BR: Welcome to Squaring the Strange, where we apply critical thinking and evidence-based analysis to, well, everything from the simple to the strange, the mysterious to the mundane. Welcome to the third episode of Squaring the Strange. I’m Ben Radford.

PR: And I’m Pascual Romero.

BR: And we’re going to be talking about a variety of weird things today, including psychics. So once again, we want to give a shout out to our sponsors and supporters. We very much appreciate it. It’s not easy or cheap in terms of time and effort and all that. We can use all the support we can get, so thank you very much.

PR: Yes, thank you to our patrons.

0:01:05
Again, go to patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange if you are interested in taking part in patronage and getting some of the perks for subscribing.

BR: But now on to psychics.

PR: Psychics. It’s an exciting topic. I have to admit I’m a little biased against them. I’ve definitely been critical of them in the past, but I think it’ll be a fun discussion to have and get into the kind of, you know, the nitty-gritty of how psychics and the law cross paths.

BR: Yeah, I’ve always been fascinated by psychics, and of course I’ve done lots of investigations into psychics. For many years, everything from John Edward…

0:02:03
In fact, here in Albuquerque, he and Celestia Ward, producer, the content producer for the show, she and I went sort of undercover. We didn’t literally go undercover or anything, but it was just.

PR: Yeah, unassumingly showed up at his thing. Oh, look at that.

BR: And that would be a great topic for an under top. Great, yeah. But yeah, it’s, you know, it’s, the psychics, I think I feel especially strong about them, which is because there is such an opportunity for exploiting people.

0:02:37
If you’re talking about Bigfoot or UFOs or crop circles or ghosts, there’s lots of other subjects and areas of the paranormal that don’t really have the same potential to really harm people.

PR: People like that stuff. It’s just stories and if someone profits off it, it’s mostly in the spirit of fun and it doesn’t hurt anybody.

BR: Yeah, I mean, if you want to go out and look for Bigfoot and you want to pay somebody $2,000 for a weekend of chomping on the wood looking for Bigfoot, knock yourself out.

0:03:11
You have fun with it. But psychics are another matter because you’re dealing with people who are almost always grieving or certainly emotionally fragile or vulnerable. The people that go to psychics are a self-selected group. First of all, it’s almost entirely people who, of course, believe in psychics. If you don’t believe in psychics, you don’t go to psychics. Unless of course you’re a skeptic who’s gathering information on them. So you know there’s inherent desire to believe and tendency to believe just going in there, just out of the gate. You have people who by their very nature they believe that others have psychic powers and that they can help them for a fee. And so, it’s just that’s really the area that I find distasteful because it can so easily lead to being exploited. Right, right.

PR: And I think it’s important to kind of preface this whole conversation with that because I think both of us do have the ammo to take a bias against it. But just keep that in mind. Psychics that are solely for the purpose of entertainment or mentalists that do it as an act and, you know, whatever. I mean, I’m fine with that. And if you’re into it, perfectly fine.

0:04:40
Just be warned, you know, don’t spend too much money on these things. And try to always have a healthy dose of skepticism when someone tries to claim something, especially when it has to do with dead relatives and things like that. They can really prey on emotion and it’s important to know when people are trying to take advantage of that.

BR: That’s exactly right. I see that all the time where I’ve been asked, what’s the harm in psychics? It varies, I’ll be honest. Psychics range the gamut from high profile psychics like Sylvia Browne, James Van Praagh, to some fortune teller in Times Square charging $15 for palm reading.

0:05:24
There’s a wide variety. And in my experience, most of the people that I’ve personally investigated and come in contact with who claim to be psychic really believe it. There are frauds. There are hoaxers. There are con men and con women, and I’ll certainly talk about those. But for the most part, as with many of these cases, you know, same with people who see ghosts, you know, most of them, they really believe. They’re not hoaxing.

0:05:52
They really think that. So that’s what fascinates me is, you know, building on the psychology of it and like, you know, why do they believe it? And that’s really where the meaty part is, is looking at the ways in which people can believe that the person sitting next to them has access to information they don’t have in terms of the spirit world and knowing the future and dead relatives and stuff. I sort of compare it to the role that, for example, priests have as sort of a shaman, as a mediator to other worlds. The average person, most of us don’t really feel like we can communicate with spirits or whatever else.

0:06:35
So we go to people, if we believe that, we go to people who put themselves out as experts and say, I can commune with the powers that be, the witch doctors. You see that role in all societies. And then the question is, what do you do when you give someone that power? Not only do you give them money, but you let them control your life in certain ways by giving you advice or, you know, what should I do with my life? Should I marry this person? Should I take this job? Whatever else. You’re really giving up a lot of control of your own life to essentially a stranger.

0:07:15
PR: Yeah, yeah. And that’s kind of interesting. I had thought about it and I sort of feel like it’s a question worth asking is, is the psychics as entertainment versus psychics as a means to communicate with the dead or some way, you know, we know there’s a large spectrum, but do you think that dismissing palm readers and things like that as entertainment and sort of just being tolerant of it as a practice can kind of lead to being a little too tolerant of the more severe and more nefarious types of psychics out there that are looking to get a buck off of people?

