Click each image to enlarge.

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.

(MUSIC)

0:00:10
Celestia Ward: Welcome back to Squaring the Strange. I’m Celestia Ward and with me is Ben Radford.

BR: Here I am.

CW: We don’t have Pascual with us yet, but we have an announcement. As you know, we have been trying our darndest to get a weekly podcast to you, and we’ve succeeded for the better part of a year and a half now.

0:00:56
BR: We have. I think we just need a little pat on the back.

0:00:59
CW: Yes. Oh, I’m patting myself on the back right now. Ha. But in order to keep up the quality of content that we bring to you each episode.

BR: Such as it is.

CW: Such as it is. And because we are juggling a bunch of other scheduling issues right now, including Ben, you’re working on your book, right?

0:01:18
BR: Yes, I’m working on another book I desperately want to finish by the end of the year.

0:01:22
CW: I’m fast approaching a time where I’m going to need every spare moment to sleep and do other stuff involving a small baby. And Pascual is so busy that he’s not here right now to make this announcement with us. But we are announcing that we are going bi-weekly.

0:01:39
BR: Or fortnightly, depending on…

0:01:42
CW: Rather than once a week, for the time being anyway, this might change in the future, we’re going to offer an episode every two weeks instead of every week. Now, one of the questions, we do have a nice handful of patrons. Thank you for being our patrons.

0:01:57
BR: Thank you.

0:01:58
CW: You patrons at a $5 episode level and up get a skepticrate every month. Since we are going to be having half as many episodes, we wondered how viable that would still be, but we figured out a way to do it. So you’re still going to get skepticrates, you wonderful $5 an episode patrons.

0:02:14
BR: The brainiacs of Screaming the Strange figured this out.

0:02:16
CW: Yes. In order to make the skeptic rate still financially viable, we’re going to stick to flat mailing crates, which means that will be a lot easier and cheaper to mail out. So we’re going to be having to limit the items to flat items. Think like stickers and bookmarks and original art sometimes, greeting cards, guitar picks, the human soul, anything that can fit into a flat space.

0:02:40
BR: No more bowling balls, old shoes, things like that.

0:02:44
CW: Yes. So, you know, you will still get SkepticRates once a month, and thank you for your support. As always, we appreciate everybody’s support, and you’ve helped us pay the numerous bills that come along with the podcast, like the hosting space, the equipment, the recording software, subscriptions, and the like. And we’re still working all as volunteers, all three of us, although you have bought us an occasional pizza from time to time.

BR: With green chili, of course.

CW: Which we thank you for. So, we will see you in two weeks, but in the meantime, let’s talk about this week’s episode. Today for episode 73 we’re going to be talking about a little phenomenon called skeptical burnout which is certainly not a new subject, but something I think a lot of you out there may have felt I know we felt it Ben.

0:03:29
BR: Yes. You know, it’s one of those things where you know skepticism is sort of an odd duck. It’s just a weird thing that we do. I mean, it’s kind of journalism, it’s kind of media literacy, it’s kind of science education, it’s kind of investigation, it’s kind of a lot of things.

0:03:51
CW: It’s kind of picking knits, it’s kind of picking fights.

0:03:55
BR: A friend of mine who’s known me for years, the other day she’s like, I’ve known you a long time, I don’t really know what you do. And it was interesting. I mean, it wasn’t insulting. It just, it was just sort of when you sort of look at yourself and what you do from other eyes. Um, but you know, but the other thing of course, is that for many skeptics, it’s a volunteer job. Um, there are very few full-time professional skeptics. Joe Nickell is one of them. And I kind of am, uh, in a way, I’m, I’m, I’m kind of not because most of my job, strictly speaking, is editorial. It’s not so much…

0:04:28
CW: Well, as somebody who used to work in the editorial field, I think you’re more than amply qualified to talk about burnout, because people who work in publishing know burnout pretty well, and people who work in skepticism know what a thankless job it could be. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that. We have Pascual to join us for a little bit of a round table there, but before that, we’ve got some stuff we’re skeptical of this week.

(MUSIC)

0:04:51
CW: Ben there’s like so much in the news right now, it’s it’s overwhelming there’s It’s hard to pick a swayso out of all these different topics. The court ruling on Monsanto and whether or not a jury can decide scientifically what’s toxic or not We’ve got there’s a viral scare about a fake spider in the southeast that has supposedly killed five people.

BR: The woo comes fast and furious.

CW:  Yes, it turns out-

BR: That should be like the next fast and furious just you know fast and furious part 12 wool comes fast furious Vin Diesel.

CW: Yeah, I would pay to see that actually no I don’t have to pay to see that movie. I live that movie every day. But yeah. Spoiler alert, the fake spider was just actually a woodlouse spider. He’s only really a danger to roly-poly and potato bugs.

0:05:50
BR: And I like roly-polies.

0:05:51
CW: I did too. We used to play marbles with them when I was a kid. They were fun. But then we got the White House attacking Google. I’m sure Snopes is like on their radar next. And there’s a Salon article just out talking about how there’s some trusted health sites spreading myths about preeclampsia. All this news, so much news, but what caught my eye? An article about Bridezilla.

0:06:16
BR: Bridezilla. Now, I don’t really run in Bridezilla circles. I know Godzilla, I know brides, and I sort of have a rough idea of And yeah, I should just confess. I don’t I don’t watch a lot of reality TV So for those who for those listeners who like me don’t spend a lot of time watching reality TV Can you use the thumbnail sketch of what exactly is a bridezilla?

0:06:39
CW: I’m surprised you don’t know a little bit about bridezilla’s because it is a whole category of folklore and urban legends and it plays on a very popular trope of true or not, a female who gets super into her wedding and it’s her special day and she’s going to have it. Every little detail that she wants, she’s going to make sure it’s perfect. Now, this Bridezilla story was blowing up this week on my feed. Several friends posted it and all really juicy stuff then really juicy stuff. Now, the original source was supposedly a wedding shaming Facebook site that was then reposted to Reddit and Twitter and it just spread like wildfire after that. There are some red flags to this Bridezilla story because believe it or not, you can’t believe everything you hear on the internet.

0:07:34
BR: Hmm.

0:07:34
CW: There was a claim that the Facebook post this was screenshot from was only up for 15 minutes. So it’s not around now for anybody to verify.

BR: Well, that’s convenient.

CW: It’s convenient. And there’s remarkably few typos, despite the fact that the bride in question was reportedly drunk and angry when she typed it all out. And believe me, it’s long. The author of this angry rant was described by the person who posted it as a country girl who grew up on a farm and the story itself talks about her having only a little bit of community college education. Yet this story that was typed out was really long, it was well composed, and it actually followed a dramatic structure. There were beats to it. I’m not saying it’s impossible for a farm girl who’s taken a couple of community college classes to be a really good writer, even after a few shots of whiskey, but it just struck me as odd fair enough and By well composed. I mean it it had all the hallmarks of a good epistolary piece of fiction it dropped key things in a nice little rhythmic way you find out that the bride is angry and she’s calling everybody toxic and you hear of the wedding that she planned and the dreams she had and that a psychic advised the young couple to go for the most expensive option for their wedding. And then she talks about how she’s just asking everybody for cash gifts. That’s not unreasonable. And oh, and then by the way, she idolizes the Kardashians and she always wanted her wedding to be as good as one of their weddings.

0:09:15
BR: That sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

0:09:18
CW: That’s what you aim for, right? Every country girl should have a Kardashian wedding. And then she ratchets up her request for cash gifts, turns into a demand for $1,500 from each and every guest.

0:09:32
BR: And this is for the privilege of being in her wedding.

0:09:36
CW: Yes, she wants the $60,000 wedding. So then she gets ignored by a lot of the guests and only has eight people RSVP. I’m shocked that she had eight. Again, if the story is true. And then she sets up a GoFundMe, which fails spectacularly. She has a huge fight with the maid of honor who had promised her $5,000, but later had to retract that offer and then you hear about how her plan utterly crumbles and she takes you on a white-knuckled ride of spoiled millennial type. Entitled rage with a classic comeuppance like feel-good disaster at the end as her guests all refuse and she breaks up with the fiancee, throws the fit and claims she’s going to just forget it all and go backpacking in South America.

