Uri Geller hijacks the New York Times, An Interview with Michael Shermer

00:00This is World's Greatest Con. I'm Brian Brushwood.

00:06Uri Geller has two reputations.

00:09One as a spoonbender, somebody who can melt metal with his mind.

00:17That one doesn't scare me.

00:20What scares me is his second reputation, as a guy who sues anyone who calls him a fraud.

00:29I'm not going to call Uri Geller a fraud, but I will speculate in my heart of hearts that if he were a fraud, the action of whitewashing his own reputation, 50 years of deceptions, falsely accepting fraudulent payments for prospecting to find oil that he may or may not have ever found, the idea of somebody like that being able to get the blessing of the paper of record, the gray lady herself, the New York Times.

01:10If any of that were true, it just might be the World's Greatest Con.

01:31Hey, it's Brian, gather round all you rogues and scoundrels, because we are joined again by my co-creator and partner in crime, Justin Robert Young.

01:40Justin, how was your week?

01:43It's been a very interesting and fun week, and we're going to talk about why, which is the news peg of this, but I also want to point out that the bulk of this episode is going to be a great interview and conversation that we did with Michael Shermer.

02:00It is a great conversation.

02:02The opportunity to sit down with one of my intellectual heroes was fantastic, and it seems like he's very appreciative of our work, and we're going to get to that.

02:13But first, a bit of news.

02:16A news about the news, which for a journalism major is my favorite kind, whenever we can discuss journalism as the main character of the story.

02:26The New York Times published an article one week ago, as we record this, entitled The End of the Magic World's 50-Year Grudge.

02:35In 1973, Uri Geller claimed to bend metal with his mind on live television.

02:40Skeptics couldn't beat him.

02:42Now they've joined him by David Siegel, and what follows is a pretty lengthy and I would say charitable, I think I've been more coarse on other platforms that we are on that usually have a little bit more relaxed rules.

02:59I think we could speak plainly about this. Something really curious.

03:02We do a comedy podcast every Tuesday night, and when we both read this article, we just kind of rolled our eyes and we're like, Uri Geller's going to Geller, and we didn't think much of it.

03:14And then somebody specifically started asking us for responses.

03:18And it turns out once we started talking about it, I don't know about you, but I became angry.

03:25And specifically, if you have not read it, it is explicit in things that I don't think are universally agreed upon and would not take a lot to scratch the surface and find an opposing opinion, specifically the idea that Uri Geller is just a coy trickster who has brought material benefit to the world his entire 50-year career.

03:50And now, despite the fact that Uri will never say that what he does is magic trickery or illusions, he has found a coterie of magicians who have laid down their qualms that they might have had.

04:05They've all agreed that back in the day they might have been sourpusses.

04:09And now we can all understand that he's just this strong kayfabe professional wrestling character that has brought such joy to the world over the last 50 years.

04:24And artistically speaking, a case could be made that way, but I think you had a very good metaphor of a dividing line.

04:33You said that it's as though the Undertaker accepted millions of dollars to shoot lasers out of his eyes or something.

04:43Yeah, it's the article hand waves away a lot of the talking points that have been made against Uri Geller, specifically that he has taken money from people under the assumption that he had real powers.

05:01The author hand waves away the idea that he took money from mining companies to find oil or ore.

05:08We don't know exactly what those deals were for, what he was looking for.

05:12And indeed, he covers for Uri by saying even Uri doesn't really remember how any of that went. Yeah.

05:18So, OK, and then it waits until about three fourths of the way through the article to even mention what season three of this podcast was all about, the battle between him and James Randi, the amazing James Randi.

05:34And that's, I don't think in any way historically accurate.

05:39You can have a lot of different opinions about Uri Geller and James Randi, but there is no doubt that they are the Batman and Joker of each other's careers.

05:48And you can decide who is who is who.

05:51I know I certainly have my designations personally, but the idea that you would wait in a story that promised a resolution to a 50 year grudge without mentioning the chief antagonist of the grudge is pretty remarkable in how that even hits the paper.

06:12Well, and we're kind of dancing around it.

06:15It's like what I noticed most about the article is, boy, do they not spell out any specific detriment to society that was committed by somebody who performed magic tricks and with a straight face claimed, in my opinion, that they were actual miracles bestowed upon him from an extraterrestrial force.

06:36And in further back and forth between the author and other critics, including Kostya Kimlet on Twitter, shout out to Kostya, he has said, can you please name what the harm is, what the material harm is from almost a legal definition to which some have said, many have said, you know, you could listen to season three of World's Greatest Con, where we make a very compelling argument that not only would the experiments that Mike and Steve participated in as boys have existed, if Uri Geller was not saying that he had successfully demonstrated psychic abilities at the Stanford Research Institute, but we wouldn't have had the emotional damage that eventually reflects from it.

07:31So it's, if we're looking at adjusted for inflation, millions of dollars spent, not to mention, and I think anybody who's been involved in academics understands that there is a zero-sum game when it comes to money that comes in the military and defense investments.

07:46Yeah, there is a zero-sum world.

07:48So any dollar that is spent in that world is a dollar not spent on something else.

07:54And as we know now, something that would have maybe yielded a greater idea of our world and reality more so than parapsychology did.

08:04Economists talk a bit about the seen world and the unseen world, or the seen benefit and the unseen detriment.

08:12You see people laughing and clapping and saying hooray and shouting the word bend, and that all feels good.

08:20What you don't see are the knock-on detriments of millions of dollars wasted of, as in season three, lives damaged by the experience of trying to right what we perceive as a deep wrong that happened.

08:36And to see somebody whitewash this reputation so casually to, in the same article, appear to admit that he's fraudulent, but roll his eyes and say, it's like you're shouting, there's no Santa Claus to a bunch of preschoolers like art, which provokes you have not read.

08:55That is his word for word characterization of the modern critical take on Uri Geller.

09:01Yes, that is that is the stated thesis that he has, which is if you quit trying to correct the record, jerks, nerds.

09:09Yeah, if you are critical of Uri Geller, then you are running into a preschool and screaming that Santa Claus doesn't exist because it is more impactful for our society that Uri be able to live on as a tremendous living version of a god, even if wink wink, we all know and he wink wink doesn't know because he went to Blackpool and he is involved in in this book, which is the newspeak of it.

09:39And I have a little surprise for you. Oh, no. Oh, no.

09:43Justin, you called me and said, hey, we should maybe record a little something about this.

09:49I did not know I was being lured into a trap.

09:52What is about to happen?

09:53We have a little bit of a different take on it based on our research that we did for this season. Yeah.

10:00None of which really made it into the season, but we can now reveal it.

10:06So I want to give credit to Dustin Dean.

10:10He has a website called OneAhead.

10:12com, which is a magic and mentalism news site by the looks of it.

10:20And Dustin did a good job.

10:23One might say a better job than the author of The New York Times article because he contacted the newspeak of that New York Times article, the book, specifically the author of the book Bend It Like Geller by Ben Harris, which was published by Vanishing Inc.

10:47is the reason why theoretically that news article can say that skeptics have laid down their arms against Geller.

10:57What seems to be misrepresented in that article is that Bend It Like Geller is, this is according to Harris as being interviewed by OneAhead.

11:10com, the author of the book, the author of the book, my book, Bend It Like Geller is about the history and evolution of bending spoons.

11:15It is research collection of trick techniques.

11:17This is all caps because I assume this came through in an email.

11:21This was not made clear in the New York Times piece. Vanishing Inc.

11:24did not promote my book as being about Geller.

11:26They published my book, Bend It Like Geller.

11:28It is an expose of methods for spoon bending.

11:31It is not a Geller biography and it is a skeptical work.

11:35So that seems to be a bit different than the way that it is portrayed in The New York Times, doesn't it? Yes.

11:43And at this point, we begin to speculate about like how the mental machinations of publishers or I don't I don't want to just make up a story about how this came to be, but it does sound that concrete facts are you and I firmly believe that Geller is doing magic tricks.

12:05You and I believe that James Randi has his whole quest was, will you please just admit these are magic tricks?

12:13And Geller refused to.

12:15You and I believe that this New York Times article appears to shrug its shoulders and just say, why?

12:22Who cares whether we all know it's a magic trick?

12:25Why don't you quit being babies about it?

12:27And it sounds now as though the title and subhead of this article were based on a absolutely erroneous, fallacious contradiction to what the book is about. Interesting, huh?

