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Midnight Facts for Insomniacs

Podcast Transcript

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Mentalists, Magicians, Scammers and Frauds

Renowned Mentalist, , international , and giant scumbag was born in Tel Aviv in 1946, two years before Israel was even Israel. After a brief stint in the army and a briefer stint as a model, somehow...no comment...he quickly became a two-bit illusionist who specialized in psychically bending spoons. The only difference between Geller and a standard street- magician was that Geller claimed that he was an actual wizard whose powers were derived from alien artificial intelligence, and he became very skilled at identifying and taking advantage of gullible idiots, which apparently is like 90% of the world. By the 1980s he was a multi millionaire and was being employed by corporations for his supposed abilities, basically acting as human metal detector. A dowser walks around feeling feelings, playing a game of cold-warmer-hot with the spirits, to tell companies where to dig. And the great thing is that if they don’t find anything you already got paid, and if they do, cool. That means they’ll pay you to do it again. Suckers gonna sucker. Plus the nice thing is that you only dowse on locations where experts suspect there’s a good chance you’ll find what you’re looking for, sooo...pretty sweet racket. Walking around in a field and pretending to feel feelings for millions of dollars, and getting paid even if you fail: Nice work if you can get it. This is around the time he starts claiming that his powers are alien gifts. From an article you’ll find in our show notes. “All these phenomena are said to be products of the advanced civilization of the extragalactic planet, Hoova, whose inhabitants are 1 of the 4 types of beings that are in 2-way communication with Geller.” So it’s a full on dialogue, they’re swapping intergalactic recipes or whatever. According to his autobiography, Geller was three years old when he heard kittens mewling in the back yard. He went out to investigate, like any normal independent three year old, and a blinding light appeared above him. “It was like a beam or ray of light. It really hit my forehead and knocked me back into the grass.” When you throw in the word “really”, you’re trying too hard. In later years, under supposed hypnotism, Geller recalled further details, revealing that the light was emitting from a faceless figure. However, he has alternately claimed that he actually has alien origins, having been transported to earth via spacecraft. Pick a lie, dude.

Geller was so convincing, or alternately you could say people are so stupid, that he duped some researchers at Stanford university into publishing a paper that basically said they couldn’t explain his mine boggling powers, even though literally any street-magician could have explained his mind- boggling powers if they had asked, and later the cia studied Geller as part of “operation stargate,” a government program with the goal of weaponizing psychic powers. We are all familiar with this operation from a previous episode as well as “The men who stare at goats.” Geller would later claim that the conclusion of the government researchers was “Geller demonstrated his perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner.” The United States government, ladies and gentlemen! Your tax dollars at work. Geller also claimed that he worked extensively as a psychic spy for both the United States and Israeli governments. Btw, government, If you’re going to spy on me, please do it psychically. Don’t like crouch in my backyard or whatever, just think about me really hard and we’ll call it even. I won’t even be mad atcha.

Geller’s success and outlandish claims drew scrutiny. Prominent magicians and illusionists were quick to point out that all of Geller’s supposed magical abilities were simple parlor tricks that could be re-created by any amateur magician. In particular, James Randi, who performed as The aAmazing Randi, and was famous for exposing frauds, was particularly offended by Geller. Because the thing is, most musicians don’t claim to be performing actual . They might play up the theatricality, pretending to be magical during a performance, but in their normal lives they will readily admit that they are illusionists and entertainers. Now Geller wasn’t completely unique in insisting that he was an actual wizard, but he was the only prominent self- anointed wizard that people actually seemed to believe. Plenty of people claim to be wizards, but usually only during visiting hours, and then it’s like hey, it’s medication time, lights off in the padded rooms. Geller has admitted that his powers CAN be duplicated through illusion, but claims he’s the real deal. “Sure, there are magicians who can duplicate [my performances] through trickery." End of quote. This is how much people wanted to believe in this guy; he admits that there’s no way to prove that he’s not faking it, and that the most logical conclusion is that he’s faking it because any faker can do what he’s doing, and everyone is like, “All signs point to magic. I mean sure, the obvious explanation is ONE way to look at it, but is there a an explanation that involves aliens? Let’s explore other options. Because magic is fun and con artists are less fun.”

