 Welcome back everybody. Moving right along, as they say. Get your seats, get your seats. This is going to be a killer panel. I'm so excited to listen to this. Coming up now we got Magicians vs. Psychics. Oh, I want to see that video game. Okay, it's funny. I have DJ Growthy's The Moo. But I think it's supposed to be Mod, which is like Moderator. So yeah, I don't think it's The Moo. Anyway, the people that are coming out on stage now, the, oh boy, you're going to love it. It's going to be like a thing. It's going to be fantastic. Okay, here is the haiku for Magicians vs. Psychics. Both groups flat out lie. You know, Magicians, Psychics, only ones honest. Here's your moderator, DJ Growthy. One quick thing, Randy will be joining us and we just got a text that he is on his way. So at skeptics events, we're always lucky to have a few Magicians for color. I guess is Jamie's line. You know, Magicians are around to inform the discussion. In the history of the organized skeptics movement, you'll find a number of the leading skeptics are also Magicians or at least folks with backgrounds in magic. I'm thinking of people like Martin Gardner, Penn and Teller, of course. Massimo Paladoro, out there. Joan Nickel, leading figure in skepticism, also a background in magic. Jerry Andrus, Bob Steiner, so many. So why are these Magicians important to have around? Magicians, maybe more than scientists or philosophers, actually can inform this inquiry into claims, especially paranormal claimants who might be beguiling their audiences. We're very lucky to have joining us for this discussion today. Some of the leading Magicians slash skeptics, and he saunters in, including James Randi. Always knows how to time the entrance. And so a quick introduction. Max Maven is one of the world's leading mentalists. He's one of the most prolific creators in magic. He's appeared on hundreds of TV and radio programs. And the things we'll be talking about on the panel today are things he and I have yammered about quite a bit, because it's my pleasure to have lunch with him almost every week in LA, and we have good back and forth. Jamie Ian-Swiss is senior fellow for the James Randi Educational Foundation, a longtime advisor to the organization. He's performed magic and lectures around the world for companies' outfits, as diverse as Fortune 500 companies or the Smithsonian Institution. He's the author of The Art of Magic and two collections of essays, the most recent of which is Devious Standards. He's appeared widely in the media, including the recent appearances on the late, late show with Craig Ferguson, multiple appearances there, 48 Hours PBS Nova, The Today Show, really advancing both appreciation of The Art of Magic, but also leading the charge of skepticism and the application of magic to this dialogue. Banna check right here is also one of the world's leading mentalists. Now how lucky are we that on this panel we have such talent? In addition to performing hundreds of shows each year, he's also a producer and an on-camera personality with Chris Angel's Mind Freak and now a new show's production. He's been incredibly busy with that, but he's still able to advise and support the James Randi Educational Foundation through his administration and leadership regarding the Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge. You'll learn more about that tonight. What's exciting about Banna Check to me is that he's played an integral role in some of the greatest hits of contemporary skepticism. He was involved in the expose of Peter Popoff, the faith healer. He was involved in Project Alpha, the host of parapsychology researchers at Washington University and in coordination with Randi and Mike Edwards really emphasize the point that you need a magician in the laboratory if you're going to be looking at these sorts of claims. Randi is the icon of the magician's skeptic. Everyone here knows Randi, but what is relevant perhaps to this discussion later on is that in addition to being awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award last year from the Australian Skeptics and also the American Humanist Association he was also given the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Magical Arts and he had some fiery things to say in his acceptance speech. Maybe we'll get into that. Ray Hyman is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon and a founding member of PsyCOP serving on its Executive Council. His research focuses on pattern recognition, perception, problem solving and other areas of cognition. He's written extensively on deception, the psychology of deception, parapsychology, the paranormal, pseudoscience and skepticism. He also has a long background in magic and mentalism and teaches about psychics and cold reading. Some of you may remember his really popular workshop last year on cold reading which is now available online for free on JREF's video channel. I'm really excited that he just completed a 10 lecture video series for the James Randi Foundation entitled How to Think About Not Weird Things, but there were a lot of dubious claims. How to Think About Dubious Claims and all of that will also be available online. Last on the panel is Mark Edward, a professional mentalist. He's spent over 25 years in some of the best venues around the world. He's also an active skeptic with the Independent Investigations Group at the Center for Inquiry in Los Angeles and very involved in the local skeptics organizations in LA. He's the author of Psychic Blues where he recounts his experiences as a psychic and its introduction was written by James Randi. So to begin the discussion after those introductions, do we buy this notion that magicians have a unique expertise that really magic and magicians need to inform the project of skepticism? Ray, let's start with you on that. No. Now you know why I started with Ray on that, the contrary, and we've had this discussion, why not Ray? Well, Randi, I was on a podcast this morning with Randi and he took the opposite position, but I didn't have a chance to rebut it. I think that Randi's been a very good, excellent debunker and the best man to have around, not because he's a magician, he's a poly man, he's a Renaissance man. He knows a lot of different stuff. Many magicians were taken in by Erie Gallo. We have a history of magicians, Robert Houdin, several great magicians who tested psychics and endorsed them, Harry Keller, on and on the coast. Now these are anecdotes and that's all we