1030: Exorcism | Skeptical Sunday

1030: Exorcism | Skeptical Sunday

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, my friend Andrew Gold. On the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

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To help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show, just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app. To get started today, we got a little bit of a ghoulish episode of Skeptical Sunday. The movie, the Exorcist Believer Believer came out recently and it, I might as well use my Cold Voice, right Believer came out recently and it got me thinking.

Where did this whole exorcism thing start? Is it even a real thing? Is it just a movie? And dare I ask, does it actually work and is it dangerous? With me today is the host of the Heretics podcast, formerly known as On the Edge, with Andrew Gold podcast, Andrew Gold. Obviously, Andrew has, uh, actually helped perform an exorcism while investigating an exorcist for the BBC.

So who better to cast a skeptical eye over the validity of exorcism than a man who is dued with the devil, or, you know, a person on r around on the floor pretending to be possessed by the devil. Anyway, Andrew, let's start with the question at the crux of this is exorcism real, whatever that means.

[00:01:58] Andrew Gold: It's interesting that the film made you think of exorcism because I believe there's potentially no greater example in history of a movie having such a dramatic effect on belief across societies around the world.

Often with movies, we see the opposites, right? So something big happens and films reflect that in various ways for the next decade. So the Vietnam War happens, and then you get all these war movies, nine 11 happens and you get not just movies about terrorism, but alien invasions like War of the Worlds, or Cloverfield, which is about aliens, and has this found footage aesthetic that reflects a lot of the recordings of the tragic events of September 11th.

But every now and then, a movie has such a huge cultural impact that it shifts our beliefs, our fears, and the whole cultural zeitgeist, and we almost can't remember how we felt before that movie. So one example of that is Jaws, which led to widespread fear of sharks and made us think that sharks are psychopathic murderers.

In fact, scientists believed that the 1975 Spielberg Classic actually caused a generation of people to develop gall phobia of phobia of sharks. They call this rather un, originally, the Jaws effect. The Matrix completely changed how the average Joe talked about philosophy. I remember that movie coming out, and it's suddenly becoming totally normal to wonder whether we were in a simulation, and I think The Exorcist was even more powerful than Jaws and The Matrix because it managed to trick us into forgetting that it was the movie itself that made us aware of exorcism.

[00:03:28] Jordan Harbinger: Wait, so are you saying exorcists

[00:03:30] Andrew Gold: weren't around before the movie? Well, not exactly the belief that some sort of spirit inhabits our bodies has long existed. As a way to explain the unexplainable. Things like OCD obsessive compulsive disorder or schizophrenia are easier to explain a way as possession or evil spirits.

In ancient Mesopotamia in the first millennium BC, they practiced a kind of magic called Pu to stave off demons and illnesses. The ancient Greeks tried to expel evil demons. A historian called Josephus in the first century ad recounts the story of a Jew called Eleazar, who freed others by drawing demons out through their nostrils while recounting the name King Solomon.

[00:04:13] Jordan Harbinger: Wow, that sounds really tedious. Unless demons are small enough to fit through your nostril. These all sound like exorcisms except in name. It's basically like a pre pagan or pagan practice that they were like, Hey, we should probably do something like this. 'cause people still need it. So when did the Christian concept of exorcism that we all know so well today start to take place?

You know, when did, when did priests start slamming iron crosses and over people's faces and being like, I command you to leave the body of this young lady command you in the name of Christ, you know? When did that

[00:04:44] Andrew Gold: all kick off? That's really interesting actually. So in the first few centuries after Christ Christianity was fighting off various pagan beliefs and religious persecution.

So exorcism became a way of strengthening the beliefs and feelings in Christianity, and it was primarily used to expel rival pagan beliefs. This is when it became necessary to renounce all pagan beliefs to become Christian.

[00:05:08] Jordan Harbinger: So they were linking paganism to evil spirits. Nobody wants to be evil. And so they stuck it out with Christianity, which I guess then legitimizes Christianity, I suppose.

And did the practice of exorcism grow from there, or was it kind of niche? It did

[00:05:21] Andrew Gold: start to grow. And by the fourth century AD it was rife, but not always quite as sensational as the horror images we conjure up from the movies. Mm. It was actually a daily practice that converts and Christians had to undergo in the lead up to baptism.

Even the oil that was used to anoint Baptists had itself been exercised and before the ceremony, prospective Baptists had their evil spirits blown off them, and that's called exsufflation

[00:05:48] Jordan Harbinger: blowing spirits off a body. No matter how hard you blow, it's not quite as dramatic as heads turning around levitation, projectile vomiting, the green slime.

Right,

[00:05:59] Andrew Gold: right. My own exorcist, which I'll get into a bit more later, is called Padre Manuel, and was based in Argentina. And in his case, the blowing ceremony took place after the theatrics. So there was about 45 minutes of a woman riding on the floor in an apparent battle between good and evil. It was pandemonium for all of that time.

And then when she looked sort of at peace, lying on the floor, they held cloth over her eyes, which they, they did a lot throughout the whole thing, I think, to sort of scare her into a trance or something. And they shouted like ex or something like that. Exsufflation, which we translated later when reviewing the video again when editing.

'cause we had no idea what was going on at the time, except that they'd said a word and all started just blowing on this girl. Which sounds weird, obviously. Yeah. But yeah, we put it in the subtitles as the blowing ceremony. This must be pre pandemic, you know, with all the blowing on people. Well, that's relevant as we'll get onto later.

But I'm sure there was some sort of spreading of diseases and things and, and that might've played into the whole image of exorcism. But the Exorcist and his team, as I say, they knelt over her and blew air at her.

[00:07:06] Jordan Harbinger: Huh. Okay. I, it sounds kind of funny, but I guess at the time it's not because the person's like screaming and crying on the floor, and you've definitely witnessed somebody going through it.

I wonder if over the years, the blowing ceremony had a weird causal effect because if people would come to be exercised, believing they were mentally unwell, possessed, then a bunch of dudes blow all over them. And some of them could have gotten sick from being blown on by strange men. So then not only do they have all these psychological demons get your bite outta the gutter, but they come back the next week saying they feel much worse.

The demons are taking over their body even more. They perform another exorcism and this time the person gets over their RSV or cold or nor rhinovirus or whatever and it looks like it worked or it doesn't work, and then the person dies of the illness and it just serves that as further evidence of the power of the devil having won that one or, or am I overthinking this and just pulled that outta my ars?

I'm open to that interpretation as well. I like that you said ars. That's quite a British pronunciation. It's easier than saying ass and people go, if you say ars, nobody bats an eye

[00:08:06] Andrew Gold: around here. Yeah, well that a, if you hit that a hard, you sound like because where, where I'm based near this sort of Bristol, Southwest of England, my ars like hagrid in or, or someone would say it in in Harry Potter.

