January 16, 2014 • 36 mins
In the early 21st century a trend of people who claim to be able to telepathically and clairvoyantly communicate with animals has grown. Today, the concept of visiting a pet psychic to find a lost pet, find out why a pet is behaving badly or even to learn if a pet is ready to be put to sleep is becoming more commonplace, but is there any basis to pet psychics' abilities? Join Josh and Chuck as they investigate the pet psychic phenomenon.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. That's me. I mentioned myself already.
Have I mentioned Jerry? Yeah? I think so. They just
(00:22):
keep getting worse and worse. Stuff that Cherry's over there.
We're all in the Christmas spirit. I think this is
the last show we're recording this year, right, Yeah, we're
ahead of the game a little bit. Yep, so we
can have a coushy couple of weeks. So, um, we're hammered.
Not true, no, not Yeah, you got your coffee. I
got my uh soda water laqua loquis soda water. Yeah.
(00:47):
My coffee is neither Spanish, nor Irish nor anything like that.
What a Spanish coffee? Oh, it's the better of the two.
What is it? Um? You get a little well it
depends on your on your recipe, but you get a
little bit of rum okay, uh, you get a little
bit of triple seck or I can't remember the other
name for it, um, but good triple seck. Put them
(01:11):
together in a like a tempered sniff ter or an
Irish coffee class fire tempered. Make sure it's tempered, or
else you're about to hurt yourself. You light it um,
you like the it's gotta be high proof from you
like the rum uh triple sec combo. Just let it
burn out for a second, or you can blow it
out if you don't want to burn off too much
(01:32):
of the alcohol. And you add some espresso, some kalua
and then top it off with a little whip cream
and nut make Man, it's good stuff. And that's just
one version. There's plenty of other version of Spanish coffee
that makes Irish coffee look silly. They're just like I
don't put down Irish coffee much in the coffee and
(01:53):
drink it pretty much. It's also called the eye opener. Yeah.
I love the simplicity of the Irish just doing that
and I love that. Have you seen that country. I
don't know if it was a new one. Last week
I started watching The Simpsons again after like years off,
and it is it's awesome, man, it is back. There
was one. I don't know if it was new or not,
but Crusty Um syndicated himself around the world so he
(02:17):
could make a lot more money. So there's like a
Jamaican crusty. There's like a like all these and then
the Irish one. It was just like this depressed alcoholic
who would like sit at a at a table on
a chair and like the spare room didn't even do
that really yeah, and like we just drink and say
(02:39):
like these you know, really bleak depressing things. Was perfect
and he ended up with his own like stage show
on Broadway and everything as the Irish rusty. Yeah, that's
a good one. Have to check that out. Yeah. Uh,
that was my intro to pet psychics. Alright. You know
that cat sitting over there knew everything. I was about
(03:00):
to say, Oh yeah, not many people know we have
a studio cat. No, man, I wish we did. How
awesome would that be? Studio cat? Yeah, it'd be great
to get game in here, wasn't I it's already pretty
warm in here as it is. A cat would love that. Yeah. Um,
all right, So pet psychics fact or fiction? Uh? Their fiction?
(03:23):
Are we debunking right out of the thing? Well? You know,
I'm I am of the forty and ilk all right,
Like I think that using science as a means of
avoiding scientific investigation of something is a slap in the
face of science, and that science should be used to
exhaust all avenues. And just because we can't currently explain
(03:46):
something using science doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I think
that there's a whole echelon of stuff out there that
does exist that we can't quite explain yet. Yeah. Sure,
I don't know if pet psychics fall into that one,
but I'm wanted just overtly pooh pooh something out of
hand that said, I had a hard time like taking
(04:07):
this entire article seriously. Well, you want to know something, Yeah,
Emily just went to a pet psychic. I I thought
that there was probably like a nine percent chance that
something like that was going to come up. Yeah, you know,
we had to put old Lucy down. And Emily went
(04:27):
in the following week. We have a local pet psychic,
and I'm surprised there probably is, but um one near
our house. And she went and talk to this lady.
Was it comforting? It was? She said it was really interesting,
and um, there was less talk about Lucy and more
(04:48):
talk about like me and our other animals, and um,
she wouldn't tell me a whole lot because she didn't
want me to poke fun at it, you know, And
and I tried to be super supportive, and I was Um,
I thought every instinct I had two. Uh, you're like,
that sounds like a great neat. How much was it? Um?
(05:12):
But Emily, and she asked me not to say this,
So of course I'm going to say it. She is
getting books now herself to read and because she feels
like she is very intuitive with animals, and that she
is very intuitive with animals, and so she's gonna poke
around there and not to do it for a living
or anything to do with your own dogs at home. Yeah,
(05:32):
just to see if she can become more in tune
with our animals. And they are called animal intuitives sometimes
or communicators, not necessarily pet psychics, because that makes you
sound a little crazy. It seems to be like a
whole gamut of people that would fall under the umbrella
of pet psychics. Yeah, like a horse whisper or Caesar Milan,
(05:56):
some people might say, as an animal communicator that are
just maybe more in tune with the signals the animals
send out, and they can send signals to animals. Yea, Um,
but that I fully believe. Okay, So that's totally different
from what a person who claims to be a pet psychic,
says is going on. Well, yeah, but not always like
(06:18):
this lady Emily went to was sounded more like an
animal intuitive and communicator than uh, like a medium saying
I'm talking to Lucy. She's in a better place. She's
playing with your grandfather in heaven. Right. But there are
pet psychics that claim to do that, yeah, and charge
people money for that. Yeah, just like real psychics. Um,
(06:40):
all right, so let's get into it. Well I thought
we already had. Well I guess we have. Um. I
just wanted to go ahead and drop that bomb about Emily. Um,
I think you're in trouble. So pet psychics, now, she
doesn't listen, they they claim, depending on who they are,
there is a spectrum of pet psychic like you said,
(07:00):
that claim certain abilities, but some claim that they can
actually telepathically communicate with animals mind and like one step
beyond intuition, Like we're actually talking, right, Not only are
we talking, we're transferring images from one mind to another. UM.
In some cases they are talking like there's a pet
(07:21):
psychic um who claims that when she speaks to animals, um,
they respond to her in a childlike voice. The animals
have childlike voices, they speak like children. They do in
Disney movies, So why not um, But the basically at
(07:42):
its most supernatural, I guess it's most extrasensory um pet psychics.
What they're claiming to do is a convergence of clairvoyance,
which is far sighte um, and telepathy, which is mind reading.
And they're putting these together. And then if you already
(08:03):
have a hard enough time swallowing that, you may have
an even harder time following it when you realize that
they're saying they're doing this with animals, which may or
may not even be self aware. Yeah, Like, it's tough too.
It's hard with humans to believe that someone might have
ESPN telepathy, and we speak the same language, so it
(08:25):
might be even a deeper reach to say that you
can do that with a dog. Let's say, okay, Emily
went to a pet psychic. Um. She went after Lucy
um passed on um basically to find out how Lucy
was doing. Yeah. I think she was just curious about
the She had been curious for a while, and this
(08:47):
afforded her an opportunity to go see a pet psychic.
