A Lecture by James "The Amazing" Randi

thank you what a great turnout and our speaker tonight that deserves just such standing room only crowd I have a very long introduction to give but of course I'm getting telepathic messages Randy like cut it short kid and no really that that is what he's thinking he'll he'll verify that and I want to just say on a personal level how much he influenced my life and work you know I go around the world investigating paranormal claims I was a young skinny kid at the Houdini magical Hall of Fame many many years ago and I ran into James Randi and he absolutely transformed my life I knew that what I wanted to do was investigate the paranormal and I've done it now low these about 40 years and over that time he's become an even greater and greater figure no one has taken more risks no one has done more to counter the frauds the charlatans the fakes the phonies the deluded then James Randi has no one even comes close I consider myself a considerate and honor that I'm just an understudy for his work I remember as a young fellow him risking his life I remember he almost died in the offices of the Toronto telegram newspaper escaping from a safe I remember him hanging upside down over Center Street in a straitjacket and wriggling wriggling out and I thought what a what a great what a great guy and to watch him challenging the fakes and frauds the phony spoon benders and today's right up to today's phony psychic detectives has been a privilege one time I remember just as an example of his humor I was at the executive council meeting with and Randy was there and he was resting his eyes you know like this and I wasn't sure if he was you know paying attention or whatever he he didn't need to but and I was going on about how we needed to really encourage young people and we needed to you know do more to encourage people and I said why you know one slit Randy sent me a letter it kept me going for five years randy cocked open one eye and said remind me to send him a tenure letter next time so i considered that the ten year letter and it's my honor to introduce James the amazing Randy thank you so much I'm very very pleased to be here in Amherst I believe that sure I was I was in Buffalo a short time ago you I can't keep track of the geography of this place at all and when the snow comes it all looks the same you know I I can talk a little more informally this evening that I normally can but I deliver these speeches and lectures if you will I have to correct nickel right at the top he said that I did that stunt in the safe where I almost lost my life at the Toronto telegram know that with the Toronto Sun so there but closed it was a big safe and it's very true I almost cashed in you see I'm certainly been good company certainly in this crowd here I hope we'll find out in a moment with Joe Nickell and Barry Carr and Paul Kurtz is he is not here he he went away to India as you've been told and that if you take a globe of the world and you take Amherst and you draw right through the center of the earth and comes out on the other side on India that means he traveled as far away as he could get from me so that he didn't have to answer questions I don't know but it's antipodal so to speak that's a new word I just came up with but nonetheless I I am so pleased to be here it's been a long time so I hadn't seen the new building here at all and you folks must be very proud of it it's it's really something now since my last visit I have undergone a lot of things for one thing a double bypass I'm recovering from it nicely thank you and people like her regular and Sylvia Browne weren't you too happy to hear that news but I'm very happy to hear it and I've had an asteroid named after me now that thank sort of distinction there's one named after after psycho as well but it's psychic you see it's not CSI you better change the name of the asteroid I think you have to go up there and do something I don't know what you do but there is asteroid three one six three Randy now it exists and I've got the the orbit all plotted and if Gellar gives me too much of a hard time I'll drop it in his backyard now I'm told that it's a Mars crosser that particular asteroid that means it crosses the orbit of Mars I have nothing to do with that so don't blame me if it goes amiss and and does some terrible thing like speeding off into space but I must say that dear Arthur Clarke just recently deceased as I'm sure you know sir Arthur Clarke pardon me I had the the delight of sitting down at my computer after I heard that the American physicals are pardon me the American astronaut astrological I'll be RIT precedes I'm going to be ok the American another International Astronomical Union there I got a straight had named this asteroid after me quite a distinction and I called and pardon me I emailed Arthur Clarke and I said Arthur guess what I just may have an asteroid after me and he very dryly of course you can't an email it's always dry isn't it so he just dryly emailed me back and he said yes it's quite a thrill I had one named after me eight years ago so I went to the to the casebook of the International Astronomical Union that I looked up after I'd ran be an asteroid Clark I had the great delight of emailing them back saying I found out that your asteroid is supposed to be 1.1 kilometers on a side mine is 2.3 telemeters on the side my asteroid is bigger than your asteroid come to think of it I didn't hear from him from that moment on no I'm only kidding across then other things have happened too now for example every year I'm invited to the Thatcher school something that most of you hope folks won't have heard about but it's the summer science program is held there and this is where they have absolutely gifted kids from all over the world literally now it used to be all over the USA but all over the world who come in there at Thurid suggested by their schools of course on the school superintendents and they go in there and one of their jobs during the summer that there at the summer science project is to calculate the orbit the orbital elements of an asteroid one that's just numbered up until then and they have the privilege of suggesting whose name it might bear they're not allowed to use their own is it and which is a good point because they'd be calculating them all day long it'd have all of them named George or something like that but staying at the Thatcher school and since they're many science oriented people here I'll give you this this little anecdote I was taken out on my first visit to the Thatcher school it's in Ojai California and that's a rather an historical area full of mountains and beautiful beautiful scenery there they took me out on a trip where they took me to a huge huge rock but half the size of this road and that's a rock and I climbed up the rock and got up to the top and they point out to me that there was a big brass plug sunk in the rock and cemented in place and it had a screw thread in it she's I put my finger and I cleaned out some pine needles and various things and by golly I said this is obviously put here by extraterrestrials or whatever what is the purpose of it and the fella just said well look down the hill here and I looked down and I saw that vegetation was much shorter in a long strip about 20 feet wide I would guess to another mountainous Rock down there he said if you go down to that rock it's about a mile and a half way said you'll find a similar plug I said yes but is it's a convention of plugs at a distance or what is it he said just two magical words michelson-morley that mean anything to anybody the michelson-morley experiment which determined the speed of light was conducted on that very site now it was conducted at many other places around the world as well but that's where it was first conducted they actually spinning mirrors on there and that's a wonderful sight to come upon this thing and it hadn't been used since in 1920s or whenever they did the experiment that's really wonderful at my age of course everything in the 1920s is a relatively recent but it gives you an idea of the richness of my life and I don't mean that facetiously at all I have these exciting things that we just came back from a trip to the Galapagos and a couple folks sitting right here in our audience who were on that trip with us and we retraced the steps of Darwin Dam that's something else walking along blue footed boobies and pelicans of all kinds and wonderful wonderful critters walking in the footsteps of Charles Darwin I tried it on George by the way one of the Galapagos turtles there he had tortoises part meal silly me oh my goodness what did I say tortoises and he once enjoyed is known as the one of the tortoises that is known to have met Darwin so I tried a little bit of a trick I walked up and said hello I'm back didn't fool them a bit no I guess drugged was smarter than I had suspected up until then and other developments I can tell you about first of all the James Randi Educational Foundation library is almost three thousand books were just a few books short of three thousand now most of the other books are what's the category yeah that's the category most of them but there is one shelf in there that's all books that I have have written over the years actually that's only nine books but they're in eleven different languages and Braille of all things I have to take their word for it it's just bumped on a piece of paper to me but they tell me that it said my book flim-flam now that's quite a privilege of course I can't write any more books or I filled that shelf so that's the end of my ball I have two more books on their way so I'm in case you were wondering I know you were desperate to have another book firing by me now these are recent developments that I've gone through with the James Randi Educational Foundation I want to tell you a few other things about the foundation and how we're getting along but I first of all must stress something to you The Magicians point of view no I'm not a scientist I am a magician I am NOT the scientist I don't have an academic degree well I have one autorai one it's in its a its literary degree of some kind agree of letters I I don't know what the letters are maybe a through E I'm not sure but they didn't tell me what letters were represented I don't have any highfalutin letters like way down with the W is written like that that's an honorary degree and I can't really claim the title of Doctor but if you force me I might assume it now magicians work in a strange way we are not the psychics remember we are the people who tell you that what we're doing is fake magician is among the most honest of individuals walks out on