Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Weird World Adventures, the podcast. I'm your host, Mallory, and I'm here to show you just how weird this world of ours really is.
I am very excited today because I have Benjamin Radford. He's deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. He's a research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
And also, I just read recently that you have written over 20 books, by the way.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Yes.
Written or co edited or co authored. Yes. It's lots of books. More than I had expected to ever write. Yes.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: That is amazing.
By the way, before we get started, I know we were going to talk a little bit more kind of focused on witchcraft, but before we move into that, I'd love to hear how you got involved in the world of skepticism.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Sure. Well, it's kind of a roundabout way, basically. You know, as. As a kid, as, like most kids, I was interested in weird stuff, right?
Weird, weird world adventures.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Right.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: And so it was a case of where, you know, I.
I was growing up, and I. I grew up here in New Mexico, not too far from where I am now in the small, small rural town.
And, you know, I was. I was. I would see these TV shows, I'd read these magazines. It's all about these crazy things and, like, you know, you know, in search of. And that's incredible, and all these types of things, and, you know, the Loch Ness monster and, and, you know, UFO sightings in Roswell, this and that. And so I was like, oh, my God, this is so cool. Right?
And. And so I would. And of course, I was fascinated by these things. And so I was a voracious reader as a kid. And so I would go to the. The library not too far away, and also a used bookstore.
So I would take my allowance money, you know, five. Five crumpled dollars or something. I go in there and I'd buy. Come back from the bookstore with a whole bunch of used books and, you know, books on, again, extraterrestrials and, you know, psychics and Atlantis. And I'm like, oh, this is so cool. So I'm learning about all these mysteries out in the world, and. And I'm probably 12, 13, 14 or something.
And I was kind of jealous because, you know, again, this is a small town in New Mexico. Like, there's not, I mean, dirt roads there. There's one paved road there to this day.
And I'm like, oh, man. It's like, you know, all these. All these mysteries are far away. Like, you know, Loch Ness is in Scotland, and, you know, and I mean, Roswell is. It's in the state, but it's, you know, four and a half hours away. Anyway, so I was like. I was kind of bummed. It's like, nothing cool happens here, right? Nothing weird happens here. And little did I know, weird things are everywhere, as you know.
So I. So I was reading all these books and about, you know, just weird things. UFOs, this and that. And two things happened. Number one is I began to recognize that there was very little actual investigation.
There were lots of, you know, it is said that stories and, you know, oh, well, it's. This is. This is a crazy story. And, you know, an anonymous person saw a flashing light in Philadelphia in 1975. I'm like, okay, like, all right, right. But I'm thinking, well, hold on here. Like, even. Even as, like, you know, I'm 12, 13. Like, hold. Hold on a minute. I'm not. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm not saying you're right either. So, you know, I. I was in the phase where it's like, it's a published book. The author's name right there. They wouldn't publish something that's not true. I mean, it's. It's. It's published. It's. This has been vetted by the universe or something. Right? So.
So I. I sort of gradually recognize that many, if not most of the dramatic, sensational, exciting weird stories, mysterious mysteries were kind of flimsy. They were. It was just sort of like other people said. There was. There was very, very little. Like, I went there, I did this. I investigated. You know, I talked to witnesses. I looked for photographs. I like footprints, the stuff that me and Kenny Biddle and other. And you do.
And so part of me is like, well, if you want me to believe this, then give me some reason to believe this. I'm not.
You know, it's not. You're like, I'm an author. I said, it isn't good enough. It's like, I want references. I want citations. If you. If you tell me that, you know, two kids were snatched off a street in London in 1880 by a tentacled horror. Pulled them into the sewer. I'm like, what was their names? Who saw this?
What is the street?
How do we know this? Right, right. I mean, there should be. If this happened, and that's a big if, then there should be.
There should be verifiable evidence and things that we should be able to dig into that.
And then I said, the second thing that happened was that I started to recognize that these beliefs has. Have consequences.
And that was. For example, I remember I got a book on Viking runes, and I was like, oh. So I bought a book and I was like, how to cast your own runes. This is my sort of prophecying phrase, right? So there's. There's. There's tarot, there's palm reading, astrology, whatever else. But runes were something that, like, they. They're like. They're Vikings. The Vikings, they had these, right? It's like, I'm not gonna mess with the Viking. If they tell me there's this rune means this thing I believe, right?
So I bought this book. It was like, you know, three and a half bucks or something. So I. I'm like, oh. So it had these. All these drawings. Like, you know, this symbol looks like E or, you know, whatever symbol it is, it means this. So. Okay, that's cool. So I. I went and got some flat rocks, just wandering around my neighborhood. Got some flat rocks, and I got a nail, and I carved, as best I could, some of these runes into. Into the flat, one side of flat rock. It's like how to cast your runes. Like, okay, so I'm like. I'm like, I just threw them on the ground.
And I'm trying to interpret the runes, right? In the same way that you would interpret tea leaves or tarot cards or whatever else.
And like, okay, well, this means this. And this is the situation.
This is a. This is this angle. And I'm like. I'm, like, looking at these things, trying to, like, make sense of what I had just done.
And I'm like, well, how do I know how. How this author. How does. How does she know this? Like, where did you get this? Did you make this up? I mean, I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying you need to. How do I know that you didn't just make this up? Like, well, this is what this means, okay? Even. Even if you're right, that this is the symbols. What this means, that has no logical connection to the fact that if you carve that symbol on a rock and throw it in front of you, it somehow tells you something about the universe.
