0:00:00
Ben Radford: Welcome to Squaring the Strange, where we apply critical thinking and evidence-based analysis to, well, everything from the simple to the strange, the mysterious to the mundane.

(MUSIC)

0:00:14
Pascual Romero: Welcome back to Squaring the Strange. I’m Pascual Romero. With me as always is…

BR: Ben Radford.

0:00:33
PR: And this is episode 33.

BR: The Big 33! The big rolling rock.

PR: I used to drink that a lot in high school not to incriminate myself statute of limitations is way past.

BR: This is New Mexico, there’s no laws here. Yeah, but we still get our mail delivered on boroughs for those who don’t know.

PR: Yeah So yeah, so that’s this is gonna be a really interesting episode. We’re be kind of talking about Conspiracy that we that we… it’s a very… well, and conspiracy is sort of the the way it’s perceived, but there’s a lot to it that comes from you know, some truth, some fallacy, and everything in between, so it’s going to be really interesting. What did we decide to title it this week?

BR: We decided to title it, They Divide to Conquer.

PR: They Divide to Conquer. They being the capital T, they.

BR: Exactly, the royal they, those people, the others, the capital O, others, are responsible for bad things.

PR: Right, right. Cool. Well, let’s just get right into it. Ben, what are you skeptical of this week?

0:01:52
BR: This week I wanted to highlight something that I’ve talked about many times over the years and that is psychic detectives and psychics in general. What you find is that when you follow the news, as of course I do and many of our listeners do as well, there, I routinely, I don’t know if daily, but certainly weekly, see news stories where I see it and I’m like, you know, a psychic would be really useful right about now.

PR: Yeah.

BR: And just over and over again, and there’s so many well-known psychics. There’s Carla Baron, there’s of course John Edward, James Van Praag, many, many, Tyler Henry, I mean just take your pick. Not all of them of course claim to do the same things but many of them claim to have psychic ability. For example, knowing the future, finding missing persons, that sort of thing. One of the biggest strikes against the credibility of these people is, well, that they don’t do what they claim they can do. I find that a lot of times when skeptics and the general public think about psychics, it’s sort of this abstract way like, oh, psychics can do this. But then when you say, okay, well, let’s bring it to the real world, there’s, they should be involved in police departments, they should be in the TSA. They should be helping us all get through lines at the airports faster because they can cyclically determine which of us are terrorists, which ones aren’t. So there’s all these real world applications where psychics are noticeably missing. And I just want to touch on a couple this time. I don’t like to harp on it all the time because I don’t want it to seem like I’m sort of like coattailing on tragedy and saying, oh, well, here’s this case. But I do think it’s important every now and then to remind people to ask, where are the psychics? And so I want to touch on that briefly today. So again, it’s basically highlighting the absence of psychics and oftentimes the absence of something helps to provide clues to understanding that phenomena. There’s a famous Sherlock Holmes story, I think it’s the the Silver Blaze, or no, it’s the dog barking in the night, The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime, and there’s a scene there where, seen in the story, where Holmes notes that a dog did not bark when you would have expected a dog to bark. For example, the dog knew that the killer was sort of the take-home. And his point is that the curious thing is that the dog didn’t bark when you would have expected it to bark. So again, the absence of information can give us information as to what actually did happen. That also happened in skeptical investigations as well. And that happens every day when you look at the world from a skeptical point of view and say, okay, where are the psychics? Why aren’t they doing what they say they can do? So I’ll just touch on a couple of things that have been in the recent news. As of the time of recording this, there is a submarine from the Argentine Navy, which has, I believe, 44 people missing. And as of now, it’s still missing. And they don’t know where they are. At this point, unfortunately, they’re probably dead. I mean, they have limited oxygen. But if psychics are real, they should be contacting the Argentine military and saying, this is where the submarine is. These are people, you know, 44 people’s lives could be saved if psychics can do what they claim they can do, which is to find missing people. As of this moment, there’s a serial killer in in Tampa. There’s four victims so far and there may be other victims. If psychics can find these people, then do it. Help catch this killer and save someone’s life. There was a cop killed in Pennsylvania that is still loose. And as of moment, as of right now, very recently, there are two border patrol agents outside of El Paso, and one of them is dead, the other one is badly injured, and they don’t know what happened. Was it an attack? Was it an accident? Was it illegal immigrants? We don’t know. And psychics, again, could help solve the case. Particularly in this case, if it wasn’t an illegal immigrant, who of course Trump is blaming, then you can help stamp out racism by saying, I’m a psychic, I know exactly what happened, I can show you how it happened, I can prove it, and here it is. And so, you know, I just, it just gets frustrating to me to sort of see how people compartmentalize these psychics. On one hand, they sort of have this little carefully couched, it’s almost like a magician to me. There’s an interesting parallel, I think of like a stage magician where, you know, the magician will be on stage, and they can do certain tricks as long as you’re sitting in a specific place like stay in these seats don’t look behind the magician don’t look to my side don’t look above me as long as you’re in these from this particular angle and as long as you see what I’m doing from this angle then it’s mysterious and I think it’s the same thing with psychics where as long as you view what I do through a very specific limited prism it’s weird and strange but don’t ask me to do these other things. Don’t ask me to actually find missing persons and save people because I can’t do that. So I would like to, frankly, I’d like to see the national news media call them out and ask them why aren’t they saving lives. If your powers are real, you know, step up. And you know, I’ve talked before about the case of J.C. Dugard, the girl that was abducted from California and spent almost a decade being held hostage, being brutally beaten and raped, while psychics spent their time going on TV and on Montel Williams and Larry King, selling their DVDs and their shows, when if they had any ethics, they would actually be helping real people. So that’s, anyway, I don’t want to spend too much time on it. I just want to touch on that. And I think it’s, I just think it’s important to keep that in mind. And, and, uh, and we should always be asking where are the psychics?

