TEDTalks has devolved into a reality show of eager self-publicizing, self aggrandizing idea generation. ROKU has a TED channel and I used to cruise through it as I had seen and quoted some great TEDTalks. After awhile it just got tedious as there was no good way for me to preview them and my time was better spent elsewhere like The Edge where the organization of the question, ideas, speakers, and position statements allowed better access.

Now TED has been bashed for censorship. Today is Friday, I am often burned out on writing after the week and the day is too intense for me to fit in a writing binge. Today is no different. Vaccinations for a child in the morning, an electrical inspection midmorning, and a long list of weekly chores I can’t possibly finish by night.

Yet, I find myself awake way too early deeply annoyed at  Deepak Chopra’s post in HP whining that science isn’t being served, TED censorship is real, and that militant atheists are unwarrantedly attacking god and miracles called external consciousness and physical anomalies. Cruising through a search of TED censorship, I see many entries castigating TED as if they have never posted or removed idiot talks before. Oh wait, there was that one guy last year who had really bad data supporting the correct idea that the rich don’t create jobs. Good idea, bad data–too bad.

Hmm, TED does not represent itself as the science community. It is entertainment meant to showcase ideas they wish to publish. Like the New Yorker, Discover, or any other rag, electronic or not, editors can choose what they publish. It is in no way meant to be an airing of all ideas regardless. By definition it can’t be censorship. If it were then by that standard we can say Depaak censors as well because he doesn’t promote science without god in his books. I suppose we could bandy about self censoring as a concept but no one is using that term. Critics act like there is a third party organization limiting TED’s discussion in science.

The real issue is as usual money and status. TED has gotten famous and cool enough, or had, that being on was a great perk to one’s reputation. It was a jazzy selfpromoting showcase that was free, other than membership should you choose to join. But:

Graham Hancock had publicly expressed his frustration in being censored by the people who run the TED conferences.  Another well known researcher, Rupert Sheldrake was censored in the same manner.  Days later we discovered that entrepreneur Eddie Huang had similar experiences with TED, and even compared their organization to a cult.

TED is clear even in its title, “Ideas worth spreading” that it intends to be selective. Its Terms of use states:

By inviting you to participate in TEDTalk comments and TED Conversations, we are seeking to build a mature online community centered around ideas that matter. Please be aware, when participating, that we will remove:

• content promoting pseudo-science, conspiracy theories, zealotry, proselytizing, self-promotion, product-hawking, and new-age fluff
• content written in txtspeak, all-caps, or otherwise lazy grammar
• content posted by members using joke names or non-names
• disrespectful, distasteful, unconstructive, or illegal content

“New age fluff” is indicative of their publishing measure.

I don’t think anyone would contest that god as external consciousness belongs to the New Age movement which has long been defined within pseudoscience. That there are many other stupid talks in TED doesn’t mean they should allow any or all of them. Do we need to debunk Uri Gellar and telekinesis yet again?

Damn, I remember years ago being pestered to read the Carlos Castenada books, the Bermuda Triangle books, and the Van Daniken “aliens came to earth” books. How much time did I lose having to analyze these works so I had the intellectual fodder needed to combat pop science forced on me by a fanatical group of people who wished for there to be aliens creating Mayan civilization–how cool would that be? What a great explanation for the seeming appearance of gods. Who doesn’t get that hallucinations expand consciousness? Who hasn’t wondered if Earth was seeded with life?

That one of the TEDTalks encourages the study of psychotropics, something with which I totally agree, seems great as the law idiotically blocks that research (not science by the way but conservative politics). To connect that to the belief that they expand consciousness where consciousness is god and to use that to show that miracles occur is nothing but adding god to science. It’s like those big bills in congress with all the little add ons that have nothing to do with the bill but pander to lobbying.

If our incredulous reaction is militant atheism then Deepak and his ilk are militant pseudoscientists in publicly promoting their ideas in a forum that has by definition excluded them because they are not promoting science but hanging on to theology by merging bronze age mythology with modern physics and biology–nay, even totemism, and prototheology with quantum physics. Entanglement is god! This pantheism is no kind of recognizable or realizable god whatsoever. Certainly not the anthropomorphic entities and attributes then assigned to it. Fine, make a misnomer of natural laws as god but don’t assign them human or animal qualities. Indeed if there isn’t evidence that can be evaluated then it’s utterly solipsistic mysticism; if there is evidence then it is by their own definition within science and can be studied. What is mystical cannot be discussed because it is a dimension so out of reach we don’t even know it exists as it shows no sign of its existence.