There's nothing there. So anyway, so that. That was sort of what led me onto it. And then I was thinking, well, you know, what about people who. I mean, I was just sort of doing as a lark, right? Again. I'm 12, 13, 14. It's a hot summer day. I got nothing else to do.
But the more I. More I looked into it, I'M like, okay, well, you know, like astrology, right? So, so, you know, there were people that I knew and of course I was a teenager, I didn't know a whole lot of adults, but I knew some, some. And, and you know, remember one of them talking about how, well, it's not going to work out with me and Bill because, you know, he's a Capricorn.
And I'm thinking that might be true, but it's like, well, hold on here. It's like, so you, you might make a life changing decision about who you marry or who you date or what job you take based on something you read in some random book.
And I'm like, suddenly I'm like, oh my God, this like, you know, it's all well and good to sort of do frivolous, you know, party, party psychics, you know, if, oh, you mean a dark, handsome stranger. But a lot of these beliefs have consequences, right? If you, if you believe that, that, that aura reading can, can cure you of some disease that can kill you, if you believe that homeopathy works.
Anyway, so, I mean there's a continuum. I don't want to overstate it. But anyway, to answer your question, that was one of the things that sort of led me on the path to skepticism. And I later on got a degree in psychology and then public health and things like that. And so I wanted to apply those disciplines and those techniques and research methodology to exploring the world sort of like you do.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: I love that. And how did you get involved with Skeptical Inquirer?
[00:08:51] Speaker A: So I got involved with si. So that's also a strange. I've. I've told it before, but I'll give you the quick version. So I was, I was the University of New Mexico as an undergraduate getting my degree in psychology and I had won an essay contest. I was comparing the Chernobyl and the Challenger accidents both in 1986 and talking about like the, the different ways. Basically looking at how these hu, these high profile disasters were basically human created is that, you know, people, scientists had protocols and they chose not to follow.
The people operating the, the, the, the, the shuttle chose not to do what the scientists told them to do. Like right, do not launch if, if this is under a certain temperature.
There's the o ring. I'm getting into details about the Challenger accident that most people probably aren't, don't know, I don't care about. But the point is that there were NASA, NASA documents written by Morton Thiol, who was the contractor who said do not launch the shuttle if The. The ambient temperature is below X.
And they're like, it'll be fine.
It was not fine. Seven astronauts died.
Anyway, there's. There's similar parallels with the Chernobyl accident in. In Ukraine. But anyway, so I. I want this. This essay contest.
And as part of the. The. The. The award, if you will, we went to Logan, Utah, which is a nice place. It's not Vegas. It's. It's not la. It's Logan, Utah. That's fine. No, I don't want to get a hate mail.
But I was. So. I'm like, all right, whatever. So good. And so I'm like, let's get a beer. Well, I didn't realize that. That it's a dry county because it's Utah. So me and a couple of friends from UNM were like, wound around, like, let's. Let's get a beer. Like, oh, there's no beer on here. So in looking for beer, we found a used bookstore. And I love used bookstores, so don't get me started on that. So I went in the used bookstore, and just typical used books, there's lots of stuff on. On like, canning preservatives, because that's. That's part of, like, the Mormon tradition. Anyway, so among these things was a copy of Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine that I'd never heard of.
And it was a purple cover. I still. I still have it right here.
And it was. The COVID article was the Mask of Nostradamus. And it was James Randy writing about Nostradamus and his. His quad trains and. And this and that.
And that was the first time in my life that I had ever seen a legitimate, sincere criticism of Nostradamus. I had. I'd seen lots of TV shows, and this is crazy. And the man who foresaw the future. All sorts of things. I had never seen anybody say, hold on a minute.
And. And. And so I'm like, this is. This is. This is interesting. So I bought. I bought a copy of it. It was a back issue even back then.
And in fact, there were. There are two issues. And so I bought both of them and never heard of this magazine before. I had no idea it existed. I came back. I came back to New Mexico. I showed it to my dad. I said, look, I saw. I randomly found this cool magazine. He's like, I think the editor lives here in Albuquerque. I'm like, no. He's like, yeah, sure enough, the editor, Ken Frazier, the late Ken Frazier, who's editor for decades, and he and I worked together on the magazine. So anyway, so I reached out to him, I said, hey, I found your magazine randomly out of the blue.
I. I'm read it. This is super cool. I'd like to write for you. And anyway, I ended up getting hired as editor.
And.
And then. So that's. That's how I got involved in that. And to this day. So I. When I later met Randy, he autographed that. That issue. So it's Paul.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: It's amazing.
So I guess we'll transition a little bit into the belief in witchcraft and why it's harmful. Because I think it's interesting that people generally consider witchcraft a thing of the past. I feel like a lot of people don't think that it's still happening now. They don't realize that it's still happening in different places around the world. So they treat it almost like it's harmless or don't see the harm.
But it's very real.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. You're exactly right. And that's, you know, I. I've done some stuff. I think you saw. I made a short documentary film, which I think you saw at cy.
And. Yeah, so, you know, I. Again, going back to one of the themes of my career, my work is.
