Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
But he's also the one that after we came out
and said that everything was fake, that we were frauds,
he came out and said, look, they say that they
were lying, then how do we know that Randy hasn't
paid them off to lie? Now he's still believed. So
you still have that category there of people gonna believe
no matter what. The majority of people realized. We wore magicians.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Today we have Banicheck on the show. Banicheck has been
named the world's greatest mind reader. He dazzles audiences all
around the world with his incredible mentalism, which is a
sub branch of magic that combines psychology and magic. In
this episode, we learn more about the man behind the
mind Reader, discussing his challenging early childhood, his criticisms of
self described psychics, his partnership with the skeptical magician James
(00:49):
Randy and their work together on Project Alpha, and his
successful attempts to fool professional paranormal psychologists. Banicheck is a
really interesting guy, as you'll see, one of my favorite
mentalists alive today. I hope this episode gives you a
greater glimpse into his own psychology, and I hope this
episode also even increases your own interest in the exciting
field of mentalism, which I find extraordinarily exciting. So, without
(01:12):
further ado, I bring you Beanicheck Banacheck. Welcome to the
Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Thank you the amazing doctor Scott. Is that what we
were saying.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yes, but you can call me Scott in this episode.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
That's your stage name.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yes, that's my stage So yeah, I'm super interested in mentalism,
but as you know, I'm super interested in creativity, and
you're such a great example of a combination of creativity
and skepticism. I love this combination, this unique integration of
what makes you so unique. First of all, I want
to ask, are you the world's greatest mind reader?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
That's what they tell me. Okay, I have a real
hard time promoting myself. We're talking to myself in terms
like that. It's good marketing. And you know, it's kind
of like it depends who you're asked. You know, what
are you looking at? A mentalist? And there's different types
of mentalists. You know, there's pure mentalists, which is sort
of like me. But I'm also a pure mentalist with
(02:12):
a skeptic bent that wants people. By the time I'm
doone to realize it's strictly entertainment. There's metalists that wants
you to believe that there are one hundred percent real
and then there's magic mentalism, what we call magic menalism,
and we can touch on those a little more if
you want to at some point.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Magic mentalism. No, I'm actually curious right now, I can't wait.
What is magic mentalism?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Well, I think of well, mental magic is what we
often call it. I call it magic mentalism. I used
to think it was all about the props that the
performer us. Right, if they use something that looked like
it was magical, then it felt magical. But I think
it's more about the performer. Now it looks like magic tricks.
It's medalism that actually looks like a magic trick. You
(02:52):
don't misunderstand or you don't confuse it with like psychic powers.
Well that could have been psychic. You know for sure
hundred percent that it's a magic trick. And then Darren Brown,
who's we can touch on him again in a little bit.
Darren Brown, who became the top medalist in the UK.
He used what we call a dollhouse illusion, which is
(03:13):
used by illusionists, and he actually used this and nothing
can be more magical than a dollhouse illusion. He used
it for a prediction effect and it looked like it
was a genuine prediction. So at that point I went,
uh huh, it's not so much about the props, it's
more about the performer.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Absolutely. So how would you define mentalism? You know, like
a sentence?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, well, well I really pushed it in one of
my books. It was the term taking my five known
census to create the illusion of a sixth sense. And
that came from a gentleman who years ago did one
lecture and he basically it was by the wayside and
then the amazing Randy, because I was looking for a way.
I didn't want people to think I was real, and
(03:57):
I was looking for a way to describe what it
is that we do, and Randy gave this to me,
and I called the gentleman up. I said, hey, do
you mind if I take this and run with it?
He said, no problem at all. So that's really what
it is. We take our five known senses to duplicate
what psychic powers would look like if they were real.
We use verbal communication, nonverbal communication, magic with lots of magic,
(04:18):
mostly magic, and it's of psychology to create what would
look like it was a genuine psychic experience. You're not
going to call yourself a mentalist if you're a psychic,
there would be no reason to do that. So anybody
that's calling themselves a mentalist, they are using tricks to
duplicate what psychic powers would look like. Now as to
(04:38):
what claims they're making, that's completely different.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yes, no, that's true. I mean, you don't call yourself
a psychic, you call yourself a man.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
I wouldn't, although some mentalists will at times call themselves psychics.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's true. I have a friend, Michael Guttenplan. I don't
know if you know him. He's calls himself the third
generation psychic, and he's a friend of mine from college.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well, that's one of the problems I had with some
you know, there was one group that I belong to,
and I love most of the guys in I love
them all. Some of them don't like me so much
because my skeptic meant but they would get very upset
when I would say, hey, that I'm a mentalist and
I use tricks. They would get upset at that, and
some of them wanted people to believe that they were
actually genuine psychics, and I'm like, wait a minute, your
(05:24):
publication that comes out, it's all tricks. Everything that we
do at every convention is all tricks. I'm not seeing
anything here that's actually genuinely psychic. I do see some
of you that are giving psychic readings, but really on stage,
your entire evening show is people performing tricks, performing mentalism.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
It's interesting how people react to mentalism because you know,
I'm nowhere anywhere near your level, but just for fun,
you know, when I do mentalism, I often get the reaction, hey,
you're cheating, and it's like, it's like, well, of course,
I am, like and it's it's interesting because it's like people,
even if they know and you know, and you make
(06:08):
it clear that it's not actual mind reading, they still
use those words like, hey, you're cheating. It's like, well,
what do you what did you think?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah? Well, there was a couple, a well known couple
that do a two person telepathy act. I'm not going
to name their names, there's no reason for it, but
they were going around colleges and I was number one
college Entertainer of the Year two years in a row,
and not only enter Tata and during my show, I
give disclaimers. I tell people that this is not real.
I tell them at the beginning, I tell them in
the middle, and I remind them at the end and
(06:38):
remind me to come back to this. But they were
going around and doing the exact opposite. They were trying
to make people think that they were real, that they
were genuine, and they got really upset with me, not
because of anything I did to them personally, but because
students would come up to them because they were making
these claims and say, you know, I don't think that
you're using I think you're using tricks. Why And they go, well,
(07:00):
because Banichik says that this stuff is not real. For me,
I always find it really interesting and entertaining, and you know,
it's in the back of my head. There's a nice
thing that I like about it is when you can
tell people that this is a trick, and then I
get into the mode in the moment of performing the effect,
as if I was a genuine psychic, what would it
(07:21):
look like? And I'm able to convince them that this
is real, only to come back again and tell them
that it's not. And I think a lot of mentalists
when they start out, they're not that good, and so
they kind of need people to believe in this stuff
ahead of time to be able to get away with
the tricker he so people don't look quite so close.
And then when they start getting good that they're in
(07:41):
this trap of always telling people that they're genuine. And
it's a trap that a lot of mentalists get. In
a lot of mentalists when I started out, you know,
they would say, oh that, you know, Manichec's if he
does tricks, and he says he's not a genuine psychic.
There's no place in menalism for a fake psychic. And
I'm like, well, yeah, you're right, there is no place
(08:02):
for a faith psychic. But we're not psychics where we're
mentalists that are performing. And then I took Entertainer of
the Year two years ago and it was like, well,
Banicheck's the exception, and I'm like, no, I can do it.
