Latest / The You Project / #2080 Enjoy The Delusion - Prof. Chris French

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#2080 Enjoy The Delusion - Prof. Chris French · The You Project

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Speaker 1: I'll get our team. Welcome to another installment of the
0:02
Speaker 1: New Project. Craig Anthony Harper reporting in for Judy on
0:06
Speaker 1: the as I Record, Wednesday, the seventh of bloody January.
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Speaker 1: It's going to be one thousand degrees in Melbourne. Forty
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Speaker 1: four degrees Celsius. Can you believe that, Professor Chris, can
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Speaker 1: you believe it's going to be forty four? Here? What's
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Speaker 1: the top over there? Today?
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Speaker 2: I think today we may have just scraped into the
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Speaker 2: one degree at one point. Oh, the coldest, the coldest
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Speaker 2: place in the country yesterday was minus twelve and a
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Speaker 2: half degrees, So we really are going through quite a
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Speaker 2: severe cold snap at the moment.
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Speaker 1: That is, that is that's beyond cold. So what do
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Speaker 1: you do when it's in that sub zero? Do you
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Speaker 1: just stay in? What do you do? It mustn't be
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Speaker 1: fun getting out in that.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to take the dog out, you know,
0:51
Speaker 2: just for a short we Fortunately, we've got a couple
0:52
Speaker 2: of very nice coffee places within one hundred yards or so,
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Speaker 2: so so some days it's just a matter of making
0:59
Speaker 2: it to there for an I sit down in a
1:01
Speaker 2: coffee you know. But yeah, it's it really has been
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Speaker 2: it's been quite exceptional.
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Speaker 1: You know, how do you go in the cold? How
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Speaker 1: do you go in the cold? Does it affect you, like,
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Speaker 1: does it get you down? Does it affect you emotionally
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Speaker 1: or mentally?
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Speaker 2: We no, not hugely. I have to say, you know,
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Speaker 2: it's u I mean, as long as you can get
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Speaker 2: back inside and your house is reasonably warm, you know
1:29
Speaker 2: at the moment, even though I mean in the room
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Speaker 2: I'm in, I've kind of tried to find a quiet
1:34
Speaker 2: room to do this, and I've had the heating on
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Speaker 2: in here for the last hour or so before I
1:38
Speaker 2: came in, but it's still pretty damn chilly in here.
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Speaker 2: But uh, you know, overall, it's not it's not a
1:45
Speaker 2: big deal. You know, we're we're very We're very lucky
1:48
Speaker 2: where we where we live, you know, compared to what's
1:52
Speaker 2: happening in some of the parts of the world. You've
1:54
Speaker 2: just got to kind of count your blessings.
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Speaker 1: That is absolutely true perspective context, it's all of it
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Speaker 1: all right now, I'm going to read I hate doing this,
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Speaker 1: but I'm just going to I tried to find something succinct.
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Speaker 1: You correct what I get wrong. Chris French is a
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Speaker 1: British psychologist and Professor Emeritus at Goldsmith's University of London,
2:15
Speaker 1: where he founded the and Nomalistic Psychology Research Unity specializes
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Speaker 1: in the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences, why
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Speaker 1: people believe in ghosts, psychics, UFOs, astrology, and other weird
2:29
Speaker 1: and wonderful claims. A former editor in chi chief of
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Speaker 1: the Skeptic magazine, Chris is a leading science communicator and
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Speaker 1: frequent media commentator known for taking extraordinary claims seriously while
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Speaker 1: explaining them through evidence based psychology. And he's my favorite
2:44
Speaker 1: bit audience. This is why you know I got him on.
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Speaker 1: He's also the author of the Science of Weird Shit. Now,
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Speaker 1: did you come up with that title or somebody else?
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Speaker 2: I came Initially it was a joke. I was originally
2:58
Speaker 2: going to call my book Why Weird Stuff Matters, which
3:03
Speaker 2: I still think is quite a good title. But then
3:05
Speaker 2: to a couple of friends, I just said, or I
3:06
Speaker 2: might just call it the Science of Weird Shit, and
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Speaker 2: kind of almost with that exception, they said, oh, I'd
3:11
Speaker 2: buy that. So I started toying with the idea of
3:15
Speaker 2: actually using it as the title. Didn't know whether or
3:18
Speaker 2: not the publishers would be would be up for that,
3:21
Speaker 2: especially as I mean the book was published by m
3:24
Speaker 2: T Press, so it's a respectable publisher. They were quite
3:29
Speaker 2: happy with it. They were they were really on board.
3:32
Speaker 2: I mean, in my mind, I'd always kind of imagine
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Speaker 2: the title as having an asterisk where the eye should
3:38
Speaker 2: go in that final naughty word. No, no, no, they said, no,
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Speaker 2: we'll put an eye in there. Will be proud of
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Speaker 2: the title. So so that's what we went with. And
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Speaker 2: I think it's a it's kind of worked as a title.
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Speaker 2: I mean, you say you loved it. Some one or
3:52
Speaker 2: two people didn't like it. I mean, in some cases
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Speaker 2: just because they don't like the use of edgy language,
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Speaker 2: and I think in other cases it might be that
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Speaker 2: it might give the impression. And I was a bit
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Speaker 2: worried about this that I was kind of being dismissive
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Speaker 2: and flippant about the kind of weird experiences that people
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Speaker 2: have and I'm not, you know, I take them seriously.
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Speaker 2: I want to try and explain them, trying to understand them.
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Speaker 2: But overall, I think it's probably it's probably helped in
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Speaker 2: terms of book sales rather than hindered.
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Speaker 1: So I totally agree I think science, ye people and
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Speaker 1: academic people don't always this. I'm putting an asterisk next
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Speaker 1: to this. Understand how to build rapport and connection and
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Speaker 1: trust with people who aren't academics, which is the majority
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Speaker 1: of the population. And so I'm always thinking, how do
4:41
Speaker 1: I share what can be kind of complicated or you know,
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Speaker 1: quite nuanced or academic ideas or information in a way
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Speaker 1: which resonates with everyone and is understandable for everyone, so
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Speaker 1: that it's of value to everyone or potentially who listens.
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Speaker 1: And yeah, I think that's we have a similar story.
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Speaker 1: I won't bore you, but I I've written seven books,
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Speaker 1: and I wrote a book called Stop Fucking Around. Wasn't
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Speaker 1: even going to be that, like you. That was the
5:11
Speaker 1: working title because the concept was about we just waste
5:15
Speaker 1: a lot of time and energy and you know, on bullshit.
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Speaker 1: And I did brief you before the show. I do
5:21
Speaker 1: swear I should have done that, but anyway, and so
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Speaker 1: that was the working title, and all the people that
5:26
Speaker 1: I gave it to to have a proofread and a
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Speaker 1: bit of a just a meander through, I said, by
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Speaker 1: the way, this is not the title, but it's kind
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Speaker 1: of the feel the vibe of the message right, stop
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Speaker 1: fucking around. Yet to come up with a title. Everyone
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Speaker 1: said make that the title, and I go, I can't
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Speaker 1: have a book called Now. This was pre all the
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Speaker 1: fuck books, like the Mark Manson there's a lot of
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Speaker 1: you know, the subtle art of not giving a fuck
5:49
Speaker 1: and all that. So that was in twenty ten, sixteen
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Speaker 1: years ago. So and that one then got picked up
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Speaker 1: by Penguin, which obviously was a very big publisher in Australia,
6:02
Speaker 1: number one or two and we want you to do
6:04
Speaker 1: it basically part two or version two like the sequel.
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Speaker 1: And then I did that, and then they didn't want
6:13
Speaker 1: to put that word in the title, so they came
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Speaker 1: up with another title, which was boring and a much
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Speaker 1: better book than the first one with the F on
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Speaker 1: the cover, and it undersold like it. It was outsold
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Speaker 1: by the book with fuck on the cover five to one.
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Speaker 2: And I speaks volumes, isn't it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, well I wrote both books, and I know
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Speaker 1: which one is a better book. But anyway, enough about that. Hey, So,
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Speaker 1: and when I'm interviewing people like you, who I feel
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Speaker 1: like you've probably done a million conversations and interviews, I
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Speaker 1: don't want to ask you all the same things, but
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Speaker 1: most of my audience are meeting you for the first time.
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Speaker 1: So I apologized for what might be repetitious, bloody questioning.
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Speaker 1: But so let's start with why the fascination with the
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Speaker 1: paran normal and all of those kind of weird and
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Speaker 1: wacky ideas that people sometimes embrace as absolute an equivocal
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Speaker 1: truth when they might not be or often add or
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Speaker 1: usually add.
