A Trek Through Skepticism with The Amazing Randi

April 21, 2014

This week, Point of Inquiry is excited to welcome “The Amazing” James Randi: famed magician a godfather (as it were) of the modern reason movement, and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation. Randi is the subject of a new documentary film, An Honest Liar, which brings to life Randi’s intricate investigations that publicly exposed psychics, parapsychologists, faith-healers, and con artists.

Randi and host Josh Zepps diagnose the state of American credulity, and discuss why human beings continue to believe unreasonable things that simply “sound nice.” They reminisce about some of Randi’s greatest hits with Johnny Carson and Oprah Winfrey, and consider the impact of the religious right in America, of the Internet and social media on skepticism, and much more.

It’s a funny and insightful trek through the last few decades of skepticism from the mind of a great man who helped make it all happen.



This is point of inquiry from Monday, April 21st, 2014. 

I’m Josh Zepps, host of Huff Post Live, and this is the podcast of the Center for Inquiry. Today’s show is brought to you by Harris, an excellent shaving company. You can visit Harrys dot com and use the promo code point to save five bucks off your first purchase. Today’s guest is quite simply the most important human alive for the skeptical movement. An iconic magician, an expert escape artist, a ruthless paranormal investigator, really the godfather of the modern reason movement, James Randi is also now the subject of a feature length documentary entitled An Honest Liar. He joins us now. Thank you so much for being on point of inquiry again. 

Great pleasure. But is iconic an insulting term? I think it’s a good term. Oh, I would want to be iconic. Well, it depends what it’s what noun it is attached to. Right. An iconic asshole. Probably not. There you go. You see, I’m asking questions as I go. It’s good that nimble mind inquiring. Yes. 

You’ve been such a an inspiration to a lot of people in the secular movement. I’m interested in when you are young, when you were a kid who who your inspirations were, what did you think you wanted to do? 

Well, I didn’t really know. I very briefly, I won’t go into the whole story is great. A long tale, but I turned out to be a child prodigy. I essentially didn’t go to grad school at all. This is in Canada. And they found out that I was falling asleep in class and that I always knew the lessons and such. So they made some sort of provision. I was allowed to play hooky. I was actually told that I can go anywhere I wanted. I lived mostly at that time in their own Ontario museum in Toronto and a couple of other places like Toronto Public Library was just bliss. It was a huge building. My Tudor than I needed because I was a little tiny. I got a pass to go into the stacks at the back and oh, what a privilege that is. What did what were you reading? Oh. Well, I learned to read Egyptian hieroglyphics for one thing, and I think I could still do it. I can I can whip off a cartouches so you know, but it was one of my hobbies and and I’ve never been to Egypt. I think it’s the only country in the world that I might get Bender. Wow. Even though that was my fascination. Yeah. An edge. However, nonetheless, I. Yeah. I just loved wandered around on my own and I got that privilege until a certain point when I visited the casino theater, which I frequently did on afternoon vaudeville shows. You see, these are the days of vaudeville. I’m taking you way back into the mists. And I got to see Harry Blackstone, the magician. Now, he was the reigning magician of the day. His son, Harry Junior succeeded, of course, but I actually saw him levitate a woman in the air. He gestured and he said and I remember very clearly and he had a bit of a lisp. So I’ll try to be Harry Blackstone. 

You see this young lady suspended in the air before you. As if weightless. She could stay there, should I wish for a thousand years and a day. But in the interest of time and your patience, I will return her once more. To the court from which he rose only a moment ago, descend Ausra. And she would dissent. If you don’t think I was taken completely by the. I had to know more about this. So I actually went backstage and went around the back of the alley of the casino theater. It’s still there on Queen Street in Toronto, Canada. And, oh, I assume much there unless it’s been taken away. I can’t picture that possibility. And old Harry Blackstone was with his wing collar undone and wiping his perspiring pay. So in only days before air conditioning and big theaters as he. And I approached him. He was generous with this time and with his compassion for the curiosity that I had. Took me backstage, showed me how to do a simple trick and rolled up one of his famous posters, The Levitating Camel, which today fetches over two thousand dollars on anybody’s market. So you rolled it out. He autographed it and we rolled it out. I put it into my arm and I started home. Now, I did not. But I should have resumed it. My parents, who were in a panic because I was so late getting back. And I arrived there as dusk was falling. Walked in the front door and they screeched at me. Where have you been? Why? I ran into this magician, Harry Blackstone and he gate. Oh, my God. I left you behind on the bus. 

