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Aug. 5, 2025 - Skeptoid
19:22
Skeptoid #1000: Candle on the Water

Today marks the 1000th Skeptoid episode. And it's time to raise the question: What are you going to do for it? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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A Personal Note From Brian 00:01:43
For 1,000 episodes, I have shared my enthusiasm for science and historical facts that can help people live better lives.
This is not a regular episode.
It's also not a retrospective.
Not really sure how to describe it.
It's more personal than most Skeptoid shows.
But it's also intended to be not about me at all.
Rather, it's about you.
So let's get into it right now on Skeptoid.
Hi, I'm Alex Goldman.
You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that.
I'm doing something else now.
I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed.
On every episode of HyperFixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them.
Some massive and life-altering, and some so minuscule it'll boggle your mind.
No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you.
That's HyperFixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia.
Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Candle on the Water.
Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience, real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not.
This is episode number 1000 of Skeptoid.
Nineteen Years of Skepticism 00:08:08
The show began in October 2006 and is today going stronger than ever, almost 19 years later.
It first broke into the iTunes top podcasts in the social sciences category in January 2007.
And as far as I know, it has never dropped out of the top 20, despite there being 5.5 million podcasts today compared to only 2,000 when I started.
This makes me the luckiest person I know, having been privileged to do for a living the same thing I would be doing anyway for a hobby.
But much more than that, it's put me in a classroom for 19 years, learning and understanding more than I ever dared to hope, studying 1,000 different subjects, well enough to share a 15-minute overview of each of them with you.
I have grown enormously as a person during that process.
And like all of us, I probably have a whole lot more to do.
In all that time, not a week has gone by that I haven't thought of a transformative experience.
I had it as a small boy in a movie theater in 1977.
I'll be your candle on the walls away.
My love for you will always burn.
No, I don't mean Star Wars, though I also had that transformational experience that same summer.
I spent years perfecting my skills drawing the T65 X-Wing from all its various angles.
No, this experience was found in Pete's Dragon, 1977.
The movie's peak moment was when Helen Reddy, known at the time as the Queen of 70s pop, stepped out onto the gallery outside the lantern room of her lighthouse near the fictional fishing town of Passamaquoddy, Maine, and sang the movie's anthem, Candle on the Water.
She was singing it simultaneously to two people, to her fiancé, Paul, lost at sea this past year, and to Pete, the young orphan boy escaping an abusive foster family, and whom she had just taken in.
I should note that the similarity to the phrase, a candle in the dark, best known as part of the subtitle of Carl Sagan's 1995 book, A Demon Haunted World, is not lost on me.
But that book came out 18 years after Pete's Dragon made such an impression on me.
And by then, the candle on the water was already firmly etched into my DNA as my metaphor for a guiding light.
Carl Sagan is probably someone you and I both hold in a great deal of respect as the guru of all science communicators who truly did succeed in reaching people of all belief systems.
As he explained, his Candle in the Dark came from the title of a 1656 book by the physician and humanist Thomas Addy.
Addy's book attacked the superstitions of the day, specifically the belief in witches and witchcraft, and advocated for skepticism and evidence-based thinking in the face of widespread hysteria.
Addy offered a candle in the dark as an allegory for reason and critical inquiry, which could bring reassurance and comfort.
For me, I grew up on the coast, often swimming in the ocean or sailing on yachts, and had my share of deep-sea scares.
The title Candle on the Water resonated powerfully with me, a beacon not to knowledge, but to safety and warmth.
And now in later years, when we use humankind's best tools, the tools of the scientific method, to discern what's real from what's not, we are best positioned to keep ourselves safe, be it from disease, from scams, from conspiracy theories, or from false hope.
All the threats that skeptoid seeks to explore.
I didn't know anything about science or skepticism or James Randy or Carl Sagan when I watched Pete's Dragon as a boy, but the words of that song struck me at a deep organic level, and the idea of a lighthouse has always been close to my heart.
The filmmakers were not subtle about having the dragon, Elliot, playing the role of Pete's imaginary friend.
Pete had had a rough life with nobody to love him and had constructed this common coping mechanism.
And it's fascinating to extend this same parallel into the various forms of woo that scientific skepticism is critical of.
Every day in my work, I encounter people who believe they can speak with their dead relatives, or who have placed all their faith into a hopeless fake cure for some medical condition, or have turned in financial desperation to multi-level marketing, or have become deeply psychologically invested in the belief that aliens fill our skies.
These are all imaginary friends by any other names.
They are the dragons I first spoke of all those years ago with my 2008 short film, Here Be Dragons.
Pete simply needed love from Elliot, and almost all people who seek comfort from some pseudoscience or paranormal belief are just as innocent and well-meaning.
But while Pete had the advantage of Hollywood movie magic that made Elliot real when the critical moment came, people in our material world won't ever get that magical rescue from their invisible friend.
But luckily, there are so many of us who will always be willing to throw a lifeline and to hold up that candle.
Hey, everyone.
I want to remind you about a truly unique and once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
Join me and Mediterranean archaeologist Dr. Flint Dibble for a skeptoid sailing adventure through the Mediterranean Sea aboard the SV Royal Clipper, the world's largest full-rigged sailing ship.
This is also the only opportunity you'll have to hear Flint and I talk about our experiences when we both went on Joe Rogan to represent the causes of science and reality against whatever it is that you get when you're thrown into that lion pit.