12:41So then Harris, again, being interviewed for onehead.

12:45com, give them a lot of credit, goes on to talk about how this article came to be.

12:51So what was supposed to be a story about my book and a celebration of spoon bending's allure to the modern magician for over 50 years turned into something else, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

13:04Siegel wrote a confronting piece. It's his job.

13:07The fallout is the result.

13:09So not for nothing, we do take a moment to celebrate the poetry of spoon bending as a way to go.

13:18We agree with Harris on that's a very, very good magic trick for a mentalist to do.

13:24And by the way, Banachek, who obviously plays a gigantic role in season three, as we tell his and Mike's story of Project Alpha, is quoted extensively in Bend It Like Geller because most of the actual techniques that are used for metal bending in our modern world are not Geller's, they're Banachek's.

13:44Right, because Banachek out-Gellered Geller, as we talk about in season three, there's a wonderful moment when he's watching the inspiration for all the work he's done and he realizes, oh, I'm way better than him, better magician than this guy.

13:57But it got me thinking about some of our conversations that we had both with Mike and Banachek and specifically around the idea of magic or miracle because, and I don't know how much you remember this, when we were talking to them about it and we couldn't really find a way to fit this into the story because our narrative was really about Mike and Steve and not about Randy, but Randy has never, and you heard in the interview that I forgot I had done with Randy years ago, never mentions magic or miracle in any of his tellings of Project Alpha.

14:38Which I just read as he was really hoping it would be the James Randi show.

14:44It turned into a lot of projects kind of do that.

14:47There we go, right there, because that was something that was told to us by Banachek and Mike that it was initially the Randi show.

14:55It was the Randy travels the world and finds some things for which he absolutely cannot explain like the ability to walk across hot coals.

15:07Right, which is a real phenomenon based on thermal lag, but it was poorly understood at the time, yeah.

15:13And reveals other things, like psychic surgery.

15:16But that's not, and I really, really wish that the George Schlatter Productions would put this on the internet somewhere.

15:25The bulk of that special is this back and forth between Randy and Gellar.

15:33And they've shot a lot of stuff of Gellar doing certain stuff.

15:37And the beginning of the episode is the narrator reading off all these fanciful things.

15:44But first, the psychic battle of the century.

15:49I think we even used that clip in the show.

15:51And it goes right into, Gellar says he's real.

15:53Randy says he's not.

15:55And they go back and forth, and it's Gellar talking, and it's Randy talking.

16:00And from everything that we have heard from at least Mike and Steve, Randy was very upset that Gellar essentially hijacked his special.

16:08This was this close.

16:10And he made it all about himself.

16:14And I wonder if, we don't know what has gone on in the process of creating this, but if maybe, much like George Schlatter Productions way back in the early 80s, a story about something else that involved getting comment from Gellar all of a sudden found itself morphing by some unseen hand, not unlike a spoon bending, to the will of the person holding it.

16:44Justin, can I share with you a totally unrelated recommendation?

16:49There's an Idris Elba starred vehicle on Apple TV Plus that me and the family are enjoying. It's called Hijack.

16:58I mean, we don't know, but based on what Ben Harris said this was supposed to be and how upset it feels like he is for essentially being pinned as the poster boy for the fact that all magic and skepticism now loves Uri Gellar, it would not shock me if history has repeated itself.

17:21I mean, that special was in 1983.

17:24So if 40 years on, the exact same phenomenon happened yet again, and the paper of record.

17:32A little bit of a preview here.

17:36We're gonna do an interview with the authors of the upcoming book.

17:40I guess it's out now, Nobody's Fool.

17:42And one of the chapters is dedicated to the idea of how rarely we check to see what somebody's past track record is when we accept their claims.

17:53And so very often, it's not the first time.

17:57That when you get deceived, you go back and you're like, oh yeah, no, definitely arrested this time, that time, that time, the other time.

18:05This was a lawsuit and so on.

18:06If past performance is any indicator of future results, I guess the history record speaks for itself.

18:17Anything else on this?

18:20I mean, I think the other element of all this is that me and you both know how this process works with Gellar, that any kind of attention, you know.

18:30Becomes good attention for him, yeah.

18:33I mean, he is, the reason why him and Randy had such an epic feud for as long as they did is because both of them were not just good, but expert at making any motion from the other one into a meal that benefited them.

18:51Let me throw this out there.

18:53I am personally, Brian Brushwood, of the opinion that you're 100% correct and part of me, the human Brian Brushwood, is a little bit embarrassed to even being drawn into the discussion about this because Gellar benefits, but what if, like the relationship between him and Randy, we were able to benefit?

19:16For example, what if everybody listening made a habit of encouraging people to listen to episode one of season three of World's Greatest Con?

19:27Yeah, wherein we talk very specifically about Gellar's effect, not only on parapsychology, but academics in general, and then we tell a very small story about only one example of $4 million adjusted for inflation being lost.

19:41So yeah, so there we go.

19:45That is our thoughts.

19:46I know a lot of people have reached out to us about it, and it felt right to have some kind of comment here, especially now that we've got more information that has come out about the sourcing on the article.

19:57All right, so enough about the New York Times article.

20:00The important thing is that we got to sit down with a name that is as synonymous to skepticism, at least in my upbringing, as James Randy himself.

20:09Michael Shermer was gracious enough to stop by the studio, and we got a long interview with him. We did.

20:17He was incredibly gracious with his time, and even more gracious to listen to our entire season.

20:24As it turns out, that man bicycles a lot.

20:28Yeah, and as somebody who's done a triathlon or three, I could agree, you want something in your ears at all times.

20:36Absolutely, and we were honored that it was us, and so what follows is a conversation with Michael Shermer, not only about season three, but also about skepticism and the skeptic community, and a little bit about James Randy as well.

20:50And again, if you have a friend who you hear talking about that New York Times article, please just do us a solid. Make them listen.

20:59Season three, world's greatest guy.

21:01And that's why I need your money right now.

21:05Man, how do we begin?

21:09We're here with Justin Robert Young, Michael Shermer.

21:20This is a moment I never thought I would experience.

21:23This is precious and powerful to me.

21:25I don't know which one of us should be asking questions of whom.

21:29Well, we can just have the conversation, ricochet around the table and see what comes up.

21:35I would ask you guys.

21:37Yeah, I'm very interested in the psychology of belief, why people believe weird things is my first book, right?

21:43So, why people believe anything, and then in cognitive psychology circles, there's this sort of division between how gullible and susceptible people are to cons and scams and so on.

21:54We're just inherently irrational.

21:56The whole Danny Kahneman, Amos Tversky stuff about cognitive biases, confirmation by system one, system two, and that.

22:04We're just sort of hopelessly irrational.

22:07And look, here's 100 different cognitive biases you can look up on Wikipedia.

22:11It's like, how does anybody even get out of bed and go to work? We're so irrational.

22:16But then there's other cognitive psychologists that say, no, no, no.

22:18Actually, if it's presented in the proper way, people are actually pretty rational most of the time, right?

22:24So, it's not clear which is the correct answer to this.

22:27So, I'll just set it up and just ask you guys this. I'll go first.

22:32I think we're talking about heuristics.

22:34And heuristics are, give it a bad rap, because heuristics are what cause us to ascribe negative things to situations and people just kind of automatically at a gut level.

22:46But also, there are probably various tribes 10,000 years ago who had a heuristic of the other equals bad were more likely to survive than the other equals invite them in. Right.

23:02Yeah, I think that even the framing of a question like that is really a slave to narratives.

23:08We have this narrative that by purging the irrationalities, we will become more rational and live a better life.

23:15And that is certainly a goal to have, to confront elements of your existence for which you can make better.

23:22But I do think on some level, it is, if anything, almost harmful when we look at our own behavior and say, if I have a flaw, if I have, I mean, there's a reason why we were hanging out earlier and Brian was doing magic tricks for you.

23:37It doesn't make you stupid that you didn't know how the magic trick was going to be done.

23:42It made you human that you were going to focus on a certain thing.

23:46And magic is the art, much in the same way the cons are, of exploiting those holes.

23:51So the reason why we have one's greatest con and the central thesis is cons don't fool us because we're stupid, they fool us because we're human.

23:59And to assign morality and virtue and being broken if you are not to it, I think only cements us in this idea that we're not just flawed machines that like any machine can be hacked.