That kind of piratey accent. My ars, but I would say ars. But anyway, yes. You might not be far off with that illness theory. Maybe one or two of the people who performed that blowing ceremony also died of that illness, so they would've imagined the devil or demons spreading from body to body, infecting clergy and worshipers.

It's this idea of a constant battle, and it isn't just blowing. Of course, clergy would run around placing their hands all over the worshipers too. Everybody's touching each other. The illness is spreading, and I think that kind of illness, especially plagues in the Middle Ages, for example, could easily be explained away as demons,

[00:08:53] Jordan Harbinger: right?

So I have a picture of priests running around, blowing and placing hands on people, and it's a little silly. When did exorcism get scary? Like when were they like, you know what? This blowing on people. Not everyone's buying it. We need to slam them down and shove that cross in their face and like give them the stigma to treatment.

[00:09:12] Andrew Gold: Well, it was rather tame and started to be a little peripheral to Christianity. Remember there wasn't even initially that much talk of demons and Satan in exorcism. It was about dismissing pagan beliefs. Okay. But it was around the 13th century that St. Thomas Aquinas began studying Demonology. I think it's Aquinas.

Well, he can be Aquinas if he wants to be fair. Okay, continue. I don't even know what that means. St. Thomas Aquinas began studying demonology and clarifying what exorcism for Catholics was really about. And this idea of the demonic other went into hyperdrive amid the formation of Protestantism arrival to Catholicism.

But perhaps unexpectedly interest in exorcism wanes. In more recent times in the 20th century, the use of the words exorcism and exorcist plummeted in the 1950s and sixties until we see a quite sudden and dramatic spike in their usage. First with the book The Exorcist in 1971, and then the movie in 1973, and then it spiraled out of control becoming more and more common every year until today.

Today the word exorcism is the most prevalent in publications since records began in 1800. That's largely down to the impact of the book, the film, and subsequent movies. The Vatican actually reformed the writings around the right of exorcism. That's RITE of Exorcism in 1999, for the first time in nearly 400 years.

Oh, wow. Perhaps in response to the film. Right. I. They changed it to reinforce the role exorcism plays in baptism. So we've gone full circle in that sense. 'cause that's what it was originally a big part of baptism. Huh? They also emphasized the role of the priest because the rite of exorcism didn't stipulate before that it had to be a priest that did it.

So I guess after the movie, they couldn't just have random people going around performing exorcisms and charging for it. That money's not gonna go to the church then, is it? So they made sure it was only trained priests.

[00:11:10] Jordan Harbinger: Right? Like the fake, possibly fake priest that did the one mm-Hmm. That you went to in Argentina.

I don't, I'm not sure they're familiar with how con men work. Like, okay, I'm gonna charge for this. No, you have to be a priest. Oh, what a coincidence. I'm a priest now. The robes are coming from Amazon tomorrow. Thanks, prime. I mean like, hello? I don't think you, that was quite the gotcha that they thought it was reforming that in the, in the paperwork.

Alright. After 400 years, now they have 400 more years to figure out how to solve the current problem. Alright, so now Exorcism is as popular as ever. They just brought out the Exorcist believer in 2025. They got the Exorcist deceiver, which I assume is gonna be said the same way that's coming out. It's great when things rhyme.

And a third, the Exorcist film from that franchise is coming out just after that. They are hard at work. Milk in this one. Mm-Hmm. Which is just gonna make this way more popular 'cause it's gonna be in the zeitgeist. What might rhyme of believer in deceiver for the

[00:12:05] Andrew Gold: third one? I can't think of anything.

Receiver. No. That doesn't make sense.

[00:12:09] Clip: It has to be, it has to be receiver. Yes. That's brilliant. You should work in this.

[00:12:13] Jordan Harbinger: But what are they receiving? I don't know. But then what are they believing in? Deceiving, um, the devil. Yeah, that's true. They're receiving the, yeah. Receiving achiever beli. That's true. It could be a Justin Bieber collab.

That'd be great. Yeah. Yeah. You never know. Depends. Maybe he could use an exorcism.

[00:12:26] Andrew Gold: Yeah.

[00:12:27] Jordan Harbinger: Going back to what you were saying about cultural events impacting movies, it makes sense that following the Covid epidemic, we have the first three movies from that famous franchise since 2005. Do you see a Covid Exorcism connection or am I leaning too hard into the blowing?

[00:12:42] Andrew Gold: Well, no, I think it is. I think it really is. The Exorcist franchise initially comprised three exorcism films. So in 19 73, 77, and 90. Then two prequel films come out in 2004 and 2005. So again, odd wager that's in response to that feeling of an invasion by evil forces that came about after nine 11 in 2001, nothing about The Exorcist.

And then 20 years later we have a sickness that invades our bodies and suddenly three more the Exorcist films.

[00:13:13] Jordan Harbinger: And does it follow then that it's not just Hollywood who profits from renewed interest in exorcism, but there's priests real or fake print money with some of this stuff, especially in developing countries where people are really into it.

Although I will say, when I was looking at news about exorcisms, one in my town here in Northern California popped up where a child died, but it was like a church that's in a, the back of a single family home, you know, is one of those. But the kid died, they basically like. Yeah, they murdered the kid. Yeah, by mistake.

[00:13:41] Andrew Gold: It's horrible. Well, I think I'm gonna be talking about that in a bit. Oh, right on. Awful, awful story. But yeah, I mean, the idea of priests and churches profiting from it is a controversial thing to say and to think and to talk about because priests and churches are not supposed to charge for an exorcism.

And look, if you really do believe that evil spirits are inhabiting bodies, I mean, that's pretty shocking. Yeah. Like an evil spirit in me. Wow. Then you'll do that work for free to save the world, you know? So it is a free service offered by the church, but also it makes sense from a business perspective for the church to provide it.

It reinforces the good feeling around the church, increases the bond. Exorcisms are often witnessed by the rest of the worshipers, or at least they get to hear about a big exorcism. They've heard like, Hey, what happened on the weekend? There was a huge exorcism that's even more powerful because of the strength of imagination.

And so you think, wow, this could happen to me. I need to keep going to church. As for the money, that's where it gets a little controversial and complicated. There is a sort of exit by the gift shop routine that often goes on.

[00:14:43] Jordan Harbinger: That's funny. Do do you say that in the uk we say exit through the gift shop.

Like if you wanna leave, you have to go through that store where we're selling key chains. That's really funny.

[00:14:50] Andrew Gold: It may made me through as well. Yeah, sorry. It exit through the gift shop routine and it really felt that way when I was there as weller in Argentina. You know, the exercise E, the person who was exercised that is, feels so grateful that they start donating and in fact, it's an unwritten rule.

The donation is expected. The church in Argentina where I was at, they did have this little gift shop full of trinkets that ward off demons. You'd buy things like rosaries or holy water. And it wasn't all related to exorcism exactly, because there was this stuff like olive oil that had been blessed to prevent breast cancer.

