Saturday, August 6, 2005 at 9:09 PM Hey everyone, in case you don't know, James Randi is a nationally known atheist/skeptic. Someone wrote him regarding Van Praagh's appearance on Loveline recently, and he published it in his online newsletter. Text is as follows. James Van Praagh was on LoveLine [radio] tonight on the east coast. I didn't hear the entire show, only the last hour or so, but what I heard was spectacular. Unlike most talk shows, there was no placating and encouragement of Van Praagh's nonsense. Adam Carolla, probably the most vocal skeptic and atheist on the radio, did not hesitate to call him out. A woman called in named Anita, whose son had fallen off a cliff and died. Van Praagh did all the typical, untestable, mumbo-jumbo implying foul play, etc. Van Praagh told Anita that her son “wanted her to move on” and "psychically divined" that the woman had a shrine to her son set up in the living room with pictures and flowers. The intended reaction to this prediction was shock and amazement, but it was met, instead, with reason. Here's (more or less) the conversation that followed: Carolla: Doesn't everybody do that when their kid dies? Van Praagh: No, not everybody– C: Well, nine out of ten do, though. VP: I don't know that – C: The kind of people who make these kinds of calls are the people that set up the shrines. At this point Van Praagh redirected the conversation. Later in the show Adam Carolla was speaking more generally about psychics and intuition. Basically what he said is that whenever anybody takes their family to the airport they have a brief moment where they fear the plane will crash. When it doesn't happen they just forget about it, but on the rare occasion that it does they think, A-HA! Van Praagh then went off on some incomprehensible rant about time and living outside of the third dimension. When he’d finished, Carolla's response was "See, you're smart though: If I wrote a book about my theories on this, no one would buy a goddamned copy... no denomination would follow my validity." It was all said humorously, but it's nice to see a nationally syndicated personality basically call this guy a fraud who's just in it for the money. All in all, Adam Carolla wasn't as hard on Van Praagh as he could have been, but he was far more reasonable and skeptical than the more "legitimate" talk show hosts like Larry King. He was very clear, throughout, that he didn't believe any of it. What was also funny was that Van Praagh was just doing what Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew do every night: listening to a person's voice and problems and making educated guesses about them. Only they do it more accurately, they make more concrete guesses, and admit when they're wrong. Further, they don't credit some arcane and esoteric BS, but, instead, credit the years they've been doing the show and listening to people's problems. I realize that LoveLine isn't anything more than entertainment and pop-psychology, but it is a national forum and many young, impressionable people listen to it and are influenced by it. In this culture where skepticism is confused with cynicism, I'm glad that, at least occasionally, a tiny ray of light can get through. If only one 14-year-old out there took to heart that Van Praagh is a fraud, he or she would then be a little more skeptical of the next pop-mystic, and the next, and the next. And he or she would talk to their friends and the ball could start rolling. This show was just a very small blip on the national scene, but, the way things are now, these blips are about all we've got.
—Bad Directions | 