I think like it gave her a good reason. Okay,
so that's one reason people go see pet psychics. Um
after the death of a pet. Another one is when
a pet is sick or injured or ailing, tell me
if it's time to go. Um, which, man, that's gotta
be a lot to put on a pet psychic. That's
(09:09):
a lot to put on a vet, you know, although
I think vets are kind of like, yeah, let's just
go ahead and do it. No, that's not true. Um,
And then what if the what if the pet is
acting like a jerk all of a sudden. Yeah, that's
another reason people, why pets. Is my dog acting out
or maybe my pet is lost? Can you tell me
where my pet is? Right, that's a little more of
(09:31):
a niche thing. Not all pet psychics will take on
those cases, my guess is because the success rate might
not be great and they don't want to, you know,
charge somebody for something and not provide the service that
they said they can. Yeah, because I mean, unless you
can talk to somebody into giving up their bread for
(09:52):
you just to say, yeah, your dog will be home
in a couple of weeks, yeah, then you know, how
are you gonna work that you can't? But there are
anecdotal success stories of locating pets this way. If there
weren't this wouldn't be yeah around and a skeptic will
say this just luck and coincidence. I think the dog
was on its way home anyway, exactly. This pet psychic
(10:14):
didn't called to it with her mind, that's right, Uh, psychics.
Pet psychics say they, UM use electromagnetic energy to accomplish this,
that there's this energy field in the universe that science
hasn't quite figured out yet, but it exists, and we
are able to pick up on that energy and use
that energy to speak to your animals. Um, whether it's
(10:36):
a childlike voice or like I think most of them
generally do it, and like in pictures, which makes a
little more sense to me. Um. And this this this thing,
this electromagnetic energy. There's this guy who wrote a book.
His name is Jay Alan Boone and he wrote a
book called Kinship with All Life and it apparently is
(10:57):
the pet psychics Bible, and it's um kind of his
relationship with this German shepherd named Strongheart, which is a
Hollywood dog that he cared for starting and I think
the nineteen thirties, UM, and who he became Uh, telepathically
linked with intuitively linked to um and basically Jay Alan
(11:20):
Boone wrote this book on how to Communicate with animals
and in it he mentions that all things are connected
by this thing called the primal cause. Minty Glorian's right,
and um, I think that's what the pet psychic would say. Well,
it's the electromagnetic energy. The point is that since it
binds all things, we can just kind of use that
(11:43):
too to connect to the mind of another thing, human
or animal, because we're all connected by this, right, it's thought. Uh.
Animal Plan actually hit a show for a little while
about ten years ago called the Pet Psychic and Um,
the lady on the or what's her name Fitzpatrick. Yes,
she claimed that she picked up this in childhood as
(12:05):
a result of a hearing loss um, although other people
say they pick it up as adults after studying it
and not necessarily born with a gift. But they just
studied how to be more in tune with animals, right,
And apparently a lot of them discovered that they had
this gift after they saw the Pet Psychic on Animal Planet?
Was that right? That's what Tracy says in this article. Okay,
(12:28):
I wonder what that sounds like one of those statements,
did she do research on that she do a poll? Well,
I think that definitely did kick off a frend. If
it didn't capitalize on it, it definitely kicked it off.
All right. So you go to your pet psychic. You're
gonna go into a room and they're gonna do something
like this, Uh, not exactly like this, depending on their methods,
(12:52):
but they're probably gonna like just relax and tell you
to calm down, and they will make contact with the
energy of the animal. And then they will actually try
and contact the said animal telepathically, like ask a question
of the animal, or they'll they'll they'll call its name
or something and get its attention to yeah, or have
a picture. A lot of times like you don't need
(13:15):
the animal there necessarily. In fact, a lot of times
I think the animal is not there, because why do
you need the animal? Now? You don't, You've got the
great cause, the primal cause exactly with their mind they do,
and then they um well accept whatever response they get,
relay that back to you, ask you some more questions
(13:37):
or if you have any more questions, and basically act
as the go between between you communicating with your pet
like just like you would think, it goes down, your
pet is saying that there. Uh they're not happy with
the new couch and that's why they're being on it
or ever since you uh took that promotion in the
(13:58):
middle management, you've changed, man, and I'm not happy with
this new you. That's why I keep chewing your suits exactly. Um,
they are going to uh. It's it's pretty controversial, as
we pointed out, because there isn't any hard science behind it.
There's no proof of this electromagnetic energy. And a lot
(14:20):
of people believe in energy. I mean electromagnetic energy does exist,
not this kind of manet. Yeah, it's fun to make
sure everyone knew that we believe in electro magnetic but
they haven't picked up that. They haven't proven that there's
any actual like sensory organ than people or animals that
allow them to tune into this energy. Does that make
more sense? So so during these pet psychic sessions, when
(14:43):
the when the the purpose of this normally is to
get to the bottom of a problem, say like we said,
or to get some sort of comfort or even for
decision making. Um, the problem is when a pet psy
kick asks an animal what's going on, and the animal
(15:04):
is thought to respond, well, this, I'm doing this because
of this. So beyond the telepathy, beyond the clairvoyance involved,
there's still the question of whether an animal is capable
of that higher level of reasoning and thought. Yeah, right,
that it would be aware of its own reasons for
(15:26):
its behavior. That in and of itself is a controversial
aspect of this whole topic. Yeah, that's self awareness. Like, Um,
a lot of animal intuitives believe that animals are basically
kind of like people. They just can't talk. They experience
the emotions there they're self aware, um, and they're just
not trapped, but they're in an animal's body. Um. And
(15:50):
when you look at your pets, you may think they're
experiencing emotions. And it's a controversial subject because it's not
something you can prove. Well, it's been it's become more
and more proven over the years. Yeah, Like nowadays it
is accepted that animals can feel certain emotions. Yeah, especially
the basic ones like yeah, like stress, fear, fear, upsettedness. Yeah, um,
(16:15):
rage I think is one, um, lust, separation, distress. But
it's hard to define emotion period, much less in an
animal right. But the the idea that um emotions just
belong to humans or even humans and higher primates is
is definitely faded. Um. We are aware that animals can't
(16:36):
experience basic emotions. They can probably experience even higher emotions too.
Like if you look at a dog and your dog
looks sad and it's sad because you're leaving, you may
be correct. You know your dog pretty well. And we've
reached the point where science is starting to come to
grips with the idea that yes, animals can experience some
(16:57):
higher emotions as well. Sure. And there was actually a
conference at Cambridge University in two thousand twelve, and uh,
it was a pretty heavy hitting conference. Um, Like, I mean,
the people involved were no slouches, and they came up
with the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness and they basically said that, um,
(17:18):
the the components that you need to experience emotions and
consciousness are not relegated to the cortex, meaning it's not
just humans that have that are capable that have the
hardware for experiencing consciousness. Right. Um. They also said that
if you artificially stimulate um, uh, the neural circuits that
(17:44):
are responsible for different aspects of consciousness and humans. You
can stimulate the same things in animals too, which suggests
that they have the same equipment. UM, you can also
disrupt those circuits using hallucinogens in humans and animals. And
since they have all the equipment, all the signs point to,
said this group of neuroscientists and UM other professionals. They said,
(18:07):
there is a pretty good chance that it's not just
humans who are experiencing consciousness. The things that the trappings
of consciousness, like higher emotions, self awareness, the things that
make us human. Animals might have that make them animals.