have here by the way. Remember, we're talking about anecdotes. There's no scientific evidence one way or the other and we're supposed to be people who like scientific evidence. At the moment, I know no scientific evidence that's going to enable us to settle this question. You mean there's no scientific evidence that magicians help the project in a skepticism? Exactly. But we have our experience. Randi, what's your... We have anecdotes. Yeah, right. First of all, I have to correct Ray. Very polite to you, of course. You know that I respect you highly but I don't accept the term of debunker. I think we've been through this once many years ago perhaps. No, I believe that the JRAP and I personally, we are not debunkers. We are investigators because if you go into an investigation, frankly, with the idea, this is not so and I'm going to show that it's not so, you've already made up your mind. Now, I don't investigate something that Sylvia Brown has done, for example, and say, I wonder if it's true. Really, I have enough experience not to have to do that but I want to say always, I don't know, let's find out. That's an investigator. If it turns into debunking, which it usually does, that's a different matter. But I don't want to be known or I don't want the JRAP to be known as an organization that debunks. So Randy, on that point of magicians informing skepticism, the unique expertise, Ray said he disagrees with you on that point. So does that mean you also disagree with Ray? Yes, I do with great respect, Ray, as you know. But I think we are uniquely suited because of our experience of how deception is carried out and in many cases, technical deception as well rather than just psychological deception. I think that we are experts in that field and that consulting with us can help scientists and people like parapsychologists who are almost scientists. I think it can help them if they would listen and if they would come to us. I found that in my experience, they make great noises about doing that and then they fail at the last minute to come to us. Although I've had exceptions to that as well. Jamie? Well, I would say I actually agree with both of them, although I'd really like to see the steel cage match. Maybe we'll substitute that for the MDC tonight. But I would say in a way I agree with both because even Randy, you would agree with Ray's point that certainly just the simple fact you are a magician does not qualify you as a psychic investigator. And the proof of that being, I mean even Milburn Christopher was fooled by Kelly. And it's dangerous, we know that it's really hazardous when a magician who doesn't have the particular expertise walks in and actually makes matters worse. Yes, I agree with that point. I say an experienced magician, of course, and not some amateur who does children's parties or something like that. I'm not decrying the... Some of my best friends make balloon animals. No, a lot of folks make a very good living doing exactly like being a children's entertainer. But that doesn't necessarily give that magician the expertise and the strength to be able to know what's going on in the so-called psychic field. I think it really depends on what you're investigating. There are certain areas where we are experts and there are areas where it's totally out of our area of expertise. Well, we're particularly talking about psychics and psychic claimants. We are, but there's many different psychic type claims and it depends what claim they're making as to whether we're uniquely qualified and what we are uniquely qualified at detecting if somebody is using a major deception, you know, regular trickery or something that looks like it, not always necessarily able to detect that trickery, but when you do have this sort of radar where you can look at things like a silver and brown and immediately you say, you know, it kind of looks fishy. You know, let's get the right experts as good as people. What we are qualified as well to do is to bring attention to when there is deception, much more so than say a scientist who's investigating it so we can truly get the word out there being shown as well. So before we further the discussion in zero on psychics and maybe magicians versus psychics, Max, you have a thought? Well, I think it's a two-sided coin. Totally aside from very specific cases where a magician is brought in and is a reason to be able to help, the general concept of including magicians in the exploration of these things has value in and of itself because it serves to remind the non-magicians that things are not always as simple as they appear to be, that there are different ways of thinking about things than normal people do. Magicians think in different ways in terms of how they approach this type of problem solving. So that is great value, I think, just the fact of remembering to include magicians in the discussion. The opposite side of that coin, the bad side, is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and just because a magician sees something, analyzes it to the best of his or her abilities, and then says, I don't find any deception here, that's not the final word. And so assuming that just because you've brought a magician into the investigation that you've then done due diligence is not enough. So I think it has to be kind of taken in context. The addition of magicians in these types of investigations is often extremely valuable and very often provides the breakthrough moment when it comes to discovering deception. So assuming that that's the cure-all, I can say too, I must say, that we magicians, we know very well of other magicians who have the expertise, if they just want to summon it up, or they want to be honest with themselves, who fail. They absolutely, oh, they're all faking sex, this fella in Peoria or whatever, and there's always, not always, but there is so frequently is some place that they have a very big blind spot in their heads and they don't see through it at all. So to drill down on this a bit, if we're talking magicians versus psychics, it seems to me the skeptical magicians who have a beef with psychics who may be using tricks, the beef isn't that they're using tricks, it's the nature of the claim surrounding the tricks or the deceptions. So if you look at the history of magicians versus psychics, even your history, Randy, we've talked about this at length, there are, let's use the category psychic entertainers, people who seem to do magic tricks with information seem to