24:15That's where I'm leaning now on that debate, I think.

24:19Like you showed me the, pick a book off the shelf here, flip to any page.

24:24The book looks exactly like the books that I recognize.

24:26Why would I think this is a artificially constructed book where every page has these certain words and you're going to get them?

24:34I wouldn't think that because normally, that's not the way the world works, right?

24:37So like I did a series of experiments for Dateline NBC with Chris Hansen, which we replicated famous psych experiments like Milgram's shock experiments.

24:44But we did the smoke in the room.

24:47So this is at NBC Studios.

24:49The subjects are just people trying out for this reality show called What a Pain.

24:53And so they're filling out their forms and we start pumping theater smoke into the room, right?

25:02So everybody there is a shill working for us except for the one guy that's our subject, right?

25:08Doesn't even smell like actual fire smoke.

25:10No, no, no, but you know, and you see him, he's like, and then he looks at, you know, okay, and then he goes back, you know, to- Yeah, and meanwhile, everybody else is acting like nothing's weird.

25:21Right, but if you think, then everybody laughs, you know, these people are so stupid that they fall for this.

25:25Well, normally, if you were in a room and there was smoke pouring in it, you guys wouldn't just sit there.

25:30And if you were just sitting there, because we're in a studio, I'd think, this has got to be theater smoke. These are magicians.

25:34I know they're hacking me here or something, but normally, so social proof, right?

25:38You turn to other people and think, well, that's, I can trust them for the most part, you know, pull the audience.

25:46It works pretty well for most things, right?

25:48And who has time to fact check everything that happens?

25:51And more importantly, who could function as a human in society if you're gonna question, like, is that light really red or is it green?

26:00You know, it's like, at some point, you have to take most points at face value. Right.

26:07Well, yeah, or else we would just be constantly questioning everything at all times.

26:12We're all making assumptions.

26:13We're making assumptions about how we comb our hair or how we dress or where we are or the fact that you're really in Austin, Texas and you're not on Mars right now.

26:22Like, there's a lot of stuff that we just have to build.

26:25And that's why it's like, when we say narratives, it's, I think it's necessary.

26:28It's part of our processing so we can understand where we are.

26:32Now, there are ways in which we do it.

26:35There's ways in which we gather and predictably put together what we assume to be our reality.

26:40And that's where, I think, for, you know, to Brian's point, whenever you are looking at a thing that could only in your mind take tremendous effort, like that person who's sitting there and is, like, thinking about, should I freak out?

26:55Should I not freak out?

26:57Everybody else is calm.

26:58In his mind, probably subconsciously, there's a thought of, well, I mean, I'm not on a television set with a bunch of actors and this is canola oil and Michael Shermer is behind the scenes.

27:10That's certainly not the case.

27:11I guess this is just a thing that happens and maybe, you know, Dracula's farting and, like, that's why you should keep filling out.

27:19I want to live my life as though Michael Shermer is always behind the scenes of everything.

27:24Well, it's like that Darren Brown special, The Push.

27:26You know, like how many steps you have to go through to get somebody to walk up to somebody sitting on a wall on a high rise and shove them off.

27:33And it took a lot, right?

27:35So it's not like people are so stupid they'll just do whatever you tell them.

27:38Go push that guy off the bridge.

27:40Okay, well, they don't do that.

27:41You have to have, like, a hundred steps to get them to do that.

27:44Darren is a special case.

27:46But he's so brilliant because the art.

27:47Wait a minute, you're not telling me some of this was not what it looked like?

27:51Regardless of how the method's done, the brilliance of Darren Brown is that he makes what we were just talking about as the thing that you would definitely not think his art.

28:01So he, in his specials, and he's done this repeatedly and in his live shows, talks about all the little things that are going to have to happen to make this extraordinary thing possible.

28:11Is that exactly how it's done? Who knows?

28:15That's the magic of Darren Brown.

28:18So maybe that's misdirection.

28:19Michael, here's a totally unrelated, totally separate story, in no way connected.

28:24You are familiar with something called the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, right?

28:28How do you describe that?

28:30Oh, well, you just shoot at a barn and then you walk up and draw the bullseye around your shots.

28:36That's a good way to do it.

28:37Magicians have something called a dual reality where a pretty good trick happens to somebody on stage, but an amazing trick is perceived by the audience. I see.

28:47Darren Brown is a very good magician.

28:50And it seems to me, and this is my favorite thing, this is why I intentionally don't find out how many things are done, because if I don't know how it's done, I feel ethically free to suspect how I would do it.

29:05New story, here's how I might do something like that.

29:10I might get a result, and then after the fact, manufacture a narrative that acts as though that was the intended result. That's really fun.

29:22And we see this not only on magic shows, but also, hypothetically, I don't know, which is why I get to speculate on Bryce's favorite show from Nathan For You.

29:34What was that show? The Rehearsal. The Rehearsal. The Rehearsal. Whatever.

29:39Brian was not fooled.

29:41I was not fooled.

29:43But the point is, is there's the in-the-moment narrative, and then there's how you present the narrative.

29:49And I think Darren Brown was one of the greatest, is one of the greatest masters to ever perfect that.

29:56to make both parties satisfied, because the people were genuinely fooled in the moment, but the people at home got an even better story. End press release.

30:07You mean, so when they make the actual documentary and they reconstruct how they did all this, that could be somewhat artificial, in the same way that scientists run experiments.

30:19They run like nine different experiments and three of them are significant, the others just go in the file drawer.

30:25And then they write up the paper.

30:27Here was my methods.

30:28I did this and this and this, and we found this and this and this.

30:32And they don't mention all the messiness.

30:33And we tried this, we tried that, nothing worked.

30:36Spent years doing this and we finally got this.

30:38That's all you read about.

30:39Well, and I believe that that bias exists in all of our lives at all levels.

30:43For example, I'm 48 years old now, doing okay as an independent content creator.

30:47And people ask me, how did you do it?

30:50And what I'm tempted to do, because of where I am, is draw a thread back to performing on a street corner and figure out what are all the right things I do.

31:00So with a straight face and actually believing it, I might want to say, well, you've got to do this and that and think about this or whatever.

31:08But truthfully, I cannot remember all of the failed attempts or, and I cannot figure out how many of those things were just dumb luck or coincidence or what have you.

31:18Only, you know, if you're giving a magic show, maybe you do a little bit more of that on purpose.

31:25It's all like that.

31:26It's the hindsight bias.

31:27I call it the autobiography bias.

31:29You know, that's an unauthorized autobiography.

31:31Here's how I did it.

31:32Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

31:33When in fact, you know, like in my case, oh, so you go to college and then you don't get into grad school.

31:39So you get a job at a bike magazine and you become a bike racer and then you teach at night and then you do this and then you start a magazine and here you are. It's like, what?

31:46I mean, it's just like this total random.

31:48Like some 16 year old who is like, oh my God, Michael Shermer, I want to be just like Michael Shermer.

31:53I guess the first thing I have to do is be very good at riding bikes.

31:56It's like that will not lead you to being Michael Shermer.

31:59But that goes back to to the stories that we tell of ourselves and that we demand from the rest of the world.

32:06Like the reason why Darren Brown is so successful is because he put, especially for his era of magic, more artistry and story in both his live shows and his television specials than really anything else that was in the field.

32:20Nobody else was putting that kind of narrative into it.

32:23It was called Miracle where he kind of debunks the faith healers by being a faith healer himself on stage. Yeah.

32:29Now some of this, you know, standard mentalism, some stuff, it looked like he was actually doing hypnosis where the person, he tells the person, you won't be able to, under hypnosis, you won't be able to read this headline, right?

32:41Everybody can see what the headline is and then the guy's reading and then all of a sudden he can't read it anymore.

32:45Now I assume that guy's not a plant.

32:48Is he actually able to read it and he's going along with it or is it like the old hypnosis trick where, you know, after I wake you up, you will not be able to say the number seven and then they wake him up, count to 10, one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine, 10, and they can't seem to say it.

33:05I can't tell if they're going along with it.

33:08As best I understand it, and my experience is less academic and more watching a friend of mine become a stage hypnotist for 20 years, as best I can understand, there is a spectrum of people who are able to be fully in state at any time. Absorption, that's called.

33:27Yes, and some of them who are very good at doing it on cue go to Hollywood and become famous actors and they're not faking when they cry, right?

