S2E8 - The Researcher (Afterlife Science)

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Kayla: Is this the episode?

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Chris: Is what the episode?

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Kayla: This?

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Chris: Yep.

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Kayla: Talking?

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Chris: Yep.

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Kayla: Cool. Are you ready? Let's go.

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Chris: Well, whenever I'm doing my episode, you're always like.

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Kayla: And go, yeah, I don't really feel like banter personally.

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Chris: And go, well, no, we don't have to banter. We never do. First of all.

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Kayla: First of all, we always banter.

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Chris: No, but it's only ever about meta. It's only ever about the banter itself. It's probably getting really tired at the same time.

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Kayla: Then I challenge you to bring something different to the table.

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Chris: I was about to go. I was gonna say there's a couple things. First of all, if you listen to our last episode, the line, it was all about your world of text. And we have our own, your world of text page. Yourworldoftext.com cultorjustweird.

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Kayla: It's pretty awesome.

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Chris: It's pretty sweet.

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Kayla: It's pretty great so far.

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Chris: You can go there. Some of you guys have already gone there and like, started making a little village at the end of a road.

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Kayla: Don't spoil.

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Chris: Well, oh, I didn't say where it was or what or anything. I added some bits.

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Kayla: Oh, nice.

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Chris: Added a building and a road.

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Kayla: Everybody go check it out. Leave us a message. Leave us a secret little message.

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Chris: Yeah. Also, finally we got our own website up and running.

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Kayla: Is that the right noise? Noise?

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Chris: There's no, I don't. What is.

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Kayla: I don't, I don't know. Give me vuvuzela. They were way more annoying than that.

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Chris: Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, it's 2020, so we finally. Is that it got a website going. It's on geocities.

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Kayla: And wait, no, it really should be. After talking last episode about how the wild west of what the Internet used to be and how chaotic and how, like, personalizable it was.

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Chris: I know. And now the website that we made is just so stark and design oriented.

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Kayla: It should have had things that are going in and out and words spinning around the planet Earth.

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Chris: Right. With like, 3d blockletter words, but like.

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Kayla: Shiny Lisa Frank sparkles.

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Chris: Yeah. And music playing in the back, like a midi file playing in the background like that. And we could join a web ring.

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Kayla: Don't talk about web ring.

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Chris: Anyway, it's cultogistweird.com. Anyway, check it out. So that's the business.

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Kayla: So then let's get down to business.

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Chris: Let's get down to it.

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Kayla: First of all, I'm Kayla.

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Chris: And I'm Chris.

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Kayla: And this is cult or just weird.

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Chris: It is.

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Kayla: Welcome back.

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Chris: Welcome.

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Kayla: I just did the line. I don't know why I'm going again.

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Chris: Because I went twice in a row.

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Kayla: Oh, right. Yeah, thanks.

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Chris: I did Roko's basilisk, and then I did the coaches.

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Kayla: So.

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Chris: Yes. You guys get to hear Kayla's voice explaining things to you twice.

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Kayla: Sorry.

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Chris: In a row.

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Kayla: So I'm gonna start by. I'm gonna start by asking you a question. I ever do anymore. Yeah. That's how I got through high school.

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Chris: Like, copping off of me. Because we didn't know each other in high school, so that would have been tough.

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Kayla: Yeah. Well, I did it. So here's the question, Chris.

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Chris: That's me.

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Kayla: If you are certain that you experienced something, does that mean then that it's empirically proven that you experienced it?

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Chris: No. Oh, my God. I mean, it's a really weird question, but.

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Kayla: Oh, it's not.

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Chris: Yeah, it is. I would say no, though, because, like, for example, in the teal swan episode, we talked about how you can actually generate fake memories in someone if you. What was the. How did that happen?

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Kayla: Fake memories are a thing because we're highly suggestive.

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Chris: That's right. We're suggestible.

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Kayla: Suggestible. Awesome. No, we're suggestive. It's 930 on a Tuesday here at culture. Just weird. And we're getting crazy.

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Chris: We can't blame it on 930. Cause last episode, we blamed it on 1130.

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Kayla: Yeah, the joke is that 930 is not even that late.

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Chris: Oh, yeah, it's late for us olds.

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Kayla: Oh, it's not. You and I stay up until, like, 02:00 in the morning every day.

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Chris: Yeah, but it's watching Star Trek anyway.

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Kayla: So you're telling me that if you experience. If you haven't experienced, simply having that experience is not empirical proof that the experience happened?

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Chris: Unfortunately, no. I mean, like, well, it's okay. It depends on what you mean. Right? Like, I think everybody's own subjective experiences are true to them in, like, a solipsistic sense. But that doesn't mean that what you feel like you experience is always reliable. I mean, even the simple fact that our brains take time to process the information that comes into them means that we're always. Everything we experience right now, up until including listening to my stupid voice right now, is always at least, like, some fraction of a second in the past. So you're never even experiencing what you are experiencing right now. So the point is you're nothing. You know, your senses, your connection to reality is not always reliable.

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Kayla: That makes sense. I'm gonna tell you a story, okay?

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Chris: I'm certain that I will experience it.

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Kayla: Are you? No, you've. Well, you've already heard this story a few times, but I will retell it.

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Chris: Oh, well, then just skip it. I've heard it.

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Kayla: I will retell it again for our listeners.

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Chris: Oh, right, the listeners.

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Kayla: When I was a little kid, I saw a ghost.

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Chris: Oh, yeah. I have heard this story.

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Kayla: I was probably about ten years old, and I was spending the summer with my family at my grandparents house up in Canada. I shared a large room upstairs with my sister. We each had our own bed. My bed was furthest from the door and near a window. This particular evening in which I saw a ghost, there was a bizarre storm happening outside that consisted of a lot of sheet lightning and wind, but no rain. Yeah, that was the first time I ever saw sheet lightning. It was fucking cool. A few hours after everyone had gone to bed and after I had fallen asleep, I remember waking up because my mom came into the room and closed the window near my bed, presumably because of the storm expecting rain to come. I was not a great sleeper as a kid.

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Kayla: I still am not a sleep.

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Chris: Yeah, I was gonna say it hasn't really changed.

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Kayla: So I laid awake for a little bit after my mother left. I don't know how much time passed, but after a little while, another figure entered the room. It was in the shape of a woman with a long dress and hair, but she was featureless and made up of a gauzy, wispy, almost translucent matter.

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Chris: Was she hot?

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Kayla: Featureless? Don't interrupt my ghost story. I watched in terror as this figure drifted through the bedroom door, crossed the room, and came to stand at the window my mother had previously shut, staring out into the night. That is whack the window that was right by my bed. I cannot accurately communicate the level of fear that came along with watching this ghostly woman stand only a few feet from me.

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Chris: Did she see you? I forget.

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Kayla: Or were you under the covers, standing, staring out the window? I thought about leaping up and running out of the room. I thought about screaming to wake my sister up. But every plan I thought about seemed too terrifying to carry out. Instead, I kept my eyes glued to the woman, and I inched my bed sheet up until it covered my face. And I inched my pillow down until only my eyes were exposed so that I could watch the ghost. And after what seemed like hours of literally just sitting there, staring at this.

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Chris: Ghost, she was there for hours.

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Kayla: It feels like hours. I don't know. It was a kid.

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Chris: It was probably, like, 15 seconds.

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Kayla: It was long enough that eventually I just passed out from sleep, overtaking me. Like, I just fell asleep.

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Chris: Maybe you had, like, a waking dream.

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Kayla: The next morning, I told the story to my whole family, and I have never forgotten the night where I saw a ghost.

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Chris: Did they believe you, or did they pooh it?

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Kayla: Everyone was like, no, you didn't. No, you didn't.

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Chris: Until they pooed. Even your hippy dippy family?

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Kayla: Yes.

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Chris: Wow.

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Kayla: Yeah. The thing is, I don't believe in ghosts.

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Chris: But you saw one.

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Kayla: It doesn't matter to me that I saw one. That experience, no matter how strange and terrifying, is not evidence or proof of the existence of ghosts. And so I believe that there is another explanation, and it's one that is probably based in science and our best knowledge. Boring, I know, but that's the explanation for what I saw.

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Chris: I mean, we talked about this a lot, too, where you're like, what would it actually take for me to believe in ghosts? And, you know, not that.

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Kayla: No, not seeing one.

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Chris: Not seeing one myself, because I would. I would first doubt my own recollection, my own experience. I would first doubt my own sensory input or state of mind or something. I would have to see peer reviewed studies from places that I trust keep.

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Kayla: Peer reviewed in your mind. The truth is, I had several of these experiences when I was a kid. It wasn't just that one ghost that was probably the most, like, ghosty ghost that I saw the most ghost host. Stop. I spent a lot of my childhood being scared of ghosts, but I can't say which came first. I can't say if it was the fear of the ghosts that came first or the sightings of the ghosts that came first. So who's to say I wasn't primed to interpret shadows and tricks of light as spirits, considering I was scared that they existed around every corner? I had already considered my grandparents house haunted my entire childhood, and I was generally too afraid to even be in that upstairs bedroom by myself. Even before the ghost sighting, I had.