read minds. There are people in the history of magic who did that every bit as strongly, say, as Uri Geller in their claims that at the time, you didn't seem to have a beef with. I'm thinking right now of Dunninger, who for the general public would make strong claims about powers, although there were some differences because he would perform sort of as an entertainer and be a guest on talk shows doing things that look like tricks. So I'd ask the panel, and let's start with Mark, is the issue that the psychics are not disclaiming that what they're doing is fake when they're doing it? I don't even think that enters into their mind to do those things. No, I mean, is the issue for the magicians that the psychics that they're versus not disclaiming that what they're doing is fake? Yeah, that's pretty much the bottom line. That's what we would like to see. But I think it's, like you said, Dunninger, he started a lot of his mental acts by doing the Chinese linking rings. That was sort of a disclaimer. Yeah, even if not verbally. Yeah, so sometimes some of the people who I'm aware of in the past in psychic entertainment had ways to suggest that they were just like every other concher. Can I jump in at this point? I always thought that Dunninger and Kreskin were very clever at opening with magic tricks. Both mouths would use the Himba rings, linking rings. Not the Chinese. The finger rings. And they would begin by saying, look, this is a trick. I'm showing you now. What they're doing is saying by inference, using what we call the invited inference, they're suddenly claiming that everything else they're doing is a trick. And it isn't a trick, right? Psychologically, even they're using tricks. By calling them tricks, they use it in some context. Such a way is to get the audience to believe that the rest of they're doing must be the real thing. So if Geller, back in the day, started with a magic trick and then did his quasi-spiritual demonstrations, would magicians have had less of a beef with him? Randy? Oh, yes. I made an offer to Geller, as you well know, I think I made him a very generous offer when he first came upon the scene in America. I wrote him a lengthy letter. It was quite sincere. I made sure that he got it by certified mail and he signed for it, so I know that he read it. And I made him an offer. I said, I can put you in touch with my agency in New York City, a very powerful agency. They can put you on the road as a magician, but not if you're claiming to have these genuine psychic powers. Well, I'll offer you this service for free and I'll even, if you want, I will take it in New York and I'll introduce you personally. I made him a very generous offer. He never responded to that because he knew very well, oh, he suspected strongly, and he was right, that people would accept this kind of thing, especially since he had the name of Stanford Research Institute behind him. So speaking of Geller, he's in a sense maybe the Madonna of psychics or something in that he's reinvented himself in his career and as many of the panelists know, he's now appearing at Magic Conventions. And we saw him, I don't want to say perform at a Magic Convention last year, but present, you know, he's sort of presented and got standing ovations and it was very moving for folks. In many ways, some people got up and walked out, some people were very upset and some people were very inspired. Is the fact that a standing ovation from those left in the room? Yeah, it's jaw-dropping from my vantage. So Jamie, you have to report this apparently, because by saying those left in the room, it makes it sound like a large percentage is left. He mentioned that a few people left, very few people left. I was trying to make a point, but he mentioned from a very large audience. So Jamie, that Geller, that Geller is now at Magic Conventions, is that sort of disclaimer enough and now he's one of you? Oh, no, no, no, no. This was a very artful performance. Afterwards, after he did his show, he came up to me and said, Ray, what did you think? But anyway, and you said, Ray. I said, well, you did what you wanted to accomplish, you know, but you achieved your goals, but those goals are not the ones that civilized society. Oh! Ray Hyman, ladies and gentlemen. I must tell this giddy audience here an episode that happened to me not too long ago. DJ, you mentioned that I received this lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Magical Arts at the Magic Castle and such. And I had the chance to address them briefly. I addressed them more than briefly. I took advantage of the fact that I was on the stage and I had the microphones, so there. Right, right. And I appealed to that audience. Now this was magicians and families of magicians. It was a huge audience. This is like Oscars for magicians. So I had their attention and I said I'm very honored to receive this at Sector Center, the usual thing. And then I said, I must ask this audience in which I see a great number of very influential and skilled magicians why they are not of the opinion that people like Uri Gullard should be put out of business because they bring disgrace to this honorable profession. And I said more than that, I developed it quite fiercely. I almost had a soapbox that I brought on just so I could see over the podium. Neil Patrick Harris who introduced Randy and conferred the award on him as Randy was getting ever more fiery in his acceptance. Neil continuing to smile was ever so slightly hedging back and wondering if someone would lob something because in the audience Randy you'll remember that half of the audience roughly half of the audience were over the top enthusiastic that you spoke that at that venue. And the other half of the audience The other half of the audience sat right there looking at me like this and I knew that they were not on my side. Why they don't have some sort of sense of honor defend the profession the honest profession of the Prestidigitator and they don't want to do it they seem to think oh Guller is one of us I don't want to belong to an organization which Guller is considered to be one of us, frankly. So, Max Max Maven, you're having a panel discussion of two please share your thoughts, you're at the self-same event. I produced that event I'm going to arrange for Neil Patrick Harris to give the award to Randy so I think I know a little about what was going on I don't think it's fair to represent that half the audience there was opposed to the message Randy