This is egostical and arrogant fetishism. Haven’t we spent long enough trying to make the world better by discerning subnaturalism from naturalism? If myths worked I’d be the first to join. Oh, wait, like Susan Blackmore I did explore them and found them incredibly wanting on all levels but mental masturbation and false comfort that took me away from real solutions.

Scientists studied maggots when they looked to how they help in wound infection. Scientists studied bloodletting and leeches as medicine. Both, again, long after they were originally discredited. There are plenty of far out things that are looked at. Indeed, a recent criticism of science by a pubcon was they were spending millions looking at worms. Turns out they are Guinea worms a bane to humans which if eradicated would relieve tremendous suffering.

That so many criticize TED reveals the depth of the New Nones, the spiritual ones, those that can’t leave their mythology and yet can’t go to antiquated institutes called churches. Pagans often do the same. It’s not that Carlos Castaneda was wrong it’s that he was right conceptually, hallucinations can provide insight, but his story was fabricated but it could have been real, true. No, these guys are charlatans like Tony Robbins who at a moment of deep depression and pennilessness decided he needed to make a mark on the world and get some cash. The best way to do it was to sell something that was tasty but unprovable. Fire walking is a miracle of intent. Mind over matter. Brilliant marketing! Bullshit made monetary.

When I was 9 I got a crystal radio. I took it out to the farm where we were celebrating a holiday and removed myself to put it together. I was amazed that so few parts could transmit radio. A crystal, a coil, a few bits of metal and yet so much information. Like many think, it seemed like magic. Just as our bodies are mostly water, and solids are mostly space. So much magic! The brain is not a crystal and consciousness is not a frequency. That so many stories took on vibrating crystals as signifying consciousness shows how deep our phantasms can be and how much we use symbol not only as representation but as reality itself. Hell, Hegel’s entire philosophy is devoid of a material world–it’s all idea. Schopenhauer said the world was nor more than will and idea. Yeah, until you trip on the banana peel. Air theology versus earth theology. It’s great to be dreamy and go up to the mountain but who stays and home and helps mom raise the kids or helps the poor and disenfranchised succeed?

This disconnect between mind and body ensure the continuation of heuristic biases made material. They aren’t biases because they are perceived as real. Deconstructionism showed that if you act on an idea as if it were real then in a functional way living in the world it is real. However, at some point if you want to catch fish or grow corn you had better come to Earth. It’s a beautiful place.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

NLP, founded in the 70′s as a New Age type therapy has been employed in Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT) including the ever-popular EST, Scientology, Tony Robbins, and Landmark. Like most New Age type therapies it has a ring of science to it by using technical terms and like most pseudoscience it has some sort of seemingly reasonable scientific explanation for its working. Hey, it mimics science talk, it must be science.

NLP bastardizes scientific principles and terms to mean other than how they are defined or are misapplied. NLP does not work on the neural level, has nothing to do with its claimed base of Chomsky’s transformational grammar, and does not program the brain like a computer with language as the code. Yet, of course, all brains have neural networks, grammar does communicate, and language does create action in others.

Proponents like a priest-class insist that they are pragmatic. “it works,” assure that proper training is key, and state there is so much more to it than the NLP part of it. Yes, indeed, a sense of feel-good that one is doing something, a large expense to ensure loyalty, and quick, temporary results for near any problem only possible through faith rather than legitimate therapy. A hit-and-run therapy result can be obtained in a weekend and failing that you can sign up for the next seminar which really is the best one. I know. My family took a ton of them and I studied it like crazy to understand it. It’s faith healing disguised as science.

Problems that took years to form, are based in genetics and personality. They involve organic issues of the brain that don’t change overnight and don’t change at all if alleviated only by emotional and social support.

Research after research (sources shown below) has consistently shown NLP to be an ineffective remedy and as one would expect of a faith that is not based in evidence causes its proponents to insist more loudly that it works. One thinks of Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize Winner, who insisted that Vitamin C cures the common cold, and when it didn’t show to be true, insisted more vehemently that people weren’t taking high enough doses. Finally, when people were taking handfuls of Vitamin C, enough to burn vast holes in their stomach, he insisted it wasn’t the right kind of Vitamin C. Finally, when every form of Vitamin C had been tried including near-exclusive diets of citrus and other high-C foods, Linus had died by now, and the cold was not cured the excuse was the research was off because of no money in it–avoiding the obvious potential profits of the Vitamin and specialty food markets that claimed the cure was now based on other nutrients combined with C–and hey, Acai cures cancer too. This is how deep confirmation bias runs. The intellectual desperation to insist that one couldn’t have been so wrong can infect any of us. We see that saving face, preserving ego, maintaining status of competency prevails over near any kind of worldly evidence.