PR: Absolutely. I think that’s a really important thing. Uh, and it’s, you know, I mean, the, the go-to is always, it doesn’t work that way whenever you, you, you know, you have to ask, you know, they always say it doesn’t work that way and it’s like, well, then what use are you to any of us? If it doesn’t work that way, my grandpa’s given you the first letter of his name.

BR: What use is that?

PR: That’s useless to us.

BR: It doesn’t work that way. That one way it would be usefull to society? It doesn’t work that way? Instead, it’s just, oh, instead your abilities are better spent, you know, picturing that maybe my dead grandmother had some gem that was important to her.

0:09:31
PR: Most definitely.

BR: So what’s on your skeptical radar? are. So this week I read an article in Forbes and it was a guy, I’ll just read the headline, this flat earther is about to launch himself in a homemade rocket to prove earth is flat.

BR: I like it already. Oh yeah, that’s exactly. I’m down. I’ll throw you a few bucks.

PR: If you want to know how to clickbait me. Throw me a headline like that. But yes, so this fellow named Mike Hughes, he is a-

BR: Related to the Howard Hughes, the famous aviator?

PR: Oh yeah, I’m sure. But he says that he’s going to use a homemade steam-powered rocket.

BR: Steam powered. Retro, I like it. Steampunk. Let’s do this.

PR: Yeah. So he said he was going to take a 500 mile per hour, mile long flight across the Mojave Desert to prove that the earth is flat. That he believes it’s a flat disk. So…

BR: I’m not making a connection between how is it? I’ll just shut up and let you explain the logic behind this.

PR: So he says that what he’s going to do is launch himself 1,800 feet into the air to take photos proving the Earth is flat.

BR: That’s his best way to do that?

PR: Now, it is possible to see the curvature of the Earth from high enough up. Usually ballpark, I think, 2,000 feet is kind of the minimum.

