TRANSCRIPT Ross and Carrie Read Susan and Mark

Transcript

music
									
“Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.
ross blocher
									
Hello, and welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal, no, we take part ourselves.
carrie poppy
									
Yup, when they make the claims, we show up so you don’t have to. I’m Carrie Poppy.
ross
									
And I’m Ross Blocher, and we are joined with two exciting guests today. We have Susan Gerbic—
susan gerbic
									
Yay!
ross
									
—and Mark Edward.
mark edward
									
Hey.
ross
									
Welcome, and welcome back, Mark.
mark
									
Thank you. It’s been awhile.
ross
									
I had to look this up. Our thirteenth episode was an interview with you.
susan
									
Carrie said this house was weird—
mark
									
Blissfully creepy, which I really liked. [Carrie laughs.]
susan
									
He’s bringing it to my house in Salinas now. My house is becoming blissfully creepy, it’s great.
ross
									
Wonderful.
carrie
									
So you’re moving in. You’re shacking up.
mark
									
Yeah, we’re shacking up.
susan
									
It’s only been ten years.
mark
									
After ten years, you know.
ross
									
Living in sin, just the way it should be.
carrie
									
Actually, this interview is not about your amazing work in the world of debunking psychics. It is about us really taking you to task for living in sin. [Everyone laughs.]
ross
									
This is an intervention stage.
carrie
									
So, your parents are in the other room.
mark
									
It wouldn’t be the first time. So, you know, don’t worry, I’m used to it.
ross
									
I was showing Mark and Susan my light layer of creepiness in my own apartment. Some fun things that I’ve gotten recently. Crystal skulls and phrenology busts and some excellent stuff from Thimblerig, who you know.
mark
									
Thimblerig, yes.
ross
									
Yeah, fantastic.
mark
									
Fantastic artist.
ross
									
Jimmy Hickey. Yeah. So the reason we have you today is we just had two episodes about Cindy Kaza.
carrie
									
Cindy Kaza, an evidential medium.
ross
									
Evidential medium. Now, you responded—
mark
									
We’ve been talking about that.
ross
									
Okay. Now, I think we found where she got that terminology, because she went to this school in England, the Arthur-Findlay College, and she studied there. They have a lot of instruction in trance mediumship and a separate course you can take all in evidential mediumship.
mark
									
Right, but how is that defined? Because anybody can say that. Where is the evidence?
ross
									
Both of you are intimately familiar with cold reading and those techniques, and I think her spin on this, as we found, is that she establishes these standards that she holds herself to during the reading. She says, “No, no. I’m not going to— you know, if I say Susan or Cynthia, I’m not going to jump if you say you know a Shelley. That’s a step too far.” Or if you say, “I know a guy named—
carrie
									
Sam?
ross
									
“—Sam,” yeah. She’s not going to do that. “Oh, I can’t switch genders.” So she’ll paint herself into a corner every now and then, as she did in our performances, where she could jump on and take this person who sounds close, but she’ll say, “No, no. I know what I’m hearing. I’m gonna stick with it.” And I think for her, that’s the evidence. She feels like—
mark
									
That is so Geller-ish.
ross
									
Uri Geller?
mark
									
Yeah, because that’s what Uri does. When he does the linking finger rings, he says, “Magicians, they use a trick ring. I don’t have to use a trick ring.” Then he goes ahead and uses a trick ring, so he’s setting you up to think that he is not doing something, but then evidentiary is like, no. You gotta do a lot more than that to show evidence. I mean, I don’t— I was trying to figure out where I first heard that, and I thought it was from the spiritualism. There’s physical mediums, there’s mental mediums, and then there’s evidentiary mediums.
ross
									
So many terms.
mark
									
It’s just like saying, “I’m the greatest medium.” Anyway, evidentiary is just a misnomer.
susan
									
It seems like it’s a new thing. I’m starting to see it more often, and it’s all these new, new-ish kind of. I mean, you wouldn’t see Theresa Caputo or anybody like that saying evidentiary medium; but I’m starting to see these up-and-coming people who are charging, you know, $25 to $50 for a sitting, and that’s—by sitting, I mean a show.
mark
									
That’s the key though. See, they’re up-and-coming.
susan
									
They’re just starting out, but this seems to be the phrase they’re using.
mark
									
It’s like saying, “I’m a genuine medium.”
susan
									
Yeah, their idea of evidence and our idea of evidence are completely different.
carrie
									
Yeah, so tell us about, I feel like a lot of these people are probably running into people like you two, who keep coming to their shows, and exposing their methods, and they say, “Okay, I’m going to do something one step better, and make sure Susan doesn’t jump down my throat.” So why don’t you tell us what you do when you go to psychic mediums to educate the people who might buy their wares?
susan
									
Well, what we do is we try not to interact with the audience too much. If we go in character, we’ll stay in character and see what we can find out, and gosh, you can find out some really great stuff talking to the people around you, as you guys did when you went to see Cindy. The stories they tell you, they’re really hot reading most of the time. You can tell because they’ll say, “Oh, I follow this medium. I’ve been to many shows. I’ve had lots of readings with them.” And then—
ross
									
Ah, there’s a stable of regular customers.
susan
									
Yeah, well, they’re regulars, and they sit up in the front part, and then when we went to the Thomas John show—
ross
									
Oh, so that’s an easy fallback, you can talk intimately about this person.
susan
									
Right, and that’s what the psychic will do, or the medium will do. Thomas John, who was Operation Pizza Roll, the sting we’re most known for now, he went and fell back on several people that he had read in spirit medium groups where it was him and five other people, or ten other people.
ross
									
Ah, but doesn’t reveal that during the performance.
susan
									
No, he doesn’t, but he knows their whole story.
ross
									
This reminds me of the stage magic trick where you say, “We haven’t ever spoken before tonight, have we?” but that includes the half-hour conversation you had before the show. [Everyone laughs and agrees.]
susan
									
Absolutely. So they don’t know. The people in the audience don’t know that the person that he is reading and getting very accurate was actually somebody he had read for a week or two ago, and they don’t realize it, which is really interesting when you talk to them afterwards. One woman came over to us right after the reading we had with Thomas John, she says, “Oh, this is so exciting, he was able to get to your dog and everything.” We’re like, “Yeah, I know,” and I said, “Have you had a reading from him before? Because I noticed that he read for you right now.” She goes, “Oh yeah, I was in his spirit circle just recently.” And you’re like, that’s a hot reading.
ross
									
Yeah, that’s relevant information, when gauging the evidence, yeah.
susan
									
He knows already. But they don’t get it. They think their family keeps coming through, but they’re unaware. So we rarely ever expose a psychic during—
carrie
									
At the show.
susan
									
Yeah, in fact, we never do.
mark
									
We’re not trying to get to the audience.
susan
									
No, we’re not.
mark
									
They’ve already paid into it, so.
ross
									
Okay, that’s something I wanted to ask about, because that’s our method as well. We show up there and we’re there for the experience, not to teach everybody a big object lesson.
susan
									
No, you’ll just be laughed out, and you’ll be sent away.
mark
									
We try to teach the psychic a lesson, but he may not know it for a couple of weeks, or even longer. I mean, we gather information, and then we look for— the key for us right now is getting media coverage, because we can preach to the choir all day long, it doesn’t make any difference, but—
ross
									
Media, which is technically the plural of medium, but we have to be careful here in our terms. [Everyone laughs.]
carrie
									
I call it the lamestream media.
susan
									
Fake news.
ross
									
Gotcha media.
mark
									
That’s the key, and trying to talk or stand up in a crowd is just like, you might a well throw yourself out.
carrie
									
Oh, totally. I guess I was thinking of the larger audience.
mark
									
And I have been thrown out.
susan
									
Yeah, you have, by some of the best. Chip Coffey.
ross
									
Didn’t you have kind of a fake seizure in front of Sylvia Brown once?
mark
									
Yes, I did.
susan
									
Oh, that was great.
ross
									
Where you yelled out names of people she’d misread, like children who had been falsely pronounced dead when they weren’t.
mark
									
Yeah, I said they were talking to me and I wanted it to stop, and then I just pretended to faint on stage. They let me lie there. They did not do anything. [Everyone laughs.] In fact, people were stepping over me in the line to ask their question.
ross
									
You were the sleeping dog, they let you lie.
carrie
									
Were they not persuaded that you had actually had a seizure, or are these people just completely heartless?
mark 
									
They’re just completely clueless—
susan
									
It was their turn, and they wanted to ask Sylvia a question.
mark
									
It was their turn. That was more important than me.
susan
									
Sylvia had said, “It’s okay, he’ll be alright. They’ll take care of it,” or something like that.
mark
									
I mean, that got to the audience and to the psychic, but it got more to her because she knew the names that I was saying, and Montel was with her, and they were both like, “Woah, woah, wait a minute.” They need to shut me up right away.
susan
									
So, we’re not out to— and as Mark has said many, many times, these are performers. If you rattle them, if you let them know that we’re here and we know what they’re doing, and we could be anybody, because we’re invisible. They’re not psychic, so they don’t know we’re in the audience. They don’t know which person they’re talking is a skeptic who is wired or who has some kind of thing they’re going to do.
ross
									
And they should be prepared for that.
susan
									
They should be, but they can’t, because they’re not psychic, and so you’ve got a room of 200-400 people. They don’t know who it is. They didn’t— did this person know you were there, shooting a podcast?
carrie
									
No, no. As far as we know, no.
susan
									
How come she didn’t know?
ross
									
No, and she spoke to both of us both nights, and she didn’t show any glimmer of recognition on the second night.
susan
									
Seems odd, doesn’t it?
ross
									
It does.
susan
									
Seems like she should know that you were there as skeptics.
ross
									
Yeah, and that’s always tricky, like where to draw those standards for the medium. Like, “Oh, you should know lottery numbers, or you should know x or y, or you should be rich, because you can do this.” They’ll always try to redefine mediumship away from whatever standard it is that—
mark
									
Greed.
ross
									
Yeah, exactly. “Oh, I can’t use my powers for personal gain,” and what have you. So it’s a hard thing to nail down.
carrie
									
I think there’s a certain fairness in that. They’re not claiming they’re omniscient. They’re not claiming they know everything, just that sometimes they get these inputs from the universe that give them preternatural knowledge.
susan
									
Right, but I’m kind of tired of the fairness. I mean, I think skeptics have bent over backwards to be fair and to be nice and to not get sued in things that we do, but these people, they’re not nice. I mean, when you think about it, there’s so much harm in it. Today, just today, I got a message from somebody I didn’t know who—
ross
									
On the other side. [Everyone laughs.]
susan
									
No, it was on Facebook messenger, and he—
carrie
									
Starts with a C.
susan
									
—he asked me if I’d heard about a psychic, a particular psychic, and I said, “Actually, we deleted her Wikipedia page many years ago, because she didn’t deserve a Wikipedia page, and she was making claims that she solved police cases and so on.” And he said he had contacted her, and he gave her a whole bunch of information, and because of her police contacts, he thought she could solve a case for him involving a family member, a suicide. And she says, “Oh, it was a murder.” And the guy was— you know, this woman charges $700 an hour.
carrie
									
Oh, God.
susan
									
So I said to him, “You dodged a bullet, because as soon as she could have gotten in with you, you’d be thousands of dollars in.”
mark
									
