The Joe Rogan Experience - #1163 - Banachek

Episode Date: August 28, 2018

Banachek is a mentalist, professional magician, and "thought reader." He performs as an entertainer and tours internationally. http://www.banachek.com/

Here we go. Four, three, two, one, boom. And now we're live. How are you, sir? I am wonderful. We had wonderful chat off microphone. Yeah, you probably would love to have had that on here, but I just couldn't do it. No, no, I wouldn't.

I would never want to do that to you. Yeah, no, yeah, exactly. And I wouldn't want to do that to, yeah. Yeah. So listen, man, it's great to see you again. It's good to see you again. It's been a while. Yeah.

I know we ran into each other once in Vegas at a bar. Mandalay Bay. So randomly. Eye candy. Is that what it's called? Yeah, I turn around and you turn around and we made eye contact and eye candy. Wait, how long ago was that? That was a long time ago still.

Yeah, it had to be about probably five years ago, four years ago now, right? I know we talked about doing a podcast back then even. I'm glad we finally got together and did it. Yeah, me too. It's going to be fun. You did that TV show that I did a long time ago, Joe Rogan Questions Everything, and you blew me away. You and me and Duncan, and you showed us all the tricks that people you well, you didn't you showed us that they were tricks, but you didn't show us how to do the trick. I broke one thing down for you, but that was about it. It was a psychological thing because here's the thing, right? It's better to know that you can be fooled rather than tell you how you can be fooled.

And we'll get into this about with scientists and how I fooled them a little bit. But people always tell me, why don't you just teach parapsychologists the tricks? And the problem is, is for every single trick that I have, I probably have about seven or eight methods. So if I teach you one method, Joe, somebody else will come along and maybe a method of bend a key. They'll do it a completely different convincing way. And you'll be looking for that one method. And you may say, because you don't have the experience, you may say, this has to be real. I know how the trick's done. They're not doing that.

They are actually doing something completely different. This has to be real. So it's better to get an expert. Let me ask you this one because my friend Eddie was at Venice Beach and this guy was doing, he had like some save the rainforest thing and he said, if I tell you your birthday, will you listen to me and donate some money or something like that? Right. And he goes,

okay. And then he just goes, May 15th. Right. Just straight out like that? Yeah, just figured it out. I'm like, how could someone do that? I can't tell you because I wasn't there. There could have been other circumstances. There could have been something you overheard. There could have been something he's seen. There could have been something he's seen. He may have been in the store when the guy took his driver's license.

There's a million things that could have happened that your friend Eddie was not aware of before that guy even walked up to him. So I really can't answer that because it's circumstantial. And here's the other thing. Does Eddie really remember everything exactly the way that it was? Or has he forgotten something and left something out in that story because he's told it so many times? And usually here's the thing, right? When people want to convince you of something, they embellish. And the more times they tell that story, that embellishment becomes their reality.

They basically create a whole new reality for themselves that they forget that maybe they wrote it down. They forget that maybe they said something. They forget that the person might have asked specific questions. He might have said, yeah, I get the feeling that you're probably not born in the beginning of the year, maybe later in the year, maybe in the fall or something like that. The person says, no, but I am born in the year. Now you know it's the wintertime. So now you get within a few months right there. So there are ways within mentalism, which is what I am, a mentalist, and we'll explain what that is in the air. Now, you know, it's the winter time. So now you get within a few months right there. So there's, there are ways within mentalism, which is what I am a mentalist. And

we'll explain what that is in a minute. But there are ways to do those things. And there's many ways to do those type of things. So without being there, I can't tell you exactly what your friend Eddie experienced. To him, it was very, very real. You don't believe in any psychic power? I've- Is that fair to say? very very real you don't believe in any psychic power i've is that fair to say okay it's fair to say but if you just say it that way it sounds very cold it kind of sounds like i'm an asshole i'm a dick i'm a skeptic dick in a way well it can't because it means i'm not haven't been open-minded i am very open-minded about these things and whenever i investigate a new phenomena i open i step back i put everything that i i think that, hey, it's not real, I put that aside

and go, this could be the one. I'm going to give them the chance, but I'm going to look at it. I am going to be a little bit skeptical. I am going to do a double blind test. I am going to step back and look at it from a scientific point of view. I'm not going to be stupid about this, and I'm not going to let them get away with something. And I also know they may be self deceived. And I've seen so much of this type of phenomena that I usually know what's going on when I do see it. So I can honestly say that I've seen so much phenomena and I've looked at so much of it and I've seen the best people out there and I've tested some of the best people out there that I have not seen anything indicative that psychic phenomena is genuine.

that I have not seen anything indicative that psychic phenomena is genuine. Have you ever heard of anyone who is reasonably believable that has seen anything that counts? I think you hear that all the time, right? When you see a John Edward on TV or you hear these antidotes and stuff like that, and it's just like you telling me about Eddie. So you telling me that sounds like, oh, wow, that person could be really psychic. But I know that there's probably more going on when that person. Well, I'm glad you answered the way you answered, because that does make a lot of sense that you do tell stories and people do forget how the story actually went. The human memory is very flawed. Oh, absolutely. It's why we can change a person's memory. You know, there's been plenty of experiments that

have done on that. You know, you take a certain group of people. I can't remember what her name is. It's just not coming to me. I have dyslexia as well, which is really weird when you see what I do on stage because I work with numbers. I work with names. I use a lot of mnemonics for these things. So I have a really hard time recalling names and books that I read and stuff like that.

I just, it's really hard. It'll come to me, but it takes a while for those things to come back to me. How does dyslexia work? I always thought that it switched things. The girl I dated in high school had it. It does switch things around. It's one of those things, like if I'm working with numbers, I think what it is is I got so disappointed with numbers when I was young.

I love numbers. I love the fact that everything in the world is numbers. I love the idea of numbers, of what they do. But I think when I was young, I would get so frustrated, even in high school and in middle school, I would do math problems, but I would figure out a way that worked for me to do the math problem. And then the teacher would come up, they say, like, show your work. And I would put it down and they'd say, no, that's wrong. the right answer yeah but that's not the way we do it you need to do it this way and the normal way of doing things was extremely difficult for me so i give up what is what it does switch it switches numbers

around you know and if you're trying to carry numbers it'll switch letters for me i'll use words that are the wrong words like i could be talking to you during this podcast and then i'll listen to the podcast and i'll go oh my, my God, why did I use that word? You know, I had a thing where I'll give you an example of the type of things that happened to me. I have a line when I say in some of my shows where I say I read thoughts, not minds. What do I mean by that? Husband and wife are sitting on a park bench. Pretty girl goes jogging by.

Husband turns his head and looks. Wife slaps the husband in the face. We know what the husband was thinking. We know what the wife was thinking, right? We haven't read their minds, but we do know what their thoughts are. So it's sort of that body language thing. And I remember one time doing this for a skeptics group, and I was on stage, and I was like, husband and wife are sitting on a park bench.

Pretty girl walks by. Husband slaps the wife in the face. So I said exactly the opposite of the way. And they just thought it was a joke. Like they thought I was being stupid and just a joke. But I do that kind of stuff consistently. And I have a really hard, like if you say certain words. A lot of people do that.

Yeah, but it's really bad for me. Like I do it consistently. You'll talk about things and I hear you talk about things and you'll use words that I actually know what the word means. But if I wanted to recall that word and use it, I cannot remember it. But what's the mechanism? Like what is happening in your mind where it switches things around that they call it dyslexia? Yeah, I don't know. Is it just the effect?

I don't know. Just the fact that it happens, they call it dyslexia? For me, it's the effect, and it's a really fucked up word, right? For dyslexics to use dyslexia. Couldn't they come up with a better word for that, right? That's funny. It's horrible. A word that's really hard for dyslexics to say.

Well, that's the way it is with all that stuff. It's like, I got a lisp. There's an S in there. It's like, why? Why? That's true. Why? That's true.

So, is there anybody that, I mean, there's the James Randi Challenge, right, famously where – Which I was in charge of the million dollars and I tested many psychics. I guess what I should do is – You were in charge of it? How so? Yeah. Well, let's go back to my beginning so you understand how I got here on this journey, if that's okay. Yeah, please. All right? And I'll talk about a couple of personal things in the very beginning. So I was born in 1960, so I'm 58 years old, you know, so yeah.

And I was born in England, left there and came to the United States. My mom divorced my dad in that year, went back to England. And I'm giving you this so you understand where I'm coming from and how I got on this journey. She had two kids. We emigrated to South Africa in 1969. She abandoned me in South Africa that time with my two brothers a year and three years old. We had a stepfather who was an alcoholic. We saw him maybe on Sundays, maybe if I drug him in

from the car into the house, we would see him then. So I was changing diapers. I was taking care of my brothers and so forth. Wow. And I was there until I was 15 years old. Now, it was during that time that I heard a guy by the name of Uri Geller, who was a famous psychic. And he's the first one to claim that he could actually bend objects with his mind, like silverware, and became really famous for it. He was supposedly – they did research with him at Stanford Research Institute. And he was using that sort of as an endorsement to say that he was genuine. And one of the things that Geller did was he said, if you bring metal objects to the radio, you can get them to bend as well. So, I mean, think about my heart.

To the radio. Yeah, because he was on radio. He was on the radio. He was talking. Well, there was no TV there at the time. They had Springbok TV. They didn't have the actual station, but they were putting it up. And they had TVs in the store at the time, they were playing popeye vhs movies back then

you know on the way however they played it back then but no tv station so that was the thing everybody there listened to the radio and he's like if you bring it to the radio you can do it with the unleashed powers of your mind you can get metal events i went around the house i found a little pin in my mom's old sewing kit and i held it up and i looked at it and i stared at it and i concentrated on it and it bent well on a micro level at least i thought it bent so i convinced myself that it had bent minutely and i learned that years later but in my mind i had got that to happen from there i went to australia to go be with my biological dad and from there to Colorado. And it was while I was in Colorado that I picked up a book by James, The Amazing

Randy. And that book said the truth about Uri Geller. In fact, the book was changed. The name was changed years later to The Truth of Uri Geller from The Magic of Uri Geller. And that book basically said that Uri was a magician posing as a psychic and no adult had ever told me that before all the adults that I did know they believed in Uri so I believed in as well and I learned a valuable lesson just because people in a position of authority because they're adults they're older than you doesn't make everything they say correct which I learned it learned it that way um because keep in mind I was really socially inept because I was always taking care of my brothers I had no free time so I wasn't hanging out with other kids. I wasn't doing those

things. I had a great life. Don't get me wrong. I had a really great life in South Africa. I did stupid stuff like jumping off bridges into trains to so we could get apples, we would have apples to eat at home and stuff like that. Jump off the train, take it home. So those were great things. Those are great times, actually, believe even though it sounds like it's really sad. It's not. So anyway, I read this book. And in the book, Randy sort of mentions, alludes to a method for bending a nail. And so I picked, I got some nails.

I started creating my own ways. I'm sort of a problem solver. You give me something you want to do, and I can go ahead and figure out a way to do it. It's why I work for people like Criss Angel. And, you know, David Blaine opened his second TV special with one of my effects. And I'm the first person to be buried alive six feet on the ground, chained and handcuffed in a coffin and dig my way to the surface, which I've done twice and almost died twice doing that. But anyway, getting back on track here. We'll get back to that later. Yeah.

I need to hear about that. You can't just gloss over that, sir. I'll gloss over a whole bunch of crap. I've done crazy, crazy stuff where I should be dead. I look back now and I go, I am really – I mean, even when I was a kid, I was crawling down just to do it. I'd look out the top story window and I'd go, I think I can climb down that drain pipe. I think I can do it upside down. And I would actually climb upside down using my feet to keep myself up there and climb down the drain pipe to get down.

So I did a lot of dumb, dumb, dumb stuff. So I was in high school and I started to create methods for bending silverware. So much so that all the kids there went to plastic. I mean, that school actually went to plastic silverware because all the kids in there were bringing all their silverware to me. So we were getting low on silverware. They went to plastic silverware. I got in trouble. You were bending the silverware with your mind?

Is that what you're saying? Well, I was making it look like I was using tricks to make it look like I was bending it with my mind. I was basically doing what Geller was doing. Only the difference was is I didn't realize it until I saw Geller. I'd never seen Geller work. I just heard about him on the radio and i heard you're supposed to see the metal bend so in my mind the effects that i created to bend metal you actually saw the forks and the spoons and that bending and if you see any magician

working today more than likely they're using a couple of my techniques to make metal look like it's actually bending uh i even figured a way to make the school bell go off so we could get out of school early. I got suspended for that. Well, how'd you do that? Because I could. No, how? How'd you do that?

There was a wire and there was a short that goes through this one classroom that I was in, and I was able to figure out exactly how to get that short to work so the bell would go off. And we got out of school early. It was just connecting the two, and it's like, you don't connect, you connect, and it goes off. So it was like, oh, okay, this is great i with the clock up on the wall if you look at a clock i realize that as the clock hand goes around all the way around it looks like it's

slowing down when it comes back up it's not it's just an optical illusion from one side so i would make kids think that i was making the clock slow down and i figured a way on an old time timex watch that i used to be aware that if i pulled the stem out and slowly turned it backwards and pushed it in, the second hand would keep moving for about 35 seconds. And then it would just start like going click, click, click. And then it would stop. So I could put my watch in somebody's hand. So I come up with all these different methods for accomplishing all these different feats. I started learning how to do a thing called muscle reading, which we can talk about in a little bit.

Muscle reading? Yeah. It's an old, old technique that nobody uses. And I was really surprised that people were not using it, but it was really, really popular back in the late 1800s, where if I take your wrist, and it's based upon the ideomotor response. If I take your wrist and wrist and I tell you look at my other hand and I want you to imagine it actually touching an object think of it one of these objects five objects on a table think of my hand actually touching it and I move my left hand which you're not holding you actually I'm holding with you with my right hand but I'm moving your hand in sync with it if you're thinking go to the left go to the left

go the left I can actually feel the resistance when I go to the right in your arm. So you give off this thing that lets me know exactly where to go. And Kreskin did it with his check. He would hide the check. And before that, Polgar did it with his check. And I've done it with my check when I do shows in the past, where they can hide your check anywhere in the theater. You take somebody's hand and you tell them, think of my other hand, and they have to know where the object's hidden. And think of that hand actually going there and touching it,

and you can actually find the object. So I was doing a lot of muscle reading back in those days. Does it work on everybody? What about if you get some stone-cold psychopath? No, they have to really, truly be thinking it and wanting it to happen. And that's why I reframe it in the aspect of you see me do things with my mind. I want you to try to do something with your mind. Will this hand to actually touch that object?

Oh, okay. So they do. And they don't realize that suddenly they're pushing and pulling you in the right direction. And you can even say to them, don't pull me in the direction. Let me pull you. But you're still pulling and pushing with them and you can find the actual object. So I wrote a book on it. It's called Psychophysiological Thought Reading.

Psychophysiological Thought Reading. Did you name it? I did name that. What I did was we call it muscle reading in the business. The business? In the business, yeah. And I started looking at some of the older terms for it and I found that term Psychophysiological Thought Reading.

