 Are you ready for one more? All right, I know it's been a long day. It's been a long weekend once again clench the butt cheeks together. It just works It just I'm telling you. Oh, it's just refreshes you so nicely. All righty. Our final speaker is Massimo Polidoro His talk is called Gaccia or how I learned from the amazing Randy to fight the fakers and live my dreams he is the executive director and co-founder of Comitato Italiano per il controllo del parodormale That's right That took three and a half hours to learn And the coolest thing is that he apprenticed with James Randy. So that's where we're at His haiku is one Italian one diminutive Randy a dream taught and learned. Please welcome your final speaker for Tam Massimo Polidoro Thank you. Thank you very much it was exactly 25 years ago That I today, I mean that I got a letter from James Randy This is the original That would change my life. I'd written to him congratulating on his work And asking some information on my then pet subjects like a you know, Houdini magicians paranormal regale And he very kindly replied and we met a few months later when he came to Italy Make a long story short We got to know each other and since Italy's prominent science journalist Pirrangela Was trying to start an Italian version of psych up They Thought that I could be presented with an interesting proposal Randy had been Observing me for a couple of days in in Rome where we were at the time and and then at the end of these two days together Pirrangela and Randy called me and then said, you know Massimo Randy has a proposal for you. Would you like to go to America learn with James Randy how to investigate mysteries? You know gathered these experience then bring it back to Italy in order to start the Italian version of Psycho which was going to be cheek up Provided that Pirrangela would give me a grant in order to sustain myself in the United States tough question Well, I said yes, and so I became Randy's Apprentice full-time apprentice in skepticism probably the first one and that's how I learned to Fight the fakers as I said It has been 25 years and I've seen things that you people wouldn't believe I Could you know attack ships on fire off the Not that kind But I've had the chance to meet and to Test and investigate dozens of that really thought that they possessed some kind of normal Phenomenon from paranormal power of these the fakers were actually a small percentage But they were quite loud the majority were just naive people like for example This man the magnetic man He thought he was a magnetic man He just put his cutter set on his chest, and he didn't fall down So he went on television explaining how this magnetic powers made him so so powerful Currently, so they asked me to test his powers and as you can understand very easily you don't need a degree in physics to test Disclaim because the simple test that I suggested was Could you just please bend over a little bit? What happened is quite, you know clear everything fell on the floor And it was a shame and I said I was an unbeliever, of course But you know just by watching him, you know this slope going down gives away the explanation in other cases Self-proclaimed psyche has just Deluded maybe they one day decided that they have some special ability and there's nothing that can shake that belief For example, there was this lady No, I'm not looking where you think I am No She thought that she could guess the identity of cards without looking at them So she would pass her hand on the back of a card and say king of hearts No, it's a tree of diamonds. Yeah, but it was red you see very good Jack of spades Now clean of clubs. Yeah, but it was a figure and so on The same for another lady who said she was she she had x-ray eyes and she could see inside boxes And but what she said was, you know, I see a shiny object with a smooth surface We opened up and there is an orange. I said see I got it Yeah, but would have been true for a pen a shoe or whatever you want So she was very vague and never tested properly But as I said, even if they are not the majority the fakers are the loudest I'm not sure if you can call these people 100% It's honest some undoubtedly are deep inside But many may just have found that sometimes seemingly strange things happen when they are around And so they get an aura for being special Or better what actually happens is that they found some situations in which pretty mundane events Can be transformed into apparent miracles and then take advantage for them A typical example is when a psychic appears on television and pretends to project his powers through the TV screen ever heard of that Well years ago when my apprenticeship with Randy had just started it was working on a TV show title exploring psychic powers live From Los Angeles and Yuri Geller was going to appear on the same show Claim that he was going to perform something incredible never seen before That would make that would change Randy's mind about his powers, maybe and since Randy imagined very well What was going to happen? It came to me and said we were living in secrecy Said where do we go? Arizona Well, Phoenix. Oh, wow, and I've been how long do we stay two hours? What yeah, I need you to be a psychic for a radio show. Don't worry. Let's go. I Didn't know what to expect, but there was nothing that you could do. So I Just came from Italy and if you want me to be a psychic I'll be a psychic So that evening in Los Angeles Yuri Geller made his usual presentation nothing new unfortunately So people called in to report the strange things were happening in In their houses, right? And so the host of the show the late Bill Bixby asked Randy what he thought about this and this is what happened I'm sorry. I'm afraid we are running out of time now We've heard what the callers had to say those that could get through to us. It seems incredible to me now Randy What do you have to say? So this is the astounding feat that mr. Geller offers as proof of his wonderful psyche powers Last Saturday morning listeners to Phoenix radio station KSLX were treated to a similar performance by psychic Massimo Polidoro from Milan Italy. Mr. Polidoro told the audience as mr. Geller did tonight that wonders things Would occur in their homes as he put forth supernatural vibrations. Let's listen to some brief reports by the amaze listeners who called it We've got Massimo Polidoro from Milan Italy. He is a kinetic psychic and let's go to the phone. Hi, Casalex Hello, my name is Bob my cat. It's