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Eight years ago, I was haunted
by an evil spirit.

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I was 25 at the time,

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and I was living in a tiny house
behind someone else's house

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in Los Angeles.

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It was this guest house,
it had kind of been dilapidated,

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not taken care of for a long time.

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And one night, I was sitting there

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and I got this really spooky feeling,

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kind of the feeling
like you're being watched.

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But no one was there except my two dogs,

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and they were just chewing their feet.

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And I looked around. No one was there.

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And I thought, OK,
it's just my imagination.

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But the feeling just kept getting worse,

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and I started to feel
this pressure in my chest,

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sort of like the feeling
when you get bad news.

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But it started to sink lower and lower

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and almost hurt.

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And over the course of that week,
this feeling got worse and worse,

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and I started to become convinced
that something was there

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in my little guest house, haunting me.

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And I started to hear these sounds,

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this "whoosh," kind of whisper,
like something passing through me.

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I called my best friend, Claire, and said,

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"I know this is going to sound crazy,

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but, um ...

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I think there's a ghost in my house,
and I need to get rid of it."

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And she said -- she's very
open-minded -- and she said,

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"I don't think you're crazy.

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I think you just need
to do a cleansing ritual."

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(Laughter)

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"So get some sage and burn it,

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and tell it to go away."

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So I said, "OK,"
and I went and I bought sage.

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I had never done this before,
so I set the sage on fire,

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waved it about, and said, "Go away!
This is my house! I live here.

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You don't live here!"

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But the feeling stayed.
Nothing got better.

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And then I started to think,

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OK, well now this thing is probably
just laughing at me,

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because it hasn't left,

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and I probably just look like
this impotent, powerless thing

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that couldn't get it to go away.

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So every day I'd come home

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and you guys, this feeling got so bad
that -- I mean, I'm laughing at it now --

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but I would sit there in bed
and cry every night.

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And the feeling on my chest
got worse and worse.

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It was physically painful.

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And I even went to a psychiatrist

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and tried to get her
to prescribe me medicine,

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and she wouldn't just because
I don't have schizophrenia, OK.

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(Laughter)

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So finally I got on the internet,
and I Googled "hauntings."

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And I came upon this forum
of ghost hunters.

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But these were a special
kind of ghost hunters --

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they were skeptics.

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They believed that every case of ghosts
that they had investigated so far

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had been explained away by science.

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And I was like, "OK, smart guys,
this is what's happening to me,

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and if you have an explanation for me,
I would love to hear it."

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And one of them said, "OK.

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Um, have you heard
of carbon monoxide poisoning?"

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And I said, "Yeah.

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Like, gas poisoning?"

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Carbon monoxide poisoning
is when you have a gas leak

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leaking into your home.

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I looked it up, and the symptoms
of carbon monoxide poisoning

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include a pressure on your chest ...

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(Laughter)

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auditory hallucinations -- whoosh --

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and an unexplained feeling of dread.

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So that night, I called the gas company.

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I said, "I have an emergency.
I need you to come out.

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I don't want to get into the story now,
but I need you to come out."

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(Laughter)

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They came out. I said,
"I suspect a gas leak."

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They brought their carbon
monoxide detector,

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and the man said,

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"It's a really good thing
that you called us tonight,

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because you could have been
dead very soon."

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Thirty-seven percent of Americans
believe in haunted houses,

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and I wonder how many of them
have been in one

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and how many of them have been in danger.

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So that haunting story
has led me to my job.

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I'm an investigator,
and I'm an investigator in two senses:

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I'm an investigative journalist,

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and I'm also an investigator
of the claims of the paranormal

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and claims of the spiritual.

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And that means a few things.

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Sometimes that means that I'm pretending
to need an exorcism

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so I can get -- yes, that's right! --
so I can go to an exorcist

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and see if he's using gimmicks
or psychological tricks

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to try to convince someone
that they're possessed.

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Sometimes that means
I'm going undercover in a fringe group

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which I report on
for a podcast that I co-host.

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And I've done over 70 investigations
like this with my co-host, Ross.

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And I would love to tell you
that nine times out of 10, science wins,

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saves the day, it's all explained.

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That's not true.

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The truth is, 10 times out of 10,
science wins, it saves the day.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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(Applause ends)

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And that doesn't mean
there's no such thing as a mystery.

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Of course there are mysteries,
but a mystery is a mystery.

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It is not a ghost.

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Now, I believe there are
two kinds of truth,

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and it's taken me a while to get
to this place, but I think this is right,

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so hear me out.

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I think there is outer truth
and there's inner truth.

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So if you say to me,

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"There was a man named Jesus
and he once existed,"

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that's outer truth, right?

