894: Psychics and Tarot Cards | Skeptical Sunday

23:30They got a big sign on the side of their house or on their car. She's on your podcast talking about how she's psychic. So you're not trying to maintain a low profile. You're doing whatever you can to get publicity and prove your thing out. But you just don't want to win the lottery. But no reason given. I don't want money. I want to earn my money by being psychic. Come on, dude. And think about all the good she could do with that money. A$400 million Powerball. Like you don't want to build homeless shelters. Like, come on. Win the lottery and solve major, major issues if you just don't want the money.

23:58I mean, why bother doing any of this psychic stuff for money when you could simply win a lottery or two, then use your services pro bono? Hi, I only find missing kids, the occasional missing pet, whatever it is. Finding missing kids is a hell of a lot more rewarding than telling Angela from the Macy's makeup counter about what her future Prince Charming is going to look like. So I just don't buy that. Anyway, you've had a few psychics on the podcast, I think. I have. So one claimed to be a psychic to the stars. One claimed to communicate with the spirits that followed my daughter around. That's a little invasive, I feel like.

24:31Hey, your child has these spirits that I'm talking to. You pretending to talk to my fake spirits, fine. But if somebody brought my kid into it, I'd be like, hold on, dude. What are you doing? Yeah, he did. And you know what? I'll share that story in a little bit. I'll tell you that. And then I had a really personal read, too, that I could get into in a bit as well. And I'll just kind of break down kind of what happened with each of those. Oh, yeah. I get it. Do you have a fourth proof? I think you were like on number four here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So number four, why aren't psychics like predicting and warning us about COVID or the Russian invasion of Ukraine or monkeypox?

25:07And lastly, the James Randi Foundation had a$1 million challenge for anyone who could demonstrate psychic or metaphysical powers under scientific conditions, and not a single person ever collected the prize. So no, your psychic isn't real either. They just haven't been caught lying yet. James Randi, famous stage magician, but also nonsense buster. So he had a whole career built on challenging these ideas. Yeah, and he, people would call him a debunker or say that he debunked it, and he didn't like the word debunk. He called himself a psychic investigator. Really? He didn't want people who believed in psychics to immediately be like, oh, he's just anti-psychic.

25:49I see. He's like, show me. I have a million dollars here to give you. Please show me that you have these abilities. Right, because if he says psychic investigator, it's like the door's still open to me changing my mind, which for him was almost certainly true, but debunker says I've already made up my mind and I'm just gonna shame you. That's what we're doing. We've already made up our mind and we are now explaining why you are a fake psychic or the psychic you think is real is fake. I'm a debunker. Yeah, James Randi was a little bit more open-minded when it came to these things. And guess what?

26:17Spoiler alert, never gave away that prize. Nope, a lot of people tried. They all failed. No one ever collected the prize. So I don't know if you remember, Uri Geller. Yeah, Uri Geller. Yeah, the spoon bending guy on TV. Yeah, I'm going to put a little asterisk here, but he was confirmed by Stanford scientists and even the CIA to have psychic abilities. Wow. And there are documents to prove this, but I'll come back to that. There was something called Project Stargate. It was a government-funded operation trying to create psychic super soldiers. And there were documents released in 1995 showing that this is completely real.

26:55The program is real. The program, thank you for clarifying, is completely real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They tried to telepathically communicate and train in what they called psychic-based martial arts. They tried to run through walls. Like, they thought they could dematerialize. That? I want to see that experiment. Yeah, I want to see videos of guys just smashing into stuff. Run into it as fast as you can. We're filming. They even tried to psychically explode the hearts of goats. Is that the Men Who Stare at Goats movie? Or am I just... I believe so. Yeah, yeah, okay. I believe so. Okay. And so it was shut down in the mid-90s after, of course, there was no evidence shown that it worked.

27:36And so many people believed that it was possible. Uri Geller was blowing people's minds by bending spoons and turning phone book pages without touching them. So our government brought him in to run tests and hopefully use him as some sort of invisible brain ninja. By the way, they brought him in because he had gained popularity. and it was shown even by this group, by our CIA, that he did have the powers. And there are documents confirming that he had these psychic powers. So he goes making the rounds on Johnny Carson and James Randi. By the way, you know Johnny Carson was a magician as well. I did not know that, but that makes sense.

28:11He loved having these guys on. And remember the thing he used to do with the envelope where he would say the punchline and then open the envelope and read the setup to the joke? It was brilliant. And so it was kind of paying homage to his magician days, but also kind of, you know, comedy. So Uri Geller was making the rounds of these TV shows, and he goes on Carson. And because he was coming on Carson, I don't know if Carson reached out or if James Randi reached out, but they spoke. And James Randi told Johnny Carson and his people how to prepare all of Uri Geller's props and to not let Geller or any of his staff near them until they were live on TV.

28:50And so he comes out, and the full video is available. It's like a 20-minute clip on YouTube. Gellar comes out, and they roll this table out in front of him, and sure enough, he failed to do any of his tricks, and he kept pointing at the table saying, this scares me. This is very, very scary. Because he could tell by looking at the props, they were not set up according to his standards. And it's this moment of him just flat-out admitting he's not feeling strong today. And then Carson's like, well, you can do whatever you want. You can do whatever. And he gives him multiple opportunities. He goes, you can show us any of your abilities that you want.

29:23And Uri just looks at him and goes, can you ask me more questions? Oh my gosh, just wants to conduct an interview. He just wanted to talk. You know, we had a really interesting sponsor for this episode lined up. It was a psychic fair, but they had to cancel due to unforeseen circumstances. Here are the rest of the ads. This episode is sponsored in part by 1-800-CONTACTS. You know that last pair of contacts panic? My wife, Jen, knows it way too well. She's had these mornings where she's out of contacts and stuck wearing these old glasses. She's got to keep wiping clean with her sleeve. But now she makes sure to load up ahead of time because her next set is always on the way from 1-800-CONTACTS.

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32:43You can also search for any promo code using the AI chatbot slash search box right there on the website. Thank you for supporting those who support us. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Uri Geller is really, I say this, I realize I'm talking about an absolute like scumbaggy con man guy, but he is amazing at what he does. I just wish that he would be truthful about what it is, showmanship, it's stage magic, as opposed to lying about it to take advantage of people who desperately want to believe in him and his skills. Because if he had said, Johnny, I'm a magician, of course, I got to mess with the props.

33:19Like it's, it's, these are tricks. They're for entertainment. They would have let him mess with it. But instead, he's telling oil companies that he can find mineral and oil deposits. He's telling people he can figure out where things are and he's got psychic powers. He duped the CIA, which, you know, not a ton of sympathy, but those are our tax dollars that he wasted as well, just for attention. I mean, it's just, it sucks to see people do that. I want to say, though, he would have never been invited to Carson if he was just another magician, right? There were hundreds of magicians performing all over the country.