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Speaker 2: Well, I mean again in terms of my own interest.
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Speaker 2: I mean I used to be a believer in a
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Speaker 2: lot of this stuff, and talk kind of quite well
7:31
Speaker 2: into early adulthood. Yeah, I had the kind of fascination
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Speaker 2: with this stuff. Most of the books and TV programs
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Speaker 2: that were around when I was growing up were very,
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Speaker 2: very uncritical, you know, they're very often quite sensationalistic. I
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Speaker 2: can see that now. I had a particular particular fascination
7:53
Speaker 2: with the idea of kind of ancient astronauts, you know,
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Speaker 2: the Eric Ofvondanikan type stuff of those books, and kind
8:01
Speaker 2: of very naively. I mean, I can see that now,
8:03
Speaker 2: but at the time, obviously it didn't occur to me.
8:06
Speaker 2: I thought it must all be true because it was
8:08
Speaker 2: written in a book, you know, I just accepted it
8:10
Speaker 2: at face value. I think by the time I kind
8:15
Speaker 2: of did my first degree, and right the way through
8:18
Speaker 2: doing that first degree in psychology, I still would have
8:20
Speaker 2: probably come out as a believer on any scale to
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Speaker 2: measure believe in the paranormal. It wasn't until I was
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Speaker 2: doing my PhD that someone a friend recommended a particular
8:32
Speaker 2: book called Parapsychology, Science or Magic, and it was by
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Speaker 2: a Canadian psychologist called James Orcock, and it was the
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Speaker 2: first skeptical treatment of all this stuff that I'd ever
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Speaker 2: come across. And it just kind of opened my eyes,
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Speaker 2: you know, and I realized that there were books out
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Speaker 2: there that took a skeptical perspective on this stuff. There
8:53
Speaker 2: were even magazines like you know, The Skeptical Inquirer, and yeah,
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Speaker 2: they did. This whole new kind of world opened up
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Speaker 2: full of interesting people. And I don't know how much
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Speaker 2: you know about kind of organized skepticism, if we can
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Speaker 2: call it that, or people like James Randy and Ray
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Speaker 2: Heimon and various others who were into all of this
9:17
Speaker 2: stuff but from a skeptical point of view. Yeah, I mean, basically,
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Speaker 2: I mean by the time I started at Goldsmith's, which
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Speaker 2: was back in nineteen eighty five. I was definitely a skeptic.
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Speaker 2: Did a couple of lectures on this stuff for the
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Speaker 2: students from a skeptical perspective this time. And whether you're
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Speaker 2: a believer or a skeptic, I think people like talking
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Speaker 2: about this stuff. That's my experience, you know. People will
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Speaker 2: talk about it down at the pub or over a
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Speaker 2: dinner party or wherever. And what started off as a
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Speaker 2: kind of hobbyer side interest eventually ended up being my
9:55
Speaker 2: kind of main focus of research. I mean, I've condensed
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Speaker 2: a lot down there, you know, but actually we got
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Speaker 2: to a point where this, if I'm known for anything,
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Speaker 2: is known for doing this stuff. And it's been really
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Speaker 2: it's been a really interesting experience. You know. I've met
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Speaker 2: lots of interesting people, people who claim to have psychic powers.
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Speaker 2: I've got a lot of friends who are conjurers, you know,
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Speaker 2: just that whole world of what's real, how the deceptive
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Speaker 2: techniques that can be used. Are people who genuinely believe
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Speaker 2: in all this stuff, that really are convinced that they
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Speaker 2: have a gift. And it's just kind of fascinating to me.
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Speaker 2: On the one hand, there's the question of, well, could
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Speaker 2: any of this stuff be genuinely paranormal, and in my
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Speaker 2: own experience, I've not come across anything, despite having tested
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Speaker 2: lots and lots of psychic claimants, not come across any
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Speaker 2: evidence that any of it is real. But then that
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Speaker 2: raises the secondary question, why do so many people believe
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Speaker 2: in it? Why do so many people have these experiences
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Speaker 2: that they're convinced of paranormal and trying to get to
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Speaker 2: the bottom of the psychology behind it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so to me, it seems like people want to
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Speaker 1: believe in something. Correct me if I'm wrong. This is
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Speaker 1: just my guess, because obviously it must give them a
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Speaker 1: sense of comfort on some level to believe that, oh,
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Speaker 1: there's this thing that's kind of looking after me or
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Speaker 1: protecting me, or guiding me, or informing me or enlightening me,
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Speaker 1: so I've got some kind of advantage or whatever, and
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Speaker 1: or some kind of protection. And also, I think when
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Speaker 1: you believe something that you can't prove, which I guess
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Speaker 1: is called faith, you know, then you have an emotional
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Speaker 1: and personal interest in that being true, which pretty much
11:43
Speaker 1: cancels the possibility of object absolute objectivity. You know. It's
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Speaker 1: like when you desperately want something to be true, you're emotional,
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Speaker 1: you're not logical, you're not using your prefrontal cortex a
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Speaker 1: whole lot.
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Speaker 2: That's right, I mean, Having said I mean, I think
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Speaker 2: you're absolutely right in what you've said. Having said that,
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Speaker 2: I think the kind of absolute objectivity is something that
12:06
Speaker 2: you lose all of us. You know, some of us
12:08
Speaker 2: try harder, some of us us actually kind of pay
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Speaker 2: more attention to evidence and kind of rational critical thinking
12:18
Speaker 2: to try to come to our conclusions and so on.
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Speaker 2: But even those of us who would self identify as
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Speaker 2: skeptics and rationalists and all this, we've also still got
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Speaker 2: our biases because they're they're wired in basically, they're a
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Speaker 2: product of our evolutionary history. But you know, as I say,
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Speaker 2: I would certainly recommend that, certainly, for making really important
12:40
Speaker 2: decisions in your life, you should err towards the side
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Speaker 2: of trying to be as rational and cool and unemotional
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Speaker 2: about making those decisions as you can be, whilst acknowledging
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Speaker 2: that fundamentally we've all got an irrational side, and we
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Speaker 2: can enjoy that, you know. I mean, I like kind
12:58
Speaker 2: of like kind of like science fiction. I like surrealism,
13:02
Speaker 2: I like the kind of absurd side of creativity. You know,
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Speaker 2: and comedy, you know, all that sort of stuff. Celebrate it.
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Speaker 2: But when it comes down to making important decisions and
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Speaker 2: trying to do our best to get to the closest
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Speaker 2: approximation we can about the truth about the way things are,
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Speaker 2: then I think we should rely on that more rational,
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Speaker 2: non emotional side to the extent that we can.
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Speaker 1: Well, I guess all of us have got pre existing
13:30
Speaker 1: ideas and values and beliefs and programming and conditioning, and
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Speaker 1: that's kind of the window through which we view and
13:38
Speaker 1: process the world. Right. It's like I always look through
13:41
Speaker 1: the Craig window, which clearly is just the Craig window.
13:44
Speaker 1: It's not the Chris window. It's you know, and so
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Speaker 1: I'm not seeing you know, I'm not seeing the thing.
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Speaker 1: I'm seeing my version of the thing, whatever that means,
13:54
Speaker 1: you know. But I think sometimes we misinterpret or we
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Speaker 1: can't justin the objective reality of what's happening compared with
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Speaker 1: our subjective story. It's like, well, no, I was there. Yeah, No,
14:09
Speaker 1: he is offensive. He's offensive, absolutely, And the next person's like, no,
14:14
Speaker 1: he's not. He's funny, And the next persons no, he's not.
14:18
Speaker 1: He's actually quite clever. And it's you know, I probably
14:22
Speaker 1: like you where some people go, hey, Chris, I fucking
14:25
Speaker 1: love the title of your book. That is so good,
14:27
Speaker 1: it's so clever. If it wasn't for that title, I
14:30
Speaker 1: wouldn't have picked it up. I picked it up, I
14:32
Speaker 1: read it, thank you for writing it, and other people
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Speaker 1: like well, I would never look at that because clearly
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Speaker 1: it's whatever. It's same stimulus, different response, right exactly.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's one of the really interesting things
14:44
Speaker 2: about this area that I mean, which I refer to
14:47
Speaker 2: as anomalistic psychology, the psychology of anomalist experiences, that very
14:53
Speaker 2: often you are dealing with a situation where clearly people
14:57
Speaker 2: are reading their own meaning into things. I mean. And again,
15:00
Speaker 2: one of the reasons we're so successful as a species
15:02
Speaker 2: is that we are so good at picking up on
15:05
Speaker 2: meaningful patterns and finding significant connections and so on and
15:10
Speaker 2: so forth. Problem is that sometimes we overplay it, and
15:13
Speaker 2: we think we're seeing meaning and significance when really we're
15:17
Speaker 2: looking at randomness, you know. And that's the root of
15:20
Speaker 2: a lot of paranormal beliefs. It's also the root of
15:22
Speaker 2: a lot of conspiracy beliefs, you know, where people are
15:25
Speaker 2: kind of joining the dots, where really those jots that
15:28
Speaker 2: those dots don't have any real connection. We've just we've
15:31
Speaker 2: just read into it. We've seen something there. And that's
15:34
Speaker 2: that's the kind of theme that crops up again and
15:36
Speaker 2: again within anomalistic psychology.