0:10:26
BR: Okay, well, I guess that’s possible.

0:10:31
Yes. And so now this was originally credited to a Canadian woman named Susan. You can just Google Canadian Susan and you’ll see the story in various reports. But some of the words in the post were spelled in the American way, not Canadian and later later stories say that it’s actually an American bride named Susan a Lot of mainstream sources picked up on this story. It went really viral Fox News Huffington Post board Panda Daily Mail global news and oddly enough, I’m gonna talk about this in a second here, especially sites that are geared towards women. Obviously the wedding angle plays into effect here. You’ve got brides, scary mommy, allure, and cafe mom are among the sites that have a fairly female-centric readership. Now HuffPo Canada was the only main source I found that, to the credit of the writer, I’ve got to give a shout-out to Maja Kappler. She did a story bride goes ballistic after wedding guests refused to pay $1,500 cash. She points out right away in the second paragraph, good for her, a Follow-up post claiming to be her cousin says Susan is actually American. Keep in mind this was posted in a private Facebook group where content is user submitted and unverified.

BR: Do tell.

CW: And of course anyone can make up anything on the internet. Also consider that what you’re about to read, fact or fiction, is truly a wild ride into the very real phenomenon that weddings make people do nutty things.

0:12:14
BR: See now, this is pretty common with a lot of these sort of humorous or scare lore things where on the rare occasion where when a writer bothers to put in some sort of skeptical caveats, it’s quickly followed up with, but you know, whether it’s true or not, let’s all use this as a learning experience, right? Okay, maybe the stories about the change at the Halloween candy aren’t true, but reminding kids about strangers, there’s always sort of like, well, we’re not wasting your time, we’re just reminding you to be careful.

0:12:51
CW: Well you make a good point there, and in fact she does mention that it’s a teachable moment. She kind of sandwiches, she sandwiches the, you know, the main meat of the story in between two slightly skeptical pieces of bread, and at the end of her, at the end of her article she says, like anything else in life, this is a teachable moment. Don’t air your grievances on Facebook, especially after throwing back a bottle of whiskey. Don’t put so much emphasis on one day of your life that you lose touch with reality. And please, for the love of whatever deity you believe in, do not ask your wedding guests for fifteen hundred dollars cash. So like all good folklore, it teaches a moral. There’s a couple of morals in there. It’s a warning story.

0:13:30
BR: Did it specifically say that it was spurring a national conversation?

0:13:35
CW: Oh, no, no. I didn’t see that, but it just struck me as odd that besides the quick little caveat we have listed by the HuffPo Canada writer here, it’s being reported as pretty much, well, somebody said it was true, so it must be true, which is about, it’s like basing a news story on one of the postcards from that book Post Secrets by Frank Warren. You’re familiar with that book where people anonymously write in something really horrendous on the back of a postcard and send it in and he publishes it? Well, you don’t read that as absolute truth. I’d be very surprised if any of these same authors would take a postcard from that book and decide to write a whole story about it. But that’s what an anonymous post is. And are you familiar with how Reddit works?

0:14:28
BR: A little bit. I don’t spend a lot of time on Reddit, but I Pascual has directed me to a couple of Reddit pages, some of which I won’t mention.

CW: Well, there’s a point system. Everybody can win karma depending on how many little upvotes that their little their post receives. So there are people who just like to karma farm. It’s not like you get money for every little upvote and karma, you know, bit you get. But some people really get excited when something they wrote gets to the front page and they get thousands of little upvotes and it goes on to your karma score. You’ve got a score based.

BR: What do you trade these in for?

0:15:04
CW: I think you can get a decoder ring at the end of the year. No, you don’t get anything. You just get internet infamy, anonymous internet infamy.

0:15:16
BR: This is sounding thinner and thinner by the moment. But go ahead.

0:15:20
CW: Which ironically, a lot of people really want to get. So Reddit, Reddit kind of is a site that encourages people to post stuff that may or may not be true, but it’s a good read.

0:15:30
BR: And sensationalist, sensational clickbaity stuff.

0:15:35
CW: Yeah, yeah. And the Bridezilla story just struck me as like I said it has a whole lot of dramatic beats It’s really well crafted if indeed it is a well regardless of fact or fiction It’s crafted even if it was absolutely true somebody had to put it together in a story form and it was done pretty well now later later on a second person came forward, I mean she posted anonymously. He or she posted anonymously on the Facebook wedding shaming site. So it’s not really coming forward. It’s just another voice in the dark, just like the original story. And this really reminded me of another bridezilla story I had looked into years ago where the bride was, you know, somebody told the story of this horrendous bride. I forget the details because I read it years ago and then news outlets said aha and the bride has responded and Somebody wrote in anonymously on a comment section basically cursing at everybody and claiming to be the bride. But you have absolutely no proof no verification that the person writing in all caps on the computer is in fact the bride from the story.

BR: Right. Right. It’s all it’s all layers of dubiousness, lathered with anonymity and just general gullibility.

CW: Yeah. And I found that a lot of a lot of the friends I have who posted this story, you would describe them as feminist, which I found odd because, you know, spreading around a bridezilla story is it’s juicy. It’s gossip. It’s like, oh, my God, look at how horrible this woman is.

BR: Right.

CW: And it’s it’s compelling. I have you know, I got a kick out of reading this story, I’m going to fully admit. But it’s also, you know, it’s spreading a very anti-feminist stereotype of this.

BR: This sexist trope.

CW: Yeah, this spoiled, I want to be a princess. I’m a money-grubbing, shallow Kardashian wannabe. So people are spreading this story and I did notice that people were spreading it also with the caveat they would introduce it by saying my wedding only cost $300 total. I am not this shallow. I had people over in the backyard and that was fine with me. It’s the marriage that matters not the wedding. You know, it’s all fine if you want to say that and I’m wondering if you know I’m thinking conspiratorially here but I wonder if the person who crafted this original post If indeed they were doing it for karma and for internet infamy if they took that into mind saying this is gonna go everywhere because People want to share this story in a way to show that they are not this person Just something to think about when you’re forwarding a story that might be BS. Think about why. Think about whether or not it really does have a feminist message behind it. Who knows? Well, have you read anything? Has anything crossed your plate, Ben, that you were skeptical of this week?

0:18:39
BR: In fact, yes. This is from a few weeks back. I’ll just read you the headline. I think the headline will give you a little to tell where I’m going with this. This is this is posted Sunday, July 29th, and the title is Woman Says She Telepathically Convinced a Mountain Lion to Leave Her Home.

0:18:56
CW: Oh!

0:18:57
BR: Yeah, so I was debating as to whether I was either going to bother with this, but I figured, you know, there’s a larger lesson, so I’ll spend a few minutes on it. I’ll just read a bit from the story here. An Oregon woman’s tale of a close encounter with a mountain lion, a species she describes as extremely psychic, went viral this week on social media after it was shared earlier this month. The woman…

0:19:21
CW: Wait, wait, wait. She described the species as being extremely psychic?

0:19:24
BR: Yes.

0:19:25
CW: So she’s a psychic zoologist. She knows the different levels of psychic energy in different animals.

BR: So it seems.

CW: That’s fascinating.

0:19:34
BR: It’s, it’s, that’s one word for it, the woman’s name is Lauren Taylor, and she claims to use telepathy, energy fields, and quote, feline speak eye blinking. I’m just reading the story. To coax the mountain lion into leaving her home after she found the animal behind her couch, where she allegedly napped for over six hours. Taylor rode through the mountain lion, drank from a fountain before wandering into the home, and might not have realized she was going indoors because the decor of the room, which has huge plants and stairs built around real tree branches. She said one of her roommates reacted with alarm to the cat, as you can imagine, they might, creating a negative energy in the house, but she was able to restore the cat’s sense of calm by elevating the energy field.