BR: Let me just make sure I understand. His best way to get, how high? 1,800 feet. So the best way he can think of to do that is to launch himself. Awesome, all right. I like this guy already.

PR: This is great. And that’s kind of, now that you mentioned that, that sort of gets to the thing that I’m actually really skeptical about because flat earthers I don’t think deserve, there’s no point in debating them. Way too off the reservation, but but when it comes to What’s happening here? What it looks like is so this isn’t the first time he’s launched himself on a homemade rocket. He actually did this in 2002 he he did a… Let’s see here. I’m gonna look right here. Do you got a Guinness World Record for –

BR: landing on his head?

PR: Yeah for well, actually a limousine jump was his world record and I guess for distance it didn’t say here but in 2014, he actually made his first rocket and he – It doesn’t it says it he flew it over a quarter mile now that wrecked spectacularly in the end. And he ended up actually injuring himself pretty seriously, as you do when you fly in homemade rockets. But-

BR: As one does.

PR: Yeah, so anyway, but here’s where I’m skeptical. He had a Kickstarter that he launched in 2016 to help fund what he was going to do is his mile-long homemade rocket world record flight. He was only able to raise $310 of his $150,000 goal. So since then he became a flat-earth believer. This was not something he was doing before. So the rocket was already being built and he already had the plans and the goal was to break the world record. Now it looks like he kind of adopted this viewpoint in order to maybe reach out to a different audience.

BR: Hitch your wagon to the lunatic friend.

PR: Exactly. That’s a novel approach. So far I guess he’s raised $8,000 which is significantly better than what he was doing before.

BR: Alex Jones makes that in half an hour. Come on, man.

PR: I think, I mean, best of luck to you. But I would be a little hesitant to fly a mile in a steam-powered rocket. I’m not sure. I kind of imagine, you remember those old rockets, the water bottle rockets?

0:13:58
BR: Oh, yeah.

PR: That’s what I imagine. That’s how I picture it. He’s boiling some water in it using the propulsion from I don’t know if that’s true.

0:14:13
BR: Maybe he’s got vinegar and baking soda?

0:14:17
PR: But anyway let’s get on to it.

(MUSIC)

0:14:32
PR: So we are talking about the they divide and conquer. So what we’re looking at is sort of this idea that, well, Ben, why don’t you go ahead and just take it from here.

BR: One reason I thought it would be fun to discuss it is it’s so common. I’ve heard it many, many times over the years and I’ve never really bothered to take a closer look at it. Just sort of like, oh yeah, whatever. It’s not a sort of classic conspiracy in the way that the moon landing hoax is, for example, or the Piltdown Man. I mean, it’s not a conspiracy in that regard, not sort of Alex Jonesy conspiracy. It’s actually much more widely believed, which makes it interesting to me. And I see this in a couple of different areas. I’ll just touch on a couple of them here. There was an art installation by Shia LeBeouf, LeBeouf, who I think you met.

0:15:40
PR: Yep.

0:15:41
BR: And it was a case in where he had a… Well, actually, why don’t you just tell us what it is.

PR: So he was installing cameras throughout various cities in the U.S. and kind of launching these sort of online protests, and he would stand at the camera for… I can’t remember exactly how long like an entire day or something and and And he usually would gather a crowd And they just keep chanting things like he will not divide us and it was a response to to Donald Trump Just being elected actually at that point. And it was a very I don’t know exactly what the the the goal of the installation was but I I just happened to be at the launch pad downtown here in Albuquerque when he was here in town doing it on a wall just around the corner and and it just so happened that you know that crowd was right there and I was like what is this and I ended up talking to him a bit and just hanging out with him a little bit. Very nice guy. I still didn’t get a lot of clarity on what exactly he was talking about, but the he will not divide us obviously was a response to this idea that we’re talking about.

BR: And it was written on the wall, if I’m not mistaken.

0:17:13
PR: Yes, it was spray painted on the wall.

