Stuff You Should Know - How Pet Psychics Work

Episode Date: January 16, 2014

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack

and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That's me. I've mentioned myself already. Have I mentioned Jerry? Yeah, I think so. These just keep getting worse and worse. Jerry'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. Yeah. So we can have a cushy couple of weeks. Yeah. So we're hammered. Not true. No. Not yet. You got your coffee.

I got my soda water. Lacroix. Lacroix soda water. Yeah. My coffee is neither Spanish nor Irish nor anything like that. No. What is Spanish coffee? Oh, it's the better of the two. What is it? You get a little... Well, it depends on your recipe, but you get a little bit of rum. Okay. You get a little bit of triple sec or... I can't remember the other name for it, but good triple sec. Yeah. Put them together in a tempered snifter or an Irish coffee glass. Fire tempered. Make sure it's tempered or else you're about to hurt yourself. Yeah, but bust on it. You light it. It's got to be high proof rum. You light the rum triple sec combo. Just let it burn out for a second. Or you can blow it up. You don't want to burn

off too much of the alcohol. Yeah. And you add some espresso, some Kahlua, and then top it off with a little whipped cream and nutmeg. Man. It's good stuff. And that's just one version. There's plenty of other versions of Spanish coffee. That makes Irish coffee look silly. They're just like... I don't put down Irish coffee. It's whiskey and a coffee and drink. It's also called the eye opener. Yeah. I love the simplicity of the Irish just doing that. I love that. Have you seen... A great country. I don't know if it was a new one last week. I started watching The Simpsons again after years off. Oh yeah? It's awesome. Is it back? Man, it is back. There was one... I don't know if it was new or not, but Krusty syndicated himself

around the world so we could make a lot more money. So there's a Jamaican Krusty. There's all these... And then the Irish one was just like this depressed alcoholic who would sit at a table on a chair in the spare room. Didn't even do that. Really? Yeah. And would just drink and say like these really bleak, depressing things was perfect. And he ended up with his own stage show on Broadway and everything. As the Irish Krusty? Yeah. Oh, awesome. That's a good one. I'll have to check that out. Yeah. That was my intro to pet psychics. All right. You know, that cat sitting over there knew everything I was about to say. Oh yeah? Not many people know we have a studio cat. No. Man, I wish we did. How awesome would that be? A studio cat. Yeah, that'd be great.

It gave me in here, wouldn't it? No. It's already pretty warm in here as it is. The cat would love that. Yeah. All right. So pet psychics, factor fiction. They're fiction. Are we debunking right out of the thing? Well, you know, I am of the 40 in 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. Yeah. And that science should be used to exhaust all avenues. And just because we can't currently explain something using science doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Sure. I think 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 not one to just overtly poo poo something out of hand.

Okay. That said, I had a hard time like taking this entire article seriously. Yeah. Well, you want to know something? Yeah. Emily just went to a pet psychic. I thought that there's probably like an 85 to 90% chance that something like that was going to come up. Yeah. You know, we had to put old Lucy down and Emily went in the following week. We have a local pet psychic. And I'm surprised it's just one. There probably is. Yeah. But one near our house and she went and talked to this lady. Was it comforting? It was, she said it was really interesting and there was less talk about Lucy and more talk about like me and our other animals and she wouldn't tell me a whole lot because she didn't want me to poke fun at it. Yeah. You know,

and I tried to be super supportive and I was sure. Of course. I thought every instinct I had to you're like, that sounds like a great time. Neat. How much was it? But Emily and she asked me not to say this. 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 she is very intuitive with animals. And so she's going to poke around there and not to do it for a living or anything. Right. Just to do with your own dogs at home. Yeah. Just to see if she can become more in tune with our animals. And they are called animal intuitives sometime or communicators. Right. Not necessarily pet psychics because that makes you sound a little crazy. There seems to be

