months of my personal time. Some of it is work time, but a lot of it is nights and weekends. This is my own time. And you know, I don’t mind doing it, but you know, this is, I don’t go to other people, I don’t contact lawyers and bankers and other people and say, hey, I have this thing I’d like you to do on your own time.

0:44:45
Do you mind doing that? Could you spend a couple weeks researching this and get back to me? That’s not how that works. So again, I try and strike a balance between wanting to be open to investigations, appreciating tips and leads and information and stuff, because that’s how you learn about these things. But at the same time, I can’t drop whatever I’m doing to go and track down anything at all. So I suspect that he… The Miracle of the Sun case he’s talking about happened many years ago. I mean, I, you know, I can’t go back and reinvestigate it and I wouldn’t even if I could.

0:45:20
But I think he was just wanting to know, well, what’s, you know, what’s the status on this one particular sort of aspect of this mystery? And I happened to know something about it, and so I wrote back.

PR: Yeah, that’s a really interesting miracle, too, because, you know, most of the time you hear about these miracles being, you know, pretty profound. You know, occasionally you hear about ones that are pretty minor, but it’s a very interesting claim and I wonder where that even came from. 50,000 people trudging through the mud and then it dries up. I like the closer clean line too. It’s just like…

BR: All pressed like a fairy’s did overnight.

0:46:03
They all had a shiny nickel inside in their pockets.

PR: The first thing I wanted to respond to that was, ancient Chinese secret. But maybe five of you will get that. If you’re over 35, you’ll probably get it. But that’s really kind of a curious claim. I think it’s kind of interesting how people kind of expect that because you’re an investigator, you’re there to do the job for everybody. I’d like to put myself out there. If you do want to pay me to investigate something, I will gladly do it, but to quote my lawyer, my rate is ruinous.

0:46:47
BR: There you go. There you go. But no, so I appreciate the email and all the fan mail, of course. And keep them coming. The polite, respectful ones are more likely to be responded to. But you know, hey, bring it on.

BR: Well this week I’m skeptical of a story that I saw in the New York Times. Not skeptical that the story is true, I’m skeptical of what it talks about and that is there’s been a recent outbreak of yellow fever in Brazil. Apparently it’s killed at least something like two or three hundred people.

0:47:42
And one of the concerns is that a lot of people there are blaming monkeys and they’re killing monkeys. Because a lot of the general public is wrongly accusing the monkeys. There’s not a monkey accusation board, but they’re wrongly believing the monkeys are the vectors for yellow fever, which is of course a dangerous disease, particularly in South America, where you have, in many cases, lower standards of sanitation, particularly in the rural areas. So, but yeah, apparently what’s been going on is the epidemiologists have been looking at it, and of course, mosquitoes, not monkeys, are the vectors for the virus. And in fact, if anything, the monkeys are being decimated by yellow fever even more so than humans are.

0:48:34
And anyway, this is concerning to many epidemiologists for a couple of reasons. One of course is that there’s these people that are going out there intentionally killing monkeys. Sometimes they’re being poisoned, sometimes they’re being shot. There’s been several carcasses have been found burned. Yeah, and particularly, it’s especially troublesome in Brazil that has a really wide range of speciation of monkeys. It’s a pretty broad area there. Anyway, the reason I wanted to bring it up is it’s one of those cases of where it really illustrates in my mind the danger of rumors.

0:49:16
When people think of rumors, it’s like, oh, rumors. The rumor is Kim Kardashian’s pregnant. It’s like, yeah.

PR: They’re not all quite so innocuous.

BR: Not so innocuous. That’s been one of the running themes in my research over the years in folklore and this like that is identifying the darker side to rumors. I talked about that in some of my research, for example, the organ theft urban legends. People waking up with their kidneys gone. To a lot of people, oh, it’s a cute little urban legend.

0:49:56
Well, in some cases it is. In other cases, it’s led to people being killed. And, you know, tales of organ theft in Central America, and we can do a show on that at some point. But the point is that, you know, that contrary to the sort of perception that rumors are sort of, you know, cute or funny or annoying, they can be deadly, and especially to animals like this.

PR: Yeah, and we kind of touched in on that, you know, when you were skeptical a couple weeks ago about the viral Instagram post we had mentioned, you know, the preacher who was being accused of advocating violence, and you know, and that’s the sort of thing we’re talking about where, you know, rumors can be fairly harmless sometimes, but, you know, if we don’t treat all rumors with the same level of skepticism, we allow these things to bleed into the population at large and cause things like this where people are killing monkeys.

0:50:56
I’m sure that brings up a whole other range of issues with the disease itself and with the spread of it.

BR: In fact, yeah, that’s one of the things they’re concerned about is that in fact, in many ways the monkeys sort of serve as the canary in the coal mine because they tend to serve as animals that are sort of on the front lines of, you know, so we need monkeys who are, I hate to say it, but we need monkeys that are there that are being infected to know that they’re one step closer to humans.

PR: Yeah, and that’s very common in a lot of epidemiology is that, you know, you watch the populations of all living things because one way or another we’re almost always connected. It may be on a more broad scale like plants dying can lead to animals dying can lead to food source problems.

0:51:47
But then on the other hand with disease there’s an animal that can contract a disease that we can contract.

BR: All the more important to pay attention.

PR: You want to make sure that they’re out there and that sadly that when they do die at least it’s not in vain and we do use that information.

BR: So what the epidemiologists are saying to do is, number one, get vaccinated because you can vaccinate yourself against these diseases. Number two, stop killing the damn monkeys. These are the two things. And again, you can understand why people would be concerned.

