0:00:00
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.

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0:00:11
BR: Welcome back to Squaring the Strange. We’ll be talking this week about the challenges of applied skepticism. And here in the sequestered bunker that is the Squaring the Strange studios, across from me is Pascual.

0:00:57
Pascual Romero: Hey.

BR: And to my left we have a special guest. Who are you?

0:01:04
Celestia Ward: I’m Celestia. Still not that special, but happy to be here.

0:01:13
BR: Hello Celestia.

CW: Hello. Hey Ben and Pascual.

PR: She’s the voice in my head during every edit.

CW: I have the best job ever, I get to listen to all the podcasts.

BR: The problem of course, is that you have to hear my voice.

PR: So let’s get right to it.

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0:01:56
CW: So we talked about how to organize this and really there’s, when you’re talking about interactions with people friends loved ones you’ve got two different veins of interacting with people these days, there’s the virtual and the real. So we figure we’ll cover social media first. Everybody everybody’s got their Facebook their echo chamber their Twitter their tweets their Instagram their snapchat their their whatever the kids are into these days and it presents different ways of interacting with people and sometimes BS kind of gets around and sometimes sometimes you feel you need to stick your skeptical nose into things and you know set things straight and sometimes you want to hold back, and let’s talk about that cool. What are your thoughts on Facebook skeptic problems? You may have encountered.

0:02:42
PR: So in kind of an interest a few interesting things about social media is that the image that gets painted of you is, you know, and I think this is something that, you know, journalists and writers have had to deal with their entire lives. It’s what you write reflects on you as a person and people form their opinion of who you are based on what you say. Now, that’s true to an extent as a human being, but when you’re speaking from the platform of social media behind your keyboard, you’re saying things that you probably, you may not say in the same way, or even, you know, in a lot of cases, something you wouldn’t say in person to someone’s face. And so it’s kind of interesting that your, the image your entire social network has of you is based on posts that, you know, depending on how you craft them and how strongly you deliver them, it can kind of change people’s perception of you. And I think in being a skeptic, that’s something you have to be especially cognizant of because you may not realize it, and I think I’ve been guilty of this, but you see a friend post something about a psychic or about a news story that was a hoax or something, and you’re the first one to pull the snopes out on them.

0:04:03
CW: Well actually…

0:04:05
PR: Yeah, the well actually friend. And that can open a lot of doors for ill will between people because even though in your head you’re like, well I just want to correct this, it can come off as being harsh and pedantic.

0:04:20
CW: And they can take it personally, because that’s their wall. And many people feel that, well this is my wall, I can say anything I want on my wall. Well, do you really want to say that cinnamon cures cancer? Maybe we could rethink that particular thing.

0:04:37
BR: Maybe that doesn’t need to go on your wall, really.

0:04:39
PR: Totally.

0:04:40
CW: I guess a true story, I did actually get kind of sniped out by a belly dancer friend of mine who was putting on there that cinnamon cures cancer.

0:04:49
PR: I have a couple of belly dancer friends, and that’s exactly the kind of thing they would post. I wonder if there’s a thing about that.

BR: Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is you just, you know, you have to pick your battles. And you know, it’s like the famous joke, you know, where someone’s up, you know, middle of the night, someone’s wrong on the internet. Can’t go to sleep quite yet. You know, and as skeptics, at least we who pride ourselves on being skeptics and sort of applying critical thinking, it’s easy for us to sort of fall into that trap of like, well, you know, I’m going to correct this and this isn’t quite right. And a lot of times it’s done – it’s not done to be an ass. It’s not – we’re sincerely trying to help.

0:05:34
CW: Well, sometimes I’m trying to be an ass.

0:05:35
BR: Well, yeah, but a lot of times it’s not that. And I think part of the problem is that, particularly on social media, it’s easy to sort of forget about the principle of charity. It’s easy to immediately assume that anybody who is saying something, not even that’s necessarily in opposition to you, but in addition to what you’re saying. There’s been cases where, for example, I’ll be contributing to a discussion and I’ll add a tangent. I’m not contradicting the original post. I’m adding to it. I’m giving it context. And I’m dog-piled on like, well, you’re contradicting. No, no. I agree with 90% of what you’re saying. It’s just this one particular part of it is, you know, and, but it’s so easy to assume that anybody who is in any way not straight down the line agreeing with every single letter of what you said is trolling you or against you or out to make you look bad in front of your friends. And that’s not true. Sometimes yes, there are trolls and it’s difficult to tease that out. So that’s one thing that I would say is important from an applied skepticism point of view to social media is employ the principle of charity. Don’t assume that anybody who says anything is out to make you look bad or make you look foolish. No, if there are several different ways to interpret what something is said, don’t immediately go to the worst possible extreme view. I mean just say, you know what, maybe they meant this, maybe they meant that, but there’s a tendency that I often see to just immediately go to the most negative, harshest interpretation of whatever it is, and that’s not helpful.

0:07:25
CW: Well, yeah, and depending on how you handle that, the language that you choose, employ charitable language as opposed to saying, look, dumb ass, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because this social media, more so than personal encounters and it’s been you know personal encounters you can gauge what their face looks like what their emotional mood is you know? You know how much the interaction they can take on what level or and also you know if they’re friends or family I can tell my brother look you’re being a dumbass and he’s not gonna bat an eye cuz he’s my brother. But talking to somebody on Facebook sometimes these people have never met you I’ve got a few Facebook friends, I mean not many, but most people I’ve met personally, but some are colleagues that I know online, some are people I know who are friends of friends, and you’re dealing with somebody that you don’t have that gauge with, you don’t know what their emotional state is at that particular moment, and whatever you write on their wall, they are hyper aware of the fact that everybody is going to see it. It’s like you’re not just saying, hey, come here, come to the corner, let me explain, you have a wrong idea about this and I’m going to correct this. No, we’re spray painting it on the side of your house. This person has a wrong idea. And you’ve got to be careful what you spray paint. And you’ve got to give them some charity and some room to assert it because nobody gets rid of a wrong viewpoint by being bullied out of it. They’ve got to be kind of led with a little bit of candy and a little bit of hand-holding sometimes to get rid of that idea.

0:08:56
PR: In the last couple years, I, about, I guess maybe two or three years ago, I switched my Facebook over. So I had a Facebook page that I had about, I think, just several thousand friends on and it was kind of by virtue of being in music and just fans adding me and…

CW: We get it you’re famous. Stop name-dropping yourself.

