Skeptiko
This podcast is a leading source for intelligent, hard-nosed skeptic vs. believer debate on science and spirituality. Each episode features lively discussion with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics.
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November 16th, 2011 Alex
Skeptics and Beliver square off in a discussion about Skepticism, science and some controversial past Skeptiko interviews.
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for a discussion with Monster Talk podcast hosts Blake Smith, Ben Radford, and Karen Stollznow. This episode is also published on the Skepticality podcast.
Monster Talk Podcast Website
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August 16th, 2011 Alex
Professor of Psychology and well-respected researcher Dr. Stanley Krippner explains how his research supports the reality of precognitive dreams.
Join Skeptiko guest host and paranormal dream expert Andy Paquette for an interview with legendary psychology researcher Dr. Stanley Krippner.. During the interview Dr. Krippner discusses whether or not the evidence for paranormal dreaming is well established:
Andy Paquette: You’ve been studying dreams for the most part for the majority of your career. Do you feel that the case for precognitive dreaming is proven?
Dr. Stanley Krippner: No, I don’t think anything in science is proven. Science is always open-ended. There’s always a chance of revising scientific theory based on new data.
Andy Paquette: Of course, that would work both ways, as well, wouldn’t it? So what you’d really be talking about is what does the currently available information indicate?
Dr. Stanley Krippner: That’s right.
Andy Paquette: And in your case, from what you’ve seen, what do you think the currently available information indicates?
Dr. Stanley Krippner: I think you can make a strong case for precognitive dreams.
Stanley Krippner’s Website
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Alex Tsakiris: Today we’re joined by Andy Paquette, who is a former Skeptiko guest and is also the author of Dreamer: 20 Years of Psychic Dreams and How They Changed My Life. Now, Andy is joining us today because he recently attended the 2011 Study of Dreams Conference in The Netherlands, where he was also a presenter. While he was there he was nice enough to snag a couple of interviews for us and he’s here to share them with us. So Andy, welcome and tell us what you’ve been up to.
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August 2nd, 2011 Alex
Author of The Bond explains how our scientific understanding of human connection leads to spirituality.
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Lynne McTaggart best-selling author of, The Bond. During the interview Ms. Mc Taggart discusses how science can give us a greater understanding of the spiritual:
Alex Tsakiris: On Skeptiko we’ve found that a deep examination of many of scientific questions quickly leads to questions of the spiritual. Questions of God, questions of the afterlife, questions about the meaning of consciousness. You don’t seem to go there very much. Why not?
Lynne McTaggart: Because I wanted to argue in terms of science. I wanted to say we’re operating against nature. We’re operating against science, emerging science that is coming to the fore. I believe the science—I always look at scientific elements and I sit probably where science and spirituality meet because the science that I write about is very spiritual in a way.
If you want to look at it this way, I’m just simply looking at it from the point of view of saying we’ve been living against nature. We’ve been living according to the wrong story and that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in.
Alex Tsakiris: When we enter into the materialistic, atheistic, science game that’s been dictated and then we find that it no longer holds together, I think it behooves us to take a step back and re-examine things. For example, you make a good case for the science interconnectedness, not just at a subatomic level, but at a level we can feel and experience. Don’t we then need to look our great wisdom traditions and notice that they’ve been saying the same thing all along?
Lynne McTaggart: I think that’s what my books try to do all the time. They just provide the scientific basis for what spiritual traditions have been saying for centuries. In a sense, my books are always the science of religion. And yes, we have to understand. You have to take it back to the whole idea of unity infusing everything that we are and everything that we do. That’s a very spiritual idea.
Lynne Mc Taggart’s Website
www.thebond.net
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Alex Tsakiris: Today we welcome journalist, part-time consciousness researcher, and multiple best-selling author, Lynne McTaggart to Skeptiko.
Lynne, thanks so much for joining me today.
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June 21st, 2011 Alex
Investigative journalist and author Steve Volk seeks a middle-ground between mainstream science skepticism and researchers on the paranormal fringe.
