Listener Reaction: Didn't See It Coming part 2
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01/24/26
•25m
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Patreon supporter Christine Harnos (not the Star Trek actress, the other one) joins Javier to break down Part 2 of the "Didn't See It Coming" series before listening to the finale.
They get into the weeds on Susan Gerbic's sting setup: the Facebook accounts she's been maintaining for years, the fake obituary, the hog farm detail. If a psychic mentions pigs, you know something's up. They also discuss the difference between hot reading and cold reading, why "scientifically tested" doesn't mean what mediums want you to think it means, and the troubling relationship between psychic mediums and grief support organizations like Helping Parents Heal.
Christine also shares a strange, unexplainable moment from her own life involving her daughter and a daycare power outage.
Want more? Susan Gerbic documented the entire Operation Banana Cream Pie sting on her YouTube channel "Psychics Explained"—20+ videos of behind-the-scenes footage. Link in the show notes.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcSfdioxwHQGkyFZ68maphdIJuYcb8xln
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Previous Episode
2502: Didn't See It Coming (Part 2)
January 20
•33m
In Part 1, we watched skeptic Susan Gerbic dissect a celebrity psychic's cold reading techniques. But cold reading is the little leagues of the psychic industry. In Part 2, Susan sets her sights on something harder to catch... a hot reader.
Hot reading is when a psychic does their homework, researching their clients before the reading even starts. So Susan devises an elaborate sting: fake Facebook accounts, fake obituaries, fake family members, and $1,400 worth of bait designed to catch a medium in the act.
Six skeptics go undercover as grieving siblings. They don't know each other. They don't know the backstory. And they have no idea what's about to happen.
This episode takes you inside "Operation Banana Cream Pie." Let's just say, the moment the medium logs onto the Zoom call, no one saw it coming.
ABOUT SUSAN GERBIC:
Susan Gerbic is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and founder of Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia, a group that has written over 2,000 Wikipedia articles on science and pseudoscience — viewed more than 200 million times. Her most famous investigation, "Operation Pizza Roll," was featured in The New York Times Magazine and exposed medium Thomas John's hot reading techniques. Susan runs the nonprofit About Time, which funds her ongoing psychic investigations.
Want more? Susan Gerbic documented the entire Operation Banana Cream Pie sting on her YouTube channel "Psychics Explained"—20+ videos of behind-the-scenes footage. Link in the show notes.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcSfdioxwHQGkyFZ68maphdIJuYcb8xln
LINKS & RESOURCES:
- Susan Gerbic's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PsychicsExplained
- About Time Project: https://www.abouttimeproject.org/
- NYT Magazine feature on Operation Pizza Roll: https://archive.ph/20190226135004/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/magazine/psychics-skeptics-facebook.html
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Next Episode
2503: Didn't See It Coming (Part 3)
January 27
•43m
The sting is set. The bait is in place. Six skeptics are logged into a Zoom call, pretending to be grieving siblings. They've paid $1,400 for a private reading with a medium Susan Gerbic believes is a hot reader. Months of planning have led to this moment.
And then... the medium does something no one expected.
In the finale of this three-part series, we find out what happened to Operation Banana Cream Pie. Then, Susan shares recordings from other readings she's analyzed, walking us through what she believes is evidence of hot reading in action. We break down the techniques, examine the receipts, and let you decide what it all means.
Watch the full videos of Operation Banana Cream Pie on Susan Gerbic's YouTube page:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcSfdioxwHQGkyFZ68maphdIJuYcb8xln
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