I thought that's a great name for the book because every book I've written on mentalism because I write books that teach people and video I have they all start with a P Psy series you know I've talked to you know I've talked to Penn about magic and about

illusions and he's you know funny about it and he laughs and says it's all lies and bullshit and he makes it seem fun. But the way you described it, it became a little bit more compelling because you're seemingly obsessed with it. Obviously, to get as good as you got at becoming a mentalist, you had to be.

Even the way that you rattle off things, there's very little pause to you. You stop and start. And I talk fast I know everybody says you talk way too fast you just talk fast yeah I mean I can hear you it's very clear but that's also what I noticed when you were doing the reading when we did in front of the the crowd of people and you were able to pick out certain things yeah that's something I didn't make the air because it didn't fit the format of the show there but one of the things and what you their life. Yeah, that's something that didn't make the air because it didn't fit the format of the show there. We just didn't have enough time. But one of the things, what Joe's talking about is

there's a part in the show where I ask people just to think of things. And then I start getting initials, and then I get names, and then I get, yeah, you're actually thinking about your grandmother and how you went on a bike ride with her through certain forests and went to Lake one popak and your birth date is this and that and i get birthday freaking out stuff there yeah yeah they were freaking but the weirdest thing is like they they're also overwhelmed by the fact that you never stop talking like it just it just ready go it just keeps coming like huh what how do you know

that and then don't don't worry about that we'll get that to the minute. You know where that comes from, Joe? That comes from back in my early days. Well, in the very beginning. Well, let's continue with that story. Okay. I'll get to that to where I work, the places. Because that sort of comes from working the comedy clubs in some really shitty, shitty places and having to grab people's attention.

Right. So from there, I ended up writing Randy a letter just out of the blue because I was getting a little cocky, I guess, at that age because I was getting away with all this stuff. And I wrote Randy a letter. I said, look, if you ever need a kid to try to convince scientists that this stuff is real, I would be happy to so long as I come out and say it's a hoax at the very end. I had a couple of hypotheses. And one of them was that scientists had lamented for years there's no evidence of the ESP on a proper scientific controls now this is back in the 80s because a lack of funding it was my contention had nothing to do with funding it had to do with the scientists were going with a pro

biased opinion and they were documenting their own beliefs rather than using proper science first of all to find out if it was even genuine so they were not using the proper scientific method they were basically just saying I believe this is real. I'm going to get it on tape or I'm going to get it to where I can document it. So the rest of the world can actually see it. Okay, let me slow you down. Were they biased towards believing that it was real or fake? No, believing it was real.

Because you don't get, usually you don't get into parapsychology unless you have an interest in it. And usually you don't have an interest in it unless you think there's something there, right? Do those ghost shows drive you fucking crazy? Yeah, they do. Because I know I've actually, I've actually been called to work on a couple of them behind the scenes that I always tell them,

no, I can't do it. And I have some friends that have worked on them behind the scenes to try to make some of the investigators freak. And they're using magic tricks to get the investigators freak. And the great thing about those kind of shows is You only need to do one little thing just something falling off a shelf because that's all you need, right? I mean, it's like yeah, there's a ghost it fell off the shelf They play that tape over and over and over again. They show a little shadow or something like that

There's nothing dumber on television. No, no and and they're smarter and I know for a fact There are people that work behind them, behind those scenes, fooling those guys. I work with Chris Angel a lot, all right? The early days I worked with him on almost all of his shows. I've done over 100 episodes of television with Chris. And we, every year, we would do one episode that was a sales episode, that type of thing. And we brought a group of researchers in. And the moment they got off the bus, we had all this stuff set up and everything

else to mess with them. The moment they got off the bus, I told my guys, I said, we're not using any of that. We're just going to use pure psychology with these people. And that's what happened. Because I could tell they were such believers that anything I suggest to them, they're going to go for. So let's say we have six rooms and I need this one room to be the room that is haunted because it's a story that goes on behind it with something else that's already been said and positioned. Or it's got to match up with a bunch of celebrities who feel something in the room as well. All I got to do is once we go in, do you feel anything? Yeah, yeah i feel a little haunting i feel this and that you know this room i really want you to take time with that's all i have to say and it's like the psychic's getting headaches and they just they go they go crazy because i've already put it in their head at that point

so the stuff they come up with is going to be much more believable than any of the little tricks that we had like hidden recordings and stuff like that the stuff they come up with is going to be much more believable and much more of a hit are there any real like supernatural investigators that actually believe in ghosts or are they all con people no there's people investigators that believe in it yeah absolutely but those shows they must know they're fucking i think yeah like think, yeah, like, what is it? Paranormal State was one of them, you know. And I think some of them are a little abusive, too, because they work with the little kids sometimes. And they talk the kids into believing these things.

And it's just some of them are a little bit creepy. Yeah, a little creepy what they do to them. And, you know, they usually don't have a psychologist taking care of the people afterwards to work them through it. And it's just it's or the psychologist they do is also a paranormal investigator that believes in these kind of things and is going to come at it a very slanted angle. So I've not seen a single one of these shows that I don't look at and go bullshit and just end up turning it off. So, yeah. shit and just end up turning it off so yeah yeah yeah did they i mean i mean but is there anybody who like legitimately like anybody who's a reasonable person who legitimately believes in ghosts and legitimately believes like in every movie every haunt horror movie there's always like

this one real researcher yeah you know that there are there's some people like lloyd alaback and you know who i know is he believes in this kind of stuff, too. Does he have a tumor? No, he doesn't have a tumor. As far as I know, he does not have a tumor. He's a nice guy. You see, I respect a lot of these guys. I get along with them.

I think you have to, right? Because you've got to be able to debate with these people. You've got to be able to talk to them. And if you show them respect, they're going to show you respect. Did you ever want to reason with them and sort of explain why what they're doing is faulty or we have we have we have conversations you know about certain things certain type of testing you know and and and how how ridiculous some of these things are and and um but you know they're going to be convinced that there's something there even if it's a little little something like one little thing you can't

quite knock out away they can do that i mean it's like when i little something, like one little thing you can't quite knock out away, they can do that. I mean, it's like when I worked with a parent. So back then, Washington University in 1979, James S. McDonald gave a half million dollars to Washington University. All right. And that was shortly after I had wrote Randy that letter. And now James S. McDonald, he was McDonald Aircraft, you know, the Banshee and all those different type of, all named after spirits, by the way. Yeah. Yeah.

So if you take it, if you do your research, you'll find all these things. So he really, truly believed in, in, in, in the afterlife. And his thinking was, look, if they can find something that's even psychic, that might be indicative that maybe there's an afterlife, you know, at least it's indicative. There's something supernatural, paranormal. There are things we don't can't understand. So he gave half a million dollars to Washington University to form a laboratory called the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research. Short, we called it Mac Lab. Peter Phillips there

had an interest in parapsychology, but really didn't want to get involved. But the university said, look, we want this money. We want this lab. You believe in this kind of stuff. You're interested in this kind of stuff. And he was a physicist, so they put him in charge. They had over 300 and some applicants. And out of all the, I sent them a letter, out of all the applicants they had, there was only two that were accepted. I mean, they did some research with other people. There were two that they really accepted.

It was myself and another kid that I didn't know at the time by the name of Michael Edwards. And Michael turned out to be a magician as well. And he had also spoke to Randy. So I get a call. I sent – there's an Associated Press article that came out, and that's when I wrote to them. And they said, yep, we'd like you to come visit. I get a call from Randy.

He says, you know, there's this guy at Washington University who's been given half a million dollars to study psychic phenomena. I'm like, can you just think of his initials for me? I said, there's a P and a P. He said, how did you know? I said, I've already been accepted. I was going to let you know. And he started to tell me about Mike, that Mike had already been there. Mike had bent a key in their hands. They were completely convinced that this was real psychic phenomena. But at that point, Mike wasn't quite sure where to take it. And he knew Randy was the expert debunker in the field because Randy had debunked Geller and other psychic phenomena. So he wrote, he spoke with Randy on the phone and wrote to Randy as well. And they had some conversations. And I said to Randy, I said, can I trust Mike? He says,

I don't know enough about him to trust him. And Mike had the same concerns about me because Randy had mentioned me to him and said, you should mention, you know, my real name is Stephen Shaw. So it's Stephen Shaw back then. Banachek came years later because people couldn't remember Stephen Shaw. I think you remember Banachek because of the detective on TV? So I did a corporate gig one day, which is good that you say that. So I did a gig one day. It was a corporate gig, and the guy got up there, and he's like, I was really insecure, you know, as we already talked about. So I had my introduction.

Here's my introduction. And he says, I want to do my own introduction, you know, about you. I've seen you do different things than that. So he gets up there and he says, I've seen him on the Today Show, CNN Live. He's done this. He's done that. I've seen him do this and that. Please welcome Steven. What was the last name again? Great. So I get up, I do my gig. I got another corporate gig that week. I get up and say, the last guy, I forgot my name. Please, you know, remember my name, Steven. Oh, Steven Shaw. Yeah, I got it. No problem. He's done this. He's done that. He's done that. Please welcome Steven. What was the last name again? Holy crap. It happened to me a third time. And so I started thinking about why is this happening?

And how can I fix this? Well, one way to fix it probably, I think, back now is just say, hey, read my thing. Don't even memorize it. Just read it. But Stephen is such a common name. And Shaw is such a common name. There's really no real hard syllables in there except for maybe the T and the V a little bit, but not really. It's a soft syllable.

So it kind of passes right through the brain. So they're thinking so much about everything else they want to say. You know, CNN Live, The Today Show, this and that. I've seen their story that they want to tell and everything. So by the time they get to my name, they haven't really thought about my name or memorized my name.

So I wanted a name that had at least two hard syllables, something that would stick in the brain, and I wanted a one-word name, not a two-word name, a one-word name. Like a rapper? Yeah, but this is before I'm dating myself. This is before real rap music. George Pappard.

That's it, right there. Has been a check. So C-E-K right there, and I loved that show. He was an insurance detective. What year was that show on? I don't know. I think it was only one season, right, if I'm not that show on? I don't know. I think it was only one season, right? If I'm not mistaken, Jamie.

I don't know if you can look that up or not. But I think it was a complete season right here. Season one. Yeah. The complete season. And that was a great show because he always had these great Polish sayings that meant absolutely nothing. But it was just. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very charismatic in that show. But the way he solved it was almost like a magic trick. It was like they put the statue on the truck. The truck arrives and it goes all the way across the United States and no statue. Where did it go?

It turns out that what they actually put on the truck, they thought it was a statue because it was covered and it was in this crate. But it was a block of ice. So by the time it got there, it had already been switched out. By the time it got there, it had melted. So it was sort of magic in its own way as well so i i had it was sort of kindred spirits in a way to that and i loved the name banachek and i was like you know what if i use banachek the way it's spelt there they're going to say banasek and so i put b-a-n-a-c-h-e-k i didn't want to put an extra c at the end because then it becomes bouncer check or something stupid like that.

So, yeah. I get banana check. I get boner check. I get all these things. But at least here's the thing, right? So the old timers back then, the CEOs of the company, the presidents of the company, if they remember the TV show, they may make fun of me at first. But they're going to remember the name. At the end of the show, they now associate it with me because I've blown their minds. If they don't know it, they've got to come up to me and

say, how do you pronounce that? So they're thinking about my name. Never had a problem since. So there's the old TV show, Banachek, but the way I spell it, there was a greyhound, there was a dog, there was a band called Banachek, and there was a construction company. Now the construction company owned the Banachek Earl, you know, the website, but they didn't do anything with it. So, and this is back before you could do automatic payments, like it just goes every year automatically

for you. So I would sit there every year just waiting on that all every day, you know, when I knew it was going to go up and I finally got it. Like after three years of it just sitting there, I finally was able to get it. But yeah. So anyway, that's my name. That's how we got my name.

Okay. So go back to this Michael Edwards thing. So Mike Edwards. So we, yeah, I go off on these weird. I go, I do this all the time. I go off on so many different tangents because I just, it's so many different stories and so many different directions I can go. So with Mike and you'll find that out, in my life there is so much psychology applied to everyday life for me.

Like the name. Why did I choose my name? There was a reason for it. It's not just haphazard and stuff like that. Or sometimes it's just a joke. You know, I get a really sarcastic sense of humor. Here I go off another tangent. All right, let's go back.

I get a really sarcastic sense of humor. Here I go off another tangent. All right, let's go back. So here I am with Randy telling me about them, and I said, yeah, I've already been accepted. Mike and I are supposed to show up. And by the way, somebody recently bought my – Barry Sonnenfeld had bought my life rights because of this whole thing, which is called Project Alpha that I'm telling you the story about now. And he had bought it and wanted Alan Sorkin to write it. This is way back then?

No, this is now, like not so long, like a couple of years ago. You're fucking me up with your timeline. I know. Aaron was busy, so he couldn't do it. And then when he wasn't busy, Barry got busy. My life rights, what they had were basically ran out. So I've taken it now. And I'm working with another production company to do a series on what we're talking about right now. But anyway, so here I am.

I'm with Mike Edwards. We show up at the airport in St. Louis. First time we're going to meet. We meet each other. We hit it off right away. I don't have my driver's license. I had some – what a former ID. I don't know what a former ID I had.

I had some other former ID. And Mike, he had his't know what form of ID I had. I had some other form of ID. And Mike, he had his and he could drive. He just got his at the time. So I wonder if I used my passport. I don't know. Anyway. This whole thing you do, this fast talking thing, this is part of the shuck and jive though. This is a little bit of part of the thing.

No, it's just me. I understand. But it also is very effective. That's what a shuck and jive artist does. They talk very fast and they never pause. So you never get a chance to interject and they're constantly going. So if they're reading your, or saying something, you have to keep up with them. And part of the keeping up with them is you get a little bewildered and bewildered. You forget what you've said or they've

said, and you're, you're trying to sort of keep pace with them and you can't. And next thing you know, they're like, oh my God, I can't believe you know that. How'd you figure that out? Well, we'll get to that later. And then you keep going and you keep- That is part of the entertainment aspect of it. Yeah. It's not what I'm doing right now because I'm not performing.

It's like Julio Cesar Chavez when he was fighting. He would put a pace on you, you couldn't keep up with. Right. Right. Yeah. See, you always analyze it with fighting, which is great. Yeah. Yeah.

It's kind of that thing. It's vulnerabilities. Yeah. Yeah. Exploit always analyze it with fighting, which is great. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of that thing. It's vulnerabilities. Yeah. Exploit vulnerabilities in the human mind. And one of them is that you talk and think faster than most people. So most people, when you're talking, they don't have it like what you just did right there. You want to interject, but you get a chance to interject because they're not going to

let you because I'm going to keep talking. And as I keep talking, I talk quicker. You get bewildered. That's one of the things that you do to people whether you realize it or not you do it because you've done it that way for a long time that's probably right it's become a pattern it's become a pattern to make the other person feel insecure so you don't so you take control

of it it's a pattern for me being able to think and not forget things as I'm saying them like because like it's so effective though as you said that there's another thing that popped in my I've got a like all long, I have songs in my head. It doesn't stop. Like, I do this with my teeth all the time.