0:20:19
CW: Oh, tell me feng shui comes into this. Does feng shui come into this?

0:20:23
BR: It doesn’t mention that by name, but that’s certainly where she’s going. She says, this woman Lauren Taylor, she says quote, cats are extremely psychic and perceptive of energy and this lion could have been dangerous in an energy field of fear or anger. When I made a noise she woke up and looked startled so I consciously raised my frequency. Consciously raised my frequency.

CW: I know how she did that she said hear hear a mountain lion, I mean hear a mountain lion! Come here, come here!

0:20:52
BR: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No? No, and I consciously raised my frequency, gazed lovingly into her eyes, and communicated using feline speak eye blinking to calm her.

0:21:05
CW: Oh, there we go with the eye blinking again.

0:21:08
BR: Yes, yes, so apparently this worked like a charm. Quote, it was amazing to realize that this worked.

0:21:14
CW: Really?

0:21:15
BR: I agree. That is amazing. I gazed lovingly, then blinked hard, and she did it back. Then she went back to sleep. I’ll just give you a couple more details in case any of our listeners want to try this. I sent telepathic pictures of the routes out of the house via open doors and the route out to the backyard, across the creek, through an open field, and back up into the hills. We got guidance that the way to rouse her and get her to leave her safe spot behind the sofa without panicking was through drumming.

0:21:43
CW: Okay.

0:21:44
BR: So, as I’m reading this, a cat wandered into an Oregon woman’s house, took a nap. This woman stand up, began gazing at the cat lovingly, blinking and drumming and adjusting her frequency. The cat’s like, what the hell is going on with this psycho woman? And got there as quickly as possible. That is my take home.

0:22:06
CW: I love it. The cat wandered out. No, no, no. Apparently the cat needed very specific psychic directions to get out of the house that it had wandered into.

0:22:15
BR: Right, exactly. Now, wildlife biologists and others commented on the story and they wanted to remind sane remind sane people that that’s not how you deal with a mountain lion in your house.

CW: Now, where was this again was this what state was this in Oregon in Oregon? Okay.

BR: And you know there are mountain lions the range is pretty extensive. We have mountain lions here in New Mexico So Taylor want to clarify. She said, you know, don’t leave this to the professionals She says quote I’ve been urged to point out that I have extensive experience working with energy and animals. I’m not suggesting anyone seek out interaction with mountain lions, which is probably just as well. So there’s a lot going on here, a lot of…

0:23:01
CW: Yeah.

0:23:02
BR: Between the lovely gazing and the raising frequency and feline-speak eye blinking, there’s a couple of things I wanted to highlight. One of them is that, uh, there’s actually a pretty common, there’s a couple of common, uh, errors. One of them here is, uh, is one of my personal favorites. Post hoc ergo proctor hoc. That is after this, therefore, because of it. Ah, um, so she has a mountain lion and you know, she, she awakes, this is his mountain lion and she does all these frequency raising and love gazing and whatever, at some point, of course, mountain lion is going to leave. It could be sooner, it could be later, but eventually the mountain lion is going to leave. So if after being noticed and recognized and being interacted with, the mountain lion wanders away, then it’s like, well, there you go. It worked.

0:23:55
CW: Clearly.

0:23:56
BR: Clearly, right. So the course of the lesson of skeptics is just because event A happens after event B doesn’t mean that one caused the other.

0:24:06
CW: Especially if the event is kind of inevitable anyway, like I don’t know, blinking?

0:24:11
BR: Frequency raising, gazing lovingly. Well, so there’s the illusion of attribution, right? The illusion that she caused the mountain lion to do something. Now, she’s convinced, I’m sure, that all of her frequency raising, blah, blah, blah. But of course, the fact is that we don’t have a control group. We don’t know what the mountain lion would have done if she had done nothing.

0:24:39
CW: I don’t know. Can we pull up all the instances of mountain lions actually attacking household pets or causing-

0:24:46
BR: In this case, we don’t know, right? Because this is a specific mountain lion under these circumstances.

0:24:50
CW: Well, no, we don’t have that exact mountain line with those exact circumstances, but.

0:24:55
BR: Well, no, but that’s part of my point is that when these events happen, we don’t have a control group, so we don’t know what would have happened in any other circumstance. And it reminds me of the, do you remember the egg trick I saw at the equator in Ecuador?

0:25:11
CW: Yes, we talked about that in an episode.

0:25:13
BR: Episode, I think 41, the tour guide show.

0:25:16
CW: Yes, you looked it up, smart.

0:25:17
BR: Yes, thank you. And in that case, for listeners who can’t be bothered to go back and listen to episode 41, although you certainly should, I was in Ecuador on the equator and the tour guide was explaining how it’s possible only on the equator to balance an egg on its end, and he performed this whole thing. And it was all very impressive to some people there on our tour. And then I asked him if he’d ever tried to balance an egg anywhere else. And he looked at me like that was the most bizarre, ridiculous, well, of course, I couldn’t do it somewhere else because it’s not on the equator. And of course, I said, well, how do you know? If you’ve never tried to do anywhere else, then how do you know that you can’t do anywhere else? And in the end, I went back to our camp that is not on the equator, and I managed to balance the egg exactly, and he was astonished by it.

0:26:04
CW: Were you blinking at the egg? Did you communicate at all?

0:26:07
BR: I was gazing lovingly at it.

0:26:09
CW: Gazing lovingly and blinking, yes.

0:26:11
BR: But no, but it’s a common sort of mistake that people make is, you know, they do one course of action and it doesn’t occur to them that if they hadn’t done that course of action that they might have gotten the same result. I remember a friend of mine told me about meeting her husband after she moved from Albuquerque to Portland. She said, I remember her very clearly, she told me once, oh, you know, I never would have met him if I hadn’t done that. Except the fact is that they actually work in similar fields. So they could have met at a conference, for example, maybe months or years later. They could have been assigned to work together. And I didn’t argue with her or point this out to her, but I was realizing that in her mind, the only way I could have met my husband is going out on my own and moving to Portland. And I said, well, that’s likely, but there’s actually other ways you could have met him without having to move to Portland.

0:27:01
CW: Never tell a skeptic your romantic story. They’ll just take the wind right out of your sails.

0:27:07
BR: Well, my point here is that it’s possible, but you don’t know what would have happened if you had made other life choices. You just don’t know. You can make an educated guess. But with everything we do in life, we like to rationalize and justify our decisions to ourselves. Like, well, I made the right choice. I couldn’t be here if I hadn’t done X, Y, or Z. Maybe, maybe not.

0:27:29
CW: Well, you raise a good point. And I didn’t ever think that these two things could be linked, homeopathy and a mountain lion in some energy-loving woman’s home. But when you think about post hoc ergo proctor hoc and attributing causality, people who are at the tail end of a cold, you know, colds last about an average of five days, they’ll take some homeopathic remedy on day four, they’ll wake up on day five and feel better and say, well, that’s because I took the remedy.

0:27:59
BR: Yeah.

0:28:00
CW: And so it’s very easy to attribute something as a cause when it has nothing to do with it.

0:28:06
BR: We do it all the time. I’ve caught myself doing that many, many times.

0:28:09
CW: And such is life.

0:28:15
BR: Yes.

(MUSIC)

0:28:29
Pascual Romero: So, we’re talking about skeptical burnout this week, and when we talk about burnout, we’re talking about fatigue or just being worn out from applying skepticism and being a skeptic and being involved with skeptics and all the other great things that happen to us. And just about all of us feel it at some point, whether it’s 10 hours into a Facebook argument or 150 pages into a book. So I have Ben and Celestia here and we’re just going to talk about our experiences and the things that we think may help people with their skeptical fatigue. So Celestia, this is nothing new, isn’t it?