like a whole gamut of people that would fall under the umbrella of pet psychics. Yeah. Like a horse whisperer or Caesar Milan, some people might say is an animal communicator. Right. That they're just maybe more in tune with the signals that animals send out and they can send signals to animals. Yeah. 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 this lady Emily went to was sounded more like an animal intuitive communicator than like a medium saying I'm talking to Lucy. She's in a better place. Right. 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. Sure. All right. So let's get into it. Well, I thought we already had. Well, I guess we have. I just wanted to go ahead and drop that bomb about Emily. I think you're in trouble. So pet psychics. Nah, she doesn't listen. They claim, depending on who they are, there is a spectrum of pet psychics, like you said, that claim certain abilities. But some claim that they can actually telepathically communicate with animals right mind. Right. 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. Yeah. In some cases, they are talking like there's a pet psychic who claims that when she speaks to

animals, they respond to her in a childlike voice. The animals have childlike voices. Yeah. They speak like children. They do in Disney movies. Yeah. So why not? But the basically at its most supernatural, I guess, its most extra sensory pets, psychics, what they're claiming to do is a convergence of clairvoyance, which is farsight and telepathy, which is mind reading. They're putting these together. And then if you already have a hard enough time swallowing that, you may have an even harder time swallowing 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 to, it's hard with humans to believe that someone might have ESP and telepathy. And we speak the

same language. Yeah. So it might be even a deeper reach to say that you can do that with a dog, let's say. Yeah. So okay. Emily went to a pet psychic. Yeah. She went after Lucy. Yeah. Yeah. Passed on. Yeah. Basically to find out how Lucy was doing. Yeah. I think she was just curious about the, she'd been curious for a while and this afforded her an opportunity to go see a pet psychic. I think, right. It gave her a good reason. Okay. So that's one reason people go see pet psychics after the death of a pet. Sure. Another one is when a pet is sick or injured or ailing. Tell me if it's time to go. Right. Yeah. Which man, this got to be a lot to put on a pet psychic. That's a lot to put on a vet. Sure. Yeah. You know, although I think vets are kind

of like, yeah, let's just go ahead and do it. No, that's not true. And then what if the, what if the pet is acting like a jerk all of a sudden? Yeah. That's another reason people go to pets. Why 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 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 somebody into giving up their bread for you just to say, yeah, your dog will be home in a couple of weeks. Yeah. Then, you know, how are you going to work

that? You can't. But there are anecdotal success stories of locating pets this way. If there weren't, this wouldn't be around. And a skeptic will say this, just luck and coincidence. Yeah. Like the dog was on its way home anyway. Exactly. This pet psychic didn't call to it with her mind. That's right. Psychics, pet psychics say they 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, whether it's a childlike voice or like, I think most of them generally do it like in pictures. Yeah. Which makes a little more sense to me.

Yeah. And this, this, this thing, this electromagnetic energy, there's this guy who wrote a book. His name is Jay Allen Boone. And he wrote a book called kinship with all life. And it apparently is the pet psychics Bible. And it's kind of his relationship with this German shepherd named Strongheart, which is a Hollywood dog that he cared for starting in, I think the 1930s. And who he became telepathically linked with intuitively linked to. Right. And basically, Jay Allen 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. Midichlorians. Right. And I think that's what the pet psychic would say. Well,

that's the electromagnetic energy. Right. The point is, is since it binds all things, we can just kind of use that to, to connect to the mind of another thing, human or animal. Right. Because we're all connected by this. Right. It's a lovely thought. It is. Animal Planet actually had a show for a little while about 10 years ago called the pet psychic. And the lady on there, what's her name? Fitzpatrick. Yes. She claimed that she picked up this in childhood as a result of a hearing loss. 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. Oh, is that right? That's what Tracy says in this article. Okay. I wonder what that sounds like one of those statements. Did she do research on that? I don't know. Did she do a poll? Well, I think that it definitely did kick off a trend. If it didn't capitalize on it, it definitely kicked it off. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Attention, Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell all podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day, truly every day of my life. I think

about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So you go to your pet psychic, you're going to go into a room and they're going to do something like this, not exactly like this, depending on their methods. But they're probably going to 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 still call its name or something and get its attention too. Yeah, or have a picture. A lot of times like you don't need the animal there

necessarily. In fact, a lot of times I think the animal is not there. Right. Because why do you need the animal? You don't. You've got the great cause, the primal cause. Exactly. So they go like this with their mind. They do. And then they will accept whatever response they get, relay that back to you, ask you some more questions, 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 they're, they're not happy with the new couch and that's why they're peeing on it. Right. Or ever since you took that promotion into middle management, you've changed man. Yeah. And I'm not happy with this new you. That's why I keep chewing your suits. Exactly.

