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By Root 424 0

biography come together into one enterprise of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Steve Gould was my hero, colleague, and eventually a friend, who was (and will continue to be, in my opinion) one of the most influential thinkers of our time. More than just a world-class paleontologist and world-renowned scientist, Steve was a brilliant synthesizer of data and theory—his own and others’—as well as one of the most elegant essayists of our time, perhaps of all time. Although well grounded in history, as we all should be, Gould’s ideas were always on the edge of science. The primary lesson of this book is particularly well expressed in one of Gould’s (and my own) favorite quotes from Charles Darwin: “How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!”

PART I SCIENCE

AND THE VIRTUES OF NOT KNOWING

1

Psychic for a Day

Or, How I Learned Tarot Cards, Palm Reading,

Astrology, and Mediumship in Twenty-four Hours

ON WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2003, I filmed a television show with Bill Nye in Seattle, Washington, for a new PBS science series entitled Eye on Nye. This series is an adult-oriented version of Bill’s wildly successful hundred-episode children’s series Bill Nye the Science Guy. This thirty-minute segment was on psychics and talking to the dead. Although I have analyzed the process and written about it extensively in Skeptic, Scientific American, and How We Believe, and on www.skeptic.com, I have had very little experience in actually doing psychic readings. Bill and I thought it would be a good test of the effectiveness of the technique and the receptivity of people to it to see how well I could do it armed with just a little knowledge.

Although the day of the taping was set weeks in advance, I did absolutely nothing to prepare until the day before. This made me especially nervous because psychic readings are a form of acting, and good acting takes talent and practice. And I made matters even harder on myself by convincing Bill and the producers that if we were going to do this we should use a number of different psychic modalities, including tarot cards, palm reading, astrology, and psychic mediumship, under the theory that these are all “props” used to stage a psychodrama called cold reading (reading someone “cold” without any prior knowledge). I am convinced more than ever that cheating (getting information ahead of time on subjects) is not a necessary part of a successful reading.

I read five different people, all women that the production staff had selected and about whom I was told absolutely nothing other than the date and time of their births (in order to prepare an astrological chart). I had no contact with any of the subjects until they sat down in front of me for the taping, and there was no conversation between us until the cameras were rolling. The setting was a soundstage at KCTS, the PBS affiliate station in Seattle. Since soundstages can have a rather cold feel to them, and because the setup for a successful psychic reading is vital to generating receptivity in subjects, I instructed the production staff to set up two comfortable chairs with a small table between them, with a lace cloth covering the table and candles on and around the table, all sitting on a beautiful Persian rug. Soft colored lighting and incense provided a “spiritual” backdrop.

The Partial Facts of Cold Reading

My primary source for all of the readings was Ian Rowland’s insightful and encyclopedic The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading (now in a third edition available at www.ian-rowland.com). There is much more to the cold reading process than I previously understood before undertaking to read this book carefully with an eye on performing rather than just analyzing. (Please keep in mind that what I’m describing here is only a small sampling from this comprehensive compendium by a professional cold reader who is arguably one of the best in the world.)

Rowland stresses the importance of the prereading setup to prime the subject into being sympathetic