Abhijit: Alright, everybody, thank you very much for joining me. This is Abhijit. You are watching Rationable, and today we have a very interesting Rationable interview with two wonderful people who have been doing a lot of work fighting psychics and actually Mark has been a psychic. So Susan Gerbic, and Mark Edward are here. Hey, thanks so much for joining me guys.

 I got very intrigued when talking to Rob Palmer about psychics. So, starting, Mark.

Mark Edward: Yes.

Abhijit: I heard you were a psychic at one point in time or is that the right terminology that I can use?

Mark Edward: I was what I like to call an undercover psychic because I was not a believer, and I was on the board of Skeptic Magazine at the same time I was working as a psychic. Oh. So basically, I was, my idea was to scam the scammers and infiltrate into that market and play their game and use my techniques as a mentalist and magician to convince them that I was the real deal.

So I went into it with eyes wide open and I ran screaming out of it after I got enough information to write my book, Psychic Blues. So I learned a lot and there was no other way to do it, but to become one of them.

Abhijit: Wow. So this is like psychic espionage.

Susan Gerbic: Yes.

Mark Edward: Yeah. It's undercover.

It was all done, the wink and a nod, and you know, playing both sides of the fence was not always easy.

Abhijit: I'm sure

Mark Edward: (Psychics) did not like it, but, that's the way I figured I had to do it, and it worked.

Abhijit: Nice. So, where do you learn this sort of stuff? How to be a psychic somewhere?

Mark Edward: Yeah, you pick it up or, I mean, it's not like you go to a school and they teach you, you know, 1 0 1 or anything. It's mostly experience.

Abhijit: It's so weird,

Mark Edward: You have to get out and do it. And I was lucky enough to have some really good teachers and some people who took an interest and shared their secrets with me. So that made it so that I was able to it's a performance, it's just like magic or singing or dancing or anything else.

So if you get a good teacher can teach you how to sing, you know, you what may seem impossible in the beginning is becomes possible with time. So it didn't happen overnight.

Abhijit: Yeah, of course. I'm sure. And I watch the show with Darren Brown, which was about faith healers where he actually trained somebody to become a faith healer. And actually managed to sell it to the crowd. And everybody believed him even after he confessed that he was not a faith healer. People still believe

Mark Edward: Yeah, that's the problem is you can tell people that you just made it all up and they think you're just trying to cover up for being clairvoyant.

Abhijit: well, you guys are amazing. What are the undercover techniques of being a psychic? How do you mentally

Mark Edward: (That's like) asking a farmer, how do you farm?

Abhijit: Okay. That's a very broad question.

Mark Edward: You have to be very specific. I mean, I can give you answers to those questions, but it's a pretty big area to just say, here's the main secret you make bold statements as if they're facts.

Abhijit: Yeah.

Mark Edward: That's one of the big keys right there.

Abhijit: So the two of the things which I had with my conversations with oh by the way, guys, Psychic Blues, I'll put a link in the description below if I can find one for in the, in Indian Amazon.

Mark Edward: Yeah, definitely get the audiobook instead.

Abhijit: Get the audiobook instead. Absolutely.

Mark Edward: Yeah. The audiobook is actually an expanded version of the original manuscript.

Abhijit: Oh wow. Alright. I'm getting that for sure.

Mark Edward: So you'll get more out of it if you get the audiobook.

Abhijit: Fantastic. I'll do that. And I advise everybody to do that as well. We'll get in much deeper detail than what we managed doing this conversation for sure. Of course, a couple of big things that I spoke with Richard Saunders about and with Rob Palmer were of course the concepts of hot readings and cold readings. So those are the two of the major, the biggest tools of the trade, would you say?

Mark Edward: No, I think you have the biggest tool of the trade is just faking sincerity. You can fake sincerity, and then you've got it made. But I mean, cold reading is number one. You have to be able to do a good cold reading. And then as you progress, if you need to get further into the higher or lower echelons of psychics, do you learn how to do hot reads and then it can be really accurate. People believe you're absolutely the real deal when all you're doing is just getting pre-show information on your subjects.

Abhijit: So that is a hot reading.

Susan Gerbic: Yeah. And also I think that another thing that we forget about, but one of the reasons why psychics appear to be real is because, especially on TV, is because of the editing and Mark's always said that the editor is the real magician. That's the real person who's,

Mark Edward: yeah. If you're watching something on TV, you don't know how much has been left on the cutting room floor.

Susan Gerbic: Right. So that's a really important part of them appearing to be, the real deal—also, just darn coincidence.

I mean, you know, that happens. Things happen. People, the psychic might say something, and it might be exactly what you know, they throw out a name that might seem a little unusual, like Alice or, you know, Jonathan or I don't know, something that seems a little, and that might be the trigger that hits the whole

Mark Edward: the bottom line is the client or the sitter wants the psychic to be right. So they will make connections for the psychic, like, oh yeah, my father had a friend who lived across the street from his brother-in-law whose name was Jonathan

Abhijit: Right. And the thing is, it's that conversation which really gets things moving, right? Once you start that interaction, the person is going to start picking things out from that conversation and using them as

Mark Edward: Yeah.

Abhijit: More fuel to kind of develop the story.

Mark Edward: Yeah. You're constantly course correcting to try and get to the weakest spot you can in the client, what their real problem is.

You try and get to that as fast as possible, and then you get the hook in. Then you, you say, I see this, right? I'm feeling this. And then you're, that's it really.

Abhijit: This actually reminds me of this guy I met. So this is the one and only hike I've ever been on, and I didn't even manage to complete it.

So, I can't say it was much of a hike but about halfway through I am going up this hike. This is about three hours in or something like that. I'm wiped and I'm like, I'm sitting and I'm drinking juice and I'm eating food and I'm sitting around and I see this, and this is in India, so it's kind of surprising when you see a young Caucasian man peeling peas in the corner of a hut.

And we kind of looked over and it's like, so, hi what are you doing here? So you're like, oh I study palmistry in this nearby university. And I come out here and I peel peas for these guys and I help them out. And, you know, I carry stuff up and down for the shop. And like, I was like, oh, that's very nice of you. So you're studying palmistry. That's very interesting. So, he said like, I didn't know you could get a degree in that sort of thing. I did not in India. You can, oh, you guys need to come down here. . So fun.

Susan Gerbic: That's scary.

Mark Edward: I'd love to see what the parchment that they've to give him looks like. I bet it's beautiful.

Abhijit: Oh yeah, I'm sure. And so, of course, this friend of mine who I was with said, “oh, would you read our palms?”. And he said, “yeah, I'm not like very good at it, but I can give it a shot”. So he sits down with her and he looks at a palm and he's like, “oh, this is very interesting. So you are, you're not from around here”, which is like, she's Singaporean. I'm like, yeah, no shit. So, he started, so they're having a conversation and he comes out of this and he's like, she's like, “oh my God, that's so accurate. How could you guess that?” And so I'm looking at her and I'm like, okay. So she goes through this and she was like, wow, he's good. You are good.

I'm like, “okay, all right. You can do me now. Have a look”. And he looked at my palm and I didn't say a word. I didn't give him any fuel, no ammunition, no fuel, nothing. And he kind of looked around and he was like, so it and after a couple of minutes of kind of floundering, I was like, I don't know buddy. You tell me. And after that he was like, “I don't know. I can't really read you very well. I think I think we're done for today, but, you know, all the best.”

Susan Gerbic: all the best. I think only good things.

Abhijit: Yeah, I know. So,

Mark Edward: yeah, that's how we work.

Abhijit: That was very interesting. It's that whole conversation, which kind of keeps it going.

Susan Gerbic: Yeah. A hundred per cent of it. Yes.

Mark Edward: And it's not just conversation, it's

Susan Gerbic: body language.

Mark Edward: Body language. And if you go like this, like what? Or you go or you nod your head, yes, then you know you're on the right track. You just keep going until a person says, no, not really. Then your course correct again, and sooner or later you're gonna get to the, you're gonna get to the sore spot.

Abhijit: And it's amazing how I have members of my own family who have sworn that they've gone to palm readers and astrologers and they have been told things which are uncannily Accurate.

Mark Edward: One of our favorite lines that we hear wherever we go is there's no way in the world the psychic could have known that.

Susan Gerbic: Right? I hear that all the time. And it's a challenge. If it's a person I know who's hot reading, I'm like, I'm on it. Let's go for it. And I'll go in into their Facebook page or Google them or you know, find an obituary they're mentioned in, and then you start throwing it back at 'em.

You're like, oh, I see this. And then they shut up, and they block you usually on Facebook. They'll say,

Abhijit: so what ha, what happens?

Susan Gerbic: Because they don't wanna know. They don't wanna hear that.

Abhijit: Is this in, this is in person. This must have been like on a call or on a video chat or something of that sort. Is that what you're talking about?

Susan Gerbic: I just had one happen just two days ago where a woman came. We have a, there's a Facebook group, and there are two Facebook groups devoted to trying to get your money back from this one specific psychic that I've been following for a while. Thomas John. And people will come in there and they'll post stuff. As one said, she just said a couple of days ago, I had the most amazing reading from Thomas John. He was so accurate. And I said, and I responded to her and said, so can we listen to the recording? And she says, oh no, it's only for me and my friends and family. And I'm like then we don't have any evidence. And she, oh, but it's none of your business. I'm like, then why are you posting here? And you know, it's just like, Why are you doing that? And she says, oh he, it was all information he couldn't have gotten anywhere else. So I went into her Facebook page and she has all these old photos of her mom who was in the army.

Her mother was in Vietnam, and on and on. And I said, oh, did he get this? Did he get that? Did he name this person? And then I went to her, you know, she hadn't posted her mom's name, but her husband had posted the obituary for the mom, his mother-in-law. So I just went from one Facebook page to another.

People think that they didn't post anything. Well, you're connected to your whole family on Facebook. It's not hard to go from one to another. Eventually, you're gonna find somebody who has an open Facebook page who's not so secretive, and there's a search feature on Facebook. Most people don't realize that. So you can type a word like mother, father, obituary, death, mother's Day graduation, there are terms you can put, or birthday, in the search a Facebook page and you instantly have posts going back from the beginning of the time that they've started the Facebook page. It's really easy to hot-read people whenever you have them on social media.

Abhijit: Wow. So, how did she respond? Did she just block you?

Susan Gerbic: She blocked me.

Abhijit: So she didn't want,

Susan Gerbic: no, she's the one that started the thread. But see, what I do is I always screenshot everything. Cause I know they're very likely to go away. So what I did is, that she got rid of the thread. So I turned around and took all the screenshots I've made, and I put 'em back on, on the Facebook page. I said since she's decided to delete everything, let's continue this conversation using her. And I just kept putting the screenshots up.

And then she was really upset. I think people were telling me she was.

Abhijit: I would think so.

Susan Gerbic: Because then I was posting the obituary and I was posting more information. And I told her, I said, you know, I said I know you aren't reading this, but maybe somebody will repost it. I said, look, you're grieving. Your mother just died in May. That was just a few months ago, and I know your mother just died in May. Cause I just read it off from your mom's obituary. I said, she looks like she was an amazing person. You had a close relationship with her right till the end. I said, “this is what grief is like. And we all grieve in different rates. So you have to remember that it's, there's always somebody out there waiting to take your money and there's always somebody willing to prey on you too”, and I mean prey, p-r-e-y, not pray, p-r-a-y, that will take advantage of the fact that you are grieving. I said, “I think my suggestion to you is to stay away from these psychic mediums and to probably seek out you know, maybe a grief counsellor or something, or maybe a very wise person in the family who is compassionate you can talk to, cuz you're obviously still feeling grief. And then I kind of played it up by saying, you know, I'm sure you probably wouldn't have fallen for something like this if you weren't in grief.

 I try to make her sound like she was a more critical thinker than that and she just happened to fall for this, which I don't know, she probably falls for it all the time. , I don't know. You never know. But I reached out to her that way and we'll see if she sees the posts or something, but

Abhijit: one can hope.

Susan Gerbic: So that happens constantly. Sometimes they don't block me and sometimes we end up having a very good conversation. And then, then that's where you really get into it with them and you say, they finally come down to saying maybe this person is a fraud, but are they all frauds? They asked me that. Have you ever run into somebody who was real?

Abhijit: Which leads me to the question, has there ever been some sort of an example of a reading that you haven't been able to explain how they managed to get that kind of information or something inexplicable? Like you can't wrap your head around exactly how that worked.

Has there been anything of that sort which has ever come across?

Susan Gerbic: Let's see. I mean, usually, it's just, you know it's a trick. Somehow it happened. The one I'm thinking of that was a Mark and I went to an event in a live event. And then, it was the psychic, Matt Frazier, and he pulled up a person out of the audience and he said, I bet you have a picture, you have a photo of them on your phone and it's your screen. And that is the person that I'm talking to right now. First, he said it was a young man or something like that. He obviously had connected to them, and then he made it sound like it was a, then he said it was on your screen.

And I thought that was really good because unless he had seen the picture and talked to them ahead of time and said, who is that? What probably happened is either probably not Matt Frazier, but probably one of his minions. Or somebody. Cuz you know, you're mingling, you're in this room, you're in a long line.

And if you're in a line of people and you're waiting to get in and somebody turns to you and says, who are you hoping to get ahold of? And you say, my brother, this is him. And they show your phone. , you know, they're like, this is my brother. He died. And he died of cancer, or he was in a car accident. And I keep this picture to remember him all the time. They could have said that to somebody in the audience and then, I mean, or somebody in line, and that's how they got the information. But boy, it looked smooth when he did it right in person.

He pulled them up and said that I was like, “Ooh, that's good. That's really good.”

Abhijit: Because I'm sure they'd have somebody who might have been maybe sitting behind them or standing behind them as you said. And even if she, while they were talking to other people, like she kept looking at her phone and maybe just looking at his picture and kind of, maybe that, I mean, these little signals give off a lot of information.