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Chris: Grandparents houses are creepy.

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Kayla: Yeah. And their house was amazing, but it was huge and scary.

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Chris: Even, like, my grandparents had, like, really. You know, it was in Florida, so it was open air, you know, sort of like open design, very light. I don't know, there was still just kind of something a little creepy about it. Like, it's a little too quiet.

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Kayla: Grandparents houses are scary.

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Chris: It's got, like, music, like, anachronistic music to them. That's what I'm just. Well, no, like, you know, music from when they grew up.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Chris: Versus.

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Kayla: All right.

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Chris: Cause, yeah, you know, when you grow up, and then that just kind of adds to the unsettlingness of it in some certain ways.

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Kayla: Well, I had also grown up hearing the story that my grandmother told, and my grandmother was, like, the most skeptical skeptic of all time.

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Chris: Really? Yeah. I didn't know that about her.

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Kayla: Yeah, my dad's mom.

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Chris: Yeah, I didn't know that. Yes.

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Kayla: She loves Star Trek, too. No, like, obnoxiously skeptical. I love her, but not like a troll, but just like a.

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Chris: She had a neckbeard and a fedora, and she posted on Reddit.

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Kayla: She had to live her life in an incredibly oppressive farm town where she was from the city and not a farm girl. So everyone was always like, she was a city mouse. And so she had to conform to the religious proclivities of the community, which was like, you have to go to church all of the time. And I think that my grandmother resented that because farm life is hard. Farm communities are difficult.

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Chris: She was into the church. No, wasn't into that.

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Kayla: No. But you have to go.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: Because everyone's looking at you.

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Chris: So she recoiled at that with her skepticism.

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Kayla: I think so.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: Because, like, you get brought into this situation where everyone's already judging you because you're a city girl, you're not a farm girl. So then you have to play the part. And I think part of her was like, fuck you in later life.

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Chris: Got it.

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Kayla: So I'd heard the story that had been told numerous times. So before, the room that I used to vacation in at my grandparents house was, like, the room for my sister and I to stay in. It was the ping pong room, and there was a ping pong table up there.

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Chris: Scary.

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Kayla: Well, it is, because one time, ping pong. My grandmother woke up one night to an empty house and the sounds of a ping pong game being played, like, she could hear ping pong being played in her.

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Chris: It wasn't the ghost. That was just the guy living in the wall.

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Kayla: That's just as scary. That's a scary thing to know.

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Chris: That's frank. He's very nice.

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Kayla: No, if you're living in the wall, you're not nice. So, yeah, so I knew that, like, one time, there was a ping pong ghost in there.

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Chris: That is weird.

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Kayla: Yeah. I hate that story. It scares me still. I read the scary stories to tell in the dark books. I had frightened myself with Ouija boards. I had an older sister who, of course, loved to scare the shit out of me, so I was just this perpetually scared, jumpy kid who absolutely wanted to believe that ghosts were real and that I could see them, which to me is the exact right motivated reasoning one can possess to eventually manifest a ghost sighting, one that feels as real as seeing you or me.

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Chris: I like to use the word possess and manifest in that sentence. Talking about ghosts.

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Kayla: I did that on purpose.

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Chris: Clever.

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Kayla: I didn't do that on purpose. But again, I don't believe in ghosts.

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Chris: So did you. You said you did at the time.

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Kayla: Oh, yeah. I believed in ghosts for a long time. But now I have my skeptics hat on, and that lets me think about the many reasons why I saw what I saw that don't have to do with the supernatural and have more to do with motivated reasoning and things that we don't know about yet scientifically. So, you know, there was a strange electrical storm outside. Who knows what air when it's suddenly charged with electricity? Who knows what that can do to your mind, what kind of tricks that can play on you? You know, number two, I was confused. I could have been confused upon waking up and mistook my own mother for a ghost and do not remember the events of that evening properly.

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Chris: Mm. Maybe she just was staring out your window for a couple hours.

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Kayla: There was a beautiful garden next door. There was a very beautiful garden next door. She could have just been looking outside. And in my head I was like, oh, God, it's scary ghost hun. Then I fell asleep. Also, I could have been dreaming. And I just, it just felt really vivid and real. I mean, I really don't believe that one. I do not think I was dreaming, but I could have been dreaming. I don't know.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: And also, my grandparents house was old, so faulty wiring or infrasound could have easily been present, which are house problems that are commonly associated with quote unquote, ghost sightings.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: And there are many reasons I could have seen what I saw that I don't even know about or that science doesn't even know about. But what I do know is that a little girl who is motivated to believe in and primed to expect ghosts to be wandering around shouldn't rely on this one weird experience as any sort of evidence of an afterlife. Make sense?

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Chris: That is remarkably rational skeptic of you.

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Kayla: Remarkably.

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Chris: Well, no, I mean, I'm not saying for you. No, I'm complimenting your analysis.

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Kayla: That's my analysis. Thank you for the compliment.

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Chris: Also suggesting that normally you're a nut job.

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Kayla: I mean. Yeah, that's also not incorrect. Now, my topic today is not necessarily about ghosts. It kind of is, but not really. I just wanted to. Hi.

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Chris: Anyway, we're talking about other stuff.

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Kayla: We're talking about fruit. No, I wanted to tell a story to illustrate the importance of nothing. Relying on subjective personal experience as scientific evidence. That's not to say that lived experience isn't a thing. And that personal experience, you know, if something happened to you, it happened to you. What I'm talking about is using personal experiences as scientific evidence.

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Chris: Right? Like, I can hold the idea in my head simultaneously that one that you had an experience that feels valid to you and may very well be valid, because I have no idea. It didn't happen to me. It happened to you.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: And also, that's not a standard of proof enough for me to believe with certainty. To accept that as fact.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: For me to accept something as fact requires a different standard of proof. Empirical study, peer review, blah, blah, all that nonsense. That doesn't mean that I'm denying that what you said is true. It just means that there is a yet higher standard for me to accept it into my body of knowledge.

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Kayla: And that's because our perceptions can play tricks on us. Like, that's why we need a scientific method in scientific research when we make claims about the. Make claims about reality and the state of the world and what isn't. Honestly, I'm probably just setting up biased against the topic I'm covering today because this topic was rough for me and kind of fucked with my head. Kind of like the Mt. Jafar episode did for you. So we'll go ahead.

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Chris: Several of our episodes are head fucking. Yeah, they're like, sorry, guys.

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Kayla: Yeah, I mean, I'll go ahead and give a content warning here. We're gonna be talking a lot about ghosts, death, and the afterlife and whether or not that exists. Death obviously exists. But whether or not there's an afterlife or does and just those kind. Well, I mean, we'll get into it. We'll get to that. So just a general blanket content warning. We're really talking a lot about death and the afterlife. So if that kind of existential terror is not something that you want to dig into right now, does that include me?

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Chris: Can I peace out now.

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Kayla: You can't. I already gave you this warning.

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Chris: Yeah, but I have all that. I have that.

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Kayla: Too bad.

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Chris: I have deep existential fears.

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Kayla: Okay, but when I asked you if I could do this topic, and because of these reasons, you said yes. Yes. You thought for 35 seconds. Hold on, and then you went, yeah.

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Chris: I don't believe that experience actually happened. Just because you think it happened doesn't mean that it really is. I think you were talking to a ghost.

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Kayla: I might have been.

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Chris: All right, so I'm gonna bail.

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Kayla: No, you can just talk. You have to do the podcast with me, God. And today the topic we're going to be discussing is called afterlife science.

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Chris: Afterlife science.

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Kayla: Afterlife science.

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Chris: So is this like, after life science?

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Kayla: So it's like you take life science in 9th grade, and then in 10th grade, you take afterlife science, bio two or whatever? No, it's not that. Oh, no. To be fair, afterlife science is a broad topic. There are many figures and institutions involved. So today we'll be focusing on the afterlife science associated with doctor Gary E. Schwartz, who is the director of the laboratory for advances in consciousness and health at University of Arizona. And yes, he is today's charismatically.

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Chris: I gotta unpack that sentence. Cause I was about to stop you and be like, that sounds like a super legit title. And then you said University of Arizona. Yeah, I see why you said this freaked you out. Like the empty Jafar thing.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Oh, man.

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Kayla: We'll get to that.

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Chris: Oh, jeeze.

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Kayla: So.

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Chris: So I have to, like, endure the existential terror and then also the terror that we're just, like, surrounded by charlatans and places of higher learning. Yeah, okay.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Content warning for that one, too, guys.

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Kayla: We'll get to that. So let me actually explain how I landed on this topic today. Cause this is not at all something I had intended to cover. This was not on my list of topics. When I thought about season two, I had no idea that this even existed to the extent that it does. I was originally going to talk about astrology today, which I may or may not still do as a topic, but after falling down the tiniest little rabbit. Yeah, I know you are. And I'm an Aquarius. And that's part of why we butt head sometimes. You are such an Aries.

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Chris: Is that a thing? Aquarius is an Aries. Butt head.

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Kayla: Aquarius and Aries can have very close, intense relationships. Most of the. Some of the closest relationships I've ever had in my life are with Aries. You, my sister, someone else.

