Dr. Stephen Braude, The Veil of Stupidity |485|

Dr. Stephen Braude, has seen science’s veil of stupidity descend on the study of PK.

Click here for Stephen Braude’s website

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Stephen-Braude-485-Skeptiko

Alex Tsakiris: [00:00:00] That’s a clip from a YouTube video I found titled Dumb Things In Avatar That Everyone Just Ignored, referencing of course the movie Avatar one of the top grossing films of all time, and it’s a sci-fi film has a lot of science stuff, which gets complicated at some point and you have to follow along, but then at some point it just gets really dumb. Kind of like science in general, as is so beautifully demonstrated by today’s guests, the esteemed Parapsychologist, Scientist, Philosopher, Dr. Stephen Braude.

Stephen Braude: [00:00:57] For people who are skeptical about psi phenomena, it’s almost as if a veil of stupidity descends over them, and then they start going into kind of conceptual panic. And they panic more I think initially over PK than ESP although ESP on the surface seems to threaten the idea of mental privacy. It’s very easy to explain why people freak out over PK, if I can move, let’s say, a matchstick a millimeter by thought alone, it’s a very small step conceptually, from doing that to making somebody drop dead. I tell the story in dangerous pursuits about what happened when I tried to give a talk on my PK investigations to my physics department at the University of Maryland. I was invited to do it, and I thought they wanted me to talk about it. I was two minutes into the talk and the faculty shouted me down. I never got to give the talk.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:49] Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris and today we welcome back Dr. Steven Braude to Skeptiko. You know I’ve had the pleasure and really honor I mean that sincerely, of interviewing Steve several times and as I was just chatting with him about a little bit, I went back and had to look at the records because I know it’s been a long time. The first one was 10 years ago, which, you know, if you’re interested in parapsychology, if you’re seriously interested in what’s called Psy, but really consciousness if you’re really interested in science, which is all I was interested to begin with this, you are going to run across Steven Braude, and he has a new book out Dangerous Pursuits: Mediumship, Mind and Music, which you can pick up for just 10 bucks on Kindle, which is the way I got it. Amazing compilation kind of capstone of a lot of work that he’s done and it’s just super great to have this guy back, super smart person, just beyond this kind of narrowly defined little field, we’re going to talk about parapsychology, just somebody who’s, two things I think are really great, one, you’ll recognize immediately that he’s very, very, very smart about a lot of different things, but two, he has this warrior spirit. I mean, this is a guy that has kind of battled against the tide relentlessly for I don’t know, I’m not gonna say how many years. But Steve, welcome back, thanks so much for joining me.

Stephen Braude: [00:03:46] Thanks for having me, it’s good to see you again.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:03:48] So tell folks, you know, who is Dr. Stephen Braude.

Stephen Braude: [00:03:57] Wow, well I started out as,