Susan Gerbic: right? When I've gone to, when I've done some of the events in person, as a woman, you know, you become very friendly to everybody. And what you do is you get there early and you start talking to the people all around you sitting, "who are you here to hear? Who are you here too, who are you trying to get hold of? Who is this? Who's that?" You get all that information you're talking about, anybody can hear, and the best place to get it, the information is you go to the bathroom, women, we get in line. Right? And you're in there and you're sitting there and you're just kinda like, "so is this the first time you've seen him? Isn't he amazing? Oh my gosh. Who are you here to who do you hope to hear from? I'm here too, I'm here to hear from my son." And you start sharing that information again. Everybody's around. There's always a little queue when there's a big group of people in the bathroom. Yeah. But that's what I tell people. If you're trying to get information, get it from them at the bathroom, or when you're washing your hands and you're putting on your makeup in the mirror afterwards and you say, "oh, I can't believe when he told that person earlier. Oh, that was amazing. You know, really reminds me of my aunt. That's who I'm here to see. How about you? Who are you here to see?" you get this information everywhere.

Abhijit: Yeah. It kind of makes the whole thing even more spooky when you think they might be having mics or cameras around there.

Susan Gerbic: I think it's much easier than mics or cameras. I really do. I think that I mean, it's all possible.

Abhijit: Yeah. But I think have people kept it through the audience. You sort it out.

Susan Gerbic: Right? Just sitting around. They only need Abhijit, they only need 10 people. You gotta, you got a two-hour show or one-hour show, you might even need five people. And if you've already read the person, which is really common when you go to the events, the front row, front two rows, are already people who are following and they've been to multiple events. They've read their books, they're fans, and they've had previous readings with them. So all the psychic has to do is get up on stage and say, you know, to somebody in the front row. They just repeat what they already know because they did a reading for 'em, and it looks amazing, and it looks actual, you know, really factual.

The rest of the audience doesn't know that they've been reading for 'em before, or they have stooges in the audience, or just, as I said, they've already gotten some sort of pre-information from somebody just because they rode in the elevator with them. Do you know? Or you're in the elevator with a group of people and there are two people talking. They say, "oh my gosh, how was your trip to Hawaii? Was that just the most amazing trip? And you're like, I know. And I got home and I found out my daughter's pregnant. Oh my gosh. I haven't told hardly anybody." "Oh, your daughter's pregnant?" "Yes. Oh my gosh. Oh, did you hear?" And they're having a conversation.

You're sitting there just looking at your phone in the back of the elevator, just staring ahead and then that person gets off and goes and tells the psychic. And you could ride the elevator up and down all day and just catch everybody coming from the parking garage. Put it this way, there's, when people tell us there's no way they could know. Oh my gosh. There are thousands of ways they could know.

Abhijit: Always a way.

Susan Gerbic: There's always a way. So no, I've never had anything that, I haven't been able to explain exactly how they figured it out, but it's pretty darn close. For example, yesterday I was having pizza cuz I love pizza.

Abhijit: Oh yeah.

Susan Gerbic: And I was sitting having pizza. And this woman that I know who's not a sceptic, but she knows I'm really into the psychic world, she says, could you explain this to me? Because I got my cousin got a reading with this person and can you explain what happened? And so I said, sure, give me the video. So I sat down with the video, not at the pizza.

I sat down with the video and it was amazingly horrible. It was one of those spirit boxes. Do you know about that phenomenon?

Abhijit: No.

Susan Gerbic: Spirit boxes. It's a broken radio that changes frequencies very quickly. Oh, so you get little snippets of like, whatever's on the radio? And they interpret it. They'll say like, all of a sudden it'll, the dial will go on and it'll be a very brief mention of a word, and they'll report that back as if it's coming from the other side. It's just a broken radio.

Abhijit: Oh, geez.

Susan Gerbic: It's a thing in the ghost hunting world, it's called spirit, spirit box and.

Abhijit: I'm gonna get my hands on,

Susan Gerbic: check it out. But this woman, she sat down and the first thing out of the psychic's mouth was the name of this woman, the grandmother, the one I she was wanting to hear from.

Abhijit: Yeah.

Susan Gerbic: And as soon as she said that, the sitter covers her eyes and starts crying. I mean, it was like all it took is just the mention of this woman's name and then everything else is just generic garbage. So, so my friend who sent me this video is like, how did that happen? I said she probably, whenever she signed up for the reading, probably told somebody who she was hoping to hear from.

It was simple. And then I said, and then I went to her Facebook page and put that name in the, in her Facebook page. And there are all these posts talking about the woman and there's her obituary. They weren't even good hot readers though. They just, all they had was the person's name and everything else was, "oh, she wants to tell you she loves you and she wants to tell you too that you're Thanksgiving's coming." like she didn't know, I mean, and to have the family together, make sure somebody cooks a lot. It was just generic, you know, whatever. But they did have the person's name and the only way I think they had it was cuz she just told them, I'm hoping to hear from my grandmother and gave 'em the name.

Abhijit: So, and you know, this is, there are some people like I really because when I've been talking to you and I've been hearing about Mark more than I've managed to get him down at to chat with him. But what you've told me as well, and what Rob told me is that there are a lot of you've managed to kind of infiltrate a lot of these operations. , and all over the world. Right. Like you, I think you might have done something in Australia as well. Did you?

Susan Gerbic: We did New Zealand. That was incredible. New Zealand is amazing. We, the Australians, keep saying we're gonna do some Australian psychics, but we haven't really sat down and did them.

Abhijit: They're Richard's got,

Susan Gerbic: they don't seem to be doing a lot of performances because of Covid.

Abhijit: Okay. Ah, okay.

Susan Gerbic: But we did a New Zealander, we got her good. Oh my gosh.

Abhijit: Can you tell me about that? Can you tell me about that one?

Susan Gerbic: Oh, her name is Jeanette Wilson. She's been around for 20 years or more. And she is, she says that she's in the healing part, but she doesn't say she heals. She says God heals.

Abhijit: Well, of course.

Susan Gerbic: Right, right. So, she doesn't diagnose, God diagnoses, or dead doctors that she channels diagnoses you.

Abhijit: Okay.

Susan Gerbic: Right. So there you go. Didn't know that, did you? And she had. So she'll...

Abhijit: I'm glad (she's honest about it)

Susan Gerbic: she'll channel somebody who's dead and that person will do the diagnosis, I guess it gets her out of liability possibly.

Abhijit: Yeah, exactly.

Susan Gerbic: I didn't say it, God told me

Abhijit: talk to my boss.

Susan Gerbic: So she says anyway, so her thing was, she was really into ghost photography and ghosts. She really believed in ghosts. And the pictures she would show were like taken on film. I mean, they're so old. There was dust in the picture cuz you know, there's dust in pictures.

Abhijit: Those are the spheres, the glowing spheres or something they call them.

Susan Gerbic: Right. And she called them

Abhijit: floating Orb.

Susan Gerbic: Orbs. So she blew them up. She would get the picture and she blew it up really big. And so it was a big orb. And she said and the picture, here are her kids, and then it's like Christmas or whatever, and there's all this space. And up in the curtain you see two dots and she says, that's their grandparents.

Abhijit: Awww

Susan Gerbic: they're watching. And you're like, how do you know it's a grandparent? How do you know? It's not like the next-door neighbour. I don't know. Do you know? And so she was really into ghost photography. Really old school. And then she's also anti-vaccine.

Abhijit: Oh.