So you're playing the song in your head? To music in my head. Like, constantly – if I'm not thinking about anything else, I have songs in my head constantly. And I've even – I went to the dentist and I said, hey, you know, I've got this thing with my teeth and I'm tapping my teeth. I'm wearing them down. You know, what's going on? And he says, oh, musicians do that all the time. I go, well, I always have music 24 hours a day in my head.

So, but now I've gone off somewhere and there was, oh, handwriting. So if you look at my handwriting, how bad my handwriting, like it's really hard to freaking read, right? It's not that bad. Somebody just wrote me a letter the other day and I read the letter. A friend of mine sent me something. He wrote me a letter and I read his letter. was like well what the fuck is that because it's just scribble well that's me right someone to read this is me writing neat that's not bad so slow

normally when i write i can't read it myself i go back and i look well that's the thing what you just said you're my you you're trying to keep up with your thoughts yeah and that's one of the things about bad handwriting they say that you're trying to keep up with what you're thinking Oh, my brain is always going a mile a minute It's right thousand different ways and I think it's part of my problem-solving is like when people give me ideas that they want Okay, this is what I'd like to do. It's a magic effect. How do I do it? I'm able to rattle off like 10 15 different but it's so effective like as a mentalist that way that that different ways of doing it. But it's so effective as a mentalist, that way, that pattern of talking is so bewildering to people that they just sort of like, huh, what, what, huh, and you've got them on the

ropes always. It is that thing of even in my stage show, and you'll have to come to a stage show sometime. I would love to. I would love you to come see a whole thing. Well, I saw the mini version of it when you did the television show. I was blown away. I mean, the first thing I do is I come out before I don't even introduce myself where do you do it so if people can they want to see you

I was just at Planet Hollywood in Vegas yeah I've got a thing coming up at Rochester Fringe Festival Rochester New York I'm at a lot of different colleges you can go to my website and look up the dates but the Rochester is going to be on the 13th

7pm 14th 5pm then I'm on the 13th at 7 p.m., 14th at 5 p.m. Then I'm on the 20th at 9 p.m., the 22nd at 3 p.m. I know. You can find it on the website. You can't even help yourself. You can find it on the website. So it is on the website. But you're in Vegas all the time, right?

I'm in Vegas a lot. I don't work Vegas that much. Oh, really? I'm busy now really until beginning of November. I'm going to be like different places touring different places. Some of it's corporate, some of it's college. It's a mixture of a mismatch of different

things. So go back to this whole James Randi, Uri Geller. So here I am with Mike Edwards at the airport and we're hitting it off and everything. Peter Phillips shows up and he's the professor that I mentioned a minute ago who's going to be doing the investigating of us. And he has this wristband on. And I'm always asking questions.

What's this? What's that? And I'm always noticing things. And he said it was a wristband that he got from a witch doctor in Africa that helps protect him. So I'm starting to think this might be a little easier than I thought it was going to be. Because going in, I was like, I didn't know, are these guys skeptical? Are they going to use one-way mirrors? Are they going to be trying to trick us, catch us?

I had no clue. So we get into, we had Peter Phillips' car because Mike was too young to drive a rental. Peter Phillips has a rental. He's in front of us, so we're following him. And this is how it all starts, really. I'm sitting there and just kind of like me talking all the time. I'm looking around. I'm always doing something, always noticing something. I look in the back seat, and I notice there's a briefcase.

I reach in the back, and I kind of pull it under the dash. It's locked. And to me, like, if somebody locks something, it means they don't want you inside there, of course, right? But why does anyone is in there? Old briefcase, easily you can just open the locks. So I pick the locks, open it up. Inside there's a whole bunch of silverware. So either this guy's a kleptomaniac or this is the silverware he's going to be using for the experiment.

So I start bending it all up, lock the briefcase, put it in the back. Sit there for about two more minutes. Open up the glove compartment. There's some extra keys and things in the glove compartment. I start bending those up. You bend his fucking keys? Well, I'm a psychic, right? This stuff, this shit happens.

Yeah, what if he needed those keys to get in his house? Yeah, but I needed him to be convinced I was genuine. All right, so I end up looking over the car keys that are hanging out, the keys that are hanging out on the car key out of the ignition. I start to reach over to get them, and Mike just looks at me and says,

I think you've done enough stop you know so but there's there's this really interesting phenomena right we knew that in the laboratory everything we did at that point was going to be on a micro level it's going to be very small because it had to be because we couldn't make it look like it's a trick we it had to look like minute and not just that we didn't know if they were going to be watching us, like I said, through one-way mirrors and things like that. So there's an interesting phenomena at the time that was called spontaneous PK. And that is stuff that just happens. Psychokinesis.

PK is short for psychokinesis. Telekinesis, psychokinesis, the whole thing, they're all the same thing. So there's these things just supposedly happen around these psychics that can bend metal stuff, moves, stuff, breaks stuff that. So those things were the things that would convince him and keep him holding on. Even if we did a big bend out of the laboratory, but not on camera, that's the thing that would keep him going. I want to get that on film. I definitely want to get that on film. I'm going to document that someday. That's going to happen in the laboratory. When we ended up getting to the laboratory, all the students at the university were extremely skeptical, very, very skeptical, but they had heard about the spontaneous PK. So they hid things underneath the video recorders in it. There was a separate room and they hid all kinds of things everywhere around. I noticed there was stuff hidden. I mean, why is there a quarter hidden under that VCR?

You know, why is there a fork hidden behind that cupboard? You know, it doesn't belong there. So I started bending up all those things on lunchtime. And that convinced all the students that we were genuine as well. Oh, Christ. So this, I mean, this whole thing went on and on. It's as simple as – so what happened was immediately Randy sent them a list of 13 caveats of things that they shouldn't do. And it was common sense stuff, right?

It was stuff like don't let the subjects work at the same time because they could distract you. Don't let them work with more than one object at a time because they could confuse you with those objects as to which ones you're bending and there was this whole list of different things they showed the list to me and mike and had a good laugh about it and said this would make you guys so uncomfortable we want you to be comfortable where in reality they should have followed that list because oh one of the things randy said was mark everything on a micro micro and a macro level so they the subjects can see the macro mark but won't realize there on a micro micro and a macro level so they the subjects can see the macro mark but won't realize there's a micro mark on there as well which would have helped because their idea of doing a macro mark was on every fork they took the fork or spoon they

measured it at both ends like the height from the table and they measured the middle of the fork from the height from the table then they put a label on it on a little string with a number on it. And that was their idea of keeping track of if something had bent or not because they would measure it after we concentrated on it and they would then remeasure it again afterwards and they would say, oh, okay, this has bent a millimeter or two millimeters. So we would do things like we would say, this tag's in my way. Can I take it

off? Yeah, you can take it off. We'd put it down, concentrate on it. Didn't do anything. Put it down on the table, pick up another fork or a spoon. Say, do you mind if I remove this tag? Take it off, put it down, concentrate on it. Nothing happens. Switch the tags around on the one that was on the first one to the second one, the second one to the first one, and then put the two forks off to the side and then wait two, three hours later. Pick up one of those forks, obviously not doing anything with it, concentrating on it. Say, why don't you measure it? And they would measure it and the measurements had now changed. Not realizing because they never measured the other one again because they remeasured everything consistently later on and put new tags on them every single time. Not realizing that we just simply switched forks or as we reached across the table we would lean on one of the forks and

then hours again later we would pretend like we actually bent that fork so this went on i mean it went on for 180 hours over four years i mean we messed with these people bad we did probably some things at the time that were probably illegal as well like what like leaving the window unlocked at the laboratory going off to the club across the the state line coming back like about four or five o'clock in the morning breaking into the building and uh bending up every single piece of metal that was in the laboratory um they had a fucking scientists were running this well this is back in the 80s so right and they they had they actually, this is back in the 80s, so, right? They actually had this aquarium. Back in the 80s, scientists were like 80s TV shows.

They really, but no, it's true. Here's the sad thing, right? I went into this thinking these people were going to be the enemy. It was me against them. I had to do this. Turns out these are just really, really nice, nice people that are very naive when it comes to what psychic phenomena is. Right. Well, if you're a scientist, most likely you're not studying a whole lot of liars and mentalists and magicians and psychic phenomena. And you really are probably trying to find out whether or not it's real.

And maybe you believe a little bit too much. You don't know enough yet. When it came to this type of phenomena absolutely but gala was already doing that other psychics were already doing it in other countries and they would be invalidated as a genuine thing in other countries yeah we knew like ggerard over in france even north over in england you know there was a lot of research going on in england at the time on this type of phenomena as well it was a really big thing back and it was just people hosing people it was little kids like here's the weird thing right so over in england there were um i can't think what the guy's name

is now uh there was a scientist over there a parapsychologist who was working with little kids and his thinking is that kids don't lie little kids don't lie that's all they do is lie they get to that point where they learn how to lie to get anything and everything kids don't lie that's someone without kids and these kids only got caught the only reason they got caught was by accident because they were the video cameras were left on and soon as the parapsychologists left the room the kids were taking forks and spoons and actually bending them underneath their feet and then putting them back up on the on the table so and they would come in it was they literally scientists went in with the premise that children don't lie.

That is one of the dumbest fucking things I've ever heard in my life. I don't disagree with you, but this is how badly people wanted to believe in this phenomenon. Why do people want to believe in hidden powers? I think it's why people want to believe in most things, right? UFOs. We want to believe there's something more than just us. For most people, we're not enough. And I don't know if it's because we get so bored with our lives.

We get depressed with our lives. We get, you know, we're in this everyday thing of going to work, coming home. And is this all there is? Is this it? You know, is there something else that's a superpower that I could actually have? Is there something I can discover that's bigger than me better than me you know there's a universe much bigger than just this planet right here right so i mean if you ask me i would think that if you if ufos were coming here if they were coming here let's say i don't

believe they were but if they were coming here you don't believe they were no no i don't why is that but i think if they were i just don't i i don't, I think we would really have real evidence, 100% evidence of it by now. But here's the thing, right? Wouldn't it make much sense, even like for us, okay, let's say we start going looking at other planets. Are we going to send other humans out there? Or are we going to go ahead and send robots or something like that? Like we do to Mars. Yeah, they can last.

And robots are getting better and better and better at it. So if there's an advanced civilization, surely they would also have this advancement where they don't have to send themselves out. They could send something to represent them, right? That's what the real hardcore believers believe those greys are. Yeah. The grey aliens with the big black eyes. They think they're some sort of an android or something. And it could be, but I don't believe we've had them.

I believed a lot more before i started doing that television show right that television show cured me of bigfoot cured me of psychics cured me of aliens cured me of like almost everything well this is the thing with me right when i was a young kid i believed in that stuff you know when i was a young kid i spoke in tongues you know i thought i did did you really yeah yeah i had the whole experience i mean it was like you know all the chemicals running through my body and me just going about again you know doing the whole damn thing you know and going to that and i realized later what was going on but at the time i i was looking for answers i was looking for answers

well you had a very disturbed life and you were probably looking for some sort of security i got shut down every single time I would ask questions. I was called a troublemaker. Oh, we're talking about darkness and evil. Well, how come the Bible's covered in black? Just shut up. Don't ask questions. Covered in black?

What do you mean? Well, you know, the cover of most of the Bibles back then. We didn't have the white Bibles. We all had the black Bibles. Wow. And I would just ask innocent questions like, okay, well, if you're talking about darkness being an evil and it's all associated, why is this Bible covered in black? You know, and I just wanted answers. I'm looking for answers.

I would ask these questions. And I do that. I thirst knowledge. I love knowledge. You know, I read all the time. It's just I'm always looking to try to understand things. I won't always retain all that information, but it'll be in the back of my head somewhere where it will pop out at some point when I do need it. So, but it's,

it is fascinating this desire to believe, especially the desire to believe things that don't necessarily make sense, whether it's ghosts or it's UFOs or do you ever watch that show? Finding Bigfoot? I have in the past. It's not, not something I sit down. I don't binge it, you know, but, but every episode is like a rock got thrown. Well, it's exactly the same as these ghost shows that every week, something I sit down and I don't binge it. But every episode is like a rock got thrown or there's a thumping. It's exactly the same as these ghost shows. Every week nothing happens

but somehow they manage to keep you glued to your seat. I think you watch it, people watch it because they think, oh this is going to be the show. This is going to be the one. Because they tease it like that but here's the thing, right? If it was the one we would have already heard about it before it got to air. The key is night vision. Once you have night vision, you seem legit.

You looking for things in the basement or you looking for things in the woods? Right. If you have night vision or thermal vision, like something, oh, technology, they'll find it now. Well, it's like the ghost detecting meters, those little meters. You can set them off just by hitting a walkie-talkie. Oh, you can? Oh, yeah, like way across the room or in another room. You hit a walkie-talkie, those things go freaking crazy, you can? Oh, yeah, like way across the room or in another room. You hit a walkie-talkie, those things go freaking crazy.

Is there, in paranormal research, is there like a moment where, you know, like, do you know that in SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, there's this one phenomena that happened. I think they call it the blip or something like that. Yeah, I don't think that's the name. I know exactly what you're talking about. I don't think it is either. But there's this one. It's like the event or something like that? Yeah. I don't think that's a name. I know exactly what you're talking about. I don't think it is either. I know exactly what you're talking about.

But there's this one. It's like the event or something like that. Or bloop or whatever it is. There's one loud noise that came from space that they think is. They don't know what it is. Right. They don't know what it is. They're not sure what that was.

You know what? I'm conflating it with something that happened underwater. That's what I'm doing. There was something. There was an organic noise that was underwater. It wasn't the signal. They called the bloop whatever it was. Yeah, but there's a SETI thing like that too. There was an organic noise that was underwater. It wasn't the signal. They called the bloop, whatever it was. Yeah, but there's a SETI thing like that, too.

There is a SETI thing like that, too. Yeah. But I confused the two events. There was something that happened where they recorded an organic sound underwater from some sort of an animal that they don't know what it was. But they think it could be a whale or something. Who knows? Just, you know, something. Could be something we haven't discovered yet or seen yet.

I mean, there's a lot of stuff under there we don't know about. For sure. It's a big, big place. Yeah. We were talking about the desire for people. I mean, this is one of the reasons why being a mentalist works or being one of these psychic hoaxers works. It's because people have this overwhelming desire to believe there's something more out there. Not just the powers that you and I possess, the normal senses of seeing and hearing and touching and smelling.

But there's more. Some people have more. Some people know when the phone's going to ring. Some people know things. They have an intuition. They can sense auras. Some people know. Hold my hand.

Let me look in your eyes. I know things. I know things you don't know. It's creepy how you're looking at me right now. It's weird. But that's a weird thing, right? But that's what throws people off, right? Yeah.

Because it gives up. Why would somebody be looking at me like that if there wasn't a purpose and if they didn't believe and if there wasn't something there? When I perform, I don't just read minds. I do things. Like I touch their hand. I say, look at me. See this right there? And I do certain things because it's that thing of like I've got to show a process.