[00:15:24] Jordan Harbinger: That stuff always, I guess, prevent fine treat is horrible, but then again, are they gonna tell you that it treats it if you have it already? That's the thing that worries me about this stuff. So now we have a church practicing an age old custom as is their right. But it's one that encourages people not only to empty their pockets for donations and religious relics, but also this is where it starts to like make me angry, is then not seek medical attention if they feel a lump on their breast.

Just smother it in a dollop of extortion at olive oil.

[00:15:53] Andrew Gold: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all the while, at least whenever I ask the question about money. The clergy just smile cultish at me with their heads tilted to the side, and they're like, no, no. The padre performs exorcisms for free to fight evil in the community.

I can just

[00:16:07] Jordan Harbinger: imagine what that looks like too. Exactly. Just, oh, no, it's free with that sort of murdery horror movie. Head tilt.

[00:16:14] Andrew Gold: Yeah. Really scary. Really scary. Yeah. The pressure to donate and buy this stuff cannot be underestimated, and the thing is, they really work on you Psychologically. The feeling after being exercised is one of euphoria, because in that moment, the person feels that they've been cured of all ills, negative feelings and demons, both physical and metaphorical.

They've just gone through a crazed shouting, dancing, riving ritual that has left them exhausted and elated. They believe 100% in the power of the padre and the padre recommends a few dollops of olive oil in the evening to keep the demons at bay or whatever it might be. Well, what do you do? Well, you spend a fortune then on olive oil.

[00:16:54] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, and, and that is how the business of exorcism works. And if you think exorcism is scary, wait till you hear of the frighteningly affordable prices from our show sponsors. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Dell and a MD. You ever wonder how a hacker can breach even the most secure systems for many of us who aren't tech savvy?

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What is happening psychologically, if not actual demons? Right.

[00:19:49] Andrew Gold: Well, it's amazed me since I did the exorcism documentary for the BBC, which people can see, by the way, on YouTube, by typing Andrew Gold exorcism, BBC. We'll link to that in the show notes. We can embed that in

[00:19:59] Jordan Harbinger: the, in the show notes for this episode.

[00:20:01] Andrew Gold: Yeah, I don't get paid when people watch it, so, you know, you do what you want with your time, but you could watch it 'cause it's interesting.

[00:20:06] Jordan Harbinger: I thought it was interesting. It's not long, it's not two hours of you going through the thing. It's just you getting threatened in a broom closet by a priest and then the

[00:20:15] Andrew Gold: exorcism.

Yeah, that was that a horrible ending where I thought he was gonna kill me. Yeah, it was scary. But um, so yeah, it's just 40 minutes long. But it was amazing to realize afterwards how many people really do believe in demons and the paranormal. They get in touch to say nice things about the documentary and that my priest was clearly a fraud.

And then they add, but if you want to see a real exorcist, here's a link to padre such and such, or priests such, and father so and so. Odd wager that even among those who listen to Skeptical Sunday, a fair proportion are believers or people open to belief in exorcism. So firstly, I just say that I respect people's right to believe in whatever they want, but secondly, no exorcism is not real.

It is theatrical and fake. Whether priests actually know this or whether they're convincing themselves is uncertain and probably varies case by case.

[00:20:59] Jordan Harbinger: I think that's an important distinction because what people will say is exorcism does seem fake, but my priest does it. And that is the nicest guy that I've ever met and he's helped me out a ton.

And I'm here to say along with you that it doesn't mean that everybody who does this is a conman. If they really are strongly religious and they believe in this and they do it, it doesn't mean that they are doing it because they're a terrible person and they're a con artist. It could be that they just believe in it, like for real, and they think they're doing a a service and who knows, maybe they are.

But for every priest that's doing that, there's a priest who's like, ah, yeah, the big money's in the fake olive oil nonsense that we say cures breast cancer. So. That's kind of, I think if we're taking our knife to this one, it's gonna be to the con artists and not people who have what is kind of a harmless belief as long as they're also getting medical attention for whatever they're in there for.

Yeah. It's a really appealing idea that you're in a fight for good versus evil and you're defeating all these demons, so. I can see how cognitive bias can make anyone a priest, especially who's already very religious, obviously to believe in what he is doing, and a conman will do that, especially also if it's lining their pockets.

I also get a ton of people, like I said in my inbox that say exorcism was real, but the guy we talked about in the episode ear that we did so many years ago was giving all, he's given all the real priests a bad name. You would really be surprised how many people have supposedly seen this with their own eyes and they can find somehow no other explanation at all for what they have seen.

Other than that the person had a demon spirit inside their body that was driven out by a priest. There's an exercise in delusional thinking as much as I've ever seen there, there were just people who are like, it can't be anything other than this person had a demon, and the demon is gone. 'cause I watched it.

It's like you've never. Seen anybody physically react to something that's a psychological hue, like you've just never seen that in your life. Mm. It's an exercise in delusional thinking, as much as I've ever seen

[00:22:57] Andrew Gold: an ex exercise in delusional thinking, yeah, it's the no true Scotsman fallacy. You know, that wasn't real communism.

That wasn't real exorcism. People want to believe in this stuff, and as for the priests who potentially believe in what they're doing, we all want to make ourselves feel that the way that we earn money is righteous and good, and we'll perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to make that narrative fit as to what is happening.

It's not dissimilar to why people get into cults. You come to a cult and you come to an exorcist when you're at your most vulnerable. These are people with mental health issues, physical issues that doctors can't seem to cure. Where I investigated exorcism in the impoverished suburbs of Buenos Aires, there wasn't the same level of education around mental health as we have in much of the West.

So the kind of people visiting the Padre were suffering with delusions, schizophrenia, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Before seeing the padre, they told me they felt weak, tempted by the devil, and had compulsions and urges and pushes, and so they were in a vulnerable and malleable state of mind. They expected exorcism to work and cure them, and the padre told them, assuredly that it would.

He does a diagnosis to see whether this is really a demon or something psychological. Okay? He tends to decide that yes, it is a demon, usually okay. He just sort of makes it up in his head, right? And so the placebo effect gets to work on these people. The priest has them prepare often by fasting and praying.

Then they get the patient on the floor. I'm calling them a patient, dunno what else to call them. I can't keep saying exorcise e 'cause it's a weird word. Des a lot cumbersome. They go exorcise E and uh, they, you know, get them to invoke divine assistance, calling upon God and Jesus and other holy figures to help them.

The priest starts to repeat mantras about fire and brimstone in a hypnotic fashion while spritzing the vulnerable exercise E, or patient with water and throwing them around. They then go into a type of trance and arriving on the floor for almost an hour while the priest is shouting. Religious things like the power of Christ compels you, the power of Christ compels you and so on.

And he does it in such a way with such intense rhythm and repetition that it works like hypnotism. The adrenaline rush is huge. Yeah. You are the center of attention in the middle of a church. You have all these feelings at once, and you are pushed around to such an extent that it's pretty traumatic. So when it's over, there's this real feeling again of elation that you've been through something and you have this massive placebo relief.

