Upsetting Day: Riz Mirza, Podcast Psychic

In 2019, Burger King hired a psychic medium to channel ghosts so that they could try a Burger King Whopper. Where did Burger King find a man willing to portray a ghost eating a cheeseburger for the first time? YouTube, of course. That’s where he channels hungry ghosts and spirit guides most weekends. His name is Riz Mirza, and he looks exactly like you think he does, right down to the prayer hands.

Riz Mirza has managed to integrate a very old grift into modern life in a frankly impressive way. How many psychic mediums are on Yelp? Ok, it’s more than I expected, but how many of those Yelp psychics have nearly five stars after 47 reviews? What Riz does really well, other than come up with catchy titles for himself like Riz The Wiz, is marry spiritualism and hustle culture. He’s all about helping people improve themselves, not for anything as cheap as spiritual enlightenment, yuck! It’s all about improving yourself so you can make more money.

The Dalai Lama would drive a Ferrari if only he were doing spiritual enlightenment right. One of Riz’s satisfied customers claims they doubled their income when they started living as their most authentic self. I think the area where it’s easiest to see the marriage of mysticism and hustle culture is in Riz’s very own MLM for psychics.

That’s right, he’ll sell you a class on how to make passive income with your psychic abilities. Why not? He’s been doing a great job monetizing his gift of being a terrible actor. I mean, this character work is so underbaked. His repertoire includes a bad English accent and yelling, and that was enough to get him a deal with Burger King, a YouTube channel with 500K subscribers, and several celebrity podcast appearances.

Riz has the same skillset as many right wing podcasters– he’s good at dialing up or down his crazy depending on who he’s talking to. So let’s take a look at some of the weirdest things he’s said and who he said them to, because he’s even gotten some celebrities to sign off on his grift, including Maria Menounos, the lady who reads ads before movies. She’s had him on her podcast, Heal Squad, several times. In his predictions about 2025, he said:

This was about Donald Trump winning the election. One of the biggest beliefs he pushes is that our spirit chooses where we'll be born and who will be our parents before we're born. Essentially, we're here to learn and grow, and the whole world is just going through growing pains right now. This is, of course, bullshit because if it were true, we would all obviously choose to be Arnold Schwarzenegger smoking a joint, drinking wine, and eating fried chicken after winning Mr. Universe.

Maria Menounos is floored by this quote. She's had Riz on her show several times and is clearly very impressed by him. His craziness is pretty dialed up for her. Let's get another quote from Heal Squad, a podcast that's supposed to be about "taking control of your health."

Oh, so my arms are spaghetti in another dimension, and I didn't choose to be born there? Soul fetus me is LAME. These ideas about choosing our specific reality out of a plethora of reality choices are the kind of thing that easily appeals to people like Brandi Cyrus, the daughter of Billy Ray and Tish Cyrus, a professional DJ and podcaster. She co-hosts the podcast Sorry We're Cyrus with her mom. If I could choose what reality I was born into, the one where my only job is occasionally hosting the worst podcast on earth with my mom would probably make the list. Here's some wisdom Riz had for Brandi:

This was in a long story he told about the time his grandma got angry at him because she saw the bottom of his foot. It's again about choosing your own reality because she could have chosen not to get mad about the foot thing, but oh boy, did she. He repeated himself a lot on both of the celebrity podcasts that I watched him appear on, repeating a couple of the same stories and basic ideas, but Brandi and Tish were clearly not as into him as Maria was, and he worked hard to get them on his side. I think he lost them with the foot thing.

Eventually, he gave Brandi a psychic message from her horse that the horse wants more alone time with her. He then said that his readings aren't always for the person who receives the reading, I think implying that they met so he could relay this important message from her horse to her. It was a real Hail Mary. This man was sweating, and he had no choice but to jump to, "Oh God, horse message!" as a final way to save the interview. It did not work great; Brandi was unimpressed by the horse message.

Riz claims to be psychic in every way possible. He's a shaman; he can sense people's medical problems, talk to animals, sense past lives, and channel ghosts. He's the Walmart of psychics. One stop for every crazy thing you could ever want, and he throws all of them at the Cyruses. He told them to drink more water, take naps, visit New Zealand, go to the chiropractor for back pain, all the generic things that would make rich women feel better, and they just weren't having it. At one point, Riz told Brandi that she needs to let the little girl she once was take charge of her life, and she said, "I like me now better."

Don't worry, Riz recovered from his encounter with Brandi Cyrus and lives to grift another day. He's still doing live psychic Sunday readings with his wife, who is also psychic but less psychic than Riz because she wasn't born with her powers; they are a byproduct of being abducted by aliens. Anyway, she goes by Lady O and together they use their psychic powers to guide their devoted subscribers' lives, sometimes while dressed as Beetlejuice.

Riz likes to tell people that they have "spirit guides," and these guides are often famous people who give them "cosmic advice," which is like regular advice but cosmic-flavored. In the Beetlejuice live, he immediately meets a woman whose spirit guide is Frank Lloyd Wright, but he can't remember the name Frank Lloyd Wright, and only calls him the architect of the Guggenheim museum. Except, he also can't remember the name of the Guggenheim museum, so he calls it, "that one that looks like a little upside down, kind of a muffin or something."

Eventually, with the help of some off-stage personnel, they get Riz to remember the name of the Guggenheim, and he is able to deliver his message that "Everything you do, you've got to present it. It doesn't matter what you're making, it has got to be in a special package too." Frank Lloyd Wright returned from the dead to deliver that message to a random woman named Anna. Why are we pestering Frank Lloyd Wright with this? Imagine how bored he must be in the afterlife to deliver product packaging advice to Anna. All of Riz's messages are like this. Martha Washington is here with you, my child, and she has a message about using synergy to raise brand awareness on social media.

If spiritualism were real, imagine how fucking sick ghosts would be of this guy. They must be wondering why everyone who can communicate with them looks like a failed magician. I guess that's just how the universe works. You die, and then you become a captive audience for a man who posts motivational Instagram posts and forces you to eat Whoppers.

If you're wondering how the Whopper taste test went, it's kind of hard to find a good version of the commercial. I don't think it's Burger King's proudest moment. Riz did a couple of characters that weren't named, but he did his usual British guy and then a sort of caveman type dude who scarfed the whopper down. Personally, I want to know what Martha Washington thinks of the ghost whopper, and I hope that Riz Mirza claws her spirit from the afterlife and forces her to tell me.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Good Satan and His Hot Witches, who only uses the power to talk to spirits for comedy purposes and spying on enemies. You know, like a normal person.

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