stage or in front of the TV camera and says I'm going to deceive you and he does but he tells you to advance you're going to be deceived I'm going to do tricks I'm going to fool you I'm going to use your senses and your perception against you know they people say oh that wouldn't happen with me though I'm too smart to have that happen well let me tell you something you've already been deceived I know you find that hard to believe but you've already been deceived for example I'm not using this microphone the smartphone's absolutely dead I've been talking into it very carefully moving up on it see I I did that in order to make sure that you believe that it it might be the instrument in which I was talking but it's not the instrument of which I was talking a lot of people will say oh that's very deceptive it is but it's a magician's trick because we used it purposely in order to deceive you but I used it in a good sense I think I used it to deceive you and I told you you were being fooled this microphone is absolutely useless now so more people can see my chin the chat voluntold is very attractive now the purpose of the jrf which is how we affectionately refer to the James Randi Educational Foundation we have a number of aims all of them connected to reality first of all reality in the media we all know Larry King and we know Montel Williams and we know Sylvia Browne and we know that Sylvia Browne has appeared many many times on Larry King and Montel Williams almost every Wednesday on Montel Williams at one time she was making her appearance and Montel Williams has asked on a radio program some years ago whether or not he believed in psychics and he said no I don't believe in psychics I don't particularly believe in Sylvia Browne never said but you feature on your show Ruby he said yes on this radio program we have it on record he said yes but she brings me a lot of sponsors this means and this is the expression I will use I I ask you to pardon me in advance for it but it's used in the media then he and Larry King are both known as media horrors because they'll do anything to get sponsors anything whether it destroys the public's faith in them or in the station or in the products that they're advertising doesn't mean anything to them as long as they attract the sponsors and the sponsors in turn don't care as long as they sell the products whatever that product happens to be so Montel Williams admits that Sylvia Browne he knows is a faith and yet he's the one who makes all the excuses for Houston now we just recently saw a Bigfoot hoax for example and the Bigfoot hoax it struck a chord with me because I remember some 20 years or so ago in the Monmouth County New Jersey I saw a similar Bigfoot frozen in a block of ice by exactly the same people who were purporting to have captured this particular Bigfoot and frozen in a block of ice same people probably the same ice for all I know maybe it thought out every now and then get some more ice okay freeze it up there we go we're on tour again it looked like a huge old fur coat very tattered underneath the ice you can barely see it but it looked like a fur coat and that's exactly what this turned out to be accepted with a rubber monkey suit that was stuffed with animal parts which is not quite as glamorous as a fur coat I would say but the media snapped it up the media didn't not somebody said to me earlier today but why would the media beliefs actually they didn't believe such a thing but they used that because they could make money with it and get listeners and readers and such they don't give a damn whether something is real or not as long as it makes them money and brings the sponsors newspapers want readers because their advertising rates will depend directly on the number of readers that they have subscribers and people who buy it at the new cents they just don't care one way or the other we also preach reality in the field of education now where I live in Florida near Fort Lauderdale but inland somewhat there is a private school called the Heritage School oh it's a beautiful building wonderful beautiful building very expensive obviously big football field outside it's a very expensive property and to go to that school those parents pay a lot of money for their kids to attend a lot of money I was asked the lecture there a couple years back and it's just around the corner I decided as a public service yeah I won't charge him for this I'll go in and do a lecture for them and I thought oh this is good opportunity to ask a question because I had noted now I usually wear watch not today but I usually wear a watch which is radio controlled and it's controlled from Colorado from a radio signal and it's exactly right on I got this from the radio business I was on the radio for a couple of years in out of New York City and on wor radio AM and FM New York that's the official announcement you see that I got down the rest of it was a little shaky but I used to talk to people for a couple of hours every night some cases four to four and a half hours so I got sort of used to to the business of radio and I'm very very fussy about having the correct time I really want to have the time to the second sort of an obsession with me but you'll forgive it I'm sure I have other obsessions but I won't get into them this particular obsession led me to look up at the clock and look at another clock on the football field they were all seven minutes early I was strange seven minutes early so when I got in there right in front of the crowd they they the Dean of the school was sitting right there and I said I've noticed that your clocks I'm looking up here and dev clock right in the wall here is seven and it's curving I wonder why and the Dean sort of wriggled a little bit I said but I'll ask the Dean later on and as soon as I finish of lecture he said about that clock she said no we do that because you see we have very big penalties at our school if you're late for school so we give them the advantage of the extra seven minutes just like they'll get into the real world when they go into business they have a job on Wall Street or with Microsoft and oh I'm only five minutes late Sir and that means I'm ok no it doesn't work that way the real world does not work that way but education apparently does seem to work that way no that's a small example it's a very minor example but these kids are paying a fortune for this education and they're being told that being 7 second at 7 punch seconds I'll be re I got 7 minutes late it's ok no it's not ok the real world does operate on time now I know this we've all been watching the conventions the political conventions every single person who appears on there to make a speech ends up in the last sentence always have Bush did earlier today when he made a speech ends up appealing to God now that's his choice ok it's all their choice we know that politicians can't get elected unless they profess a belief in God certain you know atheists are going to get elected in this country that's for sure that's for damn sure but that's what's happening on PBS even PBS now I have great respect for PBS they turned out that Nova show with me some years ago and that was very pleasant and I really thought they did a very good job of that I was very pleased with the results of it but PBS they're betraying us folks PBS has people like Wayne Dyer Deepak Chopra and such on there all the time during their fund raising campaigns so what they're doing is they're raising money for PBS which is a good cause and I used to subscribe to this cause I used to send them money regularly annually of course it's a deduction of income tax in case you didn't know but nonetheless I did give to PBS and I supported their efforts I don't do it anymore because they insult my intelligence by having people like Wayne Dyer on there and Deepak Chopra giving me total what's the expression again yeah I keep forgetting keep forgetting giving me this nonsense that they like to claim is real now they're on claim industry oh they let Dyer and they let Chopra get on there and claim that it's real but that's an invasion of our reality we know that this is not true and yet we have to support them we're asked to support them at least so the communication between us and the and PBS is rather strained and I hate to tell you this but this just happened they just the other day I saw it they have a series on there called stay rich forever and ever wait a minute do they actually ask you to believe that you can stay rich forever there first of all get rich that you have to do that in order to stay rich you see they don't tell you how to get rich they just say stay rich forever and ever these people are paid handsomely to appear on there during the fundraising compact and they will sell you a program for $200 did you send directly to PBS so they get the money and whether they get all of it I don't know I don't know what the mechanics of these things are at all but PBS even has betrayed us by portraying these things on television and I find that something that I read have a very hard time accepting now the other thing we preach one of the other things we preach at the James Randi Educational Foundation is having reality in public thinking now we all know YouTube oh do we know you - it's all over the place they came up not too long ago the thing of James Randi at the age of about 18 I can't tell quite how old I was at that time made from old 8-millimeter black-and-white film of me working in the black turban as Prince Ibis in a nightclub I don't know who took this I don't know where they got it it must have been found someplace in the museum I don't know but they've got all kinds of footage of me and of just about everybody who's ever done anything that's been recorded in video and you'll find it on YouTube so YouTube is a great weapon it tells people that their record is out there and they better not try to misrepresent it but I'm going to show you a bit of tape now this is the next cut on that DVD Pierre Popoff you know the name I'm sure peter Popoff is an evangelist who says that he speaks at the word of God from Corinthians - as we all know and he says that he can heal people by striking them on the forehead or by just gesturing at them in some cases the same way banning him does it and all the rest of them and some years ago I listed the help of Steve Shaw who became Banacek The Mentalist later on and I'm sure you've all heard of him he's probably the leading Mentalist of the day and he always tells people what you've seen is the result of chicane Rhee these are tricks folks no I don't have any ESP powers I can't cloud your mind or anything like that these have been tricks I hope