33:50None None of them were performing on Carson. At that level, though? Because he was really good at these tricks. I don't think it matters. I think that the reason he had so much heat and so much attention on him is because he's like, I'm for real. Right, this is real. And there's a Stanford scientific document saying, this guy's legit. And then a CIA document saying, he is confirmed to have psychic abilities. So the fact that he was lying about having it is why he was even elevated to that level of celebrity status. I see. I see. Okay. And in this video titled The Bizarre World of Fake Psychics, Faith Healers and Mediums, there's a YouTuber named Super Eyepatch Wolf.

34:27Of course. Because it's always fun to credit someone with an amazing name like that. And they showed the CIA documents from the original studies where Geller was confirmed to be psychic. And Super Eyepatch Wolf noticed the line, and I'm quoting from the CIA document, Good results were obtained on the four days when there was no openly skeptical observer. What does that mean? Like, it works as long as you're not paying attention with using critical eye at all. No, no, no. As long as everyone there already believed in it and believed, as long as everyone there was bias leaning towards psychic powers being real, he had good results for those four days.

35:06But any other time when there was a skeptical observer in the room going, wait, I don't, can you show me this? Can you prove this? He was never able to do it when there was a skeptical observer. So that just goes to show, again, your desire to want something to be true or your cognitive bias that something already is goes a long way in you fooling yourself. Speaking of fooling yourself, you know, the whole time I thought The Men Who Stare at Goats was just a movie about Afghanistan because I figured, where is there a lot of goats and a lot of people with nothing to do but just stare at the goats?

35:36Afghanistan. You ever been to Alabama? Yeah. Do they have goats down there? I guess they maybe. Afghanistan seemed more goaty than Alabama. Oh my God. I mean, absolutely. I mean, I grew up in Texas and tons of them, tons of goats all over the place. Wasn't sure where the goat population was most concentrated. It's Texas, Alabama, Afghanistan. So I love it when psychics get busted, especially on live TV. That is just chef's kiss delicious. It must've been so nice to watch Erie Geller squirm and then just not do anything. Yeah. In prep for this episode, I went back and watched all these. These are things that I would just watch in my own free time because I just love it.

36:14But I got to go back and sort of refresh and pull up like my favorites, like the top 10 greatest hits. Inside Edition tested a psychic by showing her photos of a young girl. And the psychic said she had been beaten, tortured, and killed. And the psychic had no idea that the photo was just a school picture of the grown woman who was interviewing her. Oh, man. I'd love to see that clip. Yeah, I've got it. I've got it. The squirming must have been next level. I hope they shamed her psychic powers away for good, but something tells me that she just moved on to the next local station. Of course. Yeah, just don't talk to that station anymore.

36:54Whoops, maybe I should pick another less completely, like obviously disprovable thing. Because if they said, no, this is my cousin, it might be like, well, maybe she's not telling you about the time she got abducted and almost murdered. It's like, no, this is literally me. I'm here talking to you right now. Yikes, cringe. A similar thing happened when another local news station interviewed a psychic at Denny's. Okay. Showing her pictures of a young boy. She said he had been killed. And so the searching for him was pointless. And this is where we get into the more dangerous side of this, right?

37:23It's not just that you're wrong. It's not just entertainment. You know, like these people work with police sometimes. And so telling this woman, this news reporter, don't even bother looking for him. He's dead. the young boy was now a little over 20 years old and sitting in a booth directly behind the psychic. And they confronted her, you know, together with the young man. And she just goes, well, that's interesting. I'm so glad you're okay. So this is beyond cringe. I guess, first of all, this person is a complete scumbag for doing this. Imagine if the kid really was missing or also, I just, there's so many, where do I even begin?

37:58There's obvious things wrong with this. I guess for me, I could never put myself in a position like that. I would, first of all, have way too much anxiety about getting caught, being a fake, failing in public, lying to people about my skills, trying to play off something like that. These folks must just not feel any remorse or compassion for the people that they are counting. Imagine that photo was somebody's actual missing child. Now they think this missing child has been beaten, tortured, murdered, when perhaps she was just taken by a relative, is mostly unharmed, or perhaps passed away in some other far less violent and disgusting way.

38:31Like, look, drowning in a river or something like that and getting swept away is not great. But it's so I'd feel so much more peace knowing that that happened to somebody I love versus being beaten, tortured and murdered. And now the family's left with this scar, this trauma. Also, frickin Patty, the fake psychic can get 10 minutes of time on the local TV channel. It's just disgusting. And even if there is a mistake there, there's going to be a handful of people that didn't know about her who do believe it, that will reject the skepticism and she gets new clients. Right, yeah. So she's ruining people's lives while simultaneously growing her brand and business.

39:07Sylvia Brown was on the Montel Williams show like all the time. And in a very famous clip, there was a woman standing up saying, I lost my boyfriend. And she's like in tears. She goes, I lost my boyfriend. Sylvia interrupts her and just goes, the reason you can't find him is in water. He's in water. Okay. He's in water. Yeah, she immediately just, he's in water. The woman goes, well, it was September 11th and he was a fireman. Right. So definitively not in the water. Yeah. Right. Right. It's so awkward. And Sylvia argues with her and goes, no, I see him in water. She just tells the woman she's wrong about her boyfriend who she lost.

39:47And then she turns to Montel, Sylvia Brown turns to Montel and goes, you know, if he was trying to put a fire out or something, you know. Right. So she's just trying to make any tenuous connection to water. Like, you know, he wasn't necessarily just throwing a bucket of water on the fire that may or may not have been in the place where he was probably trying to rescue, but just despicable nonsense. Right. So when I was doing your cold read and I said red or silver, something shiny, and you said there's this floor, I just never mentioned the word silver again and went just for the shiny. Sure. And I was like, I connected you emotionally to that.

40:22I was like, you think of that floor when you think of your grandmother and you're like, yes. and a few moments later you're like yeah you knew about my grandmother's floor but then you had to stop yourself and go nope I told you right I told you about turns out it was orange it wasn't even it wasn't even red it's an orange there maybe there was some red but I don't know now I'm second guessing myself and what tile floor isn't occasionally shiny I mean just things like that and so you can use this emotional manipulation doing it to you is fun because we both know this is this is for for educational purposes but you know Sylvia doing this to people who are actually hurting is just absolutely disgusting.

40:55It's one of the cringiest moments ever. She also famously told a woman that her daughter had been shot and the mother responded, no, she just collapsed in her room. And of course, Sylvia argues with her saying, oh, it was probably a stray bullet that no one saw. And she's like, no, there was no blood. And the woman pushes back. They checked her. There was no shot. Nothing happened. And then Sylvia just moves on to someone else. And the camera briefly shows the woman like so like just disoriented and just like, what just happened to hear as she hands the microphone back over going, that was dumb.

41:27And she just moved on to something else. Because she couldn't recover from that easily. So they had to just cut the thread. And she's like, I hope they edit that out of the final production. Yeah, I've done cold reads on people who tell me they believe in psychics as well. And one example really sticks out in my head, which is, this is a listener of the show, this is a long time ago. He goes, you know, I just never believed in it. But now totally, I went to this fair at college and they had a psychic and she got so many things right. And this is a guy who I'd never met, right? So we were talking at the time on like DMs or on Facebook, whatever it was.