I asked, exercised people immediately after their exorcism, how they felt, and they all said amazing. And they knew 100% in their minds that they were free.

[00:25:39] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. A few things. One, when you say they're being pushed around to such an extent, it's traumatic, are they literally being thrown around, kind of like roughed up by the priest on the, on the floor of the church?

Is that kind of Yeah.

[00:25:50] Andrew Gold: Part of this, this particular priest I was watching, and ones I've seen on YouTube, they're very rough fists in her chest. I mean, to the point that sometimes it's almost a bit inappropriate. These are often young girls, 17, 18 years old, and he, where he's touching is a little bit inappropriate at times, but also with fists pushing into her chest, you've got a guy behind her while she's on the floor holding cloth over her eyes, which is just a weird thing.

Anyway, you've got someone holding her legs down and as it starts to get more and more tumultuous and, because that's the idea, it starts slow. It's like a Radiohead song, and by the end everyone's going mad. He is then pushing her around and pulling her as if. You know when you were younger you might have done, like pretending you were fighting in the WE or something against invisible wrestlers.

That's what is going on really. He's sort of having a fight with himself as if it were the demon and grabbing the girl like, oh, I'm saving her, kind of thing, you know?

[00:26:42] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, man. Okay. So they feel amazing afterwards, but surely that doesn't last. You see these people go up on stage and they're cured of physical issues like being blind or their legs not working.

What? What's going on? When someone's like, I was blind and now I can see. That's crazy.

[00:26:56] Andrew Gold: Yeah, I think in those cases they weren't truly blind, obviously just sort of partially blind. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely the case because if somebody was really cured from being blind, just from going up on stage, it would be the biggest news story ever of all time, right?

So their legs again still worked, but just with pain. And that pain is reduced by the placebo and adrenaline produced from coming up on stage in front of a large crowd of people, crazed music, cheering, and hysteria. We've all had that feeling where we get injured, maybe playing sports and we can run it off and only later an hour after the game does it start to hurt again.

Oh yeah, that's the adrenaline wearing off the mentalist and magician. Darren Brown did a great show called Miracle on Netflix, where he said, openly, I'm not a healer, I'm not magic. And yet people still came up on stage and he appeared to cure them of their ailments. It's all psychological. And by the way, I think a lot of people find that depressing because we want to believe in demons.

If demons are real, then angels and spirits are likely to be two. And then an afterlife. And that's a very attractive and wonderful thing. But I think we should sometimes take a minute to marvel at the genius of the human mind and what it is capable of too. Isn't it amazing that we can use these psychological tricks to rid ourselves of pain, for example?

[00:28:11] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I'm, look, that stuff's fascinating. Darren Brown was on episode one 50 of this show, and I, he was great. We did it at his house. I've probably told this story a thousand times, so I'll keep it short. But we did it at his house and he's since moved. So I think I could talk about this, but when you walk in, there's like, it's like walking into a.

The club that the League of Extraordinary gentlemen are in slash the Houdini house because there's like a giraff that's stuffed in the head is like coming outta the wall. And then there's a skeleton in a glass case over here and then there's a really realistic looking old guy reading in a chair. But it's just the dead body that they used in one of the specials that was supposed to look really, really, really real and has like real, was like a hundred thousand dollars to make.

Then he is got a secret passageway in there in his house and a whiskey collection of all these old bottles that are on the wall and all this old stuff and antiques. And you're like, this is 100% the most magician house that I've ever seen outside of Disneyland. Trying to pretend that they have a magician house.

This guy is just walking the walk. Wow. And uh, it was a great conversation as well. That guy's awesome. Good on Darren Brown. Good on him. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. He's an awesome guy. Love that guy. Wow. Alright. But you're, you're also saying that those people go back to not being able to walk or see well after the show.

Right. Is this the same for people suffering with like OCD or intrusive thinking and schizo? I mean, they're not curing schizophrenia with an exorcism so that they've at some point regressed to. What they were before, I would assume.

[00:29:36] Andrew Gold: Yeah, yeah. And at first I was surprised because the three women that we'd seen exercised were actually still better months after the exercise.

Oh wow. Yeah, it took months. That is surprising. I think it depends to what extent it really is a physical sort of psychological condition, like something that is literally wrong with your brain that can't be helped. But when we talk about like a mental issue, I think it's different that you can have a temporary pause.

So that intrigues me. The idea that they were better months later because as a documentary maker, you want to be challenged. You want to have surprises. Otherwise, it's just, we went to an exorcist, it was fake boring. So. You know, they felt great. Uh, these people, that was interesting to me. The problem came about a year later.

That's how long it took. It's crazy. Oh, wow. Obviously, it depends on the person, but I'm thinking of a woman in particular called Candela, who we saw exercised. She was 17 at the time and had been cutting her wrists in her high school bathroom and also suffering from anorexia and bulimia. Oh, poor thing.

Yeah. Uh, horrible. That was actually when we realized while filming that it wasn't funny. We thought like, oh, exorcism, what a funny, silly thing we're gonna cover. And then we're like, oh my God, this is really serious. Yeah. There was a sense of social contagion in all of this, so that's what I mean when I say it's not necessarily something in the brain.

Obviously scientists will be able to explain all of this better, but there there's definitely sometimes a, a case of social contagion. She had joined a website that promoted bulimia in a really horrible way. That had become popular among some of the kids in the school. So to us, we recognize this immediately as a mental health issue.

But to Candela's family, this is demonic possession. Right? And so she has the exorcism feels immediately better. And by the way, her exorcism is really scary. She's laughing maniacally upside down, putting on a satanic voice and screaming she's mine. Ooh. As though the devil is taking her. It's amazing how the movies have influenced her mind.

Afterwards, she feels like a million bucks. She's great, but a year later she's feeling like shit again. Because yes, there was a placebo effect, but it didn't prevent underlying issues of what we would recognize potentially as something like

[00:31:42] Jordan Harbinger: depression. This is interesting though, because I was wondering if the placebo could last long enough to get her past the social contagion aspect.

Away from the website, not depressed anymore for a few weeks, months, whatever feeling good develops a new set of friends and hobbies and gets outta that because then it will have done the job and it's like, holy crap, farce or not. It totally worked. Like a, like a placebo pain pill.

[00:32:06] Andrew Gold: Absolutely. And that that's something I had to square with myself.

You know, overall psychologists I spoke to suggested exorcism was a dangerous practice because it might make exercises less likely to seek medical help or intervention. Yes. The practice itself of exorcism can be traumatic as well, and in extreme cases it can be taken too far, such as the case of Anise.

Michelle who died because she stopped taking food and drink after being exercised 67 times. Oof. Her parents were two Roman Catholic priests and were found guilty of negligent homicide, but didn't see the inside of a cell. They just got three years probation.