So James Randi famously published a bunch of exposès, and went on talk shows revealing the simple illusions behind Geller’s supposed magic. Most notably, James Randi was the architect of Geller’s most embarrassing public humiliation. Geller was scheduled to go on the Tonight Show with , but Johnny was a well known skeptic. Carson and his staff contacted James Randi ahead of time and asked how they should approach the interview. Randi advised them to switch out all of the props Geller brought with him—spoons and metal containers— with store bought ones. One of Gellers famous tricks was to examine a tray of metal containers, and identify which ones were empty and which had water in them. He did this by shaking the tray a bit, and the empty canisters would shift while the full canisters would stay solidly in place. So Randi had advised the Tonight Show producers to put some felt or something sticky on the bottom of the canisters so that they wouldn’t move, thwarting the trickery. Unable to cheat, Geller obviously couldn’t psychically determine which canisters contained water. You can watch this on YouTube, it’s truly epic. Cringeworthy and amazing. Geller just sits there miserably, he starts complaining that he’s being pressured, and Johnny feigns boredom and kind of like yawns and looks questioningly at the camera, he’s like “hey, take your time,” kind of rolling his eyes, they cut to a commercial break and come back and Geller says he feels weak, not strong enough on this particular day. It was a legendary humiliation, but it did absolutely nothing to rid the world of uUri Geller. If anything he was more in demand after the Tonight Show appearance. Paradoxically, Geller often benefited from his failures. People would think, if this were a trick or illusion, it would work every time. You’re not going to go see the Vegas tiger guys— what are their names— seigfried and Roy weren’t gonna be like, sorry auditorium full of paying audience members. Our powers aren’t at full strength today. It’s a full moon, my rising sign is in Aquarius. Line up for refunds. Maybe that’s what happened to Roy. Or Siegfried? His tiger taming powers were weak that day. I never understood that...what was the connection with tigers and magic? I guess it’s all about the misdirect. Few things are more distracting than an apex predator. Keep your eye on the ace of spades, don’t pay any attention to Mufasa as he humps your leg. James Randi continued his campaign to expose Uri Geller, even writing a full- length book that explained many of Geller’s illusions. Geller eventually sued James Randi for 15 million. I didn’t realize you could sue someone for calling bullshit on your bullshit. I’m just going to go around making ludicrous claims and suing anyone who calls me out. I’m like I have a twenty inch penis and you’re like that seems unlikely, and I’m like lawyer up. how dare you sir. My word is bond. And my penis is disappointing. (Only if you think it’s 20 inches, I want to clarify my penis is not disappointing unless you’re expecting 20 inches.) The rivalry between James Randi and Yuri Geller has never really ended. When he was diagnosed with cancer in 2009, James Randi said “I want to be cremated, and I want my ashes blown in Uri Geller’s eyes.” But then he didn’t die, he recovered, he’s still alive, which is great because I’m a big janes randi fan and also because there’s still time. He can still blind Geller with his ashes. Hope is not lost, maybe someone will pull a make-a-wish for the Amazing Randi and fulfill his final request. It would be disrespectful not to.

Geller has made numerous attempts to maintain relevance in the 2000s. In 2002 he starred in a horror film called Sanitarium. The movie has no audience reviews and only one critic review on , from film critic, com, which reads: “When the audio cut out about 10 minutes before the end of the movie, I didn't know if that was the movie being stylish or if there was a problem with the DVD. Then I realized I didn't even care.”

Other notable Geller shenanigans: back in 1992, he offered to help the police locate a missing model from Hungaria named helga farkas. He consulted with the aliens or spirits or whatever, and conclusively determined that the girl was alive, and predicted she would be returned safely to her waiting family. She was never found and is presumed deceased. Geller appeared on a British reality show In 2002 called “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!” Which...are ya though? But anyway, yeah, I’m a dubious celebrity, get me out of here! And out of there he got. He was first to be eliminated from the show. There were more comeback attempts, all similarly desperate and sad. Most notably, in November 2007 he attempted to make headlines yet again by admitting that he was an illusionist and entertainer rather than a Wizard. He later retracted the admission, and he’s back to wizarding. In fact, last March, 2019, Geller warned British Prime Minister Theresa May that he would psychically prevent her from allowing the country to leave the European Union. “As much as I admire you, I will stop you telepathically from doing this – and believe me I am capable of executing it.” The UK left the European Union in January of this year. So his streak of consecutive failures remains unblemished by success.