They are going to, 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. I know a lot of people believe in energy. I mean, electromagnetic energy does exist. Yeah, not this kind of right. Right. Yeah. I just want to make sure everyone knew that we believe in electromagnetic energy, but they haven't picked up. They haven't proven that there's any actual like sensory organ in people or animals that allow them to tune into this energy. Right. Does that make more sense? Yeah. So, so during these pet psychic sessions, when 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, the problem is when a pet psychic asks an animal what's going on, and the animal is thought to respond, well, this, I'm doing this because of this, 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 its behavior. That in and of itself is a controversial aspect of this whole topic. Yeah, that self-awareness, like a lot of animal intuitives believe that animals are basically kind of like people. Right. They just can't talk. They experience the emotions, they're self-aware, and they're just not trapped, but they're in an animal's body. Right. And 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, upsetness. Yeah, rage, I think is one. Yeah. Lust, separation, distress. Yeah, but it's hard to define an emotion period much less than in an animal. Right, but the idea that emotions just belong to humans or even humans in higher primates is definitely faded. We are aware that animals can't 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 higher emotions as well. Sure. And there was actually a conference at Cambridge University in 2012, and it was a pretty heavy hitting conference. Like, I mean, the people involved were no slouches, and they came up with the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, and they basically said that the components that you need to experience emotions and consciousness are not relegated to the cortex, meaning it's not just humans that are capable to have the hardware for experiencing consciousness. They also said that if you artificially stimulate

the neural circuits that are responsible for different aspects of consciousness in humans, you can stimulate the same things in animals too, which suggests that they have the same equipment. You can also disrupt those circuits using hallucinogens in humans and animals. And since they have all the equipment, all the science points who said this group of neuroscientists and other professionals, they said 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. Right. But the people who think that if your dog is sad, you're probably right.

Yeah, because the dog likes you around, and it might be happy when you're home 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 animal. Right. Because animals can't say I'm feeling like this right now. We can be like, that's love. You're feeling love. Yeah, like when a mother cares for her puppies, it looks like it's showing love. Or is it oxytocin, a hormone in the body that says you need to care for your young? Is it love or care? Or does the animal realize it's love or care? Well, that's the big one. Yeah. Because you can say we have that same exact neural circuit.

Yeah. 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 my baby. That means I love my baby. That makes me even happier. That's called metacognition. Right. That's where most people are drawing the line with animals these days. They might be able to experience some pretty high emotions. They may be self-aware, but the ability to think about their emotions and the implications of their emotions or think about thinking, that's metacognition. And not everybody agrees on that one. That's the new threshold that we're at, it seems like, for animals, whether or not they're capable of metacognition.

So, if an animal sees itself in the mirror and notices itself, is that self-awareness? Yeah. Which would be a form of metacognition. Right. But that's, that's not proven. That's where a lot of people, you'll lose a lot of people now, whereas 10 years ago, even saying that an animal could experience happiness or joy, would have lost a lot of people. So, who knows in 10 years from now, maybe everyone will agree that animals experience metacognition. Yeah. A grief is definitely one I've seen firsthand a lot. Yeah. We talked about it in the grief episode. Yeah. And when we put Lucy down, they recommend that, we did at our house, they recommend that the pet not see that act, but then they come in afterward. Yeah. 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. Yeah. And we did that with Buckley and Charlie and let them back in. And Charlie was stressed, we didn't think about it. She was a feral dog, 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, sniffs Lucy, and it was really sad. I'm sure. 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 all the rooms, I think, looking for Lucy because he never had done that before. Yeah. He usually just walks in and lays down, but he literally would go to