BR: Yeah, I do think so. You know, what you find certainly in the skeptic community and also I believe in the magician community, I’m not a magician but I have many friends who are magicians including Jamie Ian Swiss and Banachek and DJ Grothe and others.

0:08:08
You know, there is a very real disregard and dislike, I could use other words but I won’t, for people who sort of muddy the waters between, you know, are they a magician or are they doing psychic stuff? This is particularly true in the case of mentalism, mind reading, things like that. Kreskin has gotten a lot of flack over the years, I think deservedly so, but others may disagree, for intentionally mudding the waters. Are they doing psychics? They’re like, well, you know. I’m not going to say one way or the other. I don’t have any tolerance for that.

0:08:44
I think it’s unethical, as do many, and of course, James Randi being a perfect example. Sure. Randi and I have talked about that. That’s one of the reasons that he really holds a lot of these psychics in such low regard is because they do intentionally muddy the waters. There’s a documentary about Randi called The Honest Liar.

PR: Great documentary. I highly recommend it.

BR: Great doc. Basically, one of the themes is that’s what magicians are.

0:09:14
They’re honest liars. Yeah. They will deceive you and they will tell you they’re going to deceive you. And if they do their job right, then that’s exactly what they do. Exactly. Penn and Teller being other examples. Sure.

PR: And I mean that tradition goes back really far. Houdini, very famous for being highly skilled and highly critical.

0:09:34
But yeah, there’s a long history of that.

BR: So, yeah, I definitely think that that sort of blurring the boundaries can be dangerous just because, again, it can lend credibility to people who really don’t deserve it. The other thing to keep in mind when you were talking about for entertainment only, part of the reason that many psychics use that is basically because they want to, they’re trying to skirt the law. They’re concerned about running afoul of fortune-telling laws and confidence games. And so, not all of them, but many of them, that’s precisely why they use that language. And it’s disingenuous. And here’s why.

0:10:21
Because when someone says, look, I’m just doing this for entertainment only. The fact is that their clients do not take it as entertainment. They do not. I mean, I know this for a fact. And if you talk to them, like, you know, why do you go to psychics? Because they want information. They’re not, this isn’t, I mean, every now and then there will be a psychic, you know, I mean, there are exceptions. I mean, there will be, you know, a psychic will be hired for a party, right? Oh, it’s a bachelorette party, whatever else.

0:10:50
The girls get around. Well, sometimes it’s taken just for entertainment. But most of the time, in my experience, in my research, it’s not just for entertainment. The people genuinely believe that these people have powers. This is not a joke. And they’re asking information about their lives, for information from psychics, that they’ve taken seriously. You know, like, who should I marry is not entertainment. Should I take this job is not entertainment. Will I meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger?

0:11:24
The questions that are asked of psychics are not mere entertainment. They’re taken very seriously. It’s disingenuous for many psychics.

PR” So with that being said, let’s take a look at where psychics do kind of cross the lines with law and how the law has been able to treat psychics, which is a topic I find really interesting because I think a lot of the time they get away with a lot more than they should. On the other hand, you know, there are a lot of principles that sort of keep an understandable wall between the law and psychics, which is not because I believe they should protect psychics, but you know free speech, stuff like that. So with that said, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of where the law collides with psychics.

BR: Yeah, there’s lots of, I mean we could do a whole show just on the history of that. You know, I was reading an interesting article the other day on the history of fortune-telling in France, and you know, for example, during the last two three hundred years and how what the public thought about fortune tellers and and and it was always fascinating because you’ve there’s always been this undercurrent of anti-cultism and you see this of course in in in Christianity you see this Islam sure right the thou shalt not suffer which to live and you have Bible verses that explicitly say, do not consult the occult.

0:12:53
And of course, that’s one of the premises behind all the concern by fundamentalists about Ouija boards, for example. So there’s this whole, it’s really interesting how in some ways the skeptics and the fundamentalist Christians align very well. And for very different reasons. For most skeptics, it’s not a matter of them being a cult because it’s the devil’s work. It’s them just not having any truth to them. It’s bullshit. It’s not the devil. It’s bullshit.

0:13:31
So you do have these interesting sort of common goals in some cases. But yeah, I mean, you know, oftentimes when you see psychics talking about it, they say, oh well, it’s within the context of, for example, psychic detectives. So they’ll talk about, well, you know, there’s a missing persons case and I consulted with this police department back in, you know, November 94 and I helped solve this case. And so there’s all these claims about psychics helping police.

PR: I think in the 90s it seemed like a really, maybe it’s just pop culture kind of turned towards that, but I really distinctly remember a level of kind of credulity that the media was treating psychic investigators with. You know, like Unsolved Mysteries type stuff where, you know, we had these kind of like crime shows and reports on investigators and it was always, you know, a missing persons case and it seemed like a lot of the time they’d just be like, you know, maybe not that the reporting in a news piece necessarily gave them any credibility, but just a review of the case or someone following the case in media, you know, especially like current affair type stuff.

0:14:51
It would just follow these psychic investigators. I have very distinct memories of that being pretty common in the media, especially around the early 90s. What happened with those guys? Are they still around?