CW: Yeah, we’ve all experienced it, but it feels like it’s been going on for years and years and years. Daniel Loxton wrote an interesting blog, he’s got a subtitle here, Running on Empty. This is from back in 2012 and he cites a skeptical inquirer issue from 24 years before that. So, here’s a quote from it here. Do you ever get skeptics burnout? Asked Barry Karr, CSICOP’s astute young Public Relations Director. This question came at the end of a long, hard day during the particularly exhausting three weeks following Donald Reagan’s revelation of the Reagan’s use of astrology at the White House.

0:29:49
CW: Oh yeah, I do remember that. Now is Barry Karr still an Astute Young Public Relations Director, Ben?

0:29:54
BR: He’s, he looked a little worn last I saw him, but Barry has a lot of responsibilities. He’s still there, he’s still plugging away, and so the glue that holds it together.

0:30:05
CW: Yeah, but this is like almost 30 years ago now, if you look at 24 years plus 5, and they’re talking about being burned out.

0:30:13
BR: He could have said this last week.

0:30:16
CW: So it’s nothing new, and it’s nothing that you’re going to feel for a while and then get over, like the flu, and never have to deal with it again. Well, okay, you can get the flu more than once. Bad example.

0:30:25
PR: Chickenpox.

0:30:27
CW: It’s not like chickenpox where you have it once and you never have to deal with it again. But I also did some looking and found that it’s very applicable across the board. There’s a lot of things that people who, for instance, work in the non-profit sector deal with that skeptics deal with on a regular basis. It’s not like we are, you know, I think there’s one of us in this room who earns money off of skepticism and you work your tail off in order to do that.

0:30:56
BR: And also, and I don’t know if this is widely known, but technically I’m mostly paid for editing.

0:31:03
CW: Yes.

BR: Most of the actual investigations that I do in the skeptical work, it’s done on my own time and everything else like that. I’m certainly a paid skeptic, but although again, sort of technically, my primary job is editing the magazine and writing stuff like that. That’s part of the issue is nobody is, no one’s getting rich being a skeptic. I mean, that’s not what one does.

0:31:31
CW: Yeah, and none of us are doing it to get rich. It’s not something that people launch into going, oh, I’m going to make a million dollars being a skeptic and arguing with people on Facebook. That’s not why we do it, but just that angle of it, that it’s not a job, it’s not like being a real estate agent or being a car salesman or being a platinum record singer. It’s not something that you are earning buckets of money for. It’s something that you’re just doing and doing and you keep doing it and you think it’s doing a little bit of good and you keep doing it. And you also, unlike a job, you can’t turn it off when you get home. That was the number one thing I saw in the examples for how to fight burnout for nonprofit workers is they said you need to compartmentalize and when you get home from work, you’re just, you’re home from work. You’re not doing anything, turn off your cell phone or whatever and just enjoy time with your family or whatever, watch some movies. And even just as two examples, spending time with your family and watching movies. Chances are, if you’re a skeptic, when you engage with your family, there’s gonna be things that come up that, oh, my aunt Jan’s use of that homeopathic product, I should really tell her that there’s nothing in there. Or you’re watching a documentary on Netflix, tell me that does not engage your skeptical senses.

0:32:51
PR: Sure, sure.

0:32:52
BR: I’ll invite Pascual over, let’s watch season four of Ghost Hunters.

0:32:57
PR: Oh, let’s not.

0:32:58
CW: Yeah.

0:32:59
BR: Let’s not.

0:33:00
CW: Yeah, but you can’t exactly compartmentalize your skepticism the way that you would if it was a job.

0:33:05
PR: Yeah, yeah.

0:33:06
BR: Yeah, I mean, I think of people like Penn and Teller. I mean, their job is not as skeptics. Their job is to entertain and be magicians. In the process, they front load a lot of good skepticism. So that’s one way that I’ve often seen is the most effective avenue for skepticism just across the board, and also in avoiding burnout is when it’s sort of limbed with your main job. And when Penn and Teller explain homeopathy or they explain cold reading or something to their audiences, they’re not having to put a screeching stop on the entertainment. It’s like, by the way, we just entertained you and by the way, this is bullshit. And then move on. I think that not only has it become part and parcel of the product or the service that you’re doing, it helps to make it so you’re not constantly pounding on beating that dead horse.

CW: Well. Yeah, you know I’m a big fan of dovetailing art forms and skepticism, that’s kind of my damn.

BR: Yeah, you do a lot of that.

CW:  Yeah, and and yeah, you can you can get you can get really invested in an art form like it’s Shelly Seagal She does amazing songs, and she’s a great folk singer that rolls in a lot of skepticism within her lyrics.

PR: Yeah, yeah.

BR:  George Trabb and…

CW: Yeah, yeah, and so and then and that was one of the other recommendations that they give to nonprofit people’s they’re like take up and some sort of hobby that involves music or art or something that can kind of help you escape and Again, this kind of does roll back with like we can’t get away from it as skeptics is always with us. But but having something like that where you can kind of use it as as art therapy if you will.

PR: Yeah.

CW: Roll a little bit of skepticism in there but you know not enough to sour the whole pot.

PR: Yeah yeah I’ve found that you know in the music world and especially in the metal world you know you do on one hand you get a lot of really good skepticism a lot of people are very skeptical in the metal world I think that I would almost be willing to bet that metal listeners and musicians tend to be a more skeptical crowd across the board. Many of the skeptics I know I actually met through that world not just because I was always in it but because it was like a world where you could be pretty outspoken and not have to worry about how people reacted to you. Metal has a long tradition of criticizing religion and government and and and especially And especially there’s a strong strength a strong threat of atheism through it especially in the the areas that I’ve put out music and the But on the other hand, there’s also a lot of like conspiracy theorists and stuff Dave Mustaine from Megadeth is notorious for just like being super into conspiracy theory and he’s like a Trump voting guy I mean, he’s crazy, he’s like just under Ted Nugent right now and I’m sure I’ll get some some letters for that one but…

BR: Hey the facts are there.

PR: But you know you can also come out on stage and present like a direct challenge to it And it’s not gonna like ruin your day.

0:36:16
CW: Metal does have a long history of not giving a fuck what other people think.

PR: I think that’s what it is you start with Like you expect everyone to be pissed off anyway, so it’s like I’m not I’m nothing to lose man and then you walk out and then you realize there’s this whole crowd of people embracing what you’re saying and all of a sudden it’s like wow like I’ve got a receptive crowd and like yeah the public at large might totally hate me for what I’m saying…

CW: Let’s all be nonconformist together!

PR: Right it’s it’s a great form of conformity nonconformity is a great form of conformity

BR: That’s one thing that I found in the skeptics that are long-term skeptics. I’ve been doing this for 20 years now.

0:36:55
CW: You’re a long-term skeptic.

0:36:56
BR: Apparently, I am now officially a long-term skeptic.

0:37:00
CW: You’re a lifer.

0:37:01
BR: But, you know, the people who… It’s interesting. I have friends who sort of have surfaced for a while, gotten involved in the skepticism, and then sort of faded away. Then I have other friends who, I mean, they’ve been doing this longer than I have. Randi and Joe Nickell and Jim McGehee and Alcock and people like that. And the ones that are in for the long term, they tend to, as you said, they tend to have diverse interests. Robert Schaeffer, who until recently was a columnist for Skeleton Choir Magazine, one of the world’s top experts on UFOs, loves opera. He posts photos of him at operas and doing steampunk. It’s really cool.

0:37:44
CW: There’s a few skeptics into steampunk.

0:37:45
BR: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

0:37:46
CW: I would admit I have a few corsets and crap like that.

0:37:50
BR: It’s artwork and it’s interesting because it really contrasts with the sort of stereotype of scientists being very nerdy and like, well, I don’t know about that.

0:38:03
CW: Well, steampunk especially is a nice little tongue in cheek, little flipping the bird to reality and science and history because it’s a purposeful reimagining of the historical narrative and the way that science works. Like, oh yes, this is my steam powered time travel Zeppelin. Nobody actually believes that’s gonna work, but it’s a little play acting thing.