each room. So, I definitely think 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. 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 anthropocentrism. Yeah. Where you're just like, no, they can't, only humans can. Humans are the greatest ever. Sure. And you're forgetting that we're animals as well. Right. 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 resist. Buckley's so happy because we're putting up the Christmas tree. Exactly. Yeah. Buckley's happy because we're in there having a good time and drinking some eggnog and like the music's on, we're dancing. Right, exactly. Yeah. So, you have to resist both of those temptations to just kind of keep plodding along down the line scientifically. Yeah. But I think ultimately as 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 because they are a lot closer to us consciousness wise than we currently understand or want to admit right now. Agreed. All right. Well, we're going

to talk a little bit about pet psychics and like contradictions between them and what might be going on here right after this message break. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope,

but I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all, and now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so there are some contradictions. If you go to 10 pet psychics, you're probably going to have

10 different... 11 opinions. Yeah, 11 different stories about what's going on, which is one reason I know it makes it hard to swallow for some people. Again, I feel like since we went to break and came back, this is a good time to reiterate. I'm not poo-pooing intuitiveness. No. I'm not poo-pooing some people's ability, greater ability than others to really connect to animals and understand them or deal with them. However you want to put it, it's when it strays into telepathy and clairvoyance that I start to become skeptical. Yeah, I know what you mean. I think some people are more in tune 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 input from other things,

whether it's people or animals. They're always looking for something. Right. Justin, you know, Justin, his mom, Kerry, one of my favorite people is one of the most in tune, intuitive people I've ever met in my life because she's a studier of people. Yeah. Like you can see her, man, when there's a party going on, she'll be sitting back and watching. Oh yeah? Yeah. Is she weird? No, she's not weird at all. She's awesome. But she watches and she's, you know, I don't know if it's a gift as much as it is something you can work on. Yeah, I think it is. Like remove your head from your butt and pay attention. So some contradictions, like you might see a Fitzpatrick that says your animal ratted you out about something. You might go to another pet psychic that

says animals would never do that. They're loyal. Right. So what's the story? Supposedly, according to Sonya Fitzpatrick from the pet psychic show, animals are very gossipy and they like to tell one another all your secrets. That's hilarious to me. And she told the story, she wrote a book called 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 Sonya Fitzpatrick introduced a fish to this turtle's tank and the turtle was like, thanks, chump and ate the fish. Yeah. 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. Okay. So

animals are gossipy and widely and have the potential to lie. Yeah, you should not trust animals. Debbie McGillivray, she wrote the complete idiots guide to pet psychic communication. She's the one that said, no, no, no animals are loyal. They're innocent. They would never rat you out. They would never lie to you like that or embarrass you. So 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 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 human, like humans gossip. They'll tell other people all of your terrible secrets. True.

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 here is what's known as a cold reading. Yeah. The actual, any success or what appears to be success. Yeah. Telepathically among pet psychics, cold readings. Yeah. ESP people use cold readings to explain that. Fortune telling tarot card, palm reading, crystal balls, you name it. A skeptic will say that what a cold reading is, is the following. They are maybe stating the obvious. Your cat loves to, your cat's telling me it loves to lay in the window and look at the world outside. Right. And the person goes, oh my God, the wizard loves that. Right. All cats love that.

