So, that was my first TV appearance. I’m told I did good. You can verify such sentiments by watching the embedded clips.
It was a good experience; Mikey wasn’t really willing to come out with a fully formed view on 9/11 or the London Bombings, which made debate about the matter slightly difficult. The bit where he calls himself a skeptic just like Vicki was funny; I was watching her as he said this and Vicki’s face tried to show about fifteen different responses in the space of one second; if ‘Media 7’ was directed by David Cronenberg someone’s head would have exploded ((And Russell would be played by Patrick MacGoohan.)).
I thoroughly enjoyed my fifteen minutes of fame and, I think it goes without saying, would happily do it again. Last night’s show was motivated (I suspect really only minorly in part) by 2009 being the centennial year of the first recorded use of the term ‘Conspiracy Theory.’ I suggested to the production team that we should do another show for the bicenntenial; Mark has suggested I can be played by Robin Williams, whilst José thinks we’ll all be heads in jars.
Pop culture; you’ve got to love it.
Also, someone found my blog with the search term “kumara heyerdahl skeptic.” That’s pretty neat.
Comments
nice. you did do very well. Mikey was very ambiguous, but that’s to be expected. Was television as glamorous as they say it is?
It was, somewhat. I was taken away to be made up, which took all of about one minute and made me look like a corpse under normal lighting. Free booze was provided but the audience was able to make more of that than I was.
I think it would have been interesting if the panel had been filmed and then the results edited down to the timeslot. We filmed as if it were live, which meant that whenever the subject got meaty and I had something profound to say, we went to a break. Whilst I know editing down can lead to trouble, it would have been interesting to see where the conversation would have lead if we had been able to be more free-flowing. Still, them’s the breaks for the kind of production ‘Media 7’ is laden with; it’s not anyone to do with the show’s fault, just the reality of making a show like that in the current climate.
You and Vicki did really well, I was disappointed in Mikey. Having listened to him for years on the radio I know his views are a lot more than just “I have unanswered questions” and “I’m just pro-truth”, especially around vaccines. The only explanation I can come up with is that he must have realised that if he actually said anything concrete he would have been blown out of the water and so toned it down.
Yes, I suspect similar; he was much more forthright about his suspicion about the London Bombings after the show; he thinks Peter Power, of Visor Consultants, the man who ran the simulated attack on the same day as the actual bombings, was involved.