BR: Some of them are. Gary Posner, a skeptic doctor out in Florida, he’s written quite a bit on psychic detectives, as has Joe Nickell and Randi and myself and others. So that’s a whole other show. We’re going to do an entire show.

PR: We’ll cover that next.

0:15:24
BR: Yeah, but there are so many different angles into it. It’s fascinating. But the most recent cases that came across my desk were, there was a case just recently where there was a Hong Kong taxi driver who tricked one of his girlfriend’s daughters into having sex with him, telling her that it would help keep evil spirits away from her younger sister. So this weird case, it happened between July and August 2015, and again, the girl was 17 years old, and I guess she had a younger sister, and so this guy had convinced her that there were evil spirits, to make of that what you will, that were going to harm her younger sister. And he basically put himself up as a psychic so that he could avoid curses and this and that.

0:16:16
Fortunately, he was convicted and sentenced to jail. But these sorts of things do happen. There was a case just a couple years ago in 2012 where there was a British psychic and spiritualist named Carl Lang. And he had tricked two women into stripping and performing sex acts in order to speak to dead relatives.

PR: Wow. That’s baffling that a person can manipulate people that way, especially in the terms of, in both cases, obviously, sexual assault taking place or forms of sexual abuse. And that’s kind of the scary thing is these people, I know people kind of assign a sort of sliding scale to what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable.

0:17:11
And so it’s hard because when you’re defending psychics on one end, you know, but on the other end you have guys like this, you know, it’s like where do you draw the line? I mean, you know, you’re saying, well, they’re definitely not psychics, but someone else definitely is psychic. So to me, the sort of what I’m getting at with that is I can kind of understand why someone who would believe that stuff would go to such, you know, what most of us would consider just absurd lengths to reach out to a psychic or to conform to this weird psychic belief, but at the same time it’s like, well, there’s a mentality that goes with lending credibility to all of it.

BR: Absolutely, and that’s one of the things that’s important to remember about these cases is that number one, they’re more common than people think.

0:17:57
And I just see them as sort of another flavor or another sort of bent of the exploitation. It’s far more common, of course, to have financial exploitation. I mean, I write about that all the time, as do others. It’s somewhat less common to have sexual exploitation, but it’s all exploitation either way. And frankly, that’s true whether psychic power exists or not. I mean, I’ve seen no evidence that psychics exist and psychic powers, and I’ve looked extensively at some others. But let’s just say for a moment that I’m wrong and that there actually is evidence. These people are still committing these heinous crimes. And it’s in the guise of being psychic. And so I can picture having a conversation with a so-called real psychic, who says, “well, there’s bad apples in every bunch.” And it’s like, well, that may be true, but these are still scum that are using your worldview and your belief system to exploit people.

0:19:03
And that’s a problem. And it goes back to what I was talking about before about when you give other people power over you. And that’s one reason why I think that belief in magic and belief in the paranormal is inherently undemocratic because the premise is that we’re not all equal. The premise is that some among us can do magical things. Some people among us can talk to the dead. Some people among us can move objects with our minds. Some people are inherently better than others.

PR: And no people can do it when Randi’s watching.

0:19:41
BR: And it vanishes when skeptics are around, finding water, dowsing. But yeah, that’s one of the reasons that I really find belief in magic and the paranormal really, I know it’s sort of philosophical, but that’s one reason it bothers me, is that it tells people that some people are inherently better than others. It’s not just a matter of special abilities. There are, Usain Bolt can run faster than I can, and you ever will be able to. Yeah. For now. For now. We’ll see next year.

0:20:24
But I mean, so it’s not that, I mean, the fact is that if we want to become better runners or better at anything, we can do that. It’s within our grasp. But there is no way that we can become psychic despite all the books and seminars and promises on TV. So again, there’s a sort of inherent exalting of certain people in certain positions, often self-claimed. These cases I just gave with Carl, with medium Carl Lang and the Hong Kong taxi driver, they convinced others that they’re psychic and they’re special and they can commune with the dark arts. I think that’s one reason why, or I should say, I think that’s one way in which skepticism can really immunize people.

0:21:18
It helps to understand that in a real way we’re all equal. I’m sort of repeating myself. I just think that’s one aspect of this that’s often sort of overlooked.

PR: I think overall it’s kind of interesting because the thing I see with these two cases in particular is that it kind of strangely reminds me of cult leaders and the way they exploit people and especially because there’s sort of this sexual tone to it. That is very common with these cult leaders with their many wives and these crazy ways they convince people to engage with them at that level.

BR: And religious leaders in general.

0:22:09
Yeah, true. I mean, again, it’s the notion that somebody is a medium, literally, or otherwise. Someone else has some exalted status between you and some special magical thing. And their message, both implicitly and explicitly, is, through me, you can do these amazing things. Through me, you can speak to your dead grandfather. Through me, you can avoid a curse. Through me, and again, you’re giving other people that power. It’s like, oh, wow, okay.

PR: Yeah, and it’s interesting.