0:38:29
PR: Yeah, I think there just is a lot of crossover. You know, once you really look at the big picture, especially in a day and age where people are allowed to express their interests a lot more than they used to, because you know, back in, you know, before cons were a thing and stuff, and before the 80s and stuff, there was this like archetypal nerd that was just this bookworm who kept to himself and just like, you know it was very dry and socially awkward and all that and what that person was was a person with a lot of creative juices flowing and no good way to exercise that and once people were kind of like able to say hey It’s okay to be like super into this thing and it’s okay to just like go out dressed like this thing and the more it became embraced and now it’s like frankly pretty mainstream and now you see these like you know I mean skeptical conferences that are full of people in costume and full of people that are just like completely expressing their wildest side.

0:39:31
CW: Well yeah the whole internet interlocking different groups of social media and people being able to find them find other people exactly like them now They’ve got conferences where oh, yeah, you like to to express yourself sexually in a an animal costume So do I you know? One person in each state that actually fits that description, but they can all get together once a year Yeah, so but speaking of all getting together and skeptics as a whole Another aspect of burnout is people get burned out on the community. Yeah. And I wouldn’t even say they call it getting burned out. I’ve had a number of people I know just say, I’m done with the skeptical community. I’m done because of X, Y, Z, because this prominent person said something I disagree with, or this other person is engaging in terrible behavior, or this other person is a menace to society and skeptics aren’t denouncing that person. And that just makes me sad because if you give up on the skeptical community because of that, you’re going to have to give up on most, if not all, communities formed by human beings. Because you’re never going to find a tribe where everybody agrees on everything. And everybody has the same idea of what is right and wrong. And everybody has the same idea of what should be said about X, Y, Z.

0:40:52
BR: And especially among skeptics.

0:40:54
CW: That’s their job to parse things.

0:40:56
BR: Yeah, this is not the group that’s going to have any real uniformity or monolithic, homogenous worldview.

0:41:02
PR: Yeah.

0:41:03
BR: So if that’s what you’re expecting, like, well, why isn’t everyone thinking this way? Are you familiar with the skepticism?

0:41:10
CW: Have you been paying attention?

0:41:11
PR: Yeah, I mean, when you say something like that, it makes sense if it were, you know, speaking about a church or, you know, an organization that’s founded around morals or something like that.

CW: An organization that has dogma that everybody has to follow.

0:41:24
PR: Yeah, I mean, but skepticism isn’t about, you know, I mean, the only practice what you preach involved is just that you be skeptic. You be a skeptic. You be skeptical and you apply skepticism to things and people will do bad things and you don’t have to like them and you don’t have to approve of what they do because they don’t represent every single one of us. If there’s a group that shouldn’t even really have representatives, it should be skeptics because to be skeptical is not to allow people to speak for you in wholesale. I’ll defer to someone as an expert, absolutely, but I don’t expect a skeptic to represent me like a lawyer would.

0:42:14
CW: It’s the old saw about atheists. What do atheists think about this or that? As Matt Delahunty is fond of saying, the only thing atheists all have in common is that they don’t believe in a god or gods.

0:42:29
PR: Yeah.

0:42:30
BR: Beyond that?

0:42:31
CW: That’s all.

PR: I mean, there are superstitious people who believe in ghosts. You can be an atheist and be a Buddhist. I mean, most Buddhists are atheists by definition. And the term atheist, just like the term skeptic, it applies to a specific part of who you are and not what you think, you know, as a person with your opinions and how you feel about other people.

0:42:59
CW: You can run into a bad skeptic.

0:43:00
PR: Yeah.

0:43:01
CW: You can run into somebody who says, I’m a skeptic.

0:43:04
PR: And then they’re a climate skeptic.

0:43:06
BR: Yeah.

0:43:07
CW: Or they claim that they’re skeptic, but they have no idea how to read statistics or they believe every urban legend they’ve ever heard.

0:43:15
BR: Yeah, I mean, and that happens a lot, for example, in cryptozoology and ghosts. I mean, most of the prominent ghost investigators, the amateur ghost hunters, call themselves skeptics. If you read the books and you talk to them.

PR: Even in the shows, there’s always that one guy who’s a skeptic. I’m a skeptic.

0:43:34
CW: Sure you are.

0:43:35
BR: Are you now?

0:43:36
CW: Sure you are.

0:43:38
BR: Are you now? I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

0:43:41
PR: You watch too much X-Files, my friend.

0:43:44
CW: That’s another thing that can lend itself to burnout is you kind of feel like, oh, I’m fighting this uphill battle. Why am I even trying? You’ve got the ghost hunters calling themselves skeptic. You’ve got the mainstream media buying things hook, line, and sinker that they should look into that they aren’t looking into before they report on. And do you guys have any thoughts on that where you just kind of have a sense of hopelessness about it?

0:44:07
PR: Yeah, I mean, you know, back when we spoke to Sharon Hill about it a little bit, you know, about how the labels can get a little troubling for us at times. I think that discussion was really productive in the sense that, you know, I was actually able to see a little, become a little more soft about the use of the term. And I think that to me, the thing I took away from it was just that I needed to focus the most on being skeptical and not saying I’m skeptical. And I think that’s-

0:44:40
CW: Undercover skepticism.

0:44:41
PR: Right, it’s like, but at the same time, it’s like not being scared of titling myself as such. And especially when you have a skeptical podcast, you have to be able to embrace that title. I mean, there’s no way we can just be like, well, I’m not a skeptic per se, but you know, but I think, you know, as we mentioned about atheism, like using, when we were talking about Dilhunty, you know, saying that you need to use the title in order for people to understand what the definition is in the long run. Silverman, Silverman.

0:45:11
CW: David Silverman.

0:45:12
PR: David Silverman was very big on, don’t hide the term atheist yeah, and I think you know at this point in my life it’s like the this the word skeptic also needs to be treated at least with similar level of Pride of pride because we need to make sure that people don’t confuse us with climate skeptics, and we don’t and Holocaust skeptics you know, it’s I mean there’s some terrible versions of skepticism that aren’t versions of skepticism, but they they fly that flag and we need to overpower that as much as we can by embracing it.

0:45:43
CW: Yes sorting the deniers from these skeptics.

PR: Yeah

0:45:47
BR: But you also need to be careful in terms of drawing lines. For example, Martin Gardner is One was one of the world’s top skeptics. He was a co-founder of CSICOP along with you know, Paul Kurtz and Randy and others. And he, later in life, he acknowledged that he believed in God. And this has been, I remember actually being interviewed by somebody, I think it was for a Christian, some writer for a Christian magazine wanted my comments on Martin Gardner. And well, hold on, one of your co, one of the founders, the pillars of skepticism and belives in God, doesn’t that concern you?

0:46:28
CW: Like that’s gonna make it all crumble.

0:46:30
BR: Yeah, like, oh, and I explained to him, I said, no, in the context of the Martin, Martin talked with Randi, I think about it and others as well. And Martin was very clear, he said, I have no reason to believe in God. I have no evidence. I’m not claiming that this is true I find it comforting yeah end of story. And I I don’t have a problem with that at all. It’s not that doesn’t mean Martin was a bad skeptic it means that that he in fact that means he’s a good skeptic he says I have no evidence for this. I’m not saying this is true at the capital T I’m saying I personally find comfort in believing in a deity. I’m like, no problem.

0:47:15
CW: Yeah, James Randi discussed that at one of the conventions, one of the amazing meetings. And it was heartwarming to hear him just say, Martin was one of my dearest friends. The God conversation came up exactly once. And he just said, I understand, Randi, that I have no evidence for it. I just believe it. It’s a thing I believe because it makes me feel better.” And Randi said, well, all right then.

0:47:42
BR: Moving on.

0:47:43
CW: Moving on.

0:47:44
BR: Yeah. But the reason I bring it up is because there does tend to be a tendency to sort of draw lines in the sand. Well, he’s not a skeptic. Well, hold on here. He’s like, no, calm down. Yeah. Dial it back.

PR: Yeah.