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Chris: I see.

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Kayla: And it can be good or bad. You're definitely an Aries then. I'm definitely an Aquarius.

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Chris: I'm pro Aries. I mean, being an Aries. But it's the age of Aquarius, isn't it? So you get a whole age. What does that mean? All right. Oh, we're getting off topic.

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Kayla: Yeah, we're not doing astrology today because as I was researching that topic, oh, it was so, ugh, I was good. Oh, no, I might still do the topic. I don't know. I'm all a flutter because I went down this tiny little rabbit hole in that topic, and then that ballooned out into a topic that I found expansive and distressing and I had to change gears.

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Chris: Why does that always happen? Why, when you pull on the thread.

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Kayla: Does it always just, and this thread goes through a lot of things.

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Chris: Yeah, it seems like it always does. It seems like I'm assuming you're about to tell me a whole suite of beliefs that pretty much line up with teal and Ramtha and everybody else.

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Kayla: Well, I'm really gonna take you kind of through this episode is basically, I'm just gonna be like, here is what happened when I started reading about this online. And let me just tell you about that. So I'm basically just gonna be reading to you a lot.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: In my astrology research, I came upon an organization called the American Federation of Astrology. Thinking this looked slash, sounded somewhat official or as official an astrology federation can be, I figured, okay, I'll look through their board. I'll look through their members. I'll try and pinpoint a charismatic leader here. This led me to Google an astrologer named Dave Campbell, who on his website boasted a number of accreditations and memberships to various astrology and mediumship based groups. I click one of those certifications, certified medium, Forever Family foundation and my Forever Family foundation. We'll get to that. My entire plan of action then unraveled. So I headed on over to Forever Family foundation, expecting something about mediumship and astrology.

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Kayla: Instead, I was met with this goal listed on the homepage to further the understanding of afterlife science through research and education while providing support and healing for people in grief. And then they very kindly defined afterlife science as the study of phenomena associated with survival of consciousness after death, including near death experiences.

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Chris: Okay, I was going to ask you if this is a near death experience thing.

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Kayla: They're related. I wanted to talk about near death experiences here. That's a whole other topic, man. It is an entirely other topic.

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Chris: Remember the OA?

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Kayla: Yes, this an entirely other topic.

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Chris: I didn't care for that show.

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Kayla: So the study of phenomenon associated with survival of consciousness after death, including near death experiences after death. Communications, life after life. Parentheses death and reincarnation.

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Chris: Okay, vampires.

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Kayla: I wish they were real. Now, I want to go on the record here as saying that the pursuit of scientific study with the goal of easing grief and aiding those suffering from grief is an incredibly noble one.

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Chris: It's good that you're going on the record, because we're actually recording this right now for a podcast.

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Kayla: Is it on the record?

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Chris: So that means that it's literally where you are.

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Kayla: So, yeah, I'm going on the record. So I'm saying this here, going on the record. Grief is a universal experience. It's one of the experiences that so clearly makes us human. It's extraordinarily painful, and it's so complicated and complex that it's nearly impossible to get through without external help. Oh, and the idea of getting through grief is a faulty one. It's not an emotion you can work through and be done with. It changes you, it stays with you, and it fundamentally affects your life. I've been dealing with grief for half my life. It fucking sucks. So I am firmly on board with applying scientific study to this topic.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: And because it's so important, I also think it's very easy for the study of it to veer into the unethical or unhealthy, especially when the study departs from the scientific process, making claims that are based on spurious research and reaching conclusions that follow motivated reasoning.

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Chris: Yeah, we've talked about on the show a lot how cult like groups tend to take advantage of folks that are in desperate situations. And one such thing that can make a person feel desperate is intense grief.

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Kayla: Yep. I just. I just don't want anyone to come away from this episode thinking that I'm shitting on people who are trying to help other people with grief and loss. That's not what we're doing here.

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Chris: A little.

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Kayla: No, it's not.

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Chris: It's like a turd.

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Kayla: No. Okay, back to Forever Family foundation, which is still just a jumping off point for this topic. One, to establish the existence of the continuity of the family even though a member has left the physical world. Two, to stimulate thought among the curious, those questioning their relationship to the universe, and people who are looking for explanations of certain phenomena. Three, to financially support the continued research into survival of consciousness in afterlife science. Four, to provide a forum where individuals and families who have suffered the loss of a loved one can turn for support, information, and hope through state of the art information and services provided by ongoing research into the survival of consciousness and afterlife science.

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Chris: That all sounds pretty nice.

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Kayla: So something that came up over and over again in my research on this is afterlife sciences focus on supporting bereaved parents. We can talk more about this later, but I wanted to point that out here. There are support groups and forums on this site specifically for grieving parents. And that particular topic keeps coming up in this research. I think that bereaved parents are probably the group of people dealing with grief that need the most comprehensive support. So I'm glad there are resources for that, especially for people that walk a supernatural path in their lives. And I also can't help but worry that there is an inherently predatory nature in focusing on brief parents when trying to prove there is life after death.

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Chris: Yeah. Sounds a little bit like our dilemma with teal, where it was, you know, she's a predator, but maybe she's helping people. But maybe that's not good. But maybe it is good. Yeah.

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Kayla: And it just kind of goes back to what you were saying about, like. And I don't want to say that bereaved parents or anyone dealing with bereavement is desperate, quote unquote. But when you are in that state, when you are severely grieving a loss, I do think you are probably more susceptible to unethical tactics from people.

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Chris: Of course.

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Kayla: So, okay, I'm looking at this forever family foundation site because of their mediumship certification program. Here's what they say about the Forever family Foundation medium evaluation certification process. A rigorous science based examination of the ability of a specific medium to bring forth information without the use of fraudulent or deceptive memes. Means each medium is exposed to a variety of sitters, and a composite scoring system is used to determine the accuracy of the information presented by each medium. A sitter is somebody who is babysitter. No, a sitter is somebody who's, like, being read by the medium.

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Chris: Oh, okay. So, like, if the medium, like, looks at me and says, you are being.

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Kayla: Contacted, if you sit down with a medium, and they're like, hey, medium me. You're a sitter.

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Chris: Okay. Okay, good. Well, at least it's rigorous and science based.

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Kayla: I mean, I noticed as I was going through this website, a lot of discussion going back to science and science based processes, Afterlife studies, which sounds sciencey, rigorous science based examination, scientific evidence. But the focus of the site just does not and did not sit right with me. I came upon this site while researching astrology, a pseudoscience, and now mediumship, which, to the best of my knowledge, still has no actual scientific evidence supporting its veracity, no matter what the Forever Family foundation website says.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: But it also had me questioning myself. It had me questioning my beliefs and the facts that I think I knew to be true. Like, maybe I don't know everything there is to know about the scientific studies around the afterlife or the existence of spirits and ghosts and persistent consciousness. I can't say that I'm tapped into what the science is actually actively doing to study these things right now. Like, maybe there has been some actual science supporting or pointing to the possible existence of some of these things. I'm not up on those day to day discoveries, and I want to believe that there is real, good science behind these claims. And I don't want to be so close minded that I ignore facts just because of my pre existing beliefs and my preexisting notions.

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Chris: I will say that you say you're not up on these discoveries, but I think you are in a sense, because I think if there were a true scientific verification of something like contacting the.

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Kayla: Dead, we'd all know about it.

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Chris: It would be big news. It would definitely be trending on Twitter.

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Kayla: Yeah. At the very least. Anyway, I dug a little further into this organization because supporting brief parents, supporting brave people, lessening grief, and searching for signs of an afterlife, those aren't that crazy. And out there in terms of things you can study.

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Chris: Yeah, I mean, certainly they are subjects that feel like they are worthy of study. It's not that we're questioning whether they are subjects worthy of study. It's that I. I question any conclusions that the groups that you are talking about may have drawn, not questioning that it's a good and worthy topic to study.

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Kayla: Yeah, no, I mean, exactly. And it kind of got me going. Maybe there is some actual science here. Let's look at it. Let's be open minded. Like you said, I don't question that these are topics worthy of scientific research. So I clicked on the section of the site dedicated to afterlife science, and I was met with this message. It's a little long, so stick with me. Belief in life after death is certainly not a modern day concept. Many ancient cultures incorporated such knowledge into daily activities and long term planning. Traditional scientific thinking most often discounted the possibility that consciousness could survive physical death, instead asserting that since consciousness was a byproduct of the brain, when the physical brain ceased to exist, so did consciousness. In other words, our thoughts, memories, and soul were forever extinguished.

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Kayla: There are those who remain steadfast in their conviction that there is an afterlife solely due to their religious teachings. These beliefs are usually not evidence based, but are the result of blind faith. Similarly, some people who are simply spiritual and do not subscribe to any particular organized religion simply possess an inner knowledge of life beyond physical death forever. Family foundation is interested in scientific evidence that supports the premise that we are much more than our physical bodies and do indeed survive physical death. Although such evidence remains unknown to the majority of the population, it is compelling and plentiful. Such evidence can be found through many disciplines of research and include near death experiences, deathbed visions, mediumship, electronic voice phenomenon, reincarnation, apparitions, and other forms of after death communication.