that you've enjoyed it has entertainment that's the way he signs off each and every evening it was Steve Shaw Steve Shaw took a trip now I was at Popoff's this is in Atlanta I believe at Popoff service and he was running around the audience screeching at the top of his lungs and I wore my Adam Jason outfit Anderson je r SI n is a Namek anagram for James Randi if you write it out and move it along you'll find it's anagram for James Randi but that never dawned on these phony baloneys but I went to see peter Popoff wearing a red wig and dyeing my beard red with a temporary temporary temporary dye of course and I looked quite a sight I got to share you and I wore a false belly at one time I didn't need I need it now but I wore a false belly and a really cheap polyester shirt and and trousers that redid infect me at all and really nasty shoes but I look so bizarre that people didn't pay any attention to me at all that's exactly what I wanted I didn't want them to notice me I want them to turn away from who look at that strange banner with it and I wore big buck teeth false teeth and I could only speak like this and I couldn't eat at all I had to take the teeth out of my lap and and stick food in my mouth it was really embarrassing but nonetheless I got away with it and I attended these various faith theatres meetings I attended one of the peter Popoff things now Steve Shaw kept on running up and down the aisles with a camera around his neck and fake credentials are out his magnitude as if he were a media person and he came back to me said Randy yeah he said Popoff is wearing a hearing aid in his ear I said really that we thought it peculiar that amount of heels the death would be wearing a hearing aid you see I mean that occurred to me right away and it was one of these hearing aids where there's no wire running down the ear when I think just just completely contained inside the ear and he said I wonder why so we got together after it and I figured out wait a minute he's getting a radio transmission from somebody because he memorized he can't memorize all these names these people he calls people I need walk down he says your name Richard Richard stand up you're you're suffering from you have a cancer of the liver am I correct Richard hallelujah Jesus says you're going to be healed hit him on the forehead what not and then he say wait a minute and he give an address he says that your address there's an angel standing above the door right now and it's pretty good act don't you think could I get away with it gotta make money doing this and and the fellow would the tears streaming down his face but he was getting that information because he had a radio receiver and he was receiving it through this little earpiece well we got a fella named Alex ed jerusem the dead part of djursland pardon me Jordan and he was a private investigator and he equipped himself with all kinds of listening devices and went into the auditorium the following night and recorded the conversations of mrs. Popoff backstage saying to Peter pop up go down the aisle third third row down in the red shirt on the end he he works in the timber trade he's a lumberjack of some kind and his name is so-and-so and he lives at such-and-such and he was getting all this information through the hearing aid well the soon as I got this information of course I was going into Los Angeles and I went into Los Angeles and I went directly to NBC to Fred de Cordova who was Johnny Carson's producer at that time now deceased along with Johnny of course and I walked into his office and he said well what brings you here and I said watch this tape I plugged the tape man what's the table he said oh boy that's strong because I had to read it done it in such a way that it would reveal the whole pop off thing is he and how he was working and he said oh we'll use this tonight we'll make room for tonight we got a starlet or two we can drop and we'll we'll put this in tonight and he reached for the phone I said who you calling he's I'm going to call John I said no no don't tell Johnny please he said oh no Johnny doesn't like surprises and I grabbed his hand again I said Fred thinking the expression on his face and Fred looked for a minute and he said okay but it's on your head well they worked out just fine I must tell you now is you wouldn't have noticed the Edit point in there but there was an edit in the audio just when Carson sees the tape for the second time and now mrs. Papa's toys is dubbed into it you see at one point he said she said he says how and it suddenly dawned on Johnny Carson what he was hearing that that was he was getting the clue through the headphones a little earphone and Carson said right out loud in the studio he said oh and then then as soon as he did it went like this to the audience it quieted the audience down and they laughed just the way you did a huge audience there in the NBC studio and they had to dub that actually that was recorded earlier in the afternoon that whole program was always recorded hours before it got broadcast of course in case they had to do any editing and they certainly had to do some editing in that case and but Carson was apologizing to the people as soon as the show closed down they said oh I'm very sorry for what I came up with you inadvertent and and then Fred Carter became over to the desk and this is well people are leaving and he said we're going to get letters and Johnny looked up at and says yes friend and you're going to answer them aren't you I'm Fred said yeah you know that was the end of that but I thought I would tell you that little bit about Carson coming out with this inadvertent expression I miss Johnny Carson damn it I really miss that he used to call me after his retirement I get a call in the middle of the day and he'd say I just saw pop off on television again I thought we wiped him out completely I said no John this is the unsinkable rubber duck you know you can't do it people don't listen people are being fooled all the time oh by the way I didn't well I told you I told you earlier I fooled you at the microphone studies yeah now got it out where you can see it so now you can trust me right no I have no idea what you look like I really don't know at all because I normally wear glasses oh these are not glasses no these are empty frames empty frames and I wear these a growing man right in front of you I wear empty frames that why would a fellow do that to prove another point to you folks if you had left here and gone out there's been a reporter outside you say what does Jane finally look like well he's a handsome fella with the black suit and orange tie and the whole thing and he has a white beard if you wear glasses oh yes you were you would say I was wearing glasses but you'd be wrong inadvertent that you wouldn't know that you're wrong you wouldn't be lying but you could be wrong because we have the ability to lead you to make assumptions I didn't tell you I had a look at her my glasses with lenses in them I didn't tell you that no I allowed you to assume that they had lenses in I didn't tell you her I'm speaking into this microphone right here no I allowed you to assume that and what you will assume you will tend to believe because you made up your mind on that think about that now as you know we're have a million-dollar offer at the James Randi Educational Foundation this was given to us but obviously wealthy gentlemen who put it in your hands who we gave it to Goldman Sachs and they invested it for us and we take the interest off at every now and then it's currently I think 1.3 million or something like that so it makes mighty forest year in the year we used that to help run the phone from time to time but the million dollar offer is very simply stated on our web page I'm sure many of you have read the the terms of it you have to pass our preliminary tests first of all you have to make a claim that application partly you have to fill out the application get it notarized send it in and if we see that everything is kosher and you say what you can do under what circumstances work what accuracy then we tell you well it's notarized fine we got all this we understand that then we'll talk about the protocol now most people don't get to that stage at all they forget to have it notarized or they won't state what they can do under what circumstances with what accuracy it's a very simple thing you would think but one chap fella named Jack Myers is very well known in the media business and he's read by millions of people every week all over the world and you can look him up I think it's Myers it something-or-other calm but that's not the important thing in here he challenged me after the TED conference how many of you know what the TED conference said it so a few of you do that's technology entertainment and design and I spoke last year at the TED conference very distinguished group of folks I sort of felt out of my out of my metier but nonetheless I got up there and I bravely spoke and at the TED conference this fella saw me do what I often do at these talks I didn't bother to do it this particular one because you didn't need any convincing but I deal with the subject of homeopathic medicine which I'll discuss with you in a moment and that what I do is I take a fatal dose of sleeping tablets right in front of the ions at the very beginning my talk with a glass of water and I swallow all down 32 tablets when it says on the package anywhere from two to four tablets once every four hours no more do not exceed in case of accidental ingestion of an overdose be sure to call your poison control center da there's nothing in homeopathic medicine is I'm going to show you in just a moment graphically on that pad over there and Myers said no that was a fake that I couldn't do that because it would poison me I would fall asleep or die see so I said well when next time I'm in New York City I agree and I'm going to New York City in a couple of weeks I'm going to lecture for the New York skeptics there I said finally the moment has arrived I hadn't been New York and quite some time many many months and I said I'm going to be in New York City here's the date the time the whole place show up to some o'clock in the morning I will take the pills I thought to have the memory for 12 hour I'll be speaking at 7 o'clock that night I waited today and I heard back from him said well oh I don't prove anything to anybody and I will not appear there in order to let your skeptical attitude be known to the rest of the world what he's talking about he can prove he said he would also give us $1,000 if I did this and I agreed to do it and he backed down oh really how many people back down during this million