Didn’t he say that for a few moments he—
susan
									
Yeah, he really believed that she was doing it, because what she would have done is she would have said, “It wasn’t a suicide, it was a murder, and over time I will reveal the murder to you.” At $700 an hour, it will go on as long as the guy will pay, and so this is kind of the things that these people do. So the shows are—
ross
									
Yeah, that’s a whole different—
susan
									
But the show is used to get that. That’s what they’re doing, they’re trying to get the private readings.
ross
									
The show is where they can really get the money in, yeah.
mark
									
It’s just an advertisement.
susan
									
They’re making some money off of this, but it’s an advertisement for themselves.
carrie
									
Well, Cindy doesn’t do private readings.
susan
									
Really?
ross
									
Well, not currently. She has in the past, but yeah, right now she’s so busy with this live performance tour—
susan
									
Which is really sickening. She reminds me of Maureen Hancock, she was another, one of these comedian-psychics. Remember Maureen Hancock?
mark
									
Oh, yes.
susan
									
She was a girl next door. She wrote a book. She was trying to get a TV show called The Medium Next Door.
mark
									
The Psychic Next Door, or The Medium Next Door.
susan
									
She thought it was funny, and she’d go and she would laugh with everybody, and get everybody in the audience laughing about their dead family members, and it just breaks your heart, because the people in the audience are laughing along with it to some extent, but really you’re talking about tragedies, people who killed themselves, people who overdosed on things. It isn’t funny.
mark
									
Or entertaining, to me anyway.
susan
									
Yeah, and missing children and so on. But one of the things I wanted to clear up before, and Carrie had said it on the first episode with Cindy Kaza, is that you had asked Ross, did we come out at the show and say, “Hey, Thomas John, you’re a fraud and you just read our Facebook pages!” And one of the things I need to make sure everybody understands is we can’t do that, because we’ve blinded it. So, in the case of Operation Pizza Roll—
mark
									
Double-blinded.
susan
									
—yeah, when Mark and I went to that show, we did not know what was on the Facebook pages that were written for us.
carrie
									
Oh, nice!
susan
									
Those were locked away from us.
mark
									
Oh, you guys didn’t know that?
ross
									
No, that’s—
mark
									
You better explain the whole deal.
ross
									
Yeah, let’s step back a bit, because you talk about we go to these shows, it’s not just you and Mark. You assembled a team.
susan
									
I have a whole team, yeah. I have a whole team.
ross
									
Yeah, so talk about that. How did you assemble this team? [Susan laughs.] This crack team.
susan
									
Oh gosh, okay. So they’re just Facebook friends that have joined up. They’re all people I know either on Facebook— I’m not going to just let somebody into the team that’s just some person somewhere. I’m not psychic, I can’t tell if they’re on the side of good or not. But I know these people, and we’ve done several of these stings. We did Operation Bumblebee, Operation Ice Cream Cone, Operation Pizza Roll, Tater Tot is more about Tyler Henry, the Hollywood medium, and that’s more of them writing about him.
ross
									
Do you pick these names, Susan?
susan
									
Yeah. Absolutely, it’s great. You have to Google them after a while to find out if there is an Operation Something.
ross
									
You want to make sure that this is the only thing that comes up.
susan
									
Well, Operation Bumblebee was my first one, and there is a military maneuver called Operation Bumblebee that has its own Wikipedia page, so now I’m a lot more careful.
carrie
									
It sounds like now you’re picking mostly things in the kitchen.
susan
									
Yeah, food items are always good.
susan
									
It’s hilarious.
ross
									
Preferably alliterative. Bumblebee, Peach Pit, Bruce Banner.
susan
									
They’re just so much fun. Tater Tot.
mark
									
It makes it seem so much more undercover.
susan
									
Oh, it’s so ridiculous.
carrie
									
Or delicious.
susan
									
There’s a reason behind it, but—
mark
									
Also if we use the medium’s name, that tips everybody off, so.
carrie
									
Well, sure. Yeah.
susan
									
So what I did with the team is, okay, so I said to the team— you know, I’ve done this a bunch of times, so this time I said, on Facebook, “I’m ready to do another sting. It’s going to last ten days. Who wants in? I need a team of Facebook people.” And they said, “Me, me, me!” And then I just shut the doors and said, “Okay, we got a team.” So we get maybe, I don’t know, maybe there was ten, twelve of them this time. I put them in a Facebook group that was a private Facebook group called Operation Pizza Roll, and I said, “Alright, guys, we’re going to give this psychic money. We’re going to give them a lot of money. We’re going to get VIP seats. $160 something dollars per person.”
ross
									
Want to get close to the stage.
susan
									
Absolutely. Skeptics sit in the back.
mark 
									
Those are the ones who get called on.
susan
									
Yeah, you get called on in the front, and why would they think someone who’s paid top dollar is a skeptic, right? So you have to sit in the front, and you have to play the part, because as we said, they’re trying to get a hook in you, so you will do readings and buy the books and become a supporter and blah blah blah.
ross
									
I think we get so much from that in our investigators, that we pay to go to these conferences and seminars, because why would you if you didn’t believe in this stuff? Why would you pay five hundred dollars?
susan
									
Absolutely. It’s a lot of money and time. So, what I did is I explained this to my team. I said, “We’re going to lie. We’re going to give them money. What I need you to do is, you’re going to create Facebook pages.” Well, actually, we had a lot of Facebook pages that we’d used in the past, so they have a long history.
ross
									
I was going to say, because yeah, you don’t want something that was just started in 2018.
susan
									
So we recreate the pages, maybe with new pictures, new names, whatever we need to do, and I say, “You guys are going to own these pages.” And they could have been owned by somebody in Australia or New Zealand or Uganda, who knows. They’ve been handed down to the next person. We change the passwords, we change everything, and I’m locked out. I can’t see these pages. So what happens is, I say, “Alright, who’s going to go to the show with me?” and with Operation Pizza Roll, we put it together in about ten days, so I didn’t really have a lot of time on this one. So Mark said, “I’ll go, and we’ll go as a married couple,” which we’re not, as you guys already heard. We’ve been shacking up—
ross
									
[Carrie laughs.] Because we scolded you for it.
susan
									
—for ten years. So Mark said, “I’ll go.” I said, “Alright, great. So we need X amount of money. $160 a person.” And the team said, “Alright, we’re on it.” Now, the team members kind of know Mark and I, so we told them, “You cannot create characters that are us.” So, like, I have two sons. So the person they created, the personality behind—
ross
									
So you give them a list of really relevant personal details—
susan
									
Well, they know me.
ross
									
—to make sure.
susan
									
Yeah, some of them know me well, and so it can’t be somebody who would be me.
ross
									
Which would be an interesting test as well, if the psychic can see through the persona and read the actual you.
susan
									
Absolutely, that would be a really good sign.
mark
									
That’s what we’re waiting for.
susan
									
But it hasn’t happened.
mark
									
Thirty-five years later, we’re starting to lose faith.
susan
									
So when we go to the show, what has happened, the team, Pizza Rollers—that’s what they called themselves—they made themselves another Facebook secret group that Mark and I were not available in. We went under the names Susanna and Mark Wilson, because we have ID that says sort of that. Mark’s real name is Mark Wilson, and that’s not really Googleable. We went as those names in case we had to show ID, because we knew we were going to buy tickets, right?
ross
									
And Mark and Susan, very common names. Likely to be mentioned.
susan
									
Very common names. Gerbic is not, so we knew we couldn’t use anything like Gerbic. They created the storyline, and that’s what they did is they went and they had— and this is all up on my website, which is susangerbic.org, you can see all the screenshots as well as the full audio of the event, because we were wired, Mark and I. So we go into the show—
mark
									
You forgot one important part, though. The double-blind part was that most of the information that were on the Facebook pages, we were not aware of. We had very basic, like two or three facts.
carrie
									
So this really isolates the hot reading and makes the cold reading nearly impossible.
ross
									
And makes a lot of work for you after the show, so in the moment you don’t know how good it is.
susan
									
That’s right. We don’t know what’s going on.
mark
									
And that’s really funny, that’s something we kind of didn’t expect.
carrie
									
Let’s define some terms for listeners who don’t know. So, hot reading is when you do this research beforehand about the sitter, the person you’re giving the reading to, and then cold reading is more like psychological technique where you’re having a conversation, you’re eliciting information from the sitter, and then feeding it back to them as if you came up with it.
mark
									
Right, body language, and, you know—
susan
									
The way you’re dressed.
ross
									
And hot is really impressive if you don’t know it’s happening.
mark 
									
Oh, it’s amazing.
ross
									
And you, Mark, have talked about hot reading in the past.
mark
									
I love hot reading.
ross
									
Looking up maps of peoples’ houses and—
susan
									
It’s so much fun.
mark
									
It comes from mentalism, it’s basically called pre-show.
ross
									
And for those who haven’t heard our interview with Mark, he has spent many years as a practicing psychic, and mentalist, and—
mark
									
Well, we don’t like to talk about that.
susan
									
Well, it’s given you the expertise to be able to do this.
mark
									
Yeah, and that’s the whole game, is make it look like you’re picking it up in the moment, but you’ve spent time piecing it together, and you’re never directly dead on. You want to make it a little bit fuzzy.
carrie
									
Right, so it seems human.
ross
									
Yeah, otherwise, okay, you just said my address and my social security number, you’re just creepy.
mark
									
And that’s one of the things about Tom. Yeah, exactly. Like the faith healers used to say—
susan
									
Peter Popoff.
mark
									
—”I’m getting John Smith, 2241 Elm Street.” You know, it’s like, wait a minute. You know?
susan
									
I just wrote that on a piece of paper just a few minutes ago before the show.
mark
									
Those days are over.
carrie
									
Blood type O-Positive.
ross
									
So it seems like, just like a scientist when they’re looking at a new drug or something like that, they’re trying to rule out placebo, they’re  trying to rule out all these other factors. I think when we go into a psychic, the four of us here, we’re always thinking in terms of, “Okay, how do we remove the possibility of a hot reading? How do we minimize, or at least understand the parameters of a cold reading so we can really see if there’s meat here?” I think it’s a similar process.
susan
									
Well, we had to catch him in a hot read, because that was the thing. Mark had arranged with New York Times reporter Jack Hitt, that if we ever caught a hot read, he wanted to do a story on it for New York Times Magazine, which was, you know, only 2 million people reading it.
mark
									
That’s why I say the media is really what the point is.
susan
									
Right, so now we’re at the point of media first. So, we knew we had to catch this guy in a hot read. Cold reading is so simple to catch. I mean, you can catch that all day, all the time, it’s pretty simple. So they were like, “Whatever, come back to us when you have a conclusive hot read.”
ross
									
Yeah, that’s a story.
susan
									
So when we went to the show, Mark and I, as he said, we were given a little bit of information. I knew that I was there to reach my twin brother, Andy, who had died of pancreatic cancer.
ross
									
Sorry for your loss. Fake loss.
susan
									
I know. Fake loss, yeah.
mark
									
Here’s a tissue. [Everyone laughs.]
susan
									
So Mark was there to contact your father who had died many years ago, who had heart conditions, and I guess you were starting to have those same heart conditions, and you were having tests done, and something like that.
mark
									