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Chris: All the things just wait.

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Kayla: In addition. Just wait. In addition, there are other types of phenomena that show that the mind can act independently of the brain, thus laying the groundwork for survival. Such areas of study include telepathy, remote viewing, oh, boy. Distant healing intention, and other types of psy phenomena.

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Chris: When does it get racist? I'm assuming it gets racist at some point, right?

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Kayla: I have not come across anything that seemed overtly racist, but it probably does. I don't know.

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Chris: There is definitely an on ramp to racism somewhere in this mess.

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Kayla: I don't want to claim that there is because I don't know.

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Chris: Well, as the person who didn't do the research and is just wildly speculating based on the past experiences with this kind of stuff. Probably.

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Kayla: We'll see.

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Chris: Remember Romtha?

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Kayla: Anyway, I read this, and in my head I went, and there it is. The issue that we always run into when we're talking about one weird supernatural thing is that it inevitably dovetails off into a series of connections to other supernatural claims so out there and unstudied that the original thing loses all credibility in my eyes.

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Chris: Yeah, I mean, probably into, like, ancient aliens and all.

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Kayla: They don't even have to say anything else. They're talking about remote viewing. Remote viewing is literally. I don't even. It's not even funny to me.

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Chris: It's.

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Kayla: Remote viewing is, like, basically saying that you can see the future or you can see what's happening somewhere. It's literally just being like, yes, psychics are totally real and. Okay, let me take a breath.

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Chris: Take a breath. Oh, wait, there's more to it.

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Kayla: A little bit.

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Chris: Okay. Cause. Sorry. I was also gonna stop you at the beginning.

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Kayla: Oh, that's the end of my reading. The rest of this is just me reacting.

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Chris: Oh, okay. Okay. So then I was gonna say, even before you got to the weird part, like, it started off by saying, we are interested in finding evidence for this thing that we believe in.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: That is improper science.

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Kayla: Is it, though? Cause is it?

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Chris: Whose hypothesis is, no, it's not. And I hate to be like, well.

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Kayla: Actually, except that's exactly what we're doing.

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Chris: I know, I know. I'm sorry. I'm reacting to something on my podcast, so here we go. That's not science. That's not what a hypothesis. Hypothesis is not we believe this thing and therefore we are seeking evidence to support it. The hypothesis is we believe this thing may be true and we are seeking evidence to either support or falsify it, depending on what happens.

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Kayla: Right, right. Yeah. That does nothing really seem to be a thing here.

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Chris: And in fact, like, when you look at like, experimental design and you kind of get into the nitty gritty of it's really mostly about the falsifiable.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: Falsifiability of it. Because in a logical sense, which logic and science are tied together in this regard, you cannot prove something to be true.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: You can only falsify something. So something to add something to our body of knowledge requires that you continuously try to falsify it and fail. And you can therefore say, this is almost certainly true.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: But you can never say for sure.

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Kayla: Well, some people think things for sure. It just.

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Chris: Well, what the bleep do we know, Kayla?

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Kayla: It reminds me a lot of this. Of course, it can't just be about the possibility of life after death. Of course we're getting into EVP and telepathy and remote viewing. And that's not all because I then checked the recommended book section and there are links.

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Chris: Dianetics. Dianetics.

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Kayla: Dianetics. But there are links to books about everything already mentioned, as well as UFO's, levitation, poltergeist, quantum physics, of course.

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Chris: Oh, yeah, you gotta get that.

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Kayla: Magic, seances, heaven and more so. And I'm not trying to shit on beliefs. I'm really not it. You have belief in these things. There is nothing wrong with that.

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Chris: Absolutely.

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Kayla: It is incorrect and wrong to be like, the science says it's real. There is nothing wrong with believing it just because you believe it. It's when you go like, science is why I'm angry.

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Chris: Right. It goes back to what were saying earlier. Like, I'm not questioning anyone's subjective experience and saying that they didn't have it, but what I am saying is that I choose not to add it to my body of knowledge unless I have a certain standard of proof. That's all it is.

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Kayla: That's all it is.

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Chris: And I mean, we've talked about this before, but like, we do fun stuff like this all the time.

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Kayla: Oh, my God. I fucking just had a session with a psychic like two weeks ago. Yeah, a psychic who I've seen multiple times.

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Chris: Yeah. And I did a Reiki session.

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Kayla: I thoroughly enjoy it.

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Chris: Because you are a fucking whack job. No, just kidding. I mean, like, I.

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Kayla: Listen, you've gone to the chiropractor, okay.

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Chris: First of all, I went to your family's chiropractor because he recommended it for back pain. And I was like a little unsure. And then he like, tried to snap my neck like they do in spy movies. And I was like, I'm never going to the chiropractor again.

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Kayla: And he also helped you, did he? Yes.

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Chris: I don't really remember that.

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Kayla: Yes, you could like, hardly move.

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Chris: I don't remember going back to the guy.

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Kayla: You definitely went more than once, man.

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Chris: I'm not, I don't want to, like, shit on this dude. Maybe little turd. And as we keep saying. But no. Yes, I went to, and there's other things that I will go to try and experience, but that doesn't mean that I think that subluxations are going to cure my cancer. And it doesn't mean that I think that, you know, the Reiki is actually doing anything with, like, energy fields, yada.

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Kayla: And even if you do believe that the science is not supporting you, that's okay. You can still believe the thing.

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Chris: But I listen to Reiki on ASMR channels on YouTube, like every other night because it's super relaxing.

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Kayla: Right. And that's a true, real benefit.

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Chris: Yeah, but, you know, but I even, I own crystals. When I was in Sedona, I bought some crystals, man.

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Kayla: Right?

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Chris: Like, I don't think that the crystals have magic, but I like dragons with them. Yeah, but, yeah, but there. As a, as a totem, as a physical thing to focus a particular thought or a particular state of mind or to help you sort of engage that part of your consciousness. I think they can be valuable, right? Why not? And they're cool.

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Kayla: They're very cool. I love a lot of weird woo things, but I'm still confused and destabilized here as I'm, like, diving into this website because as I'm scrolling through the list of recommended books on this website that purports itself to be science based and clearly to me isn't. I keep seeing signals of expertise and authority. PhD, MD, Doctor, Ms, over and over. And I have an extreme respect for education and the work that goes into achieving those letters next to your name. And then I also have an extreme respect for one's ability to get a teaching position. I know how difficult it is. I come from educators. I know what goes into this. So it freaks me out when I see letters like that attached to pseudo and junk science.

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Kayla: Like, it really freaks me out, especially coming from educators and knowing what actually goes into this job and knowing the work that it takes and knowing the, like, dedication to actual education that it takes, it personally upsets and offends me when I see PhD attached to junk science.

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Chris: We ran into this with the what? The bleep episode. We ran into this with the empty chiffar episode.

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Kayla: Right. We're gonna keep running into it.

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Chris: It's freaky. Yeah, on this show, we're gonna run into it again for sure. I'm with you there. It's scary.

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Kayla: Yeah. So at this point I wanted to get to the bottom of who was behind this particular website group. And it was really hard. Like, there was no about section. There wasn't a history or even an easily accessible list of like, the people who run it. The recommended book section was so long and full of so many different names, I couldn't get a handle on whether or not are these the site's contributors. It was like this was almost a little destabilizing. I was like, who the fuck is, what is this group? Who is this? So finally I checked out the contact us section. Almost clicked away when it just looked to be a list of emails. But then tucked under that list was another list. And this was an extensive list of all the people involved with the Forever Family foundation.

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Kayla: So this is the executive committee, the Academic advisory board, the scientific advisory board, the Medium advisory board, the financial development board, the auxiliary board and the founders.

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Chris: You should have done like Scooby Doo, like pulled the mask off and, you know, like it was you this whole time. Mike Sheffield.

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Kayla: Mike Sheffield could have designed this website.

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Chris: Would have gotten away with it too if weren't for you damn kids.

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Kayla: Many of these names, if not most of these names, were also present as authors on the recommended book, listen. And the very last name on the list under founders, I met the charismatic leader of today's topic as mentioned, Gary E. Schwartz, PhD.

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Chris: And they listed them as founders. He said he's a founders. Because remember what they called themselves at.

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Kayla: Best friends, founders is. There's nothing wrong with the word founders. Founders is a real thing. It's just, of course, tainted now. So doctor Gary Schwartze, as mentioned, is director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and health at University of Arizona. He's also a professor of psychology, neurology, psychiatry, medicine and surgery. Most of which, as science based medicine, shout out to science based medicine, as science based medicine point out, are, quote, highly unusual positions to hold without a medical degree. But maybe it's not that unusual because Doctor Schwartz is a Harvard grad, having earned his PhD from said institution, and he then became a professor of psychiatry and psychology at Yale University, where he became the director of Yale Psychophysio, of the Yale Psychophysiology center and co director of the Yale Behavioral Medicine Clinic from 1976 to 1988.

