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Legendary skeptic James Randi takes a fatal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills onstage, kicking off a searing 18-minute indictment of irrational beliefs. He throws out a challenge to the world's psychics: Prove what you do is real, and I'll give you a million dollars. (No takers yet.)

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Showing Revision 2 created 07/31/2013 by TED.

Title:
Homeopathy, quackery and fraud
Description:

Legendary skeptic James Randi takes a fatal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills onstage, kicking off a searing 18-minute indictment of irrational beliefs. He throws out a challenge to the world's psychics: Prove what you do is real, and I'll give you a million dollars. (No takers yet.)
Speaker:
James Randi
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Good morning.
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Happy to see so many fine folks out here
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and so many smiling faces.
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I have a very peculiar
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background, attitude and approach
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to the real world
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because I am a conjurer.
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Now, I prefer that term over magician,
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because if I were a magician, that would mean
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that I use spells and incantations
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and weird gestures
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in order to accomplish real magic.
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No, I don't do that; I'm a conjurer,
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who is someone who pretends to be
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a real magician. (Laughter)
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Now, how do we go about that sort of thing?
¶
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We depend on the fact
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that audiences, such as yourselves,
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will make assumptions.
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For example, when I walked up here
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and I took the microphone from the stand
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and switched it on,
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you assumed this was a microphone, which it is not.
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(Laughter)
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As a matter of fact, this is something
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that about half of you, more than half of you will not be familiar with.
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It's a beard trimmer, you see?
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And it makes a very bad microphone;
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I've tried it many times. (Laughter)
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The other assumption that you made --
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and this little lesson is to show you
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that you will make assumptions.
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Not only that you can, but that you will
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when they are properly suggested to you.
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You believe I'm looking at you.
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Wrong. I'm not looking at you. I can't see you.
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I know you're out there, they told me backstage, it's a full house and such.
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I know you're there because I can hear you,
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but I can't see you because I normally wear glasses.
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These are not glasses, these are empty frames. (Laughter)
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Quite empty frames.
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Now why would a grown man appear before you
¶
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wearing empty frames on his face?
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To fool you, ladies and gentlemen,
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to deceive you, to show that you, too,
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can make assumptions.
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Don't you ever forget that.
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Now, I have to do something -- first of all, switch to real glasses
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so I can actually see you,
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which would probably be a convenience. I don't know.
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I haven't had a good look. Well, it's not that great a convenience.
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(Laughter)
¶
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I have to do something now, which seems
¶
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a little bit strange for a magician.
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But I'm going to take some medication.
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This is a full bottle of
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Calms Forte.
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I'll explain that in just a moment.
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Ignore the instructions,
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that's what the government has to put in there
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to confuse you, I'm sure.
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I will take enough of these. Mm.
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Indeed, the whole container.
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Thirty-two tablets of Calms Forte.
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Now that I've done that -- I'll explain it in a moment --
¶
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I must tell you that
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I am an actor.
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I'm an actor who plays a specific part.
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I play the part of a magician,
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a wizard, if you will, a real wizard.
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If someone were to appear on this stage in front of me
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and actually claim to be
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an ancient prince of Denmark named Hamlet,
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you would be insulted
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and rightly so.
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Why would a man assume that you would believe
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something bizarre like this?
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But there exists out there
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a very large population
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of people who will tell you
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that they have psychic, magical powers
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that they can predict the future,
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that they can make contact with the deceased.
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Oh, they also say
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they will sell you astrology
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or other fortunetelling methods.
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Oh, they gladly sell you that, yes.
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And they also say
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that they can give you perpetual motion machines
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and free energy systems.
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They claim to be psychics,
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or sensitives, whatever they can.
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But the one thing that has made a big comeback
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just recently
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is this business of
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speaking with the dead.
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Now, to my innocent mind,
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dead implies
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incapable of communicating. (Laughter)
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You might agree with me on that.
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But these people, they tend to tell you that
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not only can they communicate with the dead --
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"Hi, there" --
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but they can hear the dead as well,
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and they can relay this information back to the living.
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I wonder if that's true.
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I don't think so, because
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this subculture of people
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use exactly the same gimmicks that we magicians do,
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exactly the same --
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the same physical methods, the same psychological methods --