41:59And I said, I can cold read you. Tell me if I'm accurate. And his name was like Rajesh Shetty, right? So he's Indian and I can see a photo of him. And I said, all right, you are a, I know you're a graphic designer because he told me that earlier. But your parents, they wish that you were more in a sort of STEM type of career, maybe like doctor, lawyer, engineer, which by the way, every Indian parents, right? From the old country, every, every immigrant child will be like, my parents hate what I do. They want me to be a doctor or especially if they're an Indian kid and they're a graphic designer, like that just doesn't go with what immigrant parents had in mind most of the time.

42:38Exactly. And so I'm going down that route and I'm like, but your siblings or maybe cousins, they are going more along that traditional path and there's a lot of pride. So you feel a little bit of a disconnect between, you know, I know my parents love me, but man, they really want to pull me in this other direction and look at my, is it a cousin or a sibling? They're doing it. And he's like, I can't believe, you know, my sister, she's starting to be a doctor. My cousin is an engineer in the whole family. They always talk about them. Nobody ever talks about me. And he's like, and he's almost like, dude, how are you doing this?

43:06And I'm thinking, well, it ain't because I'm psychic, man. It's because I'm reading cultural stuff based on the little amounts you've told me. And this is really, really, really easy. He was half convinced that I was actually also psychic. Yeah, he starts telling you you're psychic. Instead of you being wrong about psychics, you're literally psychic. Oh my God, how are you doing? But he's like, how are you doing this? It's really not that hard. If you have basic cultural knowledge, which you can almost get from looking at any, especially if the person's from a country where you have obvious things like their parents are German.

43:36Maybe were your grandparents kind of strict with your parents, but nicer to you? Yes, as every person whose parents grew up with immigrant parents from Europe. I mean, come on, like this stuff's not hard. but you think that these generalities only apply to yourself and I think that's part of it but yeah very cringe that she has to move on when she gets something wrong so that's that type of cutting the thread when it doesn't work out that's really common in cold reading right the person claiming to be psychic is going to throw something out there see what people agree with jump down those rabbit holes and if they miss they throw something else out there argue with the person to try and double down move on to somebody else who's going to play along more because you know know, if you'd said something shiny and red, I could have been like, nope.

44:16And then you're like, if I'm in an audience with 50 people, you just go, this guy does not have it. Next. Well, and the, the, the M or J thing, you know, a lot of people will do that to a crowd. They'll be like, I'm getting an M or a J in this area. Oh my God. Are you kidding me? Yeah. A group of 20 people and you just like motion toward nine of them. Right. My aunt died. Her name was Marjorie. Oh, well it must be you. Yeah. And you also realize that person's willing to, to, to, uh, to sort of set you up with information. They want to play. They're willing to reply. They're willing to, yeah, they're willing to play along.

44:46So that makes sense. That's one, that makes sense why the psychic will then address the entire room and say, I'm seeing someone named Tom until somebody in the corner is like, he was my husband who died six years ago because then it's a fishing expedition. And like you said, you find the person who's game for this. Of course you pick that person instead of the person who's like, there's nothing here that applies to me. Right. Yeah, Sylvia also gave tips on missing children saying they were still alive like years later when they eventually found out they had been dead from a few days after their kidnapping.

45:17Disgusting. And she told parents of a young boy that he was abducted by a man with dark skin and dreadlocks and that their son was dead and their son was later found alive and his kidnapper was white. That is absolutely shameless. Playing into people's stereotypes, making and reinforcing a negative stereotype. I think we all know what she meant when she said dark skin and dreadlocks. Come on. Right. These people must be sociopaths doing something like this. This is it's absolutely unconscionable. Really, really something. She's the same psychic who told Amanda Berry's mother that Amanda was dead.

45:52Is this a kidnap victim, I assume? Yeah. And since she was found six years later being held captive in a house, it was a very famous one because Amanda called 911 and said, I'm Amanda Barry, I've been held captive. Oh, I remember this. She was like in a tent or a basement or something weird like that. She was in someone's basement. And this is so disturbing. She was literally next door and could hear the family like having parties or having like get togethers or whatever. Her own family? Yeah. Like she was next door to someone she knew, friends or family. Oh, no. And she could hear them like doing things, but she would scream out and nobody could hear her.

46:32That's so horrible. This woman goes on to Montel. This is televised. You can find this on YouTube. She just flat out says, I'm sorry, she's gone. She's dead. And Amanda Berry, years and years later, did an interview where she said that she was watching TV. So she used to watch Montel and she would see Sylvia Brown all the time on there. And she would constantly think, I wish my mom could go there so Sylvia could help her, help her find me, tell her where I am so that the cops can come get me. And she was watching that episode live on television from captivity when Sylvia Brown says this to her mom that Amanda's dead.

47:11And she says that watching her mom break down and cry only added to the torture. Of course it did. And look, I'm going to make a really uncouth joke, which is if you want to chain somebody in the basement, that's disgusting. But making them watch Montel Williams, you monster.

47:30sorry i don't mean to make light of that but i had to lighten that situation up a little bit yeah god think of all the police investigations sorry montel is gonna write me and be like you're prick jordan correct no he's he's just look somebody said i think it was john oliver who covered this said he goes if i bring an alligator in here and it eats half of my audience sure the alligator did the thing, but I've got some culpability in that. Yeah, it's true. So, so, so Montel is partially responsible for bringing this person on that is doing this damage both emotionally and psychologically to, to, to the, to the crowd.

48:06Absolutely agree with that. God, think of all the police investigations, which first of all, who gets these people involved in those? I mean, they have wasted money on paying psychics to help them through remote viewing with all of this, with all this being public information. Why do people still believe in psychics? Is it just, what is so convincing? Is it just that people want to believe in it so bad? It's the only thing left that might give them hope. What's going on here? I think simply put, people just don't know how it works. They don't understand cold reading tactics. Going to a psychic reading is literally walking into a magic show without knowing you're in the magic show.

48:44And you're paying to be tricked, and the really good ones make you trick yourself. It's emotional and psychological manipulation. You know, it's funny. I go to magic shows here and there and really good magicians will tell you everything you're about to see is a trick. They'll tell you that in the beginning, or maybe they'll tell you at the end. Penn and Teller do this. A lot of the good ones in San Francisco will do this. Even some amateur magicians that'll have a show, they'll say like this, just so you know, I'm not actually psychic. This is all trickery at the end of the show. And I think at first I used to be like, come on, of course we know that.