0:47:57
CW: Well, certainly it can be good for your own mental health to know where to draw the line and again, which hill to die on and where’s the harm? That’s the number one question you ask yourself as a skeptic, where’s the harm? Now if your Aunt Hilda kind of thinks that she’s a Pisces, so that’s the reason why she likes jigsaw puzzles, not much harm there. However, if she’s decided to pay an astrologer, you know, $1,000 a week to give her personalized readings that will help with her ability to find a man in her life or something, you might want to look into that because that’s causing some harm. Or the pseudoscientific health treatments that are killing children or preventing cancer patients from taking therapies that will help and instead spending their money on bee pollen and candles and crap. There’s definitely a cause to ask the question, where’s the harm? And that way you can parcel out where you’re spending energy and where you’re just letting stuff glide off your back.

0:49:01
PR: Yeah, that’s definitely something that you should always keep in mind because I don’t think that there is much use in engaging people in any kind of, especially, you know, astrology is a great example because I have one particularly old friend of mine who really gets a kick out of astrology and I presume she believes it to some degree, but she doesn’t spend money on it, she doesn’t spend much time, you know, she’ll once in a while post like, wow, this is a really Gemini thing.

BR: She’s not quitting her marriage and changing careers on the advice of those astrologers. And some people do. That does happen.

PR: Yeah, but I mean, and she’s educated, intelligent, has a career in education. And none of that affects any of that, and also she seems to live a perfectly happy life. I’ve taken a few funny jabs at her. Like one thing that I do is when people ask me my sign I always lie about it because I people tend to dig holes right after you they’re like oh I’m a Scorpio and they’re like oh I knew you really come off as such great and then I’ll be like I’m actually a Capricorn they’re like that’s such a Capricorn thing to say but the trick is to just lie a lot you’re like no I’m actually a… Just make sure to do it to people who can who can take a joke But yeah, but yeah that but then you know There was an ex-family member at this point who racked up a several thousand dollar bill on psychic hotlines and it did you know contribute to a divorce in our family and and you know that right there. I mean I was I was young and I actually had no idea what was going on. I was about maybe 10, 12 years old. But looking at that situation, I mean, had I known about it, I would have certainly.

0:51:01
CW: Had you been 35 instead of 10.

0:51:04
PR: Had I been of the age to engage in that conversation, I certainly would have been like, you need to definitely not do this. Here, look at this evidence, please. Because thousands of dollars, what did it lead to it led to your divorce, and you know I mean It’s that’s not nothing nothing none of that stuff worked out for you, you know and I It really bums me out that it had to be discovered that way you know so at the end of the day.

BR:  You know skepticism is a big tent And I think that’s what we’re getting on in terms of you know you have Martin Gardner you have the Mythbusters guys, I mean everybody has their own flavor of skepticism and my approach isn’t necessarily that of Randi’s or Penn’s or whatever else, it’s or yours or any of ours. And so I think that establishing your own niche helps to guard against burnout because you’re not having to fight, not having to tackle everything at once, you say, okay, this is what I do.

0:52:00
CW: I remember seeing Ben put that into action one time. There was a talk he gave about, I forget what it was, I’m sorry, see how much your talk resonated with me?

0:52:09
BR: Clearly. That brilliant one, yeah, I remember that.

0:52:13
CW: But there was a gentleman, and I use the term loosely, came up afterwards and started really trying to engage Ben hard with like climate change, he was clearly a climate change denier. And Ben could have just spent tons of time arguing with him, but he said, he said, well, what’s your position on climate change? And Ben just said, I’m not a climate scientist. That’s not what I study. If you want to learn about that, you should look at what clients, climate scientists are saying, but that’s not what I investigate. And that was, it was like, it was like one of those like scenes from the matrix. He just dodged it. The guy had nowhere to go. He had nowhere to go once Ben said that. And that was a good choice not to engage at that point.

0:52:58
BR: Well, and he, because I remember that case and he was, you know, he was trying to like, what’s your official position? And I said, there is no official skeptic position.

0:53:06
PR: I was going to say that’s actually pretty well against the concept of skepticism. Official positions are few and far between.

BR: They are and it’s true I mean certainly with the magazine we have people who we have a few people who are actually climate change deniers in skepticism. They’re very skeptical about some things and less so about other things in my opinion. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not good skeptics and they don’t apply critical thinking elsewhere and not everyone you know no one does it in all areas of their lives all the time.

0:53:39
CW: Andrealizing that is part of being becoming a skeptic is realizing that Even if you think you’re the perfect skeptic there are gonna be some blind spots that you have and when somebody alerts you to something you have an open mind about it.

PR: Yeah, you know with me on on social media that was you know a big thing for me to consider because I think that you have to look at, and this is the reason I just don’t engage in social media much anymore outside from a little bit of our podcast page and a couple of band pages, but after a while I realized that in the skeptics in general on Facebook, it got, I think maybe the political climate in the US has really brought out the biases and it’s shown where people aren’t being skeptical, but it’s also shown me that skeptics can just argue just to no end about things that really have nothing to do with skepticism, but they keep folding it into the conversation. I realize I’m like, this isn’t doing anything for us. This isn’t doing anything for me. In fact, it’s raising my blood pressure and I’m sitting at a computer. That right there should be a warning sign that this isn’t doing anything good for me. It’s not that I ran from it. I still have these friends, but if we want to have these conversations, you have to do it in person. They don’t happen in person. They never happen in person.

0:55:07
CW: Well, yes. Social media can be exhausting. With the election of Donald Trump. You’ve seen this merging of politics and skepticism, which has always happened to some degree, but it seems excessive right now.

0:55:22
PR: Yeah.

0:55:23
CW: And it is very exhausting, and I wanted to bring up something that you were mentioning, the way that social media was making you feel. Dr. Christina Maslach, M-A-S-L-A-C-H, from UC Berkeley’s psychology department, she developed the Maslach burnout inventory, which is designed to assess the three components of burnout syndrome are emotional exhaustion Depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment are those or are those not the three effects of Facebook?

PR: Yeah, I agree

0:55:52
CW: Absolutely the three effects of social media for me.

PR: The deeper those discussions and arguments get the the more those particular things become apparent.

0:56:04
CW: Yeah, you’re emotionally exhausted, you feel very depersonalized, and it definitely reduces my personal accomplishments. So check out that inventory, listeners, if you’re curious to see where you fall. But people don’t realize it’s really more than just kind of a list-list, like, oh, I’m in a burned-out sort of mood today. It can really compound and end up becoming like a medical condition. Yeah from a New York Times article I’m pulling from my sources here guys from an article in the New York Times back in September 2017 by Kenneth Rosen Titled how to recognize burnout before you’re burned out the general social survey of 2016 a nationwide survey that since 1972 has tracked the attitudes and behaviors of American society found that 50% of respondents are consistently exhausted because of work compared with 18% two decades ago. So burnout in general from jobs is going way up. And from that same article, we need to remember that burnout can literally affect your health here. And I’m quoting again from the article, it is difficult to identify burnout, which often feels like surrender or failure rather than what it really is, a chronic disease. Many experts, psychologists, and institutions, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, highlight long-term and unresolvable burnout as not a symptom but rather a major health concern. Though it does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which outlines psychiatric disorders, it does appear in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, a classification used by the World Health Organization. And so what I took from all that was if people’s jobs are regularly exhausting them far more than they did 20 years ago, that’s going to take a toll on how much time and energy you have left at the end of the day to do other activities, number one, like skepticism, and the factors that contribute to job burnout. I’m talking about things like the instant nature of email, the fast pace of business and the news cycles these days, the ever-changing software you have to get used to and different platforms. The constant reachability that cell phones provide. There’s never a crisis that just waits till Monday morning. If there’s a crisis, you find out about it in one minute and you stress about it and you have to deal with it. And all that applies to doing skepticism just as it applies to a lot of people’s jobs. And so that’s an important thing to remember that just as we mentioned from Dan Loxton’s blog earlier, burnout is nothing new. It’s also gotten a little bit worse with some of these modern conveniences.