But the people who think that if your dog is sad,
(18:28):
you're probably right, are right. Dog likes you around, and
it might be happy when you're home, yeah, and sad
when you leave. And the whole reason that this has
been a thing is simply because humans haven't been able
to figure out how to accurately test what is an
emotion in an an animal, Because animals can't say I'm
(18:49):
feeling like this right now, and we can be like,
that's love. You're feeling love. Yeah, Like when a mother
cares for puppies, it's showing it looks like it's showing love,
or is it oxyt oson hormone in the body that
says you need to care for you're young. Is it
love or care or does anyone realize it's it's love
(19:09):
or care. Well, that's the big one because you can
say we have that same exact neural circuit and we
react to oxytocin the exact same way. So you know,
if it's love for us, why isn't it love for
the animal? Well, the key is is we think about it.
We're thinking, I feel so good about taking care of
(19:30):
my baby. That means I love my baby. That makes
me even happier. That's called medic cognition. That's where most
people are drawing the line with animals these days. They
might be able to experience some pretty high um emotions,
they may be self aware, but the ability to think
about their emotions and the implications of their emotions or
(19:52):
think about thinking, that's metic cognition, and not everybody agrees
on that one. That's the new thresthhold that we're at.
It seems like for animals, whether or not they're capable
of metic cognition. So if an animal sees itself in
the mirror and noses itself, is that self awareness, Yeah,
which would be a form of metic cognition, right, But
that's that's not proven. That's where a lot of people.
(20:12):
You'll lose a lot of people now, whereas ten years ago,
even saying that an animal could experience happiness or joy,
um would have lost a lot of people. So who knows.
In ten years from now, maybe everyone will agree that
animals experience metic cognition. Yeah, grief is definitely one I've
seen firsthand a lot. Yeah, we talked about it in
the Grief episode. Yeah. Um, and when we put Lucy down,
(20:36):
they recommend that we did our house. They recommend that
the pet not see that act, but then they come
in afterward so they see the body and so they
can understand what's going on and so they don't spend
time looking for that animal. And uh, we did that
with Buckley and Charlie and let them back in, and uh,
Charlie was stressed. We didn't think about it. She was
(20:57):
a feral dogs, so she gets stressed when other people
are in the house. So we forgot this vet lady
was in there. So Charlie's just stressed running around. Buckley
goes up sniff's Lucy and it was really sad, and
he was different for about four or five days, seemed
depressed to me. And when we would take him on
walks and come back, he would still run around to
(21:18):
all the rooms, I think looking for Lucy because he
never had done that before. He usually just walks in
and lays down, but he literally would go to each room. Um.
So I definitely think that there are things like grief,
whether or not the dog realizes it's grief, like who cares?
You know, That's what I think. Yeah, I mean it's
still experiencing on that virtually the same level, right, Yeah,
(21:41):
and at its most profound level, that gut experience of grief. Yeah.
And I think the whole the fine line here with
investigating or talking about whether or not animals can experience
these things is you're walking this edge where on one
side you have a through pacentrism where you're just like, no,
(22:02):
they can't, only humans can. Humans are the greatest ever,
and you're forgetting that we're animals as well. Then the
other side you have anthropomorphizing, where you're attributing you know,
human attributes to animals unduly. So it's kind of like
you have to so happy because we're putting up the
Christmas tree exactly. But it's happy because we're in there
(22:23):
having a good time and drinking some magnag and like
the music, so onward dancing right exactly. So you have
to resist both of those temptations to just kind of
keep plodding along down the line scientifically. But I think ultimately,
is we go down that line, we're going to finally
come to as a species, hopefully the idea that like
animals should not be in zoos or tested on or whatever,
(22:45):
because they are a lot closer to us consciousness wise
than we currently understand or want to admit. Right now, Um,
all right, well we're gonna talk a little bit about
pet psychics and like contradicts between them, um and what
might be going on here right after this message break. Okay,
(23:10):
so there are some contradictions. Um, if you go to
tin pet psychics, you're probably gonna have ten different, eleven opinions,
eleven different stories about what's going on, which is one
reason it makes it hard to swallow for some people. Um. Again,
I feel like since we went to break and came back,
it's this is a good time to read it. Write
like I'm not I'm not poo pooing intuitiveness. No, I'm
(23:35):
not poo pooing UM and some people's ability a greater
ability than others to really kind of connect to animals
and and and understand them or um deal with them
however you want to put it. It's when it strays
into telepathy and clairvoyance that, um, I start to become skeptical. Yeah,
(23:56):
you know what you mean. And I think I think
people some people are more into with other humans than others.
Some people have their heads up their butts and are
completely absorbed in their own little universe. Other people, I think,
seek out um input from other things, whether it's people
or animals. They're always looking for something, um just you know,
(24:18):
justin his mom. Carrie, one of my favorite people is
one of the most in tune intuitive people I've ever
met in my life because she's she's a studier of people.
Like you can see her man when there's a party
going on, she'll be sitting back and watching. Yeah she's weird. No,
she's not weird at all. She's awesome, but she's she
(24:40):
watches and she's you know, I don't I don't know
if it's a gift as much as it is something
you can work on. Yeah, I think it is remove
your head from your butt and pay attention. UM. So
some contradictions like you might see if Fitzpatrick that says, um,
your animal ratted you out about something, you might go
to another pet psychic that says animals would never do that,
(25:02):
they're loyal. So the story supposedly according to um Sonya
Fitzpatrick from the Pet Psychic show, UM, animals are very
gossipy and um they like to tell one another all
your secrets. That's hilarious to me. And she told the story.
(25:22):
She wrote a book called UM What the Animals Tell Me?
And she told the story about a turtle that she
was communicating with and the turtle told her that it
would love to have a fish friend as a pet.
So Sonia Fitzpatrick introduced a fish to this turtles tank
and the turtle was like, thanks, chump, and ate the fish.
(25:43):
And so she said, why did you eat the fish?
And the turtle said, well, I knew that if I
asked you for a fish to eat, you wouldn't give
it to me, So I just tricked you. Basically, so,
animals are gossipy and wiley and have the potential to lie. Yeah,
you should not trust animals. Uh. Debbie McGillivray, she wrote
(26:04):
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pet Psychic Communication. Um, she's
the one that said no, no no, no, animals are loyal.