Other people can do it too. And then Darren Brown
read my books and they took it in that direction
of the psychological mentalist, and he took it to a
whole other level, and then everybody started adopting that, you know,
(08:26):
we're using psychology, but The problem with that is, in
the early days, Darren was, and he's a great guy,
Darren was got caught up in that trap of saying
it was all NLP neuro linguistic programming. And a lie
is a lie is a lie. It's just as bad
as saying that you're a psychic, right, I mean, bex
people are going to go to these high priced seminars
thinking they can do what you do on stage. They're
(08:47):
never going to be able to do it because you're
actually performing tricks. And then somebody I was told wrote
an article about Darren. I was saying, guy that wrote
an expos on Michael Jackson back in the day, and
rightfully so said, you know, well, this isn't psychic, this
isn't NLP. It's done this way. And the problem with
that when you start making these false claims is you
don't only you know, hurt the critical thinking process, but
(09:11):
you also hurt menalism as a whole for other menalists
that are honest liars, so to speak, that of telling
people that this stuff isn't real, because rightfully, so a
reporter now has that right because you've made that claim
to expose the trickery that we all use as entertainers.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, no, I completely agree. And to Darren's credit, he
has admitted that in the earlier days he played a
little too fast and loose with his first specials because
he was trying to make a name for himself and
trying to exaggerate. He exaggerated a lot, and he admitted
that so, yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Well, it's like having a kid. There are no rule
books that really come and with menalism back in that day,
there wasn't any real rule books of what you should do.
There is the ethical stance, but it's like I said,
it's so easy to get caught up into that process
of lying the people, because that's kind of what we're
doing on stage. We are lying. But how do you
do it? Honestly? How do you have this contract? A
(10:06):
lot of menalists would say, well, you know, if you're
doing Macbeth, you don't stop in the middle and go
oh hey, laies. Jim. I just want to remind you
I'm an active playing Macbeth. I'm not really Macbeth. Well,
of course you don't, because that's context, right. I mean,
everybody comes, they see a play, they know it's a play.
But if I get on that stage the next night
and I'm performing mentalism. These people have never seen this before.
(10:27):
It's no different than ifferent if you got on stage
and started talking about psychology, people would very quickly go, oh,
this guy is a real psychologist. He can answer questions
on it. He knows what he's doing right. So the
context is as a mentalist, primarily for a large group
of those people, is whatever I say it is. Yeah,
there's gonna be a group of people that have skeptics
(10:48):
gonna come. They're not gonna believe, no matter even if
I was real, They're not gonna believe. There's a group
that comes and they're gonna believe no matter what I say.
They're gonna think I'm lying about being not being a psychic.
But there's this large group that have never seen it before.
And when you see a really good metalist performing on stage,
you go, this might be real. I used to do
a show called Telepathy, and it was all about what
(11:09):
people Einstein, Madame Curry, and other people thought Telepathy was.
The whole first half of the show was me playing
it as if it was real, like one hundred percent real,
and then the second half was me talking about this
stuff all being bs right, and how can I say that?
And because that gave me a chance to give my
whole history. But I did it that way on purpose,
(11:31):
because as a skeptic, you can talk to people about
psychic phenomena and they'll go, yeah, but I had this
one experience with this one psychic, and they're going off
the emotional experience. So I wanted to give people that
same emotional experience in that first half of the show.
I wanted them to really dig deep in this and
(11:53):
really believe that this was one hundred percent real, even
to the point where I did something that I think
is disgusting, but I had to do it for the show,
and that's talking to their dead relatives. I was very
careful about how I did it. I didn't change her
thinking about the dead relative. I didn't give him extra information.
I basically was feeding of information back that they were
already thinking about that dead relative. And we had a
(12:15):
way of garnering information. And I remember one, and this
wasn't just one. It was really typical. But this one
hit me really hard because the goal was well, anyway,
i'll tell you what she said. She said, she thanked me.
After the end of the show. She thanked me for it,
and she says, you know, And then later on she
followed up and she said, you know, my mom and
(12:36):
I cannot talk about this stuff. We agreed to come,
but we didn't speak about it on the way because
I'm a skeptic. I think this stuff is lbs. My
mom believes it's all real. We end up fighting, and
then we don't talk for weeks. After the first half
of the show, we're in the lobby and my Mom's saying, yep, see,
I told you so, and she said I was believing,
like I was, thinking this was real. And then at
(12:58):
the end of the show, the second half, you came
out and said it was allbs. So me and my
mom now were able to take a look rather than
attacking each other. We saw where the other person was
coming from, we knew why they felt that way, and
we had the longest conversation on the way home, and
we've been talking about it ever since. And that was
just lovely to me, because so often with skeptics, and
(13:22):
I don't even like the term skeptics, I like critical thinking.
Maybe I see a lot of skeptics that believe in
this stuff and then they have an epiphany and then
they get some facts and figures and all of a sudden,
anybody that believes in that stuff is stupid. I'm like,
why are you saying that? That means you were stupid, right,
you just didn't have the right information. So it's much
(13:45):
better to talk to people and give them information and
let them think about it, let them digest that if
you attack somebody, they're going to put up a wall,
and they're going to put up that emotional wall from
their experience that they've had in the past and not
even going to think about it. Sorry, I go off
on these tangents and let you pull me back in.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
No, you're raising a lot of really good points. I
mentioned my friend Michael Gunnaplan, who was a great mentalist earlier,
and he says, sometimes people come up to him and
you know, he'll never say he dubbed himself with their
generation psychic, but he'll, you know, he'll to someone who
asks you, he'll admit, you know, it's just magic. I'm
not actually a psychic. But he says, some people really
(14:25):
are so believing that he's a psychic that no matter
what he says, he says, he can't change their mind.
And he said that doesn't mean you shouldn't be honest interesting,
but you shouldn't be attacking.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
I don't attack. People come up, they tell me their
stories about how they believe in this stuff and that,
and I let them tell their story, and I don't
judge their story when they asked, men say, hey, look,
I don't have enough information. I really wasn't there. I
can't tell you that that's not a real experience, and
that's not real. I can just talk about my own
experiences if you want to hear about that. What I'm
doing on stage is not genuine. What I'm doing on stage,
(14:58):
I know how I'm doing these things. I'm using a
lot of magic. I'm using verbal, I'm using nonverbal. I'm
not going to tell you which is which for each piece.
Some relies upon one, some relies on a lot of it.
But I duplicate what psychic phenomena is. So what I'm
doing there is I'm telling them that what they've experienced
with me is not real. And so I'm leaving this
sort of thought in the back of their head, a
(15:19):
little easter egg of like, hey, next time I see
something like this, I neither maybe question a little bit more.
But I'm not going to attect their experience. I'm not
going to attack their beliefs, but by giving them information
that hey, this guy says he's not real and I
believe him, they might doubt something further down the line. Now,
(15:42):
your friend is probably of that crowd of like with mediums,
and I detest mediums. I think you know they're they're
they're they're grief vampires, and they've basically taking advantage of people,
and usually for either monetary gain or secondary gain. So
they have purposes for why they're doing this from themselves.
They're not doing it to really help people, especially the
big ones. There might be some smaller mediums that believe
(16:03):
they're doing this. There may be some mental issues there
with some of them, and maybe not, but the big
ones they're all using trickery and I know exactly what
they're all doing. And people say, well, they make people
feel good, Oh that's great. You know what, I can
give crack to a junkie. It's going to make him
feel good. Doesn't mean that it's good for him. The
grieving process is there for a reason, and what these
Greek vampires are doing, they're putting a halt to the
(16:25):
grieving process. I had a very good friend she lost, well,
she was my wife's, my ex wife's very good friend,
and I was friend of the family too as a result,
and she lost her child at ten years old to cancer,
and she had a big hole in heart. Now, keep
in mind she's got two daughters as well, and she
has a husband. She goes this big hole in heart.