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Steve Volk, author of Fringe-ology. During the interview Mr. Volk discusses his personal experience with poltergeist phenomena:
Alex Tsakiris: In your book you do a very nice job of exploring the mystery of the paranormal. But at the same time, I look at the mystery associated with your experience with a ghost in your house. That is, what happened to you when you were a kid growing up and you experienced this poltergeist phenomena. At the end of the day, in the book you come away and say, “Well, it’s a mystery.”
Steve Volk: It is.
Alex Tsakiris: But that’s a tricky word because it could mean two things. It could appeal to that certain group of people who say, “Okay, we don’t know if it really happened. It’s a mystery.” Or another group of people could process it and say, “Oh, it’s a mystery. We don’t know the precise confluence of paranormal things that happened to cause it.” Are we using a word that doesn’t get us to the underlying question about this mystery?
Steve Volk: I think in the totality of that chapter with the fact that I explore the idea of it having been a traditional sort of ghost, along with a range of skeptical explanations from the fantasy-prone personality which is really purely a psychological one to what I consider the more exotic materialist theories like Vic Tandy’s theory of infrasound that there are these sound waves below the level of human hearing that can cause us to even have visual hallucinations, on through Persinger and the electromagnetic energy temporal lobe interaction that he’s been pursuing for a while now, there’s this range of potential explanations right?
I wanted to just put them all out on the table because I think that they all have some sort of validity. I think we need to be willing to consider all these possibilities. I suppose, in that respect Alex, I might appear a little bit of a gadfly at times because I’m challenging everyone to look at all the possibilities all the way on through.
Steve Volk’s Website
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Alex Tsakiris: We’re joined today by someone you’ve gotten to know over the last few episodes of Skeptiko as Steve Volk has been a guest host here and brought us three very informative, insightful interviews about the history of parapsychology, neuro-theology, and ghosts. Today Steve is here to talk about his new book, Fringe-ology, a book that covers all these topics and a lot more. Steve, welcome to Skeptiko.
Steve Volk: Alex, thank you so much for having me.
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May 31st, 2011 Alex
Noted parapsychology investigator and author Guy Lyon Playfair discusses poltergeists, after-death communication and the telepathy of twins.
Join Skeptiko guest host Steve Volk for an interview with Guy Lyon Playfair. During the interview Mr. Playfair summarizes what he’s learned about the poltergeist phenomena:
Steve Volk: What’s your best guess, at this stage, after all these years, on what poltergeists, or ghosts, are.
Guy Playfair: The short answer is that there are two possibilities. Either they are some kind of discarnate entity – which I certainly don’t rule out – or else they are an entirely unknown force that emanates from the human mind. How it works we simply don’t know. We can only observe its effects. I think there’s quite strong evidence that it’s some kind of so-called spirit or discarnate entity, kind of drifting blobs of exo-intelligence, if you like. But that is an extremely controversial opinion and not many people share it.
Steve Volk: I do find it interesting that in some cases skeptics have started putting forth more complicated and I would say more interesting theories than the usual, the mind plays tricks, wishful thinking, creaking floorboards, leaky pipes kind of explanations.
Guy Playfair: Yes, there’s another possible line of inquiry. Poltergeist outbreaks have got certain features in common with Tourette’s syndrome, where you get these sorts of jerks and muscular spasms and things and also very strange vocal sounds. A poltergeist looks rather like an extension of some super-Tourette’s where not only the muscles twitch but furniture starts twitching as well. But that’s not my idea. That was actually Michael Persinger and William Roll, who is a very experienced researcher. I think it’s an interesting line to follow up.
Guy Lyon Playfair’s wiki entry
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I’m Steve Volk, guest hosting for Alex Tsakiris on Skeptiko. My guest today is Guy Lyon Playfair, a journalist and translator who has been conducting paranormal research seemingly forever. His first book, The Unknown Power, a book on psychical research, was written in 1975. In the ensuing years he’s written about Uri Geller, hypnotism, telepathy among twins, reincarnation, and we’ll discuss some of those things.