dollar offer almost all of them folks they make great promises that they're going to be there and they're going to do the thing and then they suddenly vanish from the face of the earth and we never hear from them again one fellow one PhD in California for four and a half years we negotiated with him on a protocol back and forth on email and letters faxes and whatnot finally agreed on a protocol then he changed his fax number his telephone number and his email address and we have been able to reach them since they do anything to escape actually proving their point and this is a guy who teaches remote viewings remote viewing now they always want to go to Jupiter they don't want to come to Fort Lauderdale I've got a coverage in Fort Lauderdale air a locker with an object in it last week up until I left for this trip with a coconut that was one of the object and I issue a list of 20 objects it's going to be one of those objects so it's a forced choice test if they've said a walnut you see that wouldn't be close enough because it says right on the list coconut and model-train and few other things bobble to catch up and whatnot common objects that everyone would recognize but they won't go to Fort Lauderdale weather temperatures are much much better than than Jupiter I can assure you and the living conditions are certainly much better the breathing I'm sure is much better even though it's a little money in Fort Lauderdale now these people will not stay with the child they won't do what they said they would do now who do we get flying for this this billion dollar prize which incidentally will be discontinued in the year 2010 at March the 6th to 2010 it will be discontinued the reason for that is it simply doesn't pay off we spend far too much personnel time and involvement on negotiating with these people who don't seem to be able to tell us three simple things what can they do under what circumstances with what accuracy but most of the claims we get by far the greatest number of them are for dowsing now this is the business with the fork stick or a couple of pieces of vent coat hanger wire or a pendulum or whatever but they say they can find a water oil gold lost children anything you want a name they say they can find well a lot of them have come forward and been tested and guess what they've all failed really yes because they can't do it now that doesn't mean there isn't somebody that can do it I'm waiting I willing to be shown but I want to discuss something which we often get claims for it now not claims for the million dollars because no homeopathy has ever stepped forward for the million dollar prize no homeopathy ever this is I have to describe this very quickly to you and you won't believe but I'm going to show you first of all this is the mathematics lesson part of it 10 not bad for an old fellow 10 is expressed well 10 to the one you see is just simply 10 will get 10 to the power one however 10 squared the power to that is well this is I know very fundamental mathematical lesson but it's necessary that's 110 tubed or 10 to the power 3 is 1,000 I'm running out of room now the way they do homeopathy this is weird and don't blame me for this this is their idea not mine they make a one solution by taking one part of some active medicine now they can be belladonna which is deadly poison does make it your mission I can't end up with any of it anyway but Oh sodium chloride anything penicillin whatever they will put one part of it in ten parts of water then they shake it up now ten is the magic number in homeopathy remember that ten always ten and you shake it ten times this way the left is a science and ten times this way and then ten times this way and that's called successive I call it checking it up ten times in three different directions but they call it secession okay that would be a one solution when you mix one part in ten then they take one part of this solution that they put it in ten parts of water and they repeat the process again that's one part in 100 that is called a two solution then a three solution would be repeating that process a third time I hope you're ready for this they will go all the way up to ten to the power of 1,500 now I called my good friend Martin Gardner firmly of Scientific American magazine now 95 and in possession of his wits I hope I fits that long and I hope I have the same possession of my wits I asked him I said how can I explain this to even to a scientific audience but particularly a lay audience and he figured it out and he said that would be equivalent to taking now for sleeping pills calms Forte makes a sleeping pill the active ingredient the sleeping pill by the way is caffeine because that's the way homeopathy works it works the opposite way is he and you dilute it down to the point well I read them but what the dilution was and he said in order to get that dilution if you figured it out you would have to have 16 swimming pools full of pills and you would have to eat all of those swimming pools full of pills in order to make sure that you got one molecule of caffeine think about that not a pretty sight first of all we had a bathing suit not anymore is it I was going to do my make a dance on fire for you but there's not much call for that anymore I have no idea why but nonetheless imagine being in a bathing suit diving into a pool full of pills gobbling wall down how I get out of the pool laughter I don't know but with help obviously and I dive into the second book they say are you sleepy I'm not sleepy yet no I'd have to eat 16 swimming pools full of sleeping pills in order to make sure I got one molecule of caffeine that's how dilute these things are it is so exceedingly dilute it's beyond all perception because after you reach Avogadro's limit which is 10 to the 23rd that means 10 with 23 zero vaatrik parts of water and one part of the original substance here down to a dilution where Avogadro a very awkward man obviously would say according to a Vergara of lemon he would say there's only a possibility of there being one molecule of the substance there by the time you go to ten to the 24th there's one chance in ten other being one molecule there you see and these people go all the way up to 10 to the power of one thousand five it's incredible nonetheless is true ah but it gets better than that Jacque benveniste who will be in my next book he's now deceased so he won't care much he came up with a wonderful discovery and he actually sold this over the Internet believe it or not he said you don't actually have to mix the chemicals you don't have to put the the compound in whatever it is caffeine or whatever you don't have to put it in there because you found a new way of doing it what you do is you have some beakers of water okay beaker of water bigger water over here now this beaker of water is homeopathic water okay that's homeopathic so you take a piece of wire and you run it around here ten times you lead it over to this beaker this is plain water over here you see just ordinary water you leave it down here and these are batteries you see the batteries you're in here and then you leave it over to a switch and you lead it up this wire over here and you depress this switch and you keep it down how long very good you see they can be trained I told you they can be trained they can be taught about these things for 10 seconds that's the magic number I'm glad you remembered and then this water becomes homeopathic according to the theory now I agree that this has exactly the healing powers of this action I agree with that no question about whatsoever but then Denise came up with this idea and he actually sold the service oh how could he sell the service he did it over the internet he would call you up on your computer and you would connect a coil of wire 10 turns of wire around a beaker perfectly or near water or bottle of ordinary water plug it into the sound output of your computer not my idea don't look at me and laugh it's his idea and then he would send this signal through because he had the same arrangement on the other end on the microphone and you see and it would stay on for 10 seconds and then he disconnect and then he'd send you the bill on your credit card and that would make the medicine or the water that you had there into medicine and again just as effective as any hoping Apothic medicine has been homeopathy has nothing in it it's a total fake and a farce it was invented almost 200 years ago by a man named Hanuman it didn't work then and it doesn't work now but many many people have made claims for the million-dollar prize based upon this now I did a test for the BBC BBC said we want to do a test of only Alfie and we want you to be part of it I said no I won't be part of it you designed the thing and the Royal Academy was involved I said I'll leave it to the Royal Academy they can design the protocol for it and the statistical picture and the whole business but I don't want you to tell me when it's going to happen I said why why not we want you to be in England when we do it no I agreed not to be in England there won't be anywhere near it and don't tell me what it's going to happen only tell me 48 hours after the experiment has been completed and all packed up he said why I said because the homeopath say and they do say this the James Randi has a powerful mind that sends out negative vibrations to inhibit all the experiments you see that's why the experiments don't work James Randi has these strange powers so I thought I don't want to know what's going to happen sometime in the next few months we'll be just fine with me I don't want to know so they didn't tell me but then they finally called me and said we have the results I said don't tell me I will now go to England sit in front of cameras and you will reveal to me the statistical occurred with the whole business ok they did i sat there and they showed me the whole thing and guess what here are the error bars like this and the data it was significant would be well outside the error bars but it was just sitting in the middle and a little wait in line the middle right in the middle of the to error bars absolutely statistically totally insignificant and that was a definitive test but tens of thousands of results that were being considered and the BBC and the Royal Academy ran it and the homeopathy immediate come they are you use the wrong homeopathy for wait a minute we use the Royal homeopathy the one that takes care of the House of Windsor and if you know anything about the House of Windsor you know the condition has been in lately that's probably due to homeopathy I would say so homeopathy is one of those total forces and this is a way of thinking that is very very