[00:32:40] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. That's, first of all, that's disgusting and I can't imagine going through this 67 times, I have a feeling this crazy and tragic case had something to do with the film The Exorcist, because that is, I mean, it just sounds insane to me.

[00:32:52] Andrew Gold: Oh, absolutely. So that's a perfect example of it. She died in 1976, so just three years after the movie, first Ed. There are audio recordings online and photos, and I don't suggest people look them up because they're horrible.

[00:33:04] Jordan Harbinger: Now obviously we'll link to those in the show notes 'cause some of y'all are sick like me because I looked them up and I have no rag ratts, although I didn't watch, I didn't watch and listen to the whole thing.

But it, yeah, it is, it's creepy. It's sad and

[00:33:14] Andrew Gold: creepy. It's horrible. It's horrible. And then a 3-year-old child died as, as we were talking about before, in an exorcism Oh yeah. In a Pentecostal church in San Jose, California in 2021.

[00:33:24] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that was horrible. I, I mentioned that earlier. They pressed her for 10 minutes from the chest and back and she was like three.

So it's, and it's a small little girl. And again, this was a church that I think was in the back of a single family home. So you can imagine it's probably got a congregation of like eight people. And they're fanatical. 'cause that's why they go to church in someone's house. And they pressed her from the chest in the back while praying, and they prayed for 10 straight minutes.

And she's tiny, so she couldn't breathe. And the autopsy report, let me just say it was, it was hard to read, especially as a parent.

[00:33:54] Andrew Gold: Oh my God. It is just the worst. And that's what happens when people get into this trance and into this belief system. There are many famous or infamous cases of exorcism. One of the first in modern popular culture actually predates the movie The Exorcist, and for Good Reason, as you'll hear, and that is the exorcism of Roland's Doe, who was later named as Ronald Hunkler after their Aunt Harriet's death in the 1940s.

The family heard strange noises around the house, furniture moving of its own accord and VAEs flying around. When the boy was near, he was taken to Georgetown University Hospital, a Jesuit institution to undergo a number of exorcisms at the hospital. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, it's a Jesuit hospital, so I don't know to what extent that's a real, I mean, I guess it is a real hospital, but it's one that is, it's

[00:34:42] Jordan Harbinger: a very real hospital.

Yeah, but, and it's a Jesuit institution, but I just still thought they were like, oh, it's for medical care, not for like exorcisms. But this was what, 1940s? So maybe they were still like, eh, we're half medicine, half. Exorcisms from priests. I don't know. That's a little surprising,

[00:34:57] Andrew Gold: odd wager that still goes on.

So many of the hospitals that I went to, just, if I needed a checkup or whatever in Argentina, they're like super, super religious. There's like nuns walking around, all of them. For some reason, I, I never really got to the bottom of why. It's just like nuns everywhere, so I bet that's still happening. But yeah, he went to the hospital to get a bunch of exorcisms, believing the boy possessed by a demon.

They had him restrained, but it was claimed that the boy slipped his hand out of a restraint, tore off a bed spring from beneath him and slashed the priest's arms. Wow. To stop the exorcism.

[00:35:28] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. That sounds like this kid was, this kid had real issues. He wasn't just like around when a VCE flew across the room, this guy was.

He had actual, real, serious issues. Oh yeah. Wow.

[00:35:38] Andrew Gold: Yeah, I think so. I mean, ano another time the kid broke the priest's nose.

[00:35:42] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, I get it. Good for him, I suppose, but also, no,

[00:35:45] Andrew Gold: not not.

[00:35:45] Jordan Harbinger: Probably

[00:35:45] Andrew Gold: not a great kid to be around. No, I wouldn't wanna be around that kid. The consensus today is that Rolands was a deeply disturbed boy who pulled pranks deliberately to fool his family and the priests.

He disappeared into obscurity and seems to have led an ordinary life. Hmm. Nonetheless, the boy was one of the most influential people in the 20th century because the book, the Exorcist was based. On him.

[00:36:07] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. 'cause I was about to be like 1940s c They had this before the movie and it's like, no, this guy was the inspiration for the movie.

Okay. Oh yeah. Well there you go. He was like a one-off, right? No, he just, he was cre. Creative genius. Yeah. I mean, he came up with the whole, hey, there's that evil spirit and it's throwing things around the house and look, this things are moving and I have a demon in my, I mean, that kid basically pioneered that, which is very interesting.

I thought you were gonna say he grew up to be, you know, incarcerated for being a serial killer, but he turns out to just be like a punk, which is kind of funny. He grew up actually

[00:36:39] Andrew Gold: up to be Jordan Harbinger, and that's where we are today, guys. Right? No, what? It's amazing. The Butterfly Effect, isn't it?

Because he did that and it was this whole weird situation he had that led to the Exorcist film coming out. Countless people are more people anyway. I mean, it was happening just not very much, but countless more people are being exercised and then you've got like the death of that three-year-old kid.

That kid survives, if not for Roland Doe. Right. Or Roland Ronald's Hunkler as his name is also, for some reason,

[00:37:04] Jordan Harbinger: I gotta say, if you're like Roland Doe, oh, it sounds like a fake name because John Doe let me change my name. Hunkler is not where I'm going. But you know, who knows the circumstances?

[00:37:13] Andrew Gold: I think it is a John Doe thing.

That's why they called him Roland Doe and, and later his name was allowed to be mentioned and it was actually Ronald's. Oh,

[00:37:18] Jordan Harbinger: that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. 'cause I'm like, if you can pick any name, you pick Hunkler. I mean, eh, there's gotta be a reason, you know, what's more affordable than being beaten up by a fake priest, Andrew?

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We've done your homework. Thanks again for listening to the show. All the deals are at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Now for the rest of skeptical Sunday. All right, so that's the bad side. Death and starvation in the case of Annalise, Michelle or Michael and Psychopathic Deception in the case of Roland Doe or Ronald.

Wait, Roland or Ronald?

[00:39:17] Andrew Gold: It's Roland Doe. And Ronald Hung. I love that they've gone like, okay, like obviously the 1930s version of John was Roland, or they've gone like, okay, so his name's Ronald. We're gonna give him Doe 'cause that's just the name we do for anonymous people. I see. And then we're gonna make a really difficult first name, so nobody can guess that it's actually Ronald.

Let's go with Rolands. It's the same name.

[00:39:36] Jordan Harbinger: They'll, they'll make it so close. They'll never guess. It's actually the same. All right. So can exorcism ever be a force for good? Because like I said, sometimes it seems like it works temporarily, so I don't know. I'm, I'm kind of on the

[00:39:48] Andrew Gold: fence. Yeah. Well, in very specific cases, it is possible, and I mean possible as in not beyond the realms of possibility, although certainly not recommendable, that an exorcism can help, or at least it can mask symptoms for long enough for them to disappear, as you alluded to.

Anyone with teenage kids will know that teens are particularly susceptible not only to social contagion, but to real mental health issues. I myself suffered terribly with obsessive compulsive disorder As a teenager, I was flipping light switches on and off all night for many people. Oh man, that stuff gets much worse and worse into adulthood.