0:17:14
BR: Spray painted on the wall and written. There were a couple of different versions, but it was essentially a camera and writing and again it said, quote, he will not divide us, of course referring to Trump. And then another version of this, there was a meme that circulated around from Bernie Sanders and he said, quote, President Trump, you made a big mistake. By trying to divide us by up by race gender and nationality you actually brought us closer Now I’m not sure how prescient that was I I’m not sure that that America is closer together after Trump’s… In fact if you sort of think about the the the two statements by Bernie Sanders and LeBeouf they sort of are opposites I mean because the premise is that That we actually when we think they’re the process that well I mean think about this so the premise of both of them is actually that we are united Yeah, I mean because you know that he you know he will not divide us If he’s not gonna divide us then that means we’re united. I mean that’s by definition right so so so she is saying that we are united and that we won’t be divided. Bernie Sanders’ thing is saying that Trump tried to divide us and we’re united. I don’t really think either one of those is true. Honestly, I look around America and I see a pretty divided America politically in many other ways. But anyway, that’s neither here nor there. There’s a similar version that’s circulated around, and I’ve seen many, many versions of this, variations of it. And it’s basically, the government does not want an educated or aware populace because keeping us ignorant makes us easier to control. That’s a quote from something I’ve seen many, many…

PR: Really common idea.

BR: Yeah in fact it was interesting I a while ago I on Facebook I posted a meme that was discussing something on those lines and I was actually I was surprised many friends of mine and acquaintances endorsed it and they were they’re like yeah you know that the government is trying to divide us by race and things like that.

PR: Right, right.

BR: What was interesting was this was during the Obama administration. This was about a year before Trump took office and was even elected. So I was thinking like, so the belief, again, it’s important to, on the show we talked before about how liking or sharing something on social media does not necessarily mean you endorse it. It might or might not. People like and share stuff they haven’t read. They don’t really, they just sort of get a general idea of what end of the spectrum it’s on. If they agree with it, they share and like it. So just because people ostensibly shared and like doesn’t necessarily mean they personally thought it through and endorsed it. But a lot of people, because I was curious, you know, in the comments, do you really think that’s the case? Because I personally don’t believe that Obama and his administration were trying to divide America by race. I saw exactly the opposite. I often saw Obama making efforts to unite black and whites, black Americans and Muslims. So it was interesting to me, well, where’s this coming from? But I think it was just so ingrained, it was almost this knee-jerk reaction. Yeah, government’s trying to keep us divided, because if the government, you know, if we were allowed to unite and come together, we would overthrow the government and what? What exactly?

PR: It occurs to me that when Obama was president, that there was a little bit of that narrative going on from kind of the Fox News set and it was that It was kind of like it is so it is kind of funny because I’ve seen that same mentality kind of shift political positions over the years and it seems like whoever’s president it’s like the opposing party that believes that about them more strongly at least. And it’s kind of interesting because I think what would happen was you’d say something like maybe there’d be some kind of racial injustice or something and you comment on it and they’d be like, they’re just trying to keep you focused on racial injustice.

BR: All big distractions.

PR: So that you are being taught to think this about race and stuff and it’s like well you know that’s I don’t think that’s a government ploy I think that’s just you know me reacting to something that I have an opinion about.

BR: Right, right. And you know part of it is of course you know as they say if you want to start an argument online just post an opinion and yeah give it a few minutes. There’ll always be somebody that’ll contradict you but I just want to take a closer look at it because, again, it’s widely believed, or at least it seems to be widely endorsed. And it is, at its heart, it’s a conspiracy theory. I mean, that’s what it is. It’s a cynical conspiracy theory. It’s this notion that the government, and again, the government, you know, they, who exactly is they?

PR: The DMV?

BR: Right, which branch of government is responsible for sowing racial discord? I’m being serious. When you point to they, who? The DMV? The Secretary? Who are you talking about here?