Is where the rubber hits the road, right? Where you have beliefs and everybody can have, you know, you can believe whatever you want, but again, beliefs have consequences, and particularly beliefs in. In magic, in witchcraft, right? Because if you believe that, if you believe in magic and particularly witchcraft and black magic, then that, that, that brings with it a whole constellation of assumptions and beliefs, one of them being that if bad things happen to you, it's because someone else did something to you.
It's.
It has this whole.
This whole sort of epistemological worldview in which bad things are the result of karma or.
Or malice, right? So it's not that you happen to be the wrong place at the wrong time. It's that somebody has it out for you.
And if you, you know, when you sort of think about it in that way, you're like, hold on a second. If. If you believe. If you sincerely, truly believe, as many, many people do, that if something bad happens to you, your house burns down, you get in a car accident, you're injured, whatever it is that somebody did that to you, you're going to want revenge, right? You're going to. You're gonna. You're gonna look around, who did this to me? And this creates this tension where there's suspicion, there's distrust, and oftentimes there's violence.
And I think that that's one of the. That's one of the aspects that I try to again, touch on in my work and also in folklore is pointing out to people that, you know, particularly in New age circles, magic has a sort of warm, sweet, saccharine magic. It's the beauty this and that. Like.
Yes, but magic also has other implications. And, you know, we can see this in the Salem witch trials. We saw this, for example, in.
In the. In the witch hunts, in, In. In. In. In medieval Europe, late medieval times, when people. Again, this is the same thing over and over again, where you have. You have something bad happening to a community or someone.
Hailstorm, plague, take your pick.
And, well, someone did this.
Who is it? Well, usually that answer is a woman and. Or somebody who is of low socioeconomic status. And so in this regard, I see witchcraft accusations as not only being harmful in the realm of public health, which I. Which I can talk on later, but also just sort of. It's a. To my mind, it's. It's a human rights issue.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: And. And again, people. You know, when. When people ask me what's my latest documentary about, like, Mitchcraft, Like. Oh, you mean, like. You mean like, like wicked. You mean like they. They. They think of, like, Halloween witches.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Right?
[00:16:23] Speaker A: And. And it's like, yeah, but no.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Right. And there's such a different context because we are so separated from it. I agree. And it's also a way to release accountability. And I feel like in the past, there's a pattern of people that get accused. And it's like you said, a lot of time, it's women, it's people that don't fit into society. The people in charge use it as a tool to control people that don't fit into the box that they want them to fit in, and it becomes incredibly harmful. And I feel like that has been happening for centuries. And is there a pattern. Do you agree with that, or is there a pattern you see for people that get accused?
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and it depends on. On the context. So, for example, in. In. In the Salem witch trials, for example, which I'm not an expert on, but I've read pretty extensively about it. One of the aspects that's often overlooked is that the. The people at the time, they weren't that concerned about specific witches. In other words, they were concerned about witchcraft partly because it challenged their. Their Christian, you know, beliefs and tenets. But the. The bigger concern was not that Mary down the road or Mallory down the road, not you, but different one. Mallory with it with the Y.
Was. Was sort of doing herbal practices or, you know, or doing something else. The bigger concern was, honestly a conspiracy. The bigger concern was that.
Was that there was a hidden secret coven. Right? The bigger concern was not one or two witches doing their own thing, maybe using black magic, web ralts. The concern was on. On full moons, are they vanishing into the night, meeting up in the woods to meet with Satan and, you know, have orgies and convert, things like that.
And this is why there was such an emphasis in the Salem trial, specifically of finding out more and more confederates. Right? So there's always like, well, who's. Who are the other witches? Right? You. You've admitted to being a witch after, you know, being beaten and tortured. Who else was there? That was their big concern is who else was there? It was this. That's literally a witch hunt, right? And this. That's why I find it especially galling not to be political, but when. When Trump talks about witch hunts, I'm like, wow, you really have no idea what you're talking about. That's. You. You. You. This has nothing to do with you, dude. This is not a witch on any stretch of the imagination. But anyway, so. So, yeah, I. I do think you're right. That. That is. There's these recurring themes. And. And again, you can. You can see those themes in. In Africa, right? Where. In sub Saharan Africa, of course.
And you've spent time there as well as I have. There's lots of belief in witchcraft. And. And again, one of my interests. And I can talk about later if you want, is where it intersects with public health, because a lot of the beliefs that witchcraft have to do with. With disease and illness.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: Right?
[00:19:37] Speaker A: So. And then. So the question becomes, well, you know, why did I get this? Well, it's not because, you know, you were exposed to a virus. It's because somebody did that to you.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Right. Please, please expand on that more. I'd love to hear about it.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's, you know, it's one of those cases of where.
Where if your worldview is that bad things only happen to good people, and assuming you believe you're a good person, which most people do, then again, then this. This logically implies that there's someone out to get you. And we saw this, for example, with. With Ebola, with the. With.
With the. The AIDS virus and. And other things like that, where there was. There was assumed to be a.
A magical element to it.
And I did a. I did. I did a master's in public health at Dartmouth a couple Years back and, and my focus was on sort of having the, having, trying to bridge folklore and public health and journalism to, and sort of seeing these are, these tend to be siloed expertise. And I'm trying to say, hey guys, those folklorists, you think they're just talking about fairy tales and urban legends, I promise you they have expertise in how to do messaging for public health, for Ebola, for things like that, and vice versa. So part of my goal then and to some extent still is to try and get these different areas to talk to each other and say, hey, how can we all come together to improve the messaging for vaccination? For example, Overalls. Anyway, so in, in the process of, of doing that project, I was reading some, some documentation about, about how, for example, people who are, if you're interviewing people about prophylactics for hiv, right. So they'll also.
