I just got a message from Randi– he’ll be on CNN’s Larry King Live tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time!
This is really good news: It’s been years since Randi was on, and he challenged the evil harpy Sylvia Browne to take his million dollar challenge– which she accepted live, on international TV, and with which has never followed through. It’s been 283 weeks.
Randi will be on with Rosemary Altea, another "psychic". With Sylvia being slammed repeatedly the past week, this ought to be a lot of fun. Set the TiVos, folks.
January 26th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Um, just remember that Larry King has no interest in challenging his ratings… I mean, his psychic star, so even if Randi is allowed to take Altea to pieces, there’s no guarantee that King will follow up with any smackdown, and, more likely, would have Altea and her cold act back the following week, unchallenged…
January 26th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Interestingly (is that a word?), and sadly, top billing for Larry King’s show tonight is something about Anna Nicole Smith.
Yeah.
I’d like James Randi to debunk Larry King.
January 26th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I’d love to see Randi smackdown Larry, Montel, and the other idiots who promote these psychics. It would be counterproductive in the long run, but it sure would be fun.
Still, this is real “must see TV.” Thanks for the heads-up.
January 26th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Aah! This sounds great – but I live in England. Oh yeah, and I don’t watch TV. Guess I’ll have to wait for a précis. Just ain’t the same though.
January 26th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Great picture of the amazing one.
Try reading scary stories to children with a flashlight held below your face in the dark (like in the pic). With any luck you can scare them silly.
Nic: I’d try You-Tube in a couple of days. (I’m assuming you will have written permission from Time Warner, the James Randi Educational Foundation and Google labs to view the video.)
January 26th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
BTW- everyone should read Randi’s page today in which he writes about Sylvia Browne.
http://www.randi.org
January 26th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Go Randi!
He’s on the attack.
January 26th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Rosemary Altea is a nasty patronizing condescending lying sleaze-bag.
I hope the Randi foundation goes after her in a big way this year.
January 26th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Sweet! I read this about 15 minutes before the show started (we get Larry King relayed live on CNN International), so thanks.
But, boy, who are these people? I had no clue about what the actual news story was, but this Altea person was definitely a big joke.
Randi, whom I’d never actually seen before, was fab. Hogwash with a capital H! Loved that. Don’t know if we have any ‘psychics’ like that here in Belgium, but they’re certainly not allowed to roam freely on television like that.
Thanks for the laugh.
January 26th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Thanks for the heads up, BA! I only got to see the last half of the show, but it was great! I mean Rosemary made herself look so stupid to anyone with an ounce of critical thinking in them. Montel was too chicken to go on the show…
And Larry King, while I respect him for putting Randi on, did say something pretty dumb. He said something like, “Randi, Sylvia did do a pretty good job of describing the suspect though, didn’t she?” And then Larry paused (I thought he was being sarcastic). And Randi went on to descride the obvious – that Sylvia didn’t describe the suspect good at all, and then Rosemary jumped in, it was then clear Larry had been serious and it was a whole mess…
Yes, we’ve got a fight on our hands, a BIG one. I mean, if the psychics aren’t even willing to try and prove themselves for a million dollars, what will they do it for?
January 26th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
That black and white photo of Randi looks like Rasputin. I am glad that Randi’s health is back. Television is filled with too many cosmetic types with their talking heads. Randi looks like a cosmic type with a talking mind.
January 26th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Ay one point, Larry King said that someone had "ESPN".
January 26th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
“ESPN” I like it. And probably true! (Which makes him superior already to most other psychics!)
January 26th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Thanks for the notice. Randi was great but the show was stacked against him with both Larry & Rosemary trying to justify the unjustifiable.
January 26th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Foor those of us out side the US, is this on the net somewhere?
January 27th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Sorry I missed it.
1) It’s 2:00 am CST and I’m just reading the BABBlog.
2) I’m Just reading the Blog because I was at a local dance hall listening to my brother’s band (http://www.thebandhaywire.com/) play. Live music beats “live on TV” talking heads any day (or night)!
January 27th, 2007 at 3:40 am
Has anyone put the clip on youtube or something like that?
January 27th, 2007 at 5:30 am
Scroll down this page to Lisa Simpson’s contributions
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=2291091.
January 27th, 2007 at 6:50 am
Here you go:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzkgskUkOlE
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehYIXAbM3Ss
Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nqBNUDxzk8
January 27th, 2007 at 7:46 am
Someone put it up on youtube already:
pt 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzkgskUkOlE&NR
pt 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehYIXAbM3Ss&NR
pt 3 http://youtube.com/watch?v=5nqBNUDxzk8
January 27th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Larry said ‘ESPN’ instead of ESP a couple of times before he realized he’d goofed. There was also some weird caller towards the end, wasn’t there? I only caught the last few minutes, but it had so much concentrated absurdity that it’s hard to distill!
January 27th, 2007 at 8:23 am
I haven’t found a video yet, but the transcript is on line:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0701/26/lkl.01.html
January 27th, 2007 at 8:49 am
My predictions: the show will change no minds.
1. That’s humanity, folks. Sorry.
2. If everyone on this thread watched the show, that effectively doubled Larry King’s ratings for the night.
Randi should do O’Reilly. Yeah, I know the guy is demonized in many people’s minds, and he’s a devout Catholic, but I believe he’s fairly skepical about other paranormal things. And he reaches a few more people than King.
Oprah?
January 27th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
I laughed out loud at that Altea woman, especially the way she was introduced at the beginning of the program. Something like “This psychic says that most psychics are actually frauds, but she’s the real thing”.
January 27th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
I always wanted Larry King to have the big one (heart attack) and get his abrasive pseudoscientific butt off of t.v., but then I saw he has a nice (and surprisingly young) family so I don’t really want to see that anymore. I read the transcript I thought Sylvia was going to be on it, but I guess she has decided to lay low for a while. Probably 3-6 months. Psychics do know one thing that our national attention span is about that long and it’ll die down soon enough. Uri Gellar and Peter Popoff are a bit like immortal hydra heads that come back in pairs after you cut one off.
I love that picture of the amazing Randi. I’d love to see him in a movie!
Another thing Randi is a much more competent as a trickster than Sylvia Browne, that’s why he can tell you he is playing a trick. You’re still fooled: If Sylvia Browne told everyone that her career would be over!
January 27th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Hi Phil.
I never watch Larry King, but on your advice I did watch the Randi clip. He was magnificent. You can see how much he has to work to control himself on TV in the face of such absolute nonsense and it does me good to see such passion about this cause. Thanks for the heads up.
January 28th, 2007 at 9:25 am
“She doesn’t know how to use a telephone book?” I always laugh when Randi responds to Browne’s stale, old statement, that she didn’t know how to reach Randi.
Thanks for the youtube links, folks. I guess you know that Phil Plait goes by “TheBadAstronomer” over there with some interesting clips about eggs and comets.
July 21st, 2008 at 4:02 pm
[...] sorts of fraudulent "psychics " on his show, and UFO people, and and and. To his credit, he had Randi on once, but he still promotes all manners of irrational [...]