NLP states that studying body language allows people to learn the style of communication of the interlocutors; they insist that some people divide themselves in hearing, smelling, touching, talking, and visualizing. That effective communication requires knowing the sensory language of that person. For example, supposedly crossing your arms in front of you means you are defensive, splaying your legs out and holding your arms open means you are receptive. A good communicator will use these motions to communicate better. The problem is this has to be an agreed upon language. In this country the thumbs up is positive, in much of the rest of the world it is derogatory. Since there is no agreed upon grammar of body language clearly defined as in German versus Latin there is tremendous pointless cross-communication. It is as if as an American you met a German and began imitating the sound of German; unless you know German you are being more confusing not less. Since there is no universal macro-body language and since facial expression do have a broad similarity (most cultures smile, frown, and show terror the same way) it seems like a thumbs up should be universal when it is not. Looking one in the eye and then glancing away doesn’t invariably mean you disagree. Lie detection by humans based on body language has no conclusive evidence; even MRIs aren’t sufficiently accurate.

NLP took the term transformational grammar to mean that grammar can transform thinking and feeling by using a deep level of universal grammar. NLP folks took Chomsky’s deep and surface level definitions to mean that in using language they could speak to everyone without concern of the overt structure of the grammar. This concept was so misused that Chomsky himself abandoned it for the division of phonetic versus logic structure. His point along with others is that in our mind there is an innate structure for learning a language, any language, and as such a baby learns the idiosyncrasies of the language of its culture; his research was extremely important to counter the idiocy of behaviorists like Skinner and empiricists like Locke who insisted that the mind was a Tabula Rasa, a blank slate, empty, in which any and all could be programmed. NLP insisted that one could speak deeply with the inner grammar directly as if able to avoid the phonetic or surface attachments. A Tabula Rosa is impossible; there must be a structure that is conducive to the conscious artifacts experienced; the physiology of the body creates the boundaries of possible expressions.

It sounds great to people who claim intuition as a primary source of information but intuitionists have shown again and again that they discount the many conscious efforts they made to train themselves. Oddly a hunter who claims they have to have step-by-step instructions to learn something can then turn around and say they shoot intuitively, point and shoot, ignoring they learned by a highly repetitive style of shooting over and over again as the mind made slight adjustments following a step-by-step process of improvement. Self consciousness of the process is the difference and not the process.

NLP also incorporates the like attracts like idea of affective language.To a temporary degree being around a sad person brings you down. Being around a person who cusses encourages cussing. It ignores that each of us has an organic basis for our behavior that is difficult to change. A mildly depressed person can pick themselves up by doing something fun, energizing, social, or distracting but like a drug trip, they eventually come down and return to their set point. Some activities done consistently over time will change the brain as mental exercises like meditation, contemplation, and focusing but these take time and like a body builder requires fairly specific methods and a consistent routine for success, and may need to be done for life.

The heuristic bias of anchoring confirms the perceived success. If you buy a red car, you see a lot more red cars. If you are around successful people you see more successful people elsewhere. This is a perceived and affective bias. It makes you feel successful but you are not going to be more successful. It may actually hinder your success as it is seems enough to be around successful people rather than taking the steps necessary to be successful. It also means you have to keep taking those expensive seminars to feel effective. You would be better taking the antidepressants and retraining yourself in a career that is currently valued.

The “it works” bias of NLP involves the cause of success. Like the homeopathist that says it worked NLP works often because people do it when at the end of their personal methods towards success; the sick person usually heals rather than dies. They were on the verge of succeeding anyway because they have already passed much of a statistical average of time it takes to become successful. Converts employ this the most: “I had tried for months, years, and failed, but after this seminar it happened.” It seems like since they had failed for so long it would take a near miracle for it to happen when they were already on the verge of success. Combining that with the feel good ebullience of socializing and paying attention to one’s self creates a potent mix of faith in fallacy.

