Making a living of bullshit detecting

In 1987, a distinctive man looking like a suited Charles Darwin—or Santa—sat in The Tonight Show chair next to Johnny Carson to premiere a video clip. Usually such a setup is reserved for an actor on press tour, but paranormal investigator and world-famous magician James Randi, “The Amazing Randi,” was a guest promoting only truth. That is, the truth about TV faith healer Peter Popoff. The clip shown was of a typical Popoff stunt: God divinely tells him the name of an audience member, their ailment and their address, and Popoff palms their foreheads and they’re healed. But after the segment finished, Carson and Randi played it again with one small addition: an audio recording picked up in the church with a radio receiver by Randi’s informant. The evidence clearly showed that through Popoff’s unassuming earpiece, he was being read the information of sick people sitting before him. Read Article

By Omar Mouallem