The Right Coast

April 12, 2004
 
Guilty pleasure
By Tom Smith

All the talk about evolution and creationism over at Brian Leiter's site has put me in mind of this very guilty pleasure. No place can match coast to coast, the AM radio program, for pure, unadulterated, delicious pseudo-science of the most entertaining sort. I know it is utter rubbish. I know it is wrong to listen to it, let alone enjoy it. But I can't help myself. It is usually interesting, often intriguing and even more often hilarious. Driving somewhere in the middle of nowhere once with my family, we listened at length to the story of a woman who could mysteriously read other people's thoughts. Only towards the end of the hour interview did it emerge, accidentally, that she had received major brain surgery and that it had gone badly wrong. Cast a rather different light on the voices she heard, but no matter! You can't let little details stand in the way of science! I think I'm going to sign up for their newsletter. Why not? Don't you want to know about the spiders the size of small dogs that have been reported roaming the deserts of Iraq?