Here are sources:

Sue Knight, NLP-No Longer Plausible

Thirty-Five Years of Research on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP Research Data Base. State of the Art or Pseudoscientific Decoration?

NLP-Skeptic Dictionary

Neurolinguistic programming and other nonsense

NLP–No Longer Plausible

Jim newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

With all the crap in the news this last year of near death experiences (including a Newsweek cover) proving a godly other-world it is a pleasant change to see a book that discusses near death as post death consciousness and why the body reacts the way it does. These experiences will be discovered to have material sources similar to the out-of-body experiences many people have–my first wife had them often and fondly so. They can be triggered by specific brain stimulus. In Sam Parnia’s “Erasing Death, the Science that is Erasing the Boundaries between Life and Death:”

Because we have never had a science for studying death, we have never had an objective method to go beyond the threshold of death and study what happens both biologically and from a mental and cognitive perspective. In the past, everything that we have dealt with has basically been hearsay and people’s own beliefs. But recent scientific advances have produced a seismic shift in our understanding of death. This has challenged our perceptions of death as being absolutely implacable and final. And so now many of our strongest-held views regarding death are outdated. In fact, where death is concerned, two major revolutions have already begun — one of accomplishment, and another of understanding. In short, medical science is rendering previously unthinkable outcomes entirely plausible. We may soon be rescuing people from death’s clutches many more hours — or even longer — after they have actually died.

Having been close to death on numerous occasions from climbing, driving, drowning, skiing, heat, cold, ether, and other situations where I have been either close to permanent unconsciousness or had  temporary unconsciousness I can vouch for the complexity of defining death as perceived; it is rarely the clean act of going under as in an operation where the anesthetic makes an immediate exit and reentry (contrast that to the old use of Ether); the diversity of death. Please do not comment on whether I am a risk taker or just busy in the world.

Contrary to common perception, brain and other cells in the body can live for many hours after a person dies. There are different estimates on how long cells can survive without a blood supply and oxygen after death: bone cells for four days, skin cells for 24 hours. Although the oxygen and energy supply to brain cells is depleted within four to five minutes, brain cells remain viable but non-functioning for up to eight hours. Therefore, if cooling process and post-resuscitation care is done correctly, the patient can come back to life without brain damage. Cooling and optimal post-resuscitation care is one of the dividing points between those who suffer brain damage after cardiac arrest and those who don’t. If cooled, all those cells that were deprived of oxygen can again return to normal. Brain death, the other term commonly used to define death, is thus simply a state of irreversible and irretrievable brain damage either after someone dies due to circulatory arrest — when the heart stops beating (which is how we have always considered death) — or due to some other process that causes brain damage (while largely sparing the other organs) such as occurs with a massive head injury.

The desire to attribute this to the supernatural can best be seen as a confirmation bias akin to not understanding how complexity can be just so complicated and attributing that to unworldly design. As well as that feeling of post-agonizing positivity being the warmth of cosmic embrace.

As an unintended consequence of developing these new lifesaving measures, science is also expanding our knowledge of death. By finding new means to save lives, we are also inadvertently finding new ways to investigate and answer fundamental questions about what happens to human consciousness, to what we might call the mind, the “self,” or even the “soul,” during and after death — questions that, until recently, were considered subjects better suited to theology, philosophy or maybe even science fiction.

Aaah, science is taking the mystery out of death. Wasn’t that the point of science to understand, know, and take the mystery out of death? Yes, but for many removing the mystery involves an exchange of what was accepted comfort for something that just seems…too material and weird. Death used to be so clean. Even for scientists. A  brainwave. A heartbeat. Being conscious. These questions were fun to ask even for scientists and answers, often reductive, are unpleasant for those who actually like to wonder in some nebulous way what id death, what does death mean? It will be an interesting change when the brunt of human research effort is not in learning about the world but in passing it on.

Fear of mortality or more importantly the quest for immortality as an extension of not just ego but certainty of continuation enforces a kind of identity confirmation bias. That we are actually conscious of so little exacerbates the feelings of helplessness and the drive for certainty, as long as the answers are the right ones.

In view of the rapidly evolving progress in the field of resuscitation science and the ever-expanding gray-zone period after death, I believe it is important to include what we would refer to as human consciousness, psyche or soul in future definitions and considerations regarding death. It would also perhaps be wise to concentrate some of our future research efforts on understanding the state of human consciousness after death has started, since the evidence currently suggests that it is not lost immediately after death but continues to exist for at least some time afterward.

