Show 443: How to Think about Weird Things?

Ted Schick on How to Think about Weird Things?

Audio here!

Your neighbor says she had a dream where her friend died, a friend she hasn’t seen in 30 years, and that she woke up to discover her friend had really died recently. Is she psychic?

Your friend was out stargazing when he saw strange lights in the sky, lights that seemed to move too fast to be airplanes. Are we being visited by advanced beings from another world?

A woman at work claims that she used to be someone else in her previous life, and she can speak in uncanny detail about her former life, sometimes even taking on a different accent or entirely different language. Has she proven reincarnation? And if not, how can these incredible claims be explained?

Even if you dismiss these stories as nonsense, it’s natural to wonder why people keep claiming them with such certainty and such frequency. It turns out that many of these weird things can be easily explained by science and logic – if one knows how to think about them. Dr. Ted Schick, co-author of the text “How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age“, returns to the show to explain just how to reason these weird things out; and why, with our understanding of human nature, it’s not surprising that such strange experiences tend to happen…and happen a lot.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *