this thread: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_062.html
is a pretty good start for debunking Uri Geller.
There’s a simple question that use to challenge people who believe in this kind of stuff:
Why do these guys with “super-powers” always appear on TV only on the entertainment shows, and not on the news?
If you really had occult powers, shouldn’t you be doing something more useful with them?
Entertainment shows pay better?
More useful than making yourself an easy living?
This is a pretty common observation over at Randi.org. I’ve always been partial to the question (although I can’t recall who first posed it) “Why have we never seen the headline ‘psychic wins lottery’?”
And of course, you’re right. I’ll start giving serious thought to people claiming supernatural powers when someone goes not the Tonight Show, but to The New York Times.
But Geller at least is relatively harmless. It’s the faith healers and speakers-to-the-dead that are bilking poor, suffering people out of money that get my goat. Bastards.
thwartme
Probably because the people who produce news shows don’t want to lose all credibility. I can imagine some recently-fired producer doing 12 minutes on Geller as a “fuck you” gesture to his network on his last day, though.
but not if he plans to seek a similar job at another network.
Your premise in incorrect. Uri Geller has been featured in just about every major news-based paper, magazine and periodical in the world, from Time magazine to the London Times and similar publications all over the world. He has also been featured on countless news and currrent-affairs TV show, been interviewed by interviewers and presenters who specialise in hard news and factual stories, and done many, many TV appearances on shows that are ostensibly more than just ‘light entertainment’. If you are unaware of this, then you are unaware of what a massive news story Geller was in the 1970s. In fact the TV appearance that made him an overnight sensation here in the UK was an ostensibly fact-based show hosted by Richard Dimbleby, one of the UK’s top TV presenters specialising in news and current affairs.
Also, Cecil’s ‘explanation’ of the spoon-bending feat was superficial to the point of being misleading, and was far from an adequate explanation of how the various spoon-bending and spoon-breaking effects are achieved when they are achieved by trickery. I’m not going to give details, because I’m a magician and I don’t think it achieves anything to explain these methods on a public forum like this. But I myself am aware of something like 40 different methods that might be used in different circumstances, and to achieve slightly different results and effects.
Cecil also provided some references that won’t help much. For example, he recommends James Randi’s book, ‘The Magic of Uri Geller’ (republished as ‘The Truth About Uri Geller’). I know Randi, and I know this book very well. It does not explain, anywhere, how any spoon-bending trick is or might be done – save for a single rather unimportant example of one spoon being switched for another using the cover of a table napkin. In fact the book scarcely reveals how any tricks are done. I still think it’s a fine, fine book and well worth reading. But it has very little to do with answering the question that Cecil was trying to answer.
If Dopers want to learn how it’s done, go to a magic store (in real life or online) and try to order ‘Psychokinetic Silverware’ by a performer called Banachek. This video or DVD is the best available source for information on trick methods of seeming to cause metal to bend via psychic energy.
[minor nitpick]
The member of the Dimblebys responsible for promoting Geller to national fame in 1973 was actually David. Richard - for those not familiar with British TV dynasties, David’s father - had died in 1965.
[/minor nitpick]
**
Bonzer** is correct. My mistake. The show was The Dimbleby Talk-In, broadcast on Nov 22nd 1973.
Another observation from this column. He did fool people at the Stanford Research Institute, but that Institute is not affiliated with the university, as the name would suggest. It’s just merely located in Stanford.
I seem to remember there’s a pretty good photoessay analysis of “spoon-bending” in Penn and Teller’s How To Play With Your Food. P&T show you how to play the misdirection angle, if you’re interested in pretending to Geller your friends. The photoessay is one of their more memorable ones, if only for Teller’s ridiculous glasses and James Randi’s cameo at the end.
James Randi does know the technical details of how to bend spoons, it’s not hard to find videos of him performing the trick himself.
Here’s a video of him exposing Uri Geller and another of him bending a spoon. I’m not sure if its the same technique featured in the other video.
It seems to me that if I had a real supernatural ability to move small objects, I’d keep it a secret and pretend I was performing illusions. Let people be wowed by my mad presudeg–pastadog–uh, trickery skills.
The smart thing to do would indeed be to keep it a secret, and use it rarely to move small objects – like dice or a rolling roulette ball at a casino!
LOL, I swear, if I ever win a decent sized lottery I will say that I psychically determined the number in a dream, or something =)
He lives a village a couple of miles from me, I’ve seen him do a few demonstrations of his psychic powers, mainly at football matches (he’s good friends with the chairman of my local football team).
He’s a total fraud and not even a good one at that.
I’m actually very well acquainted with someone who worked there at the time and he wasn’t fooling anyone. SRI never actually believed for a minute that he was bending spoons with his mind.
I remember my friend saying the worst thing was figuring out how to admit that you’d spent all that money studying such an obvious fraud.
While you can’t bend spoons with your mind, my friend regularly does the spoon-bending trick (and you hold it, its bent, and then he does something poofy magic like and POP! it breaks) at restaurants. All you need is lots of practice and a cheap spoon and some heat.
Actually, that’s how he first got my number…he did the trick and I was so startled I had to finally give him credit. He’d been working on me for a couple of hours. 
So, the spoon wasn’t the only thing that was cheap, right? 
Are you trying to insinuate that I’m a slut?
I don’t know if they believed Geller, but some people at SRI certainly seem to have believed in Inigo Swann and other “remote viewers.” They studied them for years. This was psychic claptrap quite on a par with Geller’s claims.