0:09:18
PR: Well, and namely it was just a lot of kind of kind of tangential people that you know We’re sort of involved with other bands and and also film people It was just thousands of people that just you know I kind of kept being friends with and and it and it created this, you know just cacophony of ideas on my wall or on my newsfeed where it was just like you know I never noticed you know friends posts because this post is rolling out and and but the big thing was that you know I just found myself getting like I couldn’t post something without a huge debate starting on it even if it was like just like hope you have a nice day today and like You know, it’s like, what the hell is wrong with you? Yeah, it’s, and… Not all of us were in your time zone, sir. Yeah, and it got really, I was just like, no, I don’t have the energy for this, and I don’t know these people, so I don’t feel like I owe them an argument. And, you know, and so eventually I switched over. I have a much more private one now. That one is now a public page. You can still like it, and I will communicate with you on that if you want.

CW: Oh, you purposely created an echo chamber.

PR: Yeah, and I make no apologies for this. I really do not care about having Trump supporters in there just to keep it interesting. I have friends who are like, well, how can you live without your ideas being challenged? It’s like, they’re challenged every day. It, I don’t need Facebook to be the delivery method for that because I can go over to Reddit and get in a poo-flinging fight with, with, you know, any, any number of anonymous people that don’t care about me. Now, you know, Facebook, I post pictures of my family and my kids and I don’t need a bunch of you know anger and –

CW: That’s remarkably healthy actually have a very good that’s a good strategy.

PR: Thank you I think it’s crazy though because people criticize me for doing that they’re like will you just live in an echo chamber you you don’t allow other ideas in your I’m like no I just I don’t want people starting an argument about libertarianism on a picture of my five my eight-month-old child you know it’s like I know you can follow me on Twitter and start all the crap you want with Me there, and you know reddit’s a great place to just get in stupid pointless never-ending arguments with people that just downvote you And you know but but you know I personally especially because my personal life is so interwoven into you know the social media which all of ours are, you know, I feel the need to really separate the guy who fights with people on the internet from the guy who’s, you know, hey, look at my kids, look at my wife, look at my family, we’re doing this, we’re doing that, you know, and I think that it’s okay to have an echo chamber there as long as you understand that the world doesn’t start and stop at Facebook.

CW: Yeah, well, there’s a lot of skeptics that view their Facebook as kind of their outreach, their social work for the day, their contribution to the improvement of humanity. And I’ve been guilty of that too. It’s an incredibly self-aggrandizing principle. But I try and treat it like a salon. I do try and have differing viewpoints on there. I tend not to block people. I can only remember blocking one or two people in the past four or five years. And I tend to just, you know, argue back. And I find that that becomes an interesting venue because people who might, because I’ll have people run into me, I’ve had this happen, they’d be like, hey, I haven’t seen you in forever. And they’re like, oh yeah, you know, I loved what you said to so and so on Facebook. And so there’s all these unknown people watching, they might not comment, sometimes they’ll like it, but they might, they’ll see it and they’ll remember it and it’s just kind of that same principle of, you know, why did Bill Nye debate Ken Ham? Well, it’s not to convince Ken Ham, it’s to convince the people who are watching and to help anybody who is on the fence who might be in the audience and Facebook is a much smaller audience than Bill Nye and Ken Ham would get, certainly my Facebook is, but I’ve had people come up to me, like I had somebody come up to me at an artist gathering and say hey you know I was just visiting visiting my friends organic farm and they have all these really crazy organic you know “woo woo” food stuff ideas you know all about the GMO stuff though I see them on your Facebook tell me the other side what am I missing here and yeah point me to some resources and so I took the opportunity to do that and when you become known as a skeptic because of your Facebook that at least provides a little like nexus channel for people to be like you know I had this idea you know let me check this out with you. How would you research this?

0:14:13
BR:  I was gonna say I I sort of take a similar tact to Celestia in that my you know I I don’t intentionally post provocative comments on Facebook I may bounce around on YouTube but I don’t I’m not one of those people who’s like, you know, you know, Trump sucks debate Yes, I’m like first of all, you know, it’s sort of it’s it’s almost sort of selfish It’s like it’s like all my friends have nothing better do than to debate what I want to on my page, right?

0:14:40
CW: I’d like one argument, sir.

0:14:42
BR: Anyone disagree with this like no matter what you say, you know, I like sugar. No, you don’t, right? So, but what I find is that on my page, I’ve been told, and I found it’s true, I especially noticed it once it was put out to me, is that there tends to be a surprising amount of civility on my page. And again, it’s sort of, because I think part of it is sort of like you were saying earlier, Pascual, is you set the tone. And you as well. It’s, you know, if you approach it in a contrarian, you know, nasty way, that’s one thing. But my general tone, just overall, and as a skeptic, is I try to be respectful of people. I try to look at their point of view, and I don’t troll people. I mean, if I genuinely don’t understand your position, I’ll ask you about it, but I don’t. I try, I go out of my way not to be obnoxious because I don’t think it’s useful and for a variety of other reasons. So what I think happens is that civility breeds civility. Not always. Let me be very ethical about that.

0:15:50
CW: And there are times where your efforts to be civil and careful and I’m just asking, you know, people accuse you, oh yeah, I’m quote unquote just asking questions. people will completely misinterpret civility to be you know you’re just being snooty and you’re being you know academic and you’re being well no I might be using a couple of ten-cent words here yeah but I’m not doing it to be condescending.

0:16:14
PR: That’s a big point that you know kind of should be made about you know when you type anything out the tone is not there and that’s a really tricky thing because I mean it’s so ingrained in the culture now that you try to read tone from text that you know, like text messages, there’s this whole like psychology with them, you know, if someone responds to me with Ok, period, I think they are angry. My mom obviously, like, who’s relatively new to text messaging, texts like that all the time. So I’m like, is she mad about something?

0:16:56
CW: Well, that’s what we’ve all, these workarounds have been evolving over the past 10 years. Okay, smiley face, winky face, emoticon, all the emojis. I love all the emojis. I’ve become, yeah, I’m one of those. I can have entire emoji conversations. And little reaction gifs and the S with the slash for sarcastic font. So people really have a desire to get their tone across. And granted, a lot of these tones I’ve mentioned, like the sarcastic font, you don’t necessarily want to use when you’re trying to apply skepticism in a kind way. But if the civility is out the door and you’re just trying to, if you’re just okay with being a jackass, yeah, you can, there’s some great memes and I could point you to some skeptical cartoons that would make a point, you know. And as long as you get the point across without having to link to giant swaths of text, because nobody reads those on social media.

