-the following is an interview of James Randi by Eric Krieg 3/97

special thanks to Martin Czigler for transcribing this.





EK:  ...Uh, the following kinds of goals do you think deserve more attention, things like providing responses to claims, increasing percent    of people who hear the message, nurturing the next generation, advancing the agenda of critical thinking to all walks of life, which of these goals do you think we should focus on?



JR:  Information, I think, is the major proposition here, information    that we can provide to people

 who don't necessarily have that information, so anything that's educational, anything that teaches 

critical thinking, anything that makes information available to people who need to have it available 

to them.  Um, I think that sometime we spend far too much time handling individual claims, mysterious 

powers and such, uh except that    that demonstrates for media bites, essentially demonstrates the 

fact that we    can usefully use individual investigation of specific claims because they    attain a 

very high profile in the news, in the media.  and if we can go after    them and show that they don't 

necessarily hold water, that's fine, but more    basic than that is to provide the information whereby

 people don't need to be    led to this conclusion they can arrive at that conclusion themselves. 

 And I think particularly for young people, we have to provide that information    for them.



EK:  OK.  I understand.  In my mind, it represents a little bit of a    shift from simple debunking 

to getting the message across.



JR:   Debunking.  Now let's discuss that term.  I don't consider myself    to be a debunker.  A 

debunker would be someone who says "Here's something that isn't so, and I'm going to show it to 

be not so."  I can't have that attitude.  If I have that attitude, it means that I've already

 presumed    that there is no phenomenon here that can be studied, that it doesn't exist. 

  

 I can't have that attitude.  That's too easy an attitude for me to have.    It's

too convenient.  I can't afford that convenience.  I have to say, essentially, "I don't know whether 

this is so, but I'm willing to look    into it to find out whether or not it is so."



EK:  The  term investigator being better than debunker.



JR:  Oh, much better.  I never use the word debunker.  A debunker means a preconceived opinion on 

the thing.  No, [??], I have a preconceived    opinion about Santa Claus.  I do not sit by my 

chimney on the evening of December    24 waiting for a fat man in a red suit to bounce down the chimney.  But the reason being, and common sense tells me, it's not likely to be true.  And  

  I have had some experience in the field, as we all have.  So I'm prejudiced against belief 

in Santa Clause.  I also, from my previous experience with things like dowsing and acupuncture 

and therapeutic touch and various    other things of this ilk, I am predisposed to believe that

 it probably is not    so. But I cannot say that it is not so.  I can't prove a negative.  

The onus    of proof is on them.  Show me that it is so, then we've got a different    matter.



EK:  Alright, I understand.  Do you think there is any particular lack of resources [that are needed?] to reach these goals.



JR:  Oh, yeah.  Schools are not trying to get politically correct or    popular with parents or with

 other educators to question things that are    generally accepted that we have to spend vast 

fortunes on alternative curing modalities, for example.  Now, we must spend money on them, 

absolutely. There may be a baby in this bathwater.  I've looked at a lot of    bathwater, and 

I've run it through very close sieves.  I haven't found any babies so far, but there may be one 

there.  If there is, we want to know about    that. But we don't have to do what the National Institutes of Health is doing,    for example which is throwing tens of millions of dollars into

 the hands of    the alternative healers, so called, and having them investigate all kinds of 

strange angles of their healing modalities, supposedly, uh instead of investigating the basic 

facts of it.  For example, the chiropractors.   

 You

could answer a question "Does chiropratic have any basis in fact?  Is it    a healing modality,

 and if so, to what extent does it work, in what direction?"  They don't do that, that's basic 

research.  That's what this foundation will support, basic research.  But instead, the NIH money

 that was given to them, they spent on trying to determine how much force is exerted by the 

thumbs of the chiropractor on the spinal vertebrae.  Now    come on, we didn't need that 

information.  We still don't need that    information no matter how much there is of it. 

 That's not so exciting, go around and measure chimneys to find out whether fat men in 

red suits can get down.   

 No,

let's go to a more basic fact:  can a man live at the north pole making enough toys to 

fill the stockings of children around the world.  That's a more basic question.  Never 

mind measuring the chimneys.



EK:  All right.  Within the skeptical community do you think there's any particular lack of 

resources, like money, people.  Is there any specific thing that comes to mind?



JR:  Well, CSICOP and the Skeptical ? in California for example, they    have money behind 

them because they've engineered it in such a way that their subscriptions to their journals

 and such will support them.  They get    grant money independently as well.  Skeptical 

Magazine is out on the newstands    and selling very well, from my understanding of it; 

they're well funded.  But the individual skeptical groups in cities and towns around the 

United    States are very poorly funded. They're supported entirely by members who give  

  money to keep the thing alive.  and I would hope that more money would come    

their way.  Now this organization, the James Randi Educational Foundation, is    

only getting started.  We are generously funded, I must say, but we have to    

begin looking for independent sources of income in order to expand, to build   

 our auditorium, various projects that we are undertaking.  By and large, the 

skeptical movement is poorly funded.  There are notable exceptions to    that, 

but the small groups are the ones I feel really sorry for, and I see them 

folding every day, because of lack of interest.  One up in Canada just folded.   

There was just not enough money, not enough interest that    

people would give their money for it.  And it's a great pity that these things aren't better supported.