I was worried.
carrie
									
Common American story.
susan
									
Yeah, American male. So we knew that. So when we went to the show—remember, we’re not in the Facebook pages—so we got to the place in Hollywood, and we texted the Pizza Rollers and said, “We’re here, we’re in. We’re in the building.” So they went to the characters and they texted, “Oh, I’m here,” tagging the event and the psychic on Facebook. “We’re in the event, and here we are, and we’re so excited.”
ross
									
So this is the real lure, assuming—
mark
									
The bait.
ross
									
—assuming that the psychic hasn’t gone to the effort to look at the list in advance of who signed up and then proactively— that is a lot of work, and psychics will often say, “Oh, who has the time to look at 200 people?”
susan
									
They do.
mark
									
They have nothing, nothing but time. The ones who make a lot of money, like Theresa Caputo, they have a whole staff to do that.
ross
									
That’s how they earn that money.
carrie
									
And also you’re doing what, one show a week that’s two hours? Who has the time? You. Your job is very specific.
mark
									
All is you need is like—
susan
									
You only need one or two.
mark
									
—three or four in an audience of two hundred—
susan
									
Right, you don’t need a lot.
ross
									
—to impress everybody, yeah.
susan
									
Right, absolutely. So they didn’t need to do a lot. So we walk into the show. We were dressed to be cold read, because I didn’t know this man, Thomas John, from nothing. So we came in prepared to be cold read, with wedding rings and dressed a certain way. I had a pin on that was a Scottish pin. Mark had a marine—
mark
									
I had a marine pin on my lapel.
ross
									
Oh, just so they could run with that, even though you were not a marine.
mark
									
Hell no.
ross
									
No semper fi here.
susan
									
Nothing. Nothing to do with the military. So if they had picked up on the military with Mark, we would have known he was being cold read. So we didn’t know anything about that. So when we got into the show, we sat down, we played the parts. I looked grieving. We made contact with people around us.
carrie
									
Can you look grieving right now?
susan
									
Yes.
carrie
									
Aww. It’s convincing, you guys.
ross
									
Oh, Susan, I’m so sorry.
mark
									
You have to have a tissue.
susan
									
I had a tissue.
mark
									
You have to have a tissue that’s all wound up. You have to be going like—
susan
									
Oh my God, I’m just really nervous.
carrie
									
Oh I wish our listeners could see this.
mark
									
—dabbing your eyes, looking down at the floor.
susan
									
It was great. It was so much fun. And we were wired. I mean, I was really nervous, so we had wires, and—
mark
									
And they actually said it was okay to record.
susan
									
I’m like, “Okay!”
carrie
									
Oh, that’s such a relief.
mark
									
Both of us turned on our—
susan
									
We pulled out our phones and we turned them on visibly. Then we get into the show, we sit down, we start playing our parts. The manager gets up on stage, and here’s the great little line she says. “Oh, it’s so wonderful to see so many friendly faces here tonight.” And Mark and I are like, “Mmhmm.”
mark
									
No, she said familiar faces.
susan
									
Familiar faces! Mark and I are like, uh-huh.
ross
									
Boy, the turn of that one word.
susan
									
Familiar faces, and you’re like, okay, there’s a lot of people in this room they know, or they’ve read for, and so on.
mark
									
Or could even be paid to be there.
susan
									
There’s like fifty people there.
ross
									
This reminds us, we went to see Bob Larsen—
susan
									
The demonologist? Oh, that’s a great episode.
ross
									
—the demonologist, the exorcist. And afterwards, same as you’re mentioning, we found out that one of the people he cast demons out of, she was one of the main, central setpieces. She had been to his show before and had had a demon cast out there, so I guess it wasn’t a thorough enough job. But yeah, you like to have reliable people in the audience.
mark
									
It’s called stooge, and they’re usually paid very well.
ross
									
There’s a plant in the audience.
susan
									
And they don’t know. All these people don’t know. When we went to see Chip Coffey, we found that the first— we had VIP tickets, and we were in the third row, because the first two rows are made up for all the people who are his fans, who have gone repeatedly, and they don’t realize it, most of them. He calls on them whenever he’s getting a low moment. He calls on somebody in the front row, because he knows them. Anyway, so we’re in our seats—
carrie
									
Chip Coffey, pizza roll, everything sounds so good. [Everyone laughs.]
susan
									
So we’re sitting in our seats. Thomas John gets up on stage, and he has his eyes closed on the stage, and he is perfectly still. He’s getting a message from somewhere, and there’s a reading in the back of the room, very detailed. Absolutely detailed.
mark
									
Very accurate.
susan
									
And we find out later that was the woman who came up to us and said that she had been in his spirit circle not too long before.
carrie 
									
And her dog came through.
ross
									
But to an uninformed observer, it’s just a really impressive reading.
susan
									
Nobody had any clue. Absolutely. So he doesn’t call on a person in the audience. He says, “I’m getting a message from,” much as Cindy did. You’re supposed to raise your hand and say, “That’s for me. That’s my uncle Bob,” or whatever. So the psychic up on the stage does not have to know— I get this criticism all the time, they say, “Well, how did he? He’s memorizing everybody in the audience and he’s able to point to the person in the audience and say, ‘I’m getting your—’” No, it doesn’t work like that at all. He only needs to memorize one or two, if they even need to memorize. There’s other ways of getting information, from the netherworld, the great beyond, into your ears. There’s ways of that happening.
ross
									
I don’t know what the calculation is of how much money they’re taking in that night, but it’s—
susan
									
Thousands of dollars. Absolutely.
mark
									
Probably about five grand.
ross
									
That sounds realistic. So how many names would you memorize for five grand?
mark
									
Three. [Everybody laughs.] Because remember, you’ve already got all these people you already know. A psychic never says, “Good to see you again!”
susan
									
No, they don’t let the audience know.
mark
									
“That was a pretty good reading we had yesterday!”
carrie
									
In fact, they’ll be like intentionally surprised. “Oh, I didn’t even remember that! You’re reminding me that last year I met you! Oh yeah!”
susan
									
Absolutely. So, what happened is— and the full audio, as I said, is on my website. Anybody can listen to it. It says, “I’m getting a message from—”
mark
									
Well, first tell about the lady in green, because that’s really interesting.
susan
									
Oh, okay. Alright guys, we’re going to do lady in green. So right across from Mark is a woman wearing green. She comes in a little late in her VIP seat and she’s getting a spot-on reading, absolutely detailed, and she’s crying like crazy into a Kleenex. Mark and I are listening—
mark
									
But I look over at her and I see she’s not really crying.
ross
									
Really?
mark
									
She’s doing the same thing we were doing.
ross
									
Is she running her own Operation Pretzel Twist?
mark
									
There’s nothing on the— there’s no tears. It was crocodile tears.
carrie
									
Oh, okay. Mark is wiping his dry eyes, okay.
mark
									
And I’m just, “Okay, so this is a—”
susan
									
Yeah, and we called her the lady in green, and she becomes important a little later on.
carrie
									
So she’s not running a sting. She’s maybe part of the psychics operation.
mark
									
You’ll find out. Wait for it.
carrie
									
Oh, okay. Sorry! Jumping ahead.
susan
									
So that was the second reading. The third reading is me. I get this message from Thomas John on the stage, saying, “I’m getting a twin brother who wants to reach out to his sister.”
ross
									
[Gasps] Holy shit.
susan
									
And I tentatively raised my hand very slowly, and I was very awkward about it. They came over with a microphone. I said, “I think that’s me.” You know, they have their box of Kleenex right there, and it’s really hilarious. That’s a medium trick right?
mark
									
Yeah, always have a box of tissues, because once the tissues are there, it coaxes the—
carrie
									
It invites the cry.
susan
									
You pull it out during the reading.
ross
									
It primes the audience. It sets the atmosphere.
mark
									
Well, mediums used to have a box of tissues—this is the story I heard—under their table, and when they’re doing any sort of reading, when they see somebody’s really close to breakdown, they just take the tissues out, and they say, “Here, cry it out.”
ross
									
So smart.
mark
									
And then they do closure on it by saying, “Now since you’ve done that, you’ll never have to cry about that again.”
susan
									
Until our next session.
ross
									
Double-dipping on that. It reminds me of, what was those movies where they would have the person out front in the lobby. “Oh, we have a nurse here, because you’re going to be so scared. We’ll be ready to cart you out.”
mark
									
When they did House on Haunted Hill, they had an ambulance with the engine running in front of the theater.
ross
									
What a great gimmick, assuming it’s a gimmick. Continue.
susan
									
So, I know it’s my turn. He’s calling on me. I have a brother who is wanting to get in touch with me, my twin brother, actually. So immediately, I say it’s me, they give me the microphone, and Thomas John says, “I’m getting something in the stomach area. Cancer? Is it pancreatic cancer?” And I’m like, “Yes.”
ross
									
Went right for it. Wow.
susan
									
Oh, it was verbatim almost. And so, that’s all I know, right? That’s pretty much all I know. So I know enough to raise my hand when it’s mine, I have enough information. And we knew the Mark’s dad connection, that his dad had heart failure and that Mark was concerned about it because he was about the age his father was when he died, and so he’s been having tests and he’s worried about it. So that’s about it.
ross
									
I’m really interested in this moment and zooming into your head, because you have to react to him and what he’s saying.
susan
									
I was so excited. It was so exciting. I knew he called me. It was so easy.
mark
									
Up to a point, and that’s what we’re getting to, which is the fun part.
ross
									
Yeah, but how are you responding to him? Are you saying, “Yeah. That’s right. Wow.”
susan
									
Yes. I was excited, I was thrilled that it was so easy. We were only the third call. It was so simple. I thought, “Wow!”
ross
									
Now, if Cindy Kaza had gotten this far, she would let you know that your brother says, “Hi.” [Everyone laughs.]
carrie
									
Okay, but what really did happen?
susan
									
So he goes on and he’s telling us stuff, and it’s a fifteen minute reading, and Mark and I—this was the awkward part—we didn’t know what he was talking about. He asked about somebody named Maria.
mark
									
Because it was all from the hidden Facebook pages. That’s where the double blind comes in.
susan
									
Right, so we don’t know. So something about Buddy, and so what’s this about Buddy?
mark
									
He goes, “Who’s Buddy?” and I’m like—
ross
									
“Is it my dog?”
mark
									
No, but that was what it was. She jumps in and she says, “I think that was your father’s nickname, wasn’t it?”
susan
									
I said, “It was my brother’s nickname, or his father. They used that name a lot.” And he’s like, “Really?”
mark
									
Then he looks at me and he’s like, “No, Buddy’s your dog.” I’m like, “Oh, yeah.” [Everybody laughs.]
susan
									
“Oh yes, of course.”
ross
									
I would have done better than he did.
mark
									
Then he’s starting to smell a rat, just a little bit.
susan
									
He says, “And Steve. Steve.” And Mark’s like, “Steve?” I said, “Oh, that was my brother’s friend’s name that was…” and my voice drops, and it was actually Mark’s dads name was Steve.
ross
									
So his precious hot reading material is dissolving before his eyes, and now you’re radioactive and he wants to get away from you.
susan
									
