When I was a high school senior, I failed calculus second semester of my senior year. And as a result, my admission to the University of Virginia was rescinded or at least paused. I had to write a letter to the school and get counselors from my home high school to write a letter of support. Just to sort of say that, you know, why this happened. In hindsight, what I learned from it was I wish I would have asked for more help in the class setting because it would have saved some heartache that summer. Fortunately for me, the school allowed me to attend and that was a benefit to me and I was grateful for that. It actually made me work harder once I got to UVA that I wanted to make sure that nothing like that happened again. So I didn't have straight A's when I was at UVA, but I did make proactive efforts to try to do as good as possible once I got there.


It's Saturday, February 20th, and this is For Good Reason. Welcome to For Good Reason, I'm DJ Grothy. For Good Reason is the radio show and the podcast produced in association with the James Randy Educational Foundation, an international nonprofit whose mission is to advance critical thinking in society, mostly about the paranormal, pseudoscience, the supernatural. Before we get to this week's guest, I want to thank our listeners who've been writing in past few episodes, really gratifies us to get all the kudos emails. For those of you who have expressed how much you have been enjoying the show, please let us know by becoming a member of JREF. You can do so at randy.org. My guest this week is Carol Tavris, a social psychologist and writer whose books include The Mismeasure of Woman and Anger. She's written on psychological topics for the LA Times, the New York Times, Scientific American, many other publications. She's a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She's a member of the editorial board of Psychological Science and the Public Interest and a senior fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. She also wrote Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me. Great book, I want everyone to read. Her co-author is Elliot Aronson, who's one of the most distinguished social psychologists in the world. His books include The Social Animal and The Jigsaw Classroom. He was chosen by his peers as one of the 100 most influential psychologists of the 20th century and he's been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the only psychologist to have won all three of the American Psychological Association's top awards for writing, for teaching, and for research. Carol's joining me on the show to talk about the book they wrote together, Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me, Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. Thank you for joining me on For Good Reason, Carol Tavris. Very happy to be here as ever, DJ. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Mistakes Were Made, as I've said in print, I've said elsewhere on my last show, Point of Inquiry, one of the best books I've read in years, especially as it applies to my interests in skepticism and self-deception. My background in magic leads me to be into self-deception and deception in general, especially how fake psychics and charlatans and faith healers can begin to believe they're legit. Your book, it's about the topic of dissonance theory, the theory of cognitive dissonance. It helps explain what's going on there. So Carol, to start off, tell our listeners, tell me what dissonance theory is. Well, more than 50 years ago, a terrific social psychologist, a genius, named Leon Festinger, developed this theory of cognitive dissonance, which is quite simple really. It argues that it is cognitively uncomfortable for human beings to hold two ideas in our minds that conflict with each other, that this state is as uncomfortable as being hungry or being thirsty, and we are motivated to reduce it. So the cognitions that might conflict are at a simple level. You love Woody Allen movies, and your best friend hates Woody Allen movies, and that's uncomfortable. You're going to try to persuade your friend or you're going to maybe start liking Woody Allen a little less. More seriously, the classic example is of the smoker, who knows that smoking is hazardous to health, but really enjoys smoking. On the John Stewart show, Lewis Black defined it perfectly. He said dissonance is when an environmentalist drives an SUV, might as well be filling his gas tank with cognitive dissonance. He used the term. It was really wonderful, and that's exactly right. So what it means is the smoker has to give up smoking or justify smoking. Okay, my life will be shorter, but I'll be cuter and thinner, and it relaxes me or whatever excuse they come up with. Or they say they just like it and leave it at that. Or they do.  Now, my colleague and good friend Elliot Aronson, who had been a student of Festinger's, took cognitive dissonance theory the next step. He said this is not just a cognitive theory. You don't think two ideas clashing in your mind. Dissonance is most painful, most difficult, and most motivating for us to resolve it when the conflict involves a clash with some important self-concept. So, you know, if I don't think I'm a world expert on film, my views of Woody Allen aren't important, but if I think they are, then my view of Woody Allen is going to be better than your view. Now, what are the central concepts that people have about themselves? I'm kind, I'm ethical, I'm smart, I'm competent, and I know what I'm doing. And if you now present me with evidence that I have just done something stupid, foolish, harmful to another person, cruel, a colossal mistake that perhaps resulted in the illness or death of a patient I'm treating, now what am I going to do with this information that you've just given me? It's clear information. That information has to do with who we are. It's not just an idea, so we're even more motivated to make sense out of the dissonance. Exactly. And what we are inclined to do, and given a choice between modifying the self-concept or throwing out the evidence, is we throw out the evidence. So we minimize it. It's not really important. It's not really true. Who are you telling me that I'm wrong about this? Who are you to tell me I really did such a harmful thing? You know, go away and don't darken my door again. In this way, we get to sleep at night, secure in the knowledge that we really are good, kind, competent, and ethical after all. We dismiss the evidence that is dissonant. Okay, here is the most dissonant situation we find ourselves in. When I, a good, kind, competent, fair person, is confronted with evidence that I've just done something not kind, unethical, incompetent, and so forth, I have a choice. I can accept the evidence and say, oh, thank you for showing me that I've just made a colossal mistake that has caused an enormous harm to those I love or the patients in my care, or I can tell you where you can go with your stupid evidence. And what most people do, unfortunately, when faced with the dissonance between their self-concept and the evidence, is they are inclined to dismiss the evidence. This is how tyrants sleep at night, how charlatans sleep at night, how people who bulk others out of millions of dollars sleep at night. It's not that they go to bed knowing or thinking they're villains, they get rid of that evidence so that they can live with themselves. Exactly right. And in a way, as Elliott is at pains to point out, this is a healthy and adaptive quality of the human mind, if you will. If we had to keep changing our minds seven times before lunchtime because of new evidence, we'd never get anything done. We come up with beliefs, we come up with general notions about ourselves, and we let that belief carry us through the day. And for the most part, that's an efficient way for the mind to work. The problem comes, of course, when we really need to change our beliefs, when we really need to listen to disconfirming evidence, and we're unable to do so. You mentioned charlatans, makes me think of folks like TV psychic Sylvia Brown, on Montell Williams show all the time. Montell Williams and Sylvia Brown did this high-priced tour, the end of 2009, where she's selling her wares as a psychic. Lot of skeptics say, how can she sleep with herself at night? But this social psychology that you're talking about, dissonance theory, it explains how. She doesn't actually believe she's harming people. That's exactly right. When we say she doesn't, neither do we I mean, one of my favorite stories is that baby Dr. Valier, the tyrant in Haiti, puts up a sign saying, I'd like the world to see me as the man who brought democracy to Haiti, and he signed it, Jean-Claude de Valier, President for Life. He was a dictator, a cruel and horrible man, and saw himself as the man who brought democracy to Haiti. That's how he slept at night. This mechanism is what allows us to deceive ourselves and forgive ourselves. It works like this. We now understand that dissonance theory really is a nice way, an umbrella term for a lot of the biases of how the human mind works, and it works like this. Before we make a decision or decide on a belief or take a course of action, we tend to be open-minded. What does that mean? We're open to evidence, pro and con for that decision or that belief. But once we make the decision, we buy a Prius rather than a Honda, or we buy one house over another house, or one take one job over another job, once we make a decision, or once we come up with a belief, vaccines cause autism. It is as if, as we say in our book, we take a step off a pyramid, and as you make that decision, you will then be motivated to justify the decision you made and to stop even noticing evidence for the decision you didn't make. They call that confirmation bias. That's exactly right, and skeptics know about confirmation bias. All scientists know about confirmation bias because science is the one system we have that's designed to hold our beliefs up to disconfirmation. That is an abnormal process for the human mind. We're really designed only to see information that confirms what we believe, and to ignore or forget information that's discrepancy. That's how dissonance works. So after we've made a decision and we start falling down this, we take steps down this pyramid, by the time we reach the base, we are very far away from people who made the opposite decision and went in a different direction. And moreover, it becomes harder for us to be open-minded enough to consider the evidence that we might have made the wrong decision to begin with. So it's like throwing good money after bad. We're going to just keep going that way. This is why in the case of the vaccine autism people, you'd think they would say, thank you for showing us with all this massive evidence that we weren't responsible for giving our children, creating our children's autism by giving them a vaccine. Thank goodness for this information. Now we can find out what really is the cause of autism. No, they're fighting tooth and nail to maintain their original belief. But again, it's not because they're villains or they have a certain kind of agenda. Even global warming denialism, those folks, while some of them may have a financial interest, may be big oil or something, or people who are involved with intelligent design creationism versus, say, evolution education, they look at what seems to me to be overwhelming evidence and just refuse to follow where it leads. It's like they need their vital lives. They've already made a commitment and it would muck with their psychology too much to change course. It's not like they know that they're lying to themselves. This is the point. This is exactly the point. This is the crucial thing that we say in our book.  