Steven Novella

Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

Today is Thursday, September 24th, 2026, and this is your host, Stephen Novella.

Joining me this week are Cara Santa Maria.

Howdy.

It's what my two books are about.

And one of the sort of people that I followed was Stephen Novella from The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

I really love those.

I really enjoy scepticism.

And, you know, it was funny to me when Eben was participating with him and Raymond Moody were doing a debate with two materialist scientists.

I think it was Sean Carroll and Steve Novella.

And I remember Sean Carroll said, you know, all you near-death experiencers and spiritual people, you're always talking about this love.

You know, I love my wife.

Hello, and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

[clapping] [cheering] Today is Saturday, September 5th, 2026, and this is your host, Steven Novella.

[clapping] [cheering] Joining me this week are Bob Novella-

Hey, everybody.

This is such an important topic.

It's a topic that in my other podcast, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, the host that I work with there, Steve Novella, he has a talk specifically about this.

And when we were just traveling in Australia and New Zealand, he gave his talk about this.

ideologically, I think many times not evidence-based, divided.

The 2005 film The Exorcism of Emily Rose was based on Michelle's ordeal and the subsequent trial.

One of the leading skeptics of exorcism and one of Gallagher's chief critics is Stephen Novella, a neurologist and professor at Yale School of Medicine.

He wrote a lengthy blog post dissecting Gallagher's experience with Julia.

The Satanic Priestess, it could be read as a takedown of exorcisms everywhere.

He says Julia probably performed a cold reading on Gallagher.

It's an old trick of fortune tellers and mediums in which they use vague, probing statements to make canny guesses about... someone fortune teller i see a recent tragedy in your family then the client would say you mean my sister who got hurt in the car accident how did you know or take the case of a person speaking in an unfamiliar language like latin during a possession a patient might memorize latin phrases to throw out during one of their possessions novella wrote were they having a conversation in latin did they understand latin spoken to them or did they just speak latin Novella says it's noteworthy that no one has filmed any paranormal event such as levitation or sacred objects flying across the room during an exorcism.

He's seen exorcism tapes posted online and in documentaries and says they're not scary.

They're boring.

You're a bit overwhelmed at being here again too, aren't you?

Look, I haven't been involved in any sort of organized skepticism in a really long time, but the last time I was in this room was for TAM Oz, and I remember very clearly sitting on that stage with Steve Novella and Ian Harris talking about science-based medicine, and we hadn't thought it through very well, and we were kind of perched on the edge.

And the three of us sort of ...

We kind of got through our, our little panel discussion, but we were all perched on the edge, almost gonna fall into the crowd.