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and they effectively and profoundly
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deceive millions of people around the earth,
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to their detriment.
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They deceive these people,
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costs them a lot of money,
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cost them a lot of emotional anguish.
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Billions of dollars are spent
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every year, all over the globe,
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on these charlatans.
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Now, I have two questions
¶
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I would like to ask these people
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if I had the opportunity to do so.
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First question: If I want to ask them to call up --
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because they do hear them through the ear.
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They listen to the spirits like this --
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I'm going to ask you to call up the ghost of my grandmother
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because, when she died, she had the family will,
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and she secreted it someplace. We don't know where it is,
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so we ask Granny, "Where is the will, Granny?"
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What does Granny say? She says, "I'm in heaven and it's wonderful.
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I'm here with all my old friends, my deceased friends,
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and my family
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and all the puppy dogs and the kittens that I used to have when I was a little girl.
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And I love you, and I'll always be with you.
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Good bye."
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And she didn't answer the damn question!
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Where is the will?
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Now, she could easily have said,
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"Oh, it's in the library on the second shelf, behind the encyclopedia,"
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but she doesn't say that. No, she doesn't.
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She doesn't bring any useful information to us.
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We paid a lot of money for that information,
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be we didn't get it.
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The second question that I'd like to ask, rather simple:
¶
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Suppose I ask them to contact
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the spirit of my deceased father-in-law, as an example.
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Why do they insist on saying --
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remember, they speak into this ear --
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why do they say, "My name starts with J or M?"
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Is this a hunting game?
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Hunting and fishing? What is it?
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Is it 20 questions? No, it's more like 120 questions.
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But it is a cruel, vicious,
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absolutely conscienceless --
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I'll be all right, keep your seats (Laughter) --
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game that these people play.
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And they take advantage of the innocent, the naive,
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the grieving, the needy people out there.
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Now, this is a process
¶
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that is called cold reading.
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There's one fellow out there,
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Van Praagh is his name, James Van Praagh.
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He's one of the big practitioners of this sort of thing.
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John Edward, Sylvia Browne
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and Rosemary Altea, they are other operators.
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There are hundreds of them all over the earth, but in this country,
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James Van Praagh is very big.
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And what does he do? He likes to tell you
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how the deceased got deceased,
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the people he's talking to through his ear, you see?
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So what he says is, very often, is like this: he says,
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"He tells me, he tells me, before he passed,
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that he had trouble breathing."
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Folks, that's what dying is all about!
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(Laughter)
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You stop breathing, and then you're dead.
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It's that simple.
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And that's the kind of information they're going to bring back to you?
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I don't think so.
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Now, these people will make guesses, they'll say things like,
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"Why am I getting electricity?
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He's saying to me, 'Electricity.'
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Was he an electrician?" "No."
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"Did he ever have an electric razor?" "No."
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It was a game of hunting questions like this.
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This is what they go through.
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Now, folks often ask us
¶
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at the James Randi Educational Foundation,
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they call me, they say, "Why are you so concerned about this, Mr. Randi?
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Isn't it just a lot of fun?"
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No, it is not fun. It is a cruel farce.
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Now, it may bring a certain amount of comfort,
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but that comfort lasts
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only about 20 minutes or so.
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And then the people look in the mirror, and they say,
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I just paid a lot of money for that reading.
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And what did she say to me? 'I love you!'"
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They always say that.
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They don't get any information,
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they don't get any value for what they spend.
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Now, Sylvia Browne is the big operator.
¶
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We call her "The Talons."
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Sylvia Browne -- thank you --
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Sylvia Browne is the big operator
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in this field at this very moment.
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Now, Sylvia Browne -- just to show you --
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she actually gets 700 dollars
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for a 20 minute reading over the telephone,
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she doesn't even go there in person,
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and you have to wait up to two years because
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she's booked ahead that amount of time.
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You pay by credit card or whatever,
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and then she will call you
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sometime in the next two years.
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You can tell it's her. "Hello, this is Sylvia Browne."
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That's her, you can tell right away.
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Now, Montel Williams is an intelligent man.
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We all know who he is on television.
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He's well educated, he's smart,
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he knows what Sylvia Browne is doing
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but he doesn't give a damn.
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He just doesn't care.
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Because, the bottom line is, the sponsors love it,
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and he will expose her
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to television publicity all the time.
