The Infinite Monkey Cage - Science vs The Supernatural: Does Science Kill the Magic?

Episode Date: July 5, 2011

Robin Ince and Brian Cox are joined on stage by actor and magician Andy Nyman, psychologist Richard Wiseman and neuroscientist Bruce Hood as they take on the paranormal. They'll be looking at some of the more popular claims of supernatural goings on, and asking whether a belief in ghosts, psychic abilities and other other-worldly phenomena, is just a bit of harmless fun, or whether there are more worrying implications in a belief in the paranormal.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. This is a download from the BBC. To find out more, visit bbc.co.uk slash radio4. Hello, he's Robin Ince. And he's Brian Cox. And this is Infinite Monkey Cage. Today, I'm going to test my psychic abilities with this audience here.

Now, did anyone in the audience know anyone who owned a hat? Yes. Excellent. So there we are. That's proved already that I have an uncanny ability to commune with the dead. Or at least make loose statements that are easily applicable to many different people. It's a gift.

We're actually going to be looking at science and the supernatural. We aim to list every paranormal phenomenon that has occurred throughout all of human history that cannot be explained by science. Good night. But why do at least three out of four living people have a belief in the supernatural? And that figure goes through the roof when you ask dead people. Thank you, Andy. That was more effective than I imagined. Much more. To help us flesh out the answer beyond the negative, we have a panel of experts or the nearest available equivalent.

Our first guest has spent the last year terrifying audiences in his hit play Ghost Stories. He's also fought zombies and lost in Charlie Brooker's Dead Set and devised tricks for Darren Brown. He's an all-rounder, well, I say all-rounder, all-rounder on a sphere made of zombies, Russian roulette and parapsychology. In fact, he's terrible at typing and not particularly impressive at volleyball. But nevertheless, it's Andy Nyman. Our next guest started as a young magician and remains obsessed by the nature of illusion and people's fascination with the paranormal. is a young magician and remains obsessed by the nature of illusion and people's fascination with the paranormal. As a psychologist and author, he has asked many important questions, like how can

we find happiness? Why does the human mind appear to trick itself? And is that a duck? It's Professor Richard Wiseman. And our final guest is a neuroscientist at the University of Bristol and author of Super Sense, Why We Believe in the Unbelievable. His next book will investigate if free will is an illusion. Why anyone would choose to write about that, Why We Believe in the Unbelievable. His next book will investigate if free will is an illusion. Why anyone would choose to write about that, I've got absolutely no idea. It's Professor Bruce Hood, and that's our panel! So all of you in some ways have a reasonable knowledge there of superstition. I want to start with you, Bruce.

What is it about the human that means so many people, in fact the majority of people, still seem to require a belief in the supernatural? I think it's really part and parcel of our makeup. I suppose there are two schools of thought, that they're either very gullible and believe stories which are passed on through culture, or, in my position, is that there is actually an inclination

in all of us to try and interpret events in the world. And in doing so sometimes we come up with explanations which resonate with beliefs and spirits and ghosts and all manner of things which scientifically are not viable andy in your play ghost stories you begin with a lecture a kind of a i suppose a history of the ghost story yeah and you point out there that it's something that's evolved over the centuries yeah that's what we recognize as the ghost story no well the first historically recorded ghost stories we found were in 600 a.d in pope gregory the great's dialogues and what happened to those was that was the first time really the church saw

something that they recognize as oh that's useful we, we can have that and make people feel that they should behave. Otherwise, the very notion of a spirit and an idea being written down was a powerful weapon to allow people to actually behave as they should, in inverted commas, behave. And then after the Reformation, when the Catholic Church sort of lost its power, what happened was the idea of the notion of a ghost story became a secular idea, where it was a way of being able to cope with tragedy

and being able to frame terrible things that happened in your life. So it meant then that those ghost stories that we tell each other could stop being something that was just tied to the church and could now become about real life. And, you know, oh, I saw that soldier that had been killed in da-da-da-da-da, whatever it was. So that was sort of the lineage, really, an early lineage of how the written ghost story came to evolve.