was giving because I don't think that was the case I do think that there were some people who felt that he was going long because this has one of the most important awards of the evening he was on late in the show and it was two hours into the night and so I think the negatives were simply some people going okay, I can hold the rest of this later I really don't think half the audience there I really don't think half the audience there was opposed to your message I think the majority of the audience there was absolutely with you in terms of the message Well I got a lot of silent stares from people mixing with the crowd after me some people just literally turned away from me as soon as I approached oh that has happened Well it's been documented on the guys who are doing the documentary about you the other day they recorded the whole thing so we actually have tapes we can check So leave it to Max Maven to tell us skeptics look at the evidence okay so let's switch gears just a tad and we talked about disclaimers but seems to me when we really get riled up it's not just about magicians pretending to be supernatural and not claiming that their abilities are fake that's not the only thing that upsets us it's people who aren't doing magic tricks but are a different kind of fake and I mean like fake therapist or fake counselor the real problem is feigned expertise in a sense so you go to a psychic a storefront psychic or a woman at a new age fair or something she's not going to do magic tricks but she will maybe give you advice on whether or not to sell your house yet she's not a financial planner she may talk to you about problems with your family but she's not a family therapist she may guide you in your career but she's not a vocational counselor so is the push for magicians when engaging them just about the truth hey you guys aren't actually talking to dead people tarot cards don't actually work or is it about you're not in fact helping people because there's no such thing as the poor man's psychiatrist I think the truth is a good motive that's it no I really think that being honest with your audience is very important for all performers we are actors we magicians are not some special category of performer no we're actors we play the part of people who can actually do magic and we do it I hope with a wink and a shoulder whatever to make sure that that audience isn't going to take us seriously I have had people when I've done some of my regular tricks traveling around the world I've actually had some people approach me and say oh that was wonderful what you did that I enjoyed the show but when you told the lady the phone number that wasn't a trick right and I say oh you said I know the difference between a trick and a miracle Mr. Annie that was not a trick so I rather than talking about the performer I was just I was talking about the sort of faux counselor you know when a lot of people go to psychics to get help Mark you were formally a psychic well I would like to clear that up just a little bit finally okay but since I have a group of people here exactly but the point is you did offer advice and helped people or I don't know I won't say that either again I wasn't my intention to try and help them my intention was to try and find out how this billion dollar industry works from the inside out so I you know Randy everybody who here know who knows me from my past skepticism I started in skepticism in the 70s I was a skeptic the whole time so my plan was to get in there you can't go to a psychic fair and say hey show me how you did that chakra reading they'll just go what are you talking about but if you get on their good side the wink wink nod like you know here's the young guy coming along wants to learn the roots of what we're doing that's what I did so so in a sense it's like investigative journalism we're getting the inside scoop because you're accepted as one of them yeah and I wanted to be accepted as one of them that was the plan okay so it became extremely unpopular with magicians for me to do that I walked the tightrope the magicians hated me because I was doing psychic work the psychics hated me because I was seen as a magician but fortunately most psychics they don't read skeptic magazine so they didn't see that I was the editorial board of skeptic magazine the whole time so that's that's what it was about so to go back to your original question I think what was the original question now I've got that out of the way yeah the original question is about you know the just story scheme we hear some psychics give even knowing fakes yeah that they're sort of a poor man psychiatrist they're helping people even if they're not really sure it's a very crude rationalization is all it is you know that's a rationalization for somebody who deals with people who can afford it you know a two dollar reading you know yeah four man's therapy but they don't have any degrees they don't have any background most of the time some of them might in this economy but most of the time they're people who have just learned the gift of gab next about it I know that you know there are some characters in mentalism as a sub field of magic who have used that same justification they might do a magic show but then also teach or conduct cold readings or psychic advising after a show to make an extra buck there is a there's been a swing of interest in mentalism in the past decade particularly it suddenly has become much more popular among dabblers if you will than it had been and one of the things that's come along with this is a very shallow grasp of the term cold reading now the guy who understands a very deep grasp of that is Ray Hyman who is one of the first to write serious non non magic books and essays regarding cold reading and I think Ray will agree at least with my general point here that cold reading is actually a very complex set of techniques I estimate there are approximately 75 different techniques that go under the umbrella of cold reading that said most of what is being passed off is cold reading in the literature both of magic and skepticism is essentially one of those 75 techniques specifically the four the four paragraph which just keeps getting recycled as if that is cold reading so Max for our audience just elaborate on the four the four paragraph is literally that it's a paragraph of statements about you that most people will read and say yes that is me that is a description of me and if it's framed properly and Randy has