We know when we're consciously lying to others to avoid punishment, self-justification is more dangerous, more persistent, and more insidious because we aren't aware that we're lying to ourselves, that we are deceiving ourselves. That's what makes this mechanism so interesting because it protects us from the awareness that we're wrong. Now, how do we know how this feels? In our book, we end each chapter with an example of someone who was able to say, oh my god, I was wrong. A therapist who realized she was wrong about recovered memory therapy. Wayne Hale, the head of NASA, who realized it was his responsibility for sending up that shuttle that exploded. A district attorney who realized he had put an innocent man in prison for 16 years. For me, those stories made it all the more powerful to understand how hard it is to say I was wrong. And you said exactly the right word, the greater a person's commitment to a belief or a point of view or a course of action, the greater their commitment, especially the greater their public commitment, the harder it is to say I was wrong. Why? Imagine yourself in that situation.  It's actually pretty persuasive. I'm trying to reverse the situation. How difficult that would be to say, whoa, for 15 years, I thought this wasn't the case, and now you're asking me to change my mind. Well, and you're raising questions about how this applies to skeptics as well. So maybe there's some close-mindedness in the skeptical world. I want to finish up with a conversation about that, but you were mentioning these examples of people who didn't follow maybe their natural cognitive biases and self-justify. They admitted their own role in these mistakes. It makes me also think of Alan Greenspan, whom I respect, if for no other reason than on Capitol Hill after what worldwide economic fallout, the crisis. He said, I messed up. I was wrong. He didn't say mistakes were made, but not by me. He assumed responsibility, and that's almost unheard of when you're talking about big mess-ups like that. Exactly. And you know what? Look at how people respond. You know, people often fear admitting that they were wrong or that they made a mistake, but the fact is that everyone around them is more likely to be grateful for it, you know?  Often it is beneficial for people to admit they were wrong, and the reason is that it makes them more human to their friends and partners. I mean, how many people would really be angry if their loved one said to them, you know, honey, I've been thinking about this quarrel we've been having for the last 27 years, and you know what? You are entirely right, and I was completely wrong. I don't think they would get in trouble for that, you know? But of course, people worry and often rightly worry that if they admit mistakes at work or in that kind of context that they could be liable for the consequences. So I'm not talking about the social reasons for not admitting mistakes. We know we've made when you think you might be punished for them, but rather something more complicated. What happens when we're able to shed the protective cocoon of righteousness and really examine the evidence the way we would ideally like a scientist to? What really is the evidence that this causes that, or that this is so, or that this is not so? What really does the evidence tell us? The important thing to understand is that the more we have invested in a point of view in terms of years, in terms of financial success, Sylvia Brown is making her living with these cockamamie predictions. She's got financial incentives to believe what she does. She has cognitive incentives. She's not going to wake up one morning and say, gee, I guess that everything I've done in my entire life has been wrong. Who among us is able to do this? And the reason that people are not is the reason that we reduce dissonance in a self-forgiving way. It's excruciating to face the realization that everything you've believed of something that was of great importance to you is wrong.  Well, let's get into that a bit because while you talk about how rare it is, we both know examples of folks who do just that. So I think of friends in the skeptics movement who, for years, were knee-deep into the paranormal or the new age movement, and they had a kind of deconversion experience. Something happened where they said, oh, criminy, I'm completely wrong about these claims. So you go to a psychic. Most people who go to psychic fairs or to a psychic like Sylvia Brown or John Edward, they don't want to admit that they're being huckstered, that they're being deceived. And I think dissonance theory helps explain how we actually misremember stuff to make it better for the psychic or say that you're into dowsing. Every time you tell an account of your own dowsing experience, even if you're an amateur and not making a buck on it, you're going to make it sound better and better.  And I think the best example that's just loud and clear in my experience is from ledger domain, from magic. I've gone to entertain at cocktail parties years ago, and I go back the next year to be the entertainment. And people recount to me a magic trick that I did, and I never did it, right? They describe something that's humanly impossible, but they kind of misremember. And I think that misremembering fuels the self-justification in this other context. That's indeed one of the mechanisms that we talk about, that memory is a self-justifying historian. Memory keeps things consonant if it's a memory of how our parents treated us or how we were in the past and so forth. The best predictor of our memories is what we believe now, not what really happened then. I think that's such an enchanting thing. It's why if you're currently feeling really good about your mother, you remember how good she was to you as a kid, and if you're really pissed off at your mother, you remember all the bad things she did for you. You're keeping the current view consonant. And yes, magic, of course, depends on, or dowsing, or all non-falsifiable theories are based on the confirmation bias that people will notice the hits and ignore or forget or trivialize the misses.  We don't notice the misses. But you see, the thing we start with is what is the major central belief? See, for skeptics and for scientists, if your basic self-concept is, I am a skeptical person who is open to disconfirming evidence because I find that interesting and illuminating, and it's how I learn, then being exposed to information that is disconfirming or something you don't want to hear isn't necessarily dissonant. Well, in principle, that's the ideal you're describing. But even though I love that in science, in principle, the best ideas rise to the top. You know, the scientists are rewarded the most when they come up with theories that prove everybody else wrong. That's, you know, in principle, I notice in skepticism as a movement, and even in science, you know, you talk about scientific revolutions and how people are incalcitrant in their views, there's sometimes a lot of closed-mindedness. And I say this as a leader in this little movement. I don't want to kind of criticize my own. But what I'm getting at is that for some skeptics, they just can't conceive that they could be wrong about this or that claim. That's cognitive dissonance again, right? DJ, first of all, when you say you don't want to criticize your own, if you don't, who will? A point taken. No, I feel very strongly about this. I've heard this all my life, feminist thing. We don't want to criticize other feminists who are believers in this recovered memory stuff because after all, you know, there are sisters. No, the ideas are wrong. They're wrong and they're harmful. And that's what's important. We must criticize members of our own family first and foremost because that is how we come to our own decisions and views about things and also because it's the intellectually honest thing to do. You don't stand by and watch harm being done if you can possibly speak out. And you can do this in a supportive and loving and generous way. It doesn't mean you have to call people names either. But all of us are human beings. Cognitive dissonance is a universal phenomenon. The content of it will vary because the sources of people's self-esteem or their self-concept are different across different cultures. But anybody in any culture when confronted with dissonant information, I mean, there are those who think that some of the rage of people in radical Islam is the dissonance they feel between the belief that my religion is the best of all in the world and the fact that so many Muslims are living in poverty and in difficult circumstances. You know, how can this be? Well, the West must have taken our civilization from us. Dissonance is a motivating phenomenon everywhere, including for humans, including for skeptics, and including for scientists. And that's what I really love about this book. I take Galat from this book for the skeptic movement as a whole. Without naming it this, you describe what I've called the Mensa effect. So in the skeptic world, you get together in a, you know, skeptics in the pub meeting or something, and we suffer from the Mensa effect, where one really smart person says, I'm a smart skeptic, therefore I'm right.  And that's the jutting of heads in the skeptic movement that you get sometimes even more than you get in some other sectors of society. Let's put it that way. You've said something very important. Remember, I said before that what is most dissonance for us is when information threatens a core belief about ourselves. I don't see myself as a car expert, therefore if someone criticizes my knowledge of cars, I'm inclined to say, oh, thank you very much for this information. Skeptics, as you've just said eloquently, defined themselves by their intelligence and smarts. Therefore, someone disagreeing with them is an immediate attack on their view of themselves as intelligent and smart, and by the way, in all domains. And so for them in a way more than ever, it's difficult to accept disconfirming evidence that might suggest that perhaps on this point you weren't in fact so smart. In relation to this, one of the most important, I think, but also funny implications of our book is that the one sure and certain way that you will not get anyone else to change their minds is to put them in dissonance, meaning you say to them, DJ, what were you thinking?  Are you a man? What's the matter with you? That will actually keep people from accepting the new evidence. The more I learn about dissonance theory, the more skeptical I am that just telling people that God or ghosts or some paranormal or supernatural claim doesn't exist, right? The evidence doesn't matter to some folks because these other psychological factors are at work, and if you tell people they're idiots, you'll only engage those psychological phenomena. Exactly.  You can see this in relationships, in intimate relationships. You can see this at work. You can see it with your employer, and you can certainly see it politically and socially and in intellectual movements.  So let me ask you, what's the right way to approach the skeptical movements, cultural competitors? You know, the folks who don't share my skepticism about God or ghosts or the supernatural, it almost sounds like you're saying the research in dissonance theory says that just speaking the truth to them is not enough. We need to be more cunning in our approach. It kind of makes me feel a little manipulative, cunning is an interesting word. Well, okay, the shortest answer to your question is, I don't know, but we should have a whole session on this one, because it's a very important question. I do not think that you can get people to dislodge their religious belief, or their paranormal beliefs, or their political beliefs by having furious arguments. This isn't going to budge the conversation one way or another. The way that religious people change their views is by listening to other religious people who move them along. I learned this, interestingly, from an ACLU lawyer who pointed out to us, he was talking about religion and the Constitution and so forth, and he said, you know, if you make Americans choose between science and religion, they will choose religion, partly because they feel they should, and for some because religion is a central core defining life organizing set of values for them.  