EK:  All right.  I'll be getting into the efforts of local skeptics a    

little bit later after this.  Do you have any guess what the annual net cost is,    

to the nearest order of magnitude, to the world of ignorance and    

irrationality, in terms of billions of dollars or perhaps lives lost.



JR:  It's, uh, the mind boggles, I have no idea, I have no idea    

whatsoever, whether it's billions or trillions, I don't know.  All we know is for 

example, that the one so-called psychic network, the so-called Psychic Friends, is 

taking in as much as ten million dollars a month.  That's    gross, mind you, that's

 not their profit, but if you can't get some constructive and creative bookkeeping

 done, in that direction, there's something wrong with your creative bookkeeping.  

To think that they bring in that kind of money, that's one source of flummery that 

brings in that amount of money. We know that Peter Popoff, the so-called healer and 

evangelical preacher    on television, at the time that I got him a few years back 

exposed him on    The Tonight Show, at that time he was bringing in 4.3 million dollars a    

month, alone.  It was a non-profit organization and he paid no taxes on it.  It    

was his church, and he was putting, I suspect, a rather large amount of that income 

into his pocket.  We know in the case of W. B. Grant that he certainly was because he's 

now in Federal prison for exactly that crime.



EK:  Did you take Popoff down for good, or is he out there again.



JR:  Popoff is back, and he's got on one of his brochures a picture of me with the number 

666 over it (?), which I rather take as uh a flattering right[???].



EK:  Well, it's a badge of honour.  I'd love to get a copy of that.



JR:  In that case, yes.



EK:  Does the concept of triage apply to us giving the rash of nonsense that's out there.



JR:  Explain triage.



EK:  The French term for being [???] with a lot of battered soldiers:   

 where

one's too far gone, don't worry about;  those who can probably make it, 

don't worry about; where you can make a difference, get them there.



JR:  Yah, I think it does probably apply to the skeptical movement in general.  

t certainly applies to our efforts here.  We have to find out where we can apply 

the attention, and some of it has to go by the board because it doesn't seem to 

be productive enough.  We're trying it on an international basis as well because, 

hey, human beings all over the world are plagued with this lack of coherence in the 

thinking process, the lack    of critical thinking.  Some of our prizes, some of our 

grants, are given in other countries.  For years now, I've been giving out a prize in 

Hungary, for example, to the students for the best project or essay based upon the 

paranormal the occult or the supernatural, and it's been very well    received. 

Out of five years we've only given out three prizes 'cause for two years    

no really sufficiently good essays or projects came along.  The other three were big winners.  

It's only $300 out of my personal pocket every year,    plus an additional $300 to buy 

subscriptions to their leading science journal, there to distribute around high schools, 

and $300 buys a lot of subscriptions to this magazine and it gets into a lot of hands 

that way    so I feel that's money that I personally spent very productively.  That's out   

 of my own pocket.  Now with this Foundation I have to be a little more    

careful how I spend the money.  It's got to have an impact.  You've got to get   

 bang for your buck, as they say, and that's hard to judge.  That's very hard    

to judge.  There are things I would like to do right here, locally, within a few 

blocks of where we sit at this moment, but I have to reach a littler further out 

because I think the total effect is better over a period of    time.



EK:  I agree.  What is the most successful way that people manage to discredit us.  What kinds of lessons are there.



JR:  By just simply saying "Oh we have a whole stack of letters here from Ph.D.'s.  

Who are these people?"  They're very, they doubt, and, uh they deal with things, real 

scientists, they, they, they put them down and belittle thembecause they say "Look, 

real scientists are dealing with    space, they're dealing with electrons"  You can't 

see space or electrons.   

 You're dealing with things that you can't see, and you can't put in a bottle.   

 Well

that's what we're doing and yet they say we're wrong.  And yet they deal with these things all 

the time.  They admit that they're dealing with probabilities and statistics.  Those are all

 ethereal things.  That's not real stuff; that's not the real world.  And when we deal with 

that they    come down on us for it.  But all this is a semantic trick that they use, of 

course, they're going to try to show that things we're dealing, the    people in science, 

are dealing with thing that don't exist at all, that's their    way of putting it, so you 

have to be very careful against falling in that   

trap.



EK:  Right.  What's your personal message to the skeptic that just    collects information, 

if they were willing to commit an hour a week.  uh or doing something more.  What would we 

ask of them.



JR:  Well, it's very interesting, and I think very productive, to do such things as keeping 

track of predictions that are made in the press.  and then, by the end of the year to see if 

those predictions came true.   

 We've

got a whole section here on prophecy.  And Andrew Harter, one of my assistants here, has 

been gathering together things that Irene Hughes and Jeanne Dixon and other so-called prophets

 have been saying down over the years.  We find that Jeanne Dixon said that in the sixties 

Red China    would be going to war with other countries with atomic bombs.  Now, I live in 

Florida, and the newspapers don't report everything, but maybe we missed that report?  

I'm not too sure.  The end of the world has been predicted    so many times in the last 

decade or so and as you've probably noticed it    hasn't happened.  Collecting those 

things just to see how silly the prophets    are, and how wrong they are, it can be 

useful and such, and if they're any    folks who are going to do that, we here at the 

Foundation would like to be a recipient of that information because it can be valuable to us.



EK:  So keeping tabs on crackpots is one of many ways that local skeptics with minimal time 

can help.