Susan Gerbic: And she was anti mammograms, anti 5g, lots of things like that. But she, you couldn't catch her because when you attended her event, and the New Zealanders were going in person and attending her event, she would go on, on and on about anti-vaccine stuff. But the thing was recorded, it didn't make it onto the internet, and there was no, that part was cut out. So what they noticed is what was going on is her husband ran the camera and when she got to the part in her thing where she was trying to sell you supplements and stuff like that and anti-vaccine stuff, he would turn off the camera and then restarted again whenever she went back onto her ghosts.

Abhijit: Interesting.

Susan Gerbic: Yeah. So what happened is I attended with a couple of other New Zealand sceptics and we recorded it all and then as we recorded it, we got all the anti-vaccine stuff in there. Cuz I asked her question, I said, you know, I'm here in America and we have a hundred thousand people dead.

It was a hundred thousand people at that time. And we're very scared and we don't know what's going on. We, and don't have a vaccine. It was before the vaccines and what can you tell us? And she went on and told me all about how, you know, it was going to, it was going to end in a few weeks. This is like 2020.

Abhijit: Oh my God.

Susan Gerbic: And how it was gonna be over and she could hook me up with somebody who would sell me some stuff that would go in your lungs that would cover up the covid so you wouldn't get Covid. On and on. I had a video of it. She loved Trump. Trump, I'm showing Trump. She loved him. It was exactly like she was channelling Donald Trump because she said, you know, it's gonna be over in a few weeks. And you know, the things he says are the things she was saying. She supported him a hundred per cent because she says he's getting rid of vaccines, all vaccines, not just covid. And so what I did is I gave the video to a reporter in New Zealand and he listened to it and then he interviewed her and she said, he said" what's this about? These things you say about anti-vaccines?" And she says, "that's a lie. I never did say anything like that." And he goes, "I just watched the video." And she's like, "what video?" And he, I guess, showed her the video and she was furious and she emailed me and said, you gotta take that down. I'm like, that's fine, I'll take it down.

I just made it unlisted. I took it down because I'd already had my, you know, I showed the psychic and I mean I showed the reporter who reported it and then she tried to run for office and she had a 21-hour, you know, time from the time she announced, the time she got rid of. She said no, we don't know if her Wikipedia page had anything to do with it, cuz on the Wikipedia page it had all this information about how she was anti-vaccine, anti-mammogram, anti 5g.

Oh, I've been visited by a kitty cat.

Abhijit: Oh, hello?

Susan Gerbic: This is Hamilton.

Abhijit: Hamilton!

Susan Gerbic: Yeah.

Abhijit: Wow. Very historic.

Susan Gerbic: He said, hello. There's a window right here with a bird feeder, so that's why he's right there.

Abhijit: Oh, that's what he is, oh, I guess he's hungry.

Susan Gerbic: No he's always going to eat, yeah.

Abhijit: Time for some chicken! Anyway, you've done a lot of this and you've campaigned against psychics as well. Why have you made this such a massive mission in your life?

Susan Gerbic: You know, I get that question every once in a while. People think I must have been scammed by them, or, you know, was in the family. But I have, there was nothing, there was no reason I just found, you know, I found a person who was doing this. You know, it's much like those people who go into the graduate programs and they're interested in biology or whatever, but they don't really know what to do. And then they get a professor who's working on a project and they say, oh, that seems interesting. And then the professor just is like, here, try this. Maybe do this. And then you just, you fall into it. It wasn't an area that I was interested necessarily interested in. It's just that I ran into people who were doing this, and then of course I met Mark Edward, and then you're like, oh, you get pretty good at it and every time you start leaving it, you try to back away and do something else, you keep falling, getting pulled back in because somebody writes to you or a new psychic is doing this, or somebody challenges me and says, I am not a liar. And you're like, oh, really? Let me show you how you are. Or, you know, something else happens, somebody calls me or there's an interview. And so psychics just became my thing, and I got really good at it because you just do it for a long period of time. But yeah, psychics are, there was no reason I could have been Bigfoot or could have been UFO. I mean, it bothers me that people are preying on other people's grief. And it's downright lying, and it's manipulative, and I just can't stand it. It just makes me, you know, the hair on the back of my neck come up.

I can't deal with it the way that you know, you're grieving or your child's lost or you know, you're feeling like there's presence in your room with you and you're being manipulated, and it just is, it's cruel. But there was no reason I got into it. And I don't think the same about Mark. I don't think he got into it because he had a personal problem with psychics, but he's a mentalist and Mentalism uses a lot of the same methods that psychics use. A lot of the, you know, mentalism is a lot more sophisticated, but it's kind of in the same world. So that's, I think where he got to it.

Abhijit: So, how is mentalism different from being a psychic?

Susan Gerbic: Mentalism is something, it's a branch of magic. So a mentalist is hired to be a magician that focuses on that mentalism wing, you know, like that, like a wing of a magic would-be escape artist, you know, the person who does escapes. So it's all magic, but it's just a wing. That's kind of a focus. So when Mark does seances, which he does a wonderful scary Victorian seance, he's really good at that. It's all the artefacts, and he has the smells and the creaking sounds of boxes opening. And he's got this really patient way he approaches and says, "in this bell where I picked up this rose right outside the house of Houdini's wife, you know, and I picked it fresh, and here it is, and now the pedals are all dried up." It's magic, but it's a story, it's storytelling. So I think mentalism is a little more of a storytelling. And then when you're done, unlike with a psychic, there's no hook. You're not trying to get 'em to come back for another mentalism reading or something like that. So with a psychic, it's it's

Mark Edward: an advertisement.

Susan Gerbic: Yeah. So if you Google a Mentalist or you Google a psychic after you've had a really great event, the psychic's gonna be like, it's a psychic reading, and they don't say it was fake, a mentalist, you can see it says on their website for more bookings if you'd like to book me for your next party, you know, as a mentalist. So it's a disclaimer of sorts where it's, they're both kinds of like telling a story and trying to get you like, guided along. But yeah, it's a huge difference as far as ethics, there's no hook in the mentalism other than maybe, hey, the next time you're having a Halloween party book, and I will do a seance for you. Do you know? But a psychic is, not like that at all because

Abhijit: I used to watch that TV show called The Mentalist, where there's this mentalist who's helping out the police. Police. I'm sure there are plenty of aspects to that show that they've probably made up or exaggerated or something.

Susan Gerbic: Oh, I'm sure. I still haven't seen it. Mark and I have never seen it, but we've

Abhijit: really?

Susan Gerbic: People are always mentioning it yet.

Abhijit: Check it out. It's quite charming. Like after a couple of, after a couple of seasons, I was like the real stories in the first episode, in the last episode and in between like every case that, so it, I got bored of it after a point, but it was very interesting indeed.

Susan Gerbic: Yeah,

Abhijit: and I but there was, you know, there was, there is once, like most of these psychics though I do kind of understand the concepts of cold reading and hot reading, there's something that I really want to get into, which is a purely Indian thing. It is a primarily Indian thing called Nadi taadpatra,I think that's what it's called.

But this is something that I want to dig into because,

Susan Gerbic: okay,

Abhijit: first of all,

Susan Gerbic: I've never heard of it. What is it?

Abhijit: the process is essentially that these people you go to them and you give them, I think, just your birthdate and your time of birth, some very minimal information, and then they ask you to come back, or they go into a back room or something, and they tell you to come back in 15, 20 minutes.