15:40
Speaker 1: What's what's in the you know, when we talk about
15:43
Speaker 1: the science of weird shit, what's near the top of
15:46
Speaker 1: the leaderboard, in the home in on the on the scorecard.
15:51
Speaker 1: When it comes to like what's in maybe your top one, two,
15:55
Speaker 1: three of things that you've kind of dealt.
15:58
Speaker 2: With quite interesting, I mean when you ask that question,
16:02
Speaker 2: because obviously you can think about kind of answering it
16:04
Speaker 2: in different ways. I mean, I've written, previous to writing
16:10
Speaker 2: this book, which is very much kind of aimed a
16:12
Speaker 2: general readership, I co wrote a textbook on a normalistic psychology,
16:19
Speaker 2: And of course, when you faced with doing these tasks,
16:22
Speaker 2: you've got to, okay, is how are we going to
16:23
Speaker 2: divide the area up? You know, how are we going
16:26
Speaker 2: to kind of just deal with it? How were going
16:27
Speaker 2: to cover things? One way to cover it? Which is
16:31
Speaker 2: something that was done in a book many years ago
16:34
Speaker 2: with the same title, A Normalistic Psychology, but not by us,
16:38
Speaker 2: by a couple of guys called Disney and Jones. They
16:42
Speaker 2: took the approach of taking different psychological processes, so having
16:47
Speaker 2: a chapter, say, on perception, and a chapter on memory,
16:50
Speaker 2: and a chapter on whatever, and see how that kind
16:54
Speaker 2: of applied to explaining the kind of stuff that we're
16:58
Speaker 2: interested in. The approach that we took for our co
17:02
Speaker 2: authored textbook, we took each of the sub different subdisciplines
17:06
Speaker 2: of psychology and said what light do they cast on
17:11
Speaker 2: the kind of issues we're interested in. So if you
17:13
Speaker 2: sort of think about it, you know, developmental psychology, what
17:17
Speaker 2: you know? What? What what do kids believe about magic
17:20
Speaker 2: and about paranormal claims and so on, and and how
17:23
Speaker 2: does that develop over the years. Neuropsychology, what's happening in
17:27
Speaker 2: the brain when people have weird experiences? Social psychology, cognitive psychology,
17:33
Speaker 2: all of these different subdisciplines have different perspectives and different
17:37
Speaker 2: interesting things to say about weird shit. For the for
17:43
Speaker 2: the for the book, for the Science of wordship book,
17:46
Speaker 2: I took the approach of just dealing with different paranormal topics.
17:50
Speaker 2: So there's kind of there's chapters a couple of chapters
17:52
Speaker 2: there on kind of ghosts. There's a chapter on reincarnation.
17:57
Speaker 2: There's chapters on precognition, et cetera, et cetera. I think,
18:02
Speaker 2: I mean, one thing, one of the kind of messages
18:05
Speaker 2: that I wanted to get across is that, as I've said,
18:09
Speaker 2: as far as I'm concerned, we've all got these kind
18:12
Speaker 2: of biases, We've still got them in there's a huge
18:15
Speaker 2: chapter on There's a lot there's a lot of cognitive
18:18
Speaker 2: biases within the book. These are kind of things that
18:20
Speaker 2: are kind of wired in that underlie a lot of
18:23
Speaker 2: these things. And one of my kind of main interests.
18:28
Speaker 2: I'd say over recent years, most of the actual kind
18:33
Speaker 2: of research papers that were published tended to be about
18:36
Speaker 2: either false memories in one way or another. That's one
18:41
Speaker 2: of my favorite topics, sleep paralysis, which is a fascinating topic,
18:48
Speaker 2: or belief in conspiracy theories. That that that's kind of
18:50
Speaker 2: most of the kind of output that we've produced. Even
18:53
Speaker 2: though I'm interested in a wider range of things than that,
18:56
Speaker 2: that's where the actual published research papers were. So those
19:02
Speaker 2: three topics have got, you know, are all close to
19:05
Speaker 2: my heart. In terms of within parapsychology, I would say
19:11
Speaker 2: that there are some areas of research that are more
19:16
Speaker 2: challenging for skeptics to explain away than others. So you know,
19:21
Speaker 2: in my head, there are some There are some things
19:24
Speaker 2: areas within parapsychology or within the world of the paranormal
19:28
Speaker 2: that I think we we can definitely kind of explain,
19:31
Speaker 2: you know, we don't. We don't need to look any further.
19:34
Speaker 2: But there are some areas, and I think a lot
19:36
Speaker 2: of skeptics are not aware of that. They think it's
19:38
Speaker 2: all easy to explain away. There are some areas where
19:42
Speaker 2: some of the evidence is a bigger challenge to skeptics
19:45
Speaker 2: to come up with kind of convincing explanations, particularly some
19:49
Speaker 2: of the work on telepathy using a technique known as
19:53
Speaker 2: the Gansfeldt technique, where you have a receiver and a
19:58
Speaker 2: sender in two different rooms, and the sender tries to
20:02
Speaker 2: transmit information telepathically to the receiver. The receiver is in
20:07
Speaker 2: a situation where of kind of sensory deprivation, and some
20:12
Speaker 2: of the evidence from those kind of studies is it
20:14
Speaker 2: certainly interesting striking. Some of the research on reincarnation claims
20:20
Speaker 2: past apparent past life memories in children and so on. Again,
20:25
Speaker 2: I'm not convinced otherwise. I wouldn't be a skeptic. Still, obviously,
20:30
Speaker 2: I think that some of that evidence that's produced is
20:33
Speaker 2: kind of is really quite intriguing, and I'm not one
20:36
Speaker 2: hundred percent sure that I know. I think it's best
20:38
Speaker 2: explained in terms of false memories, but I don't know.
20:43
Speaker 2: So there I say, there are some areas like that.
20:45
Speaker 2: I remember many years back reading Carl Sagan's book, and
20:52
Speaker 2: I was, as it happened, I was reading it while
20:55
Speaker 2: I was making a documentary, while I was taking part
20:58
Speaker 2: in a documentary about reincarnation amongst the Druze people in Lebanon,
21:05
Speaker 2: and actually he was reading this in my lighting on
21:08
Speaker 2: my bed in my hotel room, reading this, and Sagan
21:11
Speaker 2: kind of mentioned three areas that he said, but essentially
21:15
Speaker 2: the same as I just said, I don't kind of
21:17
Speaker 2: believe that these things are real, but I think they're
21:19
Speaker 2: really intriguing and they just might be true. And one
21:22
Speaker 2: of them was past life memories in children. Another was
21:26
Speaker 2: referring to the Gansvelt type stuff, and another was referring
21:29
Speaker 2: to the idea that maybe just by willpower, people could
21:34
Speaker 2: influence the kind of random number generators in a very
21:37
Speaker 2: very tiny way, but that they could they could influence
21:40
Speaker 2: the output, you know, and I would tend to agree
21:42
Speaker 2: with that. I think they're still quite challenging areas.
21:46
Speaker 1: Have you ever? I love all of that, Thank you
21:49
Speaker 1: so many questions. I'm one of my areas of curiosity
21:55
Speaker 1: is plus ebos and no cibos, right, plus place ebo
21:59
Speaker 1: is because so I spent my first couple of decades
22:04
Speaker 1: of my working life working with teams and athletes and
22:06
Speaker 1: the general public trying to help people get fit, strong, healthy, functional,
22:11
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. And so many times where
22:17
Speaker 1: you know, people would we'd be talking about health, somebody
22:20
Speaker 1: would take something that was essentially you know, inert and
22:26
Speaker 1: they would get some like that'd take some supplement that's
22:29
Speaker 1: essentially bullshit. We found out later, you know, since the
22:33
Speaker 1: early eighties when I started working, and probably you too,
22:36
Speaker 1: so many supplements and sporting this and nutritional so many
22:41
Speaker 1: of them are essentially nothing, but people believe there's something
22:44
Speaker 1: and they actually start to get some results, like not
22:47
Speaker 1: imagined results, real results in a life you're that's not
22:52
Speaker 1: creating the result you are, and it's hard to prove,
22:54
Speaker 1: but that whole kind of you know, I've had a
22:58
Speaker 1: guy called Professor Jeffrey Rettiger on a couple of times.