It's fascinating because if you talk to people, they will say, yes, HIV is caused by a virus.
And of course the medical establishment, yes, that's correct, but the reason you got the virus is because of witchcraft.
You're like, no, you almost had it and then you went sideways. And so. But again, this is where you have this weird syncretism of beliefs where on one hand you have people who are, who are accepting the sort of Western, and I'm not really don't really like that phrase, but for lack of better words for established medicine model, epidemiological model of it. At the same time, you know, in the real world, in their daily lives, they sincerely and genuinely believe in magic, they believe in witchcraft. And so it's not one or the other to them, it's both.
And this poses real challenges to public health officials in many places, including, including Africa because again, you're trying to get people to, to in the case of Ebola, for example, not do the traditional burials. Right. So what's in like, as we're speaking right now, there's a huge Ebola outbreak in, in Dr. Congo and elsewhere. And so we. One of the challenges that they have there is that the, a lot of the, A lot of the advice, the best medical advice, the empirical based medical advice is in some ways contradictory to their traditions.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Right?
[00:23:12] Speaker A: This is why. And again, you saw this yourself in South Africa, but where you have this sort of tension, where on one hand you want to respect local beliefs, you want to respect local traditions, you want to, you want to not be this sort of yo, you know, dismissive white man, white woman coming down to tell them what to do at the same Time.
Some of those, in fact, many of those traditional beliefs are harmful. I mean, you know, in South Africa, it was believed for. For a long time to this day that one way to cure AIDS is to have sex with a virgin. So you would have women who are being raped because someone finds out they're HIV positive and they heard.
Because it's common knowledge that the way you get rid of HIV is. Is by raping a virgin. It's like. This is horrific.
Anyway, it's.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: It's a very good point too. And I feel like. Because I. I study anthropology and specifically.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Yeah, this is right up your alley.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Exactly. And anthropology teachers push, you know, ethnocentrism. You have to have respect. You have to. And some of them are so hard about it that, like, we support revenge killings because it's their beliefs. That's not our fault to come in and say otherwise. But then, as, you know, the humanist, as someone that cares about people, you don't want to see that happen. And there are situations with, you know, people believing in witchcraft in Africa where I believe this other tribe cursed me. So that makes it valid for me to have a revenge killing of someone from their tribe. And it causes, like, violence and revenge killings and actual cycles of harm that you can physically see and measure and.
And when. You know, obviously that's an extreme case, but. But there are anthropology teachers out there who will say, well, that's just their beliefs and you just have to respect it. And that's. To me, it's crazy. Yeah, I don't hear that well.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and so that's my position. It's like, you know, it's. Again, I will respect your beliefs, but at the point which you're harming people, that's. No, no, that's not. And actually, that was actually interesting discussion. I went to a folklore conference a couple months back in Kentucky, and there's actually an interesting evolving discussion among folklorists about at what point do you take a stand? Right. Because traditionally, folklore is about tracing legends and stories and narratives and saying, okay, well, this legend came up here, and then it appeared in Germany in 1885, and here's the story, and then it appeared in France, and they changed in these ways. That's all well and good, but traditionally folklore has not cared about and intentionally not cared about the truth of the claims. They're like, very agnostic. Like, you know, I don't. The vanishing hitchhiker story, it's like, is it true? Probably not. That's not the point. Right.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: And it's Everywhere. It's footprint exists all over.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And so. And so I was sort of, again, sort of bridging these worlds. As a skeptic, but also a folklorist. I'm like, hold on, guys, that.
I respectfully disagree.
I think that. I think that at the point in which some of these rumors and urban legends, particularly rumors, are hurting people. Yes, it is.
It is. You know, it is. It is a valid mission of folklorists to. To get out of their shell and say, well, well, I'm not saying it's true or false. Like, no, no, it's. This is false. Like the whole, the whole. They're eating the dogs, eating the pets. That's categorically false. That is, that. That. That didn't happen. And furthermore, it is harmful for folklorists to stand back and say, well, you know, we don't really care whether immigrants are eating dogs or pets. I mean, they're not. But like, no, no, no.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: Right.
Sometimes you have to put a stand if you live in the world and you need to care for it.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, especially because these are. I mean, these people with the expertise. These are precisely the expertise, the disciplines, including, again, you know, anthropology, ethnology, folklore, where these are precisely the people that need to stand up. And, and, you know, again, this goes back to the ethnocentrism. I mean, part of the, Part of the, the wrinkle is that for better or worse, and you know this as well as I do, a lot of the academics are white people.
They are not people of color. There are. There are some. A lot of them are men.
That's just. It's not good or bad. That's just what it is. So we get in a situation where the folklorists, you know, are saying, well, we should do something. But then again, it's like, whoa, we don't.
It's kind of touchy. We don't. We don't want to sort of. Sort of like, I'm like, guys, anyway, that's, That's.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it's hard. It's a hard line to walk.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Especially when, you know, sometimes you personally know people who might have these beliefs and how do you respectfully disagree with them? In a way, sometimes it doesn't mean, you know, people get people. I, they. They consume. Sometimes their identity becomes their beliefs. And how do you not challenge their identity and how do you present it in a way that doesn't do that?