Exactly. So that might happen in your reading. They might also use very vague language. Like, he says, your dog says something has changed around here. And you go, oh yeah, I just accepted this middle management promotion. Yeah. And the pet psychic says, yes. 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 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, by the way. 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 an extra 15

hours a week and your dog has separation anxiety. Yeah. So ironically, it might be actually on the money, but the disconnect comes in when the psychic says that your dog told them that. Exactly. What else? Or about this, here's another way to state the audience. Your dog, I'm looking at a picture 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 paw or you went in and forgot you said my dog is, is chewing their paws all the time. What's the deal with that? Right. Like they'll, they'll glean these bits of information without you maybe even necessarily recognizing that by asking you questions. Yeah. 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 red and green and then you say blue, blue collar, your dog is wearing a blue collar. Yeah. So every time something is, that, that you indicate something is correct, it'll be restated, rephrased, yeah. Respoken as if the psychic is saying it. Right. 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. Yeah, because this isn't just pet psychics. No, like generally, if you go into a psychic, you are there because you want to believe and

you're seeking an answer. Right. If a dude like your eye 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 I did encourage Emily, I was like, go in there with an open mind, you know, I would go in there with an open mind. I see. I don't think I could. I would. That's why I wasn't invited. I would try at the very least. I don't, I wouldn't, if I were going to go in there, just a poo poo, 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. 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, I didn't

reveal a whole lot and she, she gave me back something. So she's a believer. Well, that, that whatever she spent on that, yeah, it's a drop in 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. American spent $61 billion, billion with the B dollars in 2013 on their pets. Yeah. $61 billion. And that was up from 36 billion in 2005 and 17 billion in 1996. Wait, what's the current number? 61 billion. Wow. Boy, I mean, things have really, I don't want to say gotten out of hand, but you definitely noticed in the past decade more doggy spas and stuff like that around. Well, there's supposedly more disposable income. Yeah. And there are more people who are not

having kids. Oh, so they're just dumping their money into their pets? Well, good. Get them off the street people. That's what I say. The point is for spending $61 billion on our pets and it keeps increasing, almost doubling every few years now, every eight, nine, 10 years. Pet psychics are not going anywhere. No, they're not. They are here to stay. I've got one more stat for you. There was a poll in 2008 that found that 67% of pet owners say they understand their animals, purrs, or barks, or other noises. And 62% said that when they speak, their pet understands them, or at least their intent. And one in five owners claim that their pets understand each other completely, like the two pets do. And one quarter of cat owners, they completely understood their

pet sounds. Only 16% of dog owners said they were fluent bark. So I guess those are two different polls that are wildly different in their numbers. Yeah. I think people can, and animals, since a lot of subtle micro expressions in body language, and that is communication. And don't you think that's just a result of proximity around another living being? Just living with something, whether it's a person or an animal, you get to know them and their mannerisms. Yeah, absolutely. You can read them. And that is, like I said, micro expressions is a form of communication, I think. So it's not like, I think, sure, you can communicate with your dog. Sure. But it may not be telepathically like a conversation. But if it feels as easy as a telepathic conversation,

then 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. If you want to know more about pet psychics, type those words into the search bar at House of Worker.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Go Figgy Puddings. Remember that? In our live podcast, well, I'll just go ahead and read it. This semester, guys, I'm studying abroad in the UK at the University of Hertfordshire during my travels. Go Figgy Puddings. Exactly. During my travels, your podcast has helped me pass the time of playing in 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 have. Not that quick. I was a little taken aback, guys, since you're always dead on with your university team names. I regret to inform you that UH does not have a team called the Figgy Puddings. They're actually the University of Hertfordshire Hurricanes. It was this guy's joking, right? No, I knew I was joking. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I think so. Okay. Boy, I think so. Andrew, you knew Josh was joking, right? Please, Andrew. I think so.

We're 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, isn't there? No, I don't think so. They tend to come this way. Yeah, the UH 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 are five 12 division titles since 1997. Just want to set the record straight. Also, I wanted to thank you guys for such a consistently great show. And that is Andrew Millian. Go Kains. And I think he, I hope he knows you're joking. Well, I said he was taken aback. I think he was kidding. I hope I don't know that he was joking.

If you want to pull one over on me and Chuck, that's fine. We'll see what you got. You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. And as always, join us at our beautiful, spacious, warm smelling comb on the web stuff you should know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Hey, Netflix streams, TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device, or game console. You can get a 30 day free trial membership. Go to www.netflix.com slash stuff and sign up now. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different, hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention, bachelor nation, he's back, the host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all. And now he's telling

all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.