I remember a show on tv about how psychics trick people and they showed eveything from how they do seances to telling a member in the audience (whom they’ve never met) everything about themselves. I was wondering what show this was and if it is on dvd? I’m guessing it was on about 2001 or earlier, it may have starred Judd Nelson but I’m not sure.
If anyone can name it or knows if it will be on dvd please let me know
thanks
Jason
I don’t know the show you mean, but you might check out James Randi’s website. Randi wrote a couple of books about the topic, I think. All psychics seem hate him with a purple passion.
If you’re just interested in the subject matter, this would be a good start:
The show was Unmasked: Exposing the Secrets of Deception. Good little show, as I recall, but I think most of the show was about exposing casino cheats. I think you can see it come up occasionally on Discovery or TLC.
Hi jhsif. I was in the show, demonstrating some simplified and just-for-TV ruses similar to the ones that might be used in real life by fake psychics. If I can help you with any questions, please fire away.
I don’t believe the show was ever released on DVD.
As a matter of interest, they shot twice as much footage as they needed, hoping eventually to produce a ‘Part 2’ follow-up show. However, the first one didn’t perform sufficiently well for the NBC executives to feel it was worth completing ‘Part 2’.
See, if you’d just done the same show and the same tricks and told everyone with a straight face that it was all real, mentioned God a lot, and told everyone that their dead relative whose name starts with J said to say “Hi, I love you”, it would have rated through the roof.
Come to the dark side, Ianzin!
It’s also worth a reminder that there is a Staff Report on this question: Straight Dope Staff Report: How come TV psychics seem so convincing
ianzin’s wonderful book on cold readings was the inspiration and main source of that Staff Report, and he gave invaluable assistance in the writing.
I’ve done that as well. Almost. In 2002 I taped a special segment for Halloween for ABC ‘Primetime’. Cutting a long story short, they set up an exact duplication of a TV psychic medium show in the style and manner of John Edwards, and I played the part of the psychic medium for half an hour. This was done under test conditions - the small bunch of about 20 people in the audience were selected at random by the production team researchers and I didn’t know anything about them until the cameras rolled. There was no hot reading, and I was not given any information in advance about these people, overtly or covertly.
I think it’s fair to say the demonstration was at least a modest success. I started about half a dozen ‘messages’. One was a complete dud, most got somewhere, a couple came across as impressively accurate and got an emotional reaction from people in the audience.
We then took a break, and a TV presenter Chris Cuomo took over. He conducted a general discussion with myself and all participants, in which we made it clear that it was essentially an exercise in cold reading, and an experiment into the difficulty of sorting fact from fiction. We conducted this as sensitively as possible, not wishing to upset or offend any of those who had taken part. We certainly didn’t adopt a ‘Hey, we fooled you!’ line. It was more a case of, ‘You’re entitled to believe whatever you want about your experience here today, but for sure the ‘Ian must be psychic’ line is not the only available explanation. We’ve shown that whether someone is psychic or not is a very tough call to make, and that TV shows like this are certainly no kind of proof’.
Finally, after everyone else had left, Chris did an interview segment with me where we looked back over some of the footage.
That particular TV demonstration is one I’m very proud of, if I may say so. It was unique in broadcasting history, and remains so to this day.
I realise you were joking, but let me add I’m not remotely interested in going over to ‘the dark side’. I live a nice life and, like most people, I try in my own stumbling way to be a good person. I don’t want to start lying to people for a living outside the context of a show where everyone understands it’s just deception for the purpose of intriguing and enjoyable entertainment.
ianzin, I absolutely LOVED that show. I still have it on cassette tape somewhere and pull it out once in awhile. I had heard of psychic surgery before, but your demonstration of it in that show was really well done IMHO. I remember that show also had the video and audio footage that James Randi used on the Tonight Show to expose that fraud, Peter Popoff as well as Darwin Ortiz, who also did some exposure of some gambling scams.
What made that show interesting was that it came out during the whole “Masked Magician” hullabaloo and I remember thinking that it was a good way to get in on the whole “Exposure of tricks” ticket while at the same time making it a point to expose real frauds instead of all of the stage magicians’ secrets.
I would buy a DVD or transcript of this show if it were available. I searched ABC with no luck (my search skills are admittedly weak). Anyone able to point me to where I might be able to get a copy/transcript?
Ianzin is the man for this stuff, but you will be shocked by this story, from [url=]here:
'Professional skeptic and debunker of faith healers James Randi didn’t believe Popoff’s miraculous stage abilities, where Popoff appears to know the names, addresses, and ailments of people in the audience without them apparently ever saying a word. But Randi proved they were fake when he used a radio scanner at one of Popoff’s religious crusades. In Randi’s video, you hear a woman’s voice say, “Hello Petey, can you hear me? If you can’t you’re in trouble.”
Randi says it was the voice of Popoff’s wife, Elizabeth, and that she was secretly talking to him through an earpiece, feeding him information taken from prayer cards the audience filled out in advance. After Randi went public with the fraud, Popoff declared bankruptcy.’
I do not think this link links to what you think it links to.
Yes, but Popoff is now back up and running and scamming people again. You can’t save the gullible from being gullible: they work too hard at it.