33:38And as a result, we watching the movie lose ourselves in that moment and actually cry or whatever.

33:44There are some people who are better able to do that than others.

33:47Stage hypnosis, and there's therapeutic hypnosis, which, you know, that's where you get into double-blind trials of whether or not it's more effective for stopping smoking or eating less or whatever.

33:58Setting all of that aside, the moment of theatrical hypnosis, it does seem like there's a giant, let's say you have 2,000 people in the audience, that's a good data set, right, from all types.

34:11You have a statistically significant number of people who are able to self-select for number one, wanting to play along, and some number of those are going to be the type of people who are somebody who can instantly put themselves in any state that they're given.

34:26And then over the course of 45 minutes, they are trained, makes it seem like they're a puppy dog, which of course they're not, they're humans, but they are accustomed to the game, and then they're said, and now this happened or whatever.

34:40And one of my friends was one of those subjects where he won a million dollars, air quotes, and afterwards, people would ask him, hey man, where's that check?

34:52And he actually reached for his pocket, and it was like, oh.

34:57And to hear him describe it, this is my interpretation, but it sounded an awful lot like, have you ever had a dream, and you know it was a dream, but you forgot that you knew it was a dream, and later in the day, something happens, you're like, oh yeah, screw that guy, oh no wait, that was a dream.

35:17Like that's where you seem to end up, as best I can tell.

35:20Yeah, I think that's probably right.

35:21There's this thing called absorption, where there's an absorption scale, you take this little test, like do you ever find yourself staring at the ocean, and just you're kind of mesmerized, and minutes go by.

35:32You know, some people know, some people, yeah, totally.

35:35So if you score pretty high on this, these people are more likely to hear voices, or sense presence, they have sleep paralysis, or hypnopompic hallucinations, but more the kind of sense presence of somebody else in the room with me.

35:48You know, this is a phenomenon, it's not huge, but people high in absorption are more likely to have those kind of imaginary things that happen.

35:56And so you mentioned, you have 1,000 people in the audience, it's a good data set.

36:02Do you mean by that that the hypnotist does a bunch of stuff before the show starts, or we see the TV show starts filming, in which they have people raise their hand, and then lower your hand, and they end up with like 100, and then down to 10, and these are the five people I'm bringing up on stage.

36:17Well, this is another great moment where I get to speculate, because I don't know, here's how I would do it.

36:22I would do all of those pre-selection activities.

36:24I would do things like tell people, clasp your hands together, the harder you try to pull apart your hands, the more stuck together they become.

36:31And I would have spotters telling me who's doing what, or whatever, and then I might make a moment of you, you, you, you, you, and then get them up, not entirely on stage, but maybe get 50 of them, and do more filtering activities.

36:44And then finally say, okay, you 20 stand here.

36:47Then I would go up, and I would say from stage, I need volunteers, about 20 of them, please come up.

36:54And then that's all the home audience would see.

36:57That's if I was doing this, and I cannot speak for anybody else.

37:02There is the intro of our second season of World's Greatest Con, where Brian does an entire breakdown of a stage hypnotist act.

37:09And specifically, like for a television show, that is a great element of pre-work.

37:15But if you're just out of college, and this is just all going to be packed into a 90 minute thing, where you come on at a certain time, you gotta leave at a certain time, it's remarkable how much our human desire to fit in, to be recognized, to not be uncomfortable, and the little ways that we will push our own boundaries, or maybe even secretly fulfill a desire to be the center of attention, will allow you to be theatrically put into a position where it looks very credibly to the audience that you are dancing like Britney Spears because you are fully under hypnosis. Right, right.

37:52So I got a funny story for you.

37:54So one of my kid's friend's parents is over visiting.

37:58And he's kind of a skinny guy, and so he sees I have a chess set.

38:05He goes, oh, you play chess?

38:06I go, yeah, a little bit.

38:07You know, he goes, oh, you know, I used to play Grandmasters and stuff.

38:10I'm like, oh, well, you know, you don't want to play me.

38:12I can't even beat level one on my computer, right?

38:14And then, you know, I got a tennis racket.

38:17Oh, you play tennis?

38:18Yeah, yeah, a little bit, you know, just for fun.

38:21Well, I play with Jimmy Connors.

38:22He and I hit all the time.

38:23This is in Santa Barbara.

38:24I'm like, okay, that's two that are, it's a bit of a stretch. All right, maybe.

38:27And then, you know, we talk about I'm a cyclist, right?

38:30So, you know, no Lance Armstrong.

38:32Yeah, I know Lance Armstrong, the dopey.

38:33He goes, oh, I used to be a big doper.

38:36You know, when I was in Special Forces, I was just totally repped.

38:39I was taking testosterone and steroids the whole thing.

38:40I mean, we were down there, you know, eliminating dictators and stuff with the Special Forces.

38:44Like, you gotta picture it.

38:46The guy standing sitting across from me looks like Pee Wee Herman, right? Yeah, yeah.

38:50And at this point, I'm like, you know what?

38:52Three strikes and you're out.

38:53And that man, the Pope. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

38:56So how many cues do you need before somebody's skepticism kicks in?

39:01Well, there's a bit of a filtering mechanism.

39:04Like, I, on purpose, once I quit my day job, started touring as a magician, started telling stories online, started, you know, doing a little bit of TV here or there.

39:16You know, I've collected stories that have informed business decisions.

39:19Like, it's not entirely an accident that I bought a crazy person compound, right?

39:26Because I'm attracted to crazy people.

39:29But if I were to, just out of nowhere, say, oh yeah, no, I'm a nationally famous touring, Tonight Show performing guy who bought a crazy nudist cult compound that was where the satanic panic happened.

39:44Like, if I gave you all of that at once, that would be like, you're an asshole and you're making up all of this.

39:51However, in pieces, like these are trophies on the shelf that I've collected over time.

39:56And I know that I have learned to parcel them out even when they're true.

40:01And instead, but it sounds like this guy, you got the impression that the guy was making up everything whole cloth.

40:09Yeah, but see, I can't fact check any of that.

40:11I wouldn't even know who to call in the special forces.

40:14Is this guy on your, whatever, I'm not, he's not interviewing for a job or something like that.

40:18But so you just kind of have to default to trust for most of the time, because most people don't make up stories about how they were in special forces or whatever.

40:26And I'll tell you another funny story.

40:28This has to do with cycling.

40:29There was a guy, like a 45-year-old cyclist, and he's on Strava, which is this app where you record all your rides.

40:35And everybody sees what everybody else is doing.

40:37You can see the average speed and which climb and so on.

40:41Anyway, this guy was a total imposter, con man, so on.

40:43And he told people he was the CEO of a major corporation in Europe.

40:47He was a pro racer in his 20s.

40:50He was in special forces.

40:52He did all these things. But nobody checked.

40:54And he carried this on for years until finally he posted a stage on Strava where he was faster than the fastest Tour de France rider did that climb.

41:03And somebody went, that guy did not do that.

41:06That I can fact check, because I know that climb.

41:09And that's what brought him down.

41:11Because otherwise, how would you fact check stuff like that?

41:14Well, and also, it's what is that person's worth to you?

41:17We are always constantly looking around and assessing our own status and assessing who can help us, who we like, who we don't like.

41:26Sometimes we have friends that are kind of rakes or they might make things up every now and again.

41:31But we like them.

41:32We enjoy their company.

41:34We don't want to embarrass them.

41:35Sometimes there were people that we just absolutely loathe and despise and wish would leave the planet immediately that we kind of have to begrudgingly concede are honest or at least have a code for which they follow.

41:46These things are messy.

41:48So it doesn't surprise me that somebody would be able to be a complete fabulist as long as with other elements of their social status, they are fitting into the world.

41:57And people might think, okay, well, let's say 50% of what he's saying is total horse poop.

42:04Maybe the other 50 can help me.

42:06Maybe I can get ahead in life.

42:09Well, and that's an interesting question because I know for sure that- Until you fraudulently list a bike run.

42:15And I can ostracize forever.

42:17Now you're over the line.

42:18No, I know for sure that there are friends that I invite to parties that I don't believe half of what they say, but I know it'll be a better party because they're there.

42:28And I know that there are people who invite me to parties who probably don't believe half the stuff I say because it'll be a better party for it, which I guess brings us back to storytelling.

42:38And you have a unique talent, Michael, I think of navigating.