0:17:58
BR: And what I found is that, at least in my case on my page, is that I have a handful, I’ll say maybe about a dozen or so people who I get into more than rare, for lack of a better word, arguments with. I’m thinking of three or four people off the top of my head, and we’re generally on the same page. I know we are because I’ve known them for years through Facebook, in a couple of cases I met them firsthand. But I also know that about once or every week or two, they’ll make some posts and we will go at it. I will be very respectful. I’m just like, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong. And to their credit, and I sincerely give them credit, we’re still friends. And because I’m not going to block, I don’t really block, I’ve blocked three people in my life. It’s just not, I mean, you got to really piss me off before I’m like you know you’re gone.

CW: Challenge accepted!

BR: But I give that even though we argue a fair amount I mean I always I’m respectful they they know I’m not calling them I don’t hate them personally I’m just like this particular thing I think you’re wrong this is why and we’ll go back and forth and again to their credit I’ll say they they haven’t you know defriended me and blocked me over else.

CW: That’s to your credit too. You’re not surrounding yourself with sycophants here.

0:19:18
BR: So anyway, I respect that. Even though maybe six out of the last ten times we interacted, it was not friendly. They’re still like, hey, you know what, I like that, or we’ll like each other. It’ll be sort of like, like you’re saying, trying to give context. So it’s like, if I was having a Facebook fight with somebody, like, you know, the next day I’ll like, like a post and just like, that’s it. I sort of like throw him a bone, like, sorry. I’m not sorry, but you know, still with you, buddy.

0:19:50
CW: I’m holding my grounds on the facts and evidence, but your puppy is really cute.

BR: That’s right. And then we’ll wait a week till the angers cool off and then we’ll be back.

0:20:00
PR: Totally, totally. And that’s, you know, I don’t want to sound like my echo chamber is just a bunch of clones of myself because I do, you know, have occasional disagreements with people, but I think that, you know, and that’s a good point because I kind of, I feel like the handful of people, I mean, like I even have one friend who is actually a Trump supporter who were just good enough friends in real life that it doesn’t matter but you know we… Well for one I just don’t engage in debate in the you know I see him post something where I just roll my eyes and just like just walk away.

BR: Let it go let it go.

PR: Because there’s no way we’re ever there’s not even a middle, you know, and that’s thing where you know Some people like like him are just there’s no middle between us on politics. There isn’t. There’s no such thing as a middle ground between us. And that’s fine. We’ll just talk about anything else.

CW: Politics doesn’t have to be all life. Yeah.

PR: And it lends a little bit of credence to that old saying about don’t talk about politics and religion in –

CW: pleasant company or something.

0:21:06
PR: Yeah. And I think that’s how it is. But I think my echo chamber mostly has been cultivated by, you know, sticking with people who I genuinely know in real life and like and, you know, I’m friends with or family members and I’m fortunate in that I live in a world where most of the people I know just are at least roughly similar to me. Like, I have religious friends and I have a really good friend who’s a minister and, you know, one of my best friends is extremely religious, but those aren’t things I worry about debating, and that kind of speaks to the challenges of pick your battles. The interesting thing is that my buddy who is particularly religious, he is a very intelligent guy and well-educated, very well-educated guy. The common thread is that we both are really into knowledge and reading and we’re both really interested in science and and he’s a very… You know kind of he’s a little little right of center and but close enough to me politically that we don’t really disagree on much. And and it’s interesting because yeah, it’s you know our discussions And but we even do talk about religion sometimes and I found a way to talk about it with him That’s because it doesn’t have to start with the premise that it’s like, OK, there is no God – Discuss. I just start with, he has his experiences and what leads him to believe the way he does. And I have mine that, well, really just a lack of experiences that has led me to never believe in the first place. But we both are like, we still have the same very similar values and ideals in life. And it becomes just a minor hitch that we even have that difference in worldview because it doesn’t really matter to either of us. And I think in social media, that kind of speaks to picking your battles. Like, why would I pick a fight with him over religion? Because he believes what he believes, but he also behaves as a perfectly decent human being.

0:23:09
CW: There’s a difference between a fight and a discussion or a debate. There’s a goal in a discussion or a debate. I try to refer to my Facebook as a salon at times. This is going to be a salon discussion of blah, blah, blah, go. Sometimes we have neat little threads develop. But if it’s a fight, if it’s just a fight, then you’re just trying to punch. You’re not trying to convince anybody you’re trying to make the loudest statement you can and punch somebody in the face verbally right which can be fun. I you know everybody’s done that occasionally…

BR: I ain’t got time for that.

0:23:46
PR: No, I just like to end the conversation with an all-caps response and then unfriend them right after.

CW: That totally makes you look like you won. I’m so sarcastic font. Please don’t do that to your friends.

0:24:05
PR: Not cool. Not cool.

0:24:07
CW: Yeah. I had a Facebook thing happen to me maybe three or four years ago. One of my good friends from high school who knew me as kind of a skeptic person in high school before I even knew the word skeptic. I was just one of those people. And I read Isaac Asimov in the corner and watching my pen and teller and stuff and she knows me now as a Facebook friend who talks a lot of skeptic stuff and posts a lot of skeptic stuff and has a lot of skeptic friends that pop in and on my Facebook and she texted me one day she said you need to get on Facebook and talk to my sister. I’m like why she said my sister is in Wisconsin she’s holed up in the basement it’s like 10 o’clock at night there and somebody said on the radio that there’s weird lights outside and she is convinced that there are UFOs over her house you need to talk to her so she tagged me on because her sister was in the basement I guess talking on Facebook during this whole thing and and I was so I threw some threads and you know it’s really not you know you think of all the things it could be and if it is aliens you want to get up there so you can be the first one to get proof of it.

0:25:15
PR: You stand to win.

CW: So yeah, I forget exactly how it went. But you know, she’s alive and well today. She has not been taken up by any visitors unless they replaced her with a replicant.

0:25:26
BR: You can’t prove they didn’t.

0:25:27
PR: You can’t prove they didn’t.

CW: But yeah, that honestly felt like getting a little badge or something, like a skeptic badge, like I’ve been called in. I’ve been called in for a situation.

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0:25:36
PR: Hey, strangers. Hey strangers, 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.

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0:26:04
BR: You know, what I found is that a lot of times, I come from a slightly different perspective through my investigations.