A medium convinced her she could talk to her dead son,
(16:46):
that she could communicate with him. So instead of going
through the grieving process with her husband and with her
daughters and being there for her daughters and for her
husband and them all being there as a family, you're
in a unit, she's over here talking to her dead
son and believing that she's doing that. She almost ended
up in a divorce. She almost lost everything that she
had within the living where she is right now and
(17:07):
was right then. Luckily she came to her senses at
one point. The family stayed together, but it came very
very close. Why well, some people might say, because hey,
a medium was making her feel good. No, he was
effing her life up, is what he was doing, so
that he could get that secondary gain himself. So when
somebody says to me, you know, oh, I shouldn't tell
(17:27):
them why not? Right, It doesn't hurt my performing expertise
if I'm doing my job right as a performer and
as a mentalist on stage, what I'm r actually showing
people is that this stuff can be duplicated and maybe
that stuff isn't real. Again, I'm not going to cram
it down people's throats. I'm not going to attack people
that believe in this kind of stuff. That's not my
(17:48):
job as a performer. My job as a performer on
stage is to entertain people, not to change people's belief systems.
And it sounds like your friend and I don't know,
I've never seen him perform, but from a little bit
of information that we have here, he's okay with changing
some people's belief systems. Because what there's a group of
people that aren't going to believe no matter what. There's
a group of people that are going to believe. But
(18:08):
what about those people that have come to see him
for the very first time and because of his performance,
they walk out of there going I believe in that stuff.
Here's the problem with that stuff, right, When you break
down critical thinking, when you stop people think from thinking critically,
they lose that ability to be able to think critically,
which we should all do every day with everything. That's
(18:29):
why we ended up with everything with COVID, and we
ended up everybody attacking each other because nobody knew how
to think. When you break down critical thinking, you erode it,
and it's something you have to practice every day. It
does spill over into your first private life is personal life.
It spills over into every area of your life. If
you're not able to look at things from a critical standpoint,
(18:51):
and doing that doesn't mean you be negative. It doesn't
mean you nay nay everything. It means you actually take
a look at the real facts, and you do a
little bit of research, and you know when you don't
have enough information, you take a look at I used
to do a show. I'm sorry if I'm talking too much.
I get passionate about this stuff. I used to do
a show in high school's high schools where I'd come
(19:11):
out and I'd do two or three things look like
they were real, and I was asking kids, I say
how many of you think this is real? And almost
all the hands would go up because they just seeing
impossible things they cannot explain right, And then I'd say
how many of you think it's not? Four or five? Six?
Hands would go up, and I would ask them, I say,
why do you think Oh, because my dad told me, Oh,
because I read it in a book. Because and they
would give me oh somebody on TV said it, I said,
(19:33):
And I would say, well, you know what, you're right,
and they get a big smile on their face. I say,
but for the wrong reasons. I said, you're going off
what somebody else has told you. You don't have enough information.
These other kids just saw something with their own eyes.
Now maybe you should all be saying to yourself, you
know what, I don't have enough information. I'm going to
go ahead and do some research on this, and I'm
(19:54):
going to look at it from all sides. I'm not
just going to go for my own biases and look
at the pro bias things that are going to go
on that I already believe it. I'm gonna look at
all sides of things. And that's a problem with today
is you cannot question anything if it goes against somebody
else's belief because they attack you personally. And I think
we should we should be able to take a look
(20:14):
at everything, mix it all up, and then take a
look at it all and go, Okay, I believe in this.
I don't believe in this. Oh this is interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Look I completely agree, and I mean I'm all about
the rationality and critical thinking. And I have you on
this show because I love the early skepticism you showed
to the world when you were just a teenager. First
of all, I just wanted to defend my friend Michael.
A second, he's not I wouldn't put him in the
same camp as the mediums. He does bill himself as
a mentalist and makes it clear he's a mentalist. But
(20:47):
the point I want to make most people don't.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Most people would have no idea what mentalist means. So
just because you bill yourself, I'm not attacking your friend,
I'm saying because I won't. You know, I don't attack
other performers, you know, to each his own. But I'll
give my side of things because they're willing to give
their side of things as well. But because you call
yourself a medalist, like I said earlier, there was a
group of mentalists and one of people that think many
of them in the group to think that they're psychic.
(21:11):
So and they're well aware that most people don't know
what the term mentalist actually means.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
If you're not wanted to say it's a subset of
magic trickery, then you're leaving it open. You You're you're,
you're you're being wishy washy on it.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
But you know, here's the thing, and this is the
broader plan I wanted to bring up, is there's such
individual differences in audience members and it is so fascinating.
When you do enough magic for people, you start to
see all this variation. And there are some people that
no matter what you say, they are going to believe
it's real. And I mean you can't like you can't
like physically change their you know, that would be a
(21:48):
magic trick for you to change their their belief system.
That would be a fascinating magic trick. You know, to
a Jesus believer and you do a magic trick where
they're they're like, no, I don't believe in Jesus.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
It's like, yeah, doesn't. Well that's why I'm saying, you
can't attack people's belief systems. You have to give them information.
You have to feed them information, and you've got to
give them honest information. You don't dump onto what their
biases are already, but you'd be real careful that you're
not attacking them. You're not putting up those walls. Right.
If somebody likes you, they're willing to listen to your
opinion a little bit more. I have a group of
(22:19):
guys that play squash with and they're from all backgrounds,
different religious backgrounds, you know, you know, from atheists to
Christians to Jewish people. There's Democrats as Republicans, and basically
we play squash and none of us could be president
because we tell the most inappropriate jokes because we know
we don't mean it. We just you know, we're messed
(22:40):
with each other. We call each other names, and we
drink whiskey afterwards, and we sit around and we have
the most great, amazing philosophical discussions, and then we have
other discussions that I would never repeat here because it's
just stupid, childish, adult male humor, you know, kind of
discussions as well. We're able to do that with each other,
(23:03):
whereas you can't normally do that with strangers, and so
you've got to be really careful. You can tell them
what you believe, but don't attack them with your belief
I just have such a distaste in that I have
a taste with, you know, people that so I'm an atheist,
but I have issues with atheists that cram it down
other people's throats and yell and at them and everything.
(23:25):
I'm like, why do they do that? And it's because,
well they do that to us. Well that's the one
thing you don't like about them, that's the thing you
tell me you don't like, and you're doing the exact
same thing back to another human being. Why would you
do that? Why wouldn't you want to be a better
human being than what you don't like?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I agree, I mean that's exactly. It sounds like we're
in agreement. Then, like you know, what is it in
your psychology that it gets you so right up about this?
Like I want to go back to your job for
a second. So you were born in England, but you
were abandoned by your parents in South Africa? Is that right?
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So? Yeah, I was. We went to South Africa when
I was nine years my mom, let's go all the
way back.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah, did you do that? I would because I would.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Maybe even take my brain apart and see who I
am the way that I am. Right, I want to
figure bad ugly yeah. So I was born in England.
My mom my dad dad was US Air Force, My
mom was British. We emigrated to I didn't really immigrate,
just moved here to the US. Was there for less
than a year. My mom divorced my dad with me
and toe back to England. She remarried a Scotsman. They
(24:31):
had two kids. We emigrated to South Africa. My mom
picked up and abandoned us. My stepfather was an alcoholic.
We saw him maybe on Sundays, and that's often if
I dragged him in from the car, and sometimes he
would hit meet me, sometimes not. You know, there was
a good in the bad with him. I ended up
dying of alcoholism. He cleaned himself up a little bit.
(24:52):
When I was about fifteen years old. He was about
to get remarried. Decided to be better off for me
since these were not his I wasn't here kid, It'd
be better off for me to go be with my
biological dad. My grandma had been writing to find out
because she had found out about my situation. Moved to Australia,
where I was with my biological dad. We moved here
to the United States. We moved to Colorado and then
(25:16):
to Pennsylvania, and it was there that I realized there
was I don't want to talk about too much, but
there was a bunch of stuff going on in that family.
So while I was in high school, I moved out.