42:41When I first got into skepticism, it was all about facts because in a pre-internet era when it was difficult to do fact-checking, some wild claims would be made and there was no way to push back on them.

42:58And then now we're able to, somebody can post a YouTube video saying, I'm trying to do this thing, looks an awful lot like total BS or whatever.

43:06But you, among most skeptics, have surprised me with, you seem warm to the idea that story matters and that there's storytelling aspects and archetypes that we're drawn to for various reasons.

43:20Maybe I'm misreading it, but does that, number one, ring true?

43:26And would you like to elaborate on that at all?

43:31Well, I'm a writer, so you have to tell a story or else you're just writing a textbook, right?

43:36I'm not a textbook writer, so yeah.

43:38And my favorite authors are also good storytellers, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould and Stephen Pinker, science writers that also can write a beautiful narrative arc for each chapter, for the whole book, it's outlined and so on.

43:51And to me, that makes all the difference in the world.

43:55I think this is my explanation for the Jordan Peterson phenomenon is that he's not just a good storyteller.

44:00The first time I saw him on stage, it was just at some conference and before he was really famous.

44:05And like each of the previous speakers was kind of giving their normal talk with the PowerPoint slides, just a real snoozer.

44:14And he just gets up there and says, I've been thinking all day about what you guys wanted to talk about today.

44:22And I was reading Nietzsche this morning and I just had this idea and I tied it to Jung, this question that you brought and everybody's like, oh my God, what is he talking about?

44:33And then he's on this story, right?

44:35I thought, that guy's good, right?

44:36He was fully present in the moment and he talked about everybody's favorite subject themselves. Yeah.

44:41You know, there's a great anecdote that came out right when Boris Johnson became prime minister of the United Kingdom.

44:50And this guy was telling this story about how the first time that he.

44:55I saw Boris Johnson speak, it was at some staid, you know, conservative event in London and the people there, as you might imagine, are very, very rigid about their timing and hoping everybody's there and Boris Johnson's the headliner, but he's not there.

45:09And so they're starting to panic, they're calling him and they can't get in touch with him and then they're asking other people, hey, if he doesn't show up, can you go last and blah, blah, blah.

45:19Then all of a sudden, about five minutes before he's supposed to go on, Boris Johnson comes busting in, he's like half sweating, he's barely put together and he's like, oh, it turns out like my speech got left, I came here as fast as I can, I'll just go up there and wing, he's going to wing it.

45:36So he does and he kills, just absolutely slays.

45:38He brings and admits up on stage, I just got here, I don't have my speech with me, but you know, rub the forehead, goes off and absolutely murders the crowd, everybody loves him.

45:49And the end of that column is the second time that I saw Boris Johnson speak, he was late, he showed up, five minutes and it was the exact same speech. Carefully planned randomness.

46:02But when you think about it, it's like, what makes that special?

46:06Part of it, of course, from the perspective of the speaker is that you seem like you are a high wire person, you read into who his character is, who he is, who he isn't, in a world of stayed people, he is a bit of a rebel, but also it's story immediately, like these are the most powerful characters, most powerful myths, the most powerful archetypes are people that you know immediately where they're coming from and what they're doing.

46:31And that's something that I think is extraordinarily powerful, especially in the world of cons where you need to put a lot of story in a little bit of time.

46:42Well, I don't like where this positions me because we talk about the asymmetry of the con man being able to prepare for a moment long in advance.

46:53But I know you do a lot of talks and hopefully this doesn't make me look like a con man.

46:59But every time I give a talk, I intentionally put tedious citation slides for the purpose of me to say, oh, we don't have time for this dumb garbage.

47:08Just so I can have that moment of making everybody feel appreciated.

47:13I don't know if that makes me a bad person. That's really funny.

47:17Well, since you guys are magicians, I'll tell you this.

47:21When I saw David Copperfield live for the first time, Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, late 90s, I think it was.

47:26So he took a group of skeptics there for the afternoon show.

47:29And it was great.

47:30Of course, he did all his usual stuff.

47:32But he had this one thing.

47:33He's like, OK, I'm going to randomly pick somebody from the audience.

47:37He throws the ball out of whatever he did to make it seem random.

47:40And he ends up with this cute kid that's like 12 years old.

47:42And he's got the card in the envelope on the wall.

47:44You know, OK, now you have to keep an eye on this thing.

47:48He gives them these little plastic binoculars.

47:50Don't take your eyes off that card.

47:51And then he does whatever he does. Right.

47:53Anyway, so then later for the evening show.

47:55Well, some of the other people couldn't make it.

47:58So I said, all right, I'll take you guys to the evening show.

48:01I don't mind seeing it a second time.

48:03So again, random person from the audience. Same kid.

48:04Oh, even that was planned.

48:05It looks so random.

48:06And why would it matter?

48:09Well, because he's cute and he I don't know.

48:13Well, and there is kind of a just soness.

48:16I don't want to get in the business of deconstructing Copperfield's act in particular.

48:21But I do know that sometimes in his show, something would happen organically.

48:26And after the show, it was agreed by everybody that that was the best moment ever. I see.

48:32And then it always happened again.

48:34That's funny, because I wanted to ask you about cults and cons.

48:38You know, to what extent do these cult leaders or con men, you know, by trial and error, end up at a really effective method to get people to join or give their money or whatever?

48:49And we don't see the back end.

48:52Like this guy tried 10,000 different things to get somebody to give them their money.

48:56And this is the one that worked.

48:58And now we see, oh, that's the con.

49:00But we don't see the the back end.

49:02I we not talked about this on on air.

49:04But I suspect that more rather than less con men or cult leaders really begin believing what they're doing. Right.

49:13But at some point, the stakes get high enough that they have to figure out how to keep on creating miracles.

49:22And you see this in marketing with what I've heard called a guru itis of like, no, whatever I say is the best way to market or whatever.

49:31You see this in branding.

49:33You see this in performances.

49:35But I believe very few people begin with malintent in mind.

49:40I think they take shortcuts.

49:42But then we are uncomfortable with the historical record.

49:46And we have to reconcile.

49:48Why didn't do that?

49:50Because I was scared or lazy and I wanted to pinch off this bit from so and so.

49:57So I'm now going to decide that that guy was always evil.

50:01And I'm the first one to finally reveal whatever. I don't know. Does that land?

50:05Yeah, I personally, I would like to put con men and cult leaders in kind of two separate buckets, because I think that like there's an element of that for cult leaders, for sure.

50:18If you look at the history of cults very often, it starts out as something that is almost like, you know, a rub.

50:25Even Scientology began as a rejection of the rigid structure of psychiatry.

50:28It's like, here's a open source way for everyone to take care of themselves.

50:34Oh, wait, is there no money and open source ways?

50:37Here's a new, highly rigid structure that is the real way.

50:41Whereas con men in the way that I think it's probably most commonly referred to are basically people who are like, oh, I would like money.

50:51Well, I can punch this person and take it.

50:54But that would make my hand hurt.

50:56How do I do it without making my hand hurt?

50:59And that's where you get short changes. Yeah, exactly.

51:02It's faster and it's cleaner.

51:03And you can get away with it.

51:06And you can probably be far enough away by the time that somebody realizes that they got got.

51:10Because part of what cons take advantage of, are you thinking that you're getting ahead in some way?

51:15And so you are co-opting them into something dirty that they then just want the shame to go away.

51:22And so if they had to pay whatever amount that they just got finessed for, that is what it is.

51:28And the reason why on our show, we never want to lionize the con man, that it's not something that I think we have a reflexive reaction to.

51:36Movies and television shows about con men where everything is this Rube Goldberg, Ocean's Eleven, well, you cough and then I'll do a backflip.

51:47And then somebody, the waiter will slip the thing in the other thing.

51:52Very often, cons are pretty rudimentary. They're clever.

51:55They are something that exploits an element of our humanity.

52:01But they're not these grand, brilliant plans.

52:04And so we wind up focusing more on the marks than we do on the con men, specifically because that's where we think the drama really is.

52:15But the cons know what works for the marks by how? Trial and error? Throughout history, sure.

52:20They have an intuitive guess as to what's going to work.

52:23But remember, we're only counting the successes.

52:27We're not telling stories about the failures.

52:30If I ask for the money at week three, oh, that didn't work.

52:34I'll wait till week five after I do these other things, then I'll get the money.

52:39And he tries it a hundred times.

