Episode 67 - Banachek - Improv and Magic

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hello friends. Hey there friends, I'm LD Madera
and welcome to another special episode of Improv and Magic.
This is our season finale episode and we're ending season
5 with an absolutely amazing guest.
Today I get to talk to another one of the world's leading

(00:23):
magicians. He's recognized all over the
world for his exceptional skillsin mentalism.
My guest today is Banachek. His show has been hailed as the
greatest mentalist act in the world by several of the top
magic minds. Throughout his career, Banachek
has performed to sold out shows at trade shows, cruise ships and

(00:45):
theaters around the world, and he even headlined his own show
at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas.
His creations have become a verybig part of mentalism and magic
culture. In fact, most magicians you see
today apply many of his own effects.
Banachek has made hundreds of TVappearances, including CNN Live

(01:06):
and the Today Show, and has alsoappeared in almost every major
magazine and newspaper from the New York Times to the National
Enquirer. Banachek has consulted for
hundreds of magicians and is sought out by some of today's
major magicians including Criss Angel, Penn and Teller and David
Blaine. Simply put, Banachek has put

(01:27):
more magic on television than any other magic consultant in
the USA. In addition to being an
incredible performer, Banachek is also known for his work in
exposing people with so-called psychic abilities and other
hoaxes. It all began after fooling
scientists in an operation knownas Project Alpha, which we

(01:48):
discuss in this interview. He has also worked as president
of the James Randi Educational Foundation, testing those with
paranormal claims in the world famous $1,000,000 Challenge, a
prize that still remains unclaimed to this very day.
I first saw Banachek perform years ago at my university, and

(02:09):
at that moment I instantly became a fan.
He's definitely the best mentalist I've ever seen and
talking to him was such a thrillfor me.
There's so much that's shared about his life and his work.
It's an absolutely fascinating conversation you're sure to
enjoy. And now, without further ado,
here's my conversation with Banachek.

(02:47):
Well my friends, I am so thrilled and excited to have
joining me today on Improv and magic.
He is one of the top leading mentalist of our day and an all
around great guy. He is the one and only Banachek.
Hi, Banachek, thanks so much forbeing here.
Thank you for having me my friend.
We've been trying to make this happen and we finally got it.

(03:07):
We finally got it to work. You've actually been doing a lot
of traveling lately. I've been doing way too much
traveling. I was just on the last what, 3
weeks? I'm home now for two days, but
I'm doing everything else like this, trying to catch up in real
life. I closed the show and we can
touch more on this later on if you want to, but I had a show at
the Strep, the Casino, H60650 seat Theater, 837 shows, three

(03:33):
years. I closed it in March. 2 days
later I was back out on the roaddoing theaters, doing fringe
festivals, doing cruise ships, doing corporate and it hasn't
stopped since. Do you kind of like that
non-stop lifestyle? Yes and no.
You know, it's always greener onthe other side of the fence.
It's just like I thought, we thought, oh, maybe great to have
a Vegas show where you get to stay home every single day and

(03:55):
just go to work and then come back home.
But that became like Groundhog Day in a way.
You know, I'm very thankful for it and glad that I did it.
But you know, three, 837 shows every day getting up and having
to be there at 2:00, not gettingout to 8 in the evening.
It kind of sort of takes half your, most of your day away and
then a large portion of your night as well.
And you're doing it six days a week.

(04:16):
But that 7th day you're going out, you're talking to bookers,
you're talking to the media, you're, you know, it's just, you
don't get a day off. It's not a day off.
Whereas if I'm doing cruise ships, at least, even though I'm
on the cruise ship, I'm having acouple of days of just chilling.
What do you normally do to relaxon those rare occasions where
you do have time off? I don't.

(04:39):
I really don't get to chew too much.
I have, I have started to hike alittle bit more, go up in the
mountains and do a few things like that, but I really don't
get to do much like that, you know, it's just nice to have a
day off and just not do anything.
Oh, I love that. I I relish those days.
Yeah, those are good days, few and far between, 'cause there's
always at the phone and there's always the Internet and there's

(05:02):
always something coming through every day that I have to answer.
But yeah, I, you know what? Years ago, I remember I went to
South Africa. It was years and years and years
ago. Cell phones were in the early
stages. Why we well, I shouldn't say in
the early stages because we had cell phones and we had Internet,
but Internet was more in the early stages.
And in those days I always thought that I always had to be
connected, always connected. And then when I went to South

(05:24):
Africa, I couldn't get a SIM card.
It's a long, long story. And I couldn't get online.
And I went, you know, I went three weeks with no, no
connection with the outside warrant except for where I was
performing at. That was it.
And, you know, I had my list of places to go.
And then when I got done, I cameback and I was like, oh, the
world didn't end. You can, you can, you know, cut

(05:46):
yourself off. You can disconnect.
And I think we should do that more often.
You think it's hard for people to do that, to be able to
disconnect? I think it is.
I think for various reasons. One, there's that emotional
reason. Of course you want to connect
with people, but I think on a business and you're always
afraid you're going to lose that, that $1,000,000 show that
could have come through, you know, because you weren't there,

(06:06):
somebody else got it. And you know, sometimes life is
more important. Enjoying life is a lot more
important than than a gig. I hear you.
Well, I'm excited to learn a whole lot more about you,
Banachek. So let's start with where did
you grow up and what was growingup like for you?
All right, Well, that's not an easy, short little answer, is

(06:26):
it? I guess I'll start at the
beginning. I was born in England, 1960.
My mom and I, we emigrated to the United States to be more the
biological dad. That didn't work out.
That first year, my mom took me back to England in with me in
tow. She remarried.
She had two kids. We emigrated to South Africa

(06:47):
when I was 9. They were a year at three years
old. My mom abandoned me in South
Africa with an alcoholic stepfather who I barely ever
saw, maybe on Sundays. That wasn't always a good thing.
And so I pretty much raised my brothers by myself till I was
15. I left there to go find my
biological dad who was in Australia, moved to Colorado

(07:08):
with him, moved to Pennsylvania.Some stuff happened.
I moved out while I was in high school, had three jobs so I
could finish high school and take care of some other things,
and then I moved to Texas. I lived there for 26 years and
now I'm in Las Vegas. We'll talk about never stopping.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like my entire life I've

(07:29):
always been taking care of somebody.
You know, when I was younger, I took care of my brothers and,
and, and there's been multiple occasions throughout my life
where I'm always taking care of somebody.
Even my ex-wife, when I married her, she had three kids
immediately. And yeah, just I've always been
taking care of somebody. Is that sort of a tough?
Thing to go through when you're a kid to having to deal with
taking care of people while you don't feel like anyones really

(07:52):
taking care of you. Not really, because you don't
know any different, right? I mean, I got to do a lot of
things most kids don't get to dobecause I didn't have those
restrictions on me. The morals of values that I had
were very strict ones, but therewere strict ones that were put
on me by me. And I put on my brothers because
I always felt like if I did wrong, I was going to influence

(08:12):
them to do wrong. So ethically, I always try to do
the right thing. And even today, you know, you're
not always going to do the rightthing.
But my intent is it to try to always do the right thing, to
treat others the way that I'd want to be treated.
That's really important to me. But I do realize you can't
please everybody. Even when you're trying to do
the right thing, this somebody is going to take it as the wrong
thing, so. So it sounds like when you were
a kid, you kind of had to mentally grow up pretty quickly.

(08:34):
Yeah, I did. But I also had to learn to fend
for us. You know, how to put food on the
table, create games, think outside the box.
And I think it's that sink thinking sinking.
I think it's that thinking outside of the box, that that's
what enabled me to be creative to create the things that I do
today. So what were some of the things
that influenced you when you were a kid into being into a

(08:57):
creative lifestyle? Overall, it was just like I
said, right now, you know, how do I put food on the table?
How do I get food? You know, do I jump off a bridge
onto a train and grab some apples and jump off the train?
And I did do that. I did, did some things like
that, but but it was just, it was just always it's, it's how
to live, you know, how to function, how to make things
work, how to rig things so they work.

(09:18):
You know, I didn't, I didn't, I couldn't, even when I started
getting into magic, I couldn't afford big props.
So I created my own props. I learned how to put things
together from cardboard, from duct tape and and and and and
all raggedy silks and things like that.
So when you were growing up, didyou have any certain idea of
what it was that you wanted to do with your life?
Yeah, I wanted to be a marine biologist.

(09:39):
That didn't really. Yeah, I couldn't.
Part of it was down the line, you know, my my path, you know,
took different directions. But also, I never got to go to
college. I couldn't afford to go to
college because I was always taking care of myself.
When I was in high school, like I said, I had three jobs just to
survive, just so I could have a place to live and go to school
at the same time. I was also asked to play
professional soccer one time. Well, try out for a team.