0:26:10
CW: You’ve got the whole professional angle. Your Facebook is part of your professional interaction.

0:26:14
BR: Right. And so, I get contacted by people every week or two, sometimes several times a week, by believers. By default, by definition, I’m talking to believers, right? Whether I’m investigating cop circles or people who believe in psychics or ghosts or whatever it is, you know, by the nature of what I do, I’m interacting with people who are approaching and interpreting a given stimuli, usually ambiguous stimuli.

0:26:42
CW: If they didn’t believe it, they wouldn’t have contacted you. Right. They would have been like, I don’t believe that.

0:26:46
BR: Right. That’s why I’m there, is because they believe it and I investigate it. And so what I found is that even cases that I’m not officially investigating, it’s really important, at least to me in my career, to listen to the believers. You don’t necessarily have to believe them, but you listen to them because that’s what investigators do. Whatever the topic is, right? If you call the police and you say, I need the police, they will listen to what you’re saying. They’ll gather information, try to understand what happened, what’s going on, where is this person, what is going on, right? That’s what you do. And so, you know, it’s important, even when it’s not something that I’m officially investigating, I’ve learned so much from listening to people with a different worldview. It just, it just, and that’s again, that’s sort of specific to, as Celestia mentioned, my sort of career, my official investigation career. Because, because, you know, like for example, someone contacts me and they believe they’ve been cursed. Or they’re, you know, I’ve had people write to me and say, you know, I’m seeing a psychic and this is the information I’m getting, what should I do with this information? And it’s crucial for me to listen to them, to understand their worldview to sort of get okay. What what are your premises? You know, I don’t I don’t I don’t pray tell me your premises man! But it’s you know, you you have to you have to go to where they are. And when I’m interviewing people Again, I I’m not judgmental. I’m just trying to figure out what the hell happened, what’s going on because it could be that they experience something that is genuinely paranormal, not likely but possible and the only way you find out is to investigate. And so anyway, my point is just that as an investigator, understanding the believer’s worldview is crucial.

0:28:41
CW: So your social media outreach reflects that, you’re more of a question asker rather than a truth hander downer.

0:28:50
BR: Yeah, because look, I mean, if and you know, I was going to talk about this a little later, but I’ll just touch on it now is, you know, for example, I was doing a haunted house investigation in Buffalo and and there was a case where the family believed it was a mother and father and a young girl, I think a three year old, and they were terrified to stay in their own house. They believe their house was haunted by evil spirit. And they called me and I did an investigation. It’s one of the chapters in one of my books. But it was, it was, the whole thing took place over about, of course, about a week, week and a half. And, you know, I, I knew from, from doing investigation there that they, they believed at least at one point that, that there absolutely was some ghost or evil spirit in the house. And I knew that if I just came in as the skeptic “well you know none of this was true all this was your man nation blah blah We debunked X Y & Z blah blah”. It’s all good, and I walk out is it even even even if I go point by point debunking their evidence, even if I do that and they agree with me. It’s like well, they still believe there was a ghost there and so I needed to I need to go to where they were. And so when I went back for sort of the follow-up, the debunking, where I’m like, you know, I’ve investigated, this is what happened. I go in there and I said, look, I actually struggled with this. I wrote an article about this. I think it was called Playing Witch Doctor, the Ethics of Skeptical Investigation. And there’s an ethical issue there because I knew that if I, as I said, if I just went in there as the sort of blanket debunker, they weren’t going to believe what I said and therefore…

0:30:31
CW: Yeah, they would assume that, well, obviously he didn’t get the point. Obviously he didn’t understand what we were trying to tell him. Because he just flat out debunked it. Exactly. You have to make sure they understand, that you understand what they’ve told you.

0:30:45
BR: Right. So what I did was, so again, as I was going back to visit the family, I had to figure out how do I frame this to help them out and solve the case. And there was this sort of gray area. And so the way I phrased it was, I said, we looked at the evidence, because I showed them evidence, I went through piece by piece, and they agreed with almost all of it. And I said, if there was a ghost here, it’s gone now. And I intentionally didn’t because again if I just said ghosts don’t exist – they don’t believe me because I know that at one point they were sure the ghost existed because they were about to leave their house and stay at a hotel.

0:31:21
CW: So you felt like that was almost getting into the little white lie territory I did we’re like oh no Santa knows where we live now kids.

0:31:30
BR: So I tried to very you know I get this a fair amount I tried to carefully thread the needle where I felt like I wasn’t betraying skepticism as an investigator and as a researcher. And where, so I said, well, he said, I don’t think there was any, I don’t think there were any ever any ghosts here. I don’t think, but you know, if there was, it’s no longer a problem. That left the door open for them, even in case in the back of their minds they think that I was that you know they agree with me about most of it but they still think that’s that one but he wasn’t here we experienced with love that closes that door it’s like okay well even if I even if I think there was a ghost here he’s wrong about that I agree with him that there’s no longer anything here and that’s how I handled that.

0:32:18
CW: That also kind of puts you with a foot in each of the categories of paranormal researcher and some there are believers and ghost fanatics out there who only listen to the paranormal researchers who always find paranormal activity. Like they’ll find a way to find some. There’s those paranormal researchers and then there’s the ones who never find anything. And you’re kind of allowing yourself to not be pigeonholed when you put it that way to somebody.

0:32:49
BR: And what was interesting is that after that article came out, I got an email from a Canadian archdeacon who had read my piece and he said, I’m in a similar position. He says, you know, when we were, a Canadian archdeacon and me were lamenting the fact that there’s parallels between what we do. And he was talking about how he really appreciated Maracle because it echoed his experiences when people come to him complaining about demons. And he said that it bothers him to sort of play witch doctor where he recognized that in many of the cases there was nothing going on. It was hallucination. It was suggestibility. It was X, Y, Z. And even though he could tell them that, he had to frame it for his flock, for the believers, in a way that, well, you know, nothing to see here.

0:33:49
CW: Like saying just flat out, there’s no demon or there’s no ghost, the way that the person will interpret that is he thinks I’m crazy. He thinks I’m crazy. He doesn’t get it.

0:34:02
BR: And so anyway, that’s sort of my…

0:34:04
CW: That’s effective communication. Well, and that segues perfectly into leaving the social media platform and talking about live, so live applied skepticism and any interesting things any of us have had in that arena. Certainly Ben has had a ton with all of, as you just mentioned, dealing with live encounters.

