Monday, December 17, 2007

YouTubing Randi

If you've ever got some spare time, you can find all kinds of great educational videos on YouTube of some of your favorite people. Dawkins, for instance, or Feynman, but especially Randi. Randi has had some great TV moments and a lot of them are preserved on YouTube. I found a few videos today that I hadn't seen before and I wanted to put some of them up. There are three parts to an interview of Randi with Penn and Teller. In one part they reference Peter Popoff, and I've also put up the video of that affair. Forgive me if you've seen any of these.

The reason that I want to put them up is primarily to combat the notion that skepticism and cynicism are the same ism. There's a good bit in one of the interviews where Penn and Randi discuss that notion, and I enjoyed watching it. Sadly, it is very short, but I think it's powerful nonetheless.

These aren't in the order of their titles, but I don't think it matters. The first discusses skepticism and cynicism (with a little pet psychic thrown in), the second is about the million dollar challenge. The third is a bit longer—about 8 minutes—and mentions Popoff. Then the fourth is about the definitive debunking of Popoff's ministry. I encourage you to watch many more. There's great investigation there on YouTube.








6 comments:

Ben said...

Ah yes. I recognize that from Bullshit!

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Flavin said...

You recognize the Popoff clip or the interview? I neither remember them being on Bullshit! nor can I find them on this list of Bullshit! episodes.

Ben said...

The Popoff clip might have been an extra on the DVD. I'm not sure. It could be that I saw that on YouTube a while back or on randi.org. Anyway, the other are from Bullshit!

Flavin said...

Which episode?

Ben said...

I think it was an extra on the DVDs.