(10:02):
So I could have been a soccer player.
Who knows? Who knows?
Well, let's get into magic. How did you get into that?
Yeah, You know, I always thoughtall my life I've kind of thought
about it and, and, and for the longest time, I thought I
started when I was 16. I thought it was when at that
point and, and let's come back to that.
Remind me, make a note to come back to that because the 16 part

(10:25):
of my life was really the thing that led me into so many other
directions. But I started wondering about
it. And then I remember I'm not
close to my mom because she abandoned me.
But, and I've tried to, I've tried to have a relationship
with her, but she, you know, unfortunately a bit of a toxic
human being and I've had to cut her out of my life.
But I did go to visit her in Ireland and I always thought I

(10:46):
was English, first of all. And I I went there and I said,
hey, mom, what you doing living in an island?
She said, you're Irish. You get, I'm like, you never
told me I was Irish all my life.I thought I was English.
So yeah, English and American, but turns out I'm Irish.
Did the the 21 of me, you know, and I'm I'm, I'm Irish, you
know, definitely Irish. Anyway, so on the table there
was a a daffodil. And she said, you know what we

(11:07):
call those? I go, yeah, daffodils.
You go. No, no, no.
We call them Steven's magic flower.
And I went, why? She said because when you were a
kid, when you were really, really young, you believed that
they were magical because they'dclose up at night and then
they'd open up in the daytime, and it was the most magical
thing. And then she started telling me
about my grandfather. He used to do these silly magic

(11:28):
tricks for me. And when I say silly magic
tricks, it'd like put a box on the table and it's covered.
And it'd say, all right, now what I want you to do is I want
you to close your eyes and I want you to think either coffee,
tea, milk or orange juice, and then say it out loud five times,
you know, and then said another five times and another five
times. And then now open your eyes,
pull the cloth off. And inside of the box was

(11:50):
whatever it was I was thinking of.
So. And all it was was my
grandfather had all those drinksaround the corner where my eyes
were closed. He, you know, because I was
saying it out loud. He just put it inside the box.
And I started going, Oh yeah, I guess there was magic in my life
before I thought that was. And then in, in South Africa,
when I moved to South Africa, I remember I was always trying to
think of trick ways to do things.

(12:12):
How do I get, if I'm playing soccer, how do I get the ball by
somebody? How do I get the ball through
their legs? You know, by moving this way,
moving that way. And then I also remember there
was a magician that came to a myschool and he did a thing where
he was blindfolded. He had somebody write something
on the back blackboard, they erased it.
And then he took the blindfold off, turn around, and he

(12:33):
duplicated what they wrote. And in the classroom, everybody
was trying to come up with ways that he could have done this.
And I remember they were saying things like, oh, he could hear
the chalk and that. And I'm going, I think he used
to see blue through the blindfold.
And he just turned around and looked and it turns out that's
what it was, you know, Mystery of the Blackboard, you know, an
anime. And so that's exactly what it
was doing. And I also remember I went home,

(12:55):
he did a thing where the silk goes in and into the egg and it
becomes an egg. And, you know, and he and he, he
tells you, oh, you know, this iswhat you do, but then it turns
into a real egg. And that's the sucker part of
it. He breaks the egg in the end.
So I went home and made a hole in the top of an egg and I was
pushing a silk into it doing that.
So I was fast fascinated by it, but, and it was while he was in
South Africa that the rest happened for me really.

(13:17):
There was a super superhero. Well they said he was a
superhero who was coming to South Africa and he claimed he
could bend metal objects with his mind and the whole world
believed in it. Now, in South Africa at the
time, they didn't have TV, They only had radio.
And he said, if you bring a piece of metal to the radio,
you're going to be able to do that in your home.
So I'm sitting around with my two brothers, you know, and my

(13:41):
stepfather was, who knows, out drinking somewhere.
And we're listening to him on the radio.
And I went around the house during the commercial break to
find a little needle that my momhad left behind and sewing kit
when she left. And I brought it to the radio.
And he said, Ben, Ben, Ben. And I held it up and I
concentrated on that needle. And I believe that it actually
had bent, that it bent on a micro level.
And you have to think, why wouldn't I want this superpower,

(14:02):
you know, especially in the situation I was.
And I also wanted to impress my brothers.
I wanted them to think I had a superhuman power.
But I really believe that needlehad bent minutely on a micro
level. But it had bent.
And then it wasn't until I left there to go to live with my
biological dad. And we lived in Colorado just
for a couple of months. I picked up a book by James the
Amazing Randy, and it said that the truth about this superhero,

(14:27):
that it was that he was nothing more than a magician and the
superhero was Yuri Yella. The book was the truth about
Yuri Yella and he said he was a magician posing as a psychic.
And I never even thought about that because all the adults and
everybody I knew around me believed in this.
So I believed it had to be real.And I learned a valuable lesson
reading that book. It was just because people in a

(14:47):
position of authority, that doesn't make them authoritative.
It doesn't give them the knowledge.
You know, they just, it just means they think they know
something. And so I got really upset, but
it also started me on the whole critical thinking, skeptical
movement. So from that book there was a
couple of methods for bending keys and a nail, and I started
doing that, and then I started getting more bolder and I
started creating my own methods for bending spoons, forks.

(15:10):
If you see anybody doing the twist today, I'm the one that
created the twist. I'm the one that created the
time band. There's a whole bunch of stuff
that I created, and I've even seen Uri Yella using some of my
bends now. So, so yeah, it's come sort of
full circle. But I didn't so much so that
while I was in high school, all the kids were stealing
silverware from the cafeteria. They went to plastic silverware
until I graduated. I got in trouble for that.

(15:32):
I figured a way to make the school bell go off early and
said I was doing it with my psychic powers.
I was simply shorting 2 wires inthe hallway and the bell went
off. I got in trouble for that in the
end. And then from there, I wrote
Randy a letter and I said, if you ever need a a kid to fool
scientists into believing that psychic phenomena is genuine,
I'd be happy to do so. Because Geller had been going
around the world telling everybody that he was endorsed

(15:54):
by Stanford Research Institute. And and that's not not exactly
true. They had tested him, but they
hadn't tested him under proper formal conditions.
But he was going around with while telling people that.
And parapsychologists have lamented for years there's no
evidence of ESP on a proper scientific protocol due to lack
of funding. And at a very young tender age
of 15, I I knew that wasn't the case.

(16:15):
The problem was their biases were getting in the way.
In other words, they were tryingto document something that they
already believed in rather than using proper science.
First of all to find out if it is genuine.
And not just that because they had pH DS, they believed they
were too smart to be fooled. So I wrote around in the letter
said if you ever need a kid to fool scientists, I'd be happy to
do so. Never expected to hear from

(16:36):
Randy. Did hear from him?
He said come visit me if you ever get a chance.
I got the chance. Went to Rumson, NJ showed up at
his house and he had a house that just like a wizard's house
would be right. The door opened on the hinge
side and there was a magnet for the under a rock that you'd pick
up and push the the bolt across to get in the house.
There was a clock that rang backwards.

(16:56):
He had doves, he had macaws, he had a secret room that opened
up, you know, just anything a magician would have, he would
have. He had in there.
And he never asked to see a single trick, not a single thing
while I was there. So when I left, I was really
disappointed. I thought, oh, well, that was a
waste of time. Not realizing Randy was thinking
ahead, that if the opportunity ever came about, he wanted me to

(17:19):
tell the parapsychologist. Look, I didn't train this kid.
He created all this himself. Can you imagine what would have
happened had I have trained him?I think back now and I realize
if Randy had trained me, he would have.
I would have looked more like a magician.
But because my resources and my creativity came from looking at
psychics and reading books aboutold psychics, I look more like a

(17:43):
psychic than a magician that wastrying to look like a psychic.
Anyway, I've done a lot of talking there.
Yeah, I didn't get into Project Apple.
I'll let you bring that up at some point if you want to.
You know, if there were ever a movie to be made, it should
definitely be the movie about Uri Geller versus James Randi.
Because I remember reading all about that and the stuff that

(18:05):
James said. And of course, I watched the
famous appearance on The TonightShow where Uri was basically
embarrassed, yet he still was a big superstar.
And you know, the fascinating thing about Uri Geller is that
he was sort of the, the David Copperfield of the of the
psychics at that time. In your opinion, what do you
think it was that made Uri such a big deal because he really

(18:26):
didn't have that many things in his repertoire?
No, Uri was Speaking of his repertoire.
You're welcome back. I got a good story on that one.
So I think it was a fact that hewas charming.
He was in the right place at theright time.
You look back in the 1919, seventies, 1980s, you had
Russia, you know, they had the iron curtos up and they were

(18:48):
putting out all their propaganda.
They were also putting out theirstuff about their psychics.
And the US government had to listen.
They had to take, you know, noteof it because what if it was
real, right? What if a psychic could really
read a general's mind? You know, you're kind of
screwed. So you have to let you know if
this stuff's coming out and it looks like they could do these
things, you got to do research. Now they were sending, they were
spending about $21 million a year. the US was on psychic

(19:10):
research became what we known asStargate.
It it was known by a bunch of different names.
It changed names over time, but and then you had in search of
which was on TV. It was one of the number one TV
programs still had one of the highest ratings even today over
so many shows. And that was all about psychic
phenomena. You had Chariot of the Gods, you

(19:33):
know, it was really ripe for a guy like Uri Gella to come along
and and and claim, you know, thecrown, so to speak.
And you're right, Gella didn't have a a lot in his repertoire.
He only had a few things I was doing ATV show, it was Criss
Angel and Uri Gella. It was called Phenomenon and

(19:53):
Gella was one of the hosts and so was Criss Angel.
And I get a call out of the bluefrom I thought this was so
freaking ballsy, right. I get a call out of the blue
from gallon, you know, he says, Hey, Beneteka, I, I, I heard
you're working on this show and and I don't know a lot about you
heard a lot about you. And you know, I only have a few

(20:16):
things in my repertoire. I do this, you know, the flower
generation now I got the metal bending, you know, and he went
through the few lists to like buy things that he does.
And he says. But I've heard that if anybody
could come up with a new power for me, it would be you.
And I'm thinking, how ballsy is that knowing that I did Project
Alpha, knowing I'm that close toRandy, because he can just deny

(20:42):
the call. You know, even today, he can
just say it never happened, you know, it happened, but he could
just say it never happened. And I have no, it's, it's just
my word against his. And that even like right now,
when I'm telling the story, I'm well aware it's just my word
against his. But I was like, man, that was
ballsy. So anyway, we got in this
conversation and I said, gal, I can't do that.
You know, better than that. I belong to the skeptics and
stuff like that, you know, groups and, you know, I've

(21:04):
always been on the other side ofthis.
And I, I, you know, I, I, I think it's wrong, you know, and
I said, and, and if you time on the show, you have powers.
I'm I'm going to call you out onit.
And Chris is going to call you out on it too.
And he says, no, no, no, I don'tdo that anymore.
You know, I'm just there for theshow and I'm finding the next
Yuri gala, you know, and we talked for about 10 minutes and

(21:25):
10 minutes into the conversation, he's like, but you
know, I did find oil. I said, Yuri, stop.
He's a very, very charming man, a very charming man.
You know, it's when you're in his presence, he's he's, he
knows how to turn it on. You know, he's, he's a very,
very charming man, a very talented man.
I just think that he he pushed science back a lot with his

(21:49):
claims and the things that he was saying and doing.
And, and a lot of people say to me, well, what does it hurt to
people have fun, you know, or what does it hurt to go to a
medium right? And the problem is what if if
you don't call that stuff out, it, it, it erodes critical
thinking. Critical thinking is something
that you have to practice every single day.
And it's something you should bethinking, critical thinking.
It doesn't mean to be negative or anything like that.