[00:28:26] Speaker A: And just, Just, just to follow up on that, I was thinking. Because you made me think about it so in, in the documentary I did the Nawini crocodile test.
And I can touch on that more. But basically. So it's, it's centered around a colleague of mine in Nigeria, Leo Igway, and he's been fighting witchcraft accusations for many, many years. And I'd known him for many said someone should make a documentary film about him.
And so I, I took the first stab at. It's a short film, but one of the, one of the things that he pointed out, which I hadn't really realized until I, I interviewed him on camera, is that, is that in terms of the, the witchcraft beliefs and accusations in, in most of Africa is that there are actually laws against accusing people of witchcraft in post colonial countries.
So in Nigeria, in, in Malawi and elsewhere, it is illegal to accuse someone of witchcraft.
There are a couple problems here. Number one is most people don't know that.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: So that, that doesn't deter them because they never realized it was illegal. The second thing, and this sort of gets back to the point you made a second ago, is that when Leo and others have tried to fight this.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: A lot of the pushback is. Well, no, that, you know, those are, those are, those are remnants of colonialism. We need to, we need to throw off the British imperial colonial powers like, okay, but, but, but okay, but that's protecting people from this horrific thing. And so.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: So this wholesale rejection of anti witchcraft accusation legislation, sort of throwing the baby out with the bathwater like, well, this, you know, screw the white man. They're gone now. Like, okay, be careful what you wish for because that's actually going to do you more. And that's, that's the point Leo makes that I hadn't even occurred to me.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: That's a very good point.
And speaking of Africa, where, where have you found, at least in your studies, where witchcraft accusations are causing the most harm today?
[00:30:41] Speaker A: Probably there, there's. I've seen different part. Different types of harm in different parts. So for example, in East Africa, Tanzania specifically there, from what I can tell, again, I, you know, I haven't done a demographic detailed dive on it, but from, from my experience and my research, some of the biggest problems in East Africa are regarding people's albinism.
So for example, I have a podcast, Squaring the Strange. And we had, a couple years back, we had, we had the.
A guy named Peter Ash, who's a Canadian fellow and he runs an organization called under the Same Sun. And it's an organization, I donate 50 bucks a month to it every month and they help People with albinism throughout, throughout sub Saharan Africa, but specifically in Tanzania and Dar Salaam and Kenya specifically. And so my understanding is that that's one of the biggest issues is, is so people with albinism in Africa, there's a couple things that jump. Number one, they stand out because they have albinism. They, they're white.
They're paler than you and I are.
And in a country of Africans, they stand out. They can't, they can't hide away in the crowd. And of course they're also, of course there are also other other associated medical problems. For example, you know, their exposure to, you know, skin cancer skyrockets, the, the sensitive eyes and things like that. But the other part of it is that oftentimes people with albinism in Africa are assumed to, to either be, be witches or have, or have magical powers.
And so, and, and again, you, you know this, you've looked into it where this leads to mooty crimes where people will attack people with albinism and, and sometimes hack them to death. They will cut off their fingers, their toes, their breasts, their genitals, their ears because they believe that the, the, these, these body parts have power in, in ritual magic.
And again, this is just horrific stuff. This is not, this is, this is not horror film. This is, this is actually happening, you know, these days. So, so I, so that's. And if you've seen what was District 9, the, the film, the science fiction film in, in set in South Africa, there's a scene of Muti in that, in that film, there's one scene where the protagonist goes in, he's meeting with somebody and they're, they're discussing body parts for magic.
Anyway, so I think that's, that's the biggest problem I think in, in eastern sub Saharan Africa, in Western sub. Some in, in western sub Saharan Africa and also in, in Malawi.
I think the bigger issue is the, the witchcraft accusations. And again, this is where Leo's done amazing work. And also another friend of mine in Malawi. Wonderful. Makuche, where it's. Again, when I was. Last time I was in Africa, I was actually, I was in Mozambique and I was planning to go see Leo eventually, but then I heard about a witchcraft accusation and actually assault on police officers that happened in Malawi. So I detoured. I went to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi.
I met with the, the activists there. Wonderful.
And we investigated and we went to go see the, this, this case up in northern part, Karanga near Uganda, where there had been this couple that were accused of witchcraft.
And they were basically being attacked. And police officers went in there to try and calm everybody down. The villagers then attacked the police officers.
One of them had brain damage. I met with him. He had a huge scar. He was. He was disabled. He was. He was barely survived.
And just horrific stuff. Again, this is all.
If you don't see it in. In person, it's kind of hard to describe. Just.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Anyway, so, so, so. And so I was talking to Wonderful. I'm like, you know, I said, how often does this happen? I mean, I. I had researched it before, but I. I figured this is every couple months. He's like, no, this is every day.
Wow.
I'm like, you mean. Like, he's like, yeah, this. This happens every day. Like, not. Not all of them result in people's deaths.
But. But yeah, like, every. I. I talked to the cop there, the police officer. I was like, how often do you get calls where someone is accused of witchcraft and they're being either banished or shunned or attacked? He's like, every day or two.
And I was like.
I just. I. I was like. Blew my mind. Like, I.
And when you realize this is. This is just Malawi never mind Nigeria, never mind Togo, never mind.
And so. So it. It really is this hidden epidemic.
And again, it's a human rights issue, It's a women's rights issue.
And. And. And it gets rooted in these sort of witchcraft beliefs.
