This program is sponsored by the Kavli Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Kavli Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity. I'm Alan Alda, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

For me as a psychologist, the fact that so many people believe in this stuff, well there's something there to be

explained. You know, it's either going to be the case that at least some of these

paranormal forces really do exist, as I don't think they do, but if they do, then that would be a huge scientific breakthrough.

You know, it's telling us something about the universe that we didn't realize.

But if they don't exist, then that's telling us something about the human mind and it's you know we

so we should study those experiences anyway to see what we can learn about the way the

mind works and about the way our mind can fool us. That's Chris French. He's what's called an

Anomalistic psychologist which means that he takes a skeptical but

open-minded view to the supernatural. He's done some clever and entertaining experiments to

investigate the commonly held belief that some events and experiences are just

not possible to explain. His new book is called, and yes this is the actual title, the science of

weird shit. This has got to be fun because you study something that I've always been interested in which is weird events

that don't seem to have a natural cause. They're somehow supernatural or paranormal and you really have done an amazing number of studies to figure this out and yet you yourself at one time

had a strong belief in the paranormal didn't you? I did yes and it's all well into early adulthood you know I mean I've gone through doing

a psychology degree I still believed in the paranormal and it wasn't until I read one

particular book called Paracology Science or Magic and it was the first skeptical treatment of all this stuff that I'd ever come across and it did make a lot of sense to me and so that's the moment that I became a skeptic.

I have to say that I was also caught up in it in my early 20s.

I could cast a horoscope using a sidearial ephemeris.

I'm impressed.

But after a calculating using the ephemerist to know

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