And if I'm showing a process, why would I be showing a process if it wasn't real? Right. Now, here's the weird thing. You're also overwhelming them with things to think about. Yeah, to a point. Are you touching them and moving them or looking at them? There's all these variables they have to take into account. Now, they're on their map of things that they're processing,

that's now some new territory. Yeah, it also, we talked about this earlier. We got so many stories all over the place. We've stopped that. I'll try to come back to some of them.

But it's back in my comedy club days, I worked the worst and the best clubs. I mean, there was a comedy workshop in Houston, Texas. I don't know if you remember them or not. Sure.

Paul Menzel, Sharon Jerry. And they had me come and do a Christmas show because they wanted a clean show for Christmas. And I came in and then they're like, all right, you're going to go out on the road and you're headlining, like straight off headlining, like no middling, no opening act, nothing. I went straight into headlining,

which a lot of comedians hated me for that because they're working so hard again. And it's like, there's no place for magic in a comedy club. It's a comedy club. But I was was going out i was doing these comedy clubs but i was doing like the best and i was also doing the worst like i was doing comedy clubs where literally it's a kicker bar in a an oil town and there's mesh like in blue brothers you know across the front because people throw beer bottles at the band and everything else and i'm performing behind that with a little gate that they have to come in for me to perform with these people with a big pole in the middle because people kick or dance around that.

And the bar is actually around the corner and I got to try to get people in there. So I performed at the worst and the best places. I performed in situations where people were just not there to see the performer there, you know, at colleges where it's a day show and day oh man day shows are the worst in colleges the worst if you've done them yeah like you come in it's like yeah they're sitting in the cafeteria barely paying attention you're performing the cafeteria they're trying to study for a test they're not there for you so i got to grab their attention so my first thing is to come out and say if i was to ask everyone to think of a playing card you might think ace of spades or

queen of hearts i want everyone to think of a card get one get one get one get one stand up and it's like bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam where it's like holy crap we need to pay attention to this guy and so that's where i came in from those harsh days of really just trying to grab their attention with comedians yeah you do bar gigs yeah yeah yeah you just gotta you gotta quiet them down you gotta gotta grab them so anyway so I'm with the scientists. We break in in the laboratory at night. They have an aquarium. There's another psychic there that supposedly gets ghosts to come in.

And the ghosts will write things in these coffee grounds in this inverted aquarium with a padlock on it. And there's bars that go over it. aquarium uh with a padlock on it and there's bars that go over it mike edwards the other kid that's with me looks underneath and realizes that the even though it's locked on top the post that it's locked to there's nuts underneath it like bolts he just unbolts it lifts it up we write stuff in the coffee grounds we bolt it back up and and you know so it's like all these things and we bend everything uh we go to bed about five in the morning, and Peter Phillips calls, and he calls at about 7 in the morning. He says, how are you doing? I said, oh, I didn't sleep well last night.

I had a dream that we were in the laboratory, you know, trying to work, and everything just bent and went crazy. He said, well, go back to sleep. I'll talk to you in a few hours. He calls me back in about another hour. He says, you did it. You did it. You did it. I go, well, what did we do?

He goes, you know, he says, your psychic powers when you were sleeping bent everything in the laboratory So it was just we play these games. We did these that guy's still alive. He's still alive I've met him since then you know I feel sad you tricked him He felt well loser here's it different Yeah, I felt bad you so we were talking to Randy at one point because we did a conference And there's a kid by the name of Masa waki Kyoto alright from Japan So we were talking to Randy at one point because we did a conference. And there's a kid by the name of Masawaki Kyoto, all right, from Japan. Masawaki could speak English.

He had a band that he was in as well. So he sang English songs and everything. And I'm rooming with him. And I say to Masawaki Kyoto because he's playing it up for real. And I say, is there any time when you can't do your psychic powers, you use a trick? And he says, oh, can't speak English, cannot speak English. All of a sudden he couldn't speak English. So we're at this, Gala's at this thing as well. And the reason I mentioned Masawaki is because there was a TV producer from England that came over and he said to Randy, he said, Randy, what would convince you that this stuff is genuine? Randy gave him the same 11 caveats that he gave to the scientists, the same 11 caveats.

And the guy followed them. He sat with me. He sat with Mike. He sat with Masawaki Kiyota. Now, Masawaki had a way for twisting a spoon and basically had a thing in his shoe. He would go down and when nobody was looking, put it in there.

But because this guy followed the 11 caveats, nothing happened that day. Absolutely nothing happened until the cameras went off. The moment the cameras went off, Masawaki twisted a spoon and started getting it to twist. The producer had a complete mental breakdown. Now, up to this point, I'm just thinking this is tricks, right? It's not that big of a deal. He starts screaming, yelling that Randy's evil, should never have listened to Randy.

He would have got this on tape if it wasn't for Randy. And he looks down and he's got a wet spot on the front of his pants. And he looks down and he says, I just had a demonic ejaculation, like literally. And he's having his mental breakdown. I go and I have to spend the night, which was not a bad thing. She was quite pleasant to look at his assistant I had to spend the night with her in her room

because Randy was calling her I'm not Randy I mean Tony Edwards was calling her the producer was calling her consistently screaming and yelling about Randy and this scared the fuck out of me hold the fuck up you can't just gloss over the fact

the guy just nutted in his pants as he was yelling. It's a mental breakdown. How do you orgasm in your pants during a mental breakdown? I don't know. I didn't do it. He did it. You should document that. That's more impressive than bending a spoon. I should have said yep, that's my psychic ability working right there.

Yeah, I mean, that doesn't make any sense. So he tells you that he has an ejaculation in his pants. In front of everybody, he says it's a demonic ejaculation. He straight up says, I had a demonic ejaculation. Well, he seems like a together guy with definitely got a head on his shoulders. He was a producer for, I think it was BBC, if I'm not mistaken. He was doing a documentary for them.

Well, he's fucking crazy, huh? He finished a documentary, so. Oh, well, he definitely wasn't crazy then. As long as he finished that documentary. Well. Oh, well, it wasn't crazy then. As long as he finished that documentary. Well, he believed in psychic phenomena. He also believed that a demon made him cum in his pants. That is true, yes. And he showed it to you.

As to whether he believed it was a demon or not, I don't know. If a demon did make you cum in your pants, would you pull your shirt down and get out of there? I think I would start dating that demon. Probably a price to pay that you wouldn't want don't need a girlfriend don't need a woman at that point just a demon that makes you nut in your pants when you're screaming and yelling so long as it's a good looking demon so he he was saying that randy was evil yes because if it wasn't for randy's rules that guy he would not he would have got this on tape but how dumb does that guy have to be i mean that is so silly like this is a person that's supposed to be Discovering or at least investigating psychic phenomena, and he doesn't understand. There's not a true investigator, right? He's a producer

He's a producer who believes in this phenomena hence. He wants to do a documentary on psychic phenomena He has an interest in it. He already believes in it So he's not he's not as bad as the the Parapsychologists who are supposed to be using proper science because i'm often asked right is it right is it ethical that you fool scientists in the name of science right so this becomes this whole big question like we were we unethical to do that um and my answer to that wait a minute who the fuck asked you that question a lot of scientists say that they're're fools. Well, it's a thing, right? Because if you-

Listen, what do you think that they do? It's like if you ask a guy who's a thief to break into your house, and then he breaks into your house with a method that you didn't anticipate, is that unethical? That's no different than what you're doing. You're a mentalist. You're a person who is trying to trick them. They have all these rules set up to make sure

that you don't trick them so they know for a fact that what you're doing is psychic energy. But if you don't really have psychic powers and you absolutely don't, of course you're going

to fucking trick them. Right. The idea that you would trick them and that would somehow or another be unethical. No, you just played the game better than them.

Well, this was the point, right? It was this thing of like, my thing was, should you be taking money to investigate this was the point, right? It was this thing of like, my thing was, should you be taking money to investigate this phenomena under false pretenses? Because you're not using proper science. Right. If you're using proper science, I won't get away with

any of this. Had you followed Randy's rules, we would not have got away with any of this. I mean, we had very strict ethical rules. If you ask us if we're magicians, we have to say yes. If you ask us if we're working for the amazing Randy, with him, we have to say yes if you ask us if we're working for the amazing randy with him You have to say yes You know so we had all these rules those old TV shows where like if someone was an undercover cop you say are you a cop?

They have to tell you that's what they don't really have to do that. That's they don't know That's only a premise they use really shows Oh damn it if you ask a cop are you a cop and they go no and then you buy the heroin off them You still go to jail. Wow. Yeah. I remember that. Not that I'm going to go buy heroin or anything, but maybe something else.

Well, we can say something else. A gun. Yeah, prostitution. Yeah. There's very few people that have told me a story where I go, damn, I wish I was there for that story. But the nutting in the pants and blaming it on a demon, I really do wish I was there. I really wish I was there for that guy. I would like to be in the room and i'd be like hold up everything else is gonna get put on

the back burner nowadays i'd be like hold on let me get my smartphone out i gotta take a picture how do you know it was a demon and why are you showing me your jizz soaked pants well and how much do you have to come in your pants where it shows on the outside? I mean, Jesus Christ. We were scared, though. Oh, you should be. We were kids. How old were you? So probably towards the end, 19, would have been about 1981, 1982. That means I'm 21, 22, somewhere in that era.

Oh, but you probably still kick his ass. Yeah, but keep in mind, I was also this kid who was very socially socially like not i mean i'm the kid in the back of the classroom the heavy coat on the middle of winter was that the first time a guy had ever came in his pants and then pointed to it in front of me yeah yeah well for me yes yeah it's never happened my whole life i'm 51 years old can never say i've ever had that happen ever you know ever i'd like to go to my grave without anybody ever nothing in their pants and then pointing down look a demon made me do this. Well, you have an excuse now if it ever happens to you.

Well, now the problem is millions of people have heard this, and so they'll just scam me. So I'm going to run into people now that I've said that. This is going to be great. Everywhere you go. Guys are going to pull their shirt down. Everywhere he goes. He goes to work at a comedy company. Ten guys stand up pointing down with a puddle right there.

Look, a demon made me not in my pants. Did you bring nails, man? I did. I brought nails. Yeah, I got some stuff. We might get to some of that stuff. I have stuff here in case. So you felt bad that you tricked this dummy?

Mike and I really, like, we were scared because we realized the kind of power. He was unhinged. Well, not that. We realized the kind of power we had over these people. At that point, it was just us against them. But it's like, there's another whole thing going on. There's this whole psychological thing going on here. Because they want to believe so badly.

We are really messing with people's heads, right? I mean, we're really, and what's going to happen when we come out and say this is all a fraud and fake? So we said to Randy, we said, look, we want to come out and, you know, we want to end it now. And Randy was like, you know what? We got a TV show we're going to be this is all a fraud and fake so we said to randy we said look we want to come out and you know we want to end it now and randy was like you know what we got a tv show we're going to be coming up in a couple of months let's just wait and expose it then it's not going to make any difference so we we hung out until that time i mean there was a peripheral you know scientist and there was one guy by the name of berthold schwartz i didn't want to do anything with him because he kind of came into the scene at the end of working with the Mac Lab. But he kept pushing and pushing and pushing.

And he lived in New Jersey. So finally I went out there. And this guy kind of believed in everything. He wrote a whole book called Taming the Poltergeist. Attaining the Poltergeist? Taming. Taming the Poltergeist. You can find it online as well.

And it was a booklet. And it was for the psychosynemic something of dentistry and medicine. But it was an actual medical journal. And it was all about his stuff that he had done with me. But this guy believed in everything. Like he handed me a camera one time, a video camera. And he said, look, I knew a lady that could take pictures of the sky and when i get the the film and you know i get it developed and i look at it and i play it you can see ufos in the sky that you couldn't see with the naked eye can you do that

now i was one of these kids that i was just like i would say i could do anything and everything even in the laboratory i would say i could do anything. And so he hands me the camera. I start taking pictures of the parking lot and the sky and everything, and I hand it back to him. So he gets it developed. When he gets it developed, there's his vacation footage, and then there's him handing me the camera. You see all of a sudden this weird kind of blob,

and in the blob you see a woman's torso and thigh. You see a woman giving birth to a baby. You see Jesus Christ. You see all these images. And when he pointed them out to me, I could see them as well when he actually pointed them out to me. So like a Rorschach test, that kind of thing? Sort of, yes, because this guy's a Freudian psychologist, all right? So all I had simply done was I didn didn't know what to do i was just making stuff up as i went along so i spat on the front of the camera and that blob as it changed

and as it dried almost like looking at clouds you could see all these different shapes and so he believed that this was psychic phenomena this was something that was happening now i got to give the mac lab credit because when peter phillips said saw it he said yeah it looks like uh a blob of water and and but but berthold said to him he said yeah but it's what's in the blob that's important it's what you see inside it that's important he called me up one day i lived in pennsylvania then he called me up one day and said you did it you did it and i said what did i do he said well there's this jar and there was this one jar that he would have silverware and things inside and they were all sealed and he would have it

sitting up on a shelf and at seven o'clock every night I was supposed to concentrate, never did, but I was supposed to concentrate from Pennsylvania and try to get the stuff

to bend long distance and he calls me up. He said, you know that jar you concentrate every night? Yep, I know that jar. He said,

you did it. I'm thinking, damn, I'm good. I don't know what the hell happened here. He says, well, you actually missed it, but you hit the radiator and it's leaking all over the floor. So he believed in every, that's how much this guy believed in all this stuff and gave me credit. But when you read it, here's the interesting thing, right?

I mean, he stuck electrodes on my head. He did all kinds of psychological tests. And the psychological tests turned out that if I wasn't psychic, I would be crazy. His tests? His psychological tests for me showed that if I wasn't psychic, I would be crazy. But I was answering the questions like a psychic would. So Berthold Schwartz was another character. And at the very end, when we came out and said this was all a fraud, it was all a fake, Berthold was the one that said, amongst a couple other people, but he was the primary one that said, look, they say they were lying then.

How do we know they're not lying now? Oh, God. Which is an interesting question, right? But my answer, because I can show you how I did those things. Right. Even the Mac Lab, we had a conference in the Timelapse building in New York where we came clean. We said it was all a hoax. We got up there and if you can ever find footage of this

online, it's great because Randy introduces us and it's Timeline Building. Everybody's there. I mean, Discover Magazine, Psychology Today, the New York Times, everybody from all over the world are there. They think Randy's found two psychics that are genuine.