Speaking of frauds that were exposed by James Randi, let’s talk about the televangelist . You heard that right: a televangelist named Peter pop off. Sometimes the jokes write themselves. My thanks to the universe for giving us a preacher with the best porn name ever conceived.

Popoff’s family emigrated to the US in the 1950s when Peter was a child and his father began preaching across the country, eventually adding Peter to his stage show when Peter was 14. He preached under the name “the boy evangelist.” Super healthy upbringing...all the notoriety and attention of a child celebrity with all the guilt and repression of a Christian zealot. Who could have anticipated how this would turn out. Even at this early age he was already getting into the game, claiming he had the power to see into the future and heal the sick. He married in 1970 and settled in , where he founded his ministry and began broadcasting sermons. Saving souls through the healing power of daytime television. His big hook, his claim to fame, was convincing sick people to not be sick anymore by telling them they weren’t sick. He would place his hands on a person with a terminal illness and yell, “demon begone,” and cast out all the cooties or evil spirits. And then real people with genuine terminal diseases like cancer would toss their medications on the stage and believe that they were cured. And because of the way that time and physiology works, they wouldn’t actually drop dead until they got safely home, out of sight of the television audience. He had a couple techniques for putting on a convincing show: he bought a bunch of wheelchairs and his ushers would find sick people in the audience who were ill but perfectly capable of walking, and seat them in wheelchairs. Then at some point they would be wheeled on to the stage, and popoff would command them “rise, and walk,” and to the surprise and delight of everyone except the person in the wheelchair, this totally ambulatory person would follow instructions. Probably bemused but delighted at the attention. How cool is it to get a standing ovation just for walking across a stage? As a comedian, that’s my dream. To not have to say a damn thing, just get all that attention and love just for showing up. Popoff came up with some very creative fundraising techniques. In one notorious pledge drive, he asked for donations so that he could send Bibles to Russia by attaching them to balloons and floating them over the border. He raised over $85,000, and when journalist challenged him to provide receipts or any evidence that he had actually followed through with the plan, he actually staged a break in at his office and claimed that all the money was stolen. He then went back on the airwaves and used his fake break-in sob story to raise even more money. Not even a meth head would attempt a scam this brazen. “Remember that money you sent me? I don’t have it anymore, I don’t know where it went, please send money.” Popoff’s televangelical operation grew big enough to draw the attention of James Randi, and we know how that turns out for scammers. This one was pretty epic. Another of Popoff’s signature moves was pretending to be able to telepathically retrieve phone numbers and addresses of audience members. Of course, these audience members had filled out information cards when they arrived at the venue. James Randi and his team used a radio scanner to isolate the frequency of the signal that popoff‘s wife, Elizabeth, was using to relay that information directly to popoff’s concealed earpiece.

Randi went back to the tonight show, and this time the unmasking was more successful. It turned out there was actually quite a bit more damning information than just the fact of the earpiece. Elizabeth was recorded referring to one of the ailing female audience members as “that n-word in the back,” and even mocking an audience member who was suffering from testicular cancer. The year after Randi exposed him on the Carson show, Popoff declared bankruptcy. And the following year, he was back at it, this time targeting African- American audiences On the black entertainment television network. Apparently African Americans didn’t watch the Johnny Carson show. Can’t blame them. Popoff never really went away, he just reinvented himself over and over again. in 2006 he affiliated with himself with a tiny church in a tiny town in Texas, which gave him tax exempt status. Journalists attempting to visit the church found an empty lot. But Because he is now exempt from having to report his income to the IRS, we don’t know his exact worth, but he drives a Mercedes and a Porsche and his last reported income, back in 2005 was over $23 million. In 2009 he began offering to ship people “holy water“ from Chernobyl, apparently from a blessed spring that had protected animals from radiation sickness. If I’m going to sign up to have a stranger send me water, it’s definitely going to be from the site of a nuclear catastrophe. Seems safe. Also, if it’s real, thanks a lot god, for choosing to bestow your blessings on a body of water where no one lives. You couldn’t have blessed like a municipal water supply? I could use some holiness in my tap water along with that fluoride. Save my teeth and my soul. Literally any other source of water would’ve been better, how about a drinking fountain in an elementary school? Bless a puddle as long as it’s not in the middle of an irradiated wasteland. A researcher from the Trinity foundation, A watchdog group for preachers and televangelist, was quoted as saying that some of these preachers actually believe their own hype, but that popoff was “fundamentally evil, because he KNOWS he’s a Con Man.“