52:40Week five is the time to ask for the money. Correct.

52:43Again, our core thesis is the con man isn't smart.

52:45The mark is not stupid.

52:46There are two humans playing a forever chess game. That's good.

52:50And so we only know the stories of the cons that worked.

52:54And we have yet to find out what is a con right now.

52:59For example, let's say we were doing this series two years before Bernie Madoff got figured out.

53:05He would not be on our list to even talk about.

53:08It's only after the hindsight bias that we get to reveal that.

53:11And also, it's like the times that don't work are stupid, right?

53:14In our first episode, the first thing that you hear out of Brian's mouth is him getting scammed in a for fake speakers that he was told were amazing.

53:21And what was this?

53:22The story is basically 21-year-old Brian.

53:25Let me get these flies. There we go.

53:29The story is basically a 20-year-old Brian is at a Home Depot.

53:34A couple guys hop out of a white van saying that they had studio monitors.

53:39They were supposed to only have four that went to the strip club.

53:43They had two extras.

53:44Look at this magazine.

53:45Same picture, same thing.

53:46Normally, they're $1,200, but let them go for $300.

53:49And meanwhile, I'm thinking, oh, oh, you're trying to scam a scammer.

53:53I know these are stolen.

53:55I would like to give you $300.

53:58But because I was like, what am I going to do when I find out that they're garbage speakers?

54:04Am I going to call the cops?

54:07Am I going to call the Better Business Bureau and say, I was trying to buy good quality stolen speakers?

54:11That trap tends to close off that loop.

54:13But think of the ones that don't work.

54:15It's somebody saying, hey, I got speakers.

54:18And you go, nah. That's it, right?

54:21And so it's low test. It's low risk.

54:24You can throw that bait out as many times as you want.

54:30It doesn't feel illegal in that moment.

54:33And eventually, you get a Brian who's 21 and really, really into speakers.

54:38So one of the most extraordinary parts about doing this season is the fact that you, somebody who I have followed and respected for decades, gave it your full attention.

54:52Thank goodness you drive very long bicycle rides.

54:55So the whole thing in one day.

54:58You burned through everything.

54:59What was that experience like for you?

55:02How much baggage did you come into Project Alpha with?

55:06And how much of that was a surprise to you?

55:10Well, most of it was a surprise in the details.

55:14But I had the same just kind of meme story of, you know, Randy hired these two kids and sent them in because he wanted to fool the scientists because that was Randy's thing.

55:24Scientists are not trained to know what magicians can see.

55:26So you got to have a magician on your team when you're testing the paranormal.

55:31That was always his thing.

55:33Now I think that was probably a hindsight by himself.

55:36And also not untrue.

55:37I mean, he was right. Yeah, that's right.

55:39But I always thought, well, so the two boys were just sent in.

55:44I didn't know that they were going to go in anyway.

55:48And then Randy came on board later.

55:52You know, it was obviously a team effort.

55:55And so, yeah, all the details of that were astonishing, especially the on the fly, you know, just a real time adjustments that the boys had to make to figure out how we got to do this.

56:07And I always thought, well, they just call Randy.

56:09You know, we're back at the hotel.

56:12This is what they're going to do tomorrow.

56:13What do we do?

56:14And no, that wasn't what happened, as I discovered.

56:16Yeah, well, and it was the other way around.

56:18They were calling Randy and telling them to report what they did.

56:21And then Randy would write a letter saying, hey, I don't know what you guys are doing, but if anybody's doing a thing with a bell jar, then you should really cover the bottom because somebody might be blowing.

56:31So I try to tee up a question.

56:33Any other thoughts about the experience of hearing the full story?

56:39Because we were very nervous going into this because we knew that there had existed for 40 years an official narrative.

56:48We were talking to first sources.

56:50We are not the founder and editor in chief of Skeptic Magazine.

56:54So we did not know exactly what lines we were crossing.

56:59We should write this up for as an article in Skeptic because this is part of classic history of skepticism, you know, because most of what we get, this is a big problem in science too, you know, is that we're not actually getting the full story.

57:13And the full story is always way more interesting.

57:16You know, it just gets filtered down to this really simple story.

57:18Like the eclipse experiments that tested Einstein's theory of relativity that Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington did.

57:23The standard story you get in the textbook is that in 1919, there's a solar eclipse.

57:28Einstein had predicted that light would bend around a large gravitational mass like the And gravity is a distortion of that kind of well of spacetime and it's bending.

57:39It's not being pulled by some force, right?

57:43So how would you test that?

57:45Well, you have to have an eclipse because the starlight behind the sun, you can't see during the day because the sun's out. But eclipsed it.

57:53So he figured this out.

57:54So he sends the team out there. They photograph it.

57:57And, you know, the measurements, the starlight from the back stars passing past the sun are bent exactly the way Einstein predicted. Right.

58:03And that's not at all what happened.

58:06In fact, there were actually two teams that were sent out.

58:10One team, it was cloudy and they just got next to no data.

58:14And the other team, the data was kind of in between what Newton predicted versus what Einstein predicted.

58:20And then they had to do some more measurements.

58:22And it turned out Einstein was right.

58:24And Newton was not as right.

58:26And the whole story takes like a full chapter in a history of science book, whereas in textbooks, you get like the two paragraph description.

58:35Well, this happens everywhere, right?

58:36What's the real story?

58:37It's always more interesting.

58:38Well, and also more tedious, right? Tedious, messy.

58:41It's not as clean.

58:43You know, the famous world famous Amazing Randy does this thing.

58:47And then he's got a series of hits, you know, the pop off expose on the Tonight Show.

58:54And he does this and this and this, you know, from escape artist to this.

58:58And it's just it's a great it's a story, right?

59:00It's the story we want.

59:01I also wonder, as we move through our Internet world, where the one thing that has changed forever is scarcity.

59:06Like you mentioned a textbook that that story is you only get X amount in the textbook.

59:13And that has just as much to do about the fact that the textbook can only be so many pages because that's what the budget is, as it is for any other reason.

59:23Now, in our world of infinite audio and text that we video that we have on the Internet, effectively, you know, forever.

59:29I wonder if nuance and our ability to find things easier and put them together with like is something that we will have more of that, hopefully, at least for me, because I agree with you that very rarely, especially when we're talking about big figures that people have a lot of esteem for the reality of their lives are far more fascinating than the myth.

59:52The myths are there to serve a purpose the the the actual reality is something that I think we can actually see ourselves in which is more more important.

60:02I think some of that too is you know Randy was a big personality, entertaining, fun, interesting, and a great storyteller.

60:08And there aren't many like that.

60:09Bill Nye's like that.

60:10I know Bill pretty well.

60:12Neil deGrasse Tyson's a good friend. He's like that.

60:16So when I meet scientists going on you know how come Bill Nye gets all that too.

60:21Neil deGrasse Tyson gets his own show.

60:23It's like they say it like well you know it was random or how come I don't get the show.

60:27Well have you tried going on television and try to be funny?

60:31You can't do it.

60:32You're going to be like the people on American Idol. I can sing.

60:35No actually you can't.

60:36It is a tournament. It's a crucible.

60:38It's it's a it's a it's a grueling awful meat grinder of a factory where only the simplest and plainest and most direct narratives seem to emerge.

60:47Bill Nye was a comedian stand-up comedian in Seattle before he was Bill Nye the Science Guy.

60:54Then after that he was the weather man.

60:57Yeah and then he's introducing humor into the weather report and then he you know then he does this and this and this and then Bill Nye the Science Guy.

61:05So you don't see the back end right and Neil tells a story of you know the first time he was asked to be on one of those late night shows and he rehearsed and practiced.

61:13I got six minutes and this is what I want to say and I'm going to do this.

61:17It was well rehearsed and then but the way he does it because he's so entertaining.

61:21He's bigger than live character.

61:22It comes off as totally spontaneous.

61:24I was once on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect the previous show.

61:27So he had four guests so there's two and two and I was sitting next to Kevin Nealon from Saturday Night Live and he was really funny.

61:35I mean he was just coming up with stuff like this.

61:38I was like god damn I wish I was funny.

61:41I'm just not a funny guy and then on the first commercial break he pulls out this little index card and I went oh dang.

61:46I mean that's straight up magic.

61:47It's like if you don't question first principles.

61:49Now of course we can't live our whole lives questioning first principles on everything but yeah.

61:58So I do have one question.

