Ever want to know how to bend spoons like Uri Geller? There are quite a few ways, apparently. But according to Geller’s arch-nemesis, skeptic and magician James Randi, “if Geller bends spoons with divine powers, then he’s doing it the hard way.” In the video above, editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer, shows us how to do it the easy way, and still make it look like magic. While “psychics” like Geller have dined out on their supposed powers for as long as there have been people willing to pick up the tab, skeptics like Randi and Shermer have probably been around as long, using logic and a healthy dose of disbelief. Randi’s exposure of Geller on the Johnny Carson show is the stuff of legend. For a lesser-known debunking, check out the video below from Thames Television. Geller, like so many self-proclaimed psychics, can be persuasive, but most phenomena are better explained by science than by magical thinking.

Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.