(MUSIC)

Celetia: Hey Squares and hey strangers, Celestia here with your skeptical fortune cookie. Let’s see what’s inside this week. The mind, sense-making organ that it is, does not interpret our experiences as if they were shattered shards of glass. It assembles them into a mosaic. This quote is from the brilliant and pioneering Carol Tavris, a social psychologist, feminist, and author of Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me, Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, in which this apt metaphor appears. Ms. Tavris began her career in the late 1970s, writing for a then new publication called Psychology Today. And she has since written for countless prestigious outlets, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Scientific American, and Skeptic magazine. She has co-authored psychology textbooks and trade books on gender inequality, anger, and cognitive dissonance. And she has testified as an expert witness, countering evidence that’s based on pseudoscientific or discredited psychological ideas. Her work helps to explain why our brains lead to misunderstandings with others as well as with our own history. We assemble mosaics, as she says, and these mosaics don’t always tell the whole truth. Cognitive dissonance is the glue that holds these mosaics together, smoothing out patches where we acted in ways that don’t accord with our own self-image. But it’s not just for villains who need to sleep at night, it’s part of how everyone thinks. It’s only by making ourselves aware of how cognitive dissonance works, that we can override our wiring. Much of skepticism is looking inward to examine each piece of our own mosaic and help deconstruct it. Anyone looking for an introduction to Carol Tavris’s work should look up her talk from TAM 2014 Titled who’s lying who’s self-justifying? origins of the he said she said gap Now let’s get you back to Ben and Pascual.

(MUSIC)

PR: So now we’re going to talk about the challenges of being a skeptic in real life and person-to-person situations and when you’re out in the world. I think Ben really, he kind of gave us a great example of how you handle speaking to someone as a skeptic when you know that they aren’t necessarily going to want to hear your full take on things or you coming at them with the position that…

0:37:27
CW: The hard edges of skepticism.

0:37:29
PR: And that’s something that I’ve always kind of, I’ve really had to battle with in my own My parents are both non-religious and both academics. My father’s a retired history professor, did a lot of, just a lot of academic stuff. My mother’s a retired anthropologist, and they both kind of, they raised us in a house with a lot of information and science and books, and we read a lot and we learned things, and they really, and so in my family life, it was sort of this bubble of this really nice, safe little bubble of, you know…

CW: A critical thinking family.

0:38:13
BR: And you could ask questions.

PR: My dad actually gave me, I still have it on the bookshelf downstairs. In fact, the, there’s a little handbook called critical thinking that my father gave me when I was a kid. And so, and with that in mind, my father’s family being Spanish, there’s a lot of Catholicism. I mean, my dad was brought up in the Catholic school and the Catholic church, and my grandfather, the judge, actually was a deacon, and my grandmother was devout, and her sisters were devout, everyone.

0:38:45
CW: So you sort of had to compartmentalize as a result of that?

0:38:48
PR: Yeah, so that was a big thing growing up was you know because I mean for one us being non-religious was was not a It wasn’t a badge or anything. We didn’t wear that as a lifestyle you know my parents aren’t aren’t particularly –

BR: In your face about it.

PR: Yeah I mean they in fact both of them. You know just they don’t really say one way or the other they’ve never considered that a discussion worth having which is fine. The rest of the family on my father’s side, my mom’s side largely are non-religious, but my father’s side, everyone including cousins, aunts and uncles are all mostly religious. And that was sort of where I had to learn that kind of language and that kind of communication with non-religious people because I wasn’t ever going into these discussions with the attitude that I was trying to refute what they thought, because it was like, that’s what they think, and that’s in their head, so I know it’s an idea, which means going against it with, that doesn’t exist, isn’t going to be a thing, and that really kind of struck a chord when you told that story, because that’s kind of how I’ve always had to communicate with my family in the sense that, you know, I don’t want to be, I don’t want to lie. I don’t want to hold back on what I actually think, but I also don’t want to make it seem like I’m just brushing off what they believe and what they care about in life, you know, because these are people I care about. I mean, I, you know, we, I have a strong family center that we all really care about each other. And, and, uh, so yeah, that, that kind of communication was something that I learned throughout my life and I like to see it applied in skepticism.

0:40:31
CW: Yeah, yeah. And picking your – it would be a really boring world if everybody in your social circle that you hung out with in real life thought exactly the same as you.

PR: Yeah.

CW: Friends or family. I’ve got a lot of family. I’ve got a lot of friends that are religious or have different views. I hang out with artists. I have a lot of cartoonists and artist friends and believe me, the Woo belief system runs the gamut.

0:40:55
PR: Oh yeah.

0:40:56
CW: As well as the mysticism and the, you know, there’s plenty of free spirits in the artistic community.

0:41:03
PR: Yeah, sure.

0:41:04
CW: And you get a lot of different stuff.

0:41:05
BR: Yeah, do tell.

CW: And there’s moments where I choose to step up and say, well, yeah, and then there’s moments where I’m like, oh, that’s interesting, tell me about that. And half the time they know my views and I’ve had people express hey, you know – Hey, I know you think differently from this. Yeah, but da da da and and I don’t say yeah, I think differently that’s stupid. I say, well, you think yeah, I say well, you know I said and I an opening line I usually do is Yeah, I do. I think differently, but you’d be surprised. We probably have a lot more similar veins of thought than you might believe Mm-hmm. I had to give a eulogy once following a Catholic priest. And I actually found a common vein, you know, the person that we were celebrating. You know, I don’t believe in an afterlife or anything, but I was following the Catholic priest who absolutely did. And you know, I was like, you know, well, I’m not the only one who’s lost somebody I love here. And whether or not they are now rejoicing in paradise or whether or not they don’t exist, I at least know they aren’t suffering the daily sufferings that they had. And that is something that we both agreed on. And I looked and the Catholic priest was nodding his head and I was like, all right, I’m playing to the crowd, okay. So there’s always some common ground you can reach for regardless of where the other person is coming from. And common ground is where you get a foothold. where I’m not saying you know, it’s not like I’m talking like a manipulative con man here. And that’s where you get your foothold and then you can grab them. No, that’s where you get a foothold to help show them a particular viewpoint they may not have thought about or show them an aspect of their thinking that they might have just been adhering to a wrong idea for a long time. Just because it was what they were brought up with.

0:42:49
PR: Sure.

0:42:49
CW: And they’re not going to listen to you if you come at them like, I am 180 degrees different from you.

