Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
On a talk show in 1970, the famed filmmaker Orson Welles told a story about the time he became a fortune teller out of boredom. He would spend the day predicting people’s futures and sussing out facets of their lives using cold reading, a technique often employed by psychics and mentalists to suss out information about complete strangers using surface level information about them (e.g. how they’re dressed, the way they talk).
“The computer in here,” he told the show’s host, pointing to his head, “has made all of those deductions without you being conscious of it.”
Over the course of the day and after a few fortune telling sessions, he began to fall into an old trap that occasionally happens to working magicians, where they start to believe they actually possess supernatural powers. He realized this after a woman walked in and sat down in front of him. After taking her in, he said, “You lost your husband last week” to which the woman burst into tears, confirming that she had. At that moment, Welles realized that he was teetering a little too close to believing in his own powers, and quit being a fortune teller.
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