I had three jobs. While I was out. One of
my relatives came to live with me for a little
bit because of some of the stuff that was happening
in the home. And yeah, I mean pretty much taking
care of myself my entire life. When I was nine,
(25:38):
I was taking care of a year old and three
year old kid. Now, people say, how do you do that? Well,
we did have remember that was you're an apartheide. So
we had a maid that came in the morning and
she would be there with my youngest brother and walk
my other brother to school, and then when I came home,
she would leave. So you'reing apartheide. You know, a man
would cut you along with a little perishers for twenty
five cents, so you know, it did didn't cost much
(26:00):
to have and made there. But she had to leave
the ghetto area, come out and be a stay with us,
and then have to go back into that era, and
they had to have papers to do it. It was
horrific how people were treated back then.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I mean incredible. I mean all this stuff obviously shapes
who you are. And then here you are and you're
around sixteen, I'm going to guess and you discover a
book called The Truth about Uri Geller. It was written.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Let's move back to that. Before that, look, there was
a couple of things that affected me. I had seen
a couple of magicians. I completely forgot about them, but
I remember being inspired by them going home and then
you know, hollowing out eggs and doing things and stuff
like that. But I never really got into magic. There
was a man, this New Gods supposedly, who was going
(26:42):
around the world and performing miracles, and one of the
big miracles he was performing was bending metals with your mind.
He was coming to South Africa. We didn't have TV,
or we had TVs in the store around about that time,
playing Popeye videos, but no actual TV station. And he
was gonna be on the radio and he said that
people in their homes can have this ability and he
(27:03):
was going to teach you how to do it. I
was like really, so me and my brothers sat around
the radio and there was a point when this man,
this god told us to go get a piece of
metal when we came back from the break. He was
going to have us bend in the metal ourselves. Well,
my mom was already gone at this point. I went
around the house. I found a little tiny sewing needle
and a kit that she had left behind, and I
(27:24):
sat and I held it up to the radio as
he said, Ben Ben bend. I concentrated on it, and
I believe it event minutely. Now, of course, it was
my own biases that wanted it to bend. I mean,
I was in a very poor situation. Why wouldn't I
want to think that I had some ability that's better
than just all this laying around me. And I also
wanted to convince my little brothers that I had this
(27:45):
ability as well. So anything that I actually thought that
I saw, you know, I had the power. You know,
even though it was a little needle in it bent minutely.
And it wasn't until we moved to Colorado that I
picked up a book by James Amazing Randy, like you said,
called The Truth about Ur Again. And as I read
the book, I started to get a little bit upset
because the truth of Rainy put it was that the
(28:07):
truth about Uri Yella was. Yello was nothing more than
a magician posing as a psychic. And the reason I
got upset was I was really upset with myself. It
was because any adults I did know, anybody that did
mention Uri Gala, and that's who the supposed a god was.
Any person that you mentioned him told me that he
was real. And I quickly learned that, hey, just because
(28:27):
people are in a position authority doesn't always make them right.
And it was from that book that I figured a
method of bend out keys and nails. I started doing that.
Then I started creating my own methods for bending keys.
I started creating my own methods to bend silverware, so
much so that when we moved to Colorado and I
was in high school, I started bending all the silverware
and kids would steal all the silverware and bring it
(28:48):
to me from the cafeteria and I got in big
trouble for that, and they went to plastic waretil I graduated.
Because I was stealing a lot of silverware, and I
figured a way to make these school bell go off early.
I told everybody I was doing it psychically. Meanwhile, I
was just crossing two wires in the hallway and the
bell would go off and short it out.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
There's something about you's double click on fifteen year old you,
sixteen year old you show something about you. There's something
in your blood that needs to scream. The Emperor has
no clothes.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Right, yes, yes, yes, and no. I mean when I
was It wasn't until I was almost when I read
the book. I was almost seventeen years old, I think,
probably somewhere in there, but it was at that point
because at that point I didn't know anything about medalist
I didn't know that there was a someb category of
magic called menalism. I had no idea. All that I
(29:39):
knew was that there were people that were conning people
and saying they were real.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Bothered you, That bothered you, that doesn't bother everyone.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
I've always my entire life, I'd never liked things that
were unfair. I know life's unfair, I get it right,
but there's always these things that just there's things in
the back of my head that just dick with me
through I remember a sociology teacher in high school, and
this is when I was actually pretending to be psychic
because Randy said, pretend to be psychic, keep this facade
(30:08):
going in case the opportunity comes around right where we
could go into a laboratory and try to fool scientists.
But I'll come back to that in a minute.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
I can't wait to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I remember this psychology teacher and he divided the class
oop into different groups. He says, I'm going to add
I think it was like four groups, could have been
five or six. I remember as four groups, right, And
he said, I'm going to give you each group secretly
a flower and a color. And again it might have
been something else, but I remember as a flower and
a color, right, doesn't really matter what they were. There
(30:39):
were two things he said, keep it to yourselves in
your group. But your job in the you know, during
the course of you Know that this year is to
find out what the other groups are, but don't let
them know what you are. That was all the parameters
he gave us. That was it. He didn't tell us
anything else we could do and couldn't do. And I've
(30:59):
always been one to be able to think outside the box.
I played soccer my entire life, and I was always
coming up with trick moves. I just I think, and
I think probably because I was trying to put food
on the table and create different doors and different games
for my brothers. That was sort of my training to
think outside the box, right as a kid with nothing trying.
I mean, I had one pair of clothes for an
(31:21):
entire year, and I died them a different college just
so it would looked like I had different clothes the
next year. But I was I was always thinking outside
the box. So in this immediately hit me I I
know how to do this. I went to my group,
I said, look, he's talking about different societies, and so
we're going to be a society because that's the only
(31:43):
framework we gave is it's about each of us is
a different society. But didn't tell us what our society was.
You pick what you want to be. I said, there
are societies that plunder, kill and lie. Only way I
can see to find out any of this other information
is plumbed to kill and lie, because if we try
to work together, we are being told to be You know,
(32:03):
if we're being honest and we're being a good society,
we're not going to let them know who we are
or what we are. Right, And in the back of
my head I was kind of sort of I didn't
quite know what he was going for, but I think
he was trying to get that societies do better when
they work together. Maybe that's what. I don't know to
this day what it was, but I can only assume
now because of the results. So we went out and
(32:26):
I said, all right, this person is probably the weakest
in there. You're friends with them, You'll probably be able
to get it out of them. And what I want
each one of you to do is at lunches, go
eat with them, you know, be with your friends and everything.
But tell them say, hey, we'll tell you what I'll
tell you what we are if you tell us what
you are. But don't tell anybody I told you. The
(32:48):
end of that day, I knew what all the other
groups were like. We knew right away what they were like.
We knew at the end of the day. The next
class we had with that professor, he's like, so, how
far has anybody found out anything? Put my hand up
and what did you get? I said, I know what
everybody is And his face just dropped. He's like, what
I said, Yeah, we decided to be a society at plunders,
(33:10):
killers and liars, and this is what we did. And
I laid it out for him. He started screaming and
yelling at me. He gave my group f's. He gave
everybody else in the class who didn't know what anybody
was a's, And to me, that was just so unfair
that even in this day it sticks in the back.
I can't get over it. Like it's just I didle
(33:32):
on a valuable lesson. I learned, Okay, you have to
work within the parameters of the person that's teaching you.
In that case, the person that isn't a position of authority.
Let them think they're right, even if you think differently,
because if that's the only way you're going to get
a good grade in that class.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
You're a nonconformist for sure. Who knows now when to conform?