(22:10):
Just means before you put that pill in your mouth, you better
know what you're taking, right? And I think it's part of the
problem we had with COVID because people forgot how to
think critically anymore. Nobody knew what to think.
Nobody. And you weren't allowed to
think. You're not allowed to question
anything, right? And, and we should be allowed to
question every single thing, butpeople just don't, they just
follow things kindly. And, and then they only listen
to things that go along with their own biases.

(22:33):
And you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a shame where the world has
gotten to today. And, and that kind of stuff that
doesn't help. Well, this obviously
transitioned us into what you alluded to earlier, which was a
Project Alpha and it is such a fascinating, fascinating story.
And it was you. And of course, James Randi was

(22:55):
sort of the puppet master of allthis.
And I forget the other gentlemanthat was involved, Mike Edwards.
Mike Edwards, Yes. Could you talk about how the
idea of Project Alpha came aboutand what was your experience
going through that entire process?
Yeah, I, I hate to push people to another podcast.
We're going to go over it something, but it we just,
there's just not enough time here.

(23:17):
Brian Brushwood, if you know Brian Brushwood, he does a
podcast called The World's Greatest Cons When we're done
talking about this, anybody thatwants more information and wants
the behind scenes stuff on this because we can go there.
It's, it's actually 7 episodes. Season 3 starts with the three O
1 and it goes on from there. And like I said, it's, it's,

(23:38):
it's 7 episodes. Well, it's mainly 4 episodes,
but there's follow up stuff thatcame up as a result of that.
And there's no way we're going to cover all of that here.
But Project Alpha came about because back in the 1980s, as I
said, a scientist lamented, there's no evidence, ESP on a
proper scientist protocol at a young age.
As I said, it was my belief. It had nothing to do with that

(23:59):
had to do with their biases. So I wanted to go in and I
wanted to fool the scientists. Plus there had been some
parapsychologists that said if you could introduce a magician
to the parapsychology, to parapsychology world, go ahead.
Good, good luck. Didn't think they were going to
be fooled. So I thought it was time to go
in because they weren't listening.
They, these parapsychologists, they, they had, they're the ones

(24:20):
with the loudest voices telling everybody this stuff's real and
they just wouldn't listen. So we felt we needed to go in.
The opportunity came about in 1979.
McDonald Douglas. McDonald Douglas Aircraft gave a
half, $1,000,000, which doesn't sound like a lot in these days,
but back then it was a lot of money.
Gave a half, $1,000,000 to Washington University in Saint
Louis. A gentleman by the name of Peter

(24:41):
Phillips was put in charge. Now I remember I was at
Washington Hospital, I was scrubbing floors and there was a
girl that I know who brought me an Associated Press article
because Peter Phillips had takenout a put out a, an Associated
Press. What do you call it when you put
out a, a release and saying he was looking for kids that could

(25:02):
bend metal with his their minds.And I was like, oh, that's right
down my alley. You know, I can bend metal with
my mind. So I wrote him a letter and I
was accepted. Now I didn't tell Randy right
away. I ended, I ended up getting a
phone call from Randy like 2 weeks later.
I was about to call him actually, and he called me up.
He said Banachek. Well, my name was Steve Shaw

(25:23):
back then. He said, Banachek, there's this
guy in Saint Louis, he's been given half, $1,000,000 to study
psychic phenomena. I said, think of his initials.
Does it start with AP And the second initials, AP, he says,
yeah, how do you know? I said, I've already been
accepted. I was going to write you and let
you know. He told me about another kid by
the name of Mike Edwards. Now, Mike had already been there

(25:43):
and Mike had been some keys for them.
And they were, they were flabbergasted.
You know, it's like Mike could do no wrong.
Mike didn't quite know where to go with that.
And so he went to the number oneskeptic in the world.
He went to Randy and he called Randy up and he told him what
had happened and, you know, asked for some pointers.
It was Mike actually who came upwith the idea that it would be

(26:05):
called Project Alpha, not Randy.It was Mike that did that.
And Mike asked about me and, youknow, because Randy had told him
about me. So Mike was asking questions
about me. And one of the things says,
well, is he any good? He said if he's not any good and
he shows up and he's, you know, he's going to blow my cover, I'm
going to go ahead and blow his cover before that happens, you

(26:25):
know, if he's not any good. And I asked Randy sort of the
same question. I said, what do you know about
Mike is, you know, is any good? And Randy said he didn't know a
whole lot about Mike. And so I kind of felt the same
thing. But when when we got to the
airport, when we landed in SaintLouis, we both landed in about
an hour of each other. And we met each other.
Mike and I did before we met Peter Phillips.

(26:47):
Peter Phillips come to the airport.
He was getting a rental car at the time.
And Mike and I hit it off. We we knew, we just knew right
away, like we were messing with each other, joking with each
other. And it was just like, OK, this
cool guy. And he was like, oh, that's a
cool cat as well. And we just started up and
running immediately. For some reason I didn't have, I

(27:08):
didn't have my driver's license with me.
Now keep in mind this is back inthe day when you didn't even I
need an ID to, to fly. You just needed a plane ticket
and get on a plane. But I can't remember why I
didn't have my license or if I had an ID, but I didn't have a
license. Anyway, I wasn't able to drive a
car, so I couldn't drive the rental car.
Mike, it was too young to drive the rental car as well.
So Phillips took the rental car and he let Mike drive his car.

(27:32):
And so we're following Phillips like we're behind him.
We're following him and Mike's driving.
I look in the back seat and I see that there's a briefcase in
the back. I went, oh, interesting.
So I pull it over to the front under the dash.
I try to open it. It's locked.
And I'm like, oh, they don't want us to get in there.
So then I pick the lock. I open it up, and there's all
this cutlery, The silverware in there forks, spoons, knives.

(27:52):
And I'm like, this must be some of the stuff they're going to
use for the experiments. Unless Peter Phillips is AI.
Cut the maniac, you know, and steal silverware.
So I bend up a bunch of it, close it up, put it in the back.
I sit there twiddling my thumbs for a few more seconds from the
glove compartment. There's some keys in there.
I bend them up and anything elsethat's metal.
I close it up. Mike's look at me like what the
hell? I start to reach over keys in

(28:13):
the ignition and that we're hanging there, you know, house
keys and I he slaps my hand and he says, I think you've done
enough damage. And and and that's where we
started like up and running. Now, the reason I did that is
because there's a thing called spontaneous PK and supposedly
psychics sometimes get this energy and they get too much of
it and it just puts itself out there and it's uncontrollable.

(28:34):
And these spontaneous PK things,those type of things.
And it also when the scientists see this, they, they, they think
in their head, man, this is good.
I'm going to get this sometimes someday.
I'm going to get this on video. I'm going to get this on video.
We also didn't know in the beginning if they were going to
be using, you know, trickery to try to catch us.
Like are they going to leave cameras running when they say

(28:56):
they're off during the breaks? Is there a one way mirror
somewhere that we're not, you know, we're not Privy to?
So all of our bins in the beginning were with the metal
was that's what we started out with with metal bending.
All of our bins in the beginningwere on a micro level.
Micro level. Now.
Randy had sent them 11 caveats, and the 11 caveats were things
that you shouldn't let the psychics do.

(29:17):
If you're doing experiments, don't let more than one psychic
work at a time because they can distract, you, know, for each
other. Don't let them work with more
than one object at a time. And the list went on and on and
on. When we first arrived, Mike and
I, that time together, they showed us the list of caveats
that Randy at this magician, we acted like we didn't know who
Randy was. This magician Randy had sent us.

(29:39):
Look at these. How ridiculous are these?
These would make you really uncomfortable.
And they threw them in the trash.
Whereas if they had followed those 11 caveats, we wouldn't
have got away with anything at all.
So in the beginning, as I said, the bendings were on a micro
level and Randy had said mark everything on a macro and a
micro level. That way the psychics would see
the macro, but they wouldn't seethe micro.

(30:00):
And if they were cheating, you'dknow they switched that with
silverware, right? The way they did it was they put
number tags on it, like string tags on each one.
They measured them at the bowl and at the end of the each end
of the the piece of cutlery. And they made a notation #13
these are its measurements #12 these are its measurements and
so on. I realized that if I picked up,

(30:23):
oh, one thing was don't let the subjects control the experiment.
I, I break that rule right away.I pick up a fork and I go, this
tag's getting in my way. Do you mind if I remove it?
Oh, no problem. I'm controlling the experiment
now, right? I rub it, rub it, rub it.
Nothing happens. I put it down on the table.
Now let's say that was #13 I pick up #12 right?
I probably would have picked up #1 if the numbers aren't that

(30:43):
close in the list, I pick it up.I take that tag off and I put it
down, pretend to concentrate. But then when I pick it up, I
put 13 on, you know, one and oneon 13.
And then I wait maybe an hour orso, and then I pick one up nice
and cleanly. I might pick up #1 concentrate
on it, barely touch it. And I say, I think it, I think
it bent minutely. And they'd measure it.