damaging now I found out how damaging it was because when I was in Manchester this is a few years ago now and they were forming up the European Union I got a call from Oslo and they asked me if I came over to the University of Oslo where I had spoken before and talked to the academics there of of Oslo they were obviously working on medical practice for the European Union and I went in there and I told them exactly the story I just told you there what homeopathy is all about and they were looking at one another in astonishment surely he's wrong that can't be homeopathy and yet some of the other academic stood up said yet mr. honey is exactly right that is homeopathy and they were astonished now whether they adopted it or not I never did find out maybe they did it secretly you see they might have done something like that now I'm going to give you a startling fact that the fact that you have to explain to you first of all science doesn't discover facts sky science will discover statements about the universe around us and how it appears to work and they're probably right now look for example there's no certainty in science no absolute certainty this is absolutely sure except by definition and that's a weakness of it because the woo-woos out there who believe in all the supernatural yeah that's a word that I I'm trying to push with Webster's eye whoo - whoo is the word I wo Oh - wo use it frequently peace marches the more chance it has are getting into Webster's and I would very proud of that what happened so the woowoo is out there and that's a that's an adjective and a noun as well you see so the Wu moves out there they just they take this as a weakness the fact that science doesn't really know anything for absolute sure and they'll point out to you for example the fact that Newton came up with s equal to UT plus half ay T squared that describes dropping cannonballs off the Tower of Pisa or wherever and which is very Dane don't do this at home and don't do it as a tourist either they frown on that but then Along Came Einstein and with relativity and then Along Came quantum physics so they said well wait a minute s equals UT plus half KT squared that's obviously I know it is correct because if you look into the theory of relativity the general theory of relativity and into quantum physics that formula is included in there but it uses the constant C the speed of light I won't get into all the details I didn't mean that Newton was wrong he just looked at a more limited view of the universe which is all he could observe with the technology he had Einstein looked further into it and quantum physics looks into it much further and something else is going to Wormser a wormhole theory of course is going farther than that and that's where I leave the experts to their job I really can't handle it and I don't think most of you in this room can have later but it's bear in mind science discovers statements about the universe which can be thoroughly examined and tested any number of times and must pass the test or they have to make an adjustment in them or deny them altogether that's the beauty of science it admits that it can be wrong now I got to tell you about something that my major sponsor discovered some years ago have you heard about the Archimedes palimpsest how many have heard about the argument except she had oh oh good number okay fine thank you now what is a polyp cest it's a thing you get on your neck right here it's terrible no problem says something means a reused document that sounds strange but in days when they used to write on vellum and all books were written out before printing existed they printed on vellum and dalam is quite valuable it's parchment you see and it's it's very bell and valuable and it costs a lot of money to have a book in the first place and certainly they have somebody write the whole book out on it and if they got tired of a book they could actually take brushes and they could scroll off the original ink it would scrub off if they tried hard enough and they can put a new book on there and have it all written out again well there was a thing called the Artemis palimpsest that was in a small monetary up in the mountains near Grenoble in France and scientists and scholars knew about it because they examined the gutter of the book when you open up the book that slot down the center there that's known as the gutter of the book they had examined it they'd found some traces of Greek writing and it turned out that that polym says the original book that had been there before the hymn book was written on top of it that was a waste of time in my estimation but nonetheless the original book turned out to be the only no one copy of Archimedes written in Greek ever now that's astonishing so my major sponsor spent something like it was 5.6 million or something to buy it and give it to the Walters Museum in Baltimore they've now examined it and they found out and I'll just tease you with this because there is a book called the Archimedes codex and we do sell it through the foundation and you can buy it I'm sure through Amazon remember that namely Archimedes codex Co de X if you get a chance to buy that book by it it's in 12 different languages now been put out by this gentleman who bought the original document and it is such an adventure story in science if you think science is not exciting when you read this you'll be it's a page-turner believe me it's really really very exciting adventure in science so the Archimedes codex has come up with some facts for one thing Archimedes was born in a day when the Greeks didn't even use zero in their calculation as a digit they would count three two one minus one minus two they didn't use zero it wasn't a place nor than the place right and they didn't use it our comedians did use it and our comedians used Aleph one two three and four now if you don't know what that means I'll describe it very briefly is different degrees of infinity first degree of infinity Aleph one is the number of possible points you can draw on a plane surface of infinite size that's obviously infinity you draw it and point any number of points on it because they won't overlap points have no dimension that's a loved one but think of Aleph - now Aleph - is the number of straight lines you can draw on that same dimensional surface because that's obviously a larger number a larger number a larger degree of infinity and the number of curved lines is Olive three and I won't get into four and five and go on like that because it gets really complicated after that but our committees knew about it and wrote about it in this codex what a wonderful document now we know that our committees all those hundreds of years ago you so much more than we ever suspected today you and it's just wonderful to discover these things science is exciting and it's vibrant and it's alive today now I want to talk to you about inventions I have one right here in my hat this is a pen that you may have seen use I would like to see a show of hands Lea this is not holding your hand up this is holding your hand okay how many of you have gone to pay the bill in a restaurant in a restaurant or in a jar but in a restaurant particularly and you've offered a bill of 50 or $100 in denomination and had them take a pen out of the drawer make a stroke on it look at it and drop it into the drawer and accept it how many of you oh yes any of you alright that's called the counterfeit detector pen I have one right here in my hat it says it's made by dry mark oh it must be good hmm US Patent five million sixty-three thousand one hundred and sixty-three foreign patent another number it says mark currency yellow or light it says currency passes the test dark or black the currency is suspect well I'm going to do a test this is science at work I have here I hope I have this affinity sighs bill see what we got here oh yeah here we are okay hey got fifty don't have those very often I don't worry my money here so don't come strong me up here all right take the top off the pen now that's somebody to participate with me if you'd be so kind this young lady sitting right here would you be kind of just take this pen please and make us a stroke right on the the whites part of the bill there what does that look like to you the color can you tell it from there look sort of amber doesn't yes okay amber didn't turn black however okay this bill apparently according to the pen here according to the patent papers is absolutely genuine I don't think so is it printed on newsprint and you young lady may have this as a souvenir thank you for your industrious work and making a mark on a fake fifty dollar bill don't tell the Secret Service okay now we've shown that it parody doesn't work that paper is newsprint it doesn't have any brighteners in it but most favorite like this this is a genuine dollar bill now I'll make a mark on it and you'll be able to see right from where you are it's it looks he's turning it hmm oh it's September so it must be the right thing yes of course because there's no sizing in this paper either this is rag bond they don't put sizing at it but if I take a sheet of paper like this for example come on I know I can do a yellow paper but it'll work just as well look what happens when I make a stroke on it absolutely black you can see that because it has sizing in it that's starch and what is in this pen iodine ladies and gentlemen tincture of iodine and that's what you pay something like $13 for to buy a pen like this to catch for counterfeit money gah iodine and starch turn black if you put the Julia remember chemistry way back in high school you probably write it maybe even public school you learned that that's what happens when you mix iodine with starch it turns black and that's what's happening the starch the sizing that's in that paper which makes it easier to handle in the printing presses and makes it slippery and midgets it's it's a it's an advantage to be the paper industry to have sizing like that in their paper but not in rag bond like this because that's much more expensive stuff and it doesn't need it okay I called The Secret Service oh boy that's that's fun that's fun I called him in Miami and the rest of its real I'll put it away in a safe place now called The Secret Service he got an agent the phone he said his agent so and so what can I do for you sir and I said the counterfeit detector pen that's used in the stores does that work they said counterfeit detector panel yes I've seen no sir just a wallet that I hear flip flip flip flip going through a book she's a federal employee and he doesn't know anything unless it's in the book has to be written in a book or he doesn't know any and he