Squaring the Strange

Episode 246 - Pop psych, superstitions, and luck with Stuart Vyse


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We start with some observations (ok, rants) about the press conference on the recent aircraft collision in D.C., the hearings to confirm RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the silencing of vital science and health institutions. Then we talk to eminent psychologist Stuart Vyse about his career and a handful of pop psychology topics. He weighs in on the Telepathy Tapes podcast and facilitated communication, the notorious Milgram experiment, and why baseball is rife with luck rituals. What is luck? It's an ever-present paranormal concept that most people don't associate with the paranormal at all. Because we humans are terrible at judging randomness, we ascribe all sorts of things to luck -- whether it's a person being "lucky" their whole lives, or a lucky seat at a poker table, or a flowing luck field that comes and goes... in other words, the way normal variation works.

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Squaring the StrangeBy Ben Radford, Celestia Ward and Pascual Romero

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