49:17But I think now there's a benefit to this because you just have to let people know because otherwise somebody else is going to pretend they have those same powers and use it to dupe them out of money. And these guys are saying, hey, if anybody ever shows you this, it's a trick. This is also a trick. I hope you had fun tonight. Exactly. That way, if you ever see someone try to do that at a fair or you get very vulnerable and you start and they start using some of the similar talking points, you're like, wait, I've seen this on TV. I know there's a way to do this. And I bet you, Jordan, there are still people listening right now or watching this right now that are still going, yeah, yeah, you're saying that you're debunking this or you're saying you don't believe this, but you just did it.

49:55Yeah. Well, tell, why don't we explain how you did my read? I mean, you touched on it a little bit earlier, but explain how you did the things you just did in the read. We talked about the M and the J and the kitchen floor a little bit, but let's, let's get into some other specifics. Okay. Yeah. So, so, um, I started with the, with the preface of, I'm going to communicate with your spirit guides. And of course, you know, they know I'm a skeptic and a comedian, but I also kind of said it in jest and psychics will do that too. They'll be like, these are just the spirit guides. So don't get mad at me.

50:24And it kind of breaks the ice. So it's kind of like, if you're, if you look at me and go, that's not true, there's a couple of things that could be happening. You could not know it's true and I could blame you. The spirit guides could be not communicating clearly. There could be too much fog because of your skepticism. or I could possibly misinterpret something or I just don't know enough about that world to understand what they're telling me. So I make myself vulnerable and go, they like to mock me, they like to tell me things I don't understand. That invites you to be the fixer, right? That invites you to fill in the blanks.

51:00So that's the first piece of the manipulation. And you want to help me. Just in general, humans don't want to see other humans struggle. So all I have to do is pause for a moment. I don't say, I don't look at you and I go, So it's something silver or it's something red. What is it? I go, something silver or red or maybe shiny. And I pause for a brief moment and you go, oh, I can help here. Right. Because something just came into your mind that reminded you of your grandmother. So the M or J thing is very, very common. You can look on YouTube. You can watch John Edward, who I'll get into in a moment.

51:37You can watch any psychic of the stars. there'll be like an M or a J, or I'm getting a G or a J or someone with an E name. And inevitably someone will be like, oh yeah. And then they just sort of, it's fishing. It's cold reading tactics and it's fishing. There's also something called the Barnum effect, which I'm going to mention. It's common misdirection. It's sayings, it's letting someone fill in the gaps. And then, like I said, you leave feeling like the psychic, you know, actually told you the things that you told the psychic. Barnum is in PT Barnum, the circus founder. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Barnum is credited.

52:10We don't know if he actually said this. He's the one that's credited with saying a sucker is born every minute. And the Barnum effect is a lot of the things that I, that I talked about, first of all, there's cold reading and then, and then hot reading. The cold reading was me fishing, right? M or J silver red, and then taking what you said and, and putting it back on you, reminding you of how I remember that or how I was told that by your spirit guides. The cold reading is just very generic. The hot reading is literally doing research on someone. And you may not remember this, Jordan, but in 2018, you posted one Instagram post about your beehives.

52:51I definitely did not remember that. Of course. Yeah, I didn't think you would. And you only had one. You're wearing this like bee mask thing. And I knew since it was only one post and I actually didn't know about it and I've been your friend for a long time. I was like, that's probably something very vague for him. He probably doesn't remember. So I made it very vague. I didn't say you collect bees or you keep bees. Right. You said colonies. And I was like, oh, I don't know. Right. So I came at it from a weird way. I made it seem like they were messing with me. Jordan, can you help me out? Colonies, they're saying it's sweet.

53:20They're laughing. Honey party. And then you go, bees. I made you find the answer. Right. Then it's my idea. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, absolutely. I knew about that. I also knew when I said you recently lost or in the process of separating from an object or something with a face. And then you told me, of course, it was the pet. I don't know if you remember, you reached out to a few of your friends about a month ago and told us that you needed to find a home for your cat. Right, temporarily. Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. And you didn't make a big public post about it, but you have had your cat in the pictures and you don't anymore.

54:01So a little bit of that was research. I spent probably four hours or so on sort of developing the bullet points for what I wanted to say to you. That word that I gave you, by the way? Yeah, what was that? That was the one where I was like, I can't figure this one out. Well, the cool thing about that is I didn't expect you to immediately. But a lot of times what psychics do as well is they give you something that doesn't make sense now. but forces you to think about them over and over because not only does it allow me to schedule another session with you to follow up on it, but it allows me to prove my abilities to you when I'm not even there.

54:35So you go home and do research on this very strange word that doesn't make any sense to anybody else and at some point it's going to hit home for you. That word is actually the Serbian word for kidnapped. Oh, but the A is, is it just scrambled? Is that what it is or? No, that's the word, but the N is backwards and the A isn't a real A. It's like a weird symbol in Serbian text. Oh, it's Cyrillic font. So when I said it could be a Russian thing with the N backwards, it actually is Cyrillic font. You were so close. Oh, super close. Yes. That's so funny because I wrote it down and spaced it out funny.

55:10So it didn't look like any words at all in any language that I knew. So what I would do in the follow-up is I would be like, are you sure about this? And you've talked publicly about being kidnapped. You've talked publicly about dealing with things, but, and you, you know, people know that you, you've learned Mandarin and that you're very well traveled, but the Serbian thing isn't usually on the forefront of what you talk about. It's, it's there, it's in the mix, but it's, it's hardly ever its own thing from what I've seen. So I went intentionally with a hot read and I went something that I know that eventually you would figure out.

55:40I was hoping you would. You know what, you know what made this so hard is the Cyrillic because the word for kidnap in Serbian is like kidnapovati, but it's written in Cyrillic font. So it's, so it is like K backwards. If you're reading the Cyrillic K backwards, then the weird thing that looks like an A, but it's really a D, uh, and a letter H, which sounds like N a, the pie symbol, O B a T backwards N. Right. So it just doesn't, when you type it in non-Cyrillic from Cyrillic, that makes it really, really hard. What a psychic could do is take something like this. Cause I have the actual Cyrillic.

56:15I could copy and paste it. I could burn it into something like literally print it out and burn it and then smudge the ink and be like, I woke up and this was on my bed. Does this help you? And you're like, Oh my God, it means kidnapped and served. You know what I mean? Like, I don't understand this, Jordan, please help me. So you know what that reminds me of? It's like a captcha. You ever go to a website and it's like, what is this text? And it's like K I lowercase B that's what it is. And ironically, our brains can make a pattern out of something that the computer cannot read. And that's what those captures are, right?

56:48It's like, okay, got to figure out what this is. So our brain is making something out of what a computer would say is nothing. You're using a very similar principle to get me to find meaning in something that you actually are just tricking me into thinking of, but you'd already picked the answer. I looked at your Wikipedia page. I looked your IMDB. I scrolled through your Instagram. Uh, I went through your Facebook and I just, I didn't do anything massive or major things that you would talk about a lot. And when I said, you're actually kind of a private person. That's true because almost everything you post is just about work.