But he can’t.
mark
									
Well, not quite yet.
susan
									
So he just keeps going on—
ross
									
It’s just suspicious.
susan
									
—but he goes down.
mark
									
We just kept nodding.
susan
									
And I told him, at one point, I said, “I’m really sorry, I’m so emotional. You’ve just contacted my brother, Andy.” And he’s like, “Well, we have to move on to other people, so you have to kind of get with it.”
carrie
									
Woah.
ross
									
Wow!
mark
									
“So start agreeing with me, because you know I’m right.”
susan
									
I was crying. I was absolutely looking like I was crying, and Mark’s fanning with a piece of paper, and people were handing tissues. We already had our own tissues. So, we had to keep it up, because we don’t know what’s on those Facebook pages. We have no idea if he’s hit it. All I know is that he’s hit Andy, my twin brother, and then he also went to Mark and said—
mark
									
And he had a couple geographic places, which were pretty interesting.
susan
									
Yeah, he had a lot of things that we weren’t sure of. He said, “Who quit smoking? I’m getting smoking, smoking, smoking.” Mark says, “My brother quit smoking,” and he goes, “No, not you! The twin!” And I’m like, “Oh, that’s right! My brother quit smoking too!” I don’t know.
mark
									
It’s like, who’s fooling who here, at this point.
ross
									
I mean, this sounds like a very entertaining show for me.
mark
									
Oh, it’s so fun to do it.
susan
									
It was really hilarious, you gotta listen to the audio, you guys. But anyway, the point was—
ross
									
Is this posted?
susan
									
Yeah, it’s on my website. The full fifteen minutes.
ross
									
susangerbic.org.
susan
									
You can follow along and read the screenshots of the fake Facebook pages as he’s doing the audio. It’s conclusive, put it that way. So, I mean, it’s almost like he went down in chronological order of the things, and— okay, I’m not saying he’s wearing a wire. I’m not saying that. I’m saying it’s possible that he could have had somebody in the back who was reading the Facebook pages and giving him the information. It’s possible.
ross
									
That’s the way to do it without memorization.
susan
									
Right, or talking to the dead, if you, whatever.
ross
									
Sure, yes. Can’t forget that possibility.
susan
									
Or the dead person could have been reading my Facebook page. That person could be doing it, not knowing that it wasn’t my real Facebook page that I’ve never visited.
ross
									
That would actually be really impressive then.
susan
									
Yeah, well. As he’s going through it, how is he supposed to send the message to the person in the back to say, “Alert, I need to get out of this reading.” How does he move to the next person?
ross
									
Oh, is there a code language?
susan
									
Yeah, I don’t know, but he went on for fifteen minutes, and it was obvious that Mark and I were—
carrie
									
Fifteen minutes with just you?
susan
									
Mark and I.
carrie
									
Oh my. Good lord.
susan 
									
Yeah, he says it was only a couple of minutes, but I have fifteen minutes of it. It might have felt like two minutes to him, but it was fifteen minutes.
carrie
									
He invited you to record.
susan
									
Fifteen minutes and three seconds, I think.
ross
									
The recording doesn’t lie.
susan
									
The recording does not lie. So, you can see and you can hear all of this happening. Okay, so we can’t reveal anything, because obviously we don’t know if we’ve caught him in a hot read. We don’t know. All we know is that he knew what was in my brain, was that I was here to see Andy, my dear brother who had died of pancreatic cancer, and Mark’s father. But I knew that.
ross
									
This was real smart, and with that double blind you’ve ruled out the possibility that he’s just a mind reader.
susan
									
That’s the double blind. It could have been a mind reading thing, or somebody— who knows. So we had to sit there in the audience and listen to the rest of the thing going on. In the meantime, I’m texting my Pizza Roller people, saying, “We’re done. He said this, he said this, I don’t know what’s this. Who’s smoking? What’s that?” And they don’t know.
carrie
									
Oh!
susan
									
They’re like, “Michigan?” He said, “Who’s this person in Michigan?” and we’re like, “I don’t know.” Pizza Rollers don’t have a clue. So anyway, we have it all on audio. So we are still sitting there. The VIP session, because we paid for the VIP tickets, we go to have our twenty minute one-on-one with this guy, and we’re interacting with all the people—
mark
									
It wasn’t one-on-one.
susan
									
Well, he’s there talking about his gift and all that.
mark
									
How great he is.
susan
									
So he has these books, he’s got a book out, and he’s passing them around, and everybody’s got their book, because that’s what we got as part of the VIP, and the woman in green is in this room. She’s sitting there, and she hands him the book to autograph it. She says, “Spell it right this time.”
carrie
									
Oh!
ross
									
Wow. So, it’s his mother.
susan
									
I’m like, “This time?”
mark
									
We asked him, “Do you have any mediums that you really prefer?” And he said, “Oh, there’s so many, but I have some of my own students that I’m very happy. They’re coming right along.” And Susan says, “Students?” And he goes, “Yes, this lady right here.”
susan
									
And he puts his hand on the lady in green.
ross
									
Oh, my Goodness!
susan
									
That’s one of his students.
mark
									
We’re looking around the room going, “Did anyone else notice that was one of the most accurate readings in the whole show?”
ross
									
So really, she’s a stoogent.
susan
									
She’s a stoogent. Oh, that’s great.
mark
									
So I turn to Susan, and I go—
carrie
									
But probably doesn’t know she is.
susan
									
And I got a nice photo of her, because I was taking pictures in the VIP room, and if you look at Thomas John’s Wikipedia page, those photos are on the Wikipedia page.
ross
									
Can we do a slight detour here? Why would interacting with Susan somehow end up with your Wikipedia page having the photos? You have a long and storied history as a Wikipediatrician.
susan
									
Yes, and I’m also a photographer. So, you know, it was just a snapshot with my iPhone, but you know— and yes, we do run a Wikipedia editing group, and so he has a Wikipedia page.
mark
									
He has a nice picture of both of us, he’s hugging us and everything.
susan
									
Yeah, it’s on his Wikipedia page.
ross
									
Oh, that’s wonderful. For the audience, Susan is a force of nature, like I’ve never encountered anywhere else.
susan
									
Hurricane Susan.
ross
									
Susan is so active and so powerful online.
susan
									
Power. You rule the world.
ross
									
Yeah, you’re powerful. You pull these teams together and you do things like this. You have a whole team, how many contributors to the—
susan
									
Oh, there’s about 140 of us now.
ross
									
—Guerrilla Skeptics.
susan
									
We’ve written a little over a thousand Wikipedia pages in multiple languages. We just did one in French today. Those Wikipedia pages have been viewed— we’re a day away from hitting 48 million times. So, no, I am a force of nature as you say, but it’s only because of the people around me. I bring people together and train them and motivate them and teach them how to become activists. My activities are only because of the people that’s come to me and said, “I want to help.”
carrie
									
Well, fine, but vice versa as well.
ross
									
This is powerful, and—
susan
									
It is powerful.
ross
									
—and I know Susan is kind of like Carrie. If I send either of you a piece of information, five minutes later you both will have read just pages worth of information, you’ve looked up videos, you know everything about this. Like, woah, woah, woah! [Carrie laughs.]
susan
									
I don’t know about everything. Carrie’s probably a little more, definitely. I’m definitely the type of person who will— you send me something, I’m going to read it.
carrie
									
Chronic curiosity, yeah.
susan
									
I fall into the rabbit hole all the time, and then it might end up on a Wikipedia page.
ross
									
The short version of this is, I would never want to cross Susan.
susan
									
You know, our team did write the Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Wikipedia page.
ross
									
Yeah.
carrie
									
We do know!
ross
									
Thank you.
susan
									
So, audience, if you look at their Wikipedia page, that is the kind of work and the quality that our team has done in the past. We’ve been around since, I think 2012.
carrie
									
I think earlier, because, let’s see. I worked at the James Randi Foundation in 2012 and I’m pretty sure you were already doing that work.
susan
									
I think you’re right.
carrie
									
I’m going to guess 2010.
susan
									
I think you’re probably right.
carrie
									
Yes. I just picked an earlier year, yes!
susan
									
Because that’s whenever I started—yeah. So I think you’re probably close to that.
carrie
									
Sorry to interrupt the party, but I just want to talk about my favorite thing: bras, as everyone knows.
ross
									
Typical.
carrie
									
Because this episode is actually brought to all of you in part by a bra, and in particular, the Third Love bra.
ross
									
Third Love bra.
carrie
									
So, you might be thinking, “I wonder what bra Carrie is wearing today?” Well, I don’t know what day you’re listening to this episode, so how would I know, you guys? I’m not a psychic.
ross
									
Good point.
carrie
									
But the odds are pretty decent that I’m wearing a Third Love bra, because Third Love uses data points generated by millions of women who have taken their fit finder quiz to design bras with breast shape and size in mind for a perfect and premium feel; and personally I really like my Third Love bra. It is lavender colored, it has those accordion straps y’all know I love.
ross
									
Oh, yeah.
carrie
									
And it’s lightweight. It’s very thin. It’s got like this memory foam that molds to you, so it just feels like a perfect fit pretty quick. Because you know how sometimes you have to wear something for years and years before it feels like your body? Not with Third Love. No, no, no. You get that right away, but you still get the support and the comfort. Every customer has 60 days to wear it, wash it, put it to the test, and if you don’t love it, you just return it and Third Love will wash it and donate it to a woman in need.
ross
									
That’s awesome.
carrie
									
That’s pretty great.
ross
									
So go to thirdlove.com/OHNO now to find your perfect fitting bra and get 15% off your first purchase.
carrie
									
That’s thirdlove.com/OHNO for 15% off today. And while we’re on the subject, Ross. Ross, is it?
ross
									
Yeah, I’m Ross.
carrie
									
I’ve been thinking.
ross
									
What have you been thinking?
carrie
									
You know, I had some real tooth problems a couple years ago.
ross
									
Oh, yeah.
carrie
									
And I didn’t really know why. I’d taken really good care of my teeth, but I really had to step up my game.
ross
									
How’d you do that?
carrie
									
Things have been better. Things have been better in my mouth.
ross
									
Oh, good.
carrie
									
And I think it’s partly because of my Quip toothbrush.
ross
									
Oh man, tell me about it.
carrie
									
Now, you may have heard about the Quip.
ross
									
Oh yeah, they’re great.
carrie
									
You may have one.
ross
									
I do.
carrie
									
But they are a very special little slim electric toothbrush, totally different from the electric toothbrush you’re used to that’s kind of big and bulky and sits on your counter. This one is just— it’s like having a pen in your pocket, and you can put it right up on your mirror. I have mine in a little case that has a sticky-strippy on the back so you can stick it right to your mirror if you like.
ross
									
Yeah, I do that, too. I really appreciate its stick-to-it-iveness.
carrie
									
And it features sensitive sonic vibrations, a built-in two minute timer, and a multi-use cover that, as I mentioned, doubles as a mirror mount. Brush heads are automatically delivered on a dentist-recommended schedule every three months for just five buckaroos.
ross
									
And it’s a friendly reminder when it’s time for a refresh and to stay committed to your oral health.
carrie
									
Plus you can check out the new kids’ brush. The new brush is the same as the original version, it’s just sized down for smaller mouths.
ross
									
Yeah, you can help them develop a grown-up routine without childish gimmicks.
carrie
									
Because if there’s one thing I hated when I was a kid, it was all that stuff that just said, “Just for kids.” I always felt talked down to. So if you have a weird ass kid like I was, don’t worry, they’ll like their Quip.
ross
									