0:22:49
I mean, obviously there are varying levels of how people exploit it and how genuine they are with their own personal beliefs on the matter. And that’s, again, where it gets tricky. But I think that kind of goes back to that whole thing, like if we lend credibility to, or we dismiss things as being, well, he’s not doing any harm. It sort of is like, well, where are the hallmarks for where we need to draw the line? How do we separate the well-meaning from the exploiters? Where do we enable it and how far does it go? And is the fact that we’re allowing these sort of soft versions of it go, is that enabling the people that really take advantage at the higher level? For instance, Sister Rosa in Santa Fe has been there my entire life.

0:23:38
She’s a palm reader. She lived across the street from where I lived in Santa Fe last. She’s been there forever and everyone knows who she is. Nobody thinks anything bad of her. She’s just a lady who just reads palms. But at the same time, it’s like just allowing that to exist sort of implicitly allows people like John Edwards to exist, who very obviously take advantage of people.

BR: It’s a slippery slope and that’s one of the things that the skeptical community struggles with. You know, it’s not really fair to cast a blanket, you know, smear on all people who claim to be psychics on the basis of a few of them because, as I said, many of them genuinely believe it.

0:24:21
I mean, they sincerely believe they have psychic abilities. I’ll talk about that in another episode. But they’re deluded, but they’re self-deluded oftentimes. But at the same time, to my mind, it comes down to falsifiability. What can you prove? It’s such a false advertising claim. If I go to a mechanic and they’re promoting themselves as being able to fix cars, they can prove that my car is fixed. I mean, either my car is working when it comes out or it’s not. You can go to a medical doctor and if you have something wrong, they can prove that they have the knowledge. Now that doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to be healed.

0:25:09
There’s caveats, but essentially- We have data. Yeah, we have data. We have demonstrably that we can point to this as this person can do what they claim. That is not the case with psychics. And I think that has to be one of the keys, is either you can prove what you’re saying or you can’t. And that’s across the board. So I don’t care whether you’re charging $5 for palm readings or you’re charging someone $200,000 for life coaching through psychic means, prove it.

0:25:44
I don’t care. I mean, and you know, I don’t have a vested interest in it one way or the other. I mean, I’m a skeptic, which doesn’t mean I doubt it. It means give me the evidence. And I’ve said this about psychic detectives. If psychic detectives can actually find missing people, that’s great. That’s wonderful. We should have psychic detectives being hired on staff for the FBI, Homeland Security, police forces. I mean, if they can genuinely do what they claim to do, if they can find missing persons, that’s wonderful.

0:26:20
I’m all for it. The problem is they can’t. Therein lies the rub. It’s not that I have a problem with them, it’s that they can’t do what they can’t do. And to me, that’s the bottom line.

 

PR: Yeah. Well, and especially with investigators, it kind of adds an extra wrench in the gears in that not only do they not have the ability to do what they say they can do, but when they are taken seriously, they create diversions to the investigation. They’re like, oh, well, they’re in water or something.

0:26:54
And then they’re looking in the wrong place all of a sudden. And I know, again, this kind of harkens back to the 90s pop culture fascination with them and how you would always see, like, oh, this psychic says this person’s under a pile of rubble somewhere, and then you have cops searching an abandoned building that caved in or something. And when you look at that, it’s like, you know, this person is sending resources like on a wild goose chase, like sending people who have to be paid and take time out of their day to do this. And people who, when there’s a person missing, there’s a clock ticking, you know, because no one knows where they are or what’s happening. And they may be alive, maybe they’re hurt somewhere, maybe they’re kidnapped, but when you start chasing complete fabrications, you are detracting from their ability to solve the case.

0:27:45
And if anything, I think those psychic investigators really need to take a good hard look at themselves because it’s like, you know, in these cases where you’re, you know, granted, I don’t think they do, the police really take a hard stance on them either way, but in any case where people have, even just the family of the person, takes the advice of these people and starts following, just chasing just total fabrications, they’re detracting from the ability to actually solve the mystery and the ability to hopefully bring the person home. And I think one of the biggest offenders in that world, world in terms of high-profile people was Sylvia Browne. I mean, she made some very strong claims about people, missing people over the span of her career and very well-documented cases of her being incredibly false.

BR: We’ll do some episodes just on that.

0:28:39

PR: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know that there was that very famous 9-11 case where she just, you know, completely got that wrong. And you know, but that overall is kind of, to me, some of the biggest harm I see in it is maybe not necessarily the people that exploit it for money, but just for the sake of, you know, trying to be taken seriously in a criminal investigation in a very serious matter where you really have no business messing around and sending people on wild goose chases. I mean, it’s just ethically completely bankrupt. And even if they think they’re doing something…

0:29:24
BR: But they do. Altruism is a big part of this. I find this in ghost investigations as well, across the board, where I’ll talk to people who claim to be psychic mediums or sensitives or ghost hunters. And it’s fascinating. I mean, we could do a whole show on this as well, but they, you know, part of the reason they do it is they genuinely believe that there is a spirit, the spirit of some dead person who cannot move to the other side, whatever that means, is restless wherever else. These ghost hunters and ghost investigators and psychics and mediums, they get enormous personal satisfaction out of helping a spirit move to another plane.