We set sail from Málaga, Spain on April 18th, 2026 and finish the adventure in Nice, France on April 25th.
You'll enjoy a fascinating skeptical mini-conference at sea.
You'll visit amazing ports along the Spanish and French coasts.
And Flint will be our exclusive onboard expert sharing the real archaeology and history about every stop.
We've got special side quests and extra skeptical content planned at each port.
This is a true sailing ship.
You can climb the rat lines to the crow's nest, handle the sails.
You can even take the helm and steer.
This is a real bucket list adventure you don't want to miss.
But cabins are selling fast, and this ship does always sell out.
Act now or you'll miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Get the full details and book your cabin at skeptoid.com slash adventures.
Hope to see you on board.
That's skeptoid.com slash adventures.
And that's why I do what I do, and why Sagan did what he did, and James Randy, and a very long list of my friends and colleagues in every walk of science communication and skeptical advocacy.
Join The Listener Supported Journey 00:09:27
Some are authors and speakers.
Some are other podcasters.
Some are filmmakers and YouTubers.
Some are social media mavens.
Very few make much money at it, or even get to do it full-time.
We do it because we believe it's important and worthwhile.
But we also face a lot of opposition, overwhelming opposition, as it happens.
For every one science advocate scraping by thanklessly, there are 10 charlatans selling every imaginable quack cure and sham scheme, happy to make a quick buck passing off magically easy solutions to people facing real and difficult problems.
These are the stormy seas of misinformation our lighthouse tries to rise above, but all too often is drowned out by the concussive waves of profiteering.
Here in this melee, many approaches are tried.
Some try humor, some try snark, some try debate and confrontation.
I try the big tent, being non-judgmental and simply offering the facts to those who are truly interested in learning.
It appeals to some, but not to everyone.
No approach does.
That's why many styles of communication are needed.
When Pete tried going to school, the other children laughed at him for saying he had a dragon.
Nora's father, Lampy, played by Mickey Rooney, got pushed around in the bar and made fun of for trying to warn everyone about the dragon.
And so it is easy for us to make fun of the person with the ridiculous belief.
The UFO disclosure enthusiast who makes himself more and more ridiculous with claims and conspiracies that cannot hold their own weight.
all in pursuit of a desperate need to have superior knowledge, to be anointed as one of the few who dares to have an open mind and are not hobbled by blind adhesion to the status quo.
I have seen mockery succeed as a way to coax people out of rabbit holes.
I've seen believers crack under this weight and reluctantly conclude that maybe they are wrong after all.
But it's not a method I'm good at.
What works best for me is the same things as what happens to naturally appeal most to me.
And that's finding the amazing new fact that I never knew before.
Every false belief system has a foundation that necessarily has cracks in its accuracy.
And some of those cracks open up to really neat science facts that both believer and skeptic can appreciate equally.
Sometimes the believer follows those threads backwards.
And sometimes they too find that they are more intrigued by the real science to the point that they abandon their imaginary friend.
Because here's something that's both real and interesting.
This is what works for me.
But as I say, by no means is it the only or even the best method for guiding lost people toward the light.
Allow me to close with a proposal.
There are some 100,000 or so of you listening right now.
Let us turn that into 100,000 candles.
Nora never suffered her lantern to flag.
Let all of us line every dark coastline and make sure every person out there on the water can reach a shore that is warm and bright.
Many times in the past few months, people have asked me what I was going to do for episode number 1000.
I said I wasn't sure yet.
But internally, the idea I had was that it wouldn't be my episode.
It would be your episode.
So I turn the question around, what are you going to do with this episode?
What is special to you that you can keep in mind as you hold your candle on your shoreline?
What can you do that nobody else can because nobody else is you?
Join me.
Join all of my friends and colleagues who do this same work.
Let us build a 100,000 strong army of advocates for science and reason, all standing ready to hold our beacons aloft and guide the lost to safe shores.
Let this candle guide you.
Soon you'll see a golden stream of eyes.
Skeptoid number 1000 is dedicated to the person who played me the most important private performance of a candle on the water of my life.
And it was played to me on solo viola on an autumn day.
It came when I needed it most, when I was far away and was more lost than ever before, and had no shorelines in sight, only darkness.
What I take away from that moment is that any of us can be the saving, guiding light for any other of us at any time, sometimes at that exact moment of greatest need and often defying the remotest hope.
I'll never let you go.
We continue with more on George Washington's original establishment of the Lighthouse Act of 1789 and how surprisingly similar its goals were to those of scientific skepticism in the ad-free and extended premium feed.
To access it, become a supporter at skeptoid.com slash go premium.
A great big skeptoid shout out to our premium supporters, including Brandon S. Russell, Karaman, Derek, your friendly neighborhood Satanist, and Marcel Jan Kreigsman.
I'll be at a couple of private corporate events in the next couple of months, as well as yet another Skeptoid adventure that I'm hoping you can join us on.
Please come to skeptoid.com slash events to see where we're going and sign up on the email list so you don't miss out.
To book me for your own event, come to skeptoid.com slash speaking.
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Marketing guru and Illuminati liaison is Jake Young.
Production management and all things audio by Will McCandless.
Music is by Lee Sanders.
Researched and written by me, Brian Dunning.
The song A Candle on the Water is copyright Walt Disney Music Company and Wonderland Music and was written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirshhorn.
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