James Randi examines James Van Praagh in 1998

Questioninggeller

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A brief excerpt that is pretty good:

SHOW: CBS THIS MORNING (7:00 AM ET)
DATE: May 01, 1998, Friday
TYPE: Profile
LENGTH: 1356 words
HEADLINE: SPIRITUAL MEDIUM JAMES VAN PRAAGH
ANCHORS: JANE ROBELOT
REPORTERS: JOSE DIAZ-BALART
...
DIAZ-BALART: James Randi, formerly known as the Amazing Randi, has traveled around the world since retiring from magic, attacking everyone from psychic spoon benders to faith healers. He analyzed a tape of a reading Van Praagh did for the CBS News program "48 Hours" and also thinks Van Praagh operates on a combination of guesswork and generalities.

Mr. VAN PRAAGH: Yes. He's talking about jewelry here.

Mr. JAMES RANDI (Magician/Author): I mean, jewelry, for example. He always comes up with jewelry. When people die, they leave jewelry behind. You don't throw it away; you don't bury it with them. 'It's in a drawer now, isn't it?' 'Yes. How did you know that?' It seems astonishing if you aren't being critical when you look at the thing.

Mr. VAN PRAAGH: Who's Jack?

Unidentified Woman #3: Jack, my husband.

Mr. RANDI: In a 60-minute reading, he gave her 26 names, one of which was the name of the husband. Wow. We finally hit it. He asked 260 questions in a 60-minute period. That brings it to about one every 14 seconds. And he gets no on about two-thirds of the answers.

DIAZ-BALART: Randi says with more and more exposure, the repetition of any medium's techniques, including Van Praagh's, will expose the guesswork.

Mr. RANDI: The interesting thing is, they never come through with anything like a winning lottery number or where you can really find the buried gold in the basement. He's at the top of the list right now. Give him two or three months, and he can retire to the Riviera with his royalties. And I'm sure he'll look back laughing at all the suckers who fell for it.
...
Click to expand...
 
That reminds me of this clip, about 4:25 in.

And the satisfied customer is still convinced that it was a good reading...
 
I have a DVD set of Randi speaking to the Skeptics Society back around that time. He has some video clips of van Praagh, each of them a montage of JvP giving one of his stock questions (like the "jewelry" one) over and over to various people.
 
RSLancastr said:
I have a DVD set of Randi speaking to the Skeptics Society back around that time. He has some video clips of van Praagh, each of them a montage of JvP giving one of his stock questions (like the "jewelry" one) over and over to various people.
Click to expand...

Can you post it?
 
I don't think the Skeptic Society would appreciate it, as they sell the DVDs.

Randi might be willing to have the clips themselves posted, if you ask him (and if he knows where they are by now).
 
I didn't mean the whole DVD or even the whole lecture, but rather a short clip applicable to fair use. Nonetheless, I got the answer.
 
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