But I'm very fortunate that, you know, some people just grow out of it and, and I did. Wow. So let's say I had an exorcism when I was 17, which were my last few months of, of really suffering badly with OCD. If the placebo effect of the exorcism had lasted a year, it would've masked my OCD for the final months of it.

By the time the placebo wore off, I'd have been out on the other side. So I can imagine that there are cases where exorcism does at least appear to help.

[00:40:46] Jordan Harbinger: Right. Like if you'd done it, you'd be like, I had an exorcism and it worked.

[00:40:48] Andrew Gold: Yeah. '

[00:40:49] Jordan Harbinger: cause you wouldn't have known you were gonna outgrow that, which is amazing.

I've never heard of that. Anyone outgrowing OCD, but it's not like I'm paying attention to that as a professional. Hmm. But I just didn't even know that was possible. I just thought OCD people

[00:41:00] Andrew Gold: have that forever. It's like a controversial thing among OCD sufferers. 'cause some people have it so bad man, and it's so bad.

It ruins their lives, you know? And. They are often, it's like a faux pa. You're not supposed to say what I'm about to say. So take what I'm about to say with a pinch of salt. But I am of the belief that if you are able to live a good life with OCD and like allow it to live alongside you, you can benefit from it.

You can use that obsessiveness to your advantage to become a big podcaster or YouTuber or something like that, for example. Hmm. That is like a big no-no to say in the OCD communities because it's like you're saying like, don't you realize how serious this is? It's a crippling illness, you know? And I totally understand what those people are saying and I get it.

And, and they're right, except in my case, it just simply has helped. And for me it was a, it was just about learning. I think that you sort of learn to obsess about not obsessing. Mm-Hmm. So instead of like making sure the doors are shut at night, you just, you make sure they're open, you know, and you start to actually enjoy that lack of control.

You have to obsess about learning, not to try and control your environment.

[00:42:02] Jordan Harbinger: That's interesting. I've got a buddy who's an investigative journalist and he is like. My superpower is OCD. And I was like, ha, ha ha. And he's like, no, no, no. Really? Mm-Hmm. I will chase a source down in every bit of minutia until I'm like, and I won't sleep.

And it's bad for me, but it's how he's famous and it's like, that's why I am good at this, because I can't let it go. Like it's bad for, I can't let it go. It's not good. And I'm like, yeah, but you're like the best at this. And he's like, yeah, but okay, great. But I bet if he could do his life over again, he might like not choose to have that.

I don't know. Yeah. So, okay. If this could work, right? In some ways, at least temporarily, why don't we employ exorcism like tactics in therapy where it's, instead of the power of Christ compels you. It's like we go through this ritual and it like works. Yeah. Or this theatrical thing and it works. Or does it have to be like religious?

Metaphysical beliefs or it just doesn't do anything.

[00:42:56] Andrew Gold: No. I see. I don't think it has to be. And so now it's time to talk about John Lennon, which no one saw coming. Right. Primal Scream. So in the 1970s, a fad known as Primal Scream Therapy was gaining a reputation as a way to scream out your trauma.

[00:43:10] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Is that what's responsible for those recordings of Yoko Ono, one of the weirdest people in the world screaming over John Lennon's songs where they're just delusively like, this is art.

You have to like it. There's a great video online you could find of John Lennon Dueting with Chuck Berry, and it just freeze frames on Chuck Berry looking kinda like what is happening, as Yoko just starts screaming and you can. Imagine that all these like sort of weirdo artists are like, do we draw the line at some point?

Because

[00:43:37] Andrew Gold: what are you, what are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. So that screaming according to the Primal Scream Theory is designed to get rid of all that pain and rage from childhood. The Concepts founder was an eccentric guru, like psychologist called Arthur Janov, who took Lenon in for a four week workshop. It had a profound effect.

Lenon became one of its most passionate mouthpieces, and it inspired the raw production and stripped back tracks of his plastic Ono Band album in 1970. The album's lyrics address his difficult childhood and the strain of being one of the Beatles. Janov got his inspiration from a group session in 1967 when a patient described a moment from a play that had stuck with him.

Said, seen, involved an actor striding the stage in a diaper while shouting, mommy, okay, Janov and his patients play out what he'd seen. And suddenly the patient was writhing on the floor in agony. His breathing was rapid spasmodic. Mommy, daddy came out of his mouth almost involuntarily in loud screeches.

[00:44:39] Jordan Harbinger: So this is starting to sound like an exorcism, although even more ridiculous in many ways that we don't need to get into. But yeah, it sort of reminiscent of exorcism.

[00:44:48] Andrew Gold: Yeah, I agree. Mummy, I mean, Jordan, so, and Yav, even Yav even used the terms, uh, hypnotic writhing convulsions and piercing deathlike scream that rattled the walls of my office.

The book, the Exodus came out in 1971, just one year after both the publication of Janov, the Primal Scream. And John Lennon's album.

[00:45:10] Jordan Harbinger: It seems like screaming out one's rage was all the, all the rage, I guess. Sorry.

[00:45:18] Andrew Gold: Yeah. And the release of the movie version of The Exorcist in 1973 brought the practices of exorcism and primal scream into the mainstream Primal scream seemed to work.

Yanos patient declared afterwards That original mommy daddy one I made it. I don't know what, but I can feel. That's just like the woman I saw exercised, like immediately. Yes, it's worked. Everything's amazing.

[00:45:39] Jordan Harbinger: So why aren't we all screaming all the time? Maybe this podcast would be a good place to start.

I'm just gonna have Yoko Onos scream

[00:45:46] Andrew Gold: over

[00:45:46] Jordan Harbinger: my next interview.

[00:45:48] Andrew Gold: Yeah, that would be great. It's hard, folks. Sorry. Turn. Turn it down everyone. No, we won't do that. Yeah. Before we start screaming, I should say that the evidence of long-term benefits from Primal Scream is unconvincing surprise. In fact, Janov is now seen as a self-appointed guru of the hippie elite era alongside l Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.

[00:46:07] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, great company. This man. Yeah. You're really up there when you're being compared to the founder of Scientology. Sh

[00:46:14] Andrew Gold: I know, I know. I'm imagining just now like a, an alter, an alternate reality where. As L one, Hubbard made Scientology with Tom Cruise. Janov made like a John Lennon version with his own primal scream, and they'd be like competing with each other.

You'd have like Lennon's, right? Cult and Tom Cruise's cult. But just like Hubbard Janov declared psychiatry an evil, calling it the greatest hoax of the 20th century, while proclaiming his own primal scream therapy. The most important discovery of the 20th century.

[00:46:41] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, of course. 'cause narcissists gonna narcissist, but I, I can't imagine What's more annoying?

Scientologists on Hollywood Boulevard asking you to take a personality test or screamy people on Hollywood Boulevard just screaming at the top of their lungs on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. I don't know. Yeah, both. Annoying. I might take the personality test over that.