JR:  Oh yes, that's very useful, I think, as long as it's put into one central data bank, 

and here we're very um very interested in archiving, digitalizing information like that, 

for a future generation to look at,    and say this is a record of what kind of nonsense 

has gone on in the past and try to correlate it to their time.



EK:  Can you think of good ways to motivate these armchair skeptics to become a little more active? ...



JR:  Well, there's a certain amount of satisfaction.  If they don't feel there's a satisfaction, 

then they may not be dedicated enough to the    cause. I think that's a pity.  I would encourage

 them to become dedicated to the cause because I think it's important.  It's ceratinly important

 to future generations, and if we want to leave something behind us, maybe what we    

want to leave is information, is an opinion, is an attitude that maybe    endures. I'm 

satisfied to know that I have ten, almost eleven, books out now and    that they're on 

library shelves in libraries all over the world, and I can picture that a hundred years 

after I'm gone some young person is going go along there and take this book out and look 

at it, say "I wonder about    this. What has this man got to say?", look into it, fold it 

up finally, and put    it back on the shelf and say, "That makes me think."  If we can 

make them think, we've done what we set out to do.



EK:  Can we ask local skeptics to ask their high school libraries to try grab copies of your books? ...



JR:  Well, my books and many other books written by skeptics all around    the world.  

Richard Dawkins, Philip Klass, Bob Sheaffer, people like this    have written wonderful 

books, and Isaac Asimov, of course, and Carl Sagan    whose latest book, _The 

Demon-Haunted World_, is an absolute tour-de-force, and was his final writing 

on the subject, but it is so strong.  I'm sure he    was very proud of the fact 

that it went to print before he died, and I'm sure    he was satisfied with the 

act that he knew it would have an impact.  His Cosmos series, for example, which 

we have in our video library here, was seen by an estimated 400 million people 

around the world in various languages.  That's an accomplishment.  If you could 

spend a life and accomplish one thing like that in a life, I think you can close 

your eyes    on your final day and say, "I did OK"



EK:  Amen to that.  I think one of the coolest epistemological ways to    

kick some butt is the offering of your "put up or shut up" prize.  I have one    

of these that I've offered myself, [and] I plan on making more.  Do you    

think that it would be good for skeptics to make independent, free standing    

prizes for proof of remarkable things. ...



JR:  Well we've got $1.1 million we're offering now for the performance    

of any paranormal, occult or supernatural event of any kind under proper observing conditions.  

No one seems to be taking it up.  Now for many    years I offered ten thousand dollars.  

Up until just last year the prize began    to grow through being added to by pledges from

 people in fifteen different countries now, over 300 people have pledged an amount of 

$1,000 and multiples of $1,000 to come to a grand total of $1.1 million.  At one    

time, when it was $10,000, the psychics said "Ten thousand dollars; that's not enough to 

be interesting!".   Now they're saying "$1.1 million dollars; that's too much!"  

So you can't satisfy them one way or another.  My challenge to them now is "Take any 

amount of that, or none of it".  They say, "Oh well I wouldn't want to take money.  Oh, 

this is a pure divine force that I have going for me."  Well, give it away to AIDS research. 

Well, we make the excuses less and less available to them, but they still come up with 

wonderful excuses.  I think that the skeptics, if they're    going to offer individual 

prizes of say $500 or $1,000 might be much better off    to pledge it towards this massive 

prize, because the bigger the prize gets,    the harder it is for the media to ignore it 

and for the psychics to ignore    the fact that that prize is there if they can do what 

they say they can do.



EK:  Right, I've pledged at least ten for yours, but also put up about    

five for one of my own.



JR:  Well, local prizes are often more powerful with the local papers and such, in 

small centers and such, individual cities or towns, so it can be effective.  But if 

they want to get in on a big thing, and $1.1 million    is certainly big enough to be 

interesting, they certainly can pledge, they don't have to give the money, they just 

have to offer a notarized pledge,    to the effect that they will give this money if 

and when the prize is won.



EK:  All right.  That sounds good.  Getting back to the subject of local skeptic groups, 

I have a vision that well run local skeptic groups can    have a bigger net impact with 

low budget than what the larger groups can do. What do you think would be necessary 

ingredients to have powerful contributing local skeptics groups.  ...



JR:  Get a personality to act for them.  If you have some local author,    

or scientist, someone connected with the local college, university or    

whatever, who has some sort of profile.  Mind you, it's hard to get academics to do this.  

It really is difficult.  Carl Sagan himself underwent a lot of criticism from his colleagues, 

who said, "You're an astronomer.  Get back    to astronomy."  They couldn't quite understand

 him stepping out of this    rigid mold that he was supposed to be in,  an astonomer and 

nothing else but,   

 to

join the critical and skeptical atmosphere that he liked to live in,  and did so, so 

beautifully and so effectively.  You run into a lot of    criticism that way.  But try 

to get local people, particularly prominent people, connected with it, people who have

 a high profile, who know how to speak publically, will appear on local television or 

radio programs, and even columnists with newspapers who are on your side and who aren't afraid to 

tell the truth about what's really happening in the world.



EK:  All right.  I want to get back to some of the subjects.  I like to quote that even if 

Gardiner and Hertz(?) started hawking astrology books    on Shopper's Network that PhACT, 

our local group, would continue to confront ignorance.  Do you think that local skeptic

 groups should be independent    of CSICOP or maybe band together in a loose affiliation 

so we can coordinate our investigative efforts?