And Richard, so the ghost story, is that the most common cultural experience of the paranormal today? It's certainly one of the most common. So we did a survey recently, and one in four people experienced, said they'd experienced some ghost-like phenomena. And of those experiences, the most common one is what people refer to as the incubus, which is the demonic figure that comes in the middle of the night and sits on your chest, pins you down, makes you sexually aroused and scares you. At least that's what he does to me. I don't know about...

I now realise that I could be overgeneralising my own experiences and no one else. But for those of you listening on the radio, he did that purely with the look on his face. But no, the look on your face did not suggest that you were the victim. The look on his face. But no, the look on your face did not suggest that you were the victim. The look on your face suggested a man who occasionally dons a sheet and thinks, I'll go into that room. A man who's using psychology possibly for evil, yet again. Anyway, so the

incubus, which has been around a long time, basically takes very many different forms. So if you're into alien abduction, you think it's an alien that's sitting on your chest. And if you're into ghosts thenduction, you think it's an alien that's sitting on your chest. And if you're into ghosts, then it's a spirit rather than a demonic force like the incubus. So what's interesting about the experience

is you find it in pretty much every different culture throughout time. And there's a very good psychological explanation for it. I don't know what it is, but... LAUGHTER No, I do. It's that when we dream, we become paralysed, so we don't act out our dreams and injure ourselves. And as we drift from dream state into waking state,

some of the bizarre imagery comes across, and so does the notion of being paralysed. And you try and interpret that, you try and make sense of it, and you think, oh, my goodness, I'm paralysed, there must be somebody holding me down. Now, oh, my goodness, I see this evil spirit, that's what's happening there. And what's really interesting is that that experience

that can be terrifying for people if you buy into the idea of demonic forces or ghosts or aliens, once you explain the psychology, is actually not at all scary. And so it can help people to know the psychological explanation for it. So some people who've had this, people can actually kind of embrace the cure for it and will take on reason in this, because obviously the battle of reason against superstition is a difficult one. Absolutely. Same with hearing voices.

I mean, if you hear voices, you think it's the voice of God or the dead, that's scary. As soon as you know that our brain produces internal dialogue for all sorts of reasons, actually it's not so scary. So in that sense, being rational can help you. Saying that, there are genuine demonic forces out there. Which I imagine your next book will probably deal with. My next book, Genuine Demonic Forces.

See you in your room later, I'll be in the sheet. Absolutely. Bruce, Richard there has given an explanation for the, I suppose, the appearance of ghosts or the perception of ghosts in the space between wake and sleep. Is that the general explanation for these misfirings of the cognitive system? Yeah. People who are inclined towards these notions tend to see structure and order in otherwise ambiguous patterns. notions tend to see structure and order in otherwise ambiguous patterns. There have been experiments showing that they will see structure and patterns in what is effectively random noise. Why are we predisposed to do that? Well, I suppose it's really an evolutionary strategy is to assume the worst, which is possibly another agent or a predator in the bushes or somebody's about to beat

you over the head and steal your food or your mate and therefore you always trip wire to assume there's an agent out there to to do you in so it's a better strategy to assume there's something there rather than ignore it and is that the the basis of the success of ghost stories throughout the ages that we're pre-programmed to be to be scared because we also seem to enjoy it oh i think we absolutely love absolutely love ghost. I think, well, most people love the idea of being scared and love, there's a very, something absolutely life-affirming about going to a horror film or a play in the West End called Ghost Stories running until July

16th, perhaps. Duke of York Theatre. Duke of York Theatre, bless you for that. But yeah, there's absolutely, I'm sure, some sort of primitive drive within us that the choice to believe isn't always. Sometimes it's so near the surface. It's amazing. And a couple of years ago, there used to be a hilarious psychic hour on a London radio station.