0:30:13
In this theology, in this world view that they have about what ghosts are. And it’s interesting. I have a book coming out later this year on ghost investigations. I have a section on that, but it’s fascinating to sort of see people who, in all sincerity, are patting themselves on the back for helping a spirit to cross over. To them, it’s very real. There’s this person and he’s haunting the place and he’s now at peace. I’m looking at this person and they’re very sincere. I’m like, you may have imagined the whole thing. I don’t say that cuz I’m trying to be polite But yeah, it’s like it’s you know if so altruism Is is a very strong motivator many of these cases and that’s what you know we that’s why people you know The people volunteer at that at shelters, and you know help feed the hungry, and yeah people like to do good And that’s wonderful. I’m all for that. I mean I volunteer at a domestic violence shelter.

0:31:17
That’s all well and good, but at least in these cases, we don’t know that there’s anybody being helped. So it’s this sort of weird, like, okay, good? I don’t know.

PR: Yeah, that’s true. And again, it’s hard. And when you know people who believe these things and stuff, you don’t want to be a person who’s just constantly questioning them and what they think. When someone sincerely believes something, it can be very hard to point it out. As a human being, your own altruistic instinct keeps you from wanting to make people feel bad.

0:31:53
And that can be really tricky. That’s actually one of the trickiest things for me, knowing a lot of religious people and knowing a lot of people who believe some, you know, I’m from Santa Fe, that’s the, you know, one of the new-ageist towns on earth. Even my own father who’s a scholar and a career professor, you know, has his own his own things that sometimes I question. But, you know, at the same time it’s like, well, how much of a fight do I want out of this?

BR: You know, one of the things that I always, that is frustrating to me as a skeptic and as someone who’s researched psychics, is the light sentences they get. And I see this over and over again.

0:32:31
There was a recent case, actually, there’s a Colorado psychic named Becky Ann Lee, who was arrested last year for scamming a woman of nearly a quarter million dollars. She was in contact with Victoria LaCoste of the clothing.

PR: Oh, okay, the little alligator.

BR: Yeah, the little alligator, right. Something like that. And the psychic, she ran a place called the Psychic Chakra Spa in Boulder, Colorado. And the psychic, Lee, told LaCoste that she would need to buy gold coins for a ritual. It’s interesting if you look at, and again, we could do a whole show on just the psychic techniques, but one of the things they often do is they shift the focus.

0:33:27
So it’s not you giving me money. It’s us buying gold coins so that I can help you in a ritual. So I’m not taking the gold coin. Who wants gold coins? No, no, that’s old school.

PR: That’s crazy talk.

BR: I hate gold coins. Throw them away.

PR: Gold is so tacky.

BR: Yeah, it’s, ugh, right?

0:33:46
But the spirits, they like gold coins. And so if you, I don’t have any money, but I see the little alligator on your shirt. You guys got money. So why don’t you give me $200,000 and I’ll go buy gold coins and you’ll get them back of course, but the spirit team, anyway, so this is what they do. That way it sort of depersonalizes the transaction. It’s a little less obvious to people. I mean it’s obvious to you and I as we sit here. But again, keep in mind the context of the believer, the believer/victim.

0:34:22
To them it’s like, do you know something’s not right about this? Again there’s a whole interpersonal dynamic. The psychics are very personal. They’re friendly. People make strong connections. You know, like, I’m helping you out. We can do this together. Did something bad happen to you and I routinely get emails from people wanting me to help them remove curses and we can do a show on that.

0:34:57
It’s interesting, how do you handle that when you’ve had people who really believe this? So anyway, that’s one of the techniques and that’s exactly what happened in this case where Lee’s like, “well, give me money for gold and gold coins and we’ll do this.” And then when she later wanted the gold coins returned, it’s like, oh, she’s kind of vague about whatever happened to the gold coins. Oh, I lost them. You know, it’s weird. I went to Safeway. I may have accidentally paid in gold coins. I don’t remember.

0:35:28
And eventually, she was sentenced to probation and she had to repay the $232,000 she admitted from stealing from the victim. So, just to be clear, so there’s this multi-year, quarter million dollar theft and the worst that had happened was she got probation and give the money back. And it’s incredibly frustrating to me and to others who were trying to alert the public to just how dangerous these sorts of scams can be because it’s not a joke. I mean, we can sit here and sort of roll our eyes at someone’s gullibility about handing over $200,000 in gold coins for some magic, but the fact is that for many people, this is very serious.

0:36:26
And so, you know, unfortunately it’s not unusual for these psychics to receive light sentences. And part of it is because the bunco artists, you know, the con games, they’re not considered a priority. Right? I mean, and you can understand that from a law and order point of view, right? What is the public pissed about? They’re pissed about the car was broken into, rapes, murders, armed robberies, they’re not so much pissed about some old lady who gave some psychic $200,000 in gold coins. And so, I get that.

0:37:04
I understand why that’s a bigger priority, but the fact is they’re all victims.