piling at the radio right now standing with the tail on edge I've never seen behavior like this in my life. Hi, Casalex. Is something strange happening at your house? But I I have a clock my mom gave me it's an antique clock It hadn't worked when she gave it to me, but it's a family clock and it's it started ticking I mean, it's making that hot noise back and forth. Hi, Casalex anything weird going on where you are Yeah, I'm at work and we're processing artificial kidneys and the reprocessing machine started backing up foam out of the sink Tammy's on the phone live with us right now. Okay. I walked out into my kitchen I have a clock that's battery operated and When I looked up at the clock, it said eight o'clock and it's still ticking and it was on time before And you just went in there just like recently because right right now it's 823 Well, the only problem here is that Mr. Polidoro is a colleague of mine who has as much psychic power as a piece of shirt cardboard Period of only 30 minutes reacting to suggestions that any anomaly at all would be due to psychic influence Listeners to that station called in and reported things that they ordinarily would not have even noticed We say thanks to folks at chaos elects for proving our point for us and I rest my case In 1988 the iron curtain is still up and it appears that in Russia powerful Psychics are being, you know tested in order to transform them into paranormal spies a science fiction scenario that when the Berlin Wall Collapsed and Randy and I watched in amazement on TV that I expected and welcome Development turned out to be just that a fantasy However, many Russian Psychics are still considered to be very powerful and have grown like a legendary status One of these is a la vino guard over a woman who claimed she could move objects with the power of her mind And we can see her in action here. You see she's moving like a cigar case Holder made of aluminum without touching and this is a piece of a pencil. I guess on a glass table So Randy was going to do a TV show in Russia for Nova explore and Secrets of the psychic were titled and Vino Gradova was asked to be tested But she refused to be in the presence of Randy and so the crew went and filmed their Performing her feet alone However, this film was not used in the in the program and Randy probably didn't even look at it for for a while So what happened is that one day I was going through his tapes And I asked about the mysterious box that said unused footage Nova He didn't remember about it And so we watched it together and at one point we both jumped on our seat because we saw something that probably could explain The mystery and let's see if you can spot it Okay You see anything weird going on Yeah What? What underneath exactly if you watch it again, you will see that below the table. There is a loose thread And you see it moves when she when she passes close to with her hand with the object just jumps So this gave us an idea that maybe there was static electricity involved in this And many times when you want to find out about the mystery and you have a hypothesis or something a good idea is to put yourself in the Same condition as the phenomenon and then see what happens so what we do what we did was to find a Plexiglass plate because this is Plexiglass is not glass Plexiglass is like a plastic material that can be charged Electrostatically very easily and then put some light objects on it as soon as we try to do it The objects would just fly all over the table without Impressive the most close thing to Psychokinesis that you could find So she had been performing this for 40 years and we are not saying that she was Lying she was a fake but maybe in 40 years a hint of what is really taking place you would guess that She would have it but no she was still performing it as a genuine psychic phenomenon There have been occasions where the fakery was quite evident And there are no possible excuses or alternative explanations for when it happens like it did when When the mini-gatherers were around if you can remember those Kids that presented power similar to Their hero There was a specific girl in Spain who claimed that she could bend the metal See through closed boxes and she was once tested on Italian television And I was asked to explain what was taking place. This is the the actual And she's talking in Spanish because she's Spanish and she has a box there with some color paper So she this is a clairvoyance Experimenting the tester this to be presented as you can see very very careful Choosing piece of color paper right in front of her Very scientific and then put it in the box Now she could take the box of course Concentrate on it. The only thing is that in order to foster psychic powers She needed some some boost and so she asked some music And you all know that Michael Jackson is a great inducer of psychic phenomenon So she said gray and when the box was open of course there it was it was great fantastic so again as I said what you do in such Situations it try to put yourself in the same conditions and so I had a box very similar to the one that she had built I Don't want to be performing now, but just to show you. Could you please join me for a second? Yeah, I Won't see everyone. It's inside. Do we have any? She would you know hold the box it like this concentrate I don't need to perform the thing as if it was real because I know it is yellow inside Yes, this How do you do it? I'll tell you in a second when the color is inside the box and you will see it and I will show it to you This is the simple thing you need to do just with your thumbs Well, you cannot see because you're very far back with your thumbs. You just raise one angle here You can see and below this you see exactly what but from the front Yeah Just takes a second just look you see and it's a thank you I can easily understand. There is no need to be a fraud to perform in Perfect good faith some of these feats not this And believe they have a paranormal origin But certainly deception and self-deception can can help a couple of years ago I was just reminded of this episode the very first day here at time About the test we performed and I thought that maybe it was interesting to go into it a little bit Couple years ago National Geographic channel asked me if I was interested in testing sort of a Jedi Knight warrior Yes Do amazing thing with these strange powers Of course, I would be interested even if that meant being knocked out by a karate master as they presented