flipped through the book and he said counterfeit detection pen he posture met and he said sir it is not dependable I said wait a minute either at work sir it doesn't work where'd you get that from he said oh that's so one so ii said he gave me the whole number and the reference to it i said i see and he says there is not dependable he said no said not dependable and I said not dependable like it doesn't work at all and he laughed he said well you could say that and I said well why didn't you say that he said because that's not in the book that's not in the book so I said where can I write in Washington to find out about this and he gave me an address over the telephone I wrote to him it took them a couple of months to answer but I finally got a letter said my question was in the letter I said has an issue of counterfeit money ever been detected using the counterfeit detector pen they wrote me back and they said no because this actually only detects starch in paper sizing the paper I wrote them back again I said what why aren't you doing something about this I did not get a response to that do you know something the reason that there's so much counterfeit money out there and there's oodles of counterfeit money hundreds of thousands of dollars in circulation at any given moment all over the world in American currency phony stuff that somebody printed on a printing press in their basement the reason it does so well is because this pen doesn't work and it gets passed in a restaurant immediately and the restaurant says oh it hates us write on the pendant is patented the US Patent Office patented it the US Patent Office will patent any damn thing they have patented perpetual motion machines and free energy machines they actually patented not too long ago they patented the fact that in a playground swing a child swinging back and forth got a design patent on twisting the swing like this so that he swings back and forth like this and that was issued to a patent attorney who wanted to see if he'd get a patent on a read um thing and he got the Packard you can patent everything because the Patent Office says we have the theory that every American citizen should have a right to have a patent get out of here thanks to the kind of thinking that people like this organization and my organization the jrf are fighting all the time it's just kind of thinking that we're trying to fight now that's one of the inventions but there are other inventions that can cost us a lot lives and money the Quadro rod for example this is a simple dowsing rod thing it looks like a television antenna with it antenna the sticks out from it but it's a dowsing rod and it simply works on the ideomotor reaction I asked you to look at my site and look up a definition of the ideomotor reaction and you'll be quite surprised but this was sold in great quantity to the homeland security people I saw them in Miami when I was waiting for an international plane to come in and a plane came in from Colombia we know what they saw yes sir and they had the dog so there they're going to sniff for drugs you see and what they did is they went out with this stupid rod thing and they tested us Oh which indicating over there suitcase and so at that point they called the dog brewery and the dog didn't sense anything and they said oh crap I thought of why they were so disappointed they said well this rod is far more sensitive than the dog more sensitive than a dogs that sniff ah get out of here they can sell cocaine miles away they can pick it up right away and they get all excited to that point that's what dogs do when they do it very well but the rod had detected cocaine and the dog didn't detect it so they couldn't stop the guy and search his value there's an old draft the poor guy he could have been stopped and he could have been searched in the whole thing but that's what happens the government actually invests in these things now there's another thing - I want to prove you that you can be fooled again there's a young lady in the audience was it Lisa are you out there someplace yeah 31 stand up would you please okay um this young lady I stopped here in the lobby outside here just a few minutes before mounting the stage and that you'll correct me if I'm wrong on any of this okay and I asked her if she would do give me a favor we took him oh I guess I tossed away a copy of skeptical inquiry I had to because I she had taken a page out of it what I asked you to do he said was very simple I did you use your pen to use my pen I don't remember my pen okay all right I gave you a ball pen I guess it was and I asked you to turn to any page and you chose a free pay any page in the whole issue of skeptical Inquirer I think there were 68 pages altogether micro-opal and I asked you to turn to anyone and I stepped well away from you you stayed over here by yourself nobody around you I stepped way over and I turned my back and I said I want you there's something on that page that you have selected randomly choose one word on that page but don't worry I think I told you don't worry take a word like she or butter and or something those would be very common words and you chose another kind of overdid you okay and I simply asked you to remain to remember that's the question after a scanner do you remember the word I'm so glad because when the Flamingo comes in the gold flamingo with the with the the consignment is be saying what the word is see if you've forgotten it how look and I'll say it's not the word you say I don't know I forgot I really hate that when that happened but any case you chose a word at random from the whole issue of skeptical inquirer current issue of skeptical inquirer right sorry what yeah and I asked you then to tear out the entire page right and I asked you to fold up but in your pocket a person you did that did you tell anybody else you didn't know so you've kept it secret Lisa thank you very much now I'm going to step over to the board where's the big black magic marker there it is and I'm going to start sketching on here now you see something that mentalists and magicians often use they read body language so I'm not going to look toward you it would be difficult at this distance with the lights on my eyes everything to see your body language but you see if I start to write the word here ah and if I'm right then you'll be doing things with body language or you'll be going astonished and rightly so but if I'm wrong you'll be going on you'll be a little impatient with me okay so I'm going to take the pan I've got to go over here that won't look back at you and you have told nobody about this am i correct okay so you've had it in your pocket of your purse all this time you chose any page in the magazine and any word on that page as long as it wasn't weird like and or but or something like that all right that can't be oh no I this can't be no it can't be there's no such word well this is the closest I can get to it now that can't possibly be that until the audience to see out so maybe I got some of the writers grade what was the word that you selected freely out of any page in the skeptical inquirer at a distance from me and you put it in your pocket repeatedly oh oh this sometimes happens ladies and gentlemen yes I apologize sometimes I get it upside-down that happens okay now the easiest thing for you to think at this moment is well I made a deal with Lisa and you know I winked out and Chantal jeez what do we do I know I never met this young lady before in my life and she has been perfectly honest in her description of what happened and her agreement to my description was quite correct she did choose any word on any page of the current issue of The Skeptical Inquirer she then tore the page out and she put it in her pocket and didn't show it to anybody she is not a Confederate in any way whatsoever now I have to ask you this important question at this point if I had shown you this and I had appeared here as a psychic of some kind think to yourself now you have to answer this for yourself would you possibly have been saying I guess the guy must have ESP or something going for him you possibly might think that that's possibly true but you know I'm a trickster and I'm not lying to you at all this is a trick it's a damn good trick but it's a trick so there and I thank you for your contribution and thank you Lisa now very quickly I will just take cover this booze that nobody says no okay I want to cover it so this the subject of astrology one of the oldest canards ever to bother mankind very very briefly you'll you'll notice that no one ever seems to notice that the astrology called museu peers right beside the comics they don't seem to relate to two of them but I think they're very closely related but you'll notice that that usually happens American Airlines some years ago used to run a popular astrology column and I made so much fun of it on swift our web page for for the James Randi Educational Foundation that they discontinued it but now they're again using it and they're using it from a bit different a different astrologer though and of course we know that that's got to be the real thing because they changed astrologers but I have a very simple test of of astrology and I often conducted at at seminars when I appear in at colleges and universities and whatnot I go to the local newspaper the current newspaper and I open it up and I I go to the page and I tear it out and I say alright how many folks here believe in astrology now usually I have set them up for this because I go to the faculty and I say what's the the current rage in paranormal stuff on on campus they say oh everybody's going after astrology okay I can use it then you see and so I say is how many here believe there's some validity to astrology and the hands go up see and I cool well I have here let me see are there any Sagittarians there so hands go I see secretary ins all of you stand up please they stand up and I say okay I'm going to read Sagittarius for yesterday's newspaper that'll apply for today this is what should have happened today and I read out the forecast say I say I signified to me how well does that agree with you it usually that not not everyone necessarily but most of them in some cases every one of them will say oh yes that's bang on right on that's very very accurate I say well that's oh wait a minute no that was Fergal I'm sorry I read the wrong one I'm very sorry I was verbal okay sit down side join virgos will you stand up and they stand up sort of slowly because they figure they're been and yes I've got him again and I say verbal said how many agree fewer hands go up this time out of the verbals I said wait a minute wait a minute this is