Project - Project Alpha Part I

00:00This is World's Greatest Con. I'm Brian Brushwood.

00:09Why are we obsessed with coming of age stories?

00:15Also, if you're under the age of 25, please do not embarrass yourself by trying to answer that.

00:20Because the answer is once you get some years underneath you, you realize how much you owe to those random gateway moments.

00:29And in the moment, they never feel special, but they stick with you.

00:35They make a little change.

00:38They can end up shaping your life, determining your career path, who you marry, what kind of children you have.

00:47By the time you're 50 years old, you can trace back to one silly moment, an entire life's work.

00:5729 years ago, this exact month, I began my entire magic career.

01:09And it wasn't because I loved illusion.

01:12It wasn't because I loved the starry-eyed look of children and being amazed.

01:17And it certainly wasn't because I thought there was money in it.

01:23It was one very simple reason.

01:26Gordon Prince, my best friend Gordon refused to tell me how a trick was done.

01:33We're sitting outside in the parking lot of the local movie theater where we both worked.

01:39He spread the cards and I had a truly free choice.

01:43He squared them up, had me place the card on top and cut the deck and cut the deck again and cut the deck again and again and again until I was absolutely convinced there was no way short of them being marked cards, which I knew they weren't. They were mine.

02:00There was no way he could know where my card was.

02:04That son of a bitch found it.

02:07I tried to play it as cool as an 18-year-old Brian Brushwood could, just sort of quietly nodding, a little bit of a frown as I tilt my head and say, huh, not bad. Yeah.

02:19Uh, yeah, I'm getting pretty tired.

02:23Uh, hey, wait, that last one.

02:27How, uh, how did you do that one?

02:30And Gordon has the audacity to look me straight in the face and say the words I remember to this very day.

02:40Now, this one's too good.

02:43Something broke in me.

02:47The next day I went to college and I figured out while Gordon was back in high school, I suddenly had a lot of free time.

02:58I took a bus up to a transfer station to get on another bus.

03:03I walked two miles down the road to a small mom and pop magic shop in North Austin that was run out of a garage.

03:10I left there with one pack of playing cards and a copy of the Royal Road to Card Magic.

03:15And on chapter one, I learned it was something called the key card.

03:19Ha, got you, Gordon.

03:20But I'm not stopping there because now I'm in it to crush him. I've got time. I've got information.

03:27I've got no friends.

03:29These don't all necessarily sound like advantages.

03:32And before I knew it, months later, I was working part-time gigs, making three times the amount of money I could make working at a movie theater.

03:42So I kept on going.

03:43I talked my professors into letting me make my senior thesis a magic show.

03:48And now all of a sudden I had 35 minutes of good material.

03:52I went on tour with an illusion act running sound, dating and marrying the lovely assistant.

03:58I quit my day job in May of 1999.

04:02And two years later, I was on The Tonight Show. I won awards.

04:06I went on The Tonight Show again.

04:08I launched a show called Scam School that led to my own TV show on National Geographic, which is the reason I met Justin Robert Young.

04:16And the two of us co-created the very show you're listening to right now.

04:21There would be no magic career, no television shows, no world's greatest con.

04:25I wouldn't have married my wife.

04:26I wouldn't have the three kids that I have.

04:29There would be no Brian Brushwood that you know today.

04:32If in that parking lot, Gordon had told me how he did that damn trick.

04:37Maybe that's the other reason that we're fascinated with these coming of age stories, because the characters in these stories, they don't realize that the decisions they make could shape the rest of their lives.

04:50And sometimes in very special circumstances, literally reshape the world.

04:56On this season of World's Greatest Con, I'm going to tell you one of these kinds of stories.

05:03Two teenagers full of righteous indignation, the kind of fire and fury that only an 18-year-old can have.

05:09They're going to punch way above their weight and attempt an audacious multi-year con.

05:13These teenagers look around and they think the world has gone crazy, that the authorities began believing in fantasy and that it's being funded with millions of dollars.

05:22And if these kids see that the people in charge believe it, then the real con men are free to fleece the public peddling this nonsense.