They're innocent. They would never write you out, they would
never lie to you like that or embarrass you. So um,
it makes it tougher to swallow when you have people
saying these wildly different things, not about what they're picking up,
but the fact that no animals do this, No animals
(26:26):
do this, Like, which is it right? But you could
say the same thing about humans, you know, like if
you hang out with certain humans, you can be like
some humans like humans gossip. They'll they'll tell other people
all of your terrible secrets. Other people might have hung
out with the Waltons and they're like, no, humans are
all loyal. It's all. It's all about your perception and
your experience, that's right. So what might be going on
(26:49):
here is what's known as a cold reading. Yeah, the
actual any success or what appears to be success telepathically
among pet psychics readings, Yeah, esp people use cold readings
to explain that fortune telling, tarot card palm reading, crystal balls,
you name it. Uh. A skeptic will say that what
(27:12):
a cold reading is is the following. They are maybe
stating the obvious. Your cat loves to your cats, telling
me it loves to lay in the window and look
at the world outside. And the person goes, oh, my god,
the wizard loves that. All cats love that exactly, so
that might happen in your reading. Um. They might also
(27:34):
use very vague language like, um, so he says, your
dog says something has changed around here, and you go, oh, yeah,
I just accepted this middle management promotion, and the pet
psychic says, yes, that's that exactly, that's the this new
thing that's changed. And you said earlier that your dog
was chewing up your new shoes, and that's why your
(27:57):
dog is not happy with this change, So he's chewing
your shoes. I am a psychic. That's that's how they
finish every reading too. But they throw their arms up
in the air and shout that, well, it's interesting because
what might be happening there is is your dog might
be chewing up your shoes because you did get that job,
because you're working in extra fifteen hours a week, and
(28:19):
your dog has separation anxiety, so ironically it might be
actually on the money. But uh, dis kinnect comes in
when the psychic says that your dog told him that exactly, Um,
what else? Um? Or about this? Here's another way to
state the audience your dog. I'm looking at a picture
(28:40):
of your dog and they chew on their paws all
the time, and say they itch and that's because in
the picture they have like a bandage on their pall.
Or you went in and I forgot you said, my
dog is chewing their paws all the time. What's the
deal with that? Like, they'll they'll glean these bits of
information without you maybe even necessarily recognizing that by asking
(29:02):
you questions, and then they make that part of their
cold reading. But then asking questions is another one too.
It's fishing for details. It's like I see that your
dog is wearing a green and then you say blue
blue collar. Your dog is wearing a blue collar. Um.
(29:23):
So every time something is uh that that you indicate
something is correct, it'll be restated, rephrased, respoken as if
the psychic is saying it, and you're you're so unwrapped
in this whole thing that you're just missing the fact
that you're feeding them the information that they're giving to
you as a psychic reading, because this isn't just pet psychics. No,
(29:47):
Like generally, if you go into a psychic, you are
there because you want to believe and you are seeking
an answer. Um, if a dude like your I went
into a pet psychic, we probably wouldn't have much luck
because we would go in there looking to shoot holes
in it. And uh, I did encourage Emily. I was
like going there with an open mind. You know, I
would go in there with an open mind. See, I
don't think I could. I would, I wasn't invited. I
(30:08):
would try, at the very least, I don't. I wouldn't
if I were going to go in there just to
poop who, I just wouldn't go. Well, yeah, you know,
because I mean, who wants to do that? Jerks? There
are plenty of them out there too. No, that's true. Um,
But Emily did say that she was She made a
point to not reveal too much and to sort of
watch out for those cold reading tricks. And she said
(30:33):
I didn't reveal a whole lot and she she gave
me back something, so she's a believer. Well, um that
that whatever she spent on that, So dropping the bucket.
Compared to what people spend on their pets these days,
it's a little crazy these days, not just for pet
psychics but just in general. Yeah. Um, Americans spent sixty
(30:55):
one billion dollars billion with a B dollars in two
thousand thirty on their pets. Sixty one billion dollars and
that was up from thirty six billion in two thousand
five and seventeen billion. What's the current number, sixty one billion? Boy,
(31:15):
I mean things have really I don't want to say
gotten out of hand, but you definitely noticed in the
past decade more uh, doggy spas and stuff like that around. Well,
there's supposedly more disposable income. Yeah. Uh, and there are
more people who are not having kids, so they're just
dumping their money into their beats. Well, good get them
(31:37):
off the street people, That's what I say. The point
is for spending sixty one billion dollars on our pets,
and it keeps increasing, almost doubling every few years, now
every eight years. UM. Pet psychics are not going anywhere. No,
they're not there. Here is stay. I've got one more
UM stat for you. Uh, there's a poll in two
thousand eight that found that sixty of pet owners say
(31:58):
they understand their animals purrs or barks or other noises,
and said that when they speak, their pet understands them
or at least they're intent um. And one in five
owners claim they their pets understand each other completely like
the two pets do, and one quarter of cat owners
(32:19):
that they completely understood their pet sounds. Only of dog
owners said they were flute and barks. So I guess
those are two different poles that are wildly different in
their numbers. I think people can and animals since a
lot of subtle micro expressions and body language, and that
(32:42):
is just I mean, that is communication. So don't you
think that's just a result of proximity around another living being,
you know, just living with something, whether it's a person
or an animal, like you get to know them and
their mannerisms and yeah, like you can read them, and
that is, like I said, micro expressions is a form
of commune cation, I think. So it's not like I think,
sure you can communicate with your dog, uh, but it
(33:05):
may not be telepathically like a conversation. But if it
feels as easy as a telepathic conversation, then you you've
got it going on with your pet. Yeah. And again,
if you want to go out and drop your dough
on a pet psychic, more power to you. Probably get
something out of it. Same here. Uh. If you want
to know more about pet psychics, type those words into
(33:26):
the search part how stuff works dot com. And since
I said search parts, time for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this uh go Figgy Puddings. Remember that in our
a live partly Well, I'll just go and read it
the semester. Guys, I'm studying abroad in the UK at
the University of Hertfordshire during my travel exactly during my travels.
(33:48):
Your podcast is help me pass the time of plane
and train rides while learning new things and hearing the
American accent I miss so much. I just listened to
a zero scientific for me. For funny, you mentioned Richard
Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire and Josh said go
Figgy Puddings, which was very funny. I couldn't have thought
of that. You could not that quick. I was a
(34:11):
little taken. Aback guy, since you're always dead on with
your university team names, I regret to inform you that
you h does not have a team called the Piggy
Puddings Zell. They're actually the University of Hertfordshire Hurricanes. It
was this guy's joking right now, King, Oh yeah, well yeah,
I think so. Oh, I think so, Andrew. You knew
Josh is joking, right, please, Andrew, I think so. Um,
(34:34):
we are the Hurricanes, which is a little weird since
they have more figgy puddings here than hurricanes. Yeah, there's
not a lot of hurricanes over there and there, No,
I don't think so. They tend to come this way. Yeah,
you h Hurricanes are actually one of the best British
American football teams around with four national championships. But I
think he corrected himself in a subsequent email. I think
there were five twelve division title since just want to
(34:58):
set the record straight. Also wanted to thank you guys
for such a consistently great show. And that is Andrew
Million go Kaine, and um, I think he I hope
he knows you're joking. Well, he said he was taken aback.