23:00
Speaker 1: Who's from Harvard Medical School. He's a doctor and a
23:03
Speaker 1: psychiatrist and a researcher. And his well, last time I
23:07
Speaker 1: spoke to him, which was two years ago, his entire
23:10
Speaker 1: focus was on around place ebos and people who had
23:14
Speaker 1: literally stage four cancer who got better big for whatever reason. Right,
23:19
Speaker 1: But have you ever opened that door or thought about
23:22
Speaker 1: that stuff?
23:23
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah I did. I wrote a review chapter on placebos.
23:27
Speaker 1: Oh.
23:29
Speaker 2: The book was published in two thousand and one, so
23:30
Speaker 2: it was a long time ago now, and I confess
23:33
Speaker 2: that I haven't really kept up with the research kind
23:37
Speaker 2: of since then. I kind of read around it a
23:39
Speaker 2: lot while I was writing that chapter.
23:42
Speaker 1: I believe that was Can you believe that was quarter
23:45
Speaker 1: of a century ago?
23:46
Speaker 2: Prop? I don't remind me. Yeah, I mean where did
23:52
Speaker 2: the time go? You know? But anyway, Yeah, I was
23:55
Speaker 2: kind of invited to contribute a chapter to an edited book,
24:03
Speaker 2: and one of the topics that was interesting and obviously
24:06
Speaker 2: was placebo effects. I mean, placebo effects are kind of
24:10
Speaker 2: a beloved by most skeptics. You know, why is it
24:15
Speaker 2: that some worthless forms of complementary and alternative therapy seemed
24:20
Speaker 2: to produce positive results, even often albeit subjectively. But what
24:24
Speaker 2: was the explanation, Oh, it's a placebo effect. Now, So
24:28
Speaker 2: I expected, I thought, well, great, I'm going to take
24:30
Speaker 2: a deep dive into that literature, and I expected to
24:33
Speaker 2: find lots of evidence, good strong scientific evidence to support big,
24:40
Speaker 2: strong placebo effects. And actually I was a little bit
24:44
Speaker 2: more than a little bit. I was quite disappointed because
24:47
Speaker 2: when I actually did that deep dive, I realized that
24:50
Speaker 2: a lot of the most superficially impressive evidence was anecdotal.
24:56
Speaker 2: It was coming from people who were saying that, you know,
24:59
Speaker 2: I mean the paper on the powerful placebo by Beacher
25:03
Speaker 2: from nineteen fifty five. A lot of the stuff in
25:06
Speaker 2: there is it's actually there's a lot wrong with that paper,
25:10
Speaker 2: which I wasn't aware of until like I kind of,
25:12
Speaker 2: you know, started reading around and realized that people have
25:15
Speaker 2: been critiquing it and so on, and I got to
25:17
Speaker 2: a point where I was wondering, is there really such
25:21
Speaker 2: a thing as the placebo effect at all? I mean,
25:23
Speaker 2: there's a lot of kind of muddle and confusion and
25:27
Speaker 2: misconceptions and so on, and love a lot of problems
25:31
Speaker 2: related to the terminology that she used and so on.
25:34
Speaker 2: But once you kind of cleared all that away. I
25:36
Speaker 2: was being thing, is there anything really here at all?
25:39
Speaker 2: And a paper came out. I can't remember who was by.
25:42
Speaker 2: There was a couple of Norwegian researchers and I think
25:44
Speaker 2: it was somewhere like, I don't know, the Journal of
25:47
Speaker 2: the American Medical Association somewhere. I was there a certainly
25:50
Speaker 2: a respectable publication basically saying is there such a thing
25:53
Speaker 2: as the placebo effect? Which was very much along the
25:55
Speaker 2: lines that I was thinking at the time. Now I
25:58
Speaker 2: got to a point where I thought there was some
26:01
Speaker 2: evidence that there really was a placebo effect. It really
26:04
Speaker 2: was convincing a part from all the other stuff. I
26:08
Speaker 2: do have a friend who is really into this stuff,
26:12
Speaker 2: who is convinced that the placebo effects it doesn't exist.
26:17
Speaker 2: Now I don't know if he's right or not, because,
26:19
Speaker 2: as I say, I've not kept up with the literature
26:21
Speaker 2: over the years, and you know, I certainly I mean,
26:25
Speaker 2: I don't know whether you're familiar with Edzard Earnst. He's
26:29
Speaker 2: like he was a professor of the first professor of
26:32
Speaker 2: complimentary medicine in the UK, very very you know, massive
26:37
Speaker 2: publication list. I've got a lot of time for Edzard.
26:42
Speaker 2: He's a strong believer in the placebo effect, you know,
26:46
Speaker 2: So on the one and I've got this, I've got
26:48
Speaker 2: this friend who's kind of convinced it doesn't exist. I've
26:50
Speaker 2: got another friend who is convinced it is real and
26:53
Speaker 2: it can be powerful, And I basically I don't know.
26:57
Speaker 2: I think that you can certainly get situations like that
26:59
Speaker 2: where people are using, as you say, particularly in the
27:03
Speaker 2: world of kind of sports sports science, where people will
27:06
Speaker 2: try something and subjectively it has it has an impact
27:11
Speaker 2: on them. And then obviously there's all kinds of other
27:13
Speaker 2: possibilities with respect to what might underlie those kind of
27:17
Speaker 2: placebo effects. Is it just that it's given that person
27:19
Speaker 2: that little bit more confidence that they lacked and made
27:22
Speaker 2: them and that's improved their performance, or you know, whatever
27:26
Speaker 2: else it might be. But yeah, I do find it
27:30
Speaker 2: a fascinating area, and I do still kind of find
27:34
Speaker 2: myself referring to placebo effects and some of the stuff.
27:37
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, it depends on how
27:38
Speaker 2: you how you define it. I mean, I've some of
27:42
Speaker 2: the papers, some of the work that we've done is is, Yeah,
27:46
Speaker 2: it's certainly on the looking at the effects of the
27:48
Speaker 2: power of suggestion, and really what is that CBO effect?
27:53
Speaker 2: You know? If you I'll give you an example one
27:56
Speaker 2: Once we did a couple of studies and unfortunately I
27:59
Speaker 2: never got around to publishing them in a properly referee journal,
28:03
Speaker 2: even though we you know, the research had been well received.
28:07
Speaker 2: I was just always I was just too busy at
28:08
Speaker 2: the time, you know, And now I think the kind
28:10
Speaker 2: of time has passed. We were looking at claims about
28:14
Speaker 2: crystal power, crystal energy, right, all this stuff from the
28:19
Speaker 2: New Age area, and basically what we did we gave
28:23
Speaker 2: people crystals to hold, and we told them that, you know,
28:28
Speaker 2: there's this notion that crystals kind of have this energy,
28:31
Speaker 2: this kind of healing energy, and that sometimes you can
28:33
Speaker 2: actually feel it while you're holding the crystal. Just relax,
28:36
Speaker 2: hold the crystal and you might feel things like warmth
28:40
Speaker 2: or tingling or vibrations or whatever, you know. And we
28:44
Speaker 2: just got people to kind of hold these crystals for
28:47
Speaker 2: ten minutes or so then fill in a questionnaire about
28:50
Speaker 2: did they did they experience any of those things? And
28:53
Speaker 2: lots of them did so that was quite interesting, but
28:56
Speaker 2: kind of what was more interesting was that half of
28:59
Speaker 2: the people were given the genuine quartz crystal, and half
29:03
Speaker 2: were given a very realistic looking fake. Well, it didn't
29:06
Speaker 2: make any difference, not the real one, all the fake.
29:10
Speaker 2: They still reported those kind of sensations, you know. So
29:13
Speaker 2: I would describe it as a placebo effects, you know.
29:16
Speaker 2: So so yeah, but again I suppose it depends at
29:21
Speaker 2: the end of the day, how you're going to how
29:22
Speaker 2: you're going to define it, and then secondarily, how would
29:25
Speaker 2: you explain it. You know, I think.
