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Randi on TV ??

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Are there any plans to bring JREF and James Randi to television?

A regular (monthly? yearly?) show on (say) PBS might help the cause by educating children (of all ages) on the value of critical thinking. The show could present the Pigasus Awards for the year as well as do an in-depth on one or more of the well-known, psuedo-scientific stories of the year and how critical thinking should be applied to them. It could even give some information from the previous year's TAM!

Do you think something like this could be pitched to (say) PBS? I'm sure that a well-designed idea would get a lot of support from the JREF community.
 
This is a really good idea, but it would likely have to be subsidized by the network, and with how the woo stuff sells, it may not fly.

If more people support shows like P&T's Bullsh!t, they may turn around though, and realize that there is an audience out there for truth.

Clearly people are getting more interested, TAM will sell out this year! WOOT!

Honestly though, I wonder if Randi would have time for it. He's got a pretty full schedule.
 
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I did see Randi on Happy Days on Sunday. I don't know if that counts :D
PBS used to do a good job on stuff like that. Science shows and This Old House. Now it sort of sucks. I'd watch it now if they had more "Nova" on it.
I'd buy tickets to see Randi do a live audence show sort of like one of those cold reading shows, but do nothing but mock and expose them. Or maybe bring in a whole audience of woo's and tell them its real, and at the end of the show expose to them the truth, so they feel like jackasses. To me in my cruel world, that's good entertainment. :drool:
 
Actually, with shows like Bulls**t and Mythbusters doing well, another skeptical show would probably be ok. The thing that sells with BS and Mythbusters, though is showmanship 21st Century style. Randi strikes me as the more scholarly type, so would he be able to pull it off?

Marc
 
There are a couple of debunking shows on T.V. currently..

Mythbusters..

P&T ********(If they are doing another season,Are they?)

Is it real?

Brainiac(On G4 on direct tv)
 
Dustin said:
There are a couple of debunking shows on T.V. currently..

Mythbusters..

P&T ********(If they are doing another season,Are they?)

Is it real?

Brainiac(On G4 on direct tv)
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Naked Science. I have seen Randi on either Naked Science or Is it Real (can't recall which).
 
Be serious! Randi is Quite a showman! Who would be the advertisers?
 
psy kick said:
Be serious! Randi is Quite a showman! Who would be the advertisers?
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Randi is a showman. He is also a smartass, which would lose some popularity points. For example, I love reading the commentary each week, but if you made that into a TV show, people would lose interest. New woo-woo's keep popping up and Randi keeps knocking them down. But wtaching the same "act" on TV would get boring.

But I thikk JREF could make a really good TV show. Have a commentary segment from Randi. A short JREF challenge update. A topic of the week segment that covers some well known topic (interviews with ex-Scientologists, facts about ghost hunters, how cold reading works, an analysis of ESP studies, history of chiroprtactic, why homeopathy doesn't work, what is actually in a GSIC chip, etc.). Then an illusion bit where a simple trick is done and then the trick is explained. And maybe an interview segment with some of the types of people that present at TAM (Dawkins, Penn&Teller, etc.)

The important point would be to not make it smarmy "we're right and that's wrong" knid of show. It should be an investigative show that looks at all angles. It should present the evidence, and let the evidence speak for itself.

The segments should play off well. Randi could go off on whatever tirade he wants. The bulk of the show would cover some topic (like the topics covered by Skeptic Reports). The JREF challenged would be mentioned so that any non-believers of the topic covered would be assured that anyone with proof can show it. And there would be some entertaining magic to show how easliy some one can be fooled and show you how it is really a trick and give you a neat magic trick to play on your friends (that don't watch the show)

I think that if it wasn't really "in your face" skepticism, but just presented topics from an open and questioning viewpoint, it could be popular and well received. I'd watch it. :)
 
We get the Penn & Teller show here in the UK . The one about Recycling struck a very bad chord here in the UK and I would guess nearly everywhere outside the USA . Everybody in the world seems to accept we have a problem except Bush and co and I was surprised to see such level headed folk like P & T falling for that wishful thinking .
 
homer said:
We get the Penn & Teller show here in the UK . The one about Recycling struck a very bad chord here in the UK and I would guess nearly everywhere outside the USA . Everybody in the world seems to accept we have a problem except Bush and co and I was surprised to see such level headed folk like P & T falling for that wishful thinking .
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What did they get wrong exactly?
 
Anti_Hypeman said:
What did they get wrong exactly?
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Nothing wrong except to rubbish the whole thing . Now that's a political judgement , since most European Governments have implimented some form of recycling which P & T claimed was bul**** .
Now they could be wrong couldn't they ? Somebody must be .
 
Anti_Hypeman said:
What did they get wrong exactly?
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It wasn't so much that they got anything wrong as that they didn't tell the whole picture and they made people who recycle look like idiots.

They correctly pointed out that for most items (and they pointedly excluded aluminum), recycling costs more than making the materials from ores. This is probably true, but it ignores the long-term costs of using up resources. Plastics in particular use up very precious petrochemicals which, though still economic right now, may become very much less so in the near future. The longer we can stave off that "near future" the better. Washing and reusing plastic bottles, while costly, is likely to have long term benefits.

And they humiliated the couple just for wanting to do the right thing. That was just plain mean.

Also, as a geologist, I am aware that landfills have a significant degree of danger to the environment. Even well-constructed landfills can have failures which will contaminate ground water, and of course, many old landfills are not well constructed at all. Add to this the problem that many people do not use landfills at all, so making it worth the time to recycle, even if it is not cost effective from a manufacturing standpoint, can have a very positive effect on the amount of litter on the streets, requiring less expense for clean-up.

So I thought the show made some good points, but it was skewed by their rabid libertarianism which seems to imply that people should be able to do whatever they want.
 
Mobile-phone TV appears to be the next big thing for 2006 (allegedly). Does anyone know how you would set up such a thing? I remember Randis web-casts, could shuch a thing be done over mobile networks when the networks get the infrastructure in place?
 
Colloden said:
Mobile-phone TV appears to be the next big thing for 2006 (allegedly). Does anyone know how you would set up such a thing? I remember Randis web-casts, could shuch a thing be done over mobile networks when the networks get the infrastructure in place?
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There's already a service, MobiTV, that provides over two dozen channels of programming to cell phone customers of the biggest cell phone carriers (Sprint, Cingular and Orange just to name a few). MobiTV has channels such as MSNBC, TLC and Discovery which methinks would be a good target for a Randi show. They have contact info on their web site , but no direct information on how to get a show on a station. You may have to deal with the network eg. Discovery.
 
The thing about scepticism is you should always use your brain. Not only when watching woo's, but with everything - including P & T. I found their show about biblical literalism fairly poor too, even though I agree with their conclusion. There is a balance between entertainment and objectivity.

Perhaps the Challenge would make some excellent television show material. Many of the claims themselves should be good for a laugh. And then there's the whole proces of setting up a controlled protocol - very interesting to eliminate all the possible loopholes.
Scientists volunteers could introduce themselves and their work briefly, possibly generating some interest too. And with even a minor television budget it would be possible to test more outlandish claims as well.

I'm thinking about a combination of Jerry Springer-type guests and scientific scrutiny.
 
Penn & Teller show might have been on internet TV come to think of it . We have so much stuff on satellite I just thought that was where I had seen it .Sorry about that . If I'm right it would be available using winamp TV.
 
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