I think he was kidding. I hope I don't know
that he was joking. Go with that if you want
(35:19):
to pull one over on me and Chuck, that's fine,
We'll see what you got. You can tweet to us
at s Y s K podcast. You can join us
on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email the Stuff Podcast at Discovery
dot com, and, as always, join us at our beautiful, spacious,
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(35:48):
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(36:08):
com slash stuff and sign up now.
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. That's me. I mentioned myself already.
Have I mentioned Jerry? Yeah? I think so. They just
(00:22):
keep getting worse and worse. Stuff that Cherry's over there.
We're all in the Christmas spirit. I think this is
the last show we're recording this year, right, Yeah, we're
ahead of the game a little bit. Yep, so we
can have a coushy couple of weeks. So, um, we're hammered.
Not true, no, not Yeah, you got your coffee. I
got my uh soda water laqua loquis soda water. Yeah.
(00:47):
My coffee is neither Spanish, nor Irish nor anything like that.
What a Spanish coffee? Oh, it's the better of the two.
What is it? Um? You get a little well it
depends on your on your recipe, but you get a
little bit of rum okay, uh, you get a little
bit of triple seck or I can't remember the other
name for it, um, but good triple seck. Put them
(01:11):
together in a like a tempered sniff ter or an
Irish coffee class fire tempered. Make sure it's tempered, or
else you're about to hurt yourself. You light it um,
you like the it's gotta be high proof from you
like the rum uh triple sec combo. Just let it
burn out for a second, or you can blow it
out if you don't want to burn off too much
(01:32):
of the alcohol. And you add some espresso, some kalua
and then top it off with a little whip cream
and nut make Man, it's good stuff. And that's just
one version. There's plenty of other version of Spanish coffee
that makes Irish coffee look silly. They're just like I
don't put down Irish coffee much in the coffee and
(01:53):
drink it pretty much. It's also called the eye opener. Yeah.
I love the simplicity of the Irish just doing that
and I love that. Have you seen that country. I
don't know if it was a new one. Last week
I started watching The Simpsons again after like years off,
and it is it's awesome, man, it is back. There
was one. I don't know if it was new or not,
but Crusty Um syndicated himself around the world so he
(02:17):
could make a lot more money. So there's like a
Jamaican crusty. There's like a like all these and then
the Irish one. It was just like this depressed alcoholic
who would like sit at a at a table on
a chair and like the spare room didn't even do
that really yeah, and like we just drink and say
(02:39):
like these you know, really bleak depressing things. Was perfect
and he ended up with his own like stage show
on Broadway and everything as the Irish rusty. Yeah, that's
a good one. Have to check that out. Yeah. Uh,
that was my intro to pet psychics. Alright. You know
that cat sitting over there knew everything. I was about
(03:00):
to say, Oh yeah, not many people know we have
a studio cat. No, man, I wish we did. How
awesome would that be? Studio cat? Yeah, it'd be great
to get game in here, wasn't I it's already pretty
warm in here as it is. A cat would love that. Yeah. Um,
all right, So pet psychics fact or fiction? Uh? Their fiction?
(03:23):
Are we debunking right out of the thing? Well? You know,
I'm I am of the forty and ilk all right,
Like I think that using science as a means of
avoiding scientific investigation of something is a slap in the
face of science, and that science should be used to
exhaust all avenues. And just because we can't currently explain
(03:46):
something using science doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I think
that there's a whole echelon of stuff out there that
does exist that we can't quite explain yet. Yeah. Sure,
I don't know if pet psychics fall into that one,
but I'm wanted just overtly pooh pooh something out of
hand that said, I had a hard time like taking
(04:07):
this entire article seriously. Well, you want to know something, Yeah,
Emily just went to a pet psychic. I I thought
that there was probably like a nine percent chance that
something like that was going to come up. Yeah, you know,
we had to put old Lucy down. And Emily went
(04:27):
in the following week. We have a local pet psychic,
and I'm surprised there probably is, but um one near
our house. And she went and talk to this lady.
Was it comforting? It was? She said it was really interesting,
and um, there was less talk about Lucy and more
(04:48):
talk about like me and our other animals, and um,
she wouldn't tell me a whole lot because she didn't
want me to poke fun at it, you know, And
and I tried to be super supportive, and I was Um,
I thought every instinct I had two. Uh, you're like,
that sounds like a great neat. How much was it? Um?
(05:12):
But Emily, and she asked me not to say this,
So of course I'm going to say it. She is
getting books now herself to read and because she feels
like she is very intuitive with animals, and that she
is very intuitive with animals, and so she's gonna poke
around there and not to do it for a living
or anything to do with your own dogs at home. Yeah,
(05:32):
just to see if she can become more in tune
with our animals. And they are called animal intuitives sometimes
or communicators, not necessarily pet psychics, because that makes you
sound a little crazy. It seems to be like a
whole gamut of people that would fall under the umbrella
of pet psychics. Yeah, like a horse whisper or Caesar Milan,
(05:56):
some people might say, as an animal communicator that are
just maybe more in tune with the signals the animals
send out, and they can send signals to animals. Yea, Um,
but that I fully believe. Okay, So that's totally different
from what a person who claims to be a pet psychic,
says is going on. Well, yeah, but not always like
(06:18):
this lady Emily went to was sounded more like an
animal intuitive and communicator than uh, like a medium saying
I'm talking to Lucy. She's in a better place. She's
playing with your grandfather in heaven. Right. But there are
pet psychics that claim to do that, yeah, and charge
people money for that. Yeah, just like real psychics. Um,
(06:40):
all right, so let's get into it. Well I thought
we already had. Well I guess we have. Um. I
just wanted to go ahead and drop that bomb about Emily. Um,
I think you're in trouble. So pet psychics, now, she
doesn't listen, they they claim, depending on who they are,
there is a spectrum of pet psychic like you said,
(07:00):
that claim certain abilities, but some claim that they can
actually telepathically communicate with animals mind and like one step
beyond intuition, Like we're actually talking, right, Not only are
we talking, we're transferring images from one mind to another. UM.
In some cases they are talking like there's a pet
(07:21):
psychic um who claims that when she speaks to animals, um,
they respond to her in a childlike voice. The animals
have childlike voices, they speak like children. They do in
Disney movies, So why not um, But the basically at
(07:42):
its most supernatural, I guess it's most extrasensory um pet psychics.
What they're claiming to do is a convergence of clairvoyance,
which is far sighte um, and telepathy, which is mind reading.
And they're putting these together. And then if you already
(08:03):
have a hard enough time swallowing that, you may have
an even harder time following it when you realize that
they're saying they're doing this with animals, which may or
may not even be self aware. Yeah, Like, it's tough too.
It's hard with humans to believe that someone might have
ESPN telepathy, and we speak the same language, so it
(08:25):
might be even a deeper reach to say that you
can do that with a dog. Let's say, okay, Emily
went to a pet psychic. Um. She went after Lucy
um passed on um basically to find out how Lucy
was doing. Yeah. I think she was just curious about
the She had been curious for a while, and this
(08:47):
afforded her an opportunity to go see a pet psychic.