So there’s a bus someplace in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the north end in Leaside that is wandering around, I’m sure, to this day with that poster rolled up behind the back window. I’ve got to get to it. 

This is the. Yes. Your new life mission. Right. Go ahead. Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. And at what point did. Then, of course, you’d left home at 17, you joined a carnival and became a magician. Was there. 

I’m interested in the crossover point between magic and skepticism, between magic and investigation. 

Well, magicians have an inner knowledge, of course, of how people can be deceived. And if they’re any good as magicians, they know how to do that. They recognize the gimmicks. And when we see people doing the faith healing gag, for example, healing people by striking them on the forehead or whatever, we see the psychology behind it, especially if you catch them rehearsing backstage with the poor people who are there to be healed. I mean, and I’ve caught them at all these things over the years. 

Yeah. You went on. You wanna tell a story about going on costume to to expose pop off the famous faith healer? 

Well, Johnny never quite got over that either, because I was only on the costume, by the way. Do you know? I did, I think was 22 altogether Ron Lindsay over the years. And I wanted a delight because Carson was a delightful person in person and on the air. He was just wonderful. But I did. I went to his producer and I said, look what I’ve got. And I showed him the evidence ahead. And he said, Oh, wow. 

This is basically evidence that what did that a huge faith healer named Popoff was being fed the details about the people in his audience through a small hearing aid to hear what he had in his in his left ear, as a matter of fact. 

But lest we insult all people named Popoff, who was Peter Popoff, and I think there is probably only one of those ever. But in any case, I said to the producer, I said, we’ll do it tonight. He said, oh, yeah, we can bump a couple of Hollywood starlets. I apologize to starts now. And so I said, well, how do we do this? And he said, well, first of all, I got to call Johnny. And he reached for the phone. I said, Fred. And that was Fred de Cordova and producer at that time. I said, Fred, don’t tell Johnny. He said, Oh, I have to because John doesn’t like surprises. I said, I just think the expression on his face. Well, he’s postering minute, and he pointed at me, you said, well, it’s on your head. I never had to suffer for that because if you if you see broadcast of a nature on YouTube, so you should look out. Peter Popovski, James Randi, it’s also in the film as well. Oh, yes, it is. That’s right, too. I have I only seen version two that came some months ago. I haven’t seen the latest one, but I’m looking forward to that. So in any case, he didn’t tell Johnny. And there’s a spot in the end the film there, which I always makes me laugh because I know they did some editing. You see, at one point, John hadn’t been told what the gimmick was. And then he heard the voice coming over the headphone thing, you see. And he said, Oh, shit, up. And he stopped like that. And he waved his hands at the audience for a quickie to shush them, you see. But I know where that shush occurs, you see. And you can just hear a little hook from the audience as they start up, but they don’t go any further than that. It was edited out. Right. But I always get a laugh at that. 

That’s cute. Uri Geller as well, of course. With pleasure. You’re saying dirty work is has been an object of fascination for so many people, in particular for you. 

What do you make of that tendency to to willingly believe things that we probably wouldn’t ordinarily believe if we thought about them very closely? 

Well, course, most people don’t think about these things twice. If it appeared look at Oprah Winfrey, she has endorsed and spent millions, literally millions on people like Memorize, a very famous cardiologist and doctor. He has a TV show. 

Yes. She gave him a TV show. Now, Oprah believes in anything and accepts anything. That sounds good. That’s all you need for Oprah to win her heart is to make it sound good. Look at this. Others, I won’t mention the source, for example. Very, very quickly. Stuff that she’s gone for over the years and spent millions on supporting. Now, she actually scolding me at one point. We had a faith healer on her on her show. This is many, many years ago. And she said, oh, Randi, be kind. And my throat over was when she’s kind to me, Oprah, I’ll be kind to her. And I think Oprah took that badly. We’ve spoken since. But nonetheless, there are people out there who just won’t look into it any further because it sounds so good. And I wish it were true. I’m going to assume that it is true. And that’s a dangerous attitude to take. 

And do you think there’s a misallocation of empathy? 

I mean, when you say that Oprah is saying that you have to be kind to you as a person who is who is deceiving people. Right. You shouldn’t be that curmudgeon who is exactly exact disproving these things. 

Oh, yes. Why do we do that? What do we have empathy for the villain? 

Sometimes we’re not very smart. There’s such a thing as being smart and I don’t mean high IQ or anything like that, but just being common sense, smart. Look at it and consider. Does it sound like it’s reasonable? I’d maybe want to look a little further into it. In that case, they can buy any of my books. 

