There has been much discussion about the Oprah show so let me elaborate a little more on how the show came about and was produced.

I was filmed in a hotel room in Anaheim, California by the Oprah crew a week and a half before the show aired. They were in town to film James Van Praagh for a workshop he was doing in Anaheim. I insisted on attending the workshop myself so I could comment on it intelligently, but they didn't want "confrontation" or specific remarks about things he said; rather, they wanted a general explanation including the principles of cold reading, hot reading, probabilities of getting hits, selective remembering of hits, etc. They wanted to set up a private reading with Van Praagh with someone he wouldn't know about ahead of time. I warned the producer that Van Praagh would pump her for info about the person, and she called me back and told me that is EXACTLY what he did. And she said he was really skilled at it but that she just kept telling him, "James, I told you I cannot tell you anything about this person." Some psychic he is.

In any case, the producer was very friendly toward me, was really glad I was there, definitely wanted the skeptical perspective presented on the show, and she had some success in this regard, although of course we skeptics would always like more time. In the end I wouldn't imagine that I had much negative impact on Van Praagh's book sales. His book really is Number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. It is simply unbelievable. But there it is. What else can we do? To paraphrase Yogi Berra, if the people won't come to the skeptics you can't stop 'em.