Hello, welcome to oma Ross and Carrie the show where we don't just report on fringe science, spirituality, claims of the paranormal, cults, we start them ourselves. That's right when they make the claims we make bigger claims to start our own cults. That's right. Thank you so much for joining. Yeah, I'm Ross blacher. I'm Gary poppy. And yeah, this is a fun look at a talk that I gave to skeptic Al con. Yes. I know what you're thinking. Isn't that just skeptical? No. Absolutely. Skeptical as in California. This is a conference held yearly in the San Francisco Berkeley area. I went to the first one back in the day. Oh, really? Had a great time, got to meet y'all man Chandler among many other people. I think I remember you talking about that. Seth shostak was there. Lots of good people anyways. I was invited to give a talk. Actually, last year, but then this pandemic thing happened. Yes. And so they didn't part of it. Then they had it this year, and it was going to be on person. I was all ready to head up there, but then it ended up being online. Okay. Which is cool because that means that that content is available online. And so this talk that I'm about to give is called how to start your own cult. And it is a how to guide. I would say actually useful information if you do want to start a cult. Hopefully that is not the real takeaway. Ross is squinting. What did I do? What have I done? Wait a minute. Yeah. This could come back. Call it this. In the future, well, I just did what Ross told me to do. Uh oh. But here's the other way to look at it. The blueprints to build are also the blueprints to deconstruct. I'm Carrie poppy. I came up with that on the spot. That was pretty good. Yeah, but you figured it out. Which is exactly this was also a way to spot colts in progress and not just cults, but this covers a lot of ground about the things that we talk about on the show. And I think it was kind of a fun framework. So like I said, skeptic Cal con. It's spelled, I think just like you would think, though maybe you think different. So it's. Dot com. Okay, oh. Nope, that's it. Okay. We're done. Not only was I giving a talk, but if you go there, you can still get access and you can see my talk with the visuals and everything because there's a fun slide show. And you can also see talks by some of our former guests like Bret Hermes, Elizabeth Loftus. This year was just it was like they were they listened to our show and they were like, well, these people are perfect. Yeah. This line them right up. Paul offit, he was on it. And you can still view all of those including my talk at skeptic outcom dot com. You like that more than you should. It's really good. Thank you. I gave a similar talk the night before kind of a version one. Thank you. To my wife, and then I gave another one to the satanic temple. Yes, Friends of ours. It's just fun. So now they know how to start a cult too. Some would argue. They already knew. But I wouldn't argue that. Okay. She's saying it in that voice to be a dick. Gotcha. So I do reference some of the visuals in the talk. I won't be posting the video 'cause like I say you can get that at skeptic calc on. I think they'll be releasing it publicly. Sometime in the future. But I will post a Facebook album with some of the images from the talk. So you can see some of the slides there. I paid $20 to attend this in the moment. Did you get your money's worth? Oh, definitely. Yeah. Carrie was there an active you will hear her reference. Yes, but Q for you. If someone were to say, well, I want to see the video now not in a year. Can they pay $20 now and still see it? Okay. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you go to the site now, you can access the whole conference and damn. Watch all those talks. Yeah. I say we're good. I only got to tune in for you and Loftus, but for ten bucks each put a pretty good. Well, and now you can go back and listen to Paul offit. He's on it. Yeah, that's right. And Hermes, yeah, I got a lot of the talks and they were great. So also, I've removed a lot of the ums and Oz so there you go. That's a benefit. Great, great. Didn't notice a lot of Amazonas, but good. Even better. And my apologies for all the desk thump sounds. And I really, really enjoyed this talk. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I did. And drew was watching along with me and afterward he was like, that's such a good introduction to your show. People are gonna come and listen to your show now. Excellent. I said, I hope so. Good. Okay, well hopefully this will be a fun revisit of some of our investigations. There will be lots of mentions of things we've covered before. But hopefully some new observations as well. Yeah, some good syntheses between different investigations. And there was a really wonderful introduction by Susan gerbic, it got a little clipped, so I figured I would take that out, but just know that our friend Susan, who has been on the show a couple times, she introduced me and you'll hear her a little more toward the end. I'll introduce you then. Oh, hi, everyone. Welcome to skeptical Khan. I'm Cary, and this is my normal voice. Boy, today we just really have such a treat. This man, he has for ten years. Been working in undercover investigations of fringe science spirituality and claims that the paranormal. He's one of the best speakers out there. He looks quite a lot like David Duchovny, right around the mid 90s. And he's also just so funny, so smart, so personable. Everyone was asking us, when are you going to have him as a speaker? And we'd say, well, last year, you dumbass, why didn't you come? But that's okay. Not everybody follows exactly what's happening. So anyway, he's here this year, Ross, blotcher. Thank you, Gary. You're welcome. It's hilarious. All right, well, today we're going to learn about how to start your own cult with Ross blotcher. And yes, the double reading there is intended if you get a good cult going, I want in on the ground floor. That's all I asked for sharing these tips with you. Clearly, we have some weighty terms here that need defining. For example, what is a Ross blotcher? Well, Susan told you a bit about me. I co host the podcast owner Ross and Carrie, which Susan was on very recently. So you can see Carrie and myself there in the middle photos and we both share a really strange interest in investigating fringe science, alternative medicine, claims of the paranormal and doing that firsthand and then sharing that..