But if you say within the religious community, some religious people support evolution, and some do not, so let us examine the beliefs of those for whom evolution and religion are compatible. In this way, you don't make people choose. You're not saying to them, you have to give up a central core belief in order to understand what evolution means and why it's important. This is a very different approach, as you can see. I mean, it's great fun to listen to the great arguments between atheists and believers and so forth, but it's not going to budge anybody any more than arguments between Democrats and Republicans are going to budge either side. What's necessary is for someone within your own party, within your own family, within your own religion to say here's what we should be thinking about, because then you remove the dissonance for the listener. I get what you're saying and how it could be more strategic, but what if you're like me and you think the implications of evolution are atheistic or the implication of scientific skepticism is against the beliefs of the paranormal. It's not enough to just kind of, at least for me, maybe I'm just not constitutionally capable of easing someone along. I want to just speak the truth at all costs, no matter how painful. Well, then you should. Then you should. And your ideas will fall where they fall. But you're just saying it's not as strategic as the approach you just outlined. Well, who's listening to you and who are you trying to influence? I mean, I remember years ago with my book on anger. People would say to me, be careful how you express anger. It's going to land on someone. You might feel better for a second, but someone else is now going to be really angry at you. There are two reasons you could express anger. One is you want to feel better, because you're really pissed off and you'd like to let the world know that. And the second reason is you'd like the other person to apologize or change their behavior or fix what they did wrong and you want to get them to change in some way. Those are two different reasons for expressing anger. If your reason is just to feel better, go ahead and yell. If your reason is to get the other person to change, then you might want to think about a different way of expressing anger to them. The crux of it, I think you're getting at is it depends on who your audience is. Exactly. If you care deeply about the truth and you just want the truth out there, you want to kind of forcefully say the truth no matter how many apple carts it upsets, do that. But if your audience is this middle ground of people, the people who are on the fence or something in that category, you take the approach you just outlined. It is always in my view worth speaking up in this country for skepticism, for science, for secularism, for atheism, for a whole set of values that do not conform to the dominant religious view and certainly a fundamentalist in our country. That is worth it just for its own sake for the world to know that this is not a small, cranky minority group, you know what I mean? So that people are exposed to these ideas, understand that they're not anomalous and strange and this is why we believe as we do. That is always a goal worth speaking out for. That's one thing. Second is the question of who the audience is and what we want to persuade them of. During the heyday of the recovered memory movement in the United States, I spoke truth to power as I thought. As a social scientist and as a feminist, I thought it was crucial to point out that the notions of recovered memory therapy were spurious, unscientific, wrong-headed, and dangerous. That this was not the way memory works. It's not the way trauma works. It's not that the notions of this therapy were really dangerous. People were accused of doing stuff. There was no evidence they did and lawsuits and all that stuff. Lives were ruined. Lives were ruined. Hundreds and hundreds of lives were ruined. The daycare center people, some of them are still in prison after all these many years. Right. All those Satanism scares, all that. All of that. Okay. Now, who was I trying to persuade? I certainly had no influence on the dozens and dozens of psychiatrists and psychotherapists who were perpetrating this nonsense, on the courage to heal those popular books. They were not going to listen to me and say, oh, thank you, Dr. Davis, for your wonderful information about memory and trauma. We will go and revise our book immediately. I will change my therapy practice at once. Of course not. They called me anti-feminist. They called me all kinds of names. They were not going to change, but what was really crucial was to get this point of view out to lawyers and to judges and to the general public who wasn't really paying too much attention to realize what egregious harms were being committed by these people. So that's a different audience you're trying to reach to explain the importance of science and investigating these claims. So I knew I was not going to persuade the perpetrators of recovered memory therapy, but it was really crucial to speak out about what they were doing wrong, just as it's crucial for skeptics to speak out about why psychics are wrong so forth. But your audience determines your strategy. That's the point there. I'd like to let our listeners know that you can get a copy of mistakes we're made through our website forgoodreason.org. Like I said earlier, I've really enjoyed and gotten a lot out of this book. If you care about deception and self-deception, you should pick it up through our website. Carol, I think there are so many implications to dissonance theory that we've only scratched the surface on. We could talk about law implications for the justice system. My spouse is in law school, so we're talking about that all the time, and prosecutors who refuse to admit some guy on maybe even death row is innocent even if the DNA evidence exonerates. So there's so much to talk about. But I want to talk about right now happiness. If you're truthful about yourself, might it actually be harmful for your mental health, or at least make us less happy? That's what I mean. If we go around grasping all the ways that we were wrong, it's going to upset how well adjusted we are. In other words, I'm asking, isn't self-deception absolutely necessary for us to thrive? Yes, but we're really talking about self-justification rather than self-deception. Let's make a distinction here. When we've made a decision and hold a belief, we justify it as being the wisest, smartest, best possible decision we could have made, and indeed, that is beneficial to our health. In fact, we all know people who can't resolve dissonance, and the consequence for them is the sleepless night problem. These are the people who beat themselves up. I bought this car, but I really should have bought that other car.  How could I have bought this car when I should have bought the other car? Okay, we all know people like that. They live their lives with regret and self-torment. I should have, should have, should have. I did the wrong thing.  So in their suffering, we can see what the mental health benefits are for the majority of people who in fact make a decision and then live with it and justify it and sleep soundly. Okay, of course, the ability to reduce dissonance is beneficial for our mental health, and so it should be. For the most part, this is a fine and useful thing for all of us. It does help us avoid the sleepless night problem, the agony of remorse and regret. You're just focused on when it gets really destructive. When it gets destructive. Exactly. When it sets us on, not just one decision, I bought this car versus that car, but when it sets us on a path of action that we can't get ourselves off of, even when that path is leading us right into quicksand, right into a disastrously violent marriage, right into any self-defeating or dangerous path of action where we just keep justifying the thing we're doing or the belief we're holding, even when it is crumbling under the evidence that we were wrong. Or you broaden it and you look at the destructive aspect of self-justification when you're a psychic telling people who are in the process of grief that their deceased loved one is standing right by them and playing a guessing game, whatever. It doesn't help people, it causes harm, and that righteous indignation skeptics feel about those situations lead to something else you talk in the book. It's the kind of us versus them mentality, the skeptical movement. I think sometimes we tend to make our opponents all bad. We call people who believe in the paranormal woo-woos.  They're all liars. The religious folk do it too. They think all atheists are immoral and evil. That's why you said we should speak up, speak out. So what's the solution? I don't want everyone to get along only by ignoring our differences in our worldviews, but if you don't ignore them, then you are into this us versus them stuff. Well, the us versus them, let's take, there's two pieces of us versus them. One is sometimes there is an us versus them. That is two different points of view that are not compatible. Yeah, there are real differences that are divisive. Each of us make our own commitment to stating our case for the things that we believe are important as best as we can. But the second aspect of this is to understand that we is them. Them are us. That is, you said before, you want to speak the truth about Sylvia Brown and other psychics and so forth or about people who are religious, but you know, they feel they have a truth too. The word truth is an inflammatory word because what is true to you and to me has a different meaning to others who believe that they have the truth as well. And with that, you're not talking all post-modernistic, you're just saying, you know, socially people have different views. That's what you're saying. Yes, I'm not saying all ideas are created equal and that everybody is right. No, absolutely not. Thank you for making that point. Of course not. No scientist would agree with that. Opinions may be, you get to set your opinion or your taste or your preference, but when you start making claims that are empirically verifiable or disconfirmable, then not all opinions are created equal, of course. But by truth, I mean, you see, the word is an inflammatory word. As soon as you say to somebody, I have the truth and you don't. They're gone. They're out of there. They're out the door because you've now said to them, this thing that you have lived by that is the truth for you, that God is looking over your shoulder and taking care of you, forget that. Just forget it. You're wrong and I've got the truth. Well, what they will say to you is my truth is that God is looking after me. I'm not giving that one up. So now what exactly? All that speaking the truth has done is to create a greater wedge. Again, though, DJ, this has to do with what the audience is and what the lesson is and what the point of view is. So, for example, when charlatans are making money ripping off people, then they should be exposed. It doesn't mean that they will say, oh, thank you for pointing