And apparently, they have all these leaves, these notes written on leaves on these dried leaves, and they actually read off aspects of your life. So, people swear by it. In fact, there are a lot of psychics in India, and they have been working at it for an extremely long time. And it's not just psychics, but it's tarot readers, astrologers, and fortune tellers of every stripe. I've got like these shopping apps, which will give me a discount coupon for an astrology reading on some other app or something of that sort, or on a call like 50% off in your first call to astrology.com or something of that sort. And it's just it's so embedded, it's so ingrained in Indian culture that people do not even question it, which is

Susan Gerbic: interesting.

Abhijit: Which is kind of scary because it is such a, I mean it's, it is such a blatant con in so many aspects of it. So I really like you guys have actually inspired me. To try and kind of get into these and get involved and try and get a reading and, you know, actually, go there myself and see if I can get something done.

Susan Gerbic: What's not, what kind of things do they say? They don't say a specific name, right? It's just generic.

Abhijit: No it's just that like have you seen this Indian Matrimony or Indian, Indian Weddings or something? Something was, there was,

Susan Gerbic: yeah, I was telling you about that once. It was interesting.

It was like a matchmaker.

Abhijit: Yeah, exactly. Now the matchmaker keeps going to a fortune teller or some sort of astrologer, and she just shows him a picture of the bride, the prospective bride and the groom. And he just says random things like, "oh, he'll be very successful. There'll be a great match. Or no, they don't, they won't match. They'll have a lot of trouble within five years of their wedding", or something of that sort. And then she'll just go on and say, you know, like, I think, you know, my guy has said that you guys are gonna be a good match and I want to see how this goes on. And so she kind of takes all her guidance from him.

There are people who go to Numerologists and get their company names, and their own personal names changed because of the fate associated with the numbers that their names come out with. So you have to add an extra a or add an extra I or something of that sort. So there are so many different aspects of it, of these supernatural fortune telling kind of, practices that people just kind of get sucked into by the by and just saying, you know, let's see what happens. And they're not aware of the different aspects of the reading and how you forget all the misses and remember all the hits and how your confirmation bias and how you are feeding them information as the conversation goes on. And you can just take things for granted like somebody's told. Like even my parents, somebody apparently told my grandfather that he would die at a relatively young age in his sixties, which he did.

And, but is that something that, I mean, is that a hit that we remembered? But what else did they say? I've always been curious. We

Susan Gerbic: a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe he felt I was; he was going to die young. So he didn't take the health business.

Abhijit: No, he was quite a healthy guy on the whole. It's just that heart disease genetic in our family.

Susan Gerbic: Oh. So heart disease is the number one killer of males.

Abhijit: Yeah. And pretty much India

Susan Gerbic: and cancer's number two.

Abhijit: And India is probably on the top of the list in most of our neighbouring countries. We have a, seem to have a genetic predisposition to this sort of thing. So they're just playing the odds, I guess. But this is,

Susan Gerbic: and if you say he's going to die young, I mean, is that psychic going to be around 20 years later whenever. Mark would say he would make statements. Oh, in three months, or I see, in six months. Mark's not going to be around in six months.

Abhijit: Absolutely.

Susan Gerbic: You know, so it always sounds like, oh, you know, in six months, this is going to happen. But it's not like he's going to be talking to them again on that date. And also, it is a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you say you're going to have a wonderful match, you guys are great, maybe that means they're going to try a little bit harder.

Or if they say that they're going to have an awful match. You said they break up, and they don't even,

Mark Edward: Sylvia Brown used to do that all the time.

Susan Gerbic: Yeah. Sylvia Brown. The famous grief vampire is Sylvia Brown. She's to do that kind of stuff. But it's not a real prediction. Right. I mean, if you say, "I think that if you make this switch in your life, you're gonna be extremely successful."

And then the sitter says, "you know, I was thinking of changing jobs". And then the psychic says, "yes, that's what I'm talking about". See how I did that?

Abhijit: Yeah.

Susan Gerbic: I didn't say to switch your job. I said, you're thinking about a change, and it's going to be successful. So the person says, yes, I was thinking about changing jobs, and so they changed jobs, and it's a success.

You're not going to hear about it if it wasn't because they're not around. If it was a horrible thing to do and it was wrong to do,

Abhijit: yeah. Yeah.

Susan Gerbic: They're not returning to the psychic that they won't know, but they'll say this was a great decision. My astrologer said this is even a great decision, and they'll make it into it.

So a lot of it is the power of the mind that's making these decisions for you in helping you move forward. But the writing on the, you said they're writing on leaves?

Abhijit: Yeah, apparently, they're writing on leaves. So I'm very intrigued about this because if they've got a hack of,

Susan Gerbic: but what are they saying?

Mark Edward: Like (a fortune cookie)

Susan Gerbic: a fortune cookie, mark. Mark says it's like a fortune cookie. Is it like a fortune cookie? But it feels personalized.

Abhijit: It feels very personalized. So it could be just a book of Barnum statements, and I mean, who'd know the difference, but

Susan Gerbic: If you've paid money, okay, we all know this fallacy. If you have paid for something, you want it to be real. You don't want it to look like a fool that you just throwing good money at something. So you're much more likely always to try to find the good in it. Like if you buy a, I don't know, if you buy a some object and it falls apart after you've used it a couple of times, you might say, "yeah, I know it fell apart, but I got two good uses out of it, and I didn't pay that much for it."

So that was so it was a good buy. You know, you're trying to make yourself you're people do that. They rarely go, I bought this piece of junk, and I can't get my money back. Boy, was I stupid! You don't usually say that. It's usually you're trying to find the good out of it so that you can justify your purchase and not look like you made a bad decision

Abhijit: Indeed. But how do you think that we, say noobs in the psychic sceptic world, should go about maybe getting readings done? How do we tell, you know, pull the threads apart and see where it's at? How do we analyze the information? Basically, how do we get into this field that you've been working in?

Mark Edward: Read my book.

Susan Gerbic: Mark says, read my book, the audiobook. I think that, You know, it just kind of depends. This leaf reading thing,

Mark Edward: sorry, can I say something? He already knows the answers. You can spend your whole life chasing a dream.

Susan Gerbic: He says you could chase your dreams for all your whole life.

Mark Edward: He already knows.

Susan Gerbic: "You already know the answers", Mark says. So I think this is okay for the leaf reading thing, that's an interesting little side. I suspect that your birthday and your time at birth and all that is irrelevant to what is going on. It's just a way of making it feel like that's their hook, that's their your, you know, with their gimmick.

And I suspect that's just a ruse. But so I mean, if you wanted to take that aspect, you could say I could go to give, go to the same reader over and over and give different birthdays every time I go and see if the reading changes. But I have a feeling that what it is written on those leaves, it's just a Barnum statement. I have a feeling that's what it is. So I would get several readings and see and compare the leaves and see if they're just generic statements. Do, they give you the leaf, do they have a reading with you after, or is it they hand you the leaf and you walk out? Do they interpret it for

Abhijit: I think they just read it for you, and then you leave; you don't keep anything with you. I think they keep,

Susan Gerbic: you don't get to take the leaf with you.

Abhijit: No, they don't. You don't, I don't think.