And I was listening to it. And there was a woman on there who was a phone in. And she'd phoned into the psychic and said, this extraordinary thing happened happened i don't know that you're going to be able to explain this she said i live at home with my cats and uh not making it up but i felt like saying so at home with my cats i have a piano and i'd gone to bed and the piano was down and um i went to bed and i suddenly heard four or five notes playing on the piano. And I came back down and the thing was down and it couldn't have been the cats. So they had a sceptic on there as well. And the sceptic said to her, look, well, one of the interesting things is that pianos,

because it's a string instrument fundamentally in that they contract and expand in heat, and sometimes you'll find in changes of temperature that you will it sounds like notes are playing and she went and then the psychic said the other thing is that fairies play yes yes i think that's what's extraordinary is that the desire to believe it is so overwhelming that all logic flies out of the window to just grasp onto something magical. But to get back to your very good point about whether we enjoy being scared, I actually don't think we do. I think what's interesting about plays and about stories is we know they're not real.

You can explore the notion of the ghost in a relatively safe environment. But actually, when you do see a ghost, as it were, you are very scared, and that isn't quite such an enjoyable experience. And to me, it's the same as going on a rollercoaster, that you're being thrown around and it's all rather fun because you know it's safe. As a good practical joke, if you go on rollercoasters,

take on, like, a rusty bolt, and then... LAUGHTER Just as it's moving off, just you go on roller coasters, take on like a rusty bolt and then just as it's moving off, just palm it and take it out and then say to your friend, oh, is this supposed to come out? Because then they experience genuine fear. This is something that I find, because I was, as I imagine actually most of this panel today, we were all somewhere in their forties, brought up in a world of

unexplained magazine, Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. We were surrounded by ideas of ESP, Bigfoot, Loch Ness, spontaneous combustion, and yet none of us, as far as I know, here have clung on to those ideas, even though they would have been put into us when we were quite young but they're all gorgeous ideas though aren't they that's what makes them so seductive is they're all as you say all of those you just feel

god bigfoot don't you wish that was real the myth of it is so great and messy and i think that's really part of it is this it's almost like great advertising you know they're so perfect those ideas that they feel how could that not be real it's just brilliant and you almost want it to be did you have a moment andy where you just you know just the way the passion you talk about it now where you kind of you've reached a certain age and you went i don't think there is a big foot and i don't think i'm going to take the train to scotland because i don't think at the most it'll be a jumping otter i've never had that moment no no i've never had that moment. No, no, I've never had that moment. I still sort of, whilst I am deeply

sceptical and, you know, I have, I believe what I believe, but no, I mean, there's still that little tiny bit of me that wishes on the news tomorrow, they go, Bigfoot's been found, look, here it is! You'd think, God, that's brilliant. Watch Fox News. That would greatly increase that chance, I think.

See, that then interests me. Is there something, though, something in the wiring where... There are lots of things that I would love to believe in, but I just go, no, it can't be. And it's not just about reading, it's not just about education, because there's people I know who've read widely and still cling to beliefs that I wouldn't be able to make that leap. So is there something actually within us?

Well, there's a couple of things. I mean, first of all, we tend to believe what we would like to be true. Francis Bacon said that about rationality in general, that we prefer to believe what we would like, and that includes an afterlife. But yeah, I happen to think that there is a real difference between people who are very much inclined to sort of the woo, as we call it, because they do tend to score very similarly on measures of personality.

They're more creative. They're more of that kind of notion. I'm not suggesting that it's black and white, but there does seem to be a profile which fits with this kind of way of thinking. I know, Richard, actually you have an experiment you could do on the audience to try and seek out people of that persuasion. We could do that. We could do and seek out people of that persuasion uh we we could do that we could do a little test here of um essentially imagination uh so what everyone's your eyes he'll put a sheet on that's right i'll work through the group one by one uh so um yes everyone can try this and uh try this at home as well uh what you need to do is hold out your hand straight in front of you palm down so kind of superman flying pose. So both hands out, stretched out in front of you, palms down and level. It's

very important. Excellent. And now don't consciously move your hands, but all you need to do is close your eyes and listen to my voice. And just imagine a helium balloon, very light balloon, attached to a string and the end of that string attached to the fingers of your right hand. So your right hand being pulled up towards the ceiling, gently being tugged up by that helium balloon. Then there's the heavy books, another set of heavy books, attached to another string, attached to the fingers of your left hand. So your left hand being pulled down towards the floor,

your right hand being pulled up towards the ceiling. Just focus on my voice as you imagine that right hand being pulled up, left hand being pulled down. Don't consciously move your hands, but keep them exactly as they are. And now if you open your eyes... Excellent. That was amazing, Richard, because every single person in the audience did that. Very markedly, the difference in the hands, every single one of them.