out to me that I can't really channel this guy from another world. They're not going to admit it. They would be liable in lawsuits. You can persuade their audiences. But you're saying the righteous indignation that skeptics feel is not misplaced there as long as it's focused primarily on the people being harmed and not going on this kind of fool's errand of trying to change the mind of the claimant. Exactly right. So Carol is the solution here to reach out to people who believe unlike us. I think of this growing skeptics and the pub movement, you know, these groups all over the United States. There's a big one here in St. Louis now. Maybe the implication of what you're saying I'm hearing, maybe they should be more open to all comers, right? You know, it's not just skeptics in the pub, but it's people who care about these questions in the pub, right? That presents some challenges, I think, to organizing because on the other hand, I think there's some rationale to being somewhat exclusive or exclusivist. If we have these clubs all over that accept everyone, they're not really clubs, you know, they're just kind of people in a pub. Well, it depends on what the defining membership requirement is. Is the requirement of being a skeptic that you can't be a religious person? I think that would be a mistake. I think that the one of the things that really distressed me that the Center for Inquiry did with this blasphemy day business, that really distressed me because it seemed to me to be gratuitously insulting to religious people. Right, to people who shared the values maybe of the Center for Inquiry except for the blasphemy. Exactly, exactly. Plenty of people who believe in God are good scientists and good skeptics and love science and skepticism, but if you're going to run around insulting them, why should they want to find any common ground on the kinds of things that are so important for our country right now? Leaving aside my personal view that blasphemy is a victimless crime, literally, I agree with you that there are these strategic questions raised. If you're trying to build a broad base to advance critical thinking, insulting a big segment of that base is shooting yourself in the foot. It is. That's my view exactly. As I say, there's two reasons for expressing our views. One is to feel better and the other is to change people's minds and to bring people along. I think it is really, really important for skeptics to speak out about what it is we are for and not just what it is we wish to debunk this week and to show what is gained when we are able to face the ways in which we've been wrong. Many people think of skepticism as debunking. It's like critical thinking. It means you're critical. You don't like my dress. I'm being critical of that movie. No. Critical thinking, skeptical thinking is about creativity and imagination. It is about two things. Being able to say, this method in medicine or teaching or any other area is wrong. It really doesn't work. We've measured it now and look. It's not producing the results we wanted. You're talking about some pseudo-scientific claims, say, in medicine or pedagogy or something that skeptics would go against saying that it's wrong. Yes, facilitated communication, for example. Or a method in medicine that was established practiced for 50 years, only now it turns out not to be so important or useful or good or not as good as a newer method. What skepticism gives us, I think this is so important, is it's not just tearing down. It's not just saying, gee, this method doesn't work. It's saying, now we can find something that's better. We can find a better way of treating this problem. We can find a better way of reaching out to autistic children or treating autistic children. It's creative. It is not just tearing down. Skepticism, it's affirmative, you're saying. It's not just naysaying. It's not just cynicism. It's skepticism in maybe the classical sense of the term, which means to inquire, to find things out, to look for the best evidence for things. For you, and this is one of the things I take away from the book, another reason why I tell everyone they should get it, skepticism is not just used as a weapon to conk others over the head with. It's an affirmative approach and it's best when it's self-applied. That is the heart and soul of my life and of this book. Don't we want doctors to wash their hands because it will save lives? Don't we want psychologists to have better ways of interviewing children so that we don't put innocent people in prison? Don't we want better methods of determining whether a suspect is guilty or innocent so that we don't have people in prison for 30 years for a crime they didn't commit? Don't we want better ways of running companies and of improving our cars? Only when we're able to say to admit that we were doing things the wrong way because the evidence shows us it was the wrong way can we determine the right way and the better way. Last question, Carol. Here you've persuasively talked about skepticism's positive aspects you know this positive approach not just tearing down but nonetheless skepticism does tear down the nonsense and we do that unapologetically. We go after stuff we think is incorrect but here we're talking about self-justification and changing our own minds.  Have you ever been wrong as a skeptic? Of course not. Why? What makes you think I would ever have been wrong? Of course I have. Oh boy of course I have and actually you know I'm the co-author of an introductory psychology textbook. Widely used in universities all over. Well yes it is thank you and I mean we were the first actually to bring critical thinking as a as a guiding philosophy to the to the field into this book and my co-author and I keep each other honest this way you know she will say to me as we go to revise a new edition you were wrong you know but when you said about this and this and I say I was not whatever do you mean and Jesus I mean we joke about this but as textbook writers we had better be able to change our notions of you know ideas that we thought were really important and useful I remember how excited we all were about Carol Gilligan's theory of the moral reasoning in women all of this seems to be such a wonderful corrective to the male bias in the field and it turned out to be complete blather there was no data there was no support for it it had a little you know flash of interest certainly in the public but it was completely wrong so there you have it Carol Tavris admitted mistakes were made and by her by me yes I do them frequently thanks for the discussion Carol before we go I want to announce to our listeners that you are going to be a featured speaker at the amazing meeting in Vegas this year July 8th through 11th so that's another good reason for folks to register online at randy.org well I'm really happy that you invited me DJ and I'm very much looking forward to coming to the conference which should be great fun and I will do my best to raise a little hell with our fellow skeptics I love it I love it thanks for coming on the show enjoyed our discussion me too DJ thanks so much and now another installment of the honest liar Jamie Ian Swiss what does a villain see in the mirror when thinking about the nature of phony psychics have I mentioned that's redundant I often can't quite help myself from speculating about their mindset it's hard not to wonder about what's going on in the minds of fortune tellers spoon benders talk to the dead mediums or the endless glut of television psychic ambulance chasers who latch themselves on to any missing or dead body in desperate hopes of securing a few morbid moments of camera time for those of us who believe that most if not all of these lowly character types are fakes and frauds it's easy to imagine if not insist that such apparent moral outlaws can't escape seeing themselves as villains and must recognize if not even embrace the role but this is in fact unlikely and the truth like most human behavior is more complicated in order to think about this we have to first distinguish between self-styled psychics who must by definition be deliberate self-aware frauds and those who might not always be so if you're a spoon bender for example you know you're doing sleight of hand you have to manipulate the silverware secretly and engage in other deliberate deceits from the magician's bag of tricks in order to pull off the illusion and it's plainly impossible to deceive yourself into not knowing that you're doing such things but while the majority of psychic types are probably engaging in some kind of deliberate deception once you eliminate the elements of physical manipulation or the obtaining of secret information by subterfuge for say use in a psychic reading there remains a broad spectrum of behavior and thinking that makes it difficult to be certain about the inner workings of another person's mind no matter what we think of their behavior while most storefront psychics are indeed ruthless con artists ever at the ready to rob someone of their life savings and the guise of removing a curse or resolving a problem of the heart there are also some psychics who believe they have a gift and all psychic practitioners are helped along in this belief by the self-selecting group of believers who present them with a steady flow of positive and confirming feedback skeptics after all don't generally sign up to visit the neighborhood psychic on a steady basis week in and week out just to continually remind her that most of what she's done or said has been ineffectual and just plain wrong when we catch a faith healer ripping the cash out of the mail and shredding the letters from supplicants without even troubling to read them we may surmise a cynical and manipulative worldview when we listen to the likes of a talk to the dead medium like john edward recite the same tiny set of repetitive techniques over and over again guessing at letters or names or months of the year we can certainly speculate that he is merely guessing and even that he knows it too why is it if you actually had the power to cross the void between life and death that the connection gets reduced to a bad game of charades why is it that once you're dead you can still talk but you can't quite remember your name but for all this apparent villainy it is only in the movies that the villain gazes into his own eyes in the mirror and declares mirror mirror on the wall who is the most villainous villain of all tis high tis high because nobody looks in the mirror and ever sees a villain john edwards website calendar currently lists more than 50 dates in the coming year in which he will fill thousand seat halls and more with tickets selling at 175 dollars a crack try doing the math here yourself filled with satisfied customers who will stand to applaud his very presence the instant he mounts the stage a heady 21st century blend of quasi religious leader and tv celebrity those accolades tell him something and not just that there's a sucker born every minute as the channeled spirit of pt barnham might remind him of asked but those cheering fans also tell him what he tells himself that he is helping people that he is doing good in the world and so it is quite possible even perhaps likely that he might well even admit to himself the occasional or more than occasional dalliance and deception all the while excusing it in the name of the greater good he tells himself he is providing now make no mistake this story as told to the self in service to the resolution of what would otherwise cause a disturbing and ongoing cognitive dissonance is a tissue of self deception and a distortion of reality talk to the dead mediums claim to help people but in fact do the opposite they entrap people in their grief encouraging