Susan Gerbic: Why not?

Abhijit: Because I think they need it for other people as well.

Mark Edward: That's so much work. They're right on all.

Susan Gerbic: Wait a second. So they're writing on a,

Abhijit: This is, of course, my information, and I

Susan Gerbic: keep the leaves

Abhijit: inaccurate because this is like second or third. Somebody who had that done for them told me about this a few years ago. And I'm telling you, as far as I can remember, this is stuck in my mind because I'm intrigued now I want to go and check it out.

Susan Gerbic: I would have it done. That would be interesting because I'm thinking to myself, why does the leaf need to? If indeed you don't get to keep the leaf, why don't you get to keep the leaf and you give it to somebody else? What do they expect? The writing to evaporate, and then it's going to be somebody else's leaf is gonna have writing in it, or are they just handing the leaf to somebody else? I mean, is it freshly written on, or does it look like it's old?

Abhijit: I think they probably want to make it look like we've had this little bookie about you all our lives and it's been waiting to be read for you. Something of that sort. I think that is the kind of effect that I probably, that I remember from this.

It's getting a little vague, but I'm going to get into this.

Susan Gerbic: Oh, get it done. Get it done and write it up. And I would take maybe a pinhole camera or something so you could see if they're not letting you keep the stuff; I would be interested in how it works. But I suspect you're just giving a name and birthday.

I will give you my real name and birthday. I don't see why not. Or your real birthday and your real date of birth. I mean, the time of your birth. I would do it. Go in and get it done and then see what the reading says. If it's something

Abhijit: I will report back to you,

Susan Gerbic: like there is a, you know, and names. I can't imagine it being specific and saying some name. Yeah, things happen, but I think it's going to be generic like a fortune cookie.

Abhijit: Yeah. But they've mentioned details like, you will have one child at such and such at approximately such and such age, and you'll get married and this year and you'll get divorced. And

Susan Gerbic: are you sure

Abhijit: That's the kind of stuff

Susan Gerbic: I have a feeling that ain't happening.

Abhijit: But see I'm sure that things have been exaggerated and gaps have been filled in, so I just need to do this myself.

Mark Edward: Second person.

Susan Gerbic: Yeah. You're getting it secondhand to maybe third hand. I have a feeling that there is nothing specific about, you will have a if you're a woman, if you're gonna have a child, you will have it by a certain age. Right. We already know that within the next 10 years you're gonna have a . So I do believe that there are generic things that could be said that seem very specific. Like for example, Abhijit, I could say, I know you have a story within you that needs to be told and you've been hoping to get that story out and write it and get it out and you know you could do that, but just haven't been able to find it in you.

And my Zoltar has who I channel says, you need to get this story out.

Abhijit: Zoltar! He's the same guy who did it for Tom Hanks. I know this guy.

Susan Gerbic: It seems specific because it seems like only you know that like I've zeroed in on you. But it's just a statement. That's true it's just about everybody. Or

Abhijit: (you know the) freaky thing you,

Susan Gerbic: there's accident. This accident, it's gonna be, it's a white car and you really have to be wary of this white car. You're not gonna be paying great attention and it's going to be so close if you're not. And what kind of statement is that? How many. It's a near miss. And a white car. What does that mean?

Abhijit: My driver has a white car, which is parked in our house.

Susan Gerbic: Ooh. Ooh. And that might some danger. Maybe you're gonna spill hot coffee on yourself or something, you know. ,

Abhijit: maybe he'll spill hot coffee on me,

Susan Gerbic: or, yeah. Or you're gonna get your finger caught in the door.

Abhijit: You know what the key thing is? The really freaky thing is I was jamming with my band earlier this evening, and the drummer told me I really should write a book.

Susan Gerbic: And I just told you

Abhijit: you really are psychic.

Susan Gerbic: So did you see how you made that connection? If he hadn't told you to write a book? You would still be in your mind thinking about it going, you know, maybe I should.

Abhijit: Yeah

Susan Gerbic: a statement that's true of almost everybody. And when you make these statements, bold statements, as Mark said, as facts, then you're most likely to,

Mark Edward: if they only ask question,

Susan Gerbic: and if you didn't react or if you didn't, I just move on to something else. I just moved to something completely different, or I'm seeing this really interesting flower and it's got an unusual smell and it appears in a place which you are not used to. It's a, you just make statements and then that flower is in a place that you didn't expect. It could be anything. It could be a flower growing from the ground. It could be a flower on a you see someplace like cut in a vase, or it could be a flower tattoo, or it could be a flower and a drawing on a book alongside, I mean, , you make it into whatever you want. Because we're humans, we wanna relate to each other.

And so we're trying to find the social relatability that humans evolved because we make connections. We make connections when there's no connection. And like they say, the species evolved because we saw rustling in the bush and we thought it might be a tiger. And, you know, we made that connection. My birds on the bird feeder out here, there's a big piece of glass between me and them. But if I make a movement they're outta here. And if I if there was one bird that said she can't get me because there's a piece of glass right there. That bird has made the assumption. And the next time I have my window open and my cat's on this side, and they assume they're they're gonna be eaten.

Abhijit: Exactly.

Susan Gerbic: The ones who survive are the ones who see the pattern. They react to the pattern.

Abhijit: And another thing which I've been, I've kind of deduced I feel about humanity. One thing, of course is that everybody is a sucker for a confident person. And there are so many of these completely confident politicians, charlatans, conmen con artists of absolutely every stripe across the planet.

And the only reason why they have followers is because they speak confidently about their bullshit.

Susan Gerbic: Oh. And all human beings, person who's selling you shoes, person is selling you a car. Absolutely. There's confidence. Confidence people everywhere that will make you feel like you are special too.

We have people who will tell me, this is funny. So the psychic will come in and they'll read their Facebook page and they'll say, oh, I see this, and this. And then the psychic with confidence says, I'm getting somebody named Steve and something about, and it's just what they found on the Facebook page.

So if I come to the sitter and say later he just read your Facebook page back to you. They're like, "he read my Facebook page. He was on my Facebook page. That is so why would he read out of all the thousands of people he read my", they feel like, like they had a celebrity just look at their Facebook page like, that's how it works.

Abhijit: Exactly. And there is another reason which I've deduced, I like using that word, why people, get sucked into this and find comfort. In in these grief vampires as you so very well put it is that they want to have the world make sense and especially when it comes to a sense of loss or, you know, being in grief, that is a particularly susceptible time that they really feel that the world is as at its chaotic worst.

Susan Gerbic: Absolutely.

Abhijit: And they want something to make sense and they want something to happen where they can be comforted. And that's where these people come in and just take horrible advantage of them.

Susan Gerbic: Yeah. After a war, during the Covid, people are, they're, they want answers. They want easy answers.

Abhijit: Exactly.

Susan Gerbic: And it's much easier to think that grandma or your child is in a wonderful, beautiful place and isn't upset at you. It's much easier to think that than not to know or to just continue with the grieving process, which is painful. Heck, exactly. If somebody, if your partner leaves you for another person, right, that hurts like hell. But if you find out, if you think that person left you and now is really regretting it, that feels good.

Abhijit: Absolutely.