Carrie hates that. Quip is perfect for getting back into a routine.
carrie
									
And Quip starts at just $25, and if you go to getquip.com/ohno right now, you can get your first refill pack for free. That’s your first refill pack for free at getquip.com/ohno.
carrie
									
Where were we on the story now? It’s so good.
ross
									
Oh, sorry. You got a photo with him, it’s on his Wikipedia page.
susan
									
So, yeah, so we know that he has outed his stooge. And to be clear, it’s fine for him to do a reading for somebody in the audience of his student that he knows well. You know, a dead person may be trying to get through to her, or who knows, we don’t know.
ross
									
And you can strategically load that in the show early on to get everybody on board and impressed.
susan
									
But, he didn’t tell the audience. And that would be, ethically, that’s what you should say. You say “oh, you know.”
carrie
									
“Full disclosure.”
susan
									
But he says he has his eyes closed, he didn’t know it was her, and I’m thinking, “Really, you didn’t recognize her story? You didn’t recognize her voice? Yeah, you saw her in the audience when you got on stage, whether your eyes are closed or not.”
mark
									
He’s not blindfolded.
susan
									
No, that’s true.
ross
									
And you keep referencing his reaction. So this is after the story has come out, then he offers some explanation for what went on that night.
susan
									
Right, so what happens is— oh, gosh, let’s see if we can do this a little faster.
ross
									
Yeah, this is hard to do in a linear fashion.
susan
									
Yeah, because what happens is—
mark
									
Now we wait, because we don’t—
susan
									
Well, we talked to the Pizza Rollers, we gave them the audio, and we said, “Here you go, here’s the audio, what did he get?” And as we found out, he really read those Facebook pages, or, the dead person read ‘em.
mark
									
He buried himself, you know? He really did. Wow.
susan
									
It was one hit after another. And what happened was— and those Facebook pages look real. And when you see these screenshots, you guys, you will say, “This is a lot of detail.” There’s a lot of people involved having real conversations with each other.
ross
									
You’re smart about it, too. You have people post political memes, and—
mark
									
Dog pictures, food.
susan
									
Deep October quotes—
ross
									
Things they hate, right.
susan
									
Which is what came down to it. The thing about Michigan was a filler picture. One of the people on the team just put up a picture of some place in Cornwall.
mark
									
Oh, the Europe connection.
susan
									
Yeah, some place in Cornwall.
ross
									
So they had forgotten they’d done it.
susan
									
They’d forgotten. So what happened is, when you Google the name of the park that’s in this picture they put up, it comes up to some place in Michigan.
carrie
									
Oh my gosh.
susan
									
And then the smoking thing, they didn’t know what we were talking about when I said about the smoking. I said, “Who smoked? Did my twin smoke?” And they were like, “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But then when they went back through the Facebook pages far enough, there was a life event for my dead brother Andy who died of pancreatic cancer, my twin. There was a life event where he quit smoking in 2013.
carrie
									
Oh, okay!
susan
									
But nobody remembers putting that up. It may have existed—
carrie
									
Dun dun dun!
susan
									
Well, it might have existed from one of the old times the page had been used for another purpose. Somebody on the Thomas John— Thomas John somehow saw that post about a life event about somebody quitting smoking, and he argued with me that it was not Mark’s brother, it was my brother.
ross
									
Wow.
susan
									
And he had that down, so—
ross
									
Now that’s some solid double-blinding, there.
susan
									
So people also will say, “Susan, you should have known more of the story because, he was confused, you guys were confused, he must have smelled a rat!” And I said, “It doesn’t matter if he smelled a rat or not, the moment he knew that Andy was my brother who wanted to get in touch with me—my twin, who died of pancreatic cancer—we had him!” So from that moment on, we got him.
ross
									
He was just burying himself deeper.
susan
									
Right, so, if he had gone into detail about the Facebook pages, which he did, that’s more depth. He just kept digging himself in, so it didn’t matter if Mark and I got up there and did a jig. It didn’t matter. He was confused, we were confused, it didn’t matter at all. Because the story is, “Did he read those Facebook pages?” Even if he had made the first mention of something on that Facebook page, like the smoking or the Michigan, that we didn’t know anything about.
ross
									
You solidly established the hot read.
susan
									
We got it! Yeah, if he had said, “I’m sorry, I’m not getting anything more from him—”
mark
									
Which a lot of people were waiting to have happen, including this news reporter. So now it was like, “Okay, now we can roll with this.” And Jack really did, he got into it.
susan
									
Well, it took two years.
mark
									
Yeah, it took a while.
susan
									
Because what happened is, he was involved with the story, he loved the story, the reporters for the New York Times loved it, his editor loved it, everybody thought it was a great story, but, a year went by, and I said, “Well, what the heck’s going on?” And he goes, “Well—”
ross
									
We know, the wheels of journalism can roll slowly.
susan
									
It takes a long time. So you have to get like—
mark
									
But then, something happened.
susan
									
Well, what happened is, I finally called Jack, and I said, “What is it you need from us? You know, here’s the story.” He goes, “Well actually, I need to watch one. I need to be involved in one from the very beginning, because I have to tell about the ambiance—”
ross
									
And thus began Operation….
susan
									
—Peach Pit.
ross
									
[Laughs] Okay.
susan
									
So then we put one on... in Pennsylvania?
carrie
									
Is that because peaches contain cyanide in the pit?
crosstalk
									
Susan: No, but that’s what the team— Ross: Or is that apricots? Carrie: They both do. Ross: Oh, nice.
susan
									
The team did take on that name, so we did a whole new team, and we had Kenny Biddle and his wife Donna, and four other skeptic—
ross
									
Kenny’s a great guy, and a big fan of this show. Hey, Kenny!
susan
									
I love Kenny, though, and Donna, and all their friends. They went, and they followed, they went and did the whole—
ross
									
Hi, Donna!
carrie
									
Hi, all their friends!
susan
									
Hi, all their friends. They went and did the same thing. They took pictures with the psychic. His name is Matt Fraiser. I’m gonna go see him tomorrow, so that’s gonna be—
ross
									
Yeah, this’ll come out long afterwards so you’re not spoiling anything.
mark
									
Sold out, tomorrow night.
ross
									
Is it?
susan
									
Yeah, we just saw him.
ross
									
Oh, I was tempted to join you both.
susan
									
But you might be able to, I’m sure they’ll squeeze one person in. You’re small.
carrie
									
Be dead, then you can come in.
mark
									
Yeah, right.
susan
									
Come in your zombie makeup. Anyway, so we put on the other show, with this other psychic. We didn’t attend, but the New York Times reporter did. He was able to attend. He was almost called on, he was kinda freaking out about it.
ross
									
Ohh! “I just wanna be an observer!”
susan
									
So, yeah, he was called on almost, so he was like, “Oh darn, what do I do?” So we did not catch him in a hot read. We didn’t think he’s the hot-reading type, he looks like a cold-reading type. He’s a stage kind of thing. He’s got a TV show coming out, Matt Fraiser, by the way.
ross
									
Cindy Kaza has a show on the Travel Channel.
susan
									
Is that right? So these are people that have—
mark
									
Right where it belongs, on the Travel Channel.
susan
									
These are all people who interest me. And Matt Fraiser is now— I’m turning my eye to him a bit more now, so, hey Matt. But he already knew. So, still the New York Times didn’t do it. Still the article waited almost a year, and it still didn’t come out, and I said, “What the heck?” So, Thomas John has a show on Lifetime called Seatbelt Psychic. I kid you not.
mark
									
Have you heard about this?
ross
									
No!
susan
									
Okay, Seatbelt Psychic is, like, you get in a cab—
ross
									
Yeah, what is that even supposed to refer to?
susan
									
—and he drives away, in an Uber or whatever, and he drives away. It’s in L.A., it was filmed in L.A., and—
ross
									
I like this part, they drive away. Go ahead.
susan
									
—and they get in the back of the car, and they’re given readings.
carrie
									
Okay, so it’s like Cab Confessions, or Cash Cab.
susan
									
Yeah, singing karaoke or something.
ross
									
Or like Theresa Caputo reading people in a supermarket.
susan
									
Absolutely. So, I said, “Alright, that’s it.” Thomas John had a Wikipedia page that came out, so we’re like, “Alright, we got to get some more content on this thing,” so I said, “I’m gonna do some research on Seatbelt Psychic,”, thinking fully well that it was all cold reading. Well, it didn’t take me that long, but I found out—
ross
									
Whenever you have producers involved—
susan
									
These are people who are not—
mark
									
Casting agents.
susan
									
Casting agents, they have IMDB profiles.
ross
									
Nothing is by accident on TV.
susan
									
So these people got in the backseat of the car, and they did not react to how many camera angles facing them.
mark
									
They never say where they’re going.
susan
									
There’s no destination.
mark
									
They never have any kind of logos, any kind of commercial—
susan
									
—On their clothing.
carrie
									
[Laughs] Right, right, perfectly blank, green shirt.
susan
									
Right, they’re sitting in the perfect spot for the camera to hit them.
ross
									
When you watch TV, remember all these things, it’s all set up. You have to so carefully set up a TV show, and your rides, the cameras.
susan
									
But we don’t think that— Right, I don’t think that the people who got in the car knew they were going to be read. I honestly don’t. But, I was able to find the names of several of the people who were on the show, because they had IMDB profiles, and I went to their Facebook pages, which are open, because they’re actors, and so on, and I was able to see some of the things that he got. Like one woman’s dead brother, he was able to describe it in detail. Well, it’s easy to describe in detail when you can look at her Facebook page. So I really do think that it was kind of the same thing, somebody was giving him information. All he had to do was find the person’s name. It took me a few minutes just to find their name and I’m on their Facebook page, and I found the same thing he was giving them. So anyway, I write a story for Skeptical Inquire about Seatbelt Psychic, and I said, “Hey, Jack, I’m about to release this, because it’s been two years since we’ve done Operation Pizza Roll, and I’m sick of waiting.” And he says, “Give me three days.”
ross
									
Woah!
susan
									
So, he did, he got it to the New York Times.
ross
									
This is how you light the fire.
susan
									
Yeah! You really have to push them. And he says, “That got them off their asses. They love the whole stuff.” So, they were trying to see if maybe we should have stalled a little bit, because they were thinking of doing it— The New York Times has a show called The Weekly.
carrie
									
Yeah, a podcast.
susan
									
It’s a— No, that’s The Daily.
carrie
									
Oh! Oh, sorry. Okay.
susan
									
There’s a Weekly that’s a video. So that was about to come out, so they were thinking of using our story as part of their show, so there was an even longer delay. Now, Jack Hitt has interviewed Thomas John all this time. I mean, the story’s ready to go, so it took a while. But that final thing, I said, “I’m about to release this piece about Seatbelt Psychic if you don’t do it.”
ross
									
I’m sure Thomas John is dreading this.
susan
									
Oh, yeah, he knows. Well, he’s psychic, of course he knows. [Ross laughs] So, it came out in March of 2019, and it was phenomenal. I received so much content from people who have had dealings with Thomas John, and all sorts of psychics. I got interviews at all kinds of places, and it was phenomenal.
ross
									
