Hello and welcome to the inaugural episode of Oh No Ross and Carrie. The show where we explore the paranormal, fringe science, spirituality and more all from a scientific standpoint.

Yes, when they make the claims, we show up and ask the questions so you don't have to. I'm your co-host, Ross Blascher.

And I'm your co-host, Carrie Poppy. And today we come to you from the Center for Inquiry Los Angeles to tell you about our brief romantic interlude with the allegedly ancient teachings of Kabbalah.

So Ross and I both live in the Los Angeles area, which is home to the headquarters of the Kabbalah Center, which is founded in 1965 with the LA branch opening in 1984, just a couple years after Ross and I were born incidentally.

And that's where many students of Kabbalah have studied, including several celebrities like Madonna, Ashton Kutcher, to be more.

So the Kabbalah Center takes a modern approach to Kabbalah teachings and may differ from teachings associated with other branches of Kabbalah.

It's usually supposed to be more studious, but I think this is more of the pop psychology kind of presentation of Kabbalah.

Nevertheless, the Kabbalah Center continues to be influential and to attract followers of all stripes with the promise of wealth and happiness.

I don't think you'll be learning how to raise a golem in their classes.

All right, so we found out about this because, well, I found out about it when I saw an ad for the best kept secret talk on Facebook and Ross, you had heard of it before, right?

So we went to this once. We went in March of 2010.

Yeah, we wanted to go again. We didn't know the last time we went that we would be telling anyone about it.

Right. And our first journey was such a joy. We really wanted to repeat the experience.

We had a good time there. And this tells you a little bit about who we are as people that we actually enjoy doing that sort of thing.

Right. Absolutely. So right before we went this time, the teachers from the center actually called us to confirm that we were coming.

I had this very awkward, rehearsed sort of interaction with the woman who called who had this very practiced cheerfulness about her where she was like, hey, oh, Carrie, hi, it's Susie calling from the Kabbalah Center.

Oh, how are you?

It's very uncomfortable, but I agreed to go anyway. And one of the reasons that I committed to going, Ross, was that they said they would have coffee and tea, which will be key in this story.

Yeah. Yes, she called me too, but she got my answering machine. And she sounded fine. You heard it. She sounded good.

Yeah. She was not as excited about you. Right. I mean, which is, you know, before we attended our talk, we wanted to get a little background on what Kabbalah is and what it teaches.

We learned that in our understanding, Kabbalah is an essence and offshoot of Jewish mysticism.

It is monotheistic and teaches that there is a God who brought the universe into being and that most of what we experience is actually an illusion of the senses.

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