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