05:30In their eyes, the only way to humble all of them is to show the big wigs exactly how easy it is to take advantage of them.

05:38Just like all teenagers, they don't truly understand what it's going to cost them and how it will change their lives forever.

05:46This is a tale of daring, friendship, brothers and fathers, a warning of betrayal, ego and baffling overconfidence.

05:53But to understand the motivations of our main characters, you first have to wrap your mind around how broken the world is for them and why they would risk everything to fix it in what just might be the world's greatest con.

07:45One of the trickier things to understand in culture and influence is the idea of social contagion.

08:01The idea that fads, rumors, memes, the way they spread and they change the shape and direction of society.

08:09Careers have been dedicated to this phenomenon, not just in academia, but in influence-based jobs, advertising, and of course, the world of cons.

08:18After all, if you could guess which ideas are going to be fresh and new, exciting and new, you're already halfway to taking advantage of it.

08:28From our best guesses, to have an idea spread fast and hit critical mass needs a lot of things to go right.

08:34Maybe the most important is acknowledging that in a world of chaos, we crave order.

08:40A startling story from Lenin in 1914 with 13 followers, to the present with 1 billion people under the control of a comparative handful of communists.

08:54If, as the communists say over and over again, war is inevitable, then it is sheer folly for us not to make every conceivable political, economic, military, and psychological preparation to win.

09:06No one knows what the end of the story will be.

09:11That's up to you.

09:13That's actor Ronald Reagan narrating a film about the threat of communism in 1962.

09:22Now, of course, he goes on to become the president, but that's not until the 80s.

09:28For our story, we're right in the middle.

09:30Welcome to the 70s in the USA.

09:32The adult children of the baby boom are now suffering from the lingering effects of the World War's the greatest generation fought.

09:41We're seeing the emergence of the United States of America as the preeminent Western superpower.

09:47Interconnected highway systems, a booming economy, and the brand new medium of television.

09:53They all conspired to microwave a monoculture, one that could be exported throughout the free world.

10:00And free world is the operative phrase here.

10:03Because on the other side of the Iron Curtain is the other great victor of the Great Wars, the United Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR, the communist super bloc bound their citizens to a common glorious purpose.

10:21And through that central vision and execution, they could always be able to overcome any loose configuration of self-interests.

10:30Now, if you're younger than I am, do me the favor of forgetting everything you know about Russia.

10:40Forget everything about communism.

10:41Forget everything you know about the leadership of the USSR.

10:43Because for our story, you don't need any of that.

10:47You're just a kid in the 70s.

10:50And just like everyone else, you're assuming at some point the world is going to end.

10:54In the minds of my generation, this looming super conflict with the USSR.

10:59It's not just a possibility. It's a certainty.

11:02Hell, even your sci-fi had kind of a communistic bent to it.

11:07Star Trek, where there's no money.

11:10We all just help each other because that's what we do, comrade.

11:14And the threat just kept looming larger.

11:17The arms race was a very real thing.

11:21The looming shadow of nuclear war.

11:24And our big defense in my elementary school was to hide under a desk.

11:32And in fact, that may be a good way to understand the cultural mood.

11:47This sense of helplessness.

11:50The weapons had all just become too powerful.

11:52The leaders too distant. Too crazy.

11:54At any moment in any town, a bomb could be launched and boom, the world would be over before we knew it.

12:02Not because of anything you did.

12:04Not because of anything you believed. Just because.

12:07And it's in this moment of learned helplessness that humanity craved something more, something different, some kind of outside force that could possibly turn the tide.

12:21We wanted to believe.

12:24And if it's our minds that are torturing us with all these grim possibilities, maybe inside our mind was where we could find the solution as well.

12:36Maybe, just maybe, with enough practice and research, we could unlock the true promise of the human brain through, and I'm serious, psychic phenomenon.

12:47All right, here's the good part.

12:51In a pre-internet world where all you got to learn was on TV or in books, the 70s were this golden age of so much awesome spooky stuff.

13:06In San Francisco, as in other American cities, Satan is alive and well.

13:12There doesn't seem to be much doubt that UFOs are happening.

