Because his original profession was magic, Johnny Carson busted a well-known wrangler on national television. This made "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" memorable in the annals of mystic busting.
Now, the much-loved illusionists, Penn and Teller, have arrived on the scene, with hilarious ways to trick holistic mystics. Doubling us over with laughter, they display portraits of holistic mystics that make us lose it.
In a long line of cock-and-bull is psychic surgery. These "surgeons" plunge their hands into people, and slosh them around. Suddenly, out come innards. One wipe and bingo we are "cured! We look down and our abdomen is clean and free from scars. To the unwary, the operations appear authentic.
To observe the phenomenon of psychic surgery, a famous doctor went to the Philippines. He came back and said, "Oh my! How did they do it?" Amidst all of the blood and guts, the doctor simply saw what he expected.
When a trained, gastro-intestinal surgeon enters the abdominal cavity, one of the first things seen at the deep layers of the body is a lining tissue. This lining tissue gives the impression of plastic wrap. So, in the case of "psychic surgery, to make the procedure appear real, psychic surgeons have been known to stretch plastic wrap over the "surgical" site. While a magician would have spotted the hoax instantly, the doctor fell for the whole farce.
Another dirty trick used by psychic surgeons is to use a fake thumb filled with chicken guts and blood. Television crews have even gone in to let us see that psychic surgeons are really wolves in the garments of sheep.
Such mystical ploys simply do not fool magicians. And so we honor the Great Houdini, Penn and Teller, James Randi, Bob Steiner, and others. Were it not for mystic-busting magicians, magical swindlers would fool even more of us.