57:23It's about an interview or, you know, here's a, here's me and this guy having dinner, but you just had an interview because of a podcast. Like you're never just like, Oh, you know, my wife is pissing me off today with blah, blah, blah. I know better than that. or picking the kids up from school. Like you don't do a lot of that stuff. And so I used the fact that there was missing information to be a positive on my side to say, even though you're a public personality, you're kind of a private person. You nodded and you were like, yeah, you are. So there are a few things that I hit because of a hot read, which is research on you.

57:54Everything else I said, this is going to be surprising to you, but literally everything else from you being genuine, you kind of show one face in public, something else in private, it. You're very creative. You find yourself having well-formed ideas that other people have a hard time to grasp. You set high standards. You're a perfectionist. You have a dry sense of humor. You rehearse jokes. I feel like that's a lot of that applies to everyone. No one's going to go, no, I'm not creative. No. Well, the healthy desire to impress, the links to traveling, by the way. Sure. And even letting people in a little bit more and loving your appealing personality.

58:30Every bit of that is a Barnum statement. Oh, really? So these are like a century plus old tricky statements. It's literally on Darren Brown's website. That's so funny. For this thing that he did that I'll get into a little bit later. But he, you know, it's essentially horoscopes. It's this idea of copy and paste and people are going, wow, that's so meaningful to me. But it's everything else I said that I didn't hot read for you. So I did the cold reading, fishing with the Ilmer J and the Silver, and I got a hit there. Everything else was either a hot read from research or a Barnum statement. Wow.

59:07All right. So these are some of the basic tricks that all so-called psychics use. Incredible. Yeah. Yeah. John Oliver covered psychics on last week tonight, back in 2019. He showed a clip from John Edward, who of course claims to talk to dead people. And John was doing this cold read. John Edward, to be clear, was doing a cold read for a room full of people in Long Island. And this certain area of Long Island where one in five citizens is of Irish descent. And Edward starts the cold read by looking around the room and going, is there anyone who knows someone who has passed named Brian Flanagan or Flynn or O'Sullivan or O 'Reilly or something like that?

59:45That's a word for word quote from John Edward. Every common Irish last name, basically. And it's like, you're gonna, if you don't hit that you're in the wrong state yeah like nope we're all smith i don't know who you're talking about and then when giving that reading by the way if you watch the entire reading he he makes a huge mistake um but he doubles down on it and so brian o something apparently has family there someone stands up and goes oh yeah okay kind of brian something similar and these these two women stand up and they're talking to john edward uh about brian and edward is supposedly communicating directly with Brian, by the way.

1:00:21Oh, this is a guy who had passed away or something. Yeah, Brian O something. And he says to the women that one of the people involved didn't like the mother figure. And one woman starts shaking her head no. She's like, no, no, no, no, no. And he keeps pushing. He's like, no, no, no. He tries to make it more broad by saying something like, well, maybe you didn't like your mother-in-law or something like that, which he starts kind of backing off being more generic. You know, not everybody loves their mother-in-law. And then he pauses again and she shakes her head no. And she goes, then you got the wrong Brian.

1:00:53And you can, if you watch the video, you'll see that John Edward gets a little rattled. Gets a little rattled for sure. Well, he's mad. He's like, how dare you? I'm talking to dead people. You're just a lady in Long Island. He gets a little frustrated. And he goes, I can't tell you what you want to hear. I can only tell you what the spirits tell me or what they show me. And if he's calling your mother a bitch, I'm going to pass it on. Wow. That's terrible. And he gets kind of hateful with it. Yeah. Absolutely. You know what's not an obvious scam designed to bilk you out of your hard-earned cash?

1:01:24The fine products and services that support this show. I'll be right back. Once again, thank you so much for listening to and supporting the sponsors. All the ways to support the show are at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Search for any sponsor using the search box on the website as well. Please consider supporting those who support us. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. So this is an interesting point, right? Because this is what a lot of scams have in common. whether it's a psychic or a multi-level marketing scheme, if the psychic fails, it's your fault. This is whenever a belief system comes into play.

1:01:56If it fails, it's your fault. You're closed off. You're not open-minded. You're too skeptical. Your belief is required for it to work. The CIA document or whatever said it best, right? We saw this when we were looking for it. And when we didn't, we didn't. You're fighting the universe or whatever this guy says, or you're just wrong in some way. Damn, did you train to be a psychic? Because you nailed it. I should, I should. Former psychic Mark Edward even reveals how all the tricks are done. There's a cold reading, which I address with the whole M or J nonsense. And then the hot reading, which is, you know, researching the client beforehand, just like I did with you.

1:02:31Yes, we did have Mark on the show a few years back where we went in, we went over some of this stuff in depth. We didn't, I don't think we did much of a demo or anything. If people are really interested in this topic, there's more. That's episode 413 three with Mark. He was basically a phone psychic. And then he was like, wait, this is all BS, but I'm really good at it. And I know I'm not psychic. So he started to just, well, debunk and break down all of the tricks. Really interesting. A medium to the stars, Tyler Henry went on the Today Show and gave a reading for Matt Lauer. And Henry gave this touching reading about Matt's dad sending him messages about fishing alone in a boat.

1:03:06And he tells Matt that that's the perfect time to reconnect with his lost father. You know, kind of like when I said to you, I said, whenever you see dolls lying around in a weird place. Right. This is your grandma. Yeah. You started smiling going, well, I don't know what's going on here, but you're like, I know you're up to something. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, if you're at a toy store and you see a doll out of place, you know, your grandma's just letting you know she's okay and you're going to be fine. It's a great, you know, comforting thought. And that's what this guy did to Matt Lauer.

1:03:34And of course, Matt was deeply emotional about it. But as John Oliver points out on that episode, Matt Matt Lauer has done countless interviews where he talks about fishing with his dad and how he misses it and how his dad taught him to fish and how he fishes alone now and thinks about his dad since his dad's gone. That's sad. And he's also written about it in multiple articles and it's been quoted in other articles that are easily accessible. So there was likely a hot reading situation. And John Oliver says, he goes, maybe, maybe you communicated with the dead. He goes, or maybe you Googled Matt Lauer dad and hit the jackpot.

1:04:06Right. And there are several times where you can watch a psychic reading and then see an interview with the person afterwards. And they'll be like, oh, my God, they, you know, that psychic told me this thing. And it's like, no, no, they didn't. You know, it was a hot read. Right. Something you said yourself. I will tell you, I did a rough Google estimate probably two years ago. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of me being on other people's shows, just ignoring my own show, which has, you know, every show I've been a host on, 1500 plus episodes. I think more now, actually. So if you're looking at 1 ,500 plus hours of content, plus the, let's say 2 ,000 to be just conservative of how many hours of audio of me talking there are out there, that's how much information you can get from me.

1:04:49I remember basically none of that, of course. Right. So if you're going through and researching me, you could put together a 50-page dossier and I would be incredibly, incredibly impressed about all the things you magically found out that I just said myself several months to several years ago. Incredible. So hot reading. you've done the research on your subject. You don't disclose this to them, of course. And then it looks like you're psychic when really you're just capable of doing a basic Google search. So you've interviewed a few psychics on your podcast. How does that go? Because I know that you challenge them.