(31:04):
And sure enough, it's been a millimeter or 2mm.
And then the other thing, sometimes if there were two
pieces of cutlery on the table and I'm holding one, I can just
lean over and press on one pieceof cutlery because that's I'm
using more than one piece of cutlery at a time, which is one
of the things Randy said not to do.
Later on when we realized that they weren't trying to catch us,
that they really believed in this, we started to get a lot
bolder. The students, the first time we

(31:27):
were at the campus and the students on campus, they were
skeptical. The professors weren't, but the
students were. And so they hit a bunch of
cutlery and stuff in the other room in the, the, the video tech
room. And I was standing there one
time and I just happened to lookand I saw underneath one of the,
the video recorders, I saw a bunch of cutlery hidden and some

(31:49):
calls. I went, what's that all about?
I didn't say it. I kept it in my head.
So when there was no one around,I bent those up and put them
back underneath. And that convinced the students
because they found it themselvesthat something, you know,
unusual was going on here. We ended up doing a whole bunch
of different experiments. They tested us for all kinds of
psychic phenomena, you know, making rotors move under a bell

(32:10):
jar. That was one of the funny
experiments was so there's this spike that comes up and a wooden
round circle disc on the bottom with a groove in it.
And then on top of it is a glassbell jar and that that goes out
and on top of the spike inside the bell jar there is a little
Rhoda and it's always been sprayed down.
So there's no static, anti static materials.

(32:33):
And they said, and I always justsaid yes to everything.
Mike was more conservative. He was training to be an
attorney. Me, I didn't care.
I just did anything and everything and I took probably
too many chances, could have gotcaught a couple of times.
But anyway, they said can you make the rotor move to the left?
I'm like, Oh yeah, no problem. I concentrate.
Next thing it's moving and it's rotating to the left.
Can you now make it rotate to the right?

(32:54):
I'm concentrating and it's moving to the right.
And Mike and I had a cue that ifwe ever wanted to speak to each
other, we'd tap each other underthe table with our feet and say,
hey, do you want to go get a drink?
Because the drinks were all the way down the hallway outside of
the the Mac Lab, you know, all the way down the hallway.
And because they ended up havinga place called the Mac Lab where
they ended up doing experiments that were no longer on campus.

(33:14):
That's this whole dedicated place.
And when we're down there, we would discuss the experiment
that just happened. Mike says to me, I remember on
that time with the road, he says, he said, Steve, he said,
how the fuck are you doing that?I'm going.
And I said, Mike, you're not going to believe me if I tell
you. He says, no, you got to tell me.
I'm like, well, you know, we've been sitting here and we come

(33:35):
here like on weekends and, you know, we spent over 180 hours
there, you know, over, over, youknow, 3 1/2 years I think it
was. And I said, I just, I just
realized after all this concentrating that I'm really
psychic. And he up against the wall.
I said, no, tell me, you know, like all right, I told him.
So he went back in the room. Next thing you know, he was
making a move to the left and tothe right.

(33:57):
And I, I, I held on to this one for a long, long time because it
was the one that people always saw because there's videos of
the stuff we were doing. And I held on this one for a
long time. But what I realized is if I me
and I'm not supposed to be touching this stuff according to
Randy, but if I put the bell jaron, I could put it in.
So it didn't quite settle in. That left a little gap on the
bottom. And if I blew it from One

(34:17):
Direction, the road one way, if I move it blew the other
direction, it went the other way.
Then at one point, for whatever reason, they decided to put foil
over the bottom of the bell jar.And that made my life a little
easier because all we did was wetook a little piece of tinfoil,
dropped it into the groove. So now there's a permanent area
where it's not going to settle properly.
They can take it and put it on top themselves.

(34:40):
Another one that I that I did was we would move objects and I
had a great link up that I had created with an invisible thread
before invisible threads became really popular when the
magicians nowadays, you know, but he has loops and stuff.
We didn't have loops and, and soit was a piece of it was a
hookup that went to my one hand and the other hand came into it.

(35:01):
And it's, it's harder to, to actually describe.
It's just easier to show. But anyway, I'm moving the clock
forward and the thread breaks soit's no longer hooked to my
body. It's just.
So now I hook a piece of thread between my 2 index fingers and
I'm moving the clock forward andthen I lift up and I go over the
clock and I come back and it comes back to me and it's

(35:24):
obvious, it's pretty damn obvious what I'm doing.
But they used that on their video for the parapsychologist
saying this was Ben Unesb and National Enquirer.
They asked me, they said, you know, it looks like maybe you
have something between your hands and you're pushing it and
pointing it back. I'll go.
Yeah. What I do is I imagine that
there's a beam between my fingers and so I'm pushing it

(35:44):
forward. So I have to really believe it.
So now I got to pick it up and bring it over and bring that
beam back in order for it to come back.
They took it hook, line and sinker and believed it.
So. But anyway, after all those
years, we came out and said it was all a hoax.
It changed parapsychology forever.
Mike, myself, Randy ended up being in every parapsychology
textbook. We ended up being every

(36:05):
psychology textbook in every university around the world.
And a lot of people, well, not alot, but a few parapsychologists
woke up and said, hey, it's not fair to four people in, you
know, in the name of science. And it's like, well, it's not
fair to take money and not perform proper science as well.
Now, going back to the caveats, if they had to listen to Randy
or and Randy would offer to comein all the time and every time

(36:27):
we did a project, we would call Randy and we would tell them
exactly what we just did. He would shoot them a letter
right away saying, hey, if you're ever doing something with
a bell jar, you might want to blah, blah, blah, blah.
And that's probably why they putthe foil on the bottom.
It was probably something that Randy had said to them because
he didn't always tell us everything he said, but we know
that he was in communication, writing them letters and telling
them exactly what we did. But there was ATV producer for

(36:51):
BBCI think it was BBC, it was anEnglish, it was an English
Channel and he was a major producer and he came over and it
was a convention that a Geller was at as well.
It was right before we were going to be coming out and
saying it was all a hoax. And he wrote Randy a letter said
what would convince you this is real?
Randy said, well, if you follow these 11 caveats, I might think

(37:14):
it's genuine. So he, he sent him the 11
caveats and it was me. It was Mike Edwards, another kid
by the name of Masa Waki Kyoto. And Masa Waki Kyoto was known
for twisting forks. But he had a gimmick in his shoe
that when nobody was looking, hewould go under the table, put it
in his shoe, give it the fork A twist or a spoon A twist, and
then bring it out and make it look like it was twisting.
It became the Holy Grail for me to figure out how can you do

(37:36):
that without a shoe and without a gimmick, right.
And I, I, I found it finally by accident, but anyway, so
nothing, well, nothing happened that whole day except for one
thing. He did give us these electronic
watches. Now these are the ones that you
now buy for like a dollar and you give them to the kids back
then they were brand new and they were real expensive.
So he gave me one, he gave M1, he gave Masuaki Kyoto, this

(37:57):
Japanese kid one, which by the way, Masuaki Kyoto I ruined with
him at that convention, spoke perfect English until I happened
to say to him, Masuaki, like when you don't have your powers
working, do ever use a trick trick trick.
I don't understand it. I do not speak English.
All of a sudden he couldn't speak English.
But anyway, back to the experiments.
All day we're there and nothing happens except for the watches,

(38:17):
because Mike had the brilliant idea at lunch to put it in his
sandwich and put it in the microwave.
From when it came out. It was all gibberish, so, and
they thought that was a miracle.But anyway, so now the the
cameras go off, everything gets shut down, Nothing's happened
because he's followed Randy's caveats.
And I see Masawaki go under the table and he comes out and he's
twisting a fork. And this producer sees him

(38:40):
twisting a fork, but there's no camera on it.
He's not getting it on camera and he has a complete mental
breakdown. Now, you might think metal
bending is just a trick. It's not that big of a deal.
This guy had a complete mental breakdown, started screaming and
yelling that Randy was the devil.
Randy is evil. We should have never listened to
Randy. If he didn't listen to Randy, it

(39:00):
would have been comfortable. We would have got this on tape.
He looks down at his pants. He's got a big wet splotch there
and he looks down. He says, Oh my God, I've had a
demonic ejaculation. That's the word ejaculation.
So the guy was having a nervous breakdown, like complete nervous
breakdown. I had to spend the night in his
assistants room all night long with her because he was calling

(39:23):
her all night long screaming andyelling about Randy.
And it kind of scared Mike and I.
And so we said, Randy, we kind of want to come clean.
You know, Randy's like just holdoff two more months and then the
TV show's coming out. So we held off.
But yeah, well, that was a a really, really scary moment.
And the hard part for me and Mike was we went in this thing

(39:44):
thinking we were the Knights, white Knights, right?
We're coming in and we're going to shine a light on truth,
right? Rather than all the lies that,
you know, other people were putting out saying they were
psychics and that not realizing that the professors were out of
the league. But they were really good
people, kind hearted, really nice people.