JR:  There are two directions.  The local groups are going to be more powerful locally 

because they understand the local problem.  They've got    the local so-called psychics 

and parlours and psychic carryings-on.  They can    be very powerful in that direction, 

particularly hospitals that have    quackery processes going on in them.  They can be more 

[? effective??] that way.   

 But

they also have to get in touch with major organizations such as CSICOP    

and this Foundation and the Skeptics group in California.  They've really got    

to get affiliated with them, and one of the ways to do it is to contribute    

to the journals if and when the journals will accept contributions from    

local groups.  And most of them do, and they welcome them.  But contributions   

 of that kind do give them a little more of a national scope and a national profile. 

 And you've got to do both; you've got to concentrate locally    

and you've got to also join.  Otherwise, if you don't join national and 

international groups you find that you're missing out on a lot of information

 that can be very, very useful to you.



EK:  OK, so a loose affiliation



JR:  No problem, and I suggest that when members of local groups travel    

as well Many of them go on vacation and see Europe, the Far East, Australia, 

whatever that they look up local groups and try to do a luncheon group or    

do a little talk for the local groups.  I know wherever I go, I tell people,   

 I usually have it on my World Wide Web page, um, and I find the minute I announce,

 as I did, the next month I'm going to South Africa, for    example, they email just 

lit up like a torch, saying, "Oh, do come and speak for    our group."  and it's very,

 very useful that way.  And getting on the    Internet, email, is very important for 

any of these groups.  Very important.  Get a page, if you possibly can, on the World 

Wide Web, and certainly get a profile on there because you'll attract a great number

 of people that    way.



EK:  All right.  I'm the keeper of the PhACT page.  I certainly grew into that.  

What do you think would be a good distribution of local skeptic chapters.  Do you think that a 

first rule would be metropolitan areas of greater than a million people should target [???].  

Is there any rule of    thumb?



JR:  I don't think there's much of a rule of thumb here.  The cultures    

vary and individual regional requirements vary so much that pretty well you've got 

to sit down and reason it out and come to a conclusion that way.  I couldn't give you

 a blanket answer for something like that.



EK:  All right.  Do you think there should be any kind of symposium or information 

source for how to run successful local skeptic groups.



JR:  Well, CSICOP does hold symposia to that effect and we certainly    

intend to do it here as well.  Uh, there will be several, um, more than just a  

  few months before we're ready to do that, but we certainly have plans to do that. 

 There are symposia held whereby you can go to them and they give    

you, I think, very good information on how you organize your local group.  

It isn't easily done.  And it's like any of these groups, uh, anything from, 

uh, well any social service organization finds out, there are two or    

three people at the top who do all the work, the rest of them just stand there    

and applaud.  That happens.  I needn't tell you.  uh, it happens and I think that's 

the natural, the natural way things work.  There are always    

leaders and individuals who stand out, who tend to do most of the work and    

perhaps it works well that way.  I think it probably does.



EK:  OK.  Do you have any ideas what might have caused prominent local skeptic 

groups to sink into mere obscurity.



JR:  Key people moving out of the area, or dying, or whatever, the    

attrition of the general membership.  That can have a great deal to do with it.   

 You

need charismatic figures to head these groups, and they sometimes don't stick around 

long enough, and when they fall out, or they become disconnected from the group, 

sometimes the group falls apart from    internal politics.  This has happened several times. 

 It's happened with one pair    of groups in California who are literally at one another's 

throats.  And    that's not the way to organize these things, that's not the way to function. 

Skeptics have a hard enough time getting along.  If we don't get along    

well together and have very close cooperation, statewide and locally and on a 

nationwide basis, and certainly internationally, then we're not doing too well.  

But you find that internationally, you will always be welcome to speak at luncheons and whatnot that local groups get together.  They're thrilled, as I know you are in Philadelphia with, 

you have a great    interest in having people from other states, from other countries come 

in and    speak for you, and I'm sure you find it very useful to have a fresh input and    

to learn what other people's problems are as well.



EK:  Do you have any advice (???) on publicist, how to get on talk shows,    

to get more publicity. ...



JR:  Yeah, you've got to be as attractive as the psychics, have funny    

things to say.  When, for example, when the Reagan White House when they   

 announced they were using astrology, I called it the "Tinkerbell White House".   

 Well,

that's a sound bite.  That's a phrase that the press leaped upon and it    

was published in many places.  When Hillary Clinton was supposed to be    

listening to the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt, shudder, in order to find out how to  

  run her life as a First Lady, I said "In my opinion the only thing Hillary is 

going to learn from Eleanor is how to be a dead wife of a dead president. She's 

only half way there."



EK:  [laughs]



JR:  Now this is something the media will grab.  They like it, it's    

amusing, it's satirical, and incidentally satire is a very good weapon in this    

thing. H.L. Mencken once said "If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a   

 horse laugh is worth a thousand pictures."  If you make these people look as   

 silly as they actually are, without having to strain at it, without having to 

force the picture, just show people what they're all about.  Tell them    

what homeopathy is.  It's highly diluted nothing with the essence cut off.  

I mean it's nothing, there's nothing there in homeopathy.  There's no    

evidence for its working.  There's no substance in the medicine.  They come in  

  fancy boxes, pills and liquids; it's nothing but water or lactic acid.  