victims to remain obsessed with death rather than help release them to move forward and return to embracing the future and life itself talk to the dead mediums are among the world's most vicious emotional predators who distort the purity of our memories and the genuine truths of relationships we've had with loved ones who have lived and eventually died only a monster would prey on the grief of a parent who has buried their own child but talk to the dead mediums do it all the time and for nothing more than raw personal riches and the brutally attained high of what it feels like to play god but cognitive dissonance is hardwired into us a magic trick of sorts that our brains play on us in order to make us feel right or at least to help prevent us from feeling too bad about being wrong even the likes of oj simpson whose scientific evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates murdered the mother of his children with his own hands probably doesn't see a villain in his bathroom mirror in fact he might just see an unjustly maligned even persecuted hero albeit one wearing a prison uniform so what does a villain see when he looks in the mirror a grand portrait painted by an artist named cognitive dissonance this is jamie in swiss and i am the honest liar thank you for listening to this episode of for good reason to get involved with an online conversation about today's show join the discussion at forgoodreason.org views expressed on for good reason aren't necessarily the views of the jref questions and comments on today's show can be sent to info at forgoodreason.org for good reason is produced by thomas donnelly and recorded from st louis missouri our music is composed for us by m a award nominated gary stockdale contributors to today's show included jamie in swiss and christina stevens i'm your host dj groovy


Put yourself first. Hey guys, it is currently 6.55 a.m. and I haven't gotten up in the 6 a.m. zone in too long. Sounds bad as I thought, but I'm still a little tired. Probably gonna take a little nap when I get home because I didn't get to bed as early as I wanted, but I'm just here because I am getting a breathing test that I booked a long time ago, like five months ago, I'd say probably, and I've been just on the wait list and she just kind of assigned an appointment for me, so it's 7.15 a.m. I have to be here 15 minutes early, so I have to be inside in five minutes. I hope that this goes quick. I feel like I've been coming to the hospital so often. I was just in the emergency and then before that, I came here for an x-ray. And now I'm here for this, all in the span of like a couple months, like as opposed to me never going to the hospital. Like I've probably been here like once in my life besides from that. But yeah, I'll update you guys when it's done, but I hope everything is fine.  A few months ago, it hasn't been as bad lately, but since I already had the test booked, I was like, might as well just do it and see because I've been on the wait list. So yeah, I feel like everything is gonna be fine, but I guess it's just good to double check. So I'm gonna go in and I'll update you guys when I'm out. So wish me luck. Okay, so I just finished my breathing test and I drove to save on it. I don't get the results for like a week, so whatever. I'm going to save on right now because if you guys watched my morning routine, you noticed that I discovered the best almond milk for coffee in the world.  We're going in, we're gonna literally take all their stock before people discover and it sells out. So let's go.   I hope they restock soon because like this is my crack. This is literally my crack. Like I can't even explain to you how good this milk is. I'm gonna try and find matcha now because that milk with the matcha would be literally heaven. Hello, my love bags. How are you guys doing? I hope you're doing well. Kind of a long time no talk. I haven't talked to you guys since the morning and I just currently eight o'clock and I was just about to give myself a snack.  So I was like, I want like a healthy dessert and I'm just about to make it and I'm like, wait, why don't I tell you guys what that is because Madison, my sister actually kind of made this recipe up and introduced me to it. It's not really a recipe, it's just kind of a thing. So I'm gonna show you guys how to do it because it's delicious and healthy. If you're just craving something like light, fresh, dessert-y thingy-majang, it's very good. So basically what you do is you get raspberries, they need to be frozen, okay? Actually, you can probably do it with them not frozen but it tastes better, probably frozen, okay? Oh my God, and I just can't wait for fresh berry season. I love myself a good fat blueberries, raspberries, my favorite thing ever, blackberries, so good. That's what I love summer for. Literally the fresh berries are just so delicious. But anyways, let's just get into the recipe. Okay, so I'm gonna take my frozen raspberries and they're literally like, you guys can see, like it's literally in a brick right now because they're so frozen. I'm gonna like literally take a cutting board and cut the slice that I want but if your guys' frozen raspberries are not stuck together like mine, all you have to do is pour them in normally. I literally have to take them and chop them. This is a very hard procedure. Oh, that was a, okay. Oh-hoo!  Okay, I just got the string a little dirty but it's fine, we're gonna shout it and put it in the wash. ASAP, guys should learn my lesson to not wear white things at home. Do I stop? No, I don't. Do I know why? No, you take your raspberries. Oh, this is beginning to look like a fail but I swear this is a good recipe. So now we take our raspberries and we take a musher, a musher, whatever you call this thing and you mush your raspberries so that they're mushed, okay? So now they're literally flat. Oh my God. They're literally flat to the bowl as you can see. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this secret ingredient, maple syrup, yay, okay. So I use this thing like liquid crack and you literally drizzle or pour whatever you like better.  You let it soak in and then you take a spoon. Oh my God. It tastes like raspberry gelato. Like you know when they have that ice cream that's like non-dairy. I don't know if that's called gelato and I don't think it's called gelato. I forget what the non-dairy term is but it tastes like the non-dairy fruit ice cream that I would get at the ice cream store. So good you guys, like do not sleep on this. It's just, it's healthy if you're feeling like a little bit of a sweetness coming on but you want something refreshing and healthy. 10 out of 10. Don't knock until you try it. This is what dreams maya. Hey guys, so we just got to a park area where there's like a lake. It is currently like 12 o'clock on Wednesday and it was just such a beautiful day and it's gonna be pretty much raining for the rest of the week. So we were like, let's get out of the house. It wasn't really planned. It was just kind of spontaneous. Yeah, so it's gonna be fun. I haven't been to like a lake slash beach in so long. Actually, that's a lie. Not so long, but like it's been a while and it's kind of like, I love being around like sandy beachy areas. It's not really a beach, but it's like a lake beach kind of thing. So yeah, we're gonna go kind of explore, do a little bit of a walk around and just enjoy this sign. Okay, let's go. It's literally such a beautiful day.  I want to encourage you guys to get outside to go do something for your mental health, to go do something for yourself. Put yourself first. If you don't put yourself first then you're just gonna keep overworking yourself.  So go do something for yourself right now. Even if it's the smallest thing, even if it's just breathing in some fresh air, just do something for yourself. Trust me, it makes a huge difference in the long run. And sometimes people forget about taking care of themselves and doing little things for themselves. Like even me and Joel coming out here right now, we didn't have to. We could have just stayed working.  It's a beautiful day and if we didn't come out here to enjoy this beautiful view, then we wouldn't have gotten to see the beautiful view and we wouldn't have been as happy and we would have maybe even regretted not enjoying this sunny day to its full potential. So yeah, do something for yourself. Get out. Do something that you love because life is too short and all too. Life is too short to hold back on things. You ought to live your life to the fullest. You really do. I know it sounds really cheesy, but you do, okay? Like we're only here for a short amount of time. Do what you want to do. Do what you love doing. Make time for yourself. Make yourself a priority, okay? Ladies and gentlemen. All right, you guys. So we just finished up here. Such a beautiful day. I cannot tell you that enough and I'm so happy we came out instead of sitting on the couch all day and working. Took a nice break, came out here and did something to nourish our mental health and our happiness and ourselves. So again, put yourself first. Do something that makes you happy. Stop making excuses, okay? Do not make any more excuses. Before I would always think like, I'll go do that later. I'll go do that like another day when I have more time. But it's like the only time is now. Yes. There's no past, there's no future. It's just now. Yes, live in the present. Bo, live in the present. You don't know if you're gonna be alive within the next day or two. So if you want to do something, better go do it. Cause you might get hit by a bus tomorrow. Yeah, well, hopefully not. But just think about that every time. You want to do something. Just imagine you're gonna get hit by a bus the next day. Yeah, sometimes I just, I realize that sometimes I forget to live along with every single one of us on this earth. We just forget to live and we forget what we're actually here for. And we get caught up in our everyday lives. But so important to round yourself and realize, you know what, I'm here to live. Life is literally too short. I just want to start being more spontaneous because spontaneous adventures leads you to spontaneous opportunities. That was a good one. Bless him of the day. Moments with Michaela. Okay, so we're just gonna head out now and we're going to go back home, do some work and then I'm going to the gym today is going to be going mountain biking later. So it's going to be a great day. And I hope we see the sun more because I know that it's going to be supposed to be raining and cloudy, but I just can't wait for the summer you guys. I love the sun. I love the sun. But yeah, I'll see you guys when we're home. Hey guys, so it's currently 3.47 and I'm just going to get ready for the gym now. Gonna have a good workout session. I'm going to bring my smaller camera along with me. So take you guys on the road. So see you later. No, it's Thursday, Thursday tonight. And you know, like last time I came here and I was trying to get the oat milk and they were all sold out. Well, they restocked. Okay, they restocked. And I didn't just get one. I didn't just get two, okay? We got nine up in here. We got nine, bro. How good is it though? They're so good. It's actually good. I don't even care that much about the milk that I put in my coffee, but this one is actually different. It hits them for sure. The reason why we bought so much is because the last time that we bought them we had two at home. And those two went within two days. Like all my family was like obsessed. So we were all using them. And it went within two days. So we bought nine. So hopefully it lasts us a little over nine days.  You might think this is over excessive, but trust me once you try it, you will understand.