PR: Yeah, and we’re talking about what’s believed to be an organized effort. I think that’s the key thing to keep in mind is that an individual politician may or may not engage in that kind of stuff. And I think we have precedents for that where people do realize they can take advantage of people’s differences.

0:23:24
BR: Absolutely.

PR: However, we’re talking about a concerted, organized effort by the government to enact…

0:23:34
BR: Depending on which side you’re on.

PR: Yeah, so yeah, that’s definitely a good distinction to make.

BR: No, you’re exactly right. I mean, you know, number one, because this is a long-standing belief, it transcends political administrations. So, you know, so they want to, whatever, the Clinton administration, Bush, Obama, Trump, all these have as a core mission to divide America and to sow racial discord and to keep us ignorant? I’m just not seeing it. So, you know, and certainly in the case of the idea that the government doesn’t want educated populace, you know, what about all those government education programs? Are those a false flag operation? I mean, look, there’s been 11 secretaries of education since 1979. Have they all been told upon taking office that the government actually wants to undermine education in America?

PR: Yeah, that is to be fair might be the case right now.

BR: Maybe currently, yes. Maybe currently, but not during the Obama administration. No, but seriously, it’s like that’s what we’re being asked to believe. Is that the Secretary of Education, whoever it happens to be, regardless of the administration, is, you know, taken into a room at some point by them and told, now you know, your job is to make sure that Americans aren’t educated.

0:25:01
PR: Yeah.

0:25:02
BR: Just, we need to keep them simple and stupid and, you know, we don’t want, don’t, don’t, don’t get them hooked on that book learning. That’s, that ain’t going to solve anybody’s problem, right?

PR: Let’s not, let’s not try to push ourselves a little higher up on that list of highly educated countries or try to make progress.

BR: Right, exactly. And so if that’s your position, if that’s really what you think, then the question is, well, who else in government is doing that? I mean, is the Surgeon General trying to make people sick because such people are easier to control because they’re poor, right? I mean, health costs are through the roof. If you’re sick, then you can’t, you know, you don’t have the energy, you don’t have the finances, the resources to rise up against the government. So using that same logic, you’d assume the Surgeon General and really the NIH and I mean, all these other medical authorities and communities, they don’t want people to be healthy, right? Are they hiding cancer cures? I mean, so, so my question is like, evidence, please, right? I mean, it’s, it’s sort of a folksy, you know, anti government, I don’t trust the government. Fine. I don’t fully trust the government either. But I, I don’t for a second believe that there, there’s a underlying effort to, to conspiracy to to make people hate each other and to keep them ignorant. I just don’t buy that.

PR: No, no, and I think the government, you know, first off, if you’ve ever spent any time trying to understand how the government interacts as a whole and how departments deal with each other and how budgets are done and everything, you realize that it is always a huge hassle, a massive bureaucratic mess all the time and and you know just the organization just isn’t there and and and then you know and you look at you know like who I mean because when you talk about conspiracy and let’s talk about you know conspiracies that really have happened in the world you know like assassinations or you know. terrorist group. When they achive things, it is a relatively small group. Every member of ISIS doesn’t know what’s going to be attacked. And the reason for that is because they can’t afford to let that be common knowledge.

BR: And there’d be no reason to. If you’re in Yemen, you don’t need to know what’s going on in Malaysia.

PR: Exactly and the same kind of rules apply to the government in that if it’s going to be this widespread you’re talking about too many people for it to even be a useful conspiracy because it will come out. I mean yeah you know just you know Trump pulling Flynn aside and kind of you know underhandedly threatening him to stay in line.

BR: That comes out.

0:28:03
PR: That blew up in his face pretty quick.

BR: Right, right.

PR: And so it’s just looking at, if you tried to do that on a wide scale, I mean, that would not work for, you know, more than a couple days probably.

