Skeptics think, well, if i can't figure it out, then it has to be genuine magic. Theyre kind of an ego thing. Why? I don't know if it makes it easier to fool them, but it does make them subject to locking themselves from being tebunked. And part of the spiritualist stories, the scientists being taken in by spiritualism because they don't go to magicians. It looks like a real mind reading at the very least - it could be folded up in somebody's shoe or something like that. But when he pitched this as top of the heap and said ‘I’m a sceptic of hypnotism'
The most fundamental lesson that all magicians learn is that seeing is not believing. In episode 195, Michael speaks with internationally acclaimed sleight-of-hand artist and 35-year activist for scientific skepticism, Jamy Ian Swiss, about his lively, personal book, The Conjuror’s Conundrum, that takes readers on a magical mystery tour of the longstanding connection between magic and skepticism. Shermer and Swiss discuss: Swiss’s first encounter with fraud, the paranormal and supernatural, magic and mentalism, hot/cold/universal readings, pychics, talking to the dead, James van Praagh, belief, the afterlife, “the amazing” Kreskin, the Alpha Project, and more…