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Now, what does Sylvia Browne give you for that 700 dollars?
¶
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She gives you the names of your guardian angels, that's first.
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Now, without that, how could we possibly function? (Laughter)
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She gives you the names of previous lives,
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who you were in previous lives.
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Duh.
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It turns out that the women
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that she gives readings for
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were all Babylonian princesses, or something like that.
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And the men were all Grecian warriors
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fighting with Agamemnon.
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Nothing is ever said about
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a 14 year-old bootblack in the streets of London
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who died of consumption.
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He isn't worth bringing back, obviously.
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And the strange thing -- folks, you may have noticed this too.
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You see these folks on television --
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they never call anybody back from hell. (Laughter)
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Everyone comes back from heaven, but never from hell.
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If they call back any of my friends,
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they're not going to... Well, you see the story.
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(Laughter)
¶
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Now, Sylvia Browne is an exception,
¶
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an exception in one way,
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because the James Randi Educational Foundation, my foundation,
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offers a one million dollar prize in negotiable bonds.
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Very simply won.
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All you have to do is prove any paranormal, occult
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or supernatural event or power of any kind
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under proper observing conditions.
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It's very easy, win the million dollars.
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Sylvia Browne is an exception in that
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she's the only professional psychic
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in the whole world
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that has accepted our challenge.
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She did this on the "Larry King Live" show on CNN
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six and a half years ago.
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And we haven't heard from her since. Strange.
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She said that, first of all, that she didn't know how to contact me.
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Duh.
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A professional psychic who speaks to dead people,
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she can't reach me?
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(Laughter)
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I'm alive, you may have noticed.
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Well, pretty well anyway.
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She couldn't reach me. Now she says she doesn't want to reach me
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because I'm a godless person.
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All the more reason to take the million dollars,
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wouldn't you think, Sylvia?
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Now these people need to be stopped, seriously now.
¶
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They need to be stopped because this is a cruel farce.
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We get people coming to the foundation all the time.
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They're ruined financially and emotionally
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because they've given their money and their faith
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to these people.
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Now, I popped some pills earlier.
¶
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I have to explain that to you.
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Homeopathy, let's find out what that's all about.
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Hmm. You've heard of it.
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It's an alternative form of healing, right?
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Homeopathy actually consists -- and that's what this is.
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This is Calms Forte,
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32 caplets of sleeping pills! I forgot to tell you that.
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I just ingested
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six and a half days worth of sleeping pills.
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(Laughter)
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Six and a half days, that certainly is a fatal dose.
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It says right on the back here,
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"In case of overdose,
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contact your poison control center immediately,"
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and it gives an 800 number.
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Keep your seats -- it's going to be okay.
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I don't really need it
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because I've been doing this stunt
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for audiences all over the world
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for the last eight or 10 years,
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taking fatal doses of homeopathic sleeping pills.
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Why don't they affect me?
¶
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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The answer may surprise you.
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What is homeopathy?
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It's taking a medicine that really works
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and diluting it down
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well beyond Avogadro's limit.
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Diluting it down to the point
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where there's none of it left. (Laughter)
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Now folks, this is not
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just a metaphor I'm going to give you now, it's true.
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It's exactly equivalent to taking
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one 325 milligram aspirin tablet,
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throwing it into the middle of Lake Tahoe,
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and then stirring it up, obviously with a very big stick,
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and waiting two years or so
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until the solution is homogeneous.
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Then, when you get a headache,
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you take a sip of this water, and -- voila! -- it is gone.
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(Laughter)
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Now that is true. That is what homeopathy is all about.
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And another claim that they make -- you'll love this one --
¶
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the more dilute the medicine is, they say,
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the more powerful it is.
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Now wait a minute, we heard about a guy in Florida.
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The poor man, he was on homeopathic medicine.
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He died of an overdose.
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He forgot to take his pill.
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(Laughter)
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Work on it. Work on it.
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It's a ridiculous thing. It is absolutely ridiculous.
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I don't know what we're doing,
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believing in all this nonsense over all these years.
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Now, let me tell you,
¶
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The James Randi Educational Foundation
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is waving this very big carrot,
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but I must say, the fact that nobody
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has taken us up on this offer
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doesn't mean that the powers don't exist.
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They might, some place out there.
834000 13:54 - 13:57

