This video is from the TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) 2006 Conference and it lives exclusively on the TED Website. They also offer a 45.7MB video podcast of it you can download. Although there is an ad at the beginning and the end of the video, the content in between is well worth viewing. -SR
From the TED Website: “Skeptic Magazine founder Michael Shermer takes us on a hilarious romp through the strange claims we humans put forth as truth – from alien encounters to Virgin Mary sightings on pizza pies, to hidden messages revealed while playing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ backwards – and explains the evolutionary and cognitive basis for these lapses in reason…
Shermer is the founder/publisher of Skeptic Magazine, and author of several books, including, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time