The lights go down. The mentalist walks onto the stage. The show begins. Within the first ten minutes, the mentalist is revealing impossibly specific information about audience members they have supposedly never met. They know your name. They know where you went to college. They know what your deceased grandmother used to call you. They know the name of your first pet. They describe your childhood home with uncanny accuracy. The audience is stunned. This cannot be trickery. It must be real psychic ability. It is not. What you are witnessing is the result of the pre-show, one of the...