Susan Gerbic: You wanna know that you wanna hear something. It's much easier if you it's easier to get through that grieving process. If you have some feeling that, that there's life on the other side or that they're, you know, they don't, they forgive you for pulling the plug on 'em or forgive you for not taking 'em seriously when they've said that they were having a heart attack or you weren't there at the end to say goodbye. Oh, we hear that a lot too.

Abhijit: We have, we all have a lot of guilt associated with people we've lost.

Susan Gerbic: We're guilty. Yeah. Of course. We have that feeling. We're humans. We're not sociopaths or narcissists. That's how you can tell you're not. People sorrow in grief. Some of these, some of the grief vampires that I deal with, I think are definitely sociopaths or narcissists because I can't imagine when you're hot reading, when you're reading their Facebook page or they're, you know, you're cheating.

I mean, there's no nothing in your brain saying maybe I'm really psychic. No, you know, you are. And what they're doing, it's really awful. I know they're having a good laugh after they make you cry. And they hang up the phone or whatever. They're like, oh, that was great. I wonder if we can get her booked in a couple of weeks. And just, and we play this back and add a grandma to it. Oh, that's funny. I bet we can get more money out of her. They're laughing at you. You know, they're laughing at these people because they're, they don't see the sympathy, they don't feel like they're helping people. They're like, cool, let's make some more money out of it.

Abhijit: And it's so despicable.

Susan Gerbic: It's horrible. It just really ugly. And, but I know that's what's going on.

Abhijit: Absolutely. And with, I think most of them, that is definitely the case. But as I was talking with Rob and I was to some extent talking with with Janyce when I was talking,

Susan Gerbic: oh, I love Janyce Boynton. What a good interview you did with her.

Abhijit: Oh, thank you so much. She was fantastic. And I, it was such an enlightening conversation. And I did mention that at one point of time that there are like in the videos I've seen of James Randy, where he has actually gone to psychics and fortune tellers.

There are some of them who genuinely feel that they are being divinely gifted with this ability that they can genuinely see what is in you know, see into other people's lives and other people's futures or into their pasts or into people that they've lost. And they actually genuinely feel that they have that connection.

And just like, you know, Janyce genuinely felt that facilitated communication, did work for a short right, or a short period of time until it was exposed right in front of her and she came out of that. But there are still a lot of people and my own friends, and there you people, we meet these people at parties left, right and center where people say, oh, I can read palms.

And they're very confident in that and they think that it's down to a science that they will be able to read your palm and tell you your fortune or your future . And they genuinely believe that they have that ability, that they've picked it up, that they've got it from different people. They don't question themselves.

Susan Gerbic: Absolutely.

Abhijit: They most certainly don't question the, their ability or the practice in its in, on its own and some of them have gotten things which are uncannily right. I won't divulge anything at this point in time because some of that stuff is actually very personal to some members of my family, but I can probably find ways to be able to justify how they've managed to come to those beliefs how they've actually said these things, which are incredibly convincing and, but I don't I, you know, at times I find it a little difficult to really be able to understand it, but I think at some level I feel that it is possible to know such things. Like for example, if you if you had another, if you might have had another sibling who got lost as a child or who was given away, or if you know somebody, if your sister was actually adopted or something of that sort, those kinds of things are, don't usually happen.

They're not very frequent, but they're probably more frequent than one lets on.

Susan Gerbic: Yes.

Abhijit: Who knows where one can find this kind of information or this kind of just be inspired by this sort of thing. But so that's why I feel very motivated and I want anybody who's watching that, if you are interested in exposing psychics that you have heard of, that you've known of, let's share the details of how to get in touch with these people. Let's go and get genuine readings. Let's just go in with open minds. Not so open that your brains fall out, but just go in and really let's just record these events and then we can put our heads together and maybe even come up with something like the Great Australian prediction project.

Susan Gerbic: I, I agree. I would love to listen to anybody's recording or video or anything. I love analyzing, but you know what? Most people don't record 'em. And here's what's going on. Whenever somebody has a reading and then they get this, oh my gosh, he was so accurate. What happens is a lot of it is just manipulation of the, the moment and it's wordplay. We do this all the time. Whenever I, when I sit down with a recording, somebody's giving me and I transcribe it, that's always the best is to transcribe it, you can see exactly what happens and way they it's the way the psychic is usually speaking very fast, and they're playing with the words. So, for example, the reading I was just listening to yesterday, they said, there's a rose and then you pause and then the sitter's like filling it in. Okay. They're trying to find a person whose name is, oh, my sister's daughter's middle name is Rose.

Okay. There's your connection. But a rose could be anything. Yeah. Again, a tattoo, a flower in the garden. Somebody grew roses. Somebody's name is Rose, the cat's name is Rose, somebody's middle name. You're making that connection. It feels specific, but it's not. Or the psychic does a lot of this " who is Maria?" and then you say," that's my mother's name". And they say, "yes. That's what she's telling me". And then when you leave the reading, you say, he knew my mother's name was Maria.

Abhijit: Yeah.

Susan Gerbic: No, he didn't. He said, who is Maria? It could be a living person, a dead person, your next door neighbor, your cat, your middle name, any, it could be the name of the city you live on, the street you live on. There's so many connections. You made the connection and the psyche says Yes. That's what they're telling me with confidence. With confidence and you make the connection. And a hundred percent of the time they walk outta that reading saying they knew my mother's name was Maria. And it's because they don't have it recorded. or if they don't re-look at it, or they have such a mindset that they want it to be real, that they're not gonna listen to it again. They just say, I know what I heard. She said, my mother's name is Maria. Oh, it happens constantly. And so if you're gonna get a reading, you have to record it.

And if you're gonna record it, you need to be open and honest about how much feedback you're giving, because we're always smiling or nodding or looking like we're gonna cry. You know? We're giving feedback, crossing our arms, going, oh, rolling your eyes. You're always giving feedback. Plus they're looking at your body and everything, and they can do cold reading. I mean, anybody who's watching this video right now could cold read me, just from the environment around me. And I could do the same with you. Obviously you're interested in music and you know, and you sit in your chairs a lot. That's why you have these nice, comfortable chairs. I mean, look at the one behind you.

Yeah, there's these comfortable chairs with these good, solid, you know, construction on 'em. So you are a person who sits in chairs a lot, so you're probably behind yourself on computers all the time, except when you're playing the drums, you're very musically inclined. And I bet your family was musically inclined. And on and on. These are cold reading, you can tell I like cats. I have weird things behind me. I have two children. Look, there's a photo of two kids. Oh, these are all cold reading tactics. And for a person who, some of these people do believe that they really can read and do psychic stuff because they've gotten so much feedback and it's not hard.

If I was to say Abhijit, I'm, I think you spend a lot of time on computers and you're in front of screens a lot and there's this music angle in your life lot of music I'm hearing like drums. And you'd say absolutely right. You're a hundred percent right and you got the thing about the book,

Abhijit: all they gotta do is watch one of my videos

Susan Gerbic: after a hundred readings or five readings and everybody says how amazing I am. Also, we don't like to disappoint people. So course, if you're one-on-one with somebody and they tell you how amazing you are, they tell you how amazing you are because they want you they don't wanna say you were a pack of, you know what? Never a waste of my money. They're not gonna say that. They're gonna say, that was pretty good. Yeah. That's one of the best readings I've had this year. It's the only reading I've had this year, but boy, that was really good. We're humans. We don't wanna tell 'em the truth. We wanna tell 'em. Oh yeah. That was great. Boy. You told me stuff that was interesting.