29:29
Speaker 1: About people like, for example, if you're in a situation
29:36
Speaker 1: and you're in a room, for example, and in that
29:38
Speaker 1: room you're safe, You're totally safe, there's no threat, there's
29:42
Speaker 1: no immediate danger. But in that room you think you
29:46
Speaker 1: are in danger, which is a story, but it's not
29:50
Speaker 1: a truth. Like you're safe, there's no immediate threat at all,
29:53
Speaker 1: nothing bad is going to happen, but somebody thinks something
29:56
Speaker 1: bad is going to happen. Well, that's a belief, that's
29:59
Speaker 1: an idea, that's thinking. Then there's the emotion wrapped around that,
30:02
Speaker 1: which is potentially you know, like fear or even anger
30:06
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then there's the physiological flow on of
30:11
Speaker 1: elevated heart rate, breathing, adrenaline, cortisol, blood pressure, respiration, sympathetic
30:17
Speaker 1: nervous system. And so we see this cascade of physiology
30:22
Speaker 1: as a response of a thought, and the physiological response
30:26
Speaker 1: is built around a lie, not a truth. But the
30:31
Speaker 1: physiology is real, although the idea is not. So definitely,
30:37
Speaker 1: our mind can influence our body, you know, So I
30:42
Speaker 1: wonder like because we see the body responding because our
30:45
Speaker 1: body can't tell the difference between a perceived threat based
30:49
Speaker 1: on a lie and an actual threat, it will respond
30:54
Speaker 1: the same because it can't differentiate.
30:56
Speaker 2: So that that stuff interests me. Now all the kind
30:59
Speaker 2: of the not so called noss ebo effects, you know,
31:02
Speaker 2: the kind of where you get some kind of negative
31:05
Speaker 2: consequence of having those kind of beliefs. I mean, one
31:08
Speaker 2: of my one of my favorite examples of that will
31:12
Speaker 2: take me a little while to unpack this and explain it,
31:14
Speaker 2: but not my favorite. Okay, one of my favorite examples
31:18
Speaker 2: of that relates to the topic of sleep paralysis. Are
31:24
Speaker 2: you familiar with sleep paralysis? Craige, you know what that is.
31:27
Speaker 1: A little bit? Can you just unpack it for USh?
31:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm saying a lot of the readers,
31:31
Speaker 2: so the listeners might not know what it is sleep paralysis. Basically,
31:35
Speaker 2: in its most basic form, it's fairly common experience. It's
31:40
Speaker 2: when you're half awake and half asleep and you realize
31:43
Speaker 2: that you can't move. Yes, so it typically if that's
31:47
Speaker 2: all you get, then that lasts. It kind of typically
31:49
Speaker 2: last a few seconds. You snap out of it. You
31:52
Speaker 2: probably think that was a bit weird, but it's not
31:54
Speaker 2: really a big deal. You get on with your day.
31:57
Speaker 2: But it can have other symptoms associated with it can
32:00
Speaker 2: make it absolutely terrifying. So, for example, people often report
32:06
Speaker 2: that they get a very very strong sense of presence.
32:09
Speaker 2: They feel as if there's someone or something in the
32:12
Speaker 2: room with them and it has evil intention towards them.
32:15
Speaker 2: But even when they can't see or hear anything, but
32:19
Speaker 2: sometimes you will actually see and hear stuff. They'll hallucinate.
32:23
Speaker 2: They might hear voices or footsteps or mechanical sounds or whatever.
32:29
Speaker 2: They might see lights moving around the room, or dark
32:32
Speaker 2: shadows or monstrous figs, demons, in fact, anything that your
32:35
Speaker 2: imagination can dream up, you can actually see during one
32:38
Speaker 2: of these episodes. And although I would say it's a
32:43
Speaker 2: hallucinator experience, in broad terms, we kind of understand what's
32:48
Speaker 2: causing it. It's a kind of glitch in the normal
32:50
Speaker 2: sleep cycle. But then as I say that, I get
32:55
Speaker 2: sent lots of first hand accounts of sleep paralysis, which
32:58
Speaker 2: I always find absolutely fascinating because when it's happening, it
33:01
Speaker 2: feels real, and it can be absolutely even for people
33:05
Speaker 2: who know, yeah, it's this thing called sleep paralysis. When
33:08
Speaker 2: I'm awake, I know it's not real. But when it's happening,
33:11
Speaker 2: my god, it's terry buying, you know, yes, But so
33:14
Speaker 2: that's that's just what sleep paralysis is in general. One
33:17
Speaker 2: of the really interesting kind of episodes within the world
33:22
Speaker 2: of sleep paralysis relates to something called sudden unexplained nocturnal
33:28
Speaker 2: death syndrome. One of the one of the big messages
33:32
Speaker 2: that I'm always trying to push when I'm talking about
33:34
Speaker 2: sleep paralysis, because obviously a lot of people, particularly if
33:38
Speaker 2: you've got a religious background or if you believe in ghosts,
33:41
Speaker 2: they think it's a it really is a ghost, it
33:43
Speaker 2: really is a demon, whatever else it may be. I'm
33:47
Speaker 2: trying to say, no, it's not that you don't need
33:48
Speaker 2: to panic about that. You also don't need to panic
33:50
Speaker 2: that you're going crazy, whatever that might mean. It's this
33:54
Speaker 2: thing called sleep paralysis, and it's quite common, but it's
33:56
Speaker 2: essentially harmless. So I'm trying to push this idea that
33:58
Speaker 2: it is essentially harmless, and it kind of somewhat undermines
34:02
Speaker 2: that message when you kind of say, oh, but occasionally
34:06
Speaker 2: it can kill you. So this is one explanation that
34:12
Speaker 2: was put forward for this thing called the outbreak of
34:17
Speaker 2: sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome. This was happening in the
34:20
Speaker 2: States back in the seventies where refugees from Cambodia were
34:26
Speaker 2: coming over to the States to settle and there seemed
34:31
Speaker 2: to be this particular spate of unexplained deaths amongst usually
34:37
Speaker 2: the male head of the family. And they did all
34:42
Speaker 2: kinds of tests to see what it might be. Toxicology tests,
34:46
Speaker 2: look at cardiac with all that kind of stuff. They
34:50
Speaker 2: couldn't figure out what it might be. It looks like
34:54
Speaker 2: what it might have been is just a particular constellation
34:56
Speaker 2: of factors. They found a minor cardiac abnormal, which normally
35:01
Speaker 2: on its own wouldn't be enough to kill someone, but
35:04
Speaker 2: these people often seem to have it. They also had
35:09
Speaker 2: histories of sleep paralysis. Now, when they experienced sleep paralysis
35:14
Speaker 2: back in Cambodia, they had a way of dealing with it.
35:18
Speaker 2: They'd go to the kind of local shaman and he'd
35:21
Speaker 2: maybe perform a ritual or whatever, and that would kind
35:24
Speaker 2: of put their mind at ease. But within their belief system,
35:27
Speaker 2: they believe that when you sleep, you are vulnerable to
35:30
Speaker 2: attack by spirits, and if you get attacked too many times,
35:34
Speaker 2: they can actually kill you. And the reason that it
35:38
Speaker 2: was the male head of the household is that again,
35:41
Speaker 2: back in Cambodia, they were the spiritual guardians of the family.
35:44
Speaker 2: You know, there was very patriarchal. Now they'd come over
35:48
Speaker 2: to this new country where the male head of the
35:52
Speaker 2: family basically felt completely powerless. The kids were learning how
35:56
Speaker 2: to speak English, you know, integrating and so on, they
35:59
Speaker 2: weren't they didn't have their usual remedy to go to,
36:05
Speaker 2: and so it was this constellation of this prior belief
36:08
Speaker 2: in the tendency that some of them have for sleep paralysis.
36:13
Speaker 2: The belief system and the minor cardiac abnormality combined was enough.
36:19
Speaker 2: So they were they were kind of literally dying of
36:22
Speaker 2: fear in their sleep. They were having the you know
36:25
Speaker 2: in the film A Nightmare on Elm Street. That was
36:29
Speaker 2: that was directly inspired by this outbreak of sudden unexplained
36:33
Speaker 2: maternal death syndrome. And it's that notion that when you're asleep,
36:38
Speaker 2: you're vulnerable. You might be attacked by these spirits that
36:42
Speaker 2: are out there. And I would say that, I would say, like, like,
36:45
Speaker 2: as you said earlier, you know that belief itself is false,
36:49
Speaker 2: but it can be enough to have a really powerful effects.
36:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, Like the consequences are real, even though
36:57
Speaker 1: the stories perhaps not. It's what growing up. I'm sure
37:04
Speaker 1: that when you were growing up you believed or maybe
37:07
Speaker 1: maybe you didn't, but you would have had certain beliefs
37:09
Speaker 1: or certain ideas or that you maybe did a one
37:12
Speaker 1: ad on Like what's something that you used to believe
37:16
Speaker 1: or hope was true that, disappointingly or not, you discovered wasn't.