I think like it gave her a good reason. Okay,
so that's one reason people go see pet psychics. Um
after the death of a pet. Another one is when
a pet is sick or injured or ailing, tell me
if it's time to go. Um, which, man, that's gotta
be a lot to put on a pet psychic. That's
(09:09):
a lot to put on a vet, you know, although
I think vets are kind of like, yeah, let's just
go ahead and do it. No, that's not true. Um,
And then what if the what if the pet is
acting like a jerk all of a sudden. Yeah, that's
another reason people, why pets. Is my dog acting out
or maybe my pet is lost? Can you tell me
where my pet is? Right, that's a little more of
(09:31):
a niche thing. Not all pet psychics will take on
those cases, my guess is because the success rate might
not be great and they don't want to, you know,
charge somebody for something and not provide the service that
they said they can. Yeah, because I mean, unless you
can talk to somebody into giving up their bread for
(09:52):
you just to say, yeah, your dog will be home
in a couple of weeks, yeah, then you know, how
are you gonna work that you can't? But there are
anecdotal success stories of locating pets this way. If there
weren't this wouldn't be yeah around and a skeptic will
say this just luck and coincidence. I think the dog
was on its way home anyway, exactly. This pet psychic
(10:14):
didn't called to it with her mind, that's right, Uh, psychics.
Pet psychics say they, UM use electromagnetic energy to accomplish this,
that there's this energy field in the universe that science
hasn't quite figured out yet, but it exists, and we
are able to pick up on that energy and use
that energy to speak to your animals. Um, whether it's
(10:36):
a childlike voice or like I think most of them
generally do it, and like in pictures, which makes a
little more sense to me. Um. And this this this thing,
this electromagnetic energy. There's this guy who wrote a book.
His name is Jay Alan Boone and he wrote a
book called Kinship with All Life and it apparently is
(10:57):
the pet psychics Bible, and it's um kind of his
relationship with this German shepherd named Strongheart, which is a
Hollywood dog that he cared for starting and I think
the nineteen thirties, UM, and who he became Uh, telepathically
linked with intuitively linked to um and basically Jay Alan
(11:20):
Boone wrote this book on how to Communicate with animals
and in it he mentions that all things are connected
by this thing called the primal cause. Minty Glorian's right,
and um, I think that's what the pet psychic would say. Well,
it's the electromagnetic energy. The point is that since it
binds all things, we can just kind of use that
(11:43):
too to connect to the mind of another thing, human
or animal, because we're all connected by this, right, it's thought. Uh.
Animal Plan actually hit a show for a little while
about ten years ago called the Pet Psychic and Um,
the lady on the or what's her name Fitzpatrick. Yes,
she claimed that she picked up this in childhood as
(12:05):
a result of a hearing loss um, although other people
say they pick it up as adults after studying it
and not necessarily born with a gift. But they just
studied how to be more in tune with animals, right,
And apparently a lot of them discovered that they had
this gift after they saw the Pet Psychic on Animal Planet?
Was that right? That's what Tracy says in this article. Okay,
(12:28):
I wonder what that sounds like one of those statements,
did she do research on that she do a poll? Well,
I think that definitely did kick off a frend. If
it didn't capitalize on it, it definitely kicked it off.
All right. So you go to your pet psychic. You're
gonna go into a room and they're gonna do something
like this, Uh, not exactly like this, depending on their methods,
(12:52):
but they're probably gonna like just relax and tell you
to calm down, and they will make contact with the
energy of the animal. And then they will actually try
and contact the said animal telepathically, like ask a question
of the animal, or they'll they'll they'll call its name
or something and get its attention to yeah, or have
a picture. A lot of times like you don't need
(13:15):
the animal there necessarily. In fact, a lot of times
I think the animal is not there, because why do
you need the animal? Now? You don't, You've got the
great cause, the primal cause exactly with their mind they do,
and then they um well accept whatever response they get,
relay that back to you, ask you some more questions
(13:37):
or if you have any more questions, and basically act
as the go between between you communicating with your pet
like just like you would think, it goes down, your
pet is saying that there. Uh they're not happy with
the new couch and that's why they're being on it
or ever since you uh took that promotion in the
(13:58):
middle management, you've changed, man, and I'm not happy with
this new you. That's why I keep chewing your suits exactly. Um,
they are going to uh. It's it's pretty controversial, as
we pointed out, because there isn't any hard science behind it.
There's no proof of this electromagnetic energy. And a lot
(14:20):
of people believe in energy. I mean electromagnetic energy does exist,
not this kind of manet. Yeah, it's fun to make
sure everyone knew that we believe in electro magnetic but
they haven't picked up that. They haven't proven that there's
any actual like sensory organ than people or animals that
allow them to tune into this energy. Does that make
more sense? So so during these pet psychic sessions, when
(14:43):
the when the the purpose of this normally is to
get to the bottom of a problem, say like we said,
or to get some sort of comfort or even for
decision making. Um, the problem is when a pet psy
kick asks an animal what's going on, and the animal
(15:04):
is thought to respond, well, this, I'm doing this because
of this. So beyond the telepathy, beyond the clairvoyance involved,
there's still the question of whether an animal is capable
of that higher level of reasoning and thought. Yeah, right,
that it would be aware of its own reasons for
(15:26):
its behavior. That in and of itself is a controversial
aspect of this whole topic. Yeah, that's self awareness. Like, Um,
a lot of animal intuitives believe that animals are basically
kind of like people. They just can't talk. They experience
the emotions there they're self aware, um, and they're just
not trapped, but they're in an animal's body. Um. And
(15:50):
when you look at your pets, you may think they're
experiencing emotions. And it's a controversial subject because it's not
something you can prove. Well, it's been it's become more
and more proven over the years. Yeah, Like nowadays it
is accepted that animals can feel certain emotions. Yeah, especially
the basic ones like yeah, like stress, fear, fear, upsettedness. Yeah, um,
(16:15):
rage I think is one, um, lust, separation, distress. But
it's hard to define emotion period, much less in an
animal right. But the the idea that um emotions just
belong to humans or even humans and higher primates is
is definitely faded. Um. We are aware that animals can't
(16:36):
experience basic emotions. They can probably experience even higher emotions too.
Like if you look at a dog and your dog
looks sad and it's sad because you're leaving, you may
be correct. You know your dog pretty well. And we've
reached the point where science is starting to come to
grips with the idea that yes, animals can experience some
(16:57):
higher emotions as well. Sure. And there was actually a
conference at Cambridge University in two thousand twelve, and uh,
it was a pretty heavy hitting conference. Um, Like, I mean,
the people involved were no slouches, and they came up
with the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness and they basically said that, um,
(17:18):
the the components that you need to experience emotions and
consciousness are not relegated to the cortex, meaning it's not
just humans that have that are capable that have the
hardware for experiencing consciousness. Right. Um. They also said that
if you artificially stimulate um, uh, the neural circuits that
(17:44):
are responsible for different aspects of consciousness and humans. You
can stimulate the same things in animals too, which suggests
that they have the same equipment. UM, you can also
disrupt those circuits using hallucinogens in humans and animals. And
since they have all the equipment, all the signs point to,
said this group of neuroscientists and UM other professionals. They said,
(18:07):
there is a pretty good chance that it's not just
humans who are experiencing consciousness. The things that the trappings
of consciousness, like higher emotions, self awareness, the things that
make us human. Animals might have that make them animals.