Speaking of being commonsense smart, what do you make of the state of common sense smarts in America and the world at the moment? You sort of optimistic or pessimistic about where we’re at? 

Unfortunately, I don’t find that the United United States is is unique in this respect to talk. I traveled all over the world, come back from India, my first visit ever to India, quite charmed by the whole continent. But I didn’t see a whole continent, but a good slice of it. And yet I found that the naivety over there is exactly the same as is in other countries. 

Oh, I’d hazard that. It’s probably worse. I mean, I’ve traveled around India and, you know, they’ve they believe some really wacky things. Oh, yes. Yes. For example. And that I mean, that I even believe in the germ theory of disease. A lot of people who are living there own pleasure. It’s a mystical it is a god. The river is. 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Is it gone? It’s a funny God to have because it’s so huge. Yeah. Where are you going to put it in your in your room. 

Well, I think I think the conventional Christian God is pretty big as well. I’d just say yes, I believe so. And what do you make of faith? What do you make of belief in God is what are your beliefs and your spiritual beliefs, if any? 

I don’t have any spiritual beliefs per say. I have a belief. I really do have a basic belief in the in the basic goodness of our species and in other animals as well. I raise all kinds of animals, kinkajou as parents. Dogs catch the whole thing over all these years. Kinka, just say you don’t have a kinkajou. 

I don’t have a clue. Oh, you haven’t lived yet. Can you do is an arbitrary obese plesiosaurus here? But I am embarrassed to say I don’t know what a kinkajou is. 

Well, it kinkajou is a annatto about the size of a housecat, but very long in that respect. It has a tail and that as long as his body. It’s a mahogany colored. They’re called honey birds as well. You might recognize that name, but I’m talking technically. I mean, cause Effie excuse me for getting scientific on it. They are. Oh. Cody of OVA’s Sakar Leptis. I speak Latin. Who is she? They’re wonderful animals. And I walked into a pet store in the Bronx many, many years ago. Around in 1967. I guess I was doing my radio program w o r Amaunet from New York. 

And this is not a home to the likes of Sean Hannity. 

Yes. Can you imagine? I mean, what has happened? I walked into the pet store in the Bronx and I was curious about kinkajou is I seen one in a film. And I wondered about it. And he led me to the cage. They’re nocturnal, you see. So they sleep during the day. Any fool would know that. And I they opened up this big cage and there’s a bunch of baby carriages that had to be 30 of them, all nestled in a big furry ball. And I stood there and looked. I said, how can I choose? And one little guy looked up at me and went, Wow. Gave a little sort of a hiss and growl at the same time. And he came towards me and very unsteady legs. And I put out my finger and he chomp down on it with his gums. He didn’t have teeth. And Jesse but I that showed me ambition and character. See, he wasn’t going to take any nonsense from a big bearded guy. And so I picked him up, put him in my pocket and I said, this is mine. And I paid the man and walked out and oh, he stayed with me for many, many, many years. That was Sam. That was my first circle, Leptis Cordial vulvas. 

And since they came up, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and the religious right, these characters, I thought they had no character at all over the course of your lifetime. 

Has that strain of American culture intensified and to what do you attribute it? 

It’s been up and down. The utility denies it’s one of those things and it takes different guises. It goes into different directions. In some cases, it’s APA apoplectic about bit. There was this man’s name, ma’am. Alan, somebody or other I can’t remember his name. He died a short time ago. So he never saw the end of the world. He did see the end of the world, but not the one he was expecting. 

They’re they’re preaching the end of the world anytime, Matau. And you can look just put it on Google. And as we know, Google knows everything and just put an end to the world and you’ll see people who are currently say the end of the road. Coming next Thursday here and next Tuesday. I’ve forgotten which. But they’re saying these things constantly. And would the end of the world doesn’t come days? I ha I dropped a seven there. I didn’t carry the seven when I was doing my calculations. It’s funny, it’s 18 weeks from now. So let’s all prepare even further, folks. And people will send him money or him or her money. It’s astonishing that the amount of money these people take it really because someone usually aged folks that are not thinking too well perhaps are not in their marbles. He’s been losing them over the years. Hey, me too. Hey, I’m 85, so I could lose Merval. There’s one right there on the floor. 

He looked he looked fine. He looked as though there was. Is there actually a mall? And I go to carry market from now. I think it’s dropped just like a little breadcrumb trail. I’m going to do that from now on. I’m making notes right now. 