37:22
Speaker 1: Like I grew up in I grew up in a
37:24
Speaker 1: very religious household, just to give you context, So I
37:28
Speaker 1: was programmed indoctrinated from when I could rationalize anything. So
37:33
Speaker 1: that that was I grew up in a very religious paradigm.
37:36
Speaker 1: And then you become a byproduct of you know that,
37:40
Speaker 1: what about you? Was there something that you did? Well?
37:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was probably the way around. It was something
37:46
Speaker 2: that I was probably quite glad to do it on it.
37:48
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, I was absolutely petrified of ghosts,
37:52
Speaker 2: hoverified of them. You know. I needed a night light
37:56
Speaker 2: for a lot longer than most kids. I did not
37:58
Speaker 2: like sleeping on my own in the dir, I really didn't.
38:01
Speaker 2: It just terrified me.
38:03
Speaker 1: So once you hit thirty, wife said you to get
38:05
Speaker 1: rid of that. It was.
38:08
Speaker 2: I kind of thought more or less grown out of
38:10
Speaker 2: it in teenage years, but I was taught into going
38:15
Speaker 2: to see the film The Exaucist, and it really reawakened
38:20
Speaker 2: all of those childhood fears in me. It was a
38:22
Speaker 2: really peculiar experience. I really for about another you know,
38:25
Speaker 2: for a few weeks afterwards, I found it really difficult
38:28
Speaker 2: to well just to sleep without a light on for
38:31
Speaker 2: a while. You know. Well since then, I mean, as
38:35
Speaker 2: part of my sometimes not so illustrious career, I've taken
38:40
Speaker 2: part in some really really dreadful TV programs investigating haunted
38:46
Speaker 2: houses and that kind of thing. And I've been kind
38:49
Speaker 2: of locked in allegedly haunted basements and attics with you know,
38:54
Speaker 2: lights out, just the night camera and so on. Now
38:57
Speaker 2: I would have kind of thought that that might be
38:59
Speaker 2: enough to at least produce a shiver down the spine,
39:02
Speaker 2: evening a skeptic like me. Now it's about as exciting
39:06
Speaker 2: as watching paint dry, you know. And yet other people
39:11
Speaker 2: in that same context totally freaked out, you know, And
39:14
Speaker 2: again it's all the power of your own beliefs, if
39:16
Speaker 2: you Another example was a friend of mine, Professor Richard Wiseman.
39:23
Speaker 2: He's done some really interesting research where they've recreated seances.
39:29
Speaker 2: He was totally just using trickery, you know, but they'll
39:32
Speaker 2: produce these effects. And I'd always wanted to sit in
39:35
Speaker 2: on one of Richard's seances, and I've got the chance
39:37
Speaker 2: to do that with my wife and a couple of friends.
39:41
Speaker 2: And I hope Richard's not listening now, because when we
39:44
Speaker 2: came out out of the saalance, I kind of thought
39:47
Speaker 2: was that it was not I really really didn't frighten
39:51
Speaker 2: me at all, really kind of you know, no tingles
39:53
Speaker 2: down the spine or anything. But there are other people
39:55
Speaker 2: who be in the same rumors us for the same experience,
39:58
Speaker 2: who were coming out and saying, oh my god.
40:00
Speaker 1: That was amazing.
40:01
Speaker 2: Did you see that what was happening?
40:02
Speaker 1: You know?
40:02
Speaker 2: They were obviously totally freaked out by it. Yeah, would
40:05
Speaker 2: all sat through essentially the same experience. I mean the
40:08
Speaker 2: fact that by that point, you know, I pretty much
40:11
Speaker 2: knew what was going on, even though I couldn't see it.
40:13
Speaker 2: You know, I knew how Richard was achieving the effects.
40:16
Speaker 2: But again, it's just that thing you said about we
40:20
Speaker 2: interpret the world through our own individual lends, our own
40:24
Speaker 2: individual spectacles. You know.
40:27
Speaker 1: I think it was a nas Nin who said we
40:29
Speaker 1: don't see things as they are, we see things as
40:31
Speaker 1: we are.
40:32
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's ever so true.
40:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, one thing that this has probably taken a bit
40:38
Speaker 1: of a left turn. I don't know if you feel
40:40
Speaker 1: free to shut me down, but I'm fascinated with just
40:45
Speaker 1: the way they do their job, magicians and mentalists, and I,
40:51
Speaker 1: you know, I want to believe, like I somebody who's
40:56
Speaker 1: I don't know if he lives anywhere near you, butter
40:59
Speaker 1: and uh an englishman who is I just think he's great.
41:04
Speaker 1: Is Dynamo Stephen Frayne. I think he's his actual name is.
41:10
Speaker 1: And I watched some of the ship that he does,
41:12
Speaker 1: and I'm like, dude, you are actually magic. I don't
41:17
Speaker 1: I don't care what anyone says, I'm looking at him.
41:20
Speaker 1: I saw you just throw a card and it landed
41:23
Speaker 1: inside a coke bottle with the top on, and like that,
41:28
Speaker 1: that's magic. Yeah, I'm like, this is And then he'd
41:33
Speaker 1: walk up to a group of Now unless they're setting
41:37
Speaker 1: up every group of strangers on every street corner and
41:40
Speaker 1: do this stuff, That to me is just have you
41:42
Speaker 1: ever opened that door and pond at any of that stuff,
41:45
Speaker 1: because I know, I love that.
41:48
Speaker 2: I had a colleague at Girlsmith's, professor Gustav Kuhn k
41:53
Speaker 2: u h N. Basically he was a conjurer and a psychologist,
41:57
Speaker 2: and his area was the science of magic, and so
42:00
Speaker 2: what he would do is they were basically kind of
42:04
Speaker 2: deconstruct magic tricks to just figure out how they work,
42:09
Speaker 2: you know. And again, you know, he got into a
42:13
Speaker 2: little bit of trouble with the Magic Circle over here
42:16
Speaker 2: because there were some people who were saying, oh, you're
42:17
Speaker 2: revealing tricks, and that is a no no obviously for conjurers.
42:21
Speaker 2: He I don't think he was revealing anything that secret,
42:27
Speaker 2: you know. I mean again, like Richard Wiseman has written
42:30
Speaker 2: books on the psychology of magic as well, and they
42:33
Speaker 2: wouldn't give away anybody. It's any act that somebody was
42:35
Speaker 2: still using, and it would be kind of old tricks
42:38
Speaker 2: that anybody could look up on. In these days, unfortunately,
42:41
Speaker 2: you can look up any trick on the Internet and
42:43
Speaker 2: be told how it was done. But yeah, that is
42:47
Speaker 2: a fascinating area, you know. And as like I said before,
42:49
Speaker 2: my friends, I've got quite a few friends who are conjurers.
42:54
Speaker 2: And there's a guy called Paul Zenon who was probably
42:58
Speaker 2: a bit of ahead of the gay in terms of
43:00
Speaker 2: street magic. You know, he was doing it before David
43:03
Speaker 2: Blaine came along. And all these other people. There's a
43:07
Speaker 2: Darren Brown, a Dynamo as you say, I mean, Penn
43:11
Speaker 2: and Teller and there you know, all these people and
43:14
Speaker 2: they're all fascinating, you know, they're are. I find it
43:17
Speaker 2: absolutely fascinating. People tend to assume that, because of my
43:21
Speaker 2: research interest that I have quite an in depth knowledge
43:25
Speaker 2: of conjuring techniques. Well I don't have a very I
43:28
Speaker 2: have a very superficial knowledge of country techniques. And I
43:32
Speaker 2: love watching magic because like you, I'm watching and thinking,
43:36
Speaker 2: oh my god, how did they do that? That is
43:37
Speaker 2: impossible that I've just seen it with my own eyes.
43:40
Speaker 2: But I know it's not possible, you know, and it's
43:42
Speaker 2: that that thrill that you get watching I love watching
43:47
Speaker 2: kind of watching magic and see Penn and Teller recently
43:49
Speaker 2: at the London Palladium and they were brilliant, you know,
43:51
Speaker 2: as always. But yeah, I say, I love that world.
43:57
Speaker 2: I know a little bit about the actual techniques is
44:00
Speaker 2: not very much. I probably know a bit more about
44:02
Speaker 2: the general psychology. So much of magic is just about misdirection.
44:08
Speaker 2: That is the kind of number one thing. I mean,
44:10
Speaker 2: it sounds so simple when you say it, you know,
44:13
Speaker 2: but literally it's just a matter of learning techniques that
44:16
Speaker 2: make people look over there. We're actually all the really
44:18
Speaker 2: interesting any over here, you know. And obviously that's a
44:23
Speaker 2: gross over simplification, but I've watched my friend Gustav perform
44:27
Speaker 2: various tricks in pubs and so on the same trick repeatedly,
44:31
Speaker 2: and I still don't have a clue how he does it, you.