Unfortunately, these experiences of people presumed dead who still state they were conscious, as in a coma, create all kinds of legal dilemmas of resuscitation, continued care, euthanasia, and insurance. Religiously, it’s not over until it’s over and that is supposed to be a clean break as in the opposite of ensoulment or desoulment. Catholics and other monotheists have had a much easier time pointing to the act of conception as being the beginning event. Some medievalists and early moderns delayed ensoulment to allow some kind of abortion or when a person should actually be baptized or not. Thomas Aquinas claimed it occurred at 40 or 80 days and one wonders how would one know and was that at midnight?

While we don’t have all the answers, we do know that the once-held philosophical idea that there is no way back after death is not accurate and that there is a significant period of time after death in which death is fully reversible. The goalposts have moved, and we don’t know where the science will take us. But exploring this in its totality opens up an unchartered frontier that affects us all.

Clearly, many premonotheistic societies had beliefs of the ability to go and come back as experienced in life’s deadly events. Often they become allegories of value and moral tales such as Orpheus, who could cheat death by his music. He attempts to reclaim his wife Eurydice from Hades but foolishly looks back at her as he is coming up, against advice, and she must return–avoid passion, follow authority, you can’t cheat death.

On many levels understanding death is a loss for free will in people. Why do a rain dance or pray for life when you know the clouds just aren’t coming your way or this disease is damned near incurable or takes this long to get over? As we gain more knowledge we will have to find other ways of spending our time.

Religion controls behavior through defining the purpose, act, and end of death. If we take the mystery out of death we will be more free and more able to stay alive. Maybe we will even some day not be so afraid of death. Removing this passion would go a long ways to making people desire to do well in this world not because of an other-worldly reward but simply because it is the right thing to do. It makes this world a better place which was the point wasn’t it?

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Daniel Baldwin as Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy

I sat down to write about Christmas With a Capital C, the anti-atheist Christmas movie from a bazillion years ago, but I didn’t get through 10 minutes of the movie before I turned it off. It wasn’t because of the politics. It wasn’t because of the bad acting or script (but surprisingly high production values). It was because of poor Daniel Baldwin. He spends the entire movie DESPERATELY trying to be his brother, Alec Baldwin. Specifically, Alec Baldwin’s character Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock. But without the jokes. Or the charm. Or the chin.

It would be like watching one of Steven Colbert’s siblings do an impression of the Colbert Report for Christian Broadcasting Network. After the initial laugh, you realize this guy is only getting work because he looks like his brother’s famous character. His whole life is completely overshadowed by his brothers work. It’s just depressing. I can’t watch.

Instead, I thought I’d talk a little bit about the Mayan Apocalypse, Native American Shamanism and cultural appropriation. There’s a really great short film called “White Shamans, Plastic Medicine Men” done by a Native American tribe in the 1990′s. It’s not strictly debunkery, but the documentary goes into why white “shamans” are full of crap. I’ll give you a minute to watch a bit.

White Shamans Plastic Medicine Men

Traditional Mongolia and Padme. They copied it down to the dots on the face.

A LOT of “woo” borrow symbols and ceremonies from other cultures. From “Asian” medicine to “African” voodoo. They think it lends legitimacy to their woo. (Sort of like how having the discount Baldwin might lend legitimacy to your movie) Often, the woo practitioners will turn around and pretend that their Frankenstein woo is exactly the same as the symbols and ceremonies from the other culture. (Sort of like how the discount Baldwin is only worth something if he pretends to be the famous, sexy Baldwin) This is called “cultural appropriation.” That’s when you cherry-pick the things you like from another culture, suck them dry of their original meaning, and take the remaining husks for your own use. Is it bad? Not always. After all, cultural appropriation from Mongolia is where we got Princess Amadala’s costumes in Star Wars Episode 1. And it won awards.

Maybe that’s a bad example.

Anyway, it puts me in mind of the Mayan Apocalypse hype. Everyone and their mother was posting something or other mocking those silly ancient Mayans. Because IF THE MAYANS WERE SO PSYCHIC THEN WHY DIDN’T THEY PREDICT THE SPANISH INQUISITON (har-har). But Mayans are still alive and kicking. Those Mayans are kinda pissed that the rest of the world is mocking them over doomsday fanaticism that has nothing to do with the real Mayan calendar was basically created by Coast to Coast AM and this jerk. Take a gander at his amazon page. Notice anything… shaman-y?