This is like the Darwin awards for losing your money. In 2014, Londoner Juliet D’Souza was convicted of 23 counts of fraud and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Like popoff she had targeted the sick and vulnerable, but instead of Christianity her angle was ; she claimed she was connected to a prominent shaman named Pa in the South American country of Suriname. Between 1998 and 2010 She preyed on the elderly and ill by promising to cure cancers, heal their sick children, and help infertile women conceive. One woman in particular gave her more than 176,000 pounds to help knock her up. She did eventually get pregnant, at which point D’Souza convinced her to terminate the pregnancy because she claimed she could sense that the baby was destined to be deformed and ill. She took 42,000 from the mother of a boy with Down’s syndrome, etc., it just gets worse.

You might wonder how D’Souza explained this shamanic process, it had to be compelling enough to convince people to send her thousands of pounds. So here’s how it worked: she claimed that the money they provided would be sent to the shaman Pa in the rainforests of Suriname, where it would be hung on a “special sacred tree,” and ritually infused with healing powers. These were referred to as “sacrifices,” though she told some people that the money would be returned. If I tell you to send me money as a “sacrifice,” you’re not getting it back. Because that’s how the word sacrifice works. This is so bonkers...I don’t want to victim-blame but only privileged white idiots could believe that there are shamans in the Amazon rainforest just sitting around waiting to receive shipments of money from random white people so that they can perform a bunch of manual labor, hang it all from trees, and then perform rituals, and send it back. Like their time and comfort isn’t important, they exist to heal wealthy londoners. I understand people are desperate when they’re sick but dang, that’s honestly infuriating. She was able to find victims via her connections at the Royal Free Hospital and the Branch Hill elderly care home where some of the employees were referring patients to her, presumably they were being compensated though I only found one account of a hospital employee who had been disciplined. But maybe if a hospital worker refers you to a British witch doctor with connections to a South American money tree, ask for a second opinion. D’souza typically started out by charging only 35 pounds for a consultation but then escalated to demanding large sums of money and often incorporated threats if her clients didn’t comply. She told one of her victims that he would die on the operating table unless he gave her 10,000 pounds; another was told that if she didn’t pay 18,000 pounds her partner would die. D’Souza also claimed to have been friends with princess Diana and Simon Cowell, and insisted that she had cured John Cleese’s daughter of cancer. I believe the Simon Cowell thing. He seems awful. He’d hang money on a tree.

It all unraveled in 2007 when suspicions arose as a result of D’Souza’s mistakes. She claimed to have graduated from a college she didn’t attend and got the name of her good friend princess Diana’s sister wrong. At De Sousa‘s sentencing, Judge Ian Karsten said: “It is the worst confidence fraud I have ever had to deal with or indeed that I have ever heard of”. Some of her wealthier or more prominent victims were too embarrassed to come forward, including one who was reportedly fleeced for over 600,000 pounds. So she probably would have gotten much more jail time if rich people didn’t tend to be conceited, proud, vain, selfish idiots.