44:34
Speaker 1: Know, because it's magic you need to believe.
44:39
Speaker 2: Come on, yeah, god, this is I passed myself off
44:43
Speaker 2: as a psychic on Daytime TV on one of it. Yeah,
44:48
Speaker 2: that was just kind of you know, there's a there's
44:49
Speaker 2: a technique known as cold reading, which basically you can
44:54
Speaker 2: use to convince complete strangers that you know all about them.
44:57
Speaker 2: And you know, there are books written about cold reading.
45:02
Speaker 2: And so I was contacted by a researcher for a
45:06
Speaker 2: daytime TV show and they were doing an item on
45:11
Speaker 2: psychics and I was banging on about cold reading, and
45:15
Speaker 2: the researcher said, well, could you come on the show
45:17
Speaker 2: and do it for us? And oh god, no, no,
45:19
Speaker 2: it doesn't always work, no, no, yeah, but she twisted
45:23
Speaker 2: my arm and got me to do it. They've got
45:27
Speaker 2: a couple of volunteers and I was introduced to them
45:29
Speaker 2: as being somebody who claimed to have psychic powers, and
45:31
Speaker 2: I was going to do a reading for them, and yeah,
45:35
Speaker 2: it worked really well. It worked really well on the
45:37
Speaker 2: first woman that I did the reading for, and then
45:41
Speaker 2: at that point, only at that point, the researcher began
45:44
Speaker 2: to get kind of moral qualms about it. And so
45:47
Speaker 2: for the second woman, she said, one thing I should
45:50
Speaker 2: tell you is that some of the people we've got
45:52
Speaker 2: in today are genuine psychics. Some of them are fakes.
45:56
Speaker 2: And that obviously completely changed the mental sets of the reading.
46:00
Speaker 2: You know, she was totally didn't trust me at all,
46:03
Speaker 2: you know, and the Number one golden rule of cold
46:06
Speaker 2: reading is get the client's corporation, get them on your side,
46:10
Speaker 2: you know. So I started off with this other woman
46:13
Speaker 2: saying kind of, oh, look, it's a bit nervous because
46:15
Speaker 2: it's the first time I've ever done this in front
46:17
Speaker 2: of cameras, you know, and usually when I do a reading,
46:19
Speaker 2: I spend at least an hour with each with each
46:22
Speaker 2: of my clients. And we've only got ten minutes. So,
46:25
Speaker 2: you know, is there anything you could tell me to
46:27
Speaker 2: kind of, you know, speed things along. You know. She
46:29
Speaker 2: told me that her granddad was in spirit, and so
46:33
Speaker 2: obviously I've got a great starting point there. You know,
46:36
Speaker 2: we just just take it from there. But yeah, I
46:41
Speaker 2: mean again, it wasn't about it certainly wasn't not about
46:44
Speaker 2: trying to make her look stupid. It was just about
46:47
Speaker 2: making the point that these techniques really do work. I'm
46:50
Speaker 2: not a particularly good cold reader, but I could probably
46:53
Speaker 2: make a living off it.
46:54
Speaker 1: You know, have you ever heard of it? Sorry, have
46:57
Speaker 1: you ever heard of a guy called Lee what is that?
47:00
Speaker 1: Or Sushard? He's a an Israeli mentalist. He's absolutely he's brilliant.
47:06
Speaker 1: He's like Darren Brown. But I went and saw him
47:10
Speaker 1: in Melbourne and he did this thing which I've got
47:16
Speaker 1: no idea how he did it. So there was Firstly,
47:20
Speaker 1: one of the things he did was which was just
47:22
Speaker 1: an exercise in a brilliant brain. But before the start
47:26
Speaker 1: of the show, he went through the audience. I don't know,
47:29
Speaker 1: there's maybe a thousand people and he just asked these
47:32
Speaker 1: people their name. He went through when what's your name? Much?
47:35
Speaker 1: Your job? What's your name much? Your job? And then
47:39
Speaker 1: he probably was one second with you know, hi, I'm
47:43
Speaker 1: a Craig, I'm Craig, I'm a podcaster, whatever right. Yeah,
47:47
Speaker 1: I'm Chris, I'm a professor, whatever right, did that and
47:52
Speaker 1: went thanks, and then he did the show, and then
47:54
Speaker 1: maybe two and a half hours later he said all
47:58
Speaker 1: the people that I asked your job whatever, stand up,
48:01
Speaker 1: and he went through every one of the hundred two
48:04
Speaker 1: and a half hours later and told them their name. Now, no,
48:06
Speaker 1: that's not magic, but that's a fucking amazing look like
48:11
Speaker 1: that's a good party.
48:11
Speaker 2: Tree amazing, Absolutely, I mean, and that's one of the Again,
48:15
Speaker 2: there is that thing that sometimes you can be too skeptical. Yeah,
48:19
Speaker 2: you can kind of think, oh, well, that must be
48:21
Speaker 2: a trick there must be there must be somebody who's
48:24
Speaker 2: recorded it when we came in and he's feeding it
48:26
Speaker 2: to him somehow through an AP So yeah, almost probably almost,
48:30
Speaker 2: certainly not. I mean, they have the World Memory Championships
48:35
Speaker 2: every year and they are phenomenal. And again, I was
48:39
Speaker 2: at the opportunity kind of doing this lot of daytime
48:41
Speaker 2: TV and such, of meeting the British Memory Champion several
48:47
Speaker 2: years back, and he would do the same kind of
48:50
Speaker 2: thing I've seen him do talks and so on, and
48:52
Speaker 2: he would kind of exactly what you just described. And
48:55
Speaker 2: it's just it's just learning these mnemonic techniques and they
48:59
Speaker 2: are incredibly a but you have to basically put the
49:02
Speaker 2: hours in. You have to practice, practice, practice using them
49:06
Speaker 2: until they become second nature, and then yes, you can
49:09
Speaker 2: pull off these amazing feats of memory and they are
49:12
Speaker 2: absolutely incredible, you know. Yeah, yeah, I mean there is
49:17
Speaker 2: sometimes we have this tendency to think that something either
49:21
Speaker 2: must be done by trickery or it must be genuinely
49:25
Speaker 2: kind of paranormal in some way. And mean, another example
49:27
Speaker 2: be firewalking. You know, people you see someone firewalking and
49:32
Speaker 2: they're walking along these across these red hot coals that
49:35
Speaker 2: really are a very very high temperature and they don't
49:39
Speaker 2: appear to be burning their feet, So I mean, wow,
49:41
Speaker 2: that's amazing. The thing is that really is happening. It's
49:46
Speaker 2: all explicable in terms of physics. It's nothing to do
49:49
Speaker 2: with you know, the power of the mind over the
49:53
Speaker 2: body or anything like that. I mean, I've got again
49:57
Speaker 2: a lot of skeptical I've never done one, but I
49:59
Speaker 2: would actually quite like to do one. I've got a
50:01
Speaker 2: lot of skeptic friends who've done fire walking just to
50:05
Speaker 2: show that it doesn't involve any hokers pocus and in fact,
50:08
Speaker 2: again going back to my good buddy Richard Wiseman, he
50:11
Speaker 2: did a demonstration on TV. Might think it was a
50:15
Speaker 2: bit cruel in some ways. It was the used to
50:18
Speaker 2: have these There's be a program called Tomorrow's World, I
50:22
Speaker 2: think it was, and they'd have these once a year
50:27
Speaker 2: that have these kind of big, mega demonstrations, and Richard
50:30
Speaker 2: was interested in firewalking. On the one hand, you had
50:34
Speaker 2: the explanation from the physicists who basically say that the
50:38
Speaker 2: reason people can do it is because you've got a
50:40
Speaker 2: layer of ash, and ash isn't a very good conductor
50:43
Speaker 2: of heat, and basically, if you can work you can
50:47
Speaker 2: actually work it out that you should be able provided
50:49
Speaker 2: you walking pretty quickly, stay stay in contact with the
50:52
Speaker 2: colst for about nine seconds or for example, remember something
50:56
Speaker 2: like that. You well that on the one hand, on
50:58
Speaker 2: the other hand, you've got kind of beliefs of the
51:01
Speaker 2: New ages that it's all about mind overbody and that
51:06
Speaker 2: basically you should be able to carry on doing it
51:08
Speaker 2: for as long as forever, you know. And so they
51:11
Speaker 2: set up this huge firewalk where they challenged that the
51:18
Speaker 2: firewalkers to stay on for as long as they could.