But the people who think that if your dog is sad,
(18:28):
you're probably right, are right. Dog likes you around, and
it might be happy when you're home, yeah, and sad
when you leave. And the whole reason that this has
been a thing is simply because humans haven't been able
to figure out how to accurately test what is an
emotion in an an animal, Because animals can't say I'm
(18:49):
feeling like this right now, and we can be like,
that's love. You're feeling love. Yeah, Like when a mother
cares for puppies, it's showing it looks like it's showing love,
or is it oxyt oson hormone in the body that
says you need to care for you're young. Is it
love or care or does anyone realize it's it's love
(19:09):
or care. Well, that's the big one because you can
say we have that same exact neural circuit and we
react to oxytocin the exact same way. So you know,
if it's love for us, why isn't it love for
the animal? Well, the key is is we think about it.
We're thinking, I feel so good about taking care of
(19:30):
my baby. That means I love my baby. That makes
me even happier. That's called medic cognition. That's where most
people are drawing the line with animals these days. They
might be able to experience some pretty high um emotions,
they may be self aware, but the ability to think
about their emotions and the implications of their emotions or
(19:52):
think about thinking, that's metic cognition, and not everybody agrees
on that one. That's the new thresthhold that we're at.
It seems like for animals, whether or not they're capable
of metic cognition. So if an animal sees itself in
the mirror and noses itself, is that self awareness, Yeah,
which would be a form of metic cognition, right, But
that's that's not proven. That's where a lot of people.
(20:12):
You'll lose a lot of people now, whereas ten years ago,
even saying that an animal could experience happiness or joy,
um would have lost a lot of people. So who knows.
In ten years from now, maybe everyone will agree that
animals experience metic cognition. Yeah, grief is definitely one I've
seen firsthand a lot. Yeah, we talked about it in
the Grief episode. Yeah. Um, and when we put Lucy down,
(20:36):
they recommend that we did our house. They recommend that
the pet not see that act, but then they come
in afterward so they see the body and so they
can understand what's going on and so they don't spend
time looking for that animal. And uh, we did that
with Buckley and Charlie and let them back in, and uh,
Charlie was stressed. We didn't think about it. She was
(20:57):
a feral dogs, so she gets stressed when other people
are in the house. So we forgot this vet lady
was in there. So Charlie's just stressed running around. Buckley
goes up sniff's Lucy and it was really sad, and
he was different for about four or five days, seemed
depressed to me. And when we would take him on
walks and come back, he would still run around to
(21:18):
all the rooms, I think looking for Lucy because he
never had done that before. He usually just walks in
and lays down, but he literally would go to each room. Um.
So I definitely think that there are things like grief,
whether or not the dog realizes it's grief, like who cares?
You know, That's what I think. Yeah, I mean it's
still experiencing on that virtually the same level, right, Yeah,
(21:41):
and at its most profound level, that gut experience of grief. Yeah.
And I think the whole the fine line here with
investigating or talking about whether or not animals can experience
these things is you're walking this edge where on one
side you have a through pacentrism where you're just like, no,
(22:02):
they can't, only humans can. Humans are the greatest ever,
and you're forgetting that we're animals as well. Then the
other side you have anthropomorphizing, where you're attributing you know,
human attributes to animals unduly. So it's kind of like
you have to so happy because we're putting up the
Christmas tree exactly. But it's happy because we're in there
(22:23):
having a good time and drinking some magnag and like
the music, so onward dancing right exactly. So you have
to resist both of those temptations to just kind of
keep plodding along down the line scientifically. But I think ultimately,
is we go down that line, we're going to finally
come to as a species, hopefully the idea that like
animals should not be in zoos or tested on or whatever,
(22:45):
because they are a lot closer to us consciousness wise
than we currently understand or want to admit. Right now, Um,
all right, well we're gonna talk a little bit about
pet psychics and like contradicts between them, um and what
might be going on here right after this message break. Okay,
(23:10):
so there are some contradictions. Um, if you go to
tin pet psychics, you're probably gonna have ten different, eleven opinions,
eleven different stories about what's going on, which is one
reason it makes it hard to swallow for some people. Um. Again,
I feel like since we went to break and came back,
it's this is a good time to read it. Write
like I'm not I'm not poo pooing intuitiveness. No, I'm
(23:35):
not poo pooing UM and some people's ability a greater
ability than others to really kind of connect to animals
and and and understand them or um deal with them
however you want to put it. It's when it strays
into telepathy and clairvoyance that, um, I start to become skeptical. Yeah,
(23:56):
you know what you mean. And I think I think
people some people are more into with other humans than others.
Some people have their heads up their butts and are
completely absorbed in their own little universe. Other people, I think,
seek out um input from other things, whether it's people
or animals. They're always looking for something, um just you know,
(24:18):
justin his mom. Carrie, one of my favorite people is
one of the most in tune intuitive people I've ever
met in my life because she's she's a studier of people.
Like you can see her man when there's a party
going on, she'll be sitting back and watching. Yeah she's weird. No,
she's not weird at all. She's awesome, but she's she
(24:40):
watches and she's you know, I don't I don't know
if it's a gift as much as it is something
you can work on. Yeah, I think it is remove
your head from your butt and pay attention. UM. So
some contradictions like you might see if Fitzpatrick that says, um,
your animal ratted you out about something, you might go
to another pet psychic that says animals would never do that,
(25:02):
they're loyal. So the story supposedly according to um Sonya
Fitzpatrick from the Pet Psychic show, UM, animals are very
gossipy and um they like to tell one another all
your secrets. That's hilarious to me. And she told the story.
(25:22):
She wrote a book called UM What the Animals Tell Me?
And she told the story about a turtle that she
was communicating with and the turtle told her that it
would love to have a fish friend as a pet.
So Sonia Fitzpatrick introduced a fish to this turtles tank
and the turtle was like, thanks, chump, and ate the fish.
(25:43):
And so she said, why did you eat the fish?
And the turtle said, well, I knew that if I
asked you for a fish to eat, you wouldn't give
it to me, So I just tricked you. Basically, so,
animals are gossipy and wiley and have the potential to lie. Yeah,
you should not trust animals. Uh. Debbie McGillivray, she wrote
(26:04):
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pet Psychic Communication. Um, she's
the one that said no, no no, no, animals are loyal.
