
Show Notes
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
More from PRETEND
A 19-year-old says members of his church held him down, choked him, and beat him for two hours, trying to cast out what they called his “homosexual demons.” That was in 2013. Thirteen years, a mistrial, and countless delays later, the minister accused of leading it is finally back in court.
When Gypsy Rose Blanchard was a little girl, the thing that comforted her most was her mother's touch. In the final episode of The Gypsy Rose Obsession, I ask Gypsy when that changed. I also track down the attorney who drew up a power of attorney for Gypsy in 2013, and she tells me Dee Dee came into her office claiming her 22-year-old daughter was mentally disabled and asking for guardianship.
This week I'm handing the feed over to Andrea Dunlop and her show, Nobody Should Believe Me. Andrea has spent years covering medical child abuse, and she came to the subject through her own family.
When Gypsy Rose Blanchard announced she was pregnant, the internet opened an investigation. The woman who spent her childhood trapped inside her mother's medical lies was now raising a daughter of her own.
How does a doctor actually decide that a parent is making their child sick? Dr. John Melville is a child abuse pediatrician, president of the Ray E. Helfer Society, and one of the people who helped write the board exam that certifies child abuse pediatricians.