51:20
Speaker 2: And obviously, science says after nine seconds or so, you're
51:23
Speaker 2: going to leap off there because it's going to be
51:25
Speaker 2: burning your feet. And indeed, that is what happened, you know.
51:28
Speaker 2: And although we shouldn't laugh, it was actually quite funny,
51:32
Speaker 2: you know, even presenters on the program, you know, the
51:36
Speaker 2: kind they were going to rush. I've read of another
51:39
Speaker 2: I heard of another case where somebody had set up
51:41
Speaker 2: this was in the newspaper. Somebody had set up a
51:43
Speaker 2: firewalk as part of a kind of you know, they
51:45
Speaker 2: do this sort of thing in management training and so on,
51:48
Speaker 2: to show that you can do this stuff. Now, there
51:51
Speaker 2: is an element of truth in that, because you know.
51:54
Speaker 2: I mean, I can imagine that, even me as a
51:55
Speaker 2: skeptic who doesn't think I'm going to burn my feet.
51:57
Speaker 2: If I'm standing there looking at this stuff, I'm going
51:59
Speaker 2: to be oh, really, are you sure? You know? Can
52:02
Speaker 2: I can? I be bold enough to do it? And
52:04
Speaker 2: knowing that yes, you have got the confidence to do it,
52:06
Speaker 2: that might be psychologically good thing. But you stay on
52:09
Speaker 2: there too long, it's going to burn your feet. There
52:11
Speaker 2: was this case in the paper where the guy had
52:14
Speaker 2: done it wrong, clearly didn't know what he was doing,
52:16
Speaker 2: and he'd put the coals in a metal tray. Metal
52:19
Speaker 2: is a very very good conductor of heat. Nine people
52:24
Speaker 2: were taken to hospital with severely burnt feet, and can
52:28
Speaker 2: you imagine being the ninth person You've just seen eight
52:30
Speaker 2: people getting carried off your faith? Oh anyway, Yeah, I
52:38
Speaker 2: guess sometimes, like I say, these things are it really
52:42
Speaker 2: is what you what you think it is. There's no
52:43
Speaker 2: jiggery pokery, it's exactly as it looks, there's no trickery,
52:47
Speaker 2: it's not defying the laws of physics. It's all within
52:51
Speaker 2: the within the laws of physics. But it can still
52:53
Speaker 2: be incredible.
52:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. What a great job you have
52:58
Speaker 1: what a great mind? Yeah? Do you do you think
53:00
Speaker 1: that like in terms of the you know, we're talking
53:04
Speaker 1: about these people with these incredible memories and capacity to
53:07
Speaker 1: retain information and recall them. Do you think that we
53:10
Speaker 1: understand This is diverging somewhat to the current discussion, but
53:14
Speaker 1: as we wind up, do you think we have any
53:17
Speaker 1: idea how to master our own mind or cognitive horsepower?
53:22
Speaker 1: I feel like we don't even know how to optimize
53:24
Speaker 1: what we've got.
53:26
Speaker 2: I think. Yeah. I mean again, one thing, one thing
53:28
Speaker 2: to stir away from, and I'm sure you would craw
53:31
Speaker 2: is filled ten percent of our brains because it really,
53:36
Speaker 2: really really annoys neuroscientists and people say, yeah, we'll use
53:39
Speaker 2: ten percent of our brains believe tapping through the nine No,
53:43
Speaker 2: we don't. You may only use ten percent of your brain.
53:46
Speaker 2: The rest of us use all of it. Even when
53:48
Speaker 2: you're asleep, your brain is active. But yes, in answer
53:51
Speaker 2: to your question, yeah, I think there are some techniques
53:54
Speaker 2: that genuinely do work to help people. And it's a
53:58
Speaker 2: lot of it is about kind of will power and
54:01
Speaker 2: just you know, an attitude. I mean, I know it's
54:04
Speaker 2: a bit corny. I know it's a bit Dale Carnegie.
54:06
Speaker 2: But the power of positive thinking, it is a hugely
54:10
Speaker 2: important thing, if you. I mean again, one of the
54:14
Speaker 2: things that I often end up seem to get onto
54:17
Speaker 2: when I'm doing talks on this stuff, particularly the Q
54:19
Speaker 2: and A. I think skeptics as a rule have a
54:24
Speaker 2: view that it's always best to really kind of be
54:29
Speaker 2: totally right in your understanding of what's going on around you,
54:33
Speaker 2: of your interpretation of the way things are based on
54:36
Speaker 2: evidence and sound reasoning and so on and so forth.
54:39
Speaker 2: And there's an awful lot of evidence that actually a
54:42
Speaker 2: lot of the one for better word delusions that we
54:46
Speaker 2: suffer from are actually beneficial, you know. So there's a
54:52
Speaker 2: lot of research that shows that if you give people
54:55
Speaker 2: psychologically healthy people questionnaires, on the one hand, have a
55:00
Speaker 2: load of really really negative possibilities, like you're going to
55:03
Speaker 2: catch some kind of fatal disease, or you're going to
55:05
Speaker 2: be involved in an accident and lose your legs, or
55:07
Speaker 2: you know, really horrible stuff, And I say, what all
55:11
Speaker 2: the chances that's going to happen to you? And also
55:14
Speaker 2: a load of positive stuff. You're gonna win the National lottery,
55:17
Speaker 2: you're gonna fantastic job, whatever, we tend to underestimate the
55:22
Speaker 2: possibilities for the negative stuff and overestimate the possibilities for
55:27
Speaker 2: the positive stuff. You get the same questionnaires to depressives,
55:30
Speaker 2: and they're much more accurate. Is life really is shit?
55:39
Speaker 2: Having said that, would you want the life of a
55:42
Speaker 2: depressive or the life of a slightly deluded, psychologically healthy person?
55:49
Speaker 2: You've got you know, I mean, basically, you've got to
55:51
Speaker 2: kind of do a bit of double thing. You've got
55:53
Speaker 2: to I think your adopt an attitude of yeah, I
55:56
Speaker 2: know I'm going to die. I know it's inevitable, but
55:59
Speaker 2: I'm not going to spend all day thinking about it.
56:01
Speaker 2: You know, I'm gonna I'm going to get from each
56:04
Speaker 2: day the positive stuff that I can get, and that's
56:07
Speaker 2: the stuff that matters. All the rest will will take
56:10
Speaker 2: it as it comes. But you know, you focus on
56:12
Speaker 2: the positive stuff, and to a certain extent, you know,
56:16
Speaker 2: convince you self that the negative stuff's not going to
56:19
Speaker 2: really affect you that much. You know it is really
56:22
Speaker 2: in your heart hearts, but you're going to live a
56:24
Speaker 2: much better life if you're not depressed. So don't be depressed,
56:28
Speaker 2: you know, exactly, yeah exactly, But you can do things
56:34
Speaker 2: that you can take. You know, there's this other dimension
56:37
Speaker 2: that you're probably familiar with from you know, whether you
56:40
Speaker 2: have an internal locus of control or an external locus
56:42
Speaker 2: of control. And it's psychologically healthier to have an internal
56:46
Speaker 2: locus of control where you accept that the way your
56:49
Speaker 2: life is is mostly tends to be down to your
56:53
Speaker 2: own decisions, your own actions. Obviously, bad stuff can come
56:56
Speaker 2: out of the blue, but it's better to live your
56:58
Speaker 2: life that way than to live your as a victim
57:01
Speaker 2: who thinks that stuff just happens to you and there's
57:04
Speaker 2: nothing you can do about it.
57:06
Speaker 1: You've just given me the title for today's episode, and
57:08
Speaker 1: the title I just wrote it down. It's enjoy the
57:10
Speaker 1: delusion exactly right. So it's such an honor for me
57:17
Speaker 1: to meet you, and so I feel really privileged to
57:20
Speaker 1: have this hour with you. Wow. Can we chat again
57:24
Speaker 1: in a few months?
57:25
Speaker 2: I'd be happy to. Yeah, you're so good.
57:29
Speaker 1: Do you know what media media what producer producer would
57:33
Speaker 1: say to me, Wow, he's great talent, Like it's hard
57:36
Speaker 1: to find. It's hard to find somebody who has your
57:39
Speaker 1: depth of knowledge and education and brain power who's such
57:43
Speaker 1: a great communicator. So I know you don't need my compliments,
57:48
Speaker 1: but you are such a brilliant Always.
57:50
Speaker 2: Welcome them, mcreig, I always welcome them.
57:52
Speaker 1: Yeah mate, All right, well say goodbye, well say goodbye
57:56
Speaker 1: off air. But for the minute, thanks so much, PROFF.
57:58
Speaker 1: We appreciate you.
57:59
Speaker 2: Thank qu