0:28:14
BR: And again, across administrations and generations. Yeah. And again, where’s the evidence, right? It goes back to the skeptical question. I mean, you would think that if this is true, if the government really does want to undermine education in America, there’s certainly ways they could do that. Again, the current education secretary is probably a step along that way. But no, seriously, I mean, you know, for example, the government would maybe try and take steps towards stopping the MOOCs, the massive online education, like, for example, the Khan Academy, right? Khan Academy, which has hundreds, if not thousands, of free online courses, like quality education, like learning all sorts of subjects, all different things, mathematics, biology, computer programming, that sort of thing. You would think that the US government would be trying to undermine those and trying to stop them from providing free education to Americans because all that’s going to do is educate Americans, right? Same thing with the student loan program, right? If the government is trying so hard to keep people ignorant, why are they handing out so much money in student loans? It just doesn’t make sense. I think the other logical error here, and I see this in many different areas, and this is certainly one of them, is this notion that things are the way they are because that’s how someone wants it, or that’s how they designed it. And I see this a lot of times in sort of classic conspiracy thinking, where, you know, why do things suck? Because someone wants them to suck. Why is racism a problem? Well, because someone wants racism to be a problem. Why are all these social problems, you know, homophobia and sexual harassment? Well, no, it’s not because someone is intent, some government official or larger hidden cabal is trying to make this a problem for Americans. It’s because people are, you know, beat me here, people are just assholes. I mean, you know, that’s the problem. And so there’s not some, if things are bad, it’s not necessarily because people want them to be bad. So anyway, there’s that. And I think, you know, the other factor is that while there’s no good evidence that the American government is trying to sow discord and wants people to be ignorant and confused about what’s true, that’s not the case with enemies. I mean, you know, it’s undisputed that one of the tactics that countries use against each other is disinformation. People try and disrupt the fabric of other societies. Americans have done this in Latin America for decades. The Russians have done it to us. This is espionage 101. So is there an effort to cause divisions among Americans? Absolutely there is. It’s by America’s enemies, not by any long-standing inherent secret American doctrine.

PR: Yeah, that’s pretty much what it boils down to is we don’t need someone else or we don’t need to be doing the work that someone else is already doing for us if that’s the case. Right now we are currently embroiled with the fallout from Russia and a disinformation campaign during the election and a continued campaign that we’re discovering more and more about every day. So that’s pretty much, yeah, it’s real, but we definitely need to pay attention to who we’re blaming and to what end it’s happening.

BR:  And those are recent online video wasn’t there that you came across? Yeah, so it’s actually an old video from 1943 the War Department put out an anti-fascist PSA to to kind of warn people of the the dangers of fascism and it’s a very interesting one. Look it up, it’s titled 1943 U.S. War Department Anti-Fascist PSA. Very interesting piece and very surprisingly relevant to the current situation. But I thought we would play a clip of it real quick.

0:32:45
CLIP: What about you? You aren’t American, are you? I was born in Hungary, but now I am an American citizen. And I have seen what this kind of talk can do. I saw it in Berlin. I heard the same words we have heard today. But I was a fool then. I thought Nazis were crazy people, stupid fanatics. But unfortunately, they were not so. You see, they knew that they were not strong enough to conquer a unified country. So they split Germany into small groups. They used prejudice as a practical weapon to cripple the nation. Of course, that was not easy to do. They had to work hard to do it. You see, we human beings are not born with prejudices. Always they are made for us, made by someone who wants something. Remember that when you hear this kind of talk. Somebody is going to get something out of it, and it isn’t going to be you.

0:33:43
BR: So that’s an interesting clip. I’m glad that you found that. It is surprisingly prescient, given how old it is and exactly what we’re dealing with these days. Again it highlights exactly what we’re saying that there are forces that want to sow discord and keep people ignorant and confused and wondering what’s going on.

PR: Totally.