But it is astonishing that they will preach things like that. They will always get people to send them money. They seem to think that somehow they’re they’re paying their dues or something. I don’t want to be one of those who has not wafted away in the rapture or whatever, you know. And they believe this stuff implicitly because someone who’s convincing enough, who waves his finger and loudly enough at them will convince them. And there are people out there who are going to fall for these these. Eesh. I mean, what can you call them? So just krux they’re crooks. Yeah. Absolute crooks. 

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Do you think that having a religious belief predisposes one to fall for those kinds? Oh, yes. Because plenty of bears. You know, you’ve got a substrata. That’s right. 

You’ve already got a belief in something supernatural paranormal and that that can be controlled if you know the code words, if you know the things to say or where to send the money. 

Why do you think that people are so unequivocal, religious people, about the fact that they happen to belong to the religion of their parents and their parents parents and don’t can’t see the sort of arbitrary cultural dynamic that’s going on between different faiths? 

They don’t they don’t think about things like that. You see, they’re raised in a family which has always been Mormon or whatever. And so many Mormons, of course, it’s the only way to go or family for four generations now has been Mermin and we’ve been very successful. Grandma had that shoes or the shoe star fail. But he had the shoe store for a while. There is incredible the reasoning and rationalization that they go through. 

Is that part of what you try to fight? You just put it out a kind of logical fallacy, which is sort of selective, you know, selective choosing. I guess we remember what. We remember the hits. We forget the misses. Is that is that a key example, I guess, of the kind of thinking that you’ve spent your career trying to try to overcome? 

Yes, indeed. I want people to be aware of it first, aware that these things do exist. And I give them examples like the Popoff thing. For example, that revelation on the Carson show was one of the best shows I ever did somebody because it accomplished so much. I got a huge amount of mail after that. They said the mail room just filled up. A lot of it was hate mail as well. Of course, you’re going against God. 

And there’s, again, the misallocation of empathy. I feel sorry for this poor Charlotte. Exactly. 

Exactly. But it not only does it never end. It takes two twists constantly. 

Now, there was a thing going for a short while there about four or five years ago, poor stock market numbers. 

Now, why are these churches selling winning stock numbers of coded numbers of some? If they could use them themselves. Now, look at Chris. Sheer benevolence. See The Mentalist Christian. He has been selling as a system of telling what’s going to happen on the stock market. But why isn’t Christian fabulously wealthy? If he knows how to do it, why doesn’t he do it? Why would he sell his secret? 

That’s that’s a question you can’t get an answer to, and sometimes you’ll see people say, well, I may never have thought of it that way. But then they turned to thoughts of more lunches. You know, it doesn’t seem to be significant to them, but they will go home and say, oh, yes, I was going to send the money to so-and-so and they’ll sit down and write out the check. 

We mentioned Uri Geller briefly earlier and then then got sidetracked off it. But I’d love you to explain what happened when he went on. And you came him to set up basically, let’s say he was going around the country doing these little tricks and saying that he had telekinetic powers. Right. Just explain what those tricks were and what you did to foil him a little much. 

Well, his he only has four tricks, trade tricks, and he’s built his whole career. And I got to give him credit. Any guy, any magician, a performer he knows for tricks. 

I mean, that’s not a magician. That’s a casual trickster out at a party that you’re all kid does fall. 

Exactly. 

With a deck of cards or whatever, repaper balls or whatever. But he has a very small repertoire. What? He has built this into millions and millions of dollars. So I give him all the credit in the world for that. Mind you, he dragged a lot of people through the muck for that, and he cost him a lot of money. A lot of people gave him huge amounts of money and governments all over this world and universities and and places of higher learning. They spent tens of millions of dollars to investigate what they called the Geller effect of the killer effect. 

It’s a simple trick, bending a spoon when no one’s looking. And he’s been exposed so many times, caught actually bending the spoon as he turns away from the camera, for example, and then showing, oh, oh. Which bent look it. Oh, did you see that? 