13:17And along with archaeologists and oceanographers, parapsychologists are joining in the search to locate evidence of the legendary lost continent of Atlantis.

13:26Cryptids like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, visits from aliens and other galaxies, ancient astronauts.

13:35But here's the thing.

13:37It's hard to believe in a Bigfoot if you ain't seen one.

13:42It's hard to believe in an alien if you ain't met one.

13:45But if you've had that experience of picking up the phone to call someone and they were already on the line, if you've ever been humming a song turned on the car and the radios playing that exact hit, that's personal.

13:59That's why nothing was taken quite as seriously by the real institutions built on taking things seriously as the power of extrasensory perception.

14:10The possibilities, and I mean the military possibilities, were endless.

14:16Meanwhile, the governments of both Russia and America are quietly sponsoring psychic research.

14:23Both countries have seriously considered using telepathy, the direct transference of thought from one mind to another.

14:31Remote viewing, the ability to see something miles, if not hundreds of miles away.

14:38Telekinesis, the ability to move something using only your mind.

14:43Literal mind control, the ability to see into the head of somebody else and control their physical actions in a pre-internet world.

14:52separated by an iron curtain where we only have television propaganda to guide us.

14:58Rumors begin to circulate that the Soviets are putting real research into exactly these pursuits.

15:05And if the Reds are going to start making psychic soldiers, the US can't lose this ultimate arms race.

15:14And so we open up a disturbing dark period of governmental psychological research.

15:19Programs hidden within programs that try to unprogram the human mind through medically induced comas and electroshock therapy.

15:29Entrapping citizens, including children, and dosing them with psychedelics.

15:33All of them hoping to unlock some final phase of human evolution.

15:38So these children can become weapons against our enemy before they do the same to us.

15:44If this sounds familiar to our younger listeners, it's because I'm describing the world that Stranger Things is set in.

15:55If for whatever reason you ain't seen the show, it takes place in a small town in middle USA, 1980s.

16:02A bunch of misfits find an escapee from a psychic laboratory named Eleven.

16:05On the TV show, she has genuine psychic powers because it's a TV show.

16:11But in real life, our life, there were real life Elevens who were taken in by government experiments with the exact same goals.

16:20And their story is horrifying.

16:22I was given a glass of Kool-Aid.

16:24And so were the other children.

16:27This Kool-Aid was spiked with LSD. Let's pause.

16:32This is all very scary and all very, very real.

16:38Programs like this could be their own episode.

16:42Hell, their own series.

16:44But this episode is about social contagion.

16:48This contagion that's hit a critical mass that is causing full-grown adults to torture children to hunt for it.

16:57And like I said at the beginning, when the world wants to believe something and the con man recognizes what it is, he's already halfway to getting it.

17:08The young Israeli psychic Yuri Geller, who's puzzled scientists with his ability to bend metal with his mind and to dematerialize objects, claims that the power to do this is channeled through him from an extraterrestrial intelligence.

17:24Well, if Geller is right, we all have a lot of new thinking to do.

17:30It's breaking, I think now.

17:32Look, it's becoming plastic and there is no heat.

17:36It's fracturing, I think.

17:38Born in the mid-40s, Yuri Geller is the poster boy for the psychic boom of the 1970s.

17:46An Israeli soldier injured during military service, he goes on to become a nightclub entertainer.

17:57He became a sensation because of a simple, extraordinary claim.

18:02He had the powers the world wanted to believe in.

18:06He could find water in a desert through dowsing.

18:10He knew what you were thinking and could prove it.

18:16But what played best on TV?

18:18He could bend metal with his mind.

18:20Spoons were his specialty.

18:22That image of a spoon melting at the slightest touch is a window into our obsession.

18:29A spoon isn't the most sturdy of items.

18:34Yeah, it would be more impressive if he could bend an I-beam at a construction site or go to a prison and just with his pinkies open up the bars.

18:47But nobody has I-beams laying around the house and no prison wants somebody bending their bars.

18:51Meanwhile, everybody knows a spoon.

18:53One of those things you touch every single day.

18:57Visually, the wobbling of the spoon head, that's poetry.

19:01When you see one severed, it's truly a miracle.