[00:47:00] Andrew Gold: I'll join both. In 1973, he was, uh, going a bit loopy, was Yanoff our mate, our guy Yanoff.

Remember this is the year leading up to the movie The Exorcist, and he created in that year a birth simulator for patients to recreate and relive their own births covered in slimy liquid and pushed through a vinyl tube. I remember thinking while watching an exorcism that the woman I saw while she was being exercised, the women actually all of them were going through, and by the way, I should actually address that, that they were all women.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, they all, the ones I happened to see were women. I believe. There's no way to get actual stats on that. I tried, but my anecdotal experiences that they were pretty much, they were all women and the psychologist I spoke to said that there is something particular about women in their teenage years that is even more difficult, even more hormones and emotions and things.

And that they are just more open to these kinds of experiences. So it just happens to be women and also the priests who happen to be men are more likely to target women. So when you combine those two factors, you end up with a lot of women being exercised.

[00:48:03] Jordan Harbinger: That's weird. And why are the priests targeting the women?

That's a little creepy. Like if I'm a priest, I'm not like, Ooh, I want women to get the demons. It's like whoever has a demon. Yeah. But come see me. Yeah. But they wanna, that's um,

[00:48:14] Andrew Gold: yeah, touch the women.

[00:48:15] Jordan Harbinger: That's what it sounds like. I mean, I don't even know how you sugarcoat it. It's like, no, they wanna just like wrestle around the floor with a woman.

'cause that's like part of the weird

[00:48:22] Andrew Gold: Yeah.

[00:48:22] Jordan Harbinger: Kink that they got going here after, before they scam them out of money.

[00:48:25] Andrew Gold: Well, you know, even look at like cults, like nm, there were loads of women, NM, Keith Rani just targeted women. So he was basically an exorcist in that sense. And again, that was a bit of a different one to do with women.

But this was like suburban women in like California and uh, you know, they had these wealthy husbands and they didn't have purpose because they were just like the housewives, you know? So he was really going for like Californian suburban trophy wives who, who needed attention and then, you know, yeah.

Horrible way that he targeted them. No kidding. I remember while watching these women, it did feel like some kind of psychological pregnancy. I. Janov was charging for the Primal Scream, almost $7,000 for just like a bit of primal screaming, but he became a laughing stock in the therapeutic community, and there was never any evidence of lasting change.

[00:49:12] Jordan Harbinger: So it seems that primal scream and exorcism can offer short-term relief. They're like a jolt to the system, creating adrenaline dopamine, and who knows what else. But once that stuff wears off, you're just back to square one.

[00:49:23] Andrew Gold: Yeah, that seems right. I mean, catharsis alone makes for short term relief. Some people have tried to combine that kind of catharsis with deeper analysis.

For example, a set of participants with stage fright were made to get up on stage and deliver speeches. This is a bit like primal scream or exorcism in terms of facing your demons, going through a momentous process that sparks adrenaline. One group of participants was also asked to talk through their feelings of stage fright before going up.

While the others didn't get that opportunity, the group that was able to talk through their fears and anxieties beforehand had far lower levels of digital perspiration than the others. I think that means their hands sweated less. Yeah, I

[00:50:02] Jordan Harbinger: was gonna say, wow. Virtual perspiration now. Fingers. Fingers. I, I always forget the digits

[00:50:07] Andrew Gold: are fingers.

I know they need to change those words 'cause they're such different things. But it's thought that these kinds of emotional and performative therapies can be helpful providing you talk through the underlying issues and reframe them in your mind. I. Not only does exorcism fail to do that, but by its definition it can't do that.

For these patients to be able to talk through their issues with OCD depression or whatever else it might be, they'd need to understand and acknowledge that it has nothing to do with Satan.

[00:50:35] Jordan Harbinger: So we've covered the history of exorcism and the abstract side of it with things like primal scream and placebo, but do we know what's actually going on in the brain?

I know you're not a scientist, but can we pinpoint changes? Has anyone, I wonder if anyone's done like exorcism and then an MRI or something like that. That probably hasn't happened yet.

[00:50:52] Andrew Gold: No. Well, exorcists are typically reluctant to allow science or scientists into their churches. Many even acknowledge that there is a psychiatric side to things.

My exorcist, Padre Manuel said that when the patient hears voices from the inside, it's schizophrenia. And when it's from the outside, it's demonic possession. Or vice versa, right? I don't, it doesn't make sense. It's all just voices that you're hearing in your head, but it was his way, I think, of trying to mitigate against criticism.

He can always say that he does tell people to seek psychiatric help in addition to his services, but we do know that we can actually measure the changes in the brain when, for example, Parkinson's sufferers are given placebo pills. In fact, the brain still changes when these participants are aware they're just taking sugar pills.

So just the action of anticipating benefits can make real physiological changes. Neuroimaging scans show that placebo stimulates the release of dopamine, so they feel significantly better. Well, now imagine that rather than a pill to assuage your Parkinson's, you've got a trained exorcist battling the devil to save you.

That's pretty powerful imagery. I know you've done several episodes about the placebo effect specifically, so I won't belabor the point too much, but we also know that crying can be a release of psychological tension. A lot of catharsis remains theoretical and isn't empirically provable, which is why OVS work and much of Freud's work is dismissed today.

But there is a lot of subjective evidence, people telling us they feel better, which shows the power, at least short term. Mm-hmm. Of catharsis.

[00:52:19] Jordan Harbinger: It's interesting to note that even though the idea of demons is, is bogus and the practice is harmful and ridiculous sometimes that it can have some benefits.

Where are some of the places that we see more exorcism today? Is it like developing world? I mean, when I think exorcism, I think. Like you Argentina or like rural Mexico, they're gonna do this or something like that. Or in my neighborhood in San Jose in the back of a single family home, unfortunately.

That's right. That's right. Well,

[00:52:46] Andrew Gold: yeah, that, I mean, partly because it's a traditionally Catholic practice. You see it in many Catholic countries. That said, even though I was in Catholic Argentina, my exorcist was an Evangelical Lutheran. Many of these guys in Argentina and Brazil, for example, are basically charlatans, scamming their communities for money and often have no links to any church outside of Catholicism.

Similar practices have been popular since the dawn of time. Just think of Trapani, where prehistoric people would cut part of their skulls off to release. Oh my gosh. Evil spirits. Yeah. We know, we know this because parts of their skulls have grown back, uh, before they eventually died. So you can see bits of the, where the skull's been growing back afterwards.

Oh, why? Oh, that's awful. Yeah, they cut the skulls open. Yeah. And, and sometimes it actually worked because there was some kind of like swelling on the brain or something, and it did actually help. Mm. So that's pretty crazy. That is crazy. Today in Islam, they practice, uh, rookie, a set of recitations to help people infected by black magic and evil spirits.