There's nothing there.  And if you state them to them and they look at the label    

and they find out that's true, it looks as silly as it is without you having    

to hold up a spotlight to it.  You just say, "Look at the box."   And make things 

as silly as they are.  Through satire.  Jonathan Swift did that; that's why we're 

calling our newsletter, _Swift_, that we hope people    make the connection.



EK:  Maybe you can call homeopathy "the Emporer's New Medicine".



JR:  The Emporer's New Medicine.  Very good.  Make a note.  ... That's    

the kind of thing you need.



EK:  OK, I understand.  You mentioned a little bit politics and skeptic groups.  In our 

local group we're having a little bit of trouble between those who feel that skepticism 

should be applied to investigation of religion as compared with just regular paranormal claims. 

 We're having    some trouble there.



JR:  Yeah, that's a conflict, and it's a thing you have to decide on an individual basis. 

 Religion is too weak ( personally, this is my opinion now)  Religion is another form of

 superstition, another form of claptrap. It's simplistic explanation of the world that 

immediately removes from    you any responsibility to think about it.  Just read the book, 

it's all in there.  Well it's not all in there.  And what's in there is largely mythological,

 some of it is historical, (this is my opinion now).



EK:  Right.



JR:  It's a personal opinion and I reflect it in my talks and lectures as well.  

I think that they both have to be exposed for exactly what they    are. Magical thinking is

 magical thinking.  But, I don't go on the religious    bent personally myself, because 

I think there are people, like Stephen Jay    Gould, for example, who do this sort of 

thing much better than I can do it, and    I leave it to experts in the field.  My point of 

view is where people are being deceived and where they deceive themselves.  

That's my particular angle.  That's what I go at because I have expertise in that direction.   

 And

individual groups are going to have to make up their minds as to how far into the other

 end of it they're going to go.  I think that generalized statements about it are 

perhaps a way of getting out of getting too    involved in it.  I've had people scream 

at me from the audience, "Obviously you're not a Christian."  And then I point out to 

them that there are leading Christians who have thought very much the way I have, 

and leading    Buddhists, and Hindus, and whatnot who have thought the way I do, 

the way the    skeptical movement does.  That doesn't seem to do much for them, 

because they're    blind and deaf to all this sort of input.  They'd rather 

dismiss me entirely because I'm not going about carrying a crucifix around my neck.





EK:  All right, I understand.  You've inspired me to desire to try to get    

a magician on tap for PhACT, our local group, to guess, how people could improve to 

utilize ...????



RL:  Be very careful of what the magicians (???), because there are two kinds of 

magicians.  There is the kind of magician that I am, I'm happy    

to say, I really understand how my art works.  I understand how the mind of    

the spectator works, I understand the psychology, in many cases the    

physiology of some of the methods that I use.  I understand the way the illusions,   

 both auditory and visual and other sensory aspects, actually work.  Most magicians don't.

  Most magicians learn routines.  They go out and do   

 their routines; they know that they work.  Most singers are not composers.   

 They don't have to write the music, they don't have to play the music.  All    

they have to do is interpret it, sing it, and put their stylization on it.   

 And

that's the way many of the magicians are.  Don't think that because you    

have a magician connected with the skeptical movement that magician is going   

 to be able to explain how these things work and how and why people believe    

in them.  It's not necessarily so.  It's very useful, but the magicians in    

many cases are unaware of the gimmicks of the psychics use to achieve their effects, 

so beware of that.



EK:  Good warning.  On the general area of getting the press we deserve,    

I think that personal contacts, fax, la?? service??  What have you found a 

fruitful way to put out a press release, or how do we nurture a good 

relationship with sympathetic media people.



JR:  Again, give them sound bites.  Give them little phrases,    

expressions, pictures, photographs, reproduce the local UFO picture better than 

it was done by the UFO.  Photograph Venus and move the camera, or whatever.   

 Show

them that they can be done.  Make yourself as attractive as the psychic. That's 

the bottom line of the whole thing.



EK:  [break ]???



JR:  Making yourself as attractive as the psychics. 

 That's not easy.    You've got to give them the gimmicks, you've got to give them the 

pictures, the expressions, the words and such.  But if you can get on the Rolodex,  

  that's an expression we use in the skeptical business, get on the Rolodex, get  

  onto the list of when something comes up that's unusual, uh, an unusual claim   

 of some kind, they will say, "Oh, we should look up PhACT, or we should look   

 up this person or that person, give this person a call"  for an opposing    

point of view or for a different point of view.  Don't always advertise it as  

  an opposing point of view.  but perhaps as a view from a different angle.   

 If

you can get into their list of people who give them good stuff to use, you're away. 

 Now I attained that position quite some time ago, I get    

film crews into this very room, quite frequently, once or twice a week, 

on an average from all countries around the world.  And when I visit other 

   parts of the world I'm constantly sitting down for camera crews to give them  

  views on local things because they recognize my name.  Your group has got to   

 get individuals and the group itself to be recognized for that very purpose. The 

local papers do want sources of information.  Make yourself    

attractive to them and they will pick up the phone and call.



EK:  To get that relationship, does that come about by calling people individually , 

or sending out mailings telling people saying what we do?   

   





JR:  Yes, send out mailings.  Storm them with mailings.  There should be things that 

regularly arrive on their desk.  with the right kind of letterhead, the right kind of

 notice and everything, this is what we    intend to do.  This is what we are involved 

in right now.  Give us a call to    find out what we're all about.  And if you keep 

hitting them, hitting them, hitting them with that, eventually they'll say "Hey, I 

get a lot of    material from these people, I think I better look them up."