Today we’re going to focus out of the gate on the topic of Guy’s new book, a re-release really, of a book first published in 1980. The book is called, This House Is Haunted, and it deals with the very famous Enfield Poltergeist case.
I wanted to talk to Guy because in my book, Fringe-ology, I kind of out myself, describing what I call “the family ghost,” an old ghost story I grew up with as a child. I was about six years old and have a few memories of the events my family’s described to me. In general, without getting into too much detail, there was a booming and thumping sound that came from the walls and ceiling. It seemed to respond to my parents’ movements in the house. My sisters talked about having the blankets pulled from them as they slept, their beds shaking in unison in the middle of the night, and a female apparition who walked through the room.
I’m hoping Guy, in talking about the Enfield case, can give me a little insight into poltergeists, including some details from a new study which used some recordings from the Enfield case, conducted by Dr. Barrie Colvin, with whom Guy cooperated. Hopefully we will get to much else besides. Guy, thanks for being on Skeptiko.
Guy Playfair: Thank you for having me.
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May 4th, 2011 alex
Journalist and author Hazel Courteney describes her spiritual awakening and the science it led her to.
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Hazel Courteney, author of, Countdown to Coherence. During the interview Ms. Courteney discusses how we discern the authenticity of a spiritual awakening:
Alex Tsakiris: I don’t care if this guy who claims to have walked with Jesus in a former life said a lot of great things that resonated with your beliefs. He is not credible by the standards that you normally apply as a journalist. If you find a doctor, and you find him to be a quack, not credible, you don’t say, “Yeah, but he was right about these three other things.” You say, “He could have easily picked that up from some credible person.”
That is the only means we have of sifting through this tremendous amount of information that we’re flooded with, spiritual information, technical information, scientific information. We have to be the filter, and in particular we’re asking you, Hazel, to be our filter. I just don’t see where you’re really accepting that challenge.
Hazel Courteney: I go back to my statement that in every walk of life you have to discern what people’s motives are for doing what they do, whether it be spiritual or otherwise. I always say to spiritual people, “If you want to be with people that are like you and want to grow spiritually, obviously you join spiritual groups. Some of them resonate with you and others don’t. If you don’t like the way people are acting or behaving, then you move away until you find a group that you resonate with.”
But that goes true in all walks of life. I mean, I find it very frustrating that you’re asking me to give definitive ways of discerning. We’re in the middle of a process here. We’re in the middle of a huge leap forward in consciousness and so there will always be people who say all the stuff we’ve talking about is absolute nonsense. And there will be those who might be a bit more open-minded. But at the end of the day, everybody has the choice to make up their own mind. I’m not asking anyone to hand their power to anyone.
Hazel Courteney’s website
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Today we welcome journalist and author, Hazel Courteney, to Skeptiko. Since 1998, Hazel has been on a spiritual journey visiting and reporting on scientists, researchers, gurus, and spiritual teachers of all sorts. She’s chronicled her adventures in her books, including her latest, Countdown to Coherence. Hazel, welcome and thank you for joining me today on Skeptiko.
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April 19th, 2011 alex
Biologist and author Rupert Sheldrake expresses dismay at latest claims made by Skeptic Richard Wiseman in his recent book, Paranormality.
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. A distinguished biologist, Dr. Sheldrake is the author of several books including, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. During the interview Mr. Tsakiris and Dr. Sheldrake discuss the latest claims of Skeptic Richard Wiseman:
Alex Tsakiris: When someone hears you say Richard Wiseman’s portrayal of your research is deceptive, well, it sounds so horrible. But in this case, the deception is so obvious, the misinformation so outrageous, that it’s hard to understand how he assumed he could get away with it. But then again, of course he’s going to get away with it. He’s gotten away with it for years.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Yes, it’s outrageous. Wiseman’s research on psychic pets was entirely parasitic on my research. He portrays himself as this kind of heroic debunking figure who goes in and exposes people who fool themselves about their dogs and so forth. But, in fact, his own tests show an even bigger effect than I’d observed. Incredibly, he then appeared on TV and made press releases, wrote a scientific paper in a scientific journal, claiming to have refuted the effect we both demonstrated. It is completely outrageous, but as you say, he’s got away with it before. He’s been exposed before, but that seems completely irrelevant to him.