Maybe these people are just independently wealthy.
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Well, with Sylvia Browne I would think so.
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You know, 700 dollars for a 20 minute reading
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over the telephone --
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that's more than lawyers make!
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I mean that's a fabulous amount of money.
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These people don't need the million dollars perhaps,
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but wouldn't you think they'd like to take it
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just to make me look silly?
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Just to get rid of this godless person out there
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that Sylvia Browne talks about all the time?
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I think that something needs to be done about this.
¶
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We really would love to have suggestions from you folks
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on how to contact federal, state
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and local authorities
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to get them to do something.
873000 14:33 - 14:36

If you find out -- now I understand.
876000 14:36 - 14:38

We've seen people, even today, speaking to us
878000 14:38 - 14:40

about AIDS epidemics
880000 14:40 - 14:42

and starving kids around the world
882000 14:42 - 14:45

and impure water supplies that people have to suffer with.
885000 14:45 - 14:47

Those are very important,
887000 14:47 - 14:49

critically important to us.
889000 14:49 - 14:52

And we must do something about those problems.
892000 14:52 - 14:54

But at the same time,
894000 14:54 - 14:56

as Arthur C. Clarke said,
896000 14:56 - 14:58

The rotting of the human mind,
898000 14:58 - 15:00

the business of believing in the paranormal and the occult
900000 15:00 - 15:02

and the supernatural --
902000 15:02 - 15:04

all of this total nonsense,
904000 15:04 - 15:06

this medieval thinking --
906000 15:06 - 15:08

I think something should be done about that,
908000 15:08 - 15:10

and it all lies in education.
910000 15:10 - 15:12

Largely, it's the media
912000 15:12 - 15:14

who are to blame for this sort of thing.
914000 15:14 - 15:16

They shamelessly promote
916000 15:16 - 15:18

all kinds of nonsense of this sort
918000 15:18 - 15:21

because it pleases the sponsors.
922000 15:22 - 15:24

It's the bottom line, the dollar line.
924000 15:24 - 15:26

That's what they're looking at.
926000 15:26 - 15:28

We really must do something about this.
¶
928000 15:28 - 15:30

I'm willing to take your suggestions,
930000 15:30 - 15:32

and I'm willing to have you
932000 15:32 - 15:35

tune in to our webpage.
935000 15:35 - 15:38

It's www.randi.org.
938000 15:38 - 15:40

Go in there and look at the archives,
940000 15:40 - 15:42

and you will begin to understand much more
942000 15:42 - 15:44

of what I've been talking about today.
944000 15:44 - 15:46

You will see the records that we have.
946000 15:46 - 15:48

There's nothing like sitting in that library
948000 15:48 - 15:50

and having a family appear there
950000 15:50 - 15:53

and say that Mum gave away all the family fortune.
953000 15:53 - 15:55

She cashed in the CDs,
955000 15:55 - 15:58

she gave away the stocks and the certificates.
958000 15:58 - 16:00

That's really sad to hear,
960000 16:00 - 16:03

and it hasn't helped them one bit,
963000 16:03 - 16:05

hasn't solved any of their problems.
965000 16:05 - 16:07

Yes, there could be a rotting of the American mind,
967000 16:07 - 16:10

and of the minds all the way around the earth,
970000 16:10 - 16:13

if we don't start to think sensibly about these things.
974000 16:14 - 16:16

Now, we've offered this carrot,
¶
976000 16:16 - 16:18

as I say, we've dangled the carrot.
978000 16:18 - 16:20

We're waiting for the psychics to come forth and snap at it.
980000 16:20 - 16:22

Oh, we get lots of them,
982000 16:22 - 16:24

hundreds of them every year come by.
984000 16:24 - 16:26

These are dowsers and people
986000 16:26 - 16:28

who think that they can talk to the dead as well,
988000 16:28 - 16:30

but they're amateurs; they don't know how to evaluate
990000 16:30 - 16:33

their own so-called powers.
993000 16:33 - 16:35

The professionals never come near us,
995000 16:35 - 16:37

except in that case of Sylvia Browne
997000 16:37 - 16:39

that I told you about a moment ago.
1000000 16:40 - 16:43

She did accept and then backed away.
1003000 16:43 - 16:46

Ladies and gentlemen,
1006000 16:46 - 16:49

I'm James Randi,
1009000 16:49 - 16:52

and I'm waiting.
1012000 16:52 - 16:54

Thank you.
¶
1014000 16:54 - 16:57

(Applause)
¶

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