this is today's newspaper that's the prediction for tomorrow so I get them several times over and do you think they learn anything from this now I did a famous test on the Nova program which I had period at Nova University they have nothing to do with Nova but that's in the Florida and I peered in front of a class for 40 kids on a Monday and I I told them psychology classes matter of fact and I said I don't care whether you believe in astrology or not but give me your birth dates each one D with your names and such and i will cast horoscopes for your I'll have them cast professionally and that will give you sealed horoscopes tomorrow oh boy they all wrote it in it I think it was me I went back to my goodbye computer and I typed out her horoscope so what not brought them back then I stayed with the name on each one of the envelopes and with a red seal on it I had the moat and I said okay now all of you open them up please and read the horoscope that you've been presented with there and then I want to ask you to vote from 0 all the way up to 10 10 being the highest score you can get alright so they all read them and they're all going ooh wow Oh mmm hey they're doing who's on Oz and what not so I think old if this could be pretty good so I say all right how many voted zero not a one two three four five six seven eight eight one hand went up nine two two hands went up ten all the rest of the hands went up I said really that's wonderful now just hand your horoscope over your shoulders the first was about in the person of the back come up and give it to the boat the front of the row and they did that I said now read them again you're reading somebody else's horoscope now they were all identical and the use and I became us to wait a minute this is the same oh wait a minute and then I pointed out to them the fact that 40% of what was written in that horoscope was for things that hadn't happened yet how can they say a hundred percent or ninety percent for something that hasn't happened yet you will shortly maybe hear a trip to a far-off location somewhere in the road where you've never been before or ever suspected you would go they want that to be true so they vote for it now that was on the Nova show and once all that said well you haven't convinced me there's nothing to to astrology that was very welcome because it went on the nova show and he probably looked like some sort of a fool I don't know but I I never ran into him again I hope I don't it's one of those things well this closes my effort to entertain and inform you to see me but we will now if we have the time we will throw it open to questions and hopefully answers if you're going to ask a question this is not owning up your hand again this is holding up your hand and can I have the house lights on so that I can see there's a person way in the back there I can't see where there's a gentleman early there you go alright let's take the question from this person way at the back folks if you could please if you could step up to the microphone please yeah I think we we should have a microphone - yes sir step to the microphone please I have two questions what is why did you say that Amherst and India are antipodal when they are both in the northern hemisphere that what in India I'm sorry Amherst and India are antipodal you said that at the beginning of your talk anta Barry yes they're opposite one another if you draw a line they're both in a northern hemisphere yes so they can't be 94 it's a little stretch of the imagination close enough for government work I would say let's go after my next question what happened to the third law in Ohio they they the other rocky in Ohio the third Rock yeah you mentioned that there were two rocks yes but the michelson-morley experiment needs be fixed points yes I don't know where the other one was Joe no I was never informed of that but it was very interesting to see the original rock at least one of the original rocks on which they had performed the experiment here at City right of course you need some triangulation there yes sir step up to the microphone or are you just returning from the restroom I'm not sure yes sir occasionally happened to listen to a radio program in Buffalo it is nationally broadcast unfortunately I forgot his name because I wasn't planning to ask you a question but anyhow you must have heard about these guys they talk all the time it comes in Buffalo for those of you who are here if you know the name it'll be good it comes on channel radio station 9:30 a.m. from one o'clock till five o'clock in the morning whose it heart bellow yeah yeah our Nora is the one name yeah the art Belle show yeah hot burn Georgia yeah yeah they constantly talk about remote viewing which i think is an absolute fraud and the ever come across these guys to tell anything about it oh yeah I've been invited to be an Arab girl show up many times but since he makes his own rules as he goes along I'm not about to play that game you don't go in to play a card game with somebody who says I'll make up the rules as we go along hey put your money down I'm not about to play that kind of a game and it's same with Larry King I've turned down the last to Larry King shows I was offered because we found out that all of the phone calls are intercepted first by the switchboard and if it's a question that he wants to be asked they'll let it through but they won't let other people through so there's nothing fair about that at all and I just simply refused to participate thank you thank you next question step right up how did you guess the word from the magazine how many would like to know tough well this is a trick which this particular one and while Joe will know of course most of these tricks we don't make up they're made up by other people this particular one I discovered when I was in Mexico City and I was in a newspaper office and I saw that fresh newspapers came in and I thought oh my goodness I'll bet I could do that and I did it for the editor and blew them away and got some articles in the paper all I must tell you but the other thing that happened on that same desert I was there for a magicians convention in Mexico City and I did a stunt on me on the reporters first of all you are all familiar with these hotel cards of course but it happens that these hotel cards are exactly the same size as a bridge size playing card which is not the poker side which is wider and so I was already for the reporters they met me downstairs in the big hotel and they were all clustered around me and I said gentlemen there's there's far too much noise here why don't we go up to my room I have coffee up there Oh fine so we all got in the elevator we went upstairs and I went into my pocket for the tea and I couldn't find it I I said oh I've forgotten my key they all reach for their pads and they wander right down escape artist forgets his key and as they were writing I said oh wait about it I reached into my pocket I took out a deck of cards and I took out the three of diamonds from the deck of cards and put it in and the door open because I had glued this on the back of the trio diamond I was all ready for them you see that I had not forgotten my key at all it was in my deck of cards and I pulled it out and I thought that would be enough for gag right there they all ported and the one reporter said does that work with any playing card and I said I said no only a red tree and he roped that down and he got into the front page radical the next day and the guy at the scarfs and after the cigarettes three arms down whatever notions he told me he said I'm sold out of every deck of courage we had kids swarming into the hotel to buy decks of cards I don't know why I think I know why doesn't want to work so anyway that's that's the way the managing profession goes Joe and elves it's a weird profession step right up with my phone sir what is your question please having a sense of how these tricks are done gonna encounter other random strangers or friends or families who are our true believers what do you find is the best way of bringing up these these problems and presenting the serious difficulties that a lot of these beliefs ever well lnto that in two parts first of all to teach them how magic tricks are done but just simply not work because they'd have to take massive training over a period of many years in order to know how generally magic tricks are done now I have given lessons in this sort of thing I've given lectures and such and it tends to inform people better but it doesn't work in the long run because then somebody comes along with something's totally new they said well that must be the real thing because it's not what James Randi taught me about the the point is the the one thing you can point out them is the fact that organizations all over the world have vast amounts of money as prizes the James Randi Educational Foundation has a million dollars for example if this guy can do this sort of thing or this woman can do this or they have them apply for the million dollar prize that's a big carrot to wave around it hasn't worked as well as I thought it would work and it's taken far too much of our time and soon too much money and time in order to conduct the thing that's why we're terminating it in less than two years but you can remind them of that say why isn't this person a millionaire because they get easily win the prize because they can do what they say they can do so next question please pretty skeptical myself most alternative medicines but um I've heard that there's been clinical trials from even philosophy of science professors about a acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine I was wondering what your viewpoints were on those or there's any validity well I was in China been in China several times one with with the the CSI people firmly psychic as you probably know and it was just not as easier to say than CSI I don't how you pronounce that but nonetheless I spoke with some people who were doing active buncher and moxibustion there on one of my trips I don't think was the one that I went with the with the skeptical group it was on somewhat for some other reason I was lecturing for the science the Chinese science and technology symposium but anyway I visited some people there are some Chinese people two of them had been educated at MIT and spoke perfect English much to my relief and they were in charge of an acupuncture acupuncture clinic there and they told me they said no we know that acupuncture doesn't work but we have a lot of people who have imaginary diseases and we know that the placebo effect does work on imaginary diseases certainly and we can't spend real medical time examining these