1:05:18I do. The first one was a psychic to the stars. And I had a producer at the time. And I, of course, was pushing back and going, ah, that's a cold read. Ah, that's BS. That affects everybody. And I was so hard on him. and he kept going, you're very, you're fighting this. You're very rugged. I'm getting a lot of harsh energy from you. Your aura is turning black. You're very, and he kept like insulting me like I was the problem. He kept blaming me, and I was like, okay, whatever. Well, you are the problem. You don't believe in his nonsense, and he's trying to make a buck. Yeah. Right, and then he just, and he was very much about like the physical, like he almost wanted to be in a horror movie.

1:05:57He snaps his head like oddly to the right and like stares at my producer and cocks his head. Creepy. it's so bizarre he just goes is sheila okay and my producer was skeptical but almost shit himself because he's like how do you know sheila he goes is sheila okay he's like i mean i haven't talked to in a while i mean i think so completely snapped my producer's head out of all this skepticism and he was so shook by what happened it was a specific name and the way he snapped in the body language and I'm going, hey man, you know this is BS, like come on. And we couldn't figure out how we did it. We leave and I Google David Smalley producer and the third or fourth link down was my producer, his name was Darius.

1:06:46We click on Darius and on his profile, it said the most recent post was throwback to six years ago when I did this song in the studio with Sheila. and it was literally one click and you could see the post that was it was a throwback because they were like in the studio doing a song together or something and i'm like clearly that's what he did sure that's almost that's just lazy hot reading too that's just late like oh you didn't even go down to the second page of google come on dude yeah i mean i went what four years back on your instagram to find the beekeeping thing which is not hard i post once a year so you basically didn't have to scroll very far.

1:07:21It has four pictures. There was another local psychic who we challenged about the lottery. I told you about her already. There was a guy over the phone who talked about my daughter's spirits. Now, to be fair, she was a part of the show already. So he didn't just on his own mention her. She was a part of the show. That's good. And he starts laughing. He goes, David, he goes, her spirit guides are standing behind her right now and they are just laughing at your skeptical face. So he's on Skype, but we're not using video. I'm like, oh, so they're looking at me right now. He's like, oh yeah, he's like, they're laughing.

1:07:55He goes, there's a woman on her left, a woman right behind her and a man to her right. And they keep, they're laughing at you because you're so skeptical and you don't believe in them. And they think you're just so funny because of all your skepticism. To me, he's being very condescending. Sure, but it's interesting how he makes it the spirits doing that and not him doing it. So you have the social pressure, but you can't be mad at him because it's not him. It's the invisible spirits. Yeah. So I flipped it on him by making his spirits look stupid because it's just the spirits, right? Wink, wink.

1:08:24So when they want to play that game with me, I'm no longer going to be this respectful, nice guy to say, oh, I understand you. No, you're taking advantage of people and you're taking their money and you're full of shit. So here's what I did. I go, oh, the spirits are looking at me right now. And he goes, yeah. And, and I said, and they're standing behind Talisa. He said, they're always with Talisa. And I was like, all right, cool. I said, you know, I said, there's been this animal that keeps coming to Talisa. He's like, yes, yes. And I said, every time she's outside, this animal just comes near her.

1:08:53And it's such a beautiful thing. And maybe they can tell us what animal that is. And I said, and by the way, I'm gonna make it really easy on your spirits. I'm writing down a word now. It's a word of the animal. And here it is, I wrote it. It's on the notepad. I'm pushing it directly in front of Talissa. It's a three-letter word. Hopefully your spirits can read. Just have them tell you what the word is I wrote down. Immediately starts backtracking. No, no, no, no, hold on. That's not the way it works. Now they know you're testing them. Like, well, they were laughing at me for being skeptical. Just tell me what the three-letter word is on the notepad, and I'll believe you.

1:09:29She just has really, really petty spirits that want to spite you by not playing along. Yeah. Now they're just going to close their eyes and fold their arms. He backpedaled so hard, I feel like we almost lost the connection. He could not make it make sense. He was so angry that when he couldn't do it, we ended up hanging up. He called my publicist and bitched for like 45 minutes. How dare you connect me with him? That guy was just there to make me look stupid and was so angry about it. Oh my gosh. When all I did was reverse Uno his BS insult about the spirits laughing at me for being so skeptical.

1:10:06By the way, the word was owl. Yeah. But also, since when does an owl come to you during the day? That's a scary, dangerous, rabbit owl. if it's out during the day, flying near humans. I never said it was during the day. Oh, I thought you said every day this animal. Maybe I just misunderstood. Yeah, every day. I mean, she would leave, and there were a lot of owls around the apartments we were living in, and she would constantly see them flying. So we told him that. Oh, so it wasn't even a lie. Oh, that's funny. You know, it makes sense, though, that a narcissistic type of person would be this kind of scammer, because how narcissistic do you have to be to then think, I am entitled to trick people, and also, I'm going to do it by claiming I have supernatural powers?

1:10:43I mean, that's this whole thing is completely narcissistic and ridiculous in a way. And even if you're self deluded, right, you believe you have this. It's still narcissistic to think that out of all the billions of people, there's only a handful of us. And I'm one of the chosen people who can, I don't know, read spirits and read people's minds or whatever it is or see the future. There's just something inherently. I'm the main character about that belief. I would never think, oh, I have a special power. I mean, when I was nine, that would have been awesome, but I grew out of that really fast.

1:11:14Well, there's one more medium I had on. It was shortly after she came on claiming she could talk to the dead. And it was shortly after I had gone through a tragic situation where my dad died. And then two years later, my son died. I remember that. And she came on shortly after and was like saying she was speaking to my dad and my son. And that's really hard. Like when you're actually a grieving father, no matter how skeptical you are, it's hard and that episode is still out there and you can hear me go wow and I would keep going you're either the real thing or you did lots of research on me right I kept like yeah leaving the window open and then of course I did like a patreon only thing so there was that piece too but I offered myself up for this and she knew some very specific things that was you know it probably took her a long time to do the research and then she took some guesses she talked about my dad collecting things and I said coins and I thought she told me my dad collected coins but I went back and listened.

1:12:09I told her coins, you know? Um, so little things like that. Um, and then she's like, Oh, well he leaves pennies for you so that he knows you're, you know, he wants you to know he's okay. And you know, things like that. Cause who doesn't find a penny on the ground from time to time, right? Exactly. Yeah. And, and also you may see them all the time and not think about it, but once they put that in your head, you're looking for them and then you see them go, oh my son or oh my father. Yeah. Confirmation bias. Yeah, exactly. One time a fake psychic, they're all fake psychics, but a fake psychic told me when the lights flicker, when you go under them, that's your, that's your grandmother or grandfather signaling you.