EK:  We give them our newsletter.  We ought to do a directed mailing.   

 ...



JR:  Oh yeah.  And a letter that goes along with it saying If you're interested in 

receiving these mailings we'd like to hear from you.   

 Perhaps

you'd like to attend our next meeting, which will be on so and so, call    

me at this number and we're arrange for you to be admitted to the meeting.   

 And they appreciate that.  Reporters are sitting there.  This is something    

never lose sight of.  Reporters are sitting there often at their computers    

saying "What can I come up with by 4:30 this afternoon."  There's a blank screen 

sitting there in front of them, or a blank piece of paper and a  

  typewriter, if it's a small town, or the goose quill is drying out, 

you see, or whatever, They're sitting there wondering what can I come up with.  

I learned this at a very early age when I was  a teenager doing a mentalism act 

up in Toronto, Canada.  If I could walk into that guy's office at the moment that 

he's sitting and staring at a blank piece of paper in a typewriter and thinking At 

4:30 I've got to hand that copy editor a piece    of paper.  It's got to have 600 

words on it.  And it's got to be something    that people are going to read tonight 

because I do a column every day.  You    walk in on that person at that moment and say 

"Hey, how would like to know    about a guy frozen in a block of ice." Or, "You want 

to set me on fire" or whatever.  And I did crazy things like this and they would say, 

"Hey, sit down baby" and click, click, click, click, click.  They start writing it. If

 you can get them to salivate at that point, you've got them.  It's a    

game you have to play, it's a fishing game.  You're putting the bait on the  

  hook and you're throwing it out at the moment when they're hungry and they're 

near the surface.



EK:  OK.  Is there any relative value between newspapers, periodicals, radio, TV ....



JR:  Depends entirely upon the town.  There are some towns, some areas,    

where press, such things as the actual printed media is as powerful as or 

even more powerful than TV.  TV, of course, is sound and picture but it's  

  there, briefly and, bang, off.  If you miss it, you close your eyes, you go to  

  the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, come back, you've missed it if it's a   

 brief mention.  In the newspaper, it can sit there for a while, and they can 

   cut it out, or tear the page out, or read it at their leisure, or put it in 

a scrapbook, It's more permanent in some ways.



EK:  OK, I understand.  [I look at the ???] media's, for example, press angle, 

for example for us to be the little guy standing up to massive paranormal forces,

 or [drawing line?] the new age, or honest young    exposers versus old entrenched

 people covering stuff up.  Play the victims or how could someone be so stupid as 

to believe this scam, or ...



JR:  You are being swindled, yes.



EK:  ... between this group and this group.  Are any of those particular angles,

 or others that you think is the way to try to focus the    attention, to get ...



JR:  Yeah, if you find out what's politically correct at the moment.   

 Watch the TV news, particularly the morning TV news, you'll find out that  

  there's always some action going on in the Congress or the Senate, that something   

 is being considered, to spend money on or to not spend money on, or   

 something's happening at the local hospital, if you can tie into something like that 

   an show that you have an opinion on it, they bite at that.  That's currently popular,

 it may only be popular for 48 hours, or maybe for a week.   

 Whatever

it is.  I haven't been able to work out anything about knee tendons



EK:  [laughs]



JR:  Unfortunately.  That's politically hot right now, and it's of   

 interest. But try to connect. If you're connected, you hit them in the 

spot when they're warm, they're looking for that and they suck that in and they use 

   it.



EK:  OK, that makes sense.  How necessary is it in your work to be James Randi. 

 Is there still a lot that you can do if you don't have the name.



JR:  Yeah, I suppose, but it facilitates it a great deal.  More people   

 are going to see a movie with Tom Cruise in it than Xavier Putz, or some such thing, 

a name that you don't know.  Once you've got the name you've got   

 to flaunt it, you've got to use it and you've got to use the authority,

 authority that may be poorly founded in some cases, but nonetheless you   

 make use of it.  It takes a while to get there, but when you arrive at it  

  you've got to make good use of it, and the organization itself, PhACT,  

  P-H-A-C-T, that's an inspiration right there.  I don't know who came up with that 

   but it's catchy.



EK:  One of Napier's.



JR:  Oh, really.



EK:  He's one of those three people that's help stuck all the work.



JR:  ...?  That's good stuff.  Alright, that's good, and it works.  

And I think that having that in front of them all the time That's a 

good label, that should attract attention.



EK:  Do you think it's worth the attention if we're a lightning rod, 

if people are complaining about us?



JR:  Oh complaining, oh yes, the more they complain about you, the   

 stronger your profile is going to be.  As long as you can answer the complaints.



EK:  Right.  OK.  Alright, I guess they love going to controversy.  Is    

there a lot to be drawn undercover work, and setting up intentional hoaxes as a way to ...



JR:   I've never seen any lying ???  It's got to, it's got to be   

 [coughs], pardon me. It's got to be productive and positive.  The alpha hoax we 

carried out some years ago, we decided the only way we could show the parapsychologists 

that they do fool themselves and can be fooled was to    give them exactly what they 

want, the paradigm, the picture of what they    thought they needed, and the two kids 

we sent in there to the laboratory for the alpha hoax they met all the requirements 

that the parapsychologists had. That means you have to understand the business and the 

psychology of the individual parapsychologist.  And they worked up their own little stories  

  of how they became psychic, and it met the paradigm, the expectation of the moment, and 

therefore they fell for it like the proverbial ten pins.  And you've got to do it,

 you've got to develop a picture that is attractive,    get in there that way.