Now, you were saying there's a reason this experiment's never been done on television. No, what you had there were around about 10% of the audience being highly suggestible, which means their hands, the right hand is higher than the left one. Most of you,

being a rational, sceptical, scientific audience, your hands were level. Some of you, I noticed, your hands were the other way round. And that's just odd. So what does that mean? Well, it's to do with suggestibility. So the people whose hands were markedly different, the bad news is you're very suggestible.

If you go to a hypnosis show, you'll probably end up on stage eating an onion naked. And the good news is you've got very good imaginations. The people whose hands were level, you're more down to earth, you're less likely to see ghosts and have these weird paranormal experiences, and you have rubbish imaginations and you're not at all creative. So that simple test is a way of getting at imagination and again does split between the believers and skeptics very well. I'd just like to add though, of course you can increase this or enhance this effect by just putting people in stressful situations uh for example if your plane starts to plummet at 35 000 feet you'll start to

become quite superstitious and ritualistic in your behavior um and of course just telling people they're in a situation where there's been a death in the house or that they're there's a loss of control and they start to become more ritualistic. They become more superstitious. So it's an inclination that can be swayed by context very easily. And is that in some sense when you're under pressure, you're stripping away parts of the rational mind in a sense? I think when you're under pressure, you're under stress.

And one thing that we don't like is to be stressed, and so we seek out control. And when we believe we have control either through our rituals or our processes of superstitious behaviors uh we feel we're controlling the situation that inoculates us against the worst excesses of stress i think that's that gets the root of it because i think that summarizes what's underneath the hold of the paranormal experiences that we don't like uncertainty and that we don't like uncertainty. And we really don't like uncertainty in stressful situations. And somebody comes along with a magical solution. And of course there's the desire to believe. If you've lost a loved one, and somebody comes along and says,

actually, you can still communicate with them, or you're not well, and somebody comes along and says, actually, you can have a psychic healing, then it's very human to go, my goodness, that would be wonderful. The problem here is there's no evidence to back up any of these things, so you end up believing things that aren't true and actively damaging yourself and others in the process. But I think it gets to the root of it, that we don't like uncertainty, particularly when we're stressed.

You mentioned psychic mediums there as well. Is there actually a use in terms of, do people say who've been to a psychic medium event, have they gained something? Is there some good that they've gained out of that experience? Well, of course, this is where the controversy really starts to reign in. Yes, they may feel that they've gained something, but they've also lost a lot as well, which is usually financial. And some people would argue that know we shouldn't be supporting these belief systems which potentially can have negative outcomes and i'm sure andy and richard have both

had this sort of experience it's not to me it isn't really about does the person who's receiving the reading gain anything if the person giving the reading is a what is known in the trade as a shut-eye someone who believes what they're giving, then to me, whether they believe it or not, at least it's sort of given in good intention. As opposed to the coldness of the taking money for this, the scam of that from a person known as an open-eye who's a fraudulent one, that to me, I just cannot get my head around how people can operate on that level. a fraudulent one that to me i just i cannot get my head around how people can operate on that level and it is very uh difficult often to uh attach the appropriate weight to coincidence isn't it which lies at the heart of many of these belief systems i suppose with psychics the ones that really believe they're psychics they will always say something that's close to something someone in an audience has experienced well that's it i mean it's just that you know we're opening up a whole other area now which is is the fact that we all

believe we're so different whereas actually the reality is we are all fundamentally exactly the same animals be that living here or living in southern states of america wherever it is so if you make a random open statement here it's going to apply to x amount of people here as it will do there and as long as it's of a personal level you feel that's touched me how could you know that i i think that the the notion that we're more predictable than we think is is crucial to the the success of of mediums and and so when we we all think you know if you take a very general statement um you know you're an above average driver in terms of safety. About 90% of people go, yes, I'm an above-average driver.