And anyway, so that's. That's. That sort of jumps out at me.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that. And. And I had to read a lot in class on, like, Papua New Guinea.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: And a lot of things happening there. And people. People will go as far as to hide their. Their bowel movements and to hide, you know, your nail clippings. Like, they have to be hidden away because they believe that if the wrong person has access to anything that's come off of your body, that you could be cursed by them.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I know. You're right. I mean, that's. And, you know, I'm. I'm focusing on Africa because that's, you know, that's one of my. One of my particular interests. But you're right. I mean, it happens. It happens in Colombia. It happens in. In Pakistan. It happens on, you know, all. Really all over the world.
I mean, here. Here in the. Here in the States, of course, there's this sort of, you know, Western, like. Well, this is. This is, you know, these are sort of, you know, these primitive beliefs. Well, no, they. They happen. They happen here, too.
But it's easy to sort of, you know, to sort of push them off as the sort of xenophobic, you know, they're eating the dogs, eating the pet stuff stuff.
[00:36:49] Speaker B: How do you think misinformation and social media amplify traditional accusations in developing regions?
[00:36:59] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it's, there's, it's a good question. There's a couple answers. One of course, is that, is that social media has amplified folklore in an unprecedented way. Right. I mean, so rumors and gossip and misinformation have been around since day one. Right. This is, there's nothing new about that.
And then, and even, even for example, if you look at the history of again, rumors and conspiracy theories, right. So conspiracy theories are, are age old, right? Back to the Jewish blood label myths and so on. Right. And then once you had the, the, I mean the, the main, the main inflection point was of course, the, the, the Gutenberg printing press.
So all of a sudden you could take these cultural beliefs and rumors and print them on a piece of document which could be distributed, could be read by many, many people over the course of generations. So you had, I mean, again, I'm not knocking the printing press. I'm a writer, I love printing press, thank you very much.
But if we're talking about ways in which rumors, misinformation have spread and, and just that's, that's that of course the, the first major turning point was that. And then, and then arguably that would be also the event of television and now of course with the Internet and dating back, you know, the early 90s.
So what you find is that, and again, this is sort of obvious, but that, you know that in the same way that the, the news media can amplify good news, it can also amplify bad news and information misinformation. So, and unfortunately, even though there are some guardrails or there are some ways in which one, if, if one wanted to, one could, could stem misinformation. There are, there are steps. They're not, they're not perfect. There are steps.
The Harvard Misinformation Review is the publication. Maybe you've seen it, great stuff on it. So you made there.
Are they imperfect? Yes. Are there steps that social media could take to minimize and mitigate misinformation? Absolutely. Are they going to do it? No, because I mean, and you know, they, they, they did. I mean, so you know, if you, if you look back a couple years, there was, there were some efforts by Meta and, and, and, and X and Twitter to, to do that and there were community notes. There was, you Know, flags.
And then, then in the last couple years they're like, well, nope, don't want to piss anybody off. We're not doing that anymore.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: Right.
So.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: And I'll give you one quick example. So I'm actually kind of working on an, on another documentary kind of ish. I'm working on a whole bunch of projects. It's like, you know, so many irons in the fire and back and front burners. But I'll tell you a quick, a quick story about it because it, again, this, this, this folds in directly to your question. So there was a case that I wrote about, I think in, in 2023 or 22.
And it was, it was, there was a, a young lawyer by the name of Daniel Picasso from Mexico City.
And, and again I happened, I'm familiar with the case because I've been filming it and researching this. Anyway, so he, he, Mr. Picasso, I think he was 28 or something.
He went to a, a rural area called Papalozolco, which is near Pueblo, Colorado. So sort of not Colorado, Mexico, sort of over by the Yucatan Peninsula. And he wasn't from around there, but it's this rural community, sort of isolated.
And I think his grandfather owned a property or something.
And so he went there and someone noticed his car which had out of state plates. So again, he's from Mexico City.
Paralyzoco is rural area like 2 1/2 hours away. So it is a small community. Population is like a thousand or something. So very small.
If there was outsiders, people see the outsiders, they, they, they, they're, they're, they're not, they're, they're, they're noticed there. And I've backpacked in Latin America pretty extensively, so I've, I've been in many of these places. Honduras, you know, Guatemala by myself. Of course. I'm also six foot tall and bald, so people don't mess with me too much. But I was very aware that the, some of the rumors, particularly about organ theft and child snatching that I had, I mean I could have easily been accused of such a thing. So.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: Anyway, so what happened to, to Daniel was he, he went to this town and rumors on, on WhatsApp. So everyone's like looking at their phones and rumors went around saying, hey, have you seen whose car is this?
And like, I don't know, it's a new car, whatever's going on. And then someone shared a rumor on WhatsApp that there were child snatchers in the area.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: And so Again, everyone's on WhatsApp everyone. He doesn't know anything about it because he's not from there. He's.
[00:42:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: He's not doing anything at all. He's, he's just visiting.
And meanwhile, everybody around him is watching him and, and you know, thinking that he's, they're, they're thinking he's going to try to abduct a child either for sex trafficking or killing his organs or whatever it is.
And so they surround him in the town square.
And this is in Puebla, Zoco, which is near Pueblo. Okay, not too far up from there.
And, and so Picasso was an outsider in two ways. Number number one, not only was he not from the area, he's from Mexico City.
[00:42:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:42:55] Speaker A: He was also Mexican.