the thing to me luckily the strike would not come as a With through brute muscle force, but through chi the else of natural energy of universe as believers call it So I asked my friend and colleague with whom I do many Investigations dr. Luigi girls Kelly to take part in the test. So he was going to be The victim of the test I was to be the observer now you need both parts in it and somebody has to do the dirty job Here you can see what happened you saw a bit a little bit of this The other day, but it's interesting to watch it Milan home to Italy's stock market and business centers and its fashion and shopping capital It's also home to two of the world's most famous skeptics chemist Luigi girl Shelly and Psychologist Massimo Polidoro Massimo writes politically on all kinds of supernatural phenomena Luigi is the hands-on type he'll subject himself to almost anything to make a skeptical point I think it is important for scientists to investigate strange claims because it is the job of science to discover what still is unknown and And that is what societies do all the time Now it's time for Massimo and Luigi to turn their attention to the most hair-raising use of mystical energies. We've seen so far throwing chi to knock someone out without even touching them Massimo reviewed the tapes of George Dilman and his followers performing such no-touch knockouts and Was not impressed The people going there expected what was going to happen and they were expected to react in a specific way They just reacted to the suggestion when this happens in Demonstrations on stage by magician, which doesn't use it noses at all Just give suggestions and people who is ready to believe that kind of things react But critiquing a tape and standing up to a karate master are completely different matters It's time for a showdown In one corner weighing in at no more than 125 pounds is chemist Luigi Garnicelli He thinks he can stand up to a knockout punch of chi because it doesn't exist In the other corner it's 8th degree black belt Leon Jay one of George Dilman's top associates and fellow Practitioner of the no-touch knockout This ought to be interesting when we did the test on Luigi who was not Ready to to believe these things or maybe it was just staying there seeing what would happen. It didn't work We stay that you know 40 minutes Every every possible position and grimace nothing happened, but you know But what is very interesting is the reaction of? Dilman after this failure of his of his pupil The woman thinks he knows what went wrong and has come up with a very interesting explanation Diskeptic was was a totally non-believer non-believer plus I Don't know I should say that a film, but if the guy had his tongue in the wrong position of the mouth That can also nullify Yeah, you can nullify it you can nullify a lot of things than you think you can nullify him He raised those two big toes If I say I'm gonna knock you out and you raise one toe and push one toe down Cannot yeah, and then if I go to try again you reverse it if you keep doing this I will not yeah Good to know What's the use? So what you see here just a few examples of the many Stranger people and cases and a chance to investigate, but nothing would have been possible Without the priceless personal tutoring that I had from Randy However, it was not just my personal Yoda that I have found From the start Randy I've really been like a second father to me. It taught from example He did not give long lessons although he has anecdotes and Stories on practically anything as you all know and they are fascinating and you learn so much just in one day With Randy you can imagine spending months and years It's fast fantastic So instead I learned by watching him act and behave and by helping him every day in his researches and investigations Among the many things that I learned from Randy Probably one of the most resonant was the importance of self-confidence If you don't believe in yourself, probably nobody else will and I was not satisfied by simply let's say being An investigator of mystery becoming an investigator of mystery. I also wanted to become a writer I'd always like to invent stories Draw comics for when I was a kid. I even wrote and published a fanzine devoted to the Beatles and Many interest this is by the way Randy's old library now is a new fantastic place So I thought you had to be older more experienced and Far more educated than I was at the time to write books But Randy said you know that I dropped out of school Yes, but I was was this observation to my self-deprecating comment. Yeah, I know but you were a child prodigy So I had to learn to write like anybody else So and you can do it too Just choose a subject that fascinates you that really engages you and try to learn everything you can about it Then you will see that afterwards Writing about it will become a necessity And it was right of course had a strong fascination for spiritualism at the time and being in the country where spiritualism was born in 1848 Was a great chance for me To learn and investigate and research on this subject. So I deferred It I dive into Randy's books and files on the subject and then I went to Fort Lauderdale's public library to ask for more rare books It was of course internet wasn't had not been invented by then so you had to do it the old way and quickly I began to amass such an a Quantity of information on spiritualism that I I had to write it down. I wanted if you want if I wanted to see some order in it Don't make it too complicated So to and imagine that you're just writing for your grandmother and everything will be fine And that's how my very first book came about it was this history of spiritualism that came out in 1995 and It would be followed in the next 18 years by 32 more books Thanks to renders in Cornington. Yes Thanks to Randy I was able to merge my passions or Mystery detection and writing and turn them into my profession So it is a great privilege for me to be here today at this incredible convention exactly 25 years since meeting Randy and Randy if you are yes, you are backstage here and you can hear me You have been a light and an example for many people some of which are here today But there are legions out there and I want to take this occasion in front of our friends To tell you how grateful I am that you made it all possible for me to follow and fulfill my dreams And I know you know it Randy, but I will thank you forever for changing my life Thank you, Randy. Thank you Massimo Poliloro