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Kayla: Initially, he focused on topics such as biofeedback research and health psychology. But then sometime, I think in the nineties, something happened to him that changed the entire trajectory of his career. One day, doctor Schwartz was driving on the FDR highway in Manhattan with his wife. Their car was stopped in traffic when suddenly doctor Schwartz heard a voice tell him to, quote, put his seatbelt on. He did. He told his wife to do the same. They both buckled their seatbelts and they were immediately rear ended by another car going 50 mph. Believing his life had been saved by the disembodied voice, he pivoted his focus and began researching the possible places the voice may have come from. First of all, why weren't you wearing your seatbelt already? Come on, put your seat belt on.

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Chris: Guys, seriously, just buckle up. Wear a mask.

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Kayla: So it seems to me, from what I can extrapolate, he was focused very much on tangible science, biofeedback, health, psychology. He had this supernatural experience, and then it changed his focus.

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Chris: Do you believe that he had that experience?

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Kayla: Yes. I don't know, actually. I don't know. Let's save that for after. I think. Let's save that for after.

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Chris: All, right?

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Kayla: Cause it's always hard to know if the cult leader, if the charismatic leader is drinking their own Kool aid or is just a master manipulator. And I don't want to claim that this person didn't have this experience. Maybe they did have this experience. Maybe it's completely valid that this person then wanted to change their topic of focus.

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Chris: Sure, maybe.

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Kayla: I don't know either way, since then, he's been focused on afterlife studies while working at U of A, better known as parapsychology. Some specific research projects he's tackled while there include investigations of the survival of consciousness after death. Quantum holographic consciousness. I don't know what that is.

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Chris: It's not a thing.

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Kayla: Group and global consciousness. The evolutions of consciousness and understanding. Parentheses, universal hypotheses and post materialism. Post materialism is death. And the universal hypotheses or universal intelligent hypothesis is this metaphysical concept that's like, yeah, the essence of all being and becoming is of the universe. Like, I really don't understand that was for those.

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Chris: Was that a sentence?

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Kayla: I don't know. I can't understand what it is. I'm not. I don't get it.

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Chris: I think you have to. I think it's like.

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Kayla: I think it's like saying the universe just kind of is conscious and then your. Your consciousness comes from that. I think it's something like that. Don't quote me, guys.

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Chris: Is it like your consciousness, is the universe observing itself?

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Kayla: I don't know.

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Chris: Cause I dig that.

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Kayla: Sure. Maybe it's that.

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Chris: Is it that?

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Kayla: I don't know. Doctor Gary Schwartz, contact us and let us know.

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Chris: It's a reasonable thing to say, actually, but anyway. Go ahead.

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Kayla: Prior to 2008, he conducted a research project known as Veritas. Which testes. I wrote which testes? Which. Which tested the hypothesis that the consciousness of a person survives after physical death.

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Chris: He's not very creative because that's Harvard's motto.

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Kayla: Veritas.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: Truth.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: It might stand for something. I'm not sure. It ended in 2008, so I didn't get too far into what Veritas means, besides truth. And of course, he has done a lot of work with, alongside and on mediums and mediumship. Some mediums he's tested include John Edward of crossing over fame and Alison Dubois, who the show medium is based on. Doctor Schwartz has concluded from his scientific studies that both of these mediums are verified to have actual psychic abilities. Now, full disclosure, I have watched both of these shows. John Edward was not really. He was never really my cup of tea. Don't worry, we'll talk about him in a moment. But man, I love the show. Medium girl solves crimes by having psychic dreams and she's played by Patricia Arquette. It used to come on tv late at night after will and grace.

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Kayla: It was great. I loved that show.

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Chris: I'm glad that you had a good experience at that show.

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Kayla: But here's the thing. As far as I'm aware, our best science, not including doctor Gary Schwartz's, has concluded that both John Edward, our best zing. Our best science has concluded that both John Edward and Alison Dubois are frauds. Sorry to use such a strong word, mediums. And these two in particular have been addressed by a number of folks that are in my trust network. So these are people like illusionist and skeptic James. Randy James. Randy James Randy John Oliver skeptical activist Susan Gerbeck Committee for Skeptical Inquiries Ray Hyman, a psychologist and critic of parapsychology named Paul Kurtz, a prominent american scientific skeptic and many others.

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Kayla: All who've explained time and time again why a the techniques used by these mediums do not produce results that are any different from standard mentalist hot and cold reading techniques and b the claims made by these mediums are often fraudulent themselves. And as far as I know, doctor Schwartz is one of the only authorities to study, test their claims and come away with the belief that they are valid. Let's talk about these studies conducted by doctor Schwartz during his Veritas project.

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Chris: Okay, I would love to.

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Kayla: I can't say that I have a tremendous amount of specifics for you.

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Chris: Oh, so that's not that.

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Kayla: I kind of wonder if it's supposed to be that way. Another thing that kept popping up over and over as I researched this topic was maybe the unintentional, maybe not obfuscation of how exactly these scientific studies by Doctor Schwartz are conducted. To be fair. We'll get into it. We'll get into it. We'll get to that. I think.

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Chris: Here's the catchphrase, Kayla.

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Kayla: I think part of the obfuscation comes from the fact that doctor and I admit that I am making a wild claim by using the word obfuscation. I 100% believe that Doctor Schwartz would viciously deny that and claim to be very transparent. But I think that there is maybe a little bit of obfuscation going on. Coming from the fact that Doctor Schwartz is a prolific author and the process and result of many of his studies end up being published in non peer reviewed books that he publishes. Perhaps the best known is the afterlife experiments. Let me read you the summary from the book cover. An esteemed scientist's personal journey from skepticism to wonder and awe provides astonishing answers to a timeless is there life after death? Are love and life eternal?

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Kayla: This exciting account presents provocative evidence that could upset everything that science has ever taught. Daring to risk his worldwide academic reputation, Doctor Gary E. Schwartz, along with his research partner doctor Linda Russickhead, asked some of the most prominent mediums in America, including John Edward, Susanne Northrup and George Anderson, to become part of a series of extraordinary experiments to prove or disprove the existence of an afterlife.

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Chris: Really, it's a proof.

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Kayla: This riveting narrative with its electrifying transcripts, put the reader on the scene of a breakthrough scientific contact with the beyond under controlled laboratory conditions, in stringently monitored experiments, leading mediums attempted to contact dead friends and relatives of sitters who were masked from view and never spoke, depriving the medium of any cues, the messages that came through stunned sitters and researchers alike here, as they unfolded in the laboratory setting, are uncanny revelations about a son's suicide, what a deceased father wanted to say about his last days in a coma, the transformation of a man's lifelong doubts about the afterlife, and most amazing of all, a forecast of a beloved spouse's death. Doctor Schwartz was forced by the overwhelmingly positive data to abandon his skepticism, reaching some startling conclusions.

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Chris: It's interesting that he would say, abandon skepticism rather than prove the hypothesis.

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Kayla: Yeah, I think so, too. I think that's a little bit of a dog whistle.

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Chris: Yeah, it is.

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Kayla: I think it's a little bit like you want to say that you're science based, but then you go like, but don't worry, we're actually, you know, we're not skeptics anymore. And this is all woo. It's like, yeah, it's like a weird dedication to woo.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: Because I think, you know, it's gonna sell more books.

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Chris: Right, right. It's like very revealing.

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Kayla: I think so, too. I agree. You wanna know what else is revealing? You wanna know who wrote the foreword for the book?

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Chris: Let's see. Deepak Chopra.

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Kayla: Yup.

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Chris: Oh, man. Oh, boy. Deepak back.

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Kayla: Some parts of the research were documented for an HBO documentary, parts of which are on YouTube. So you can see how some of this research went, but also it's heavily edited. And then there's literally a part where, like, they're explaining what's happening, and it's like the sitter will only give yes or no answers, and then they show the sitter being like, yes, that was my father that you're talking about. And, like, giving information. So it's. That's not John.

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Chris: He died when he was 67.

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Kayla: It's just because you're putting, like, they put, like, things on their heads and, like, sign set them, like, connect them up to Eksheenda machines. That doesn't. That's not science.

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Chris: Right. It's like using. They use the trappings of science. They use the rituals of science. If you are.

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Kayla: Mmm. Mmm. That's good.

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Chris: Mm mm. Yeah. Dropping that wisdom bomb.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Mmm. Delicious. You're welcome, listeners. Anyway, it's like they're using these rituals of science as this mode of legitimacy to get. To get you in the door. And then once you're in the door, it's like, yeah, anyway, we're done with the whole skepticism thing. Anything goes. UFO's and shit, man. Woo. Yeah.

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Kayla: Yeah. I don't want to get too into the specific details of how the experiments were conducted. You can go watch the HBO stuff, even though it was really hard to find. I could, like, only find it in parts on YouTube. But just know that Doctor Schwartz claims that these mediums were scientifically tested and he walked away with the belief in their abilities, particularly in John Edwards.

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Chris: I mean, hold on. But you should be. If you have HBO, you should be watching succession first anyway.

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Kayla: You absolutely should watch succession. I couldn't find it on HBO. Maybe it was just my HBO. I don't know. I couldn't find the documentary. I could only find it on YouTube.

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Chris: It's probably a good thing.