19:06It's like the head coming off the serpent of your own disbelief.

19:11I was listening to the radio and he said, hey, there's this man, you know, and he's got these superhuman powers and he can bend metal with his mind.

19:20And he's going to come on the program next week and he's going to teach everybody in their homes how to bend metal with their minds.

19:27And I thought, wow, this is amazing.

19:30That's Banachek, one of the greatest minds in the performing art of mentalism.

19:33So, yep, next week I was right there with my brothers sitting by the radio listening and the man's name was Uri Geller.

19:41Uri Geller had become a sensation around the world.

19:44You know, I had already heard about Uri Geller.

19:47And every adult that I knew believed Uri Geller was genuine.

19:49So, of course, I did.

19:50I was a kid, right?

19:51I just believed whatever the adults told me.

19:54So, Geller comes on the radio and he says, you know, go get any piece of metal and bring it to the radio.

20:00When we come back from commercial break, you know, you're going to bend it with your mind.

20:04Now, it won't work for everybody, but for many of you, it will work.

20:07So, I went around the house looking for a piece of metal.

20:10I found a little needle.

20:11I thought, well, that would be great, right?

20:12It's not going to be hard to bend.

20:14I should be able to do that.

20:15If anybody can bend metal with their mind, if I can do it, that'll work.

20:18So, I got the needle and I brought it up to the radio.

20:20And he said, concentrate on it.

20:22And I concentrated on that needle and I bore my eyes into it.

20:24And I believed that it was going to bend.

20:27I mean, why wouldn't I want to have superhuman power, especially with my background at that particular time?

20:30And I also wanted my siblings to believe I could bend metal, right?

20:33So, I'm holding that needle up and I concentrate on it and it bends.

20:36Now, minutely, like minutely, like on a micro level, it bent.

20:39I believed that it actually bent, right?

20:41Right now, Banaszczak is headlining at the Strat Resort right on the Las Vegas Strip.

20:46But back then, he was just a lonely little boy in South Africa, desperately hoping that he could be special.

20:52That his belief in Geller could unlock the same genuine powers within him.

20:57And it wasn't just children hoping Geller was right. Academia believed too.

21:03The trustees of Stanford University founded what would become the Stanford Research Institute in the 1920s.

21:10It gave us some of the first research on air pollution and the ozone layer.

21:17In the 1950s, they were hired by Walt and Roy Disney to investigate the feasibility of a theme park in Southern California.

21:25They helped movies develop color film, pioneering the process behind Technicolor.

21:29But by the 1970s, that social contagion had them too.

21:33They wanted to uncover the truth behind what they called parapsychology.

21:38And they knew just who they wanted to see, Uri Geller.

21:45During this series of experiments, they tested Geller and his claimed ability to remote view, to replicate drawings created in a totally different room.

21:55They determined these experiments to be a success, and they said it warranted further study.

22:01The world had already seen all it needed to.

22:06Uri Geller, charismatic, symmetrical, nice jawline, handsome figure, now with validated powers.

22:12Uri became an instant phenomenon.

22:14I've been reading a lot of research on him from the Stanford Research Institute and from the science section of the New York Times.

22:26A lot of publicity on this gentleman whose name is Uri, U-R-I, Uri Geller.

22:31That's Uri making his debut on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

22:34It's hard to understand what this meant from our point of view, living in a fractured world of subcultures on the Internet.

22:40But at this time, The Tonight Show is Mount Olympus.

22:44Appointment viewing, a ground where only gods tread.

22:47Not movie stars, athletes, politicians, the ones where you only need to say their first name because your brain has already auto-completed the rest.

22:58But it's also a place where mortals can become gods.

23:03Uri is the right man at the right place at the right time.

23:08The stars were aligned.

23:09He could not fail.

23:11But he did fail. He failed spectacularly.

23:15And that was because one man who had become Geller's greatest adversary believed something else about Geller.

23:25He believed that Geller was only doing the same magic tricks that illusionists had pioneered for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

23:38He believed Geller was only taking advantage of that social contagion, that desire to believe.

23:45He believed he knew how to expose him.