(40:04):
And they became our friends. So now we're lying to our
friends, right? We're we're going to hurt people
we care about. Maybe for the greater cause.
And would I do it again? Yes, but I would not have got as
close. And I, I, I, you know, I, I
just, we're going to be ruining people's Rep, you know,
reputations. And it, it was we, we got in way
deeper than we expected. And that's why I say go listen

(40:26):
to the other podcast because it really deals with that in great,
great detail, the dilemmas that Mike and I had.
So, but that's Project Alpha andthat was just one of many things
that I did with Randy. You know, if there's one phrase
I'm definitely going to take away from this interview, it's
demonic ejaculation. Hey, I don't think I've ever had

(40:46):
one. So going through all of that, in
your experience through Project Alpha and in your interactions
with James Randy, were those sort of things that furthered
your interest in becoming a mentalist?
No, I was already becoming a mentalist because I was already
creating ways to bend metal and do these things.
When I started out as a mentalist, I didn't realize that

(41:07):
there were other there was a category of metal magic called
metalism. I had no idea there was that.
I was just creating my own stuff.
When I created PK Touches, that was based upon something I read
about a psychic and a John Mulholland book.
And basically the psychic said that there was a pretty girl, he
was Italian. And so there was a pretty girl
across the street and he imagined he was pinching her

(41:31):
butt. And when he imagined it, she
turned around, held her butt, but there was nobody there.
And that's how he found out he could touch people from a
distance. So that's where PK Touches came
came from that I all I knew was that there were people posing as
psychics that were using tricks.That's the only thing I knew and
that was because of the Randy book.
So like I said, I, I, you know, when I created all my Russian

(41:51):
roulettes, you know, I was firstwanted to do a Russian roulette
with knife that was not based upon anything magical that was
out there. That's why I came up with so
many original things, because I wasn't hanging out with other
magicians. In fact, I'd already been doing
shows at some of the malls in like Washington, PA and places
like that while I was working with the scientists and saying,

(42:13):
you know, but I, I was told to say I was a real psychic.
You know, where Andy said, keep that facade up.
So I did, which I felt really weird about because I'm lying
and it's exactly what I was against.
But I had to do it in the in thename of this thing to get into
the, the parapsychology labs, right.
But at one point there was a guyby the name of Mack.
Well, I'm going to say his name Ron Mack picnic.

(42:34):
I think his name was Boy, I'm, I'm getting old.
Jeez, Mack picnic. Mack Picnic had a, I'm going to
go Mack Picnic, even though thatdoesn't sound right, but he had
a, a psychic rabbit and he did close up and the rabbit was
there and the rabbit would help with the tricks.
And the last thing is the rabbitwould roll out an American flag.
And that was the big finale. Well, this guy came to see me at

(42:56):
one of my shows at Washington Mall.
And it was all original stuff. And he was like, man, nobody's
ever seen anything like this. You're amazing.
You've got to come do the show in Gatlinburg, TN.
You know, it's now in Pigeon Forge, you know, So.
And I was like, OK, now in my mind, because I didn't know
anything about magicians, didn'thang out with any magicians,

(43:17):
didn't know any magicians at this convention, all the best
magicians in the world were going to be there, right?
It's a magic convention and all the best magic's going to be
there. And I'm now embarrassed about my
stuff, not realizing that it wasactually really good original
stuff. So I buy one of the tenants
catalogs, you know that you haveto buy back in the day, big
thick thing. And I go through it and I

(43:39):
figure, hey, if it's in a Magic,if the Magic store, it's got to
be good, otherwise they wouldn'tbe selling it wrong.
But I'm going through it and I pick out this thing, this thing,
this thing, this thing, it showsup.
I start working on it. I go to the convention and I do
it and I bomb. It was like the crappiest.
Like I was so, so embarrassed. I did go down to that that the

(44:00):
room where the magicians hung out later and I hung out with
them and I redeemed myself for the metal bending and the stuff
that I do right. But I stayed away from magicians
for another five years after that.
Little aside on this, when I first got to the convention,
there's this guy there and he's all crazy looking and everything
else. And he says, you know, and he's
putting his hand in a bear trap,you know, and then everybody

(44:22):
leaves. I'm standing there and he says,
I want to learn how to put your hand in a bear trap, You know, I
said, well, OK, he has me putting my hand in the bear
trap, you know, And then after I'd done it, he's like, ladies
and gentlemen, come see the wonder kid who can put his hand
in a bear trap, never get harmed, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And he's going on and on. He tells me also he does magic
where he cuts snakes in half andstuff and things and all this
crazy stuff. So anyway, I do this and

(44:44):
everybody's around, right? And then I leave the convention.
Now that's in Tennessee. I'm living up by Pittsburgh, PA.
It's a small freaking wall. I tell you, I'm working in the
three a ward, and the three a ward is the crazy ward.
Might be able to see where I'm going with this.
I'm actually buffing the floors in there and I hear, hey Steve,

(45:05):
what are you doing here? I turn around.
The guy that was having me put my hand in the bear traps and
doing that stuff was locked up at the crazy farm.
So yeah, small world. Small world.
Yep. You know, because you are so
great at what you do. I imagine that from time to time
you've probably encountered someaudience members who probably

(45:27):
believed, or at least want to believe that you could be
psychic. Have you encountered audience
members like that, and if so, how do you deal with them?
Every show I encounter those people.
So let's take this back just a little bit because this goes
really to disclaimers. I think when I started out,
there wasn't mentalism wasn't part of the real lexicon of, of,

(45:51):
of magic, right? There weren't really.
You had Kreskin, you had a couple other people maybe in the
college market, you had Gill Eagles.
But it wasn't, it wasn't a known, known, known thing,
right? There were very few mentalists
that were around and it was rare.
And the majority of mentalists that were around wanted people
to believe they were genuine psychics.
You know, that was, and I think part of it is because when you

(46:14):
start out doing magic, you almost need people to believe to
get away. If you're not very good in the
beginning and then you get good by repeat performance and stuff,
you get good, but you hold on tothat crutch of people believing.
It's kind of like going to see ahypnotist.
You know, it's a lot easier if people come to the hypnotist and
they've already been hypnotized before they believe in
hypnotism, right? Your job's part way done.
So people believe in psychic phenomena.

(46:34):
Your job's part way done. It's like the first time I saw
Gala perform. I couldn't believe that he was
getting away with what he was getting.
You know, he was doing the mystery of the blackboard.
We talked earlier, but he was holding up a big piece of
cardboard next to his head so hecouldn't see behind him, putting
his head down. And slowly, while the person's
drawing on the board, he's turning his head.
And I'm like, he's just fucking turning looking.
He's not even using a blindfold.And don't they see this?

(46:57):
And nobody would see it because all the people that were there
believed in him. So and then I always felt dirty
about that, right? Saying that I was a psychic.
It's it's what I was against because it was a lie, you know,
and a big lie that, and maybe I'm converting people over to
believe in psychic phenomena by doing these things and I'm using
trickery. So I felt that weight about it.
And then I heard Randy when I was talking to Randy about this,

(47:21):
this whole problem that I have with it, you know, but it's all
I know how to do. I only know how to perform.
I don't know how to do anything else at this point.
And Randy told me about Ned Rutledge.
And Ned Rutledge was a, a guy who who was a teacher as well.
And he had given a lecture, A1 off lecture, taking his five
known senses to create the illusion of 1/6 sense.
And I went, oh, that's good, that's good.

(47:42):
I got a hold of Ned and he said,yeah, I only used it for one
lecture. He says, you know, feel free to
take it. And so I took it and I ran with
it and I kind of made it a majorpiece of mentalism and, you
know, an explanation, another way to present yourself, taking
your five mil senses to create the illusi of six.
You use verbal communication, nonverbal communication, lots of
magic, psychology and perceptionmanipulation.
Got to have the magic in there, right?

(48:04):
And some people say, well, you know, psychology, yeah, there's
bits of psychology through everydamn thing that I do.
And I have effects that rely purely on psychology.
And if they don't work, nobody knows they haven't worked.
But yeah, there there are. Why do I place this here instead
of over here? Because I know more likely it's
going to get selected if I move it over here rather than over
there. So I'm using a lot of
psychology. So none of that stuff was a lie

(48:24):
unless you take out the word magic.
Now it's a lie, right. So for a while there, there were
a bunch of mentalists that said,well, what in particular, Leo,
there's no place for a fake mentalist.
And I'm like, first of all, we're using the word mentalist.
We're not calling out psychics. So we all fake.
Why else would we need that word, right?

(48:44):
And then I took college entertainer of the year 2 years
in a row, novelty entertainer ofthe year.
And I was like, oh, Benachek's the exception.
I'm like, no, that doesn't even make any sense either, right?
If I can do it, other people cando it as well.
And then Darren Brown with Andy Neiman's help ended up doing
their first TV show. And they, the problem there,
they created another lie in a way, saying everything was done

(49:05):
by Neuro linguistic program NLP.And that's OK for a
presentational standpoint, but you still kind of come back and
remind him it's a trick, right? And they weren't Andy Darren
wasn't doing that in the beginning.
And so he ended up getting some,had some problems with it, you
know, started getting some people reported expose exposing
his tricks, saying this is not NLP, this is a trick and that's

(49:25):
how it's done. So he ended up doing a 180 on
that and embracing almost completely the other side of
things with the disclaimer. And so yeah, like because you,
if you say it's NLP, you're getting to a point where you're
going to convince people that ifthey go do these studies, they
can do this too. And it's never going to happen.
They're never going to be able to duplicate what we're doing

(49:47):
with NLP classes or anything like that.
So I feel a responsibility. So there are all these people
that are going to come believe no matter what.
Getting back to your question onthe left, right, and then on the
right, there's all these people that are not going to believe no
matter what. They're the skeptics, right?
I'm not going to change their mind no matter what I do.
I'm not going to change their mind, and I'm not on stage to

(50:09):
change belief systems. That's exactly what I'm not
there for. I'm there to entertain.
But there's a very large portion, much bigger than even.
You put those other two togetherin the middle.
They come to these shows who've never seen a mentalist before in
their life, and I become the authoritative figure of what
this is. What are they seeing?
If I say it's psychic, they're going to believe it's psychic.
If I say it's NLP, they're goingto believe it's NLP.