Hispanic. The town of Pablo Zoco is largely native Mayan, Mayan descendants. So they, they speak Nahuat, for example.
So there's. He was sort of an outsider second in, in two different ways and other ways as well in language in this. Anyway, so he was surrounded, beaten and burned alive in the town square feet from the church.
And the mob, they thought he was a child abductor. There was no evidence of this. No one was missing. But the, the, the, the messages on WhatsApp said said that he was there to abduct kids.
Medical people tried to get to him and rescue him. They wouldn't let him in. And he died right then and there.
And this happened again. This is, you know, this happened at night. This is a couple years back. I don't have the date in front of me, but. And I wrote about it in Si. And because I was like, this is, you know, again, going back to the theme like, where beliefs have consequences. Like you want to, you want to share something, some cute, you know, some cat video, some cat meme, some cute thing on social media, Twitter, whatever else. Fine.
If you're sharing messages that are saying that someone is abducting people and kids and pointing to someone that can kill people, that's not, that's not cute. That's not funny.
That has real world consequences. Anyway, so again, I, Yeah, anyway, I don't want to, I don't want, don't mean to bring the house down, but answer your question in terms of some of the, some of the dangers of, and the ways that the social media can be sort of harnessed into, into these sorts of rumors.
[00:44:42] Speaker B: I think it's important, I think people don't sometimes see how dire the consequences can be because it feels so harmless. So I think it definitely needs to be said.
And when you investigate, you know, witchcraft claims for instance, so you're out in, in society kind of experiencing this. How do you do so without dismissing the accuser's real fears or the community's distress? I guess it's kind of, kind of walking the line of having the respect. But also how do you kind of approach that?
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a case of where, you know, if you're, it depends on, on the specific belief. Right. So, for example, a couple years back, I was contacted by a woman who believed that she'd been cursed through, through magic, witchcraft.
And, and so she emailed me and I ended up writing an article about it in, in a column about it in Skeptical Choir magazine.
And I wrote about one of my books, I Think Big if True. And it was a case in which she, she was not hoaxing. It was pretty clear to me she was, this was not a put on. She was not with, she was genuinely frightened.
And so I tried to figure, okay, how am I going to help her out? Right? Because I'm not a psychologist. I do have a degree in psychology, but I'm not, this is beyond my ken.
So pardon me, is like, don't, just don't answer the email. Just, you know, just, just, just let it go. But I'm like, she needs help. Like this is, she's, she's reaching out to me. Can I, can I help her figure out what's going on with this curse?
And I somewhat reluctantly replied to her and I wrote again, I won't go into the whole details because you can, you can find the, the, the, the column online or I'll send it to you if you, if you're interested. But so I, I, what I try, I tried very carefully to craft a response that sort of acknowledged her fears. I didn't say you're crazy. This is stupid. Curses and witchcraft don't exist, number one, because that wouldn't do any good.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: Right.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: And number two, because that's not something that I would say. And same thing with if someone comes to me about ghosts.
I know you had Kenny Biddle on the show a while back. I don't know why, because he's a waste of time. But I, I get it. Whatever, you know, he, he likes to think he's important. It made him feel good. That's the most important thing. But so, you know, when Kenny and I are approached but by, by believers, you know, I have never, ever said that ghosts don't exist.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: I have never claimed, I've never said the Bigfoot doesn't exist. I've never said that. I challenge anyone to find otherwise. What I have said is that, is that in specific cases I haven't found good evidence of ghosts. Based upon my research and looking at other research, I haven't found good evidence of Bigfoot. That doesn't mean that they can't exist. Doesn't mean that's impossible. Just means if you're asking my opinion and it's based on 20 some years of expertise, this is what I think. And the same thing with curses. So I recognize that, that again in, in so acknowledging the experiential aspect of, of experiencers and believers is crucial because again, if you, if you just go into it like a know it all skeptic, well, ghosts are silly. These, these things are crazy. Curses don't exist.
Again, you're, you're missing the opportunity to understand their beliefs and, and to understand what made them think that they're cursed, what made them think that there's ghosts here. And beyond that you're not helping them out.
[00:48:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:48:20] Speaker A: And so again, I won't go to the whole thing, but basically I carefully crafted a couple of replies and I said, look, you know, I understand you believe you've been cursed.
This is, this is pretty common. I do have some experience in this.
It's possible that, you know, I, I think I phrased like, you know, in other cases like yours, I found other explanations for it. Right. So I'm just like, yeah, I'm like stirring it up. Like, yeah, I'm not saying what happened to you, but I can tell you since you came to me as the expert that I have, I have explained away. So whatever else. Anyway, so basically I was, I was trying, I was leading her down the path to recognize, you know, talk about confirmation bias. Talk about, you know, she lists these things that had happened to her recently which again she believed was the result of magic and witchcraft. And I said, well, you know, yeah, it's like, yeah, you're having arguments with your boyfriend, your car broke down.
I don't have a boyfriend, but if I had a boyfriend, I'd probably have arguments with them too. Or her, my car. I said things happen to people. And so I was explaining sort of the psychological framing and priming and I didn't, I didn't phrase it that way, but I was like, anyway, the point is that I was, I was, I was going out of my way to respect her beliefs, her assumptions and her, her worldview. And, and so that's, that's how I try and navigate that is to, is to ideally both Solve the case and help the person. And the cases I'm most proud of, and that's one of them is where I can do both.