done this in performance where he's given groups of college students or whatever readings that are ostensibly generated by their birthdays or other information so these are specific readings about you please rate them and then they read them and say wow this is very accurate I would say this is 90% correct and then it's revealed that everybody received exactly the same paragraph and that's a four reading but named after the fellow who's a psychologist who developed these statements the better part of that a century ago but most of what's being passed off is cold reading under that title is actually this very limited portion of cold reading there are many many other techniques involved and it's become a catch-all among those who haven't really studied it which includes skeptics but also includes most would be mentalists to just sort of in the same way that many non-magicians in watching Magic Trick will say well it's all their sleeves or it's all threads or mirrors or whatever cold reading is now the catch-all for any time reads another person oh it's just cold reading and most psychic advisors most people making a buck counseling people spiritual advisors maybe they're sometimes called aren't learning what they do from the magic community they're learning what they do maybe from their own communities if it's from my culture I think in fact many of them are learning it from their own they're not consciously using cold reading techniques they're using reading techniques that turn out upon analysis to be cold reading techniques that was my experience is that I found that a lot of psychics are not even aware that they're doing it and I think Maria and Irbank is somewhere in the audience that was her experience she did some psychic things and then she saw my Penn and Teller episode and I was just doing what he was doing so it has to do with the culture some people are from a specific culture where their mother did it their grandmother did it it's just the job they do so they don't look at it number one as a con it's a way of life and number two it's part of their lifestyle let me give you the psychological background there is good psychological evidence there is a during the heyday of Scenarian psychology the students at Harvard got this idea because of his preaching and so on that if you can use positive reinforcement without people knowing it you can control things and so one of the lecturers for Bill Vermebrank who was pushing this when he was lecturing he was on a little platform and the students among themselves they decided every time he came towards the left edge of the platform they would all sit up and pay attention when he wanted for math they would sit back very soon he got right to the end and he actually fell off well this is what's going on I'm pretty sure it's going on with people who naively try to do readings and then get better and better at it they were getting subtle feet when you're doing a reading you're getting a lot of feedback and you know when you're getting positive feedback for example when I did pond readings many years I finally figured it out consciously but people when I'm giving them a meeting telling them what they want to hear they're pushing their hands very subtly towards me when I'm telling them things they don't want to hear they're pulling their hands away from me and almost as if they are forming a reading with their hands and you could be picking up these input and that changes your behavior you get better and better so some of the readers giving psychic advice are training themselves to be doing self-training without knowing it you learn what it works real fast but it's automatic and it's what we call you know reinforcement basically the sorts of techniques that magicians are aware of they're codified there's a sort of scholarship at least ideally you know people teach these methods and they're criticized or in the magic journals they're published and magicians get to use them among themselves they're psychic entertainer associations where this know-how is shared back and forth but those are deceptive methods that the sort of cold reading Ray Hyman just mentioned there's not that communication system for those secrets to be shared around necessarily that's said it well not on microphone on microphone the majority of mentalists and magicians think they know cold reading they just know one small area and they don't even know that very well but because they're magicians other people go oh they must be expert at that oh because I can tell you you're so security number oh you must be really good at cold reading and it's accepted as a fact that they're good at cold reading where most of them really suck at cold reading they're doing it every day I don't think that's the question I think what the question is is it ethical for those people to do that and what I mean by that and I'd be interested to find the answer from everybody else here because you have a psychologist who goes through well he's not a psychologist he goes to college, he goes to school he wants to be a psychologist or a therapist so he's learned these techniques it's training and then you have somebody who's out there with the real public they're not necessarily trying to deceive as you said they learn as they go along they think that they're absolutely genuine and they get very very good at it and they get good at giving fairly good advice is it ethical for them to do that well that's the justification where's that line the psychic says you go to a psychiatrist or a psychoanalyst you go five times a week for 15 years spend a fortune you go to a Rogerian council or maybe just a well meaning psychic who believes she's real you get some unconditional positive regard you get some fellow feeling you get some pablum advice maybe not good advice but not bad advice either and you walk away at least the justification is feeling better I think that's the question is it ethical for them to do that as opposed to I can't remember exactly what the question was in the beginning around the actual question itself so can I jump in with one little thing that's a later Max Maven and I were engaged along with some people from the psychic association by Gary Schwartz Gary Schwartz is the guy who's bringing you who tried to validate and did validate John Edward and other psych people talk to the dead people doing those experiments and people were accusing him of his psychics that he's justifying his so called scientific articles as his