That’s what he said to me in the offices of Time magazine when he didn’t know that I was sitting right behind him. I mean, he had seen me, but he didn’t know what I looked like at that point. That’s before he got famous. And I was sitting over his shoulder, so to speak. And they brought in a whole bunch of forks and such. Now they don’t listen to me. I always say one fork, one spoon. They bring in 16 parks and 16 spoon to make sure that they got enough of them. And of course, you can’t keep track of all these eight. And I saw him looking over his shoulder. I saw him take a park between his hands and bend it. And then he beat it, covered over with a piece of paper that was on the desk in front of him. And Charlie Reynolds, my late good friend, was sitting across the office and he looked up at me and he nodded. And I nodded at him to show that we both had seen the move. And then about ten minutes later and so Gunner swoops aside this piece appearances. Oh, look, look. That’s what he says. L Okay, Luke. Luke hasn’t Luke and Mary and John. That sure. Of course. Yeah. Luke, look at it. 

He turned to me and he said, Did you see Dad? And I looked him straight in the eye and I said, Yes, Mr. Geller. I did see that. He immediately turned away from me, tossed the fart to one side and left the room. He was quiet. But one trick like that, the spoon bending thing made him. There are a couple of others. 

As I say, I used to pretend that he could tell which little booklets box little steel ball was in. 

Oh, yes. Don’t get me started on that and we’ll we’ll do another half. 

Howard, what’s your take on it? Are there any varieties of religious belief or spiritual belief that are less ridiculous than others? What are you what are your thoughts about what sort of human consciousness and self awareness is and whether there are any spiritual insights into that? 

Well, I think I think the whole problem arises with. There must be an answer to a question, any question I ask. And if it isn’t, it’s magical or it’s something to do with religion. Where do we come from? Come on. That’s a dumb question. Have you heard of evolution formally named Darwin? Well, it’s a long story, I don’t want to get into that. 

But evolution explains, if you understand what it is, explains most of these mysteries, because most people are not sophisticated enough to know the literally billions of experiments that nature performs every second. 

Even today, in seawater, in slime and guises all over the world, under the ground, above the ground and whatnot, nature is constantly performing experiments, inadvertently, mutations of various kinds and whatever. But these things occur all the time. Most of them don’t work at all. They get nothing. 

And maybe some of them work for a short period of time, maybe only two or three days, maybe one hundred years, but they eventually go away. The number of species that has developed with certain adaptations to nature over these billions appears to have gone by. 

Come on. 

But of course, the Earth only started, what, 1000 years ago or something? 

Make it six. I think if I say I say that I can’t keep up to the latest figures. We don’t read. They don’t realize. 

They have no idea the numbers or permutations of combinations that sets of molecules, DNA and whatever can go through. Yeah. In order to accomplish large variations. 

Does the level of disbelief in evolution in this country alarm you? 

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And I will get people to say, oh, I don’t believe in spoon. Barnegat are telling the future or any of these people the end, though I don’t believe in any of that. But I believe in God. And I ask them why. They say, oh, everyone knows there’s a God. Where did all this come from? And then we and then we go into the same thing all over again. Where did all this come from? I haven’t really got the time for that. I’m 85. I’ve got so many years left. You know, I like to think I’ve got at least 50 because I always advertise. 

Eighty five going on 100 being being 85 and having lived over the period of the very exciting period of world history that you have low lived. 

Well, what we could say that about any anybody’s lifetime. And they all say that if they have any perception of history at all. 

Well, they clearly lived like thirteen eighty two to fourteen, twenty seven. I mean, you were it’s not like living in the 20th century where I don’t go over that far back. But that’s true. That is true. 

That is you know, there was huge momentous changes in the 20th century. And I’m interested in your thoughts about the technological revolution now, the I.T. revolution, social media, Twitter. You know, the fact that I host a show that’s just exclusively on the Internet that people can view stream and, oh, we’re doing a podcast. Which is. Yes. What do you sort of prognosticate about the outcome, what the outcome of that will be? 

I hope I hope, first of all, that it will educate people, get people to listen more carefully to their inner voices, not the ones that they speak from outer space and from under the earth and whatnot from the sky. No, I hope that they will begin to think more solidly and more often and more deeply about. Why they believe certain things, whether it’s political, whether it’s just social, whether it’s theoretical in one way or another. Why do they have the beliefs that they do have? And if they look back in their history, they’ll find some of the reasons for that. Can I tell you a short story? But a very, very good story. 

I would never decline a story. Well, all right. 

The amazing James Ray is on my my father’s side. His father. He was raised in Denmark, although he was actually from Germany and his family moved to Denmark and the father had some knowledge of the Danish language and whatnot. But he, as a kid, as a very young kid, suddenly found himself an only child. He found himself living in Denmark and not having many friends because the Danish language is quite different from German. And so he was sort of a lonely kid. But he went to school and he was learning Danish and learning English at the same time. And he developed a mystical companion. Now you know how children often have invisible companions that they want to tell people about. Not often, but they offer them do. And so he used to have a follow that he knew as Mr. Christian. Okay. Now, the founder was Christian. So that’s not too unlikely that he would come home at night. 

