Today I was invited to host an episode of a new series for a major cable network in which I was to interview and administer a test to three professional psychics. This was the first episode they’d shot, and the producers and director were really nice and cool and it had all the makings of a fun and productive day. They had located three psychics who were all game, and were fully willing to undergo the tests under controlled conditions. Moreover, the show had even secured a $50,000 prize that any psychics who passed today’s tests would be qualified to try for. I arrived fully prepared, with some detailed protocols, and a raft of properly controlled materials.

Here’s the rub. The entire day was a setup. It was a gag, with Michael Shermer and myself as the unwitting victims.

The psychics and I began each interview with a discussion of each psychic’s personal history, what they knew about their abilities, and what they were able to tell us about them. Two of them, a pair of very friendly and positive ladies named Sylvie and Austyn, gave very fair descriptions of what they believed they could do, and sportingly undertook the tests. You can probably guess the results. But those tests were certainly not what the day ended up being about…

The third psychic was, unfortunately, not a psychic at all, but a young comedian who used to have a show on the BBC, and now appears to be trying to make a name for himself with a new character who is a wannabe nemesis of skeptics. He’s going to find this an uphill battle, as he’s neither clever, funny, particularly talented in any apparent way, nor does he seem to know much about psychics or criticism of psychics.

He goes by the moniker “Shirley”, and looks like a televangelist in a gaudy white suit with colored piping, and either the world’s worst hair or a gauche orange wig, I couldn’t quite tell which. When it was his turn to come out, Shirley came up to me, took his seat, refused to return my friendly greeting, and launched into what he seemed to think was a clever attempt to “get into my head” – insulting my parents, my wife, and “revealing” to all my terrible guilt at how I’ve treated people. Essentially, his routine was to ignore the reason [that I believed] he was supposed to be there, and try to establish himself as – well, I can’t even think what. He refused to participate in the arranged tests, instead throwing tantrums about each, constantly demanding that he be paid his $50,000.

At one point, Shirley inexplicably stopped the production, and fiddled with his iPhone for a few minutes. He then announced that his spirit guide, Sheba, informed him that my background was as an Irish flute player (perhaps not so coincidentally, this is just what a quick Google search of my name reveals. There’s also a third Brian Dunning who is an Elvis impersonator, and doubtless many more.) He then demanded his $50,000 again for “correctly” reading my background. When I then informed him that he was duped by careless Googling, he begged for that segment to be edited out. It was just one more thing that was weird: Was this part of his gag? Shirley, hire a new writer.

For one test, I’d drawn something and sealed it in an envelope. Each psychic was supposed to duplicate my drawing. When I finally persuaded Shirley to open his envelope to reveal what he’d drawn, he pulled out a poster sized sheet with at least 100 small doodles — anything and everything he could think of that I might possibly had drawn (he still missed it). He demanded his $50,000 again.

And then he went into his channeling act. A mysterious power overwhelmed him, and he began channeling Lee Majors, of The Six Million Dollar Man fame. Lee Majors began telling us what heaven is like. By now I’d given up, as we were clearly wasting everyone’s time, and wasn’t even standing on the set any more. Some of the crew informed Shirley that Lee Majors is not dead, and something in his brain seemed to snap. He became belligerent, had to be restrained by some of the crew, and strangely the director asked me to play along for three minutes — why, I have no idea. Shirley then set his phone down on speakerphone, ran to the opposite side of the room, and took out a second cell phone and called his first one, saying “This is Lee Majors’ agent, and he died today.”

If this was a comedy routine, it left something to be desired.

Eventually Shirley was muscled out of the studio, and we proceeded with a test of one of the other psychics, which brought back some semblance of normalcy. For the final segment, Michael Shermer came on and he and I discussed the results of what had happened with my tests. But we didn’t get very far.

For that was when the real weirdness happened.

Michael Twittered a description of this afterwards, which included a very apt reference to Andy Kaufman (except Kaufman truly was a comic genius), and promised to write it up on his own upcoming blog. So I will allow him to pick up the story from that point. You won’t want to miss it. It includes bodybags, and made me wish to hell I’d brought my camera.

So, I’m sorry to report that there is no new TV show on critical thinking. From a deeper study of Shirley Ghostman’s web site, it looks like he hasn’t had a BBC show for some years, but maybe we’ll get to see some of this action on YouTube. Kudos to the set crew who played along for so many hours, let’s hope it was worth someone’s while.

I just started watching Fringe (well, to be honest I watched the entire season to date on Hulu over the last two nights). I’m a little obsessed with the story. It’s fun. It thrills the science fiction horror loving side of me.

But, I am also bugged by a few things. Things that could have been different if the writers had taken the time to check the facts. Or, had a scientist on call to help them get things straight.

What is good about this new show?

1) The characters draw me in. I want to know more about them. That’s compelling writing and decent acting.
2) The lead is a strong, intelligent woman.
3) A lot of the science is based on some of the more far-out headlines I’ve read in the past couple of years, which makes the storyline more realistic or at least believable.
4) Good work on the Scully and Mulder vibe. I hope they don’t ruin it too soon.