Abhijit: Nice . Which uh, talking about your surroundings, who is that horrific looking woman, the bust of that person behind you over here at the other side.

Susan Gerbic: Are Are you seeing the imaginary one right here in the curtain? Or you seeing this one right here? Look who's this right here. That's James Randy. That's a James Randy doll. Have you seen these before?

Abhijit: No, I haven't. Oh, look, I can see it now. Oh. Oh,

Susan Gerbic: is James Randy, oh, let's put his glasses on, right? He's got handcuffs on. Oh, and behind him, he's. He's got a ace of spades right here. He's got a little ace of spades right in the back.

Abhijit: Oh, cute.

Susan Gerbic: And he has a a acupuncture pin.

Abhijit: Oh cool.

Susan Gerbic: These are great. There, there was a limited supply of these, but that's Naomi right there. So Naomi is just my friend. We hang out and we talk all the time. She's got a Scottish hat on, bonnet on.

Abhijit: She looks like she just told her a really horribly dirty joke like toilet humor. We're like, oh!

Susan Gerbic: Yeah. Seriously. So I get a lot of attention for her. She's great. We have the best conversation. She just does a lot of listening.

Abhijit: Oh, I'm sure she does. I'm she looks like a great listener. She's disgusted at story that you told her.

Susan Gerbic: Right. And then I've got Cat here, gargoyle back here over here. The cat was wondering why I'm is a gargoyle right here.

Abhijit: Oh, nice.

Susan Gerbic: It's a gargoyle somebody gave me.

Abhijit: Oh, very cool.

Susan Gerbic: And I always have plants and there's, I mean, if you're trying to hot, cold read somebody, it's, it, there's a lot you can get. And humans, even though you and I are on the completely different opposite sides of the continent right now we have a lot more in common than as humans than you would think. I'm, you know, a lot of the, a lot of the tropes would be the same for you as they would be for me, even though, you know, I'm female, you're male, we different ages, different countries, different, but we are probably a lot in common.

Abhijit: Yeah. I'm sure we do

Susan Gerbic: We both know have have a deep respect for James Randy.

Abhijit: Absolutely. We're both, skeptics,

Susan Gerbic: and for science and for knowledge. People fool themselves into thinking they're helping somebody. They're not helping them. If you've got somebody who's in grief, they need to get real help and contacting somebody saying they're contacting the dead is not really helping them and saying, and doing these readings for them, saying, oh you know, maybe you should make the change.

That change I see is coming is probably a good thing for you. How is that really helping? I mean, you might change them into, you might say, that man isn't good for you. The other this, I think he's still another one that's better to come. No, you could be throwing aside a really great person.

Abhijit: You could destroy relationships with that sort of thing.

Susan Gerbic: Yeah. And why

Abhijit: exactly?

Susan Gerbic: Why, what? Just for your power, your sense of power or money or prestige. People who are psychics feel special. They've been gifted, you know? Yeah. So why would you wanna throw that away? I wanna feel special.

Abhijit: Absolutely. But you know, I'm sorry. We are, we're running a little short on time now, but before we go I wanna get

Susan Gerbic: you good questions. This has been an interesting discussion, so

Abhijit: No, thank you so much for being on. Thank you, Mark. Thank you very much. Behind the scenes there. Sorry, what did you say?

Susan Gerbic: He said thank you.

Abhijit: Oh, it was totally my pleasure. Thank you both for coming on. And you know what, I'm going to we are going talk much more deeply about the next thing and I'll have you on for a total for an interview about that. And you know that alone, which is the Geurilla Skeptics.

Susan Gerbic: Oh yeah. Geurilla Skeptics on Wikipedia. Yeah, we can talk about that another time because the people who are gonna be listening to this about the psyche, so gonna be like wait. Now what? She does, what? I'll put on a different hat and everything. I'll change my flowers and get a different cat and we can

Abhijit: Sure thing. No wonder, you've got a lot of hats that you're wearing. That's for sure.

Susan Gerbic: I do have a lot of hats actually, I do. I love hats.

Abhijit: Yeah. So, but thank you so much, Susan. This is a, this has been an interview, a long time coming, and I am really glad I finally managed to get you and Mark on.

Susan Gerbic: I know.

Abhijit: Enlightening.

Susan Gerbic: I loved being here. It's so great.

Abhijit: And I hope the people watching you get to understand that there is harm to psychics. There is. When you say, what's the harm of getting my palm read, or what's the harm of doing a sort, you know, whatever, getting my tarot cards read or anything of that sort. You're actually promoting a practice that is seriously detrimental to people's mental health, to their wealth, to their time, to their critical thinking skills, to the decisions that they make in their everyday lives. It affects everything.

Susan Gerbic: Absolutely. It's not a good thing.

Abhijit: If you encounter somebody, please share it with me. Susan, where can they find you? Where can people get in touch with you?

Susan Gerbic: Easiest place to find me is on Facebook. I'm so, I'm on all the time. I send me a private message. I'm always looking at that.

I love that they contact me on Facebook. It's easy for me to manage, but you can get a hold of me at my email, which is susan gerbic at gmail.com or yahoo dot com. Still on Twitter for a while. We'll see how long that goes. But yeah, the best conversations are on on Facebook.

Facebook it's easy. It's easy to manage. I like the private messages, cuz then you can see the whole conversation's going far back on there. And Mark has probably you can get ahold of him on Facebook or you could find him on email, which is mark mind reader at gmail.com or he has a website called the Mark Edward,

Abhijit: the mark edward.com.

Susan Gerbic: And that's his website where you can see all his magic and mentalism. He's written many books on mentalism and seance theory and telling stories. He has a big collection of books he's written. You can find, you can also learn more about him by reading him his Wikipedia page. Mark Edward, no "S" on the end.

Abhijit: Wonderful. Thank you so much. I'm gonna put all those links in the description so that's

Susan Gerbic: Okay. Great.

Abhijit: Get access to them.

Susan Gerbic: It's great to see you and it's really great to see you. It's like I hope I'll be able to see you every year. Nice.

Abhijit: I dunno about every year. Probably. I probably have to start shacking up in a hut outside the casino like

Susan Gerbic: you have such a wonderful voice. You could do voiceovers.

Abhijit: Yeah, I bring it on. Let everybody, let anybody who needs voiceovers, I can put on a fake American accent. But thank you so much, Susan. thanks again for coming on. Thank you, Mark. I will definitely

Mark Edward: thank you.

Susan Gerbic: Have on for another interview very soon.

Abhijit: And thank you everybody for watching Rationable interviews once again and listening to it. Thank you, and bye-bye. If you want more information, I'm gonna be putting this up on the Rationable podcast, which you can find on all podcast platforms. You can come to be Rationable dot com, that's spelled exactly how you think it is, unless you're really bad at spelling.

And you can also check out the Rationable YouTube channel, which is just Rationable. So look me up if you prefer watching this in video. And then I'll put the transcript up as soon as I put in the podcast episode. So thank you all, subscribe, share, like, and I will see you guys next time. Catch you later.