I guess yeah. So that wow, very powerful, there's there's
there's so many depths to you. This is so this
is very exciting to talk about the man behind the
mind reader.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I think part of my thing growing up, the whole
ethical thing, really, and who's to say who's right and wrong?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Right?
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I can't really do that. I just tell you I
try to do everything from an ethical point of view,
and I think that really came from raising my brothers
because I was very very aware that if I did wrong,
they would do wrong. And now I'm sort of their
father figure, and so they're looking up to me, and
I at a very young age I wanted them to
(34:36):
do right. So I had a very strong sense of
right and wrong and sticking to the side of what's right,
and I think that sort of drove me with my
passion with things like psychic phenomena and exposing fakes and frays.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Have you ever been diagnosed with autism?
Speaker 1 (34:54):
I have not. I could be autistic that I have not.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Just people on the spec tend to have that very
strong sense of right and wrong. And also I've noticed
a lot of my friends on the spectrum are also
good magicians.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah, there's something that attract attraction to that same as comedy, right,
I mean, you know, depressed people attracted to comedy. I
don't know. It would be an interesting thing to try
to find out whether I am on that spectrum. I'm sure.
I mean, everybody's on some sort of spectrum somewhere. I
just get real passionate about these things in the moment,
(35:30):
but I'm not so passionate that I always think my
way is the right way. I think my way is
one way, and I think everybody comes from a different
ethical background. I can only do what's true to me
and say what's true to me. Even in the performing world,
I won't go after another performer. I'm not going to
(35:51):
do that. If they're doing their thing, I would just
tell people I think that that's wrong. But I don't
see a reason to go after exposing somebody else as
a fake or for are because they're going around in
the colleges and saying that they're real. If somebody asked
me if they're real, I'll say, no, they're doing tricks. Well,
I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
The younger you, you know, the much younger you, I mean.
I watched a bunch of videos in preparation for this.
I watched videos of this young man called Stephen Shaw.
I'm not good. Have you ever met him?
Speaker 1 (36:20):
I think I've met him a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah. I watched a lot of videos this young man,
Stephen Shaw, who eventually would legally change his name to
Banachick and he and and there's such passion in this
Stephen Shaw, young guy who you know goes around and
talks about how you know a lot of it is fakery,
but you fooled us the psychologists. How did you? Can
(36:44):
you tell me some stories like can you tell me
one anecdote of a time, like a trick you did
where like a psychologist Legit was like, this is real, so.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
We should set this up because you are now talking
about project out project Yeah. Yeah. So after reading Randy's
book and creating my own methods. I remember. I remember
it was right after there was a policeman that wanted
me to bend his car in Washington, Pennsylvania, where I
was living. I said, give me a key that you
don't need, and he gave me a key. I said,
(37:14):
you should I don't need it. Nope, I don't think
you think I could do it. So I ended up
bending the key in his hand and he ended up
being his squad car key. Yes, he couldn't get into
his squad car because he didn't have a backup, and
he ended up having to call somebody to come in.
I remember it was like the next day I wrote
Randy a letter and I said, hey, if you ever
need a kid to try to full scientists in a
(37:34):
believing this real, only if I can come out and
say it was an illusion. I'd be happy to do so,
and I didn't expect to hear back from Randy. I did.
I got a letter back from him. He said, if
you're ever in the air I'd love to meet you. Well,
we wrote back and forth. The opportunity didn't come, and
then finally there was an opportunity. I was going to
be in New Jersey. I went and I went to
(37:54):
go visit Randy and I walked up to his house
and actually know he picked me up at the airport
and then.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
No, crazy, you were how old at that time?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
I was sixteen, seventeen seventeen, probably seventeen going on eighteen
at that time. Amazing, Yeah, somewhere around there was. It
wasn't too long after I had actually read his book
and he picked me up a greyhound. I remember, I
took a greyhound from Pennsylvania and took me to his house.
And it was exactly what you think a wizard's house
(38:24):
would look like. There was a big turret in the
middle right. The door didn't open from the lock side,
it opened from the hingside, and there was a magnet
that helped you push the lock across you'd come inside.
There was a clock that ran backwards. There were more cars,
there were doves, There was just all this stuff, a
secret bookcase that opened up. It was all the stuff
that a magician would have. So, you know, I stayed
(38:46):
there a day or maybe two days maybe, and he
never asked to see me perform a single thing. So
when I left, I thought, oh, that was kind of
a waste of time, not realizing years later Randy wanted
to be able to say, hey, I never taught this
kid anything. Had I taught him, can you imagine how
good he would have been. I think back now and
(39:06):
I realized, no, I probably would have looked more like
a magician if Randy had taught me, because my skill
set came from watching other psychics, not watching other magicians
present things recognized.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Is that right, Like, yeah, yes, immediately saw your gifted. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
He also wanted to see make sure I wasn't a
crazy person, I guess, even though you know, but and
I think he wanted to see what kind of a
human being I was, right. That was more important to
him to see if I was ethically into this, or
whether I was doing it just because I wanted to
be famous, or there's probably a plethora or different reasons,
(39:43):
but he never did teach me anything. So a couple
of opportunities came up. Then they just went by the wayside,
you know, they fell through. And then in nineteen seventy
nine McDonald douglas McDonald douglas aircraft, you know as famous.
They all the aircraft and still does to build, had
all the government contracts. He believed in psychic phenomena. He
(40:04):
was getting to the end of his life and I
think he wanted to see if there was an afterlife
and somehow the connection. If there really is psychic phenomena,
maybe there is an afterlife as well. He gave a
half million dollars to Washington University to study psychic phenomena.
Now let's keep in mind that up until this point
parapsychologists a littlemented that there was no evidence of ESP
on a proper scientific protocol because a lack of funding,
(40:26):
and even at a young age. It was my contention
had nothing to do with funding, had to do with
their pro biasors. In other words, they believed in this stuff,
they weren't going in using proper science and as a result,
they won't get in the results that they wanted to.
And also on top of that because they had PhDs.
They thought they were too smart, they would never catch
a magician. Now, there had been a couple of parapsychologists
that had said, look, if you think you can introduce
a magician to the lab, by all means, go ahead
(40:48):
and do it.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Jb Ryan, did you ever meet him? Jb Ryan?
Speaker 1 (40:52):
I never did meet jb Ryan. No, but there were
a few, so we were in coordination or what they
were already saying. Well, Washing University was given this half million.
A gentleman by the name of Peter Phillips was one
of the only people there that believed in psychic phenomenas.
They put him in charge. He says a little it
was a little reluctant for him to be in charge
at the time, but he did believe in this stuff,
(41:12):
and he put out an associated press release saying, hey, hey,
if there are any kids out there that could ben metal,
we'd love to be at at test. We wanted to
work with kids. He even put a term to it,
psychicanet tease. It was a brand new term. Basically, young
kids who could ben metal will perform psychicinesis. I wrote
them a letter said I can do this stuff, and
they wrote me a letter back saying they would love
(41:33):
to see me. A few days later, I got a
call from Randy saying, Hey, there's this guy in Washington
University in Saint Louis. He's been given half a million
dollars to study psychic phenomena. I'm like Brandy, concentrate on
his name. I'm getting a P and a P, he says.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
I go, yeah, I know, I've already been accepted. I
was going to actually call you or write you a
letter and tell you I was going to be accepted,
he said. And that's when Randy told me about another
kid by the name of Mike Edwards who had already
been there before me, who had called Randy as well,
but he had already been accepted. So for the next
four years, and if you want to get into details,
we can at some point. But for the next four
years we convinced the scientists that we had psychic powers.
(42:10):
And after the four years we came out and explained
it was all a hoax. It changed parapsychology, at least
at that time and probably forever because people now realize
they can actually be fooled by these things. Your question
was about some of the experiments that.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
We asked, Now, you did more than just mind more
than just spoon bending. Did you do mind reading? At
that time?