What bugs me?

1) They keep calling hypotheses theories. They even have the “scientist” in the group doing it. Fail.
2) The “scientist” is obviously a play on the mad scientist stereotype. Ick.
3) They are lax on important safety protocol related details, which having spent time in a human experimentation lab, are pretty important.
4) Science is the villain.

I do wish they would stop saying theory all the time. The use of words like theory in place of the more accurate word undermines the work that people are trying to do to educate the public about scientific terminlology. However, this would not be an issue if the scientific community agreed to change their use of the word theory. Considering the political nature of the evolution/creation debate, sometimes I think it might be wise for science to take a cue from the general public occasionally. Can we humanize science by changing the terminology ever so slightly? Should we?

The ease with which this program presents human experimentation is a little disconcerting. The United States experimented on people without their consent in the past. We do still have human experimentation, but it is much, much more strictly regulated. Yet, there is still a dark shadow over all of science because of the things it did in the past. There is obviously a fear that it might happen again, and this show feeds right into that fear.

As far as the mad scientist goes, he does fit neatly into the plot. But, the show might have done science a favor with a less literally mad character. The mad scientist also ties in neatly with a main theme of the show. That of science and technology moving past the point of human control, and therefore being out of control. In this program, science itself is portrayed as being insane, and hence evil.

Great entertainment. Terrible for science’s PR.

Ok, overall, I love the show. It does have a bit too much of the wooo at times, and always ends a bit too tidily, but it’s good.

Regardless, of how this one show depicts science, I am optimistic that science and entertainment will be better matched in the future thanks to a new agency dedicated to helping bring artists and scientists together.

Here Be Dragons

Since the beginning of the Skeptoid podcast, people had been asking me for a video version. Tempting indeed, but having been a college filmmaker and done my share of dabbling, I knew that a weekly video podcast would require far more than the limited time I have available for Skeptoid. So this idea stayed on the back burner for a while.

But I finally got fed up with the amount of uncritical praise and attention given to the garbage conspiracy films Loose Change and Zeitgeist on the Internet, and decided that it was time for a counterattack of reason. So I spent a few months of odd hours putting together my thoughts and writing my own garbage film for the Internet, which I called Here Be Dragons. (I wish I’d picked a different title, because that one’s so common, but heck, I was fresh out of creativity by that point.)

Here Be Dragons was conceived to be a 40 minute (classroom length) video introduction to critical thinking. It’s free of any content that would affect its appropriateness for any school. Most significantly, I wanted it to be absolutely free to everyone. I wrote a 5000 word script that was a distillation of Skeptoid’s general message.

One of the best assets that Skeptoid provides me is an incredible resource of thousands of enthusiastic skeptics eager to help out with any kind of skeptical outreach project. So I temporarily dropped a special announcement and call for help into my Skeptoid feed. I needed artwork, a composer, computer graphics artists, additional “man on the street” video footage, and still photography. Response was huge. I was overwhelmed. Talk about an embarrassment of riches: So many people wanted to help, who brought so much talent and energy to the table. I had to say “Thanks but no thanks” to 95% of everyone who threw their hat into the ring. It was like being a manager during a massive corporate layoff. But I was left with a team that I couldn’t be happier with.

I set aside a few thousand dollars and took two weeks off work. I bought a decent HDV video camera and an almost-good-enough wireless mic. I bought Final Cut Express, learned how badly it was crippled, and bought Final Cut Studio. I then spent two weeks of nonstop production: Driving around, setting up tripods, printing cue cards, replacing broken gear in panic mode, reshooting scenes that didn’t work, sneaking into my orthopod’s office on his day off, earning strange looks from people at the beach, calling in more favors than I can count, getting parking tickets, being chased away by airport security, forgetting meals, employing my whole family for all sorts of odd jobs, and generally enjoying the hell out of life.

Weeks of editing and scoring followed. A week of rendering, ripping, compressing, burning, and web site building followed that. And then, quite suddenly, at about two o’clock in the afternoon, I couldn’t find anything else to do. Here Be Dragons was done.

Like I do for all of my projects, I spend virtually no effort promoting or marketing them. I reason that if they’re good, it’s not necessary, they’ll sell themselves; and if they’re not good, marketing them would be a waste of energy. If my projects find success I want it to be because of their quality, not the quality of their marketing.

People started downloading it (it’s at HereBeDragonsMovie.com). They started making DVD’s. They made foreign language translations. They show it in schools. Two friends have donated huge amounts of time to handle technical issues and get it entered into film festivals. So far, so good.

The most fulfilling part of the experience is the number of teachers I’ve heard from who employ Here Be Dragons. I’ve heard from two different high schools who make it mandatory viewing for all students. I’ve lost count of the number of science and physics and critical thinking teachers who have written to tell me they show it in their class.

Where is Here Be Dragons going to go from here? I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what I’d like: I’d like for a proper documentary production company to look at it, find value in its message, give it a budget, and professionally remake it. Will this happen, or perhaps something completely different and unexpected? Only Heisenberg can tell.