PR: I think I would be remiss to not kind of mention that I suspect that part of the problem with these light sentences also comes with how the law has to probably kind of dance around the mystical beliefs in the First Amendment and, well, they gave me the money. Because a podcast I listen to quite regularly called Opening Arguments, this lawyer, Andrew, he’s actually kind of taught me to be real, real skeptical about, you know, legal decisions and things like that. And I have a feeling a lot of it has to do with the fact that probably her lawyer and lawyers for a lot of psychics are successfully arguing that, you know, the person volunteered their money and that, you know, and, but which still does not excuse it. It actually just opens up the conversation about how maybe we do need to better regulate this stuff.

0:38:06
Because if a person can jump behind the First Amendment, jump behind the entertainment purposes only disclaimer, and kind of shield themselves with that when they’re stealing a quarter million dollars from someone. And especially because the tricky part is proving that it was a con. And we’ve seen that with a lot of televangelists and stuff. A few of them have gotten hit pretty hard for doing it. Most of them, nothing happens. Or if they get caught, it’s like something really minor. And I think a lot of it is because they just fall behind this kind of maybe too strong reverence we have for the mystical and that, well, it’s a belief thing and we can’t punish people for their beliefs.

0:38:50
It’s like, well, sure, but we should always be able to punish someone for stealing a quarter million dollars from another person.

BR: Yeah, and in this particular case with Victoria LaCoste, she just happened to come from a wealthy family, but 90% of the other ones don’t. There are many cases, and I’ve researched them personally, I see them all the time, where someone works their whole life, maybe they retire from the post office or whatever else, they’ve only got $200,000 in their life savings for retirement, and next thing you know they gave it to some psychic doing a long con. This is one thing that’s important to remember is that many of the psychics, they’re not actually psychic, but they believe they’re psychic, and they’re not necessarily trying to rip people off. I believe that. I mean, I’ve seen that firsthand. All they’re really trying to do is get your $35, tell you some bullshit about your palm, tell you you’re going to be happier in life if you move to Portland and wherever else, a lot of them are.

0:40:03
But a lot of them, a lot of them aren’t, they’re flat out fraud artists and con people. And these people, to their mind, like, well, yeah, I could spend a few minutes getting 35 bucks a pop for palm reading or better yet, do the long con, right? And some of these con games, they take months and years. This is not just somebody walking off the street. So it begins with just a simple fortune telling thing and through manipulation and coming back and well, you need a life coach and things are going okay now, but if something bad happens to you, I’m getting a sense maybe six or seven months down the road, something bad happens, let me know because I think I might know what that is.” And then maybe something bad happens, maybe it doesn’t, but in any event, they’ve already set the stage.

0:40:57
And so somebody might say, oh wow, the psychic said that something bad might happen. And they go back and like, oh yeah, there’s a curse on you, but it’s okay because I know about the curse and I have stronger magic, but we need to … I mean, there’s all … And these are centuries old gypsy curses. There’s nothing new under the sun here. These have worked for centuries. And it’s old wine in new bottles. And so there’s a lot of that going on.

PR: That reminds me, there’s a show on Hulu called Shuteye. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that.

0:41:36
It’s about a guy who’s a psychic. His wife is usually in on a lot of the cons, and it’s a lot of that long con kind of stuff, but they also have these little psychic storefronts and stuff, and it’s all part of this big Romani sort of mafia sort of thing. It’s very fantastic, and I don’t know how much truth is behind that, and if the Romani are really controlling the entire psychic game in Southern California, but the interesting thing is the show is entertaining. I wouldn’t say it’s the best show ever or anything, but it is a very interestingly critical view of psychics and it treats all psychics in the show as being complete con artists. Everyone in the show is, and they show all the techniques. I mean they really do show how it’s done, which I think is very deliberate.

0:42:26
And whoever wrote this has a chip on their shoulder. And it’s interesting because, yeah, they did a lot of that stuff that you kind of mentioned, you know, turning the money into something else.

BR: The gypsy egg tricks. Yeah, yeah. That’s fascinating.

PR: It’s an interesting show, if you ever get a chance. Anyone listening, it’s not the next Breaking Bad, but it’s a very interesting look at psychics and it very much does show the real world techniques that they use, which I think is something that everyone should be familiar with because you’ll see those techniques.

0:43:07
It’s not just psychics, but some of these tricks are used in places that you’d be surprised. I’ve seen it used in everything from sales to business to just general trickery and ways to try to manipulate people. While it is kind of funny in the context of the show, there are some very real world ramifications, but the more familiar you are with that stuff, the easier it’ll be for you to identify it if someone’s trying to pull it on you.

BR: I know that the Romani are very sensitive to being depicted as thieves and whores, as are for example the travelers in Ireland. The history of the Gypsies, the Romani, is really interesting. It’s fascinating.

0:44:03
But at the same time, it’s frustrating because a lot of them are absolutely involved in con games. So it’s like, in fact, there’s an organization, it’s sort of like the Jewish Anti-Defamation League for the Romani. Every time there’s some TV show, in fact they probably complained, but anyway, every time there’s some depiction on TV or in films or elsewhere that shows them doing that, they write an angry protest letter saying, I don’t like that. I remember about 10, 12 years ago, I was reading a news article and it was talking about that and there was an organization that was set up to promote a good image of the culture.