spiritual meetings like John Edward and so on are simply using cold reading techniques so he wanted to eliminate that possibility and the way he was going to eliminate he was going to get experts in cold reading and he had Max myself and some people from the psychic association he gathered us he paid our way to go to the meeting hotel somewhere Berkeley or Burbank and we spent the whole day one whole day watching some films that he had made of John Edward doing stuff in his laboratory and next day he met with us and wanted to discuss the cold reading his purpose was to show that his people are doing cold reading he had a very limited notion of cold reading so the very fact that people don't have a good, don't know all the techniques that Max was talking about has negative consequences this guy thinks even to this day that he eliminated cold reading as a possibility when he did come in when you're close to doing that I must say I came to visit me at the James Randi educational foundation in Fort Lauderdale I came there with some lady friend of his who hated me I could tell from the stairs she was giving me the hair at the back of my head there is some there actually rose when she stared at the back of my head but he promised he listened carefully to what I had to say I had written quite a presentation for him for 45 minutes I lectured him on the fact that he needed expert advice in evaluating these things he made notes and such at the end of that he said well this has been quite a revelation to me I had no idea these elements that are at work in this process Mr. Randy we're going to work together on this never heard from him again not a whisper except to denunciate everything that I had ever said but that kind of a promise that kind of agreement and such and I thought to myself now I can be some direct use in a specific case because he was hugely funded he had all the money to work with it that he could ever have wanted from the University of Arizona Arizona University just to be defending University of Arizona the funds he got was from private sources oh it was well he got it what they should be ashamed of is that they still keep them on the staff yes I agree so distinguished panelists to finish up the discussion on this notion of magicians versus psychics Mark wrote a book as a longtime magician and a skeptic and as I read the book a psychic or a former psychic you talked about how you got involved in that and your motivations you mentioned now and Randy wrote the forwarder the introduction I don't have the book in front of me and you make claims in the book or you can sort of share anecdotes about your experiences as a psychic and what we can learn from it and as I understand from Randy we've had conversations the reason he wrote that intro is because of what people can learn from that account still as we've had this discussion it seems there's consensus there's agreement that anytime there's sort of psychic advice or dealing with these central beliefs people have helping them with their problems that you need to tread lightly and use disclaimers and not sort of be a counselor I speak for everyone except for Max as his bristling well I'm just not sure where you got the word consensus out of this panel consensus minus one and even I don't think it's that lopsided even Max or Banecek when we're talking about disclaimer we understand as Mark mentioned when we're talking about Dunninger opening with the linking rings that's a way to frame things in ways that may let folks know I'm not real it's also a way I'm missing the point I mean that was a way of digging it in driving home what they're doing is the real thing he was an example of something that's not real this is a magic trick and my inference everything else I'm doing is real that was not a disclaimer that was him building up what he's already doing is real it's kind of like me doing a small trick so this is fake and what I'm about to show you is real let me make a very simple statement here the issue of disclaimers is one that has been discussed many times over the years both within magic and mentalism circles but also in skeptical circles so let me make the following simple statement of fact disclaimers don't do anything other than perhaps make certain skeptics feel better but the proof on that the proof on that is a fellow named David Hoy David Hoy began as a Baptist minister and then became a mentalist and later became a real psychic whatever the hell that means but during the middle phase Dave was working playboy clubs in the 1960s under the name Dr. Faust and his opening line he would come out on stage and he would say good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is Dr. Faust and I am a fake I don't know how much of a more clear disclaimer you could give and after virtually every show someone would come up to him and say I know you made the disclaimer for legal reasons but when do you get these powers someone I think on that that was just something he said at the very beginning and then he goes out and blows them away and they have no knowledge at that point the majority of the audience forgot by the way he ran the fundamental fundamental universal church of knowledge take the acronym on that sister organization to the consumer union network that was I personally when it comes to disclaimers a lot of people argue with me I usually in my regular show have a disclaimer in the middle you know at the beginning and towards the end not the show you just saw recently because that was a much shorter version of it but I feel a responsibility you know a lot of magicians and men would say you know if you were doing MacBeth you would not stop in the middle of it and say oh I'm just an actor well of course not because that's context but when I get up on stage as a mentalist I'm doing these unusual things that they have no explanation for whatsoever I become the authority figure on that what I say goes at that moment it's no different than having neurosurgeon stand on a stage in a theater and he starts talking about the human mind the brain and people will sit there and go wow this guy really knows what he really is a neurosurgeon so I can become a psychic if that's what I want to do on that stage so I know that there's going to be a large amount of people that are going to come to my show they're going to believe no matter what I say there's going to be a amount of people that are not going to believe no matter what I say but there's a large amount of