Brought to you by DIS, keeping companies connected with cloud-based solutions. Come on, City! Conor, good to chat with you again. I guess now you've had a bit of time to reflect on Saturday's game, so what are your thoughts after the defeat at Exeter? No, obviously it's disappointing. Obviously Result being in the lead twice as well, so I think marks on the upper of the key moments were just didn't handle well enough and that obviously prevented us from getting a positive result. What do you put those key moments down to being your downfall in that game? Is it a case of lack of concentration or is it something else? Yeah, I think that would be one of them. Obviously things happen quick on a football pitch and movement and let's not get it wrong. Some of their play and some of their attacking threats were very good and they've capitalised on the day and they're a very good team as well. A defeat, yes, and naturally disappointment that the unbeaten run comes to an end, but can you afford yourself that perspective that they are a promotion chasing side and in the same breath, I think I'm right in saying that they're the lead two top goal scorers as well, so it was always going to be a difficult game. Yeah, like you say, we knew what they were about and how many goals they'd scored and the capabilities that they had in their team and for us we tried our best to try and nullify them and we had certain things that we tried to implement but again sometimes when you're playing away from home and they're flying with their confidence on the day and they managed to punish us. And I guess with that in mind it can give you some perspective in the form of looking to take positives away from the game because yes, you led twice debut goals for two of your new signings as well. So there's a lot to take away despite the defeat. Yeah, it's obviously brilliant for the two new guys coming in to start so well and get a goal which was brilliant for their confidence and we're happy to see them start well and now it's for them to just keep on pushing and making sure that they're performing every week. We spoke to Levi not too long ago. He told us that you've gone through some analysis today of that game in isolation so what was your main message, yours and Mark's, to the players? I think we were going back to what gave us success in games before and just reinforcing the same messages that we potentially came a little bit away from which happens when you put obviously new players in and you've got different people in different positions and you've got players missing out so we just had to reiterate what kind of team we are and how we can play to our strengths and it was a really good thing that we did. Do you have to curate your messages at all differently to the squad now that there are so many fresh faces in the building and work again almost trying to gel all the players that have arrived at the football club with the ones that are pre-existing? Yeah, that's definitely something that as managers you have to do new players come in and they're at different stages so we obviously took over and some players are eight weeks into how we play and now you've got some players coming in who've never worked under us and maybe asking something different to they've had before so how we do that is by having individual meetings with these players new players but also getting the lads who know what we want to reinforce those messages from themselves as well. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that and I think Mark alluded to it somewhat on Saturday after the game about drawing on some of the older players, the experienced players the ones that know how you operate but certainly how football operates at that level as well to be able to use them as a way of trying to communicate messages across to some of the younger players. Yeah, that's key and I think by them getting to know what we want from specific players in certain parts of the pitch when their knowledge is at that level where they know what we want they can reinforce those messages and if everybody's on the same hymn sheet then it's going to be more promising and people understand their roles and responsibilities. Again, going back to our conversation that we've just had with Levi and again he alluded to a relationship in particular with Elliot that he's formed in the heart of that midfield just sitting in front of the back floor and the point I'm getting to is that you've been able to in your time seemingly create relationships on the field with players in particular so how much of that will have to factor into how you speak to the new players that have arrived at the football club and trying to form those relationships? Yeah, I think we've got a lot of clips and a lot of analysis of how we want players to perform in certain positions and as coaches we've been coaching for years now and we're trying to understand how players best learn and it's no difference for first team players because when you're asking something new of them you've got to be able to find out their creative way to make them understand it and for them to implement it so the relationships are key and our job is to make sure that when players come in and out that those relationships can conform as well. You've said to us previously that you like the nature of a quick turnover of games the hectic schedule that is presented to you all being well whether permitting of course and tomorrow goes ahead does that benefit you then that you have the opportunity to get back out on the field and almost try and right those wrongs at the first time of asking? Yeah, I think you've summed it up there, right the wrongs that's something that we've explained to the players and football is another game around the corner and we're happy that it comes only a few days after so we can implement what we need to do and make sure that the performance is better than the last one and we're all looking forward to putting it right. I appreciate you're not the Met Office but how confident are you that tomorrow will go ahead? Definitely not the Met Office but we're just trying to be professional we prepare for the game as if it's on and irrelevant of the weather so there's no difference in terms of preparation for us the game is on and the weather will do what it needs to do but hopefully it's kind. Yes, I guess you're experienced in that department though probably more than most clubs in this league after the season so far. Yeah, definitely it's something that's affecting everybody and we went down to Exeter and it was lovely blue skies so a little bit further north and you seem to get a little bit of snow. Yes, it was raining and snowing at Valley Parade on Saturday I can tell you that firsthand. Going back to the game in particular I asked Mark about it afterwards in respect to the substitution for Finn late on in the game and he said himself that it was probably a tough afternoon for him naturally that's going to happen. He's still so young and it's all part of his education but what's the best format for him now Connor? I suppose the big question is do you stick by him? I think with Finn we know him really well obviously been with him for years and it was an afternoon which he's got to learn from and it's massive that he does but our decision will be for the best for Finn and that's what our priority is to make sure that with any decision Finn understands why we're going to do what we're going to do so Finn's a great lad and he'll definitely learn from this occasion. Having worked with him, having known him and understanding his character how will he have responded to what happened on Saturday? He obviously wants to right the wrongs he wants to analyse and look at where he's gone wrong me and Mark have spoken to him during the game, half time before the game just checking in and making sure that he knows his roles and he's somebody that will come back stronger and we're confident in that. Naturally it's a disappointment for him in that moment and maybe potentially a detriment to the side not generally though of course but how actually beneficial could that be if we're looking for positives from it that he is still so young, it's still an education for him to have those experiences, those learning curves. I think that's the biggest thing is that he learns from it as footballers he's got a great opportunity he's 18 years old and he's playing in League 2 and he's been making week out and he's been terrific so far and he's had a performance which he's not happy with and like I say he's got to bounce back. In terms of team news are you able to return anyone to the starting fold or indeed the matchday squad that were absent on Saturday? Looks like we've hopefully got some players back in which will help us have a little bit more variety as well so yes some promising signs. Danny Rowe naturally the one that everyone wants to know about the cold that kept him out on Saturday are you hopeful that he'll be available for tomorrow? Yeah he's been in today obviously he did have his test and it came back negative and we're hopeful that Danny's going to be involved tomorrow. As for Andy Cook and Gareth Evans will they be available for tomorrow? Again we've got some decisions to make but they're definitely in the pipeline. And Billy Clark as well I realised that was someone else that wasn't in the matchday squad was it a hamstring problem that he had? Yeah a muscular injury so with Billy he's not going to be tomorrow. I wanted to get your thoughts Conner for me just on scum thought in isolation of course they've had some decent results of late and then a bit of a break which you know all too well about of course but how will you go about trying to break down their defence three clean sheets in a row which has really helped them in their recent form? Yeah what we're trying to do is identify where we can hurt them from our system and we're confident that we can find little loopholes in their system to make it hard and we've got to be asking questions of their defence but again we're having scoring two this weekend away and we're confident we can go out there and score goals that's for sure. Yeah I suppose the attacking variety that you have at your disposal now gives you more food for thought when looking at how you try and find those gaps in the defence that you talk about? Yeah like I say we've throughout the window throughout our period here we've talked about types and variety of players and because that's so important in unlocking the door in these tight defences so you know if it's going to be a wide man an out and out wide man or it's going to be an inverted winger or is it a target man or maybe someone who's going to work off the shoulder you know or a variety of one on one side's difference to the other so you know that's our understanding to try and make sure we make the right decision. And more generally as well their recent form partnered with yourselves, partnered with Mansfield, goodness even Tramir as well just goes to show that this table is completely wide open and it could be anyone's really towards the end of the season. Yeah obviously from us playing Tramir to where they are now it's quite staggering and it just shows you with performances and a bit of a runway you can get to so we've got to try and replicate that but obviously knowing that we've said it's not as easy as just winning games and being unbeaten things happen and we've got to respond. Not you don't need to remind the players that of course but is that part of what you say to them when you're going into games that this season, this table because it's so wide open there are so many opportunities available is that part of your message when you speak to them? It can be at times and you probably know what I'm going to say but obviously it's the next game is crucial and we look to pick up the points from there and then move on and then look to get some momentum. Okay we'll go well tomorrow Connor if it goes ahead anyway. Hopefully yeah thank you. Connor is there a case for saying that having lost on Saturday you'll learn more about your squad than you would have done if it had been another win or draw in how they react to me. Yeah