Did you get people who came to you and said, “His reading did X for me, but now, knowing what he did, this changes how I perceived it.”
susan
									
A lot on Youtube, a lot of comments about the videos. Because I put up videos, and other people have done interviews with us, and in the comments section, people are saying, “I thought he was really accurate, and now I know why. I went and I Googled my dad’s name,” or, “I Googled my own name and there’s my dad’s obituary. I had no idea. He almost verbatim read it for us.” And since then, a lot of other things have happened with Thomas John. He has released a video series.
mark
									
Don’t forget the “Holy Koolaid” video.
susan
									
Oh, right. So, Thomas John released—
carrie
									
Don’t forget the Holy Koolaid video!
ross
									
[Laughs] Yeah, don’t forget that.
carrie
									
Susan!
susan
									
Yeah, I won’t, okay. So Thomas John has a webinar series where you can learn to be all about karma, and crystals—
mark
									
Reincarnation.
susan
									
—reincarnation, things like that. One of my team members bought the webinar series, and was watching it, and one of the things they noticed is— You know how you’re doing a webinar, it’s off of your own laptop. At one point, Thomas John— I don’t know if it’s clicking off, but it leaves his picture and it goes to his desktop.
carrie 
									
Okay. Oh, opportunity.
susan
									
Do you kind of follow what I’m doing? So, it’s a video, so all you have to do is hit pause, screenshot the desktop—
carrie
									
[Gasps] What’s on there?
susan
									
Yeah, we saw his inbox, I have a picture of his Google inbox.
carrie 
									
Does he practice Inbox Zero?
ross
									
Meaning keeping a clean inbox.
susan
									
Oh, no! Oh my gosh, there’s like, two thousand messages, and there’s complaints in there.
carrie
									
[Delighted gasp] Ohhh!
ross 
									
Oh, wow! [Laughs] I love it!
susan
									
There’s people’s phone numbers with complaints on it. There are—and also, some of the screenshots— and these are all up on my website, by the way.
ross
									
Holy Kool-aid, Batman! Or is that a different reference?
susan
									
Also, he has on there— how do I say it? It’s like a Google screen. And if you can imagine a Google screen with a Google search box, and if you type in a letter in there, you know it kind of gives you predictive things? Well, it predicted a whole bunch of obituaries that he had been searching.
ross
									
[Laughs] That’s amazing!
susan
									
There were obituaries for Doctor John so-and-so in Illinois at 555 North Rainer Avenue or whatever. So I got two screenshots of that.
ross
									
Oh, no! Red handed.
susan
									
I know! And then he also has bookmarked Intellus, is that what it’s called? Intellus.com, which is a website where you can find out information about people. It showed his whole bookmarks bar!
ross
									
This is so amazing! You’re the best, Susan.
susan
									
So I wrote an article, and you guys can find this, it’s called “Thomas John Revisited”, so I keep putting out more and more articles about him, and every time the article goes out— Okay, so, when you have a Wikipedia page, you are considered notable, and it doesn’t mean famous, or anything, it just means you have a Wikipedia page. So, I have a Wikipedia page, which means that any time I write something for Skeptical Inquire, which is a notable journalistic—
carrie
									
Outlay?
susan
									
—yeah, a journal, then it can go on a Wikipedia page. So Thomas John’s Wikipedia page is full of all these articles that I’ve written about him, and other people have written about him, because people are starting to get interested in Thomas John, so the guy is just. I mean, we just found he was plagiarizing all these other websites of— I haven’t even got that article out yet.
mark
									
Going into new-age things.
susan
									
I mean, he’s reading the page verbatim off of their websites. You can see him doing this, and he’s not crediting those websites. This is plagiarism.
ross
									
A whole separate layer.
mark
									
That we know of—we’re still pending on most of that.
susan
									
So, that’s Thomas John. I mean, we have so much fun with these things, but it’s going back to bug him, shake him up. There’s nothing he can do. He can’t alter the Wikipedia page.
ross
									
And yet he continues to perform. What we talk about, Unsinkable Rubber Ducks.
mark
									
He’s making money right now.
carrie
									
Can I just make sure I followed that whole train? So, is it that he does a Youtube series where he’s teaching you about crystals, and whatever other new-agey stuff, but he’s cribbing all the material on that Youtube from other sites. Got it, okay.
susan
									
Yes, and I have the video of him doing that. He’s saying the things, and I have the website where he pulled it from, that was older than him.
ross
									
Showing that a pre-dated—
susan
									
And he’s reading it, but not saying that this is from Deep October or whatever.
ross
									
Not crediting his sources. That’s plagiarism.
mark
									
I don’t know why he would, he’s crook, you know?
susan
									
Mark didn’t say that.
carrie 
									
Maybe! Allegedly.
mark
									
Oh, I’m sorry. Forgive me. An alleged crook.
carrie
									
An alleged crook, alleged by you.
susan
									
Right. So this is where we are. Now, Mark and I have another sting we want to do.
mark
									
We have the grandfather of—well, what do you call it?
susan
									
The sting can be done once. Because once we do it, it’s done. And we’ve been trying to find a media outlet who will do it, because I don’t wanna pay for it. It’s gonna cost about twelve grand.
mark
									
Wait, can I just put one thing in that’s really important? Once Susan finished this project, she started getting all these people from television shows that wanted to do a reality show. And they were just clamoring to get her to sign contracts, but we both agreed that—we told them, we said, “If you’re planning on showing both sides, and you decide at the end, we’re not interested in working with you. We’re going to go for the jugular.” So, guess what? Crickets.
ross
									
It’s so tough, because it’s much easier to create TV with spectacle when you pull that heartstring of, like, “Oh, it could be true!”
susan
									
Absolutely! And they do. Some of them were producing shows like Haunted-this or Haunted-that. I’m like, “I don’t wanna work with you.”
mark
									
But, the point is, this next sting that we have is just—I mean. You can’t do any better than this.
ross
									
You got me excited.
mark
									
But, we need media backing. Otherwise, we’re not going to do it.
susan
									
Right, because I don’t want to do another thing that preaches to the choir.
mark
									
You don’t want to just send Skeptical Inquire another something. We want it to be the next step up from the New York Times, you know? And we’ve had some nibbles.
susan
									
Right, but I’m still, like—
mark
									
It’s going to cost money.
susan
									
Like I said, it’s twelve grand, and I could fund that twelve grand if I wanted to.
ross
									
A Kickstarter, yeah.
susan
									
Well, I could do it. But I want the media to pay, because I want to make sure that they’re serious, and they're going to follow up. We had one media group—I don’t think I should mention them—that has been wanting to do something with us for a long time, but they want to release a three to four minute video. And I said, “This story is going to take a lot longer than three to four minutes to tell, so I don’t want to do it with you guys if you’re only going to release that.” And they go, “Well, we have a Youtube channel with millions of subscribers, we’ll release a five minute video on that.” And I’m like, “I’m still not comfortable with that.” And they only wanted to pay five thousand, and I said, “No, I want you to pay twelve.” I’m willing to pay part of it if I know it’s a serious outlet.
mark
									
Which I don’t agree with, but.
susan
									
I want sixty minutes. I want sixty minutes. We need like fifteen minutes to tell the whole story. But once this story is told—
ross
									
Or sixty minutes. [Susan laughs.] Ignore me.
susan
									
Once this story is told, once this is done, it can’t be redone, because it’s going to alert all mediums everywhere that they’ve just been—This avenue that they’ve found so lucrative for so long—
mark
									
The rug has been pulled out.
susan
									
—that they can’t do it again. They can’t do this. So I think it’s a great way of doing it. I have a team, I have the story, I have everything done, I even have a medium picked out, and I’m just waiting for the right outlet. I have the patience to do it, because, you know, come to me. Or, they’re gonna have to, you know. Something’s going to have to happen. We haven’t decided what we’re going to call it, we’re thinking Operation Lima Bean.
mark
									
Because we both love lima beans.
carrie
									
Getting healthier, okay!
ross
									
I would say back in the day, Harry Houdini would have been public enemy number one for psychics. And then for a long time it was James Randy, who we all know and love. I think, right now, you’re public enemy number one, Susan, when it comes to the psychics! If I’m a psychic, who do I not want at my show? Susan Gerbic and Mark Edward.
susan
									
Yeah, well, the guy we’re gonna go see tomorrow, I’ve publicly been on Facebook trying to tag him saying, “Susan Gerbic will be there, and Mark Edward will be there.” I’m waiting for him to notice and say, “Sorry, but you can’t go!”
mark
									
I’ve already picked up a couple of his—the video I saw of Matt Fraiser, I actually picked up something I’m going to start using in my act, which was very clever.
ross
									
Oh, that’s right, I read about that in the report. It was standing at the angle—
mark
									
Where you stand people in a row?
ross
									
—and then lifting your hand up to point at them.
mark
									
Well, what he does is he has a row of five or six people stand up, and then he says—it’s basically the Law of Large Numbers, only a smaller amount of people. He brings his finger up, he’s at the end of the row, so, you don’t really see who he’s pointing to yet.
susan
									
He’s perpendicular to them.
mark
									
He’s perpendicular, yeah. As he says, “I’m getting something that has to do with a chest area,” and—
carrie
									
Mark is slowly lifting his finger.
mark
									
Yeah, slowly lifting his finger, and then when he sees an expression—
ross
									
He stops.
mark
									
He points more directly at it, so it looks like he nailed it.
susan
									
It looks like he was pointing at them the whole time, whereas if he was in front of an audience and you had them stand up in front of you and they’re spread out—
ross
									
You can’t be as vague with the directionality of your point.
susan
									
Yeah, when you point your finger, you can’t—
mark
									
He does it a couple of times. It’s smart.
susan
									
It’s really clever.
mark
									
I could be totally wrong, but that’s what I see.
susan
									
So from the angle that he’s at, it looks like he could have been pointing them, or the person behind him. You know, leapfrogging, or what was the word you guys used?
carrie
									
Piggybacking.
mark
									
By the way, piggybacking, real quick, I understand that as something else in what I listen to. Piggybacking, I picked up on from Theresa Caputo, is that she will say, “I may point to you, and it might be somebody sitting next to you, or behind you.”
carrie
									
Cindy employs that rule as well, she just doesn’t call it piggybacking.
mark
									
Oh, she does?
carrie
									
You know, Ross, I’m sorry. I just have to cut in one more time, because this is so fascinating, I’m getting overload. There’s just too much good stuff, I have to switch gears.
ross
									
Yeah, it’s a terrible problem to have.
carrie
									
I want to, just for a second, think about something else that’s also entertaining, also interesting, also compelling. Do you have anything like that?
ross
									
You know, actually, I do. You might be interested in this show from Maximum Fun.
promo
									
[Music.] Travis McElroy: I'm Travis McElroy. Courtney Enlow: I'm Courtney Enlow. Brent Black: I'm Brent Black, and we're the hosts of Trends Like These. Courtney: Trends Like These is an Internet news show where we take the stories trending on social media, and go beyond the headlines! Travis: We'll give you the actual facts of the story, and not just the knee-jerk reactions. Brent: Plus we end every episode with a ray of hope that we call The Wi-Five of the Week. Travis: So join us every Friday on Maximum Fun. Courtney: Or wherever you get your podcasts! Brent: Trends Like These. Real life friends talking Internet trends. [Music ends.]
susan
									