(50:29):
And Aaron Brown's a perfect example of that.
You know, convince so many people of that.
Gallo's another one, right? Convinced so many people it was
psychic. So I have a huge responsibility
of those people in the middle toremind them that it's not real.
Now, the comeback on that, whichjust makes no sense to me.
Like if you just took a second to think about it, some

(50:50):
mentalists will say, well, if I was doing Macbeth, I'm not going
to stop in the middle of the play and say, excuse me, I'm
just an actor playing the part of Macbeth.
I just wanted to let you know. But of course not because it's
freaking content context, right?You come to see Macbeth, you
know it's a play. You come to see me performing.
You don't know I'm a magician. You don't know if I'm a psychic.

(51:11):
All you know is that I'm the authoritative figure on what I'm
talking about. Same as if you did Macbeth in
that show the night before. Tonight you have an actual real
person giving a Ted Talk on the human mind, and it's a
neuroscientist. You're going to go real quick.
That's a real neuroscientist. That's not an actor, right?
So I have a responsibility to those people in the middle to
remind them this is not real. And I tend to do it at the

(51:33):
beginning. I tend to do it in the middle,
and I do it at the end of my show.
Sometimes I'll do it in other places as well.
So yeah, for me, I can't do a lot about those people that
believe, believe, believe, and Idon't want to get an argument
with them because they're cutting my show to have a good
time. They're paying a ticket to have
a good time. So you want to believe in
psychic phenomena, That's OK. Maybe that's a discussion we
have another day if you up to itand you want to have it.

(51:55):
And people will tell me the stories about a ghost they saw
and this and that, blah, blah, blah.
And I just nodded my head. I go, yeah.
And they go, do you believe in psychic phenomena?
I say, well, I haven't seen anything.
You know, I have. I run $1,000,000 foundation
where we test psychics for theirabilities and the moment we put
them under proper scientific scrutiny, you know they fail.
But that doesn't mean it's not real.
You know, I, I don't want to invalidate their thinking or

(52:17):
what, what they believe. And that's not my job at all,
right? Especially in the context of the
show. I'm there to make people have a
really good time. Did I answer your question?
I think you did. What do you think about?
The. Psychic Business Today.
Because I remember a time where there was a psychic on almost
every other TV show, right? Daytime talk shows, late night

(52:39):
talk show. Some had their own shows.
Now, as far as mainstream media,you don't really see them
featured anymore. That, yeah, because they they
have so many other outlets, social media, you know, but
they, they find their people that way.
They don't have to blast themselves on the TV and
everybody, although there's still a couple of ads lately.
You know, we only take the best psychics.
You know, we, we don't take every single psychic.

(53:01):
We take the best psychics, you know, californiapsychics.com or
whatever the heck it is, you know, and so it is up there.
But now it's done very much. You can take your Facebook ads
and you can point them in the direction of people that believe
in all the spiritual woo woo stuff and you're not going to be
wasting your dollar. It's much better spent.
So you are probably not going tosee that stuff.

(53:22):
I'm may or may not because of the world I live in see some of
that stuff. But there's other people that
don't, the non believers, I'm going to be seeing that stuff.
They're not after the non believers.
They're they're after the believers, right?
And, and, and going back to the mediums, because I do want to
touch on this from there. A lot of people say to me, well,
it makes people feel good to be able to think they, they can

(53:43):
talk to their loved one. What harm is that?
It's a lot of freaking harm. I mean, I can give crack to a
junkie. It's going to make him feel
good. Doesn't mean it's good for him.
What these Greek vampires are doing is they're basically
halting the grieving process. And there's a reason we have the
grieving process. It's a reason it's part of our

(54:03):
nature and we go through it. Everybody goes through it when
they lose a loved one, except for those that think they're
still talking to their loved one.
They stopped talking to the the living.
I had a very good friend who hada son who died of cancer at 10
years old, and she had two daughters and she had a husband.
And of course, poor woman, right?
Big hole in her heart and she's trying to fill it in a freaking

(54:25):
medium. Convinced that she could talk to
her dead son, she stopped talking to her daughters and her
husband. She was so consumed with talking
to her dead son, she almost ended up in a divorce, which
means she would have lost her husband and lost her daughters.
Luckily, she came to her senses at one point, but that's the
kind of crap that these people do.
They halt the grieving process and it is there for a reason.
And I don't care what you say, they're doing it for money.

(54:47):
And even if they're not doing itfor money, they're doing it for
secondary gain. They're getting a 10 attention
and they're loving getting that attention, right?
It's just like when a mother drowns her kids or makes her
kids sick, right? Because she's getting attention
at the hospital. You know, it's the same kind of
sickness. Eventually, you of course did
have the opportunity to get to know and work with other great
magicians. Of course, we talked about

(55:07):
James, Randy, you've worked withother fantastic magicians like
Jamie and Swiss. And of course, I remember the
many times you appeared on a Criss Angel Mind Freak.
What is it like for you to be able to collaborate with a lot
of these? Great.
Magicians. Well, with Mind Freak, it was a
little bit different. I had been touring with the
colleges. As I said, I took in a tent of
the year. I took every award I could
possibly take, and now I was making as much money as I

(55:30):
possibly could in the college market.
And I'm one of those people I change.
You know, before that I was doing trade shows.
Before that I was doing comedy clubs.
I like to change. I like to keep it up.
And Chris Angel called me up andI had no idea who he was, you
know, but he wanted to do a bearit Alive and a bullet catch.
And of course, you know, I was known for the bullet catch and I
was the first one to be Bear it Alive 6 feet underground, Dig my

(55:51):
way out. And so I came to Vegas to visit
with him and he was flying all these magicians in to meet with
them and everything. And we kept talking.
Then I start talk to him about some things like pre show and a
few other things. He was like, I need you on my
team. At that point he had Johnny
Thompson, who's got more money than God.
But Johnny didn't really think outside the box.
He's thought within the box. And Chris was always wanting

(56:12):
things outside the box. So they want a really good fit.
But Johnny freaking amazing, amazing man.
Like, you know, you hold a deck of cards and you try to do a
move. So just move your thumb that
way, you know? And he just, he knew it all.
He knew it. He forgot more magic than God
like that. Johnny did, right?
It wasn't a perfect fit for Chris.

(56:33):
He had another guy who ran a, a,a magic store.
So the guy knew a lot of little tricks and things like that.
Really nice guy, Dexter, sweet man and a good man.
And then he had another kid. I'm not going to say the name
really didn't know any magic at all like, but and the and the
one thing he did know when Chriswent to go sell it turned out to

(56:53):
be somebody else's. And we we didn't know, you know,
and Chris had to modify it and fix it.
So so that that was his. Oh, and then John Farrow.
John Farrow was a theater guy and John became in in charge of
like the big BA stunts, right, But it was like 3 weeks or 2-3
weeks before they were going to go into production that Chris
said I need you, I need. And I was like, all right, so

(57:14):
long as I can do the rest of thecollege on my college season is
is wearing down. Get I go off, I do the rest of
those gigs. I'll make sure all your magic's
ready. And yeah, it became a lot of a
lot of stuff in that first season was making things work
because there were no methods for, for some of the stuff that
was like making things work. And then after that I, it was

(57:36):
part way like 2 weeks in the shooting.
We had to deliver 1 1/2 shows every week.
And put that in perspective. David Blaine usually gets like a
year to two years to make it special.
Copperfield the same thing. You know, we were putting out 1
1/2 shows every single week. On top of that, keep in mind
that every show is 22 minutes long and we were, we were just

(58:01):
coming up with stuff for half the time.
I mean, we would sit in a room on the average most seasons and
we would have to come up with close to 300 tricks, not knowing
how we were going to do it. And then two weeks off and it
became my job. And the teams worked to sit down
and try to figure out how to do these tricks.
Chris. Chris also, you know,
interjected with that. And people think he didn't
create. No, Chris is one of the most
creative people I know as well. And we worked real well

(58:24):
together. And, and that's why it became
such a such a really good success.
Where were they going with that?It was the creative process.
The creative process. It was basically that's that
goes back to my childhood. It goes back to when I was a kid
of having to troubleshoot because I'm more of a
troubleshooter. You tell me what you want to do,
I will come up with three or four ways to do it.
And that also became the problemwith the scientists was that why

(58:45):
don't you just teach the scientists the tricks?
Well, I've got like 10 differentways to bend keys.
I teach, I teach you three of the most important ways.
Somebody else is going to come along with a whole new way that
I never had and do it. And you're going to think
they're a genuine psychic betteroff to bring me in as as
professional. And I can take a look at it and
say whether that's a trick or not, you know, who knows, maybe
maybe I'd even I'd even before. But working with Chris was it

(59:09):
was intense at times because we were putting out so much.
That first season we had 7 episodes I think it was.
And after the third episode wentout, Chris's management brought
us into the room and says well Igot good news and bad news boys.
Good news is they want more shows.
Bad news is they want 21 shows and they want it now.

(59:30):
So we took a week off, sat down,wrote out all the other shows
and all the magic we wanted to do, and then just kept them
plugging away. You know, there's one episode of
Mind Freak that I remember, and I think it was one of his later
episodes. And the big trick of this
episode was that Chris said he was going to, for a moment,
raise somebody from the dead. I, I, I, I wrote that episode.

(59:53):
Yeah. I, I wrote.
Did you write most of the episodes?
But yes, I wrote that episode, yeah.
Well, I remember that one scene where you're actually talking to
Chris, saying Chris, why are youdoing this?
You shouldn't be doing this. Do you?
Do you recall that? And.
Did you? Write that as.
Well, I recall it. That scene was in there because
we knew it was going to be a little icky.
We knew there was going to be some ethical concerns.