BR: Yeah. I think a lot of it is, is, you know, it’s what you’re trying to achieve. Uh, you know, are you, are you just trying to be argumentative or are you trying to make a difference? Um, and the, the tack that I take and it’s not, I’m not saying it’s the best take, it’s just the one that I do is I go for the pragmatic point of view. What’s going to work? What’s going to be effective? And typically, my goal is to either get them help, in some cases, like improve their lives, alleviate their situation. Maybe you get them to stop believing there’s a curse on them. Get them to stop believing that their child is haunted by something, or whatever it is. Other times it’s to inform people and just educate them. Not that I’m the smartest guy in the world, but in the cases I investigate, there’s a reason that I’m there investigating. The goal is just to be nasty to people and argue, go ahead. I don’t find that useful. I got better things to do than to just start trolling people and like, well, you’re wrong about this, you’re wrong about that. You’re like, I don’t, there’s no benefit to that. I think that’s one thing that we all share.

0:44:18
CW: It’s not fun to talk to people like that.

0:44:20
BR: It’s not fun. It’s not, what’s the point? If you’re going to spend your time and effort spreading skepticism and trying to help people, then there’s a way you go about that. It’s not calling people names. It’s not rolling your eyes and sighing heavily when they talk about something.

0:44:42
CW: Well they put up a wall. As soon as somebody feels like they’re being condescended to or told what’s what, they put up a wall. I find that that bringing people to a different way of thinking or taking them away from a false thought that they have It’s a ladder. It’s not they don’t do a high jump and like suddenly there Oh, well, I was thinking like this guy before I went from thinking like Ray Comfort to thinking like Carl Sagan Yeah in one jump. No, they don’t do that You got to put the ladder out for them and help them up that first step and then leave it there Yeah, and then and then maybe throw a few other thoughts and they might make those other steps along the ladder on their own. Later that night, when they’re in the shower at 11 p.m. and it’ll roll through their head. You might not be there when it happens. But you’ve gotta just kind of take it easy and don’t come at them with a hammer.

0:45:34
BR: One thing, just one quick thing. One thing that I found works for me is when I, if I’m discussing something or offering a different point of view with someone else, I try to be diplomatic about it and I end with just a thought. I just say, I’m not saying that, I’m just throwing this out there, just my two cents, just a thought, I’m not attacking you, I’m just leaving that there for you. And then disengage.

0:45:57
CW: Is that like the skeptic version of just saying?

0:45:59
BR: I’m just saying.

0:46:00
CW: Just saying.

0:46:01
BR: Well, I mean, that way it’s just, again, it’s just, I’m just, you know, you defuse it, this is an attack, I’m just like, here’s my point of view, take it or leave it, and then, you know, I’m not going to fight you about it, this isn’t worth my time and energy, here’s another view, take it or don’t.

0:46:19
PR: I find that it’s really effective to use condescending Willy Wonka memes.

CW: Oh, yeah.

0:46:24
BR: There’s that.

0:46:25
CW: People love those.

0:46:27
PR: Boy, they sure turn around when they see that picture of Gene Wilder’s face.

CW: Yeah. I try to, you know, there was a, the guys from Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe put on one of the workshops before TAM one time and it was effective arguing. And I found it very interesting and they actually had people line up on either side of the room and the guys, the rogues, the skeptical rogues were up there pretending to be somebody holding a very unskeptical point of view. Like GMO foods are bad for you or evolution is just a theory. No, it hasn’t been proven at all. Climate change is false. And people got a chance to try and pitch them. It was like a mock argument. It was very cute. And I I sat there wondering what my approach would be and I’ve talked to a lot of my friends about stuff like that and an approach that I’ve found works and you got to be telling the truth about this and I am you know I’d be like I Used to think that too. Yeah. But I read some stuff. of it just if you’re interested I mean you know this changed my mind if you want to see it that’s fine if not don’t worry about it yeah but and then they’re like oh yeah sometimes you know a little flattery doesn’t hurt either I’ve had especially with the GMO thing I’ve had people where I was like look most of my a lot of my acquaintances I wouldn’t even bother trying to talk them out of the idea because it’s so ingrained and I drank the Kool-Aid for a long time thinking these got to be in a hell unhealthier because I see image after image after image telling me that mm-hmm I was like but but you’re one of my smart friends yeah you’re gonna be able to wrap your head around this when I tell you all this stuff you want to hear it and they’re like yeah yeah I do I’m one of your smart friends yeah…

BR:  please proceed…

CW: So then you’re kind of handing it to them on a platter rather than force feeding them with a tube.

0:48:29
PR: Yeah, I’ve used that exact type of response or type of point that I’ve made. In the music world, a lot of musicians, I mean that all runs again, artists again, you know.

0:48:43
CW: Yeah.

0:48:44
PR: And a lot of them use a lot of products that, you know, for voice or for overall health. Like you see, I mean, people, airborne and emergency is like, every bus has it and everyone swears by it. And, you know, and stuff like that. And, you know, on one hand, okay, fine, whatever, you buy some airborne. I’m not gonna make a big deal out of that. But some people buy like these, these like homeopathic like throat medicines. I mean, I even use a very, some what would normally be a pretty wooey thing.

0:49:24
CW: Pascual’s holding up a bottle here. What does this say? Singers Soothing Throat Spray, extra strength herbal formula. I’m looking for BS flags on here. Fast acting herbal supplement. Are you sure you want to out yourself by just having this?

PR: Oh yeah. No, I make no… That stuff works really well in that whatever ingredient it is that completely numbs the back of your throat works. The language… Well, and it’s sold at like I think Whole Foods or something.

CW: It’s got licorice in it.

0:49:54
PR: And I mean it works. I mean from a chemical standpoint, the ingredient that’s supposed to do what it does, does. It’s not really a wooey product per se, but it’s stuff like that and there’s like homeopathic.

BR: But it looks very wooey.

PR: I guarantee you that company probably makes a bunch of stuff that does nothing. But it’s kind of an interesting…

CW: Found a needle in the haystack there.

PR: Right. Well, it’s actually my father who got me into it. He’s also a musician. But it’s funny because you see a lot of this sort of stuff on the road.

0:50:27
CW: So that’s like one small example, but it’s like on steroids in the music world, there is all sorts of crap.

0:50:34
PR: Yeah, and a lot of it is just actual homeopathy, which means it’s like these little pills of nothing. And they’re like, oh, this one is for throat strength or to keep your sinuses clear or help you sleep. I mean, you see it all over the place, and I’ve had to kind of do that, kind of like, oh yeah, I’ve tried that stuff before. And let me explain some stuff to you about homeopathy if you don’t mind, because I think you can understand this stuff. And I talk about the parts per billion, because the funny thing about homeopathy and Scientology and Mormonism for that matter, they all come from a kind of woo that gives you the woo right out of the gate. Just so you know, there’s parts per billion in this.