Speaker 1 (42:31):
We did do some mind reading, and you fold a.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Parapsychologist with one of your mind reading tricks.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
We folded with a lot of stuff. We did thought photography,
where we would cause images to appear on film. There
was one where they set us in a room and
they would give us an envelope that was staple closed,
and you sat there by yourself, nobody watching you, and
they would show you slide. You could just let the
slides play, play, play, and each slide was numbered. It'd
come out and you'd say, I think it's slide number two.
(42:57):
They would open it and it would be slide number two. True. Now,
we were smart enough even at that age to realize
that we couldn't get everything right. If we're using tricks,
you can't get everything right. You've got to You might
sit there for three four hours and only get a
little tiny bend in a fork right. Less was more
in those situations. But in that situation, I realized there's
nobody watching me. There's no cameras. Keep in mind, this
(43:19):
is back in the nineteen eighties didn't have cameras, you know,
and nobody had cameras back then. And I realized I
could pull the staples, pull them out, put them in
the ash tray, reach inside, look at push the staples
back through, and close the staples, and then watch the
slides and see that it was slide number four. Go
out and say I believe it slide number four. They
would tear it open because I wasn't allowed to tear
(43:40):
it open, and it would match enough to where it
was more than chance. Now, Mike Edwards, you know, we
had a way of communicating under a table where we
would tap each other on the foot and say, hey,
you want to go get a soft drink? Soft drink
was down the hall, so we had to leave the
mac lab is what they called it. We left the
(44:00):
mac lab, went to go get a drink, and then
we would talk. And every time, you know, I did
something that Mike didn't know how I was doing, it,
said hey, I want to go get a drink. And
in this instance, you know, we had a thing under
a bell jar rotor that we had to make turn
and I'd concentrate and make it move to the left.
I'd concentrate again and move it to the right just so.
(44:21):
They said, can you make it move to the opposite direction,
so we don't think it's air currents or anything. Not
that it would be because it fit in a base,
but they wanted to do that for other people so
they wouldn't think it was the air currence. Mike had
no idea how I did it, and he said, hey,
do you want to go get a drink? Like? No,
because I know what he wants. He squeezed down on
my foot. Let's go get a drink. Oh okay, fine,
we get down the hallway, he says. He says, so
(44:43):
you know, how did you do that? I go, You know,
I gotta believe this, Mike. After all these hours of
sitting here concentrating and trying this stuff, I finally found
out I had psychic powers. Pushed me up against the
coke machine, you know, friendly like you know, but that's
how we were with each other. He said, no, how'd
you do it? And I told him exactly how I
was doing and he went back in the room. He
was doing the same thing, which leads me back to
(45:03):
the envelopes. So I told Mike exactly what I was
doing with the envelopes. I forgot to tell him I
was putting the staples into the ash tray, so he
was taking them out, putting on the arm of the chair,
and he accidentally bumped and he lost some of the staples.
So he had like two or three stapled areas had
no had stableholes, but no staple. So Mike, thinking quickly
(45:24):
when he comes out, he says, I think it's number five,
calling out the wrong one on purpose because we didn't
want suspicion. He starts to tear it open. They go, no, no, no,
you can't do that, and then they tear it open
the rest of the way and they took it out.
So that's two experiments right there that we did for them,
But they had a whole host of different experiments. I mean,
there was a time that we left the lock open
(45:48):
on the window at night because they would lock up
at night, and Mike and I went out across state lines.
We partied all night. We came back probably about three
point thirty in the morning. We come Mike boosts me up.
I go through the window, step on the table. I
leave a big mark on the table where I was
going through. Oh crap, we got to clean that up.
But we went around the room and we just caused havoc.
(46:09):
We bent everything up, and there was a thing where
they were testing another psychicomedium that could supposedly move cubes
and coffee grounds. And there was an upside down aquarium.
There were bars going across, bars going down each side,
and it was bolted in and mikel looked underneath and
he go come look at us, and he realized that
it was bolted from the outside on the bottom. So
(46:29):
we were able to undo those bolts, get inside, bend
step up, move things around, and then put the bolts
back on. Well, Peter Phillips calls me up early in
the morning and you know, I said, ah, really really tired.
I didn't get any sleep last night. You know, I
dreamt I was at the mac Lab and all hell
broke loose. He said, all right, well, we'll get a
little sleep. I'll see you in the afternoon, maybe one o'clock.
(46:52):
He calls back. Less than half an hour later. He's like,
he said, you're not going to believe this. Your dream
came true. So he believed that because of my dream
that I had projected into the mac Lab along with
Mike and all this havoc had taken place. It did
take us longer really to clean the footprint. Then it
took us to bend all the stuff up and do
everything else in that back glad that night.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
These are a great story. What a fun time in
your life? Wasn't that a fun Are you sentimental when
you think about those years? I mean.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
A little bit. There's a great podcast, and I hate
to push people to another podcast too, but I think
it will fill all the details in this because for
years Randy had been the person that was seen as
in control of Project Alpha, when in reality that's not
exactly true. Randy was really the spokesperson. He was a
person that put the story out. Randy was a fantastic publicist,
(47:45):
so sometimes there's a little bit of romantic changing the
stories slightly. But we get a podcast Mike and I
with the guy in the name of Brian Brushwood, and
it's called The World's Greatest Con People should look at Up.
Season three start with three oh one, and it really
taught about this and it talks about for the first
time we were able to talk about our feelings on
(48:06):
Project Alpha and how it was really there were some
really difficult times for Mike and I. We struggled with
this because we thought at that time, because you had
let's put this all in perspective. Then bring me back
to this, Okay, this moment if you can, because I'll
forget and about the issues Mike and I had from
an emotional standpoint with all this. You've got to put
(48:27):
all this in context. It seems silly now maybe even
though we have sillier things now, believe it or not.
But back then, the Iron Curtain was putting out all
their propaganda on psychic photomena, and I think they probably
believed in some of the people that are actually doing
stuff over there, and they're putting this out. So the
US government had to take this stuff seriously because if
(48:47):
somebody over in the USSR at the time could actually
read a politician's thought, or a president's thought, or a
general's thought, or could remote view something right, that's dangerous
weapon to have. So the US were dumping I think
it was like twenty one million dollars a year into
Project Stargate. It was known by multiple different names in
(49:08):
the end Stargate. So they were studying this stuff you
had in search of which was the number one TV
show and that was all about types of UFOs and
psychic phenomena. And you know, it was really really green
at the time for psychic phenomena. You had Chariots of
the Gods, the book that came out that you know,
(49:28):
everybody was reading a Carlos Costanada. You know, you had
all this stuff enveloping, and people believed in all this stuff, right,
So it was a whole different, really completely different environment.
So the emotional aspect was this. Mike and I thought
we were knights in shining armor. We thought were these
white knights coming in and you know, we're the voice
(49:50):
of truth, you know, and nobody wants to listen, so
we have to show them, you know, that they can
be fooled. And we thought it was just gonna be
hous against them. But these were good people, like Peter Phillips,
the physicist. He was just naive. That doesn't make him
a bad person. He was just very, very naive about
psychic phenomena. He truly believed in it. I mean, we
(50:13):
all have things that other people disagree with, even within
our families, but we still love them. And in a
way we came to love these people because they were
really really good people, and we knew at some point
we were going to have to tell them that this
stuff wasn't real. We were going to hurt them, we
were possibly going to destroy their careers, and we were
already so far into this. To give you one example,
(50:36):
in the early days, even before Mike and I went
to the mac Lab, well probably about the same time,
already heard about the money, and he sent them a
letter and said, look, if you ever need a magician
to come in and test these subjects, be happy to Well,
there's no way they would do that because they thought
they were too smart. They also sent them eleven caveats,
things like don't let more than one subject work with
(50:58):
an eye item at a time because they could distract.