And we get up there and we demonstrate stuff and then Randy,'s you know somebody asks the question you know how do you do it and randy looks at us he says you want to answer mike so mike edwards walks over he says yep he says uh it's a hoax it's a trick and then i say yeah for the last four years we've been fooling the scientists and that's when we came out you see their mouths open like oh my god you know it's like it's just it's great great footage when you can see it because it's that moment the scientists would not answer their phone until we spoke to them and i have the recordings i actually have the recording of where i end up calling them back and i'm recording the conversation and i he says we've heard this rumor that you guys are working with Randy and that you're not

real. And I say, what do you think? And he says to me, that can't be true. It has to be real. And I go, well, unfortunately it is true. And he starts asking, well, how did you do this? And I tell him, well, how did you do that? And I tell him, and he's constantly asking about this and that trying to find one thing one thing that he could hold on to that's real and there were some little things because a lot of times when you have real information and you know you're going to be to do something you take chances and sometimes those chances hit as well so you can't explain that that's just the odds right right yeah so he wanted desperately to believe and the thought was that maybe you

had psychic powers but you didn't want people to know you had psychic power so that you tricked them and then you were lying afterwards to conceal your power right he also mentioned that randy may have paid us off to life for him too so yeah well, yeah. Well, he was probably devastated, right? Because as a scientist. I'm sure he was. He caught a guy that I knew in Washington, Pennsylvania, where I lived. And I think the guy still lives there now,

but a guy by the name of Joe Newsom. And Joe was an escape artist. And I knew Joe. Now, keep in mind, when I was doing all this, I really didn't know any magicians. In fact, even when I started out, I didn't know there was an area

of magic called mentalism, which is doing, you know, taking your five known senses to create the illusion of a sixth sense. You're not a psychic. You're using tricks. You're using psychology, verbal, nonverbal communication, but mostly magic to create these tricks. I didn't know that. I just knew there were people that con people with tricks to make them think they were psychic. That's all that I knew at that time.

But I met a few magicians, one of them was joe newsom so berthold schwartz caught up joe he said why would why would steve do this why would banachek do this um and joe says i don't know but i can open locks with my mind joe proceeded which i thought was a really asshole thing to do joe proceeded to work with him for years until berthold died and berthold believed that joe has psychic powers and i called joe up one time i said why are you doing this this guy's been through enough you know we've already exposed it as a fraud as a fake you know why are you doing this to that guy and rather than answer the question he pretended that he was his brother

that had answered the phone but i know joe and i knew joe and i knew it was his brother doesn't sound anything like him so yeah Isn't it possible that some people like playing tennis. Some people like fucking with people. He likes fucking with people. That's sport. Probably. Like a cat. When a cat gets a hold of a mouse and doesn't kill it.

Just lets it crawl away a little bit and swats it and brings it back. Lets it survive. That's probably what he was doing. Well, sometimes the mouse likes that, right? No. I don't think the mouse ever likes it. No, isn't there?

I was talking to my friend, no, I was talking to my friend Tyus, right? So there's this thing of, there's this enzyme that cats have, and I can't think of what it's called. Oh, toxoplasma. Yeah, right? It's not an enzyme, it's a parasite. A parasite, then, that goes into some mice where they think it's okay to have fun to play with a cat more complicated than that

It actually turns their sexual reward system sideways where the cat the when the cat urinates the smell of cat urine gets them excited and actually makes the the mouse aroused and It removes all fear of The cat cat. Yeah, because the only way that toxoplasmosis all fear of the cat. Of the cat. Yeah, because the only way that Toxoplasmosis gondii, which is the parasite, can reproduce is inside the cat's gut. So the cat has to eat the mouse or the rat in order for this parasite to reproduce.

Wow. And then the reproduction, the thing is it doesn't affect the cat's behavior, which is very strange, but it does affect people. It does affect people and it does affect rats and mice. Yeah. Do you think that's why we have cat ladies? Oh, yeah. You think it affects people?

Those crazy bitches? Yeah. You said it doesn't affect people, but do you think it might? No, it does affect people. Oh, it does affect people. It doesn't affect cats. Gotcha. The cat's behavior seems to be-

Same as the same. Exactly the same, but it definitely affects people. It makes people more impulsive. There's a bunch of weird correlations. There's a recent study that showed that entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial behavior is often connected with toxoplasmosis infection. Wow. That people are more risk. They're more inclined to take risks and take chances. It's also there's a disproportionate number of motorcycle victims of crashes that have toxoplasmosis infection.

Really? Yeah this came from Robert Sapolsky's work. He's a professor at Stanford. We had a chance to interview him. Fascinating guy. Yeah. A lot of his his work he's done on toxoplasmosis. Do you think there's a lot of other things like that that we don't realize that affect human behavior? There could very well be. I mean, there's a bunch of different parasites that people get. And, you know, there was another guy, what was his name, Hortens, out of University of

Houston, Peter Hortens. Damn it. Anyway, he's an infectious disease expert who specializes in the same television show that I work with you. I met him. And he said that people that live in jungle climates, literally 100% of them, 100% are infected with parasites. Wow. Various parasites, some documented, some undocumented. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And many of them control behavior. Yeah. What's fascinating, there's, some undocumented. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And many of them control behavior. Yeah. What's fascinating, there's some of them that are really creepy. Like there's one that's an aquatic worm that talks a grasshopper into drowning so that it can give birth. So it literally gets into the grasshopper's brain, rewires its brain, tells the grasshopper to jump into the water so it can come out of its body and exist in the water. It's amazing how, when you think about that, right, how those things have developed to be able to do exactly specifically what certain things need them to do so that something else can benefit from it. Is that what his name is?

Something can benefit. What? I was trying to find it. I couldn't decipher it that way. I think it's Peter Hortez. Hortez? Shit. Sorry, Peter.

You sure it was University of Houston? I can find it that way. I think it's Peter Hortez. Hortez? Shit. Sorry, Peter. You sure it was University of Houston? I can find it that way. Pretty sure. Pretty sure. Anyway. I'll look. So, yeah, I mean, your friend probably just liked fucking with people. And you probably feel like, this guy's a dummy. I'm just going to keep fucking with these dummies.

Have you ever seen those? I didn't do it because I wanted to fuck with people. Oh, I know you didn't. I mean, I did it because I thought I was doing the right thing. And I didn't realize that these people are going to become my friends. I'm eating with them every day. They've got these lives, you know, and I care about these people. And you're ruining their lives.

And at some point, I know that I'm going to have to come out. And it's going to be devastating for them, you know. Because you did it for years. He's got tenure at the university. He's going to look like an idiot at the end of this. And that wasn't my purpose of doing it. Yeah, but. Much bigger picture.

Yes, I get it. But that is what he is no no i agree and that's why i'm saying there's a much bigger picture i would do the same thing again today i would just protect myself emotionally i think more than i did then so you wouldn't become friends with them i would not become close friends with them right i wouldn't share a lot of my life with them. I wouldn't want to learn about their life. I'd want to keep it much more aesthetic in a way. Maybe the problem is that you dragged it on for so long. You know, maybe if you just did it over a couple of days, you know, you could have showed. There's no way to do that. I mean, we would have days where we would do nothing.

Like, we literally sat in a lab and nothing would happen for an entire day. That's a fucking commitment, man, to do that shit over four years. Well, here's the thing, right? It's a bit misleading because it's 180 hours total. And what that means is we're coming out on holidays. We're coming out on weekends. We're coming out on— Right, but you're extending this project over a long period of time.

And we weren't making money at it. There was a podium that paid for our food, but that's about it. You were just doing it for the project. I lost money because I had to take time off work. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I think it's, what you did is a good thing. Yeah.

Because it's documented. Yeah. Because you show that even scientists can be tricked if they're not really following the scientific method. And that was a way to do it because there were even some parapsychologists who said, look, if you think you can infiltrate a laboratory, go ahead and do it. So we were doing things in accordance with what some of the parapsychologists were actually saying we should do. Yeah, for sure. Like, that's the whole game. I mean, the game is you're supposed to be, they're supposed to try to find out if you're tricking them. So they should be assuming you're tricking them.

Yep. So if they're not assuming you're tricking them, they're tricking themselves. And that is part of the problem with psychics. Like, I had a friend of mine who went to a psychic and they're like, oh my God, he knew all about my grandma. I go, don't you know about your grandma? I go, if this motherfucker really knows psychic, he really knows, it's like he has psychic power, they're going to tell you some shit you don't know.

Right. They're telling you things about your life you already know. I don't need anybody to tell me about my life. No, that's a good point. That's exactly right. Right? That's all they're doing. And there's ways for them to get that info from your life you already know. I don't need anybody to tell me about my life. No, that's a good point. That's exactly right, right? That's all they're doing. And there's ways for them to get that info from you without you realizing it. But when I was saying this to my friend, he did not want to listen to me.

He wanted to believe so strong. And he definitely didn't want to believe that he got tricked. This is part of the problem with scammers. Have you ever seen some of those scammers, those Nigerian scammers that get these poor, lonely men to think that women are waiting for them in Europe. There was a terrible television show. I mean, terrible in that it was so sad. This one guy flew to Europe twice to be with this woman. And every time he flew there, she had something come up and she couldn't meet him. It was devastating. She couldn't meet him. And he kept going back. And his daughter was saying, I can't convince him that this is a scam.

He really believes this woman's waiting for him. He's never heard this woman's voice. She says she can't talk on the phone, but she sends pictures, and he really believes strongly. No, it's really sad. That's why I find like Pendulat gave me one of the biggest compliments probably that I've ever had actually at one point. He had seen me work and his wife had seen me work. Emily had seen me work. And Emily came and she said, yeah, Penn said that if we didn't know you were not psychic from that demonstration, from watching your show, you are the most convincing psychic we've ever seen.

Well, I said that to Duncan. I said the same thing to Duncan. When you did that performance for us on television, I'm like, that is the craziest shit. If you weren't so adamant that what you were doing was a trick, and Duncan was like, dude, what if he's fucking with me? What if he really is psychic? Oh, my God.

Duncan tends to, you know, he has a thirst for the fantastic. Yeah. So for him. Which is nice. Yes. Because you can play off that. It's a good thing to have. Yeah.

Yeah. My show, for that exact reason, the show I'm doing in Rochester is called Telepathy. And the first half, usually it's going to to be i don't actually have two halves but normally i do normally it's a two-hour show but i've had to cut it down to an hour show and the first half was always me coming out talking about telepathy what is telepathy what did einstein he believed it was radio waves marie curry believed that it was did einstein believe telepathy was a real thing yeah he even wrote the forward to a book called telepathy so yeah yeah he believed it was a real thing he believed your mind gave out radio waves that other people actually picked up.

Sigmund Freud believed it was related to a dream state. There was all these different theories. I mean the word was coined in I think it was 1842 by Frederick Myers. And he believed certain things about telepathy. So there was all these different things. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote Sherlockmes you know most rational character in in literature he believed there were spirits all around us it could pluck a thought out of one person's mind and actually put it in another so he believed all prognostication all these things had to do had to do with spiritualism so there's all these people i

mean the u.s government you know about stargate they gave what 20 million dollars in the 70s going on into the 90s to study and find out if this stuff had any practical military applications on these type of things. Remote viewing? Yeah. Well, that's where remote viewing came out. That was another thing that cured me. That television show cured me of remote viewing. That's right.

You did try to do that. You did that. I think you actually did that with DJ Grothy on there as well, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think he was part of that. Part of that whole thing.

DJ, yeah. Yeah. Me and DJ both did better just faking it than the guy who was supposed to be. there as well i think so yeah yeah yeah i think he was part of that part of that dj yeah yeah me and dj both did better just faking it than the guy that's great we just made a bunch of shit up and drew some stick figures that's oh that could be the tower this is the tower it's about actually it was a man but it looks like a tower there was the one guy that's famous for remote viewing and i interviewed him as well what is his name yeah you say his name I don't know it um yeah he was on Art Bell all the time yeah he'd be on there for hours and hours and hours and yeah I met him and I was like is this guy fucking with me yeah and he

was explaining how he worked for the US government how they found Osama bin Laden and a fucking you know bunker somewhere I was like hmmm yeah that doesn't work fun guy yeah telling me about his hot Russian girlfriend I was like, hmm. That doesn't work. Fun guy. Telling me about his hot Russian girlfriend. I was like, alright. Tell me more about that. Let's go that direction. Can I remove you? Can you put it in my head right now? Can I see where she is? Oh, she's in the bathtub.

Great. She's shaving her legs. Tell me more. I'm having a demon ejaculation in my pants. Anyway, since that time, I've gone after many different things. Peter Popoff, the evangelist, said he was getting the word of God. Randy came to Houston in 1986. Is that the guy that had the earpiece in? Yeah, I found the earpiece.

Oh, you found that? That was me, yeah. Oh, interesting. So Randy was writing an article. I think it was Hustler magazine. It was one of those magazines. That's hilarious. On evangelists. That's a good place toler Magazine. It was one of those magazines. That's hilarious. On evangelists.

That's a good place to hide something. It was one of those magazines. It may not have been Hustler, so I don't want you to quote me on that. Penthouse did a lot of those. Freight articles. That's what I'm saying. It might have been Penthouse,

but I don't think it was. Playboy did a lot. I think it was Hustler, but I could be wrong. Playboy is one of the ones that people actually read because the girls never take their panties off. So you get bored with just looking at breasts.

They do now, though. Didn't they go back to... Well, they don't. No, they went to not nude at all. I quit looking after they did not nude at all. Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah.

You show amazing willpower, sir. They went to bikinis or underwear. They stopped taking their clothes off, but then sales inexplicably tanked. What? It's so strange. Those articles are great. They did have good articles. They did.

Playboy had some amazing interviews. They had a lot of groundbreaking articles, too, through the years. A buddy of mine had a book of all the different Playboy interviews over the years, and I was like, well, they have some good stuff. Yeah. So, Randy. Anyway, yeah, Randy. Yeah, Randy.

Writing for Hustler. Yeah, writing for Hustler on Evangelist. He said, hey, do you want to come see this Evangelist with me? I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll come. So went there. And there's about 10,000 people. It's downtown, big auditorium. It was a huge auditorium, you know, all these people sitting around.

And Popov comes out on stage. He starts saying he's getting the word of God. He's telling people their names, information about who their doctors are, what their ailments are. And he starts healing people of cancer. He's telling people their names, information about who their doctors are, what their ailments are. And he starts healing people of cancer. He starts healing people of blindness, people walking again. And it was really, really emotional. Even for me, I had tears in my eyes, but I knew it was all bullshit. You knew it was bullshit and you still were crying?

You get this whole fucking, like when you see a little kid crying and running down the aisle. You want to get angry. But at the same time, it's like it's just so emotional. It's just you get caught up in this whole thing. You just do. So he asked for people to collect money. He's just asking random people to come up, grab a bucket, go collect money. I got down there.

I remember I was like the 15th bucket. I got my bucket. I walk around. I get checks. I got probably about, I don't know how much, 10 grand, 20 grand. I don't know what I've got. I mean money. First of all, getting money. Then you got to go. I think I'm done. He said, nope get checks. I got probably about, I don't know how much, 10 grand, 20 grand. I don't know, you know, what I've got. I mean, money, first of all, getting money. Then you got to go, I think I'm done.

He said, nope. Yeah. Okay. Once you got to go back out and collect checks. So now we're going out getting checks in the bucket. What? Then it's like, go out, get sealed offerings. And people are dropping envelopes in there with like watches, rings and stuff like that.