Do you have time to tell the Theresa Caputo, really, really quick story about how you went to her show with Inside Edition?
mark
									
Yeah, I went Inside Edition, and their producer wanted conclusive evidence of a hot read. So I said, “Let’s go and we’ll see what we can do.” I went with a reporter and—
susan
									
I wasn’t involved in this.
mark
									
—went to the show, and the one thing I notice is she has a video crew for close-ups with a microphone on a boom, and she would go around the room picking up the plants that she already knows about.
susan
									
Allegedly.
mark
									
But the crew would get right to that area before her, which I thought was really odd. It’s like they’d be setting up and then she’d go right over there.
ross
									
There’s some choreography happening here.
mark
									
Then also, so she stands next to this woman and she says, “Why am I getting pictures of baby clothes?” And the woman says, “That’s amazing, I just put some pictures of baby clothes up on Facebook.”
crosstalk
									
Ross: Yeah, why am I getting something I just put on Facebook. Carrie: Wow. Mark: I looked at her like, “There it is!”
mark
									
But nobody— you could see the audience, I couldn’t see anybody react. They’re just fawning over this person.
ross
									
Because everyone’s not trained to think about that, like how much trouble did you have to go to to get to this point?
mark
									
They want to believe.
ross
									
Because people shouldn’t have to do that. If you’re honest, people shouldn’t have to be thinking, “Okay, how could you have done—”
susan
									
They’ve just paid a ton of money to go. They want to believe.
carrie
									
This is reminding me of a study that came out a couple years ago where they divided everybody into four categories, and one category was people who are honest and assume everyone else is honest. It seems like that’s who you need if you’re a medium.
ross
									
Right, and if you’re suspicious of everyone else, that says something about how your mind works.
carrie
									
Although, there’s also the people who we’d probably count ourselves among that is like, you are rigorously honest, but kind of suspicious of other people.
ross
									
Right, but that has to be a real studied approach.
mark
									
Well, that’s why a magician is important to have on board.
ross
									
A magician is doing the exact same thing, but—
mark
									
I’m looking at what the other hand is doing.
ross
									
You’re being honest about the fact that you’re lying. Like that documentary about James Randi, An Honest Liar.
mark
									
The problem was that we captured that on film—
susan
									
No, you didn’t.
mark
									
No, that’s right, it was an audio. We did an audio, and the producer of the show wouldn’t run with it, because he said it’s not conclusive.
susan
									
And they were going to get sued, because you’re not supposed to be doing any audio in there.
mark
									
They were afraid to get sued.
susan
									
Some of these people like Theresa Caputo and John Edward, they’re just too high up. You can’t really do much to them.
ross
									
And our legal system worries about the benefit of a doubt, which is good, as it should. So yeah, you really have to have a clean—
susan
									
The only way to really do it nowadays is to just shake them up, really get under their skin. Make it so that it’s uncomfortable, so that they don’t know who’s going to be—
mark
									
Laugh at them. That’s one of the things.
susan
									
Yeah, go to the show and laugh. Laugh and have people all over the audience at inopportune times, or the bingo cards.
ross
									
Yeah, that’s why I love what Carrie did with the bingo cards at the Cindy Kaza show. It made it so much more entertaining for me, it was a less boring show the second time around, because I’m busy looking for, “Oh, dead person says hi! Oh, strange brother! Yeah, I got that one.”
susan
									
Right, if you hand out bingo cards to everybody in the audience ahead of time, maybe a skeptic group would hand them out with cold reading tips on the back, with their logo of their meetup or something like that, and you pass it around and say there’s a prize, you just have to shout it out, maybe you’ll get somebody in the audience who will jump up and say, “BINGO!” Then you’ve shaken up the medium. The medium on stage is just, like a comedian or an actor—
mark
									
Or a magician.
susan
									
—you would shake them up. They would lose their audience. This is what happened with Sally Morgan.
ross
									
They lose their confidence.
susan
									
Exactly the same thing happened with Sally Morgan, when she found out the person she thought she was reading, the picture on the wall that she thought was a dead person turned out to be a live person, and the whole audience just laughed when they realized it and she couldn’t get the show back. It was a problem.
carrie
									
Lose your audience, yeah.
susan
									
You lose your audience. This is what we can do. But I don’t advocate going and causing a disruption, because I think that it’s better that—that all skeptics should go to one of these shows and learn. But, if a skeptic group wanted to go and have a good laugh, or bingo cards or something like that, I think it’s a great way of bonding with your skeptic group. It’s an avenue that I probably won’t do but—
mark
									
I think it depends on the venue.
susan
									
It depends on the psychic.
carrie
									
And what your goal is. If your goal is to reach a larger audience, you’re probably going to just be there to observe, take in the data, and then share it.
mark
									
Right, and then two years later, you know.
susan
									
And to be clear, Mark has a term that we’ve been trying to make popular, and it’s starting to get used. We call these people Grief Vampires, and that’s a difference between a person who is like, a psychic detective or a medium on stage just trying to get a hook in you, or a person who maybe does the g-psy switch or something like that on a street corner. There’s a bit of a difference between the person who goes to the haunted hay ride and does a reading for you compared to somebody who wants your name and number, who is going to pray for you, and give more readings for you.
ross
									
I was going to mention earlier, we haven’t followed up on this yet, but I know our audience has been hotly waiting for this. At the beginning of the year we were reporting on visiting a storefront psychic in Hollywood, and she told me that I was going to be accused of sexual misconduct at work within the next six months.
carrie
									
Falsely accused.
ross
									
No, she did not say falsely. I could see it in her eyes, she was allowing for the possibility that I would deserve it. But she wanted to sell me on—this was a discount—$540 worth of candles that she could—
susan
									
To keep it from happening? Oh.
ross
									
Right, to help me. She said, “Maybe I can’t stop it from happening, but I can help deal with the consequences.”
susan
									
And there are people who are paying that.
ross
									
Right, and she had already upsold me from a ten dollar—you know, what was on the sign out front, into a $50 dollar reading I ended up paying her for. Because that was just for one palm, but now we’re doing the tarot cards as well, and it adds up quickly. So she’s trying to get me on the hook for this. So, here we are, nine and a half months out, and I can say I have not been accused of sexual misconduct. At least that I know of.
carrie
									
Sometimes these investigations take time.
ross
									
New York Times is on it.
mark
									
We just went to El Indio on Manchester in L.A. It’s an entire warehouse of candles. Every single thing you could think of has a candle.
susan
									
Yeah, you light the candle or incense, and get out of jail.
carrie
									
Ross, we have to get out there.
ross
									
I hope that warehouse hasn’t burned down.
mark
									
No, they’re very careful. Fire extinguishers are everywhere. You know what one I really liked? It said—
susan
									
“Do what I can’t.” “Do what you can.” “You do what I say.”
mark
									
No, it was a “Do as I say” candle.
ross
									
I love what we’re talking about here, it’s this multi-pronged approach to educating the public, just so we’re all aware of this. So, your aunt goes in, but she has someone near her who can say, “Watch out for this, this is what psychics do.” But you’re also, at the same time, inducing a little flop sweat on the psychics themselves, making them uncomfortable. I think it’s great. That’s the best thing we can do. But at the same time, not going there and just causing a riot, making a big show.
susan
									
Well, I’m following in the footsteps of a great person we just recently lost, Robert Lancaster, who had the Stop Sylvia Brown website and Stop Kaz website. You’ll see I did an obituary of sorts for Skeptical Inquirer on him recently. He was such an inspiration to myself and to our community. He taught us to document everything and to be kind to the people that are in the audience. It’s not their fault. They’re being preyed upon, and so be kind to them. We’ve all been in situations, I know I have, where I believed in things without evidence, and I think this is something our community, the skeptic community, should be taken to task for. They can be very cruel, and they can say that believers are idiots and they’re just stupid and let’s just take advantage of them.
susan
									
Another good friend of ours is Bob Nygaard. If you can get him on your show, you really should. He’s a private eye—we wrote his Wikipedia page also—he’s a private eye in Florida and he has been investigating these scams where, mostly the g-psy switch, the Marks—that’s their last name, is Marks—it’s a family that has taken millions and millions of dollars from people. In fact, he just had a case the other day that is starting to hit Facebook, I see it on the news all over the place, where he was part of the investigation team that caught a woman who was taking millions of dollars from somebody. What he found, when he’s working with the police, when you go into the police department and say, “Look, I’ve just been defrauded by this psychic, they took all this money from me.” A lot of police will say, “Well, you should have known better.” That’s the attitude of the police department. They don’t take people seriously. “You should have known better, how dare you give them all this money, oh well, lesson learned, bye. Bye Felicia.” So he’s having to take the police departments to task, saying this is fraud, you have to investigate this.
ross
									
This is a pattern, this isn’t just one off.
susan
									
Yeah, and the other thing he’s found is, sometimes when they catch these psychics, the psychics will give their money back, and that’s wrong, because when you give the money back, they drop the case. So now the psychic is able to do this on and on and on.
ross
									
It’s like settling in court.
susan
									
Right, and keeping him out of the news. So what he says is, “Well, of course they want their money back, but we need to arrest them. We can’t just allow them to go to the next person they take advantage of.”
ross
									
Yet another prong on the multi-pronged approach, which is to incarcerate people who are doing this willfully and maliciously.
susan
									
And publicize it, because a lot of these psychics use so many names, so many different names, they do not want their name and picture on the internet.
carrie
									
Just to clarify, some of these people, some of the mediums probably believe it. Just not the ones at the top of the pyramid, right?
ross
									
Yeah, here we have our shut eye versus open eye debate.
susan
									
I think Mark would probably argue with that, because being in the business as long as he was, they were pretty much all open eyes.
carrie
									
Mark leans back in his chair and considers.
mark
									
I would say probably 95% of the people, in my experience, could be totally different for anyone else, but 95% of them were total charlatans and knew what they were doing. So what I do is I split the 5% remaining, 2.5% are deluded, you know, if you’re a schizophrenic and you’re not taking your meds, you hear voices telling you things. So people can be deluded or just—
ross
									
Well-meaning.
mark
									
Well, yeah, but it’s usually a medical or a mental situation. The other 2.5% are well-meaning, compassionate, caring, intuitive people who have had a huge life experience, and they’re actually sharing that knowledge with you.
ross
									
Intuition is a real thing.
mark
									
When you balance 2.5 against 97.5, your odds are not really that great.
carrie
									
You still got like 1 in 20, that’s relevant.
mark
									
Which could be anybody you happen to just run into in the supermarket. You don’t need to go to a storefront.
susan
									
Or go talk to your aunt, or somebody who’s just—she knows, she says, “Get out of that relationship! What’s wrong with you?”
mark
									
No, because people want a distance from family. They want a stranger.
ross
									
Someone who is intuitive but hasn’t made a racket out of it. Unless they’re like, a trained counselor.
mark
									
They’re out there, but the problem is a lot of people say, “Well, not my psychic,” and they put them in that 2.5 category, because they’ve gotten some relief. That’s why my book is called Psychic Blues. That’s the blues part. The psychic part—
susan
									
Now out on audiobook.
mark
									
Now out on audiobook, this is true. Please. And it’s expanded and it’s funny. They put sound effects in everything and it’s really cool. Anyway, no, people get what they pay for. People go to therapists and hypnotherapy and all that stuff. We won’t even go into that.
ross
									