Mike Mark everything on a micro and a macro level, says,
they see the macro and if they switch something, that's
what they're going to change. But they won't see the micro.
And there was this whole list of things. And when
Mike and I got to the mac Lab, they showed
us Randy's list and they said, there's this guy by
the amazing Randy. Have you ever heard of him? No,
you know, And they showed us the list. They said
(51:19):
most ridiculous things. Ever, because you guys would be so
uncomfortable with this, So they basically threw that completely out
the window, and which allowed Mike and I to get
get away with a lot of things that we wouldn't
have been able to get a hold of, to be
able to do the reason I was putting everything into
this context of belief and the culture in psychic phenomena
(51:40):
at the time, there was a BBC report him and
he wrote, Randy says, what would convince you the stuff
was wrong? Because he believed in it, and Randy gave
him the same eleven caveasts. He said, if you followed
this when you were testing somebody for a mind over matter,
the guy came to the US. We were going to
be convention with ry Yello by the way, where Ella
looked at us and said, these kids can do things
(52:02):
that I can't even do. And it was on video
and a TV show at the end when we're doing
the explosure came.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Out they have that video with you.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Yeah, but they wouldn't They wouldn't put that out because
the later gell Us said he had never met us,
so they could have shown that he was lying about that.
At that time, right, But they didn't do that. So anyway,
the guy comes over, nothing happens. The only thing that
happened was he gave us at the time, it's going
to sound silly now, but electronic watches, and these were
brand new. They're the ones that you get for like
(52:30):
a dollar or two dollars now, but they were expensive
back then. Right, They just came out and Mike had
the brilliant idea putting in his sandwich at lunch when
we're all together and hitting it with a microwaves. So yeah,
that did gobble everything up. So that's the only thing
that happened all day. You know, we were supposed to
wear them all day, and when we gave him back
our watches was all screwed up. But the things he
wanted to happen didn't happen. Now, there was another kid
(52:52):
by the name of Maslawaukee killed him. Musselwaukee killed him.
Claimed he could twist forks. I caught Musclawaukee at one
at lunch putting the fork under the table and he
had a slot in his heel and he put it in.
He was twisting it that way. That also became the
holy grail. How can I do this without using a
gimmick like that I ended up coming up with a
way years later. But anyway, nothing happens at all because
(53:15):
he's following Randy's protocol until the cameras go off. The
moment the cameras go off, Masslwaukee kutas sitting there with
a fork causing it to twist. This reporter, this anchorman
broke down, had a complete mental breakdown, started screaming and
hollering about how Randy was evil, Randy was the devil.
(53:38):
He looked down at his pents and there was a
wet splotch right there, and he started screaming about it.
He had just had a demonic ejaculation. This guy was
losing it. I keep in mind, this is a major, major, major,
major producer, a command for a BBC, you know, for
the BBC network. He I had to spend the night
with his which wasn't unpleasant with his assistant because he
(54:02):
was calling her all night long, streaming about Randy and
ranting how Randy was the devil. And it was at
that point that Mike and I got really frightened. We
realized that this stuff is a lot more powerful than
we think. We think now it's just magic tricks. But
back then and even now some things, people believe in
these things strongly.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
To me, yeah, it's happened to me with this. This
gentleman from Mexico was convinced what I was doing was
black magic, you know, and yeah, Like I'm like, no,
it's not black magic, but he was yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
So we told Randy, we want to come we want
to come clean. Randy was like, oh, it's going to
be a few more months before the TV magical miracle
comes out. Hold on, hold on, But this stuff was
really powerful, which takes us back to the scientists. You know.
We we had said many times to Randy that we
think we want to end this now because we know
these people are going to be really, really hurt, and
(54:57):
that weighed heavily upon Mike and I as young. So
you have to take a look back and you go,
I mean, well, I remember one thing I do question
a little bit was there was a point where I
went to go I already had my own place, but
I ended up going move into step grandparents place. But
that wasn't quite working out, so I moved out. And
(55:19):
there was a guy who was convinced what I was
doing real At the racetrack where I was. I had
three jobs when I was in high school. But he
believed that what I was doing is real and talked
to his brother and letting me come stay with him
and his wife and daughter, and they had an extra room,
so I was there for a short period of time.
But Randy had told me to convince those people that
you're real, don't tell them you're not. And I did,
(55:41):
and then they caught found one of the letters in
my bedroom. They were going through stuff. Don't know why,
but who knows. Maybe make sure I didn't do drugs,
but make sure I didn't because they had a daughter
in the house too, and they saw that letter and
they kicked me out. And I do question that because
it does feel like a little bit like being manipulated,
just a little bit into doing things that normally I
(56:01):
probably would have never have done. To light to people
that are taken care of me, and that parlyaided over
answer with a scientist. I'm lying to people that I
actually now do care about, people that I've broken bread with,
I've stayed in their house. I still felt that I
was doing the right thing. I still feel like I
would do the same thing again, but I would be
much more guarded and careful about how I did it. Wow.
Speaker 2 (56:23):
So do you have any resentments for James Randy?
Speaker 1 (56:27):
I don't have resentments. I do think that we had
we relied on Randy heavily as the authoritative figure again
to guide us on this path, but really the path
was all guided for this publicity and for Randy. Randy
was you know, held the hat of right and wrong,
(56:49):
you know, he did. It was just sometimes how things
were done. I think I would have handled differently, you know.
But it's like I say, you know, there's not a
handbook that comes with raising a child. Right, We always
shield them differently. We try to do the best that
we possibly can. And nothing like this had ever done before, right.
You know. There was one parapsychologist who wasn't part of
(57:09):
the mac lab that I was going. He insisted, really
kept insisting, insisting that I come. Let him test me,
and he had tested other psychics. It was a lady
that he tested who she could take eight milli minute
film scan the sky and then when it was developed
you'd see UFOs a little blotches. And he asked me
if I could do the same thing, and I was
like yeah, so I did. I did. I never said
(57:30):
no to anything. I just figured away on the spot
to try to do it or not. It's okay to
fail as a psychic, right. And when he developed it,
there was a blob. But in that blob there was
Jesus Christ. It was woman giving birth to a baby,
a woman's nipple, torso and thigh and all these wonderful things.
And all that had actually happened was he had handed
me the camera and he'd already had family footage on there,
(57:53):
so the footage wasn't switched out or anything. And all
I had done was spat on the front of the camera,
and as it dried up, it made all these shapes
like looking at the clouds. Right, But he believed that
was real. But he's also the one that after we
came out and said that everything was fake, that we
were frauds, he came out and said, look, they say
that they were lying, then how do we know that
Randy hasn't paid them off to lie? Now he's still believed.
(58:16):
So you still have that category there of people gonna
believe no matter what. The majority of people realized we
wore magicians.
Speaker 2 (58:23):
This is just blowing my mind. It's wow, so fascinating.
You know, I don't know if you're up on modern
day psychic research in psychology, Like have you heard of
Darrel Them?
Speaker 1 (58:37):
Yes? I have, Yep. This is the thing where you
go back in time and change the future.
Speaker 2 (58:41):
Yeah. Well, he's trying to legitimately measure something called psy
psi phenomenon to actually see if people can, under laboratory conditions,
be able to predict what some phenomenon is going to occur,
and to see if it can happen above chance. He
published a legit scientific review paper, a legit paper in
(59:05):
one of the top journals, and it caused a big
stir in psychology, finding that above chance levels SI might
be a real phenomenon. And yeah, it's a heated debate
right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
Yeah, He's had a few things that have come out
in the past. He was also a member of that
group of mentalists back in the day that I was
talking about, and he believed you know, his original paper
that came out it was reverse SI. I think something
like that. I don't know a lot about it, I
remember I did back in the day. A person that
(59:39):
you should talk about that is probably Jamie Ian Swiss.
