I recently had the privilege of interviewing Russell Targ, an eminent physicist and researcher in extra-sensory perception. He has quite a professional pedigree: Not only is he one of the great minds who developed the laser, he also helped to manage the US Army’s “Remote Viewing” program: An experimental unit devoted to using psychic powers to spy on the Soviet Union and other enemies, in which participants were given a location thousands of miles away and told to try to visualize what they “saw” there in their minds.

Targ’s latest book, The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities, collects data obtained over the course of many years spent studying ESP, including from his years managing Remote Viewers. It’s a a great read, even if you don’t believe in psychic powers at all. Targ is certainly convinced that there’s something there. After the military shuttered the psychic spy program, Targ and a bunch of psychics got together to attempt to predict stock market fluctuations, and were actually successful doing so. It still could be chance, but Targ presents some compelling evidence that it wasn’t.