people in the center somewhere who come to the show and they have absolutely no clue and they see what I do and they want an answer for what it is and I feel a responsibility to give them the answer and remind them this is just entertainment I'm not a psychic now I know some of those people are still going to think I probably am but there's quite a lot of people that will come up to me after the show and they will say to me just like you said with David who probably claimed he was a psychic he said hey I'll give you some readings not during the Dr. Faustberg but later he went off that deep end and he did what we call a deep end here so when they come to me and they say hey you have powers that has to be real I say no it's one of those things I told you about it's either magic or psychology verbal nonverbal communication all mixed together primarily magic I'm not a psychic there are people who will get on the stage they will do what I do they will try to convince you they're real they're lying to you you have over the years made among other things made very good use of that wonderful Ned Rutledge song I absolutely do yes I take my five minutes to create the illusion of a saint the audience perception is not an insignificant issue and I think it's an issue that involves responsible decisions being made by the performer I don't know what the answer is everyone has to come to the exact same conclusions all I'm saying is there is this almost magical belief that the existence of a disclaimer solves the problem and it doesn't disclaimer is to the issue of belief systems like a bandaid to cancer so Randy you wrote the introduction to a book of marks where he talked about being a psychic and explored some of these issues in closing let's get comments from the panelists on really where this line is all of you are magicians one of you and I think actually Ray also and Randy early in his career and would make stronger claims even though Ray earlier in his career when you were doing palmistry at first you were sort of persuaded that wow this is so effective maybe I do have an ability none of you now are giving psychic advice to my knowledge you're not giving psychic advice trying to help people with their belief in the paranormal if if there is a line and it's not disclaimers last question was a discussion where is the line okay let me let me it's so black and white it really is like for example if an agent hires me to do a children not a children's party an adult party and they want to see handwriting analysis and they don't want psychics and they don't want tarot cards because handwriting analysis is more scientific it's a system once you learn a system and you know how to get on your feet and run with it it's no different than palm reading or anything else okay so if an agent hires me to be a palm a handwriting analysis I wear a suit and tie and I go in and I'm a handwriting analysis and I try to inject let me finish I try to inject no matter what situation it is skepticism into what I'm doing but do you think people leave your handwriting analysis demonstrations thinking that you're learning about their personality no they leave my handwriting demonstrations entertain and if you're hired as a psychic reader mark pardon me and if you're hired as a psychic reader what I don't understand what the question is if you're hired as a psychic reader so you go as a psychic reader you hire as a psychic reader and you do other things like I just said I inject I make sure that when I'm giving a reading and this is why I think I have been successful at whatever that means I while I'm giving them the reading I tell them things like yes if I'm looking at the lines in your hand by the way there is some science here did you know that this about your fingers and this about your hands or you give a psychic reading does a subject of your psychic reader come away believing you might possibly be psychic or disbelieving it or what information do you provide if any to that just like I let them decide you let them decide themselves that's correct I say one thing on that I would have an issue with that of course and I tell you why I have an issue with that we have to get to this point eventually right I tried three or four times let me explain why I have an issue with that because you're reading the poem you say this line means that that line means that and then you give them a real fact about something about their hand and all that does is bolster up that hey those lines must also mean something as well because you don't say straight out what's total BS at that line if you were doing poem reading that line would mean that but you know what it's not real have you ever had a reading by me have you ever read my book what you just said a minute ago was that I give a reading on the poem and then I give them some actual facts of the truth this is what I also say as I say to them something like you know it doesn't matter whether I use your palm or goat entrails or cat turds whatever it is all I'm doing is telling you answering questions that you're asking me in the most honest way I can so unless you have a reading by me you're lumping me in with the gypsy carnival and that I object to and if you read my book you'll see clearly now I read the book and I couldn't figure out what side you were on and it took me quite a while because you were on more sides and I could count but then suddenly the answer became clear to me you're on one very clear side your side and that's the only side and you have contempt for your subjects that you read them if they're not wise enough to take your advice or appreciate your wondrousness and the gift of their lives other than that you have nothing but contempt for them and it's clear that you are a lower case skeptic in that you don't believe any of the bullshit yourself but to be an uppercase skeptic uppercase skeptics are not people in this room and some of the other people on this panel are are not just concerned with what you as an individual think or see about the world we're concerned with educating others and improving others a lot in the world well first of all my character as such it is impossible for me to see you as an ally in this movement you were not an investigator when you were working for 900 lines you were paying the rent as a phony psychic can I respond? please one I totally anticipated this attack what's that? not because you're psychic we don't have enough time we're going to run out of time so I