sometimes people say a loss is an opportunity to learn from maybe things that we've potentially been getting away from getting away with sorry at times and just highlights it a little bit more so you know where we've tried to right the wrongs as we've said and we're going to definitely learn from the game against Exeter. As you said you've got to prepare as the tomorrow's game is on you also have to have a plan B if you like for if it's not on what you're going to do with the players because it will change the structure of the week completely. Yeah that's all sorted and something that we do within the club. And obviously players a lot of games coming up how much do you have to look ahead and think that player won't be able to play that number of games I'm going to have to make a change somewhere and try and pinpoint where the change will be. Yeah you know a lot of the substitutions are tried to be planned obviously circumstances are not always as easy to make substitutions but we try and plan ahead so we've got players who are on a cap certain minutes they should be playing and sometimes it may not seem the right decision but we've got to make sure that those players are fit not just for that game but for the future as well. I suppose that's one of the big changes that's happened over the last five or ten years and the physical and the medical side of it has really up to its game you say I've capped minutes for players in their recovery. Yeah you know you go back into the science and a lot of the times they can predict things and predict injuries that are going to occur and we've got to respect that and for sure we're going to take advice from people in those disciplines where they're giving advice on players loaded and the risk of injury so that's definitely something that's not just us that every club are doing as well. I suppose sometimes that fans don't fully appreciate why is that player coming off now but it's because that's what the medical staff and the sports scientists have said. I guess yeah you know unless you don't know that if you may be not being involved in having those conversations which is fair enough but you know at point of view we've just got to make the best decision for the team and for the club and we can't sort of worry too much about players being always playing 90 minutes where it's not possible we've got to make sure that they're loading and position related so some players cover a lot more distance than others and we take all this into account and we're just trying to help make sure that the team is as strong as it can be for longer periods of the season. Thanks very much, good luck tomorrow. Thank you. Hi Connor. Hello. I was also reading that apparently just over 3,000 people watched the game on iFollow on Saturday. I mean are you sort of aware of that growing fan base and sense of going numbers of people watching? Those figures seem to be going out week a week. Yeah I am aware of it I do see it and it does obviously bring a smile to my face so it's fantastic we see those numbers and how they've increased it's brilliant for the club. It's strange in a way playing every week with the grounds empty it's all a bit weird but there's that you've almost got to sort of visualise there's that big audience still willing you on there's a lot of people paying attention. Yeah and it's brilliant that people can still watch the game on the iFollow so it's really nice that people in the tough times can still watch the games and give them that excitement that they want and crave watching Bradford City so really pleasing to see the numbers and hopefully we can get even more. I think talk to players they're very aware of that they know this it's almost like it's invisible audience there isn't it? Yeah and it's something that the players have had to adapt to and not having crowds and maybe it's helped the younger ones coming in because they've not had that pressure of playing in front of 15,000 people potentially saw you know but again you know it'd be brilliant to get the fans back as soon as possible. And as Pete was saying obviously about if the game doesn't happen tomorrow you've sort of got a plan B you know whatever happens there's going to be a real concertina of fixtures basically everybody in the division is facing the same thing yeah and it's probably a lot of teams that are like us and trying to manage the minutes of the players and you know let's see what they do the EFL if they extend it or what but again you don't want to be making it where it's too much for the players so it's kind of a balance. Do you think they could possibly extend the season or is it because it's sort of set in ways with when the playoffs are and when I think all the way to the Euros and it's all very much set in stone almost. Obviously with the Euros and things like that and there's always you know if you push things back over things you know may potentially fail or get interfered with so hopefully we're hoping that we can finish the season in good time and hopefully be up that table as well. Yeah and as you say the manager and the players in regards to minutes it's for their own welfare as well because it is such a concentrated run. Yeah and we're trying to protect them. We're trying to make sure that we've got depth and we've got you know a really good squad so we're hoping to to rotate but again making sure that we're as strong as possible. And in terms of this round of games I mean from yourself and Mark's view is it good to be sort of game game game game like that coming up now would you rather have perhaps a couple of weeks where you can sort of work with the particularly as there's been a lot of changes. Yeah I think we're in this position so we've just got to react to this position and you know that just changes how we work in our organisation but we just get on with it. Right so best of luck hopefully see you tomorrow. Yeah that would be brilliant yeah. Cheers anyway. Thanks a lot, cheers. Connor for a new manager or new managers in your case is the first defeat the big test do you think in terms of the response? Yeah I think so. I think we've had a few games in where things could quickly change and we're nine games in so when we've had this sort of negative defeat and it's a challenge to see how we respond as staff but also as players yeah. And obviously you already know that you've come through the system where you learn a lot about some of the other players in terms of that response. Yeah I think there will be signs of who responds well and the professional footballers so we're hoping that the ones that we've recruited and the ones that are already in the building are going to have a positive reaction and just going into the next game wanting to prove people wrong again and being underdogs. I need to talk to you about managing the minutes in terms of the physical demands on the players now that you've got all these options after the transfer window if you think particularly attacking wise it'll be more sort of horses for courses in terms of your team selection each game looking at the weaknesses of the opposition and tailoring your team more to that. I think those are conversations that we do have but also if people weren't placing the team as well it's hard to then shift people out who are still deserving to play but what we'll do is we have discussions and we come up with the decision that's going to help us on the Saturday or the Tuesday. And to ask you the big question of the day we were speaking to Levi earlier and he was telling us he was the best singer in the squad the other day when they did the initiations is that the case? There's been quite a few now so I'm trying to remember Levi's but I'll go with what he said. On a serious note in terms of integrating the new lads have you had to be a little bit more creative because of the constraints on you at the moment? Obviously the exit to trip probably helped quite a lot with them being away from home and having to bond and get to know each other more but you'll find a lot of players know each other through the game as well and then obviously they find relationships with each other but everyone gets along so it seems a good camp at the minute but we're trying to give them opportunities to socialise with each other. How easy is it for you and Mark to judge how well lads have settled? Do you just mainly go on how they perform on the training pitch or the little signs you can pick up on away from the pitch? I think it's just everything that they do when they're coming in are they happy and have they got a smile on their face and have they got people that they're talking to and we also speak to players to see how they're settling in as well so it's just natural conversations that you do have but also as coaches you're trying to again ask that question to yourself how well is he settling in that the new play and you've got to keep your eyes on it so it's a mixture of both really. I guess it's a lot easier bringing them into a winning team and coming into methods that they can already see are working. Yeah hopefully with the buying and the players again like I said earlier reinforcing those messages and making sure that the players who come in are buying by them and they know the rules.


This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 3rd, 2015. I'm Tom Merritt. It's headlines only today because I'm traveling to DragonCon. That means we're going to have a special DragonCon show tomorrow. So you'll get an extra-long episode. You'll get at least an hour-long episode tomorrow. And then Monday's the Labor Day holiday in the United States, and we'll be traveling back from DragonCon. So it's headlines only again on Monday. Thank you for your patience. We still will endeavor to continue to bring you our perspective on Daily Tech News on your side as always. But it's just going to be me and it's just going to be the headlines today. So settle in. Ninja Steve was among the folks submitting Samsung's second-generation SmartThings Home Automation Hub and Sensors. In fact, Samsung had a ton of announcements at EFA in Berlin. The announcement includes a new services model and plans to open up to developers more so than they already have. Among the new features are the ability to control the home when the net is out and the power is out. It's got a 10-hour battery in there. And it can now communicate with sensors and other connected devices even without an internet connection. It also can now connect to cameras for the first time, which allows you to view things remotely. And there's also a cloud storage and monitoring product, which you can get for free to the end of the year. And then after that, it's going to be $4.99 a month. SmartThings is still an open platform, and they're working with more people all the time, trying to make it easier and now works with more than 200 devices. The hub will sell for $99 in the U.S. online, starting Thursday and in stores in October. And then it's coming to the U.K. later this month, and it should get more countries after that. Samsung didn't stop there either. The Samsung SleepSense is a disk you slip under your mattress, which Samsung claims will track from under your mattress. They claim it'll track your heart rate, your breathing, and your movement with 97% accuracy. It's like a princess in the P thing. And it can work with the SmartThings hub that I just mentioned to automatically do things like turn off your lights or the television or adjust the thermostat if it detects that you've fallen asleep. No price for this one, but it's set to launch in South Korea later this year. Not done with Samsung yet. Samsung Gear S2 Watch getting all the positive reviews must come out at NDA today. The watch runs ties in, if you remember, but it does work with Android phones. And Samsung today released an SDK to encourage apps to be developed for it. They're hoping to get 1,000 apps at launch. Wi-Fi version of the Gear S2 comes to the U.S. in October with an LTE version arriving soon after that. We still don't know a price, though. And one last Samsung announcement. The first Ultra HD Blu-ray player was announced, compatible with 4K streaming services, supporting HDR video. It