EK:  OK.  Is it still a valid way of investigating



JR:  Oh yes, Quite valid, yes.



EK:  OK



JR:  It's been used in science, by the way.  Nature magazine used it   

 years ago with the N-Rays fiasco that happened in France in 1903 or so.  

They used, and they've used it many times since.  A little deception in    

science goes a long way; but it does prove a point.  It worked very well with N-Rays, 

and it worked very well with the investigation we did of    homeopathy in Genmarre [

sp? -- my article on the Benveniste fiasco doesn't list the location, except for Paris],

 in France, again for Nature magazine.  It    works very well.



EK:  OK.  I understand.  You've convinced me that skeptics have to be as entertaining

 as the purveyors conveyors of prevarication and mendacity. You seem to be the only 

skeptic I'm aware of capable of this.  Do you    think the rest of us, ideas, 

inspiration, working that entertainment aspect ???



JR:  Be attractive, be attractive.  Have good words.  Again, have a high profile,

 be as attractive as the psychics are.  because they wear the   

 funny hats, the turbans, the rings in their noses and whatnot and they make outrageous 

statements and such.  Don't be afraid to make a few outrageous statements of your own to

 counteract these things.  As I gave you the example with Hillary Clinton and the 

Tinkerbell Whitehouse of Reagan and such, one of my expressions for them was , for

 example, what do you say    to the fact that President Reagan was listening to astrologers. 

 My retort    was "At least he listens to someone!"  and they seized upon that.  You have   

 to be able to come up with those things, and you've got people with PhACT   

 who can come up with this sort of thing.



EK:  Right.  OK.  Another get a lot of bang for the buck idea would be to somehow get 

us into textbooks read by every high school student or every college student.  What 

are your thoughts on that ... how do we work that   

...



JR:  Project Alpha got into a lot of textbooks.  It's written in two or  

  three psychology textbooks which I really should have on my shelves here and I

 don't think we do have  But I should get them and stick them in our    libraries.



EK:  Is that done by begging?  Or by just people saw your work and they  

  put into their ...



JR:  No, no, no.  The hoax was good enough.  It was so good that it had   

 to attract attention.  Some textbooks ignore it altogether, because they  

  said "Oh, that's outside science".  No it isn't.  It's well within science.   

 AS I

say, it's a respected technique in science.  It's out of the mainstream,   

 but it works very effectively and we have gotten into many of the textbooks ,

 that is, I have, in my efforts to try to enlighten people, to get them thinking, 

have gotten into the textbooks.  I'm very flattered by that.



EK:  Psychology is one place where ??? in textbooks.  What about stuff   

 like detection against con men, part of consumer affairs, or the general scientific 

medley ??? of irrational thinking in general.  Are there other avenues that we could 

maybe shoot for to get in, even a piece of    curricula to evaluate something.



JR:  Yeah.  Well, there are a lot of books written on that very subject,   

 on the topic of being fooled ???.  For example, there's an excellent book,  

  that I'll show you a copy of in just a moment, it's called _How to Think About

 Weird Things_.  It's the kind of book, ...



EK:  It's targeted at school kids.



JR:  Yes, indeed.  Freshmen and sophomore classes.  It's printed as a textbook.  

And it's an excellent book, when I was reading the proofs of    

it, the galley proofs, as I was going through it, I'd turn over a page and  

  say, "Oh, now, this is good.  Oh, I wish they had contacted me because I could 

have told them about, oh, here it is right here; oh, good, they covered    

that and everything.  Oh, but they should have mentioned; oh they did mention  

  it right here.  It was very pleasant to look through it, to find out that    

they did very much the way I would have done it, and they didn't ignore any of the 

sources of information.  It was done by two very skeptical    scientists, and it's 

an excellent book.  If you don't have a copy of that I recommend that everyone get 

it in the skeptical movement, and outside of course,    but in the skeptical movement

 particularly.  It gives you a tremendous amount    of ammunition.  Very useful ammunition.



EK:  All right.  Sounds like a lot of bang for the buck.  I was thinking  

  of trying to start in our skeptics group a youth ministry.  Can you give  

  good ideas on how to connect to the young.



JR:  Yeah, go around and visit classrooms.  Go around and visit  

  classrooms. You can get teachers interested enough that they'll let you come in and    

talk to a classroom and ask the kids what do you believe in and why do you believe in it. 

 And that's very much what we do right here. That's one of our major projects.  

(Let's pause for one second.)



JR:  We sell copies of this here at the Foundation, if anyone's   

 interested, by Theodore Schick, Jr. and Lewis Vaughn, _How to Think About Weird   

 Things: Critical Thinking for the New Age_, a really excellent book, highly recommended,

 it's softcover, it's not too expensive, I think it's only   

 $20, something like that, well worth the price of admission, and it has endorsements 

from myself, Martin Gardner and several other folks here. Really good book.  

A very, very good summary of everything from UFO's through acupuncture.  

It covers the whole spectrum, and it gives    students, particularly students,

 written in such a breezy fashion that it gives everybody a good idea of exactly 

what's happening in the world.