23:49And that's exactly what James Randi did.

25:34I actually uncovered James Randi before I knew about Uri Geller, and I knew about Randi just because as an escape artist, it had a very similar parallel to the things that I was starting to do.

25:59That's Mike Edwards, and at the moment he's talking about, he's in high school in Iowa, becoming a bit of a local celebrity for his own daring feats as an escape artist and magician.

26:11Naturally, he starts checking out the challenges that came before him, and he comes across James the Amazing Randi, who began his own career as an escape artist and magician up in Canada.

26:21My entire life long, I've only seen James Randi one way or foot something or other giant beard, incredibly big, bushy eyebrows, a bit of a scowl on his face while he issues razor sharp wit at all times.

26:37He's like a snarky stand up halfling Gandalf.

26:41Randi's career as a magician and escape artist took him all over the world.

26:46And in 1956 on NBC's The Today Show, he broke the endurance and escape record set by Harry Houdini himself, eventually emerging from a sealed metal coffin at the bottom of a hotel swimming pool at the 104 minute mark.

27:02But that wasn't the only way Randi mirrored Houdini.

27:06Just like the legendary magician battled the spiritualists of the early 20th century, Randi believed fraudsters were using deception techniques achievable to anybody who wants to read a magic book as genuine powers.

27:20And in the process, they took advantage of the most vulnerable among us, including grieving families seeking to communicate with dead loved ones.

27:29Randi exposed these practices on New York City radio throughout the 60s.

27:33But as our social contagion begins to truly take root in the 1970s, he helps to found the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, PSYCOP.

27:45During this time, Randi writes his most famous book to date, 1975's The Magic of Uri Geller, a book devoured by kids like our friend Mike.

27:56And then I started reading his book, The Magic of Uri Geller, which really uncovered what a devious crook I believe Uri Geller is and still is to this day.

28:09And that really infuriated me because it is somebody that's bastardizing our art as magical entertainers for their own personal gain, for their own personal fame and for their ability to fleece people for their money.

28:26A defining moment of that book?

28:28Exactly how Randi helped engineer the humiliation on national TV of parapsychology poster boy Uri Geller with the help of another magician who suspected Geller didn't have the powers he claimed, Johnny Carson.

28:45According to Randi, Geller had a very simple and very rudimentary way of achieving his amazing feats. He cheated.

28:54Specifically, while Geller was charming everybody who was about to test him, Geller's associate would in secret find out what materials are going to make up the test.

29:06Once he found them, according to Randi, his associate would prepare the items to ensure success, including but not limited to pre-bending spoons.

29:14After talking to one of the scientists who is on hand for Geller's Stanford experiments, Randi became convinced that the researchers desire to believe Geller was what really led them to be taken advantage of by simple techniques like these.

29:31But Johnny Carson, the Zeus of our monocultural Mount Olympus, he did not want to bless a hoaxter.

29:38If Geller had the goods, he could do it the way he said he did it, with his mind and only his mind.

29:48So if the Tonight Show was going to give a truly fair airing of Geller's experiments, it was going to have to be a fair show.

29:55abilities, then the protocol was simple.

29:57Don't tell Geller what the experiments will be, and keep all the material away from prying fingers, and that's exactly what Randy suggested.

30:02As you know, I told your people what to bring.

30:05One of the experiments I did at SRI is finding a hidden object in ten cans, of course.

30:12I did it repeatedly all the time. Right.

30:16And we have ten aluminum cans there, and ten over here.

30:20I was already trying to concentrate in them, so I'll try the water.

30:26Now, since we have been gone, let me explain to the audience at home that he has not touched these objects in any way.

30:33They were brought over here by our property man.

30:36The table was placed here, and while we have been away, you have not touched them in any manner.

30:40I will verify that.

30:41So I'll just move my hands over them, and if I'll feel for...

30:44And one of them contains water.

30:46I like to do it the way we'll start eliminating the ones that do not have the water.

30:53I cannot say enough about how awkward these 22 minutes of Geller's segment are.

30:56When you know the story behind it, it is excruciating.