They're innocent. They would never write you out, they would
never lie to you like that or embarrass you. So um,
it makes it tougher to swallow when you have people
saying these wildly different things, not about what they're picking up,
but the fact that no animals do this, No animals
(26:26):
do this, Like, which is it right? But you could
say the same thing about humans, you know, like if
you hang out with certain humans, you can be like
some humans like humans gossip. They'll they'll tell other people
all of your terrible secrets. Other people might have hung
out with the Waltons and they're like, no, humans are
all loyal. It's all. It's all about your perception and
your experience, that's right. So what might be going on
(26:49):
here is what's known as a cold reading. Yeah, the
actual any success or what appears to be success telepathically
among pet psychics readings, Yeah, esp people use cold readings
to explain that fortune telling, tarot card palm reading, crystal balls,
you name it. Uh. A skeptic will say that what
(27:12):
a cold reading is is the following. They are maybe
stating the obvious. Your cat loves to your cats, telling
me it loves to lay in the window and look
at the world outside. And the person goes, oh, my god,
the wizard loves that. All cats love that exactly, so
that might happen in your reading. Um. They might also
(27:34):
use very vague language like, um, so he says, your
dog says something has changed around here, and you go, oh, yeah,
I just accepted this middle management promotion, and the pet
psychic says, yes, that's that exactly, that's the this new
thing that's changed. And you said earlier that your dog
was chewing up your new shoes, and that's why your
(27:57):
dog is not happy with this change, So he's chewing
your shoes. I am a psychic. That's that's how they
finish every reading too. But they throw their arms up
in the air and shout that, well, it's interesting because
what might be happening there is is your dog might
be chewing up your shoes because you did get that job,
because you're working in extra fifteen hours a week, and
(28:19):
your dog has separation anxiety, so ironically it might be
actually on the money. But uh, dis kinnect comes in
when the psychic says that your dog told him that exactly, Um,
what else? Um? Or about this? Here's another way to
state the audience your dog. I'm looking at a picture
(28:40):
of your dog and they chew on their paws all
the time, and say they itch and that's because in
the picture they have like a bandage on their pall.
Or you went in and I forgot you said, my
dog is chewing their paws all the time. What's the
deal with that? Like, they'll they'll glean these bits of
information without you maybe even necessarily recognizing that by asking
(29:02):
you questions, and then they make that part of their
cold reading. But then asking questions is another one too.
It's fishing for details. It's like I see that your
dog is wearing a green and then you say blue
blue collar. Your dog is wearing a blue collar. Um.
(29:23):
So every time something is uh that that you indicate
something is correct, it'll be restated, rephrased, respoken as if
the psychic is saying it, and you're you're so unwrapped
in this whole thing that you're just missing the fact
that you're feeding them the information that they're giving to
you as a psychic reading, because this isn't just pet psychics. No,
(29:47):
Like generally, if you go into a psychic, you are
there because you want to believe and you are seeking
an answer. Um, if a dude like your I went
into a pet psychic, we probably wouldn't have much luck
because we would go in there looking to shoot holes
in it. And uh, I did encourage Emily. I was
like going there with an open mind. You know, I
would go in there with an open mind. See, I
don't think I could. I would, I wasn't invited. I
(30:08):
would try, at the very least, I don't. I wouldn't
if I were going to go in there just to
poop who, I just wouldn't go. Well, yeah, you know,
because I mean, who wants to do that? Jerks? There
are plenty of them out there too. No, that's true. Um,
But Emily did say that she was She made a
point to not reveal too much and to sort of
watch out for those cold reading tricks. And she said
(30:33):
I didn't reveal a whole lot and she she gave
me back something, so she's a believer. Well, um that
that whatever she spent on that, So dropping the bucket.
Compared to what people spend on their pets these days,
it's a little crazy these days, not just for pet
psychics but just in general. Yeah. Um, Americans spent sixty
(30:55):
one billion dollars billion with a B dollars in two
thousand thirty on their pets. Sixty one billion dollars and
that was up from thirty six billion in two thousand
five and seventeen billion. What's the current number, sixty one billion? Boy,
(31:15):
I mean things have really I don't want to say
gotten out of hand, but you definitely noticed in the
past decade more uh, doggy spas and stuff like that around. Well,
there's supposedly more disposable income. Yeah. Uh, and there are
more people who are not having kids, so they're just
dumping their money into their beats. Well, good get them
(31:37):
off the street people, That's what I say. The point
is for spending sixty one billion dollars on our pets,
and it keeps increasing, almost doubling every few years, now
every eight years. UM. Pet psychics are not going anywhere. No,
they're not there. Here is stay. I've got one more
UM stat for you. Uh, there's a poll in two
thousand eight that found that sixty of pet owners say
(31:58):
they understand their animals purrs or barks or other noises,
and said that when they speak, their pet understands them
or at least they're intent um. And one in five
owners claim they their pets understand each other completely like
the two pets do, and one quarter of cat owners
(32:19):
that they completely understood their pet sounds. Only of dog
owners said they were flute and barks. So I guess
those are two different poles that are wildly different in
their numbers. I think people can and animals since a
lot of subtle micro expressions and body language, and that
(32:42):
is just I mean, that is communication. So don't you
think that's just a result of proximity around another living being,
you know, just living with something, whether it's a person
or an animal, like you get to know them and
their mannerisms and yeah, like you can read them, and
that is, like I said, micro expressions is a form
of commune cation, I think. So it's not like I think,
sure you can communicate with your dog, uh, but it
(33:05):
may not be telepathically like a conversation. But if it
feels as easy as a telepathic conversation, then you you've
got it going on with your pet. Yeah. And again,
if you want to go out and drop your dough
on a pet psychic, more power to you. Probably get
something out of it. Same here. Uh. If you want
to know more about pet psychics, type those words into
(33:26):
the search part how stuff works dot com. And since
I said search parts, time for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this uh go Figgy Puddings. Remember that in our
a live partly Well, I'll just go and read it
the semester. Guys, I'm studying abroad in the UK at
the University of Hertfordshire during my travel exactly during my travels.
(33:48):
Your podcast is help me pass the time of plane
and train rides while learning new things and hearing the
American accent I miss so much. I just listened to
a zero scientific for me. For funny, you mentioned Richard
Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire and Josh said go
Figgy Puddings, which was very funny. I couldn't have thought
of that. You could not that quick. I was a
(34:11):
little taken. Aback guy, since you're always dead on with
your university team names, I regret to inform you that
you h does not have a team called the Piggy
Puddings Zell. They're actually the University of Hertfordshire Hurricanes. It
was this guy's joking right now, King, Oh yeah, well yeah,
I think so. Oh, I think so, Andrew. You knew
Josh is joking, right, please, Andrew, I think so. Um,
(34:34):
we are the Hurricanes, which is a little weird since
they have more figgy puddings here than hurricanes. Yeah, there's
not a lot of hurricanes over there and there, No,
I don't think so. They tend to come this way. Yeah,
you h Hurricanes are actually one of the best British
American football teams around with four national championships. But I
think he corrected himself in a subsequent email. I think
there were five twelve division title since just want to
(34:58):
set the record straight. Also wanted to thank you guys
for such a consistently great show. And that is Andrew
Million go Kaine, and um, I think he I hope
he knows you're joking. Well, he said he was taken aback.
I think he was kidding. I hope I don't know
that he was joking. Go with that if you want
(35:19):
to pull one over on me and Chuck, that's fine,
We'll see what you got. You can tweet to us
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