1:12:45And of course that's classic confirmation bias is when lights go off when you are near them and they open the streetlights, especially they overheat. You don't notice the 20 ,000 times a year where you go under one and it doesn't do anything. You notice the one that goes off when you're under it and you're like, holy crap, did I cause that? And then for them to say, that's your grandfather speaking to you. It's like, Like now you're going to notice it and you're going to think it's supernatural. It's absolutely insane. But these things feel so real to people because they're so personal. So we want to believe we have cognitive bias, confirmation bias, whatever it is involved.

1:13:17And but it's gross to have brought in. I just imagine bringing up someone's dead son. You're like, they're totally going to buy this one. Gross, man. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's and again, a lot of it is the Barnum effect. it's the actual definition of the barnum effect is the tendency to accept certain information is true such as character assessments or horoscopes even when the information is so vague it's basically worthless and of course there's been countless experiments done from professors in psychology they'll they'll pass out a bunch of horoscopes to people and have them read them and it'll everyone will think it's so perfect to them and they'll like rate it on a scale of one to ten and everybody'll be like oh this was a seven this is an eight this is a nine this is ten out of ten It'll all be the exact same horoscope for everybody.

1:14:01Darren Brown did one, that episode, which I actually provided the link in the show notes, where he did horoscope readings for different people all over the world. And these are different groups. Some don't even speak English. She has it translated for some of these clients. They all are interviewed, and they're given a chance to score how accurate it is. Only one guy out of all these groups said it was 40 % accurate, and that was the lowest number. Everyone else had it anywhere from 75 % to 99%. Some people were crying. They were touched. And then he reveals to them that they all had the exact same reading.

1:14:35Oh, wow. Just word for word, the exact same thing. Unbelievable. So that just shows you how well this fits huge numbers of people when they wanted to. How did tarot cards fit into all this? So the tarot cards are far more generic. You know, they're supposed to tell you the future and the present, but they don't really confirm or deny things for you. So they can address the past, but it's mostly like you have some stuff going on. Here's what you should look for in the future. That's primarily what the tarot cards are. So it's harder to call them on their bullshit. Sure. They'll lay cards out and they'll be like, you're having trouble with a person who has maybe red hair or blonde hair or maybe blue eyes or green eyes or even gray colored eyes.

1:15:17They have eyes. They basically, they are a person with eyes. They have blood in their bodies. It's kind of a cold read. And then the customer digs up their own information. In tarot, they call it fishing. I wonder why. And in an episode of a UK TV show called The Bullshit Investigator. Oh, I love that. Right on the nose. I wish they had that here in America. Maybe that's what we are. Is that what this show is? Are we the bullshit investigators of America? Yeah, but man, I don't want to get blacklisted from iTunes in Dubai. So we can't name the show that. So the host gets a tarot read from a woman who says, and this is her actual quote, she says, the guy I'm talking about either has really, really light hair or really, really dark hair.

1:16:01And she's just watching the body language to see if he reacts to anything. And of course, he's just sitting there stone-faced. And if you sit there stone-faced, they'll be like, you're not open-minded. You're fighting the spirits and of course blame you for their failure. And if you lean into something or you nod or you raise your eyebrows or give them info, then they're just off to the races. Okay, so the cards, just like a crystal ball or some tea leaves or whatever other prop is just a vehicle, it sounds, for the same cold read that you'd get without a prop or a similar cold read that you would get without a prop.

1:16:32Also, it seems like it would become, it would serve as a magical item or a token of some kind, which adds to the mystique, right? These are ancient tarot cards. This deck was given to me by my great-grandfather who was a witch, whatever. And also maybe I'm thinking it also serves to distract the Mark from noticing what's going on. Right. So I'm looking at the cards because I'm the Mark and the psychic is looking at my body and my nonverbal cues. So I'm less prone to notice them observing me like a hawk because I'm staring down at these cards. Right. And the cards are beautiful, by the way. They're very well designed.

1:17:04I don't know if you've ever taken a look at a deck closely, but they are. I remember seeing them on TV because the psychic commercials and they would lay down, they'd be And then the woman who's dressed now clownishly like an 1850s gypsy who you can never put this on TV now, right? This is like the psychic. In fact, I think we say Roma now, but is dressed and she's got the tarot cards and her crystal ball in front of it. Yes. So, yes, I've seen those. Yeah. So they're very exotic. They're very sexy. They're very well done, especially if you add to it, you know, the pass down from my grandmother who was a witch or whatever.

1:17:38But also they're participating because you make them like shuffle and then they have to cut the cards while they are thinking about what they want to address. Okay. Like if I want relationship advice, I want career advice or whatever. They're now participating in their own deception. Gotcha. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So one of the guys doing a reading on that same show is doing a reading for a 42-year-old man. And he says, I'm seeing that you've had an issue with a woman in your past. Wow. Talk about specifics. Now that's taking a chance. Nope. No women in my past. Actually. Well, yeah, of course.

1:18:15Anybody with that amount of life experience, even if they are gay as a Christmas tree in Paris, they're going to have had an issue with a woman at some point in the last 42 years. Right? Exactly. Yeah. So I'm assuming the cards have actual meanings. At least they look like they have meanings. Yeah. So the insider did a cover piece on tarot cards and they basically say, and I'm quoting from this article, tarot cards don't tell you the future. They show you the present with greater clarity and distance. So you have a better understanding of your choices and their possible outcomes. That's a quote from Mark Horn, who is the author of Tarot and the Gates of Light, a Kabbalistic path to liberation.

1:18:53That's a mouthful. Yeah, who's been reading tarot for more than 50 years, and he studied many of the world's leading tarot teachers. If you're newly interested in tarot cards, and this is from the article, it says it can feel overwhelming to decide on a deck, but don't feel like you have to go with the trendiest one. In a tarot deck, there are 78 cards based on the four elements and divided into cups, pentacles, swords, and wands. And this leaves a lot of room for creative interpretation. To me, sounds like a lot of D &D. Right. Magic the Gathering. Sounds like B &S to me. Now, I don't think you want me to sit here and go through all the meanings of each card, but just know that the exact opposite of whatever it means could also be the card, meaning if the card is upside down or reversed.

1:19:39Oh, right. So this means you're going to be sick soon. Oh, wait, no, just kidding. It's upside down. You're going to be healthy soon. Oh, this was upside down. I placed it wrong. Because you go, that's not true. No, no, no. I placed it wrong. The opposite is true. And by the way, if you've been paying attention, what happens when none of it makes sense? Then it's my fault, obviously. That'll be$200, Jordan. Okay. Speaking of that, I'm curious how much psychics and tarot readers and mediums are making these days. I'm afraid to call these places. There's actually one a block away from me and it says tarot and psychic.