Alex Tsakiris: What is going on here? What do you think is really behind this? Because it’s easy to spin out of control with conspiracies and all sorts of strange ideas. What’s your best guess, having been in this for as long as you have?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Personally, I think it’s just what Wiseman said it is. I think it’s a tendency for people to see what they want to believe, to believe what they want to believe, to only notice evidence that fits their dogmatic point of view or their belief system. He himself is a perfect example of that. He accuses people who are interested in psychic phenomena and do research in an open-minded way of being fooled or of self-deception, but in fact this is the kind of thinking he’s engaged in. Basically, Wiseman is a dogmatic materialist. People who are materialists aren’t people who don’t believe anything; they’re people who have a really strong belief that the mind is nothing but the brain, that the free will doesn’t really exist and we are just robots. He tries to prove that in this book. I think it’s as simple as that. He’s dogmatically committed to that point of view. He firmly believes it. Therefore, the evidence must be flawed. People must be either deceiving themselves or deceiving others. So I think we have to see that we’re dealing here with a fundamentalist belief system of people who pretend to be scientific but are not.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake’s website
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Today we welcome back to Skeptiko biologist and author, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. Now, many of you know that Dr. Sheldrake has been nice enough to join me on Skeptiko several times in the past. He’s a real hero of mine-not just for his innovative and imaginative ideas and research, but for his clear, straightforward manner of talking about controversial science and those who oppose it. So I’m really delighted, Rupert, that you’ve joined me on Skeptiko today.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Yes, it’s a pleasure to be back.
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February 25th, 2011 alex
The author of, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, discusses why NDE evidence doesn’t measure up.
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with philosophy of science and human consciousness scholar, Dr. James Fetzer. During the interview Mr. Tsakiris and Dr. Fetzer discuss evidence for the survival of consciousness, and whether this evidence undermines our current model of mind=brain consciousness:
Alex Tsakiris: So let’s take a big step back and say that when someone has a flat EEG they are not supposed to have any conscious experience, let alone the kind of conscious experience near-death experiencers are reporting. What you say might be definitionally true and all that, but we just have to deal with the fact that people are having a conscious experience when they shouldn’t be having it. And that’s highly suggestive that consciousness doesn’t operate the way that we thought. It isn’t a product of the brain but is somehow separate from the brain and continues after the brain is severely compromised, if you want me to say it isn’t dead.
Dr. James Fetzer: Well, as soon as you begin talking about an ordinary concept of consciousness you have to acknowledge that consciousness involves responses to stimuli in the environment that we access through our different senses, taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing. Therefore, if we’re going to talk seriously about a form of consciousness that persists after death, we’re going to have to account for how it’s possible to have sensory experiences for an entity that is no longer embodied. In other words, if you no longer have your senses, if you no longer have a capacity for taste, touch, sight, smell, or hearing, how can you possibly have any conscious experiences after you’re dead?
What we do know, Alex, is that when the brain is deprived of oxygen, the kinds of experiences that are typified by the reports of those who have these near-death experiences occur.
Alex Tsakiris: That’s absolutely not true, Jim. You just haven’t delved into the.
Dr. James Fetzer: Alex, that’s all just fine and dandy and I did not previously express any concerns about it. You have been pressing me on this point and I’m explaining to you that based on classic criteria from the philosophy of science, your proposition of the survival of consciousness after death is a paradigm case of an empirically untestable claim.
Dr. James Fetzer’s website
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Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris.
On this episode of Skeptiko we return to a topic that I’ve addressed many times before, and that is near-death experience science and how it squares with the mainstream science model of consciousness. That is, of course, that consciousness is solely and completely a product of the brain. Now I’ve wrestled this issue to the ground before, but it was really fun to dialogue with someone who I greatly respect and admire for his ability to courageously follow the data wherever it goes on a whole variety of topics that are certainly very, very controversial.