BR:  And a lot of it’s coming from Russia and Putin. The enemies, keep in mind. In fact, I wrote a piece earlier this year titled, How Russian Conspiracies Taint Social Activist News. You can find it. I posted it on April 5th, 2017. It’s a special report on the CFI blogs that I do. I just briefly, I began looking into a video that I saw by RT News, which at the time I didn’t realize was actually a disinformation branch of the Russian government. What flagged me about the story was that it was discussing the witness that filmed Eric Garner’s arrest. Eric Garner was the guy that said, I can’t breathe, and he died. And it was a strange case of really poor journalism that caught my ear. Like, wow. Anyway, basically, it was a conspiracy saying that the guy that filmed Eric Garner’s death was jailed. And the question was like, isn’t this an interesting coincidence? Like the guy that exposed this police brutality was jailed. And I looked at him like he was jailed on drug arrests. Like it’s, yeah, it was not, it had nothing to do with what he did. I mean, it was, you know, he was a convicted felon. I mean, it’s like it was there was no connection. If you if you actually look at the facts, there’s no connection, no plausible connection between this guy being jailed and his having recorded this police brutality.

PR: Right, right.

BR: And so anyway, I’m not going to go into the whole thing. People are interested. They can read it. We can post a link on on our page as well. But it really struck home to me just just how that’s when I realized this isn’t just bad journalism, this is disinformation. If you read how they’re reporting, and I use the word reporting very loosely, it was designed specifically to anger and to sensationalize and to exaggerate. There’s enough racial problems in America without Russians trying to foment it as well.

PR: That’s probably the biggest thing to me is that they’re going after us in such an unconventional way because, I mean I wouldn’t say unconventional in the broad sense, but in terms of where we are now as a country and the world we live in now with the internet and things like that, this is sort of a new experience to us in terms of how we’re getting our information. And I’m hoping that if anything, we’re learning to better vet our sources because of this. I mean, I unfortunately am not too sure we are, but in the long run, I hope we do.

BR: Well, that’s part of what the show is about. I mean, that’s one reason that you and I and Celestia should wanted to do this show, is to sort of give people a skeptical take on everything, everything from chupacabras to ghosts to psychics to the news. And not to toot our own horn, but I think, you know, hopefully we can do some good.

0:37:23
PR: Totally, totally.

0:37:24
BR: Well, speaking of Celestia, let’s see what she’s up to this week with the fortune cookie.

(MUSIC)

0:37:29
Celestia Ward: Hey, squares and hey, strangers. Celestia here with my trusty bag of skeptical fortune cookies. Let’s pull one out and crack it open. Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects. So said Will Rogers, famed American cowboy, vaudeville philosopher, actor, and columnist. Will was born in 1879 in Cherokee Territory near northern Oklahoma, and he began his career trick-roping for circuses all over the world. He then enjoyed a career in radio and motion pictures while also writing columns and lecturing, though he did not agree with the term lecturer, saying, a humorist entertains and a lecturer a noise. Will Rogers also ran a mock campaign for president in 1928 billing himself as the bunk list candidate for the anti-bunk party. He promised that if elected he would resign. This slogan on the universality of ignorance comes from his 90th column in the New York Times titled from nuts to soup published August 31st 1924 and later republished under the title Defending My Soup Plate Position. In it, he unravels a critic who took issue with a bit of etiquette on soup eating that Rogers had mentioned in a previous column. Really it’s a pre-internet flame war, going from grammar to manners to classism and dripping in homespun sarcasm and delicious pedantry. But the point boils down to remembering that you are no expert on everything, and neither is anyone else. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of. The smartest members of our species can only really be experts on, at most, a few things. So check credentials. Some folks may seem authoritative, but before you trust a cowboy’s word on soup manners, make sure he’s a cowboy who has also just read Emily Post’s Book of Etiquette cover to cover in order to review it for the Literary Digest, as Will Rogers just had. Likewise, if you trust a computer engineer’s word on climate science or a PhD of philosophy on evolution, you might want to dig a bit further and find out why you should trust them on this topic unrelated to their field. Because remember, everybody is ignorant, only in different subjects.