0:52:18
I mean, you’re in a rural area and you come to believe that the monkeys are giving people yellow fever and those other things. And yeah, you can see why people would have this sort of visceral fear and be taking it out on the monkeys. But what’s interesting is people panic when their health is threatened, right? I mean, if it’s a rumor about Kim Kardashian being pregnant, people aren’t going to panic about that. It’s celebrity news, maybe true, maybe not true, really, who cares? But when it’s something that hits home, where maybe your neighbor, their child is sick, has jaundice because of yellow fever, that’s when it really hits home.

0:53:01
And I think that’s one thing that’s important for first world skeptics. And others are just like, well, this is so silly, why do they believe that? Well, you have to look at it through their eyes. And through their eyes, it can be very serious.

PR: I agree. There could be a lot of ways that they’re actually creating a little bit more of a problem by doing this. Not only because you know by killing off the monkeys you have less data and less information to go on as to how widespread it is and how often it’s happening, but the other problem is I could kind of foresee going out into the jungle to kill monkeys exposes you to more opportunities to contract it. So, you know, you may have people going out into the jungle to kill monkeys, coming back with yellow fever, and then that kind of creates a feedback loop.

0:53:49
Then everyone’s like, oh, they went out and they had contact with monkeys, and now they’re sick.

BR: And, you know, again, it just comes down to skepticism, right? I mean, the fact that mosquitoes, not monkeys, carry yellow fever. It’s not hard to find. It’s not a secret. And so it’s not something that is being hidden. It’s certainly well-known in the medical community. The problem is that a lot of people, they don’t think, they’re not going to Google that, right?

0:54:20
They’re just, they were told by their friend. It makes sense to them. It’s this sort of almost magical thinking, you know, after this, therefore, because of it, logical fallacy. And so that’s where we go with it.

PR: We would like to thank our sponsor-level patrons, Amy Freshour-Kelly and Dr. Angela Mattke. If you’d like to find out what that is and how to become one, head over to patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange.

0:54:47
BR: If you’d like to lend your moral support, you can head over to iTunes and give us a review. Every five-star review gets us a little more visibility on the iTunes podcast charts and brings a smile to Pascual’s face.

PR: So that about does it for us this week. We wanted to announce we’ve got some stuff coming up. Ben, you’ve got a lecture at Bubonicon.

BR: That’s right, Bubonicon. For those who, no, get your mind out of the gutter, B-U-B-Onicon, named after the bubonic plague.

0:55:41
Because who wouldn’t name a con after the bubonic plague? Which is, Bubonicon for those who don’t know is New Mexico’s premier fantasy sci-fi nerd fest, which is, and I use the word lovingly. It’s sort of a New Mexico version of Dragon Con or Comic Con, although much less commercialized. And actually, only a few people know this story, but I nearly ran over George R.R. Martin in the parking lot of Bubonicon last year. I have witness. He was by himself. He was just sort of lumbering across, and I was… flipped to a corner too fast and almost took him out, felt really bad about it.

0:56:27
Not that, you know, not that if it had been anyone else. I’d feel just as bad, but had I seriously injured him, I would have to go into hiding. So, sorry George, I almost hit you. But anyway, yes, I’ll be speaking at Bubonicon. I’ll be giving a talk on New Mexico UFO conspiracies. In fact, a topic that you and I have touched on in previous episodes.

PR: Yeah, and I think we’ll definitely explore more of them in the future.

BR: Yes. That’s going to be on the 25th, I think it’s 7 o’clock PM.

0:57:00
PR: And this year’s theme is going to be time travel for the con, which is very near and dear to me, as I’ve mentioned before. I love time travel. I love the concept of it. I love the paradoxes. I love the movies that are based on it. And I think it will be a perfect time for us to do an episode that will be featuring some content from Bubonicon. So if you happen to be there on Friday, we will be there in the hours leading up to the lecture. And we’ll probably be walking around with the camera and doing a little bit of chatting with people and looking around. So definitely come check that out if you can. You can go to bubonicon.com to find tickets and the calendar and all the information you need about guests and everything.

0:57:48
BR: And just to say, there’s all sorts of stuff. They have NASA scientists, an astronaut there one year. They have got many of New Mexico’s finest writers. George Martin was there, Vardaman, just you know, Melinda Snodgrass, Stephen R. Donaldson, Ben Bova, I mean, take your pick, they come from all over, so check it out.

PR: And also, the first week of September, that’ll be September 1st through 4th, is DragonCon, where you will find Ben. Unfortunately, it’s a little last minute for me, so I won’t be making it but go to patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange and contribute and maybe next year I’ll be able to make it.

BR: That’d be cool and my my co-panelists as of last time I saw it were Larry Hama who’s a famous artist for Marvel and a and the creator of Obnoxio the clown yeah and I contacted Larry Hama when I was writing my Bad Clowns book, and I asked him for an interview and he declined, but in order to try and get him to say yes, I sent him the section that I wrote about Obnoxio.

0:59:02
I started saying, don’t you want to be quoted in here? And he wrote back and he didn’t want to be quoted, but he gave me a pointer or two and I fixed a couple of things. Anyway, Larry Hama is gonna be there and also the Chiodo Brothers, the makers of Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

PR: Oh yes, one of the finest, finest films in all of cinema history.

BR: Indeed, indeed. So I’m looking forward to that.

PR: So stay tuned for next week when we will be covering deadly urban legends. And this will be a good one because it’s not often that we can claim that an urban legend is ever deadly or dangerous in real life. So we’ll be exploring some situations where we actually have seen some scary things happen because of urban legends.

0:59:49
So until then, we’ll see you next time.

BR: Bye-bye.