0:44:55
It was making the news because the director of the organization, I believe it was, maybe the treasurer, had stolen $200,000 from his agent and made off with it and they couldn’t find him. It was just such a delicious irony. I was like, wow, all right. We’re not all common and thieves. Give me the money to prove.

PR: Oh, yeah, just like, wow, that’s rough. That’s rough. Yeah, no, no offense to them.

0:45:23
Half of the family on my father’s half of of my family is all Spanish from Spain and definitely a little bit of gypsy in that part of the family. And and and I know I just want to disclaim this, nothing against them. As far as I know, I’ve never seen any of my relatives swindle anyone.

BR: No, no, and I’m sure most of them are, you know, honestly, most of them are, you know, they’ve been marginalized, they’ve been oppressed. I mean, it’s interesting, I follow the news. In France, gypsy camps have been ripped up. I mean, there’s a whole persecution of the Romani in France and elsewhere. It’s a real problem, not to make light of that.

0:46:05
But again, unfortunately, they do have that reputation and somewhat deserved. So there’s another reason why oftentimes the psychics tend to get off on light sentences. I think that there’s a perception among the public and unfortunately also among the police or prosecutors that basically anybody gullible enough to be scammed by some centuries-old gypsy trick deserves to be ripped off. It’s like, if you’re stupid enough, and I don’t buy that. Nobody deserves to be ripped off.

PR: Yeah, I agree. I think that’s a very, it’s a dangerous thing to say that.

BR: It’s like, it’s victim blaming.

0:46:48
Well, you deserved it. You should have been smarter. Well, maybe they should have been smarter, but that’s not for you to say.

PR: Well, and again, it’s like if you leave your money out on your front doorstep, whether or not it’s a good idea is aside from the fact that nobody has the right to take it. If you had a tree and just put all the money you had in cash in that tree and people started picking the dollars out of it, it’s still your tree and it’s still your money. Whether it’s a bad idea or not is very much aside from … Sure, we can take that into consideration from a legal standpoint, but I really think that it’s unfair to say anyone’s asking for anything when it comes to being taken advantage of.

0:47:36

BR: Or victimized in any way, absolutely.

PR: And I think that, yeah, that’s a really poor view to take and we should change that. Because the thing is, is that we try to act like it’s common sense and conventional wisdom, but you or I, it would be very unlikely that we’d ever get scammed by someone over the internet through email, but our grandparents, our parents, it’s possible. And it’s not because they’re stupid or they’re asking for it. It’s because they’re not familiar with it like we are. And that’s all it boils down to. So when someone gets grifted by even the most classic scams, it’s like, well, obviously they didn’t recognize it.

0:48:14
And you can’t put that on them.

BR: And they’re not at fault for not recognizing it. I mean, I remember I was somewhere, actually I was in Paris, and I was walking along the Seine and someone tried a pigeon drop con. And I recognized it right away. I knew before they even like, yeah, we’re done. But it was just like, you know, and I almost felt like I should, I almost felt like playing out the con just to see, just for the fun of it. Oh, wow, yeah, show me how this works. But again, I mean, and I’m sure that that same con artist tried this and some other gullible tourist two hours later probably got some money.

0:48:58
I think that’s one of the ways in which skepticism can benefit people’s lives is through educating people on cons and fraud and these sorts of things and just being more skeptical. It doesn’t mean that skeptics are superhumanly brilliant or are immune to being fooled or anything else. In fact, we can all be fooled, and that’s one of the lessons about skepticism. It’s not a negative debunk everything, it’s actually a positive good world view. And it’s saved people money and heartache and lots of things. So I see skepticism as being a very positive force. Oftentimes you also find that many victims are reluctant to report out of embarrassment. They don’t want their friends and neighbors to know that they handed over their life savings to somebody who claimed to speak to the dead or to cast curses.

0:50:18
As I said before, you have to remember that the people that consult psychics are often emotionally and psychologically vulnerable. Not all of them. It’s not like there was damage that goes to the psychic. But there is, again, it’s a self-selecting group. If you’re not seeking answers, you don’t go to the psychic. So inherent in the process and the worldview is there’s something that you want answers to or closure with or something going on and you believe this person can give you that. And again, that sets the stage for some emotional manipulation. And so, you know, nobody deserves to be ripped off.

0:50:57
They shouldn’t be embarrassed about it. But again, that’s one reason why a lot of psychics, excuse me, that’s one reason a lot of victims don’t report it. They’re embarrassed, right? Who wants to go to the cops and say, yeah, you know, I gave $75,000 to someone who said that they needed gold coins to remove a curse. No one wants to do that. I mean, I would be embarrassed to do that. But it just leads to a couple of things. One is, of course, it leads to sort of a file drawer effect where you don’t hear about as many of the incidents that actually happened.

0:51:39
It’s underreported. Because, you know, inherent in the process is people just, you know, whatever, it’s only $20,000, you know, they got away so what? And that happens all the time where someone’s like, okay, you know, we were talking about big sums of money, what if it’s $10,000? What if it’s $3,000? It’s like, is it worth going to the police and embarrassing yourself in front of your friends and family to admit that someone stole $3,000 from you?