0:51:23
CW: People don’t really understand what billion means.

0:51:27
PR: Yeah, and the same thing with Mormonism and Scientology. They give you a premise that is like… I think maybe they’re just trying… Maybe the idea is that with a lot of these products and things like this and belief systems like that is that they’re like let’s just weed out the people who are aren’t going to go all the way.

0:51:42
BR: If they’ll bite that, we got them.

PR: Yeah, exactly. But anyway, to swing back to it, it was kind of, I had to use a very similar kind of, because I just I hate to see my friends like spending, you know, fifty bucks a week on some weird stuff and like emergency and airborne and stuff, you know, because people would always marvel at how I, save for the last tour I did, I have never been sick on tour.

0:52:05
CW: I’ve had some, your homeopathy comment reminded me, I’ve had some experiences, every once in a while I’ll treat myself to a massage. I’ll go get like 50 minutes of some other human rubbing my muscles and I like it. And in the massage world there’s a lot of woo. There’s a lot of people, and the last guy I had massage me, young guy, he was like 22, he was right out of massage school and he’s like, I want to be a doctor and I want to incorporate a lot of holistic things and homeopathy and da da da da da da da. And he tells me this and it’s the start of my massage and I’m like, tense. And then I’m like, challenge. And so I spent, you know, I spent 50 minutes talking to this kid going, well, hey, do you know what homeopathy actually means?  And I took him from the stuff of just educating him on what the actual word means yeah the fact I was like it’s actually dishwashing. You put a little bit of a substance in water And then you dump it out completely and then you fill it with water and dump it out completely and fill it with water and Dump it out completely you do that 50 times, and you have medicine yeah, and and he’s like – Really? Yes! Yeah And and I got him going with that and we chatted and chatted and chatted and I was pre-med for a while so I talked to him about that and and and I just I just got him for a massage just recently like this is like a year later – I Went to the same place and he had changed his views pretty significantly since the last time I talked to him It’s really cool. But the fact that it was like a captured audience. I had him for 50 minutes. Granted, I was paying him. It was almost like I got to flex my muscles a little bit. He was in a situation where he couldn’t exactly say, you’re rude and I hate you and walk out. But I still didn’t push because the guy’s massaging you. I’m not going to be mean to him. I’ve had similar things. I once had a conversation with my mechanic’s secretary that went on for quite a while. I took her step through step through step and I think maybe by the end of my oil change which took like half an hour I may have convinced her that Obama was not a Muslim.

0:54:08
PR: Hmm, that’s that’s a tall order. I’ve tried that one a couple times. It was tough.

BR: Yeah, I had the I had a similar situation with homeopathy where I was talking to a friend of mine and you know, she’s generally skeptical but and I think the the thing that really kicked it for when I said, no, just so you understand, the premise is that water has memory. And she started laughing, I’m like, no, really. That’s what they say. I mean, that’s what the experts say. And she’s like, no, I’m like, yeah. And she’s like, okay, we’re done here. You kind of have me with delusions and this and that, then like, you’re saying water remembers things. Okay, yep, yep, this is, you’ve just invalidated everything else because I’m not buying that.

0:54:59
CW: Homeopathy does have that nice trap door where you can generally convince people just by pointing out the definition because they don’t know. They don’t know, they think it, because I asked him, I said, my masseuse guy, what do you think it means? Because I wanted to know what he thought. And he gave me like three definitions, like it’s gentle on your stomach, there aren’t a lot of side effects. I’m like, oh yeah, there aren’t a lot of side effects.

0:55:24
PR: No, there are none that I’ve heard of.

0:55:26
BR: True enough.

0:55:27
CW: There aren’t a lot of effects either. But yeah, but he had these definitions that were all light, fluffy, holistic, it’s not supported by big pharma, etc. And you just educate them on that one and then literally that is one of the skeptic principles where their eyes just open.

0:55:49
BR: And I’m glad you brought that up because I was going to mention that. Oftentimes just asking simple questions is incredibly effective for skepticism. Again, it’s not being obnoxious, not being attacking, just saying, I don’t understand. I mean, you’re telling me that someone adjusted your aura. I don’t know what that means. Yeah. I’m not being philistine. I don’t know what that means.

0:56:12
CW: Get Socratic on their asses!

0:56:13
BR: Yeah, I mean, and just say, look, I don’t know. I mean, I’m familiar with energy. There’s different types of energy. There’s heat energy. There’s light energy. There’s energy that’s stored, for example, in gasoline. But you’re talking about a human energy that science cannot register, cannot detect, cannot measure. How is that different than imaginary energy? Again, I’m not attacking, I’m just trying to understand this. When you phrase it that way, oftentimes, exactly, it’s like when you ask the definitions, like what’s your understanding of this you don’t need to tell them you actually know more about them than they do just like what you know what I’m trying to what what you’re and after a while oftentimes if they’re being sincere the like a few minutes in they’ll be like you know I don’t I don’t really know.

CW: Right it just kind of makes me feel good well how does it make you feel good yeah well just reassuring which I guess, huh?

0:57:14
BR: Hmmmm.

0:57:16
CW: And it’s beautiful to see somebody who’s just asked themselves the question and figure out that they have to ask themselves the question. Not quite skeptic related, but in my field I was giving some lessons to a young girl on how to draw. And she had fallen into the trap that many young artists do – she just drew anime, anime, anime… I said, now I notice all your drawing is anime. Why is it that all you draw is anime? That’s all I asked her. She goes, because it’s easy. And then the eyes open. She goes, and if I ever want to get really good, I should do the difficult stuff instead of just the easy stuff. And I was like, yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! And yeah, she didn’t need many lessons after that. She was on the right road.

0:58:02
PR: Yeah. I think we can all take a lesson from little kids when they’re always questioning their parents like, why? That word alone can really get past a lot of really bad ideas because you just keep asking like, why? Why do you think this works? It just causes… It breaks something away. Even the most hardened people, like you still chip away at them with those questions because you require them to justify and provide evidence. And you don’t have to ask it like a little kid does and pester them about it. But again, you’re like, why do you do anime?