This is tough, too. We’ve talked about this. Many people are helped, their lives are bettered because they had this interaction, and they heard what they needed to to move on or—
mark
									
Can I tell one more story?
ross
									
Sure. I was just going to say that you can always point to that part of the bell curve of people who have interacted with psychics, but the bottom, the base case here, is that truth is important.
carrie
									
Yeah, and there are people who are harmed, and is that an even trade?
mark
									
So, just one quick story. For several years I did the haunted hay ride, in fact I think you came by one time and got a reading.
ross
									
Yeah.
mark
									
It’s all in fun. It’s a pumpkin festival, you know? So here I’m in my little psychic tent, and I’d done it for a couple of years, and one of the last years a woman came up to me and sat down at the table and she was just beaming. Absolutely. I was like, what is this person on? Why is she so happy? I said, “What’s going on? I know I’m supposed to know, but what’s going on?” She said, “Everything you told me last year came true. I had to come back, because  I’m just so amazed by it.” I’m like, “Really?” and she says, “Yes.” So I said, “Well, I want to hear about that. So first let me do just a quick tarot reading to catch you up, and then I want to hear what it was that I was right about.” So I do the reading, toss it off, typical five minute reading. Then I say, “Okay, what was it I told you that came true?” She said, “You told me to be patient.”
carrie
									
Aw.
mark
									
That’s it.
ross
									
That’s good advice.
carrie
									
Well, is that instructive for you? Because that tells you that even though she was at the pumpkin festival, she thought you were real.
mark
									
Oh yeah. Well, I think, going back to percentages, probably 90% of the people who go to a pumpkin festival think the psychics are real.
carrie
									
Okay. So, does that bring up an ethical question?
mark
									
For me?
carrie
									
Yeah.
mark
									
No, because I have learned to put skepticism— build it into my readings. If I get a hit, I sometimes will even explain to the people what I just did. I will say something like, “Well, that’s pretty true for most people.” Something like that.
ross
									
Yet this woman came away with years’ worth of “the psychic changed my life.”
mark
									
Yeah, she said, “I was patient with my love life. I was patient with my job. I was patient with all the standard things.” And her life was better, so this is just going to what he was saying, about—
carrie
									
Did you disabuse her of this illusion?
mark
									
Let me think about that. [Everyone laughs.]
ross
									
That means no.
carrie
									
Well, I hope she’s listening.
mark
									
Well, what I said was, I kind of shrugged my shoulders like, “Patience? That’s not an accurate prediction of the future, that’s just standard advice.” That’s the thing, people will take it and run with it, and all sorts of places, and that’s why I’m not doing a lot of readings anymore. Because you can just say something off the top of your head and change a person’s whole life.
susan
									
You can’t give a disclaimer and people not believe it.
mark
									
So, I think it takes a good ten years or more to come to the point where, like I said, you’re trying to be that 2.5% that is compassionate and not any of that other—
ross
									
It’s tricky, because then that little victory gets put in the column of, yeah psychics, they’re helping the world.
susan
									
But there’s nothing you can do about that. People are going to believe what they’re going to believe.
mark
									
You can go to a good bartender and get the same.
ross
									
If all of us know what cold reading is and what exactly we’re dealing with, what the real phenomena are, a psychic reading is good fun. I loved getting a reading from you. I think that’s great.
mark
									
Unfortunately, the psychic blues part of it is that 90% of the people out there have no idea. They attach the supernatural to it, and that’s what I think is the problem.
susan
									
I mean, if they find a penny on the ground, they think that’s somebody talking to them.
ross
									
That’s the thing, a psychic doesn’t need to go out of business, they just need to be a little more honest about what they’re doing.
carrie
									
Label the placebo a placebo.
mark
									
My ex-mother-in-law, she once said, “Why don’t you become a marriage and family counselor and be legit?” Then one night she saw me give somebody a reading and said, “Nah, forget it. Stay with what you’re doing.” True story.
ross
									
Becoming a licensed family counselor takes patience. [Laughs.]
mark
									
Yes, and it’s book reading as opposed to—
carrie
									
Cold reading.
mark
									
Flummery. Yeah. So, I mean, it’s difficult.
ross
									
I just wanted to ask, off the top of your head, Susan, how many psychics can you think of that you’ve attended performances of?
susan
									
Not that many, I guess. I’ve watched a lot of videos on YouTube. Under a hundred. [Everyone laughs.]
carrie
									
Under a hundred! Not that many.
susan
									
I’ve been doing a lot of research for years, but after a while you see how hard it is to just listen.
mark
									
It’s really painful to watch and listen.
susan
									
It is so painful. I can’t even watch a five minute YouTube video without having to take a break. It’s so obvious. It’s like a magician, I guess, who knows the tricks and you’re watching somebody perform, and you’re going, “Ooh,” it’s just excruciating. Then if you look around the audience, they’re just hanging on it. You just want to say, “What is wrong with you? How could you not see this?”
ross
									
You could enjoy it for the art form that it is—
susan
									
If it was, but there’s so little. There’s so little art.
mark
									
That’s why I’m fascinated by it. I’m fascinated by the artifice of it, of the performance, but I can’t stand the underpinnings of it. So tomorrow when we go see this guy, I’m going to be watching for things that I can use in my act. I do, I mean, there’s little nuances that mentalists use that it takes years to be able to use how to plug that in at the right moment. So I’m not really looking forward to a lot, because this guy’s only, what, 22 years old?
susan
									
No, he’s a little older than that.
mark
									
But there’s these little things, like the one you talked about where you say, “We never met before tonight.” They’re just conversational, verbal deceptions that I just— it just makes me go, ”Ugh, where’s my pen and paper?”
carrie
									
You contain multitudes, Mark Edward. [Ross laughs.] So, okay. Real quick, before we go. I want to hear who each of you thinks is the most talented medium out there today.
mark
									
Oh, brother. Talented?
carrie
									
Yup.
ross
									
Who does this art form the best?
mark
									
I’ll always go with Uri Geller. He doesn’t talk to the dead, but he’s still my favorite performer.
carrie
									
Susan?
susan
									
I think Tyler Henry had a really great way. I think because he’s so new and so young. What he would do is, when he’s talking to somebody, he would say something like, “Your uncle George,” and there would be this long, awkward pause. I think that most psychics would fill that in. What happens is, during that long, awkward pause, you want so bad to fill it in, so the person will start giving verbal clues back, and they will nod, and they’ll try to just jump in with the Uncle Fred or whatever, some kind of information. I think that’s a technique, I think, he developed just because he’s young and new and didn’t have a lot of experience at the time. But I noticed that, and I think that’s something nobody else is doing. It’s just this long, awkward pause, after he says something, and then as soon as you say, “My uncle,” whatever, he says, “Absolutely, that’s exactly what I’m getting.” He just acknowledges it. But that would be a skill I haven’t seen other psychics do, but I wouldn’t say he’s good.
carrie
									
I was literally taught to do that, you know where? Journalism school. You ask a question, you sit there, you feel like, “Oh my God, oh my God, I gotta fill it!” but that person will eventually cave.
susan
									
Right, we’re humans, that’s how we are. We want to connect with people. Same with a magician. If a magician gets up on stage, and he does something wrong or you see how it’s done, most people won’t reveal it. They’ll just go along with it, because they don’t want to spoil the fun of everybody in the group.
mark
									
There’s a famous line that says, “What do you do? Nothing.” That’s what Tyler Henry does, basically. Don’t just do something, stand there. Because people can only take that for so long before they want to help you.
susan
									
You’re hearing that pause, and you just want to say, “Is there something wrong with my audio, what’s going on here?”
ross
									
The thing that you’re doing is constructing the situation, then letting it play it.
mark
									
Right, you’re leading and manipulating the conversation.
ross
									
Which is something that would not work well on podcasts.
mark
									
I didn’t know that was from journalism, though. That’s very interesting. So, for interviews—
susan
									
Well, if you’re interviewing for a job, same thing.
carrie
									
I’ve heard it done really well on radio and podcasts, where there will be like, 45 seconds of pause, and it makes you like, “Holy fuck, what are they going to say?”
ross
									
You feel that tension.
carrie 
									
It can be the best moment.
susan
									
Absolutely. And if Tyler Henry does it, and it does not work, they just edit it out. As Mark keeps saying, the real magicians, the real people who are doing the work, are the editors in the back room. They just cut it all out. The things you see in the show are the best of the best. So, if it fails, you wouldn’t know it. If any of the shows, any of the psychics you see out there, were not doing live TV or live show, if they fail, you’ll never know it.
mark
									
My contention is that most of these psychics that go out and do live show tours, because their handlers and their managers don’t think they’re that great yet, and they need to be able to think on their feet.
susan
									
Tyler Henry did that. They put him on the road for a while to hone his skills.
ross
									
You got to get those ten thousand hours in.
carrie
									
Alright. Uri Geller and Tyler Henry, congratulations on your new awards. Where can people find out more about you two?
susan
									
My website is called AboutTimeProject.org and from there you can learn about the GSOW Wikipedia project, you can learn about all the interviews I’ve done with people, just skeptics in our community, as well as Monterey County Skeptics, which is a group I run up in Monterey County, California.
ross
									
Yeah, near my hometown, Santa Cruz.
susan
									
Yup, near Santa Cruz. Also it has all these articles about the grief Vampires we’ve one.
mark
									
Mine is TheMarkEdward.com. Lot of good things there, but I just want to mention, if you haven’t seen the Holy Koolaid video yet—
crosstalk
									
Carrie: Oh, right. Susan: We forgot about the Holy Koolaid video. Ross: Yeah, you got me excited about that.
mark
									
Thomas John, it really—
ross
									
Tease it a little bit, what are people going to see there?
mark
									
They’re going to see a really well-made short.
susan
									
It’s Operation Pizza Roll, just told in ten minutes. It’s really well done, with audio. I mean, if you don’t want to read the articles I’ve written, or actually listen to the 15 minute audio, this will solve that for you. Just go to Holy Koolaid.
ross
									
We’ve got material for whatever your attention span is. Excellent. Well, you’ve all stuck around, but I’ve been riveted. We could talk all day.
susan
									
Absolutely.
ross
									
Thank you so much.
mark
									
Thank you.
carrie
									
Well, that’s it for our show. Our theme music is by Brian Keith Dalton.
ross
									
Our administrative manager is Ian Kramer. You can find us online at Facebook.com/onrac or Twitter—
carrie
									
@ohnopodcast.
ross
									
You can support us at MaximumFun.org/donate.
carrie
									
Or maybe shoot us a review at iTunes.
ross
									
Or tell your local psychic about us. There’s many ways to share Oh No, Ross and Carrie! with the world, so thank you for doing that.
crosstalk
									
Ross and Carrie: And remember!
mark
									
When you’re confronted with a psychic, ask yourself what is more likely: that this person is in touch with the spirit world, or they’re just a very clever manipulator?
music
									
“Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” plays for a moment, then fades out.
promo
									
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About the show

Welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal, but take part ourselves. Follow us as we join religions, undergo alternative treatments, seek out the paranormal, and always find the humor in life’s biggest mysteries. We show up – so you don’t have to. Every week we share a new investigation, interview, or update.
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