62:01I kind of want to go to skeptic confession here.

62:04Your newest book is about conspiracies right? There is one.

62:07I'm a pretty good skeptic about most things but when I hear a narrative.

62:11We have an amazing opportunity.

62:13But whenever I see a narrative presented that is just so, that is perfectly tidy, that is just right.

62:24I always ask myself if I were going to just shoot straight for that thing is there a shorter path and I'm thinking much to my great chagrin.

62:38We recently, Jeff put together an amazing article that's on the Modern Rogue right now where we found out that Frank Abagnale's incredible story of catch me if you can.

62:51Like you know if you want to be famous for being a liar who lied his way around the world why would you bother to lie your way around the world?

62:59Why not just skip to the part where you lie about having lied around the world and the really exaggerated some of his own cons.

63:05Let's say euphemistically what you just said.

63:07Yes really between the ages of 16 and 21 most of his time was spent in prison.

63:16Hypothetically according to science if he passed as many checks as he claimed to during that time he would have to pass 800 checks per day.

63:25That was I found out that day that Santa Claus was maybe not real.

63:30So I maintain this bias and I know it comes from the same place that conspiracy theorists want to create more complicated narratives for things than maybe it merits.

63:42Where does that come from?

63:45And I assume you explore this part of the neuroscience in the book. That's interesting.

63:52Okay Frank Abagnale you're just blowing my mind. Yeah.

63:55So the con man is exaggerating his own cons.

63:58Why wouldn't you though right?

64:00It's like once you hear it you're like yeah skip the part where I went to jail in France and just yeah.

64:07Right that's so funny.

64:08I guess once you're busted then I might as well just go for it.

64:12That's really funny yeah.

64:13Well conspiracy theories do a number of things.

64:15They cut through the messiness of life the contingent randomness of life.

64:19You know we're not good at just detecting randomness.

64:22You know there's experiments on this like if I have you randomly flip a coin heads or tails a hundred times just write down what you think it would look like right.

64:32And then people go you know heads tails heads tails heads tails.

64:35And that's not at all what it looks like.

64:38You know it's like heads heads heads tails tails tails tails heads tails heads heads heads.

64:41There's streaks of like five six seven in a row and people underestimate that randomness.

64:44And you know like my other favorite example is when the iPod shuffle was first introduced people complain it's not random.

64:51Certain songs are coming up more than other songs that don't ever seem to come up.

64:58It's like that that's actually randomness. Yeah yeah.

65:00So Jobs and Company had to program in you know make it seem random and it was actually less random right.

65:07So that every song gets played once per cycle.

65:10That's not random right.

65:12Well and and we see that also with people claiming that their phones are listening to them because an ad that exact.

65:19I was just talking about going to Aspen last week and now there's an ad for it.

65:25My phone's listening to me.

65:27Whereas meanwhile you know I went to chat GPT.

65:29I said I am this old.

65:31I am from here.

65:32I have lived in these places.

65:33I currently live here.

65:34I have these aged children.

65:35I have been married this long.

65:37What's my favorite board game?

65:38And it named three board games that I love. Really? It's like yeah.

65:42Apparently we're not that hard to figure out as humans. That's right. Yeah yeah.

65:46So the messiness of life it's hard to see it because so much of it is random.

65:52Like we were talking about you know the narrative in hindsight biography bias.

65:56You know it just it doesn't seem like that is the way life goes.

66:00It seems like it should be in some more controlled pattern.

66:05So the conspiracy theory is a way of mapping that onto the messiness of life.

66:09And you know it works that way for a lot of things.

66:13And it's it's more comforting.

66:14I mean if you think like what's more threatening that the you know 18 foot lizard aliens are running the world or that actually nobody's in charge.

66:22Nobody really understands why we have inflation and what to do about it.

66:27No economist or political scientists can predict more than five years out.

66:31You know the studies on super forecasters.

66:33These are the people trained in Bayesian reasoning and signal detection theory.

66:36They're really thoughtful about how to predict any kind of specific thing.

66:40You know will Putin invade Ukraine say two years ago.

66:43You know if you're more than five years out nobody's better than 50 50 because it's just the randomness. Right.

66:49So the conspiracy theory cuts through all that. No no.

66:53It's these 18 guys in London called the Illuminati.

66:55They're running the show.

66:57Bill Gates and George Soros.

66:58They got it all covered right.

67:00What this is a universal question.

67:01I try to ask everybody what's the time that you were deeply surprised that something turned out to be true or not true that you had firmly held on to up until that moment.

67:12Well I was more confident and trusting in our government until I started researching the conspiracy book and it's like wait the CIA was doing what. Yeah.

67:23Assassinating foreign leaders rigging elections.

67:24Our government was spying on Martin Luther King. What what.

67:28And these are all backed up with receipts. Oh yes. Oh yeah yeah.

67:33Trying to make him kill himself. Yes. Yeah exactly.

67:37We have a letter. Yeah anyway.

67:39So a lot of that you know it's like OK so a lot of conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Right. There are conspiracies.

67:46Two or more people plotting in secret to do something to a third party without their consent or knowledge. That's a conspiracy.

67:51Happens all the time.

67:52Is there a bright line that people can use as a heuristic to kind of gauge whether or not it's a conspiracy likely to be confirmed or not.

67:59The more people that have to be involved less likely the conspiracy theory is true.

68:04The more elements that have to come together just the right time and place less likely the theory is to be true.

68:12The more complex and grandiose it is you know like world domination less likely it is to be true.

68:18It's like we want to cheat the emission standards so we can make more money like Volkswagen did.

68:23That's that's pretty simple. That's pretty simple. One actor.

68:26Why are they doing it.

68:28They want to make more money.

68:29Oh that's a shocker. Right.

68:31So in other words the more boring the conspiracy the more likely it is to be real.

68:34I mean break in Watergate break in.

68:37You know there's a couple of guys and they fucked up. Right.

68:41That's a normal conspiracy. That's what happens.

68:42And we saw what happened. Right.

68:43You know 19 guys with the box cutters.

68:45How could they do this.

68:46You know bring down the World Trade Center.

68:49But that is the only way it could happen. Right.

68:51If you had a thousand operatives controlled by the Bush administration and they all had to be at the right place at the right time and plant the explosive devices in just the floors that the planes are going to hit the radio control planes and everybody had to communicate coordinate the be like a Darren Brown. Yeah. Special. Right.

69:04It's like come on. Impossible.

69:05And furthermore what else would be true.

69:07Well you tell me not one of these thousand people wants to go on 60 minutes ago.

69:13Let me tell you exactly. Or some woman.

69:15I was dating the guy and he told me the whole story.

69:19And here it is.

69:20And here's his letter to me. You know whatever.

69:22And the WikiLeaks you know millions of top secret classified documents.

69:24Not one mention of 9-11 is inside job.

69:26Nothing about the fake moon landing.

69:28Nothing about UFOs in Area 51 which you would predict would be in there.

69:33So you're saying WikiLeaks is fake. That's right. Yeah. Well that's it.

69:37Flat Earth fascinates me as a conspiracy mostly because it has to kind of by its very nature be the Voltron of a bunch of other conspiracy theories like you.

69:48You have to believe if you believe in a flat earth you also have to believe that the government or an extra governmental organization is in charge of the media and that that's the reason why maps are what they are and photos and videos that disseminate.

70:05So it's like it really is this destination of you believing all of these other things that you you think make the world either make more sense or you are desperate much like my friend Brian Brushwood is not fooled about the HBO show The Rehearsal.

70:22You are desperate to not be fooled.

70:24It's definitely a magic trick.

70:26You are desperate to not be fooled by the by the fact that all the earth is obviously flat.

70:33And so everybody else is stupid.

70:35And I am I am one of the hard ones to believe.

70:38You know I mean you've seen that little graphic of the solar system of all around planets and then the little square flat earth.

70:45It's like well that was awkward. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

70:47I wonder if I am firmly of the belief that most people at least begin being flat earthers because it is about as intellectually punk rock as you can get.

70:57And if you want to get into arguments all day long just download these 30 questions.

71:02Be that guy at the party and watch people get spun up and pay attention to you.

71:07No I always thought that that flat earth is compelling because the actual conspiracy is they're hiding it from us. Right.

71:17And there's a lot of they're hiding it from us in our in our lives that's real. Right.