As I come back, I hand the bucket up to pop off and I look up and I notice that he's got a piece of plastic in his ear I go back to Randy and I say Randy I said look either this man of God God doesn't like him enough to heal him and he's got a hearing aid or something else is going on I don't know what but something else is going on and I think that's how he's getting information and Randy's like no he's using mnemonics mnemonics are basically memory systems all right I you I have to use a lot of mnemonics to memorize things because otherwise i have major issues and i know a lot about mnemonics you either memorize a lot about things about a few things or you memorize a few things about a lot of things but you don't memorize a lot of things about a

lot of things and he was memorizing a lot of things about a lot of things if that was the case i said i don't think so so they went out to the next pop-off uh congregation thing which was in san francisco got a friend of ours uh from alec jason i think his name is uh from uh who's an electronics engineer and knows everything about electronics and he brought this little scanner and dressed up as a security guard hanging out in the back. And he was scared to death he was going to get caught. Nobody questioned him. He's there in a security outfit. And he scans all the frequencies ahead of time and he blocks out every one of those frequencies that are known frequencies. The moment Popov hits the stage, a brand new frequency pops up.

And turns out, I think it was 37 point. i can tell you in just a second here it was uh yeah where was that the frequency that he was on was yeah i thought it was right yeah 39.7 megahertz that's what god broadcasts on and it sounds an awful lot like peter popoff's wife so what we did was we taped all this and went to the johnny carson show this is how long ago that was now on the tonight show with johnny carson randy takes it on the tonight show and keep in mind that pop-off would tape every single one of his shows and sort of edit it real time as well you put them on television yeah he would put them all on television this is how he made you know tons of i mean they were they had a a monthly budget i think it was like 550 000

every single month. Yeah, that was their working budget. That's not the money they were actually making. So God knows how much they were working. So that's how much they were spending? That's how much they were spending. Yeah, yeah, yeah. God, what a dirty business.

Yeah, I tell you. It's so dirty. It's so dirty to just lie to people like that. I would make a great evangelist if I wasn't ethical. Yeah. There are times I go, God. But I just couldn't do it. I would make a great evangelist if I wasn't ethical. Yeah. There are times I go, God, you know, but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. So on this night show, they play, they play the footage that they have from his TV show. They play all that. And then they play,

oh, and this was the one time that Johnny always wanted to know everything that was going to happen. Like she didn't want any surprises, but his staff said, no, you want to be surprised by this. Trust us. So sure enough, they play that footage. And then they play the footage with Popov's wife. And she's saying things like, Petey, the first thing she says, Petey, nod your head if you can hear me. Because if you don't, we're going to have trouble tonight. He nods his head as he's talking, you know, doing his whole evangelical thing.

And then she starts saying, oh, there's a live one up in the back. She's's got cancer in her breasts make her run up and down the aisle and shake those breasts you know it's just all this like re and there's a lot of nasty stuff some of that stuff we couldn't play on this night show but we showed enough and so just a disdain a mocking of these people yeah really yeah she actually had breast cancer and she's telling her oh yeah these people do yeah these it's real ailments that all these people well almost real ailments that all these people. Well, almost real ailments. I'll get to that in a second because we sent some stooges in. And so, yeah, just nasty, nasty stuff.

But anyway, the stuff we showed on The Tonight Show, Johnny sits there and he never he didn't like to edit his shows either. But he had to edit this because the moment that came on, Johnny's like, oh, shit. And you couldn't say shit on TV back then. And so he had to edit that out at that point and he says like do they know about this and like nope they do now and at first pop off try to say that we we we hired actors to be his wife and then when it was obvious that we didn't he then came out and says I thought everybody knew that I used that to enhance the Word of God and it took a long time for him to go on.

And here's the crappy thing about this, right? When I was there, he's doing stuff like telling people to throw their medications up on stage. You don't need them. God's going to take care. Imagine somebody throws up some digitalis pills or something they really truly need and think God's going to heal them. So people do die from these things. And he was using a lot of other tricks. And part of the way he was getting the information was this, right?

So people fill out prayer cards ahead of time. And they put them in these boxes in the back of the room. When nobody's really paying attention, the boxes get switched out. So all those prayer cards with all this information goes backstage to the wife, and she's able to send that information to him. Another thing, she would come out on staff. She would come out. People come to these things hours and hours ahead of time, like literally.

And they leave the hospital on carts and everything else. And she would walk out. She'd say, hi, Mrs. Popoff. I hope my husband gets to you tonight. You know, where are you from? Oh, that's nice. What's wrong with you? Oh, I'm so well, I'll pray for you.

And she gets all this information. Again, she'd go back. She had a big tape recorder in her purse and she would write that information down. Another one was what I call like the Catherine Coleman trick. And Catherine Coleman was an evangelist way, way back who had all these great, great little like scam trick things. And what they do is they wait for somebody to come walking in with a cane. And they can walk, but not well. And they're using a cane. They walk up to them and say, you know what? Wouldn't you be much more comfortable in a wheelchair? And we you right up front you'll be right next to the reverend who's going to say no to that so they get pushed up in the wheelchair and as they're

pushing them along they say where you're from who's your doctor you know what's wrong with they're getting all this information go back out write the information down and give it mrs popoff so the wheelchair is sitting there reverend comes out at some point. He can look at that person. He says their name. And he says, we've never talked before. We've never met before, have we? Because they haven't. It was the usher that was pushing him down that got that info.

He says, you know, God says you can be healed. Now, God said, I'm getting from God that you can't walk. Is that right? And the guy's sitting there. He's thinking, this is a man of God, right? So I'm not contradicting him. And he must mean never be able to walk properly again. That's what he's saying. He's saying that my doctor says I can never walk properly again. So he doesn't contradict him. He says, I say you can. God says you can. Stand up.

The man stands up. Well, that's your first miracle because everybody else, their perception is this guy is in that wheelchair, cannot walk. He says, take a few steps. That takes a few steps. You got that beat as well, right? So now you've got the emotion going even more because here's a man that couldn't even walk he stood and now he walked pop off then goes and gets in the wheelchair and sits in it he says walk to the back of the wheelchair and the guy hobbles to the back of the wheelchair he says push me and the guy pushes him real miracle right but think about it that wheelchair is now acting like a freaking walker.

Yeah. And then the great climax to the whole piece of this trick is he takes the wheelchair, puts it back where it is. And he says to him, now that's your wheelchair. Meaning, Joe, like if you got up right now, walked across the room, I say, Joe, that's your chair. You'd say yes. Well, it actually is your chair. You own it. But I mean, in normal circumstances, I say you were in my studio.

You'd go, yes. Doesn't mean it's your chair. It just means it's where you're sitting in that moment. So the person sits down and you've seen this whole miracle. So he's got all these tricks like that. The old trick of one leg's longer than the other and you make them both the same size. Isn't also people get caught up in the moment and they're on television. They want it to be real and they get emotionally invested.

I think that's a lot of things. But I don't think so in this case. I think this is more of a religious thing that people truly believe. And when you have – it's like when I was talking in tongues when I was young. I've got all this dopamine. I've got all this adrenaline flowing through my body. You really believe. You get caught up.

And it's like when I was watching it, I'm getting caught up. I'm having all this reaction in my body despite the fact I know it's all bullshit. I'm still having this this entire reaction you know it's it's you know mediums i to me the worst scum out there right now are the mediums and and why do i say that because they're taking advantage of a person in a vulnerable moment in their life and they're doing it for their own gain they're also doing it for money and a lot of people will say well they're making them feel good you know what i can give crack to a junkie doesn't mean it's good for

him right the grieving process is a natural part of the state that you have to go through to stay with the living we had a very good friend whose son died of cancer 10 years old died of cancer she's understandably has this huge gaping hole right this huge gaping hole which she's just feeling sad she's upset she needs to fill it with something normally you turn to your family for those things but she met she met a medium who convinced her she could talk to her dead son so she stopped talking to her two living daughters she stopped talking to her husband she started talking to the medium and talking to her dead son almost ended up with a divorce almost lost her entire life as a result and this happens all the time and it is so so sad they're dirty people

very dirty people that long island medium you ever watch that yeah theresa caputo yeah yeah just like and and the worst part is the networks that edit the stuff to make it look even better they don't give a fuck they're just trying to make money they're just trying to make money that's all they don't care about i mean they somehow another feel like they're not a part of the scam i mean they're literally committing fraud they are no i agree they're perpetrating the fraud well the network's not involved what it is is a production company the production company is bringing it to the network but the network should know the process the network often knows what's going on they know it's but it's like you know what it's going to get

as good ratings it's going to do this let's promote it let's like, you know what? It's going to get us good ratings. It's going to do this. Let's promote it. Let's push it. You know, they show up on set. That was an issue on SyFy, the network. They didn't want me just debunking everything. No. And I had to tell them. I said, the problem is everything's bullshit. Yeah.

It's not that I'm trying to debunk everything. We're just really looking at it. Yeah. And everything's bullshit. Well, it's why in my show, I started to go on this a little bit ago, the show Telepathy, where I talk about telepathy and what it is and everything else. But as I'm doing it, I'm performing. And there's a part in that show where I feel really, really dirty and I feel really, really bad, but I feel like I have to do it.

And I actually talk to some people's dead relatives in that show. And it's like the most despicable, horrible thing. And it makes me want to cry every time I do it. But it's because in the second half of the show i go what is telepathy well i think i know what it is i think it's uh a subset of magic i think it's a form of entertainment and a very cruel form of entertainment i know i played with emotions if any of you here this evening but how else can i convince you on an emotional level and on a logical level that this is bullshit? Because here's the thing, right? It's like your friend.

They've had this one experience that's an emotional experience meeting the psychic and the psychic telling them, if you tell them, hey, well, I got this friend Banachick that could do that same thing for you. He's going to, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is, you know, or if I do it. I have to say Banachick's a real psychic. You have to meet him. Yeah.

And then I do it and he goes, wow, that that guy's real and then now you say it's bullshit now they'll think a little bit and go well you know what i had that same emotional experience i had that same feeling maybe maybe i'll look at it my job i feel is never to break down a person's belief systems you know you can believe whatever you want you know that's fine so long as you're not hurting anybody else i'm kind of sort of okay with it. But the big thing is the problem that I have is with the people that are taking advantage of those people's beliefs. You're right.

Because there's always wolves in sheep's clothing that are willing to take advantage of people. Well, there's all these, you go down these side streets and there's these houses, there's little houses that are psychic houses where people live in them. And some of them, like, when you look at those houses, they're like freaking like beautiful.

Yeah. They look like these people must be making money, like, huge money somehow unless they're laundering money or something on the side as well. Well, I mean, there's enough people that believe. And unfortunately, they're good at it. They just hustle people. Yeah. It's a weird legal scam. I mean, in order to, like, the government's constantly shutting down cults and all sorts

of things that are not legit that they find to be dangerous. Right. But they somehow or another allow people, like,

someone got arrested recently for scamming someone out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and it was the same sort of a thing. She was a psychic

and she was saying that she needed all this money for some fucking... You know about Ralph Reigns, right? No. So he was like—I think he was like a multi, like millions and millions of dollars.

And there was a long scam that went on for a long time. I think it was—where was it? I think I have it down there somewhere. I don't know where. But anyway, Ralph Reigns, he basically grew trees and replanted trees and sold trees and everything. He made millions and millions off this. So there was this lady. He got scammed for $5.5 million over the course of a long period of time.

But it all started out with he met this lady in a psychic bookstore. She gave him a bit of a reading. And through the reading, she found out that his dad wasn't well. And she said that she had taken care of her dad through hospice and everything, but she had actually done it herself. She ended up moving in with him. She ended up getting him because she was doing readings, convinced him she was psychic. She ended up getting him, buying him like a $950,000 home, uh, which were all these

investments. She ended up taking over all of his finances as well. She moved in with him romantically? No, no. This is the weird part, right? So she didn't, she ended up taking over all of his finances as well. She moved in with him romantically? No, no. This is the weird part, right? So she didn't. She moved in as the caretaker for the father. Oh, boy.

But in the process of all this, she's now taking over his finances. She's convincing him that they're going bankrupt, they got to pay the taxes. That tax money is getting funneled through her. Gets deeper than this. One day, he's at the bus station. There's this blonde-haired, beautiful girl with an English accent that comes on over, and she starts giving him a reading.

And he ends up marrying or thinks he actually marries this girl at some point. Turns out this girl is the daughter of the other woman. Her name is Portia, and what did they call their kid? They called their kid, oh, Giorgio Armani. Now, here's the thing, right? They had a kid together? He thought he had a kid with her.

Turns out the kid was a cousin's baby that she brought in the house and acted like she had the baby. Wait a minute. She didn't... No, no, you can look this all up online. It's all online. She faked being pregnant?

Well, she used the baby bump thing you know and and and then she acted like she had a second kid but she lost that child and everything else and the only way they got caught is because the boyfriend of i think the mother i think it was went out in the same day and bought these these cars for like a million bucks almost close to that you know that he just went out and spent the money so the the U.S. government started coming and say, wait, what's going on here? How's this going down? And it all came to light. Yeah.

Ralph Reigns. People want to believe shit. You know, they just want to believe. And it's a strange thing. I wonder what that is. some sort of an evolutionary aspect to thought where like to find things that are hidden or secrets it is a part of our thirst for innovation or a thirst to to invent things or to to figure out problems or to to not be deceived i think it's part of survival right you're always looking for that next evolution uh what what's going to work and if we could read minds that would really

help us in our lives right it would say it was a lot of pain if i know that she's really cheating on me or she's lying to me or he's lying to me or but it seems like it's not just psychic energy it's like ghosts and all the other stuff too it all seems connected yeah but it it is that almost evolutionary self-deception i think we always strive to better ourselves and to get that kind of knowledge. And if there's a possibility there's an afterlife, wow, what does that really mean for me as a human being on sort of the evolutionary scale? Now I'm thinking about things that I do in a very different manner, right? There's also like this weird desire that people have to know things that are hidden. Yes.

That's one of the reasons why people believe. That's survival, though. That's survival. Conspiracies, yeah. Right? I mean, that is hidden. Yes. That's one of the reasons why people believe. That's survival, though. That's survival. Conspiracies, yeah. Right? I mean, that is part of survival. It's like, hey, I wonder what's behind that cave right there. Oh, I wonder what's over the top of that mountain.

Are there any animals over there that I can hunt in that field? Right, right. What's over there? Where's a better place to fish? Right. Where's a better place to hunt? And it's all about survival, I think. I think really on some level, it's a really screwed up thing that's in our head.

A pattern. That helps us sort of survive. You know, you talk about people wanting to believe things. You know, there was a guy, there was a Russian psychic, E. Frankl, I think his name was. Now, imagine this, Joe. So you're a conductor on a train, right? And you're going down some tracks with your train and you see a guy in a white suit just looking at the side looking down towards you coming down the tracks puts down a briefcase steps right in front of the train stares at the train puts his hand up in sort of a stop motion but you can't stop so you hit him

you knock him you kill the guy he's in a million pieces or whatever happened to him an actual real guy they open up the briefcase and inside there's a letter. It says, I stopped a bicycle. I stopped a car. I stopped a streetcar. And now I'm going to do the ultimate thing. I'm going to stop a train. This was a psychic who believed he had powers. Now, my thinking on this, I'm going, first of all, I'm going, yeah, he probably stepped in front of a bicycle.