(MUSIC)

0:40:03
PR: And thank you for that Celestia. So yeah, that was, this has been a really, really interesting talk and I’m kind of glad we decided to do an episode on it right now because it’s, you know, there’s a lot of stuff coming out now that relating to this topic and I think that a good takeaway from this is that we should not let ourselves be distracted by conspiracy theories when actual conspiracies exist that are related to what you think. You know, the idea that you think that we’re being divided and we’re being, you know, I mean that’s not untrue.

BR: That part’s true.

PR: And I think, you know, don’t let yourself be manipulated by foreign powers to think that your own government is doing it to you. You know, I mean, we should always be skeptical of our government, but we need to make sure to do it in a healthy and evidence-based way. We can’t just, you know, spend our whole lives paranoid about the government doing something that other governments may very well be doing to us.

BR: Yeah, absolutely. And it is undeniable that Trump’s administration has been divisive. I mean, that’s crystal clear and indisputable. You know again Sanders thinks that the Trump has actually brought us closer together. I don’t think that’s the case, but you know again, it’s just you know pay pay close attention and you know think about the implications of the memes and ideas you endorse.

(MUSIC)

PR: So we have been really getting a lot of positive feedback about our skeptic crates, which has been a very successful thing for us. I’ve been happy to see that people post pictures of the things that they’re getting and all the cool comments we’re getting about that. So thank you guys for the feedback on that. And if you are interested in the Skepticrate, which is a monthly crate that we send with a few little items, at least three items, that are skeptic-themed or might have something to do with episodes we’ve done or might be from one of our personal collections or something.

BR: Yeah, just something fun.

PR: Totally. And this is for anyone who is at the $5 and up level on our Patreon.

BR: Only $5?

0:43:01
PR: Yeah.

0:43:02
BR: That’s ridiculous. It should be like $20.

PR: I know, it should be actually.

BR: Who do we talk to about that? I don’t know. Do we talk to Celestia?

PR: Yeah, I think so. All right. But just in time, you know, it’s the holidays and if there’s something that you want to get for that skeptic in your life, the Skepticrate is a great way to do it. It’s, again, five bucks an episode and we will send it to you in the middle of every month and like I said, everyone’s really loving them.

0:43:33
BR: It’s really cool going on the Facebook page and seeing people like, oh my God, oh my God look what I got!

0:43:39
PR: Yeah, totally.

0:43:41
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 squaringthestrange. Patronage starts at just a buck and there are a lot of perks and

0:44:04
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. Every five star review gets us a little more visibility on the iTunes podcast charts and brings a smile to

0:44:17
Pospos.

0:44:19
So another episode down.

0:44:26
Thanks for your support everybody and feel free to support us on Patreon and throw us a couple bucks if you’re able to. If not, we appreciate any word of mouth you want to tell a couple friends or leave us some feedback. Anything is appreciated. Totally. And head on over to iTunes and give us five stars if you can. That’s what gives us the visibility on the podcast charts. I don’t personally pay attention to that, not because I don’t want to, but I always like to be surprised one day when someone’s like, hey, you’re up at the number one slot. So I just, I don’t want to hear about it until we’re number one. So just keep giving us those five star reviews. And I just assume that we suck. So I don’t hear, I don’t see it anyway. Well that about does it for this week. So if that’s about it, I guess we should check out. That’s all I got. See you guys next week. It’s going to be an awesome show. And happy Thanksgiving to those of you listening on the day we release, which is Thanksgiving. Squaring Strange is a production of Kronos Creative LLC. Copyright 2017. Theme music by Shriekback. Additional music by Memory, Guitared and Feathered,

0:45:37
and Pascual Romero.

0:45:38
Content producer, Celestia Ward. and and affiliated organizations and employers.

Transcribed with Cockatoo