can also connect to the SmartThings hub. I assume the Samsung Gear S2 should, too. What the Blu-ray player doesn't have is a price or release date. Samsung did announce it's partnering with several content makers like Amazon, Netflix, BT, and Canal Plus to deliver more ultra high-def content. So there you go. Samsung took the stage at IFA. They dominated the news cycle today. But the thing I'm most excited about is SmartThings. I was a fan of SmartThings before Samsung bought them because they're open. They can work with other ZigBee Alliance products. They can work with the Nest. They can't work with Apple, but Apple doesn't ever work with anybody. So it's interesting to see them trying to tweak things to make them work better. And having that camera interaction, I think, is very interesting. Obviously, the tech press is in love with the Samsung Gear S2. They think it's the best thing since sliced bread. And a lot of you want a watch that doesn't have to be connected to a phone, so that's promising that. And if you care about 4K on disk, that first Ultra HD Blu-ray player has got to have you excited as well. Alright, here's a piece of news that doesn't involve Samsung. Skype has updated iOS and Android apps. These are all interface tweaks. There's not a whole lot of new functionality here. For instance, the iOS app is promising simpler navigation, more effective search. The iPad version will add in some things like location sharing. It's kind of cool. And large animated emoticons. Because we love emoticons. Android app now fits into the material design aesthetic, adds a floating action button, and Android will also get enhanced search. So, trying to make it easier to use Skype because they're in the big messaging fight with everybody else, from Snapchat to Line to whatever messaging app you like to use. Instagram's adding messaging. Messaging is the new hotness. Elon Musk likes to make his Tesla announcements on Twitter and he did so yesterday. The first Model X cars will, according to him, be handed over at the Fremont factory on September 29th, beating a self-imposed deadline by one day. By the end of the quarter, in the quarter end of September 30th. Fast Company reports that IBM and ARM announced they will cooperate on Internet of Things Ventures. It's another hot area, Internet of Things. ARM-based chips will be able to collect data from Internet of Things devices and send it securely to IBM cloud servers. Now, why do you care about that? Well, everybody's trying to marry big data to sensors for personal reasons to do, you know, give mind data for you and tell you things you didn't know about yourself or help automate things in your life. Recreational, they're using them on boats for things like safety. Lots of industrial sectors are using them. It's a popular area of development for companies like IBM and GE and of course collecting lots of chip license royalties is something that is very popular with ARM so they want to get into the Internet of Things sensor device chip making, not just smartphones. They don't want to have what happened to them, what happened to Intel, when Intel did get into smartphones fast enough. So that's why ARM's in it. IBM is trying to pitch it as the security aspect. They are very good at securing cloud services, they say, and that's their big advantage here if you would want to use their service. The next web reports, RICO announced a new spherical camera. This is a, they've had one before. This is the new one. It's called the RICO Theta S. Two, one and 2.3 inch 12 megapixel sensors deliver 14 megapixel images of, or, or 1920 by 1080 HD video at 30 frames per second. You can use the app to let you configure settings and view the images. The Theta S will sell for $349.95 in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific beginning in late October. I feel like this is akin to the flip cams when people started to video blog and you had these specialty devices, eventually I think we're going to see a lot of cameras capable of doing 360, but it is a little bit of a different form factor that you have to do here. So RICO is on the ball here. Let's see if they can maintain their first mover advantage. The Corley noted on our subreddit, dailytechnewshow.reddit.com, that ours Technica has a report that Salisbury, North Carolina announced it's making 10 gigabit per second service available throughout the city for businesses and residents. You heard me right, 10 gigabit per second. A city-run company called Fibrant was created five years ago when private ISPs declined to upgrade their infrastructure. The city was trying to work with them, they declined. The service is targeted at businesses, so it varies by who you set it up with, but they do offer residential service. It's really expensive right now. 10 gigabit service is going to cost you $400 a month. You can get 50 megabit per second service for $45 a month there. So their normal service is on par, maybe a little bit at the upper range. This new 10 gigabit service, real expensive. Vermont Telephone began offering 10 gigabit service back in June, but that's about it for the United States. Fibrant, the North Carolina company, began its deployment one year before North Carolina passed a law limiting the ability of municipalities to offer broadband service. Now the justification for that law has been that a municipality getting into business is unfair to the incumbent ISPs, but none of the incumbent ISPs have run out of business. They have a cable company, they have a telephone company providing service just as they did before Fibrant came along, and those ISPs didn't want to offer infrastructure, so what happened in Salisbury, North Carolina, because they got in under the wire before the law, is they are able to provide 10 gigabit per second infrastructure, and Salisbury, North Carolina is not some unicorn of a place where everybody uses high bandwidth. They're saying they want to encourage businesses to move there. Vermont isn't the hot bed of people who are going to use a lot of bandwidth either. These are just municipalities that felt it was in their interest, either for their residents or for their businesses to provide that service because they weren't going to get it another way. So you can debate amongst yourselves whether you think municipalities should be allowed to do that, but here's a case study for you to use in whatever argument you want to make. In California, you can make an argument that you have the right to pursue a job anywhere you want at any time, because you do, according to the law, several tech companies are paying for trying to limit that, right? They found guilty of collusion. I believe it was collusion. I shouldn't say that because I didn't see if it was actually collusion that they were found guilty of, but they were found guilty of violating the law when they had a no poaching clause among them. U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Coe approved a settlement where Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe will pay $415 million for creating those no poach lists that limited the employee's ability to change jobs. It's class action suit. Approximately 5,860 workers affected by the poaching scheme will collect about $5,770 each on average. And this is a fight that's not over. I know under NDA, many people who have been told you have a non-compete, you can't go work for someone else, you have a non-poaching clause with us, you can't hire people from us now that you've left us, and those things are generally considered illegal in California, but companies really try to clamp down on people. And of course, because Google's in this story, I will disclose that my wife works for YouTube, which is owned by Google. Ironhide83 wanted us to mention the Verge article about ASUS's new router, the RT-AC5300. It looks like a spider. It has eight legs. It's a top eight legs, which also serve as dual-band antennas, and they are removable. You don't have to have all eight of them on there. It can handle 1 gigabit per second over 2.4 gigahertz wireless and 2.167 gigabits per second on 2.5 gigahertz bands, which is not, I mean if that sounds crazy to you, that's actually fairly common in newer routers. It's just the form factor that's crazy. Probably not good enough for Salisbury North Carolina, but fine for most places. Unlike the On Hub from Google, the RT-AC5300 has Ethernet ports too, four of them in addition to the inputs. You get five ports there. No price yet, and it is expected to creep up on your shoulder and scare you later this year. And that's a look at the headlines. Alright, our pick of the day, and one correction is all we have left in this headlines-only edition, but I hope you enjoyed it. Website, camelcamelcamel.com collects price histories from Amazon and then they offer alerts, either by email or Twitter, based on a threshold price. Do you paste any Amazon URL into the search bar, where the graph is provided for price history, sales rank, product details. Good smart shopping. There's a lot of services like this, and Nick in Louisiana likes camelcamelcamels. You might want to check them out, camelcamelcamel.com. He pointed out when he sent this email that the Watchmen Blu-ray had just dropped below $35 at that time. So thank you, Nick, for your pick. You can send your picks to us as well, folks. Do it. Feedback at dailytechnewshut.com. We love your picks, and you can find my picks at dailytechnewshut.com. Fresh picks? Pick picks picks? Finally, several of you, some gentler than others, pointed out that the emailer mentioning using the Google trigger phrase yesterday and said how he had to say it three times. He only had to say it three times in training. I think we sort of just had a brain glitch and both of Scott and I were thinking he had to say it three times every time. You only say it three times in training so it can recognize your voice, thanks to the body who clarified that for us. It's maybe not as bad as it sounded. Actually, not nearly as bad as it sounded. And that is it for the show. Once again, don't forget if you're in Atlanta and you can make it to Dragon Con, especially if you're already going to Dragon Con, we are going to be doing the show in the Crystal Ballroom. I'm going to double check that to make sure I'm saying that right, but we are definitely going to be doing the show in the Crystal Ballroom in the Hilton at local time of 4 o'clock. So 4 o'clock Eastern, 1 o'clock Pacific, just a half hour before the normal time. It will be streamed live on AlphaGeekMedia.com. So both the audio on AlphaGeek Radio, the video on AlphaGeek Media, as are all the podcast panels here at Dragon Con this year. Big thanks to Todd Whitehead for all of that. So if you can watch, watch, if you can come out and join us, come to the Crystal Ballroom and hang out and say hello. We're going to have Veronica Belmont, we're going to have Jonathan Strickland, we're going to have Justin Robert Young, and as always happens when we're in Dragon Con, somebody else, maybe a few other people show up. And of course, Lemp Rolta will be here in person illustrating the episode, so you might walk away with some art if you show up as well. Big thanks to all the patrons who make it possible for us to try different things who are patient with us when we do the headline news and who make the show possible. It is a minority of you that support the show, but there is enough of you who are generous enough who make it so that we can do the show. So thank you, thank you, thank you so, so much. If you would like to become one of those people and you're not already, go to DailyTechNewsShow.com. You can support by Patreon, you can support by PayPal, you can support by buying something in a store, or you can just tell a friend. Our email address is feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. You can give us a call at 51259Daily, that's<PHONE_NUMBER>. Listen to the show live usually Mondays through Fridays at 430 Eastern, like I said 4 o'clock tomorrow at alphageekradio.com and visit our website DailyTechNewsShow.com I'll talk to you live from Dragon Con tomorrow. Goodbye! This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at FrogPants.com