Judaism in rare cases has forms of exorcism, as do Buddhism and Hinduism. Across religions and cultures, there's an obsession that someone has been infected by malignant spirits. Even within Catholicism, you get a great range. The exorcisms I witnessed are fairly typical, but they can also just be a quick prayer and nothing too dramatic,

[00:54:00] Jordan Harbinger: like a polite and mild way of defeating a demon, like a very polite and understanding demon.

Actually, I invite you to leave Satan. You are no longer welcome in this body. All right. Alright, I shall leave. Then I'm out.

[00:54:11] Andrew Gold: I, I had no idea that I was unwanted here and out I go. Right? Yeah. Those guys are the polite ones. I mean, others need to be shouted out for an hour apparently, before they leave.

Right. The Catholic Church was reluctant to discuss exorcism, or really admit it was going on until the popularity of the Exorcist movie. It became this big thing within the church and was done with less embarrassment then. And then in 1991, they even allowed one of their exorcisms to be televised on ABC's 2020.

This set up a divide in the church between people who wanted the Catholic church to be more modern and understanding of modern life and mental illness. Those who wanted a more traditional church where people are subservient to priests and God. And that latter picture of Catholicism thrived on exorcism.

Mm-hmm. In 1990, the International Association of Exorcists formed to lobby the Vatican to take them an exorcism more seriously. And in 2004, the Vatican began asking churches around the world to start appointing official exorcists. Pope Francis is a fan of exorcism. Really? He doesn't seem to be, he loves it.

He doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. Of course, he's Argentinian as well, so they, they love a bit of it there. They even offered a special exorcism course in 2005. It cost $400 to sign up to and covers topics such as theology, psychology, and anthropology, as well as the background and history of exorcism.

There are even now exorcists who form the ritual by phone. Who knows what will be. I mean, that was important during Covid time as well, I suppose. Yeah, so who knows?

[00:55:42] Jordan Harbinger: Pandemic. Exorcism. Hey, do you do Zoom exorcisms? Yeah, we don't wanna get infected. We already have a demon over here. I understand. Just send us something

[00:55:50] Andrew Gold: who, uh, look, who knows what will be next.

As the church and its exorcists, try to keep up with modern technology.

[00:55:55] Jordan Harbinger: A $400 course on the topic of exorcism. That includes theology, psychology, and anthropology. Actually sounds like a pretty good value. It's not bad. Even if that's like 600 bucks in today's money, I'm like, that's actually not a bad deal.

And it's 2005, so it's probably not an online course, because they didn't really do that back then. There was not really a way for everybody to do that. So a live class, I mean, maybe it was only a couple of days or one day, so I don't know how much you cover, but yeah, not too terrible for a course on, yeah, exorcism.

Maybe we'll have to start performing exorcisms via podcast just to shake things up and keep it modern if they're doing it by phone and zoom. We can do it via podcast. Thanks, Andrew Gold from the newly named branded Heretics podcast. I appreciate it, man. This is interesting.

[00:56:37] Andrew Gold: Oh, thank you. I was just gonna say, last little word here, 2005 was the year that Tom Cruise started getting all excited about Scientology and jumping on the sofa of Oprah Mad stuff with Katie Holmes, war of the World's picketing, Steven Spielberg's therapy with, uh, Scientologists and things like that.

So that was a year where I think the Catholic Church had to sort of keep up in that respect with its sort of the craziness and all of that. Interesting. And, and yes, it's not a bad Christ. So I think you should put a link to that in your description. A link to the course. Yeah. People should sign up. It has,

[00:57:05] Jordan Harbinger: it's been done for 18 years, but we'll, we'll link to it in the show notes.

Sure. Why not?

[00:57:10] Andrew Gold: Yeah.

[00:57:10] Jordan Harbinger: Thanks so much for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday toJordan@jordanharbinger.com. Transcripts in the show notes, advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show. All at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn.

This show is created an association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. And I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer and I'm definitely not a priest, real or fake. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show.

Also, we may get things wrong here and there, especially on Skeptical Sunday. If you think we really dropped the ball on something, let us know. We're usually pretty receptive to that. Y'all know how to reach me, jordan@jordanharbinger.com and we're striving more for accuracy. We had, it was tough doing these early on.

It was tough 'cause you gotta make sure you get it right and you're trying out new collaborators and sometimes people. Do a better job on one thing than they do on the other thing. It's, it's, it's actually not super easy to do these. So I appreciate y'all's feedback, positive and and neutral. The negative ones I don't appreciate as much 'cause they're not as constructive.

So basically just say nice things or don't say anything at all. No, I honestly, the feedback has been super helpful of all kinds. Remember we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. And if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism that we doled out today.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time. Here's a sample of my interview with Scam Buster Coffee Zilla. Whether you or a loved one is being tempted by sketchy investment opportunities. MLM Traps fake guru led operations.

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[00:59:03] Clip II: some guru you've seen before. You haven't seen before. Let's say Jordan, you're the guru for today. And you tell me, oh, come to my free webinar.

It's always free and it's always gonna teach me how to get rich. There's no investment that I initially think I have to make. So I go to your webpage, I give you my email, and I sign up for this live webinar. It's never live. They've pre-recorded it. It's a three hour sales pitch for their $2,000 course.

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Normally it's a hundred thousand dollars worth of value, but just this second, for the next 50 minutes, I will give this to you for $2,000. And they're coaching you through the little credit card application. You're on the phone with a credit

[01:00:31] Jordan Harbinger: card company and that coach needs

[01:00:32] Clip II: to do this. You're like sitting there and they're like, Hey, this is what you're gonna say.

Go ahead, call 'em right now and let's swipe that card, baby. Let's swipe that card before you leave the seminar. They're left with a $40,000 collection debt, you know, for a high interest rate. They can't pay it back. They're not making the money they were promised. And then there's a money back guarantee.

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[01:00:53] Jordan Harbinger: To hear more about how to expose predatory shysters for what they are, by delving into their shady manipulation tactics. Check out episode 3, 6 8 of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Coffee Zilla.

[01:01:05] Clip III: Hi, cold Case Files fans, we have some exciting news for you. Brand new episodes of Cold Case files are dropping in your feed.

And I'm your new host, Paula Barrows. I'm a cold case files superfan true crime aficionado. And I love telling stories with unbelievable twists and turns. And this season of Cold Case Viles has all of that and more. I want to die.

[01:01:28] Clip II: I don't want to die. I

[01:01:29] Jordan Harbinger: want to die.

[01:01:29] Clip III: Her cause of death

[01:01:31] Jordan Harbinger: was strangulation

[01:01:32] Clip: lying face down on the bed.

She was in a pretty advanced state of decomposition. A little bit of bloody froth had come from Deborah's mouth. He panicked and decided he was getting rid of the body.

[01:01:41] Clip III: I saw a danger in everything. So get ready. You don't wanna miss what this season has in store. New episodes of Cold Case files drop every Tuesday.

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