And when his father would arrive back from from his office job and sit around the separate table, he’s the oldest Christian told me today and such. And Mr. Christian was a fellow with a big black beard, and he carried a sword. Unlikely, rather unlikely. And he had dogs that were bigger than little George himself. Very tall dog, but very, very friendly. And George always said that he got along fine with him. And one of them was named Ivan. 

And he especially attached to Ivan. And but he couldn’t figure out why there were so many horses around when Mr Christian was there. And he couldn’t quite figure that out. And he would tell his parents about it. Finally, his father got to a point, said, OK, you’re going to stop this now. No more of this fantasizing with the imaginary playmates and such. And he said, oh, no, no. Mr. Christian is very real, Father. I don’t know. I don’t want to hear that name again. There’ll be no more of it. So George was silenced. No more stories. About a year after that, his father sat down and opened up the evening paper. Now, in those days, no photographs in the paper, you see. But they had to. They had. Cuts made of drawings and whatnot in cartoons and various things. And the father opens up the paper and they’re on the front page of the paper, his band, The Black Beard, on a horse with very large dogs around it. King, Christian, the Knights of Denmark, who little George had been speaking to every morning when he went to school because he passed through the royal courtyard, he was a public park and he would run into Mr. Christian Christian the night on his huge horse who called him George, and he called industry Christian. And the father was a little surprised at that, to say the least. 

But he never questioned George and George said he met God. We believe every bit of it. 

But you see, we can’t discount every story that comes alive. So listen to me, too, because maybe there is something beside or behind pardon me, these visions that people have, these impressions that they have, the stories that they tell. There may be some other cause there. And my grandfather, the perfect choice to give you an example. 

Love it. Last question to do you. I was talking to Andrew in a couple of weeks ago about those long years. 

And we’re just so proud of what she’s doing. So proud of her. Oh, I agree. Oh. 

After all, you know, the head of that program now. Neil deGrasse Tyson is a fabulous gentleman. We’ve had him twice to our annual meetings that we have in Las Vegas. The amazing meeting you see AM and what a personality. What a generous soul with his time and and his. 

I can’t reach him now. He’s too big and he’s too big to reach at the. But I’ll get back to it. 

We were talking about about she and I were talking about extraterrestrial life and the probability of there being some. I wonder what your thoughts are. 

Oh, I think it’s inevitable. Oh, yeah. There’s got to be look at the size of the cosmos. Let’s get back to that. Yes. Look at the size of it. Look at all the possibilities. Take any one of the photographs that are being Tapert taken deep into space now and look at galaxies that are there in little spots of of light little pixels on a screen. And you can go closer and closer and closer and there are more and more. And those are never be a lie. Not necessarily. Little stars that are lost millions of years ago because it took millions of years for the light to get to us. So where are they now? We don’t know if they exist to tell, but it is so vast. With all of those possibilities. Other life has to exist in the cosmos someplace. Now, not not too close to us. 

The nearest light that we could possibly hope for is one point four light years away. And that’s the amount of time it takes a beam of light to travel to earth from out to us, from Earth, from Earth probably throws the model very mobile from that star system. Yet to get to Earth one point four years at one hundred ninety six thousand miles per second. I mean, that’s how far away the nearest star is. So it’s very improbable that we’re going to hear from them or that they’re going to hear from us, though we are sending out signals, you know, Operation Setit FCI. Yes. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It’s a wonderful project. So exciting. Yeah. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That we can think to do that kind of thing and troubled to do it. That’s the beauty of it. Because we are who we are, this species we belong to. Or some of us only half belong to. This species that we belong to is so curious, so inventive. And with people like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan, our wonderful folks like this that I’ve been able to rub shoulders with over the years. I am so privileged in that, so privileged. 

And, of course, people like you. James, Randi, thank you so much for being here. It’s a real pleasure to have you on Seven Leisure. 

And we’ll ask me again, I’m sure. 

Absolutely. Any time I’ll be here having you every week. We could just get a coffee. You know, you can come back. Yeah. Once a week. 

Come to think of it. I’m going to finish this coffee. My brain just stopped. Thanks to. 


Josh Zepps

Josh Zepps

An Australian media personality, political satirist, actor, and TV show host. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. He was a founding host for HuffPost Live.