0:58:47
BR: Yeah, I think there’s a general problem of burnout across the board, and I think there’s something specific to skepticism that makes skeptics amenable or more vulnerable to burnout. One we talked about before is low pay.

0:59:03
CW: Or zero pay.

0:59:05
BR: Or zero pay. This is not an implicit beg for money, although if you want to send us some money… Patreon.com, or by squaring the strange. But no, I mean, that’s look, it’s one thing if you’re doing something, number one, that you’re feeling is helping the world and you’re also earning a good living at it. Like, OK, well, you know, it’s like, you know, I may not be accomplishing that much, but hey, you know…

CW:  I’m a doctor who separates conjoined twins and here’s my yacht.

0:59:35
BR: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, but you know, as we talked about before, there’s not much money in skepticism. And in fact, you know, a running joke, which isn’t really a joke, is that, you know, if we, the knowledge that we have in terms of how to manipulate people and how to, how, for example, people like John Edward do cold reading. I mean, the, the, the things that the three of us know in terms of how to scam people. If we were on the wrong side of this, we could be making lots of money.

1:00:08
PR: Yeah.

1:00:08
BR: And this is a common skeptical thing.

1:00:10
CW: That comes up a lot, going, oh, if I only joined the other side, I can make a million dollars.

1:00:15
PR: Well, and that’s a crazy thing because it is such a like, it’s like a Jedi versus Sith thing. Because we have the same, these people have the powers we do. That’s how they’re able to manipulate it so well. But we can’t use it that way because we have too strong of a conscience about it. We feel that we have to use this for the good of humanity.

1:00:37
CW: You’re feeling the psychological drain of just restraining yourself from going over to the dark side.

1:00:43
PR: Yeah, it’s like we are monks have that and we should embrace that but it can definitely feel very thankless You know,

BR: Well, yeah, it’s not just being thankful It’s also I began by sort of talking about what I think are the elements that make skeptics particularly susceptible to burnout And again, one of them is low pay and the one is one that we touched on before which is that skepticism is is often inherently argumentative.

1:01:14
CW: Yes.

1:01:15
PR: Yeah, sure, sure.

BR: And even when you’re not trying to be argumentative, it’s like, yes, but critical thinking, you know, I understand you think that way, here’s why you’re wrong. And you can say that in the most polite, respectful way, all they hear is, you’re wrong.

1:01:31
CW: Well, yeah, that’s, I think everybody has that little like moment, you’re observing something, either it’s, you know, somebody telling you about this great astrologer they found or somebody who wants to go on a ghost hunt because they heard that you can take photographs and capture orbs and in the air and you’re hearing this stuff and I know everybody kind of gets that little do do do like like there’s spidey sense tingles and you’re like oh this is going to be contentious is this worth it yeah is this should I should I bring this up ah and and you got to kind of kick yourself a little bit and figure out how to say it in the nicest way possible, which is still possibly going to start a big fit with the other person or just make you looked down upon as like, oh, I don’t want to take that person to the next party. They’re not very fun. They just disagree with things.

1:02:20
PR: Sure. Sure.

BR: And compare that to other ostensibly similar professions, such as scientists, right? Scientists, there are science popularizers who take it upon themselves, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye and others, who as part of their job and their outreach, and many of them are fellows of CSI, who said, you know, I’m going to try and educate the public. But again, in most cases, their primary job is doing science. As an aside to that, they’re trying to do skepticism. Dan Loxon talks about this as well. There’s a very specific role that skeptics play. It is partly scientific, it’s partly journalistic. It’s also, of course, partly educator. In the case of educators, for example, you have a teacher or a university college professor and their job is to educate students within a certain framework. Often it’s to the test.

1:03:18
CW: Here’s the information. Here’s what you need to know.

1:03:21
BR: You’ll be tested on this in three weeks. Know this. And as long as you regurgitate back the correct answers, you’ll get your A or your B and you’ll move on. And so there’s not this sort of years or decades long inherent commitment to engaging and encouraging critical thinking that the skeptics have.

1:03:44
CW: There’d be some really good teachers who disagree with you there, who do believe that part of their job is engaging critical thinking among students. But yeah, for the most part, you can be a college professor and just say, here’s what happened in the War of 1812, and then you can go home and watch Netflix and relax and completely divorce yourself from your day job.

1:04:05
BR: But there’s the distinction there, which is that for the most part, teachers are not going to get the pushback from their students. There’s a power differential here.

1:04:16
CW: Correct, yeah.

1:04:17
BR: The teachers and professors have power over the students. If you don’t give me the answers I want back, you don’t pass the course. Skeptics don’t have that.

1:04:25
PR: I We wish we did. F!

CW: Could we just start giving our friends and family tests every two weeks?

PR: Maybe we should just grade people. Just send them an email. I’m sorry but you got an F.

CW: Unsatisfactory slip for you.

PR: Why did you send me the letter F in the mail? You failed, man. Read some Stephen Hawking.

1:04:49
BR: Remember that stupid thing you said about homeopathy, that’s why you failed.

PR: Got an F, man.

BR: But we can’t do that. That’s not part of the structure here. And so all we can do is sort of try and encourage people and nudge them and this and that. And as we talked about before, often that’s inherently argumentative. And we don’t mean to make it argumentative. We’re not trying to. But it’s a case of where when we see misinformation, particularly misinformation that we know for a fact is wrong. I mean, I’m sure that I encounter all sorts of misinformation that I don’t catch because I’m not an expert on that. So I mean, if it’s something that I research, then I feel comfortable in saying, no, actually, or well, actually, in some cases, here’s the facts, and I’m not trying to be mean, but this is how this is. I think that the way this ties back in with burnout is that, believe me, teacher burnout is a huge issue. But it’s not a huge issue because they’re getting pushback from the students, for the most part.

1:05:54
CW: Yeah. Usually it’s just laziness and laziness from the students.

1:05:59
BR: Right, right. Right. But the friction, the emotional cost of correcting as gently as possible a friend or a relative or colleague, and like, oh man, they’re going to get pissed off at me. This is going to be tension. And is it going to do any good? Is it going to do any good? That sort of thing. And it’s like, for example, you know, as skeptics and just speaking for myself. I mean, I routinely am insulted and I get hate mail. I get death threats now and then. And I get these in the email and Facebook and stuff and it’s weird because I’m trying to help people think critically. I don’t deserve to be hated for that. I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings. I’m trying to help people understand something and when you get the the venomous Irritation and the hostility it You know it gets you after a while, and and it’s in its. I think that also folds with with being a writer because as a writer You have people that I think that there’s there’s a tendency to criticize writers that isn’t present in most professions. If you think of your doctor, your accountant, whoever else, as a writer, people feel obligated or they certainly feel entitled, often obligated, to contact me after reading something I wrote days earlier, months earlier, years earlier, and say, you’re wrong about that. I read your article that you wrote back in 2007 and you’re full of it and you’re wrong in this and that. And there’s not a lot of professions that deal with that. You don’t have doctors coming up. Well, you know, eight years ago you said this, I mean, there may be malpractice suits, but there isn’t this sort of like, you said this and it pissed me off and you’re wrong about this. And a lot of times it’s people who are, it’s conspiracy theorists who had this hostility that I’m trying to hurt people or I’m trying to cover up for big pharma.

1:08:12
CW: Yeah, knowing you, if somebody wrote you and said, you’re wrong about this, I’m a doctor of physics and you have this little physics equation wrong, you’d be like, oh, thank you. You got corrected in a legitimate way by a reader, that’s one thing, but yeah, you’re just getting blowback from conspiracy theorists who are angry that you don’t subscribe to their pet theory. And that’s frustrating.

1:08:35
BR: Well, and there’s the necessary inherent adversarial context, right? When I criticize psychic detectives. And when I criticize a psychic detective, it’s not because I hate the person, it’s not because I’m trying to put them out of business. It’s not because I’m angry at them. It’s because they can’t prove that they can do what they’re claiming to do. It’s not a personal issue for me, but for them it is a personal issue. Very much. And this is why you get a lot of the blowback and I think a lot of the burnout.