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Kayla: I don't know. I wanted to watch it. I really did. But I could only find these parts on YouTube. The afterlife experiments is not the only account of Doctor Schwartz's research that ended up published as a book. He also published a book, the Truth about medium, that explains evidence. See my fingers? What they're doing right now? Evidence.

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Chris: Oh, I see. Little. Little bunny ears.

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Kayla: That little bunny ears. Evidence of Alison Dubois psychic ability gathered over the course of four years. One such piece of evidence is a reading she did for Deepak Chopra, which Chopra described as 77% accurate.

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Chris: That's amazing.

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Kayla: Doctor Schwartz is quoted three repeating, of course, 77%. Doctor Schwartz is quoted as saying, quote, anyone who's looked closely at the evidence can't help but come to the conclusion that there is something very real going on here. So. Okay. Doctor Schwartz has conducted study upon study about the veracity of mediums and concluded that their abilities are real. I keep saying this. As mentioned before, doctor Schwartz is virtually alone in that claim, aside from his friends. But we'll probably talk about his friends in the next episode.

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Chris: In the next. Oh, wait. Next episode?

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Kayla: We're not there yet.

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Chris: Is this a two parter?

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Kayla: It is a two parter. Sorry.

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Chris: Ooh. It's like the. The Star Trek. We need to stop talking about Star Trek. I'm gonna think of a different reference.

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Kayla: Everybody's watching Star Trek right now.

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Chris: We just. We just watched the best two parter in maybe all of the nineties. The best of both worlds, part one and two, where Captain Picard gets turned into spoilers. Dude, it's been 30 years.

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Kayla: I don't think you should spoil it.

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Chris: It's past the statute of limitations.

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Kayla: I don't think you should spoil it.

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Chris: Fine. Spoiler alert. For the next 10 seconds, the Borg capture and turn Captain Picard into a Borg.

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Kayla: It was very scary.

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Chris: And they have to plot all the stops. But the good guys win. I know. It's crazy.

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Kayla: Thank God.

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Chris: Maybe I shouldn't have spoiled that part.

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Kayla: At least in fantasy, the good guys win.

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Chris: That's why we're watching this right now.

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Kayla: God. So, okay, so now we know how Doctor Schwartz feels about these mediums. John Edward, Alison Dubois, all the other mediums. Let's talk a little bit about what other folks have to say about John Edwards and Alison Dubois.

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Chris: Other folks. Not friends like, other.

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Kayla: Like, we're not talking about his friends yet.

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Chris: No, we're talking about real people.

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Kayla: Friends are down the line today. We're talking right now. We're talking about are trust network people.

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Chris: Okay, so, like actual humans.

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Kayla: Many critics of John Edward say that he performs mentalist techniques of hot and cold reading, that he's not actually a medium. James Ranady once watched tapes of John Edwards show and said that in a single reading, only three out of 23 statements made by Edward were verified as correct by the audience member and that those three were trivial.

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Chris: And we've said this before on this show and also the program, but God bless James.

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Kayla: Randy Goddesse, truly doing the Lord's work. Hero John Edward once went on Dateline and has since been accused of using foreknowledge to hot read. During the interview, James underdown of the independent investigative group attended a taping of his show and said, quote, there are no indications of anyone I saw collecting information. None of his readings contain the kind of specific information that would raise an eyebrow of suspicion. John Edward was a bad, cold reader. He too struggled to get hits and in one attempt shot off nearly 40 guesses before finding any significant targets. That means that John, did you ever watch crossing over?

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Chris: No. What's crossing over?

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Kayla: Crossing over was John Edwards show, and I think was like, in 2002. And it was like an Oprah style show where like, he comes out and he's like, you know, oh.

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Chris: And it was. The thing is that thing where they, like, he gets in, like the audience and he sees.

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Kayla: Yeah. He comes out and he starts reading the audience.

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Chris: I'm getting a name. Mary. Martha.

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Kayla: And so this is saying that this person watching this saw John Edward go up to a person and say 40 different things before something even landed. And that's supposed to be a psychic. That's supposed to be a medium. I can do that.

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Chris: Yeah. Medium means, like, only medium guesses, 20 guesses. Medium. That's what it means. If it was accurate, that's what they would be called.

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Kayla: James underdown calls him a bad cold reader. Underdown went on to posit that John Edwards ended up looking better on tv than in reality due to the magic of editing, because obviously 40 wrong guesses is not making it to air.

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Chris: You know, this reminds me of this really interesting scam that I had read about. The scam goes like this. You, the scammer, find some power of two. Let's say it's eight people. You find eight people, and you're gonna email these eight people, and you're gonna say, all right, this stock is gonna go either up or down. And you pick four of them, and you say, this stock is gonna go up, and then you say to the other four people, the stock is going to go down, and the four people that you're wrong about. If, let's say the stock goes up, you discard, you don't email the four people that you said the stock was going to go down. You don't email them again.

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Chris: You take the four people that got the correct version, and then you subdivide it again, and you say two of those four people, you say the stock is going to go up tomorrow, and then two of those four people, you say the stock is going to go down tomorrow, and then you wait to see what happens. You discard the two emails that are wrong, and then you have two left. And then you email one of them and you say, the stock is going to go up tomorrow, and the stock is going to go down tomorrow. And then you have one person left.

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Chris: And that one person now is so convinced that you can see the future because you got it right three times in a row, that they are definitely going to sign up for your service, even though you were, by necessity, because of the powers of two and a 50 chance. Definitely. Right.

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Kayla: That's villainous. That is deeply villainous.

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Chris: That is the power of editing.

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Kayla: Wow.

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Chris: Mm.

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Kayla: Well, 40 times. Let me read you this passage from Wikipedia describing John Oliver's assessment of John Edward. And I know that John Oliver is also a television personality. And over the. I think. How long has that show been on? Eight years? I don't even know that show's been on for. It's pretty long.

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Chris: Insane how long that show has been on because I still feel like it's new.

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Kayla: I feel like it's new.

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Chris: No, he just stopped being on the Daily show.

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Kayla: Given the breadth of his career and the dedication to skepticism that he has demonstrated, he's part of my trust.

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Chris: Oh, yeah, for sure he did. I mean, we even far more than.

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Kayla: Someone, like, we've talked about him on.

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Chris: The show before, like on our MLM.

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Kayla: Episode, quote, in a 2019 segment of last Week Tonight, Edward and other prominent tv psychics were featured. Several clips of Edward attempted cold readings and failings to get hits were included, as well as a clip of Edward telling an audience member, quote, I can only tell you what they're showing me, and if he's calling your mother a bitch, I'm gonna pass that on. John Oliver criticized the predatory nature of the psychic industry as well as the media for promoting psychics because this convinces viewers that psychic powers are real and so enables neighborhood psychics to prey on grieving families. Oliver said when psychic abilities are presented as authentic, it emboldens a vast underworld of unscrupulous vultures more than happy to make money by offering an open line to the afterlife as well as many other bullshit services.

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Chris: So this brings me to the whole thing. Like, are we going to start a cult? Because I think it's much more lucrative than being skeptics on a podcast. We should just start one.

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Kayla: I don't think I could do it.

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Chris: We could do. We could do another Scientology that.

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Kayla: I mean, you could just say you're psychic and people believe you. You can just say your dad's name is Ron, John, Bob, Cal, Steve, Jim, Rumpelstiltskin. Like, literally, you just say a whole bunch of names and they're like, oh, you're psychic.

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Chris: So why don't we do that? It's much more lucrative.

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Kayla: I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. It's evil. I don't want to do evil. It's evil in the world. So that's John Edward. But what about Alison Debois? Maybe she's real after all. Doctor Schwartz did all those studies with her and declared her to be psychic.

445
01:00:20,554 --> 01:00:21,138
Chris: Show made about her.

446
01:00:21,154 --> 01:00:28,170
Kayla: Did a tv show made about her. Funnily enough, Alison Debois herself has stated that she does not endorse the book doctor Schwartz wrote about her.

447
01:00:28,330 --> 01:00:28,914
Chris: Wait, what?

448
01:00:28,962 --> 01:00:31,882
Kayla: The truth about medium. Nor does she endorse Doctor Schwartz himself.

449
01:00:31,986 --> 01:00:35,722
Chris: Wait, the medium doesn't even endorse Doctor Schwartz.

450
01:00:35,826 --> 01:00:38,738
Kayla: Miss Dubois actually rejects the labeling of psychic, so.

451
01:00:38,834 --> 01:00:39,562
Chris: Wait, what?

452
01:00:39,626 --> 01:00:47,554
Kayla: Not sure why other people get to call her that. She prefers medium and profiler. She does not like to say she has psychic abilities. She's a medium and a profiler.

453
01:00:47,642 --> 01:00:48,274
Chris: Okay.

454
01:00:48,362 --> 01:00:57,190
Kayla: And she claims that she has used her abilities to help law enforcement solve crimes and has served as a jury consultant, which is the solving crimes, the plot of the tv show medium.

455
01:00:58,050 --> 01:00:58,626
Chris: What?

456
01:00:58,738 --> 01:01:11,610
Kayla: But every agency Allison Dubois has claimed to work with, including the Texas Rangers and the Glendale, Arizona police Department, have either denied working with her or have stated that the tips she provided were unhelpful.