0:52:06
You know what? Most people just let it go. And of course, that just emboldens the psychic because they’re like, hey, I’ve scammed four people out of under $10,000 each. No one’s called the cops on me. They just move on and it keeps going.

PR: Yeah. And you do that all month. You’re looking at $25,000, $30,000 a month. You know, and that’s, yeah, that’s a pretty interesting point that I think, you know, really kind of opens the conversation on, you know, I mean, how bad is the problem?

0:52:39
Because there’s almost no way to know. It’s just always going to be underreported. It’s a statistic that we don’t really have the right kind of information for. And speaking of the information and data, I know over the years there have been a lot of people trying to prove, or not prove, but just people testing psychic ability. And not just in the sense that Randi did it by challenging people to demonstrate it, but people actually trying to use the scientific method to properly experiment. In 2010 there was a Cornell professor named Darryl J. Bem, I think it was, and he did a study that suggested there was a better than chance result with psychic abilities. I think it had specifically to do with intuition that students had and the ability to predict something coming.

0:53:38
And it was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Again, this was 2010. And he’s a Cornell professor. So we’re talking about a lot of credibility kind of being lent to the whole situation and that was published. And the interesting thing was, you know, very, very quickly, there was a lot of skepticism cast at it from on one hand, on the other hand he was lending all this credibility to psychic abilities. By 2011, some British researchers tried and failed. They used his methods exactly, and they failed. That was published in PLOS. I don’t know how they if they say PLOS or PLOS one. PLOS. Yeah just PLOS. And then again four researchers in 2012 failed again using his same and they published in the journal as well Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. But interesting enough I still through Googling found that a lot of people were holding the original study up as evidence.

0:54:57
And even though it was retracted, you can’t search it in the journal anymore, as far as I was able to, at least. Because the rebuttal was essentially published two years later. But yeah, it’s interesting because people are still parading out that study. Going back to the legal aspects of it, I feel like that’s another problem with convicting these people is that while we have demonstrated pretty with a good level of confidence that There’s no reason to think that these abilities exist. The law doesn’t seem to be concerned with that data set. The law is more concerned with what did you do to them. But at the same time, it’s like, well, maybe we should because maybe we need to completely throw out the idea that somehow a belief system was involved.

0:56:00
Because again, it’s like this mystical aspect of it. If we’re going to say the victim should have known better, it’s like, well, then if we’re going to put the onus on them, then we have to say the psychic should have known better. And we know that they don’t necessarily always know better, but we need to throw that at the person who’s taking the money, not at the person who’s giving them.

BR: Yeah, well, I mean, of course, I mean, the problem of a lack of evidence-based policy and law is rampant. That’s one of the big problems, particularly in the forensic sciences. There’s been a lot of debate over the past few years about, for example, the scientific validity of bite mark forensics and also fire and arson investigation, and even in some cases DNA.

0:56:48
Not that anyone’s wondering whether DNA works, obviously it does, but in terms of it being used in cases. And so that’s one of the big concerns, is making sure that pseudoscience doesn’t get into the legal system any more than it already does. And of course, one of the times when we saw that happen was with the repressed memory stuff that, of course, the brilliant Dr. Beth Loftus did wonderful work on. And that’s the pseudoscience of repressed memory, again, that’s a whole other topic, but that clearly led to mischaracters of justice.

0:57:25
PR: Yeah, there were some very, very bad cases of people being pretty severely damaged by the accusations and things that came from that.

BR: So hopefully, I mean, the only reason I bring it up is that that’s another example of where it’s important for the legal system to have some standard of evidence.

BR: It’s time for Squaring the Strange quiz show. True, false, or cannot be determined from the information given. Your question is, he who smells it propels it. True, false, or otherwise.

PR: Okay, so if you smell it and then you say something, everyone’s going to assume it’s you, but then again, everyone in the room does smell it. So everyone smelled it but then… Okay.

BR: Ten seconds. And you’re gonna say, you know, the last time I did that it was definitely me. I’m gonna go ahead and say true. That is correct.

0:58:39
PR: And that does it for us this week. Thank you for tuning in. Be sure to find us on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash squaring the strange. Check out our website, www dot squaring the strange dot com. You’ll find all our new episodes there as well as iTunes and you can check us out on Instagram at squaringthestrange, Twitter at squaringstrange. And I’d like to thank our sponsor patron, Amy Freshour-Kelley, for her generous donation to the show and for making these great episodes possible. And if you’d like to become a patron and experience all the benefits of subscribing to the show, you’ll see them on the website. It’s at patreon.com forward slash squaringthestrange.

0:59:41
We should have links up on all our different social media by the time you’re hearing this. With that, what do we have on the burner for next week?

BR: On the burner for next week, we’ll be discussing Jamaican folktales.

PR: Ooh, that sounds awesome.

BR: I’ve been to Jamaica a couple times, including for my research into the White Witch of Rose Hall, one of the most famous haunted houses in the Caribbean and the area. There is a particular monster there that I find particularly freaky and frightening and I will be talking about that next time.

PR: Oh, that sounds awesome. Next time you want to do some research in Jamaica, let me know.

1:00:19
I would definitely like to tag along. Alright guys, we will see you next time.