people because we know there's nothing wrong with them and they come from a regular doctor who turns them away saying it's all in your mind and he sends them over to the acupuncturist and they get something there's traditionally Chinese and then they react favorably to that and that's one of the reasons why the Chinese government supports the notion of acupuncture on the other hand there are many many officials out there in China who do agree that acupuncture does work now it's been shown time and time again not to work that it only works through the sasebo effect in the long run now broken limbs diseases viral and bacterial infections are not going to react to acupuncture you can look like a pin cushion and not feel any better except you'll probably feel worse because sometimes the needle do hurt you see so that's my answer that yes now step right up a lot of people probably would recognize Houdini in terms of the background of escape artistry but many may not also know that he was in the business of discovering fraud that was something that he did were you influenced by him in both areas did you know about his background well he was dead bee two years before I was born it's very awkward I tried to plan my birth but not possible he died in 1926 I was born in 1928 go ahead do the subtraction yes I'm 80 years old so there but I must say that Houdini Harry Houdini though his intentions were very fine of course he was spurred into doing this after his mother died now he was a mother's boy there's no question he was a mother's boy he was he doted on his mother everything in his life was directed towards making his mother proud of him and once she died while he was away in Europe he felt very badly he hadn't been around when she died and he was so devoted to her and such that he started to resent the spirituous too immediately came to have spiritualism was very big at that particular time of history and they started to say that they were speaking with the voice of his mother now he went in disguise with the funny toupee and a beard mustache from the whole thing and he's guides himself very effectively there are some pictures photographs of him taken in disguise and he got in on the seances and then he would stand up and take the stuff up and throw up floor and say I'm Harry Houdini he was rather a showman that way and I couldn't go in there and say I'm her Houdini no one will believe that but I said I'm James Randi they say yes so however he would do that he would do that quite frequently and he would say that this was a fake and so and so his theory was that if he could duplicate it by trickery which he did very effectively that meant the originals were doing trickery that doesn't prove it at all you got it you got to actually catch them in the act doing it and show how they did the trick not make it impossible for the do it people said the very Geller give him a really industrial-strength teaspoon and see if he'll bet no you won't do that he doesn't do it he does it with weak teaspoons no I don't use that kind of cheese when I use this kind so you can't make the rules for these guys they have to operate under their own rules so Harry Houdini was very effective for the short time that he did this sort of thing it was only a few years after that that he himself died and it did inspire me I must admit that the fact that he had gone about exposing people like this did inspire me and probably was responsible for my getting into this field maybe a bit earlier than the way I might normally have done so next question please you would mention that you think that most magicians are very honest because they are telling the audience right away that they're tricking them yeah I was wondering what you thought of the new wave of magicians on TV chris angel' comes to mind who seem to be very very happy to let their audience and fans think that they actually have powers without actually claiming to have powers well let's talk about Chris angel for one thing I get in his name years ago he was fussing around trying to come up with a name and I said CR is s a ngel that's just like jmes RI and di v and v fits on a marquee very well and angel is exactly what you're not so that's very funny that'll work and he comes from a Greek family they're very wealthy apparently and they owned restaurants all over the world a chain of restaurants so he doesn't need the money he could spend all his time just developing the act and he did he spent many years developing yet until he finally got some recognition and he's done very well for himself how many of what he the tricks he does are done by means of camera trickery but he doesn't try to convince you that he's the real thing he never says he is the real thing you've got to watch his statements very very carefully he'll allow you to believe that he never says it's the real thing and this is now you know how he opposed to regular on the NBC program that got on there called phenomenon the there's a long name during something rather silly and Geller didn't do anything other programs say well that blows my mind his mind apparently is very easily blow up because there was some medallist on there who did really nothing stuff it was just insignificant a lot of bad acting in such falling all over the stage and whatnot but it was really bad and Criss Angel I must have done my little little miffed at him because he stole my idea of the million dollar prize and he offered a Yeller right there with a sealed envelope kind of thing but Gilbert never claimed to be able to do that on camera like that boom boom so he did it badly I think that's unfortunate but most of the magicians don't claim to do the real thing now there are a few of them out there but made claims on our million-dollar prize for example but they won't sign the document she won't actually send in the application so we don't deal with them at all and I just hope that we outlast them but that's that's very reprehensible I'm after the Society of American Magicians and the Magic Circle in London who I've rejoined I was member of the inner magic circle with gold star and all things so there for many years and I I just stopped paying my dues because it was a lot of money and it was sending it away to England not getting nothing for it but I've been reinstated ladies so I'm now on an active campaign to get the Society of American Magicians where Harry Houdini the whole thing way back of investigating psychics and to get the Magic Circle to get there committee working again and have them actually go out and fight these guys because they need to be fought and I think the magicians have that responsibility because they are making a handsome living entertaining people and using exactly the same gimmicks but at least they are honest enough to say that it is a trick next question please here a lot of talk about meridians in the body chakras chakra centers yeah is that just with stuff yep next question no they're meridians in the body you can read and look on our web page I think I have it is that we've got a the encyclopedia of claims the the paranormal of whatnot is already on our webpage in in text form so you can look it up but do look up things like meridians and acupuncture and a few other things that was a mistake that the Chinese made they found in executed bodies and whatnot and victims of accidents they found these little tubes all over the body those are the veins interviewed but they were empty by the time they got to them because they had drained and they figured that was where some invisible gas passed through the body and they invented the whole idea of meridians and the interesting game about acupuncture there are 365 acupuncture points on the body sound like a familiar number and each one of those is most propitiously used if it's used on the day that's marked for it and so that that makes you think maybe there's not much to acupuncture after all but I thank you very much for your question next question sorry like yeah they nobody gets treated they all stay home the act bunch of clinics they close they take the shingle down they wait for the day stay that's I just finished reading your book flim-flam and I was recurrently getting frustrated at the gullibility of the people and I was just wondering do you get frustrated when you're dealing with the people and if not how do you prevent it and if so how do you deal with it well I'm used to it because since I was the age of 15 or so on I started to fight this sort of thing I've always been frustrated by it but you can't let your frustration get the better of you remember these people not only want it to be true in many cases they need it to be true and they need this kind of fantasy I can't I can lead the earth to the water you know the old story but I can't raise the horse drink so all I do is I try to show them the way and I lead them to it that's what but si si doesn't this whole organization all of us we do this sort of a we try to lead people to the truth and we show it to them if they want to turn away from that it's like after a peter Popoff session that CBS covered I threw out the name of the program many years ago and we went I went with the disguise on the red wig of the whole thing as Adam Jerome and Popoff reformed out there and a woman got up out of a wheelchair and walked out of the place and we got her as she came out and we questioned her and I was right there I was one of the questionnaires on camera and I said but that wheelchair you were put into that wheelchair weren't you and she said oh yes I didn't need a wheelchair and I said didn't you think that was deceptive she said well yes in a way but I still believe oh I still believe and she turned and walked away and the cameraman was stunned they didn't believe that she would still believe after having done this little farce of her own because she wanted to go along with the thing remember the faith heaters tell you keep the healing if you deny it and you don't tell people about it then the devil will take it from you so that's their gimmick he saw the faithful will decide to believe it let's face it ladies and gentlemen please help me thank our guest one more time thank you thank you very much very playful down here Thank You burger at all thank you very much

Channel: Center for Inquiry

Views: 186,066

Rating: 4.8713694 out of 5

Keywords: amazing, james, randi, center, for, inquiry, productions, search, chimera, the amazing james randi, cfi, center for inquiry, junk science, pseudoscience, pseudoscience vs science, Reasonable Talk

Id: S_I8aXrRAVA

Length: 91min 2sec (5462 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2009

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