Here’s my interview with Dr. Jim Fetzer:
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December 28th, 2010 alex
Author Robert McLuhan examines the psychology and hidden purpose behind the modern skeptical movement pioneered by James Randi.
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with the author of, Randi’s Prize: What Sceptics Say About the Paranormal, Why They Are Wrong, and Why It Matters, Robert McLuhan. During the interview Mr. McLuhan discusses the possible motivation of skeptics, “…we complain an awful lot about people like James Randi who apparently subvert what seems to be a perfectly good data and rather deceptively distort perceptions… but I think we have to start thinking beyond that and start thinking about what it is exactly that these guys are trying to protect? Is it a rational thing they’re doing? Perhaps I can make the point more succinctly in terms of psychokinesis, just imagine the effects of science declaring psychokinesis is real. If you really think this through you see we are in a very changed environment if we say human minds can interact with matter. That raises all sorts of very difficult implications.”
McLuhan continues, “If we think some people can hex other people, or interfere with the brakes when they’re driving — it doesn’t even have to be true — but if science says something like that is feasible and possible, it might happen, then what sort of situation are we in? I suspect, and I’m not sure if this is a conscious idea skeptics have… but I think what I’m trying to say in a nutshell is we have to think about the wider implications of psi endorsed and accepted by a central authority like science.”
Rob McLuhan Blogs at Paranormalia
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Alex Tsakiris: Robert McLuhan is an Oxford-trained freelance journalist who’s authored Randy’s Prize: What Skeptics Say About the Paranormal, Why They’re Wrong, and Why it Matters. Robert, welcome to Skeptiko.
Robert McLuhan: Thanks, Alex; I’m glad to be here.
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December 7th, 2010 alex
Author Chris Carter discuses how Near Death Experience Science is misunderstood and misrepresented by mainstream science.
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Chris Carter, author of, Science and the Near Death Experience. During the interview Carter explains how the acceptance of paradigm changing science like near death experience and telepathy wouldn’t change science as we know it, “…I do not agree with you that the acceptance-say of telepathy, or the acceptance of the near-death experience as a genuine separation of mind from body, I do not think that would challenge any aspect of science. I don’t think it would change the way that neuroscientists come in and do their jobs. I think that everything would be exactly the same. They’d continue looking for the same chemicals, the same neurotransmitters, the same areas of the brain that light up. They’d still be trying to work with split brain patients and patents who have damaged brains. I don’t think that anything would change. Except, yes, their conversations down at the pub on weekends would change. Absolutely. The philosophical conversations would change. But I really don’t think that it would impact anything in science simply because modern neuroscience is completely neutral as to whether the brain produces the mind or whether the brain acts as a receiver/transmitter for the mind.”
According to Chris Carter the real dividing point between mainstream science and the breakthroughs of near death experience science lie in conventional view that everything we experience can be reduced to just brain activity, “Materialists like to claim successes in modern science have been due to a Materialistic outlook. You’ve probably heard that before. But this is nonsense. The three men most responsible for the scientific revolution, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, were not Materialists. One of the reasons Galileo recanted his views is because he feared the Church would excommunicate him. Newton spent the last half of his life writing on theology. I mean, Materialism is an ancient philosophy that basically asserts that everything has a material cause. Therefore, the brain produces the mind. This dates back at least to Democritus in ancient Greece. It was thought to gain support from the physics of Isaac Newton, although Newton himself did not agree. Newton himself instead followed the Dualism of Renee Descartes. It was really the 18th century philosophers such as Diderot and Voltaire who spread the doctrines of Materialism and Mechanism. They did this in order to combat the religious fundamentalism and superstition, and the persecution that were common in their time.”
Chris Carter
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Alex Tsakiris: Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris.
Before we get to today’s interview with Chris Carter, I want to take a minute and tell you about something that happened to me this week. One of the benefits of doing Skeptiko and having it achieve the little bit of success that it has is that I now get books sent to me on a regular basis. Little surprises in the mail. A new book. A new movie to review.
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