62. Séances, Skeptics, and ... Spirit Trumpets (with Leslie Kean)!

Excellent episode! Thanks for setting the record straight by having Leslie Kean on. She's a top journalist I've long appreciated.

This was a real tough one to get my brain to understand but so enjoyable to listen to this journalist and the really bright Steve and of course You Paul 😂😂😂…. Love you guys

I’ve had the perception-altering experience of witnessing Stewart’s “physical mediumship,” as it’s called, multiple times. It’s so very difficult to properly grapple with a topic so outside of our “typical” understanding of reality, and especially in an hour-long podcast format (as wonderful as this one is!). Some pretty bright folks have studied this quite thoroughly for more than a century. Nobel Prize winners, even. And many have come to the conclusion, often after years of rigorous study and experimentation, that something science cannot yet explain is sometimes occurring. I consider myself to be open-minded but quite skeptical by nature , and requiring of evidence before I’ll accept something as true. And my experiences with Stewart have convinced me that SOMETHING “paranormal” is going on. Once you’ve seen a human hand form out of ectoplasm while a mere five inches from your face (literally 5 inches), it doesn’t much matter how many “mediums” Houdini exposed.

Happy birthday Paul!

Happy Birthday Paul 🎉🎉🎉

Wagon On 💞

Wow. Turkish prisoner story was great.

Paul talked about his suspicion that mental mediums can engage in, "an extraordinary level of observation of human behavior," and they're, "able to read signals about people." That's why experiments have been done where, for the first part of the reading, the medium can't see or hear the person sitting for the reading. They know nothing about them. So, it's possible for the medium to "read" them in any manner. And the information is still accurate. Is the medium talking with the dead? Impossible to prove that.

I think my uncle’s house is haunted because this one time when I stayed over one night I woke up with ectoplasm all over my face.

Honestly, this episode creeped me out 🙀

Maybe the guy she is talking about would be a guest on your show.

I experience ectoplasm every time I eat Thai food, but only with menu items listed as 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️. As a result, obviously I limit myself to take out. You’re both invited over to experience it but only if you pay the DoorDash guy.

Spirit trumpets? Table tipping? Hoo-boy...this is the corniest stuff in the book. The most telling moment for me was a throwaway comment she made about the obvious validity of psychic spoon bending -- a hoary old sleight-of-hand trick that any reasonably competent magician can do. And if spirits of the dead could communicate with us, why would they do it in the form of inane parlor tricks? I can't explain all the phenomena she described, but I'm all but certain that Houdini or James Randi or any other expert in the psychology of deception would be able to.

C'mon Paul... not all actors are Oscar level actors... doesn't make those lesser talented actors fakes...

Impressive that I don't even need to see Paul to notice his intense skepticism and borderline disdain when Leslie speaks. Voice actor extraordinaire! Fantastic episode.

Just listened. She contradicted herself several times. There is no way it’s real. No. Way.

Happy birthday Paul!