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And we can go and look
at the historical record.

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We can determine
whether that seems to be true.

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And I would argue,
it does seem to be true.

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If you say, "Jesus rose
from the dead," -- ooh, trickier.

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(Laughter)

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I would say that's an outer-truth claim,

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because he physically rose or he didn't.

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I'm not going to get into
whether he rose or he didn't,

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but I would say
that's an outer-truth claim.

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It happened or it didn't happen.

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But if you say, "I don't care
whether he rose from the dead.

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It's symbolically important to me,

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and that metaphor is so meaningful,
so purposeful to me,

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and I'm not going to try
to persuade you of it,"

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now you've moved it
from outer truth to inner truth,

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from science to art.

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And I think we have a tendency
to not be clear about this,

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to try to move our inner truths
to outer truths,

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or to not be fair about it to each other,

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and when people are telling us
their inner truths,

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to try to make them defend them
by outer-truth standards.

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So I'm talking here about outer truth,
about objective things.

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And there was an objective reality
in my haunted house, right?

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Now that I've told you about the gas leak,

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I doubt a single person here
would be like,

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"I still think there was a ghost, too."

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(Laughter)

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Because as soon as we have
these scientific explanations,

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we know to give up the ghost.

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We use these things as stopgaps
for things that we can't explain.

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We don't believe them because of evidence;

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we believe them because
of a lack of evidence.

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So there is a group in Los Angeles

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called the Independent
Investigations Group, or the IIG,

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and they do great work.

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They'll give a $10,000 prize

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to anyone who can show,
under scientific conditions,

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that they have a paranormal ability.

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No one's done it yet,

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but they've had a couple people
who claim that they were clairaudients,

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which means that they can hear voices
either from the great beyond

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or they can read minds.

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And they had one person
who was very sincere,

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who believed that he could read minds.

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So they set up a test with him,
and this is the way it always works.

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The group says, "OK, we have a protocol,

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we have a way to scientifically test this.

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Do you agree with it?"

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The person says yes. Then they test it.

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It's very important that both sides agree.

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They did that, they tested him.

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They said, "OK, you know what?

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You weren't able to predict
what Lisa was thinking.

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It matched up about the same as chance.

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Looks like you don't have the power."

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And that gave them the opportunity

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to compassionately sit down with him
and have a very difficult discussion,

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which basically amounted to,

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"Hey, we know you're sincere,
and what that means is,

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you do hear something in your head."

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And that guy got to make
the very difficult decision,

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but really the life-changing decision
about whether to go get help.

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We're actually helping people
to make these connections

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that maybe before seemed like
otherworldly explanations,

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help draw us into reality
and maybe change our lives for the better.

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Now, on the other hand,
maybe one time it'll turn out to be true.

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Maybe we'll find out there are ghosts,

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and holy shit, it will be the best thing!

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And every time I do
one of these investigations,

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I still get so excited,

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and I'm like 75 into them,

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and still I swear on number 76,
I'm going to be like, "This is the one!"

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(Laughter)

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Maybe I'm just eternally optimistic,
but I hope I never lose this hope,

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and I invite you to take
this same attitude

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when people share
their outer beliefs with you.

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When talking about testable claims,

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respect them enough to ask
these good questions.

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Challenge and see
how you can examine them together,

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because there's this idea
that you can't respect a belief

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and still challenge it,
but that's not true.

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When we jiggle the lock,
when we test the claim,

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we're saying, OK, I respect you,
I'm listening to what you're saying,

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I'm going to test it out with you.

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We've all had that experience
where you're telling someone something,

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and they're like, "Oh,
that's really interesting, yeah,"

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you know you're being had.

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But when someone says, "Really? Huh.

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Sounds a little sketchy to me,
but I'm listening,"

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you at least know
you're being engaged and respected.

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And that's the kind of attitude
we should have with these claims.

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That's showing someone
that you care what they're saying.

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That's respect.

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Now, yes, most of these searches
will come up empty,

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but that's how all of science works.

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Every cure for cancer so far
has not panned out,

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but we don't stop looking,

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for two reasons.

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Because number one, the answer matters.

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Whether it's looking at the afterlife
or the paranormal or the cure for cancer,

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it all amounts to the same question:

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How long will we be here?

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And two, because looking for the truth,

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being open-minded,

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and being willing to be wrong
and to change your whole worldview

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is awe-inspiring.

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I still get excited at ghost stories
every single time.

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I still consider that every group
I join might be right,

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and I hope I never lose that hope.

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Let's all never lose that hope,

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because searching for what's out there

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helps us understand what's in here.

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And also, please have
a carbon monoxide detector in your home.

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(Laughter)

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Thank you.

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(Applause)