0:58:45
CW: And that’s the difference between like dogmatic BS and science. Science is always asking why. And you ask why in, you know, in your average, you know, I got in trouble a lot for asking why during the Sunday school things I attended when I was a kid, right? You don’t ask why in Sunday school, it just is. Because God.

0:59:03
BR: There’s a rejoinder to that. And I’m glad you brought that up is, is, is it’s important to know your stuff. Yeah. As a skeptic. Yeah. And that’s because, for example, exactly as you said, well, you know, if someone says, why do you think it works? And their answer is because it makes you feel better. You need to know enough. I mean, you don’t need to be the world’s smartest guy, but you need to know enough to be able to say, have you heard of the placebo effect? That way, when they say, well, it makes me feel better, you’re like, oh, well, I guess it works then. It’s like, no, no, no, there’s another step there. There’s another depth of knowledge where as a skeptic, you say, okay, well, do you know what the placebo effect is? Well, yeah, I’ve heard about it. Well, that means, that literally means that you can feel better without having active ingredient.

0:59:51
CW: Yeah, yeah.

0:59:52
BR: So, if once we’re all on the same page and we’ve all heard about the placebo effect, how do you know it’s not that? So, that’s one reason why I sometimes wince when I see sort of armchair skeptics. They’re smart people, but they don’t really have a depth of knowledge. They’re quick with the skeptical rejoinders. They’re quick with why ghosts are unlikely or why Bigfoot. They have the superficial answers, but then the problem is that if they confront somebody, especially in public or on TV or at a conference, who knows their stuff, they bounce it back, they go, what about X? And they’re like, uh, uh, and so.

1:00:35
CW: And there goes the credibility.

1:00:37
BR: And then it’s like, oh, showed Mr. Skeptic up.

1:00:39
CW: Yeah, they take it as a victory. I, yeah, that’s a very good point about the placebo effect and about being able to have more than just a superficial rejoinder. I had yeah, somebody forget who it was, but I had somebody talking to me about oh, you know Aspartame or something, you know, that’ll kill you that’s oh sure that stuff kills rat kills lab rats. I’ve seen it I was like, well, I mean everything kills lab rats. And they’re like, well, what do you mean? I was like, do you know how trials are run? Back in college I got to help my roommate do some of this. You take a bunch of rats and you give them a substance, it can be anything, vitamin C, anything. You give them a bunch and then you give them a more, you give them increasing amounts and eventually half of them die and you have an LD50, that’s the lethal dose that will kill half the animals. So you point to anything on earth and it will kill lab rats, that’s what they’re there for. It’s the only reason we have lab rats. It just completely took away the ammo. And the person was like, huh. So when you see stuff that’s pointing out that it kills lab rats, just remember it doesn’t mean anything. It’s like this supports your immune system. It doesn’t mean anything.

1:01:59
BR: Doing some jumping jacks supports your immune system. It literally does.

1:02:02
CW: Eating an M&M gives me like three calories with which I can support my immune system.

1:02:07
BR: Boom, done.

1:02:09
PR: And the idea that, you know, I think it’s important and that’s what this all kind of speaks to is as a skeptic and, you know, kind of overcoming these challenges is especially with debate or with providing information for people, you have to be able to formulate your own argument, you know, because anyone can read the God Delusion and spit back, you know, a hundred things from that or, or, you know, letters to a Christian nation and, you know, just repeat Sam Harris’s rhetoric and, you know, it’s, but yeah, sure, you’ve got the sound bites, but do you understand what you’re saying? Because the person who said this originally used years of research to come to that conclusion. And they have a, there’s a whole understanding they have and they have to break it down to a chapter in a book, which is impossible to do thoroughly, but they do it so that they can communicate it to you so that you understand where they’re coming from. But when you take that and that’s your only weaponry into a debate, you are leaving yourself open to, to all the things you don’t understand about what you’re saying. And you know, and it happens on all sides of all debates. I see it a lot with the people that, actually a great example on both sides is when people pull out Leviticus to talk about gay marriage or something. And it’s like you’ve got, on one hand, you’ve got the fundamentalists using it as, well, that’s the law of God. And it’s like, well, yeah, and then there are a dozen other laws in there that you don’t follow. But then on the other hand, if you’re going to be a skeptic and you’re going to start using the Bible, which I actually highly, I really don’t think people should use the Bible to argue against religious people because you should treat it just like all other literature and understand it, but don’t use their words against them because they’ve already gone so far into justifying, picking their justifications out of the book.

1:04:00
CW: Well, you’re automatically going down to that particular turf and that’s where you’re gonna argue.

1:04:03
PR: Yeah, like don’t argue in their book. But again, it’s like, don’t throw that back at them because if you hit a guy who’s a real well-versed minister or something, he’ll talk about Leviticus and then you’re suddenly, you think you know more than they do because you read that shellfish are also and mixed fabric and stuff, but then there’s a whole bunch of other stuff in that book that isn’t just that book. And while, yes, absolutely we can point out that it is kind of hypocritical and it is very cherry picking.

1:04:34
CW: Well, it’s a gotcha. It’s thinking you have a gotcha when you have just, you have the words of a gotcha, but you don’t have, it’s the difference between standing on the shoulders of giants and just copying the crib notes of giants.

1:04:46
PR: Yeah, exactly. Because once you’re just repeating things, you know, you’re leaving yourself open to a lot of vulnerability and then you’re undermining your own position and your own credibility.

1:04:54
CW: You’re fooling yourself, you’re not a skeptic at that point if you’re just repeating things.

1:05:01
PR: Right, exactly, exactly.

1:05:02
CW: Good discussion guys. I like chatting with you all.

(MUSIC)

1:05:04
We would like to thank our sponsor level patrons Amy Freshour-Kelley and Dr. Angela Mattke.

1:05:17
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. Patronage starts at just a buck and there are a lot of perks and bonus content just for our patrons. If you’d like to lend your moral support, you can head over to iTunes and give us a review. 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

1:05:44
brings a smile to Pascual’s face.

1:06:01
Swearing Strange is a production of Kronos Creative LLC, copyright 2017. Theme music by Shriek Back. Additional music by Memory, Guitard and Feathered, and Pascual Romero. Content producer, Celestia Ward. Audio engineering, producing, and editing provided by Pascual Romero at Kronos Creative Studios. Additional support provided by Ashley Romero, and of course, our listeners and patrons. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of Swearing Strange and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Kronos Creative, Strange and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Kronos Creative, Center for Inquiry, our advertisers, or any affiliated organizations and employers.

Transcribed with Cockatoo