When talk shows bring on "psychics", did they ever try to expose them by bringing in an actor with a fake story to mess with the fraud?

I couldn’t say when or who, but I do remember some shows, maybe 8–10 years, trying to confront a psychic.

It was some sort of a talk show, and the psychic stormed off the set.

I remember Sylvia Brown was on Montel Williams show telling Amanda Berry’s mother that she was dead. She was one of three little girls that was kept in some lunatics basement for 10 years and finally escaped.

“Psychics” are by nature fraudulent. Anyone with some kind of a “fake story” would simply be playing along with the fraudulency.

I know of one skilled practitioner who would do the fraud exposure himself: go on TV or onstage billed as a “psychic,” perform his mind tricks, get people all wound up, and then tell them himself that it was all a fraud and he was a phony. Even then he found it hard to convince audiences that it wasn’t real.

He was a member of this organization. Their mission is to “promote scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.”

People tend to cling to their irrational beliefs pretty hard, using their wits to defend them rather than to defeat them.

Here he is. He died in 2013.