Did you know that the Guatemalan government used the day to promote tourism and hired a bunch of non-Mayan models to perform sham rituals at the Mayan temple? Cultural appropriation is for everyone!

Anyway, my point here is that sometimes we’re barking up the wrong tree. The Mayan Apocalypse wasn’t Mayan at all. It was 100% New Age babbling. If we’d picked apart Coast to Coast AM for promoting vaguely racist theories about the end of the world (the theories basically boil down to: I took a lot of drugs and realized dark-skinned people were too primitive to have built the pyramids – it must have been aliens/quantum consciousness! And the drugs said they’re trying to warn us!), we’d had saved a HUGE amount of trouble.

But hindsight is 20/20. Give the documentary a watch. It’s good stuff.

Today we’re looking at PT Barnum and his book Humbugs of the World. After all, there’s no one who knows a sham better than a professional sham salesman. “Humbug” as you probably know, is an old world for “bullshit” or “flim-flam” but PT Barnum generously defines humbug as mere…. exaggerations of the truth. And as long as people were getting their money’s worth, humbug here and there isn’t a problem. Whatever you say, PT.

Humbugs came out in 1865, following the huge success of Barnum’s autobiography. Humbugs did pretty well too, and you can probably find really beautiful copies of both books in your local used book store – but it’s public domain and free on Kindle. If you want to see a really beautiful copy, CFI Amherst has a lovely leather copy in their library with gold lettering on the cover and gold on the edge of the pages.

At times, Humbugs reads like PT Barnum is simply defending his own humbuggery by pointing at people who are bigger liars than he is. And hey, the guy has a reputation to keep. But that all fades away when he talks about spiritualists and mediums. Barnum never hired a single one and he has nine chapters full of venom and scorn for the lot of them. If you’re into the history of spiritualists, this is worth picking up just for those chapters alone.

Otherwise, the book gives us a nice overview of the scams and psudoscience of the day, like the “Golden Pigeons of California”, the weird and wonderful moon hoax (the one with the demons having a party on the moon), witch hunts, Monsignore Cristoforo Rischio (a “model for our quack doctors”), blood purification pills, and the list goes on and on. The chapters on financial scams are tailor made for Skeptic money readers, with lottery humbugs, Tuipomania, the largely fictional (but very profitable) New-York and Rangoon Petroleum Company , and page after page of money swindles. The book is mostly anecdotes and feels like a friendly conversation with Barnum. It’s also pretty sarcastic and light-hearted, so it’s very readable, despite the 150+ years of language difference.

There is some serious historical culture shock. He has two chapters devoted to avoiding food and alcohol-related scams; for example, watering down alcohol to “homeopathic” doses. Barnums words, not mine. It took me a minute to remember that these were the days before FDA and basic food regulations. I’ve never felt so grateful for modern food regulations in all my life. I’ll let you read them for yourself, but it’s all very scary. It’s for the germaphobe. The chapters on quack medicines are even scarier with magic sand, rampant placebo use at doctor’s offices, and hashish candy. It’s a wonder anyone was able to survive a doctors visit at all.

Other chapters left me really disliking Barnum. The 1800′s were a bit racist. Ok, they were really racist. And boy-howdy is Barnum right in step with his era. The chapter on the Miscegenation pamphlet is flat-out unpleasant. I get that he had to sell copies of the book to all parts of the US (I’m looking at you, post-civil-war-south) but I took very long breaks from that chapter. It ended up being worth reading for the history of the word “Miscegenation”, but I feel like that information could also be learned from Wikipedia without reading about Barnums disgust with racial mixing. His chapters on religious humbug is where he can really loose me. He’ll start waxing on and on about pagan cultures on distant lands or ancient heathens and my eyes glaze over. On the upside, he does move onto “ordeals”; traditional christian “trials” that would determine your innocence if you survived drowning, poisoning, burning, etc. Apparently these were still practiced during his time.

Overall, it’s a fun read and many of the lesser scams in the book aren’t available to research on the internet. If you’re into history in general or if you feel like you’ve simply run out of new ways to be shocked by scam artists, well,  you’re only gunna find this stuff here and Barnum is awesome. Go check it out.

Humbugs of the World is public domain and is available on Project Gutenberg for free, and currently is free in the Kindle bookstore.

The audio recording is free at the Internet Archive, and was recorded by volunteers at Librivox.org