Miss Cleo If you were alive and of late-night tv-viewing age in the late 90s and early 2000s, hearing the name miss Cleo will probably annoy the shit out of you. Who could forget that of a thick Jamaican accent, the turban wrapped around her head, tarot cards spread in front of her— miss Cleo was an inescapable advertisement-slash- promising the wisdom of a Caribbean shaman versed in the art of future-prediction and mind reading...via telephone landlines. Landlines are apparently very conductive of brain waves—you can’t telepathically predict someone’s future over a cell phone, that’s just crazy. You need the physical cables, and it really helps if you have a rotary phone, that extra physical contact assists the transmission. And results in strong fingers, those things were brutal. We’re raising a whole generation of weak- fingered kids. Things were so much better back in the day. A landline could transmit brain waves; 5G just transmits Covid. You’ll be shocked to learn that Miss Cleo was not in fact a Jamaican psychic, she just played one on TV. She was instead a failed American actress from named Youree Dell Harris. She was also a failed playwright, having written and produced a few unsuccessful plays that she performed in the Washington area, portraying the Jamaican character of Cleo, which obviously she would utilize for her subsequent telephone scam. In 1995 she informed the crew of her theater company that she was suffering from bone cancer, and made her way to , ditching out on her debts and leaving much of the crew unpaid. In Florida, she responded to an ad for telephone operators. Seems like she was feeling much better in Florida, apparently bone cancer is healed by sunshine and beaches and methamphetamine. She quickly taped her first advertisement for the psychic readers network, started answering phones, and was off to the races. In the beginning she was just a lowly entry-level telephone psychic, earning around a quarter per minute when she received a call. That’s a pretty rough profit-sharing model, considering callers were paying $4.99 per minute and often spending $300 or more per call. The psychic readers network pressured operators to keep callers on the line for at least 15 minutes. And say what you want about Miss Cleo, she was good at what she did. The Jamaican community hated her, she was the worst stereotype, but she had this undeniable charisma and a sassy tough-love approach, that whole “girl you deserve better you know he’s cheating on you” shtick, and btw that was apparently what most people wanted to hear… many of the callers were looking for evidence of infidelity. Which is sad. You’re not in a good place mentally when you’re paying five bucks a minute to call a stranger on the phone and be like listen, I need you to ask a bunch of plastic cards if my husband is banging his secretary. “Read me the wisdom of the mystical plastic squares.” I love that callers even believed that the people on the other end of the line were actually using tarot cards. If there were any cards involved they were digital, these people were fully playing solitaire on their crappy windows 95 computers, or whatever people did before they had cell phones to mess with...doodling on yellow pads, I don’t even remember those days, it was barbaric. I try not to think that far back. life before 2005 was an archaic nightmare of modems and slowly loading jpegs. Although the whole industry was clearly a scam, it wasn’t paranormal claims that got the psychic readers network in trouble. They were eventually accused of deceptive advertising: if you remember the details of the , they often featured a toll-free 800 number, but of course anyone who called would be forwarded to the aforementioned five dollar per minute 900 number. Also, they always advertised “1st three minutes free,” which was 100% true. Because callers spent their first three minutes on hold. The hotline reportedly earned north of $1 billion, but callers often disputed the charges and eventually the FCC got involved, fining the company 5 million. On profit of $1 billion. Cool. As a lowly and low-paid contractor, Harris was never charged in the scheme, and while her career initially took a hit, she was later able to capitalize on her fame as well as nostalgia. Her voice appears in Grandtheft auto, she charged exorbitant sums for private readings and began using the Miss Cleo voice in various advertisements. When the psychic readers network got wind of Harris making money from the Miss Cleo persona, they promptly sued her, claiming that they owned the rights to “the character“ of Miss Cleo. Seems like at that point you’re making it pretty clear that these are just frauds, but whatever. They actually were never charged with defrauding the public based on the psychic claims, because they always included disclaimers informing callers that the tarot readings were just entertainment, etc. In very small print, and of course no one actually spends five dollars a minute to be entertained unless there’s an orgasm involved. Harris died in 2016 at the age of 53 before any lawsuits were resolved. Hopefully she was able to get some use out of that Miss Cleo money. Sources: https://www.google.com/ amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/ news/2681284/uri-geller- psychic-ufo-alien-visit/ amp/ https://psycnet.apa.org/ record/1974-26580-001 https:// www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/ crime-court/how-many- more-lives-did-juliette-d- souza-ruin-conwoman-s- royal-free-and-camden- council-links- revealed-1-3628986

https://www.google.com/ amp/s/news.sky.com/story/ amp/fake-shaman-juliette- dsouza-gets-10- years-10403049 https:// www.mentalfloss.com/ article/570867/miss-cleo- psychic-empire