And of course it stopped. The person put the brakes on. He stood in front of a car and it also stopped, of course. And the streetcar he just got lucky with. The train was a huge mistake because it can't stop in time. But this guy really truly believed he had these abilities.

And then I get really, really cynical and I start thinking because I think about my ex-wife and stuff and crazy stuff and I go, I go, yeah, maybe he had an ex-wife. Maybe, not an ex-wife, but a wife who said to him,

hey, you know, I bet you can stop a bicycle. H hire some guy next door to take a bike, you know, and stop like that. I bet you can stop a car. Same guy in the car, you know, stops, slams on the brake, you know. He happens also to be the streetcar driver as well, you know, so he stops and everything else. She says, you know what? You really have these powers. You should step in front of a train and try to stop it.

Oh, Jesus. So that's just have these powers. You should step in front of a train and try to stop it. Oh, Jesus. But that's just me being cynical. So, yeah. Well, it's a good way to think, especially when you've pulled off what you've pulled off and seen what you've seen. Yeah. Yeah. You should have a show where you bust these mediums. We have a show right now.

And it's not really – here's the – it's like you said, right? Networks don't want a debunking show. Yeah, because that kills all their other shows Yeah, we had a show years ago where we came out and said it was all an illusion but they called it magical miracle and Gala was on that show and They had tape blowing Geller out of the water Basically Gala saying stuff that he denied he said later on but they had the tape of it and they could have shown that But they wanted to keep that thing of magic or miracle. Was Geller a fraud?

Did Geller trick people? Gotta be careful how you say this because he loves to sue people. Oh, okay. But he started to tell people right now that he's the world's greatest magician, but he's gotta be careful with that because he sued people who said

that he was a magician and everything else. It is my opinion from everything that I've seen and the times that I've watched him that he is cheating and he is using tricks. And I know for a fact he uses some of my methods now as well. I also know when I was working on the show Phenomenon, it's the first time I told this story ever. So I worked on a TV show for not phenomenon it was finding the next year gala chris angel was on that show as well

and they were the judges on the show and um gala calls me out of the blue which was really unexpected because i've always been on the other side of the fence of gala you know with randy and the skeptical movement and that. And he calls me up and he says, Hey, you know, how are you doing? I said, I'm doing good. He says, Well, you know, you're known as the guy that creates this stuff. You know, every mentalist working today is using a couple of your effects that you've created. And he says, You know, I only have like four or five powers that I've had through the years. And if anybody could come up with a new psychic ability for me, it would be you. And I went, wow, how ballsy is that, right?

He's calling sort of like one of his nurses. So he's hoping that you're full of shit. He's hoping, no, he's hoping I can create a new trick for him that he can tell the world is psychic. Right, but he's also must be hoping that you're not going to expose him. Well, this is the great thing, right? Like even right now when I'm saying this, this is when you hang up.

I go, why would he do that? And I thought, well, it was just a phone call between me and him. He knows I wasn't expecting it, so I'm not recording it. It's my word against his word. And he can say that I misunderstood, that maybe he wanted me to come up with an idea of something for him to use his psychic power. So there's many ways he could spin it. When we worked with Chris Angel, Chris on one of his episodes had Geller on there. And Chris put a spoon on the table and he said, you know, can you bend that?

And Uri said, no. He said, well, why not? He said, well, my abilities aren't working right. So if you bent it right now, it would be a trick, right? And Uri said, well, I can't bend it right now. He said, well, if you did bend it, it would be a trick, right? And Geller says, well, yeah, if I bent it right now, it would be a trick right and erie said i can't bend it right now he says well if you did bend it it would be a trick right and gala says well yeah if i bent it right now it would be a trick and chris is like got him i got him you know and when he walked away i said you don't have him he said well what do you mean he just said it was a trick i said no he never said

it was a trick he said if he had to do it in that moment it would be a trick because his psychic abilities weren't working he never says he knows how to do it as a trick he just said it would have to be a trick. Sure enough, I walked up to Gale later on. He says, you know I didn't say that I use tricks, right? I go, yeah, I know. He's clever. He's slick.

Very, very clever. And very, very slick. And I think he's harmed science and took it back. And it was one of these things, I think, why we had to do what we had to do at the time because science was going in this very weird pseudoscience direction. I mean that was back in the days when you had old pyramids that would basically put a razor blade supposedly and it would sharpen it. So you had all the pyramid power and – Oh, yeah.

I kind of remember that stuff. All that stuff was – People would put things into pyramids to sharpen them. Yeah. Yeah. It didn't work. But it was just – it's all pseudoscience. But it was all this – people wearing tinfoil hats and tinfoil yeah it's just wet you know the whole thing went on and on and on and on it was a list of just a whole litany of whatever

happened to pop off pop off um he disappeared oh he's back on every night now you can find him on every night now the difference is this right so he was one of the first ones to send out and you've probably seen them he would send out um these letters that look like they were handwritten it's obvious now we look at we know it's not handwritten you know that they're printed but back then you people weren't aware of that and it looks like it's handwritten and personal to you and i would get because i just signed up when i was there that day i would get an outline of a foot wear wear this in your shoe and, uh, you know, wrap it up with $20, $50, a hundred dollars, whatever you put in, you'll get tenfold back. Um, Hey, you know, you got this little piece of water and it came from Bethlehem and, you know,

wear that around your neck and then wrap it up with money and send that, send that back. So he was making most of his money, not at the, the, events. He was making it on the mailings. That's where they were making, really making all their money. Took a few years for him to disappear, like about three, four years to him disappear. After the tonight show. After the tonight show, yeah. And then he came back. But the difference is now he's not using any of those tricks.

It's more of a thing that he's on the air and he's going, somebody out there has a headache right now and I'm going to help kill you of your migraines. Oh, yeah, you don't have to if you're just on television. Yeah, you don't have to do anything, right? You just say that. Right, except the point. There's a heart attack right now

and Jesus is going to stop it. Jesus, stop that heart attack. That's right. You know, guys. The guys on the couch, oh, Jesus. He's having Harper and you know, and that, and it goes away.

He's like, oh my God, God just failed me. I'm going to send him money. A two liter Pepsi. Absolutely, yeah, oh, Jesus. He's having Harper and that, and he goes away. He's like, oh, my God, God just failed me. I'm going to send him money. A two-liter Pepsi. Absolutely, yeah. So that's what he's doing now, which is, I don't know. I don't think any of these people should be tax-exempt or anything like that. No, that's what's terrifying.

What's terrifying is that they're tax-exempt and obviously a fraud. How is the government so lax in that? I don't know. It's even this whole thing of not-for-profit organizations, right? I mean, you know, most of them are just frauds. They're fakes. That's frauds. I think you should have to prove that a certain percentage is actually going to the cause.

Whether it's 80%, 75%, whatever. And you can only have X amount of employees. The rest have to be volunteers. And the employees can get paid a lot of money They should a non-profit should be certain amount of ploys. Maybe the present this and this they can only make X amount of dollars in a Nonprofit or organization they can't make more than that or you lose your nonprofit status because you're self-sufficient at that point Yeah, no, I agree with you. Totally. It's just very disturbing to me that I mean look Scientology sued and won Yeah, and they became nonprofit.

I mean, they are, or rather, they became tax exempt because they're- Well, they had so much money. They had- Their religion. Every member's money was pulled to be able to sue anybody to the point to where you couldn't win, right? Well, they were suing so many people that the IRS just gave in. Right.

Yeah. I mean, it's really fascinating. It's fascinating how they did that. They actually fought the IRS just gave in. Yeah, I mean, it's really fascinating. It's fascinating how they did that. They actually fought the IRS and won. Right, but they got that money from the people, the congregations. It's an incredible story, really. And it's just, it's incredible that it's so obvious.

I mean, when you gotta, I mean, there's religions, right, that we don't know the origin of. I mean, we really don't know who was the original writer of this scroll. Exactly. You know what they find in Qumran. We don't know who wrote it. It was too long ago.

Right. But with L. Ron Hubbard, they got video of the guy. They know the guy. You got video of the guy saying, hey, if you want to make a lot of money. Yeah. Start a religion. Start a religion. Yeah.

And he did. When he had the captain's outfit on with ribbons he gave himself and medals, like, what the fuck? Well, you know, that's, yeah. The problem with this stuff is it's so dangerous. It's just so, so dangerous in the wrong hands. You recognize that it's dangerous because you understand how easy people are to be manipulated. Because you've been studying this your whole life and you, you know, in a form of it, you do a show. whole life and you and you you know in a form of it you do a show what i really genuinely appreciate is the way you and the way pen really go out of their way to say that this is a trick this is

bullshit we're bullshitting you i'm not showing you spooky power i got in a lot of trouble for that in my early days of performing mind reading and mentalism the moment that i came out and i would say to people because to me i think when you come out and you tell people it's not real and you can still do it and they want to tell you that has to be real. Right. That means something, right? That's impressive to me, I think. That's really impressive. There are a lot of performers who are not good performers.

They start out not as good performers. And they need the people to believe in them in order to get away with the trickery. Right. And they never lose that. They always want people to believe it's a trickery. So when I started coming out and I started saying, hey, it's magic, it's verbal, it's nonverbal communication, it's all this stuff mixed together to create a show,

I'm not a psychic, there is absolutely nothing psychic about what I do, there were quite a few mentalists in the mentalism field, back then there wasn't as many as there are now, who were upset with me. Duncan said, if you're a psychic, man, the best way to hide it is say you're not a psychic. Right. Yeah. That would be true, except that's not the case.

What's up with the nails? I don't know. Because we're two hours in here, man. We are. All right. Tell me what's up with these nails. Yeah, take a nail. Okay.

All right. All right. So this is what I want you to do. You're going to have to describe what's happening, okay? So this is one of the very first things I started doing, Joe, is this. Like the nail. I want you to look at the nail. Okay, you're holding a nail.

And I want you to watch what happens. Okay, I'm watching what happens. Oh my God, you're bending it. This is incredible. And as you can see, the nail is actually slowly. Slowly bending. Outrageous. I like how you're shaking your hand too.

Yeah. Showing your powers. And the thing about that, take a look at it. It's not a trick nail. It's nothing like that. I mean, everything I use from silverware to forks to anything that I do is actual. No, but you do like this and slowly do that. No, that's, yeah, no.

Did you straighten it out again? I was at the very end right there like that. Oh. I can't do that. So, yeah, hold on. You got another one? Maybe, yeah. I'm going to see.

Yeah. Let's see. Got some forks? Maybe, yeah. Let me see. Yeah. Let's see. Got some forks? Yeah, I got some forks. Okay. So I want you to point to a fork. Anyone? How about this one?

You want it or you want me to have that one? I'll take that one. You'll take it, all right. So you've heard of people, we've talked about people actually bending silverware. Right. Can I have that one instead? Can I have that one that you have? No, you can't.

No, no, no. That's the one I want. I'm going to use something as much as this one. Give me that fucking no, no. That's the one I want. I'm going to use something to do as much as this one. Give me that fucking fork, bro. Listen, I know what you're doing. Give me that fork. Yeah, you got a fork

that's a bullshit fork. No, you can have that fork. Joe, let's take your fork. Watch. Joe. I'm trying to get this fork to bend. You're not watching. Yeah.

This was your fork. Incredible. Trying to get this motherfucker to bend. You're not watching. Yeah. This was your fork. Incredible. Trying to get this motherfucker to bend. What kind of techniques are you using, sir? You can't tell me. These are yours.

They're not trick forks. Well, we're going to eat with these from now on. I promise. Those are actually 100% genuine forks. But you can't tell me how you're doing it.

It's sleight of hand. That's as much as I can tell you. Okay, let me do it again so I can watch one more time. You want to watch one more time? Okay. I was hoping you had like a bullshit fake fork. No, no, no, no.

These are legit forks, ladies and gentlemen. It's easier if I was sitting with you. Watch, I'll show you. It's actually, no, it's easier if I'm sitting with you. So let's do. Yeah, here people can tell. Yeah. So watch this one. Ready? Here we go.

Watch it right here. Okay, so I'm going to shake it like that. Right. You know what? Let's do it this way. Can you... Can I move this? Yeah. So hold both hands out like this. Okay. And I'm just going to hold it right there. I want you to hold that end and hold that end for me. I'm going to have to make it... What do you want me to do?

Hold this end as well. Okay. And I'm going to hold it right in the center right there. Okay. You're rubbing it. Watch. Oh, you're heating it up. Wait, wait. Don't, don't, don't, don't force it. Don't force it.

Just hold it. Okay. Can you feel that? Yeah, because it's a different kind of metal. No, it's not. Yeah, you're using some sort of fake-ass metal. And now it's hard again? Right, because you're heating it up, right? Is that what it is? No, it's not. Yeah, you're using some sort of fake-ass metal. And now it's hard again? Right, because you're heating it up, right?

Is that what it is? No, no. Watch. I'm going to actually get this one to break. Hmm, but I'm better at it now. Chill. Wow. Right, because it's some bullshit-ass metal.

I promise you it's not. I have DVDs out that teach magicians how to do this. Of course, you've got to be a magician to know where to get it. And it uses any fork anywhere, anytime. I promise you. But I got mine to bend now. Good luck with that. You're going to be bending it.

See, if they were made out of special metal, I would never let you keep them because they would be too expensive. But this one's going to twist all the way around. And that one's not made out of special metal? That's regular metal? Hold on. I've got to concentrate, Joe. Dude, are you psychic for real? Yeah.

What kind of wizardry is that, sir? He spun this around and turned it to a knot. The thing is, he's not going to tell you how he does it. That's the real problem. No. You tell me that it's bullshit, but you won't tell to tell you how he does it. That's the real problem. No. You tell me that it's bullshit, but you won't tell me how you're doing this bullshit. It's very unfortunate. Well, you know what?

There's different techniques. That's the thing. Right. And I really hope you can come see his show sometime. I would love to. I do things like one person, another person feels it. I tell people to name a number, any number at all. Okay.

Go ahead. 13. Okay. And that would be a common number for a lot of people to choose sure You know there are specific words if I said to you think of a number name any word with seven letters or less Go ahead Okay, go ahead cunt Of course most people would it just

Most people that a common word. No, that's not a common word No, most people to choose in love or hat or something like that, you know, along those lines. You know, dog or cat are really common ones. But here's the interesting thing, okay? Okay. So inside this wallet. Did you give up on the word because I chose a word that was. No, no, no, no, no.

Yeah. Inside this wallet, I put it in. I was driving. You wrote it? Well, I was driving earlier on, all right? Right. And someone cut you off? And you know what doodling is? Doodling is when you kind of scribble without even looking.

And as you notice inside the hair, you open it up, tell me what's on there. So, you know, I don't want to touch it. What does it say? It's hard to read. Yeah, it's my handwriting and doodling. Does it say 13 and cunt? Yeah, it does. Let me doodling. Does it say 13 in content? Yeah, it does. Let me see.

Holy shit. Hmm. Well, it's such bad handwriting that I got to think that you wrote that underneath the table. That is definitely a 13, right? Mm-hmm. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You wrote it under the table while we were doing this. How would it end up inside the wallet? Because you shoved it in there. No. This is... Try this. What's that one? All right.