EK:  OK, well I'll certainly buy a copy of that while I'm here [... thinking].  

If I bring that to the science teachers in a school district, would that the way 

the skeptic locally can ...



JR:  I believe so, I believe so.   As a matter of fact, I'm proud to say   

 that the publisher, Mayfield, yes, Mayfield in California.  If you buy thirty copies

 of this for a school, they throw in a copy of the NOVA tape,   

 _Secrets of the Psychics_, the one that featured moi and my efforts.



EK:  Good.  What are the common non-sequiturs [?commonly encountered?...] 

that a skeptic should be ready to respond to in his back pocket.



JR:  Well, they say that I'm not a Ph.D.  so how can I talk about things   

 that a Ph.D. has endorsed.  But the vast majority of Ph.Ds don't endorse these things. 

 The fact you can come up with one or two or maybe six or eight    

that do endorse these things doesn't mean they're right.  Having a degree  

  doesn't make you infallible.  An education doesn't make you smart.  

It only makes you educated.  You've got to be able to point that out to them. 

 Now many people don't recognize that.  They label things very easily. 

 "This is a professor; OK, anything he says is sooth."  Not automatically.  You've

    got to develop your own ways of handling illogical arguments of that kind.   

 Umm,

they'll say, "Well anybody's opinion is as good as anybody else's."  No,    

it is not.  You could show them endless examples of where that isn't true. Don't let them pull this political correctness thing on you, uh, where    you have to accept everybody's opinion as equally valuable.  That is absolute nonsense and it doesn't take an intellectual giant to figure that out,    and no rocket scientists are required, thank you.



EK:  Allright, I understand.  What would you expect of people who   

 administer the Randi challenge in the future, or have the capability to make sure 

   that that prize keeps going on?



JR:  Yeah, that's one of the purposes of this Foundation right here.



EK: I can call these people ...



JR: There will be, after I'm gone, and or disconnected from the   

 Foundation, even, the offer will go on.  I hope that it will go on in perpetuity and   

 I hope that it will increase as the years go on as well.  I think that it's valuable 

to have that carrot right there, and ask them "Why aren't you jumping for this carrot?" 

 Why aren't you trying to get it in your teeth? If you make such a noise about it.  

They have a very hard time explaining why they aren't going for the million dollar prize, 

and that gives them source of irritation.  Keep them irritated.  Keep them on their best 

behaviour if you possibly can



EK:  So you can watch them dance.



JR:  Yes, exactly, yes. exactly.



EK:  But getting people lined up to carry that off, do you have a    plan....



JR:  Well, I've got a staff here, I've got people that are more or less   

 in position to succeed me when the time comes and that's the major reason  

  for the Foundation existing, that people who have laid the money on me here, 

   and enabled us to buy this building and set up this Foundation, those people 

have that purpose in mind.  The purpose was to continue my work after I'm gone, and 

make sure that it's perpetuated technically and with a certain amount of integrity that 

I would summon up if I were here, and I'm very, very happy with the people I've hired 

so far.  They're a good working    team, and they believe in what I'm doing and what

 the skeptical movement is all about.  So I'm reasonably satisfied that it will be 

carried out.



EK:  That's reassuring to hear.  What [... I dream of, is ]getting a   

 network TV producer to do a [...?expose?] kind of format show, where [...] offer 

   to the public in terms of "Here, we're doing a show on what strange   

 encounters and psychics are afraid to tell you.  This show will finally expose 

what these people are holding back from you.



JR:  Well, it's commercial ...



EK:  Is there any way that something like that could be, to use their    

format to expose ...



JR:  Yeah, it can, but it's got to be pretty well independently funded, because 

the sponsors aren't going to go for it.  The attitude today is, everyone is saying that

 "Oh, we're much more interested in 'reality'    these days", well that passed away a 

few years ago.  They're now interested in irrationality.  They're interested in popular

 opinions on things.  They know, TV producers know, without having to have it pointed out 

to them,    that belief in the paranormal is much more popular than disbelief in it or 

questioning of it.  It's much better to just allow people to believe in, they find that 

pleasant, they find it comforting and they embrace it. Wholeheartedly.  And that's the 

way it's going to go, and may go for    decades yet, we don't know.  Now that's where 

the money is.



EK:  Allright, OK.  Most of my skeptical work out in the open, out on the Internet [...] 

using search engines to come wander around by my sites   

[...]

other people.  I'd love to see the best parts of the best books that are   

 out there searchable in cyberspace.  Are you open to the pieces of your own 

books being out there, or do you not see someone who for example take    

pieces of _The Truth About Uri Geller_, stick it out there



JR:  I have no problem with that.  As a matter of fact, I don't have the rights to the 

[??] of Uri Geller at the moment though.  I make sure they have that.  I do have the 

rights to the Encylopedia of Claims for the Paranormal, Supernatural Paranormal, etc. 

 that St. Martin's Press    published two years ago, and that is going to be put 

entirely on the, the entire    text of it is going to go on my World Wide Web page. 

 [...] It will take some time to prepare it.  [...] Yes, it will take some time to prepare it,

 but    it will be out there.  It will actually stimulate sales of the book itself,   

 we found out from past experience.  When books are put out there, people   

 aren't going to download an entire book and print it out.  That's just a bit too much, 

but they will buy the book and we have now the facilities for that.