[00:49:54] Speaker B: Right.
Speaking of that, I think a good last question is is there a case that has affected you the most or which one stands out to you as has been most profound to you in your career?
[00:50:09] Speaker A: Oh, that's a good question.
Affected me the most.
I, I, another, So I would say another one would be probably another case where I help people out.
There's a case, I wrote about it in my scientific para investigation book. I think it's chapter 10 or something.
Again, I won't go into the whole story. Basically, long story short, I was, I was living in Buffalo at the time and I was called by a woman who believe there was a demon in her house.
And again, sort of similar, they're parallel to the, the cursed woman. And, and she had been to a psychic who had told her yes, there's a demon in your house.
Which pissed me off. Right? I'm like, like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, look, okay, all right, you done pissed me off here. So she's like, God. And this happened between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Again, I won't go into the whole story because it's kind of complicated and you can read about in my books. But basically. So it was a woman and her, I think they have three year old daughter and her husband and they, because of TV shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures and these, these, these paranormal promoting TV shows, they believed that something weird was in their house and it was demonic, it was evil and it was, it was causing them, they were having fights, they couldn't sleep. They were actually afraid to stay in their own house at night. So they're actually staying at a neighbor's house.
Again, this is, this is Buffalo. This is, this is October, it's freezing cold, right?
And the poor girl, this three year old girl is out of as, you know, out of, out of her own house.
And so, so I, I met with her, I drove out to Lackawanna and I met with them. And again, they were sincere. The whole, this wasn't a joke, they weren't putting me on.
And so, you know, I spent probably a week and a half, and this is my own time, wasn't getting paid. I went there nights, weekends. I went there three or four times. I interviewed them again, respectfully said, you know what, why do you think your house has a demon? Just give me, I wasn't confrontation just like I'm trying to understand. Yeah, give Me. Give me three or four reasons why. So there was like a. There was a one. He believed he was attacked by a ghost.
There was a. A scary photograph that fortunately was done on film. So I actually, I took the negative and I had to. I had to print it all the way to the edge. And when I did that, you could actually see it was a reflection on a glass tabletop. Wow.
Anyways, to the point. So that. That's one of my favorite cases, and I would say that's one of the ones that affected me the most because I. I was able to explain to their satisfaction and also mine, there was not a demon in their house. They were being scared unnecessarily by both psychics and ghost hunters.
And I had the satisfaction of solving the case. But I also helped the Stanley move back into their own house. Right.
And in time for Thanksgiving. So it was like this sort of.
I.
There's a lot. There's lots of them. I could talk about the Chupacabra, talk about these other ones, but that's one where I.
It affected me because I saw firsthand in the ways that applied skepticism, investigative skepticism could help real people in real situations.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: You made a difference in somebody's life a little tiny bit, but still, that's amazing.
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Ben, can you tell everyone where they can find you online?
[00:53:47] Speaker A: Sure. Where am I online?
I have a podcast, as I mentioned, called Squaring the Strange with Celestia Ward. We want to have you on sometime soon. Just. We have you. It's just so many people bouncing around.
I'm mostly on Facebook.
I have a Twitter account, but I don't. I'm honestly not on it that often.
You can find me in Skeptical Inquirer magazine where I am the deputy editor and I have a regular column.
I'm also going to be depending on when you see this or hear this. I will be at Dragon Con, Atlanta, GA over the labor Day weekend.
And here and there. So I'm around. Reach out to me. I love hearing from people.
Yeah.
[00:54:30] Speaker B: Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on and joining us.
[00:54:35] Speaker A: Thanks for the invite. It's cool to. I saw you first time in. In. So it's quick story. So you. So I. I first saw you in person. I'd read your stuff. Right. Because I read. I did the magazine. I'd seen your pieces on Wicked. And then there was the other one.
What was it? Oh, on the. On the Ouija board.
[00:54:53] Speaker B: Yeah. We did Idiomotor and Robin Island.
[00:54:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, So I read your stuff. I'm like, Mallory, like, all right. So that. Then, then it was funny. We're at the table over at the in. In Buffalo, and I saw. I saw YouTube back there. I'm like, that's Mallory. It wasn't like a fanboy thing. It was just sort of a fun thing. Like, then I called you out and you're like, yes, that was fun.
[00:55:14] Speaker B: It was so much fun. I love scicon because there's, there's so many of us that, that like, either haven't met before but know each other or, or we only see each other outside. Like, I very, you know, really see. And we. Next year we're going to be there for the whole time. But me and Michael, he is. He the physician and he has crazy hours. So this, this time it. Just because it was so far, we wound up having to come after work Friday. So we got in at like 4 in the morning. It was after driving all night and then just like popped up Saturday. Like, no, we have to go be social. So it was like, make an effort.
And I, and I got off the elevator and saw Banachek and we, we like, connected in the past. So I'm like, oh, hey. That was the only time I saw him. We just like, oh, my gosh. Hey, it's you. And then, and then just kept moving through. And then we were like, let's get lunch before we go over there. And then we saw you at lunch. It was, it was just so wonderful. It was, it was the perfect start for our cycon. And next year we're going to be there.
[00:56:10] Speaker A: Yeah, me too. It'll be fun. So super cool.
[00:56:12] Speaker B: Yes. Amazing. Well, again, thank you so much. And until next time, everybody stay weird.