30:59Not only because Geller can't achieve any of the feats he's on the show to exhibit, but because Carson, this effortless titan of all pop culture, just lets him twist.

31:09Now, what I do now is try to have a sort of a feeling where the water is.

31:18Now, you're not touching them at all.

31:25You can see that I'm not.

31:31Well, I don't trust me.

31:34Okay, take this one out. There's no water. Oh, careful.

31:40Wait, you know, pick them very carefully. Right.

31:47Carson gives him no one-liners, asks only a few questions.

31:56The rest is just an expectant gaze on the experiment.

32:01He is really suspicious.

32:03I'm having a hard time with you.

32:06I don't mean to be, right?

32:08I really just keep looking.

32:11And I'm telling the viewers, if I miss, then I miss.

32:17I won't pass here.

32:19Usually, I pass if I don't feel for it, but if I'm wrong, then I'll be wrong.

32:27I'll also be a little disappointed, but that's the way it goes if I'm pressed.

32:32See, Johnny, what happens here, you can see that there's nothing put on here. I'm not. Yes, I understand.

32:47Trying to make it longer.

32:51I'm trying to feel if there's no feeling, then I can't do it. That's it.

32:58Give me a little more time.

32:59All right, would you?

33:01Now, we'll cut away from the commercial, and I will verify, and everybody in the studio will verify that nobody will touch the objects, okay? Right.

33:15Because I don't want to push it on, but obviously, we don't have, you know, unlimited time on a television show.

33:21I wish we did.

33:22Oh, and also a Kentucky Fried Chicken live read.

33:24Which one is the breast?

33:25Do you find your meals too routine?

33:27Watch closely and see how dinner can turn into a barrel of fun.

33:30And we're back to Flop Sweat. We're back.

33:33How are you feeling, Harry? Fine.

33:35I feel fine myself.

33:36In other words, this is something you just have to feel, and you can't be pressed on it. That's it. It can't be.

33:41For the record, Geller never made a pick.

33:43After the segment, Geller assumed he was ruined.

33:45That's it, he would tell a journalist. I was destroyed.

33:48Randy's book about Geller went on to be a success.

33:51Geller attempted to sue Randy over it. He failed.

33:57Randy goes on to become the face of the skeptic movement, an icon to critical thinking.

34:03And many people point to that moment, that failure by Geller, live on The Tonight Show with millions watching.

34:10This was the moment the tide turned.

34:14A false god was unmasked.

34:16After all, Randy proved his point.

34:18Randy says, hey, man, if you're going to lie and say you're a real psychic, I'm going to bust you because I know what you're doing.

34:29Randy says, Uri Geller, you're a fraud, stealing attention, fame and money away from the people who dare to believe you genuine.

34:35Meanwhile, James Randy, I mean, he's an honest liar. He's a magician.

34:39Uri Geller does not claim to be a magician.

34:43He says he's psychic.

34:45And as of now, he's done. That's the story.

34:49But that's not what happened.

34:50Because despite his fears, Geller was far from destroyed.

34:54Because it turns out that when a belief is held, a deeply personal belief, getting dunked on is not an effective strategy to get people to change their mind.

35:09It's confirmation bias that your mind moved an object.

35:13You remember the time that you looked at a clock and it happened to be 1111.

35:20And it keeps happening all the time.

35:23And you make a big deal about it.

35:26Every one of these pieces of confirmation reinforcing your belief.

35:29All of a sudden, the Tonight Show is not going to convince you that you were wrong this whole time.

35:34If anything, it's going to make you double down.

35:37You're going to think about how, of course, you can't do that.

35:42You can't just summon it at will.

35:45It's not a comic book power.

35:47It's got to be teased out with the right environment.

35:51And Johnny Carson clearly didn't do that.

35:54But at the end of the day, it was the Tonight Show.

35:57And everybody knew the name of Uri Geller the next morning.

36:02If anything, this moment might have been the seed to codify the idea that when it comes to parapsychology, scientific rigors had to be relaxed.

36:13It's the only possible way to tease out these extraordinary powers of the mind.

36:20At this point, that social contagion, that need to believe it was too strong.