457
01:01:12,270 --> 01:01:21,010
Chris: I hate to ask, but, like, now that we have seen some things, are we inclined to believe those police departments at their word?

458
01:01:21,670 --> 01:01:33,206
Kayla: I'm inclined to believe when somebody says the tips that she provided were unhelpful, because you could just say, I'm not sure I understand. If it were just, no, we didn't work with her, then I'd go, I don't know.

459
01:01:33,238 --> 01:01:34,182
Chris: Yeah, that's the part that I'm.

460
01:01:34,206 --> 01:01:56,056
Kayla: Maybe, but the tips were unhelpful. I'm like, how would you say that? I don't know. I do not believe the police are an authority that you can trust. However, this woman is a medium, saying, I worked with this, that and the other, and there's not any evidence that she did. It's not even just the denial. There's not evidence that she's actually done this.

461
01:01:56,128 --> 01:01:56,860
Chris: Okay.

462
01:01:57,280 --> 01:02:22,422
Kayla: Skeptics Paul Kurtz, Ray Hyman, and of course, James Randyeh state that Alison Dubois results are from cold reading techniques. Let me read you this passage again from Wikipedia because it really helped solidify this for me. For example, Dubois, when doing her first reading of Schwartz, told him that his deceased friend was telling her, I don't walk alone, which Schwartz understood to be a reference to his friend's confinement to a wheelchair, which Dubois could not have known about.

463
01:02:22,526 --> 01:02:27,878
Chris: She was just quoting the footsteps in the sand thing that's in every boomer's bathroom.

464
01:02:27,974 --> 01:02:52,462
Kayla: Randy says that Schwartz leapt to an unsupportable conclusion since the notion of not walking alone can mean any number of things and does not describe being in a wheelchair specifically. Okay, so for doctor Schwartz, Alison Dubois saying, your friend says, I don't walk alone. That to him is evidence. And James, Randy is saying, that's not evidence. No, that's a statement that you are taking to mean something.

465
01:02:52,566 --> 01:02:53,210
Chris: Right.

466
01:02:53,800 --> 01:02:56,056
Kayla: James, Randi and doctor Schwartz have also.

467
01:02:56,168 --> 01:02:57,616
Chris: That's not even close to evidence.

468
01:02:57,728 --> 01:03:09,400
Kayla: No, it's not. James Randi and Doctor Schwartz have also gone back and forth over whether or not Doctor Schwartz has used proper scientific controls while conducting these experiments involving mediums.

469
01:03:09,520 --> 01:03:24,928
Chris: Actually, sorry. That, you know, when we talk about, like, do they drink their own Kool Aid? That calling that evidence makes me wonder if he is more charlatan than drinking his own Kool Aid. Because you don't think there could be.

470
01:03:24,944 --> 01:03:28,876
Kayla: Motivated reasoning there of, like, she knows. She knows my friends in a wheelchair.

471
01:03:28,908 --> 01:03:35,300
Chris: It's not that. It's. It's. It's because he knows better, because he has that background.

472
01:03:35,380 --> 01:03:35,788
Kayla: Right.

473
01:03:35,884 --> 01:04:15,780
Chris: And he knows just exactly how far? Because it's not just, like, it's not just us saying that's not evidence. Like, again, if you know about study design and you know about, like, how experimental studies are carried out, like, what counts as evidence is, like, extremely rigorous and well defined, it's not just sort of different from that. It's very different from that. And he should know better and. Or he does know better, unless he's forgotten it, which I doubt. So then that makes me say, like, he's being disingenuous, calling it that. If he's being disingenuous, calling it that. Where else is he being disingenuous?

474
01:04:17,730 --> 01:04:18,922
Kayla: That's a good point.

475
01:04:19,106 --> 01:04:22,470
Chris: Boom. Get dunked on, dude. Come on the show.

476
01:04:23,450 --> 01:04:25,138
Kayla: I would gladly have him on the show. I just didn't.

477
01:04:25,154 --> 01:04:25,434
Chris: Oh, yeah.

478
01:04:25,482 --> 01:04:33,790
Kayla: I just didn't want to talk to anybody for this episode. I was so upset that I was just like, I need to get. I just need to get the research done, and I just need to.

479
01:04:34,090 --> 01:04:37,610
Chris: Yeah, we've done too many interviews anyway. Really? I'm all interviewed out, man.

480
01:04:37,730 --> 01:04:55,318
Kayla: James Randi and Doctor Schwartz have gone back and forth over whether or not Doctor Schwartz has used proper scientific controls while conducting these experiments involving mediums. Doctor Schwartz has stated that some of his experiments were performed under these conditions. Some were.

481
01:04:55,494 --> 01:05:05,742
Chris: Sorry, I'm not reacting. I'm just. I did the eyes narrowing thing. Like the fry meme. The eyes narrowing for the futurama.

482
01:05:05,806 --> 01:05:06,318
Kayla: We get it.

483
01:05:06,374 --> 01:05:09,160
Chris: Thanks. I'm having a tough time here.

484
01:05:09,240 --> 01:05:33,300
Kayla: We're not done with James Randi yet. His $1 million challenge, which James Randi is like, I will give you. I will give a million dollars to anyone who can come here and prove, using scientific techniques that the supernatural exists. I'll give you $1 million. So that $1 million challenge was offered to both Alison Dubois and John Edward. Both declined.

485
01:05:33,690 --> 01:05:34,226
Chris: Weird.

486
01:05:34,298 --> 01:05:37,190
Kayla: No one's ever received the million dollars, right?

487
01:05:37,530 --> 01:05:38,830
Chris: It's still out there.

488
01:05:39,410 --> 01:06:11,870
Kayla: Former FBI profiler behavioral science expert Clint Vanzant challenges statements about psychics helping law enforcement, arguing, quote, if psychics were truly successful and if their results were not simply the consequence of trickery at worst or good interviewing skills at best, then why don't law enforcement agencies have psychic detective squads, a real X Files unit, or other ways to integrate these paranormal investigative capabilities? I do want to point out that the FBI and the CIA and, like, upper levels of government have doyphenate ly, like, had their own X Files unit.

489
01:06:11,990 --> 01:06:12,750
Chris: Yeah, I know.

490
01:06:12,830 --> 01:06:18,942
Kayla: There's lots of supernatural shit going on. I don't necessarily think there's supernatural shit going on at your, like, local police precinct.

491
01:06:19,046 --> 01:06:22,718
Chris: Right. But we're eventually, probably going to do a. What's shit, what's. I always say?

492
01:06:22,734 --> 01:06:23,270
Kayla: Mkultra.

493
01:06:23,310 --> 01:06:26,590
Chris: Yeah. We're definitely going to end up doing an MkUltra episode. Right?

494
01:06:26,750 --> 01:06:29,860
Kayla: I'm Kayl. Charlie. Everything upsets me.

495
01:06:29,940 --> 01:06:31,044
Chris: It's all very upsetting.

496
01:06:31,092 --> 01:07:22,330
Kayla: Very upset. So, okay. The next thing I say in my script is, it's pretty clear I'm biased here, but I'm not sure that I can help it. Everything I've read about what doctor Schwartz studies, as well as how he studies it, does not pass my smell test and does not pass the smell test of my trust network. And if his methods are the foundation for afterlife sciences as an area of research, then I'm not sure I can take this field very seriously, particularly when, as John Oliver pointed out, it's hard to not view some of these activities as predatory. Let me give an example. In the afterlife experiments, and this is documented in the. In the HBO thing, one of the experiments conducted paired a single sitter, which. With a single sitter with, I think, six mediums. The sitter, it might have been four.

497
01:07:22,700 --> 01:07:32,796
Kayla: With a handful of mediums, the sitter had experienced six significant personal losses, including her son to suicide and her father, in the past ten years.

498
01:07:32,868 --> 01:07:33,620
Chris: Geez.

499
01:07:33,780 --> 01:07:38,040
Kayla: That's the person that they're having this experiment be with.

500
01:07:38,420 --> 01:07:40,880
Chris: Yeah, that doesn't sit right.

501
01:07:41,420 --> 01:07:58,242
Kayla: All right. We've covered a lot of the work doctor Schwartz has conducted at the university, which I should point out here, has been made by the. Has been made possible by grants of millions of dollars from various groups, such as National center on Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health.

502
01:07:58,346 --> 01:08:03,230
Chris: Okay? That's why this position exists at, like, an actual, real university.

503
01:08:03,730 --> 01:08:06,834
Kayla: These kinds of positions exist at a lot of universities.

504
01:08:06,922 --> 01:08:08,506
Chris: Yeah. Cause the. Cause money.

505
01:08:08,578 --> 01:08:33,627
Kayla: Cause money. And also because it's like, what? That's not what this is about. The work of the Veritas project from pre 2008 isn't the only project Doctor Schwartz has had his hands in. The man is prolific, and his reach stretches across the Internet, across the world, and to some extremely bizarre places like this podcast. Yes. What we're going to journey into next gets really weird.

506
01:08:33,724 --> 01:08:35,508
Chris: Wait, hold on. Gets weird?