1:20:10And they, I just, I've been so tempted to walk in and be like, how much does it cost? Something tells me they don't just have a set price and they'll just start high and negotiate. Something just tells me. Assuming they're reporting all their income, you know, because we know they're the most honest bunch of humans. Right. uh psychics make between 43 000 and 66 000 a year depending on which state they're in so 200 000 a year wow yeah probably i think my favorite debunking of a psychic ever is a guy who walks around hollywood and and he he hides by he's like just holds his phone for like instagram or tiktok he walks around hollywood and he hides behind the corner of like one of those psychic shops where they're just like sitting in the window like waiting you know and like the windows open or like the gates are up and he just jumps around the corner and scares the shit out of him like he screams and he's just like ah and they scream and then they start yelling at him to leave and he's like oh I figured you would have seen that coming yeah hilarious but also well deserved so realistically how many of these people do you think we sort of touched on this earlier how many what percentage know that it's fake and they do it anyway versus those who honestly believe it's real.

1:21:19I mean, look, cognitive bias is a hell of a drug. There's for sure plenty of people, even some listening right now who are thinking, I am not a con. I have special powers. This is real. And they honestly believe that it is. Yeah. And we're probably going to hear from them for sure. And I think we should invite them on. I don't know if you're okay with having guests on this version of the show, but I say, if someone says they can demonstrate the powers, I say we, we give them a chance. That's my vote. I'm not saying no, I'm not saying no. If we find one that's good and not just a time-wasting attention, a horror type of, you know, person, man or woman, then attention, then they can maybe we do something where we do a segment with them and we shred what they're doing.

1:21:56And it's a great question because I know they're listening and they're probably going to write in very upset with us, but I've definitely met people in both camps, people who know and people who honestly believe that they have these powers. And that's always the tough part of this, right? You don't want to go after someone or insult that person as being a charlatan if they actually believe that they're doing something. It's all about the intent, right? And I'd say pretty much all of the high profile TV psychics, they know it's fake because they have to run a business. You know how it is being a public personality with shows and staff and crew and writers.

1:22:27I mean, it's a lot. You have to run a business. You have to get a publicist. You get told what to say and what not to say. You get caught and have to backtrack. They do research beforehand to blow people's minds. They're putting on a show.

1:22:42It's like techniques or saying the same things over and over and doing that cold reading nonsense with the MRJ and multiple different videos. They use the same sort of standard wide net casting, the John Edward types or Sylvia Brown types or the Miss Cleo types. We all know they're taking advantage of people and they know that they're taking advantage of people. But your aunt, with all the blue jewelry and beads hanging in the doorway as she burns incense wearing a transparent shawl, she believes her amethysts and tarot cards are going to change your life. Yeah, and look, your aunt probably isn't charging you 500 bucks for your reading, or maybe she is, but like you mentioned earlier, the people who are preying on the most vulnerable people, they definitely know what they're doing is wrong.

1:23:24Yeah, it's so bad, Jordan, that the AARP has had to send out a warning to their members explaining that a New Jersey man in his 50s was having problems at work. And in February, he turned to a psychic for help. And then during their first meeting, the psychic read tarot cards and then peppered him with personal questions. That led him to a second, costlier session at which she uttered this ominous warning, you have a curse. It might be devastating for your family. It has to be removed immediately. Next thing you know, she's asking him to bring$9 ,000 and a pillowcase and nine white roses and nine red roses and some magnets.

1:24:05And she told him she would perform some rituals and then give him the$9 ,000 back. And a gallon of skim milk, actually make it 2%. What? Could you pick up my dry cleaning? Yeah. And there's some dry cleaning. It's been a while. And I've got a couple of things in my UPS box. And they write in the article, yearning for the bad karma to disappear, the man did as he was instructed, scraping together enough money from friends and family in a rainy day fund and an account earmarked for his son's college education. Oh my gosh. He got the money together. And then it says that his repeated attempts to get the money back from the psychic have not yielded a dime and police refused to pursue the matter because the man willingly handed the money over.

1:24:48Sure. And about five months after he gave her the$9 ,000, he lost his job in IT as part of a pandemic-related layoff, and he's now very strapped for money. So the AARP now has a toll-free fraud watch network helpline. So if you suspect someone in your family has been taken advantage of or is a victim of fraud, I'm going to give you the number now. So pause, write it down, whatever the phone number is, 877-908-3360. 877-908-3360. You know it's bad when a company that offers services to seniors has to dedicate a helpline just for fraud. Yeah, it's pretty bad. That same article also says that a 54-year-old woman in Canada lost$24 ,000 to a psychic who promised to connect her with a loved one who had passed away.

1:25:37A 73-year-old man in Washington state lost huge money to a psychic in hopes of winning back an ex-girlfriend. The spiritualist not only took his money, but had him charge expensive jewelry that he gave the psychic to present to the man's lost love. The woman, of course, never got the gifts, nor did she ever reconcile with him. And now practically broke, he's completely saddled with the credit card bills for all the jewelry. There was a 72-year-old woman in Seattle who gave$20 ,000 to a psychic for information about a new relationship. and when she complained to the police, they refused to follow up on her case.

1:26:12So overall, look, I'll just leave you with this. If you're looking to have a little fun and you want to do a reading for entertainment, just know that that's what it is. But if you're looking for actual answers to life's greatest problems, please see a secular licensed therapist. Or some approximation thereof. Thank you very much, David. Thanks for having me. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show about a guy who went from Nigerian royalty to the rugged streets of the Bronx. Remy Adeleke's life was thrown into chaos after a corrupt government stripped his family of their legacy, dived deep into his captivating journey from being surrounded by drugs and drive-bys to his inspiring pursuit to become a U.S.

1:26:53Navy SEAL, even though he didn't know how to swim. But that's not all. Remy's fight is far from over as he confronts the dark underworld of human trafficking and illegal organ harvesting. There's a saying in Nigeria, every day is for the thief. Corruption was my dad's demise. They knew that my father would not stop fighting them. They killed my dad. I went from riches and wealth to the Bronx, man, and it was really, really rough. Once you make the decision to join the Navy, in my opinion, you're giving up any fear of death. One day I got approached by another human trafficking nonprofit that actually employed former SEALs and former agency guys to go to other countries to rescue kids trapped in sex trafficking.

1:27:36but specifically kids who are being purchased by Americans. When I got down there, my eyes would just, like, open fully, and I just remember being appalled. The parents would sell their daughters to traffickers in the North. I just remember being disgusted. It's such a global issue. But human trafficking is a blanket term. Under human trafficking, you have sex trafficking, you have organ harvesting, you have forced marriage, you have forced labor. You know, I made the film in order to be able to expose more people to this atrocity of organ harvesting. But the perception of these traffickers is that they're these scraggly, evil looking, uneducated, you know, on a corner type people.

1:28:21And the reality is the majority of people involved on the organ harvesting side of things are highly educated, learned people. The truth needs to get out there. To uncover what drives the man who refuses to be defeated, check out episode 868 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

1:29:00media platforms at davidcsmalley.com or better yet on his podcast, The David C. Smalley Show. Links to all that in the show notes as well. This show is created in association with Podcast One. 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. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on this show. 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 needs to hear it.

1:29:32In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.