We'll try this. I can't promise I'm going to be able to do it. Okay. You know what? I got both of you in here. Let's do this. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. What are we going to do? All right. He's got a bunch of cards on him and stuff. I can take your cards. All right. That is crazy, though. You did have 13 and cunt written on the piece of paper.

I'm going to watch your hands closer. Yeah. I'm going to fan the cards out, Joe. Okay. Pick a card. No, I'm not going to actually have you pick one. Well, I am, sort of, but I'm going to fan it. I'm not good at fanning because I'm not a magician. Right. I'm going to show you the cards. Wait a minute. You're not a magician? I'm a mentalist. Oh. Watch. I'm going to fan the cards out. I want you to think of any card you see. Any card I see. Can you get one? Okay. Do you see it? Yes. Did you get a red card? Excuse me? Did you get a Any card I see. You get one? Okay. You see it? Yes. Did you get a red card? Excuse me?

Did you get a red card? Yes. Good. Since you got a red card, I'm going to do the same with you across the table. I want you to think of any card, but get a black card, okay? Did you get one? Yeah. All right.

I'm going to ask one question because I have to ask questions sometimes to try to figure out exactly what it is you're thinking. Okay. Did either one of you choose a high card? Yes. No. Okay. Did either one of you choose a high card? Yes. No. Okay. High cards are hard for me to get, but I will try.

All right? Look at me. Dun, dun, dun. So you got a red card. I'm going to say your card is probably hearts. Your card over there, Jamie, is black. Yes. Probably spades.

Nailed it. Two of spades? Yes. Hearts, king of hearts? Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me see that deck of cards again. I only had three choices.

Yeah. I had a queen of spades, an eight of spades, and a two of spades. And I switched from the queen of spades before you asked that question, high or low. I went low. You went low? You went low, yeah. Why'd you do that? Because I thought he was going to go high.

Because he thought I was going to go high. He thought I was going to go high. He mind-fucked you. He thought I was going to go high. There's a lot of these kind of things. It's verbal, non-verbal, it's magic, it's psychology. It's a mixture of all kinds of different things. You twisted up a spoon, son.

That shouldn't... Yeah. I don't know how you did that. I definitely want you to come. We're going to the Magic Castle tonight, by the way. Are you? Yeah, you're welcome to come

if you want. I can't. I got to go to the comedy store. Oh, yeah. You working? Yeah. Yeah, I'm working. What time are you working there?

I'd rather come and see you. I'm not working. You're not? No. Oh, you're just going to go hang out? Just going to go see some friends. Watch a bunch of scrubs? There's actually a good friend

of mine, Steve Valentine. I don't know if you know Steve. He's an actor. No, I don't. Really great. He was on Crossing Jordan and stuff like that. He's an actor. No, I don't. Really great. He was on Crossing Jordan and stuff like that. And he's got an interesting story about his life. And it's not the psychological thing as well, which I'm always fascinated with, of where he was performing magic for years, constantly performing magic.

And he wanted to be an actor. And the magic was kind of a side thing for him. But it started getting in the way. He'd go on interviews and stuff. And they'd say, you you know aren't you that guy that does kid shows i want you to do a party for me and so forth and he could never get the part so he started denying that he was a magician and just totally left magic completely and people say yeah i got your business card no that's not me that wasn't me oh wow and that's when he started

to be able to act and he started getting the acting jobs and everything it wasn't until years later that he could go back and be a performer. Wow. And it's a really interesting story, but he does it with magic and teaching and things. Do you ever work at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa? No, no, I never have, no. Yeah, it's interesting because he mixes comedy and magic together.

He'll have a magician on the show with comedians. Yeah, there was a few of those back in the days that I worked where it was Comedy Magic Club type thing. So, yeah a good night do you ever teach this stuff i teach to other magicians i have so you have to be like i have videos and stuff i have books uh so i definitely do teach but i don't teach one-on-one i never teach i just don't have time to teach one-on-one i'm always so busy working and traveling do you teach like this stuff like how do you do these things the metal bending i have have DVDs out on that that teach magicians how to do that, yeah.

Yeah? Yeah, yeah. And I promise you they are not trick forks. Those are not trick nails, not trick forks. They are, yeah. Well, just the fact that you could spin a regular fork like this. How the fuck are you doing that, man?

There is a way. It sort of became the holy grail for me when I can tell you how that came about for me. There was Masau wakikota i told you that he could actually put it under a chair and he would put it in something and twist it i was doing an article for the national inquire i don't even think i could do that with just my hands that's what's confusing and the guy shows up you yeah there is a way and the guy shows up a photographer shows up for me and he said i want you to bend some silverware so you know i i go you go to him, and I go, okay, all right, I'm going to bend something. So I take one, and I go like this, and next thing you know, it's bending up like that.

And then I do another bend for him. He says, this is going to take a while, isn't it? And I go, yeah. He says, just bend them up with your hands. I go, well, that's cheating, which is exactly what I was doing. So I say, that's cheating. So he says, no, go ahead. So I just start bending them up with your hands. I go, well, that's cheating, which exactly what I was doing. So I say, that's cheating. So he says, no, go ahead. So I just start bending them up like crazy, crazy.

And next thing you know, I had a twist and I remembered exactly how I got that twist. So I called Randy up on the phone because it was sort of the holy grail thing looking for a way to actually do it. And I went in there, I had one of those telephones, I had the long cord, you know, all the way into the bathroom.

And I call Randy up and I'm whispering to him. I say, hey, I just bent a fork with my hands, you know, to put a twist in it. And he call Randy up and I'm whispering to him and say, hey, I just bit a fork, you know, with my hands, you know, to put a twist in it. And he goes, yeah, so what? I go, no, no, no. And I explained exactly how to do it. And now all the mentalists use that technique. Yeah.

So this was a regular fork. Yes. And you twisted that right in front of my face with one hand. Yep. Hmm. I don't know how the fuck you did it. You're not supposed to know. You're supposed to enjoy the mystery, Joe. Well, I'm trying. Know the fuck you did it. You're not supposed to know. You're supposed to enjoy the mystery, Joe.

Well, I'm trying. Know that you can be fooled. It's very confusing that I can be fooled so easily because this is a real fork. I know that there's certain forks that they make out of shitty metal. It's like you heat it up and it becomes like super bendy. Yeah, that's something that's – I don't want to get too much into methods and so forth but that's definitely not something i use or would use and yeah and that looks just a little weird but it's weird yeah it looks like i'm jerking off the fork but i'm trying to get a mnemonic

ejaculation that may or may not do it the thing about was weird is that how easy that fork bent when i bend it when you had it it was very strange the one that bent real easy when i bend it and you said oh you're doing it on your own it was so easy to bend right like why would it why was it so easy to bend i can't tell you why at that moment but if you look now that's that fork right there and take a look at it and see if it's easy to bend now you'll see that it's not i'm heating this fucker up i'm gonna make it easy but it's because at that moment, that's the one that I was going to break. I wanted to break that one. It's very confusing.

Yeah. It's a job. Well, it's amazing, really, because you let people actually touch the things. And someone like me who knows that you're doing a trick because you told me that you're doing a trick, and yet I still can't figure out how the fuck you did it. When you see me work, you'll see I throw everything across the stage and a lot of stuff I just leave for people afterwards because I want them to interact with those things. I want them to take them home. Yeah. No, I can imagine, especially the forks.

Yeah. After a while, you know, that's just, you just sat, I mean, you just sit and look at this fork afterwards. You're like, okay, I don't think I could do that. Yeah. I mean, if I just gave you a regular fork, Jamie, you think you could do that? Spin that? No. I don't think I could do that. Yeah. I mean, if I just gave you a regular fork, Jamie, you think you could do that, spin that? No. I don't think I could twist that thing like that. Remember we were talking about the TV show?

We were talking about the TV show earlier? Yes. There is, I have a pitch that's out right now for a series, which it looks like it may be going somewhere, so I don't want to say too much about it, but it's bringing back the Million Dollar Challenge. And it's going out to look for- The James Randi Million Dollar Challenge. Yeah, James Randi Million Dollar Challenge. And it's to go out looking for psychics testing them under proper controls if they're trying to trick us maybe i'll expose their methods i will demonstrate my abilities

supposedly to do the exact same thing under certain conditions as well and it's sort of what makes me the expert to go out and try to find these things and see what's really going on and it's sort of brain games meets debunking, meets psychic phenomena. But not every single one is going to be debunking either. It's only going to be really debunking when somebody is purposefully going out and trying to bullshit somebody and trying to fool people or taking advantage of people. It's very baffling stuff. I mean, the stuff about talking to people and ask them questions and reading their cues, that kind of makes sense. But this doesn't make sense at all. The fork stuff just does not make

sense. Yeah, it's really weird because the PK stuff is something, as a mentalist, as a performer, you tend to pick your powers, right? You tend to, well, you wouldn't because you're not, you know, but as performers ourselves, when we perform this type of stuff, we go, OK, does that fit sort of in the repertoire of my abilities? Do I have X-ray vision? You know, I drive cars blindfolded, you know, put dough in there. They put tape over there. We see me do something along those lines on your show. And it's this thing of like you pick your abilities and this doesn't seem to fit with anything except that Uri Geller did do this and also said that he could duplicate pictures and read minds once in a while as well.

He didn't do too much of the mind reading, but did a little bit of it. Somebody would draw a picture, then he would draw a picture, and they would match, which is a standard mentalism magic trick anyway. But his methods were a little bit more bold, a little bit more direct.

I'm still baffled. Stop being baffled. How could I not be? You bent some forks, man. Maybe could I not be? Yeah, well. You bent some forks, man. Maybe someday I'll teach you how to do all this. I'll tell everybody. No, then I won't tell you.

Don't tell me. Then I can't tell you. You can't tell me because I'll fucking tell everybody. Yeah, but then nobody's going to be impressed when you do it. Well, I don't care. Yeah. I just want everybody to know. Yeah.

Is there anything else that you could do that's fucked up? I didn't really bring a whole lot because I've kind of just wanted to talk more than anything else. I mean, what you've done is enough. It's very, very impressive. Maybe I can do one thing for you. Okay. I don't know.

All right. So, see these? You know what they are, right? No. They're the Xeno cards, basically. Xeno cards? Xeno shapes. Basically, five shapes that were used at Stanford Research Institute.

At Duke University, actually. Not Stanford. Duke University. They were created by Carl Zener. Simple shapes. There's a square. There's a star. Wavy lines.

A plus and a circle. All right. These are the standard shapes right there. I'm going to try to get you to choose a specific one. Now, psychologically, if I asked you to choose one, which would you say? Like, I mean, I wish I didn't even say psychology. The wavy lines. Let me go with the wavy lines.

And that would be psychological because it's right in the middle. That would be the one. All right. So I'm going to go with, yeah, I'm going to go with a star, I think. Star. There's a circle. There's a square. The plus and the wavy lines.

All right. I'm going to mix them up so you don't know which is which I'm gonna have to look at them in just a second myself to make sure I know exactly where that is all right we could do this is the gambling thing or not but I don't like to do that I should probably rip people off strong I gotta put that in the right place okay good so this is what we're gonna do I'm gonna take cards'm going to ask you, do you think the star is that card? All you have to do is not choose a star. You're going to choose a star.

You won't know why you choose a star, but you will choose the star. All right? Okay. You just will. And it's going to be something I do, something I say. It's going to be something that I'm going to try. Something's going to make me pick the star. This may or may not work.

All right? But we're going to try. Oh, I see. Sne try it. Something's going to make me pick the star. This may or may not work. All right. But we're going to try it. Oh, I see. Sneaky bastard. Do you think this is, do you think? I'm going to say yes, that's the star. You say yes, that's the star. Yes.

Okay. So you're supposed to say no, that's not the star at some point because your idea is not to pick the star. I want you to not pick the star, anyone. So if you think that's the star, all right, I will. Okay. So you're just going to say do you understand yes all right so here we go i know you're watching me close all right so let's do it again hold on you already flipped them around let me mix them up one more time

there's this sneaky hand movements are so confusing watch okay no sneaky hand movements makes me sad that you spend so much time learning how to move your hands like that so i'm gonna keep it simple really simple for you can i change my my opinion yeah well i've cut it already so because i want to do it again because i want to make make it very very good your job is to not choose the star right okay not choose the stars okay ready all right so um i guess i'll just ask you do you want this card no all right so that you don't want that one don't want you, do you want this card? No. All right. So you don't want that one? Don't want that one. Do you want that card?

Don't choose a star. Yes, I want that one. You sure that's the one you want? Yeah, that's the one I want. Don't look. Okay, I won't look. Don't look. I don't trust you.

Watch my hands, bro. No, don't look. Don't look. Okay. Let's see what you didn't choose. You didn't choose a circle. Right. You didn't choose a plus. You didn't choose the wavy lines or the square. You chose a star. Take't look. Don't look. Okay. Let's see what you didn't choose. You didn't choose a circle. Right. You didn't choose a plus.

You didn't choose the wavy lines or the square. You chose a star. Take a look. Son of a bitch. Yeah. Yeah, but that's like sleight of hand, right? Huh? Huh?

No. What the hell is that? What are you talking about? Sleight of hand? I can try it. I can try it one more time. Hold on. Okay. Let's put it there. All right. talking about which sleight of hand i can try it i can try it one more time hold on okay

let's put it there all right i hate doing this stuff like this because especially with the amount of people that are listening to this podcast why what happens don't know about if i'm wrong i look like an idiot oh if you're wrong as a performer yeah somehow or another i think you're not gonna be wrong i could be so, I'm going to try and make you choose a star. Okay. Okay, your job is to not choose it. Okay. I'm not going to do it again after this.

This is the last time I'm doing this, all right? Do you want that card? Yes. That's the one you want? That's the one I want. Now keep in mind, you did that the first time. Yeah. All right?

Don't look. All right, I won't look. Square, circle, plus, wavy lines. Take a look. Damn it. The star. Now, do you realize that I'm impulsive and that I have no patience? I do know that.

And so I go for the star immediately? No, you did it the first time, so you thought that by doing it again, that I would not think that you would do it a second time. Is that what you did? That's sort of kind of not what I did. She's not going to tell us. So now he's getting frustrated, right? No, no. No, I'm very impressed.

I'm very impressed. Listen, man, this was a lot of fun. It was fun. I enjoyed it. And thanks again for doing the TV show. That was a lot of fun, too. Anytime. And thanks again for doing the TV show. That was a lot of fun, too. Anytime. And thanks for being so, well, you've cleverly navigated the waters, being so honest about

it being tricks without revealing the tricks, and then even doing them in front of me, which is incredibly impressive, this fork thing. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to tell you other than this was fun. I enjoyed it. I really appreciate it, man. And thank you for everything, by the way. My pleasure.

And everything you do. And your website is banachek.com. Banachek.com. B-A-N-A-C-H-E-K. And people can find out all your tour dates, all the places you're going to be. They can find out my tour dates, everything I'm going to do. And you've got to see this in real life, folks. It's going to fuck you up.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it, man. Thank you.