(01:00:16):
And it was one of those things if we went straight into it with
people just thinking that we hadn't thought about the ethical
concerns of this, you know, thenthat can be a problem.
So that argument scene was we knew we were going to be having
that argument. So even though it felt very real
and intense and and actually it did get intense at times because

(01:00:36):
there was some things he wanted to do that I'm like, no, you
know, I was one of the last people on mine freak that could
actually argue with really, actually argue with Chris
because we did have some arguments about that episode.
And I was one of the last peoplewho could say no to him.
And then it got to a point wherehe was just getting so famous.

(01:00:57):
There's something that happens to real every famous person at
one point where everybody's telling them how great and how
amazing they are. And it gets inside of their head
at some point. And then they come back to
reality. Chris is a good guy and they
ended up coming back. He came back to reality.
But that's where we were in thatthat season as well at that
point. So, yeah, yeah, there was some

(01:01:18):
of the things we put in some of the shows was because it, we
were well aware of what lines wewere coming up against.
And so we wanted the audience tosee those things and maybe they
can have those conversations at home themselves.
You know, maybe they can talk about those things and debate it
amongst themselves as well, knowing that we were actually
also debating those type of things.

(01:01:39):
The one of the things in the first season was like I said, I
mentioned a minute ago, each trick is 22 minutes.
And in that very, very first season, is this mostly just
going out to magicians or is it?It's going out to everybody,
anyone who's willing to listen. Because I want to be careful
what I expose and don't expose. So in the first season, Chris

(01:02:00):
would show up. He said, what am I doing today?
Oh, that's that trick where I dothis, this and this.
Yep. What I'm going to say, you know,
And I said, well, we could try this, you know, and I'd tell him
something. Sometimes he, he came up with
his own thing. I don't like that.
And do his own thing. But the problem was, is Chris
would do the trick and he would do 1 trick, a close up trick,

(01:02:21):
and it would last like 35 minutes or every episode's 22
minutes, right? So we had to edit a lot.
And magicians were magicians sometimes are the worst at
hurting out craft, the worst at hurting out craft.
And they don't realize it sometimes because they're just
trying to show how smart they'renot basically, well, they're not
trying to do that, but that is what they're doing.
And so they cut everything down.They're the ones that will draw

(01:02:42):
a circle of a shadow on a wall way back in the back and say
that that shadow belongs to thisbar that belongs to this
illusion. And you know, it's magicians
that are doing it. And it's like, why, why?
Why are you doing that? You know, you're hurting
yourself by doing that. You're exposing your own magic.
So then they would say, yeah, well, all the edits and all the
cuts is what's hiding the magic.And that just that wasn't true.

(01:03:03):
You know it. Sometimes if there's something
really bad, we have to cut it out.
And as we got into for the seasons, there are things we
have to cut out because nobody would know that like that
shadow, except for a magician. So now you got to edit that way,
right? But we edit it down to make it
fit in the context of a 22 minute show where you have an, a
stunt and you got two or three other other magic things that

(01:03:25):
fall underneath that, right. And so we, we, we have to do a,
a bunch of editing on that. And I know it bothered Chris a
little bit that magicians were saying stuff like that and
they're the ones that were spreading all the all these
terrible things. And to where in the second
season, there was a ring in an ice cube.
And basically Chris re showed that and showed as much as he

(01:03:49):
could for an episode to show that it wasn't the editing that
caused that ring that vanished from a teacher.
And because people were saying the teachers were stooges.
And no, they weren't. They didn't know how it was
done, you know, and it was theirring that ended up in the ice
cube inside their drink, right. So now here's the other thing
too. I have no problem using seeing
the medium. I want people at home most of

(01:04:11):
the time. When I was there, I wanted
people at home to see exactly what the people there was
seeing. I'll give you an example.
Johnny Ace Parman, right, goes to Fizzm, wins the entire Fizzm
with cups and balls, but no balls.
They're little chicks in the end, right underneath the cups.
You can misdirect with your eyes.
An audience that's sitting there, you can misdirect by the

(01:04:32):
way you move. You can misdirect by picking
something up and you're doing something over here.
But on ATV screen, it's a littlebit different.
He went on another TV show and it was A1 camera shot above and
you could see every load. So people at home are seeing
something that nobody there saw.So for me, I would have no

(01:04:53):
problem editing out those loads,none at all, because you're not
supposed to see those loads and nobody would see it.
But the only reason you're seeing it is because you're in
this little frame right here. If I'm over here and I'm talking
to you and I do a top change, I can have you looking at my eyes
and I can do the worst. Stop changing away well and get
away with it. If I say something to you, I use
the right moment. But if I'm within the screen and

(01:05:15):
I do a top change, my hands are moving.
That's a lot of freaking movement on ATV screen right
there. So I have no problem editing
that out. Magicians would say, well,
that's Criss Angel's people standing there, you know, when
he's doing the illusion and you know, they're, they're stooges.
No, they're not freaking stooges.
It's no different than if I'm doing a levitation on stage and

(01:05:35):
I have my assistants, my dances on stage and they're there.
They're not going to sit there and go, oh, look, there's,
there's can you see that wire? They're not going to do that,
right? The assistants on stage are
going to look like they're amazed as well.
So when you go out on the street, you do that.
Now you don't interview them andsay what did you think about the
trick? What you do is you innovate.
You lay people that are there, that's what you do.

(01:05:56):
But if you're smart, if you're out on the street, there might
be something people see. So what do you do?
You take two or three of your people and you have them stand
in front of that object, that thing that you don't want
anybody else to see. I have no problem with that.
There was 1 episode I remember and then that's it.
I'm not going to talk anymore about this because exposing
stuff, but I just want to give an example.

(01:06:18):
There was 1 episode. I'm not saying what we did, but
we needed to use a gimmick watch.
We needed a gimmick watch, but we didn't want to use a stooge.
So how do you get somebody to wear that watch and not think
and and to believe that it's their watch or the production
office. Every day there was a sign in

(01:06:40):
sheet for people that wanted to cut me on set.
There's this one guy came every day, came every day for a week,
never got on. I noticed he didn't have a watch
on. So next day when he came, when
we're shooting this, I'm like, Iwas, I, I think it was, it's
actually was a trick that we could shoot anytime while he's
doing something else. If he's doing St. magic.
I said him, hey, today's your lucky day.

(01:07:02):
You know, I'm going to take you over to the set and we're going
to use you, you know, on the set.
Come with me. We start walking, we get halfway
there. I go, OK, so we're going to use
your watch for this. And he goes, oh, I, I don't have
a watch. I go, oh, damn it, sorry, man.
You know, we need somebody with a watch.
And then we started, you know, we start walking away and I go,
you know what? No, never mind.
And he goes, no, no, no. What were you going to say?
I said, well, no, if Chris foundout, he'd be really pissed off

(01:07:24):
at me, like he said, well, what do you mean?
I said I can go to the production office and borrow a
watch from one of the guys that are sitting there.
But you got to, you can't tell Chris it's not your watch
because he's going to be mad at me.
He wants somebody with their watch.
But I know you've been wanting to be on the show, though.
Oh, no problem. Get the watch.
I put it on the guy's wrist. As far as he's concerned, I
wanted to use his watch. He's begging me to give him a

(01:07:47):
watch, doesn't know it's a gimmick watch.
And this is how we get somebody to wear a gimmick watch that
truly is amazed and thinks like it could have been done with his
watch. But magicians see it and see a
little logo on it and they go, oh, that guy was a stooge.
No, he wasn't. Think outside of the box, guys.
And just because you don't know how something is done doesn't
mean we're using stooges. So.

(01:08:08):
You've had this absolutely incredible career, you've
appeared in stages all over the world, you've appeared on
television, and you've even got to live the dream by headlining
in Las Vegas at the Stratosphere.
For you, as you look back on everything that you've
accomplished, what sort of reflections do you have as you
think about how you've really risen to be one of the top
mentalists of our time? It's actually overwhelming in a

(01:08:30):
bit and thinking about the amount of places I've been and
what I've done. I mean, I was doing colleges.
I was doing what, about 125 average shows a year?
Just the colleges, not even counting the corporate that I
was doing on those years, two years, 175.
I mean, it's, it's every small city, every big city in the US
I've driven every freeway. I performed everywhere I

(01:08:53):
performed. I performed on a train.
A train is a funny one actually.I was late.
The train had actually pulled itpulled out and the station
master was there and I was, I talked to him.
He said I get you on it. Get in the back of my truck, get
in the truck and we go all the way across town.
There's a place where the train slows down, right?
I got my little briefcase and everything says, OK, run out,
hop on the train. I run out.
I get on the back of the train. Now the corporate people that

(01:09:16):
hired me to work the train, theybasically knew I had missed the
train. And then all of a sudden here I
am. No, nobody knew where I came
from because it trains up at full speed again.
And I come up and I'm like, Yep,hello.
And they're like, how the hell? He's a real magician.
So I performed on a helicopter. I performed on an aeroplane.
I performed on steamships. I performed, I mean, it's, it's,

(01:09:38):
it's like hard, hard to find a place that I haven't performed
actually, right. I've been to every continent
except Antarctica. I think I might go there.
And I think that's where they have Penguins do a card trick
for a Penguin. So I can say I've been there too
and get the hell out of there because it's cold and I don't
like the cold. But you know, I, I, I've
lectured, you know, around the world when I was doing the
colleges, they were slow in the summertime.