507
01:08:35,564 --> 01:08:36,091
Kayla: What?

508
01:08:36,236 --> 01:08:36,852
Chris: What?

509
01:08:36,996 --> 01:08:37,916
Kayla: Really, really weird?

510
01:08:37,948 --> 01:08:38,960
Chris: What are you talking.

511
01:08:39,620 --> 01:09:02,689
Kayla: But I think it would be helpful if we digested everything we've gone through today, the background and the foundation of who this man is, what afterlife science is all about. So I want you to keep in mind the story I told you. Keep in mind the power of motivated reasoning. And then we'll come back in two weeks when we conclude our coverage of doctor Gary E. Schwartz and the field of afterlife science.

512
01:09:03,189 --> 01:09:05,277
Chris: When it starts getting weird.

513
01:09:05,332 --> 01:09:08,669
Kayla: Yes. Yes, yes.

514
01:09:08,749 --> 01:09:10,412
Chris: Goodness gracious.

515
01:09:10,501 --> 01:09:12,368
Kayla: Well, so initial thoughts.

516
01:09:13,419 --> 01:09:31,698
Chris: I don't know. It just. It's all the stuff you said. It's. It's disturbing the level of infiltration of our society and in. In high places of this type of charlatanism.

517
01:09:31,779 --> 01:09:32,439
Kayla: Yeah.

518
01:09:32,899 --> 01:09:46,542
Chris: It's disturbing that sometimes we don't know whether someone is drinking their own kool aid or not. It's disturbing to know that people may be taking advantage of. Getting taken advantage of.

519
01:09:46,606 --> 01:09:47,210
Kayla: Right.

520
01:09:48,189 --> 01:10:44,670
Chris: And, yeah, I don't know, man. Like, there's a few things about this that I want to say, too. One is, like I said before, the study of the afterlife is something that may be worth doing. The study of that type of thing may be worth doing. But what I question is, does this guy have the answers? And from all the things that you told me, he doesn't. Like, if I. Again, if I saw an actual peer reviewed, rigorous study with real evidence and not you walk alone or whatever, then I wouldn't be as skeptical. I wouldn't be sitting here going, really? That's bullshit. You know, it may not be bullshit. Great. Do the study and prove it. But what I question is these guys that come along and say, I have all the answers. I know what happens after death.

521
01:10:45,130 --> 01:10:56,562
Chris: Nobody knows what happens after death. Maybe someday we will figure that out, but we just don't know. People, aside from near death experiences, which sounds like it's its own whole thing.

522
01:10:56,586 --> 01:11:02,554
Kayla: It's its own thing. I tried to fold it in here, and it is not. It is its own thing, right?

523
01:11:02,602 --> 01:11:48,982
Chris: Absolutely. So, so ignoring that for a second, though, and I think you could even, you know, we would probably be skeptical of, you know, things claimed there as well. But you. You don't come back from. That's. That's the sort of the point, right? If it's. If you did, it wouldn't be death. It would be near death or you were saved or you were revived or resuscitated. It wouldn't be death. So that's. That's kind of the point, is that death is the thing that you. You don't come back from. It's the end. It's the end of your. Your life here on earth. Now, am I saying for sure that there isn't some extension of. Of your personhood, of your consciousness, of your matter, of your energy or whatever you might want to believe. Yeah, maybe. But I don't think that.

524
01:11:49,046 --> 01:11:58,962
Chris: That this guy has the answer to essentially the. The biggest existential question that humanity has ever and maybe will ever face.

525
01:11:59,026 --> 01:11:59,630
Kayla: Right?

526
01:12:00,090 --> 01:12:54,456
Chris: And the second thing I want to say is part of what makes something like James Randy's million dollar challenge so ironclad is that there's a clear barrier between the supernatural and the experimentally, the empirically verifiable. And it's not like a practical barrier, it's a logical barrier. Those two things aren't different. Like, it. The supernatural isn't supernatural because it hasn't been tested yet. The supernatural, by its very definition, the way you define supernatural is you say it's something that is beyond our ability to understand it. Like, that's. It's beyond our ability to test it. So if it's beyond our ability to test it, and you're saying, okay, I'll give you a million dollars if you can ever test it, that's never possible, because something supernatural is never going to be testable by its definition.

527
01:12:54,528 --> 01:12:55,140
Kayla: Right?

528
01:12:55,560 --> 01:12:58,980
Chris: Fine to believe it. It's fine for you to be like, yeah, sure, there's ghosts.

529
01:12:59,840 --> 01:13:10,544
Kayla: This is so scary is because it's like it's saying, the supernatural. The supernatural beliefs that we have can be scientifically tested and verified.

530
01:13:10,632 --> 01:14:00,368
Chris: Right? That's the inevit. Right? But then, as we pointed out, once they have you in, then they're like, okay, anyway, we're not skeptics, right? It's all about the magic, right? Because once something. Once something become. Once something is, like, testable or is verified scientifically, it ceases to be magic, it ceases to be supernatural, and then it leaves that realm. So there's like, this logical barrier between, like, the testable and verifiable and the supernatural realm. And I think that's why things like, that's why I think he's basically completely safe in that million dollar bet. Because if something ever were to be testable, then it loses all of its power for these people. It loses all of its cache, it loses all of its meaning, and then it just becomes part of the body of knowledge. Not this crazy thing that you can.

531
01:14:00,424 --> 01:14:43,730
Kayla: Write books about, something interesting that Doctor Schwartz does do, and we can talk about this a little more in the next episode. It kind of falls under that scope a little more. But something that he does do is, you know, oftentimes he'll publish a paper or he'll publish a book about, you know, the studies that he's conducted. And then a skeptic or a scientist will rebut that those claims and point out, like, here's why this wasn't proper scientific techniques. You know, yada, yada. He will often rebut the rebuttal and take a point by point stance on like, rebuttal bottle. Here is why it is. And here is why you're choosing to only, like, he kind of turns it on the other person. Here's why you're choosing to only look at the evidence that suits your narrative.

532
01:14:44,270 --> 01:15:22,978
Kayla: And I know that as we talked about, some of his books are not peer reviewed. I can't say that everything he's ever published hasn't been peer reviewed. We can talk more about that next week. But it's just something that does continue to eat at me is that he does seem very dedicated to painting this as scientific, even though he is like, I'm not a skeptic, but I'm a scientist. It's just really interesting, the dedication to that kind of gray area.

533
01:15:23,114 --> 01:15:59,752
Chris: Sure. Yeah. We talked about this on the Mt. Jafar episode with Doctor Gorski, actually, about how we think of scientists, science and skepticism as being one. And like, you can't be one without the other. But, you know, coming up with ideas, like, remember the Nobel disease thing? Coming up with ideas, that would be the type of thing that would get you a degree at Harvard and get you into Yale and get whatever that would get you a Nobel prize. Require a different sort of thinking. Require creative thinking, not necessarily critical thinking.

534
01:15:59,816 --> 01:16:00,238
Kayla: Right.

535
01:16:00,344 --> 01:16:05,418
Chris: And so you can totally have people that are much better at one thing than the other.

536
01:16:05,514 --> 01:16:06,234
Kayla: Right. Right.

537
01:16:06,322 --> 01:16:09,230
Chris: What we, it seem like, seems like we run into a lot.

538
01:16:10,290 --> 01:16:31,774
Kayla: So that's it for this week on Doctor E. Schwartz and doctor Gary E. Schwartz and Afterlife Sciences. Next episode, we're going to talk a little bit more about the circle of people around him. We'll talk a little bit more about the other projects that he has a hand in. But for now, let's just think about all that background and we'll come back to it.

539
01:16:31,902 --> 01:16:42,934
Chris: We'll get to that. We will get to that catchphrase. Boom. Well, thank you for taking me on that journey of the bizarre, but apparently still not bizarre enough.

540
01:16:43,062 --> 01:16:44,126
Kayla: Yeah, it's not.

541
01:16:44,278 --> 01:16:46,446
Chris: That was, that was neat.

542
01:16:46,638 --> 01:16:50,982
Kayla: Good. Any wrap up business or, I don't.

543
01:16:51,006 --> 01:17:01,494
Chris: Know, getting out of here, go to our world of text site, yourworldoftext.com cultorjustweird. Don't forget to rate us on iTunes.

544
01:17:01,542 --> 01:17:03,958
Kayla: No, no. It's just go to culturedweirdjisweird.com.

545
01:17:04,014 --> 01:17:06,430
Chris: Yeah, actually, I don't even care about any of that. Yeah, just. Just go to cultureweird.

546
01:17:06,470 --> 01:17:13,214
Kayla: Go to culturejisweird.com, and then go to the world of text and tell us that you went to culturesweird.com.

547
01:17:13,342 --> 01:17:17,446
Chris: Yeah, go to all of our things. Just go to it and sign up for all of everything.

548
01:17:17,518 --> 01:17:20,476
Kayla: Just do it. I'm Kayla.

549
01:17:20,548 --> 01:17:21,404
Chris: And I'm Chris.

550
01:17:21,492 --> 01:17:23,780
Kayla: And this has been cult or just weird.