You can go into hospital wards where people are in there because of accidents that they themselves have caused whilst driving. It's still 90% of them think they're an above-average driver. 95% of us think we have an above-average sense of humor. There's very few people that go, no, I just don't get it. So we're more predictable we think and so psychics come out with these relatively general things like you have a lot of untapped creative potential and we all go yes my goodness how insightful that that's true um and and so we don't realize that that we are quite predictable and that people can use that

and then to allegedly tell things about us and they they know nothing at all so in terms of what people gain when they go to a medium or psychic i think they gain a greater belief in something that isn't true uh and that's pretty much it they might get some sense of comfort but it's not going to be a long-term sense of comfort um counseling mainstream counseling is about giving you the tools to solve this problem and future problems so you don't have to keep on coming back to the counselor the psychic just gives you the solution and you become reliant on them. That's very, very difficult. There's also something we're beginning...

I'm so sorry, we're just beginning to sort of see again and again, which is this notion of a sort of quick fix as well, isn't it? There's an ease to these solutions as opposed to actually working for a solution. Is there a sense in which the belief in the paranormal appears to be growing. It certainly feels that way. I know that you work, Andy, with Darren Brown a lot now.

I know that he's absolutely careful to say these are tricks. However, many, many millions of people watch the shows. So is there a sense in which the belief is growing in our scientific age that it's just not been suppressed at all. There's an interesting thing. I wrote and directed Darren's stuff for 10 years, and the interesting thing about the Darren product, you know, as an idea,

was that the NLP gurus said, this is the greatest, even though, you know, Darren stands there and says this is magic, conjuring, science, hypnosis, whatever. The NLP brigade said, this is the greatest form of NLP we've ever seen. The psychics said, well, you can dismiss it, but you clearly have a gift. And the magicians all said, this is fantastic magic,

I've never seen it, you know. So everybody kind of embraced the bits that they wanted to see. But Richard and I worked together years ago. We did a seance. We did, and there we were staging years ago we did a seance we we did and and there we were staging a theatrical uh reconstruction of a seance and then we told people that's what it was but still it was pretty terrifying for people because once you're sitting in the darkness holding hands with a stranger um it can be very scary and then you start to think yeah but but But to answer... There's a subtext to your work, isn't there? There is.

I always remove the word sub. Yeah, at this point, yeah. It's the... No, let's not go there. So the... Anyway, so to answer your question about belief in the paranormal, it doesn't actually seem to be on the rise. But it's always pretty high. It's around about a third of people claim to have experienced

any of these weird things, ASP, telepathy, ghosts, and so on. And that's stayed pretty stable. You see it bumping up and down a little bit. And that suggests to me at least there's something there which is keeping that thing stable. And when you get all the sort of paranormal programming piling in and saying all this stuff is true, it goes up. And when you get more scepticism on TV, it goes down down a little bit but it's pretty much bumbling along there for the

last sort of 50 years or so as opposed to bring this discussion to a close there's a sense in which uh we've sat here and we've tried to understand this phenomena that isn't there and we've had this clear uh view which we would have because it's an infinite monkey cage, a bastion of rational thoughts. Is there any harm in it? I mean, because does it matter? Does it matter if, as you said, a third of the population believe in the paranormal? Many people have had paranormal experiences. Are we supposed to be trying to cure them in a medical sense? I think you just have to be on your guard. It's the consequences of these beliefs is what we should be paying attention to. People who have these beliefs can be kind of generally kind of's the consequences of these beliefs is what we should be paying attention to. People who have these beliefs can be kind of generally

kind of kooky types of people. And, you know, creativity, a lot of the artists, a lot of musicians, a lot of very creative people have all these kind of ways of thinking about the world. I don't want to dissuade them from those kind of beliefs,

but if they start to impact on their health and the health of others and the well-being of others, then clearly they've got to be stopped. I think it's enormously important because people go to psychics and you wouldn't turn up to buy a second-hand car knowing nothing about cars at all. You'd know you'd get ripped off.