(01:10:00):
So I would take like a month andI would do like 27 lectures in
28 different cities in like Spain or France or Germany, you
know, and, and just all around the world.
And so I've seen everything, I've done everything.
And, you know, I often say to people, I don't want to die
tomorrow, but if I die tomorrow,I'm OK.
I just don't want to die with pain.
But I, I, I'm OK because I've lived the life of 20 or 30

(01:10:24):
people. You know, some people don't
leave their town. You know, for me, the fat most
fascinating thing is knowing that, hey, when I'm at a hotel,
I know there's a secret door that gets you around this, that
way, that way that nobody else knows about except for the
staff. But I know, you know, I know
casinos in town that the eye in the sky isn't in the, this guy
is actually in the basement hereor there, you know, and what
door you go to get down there. And, you know, I've got all

(01:10:45):
these other little wonderful secrets.
And I have to remind myself oncein a while how lucky I am when I
go to places because I take so much of it for granted.
The one thing I would give younger people advice on is life
is about memories. In the end, doesn't matter how
much money you have, if you've not made memories, you have not
lived. And that is my one regret is

(01:11:07):
that I do travel and have traveled so much that I wasn't
smelling the roses along the waywhen I was doing go to the
colleges again. But it could be done.
You know, I can talk about the corporate or the trade shows.
Same thing. Yeah, fly in, you get in that
evening, you know, and they do ashow and you're gone out the
next day. And when I was doing college, I
was getting no more than four orfive hours sleep a night because

(01:11:29):
I was traveling so much. I had a custom van and I would
drive from gig 50 gig and you know, one day I'm in North
Dakota, next day I'm down in Florida and next day I'm over in
Texas and you know that I'm up in Delaware and, you know, take
a few extra days along your trip.
And, and even if you're spendingmoney, it's OK.
It's OK to spend the money for those memories because that's
what that's why you're making the money.

(01:11:50):
You're not just making money so you can pay your bills and pay
your house off. You need to create memories.
When you perform, and it probably varies from audience to
audience, but what are some things that you want your
audience to walk away with afterthey see a Banachek show?
What are some things I want to? I had a show that was called

(01:12:10):
Telepathy, and I created that show very for a very specific.
Most of my shows don't have specific reasons that the Strat
did 'cause there was affiliationwith the James Brady Educational
Foundation. I wanted to promote critical
thinking on that there. Telepathy was another one that
was like that and telepathy, I would come out in the whole
first part of the show and I'm, I'm getting to your question,

(01:12:31):
but the whole first part of thatshow as if I was a genuine
psychic, that I would end the first part of that show talking
to the dead. Now, it's the most despicable
thing I think you can ever do, right?
I, I, I hated it and I cringed when I was doing it and I'm
talking to people's dead relatives, but I was very, very,
very careful not to change theirthinking about that person.
I was basically feeding them back information, not changing

(01:12:54):
that information, not adding to it or doing anything like that.
But it was a very strong show and it was all about what
telepathy is, what S Arthur Conan Doyle thought it was,
Sherlock Holmes, Einstein, Murray Curry.
And and I was able to build through that second part of the
show. I come back and I allude that
it's real, but then I get to a point where I'm talking about
the mediums and I say they're scum.

(01:13:16):
Why can I say that? Because now I can talk about my
life and we had a way to and about all this stuff is BS,
right? And we had a way where we would
get information back from peopleafter shows, you know, and for
weeks at a time, we're still getting information back from
those people. And we would get, here's a
perfect example. There's one that here's one that
stuck out with me. But there were a lot that were
like this. There was a girl that wrote to

(01:13:37):
us and she said, you know, I just wanted to write and thank
you. My mom believes in psychic
phenomena. I don't, I'm a skeptic.
I don't believe in it. And we've had some really bad
arguments, really, really bad arguments where we don't talk
for weeks at a time. And we saw your show and we're
like, all right, my mom saw the show and she she wanted me to

(01:13:58):
come. And so I came that first half
part of the show, I started to question my beliefs.
I was like, oh, maybe this real.My mom, she was digging it in a
little bit saying look, you know, that's I told you this
stuff's real. We get out in the lobby
intermission, we're talking about it and I'm realizing I
might be wrong. Then we come back in the second

(01:14:21):
part and you talk about it all being BS on the way home.
It was over an hour to drive home.
My mom and I had the best conversations about this stuff
because we realized how the other person.
I realized why my mom believed in this because I almost did.
She realized my side of things as well because of the things
that you've been through and youwere talking about.

(01:14:42):
And I was like, that's really nice.
You know, it's nice for people to be able to discuss these
things. Most of my shows, like when I'm
working on cruise ships, it's more about, even though I'm
telling you it's not real. It's just about the
entertainment value. It's more about how could he
have done that? I there, there is something.
My, my, my ex manager Tyus, a wonderful guy, used to always

(01:15:03):
tell people. He says, you know, I didn't know
how it was going to work when I started working with Manichek
because, you know, he has these disclaimers.
He says this stuff isn't real, but then I watched it and he
said there's something really fascinating to be able to tell
your audience that this stuff isnot real.
And then still in the moment, right after you said that,
convince them that it is only tocome back and tell them that

(01:15:23):
it's not real again. He says to be get away with
that. And he, he was just giving me a
really, you know, a, a huge compliment.
He says it's not everybody that can actually get away with that
and do that at that level. So that that's, I don't know, I,
I get joy out of that. Well, Benichick, I have one more
question for you, my friend, andI think you kind of answered

(01:15:44):
this already, but since this is how we end every episode, I'll
go ahead and ask it anyway. What's the one piece of advice
that has served you well that you'd want everyone else to
hear? That's a hard one for me, and
I'll tell you why that's a hard one for me.
That's a hard one for me becausemy set of circumstances.

(01:16:06):
That's another thing Tice used to say.
He used to talk about some of the most successful people are
people that didn't have any other options.
And in a way, I had no other options.
I was raising my brothers. I couldn't go to college, didn't
know how to go to college, couldn't afford to go to
college. This was almost thrust upon me
in a way. So I don't, yeah, that's a hard.

(01:16:27):
I would just have, I would have to say that I answered that in a
different way of saying take thetime, smell the roses along the
way, you know, and enjoy it and invest, invest time and money in
yourself and your friends and your family rather than all the
other BS and stuff that's out there.
And you know, all the politics and the fighting and the
arguing, you know, find ways that you can love people.

(01:16:48):
I've got a group of guys I play squash with on Thursday nights.
It's like the number one attorney in town, the number one
neuroscientist in town, the number one dentist in town.
It's like, these are all like super, super rich, wealthy human
beings. The guy that holds it has a
squash court in his basement's basement, full size Olympic
squash court in his basement's basement, right?

(01:17:10):
And then afterwards we go and wego out to the library and we
drink the best whiskey in the world.
And every time I'm with them, I feel like I'm the schmuck at
dinner for schmucks or whatever that was called that movie,
right? It's like, why am I here?
You know, it's funny because I just had that same experience.
I was just on a a panel and it was Neil deGrasse Tyson that was

(01:17:31):
Chris, what's his name? The black hole guy right next to
me, another brilliant physicist,another physicist to my left.
And there I am, a mentalist sitting there and they're asking
us questions, you know, and they're giving all these.
I'm like, why am I here? I'm, I'm the schmuck for dinner
as a smart guy, right. But then somebody else reminded
me, yeah, you're, you're the topof you are at that level in your
own thing. And I was like, oh, that's nice.

(01:17:52):
But back to the whiskey. There's Democrats as
Republicans, as Libertarians, aseverything in between.
We discuss everything and anything.
There is nothing. None of us could be present
because of the humor that we have and the jokes that we tell.
And, you know, just so, so inappropriate.
But we, we just, we all laugh ateach other and nobody gets mad.
There are some heated discussions, but nobody's mad.

(01:18:15):
I would be there for any one of those guys if they call me in a
second, and any one of those guys would be there for me.
And I wish the rest of the worldwas more like that.
Not where families are no longertalking to each other because of
politics. It's the most ridiculous thing
I've ever heard. You've loved this person your
entire life, and then all of a sudden there's one thing.
You think they're an idiot and stupid and you hate them.
No, you don't. You know, you just caught up in

(01:18:36):
your own projections. Stop living within your own
brain. Start looking at things from
other people's point of view. Start understanding things you
know with intent. Somebody says something to you,
doesn't mean even if you're offended by it, that's OK.
You have a right to be offended.That doesn't mean they were
trying to offend you. So don't get mad at them about
it. Have a discussion with people.
I'm sorry, I'm going off on a tangent because I don't know how

(01:18:58):
to answer your question. But that sounds great though.
That's still a great response, Benichek.
This is a really big honor for me.
Thank you so much and I wish fornothing but continued success.
Thank you, my friend. Take care next time, if we ever
do this again, let's talk about Peter Popoff the evangelist and
go in some of the other directions too.
There's so much more we can cover, so maybe we'll do this

(01:19:20):
again sometime. I would love that.
No, that would be great. Take care buddy.
I truly love that piece of advice.
Remember to love each other. It's so important, especially
now. We don't have to agree with
everyone, but we can still love each other.
Stop living within your own brain.

(01:19:43):
A very big thank you to Banachekfor talking to me today.
He's an extremely kind individual and I feel so honored
to have spent time with him. Do yourselves a favor and go to
his website, banacheck.com and find out how you can check out
his incredible show. Well, my friends, that's going

(01:20:03):
to do it for Season 5. I hope you all enjoyed this
season. I know I did.
Please feel free to give the show a rating and a review and
be sure to check out my new website, ldmadera.com.
What will Season 6 have in store?
I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.
I'm LD Madera and don't forget. You are who you are, and you are

(01:20:26):
special. Catch you next time on the next
season of Improv and Magic.

All Episodes

Episode 67 - Banachek

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

The Breakfast Club

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 67 - Banachek