71:24Like you pointed out there are government secrets that come out that are rumors and whispers and somebody who did a thing and wrote an article in a magazine 30 years ago and then 30 years on we find the actual documents that say that they were right.

71:36So there is a lot of they're hiding it from us.

71:39But what's the sometimes they are hiding it from us.

71:42That's the hard part. Yeah.

71:43But what's the oldest most ancient thing that they capital T. H. E. Y.

71:47could be hiding from us.

71:48The shape of the earth.

71:50Like nothing is more grandiose and sacred than that.

71:53If you go out there and look it looks flat doesn't look like it's curved. Yeah. Trust your eyes. Yeah. One last question.

72:00I've watched you in a number of appearances talk to a wide wide variety of folks of of different different positions on the skeptical spectrum.

72:08And you seem to have a wonderful talent of not pushing back not meeting force with force but instead you tend to Bruce Lee somebody somebody will hit you with the moon's not real and then and you know like water you'll bend and you'll say you know what many people thought that including so and so or whatever.

72:33When when did you first of all assuming I'm reading it right.

72:37When did you embrace that.

72:38And where does that come from.

72:42And how do you do that.

72:44The Bruce Lee method. It's all water. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Right. It's water.

72:48No one's ever made that analogy. Thank you. I'll take that.

72:51He's one of the great.

72:53Well so it's more probably temperament.

72:55It's just I'm not super confrontational just by temperament.

72:57And also I'm interested in why people believe the things that they believe in not just tell them that it's bullshit and debunk it.

73:05But why would you believe that. Right.

73:07So a lot of these people they send me these theories of everything I'm taking to posting them on Twitter now.

73:13You know Hawking was wrong and Einstein was wrong and Newton was wrong but I've worked this thing out.

73:18You know it's like OK.

73:19You know do you realize there's other people that send me these every week. Right.

73:22You're not the only one.

73:23Why would you believe that.

73:24Did you go to your high school physics teacher and ask him before you announced to the world you have this new theory.

73:30Anyway so I just like the kind of the curiosity of what led you to believe that.

73:34And also when I was young I believe most this stuff.

73:37In fact back to Randy.

73:39You know when I was in graduate school the first time in experimental psychology and my mentor was super materialist and reductionist.

73:45There's none of this paranormal supernatural. That's all nonsense.

73:47And but I was reading about Thelma Moss's lab at UCLA paranormal lab curly and photography and altered states of consciousness and out-of-body experiences.

73:57You know the all the spoon Betty Uri Geller.

74:01This was in the 70s. Right.

74:03And I was seeing all this stuff. This is amazing.

74:06Maybe there's something to it.

74:08Maybe my mentor is just too narrow and maybe science is too restricted.

74:13And there's this other realm. Who am I.

74:15You know what do I what do I know.

74:17So I was pretty open to it till I saw Randy do a bunch of the stuff that Geller was doing.

74:23You know that's what he did on The Tonight Show. I went. Oh huh. OK.

74:26So maybe I'm don't maybe I'm being fooled here.

74:28That's what kind of pushed me down the skeptical route a little bit.

74:30Do you think there's a bias for people in sports of all varieties to want to believe in pseudoscientific things. No.

74:38Well they're notoriously superstitious because whatever works for them. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

74:42It's just but you know and of one. So yeah.

74:46And I tried all that stuff.

74:49I tried all kinds of crazy alternative things just to see.

74:53performance differences, and athletes are bad about that.

74:55What's one that you look back and you're most surprised that you were into?

74:59Well, let's see, there was this iridology where you get your iris red, you know, they look at the little specks on your eyes, and oh, your kidney is bad, I'm like, my kidney's down there, what are you talking about?

75:12Right, anyway, so some of that stuff is just kind of crazy.

75:15But it was exploratory.

75:17But back to your question, I am deeply curious why people believe, so I like to, in any case, I think it works as a strategy, like instead of telling somebody that's all bullshit, you know, just, well, where did you hear that?

75:32Or what would it take to change your mind?

75:34You know, and usually they go, huh, I never thought about that.

75:37Like, yeah, and if you just let that sit, rather than saying, I'm gonna now debunk you and humiliate you in front of your friends, which is, you know, the wall's gonna go up, they're not gonna talk to you anymore, just think about this.

75:49Maybe I'm wrong, I could be wrong, you might be right. Really?

75:51You know, just saying that, because it's possible, I'm not omniscient, what do I know, right, I don't know everything.

75:57One of the things that we come to at the end of this season in trying to discuss Randy and specifically his role in Project Alpha, how he did make it so much larger than it would have been otherwise, even if he didn't totally run it in the way that the popular legend, largely crafted by Randy, says, is explaining how much he meant to the skeptic movement as a whole, and Project Alpha did a lot to help him, you know, propel him to that position, and specifically looking at the skeptic movement through the aughts and early tens, where The Amazing Meeting was something that was a big movement, it seemed like it was having a moment in the sun, books, you know, were, it felt like two or three times a year, major celebrities that hadn't normally dabbled in that were now writing in this field, and then The Amazing Meeting kind of wanes, Randy takes a step back, Randy is now no longer with us, and it feels like, at least to me, somebody that kind of left the skeptic community actively many years ago, it seems far more tribal and atomized than it was at that moment, but I'm not you, you are one of the people, the titans of that industry, I was curious your perspective to that idea.

77:11I think like most social movements, it goes through different phases, and they do splinter, a lot of feminists are Marxists, Ayn Rand objectivists, you know, they all splinter and fight, there's a lot of infighting, I've noticed this back when I was reading a lot of Ayn Rand, and then there was like some story about how she's kicking people out of the group because they're not objectivists enough, they're not libertarian enough, and then some libertarian telling some other libertarian, you're a Marxist, for this one little thing, and I was like, you know, this isn't too healthy, right?

77:41And then I saw atheists do this, you know, first of all, atheism was not a big thing all the way up until the late 90s, you know, when the science wars kind of took off and science and religion, ooh, okay, and then Dawkins' book really flipped it, you know, along with a few of the other, the four horsemen, so to speak, but they weren't the only ones, but really Dawkins, and then it was like a split, like are you militant enough in your atheism?

78:03So that was one cut, and then there was atheism plus, which is you also have to be a social justice warrior and have these embraced, fully embraced, 100% these kind of far left, woke, progressive, political issues have nothing to do with atheism, right?

78:15It's like, why is this happening?

78:17This, you know, we're a pretty small tent, right?

78:20It does seem like the natural order of things is the moment you get into a clubhouse, you have to figure out what are the sub clubhouses, you know?

78:31It's, I don't know if you've read The Status Game by Will Storr, but, oh boy, that's a good one.

78:37Put a pin in that.

78:38Michael Shermer, thank you for all of your time.

78:42This has been absolutely amazing.

78:44Thank you for the kind words that you said about the world's greatest con.

78:49What can we promote for you?

78:52Oh, well, I'm interested in cons, yeah.

78:55I have talked to a lot of my guests on the show, and I'm gonna have you guys on again here.

79:00We'll do this again, but I'm gonna dig deeper into cons, because really it comes down to, you know, what do people believe, and why, and how irrational are we?

79:09To me, that's really interesting. Anyway, michaelshermer. com, skeptic.

79:12com is the webpage for the magazine, and my book's on Amazon, whatever, yeah.

79:17Right now it's, Conspiracy is the latest one?

79:19Conspiracy, yeah, why the rational believe the irrational. Excellent.

79:22Yeah, so I am citing that people are rational.

79:25Well, then why do they believe irrational things?

79:28Okay, I'll show you how they do it, right? Perfect, can't wait. Fantastic.

79:33All right, thank you, Michael. Thank you, gentlemen.

79:35This episode of World's Greatest Con is written by Justin Robert Young and me, Brian Brushwood, your humble host.

79:45Production and research by Dog & Pony Show Audio in Austin, Texas, with additional production by Will Sattelberg.

80:01Original music by Carson Pace.

80:16Very special thanks go to Banachek and Mike Edwards for allowing us to tell their story.

80:22We greatly encourage you to see Banachek's new show, Mind Games, at the Strat Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

80:31Additional thanks go to George Slatter Productions, which, along with contemporary news articles, retrospectives, and archived videos made for the bulk of our research.

80:39Write us to worldsgreatestcon at gmail. com. Thanks for listening.

80:43We'll see you next time.

80:45Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

80:48He he he he he he he he.

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