1:09:04
CW: Well Ben’s in a position that neither Pascual nor myself are in, in that he’s a full-time skeptic and he has been for decades and your name is out there, your image is out there, it’s on Wikipedia, you are a skeptic with a capital S and it kind of makes you a target. And does that kind of feel sometimes like you’ve got a target on your back, you kind of have to, you can’t really get away from it, you can’t pass, it’s like dealing with a prejudice. Pascual and I can just choose to pass. We can choose to just not open our mouths and nobody in the room knows we’re a skeptic, but you’re talking, you’re giving talks as a skeptic, you’re showing up with your books as a skeptical author, you know, at the point in which has to take its toll.

BR: I’ve been doing this for 20 years, I’m sort of like I’ve resigned myself to the fact that that’s going to be until and unless I pick a different profession, that’s who I am.

1:10:14
CW: And that’s, you’re probably best, best qualified to answer this. What would be, do you have like a top three list of things that make you that buoy you up in the times of of extreme frustration.

1:10:32
BR: Yeah, there’s there’s a few things that sort of helped me deal with it, and I’m certainly not generalizing it to other people But just for me personally there’s there’s a couple things that I do one of them is I try not to take it personally Sometimes it’s hard to do that when you have people who are calling you nasty names who don’t know you and know nothing more about you than that you were quoted in some article they disagreed with.

1:10:54
CW: I prefer to get called nasty names by people who know me well.

1:10:57
BR: I know! Have some class here. So you know, so I try not to take it personally and to understand where they’re coming from and understand why they would be pissed off at me. Even if it’s totally unjustified, it’s like, okay, it’s not me personally. They don’t know me. They don’t know why they’re reacting to some knee-jerk thing that I wrote that they disagree with. Oftentimes, they haven’t even read my work.

1:11:23
CW: Sort of like putting on the little mask of distance that a caregiver would have to take on when you’re dealing with somebody, perhaps a patient with Alzheimer’s who’s calling you names and they don’t really know why.

1:11:34
BR: Yeah. And you just sort of say, okay, well, it is what it is. And then the second one is one that you touched on before, which is diversifying interests. And I think that that’s really vitally important. And we talked to them about different interests and you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. And I think one of the reasons that I have been a professional skeptic for so long is that I do diversify my interests. I’ve done, as you guys know, I’ve written a director of a couple short films and I wrote a novel and did a couple board games and puzzles and things like that. So I’m always trying to get an outlet that’s not skepticism related necessarily.

CW: All your interests are very nerdy though.

BR: Yes, they are.

CW: Okay, so at least you’re consistent there.

BR: I appreciate you recognizing that. And the third item is basically just sort of trying to take comfort in colleagues and the community as much as I can. One reason that I do like going to skeptical conferences, DragonCon and Secon and where else, is as corny as it sounds, there is that sense of community. In some ways, I sort of feel like I’m with my own people, where you don’t have to wonder whether, if you criticize homeopathy, is the person to your right a homeopath? You know, and it’s like, there’s a certain baseline, like, okay, we’re all together on this. And there’s always the infighting, there’s always that sort of BS. But, you know, I am nourished by people who appreciate what we do and listen to the podcast and buy the books. In the same way that I try and support people whose work I care about and I am nourished by that and so those are the three things that sort of jump out at me helping me to avoid burnout so far.

1:13:30
CW: Those are good suggestions. Now I’m recalling something James Randi said and not everybody can be James Randi, there can be only one James Randi. He’s like the granddaddy of us all. And the first skeptical convention I went to was the amazing meeting. And it hurt me to see people online going, I don’t, you know, telling people that they shouldn’t feel safe and it’s a toxic environment and everything, because I felt exactly the opposite. I felt nourished, as you say. I got a lot of energy, a lot of, you know, reaffirmation of like, yeah, it matters to do this. This is important to humanity to keep doing this. And it did recharge my batteries quite a bit. If anybody’s thinking about going to a skeptical convention, go. It will recharge your batteries. You will meet people that will become lifelong friends. It will be a fun experience. And one of the things Randi said, and he said it at many conventions, I’ve heard him say this multiple times, is what he finds, and he’s of an advanced age. He’s looking back with a lot of years of experience behind him he says the thing that makes his Life feel worthwhile is he has people come up to him and shake his hand and say You made a difference to me. You changed a way the way that I thought about things Thank you. Yeah, and Again, none of us are gonna be James Randi but you can kind of help spread the love by if you read something that helps helps you figure something out if you if you come upon a blog or Or heck a tweet or anything that helps you understand something and helps helps you cut through some of the BS Throw that person a little bit of a virtual handshake and and tell them hey Thank you for writing this this matters I’m impressed by this and it will make a world of difference to that writer. It really will.

1:15:19
PR: Yeah and and I think that is a really it’s it’s cool because the Something that happened to me And I and I think this is this also kind of circles back on on making sure to wear that badge of skepticism and it’s that You know take this stuff in and appreciate the people that give it to you and and respond to them, you know, just 90% of the time you’ll get some response back. Maybe not from like the very biggest guys, but I mean, you catch like an article from a writer that, you know, the skeptical writer that you’ve never heard of before. You send them an email, like you’ll usually hear back from them. And you pass that information on and you do your best to communicate with other people what you’ve learned and what you’ve done your own research on. And that actually will, you know, someday probably affect someone else’s life in a fairly profound way. I mean, the first and only time I’ve really had like a big moment like that was a few years back and a friend of mine who I never gave up on. He was a bit of a fundamentalist Christian, but he was a friend of mine before he got into that stuff. I just, you know, I was never mean to him about it and I always was just like, well, maybe you should try reading this. Or you know, look into this book or read this article. It was never like the God delusion or any, it was like science articles or just like –

1:16:41
CW: You gotta start with Sagan, don’t hit him with the doctor.

1:16:43
PR: Well yeah, exactly, exactly. It was like at that level, I was like, you know, Bill Nye, like people who just spark it you know they don’t necessarily hit your your whole belief system on the head and Sure enough like one day. You know just kind of out of the blue he emailed me and he’s like I left that church and I I just wanted to thank you for setting me on this road to like Looking into all this stuff and not trying to beat me over the head with it And I was like it was like really moving to me because I was like, I didn’t think, I mean I was like maybe it’ll help him, you know, move away from it but I didn’t think like he’d think that I had, I was like the catalyst for it.

1:17:23
CW: Yeah.

1:17:24
PR: That’s awesome. And being thanked for it was like, I was just like wow that’s, and it made it feel like, I’m like okay, like this does matter even if like just this one old friend of mine who I just really feel like could get past this because he’s a smart guy and I know he can see past this and it happened and it made me feel great and it made him feel great and it’s like that’s that kind of…

1:17:45
CW: I’m getting the worm fuzzies now.

1:17:46
PR: Yeah, I mean and that’s like that nourishment you’re talking about. It’s like the community aspect of it and everything. It just all comes around when people engage you with that sort of thing.

1:17:54
CW: I’m glad we’re ending on this because it started with us talking about being burned out and in fact we decided to do this topic because we were all feeling a bit burned out. But a phrase I hear from many skeptics, you know, almost as a goodbye greeting is, keep fighting the good fight.

1:18:07
PR: Yeah.

1:18:08
CW: And so listeners, keep fighting the good fight.

1:18:16
We would like to thank our sponsor level patrons, Amy Freshour-Kelly and Dr. Angela Mattke. If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor or just throwing us a buck or two per episode, check out patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange. Every bit helps us keep the lights on here in strange studios and we could not keep bringing you content without the support of our generous friends. If you’re looking to provide moral support, head on over to iTunes and give us a five star review. Every positive review helps support, head on over to iTunes and give us a five star review. Every positive review helps the world.

Transcribed with Cockatoo