36:27If anything, that desire to believe evolved to excuse this miss.

36:32Parapsychology was far from defeated.

36:36If anything, now even more people were fascinated by it, including academia.

36:41It's at this time that the board chairman of McDonnell Douglas, one of America's biggest and finest aerospace engineering companies, looks to Washington University in St. Louis to prove once and for all that psychic powers are real.

37:04What's more, he's putting his own money down to make it happen.

37:10Four million dollars of it adjusted for inflation.

37:13And so the McDonnell lab, the Mac lab for short, is born.

37:17The Mac lab is looking for kids who can demonstrate psychic abilities.

37:23And to find them, they put out an open call for psychics to demonstrate their powers.

37:30And it's here that our story truly begins.

37:33Now that you understand the world, you'll understand the context for what's about to Those two teenagers I told you about in the opening, they answer that open call.

37:45And it's kind of fitting that you've already met them without realizing exactly who they are.

37:51Banachek and Mike Edwards, inspired by their hero, James Randi.

37:54They're going to take a righteous sword to this social contagion, and they're going to pull it off.

38:01But let's remember that any social contagion is just an idea, an idea people believe.

38:06And in any con, any deception, any exploitation of our human programming, there is always a human cost.

38:13This is the story of Project Alpha.

38:16In 1979, aircraft tycoon James S.

38:19McDonnell gave half a million dollars for research to Washington University in St. Louis.

38:25They advertised for psychics.

38:28They thought they were too smart to be fooled.

38:33We all want to believe there's real magic.

38:36The most successful metal vendors were Steve Shaw and Mike Edwards, who amazed the St. Louis researchers.

38:42We see these people as the enemy.

38:43You hold the cup of Christ.

38:45We don't see them as people.

38:47So we just, we were playing Haver.

38:49We did truly break the law.

38:50Oh, my God, your dream came true.

38:53Your dream came true.

38:54Everything's bent at the Mac lab.

38:56Move small, solid objects across the tabletop, influencing a variety of metal objects, such as keys and silverware and metal bars and metal rods.

39:04No, I didn't realize the dark side of Project Alpha. We're kids.

39:08We don't know any better.

39:10We have no clue.

39:12And we are listening to him howl and scream.

39:15He has a complete mental breakdown.

39:17The problem is a lie is a lie is a lie.

39:21I don't believe they're tricking us.

39:24He's got two guns in there.

39:27They are cocked, ready to fire.

39:30And that's one of the problems the scientists have when they're trying to judge this.

39:34They set up the experiment to start at four o'clock.

39:37The trick may have been done at 315.

39:39A lot of people think that Randy masterminded Project Alpha, and that is not the case.

39:42Knowing what I know now, I think the reveal would have been done differently.

39:46I fear that he believes we ruin part of his life.

39:49Can you tell us how do you do it? I'll do it. Be quite honest. We cheat.

39:53You may have heard of Project Alpha.

39:56You may have even seen it covered elsewhere.

39:58But my friends, I can assure you, you've never heard it like this.

40:07Straight from the mouths of the two boys, now men who actually made it happen.

40:13For the first time ever, it all begins on the next episode.

40:16Of the world's greatest con.

40:18This episode of World's Greatest Con is written by Justin Robert Young and me, Brian Brushwood, your humble host.

40:28Production and research by Dog & Pony Show Audio in Austin, Texas.

40:54With additional production by Will Sattelberg.

40:56Original music by Carson Pace.

41:11Very special thanks go to Banachek and Mike Edwards for allowing us to tell their story.

41:17We greatly encourage you to see Banachek's new show, Mind Games, at the Strat Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

41:28Additional thanks go to George Slatter Productions, which along with contemporary news articles, retrospectives, and archive videos made for the bulk of our research.

41:35Of course, you have questions and we want to answer as many as we can, so hit us up and we'll respond at the end of the season.

41:45Write us to worldsgreatestcon at gmail. com.

41:47On the next episode, we meet our heroes.

41:49The boys meet each other and they realize they've gotten themselves way in over their head. Thanks for listening.

41:53We'll see you next time.

41:56Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.

42:01Dog and Pony Show Audio.