So you'd either learn or you'd take somebody with you. Yet people go to a psychic. They're not informed consumers. They say, here's the problem. They're there because they have a serious problem, financial or relationship or health or whatever. And then the psychic does something which appears to be amazing and then the person follows that advice and you're sitting opposite somebody who's got no counselling qualifications because anyone can set themselves up as a psychic and still

that people are sitting there taking the advice so I think there really is a problem is a huge industry in this country and yet people have no idea what they're up against. Yes, these plays about ghost stories and things make a fortune. If only that were true. By the way, I found the most interesting thing about this panel is having people who are all based in psychology, I really expected some subtle advertising for everything you were doing. And finding out that the simplest form is just to mention your book or take a good closing date, it is...

What a relief to find out all those courses I've been on were a waste of time. I haven't mentioned mine. Oh, that's what you say. But if we replay this tape now, if we take every second syllable, you will find quirk, odd, look, gee. So there we are. What's going to happen to everyone listening?

If you play this backwards, you'll hear a voice saying, Richard Wiseman, 799, Amazon. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Richard Wiseman, 799 Amazon. ISBN 3. See, now you've got... Because we were talking about this afternoon, you decided that ghosts definitely didn't exist,

which is unusual for you, because normally you kind of err at the side of caution. But you had a specific argument if anyone says it goes from the perspective of physics why it's ridiculous not just generally from from the why the the laws of physics mean that ghosts are far less likely we might have thought well i think they're perpetual motion machines i mean they violate the laws of thermodynamics as far as i can. I mean, we process information by eating food and there's an energy source and a temperature difference

and that's the way that our brain works. And once you turn that off, I don't understand how... The reason I don't understand it, by the way, is because it's rubbish. I don't know why I'm... I don't know why I'm explaining it. But they are essential. Nevertheless, your scientific mind couldn't go, which just seems absolutely ridiculous,

there'd be a kind of see-through-y version of you that would drift around and go, and not only that, the laws of thermodynamics, which are acceptable for some zombies, but not those who've actually lost their stomach lining... Yeah. Yeah. So we asked the audience what was their most ridiculous paranormal experience and here are some of the answers.

This is from Martin. Having a medium explain to me how his wireless modem was possessed and needed an exorcism. My cat died. My dad could still hear it purring. It turned out to be the boiler. Hang on, was that the boiler that killed the cat? My hamster made a crop circle in its bedding.

That was from G Host. My daughter told us one night the house mooed. There's one here. Seeing Albert Einstein sitting in my seat the night before my final physics exam. Changed her. Oh. There was a slight, oh, of plausibility there

that I didn't like from the audience. Well, hopefully now that is everything explained about ghosts, but we should still end on a warning. Though we may have at times appeared frivolous in this show, please do not attempt to summon the dead or mess with the dark arts as they frequently stain. And if any of the issues in this show

have affected you, then... Oh, don't be so silly. Thank you to our panel, Andy Nyman, Richard Wiseman and Bruce Hood. That's the end of this series. We'll be back in November. Until then... Stay rational! They wanted us to be a bit more rational. Brian, do you really think we're going to come back in November?

I don't know. I'll have a look at the tarot cards. That doesn't look very good. Robin, it's dark in here with the lights out. Of course it's dark, Brian. My plan has worked. You believe in science. And now you are mine! Ha ha ha ha! If you've enjoyed this programme, you might like to try other Radio 4 podcasts,

including Start the Week, lively discussions chaired by Andrew Marr, and a weekly highlight from Radio 4's evening arts programme, Front Row. To find out more, visit bbc.co.uk slash radio4. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are travelling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. you