don't really want to defend what I did either I did not write this book my character to be admirable I wasn't writing a debunking book you succeeded at that good then you got it these are despicable human beings and I wanted to show an anti-hero maybe? I don't know my publisher didn't want another debunking book he wanted a book like Nightmare Alley he wanted a book about what it's really like how low can you go when you're laughing at somebody who's just lost their pet cat and you're doing a reading telling them where their pet cat is there was never a dead child how low can you go, you're in the same company no, I'm sorry that's not true I never pretended to talk to dead people just leave this, some years ago and DJ I won't tell the whole story right now we haven't got time maybe someday but Psycop embraced Greskin and brought him to a national conference to a very strong really permanent disagreement between Paul Kurtz and myself about that too and basically what I said to Kurtz and I'll repeat it here for the record if you're going to call yourself a skeptic if you're in magic or mentalism or any of these mystery arts potentially he said and you're going to claim that you're a skeptic activist and you're trying to make the world a better place with your specialized knowledge the one requirement, the litmus test entry to the club claim for that good being part of that good cause is you need to be willing to be explicit about what you do you need to be willing to say whether it's trickery, magic, deception whatever specific words you want to use but you need to label the product and Mark your website to this day says that you neither declare yourself as a genuine psychic nor give any disclaimers preferring to let his work stand on its own merits such as it is and allow each individual to arrive at their own personal conclusions you may be many things Mark but you're not a capitalist skeptic and you're not part of my movement so with that bolstering sense of fellow feeling two things Mark please a rejoinder and we'll end with Randy's thoughts anybody who knows what I do for the IIG and what I've done for the last several years on the Jeff Probe show and on Inside Edition with Teresa Caputo you go to my website and in 10 seconds I mean yeah that's on my website because I do want people to feel like it's okay for you to make up your own mind look at the balance of the rest of the website you're going to see skeptical all written all over it the first 10 seconds you go to my website so he can take whatever he wants you know that's fine everybody's entitled to their opinion but I have information to give this movement and I feel like I have information that's valuable if you don't want it fine that's what he's saying he's a magician a mentalist he doesn't he did not go into this movement as a psychic who would okay so again I'm not going to defend myself either like the book or you don't check out my IIG creds check out all the testing I've been involved with we do tests all the time a couple times a year okay and I'm the one who's there working for this movement so I'm not worried about being a capital top drawer skeptic if this is the kind of reception I'm going to get because I'm used to it I'm used to being on this burner so I leave it up to you you get to decide there's no absolutes okay sorry that's all I'm going to say and before we finish I wouldn't write the introduction if you thought I wasn't part of the movement okay and before we finish up with Randy and before we finish up with Randy while I objected to some things in your book personally I will commend the book on the grounds you just mentioned there's a lot to learn from it we're not talking ethics there when we're reading we're talking about learning that it's not for skeptics it's for the general the person who's at the airport who says I'd like to read something interesting on the flight home I think it's great for skeptics so Randy to have some closing thoughts on this it should be said skeptics like a lot of heat we also want to elicit light with our conversations as well well I look on that thank you well thank you for giving me the privilege of closing this discussion I would like to do it on somewhat lighter note if I may a story about a gentleman whose name I'm passing down the table to be recognized here but we won't use the name this was a very prominent mentalist when I was a kid I was a young teenager and I had the freedom to wander about for various reasons and see shows that I wanted to observe and I saw this gentleman advertise and I knew that he was a well-known mentalist and his name is still famous in the field and I went in to see his performance it was at some ladies club or rather and I sat in the back and I watched and I understood most of what he was doing but one trick that he did with a book and really floored me and I thought wow I've got to come back tomorrow and see this again I came back the next day paid my admission again and sat in the same seat at the back of the room and I saw it the second time and suddenly oh of course it dawned on me what he was doing so I I had the opportunity to visit him backstage I went around I called and I said I'm a student magician I'm just getting started in the field and he was rather looking down his nose at me and I said just tell me one thing if you would be so kind I did somebody in Poland he came from Poland someone in Poland teach you this routine as a youth perhaps or is this something that you originated entirely yourself he said I don't understand what you mean I said that the routines that you're doing the tricks he looked at me and said tricks I said yes tricks and he said you don't understand young man that's all done up here and I just turned on my hill and left and thought I'm not going to have much of a conversation with this man well a few weeks later I was doing an escape and I had a date where I found out that I was being worked on the same program as this particular gentleman and I thought oh I don't want to run into him I went out on stage and I did my straight back escape and perhaps a couple rope ties I don't remember I got a very very good reaction it's the usual reaction and and I walked back to the dressing room and he came out of his dressing room on one side there he came over and he shook my hand he said that was quite remarkable where did you learn that ladies and gentlemen I just looked at him and I said I'll talk to him never spoke to this gentleman again