He has a lot of information on that at the
time and probably could, and he retains all this stuff.
I don't retain that stuff as much. So I don't
want to say too much about Daryl, but I would
be I would be very skeptical about it, considering what
I had heard and knew about is other experiments.
Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Are you open to the idea that psychic phenomenon could
exist even though we don't have it great evidence for that?
Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Just a thing? So I'm also in charge of the
James Randy Million Dollar Foundation, where we had a million
dollars for any psychic that could do anything on a
proper scientific protocol. All that have to do was demonstrate
one type of phenomena, and nobody could. And I give
you some hilarious examples of some of the tests and
some of the claims that people have. But what I
do want to get in before I get to that
(01:00:30):
is one of the things that I would always say
is just because you win the million dollars, because it
was always like one in a million chances, doesn't mean
a psychic because people do win the lottery. It also
doesn't mean you're not because you fail unless we catch
you in trickery. We can't prove that you're not psychic
unless we catch you within the trickery or we find
(01:00:50):
out where you are being self deceived. What I can
say is this, after looking at all the psychic phenomena
that I've looked at, I would have to say, and
Randy used to say it, you know, eloquently, always had
an interesting way of putting things. He would say, you
know what, I can sit down by the chimney every
single year waiting for Santa Claus to come down, and
(01:01:10):
I stayed awake all night long and he never comes down.
At some point, I've got to conclude there is no
Santa Claus. I can't say there's no such thing as
psychic phenomena or something that might look what we would
call psychic phenomena that ended up having a natural reason
for why these things occur. I cannot say that. What
I can say is I would be very, very skeptical
(01:01:33):
before I went ahead and said, yes, this is genuine
psychic phenomena.
Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
Yeah, look, that's fair. I'm just gonna saying.
Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
The thing is that all the work in the past,
wherever we found papers that suggested that was real psychic phenomenon,
there's been quite a few of them. There's always been
a kink in the armor. At some point, there has
been something that they weren't doing correctly, or something that
skewed the odds slightly.
Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Yeah, well, you and James Randy have fundamentally changed our field.
You've made us add control groups that we never even
thought we should add. You made us consider the time
horizon of things, realizing that the fifteen minutes before the
experiment starts is when you probably did the move.
Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
So working sometimes with the scientists, it was hours before
that we did the move, because we'll be in there
for all day long, so it's not always fifteen minutes.
I mean, there are things even in my show that
I set up here that will be part of the
conclusion of the show over here. So yeah, they're all
all these different things. And when I perform, I want
people to think I know what they're thinking, how they're thinking,
(01:02:43):
when they're thinking it. I'll give you an example. I
let's say, for instance, I'm doing a picture duplication, and
some magicians may be upset with me giving you this,
but I'm going to give it to you because to
put it in the context of the psychology of what
I do in my shows. Let's say I know for
a fact, Oh, I just did a TV show the
other day, and I knew for a fact that the
(01:03:03):
woman had secretly drawn a cat. I'm not gonna tell
you how I knew, but I knew. So rather than
just concentrate on her envelope where she has a picture inside,
and tell her it was a cat, or even just
duplicating it, I can get much more out of it
if I tell her, all right, redraw this in your head. Now. Let's,
for instance, I say to you right now, okay, when
(01:03:24):
I snap my finger, go ahead, and if anybody's listening,
they do the same thing. Go ahead, start drawing. Now
stop did you just draw a circle or part of
a circle. So I know the first thing people are
going to do if they drawing a cat, I know
they gonna draw a circle. That's going to be the head, right,
And then I say go ahead and continue now. And
(01:03:46):
then I changed my phrasing slightly. I said, do two
triangles mean anything to you? I don't say did you
just draw two triangles? I say do two triangles mean
anything to you? Because they may not have drawn the
ears yet. If they drawn the ears, it's like oh
my god, God, yes, if not sometime of uh little triangles,
And just by phrasing it that way, they go yes,
because they now know that that's the ears. Right. So
(01:04:09):
here's the thing everybody else watching, because this person's just
doing it in their head. They're drawing in their head.
Everybody else watching goes, wow, they've just seen a miracle.
They knew the person drew a circle. They could have
drawn any part of this picture, but they drew a circle,
and I got it. And now they've draw two triangles
that I knew it was two triangles a circle. I
could stop here, but I don't. I say, go ahead, continue,
let me know when you're done. What that does is
(01:04:31):
that rushes them. They go and they tell me they're done.
And then I'll say, did you forget to put a
mouth on this? Nine times? Probably nineteen times out of
twenty they would have forgot to put a mouth on it.
So what I've done here now is I've not just
duplicated the picture, right, Because even if I know they're
going to draw a cat, I may not draw it
exactly the same, but the audience will know that because
I didn't have to draw it, but I knew it
(01:04:53):
was a circle. I knew it's two triangles. I knew
they made a mistake, and I knew what their mistake was.
It's as if I'm in their head in that that moment,
duplicating exactly what it is that they're drawing in their head.
Nothing can be further from the case. Because by taking
them to the two triangles on the outside of the
head and say go ahead and continue and let me
know when you're done, I've rushed them up to do
the rest of the body. And yes, they're going to
(01:05:14):
forget to put that mouth in there. So I'm basically
letting the audience think I know exactly what this person is.
I haven't just said you drew a cat or shown
a cat. I've got inside their head. It's like if
I say to you, you know, if I say to you,
think of a word, and I know what word it is.
Let's say I know what the word is by secret
means right, but let's say it's hotel. Right, I say,
(01:05:35):
mix the letters up. Think of any letter in the
middle of your word. I know more than likely they're
going to choose the T. Then I'm going to choose
oh the E. So I said, did jus think of
a T. They go yes, and I say, you could
have chosen Oh, you could have chosen an E. You
could have chosen to L at the end or the H,
but you didn't. You chose the T. Right. So it's
like even if they think somehow secretly I knew what
the word was, how did I know what letter? They
(01:05:56):
just picked in their head? It so I've got all
this pit college that's going on in my show, which
makes it seem even more real than just trickery.
Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
I love it you. I am a huge fan of yours,
And I don't know do you do you?
Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Do? You?
Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
Do you think you could have been a good bank Robbert?
I just want to ask you that.
Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Say that I, as a kid was always fascinated with
like it. There was a show called It Takes a Thief. Yeah,
and there are others, and there's other books, and it
was always about this guy. And usually it was about
some guy who was stealing stuff that was not important.
But if you're sealing it to help somebody else, Takes
(01:06:36):
a Thief wasn't that. But it was always fascinated by
those kind of stories, and I it's it's kind of
like mysteries right, It's like Agatha Christie or Shillack Holmes,
and that's what those things are. I think it wouldn't
have been about the money for me. There would be
more about how do you get away with this? Right? Yeah,
maybe I could steal the money and give it back.
I hope I don't get caught in the process because
(01:06:57):
now I'm going to jail. But if I give it back, secretly,
I haven't really done anything wrong, but I've shown them
that weaknesses.
Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
Yeah, that's part of the mentalism thrill of being a list.
But hey, I want to thank you so much for
coming on my podcast. It was a really exciting episode
for me, and yeah, I just really appreciate you fitting
me in amongst your million tours you're giving.
Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Yeah, I've literally got to go to I've got like, well,
I think I've got three zooms I have to do
for TV shows and stuff. I got a repack for
like five different shows. They got a lot to do today.
Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Well, thank you, no, thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
It was brilliant