 Hi, I'm James Randi, but you already knew that didn't you and the gentleman sitting beside me here is that Oh an old friend from way back. We're gonna ad-lib this. We're just gonna wing it We're just gonna talk he walked into the foundation the matter of minutes ago announced to he was I Recognized him and now we're going to give you the pleasure of knowing Michael Edwards You don't know the name. Well, you know about the alpha kids and Michael Edwards was one of the two alpha kids Along with Steve Shaw now known as the mentalist Banachek with whom you'll be much more familiar And this gentleman just walked in because he was on a business trip and decided that he was going through Fort Lauderdale He might as well drop in and see the old doc and see if he's still alive and you noticed that I am I Have noticed that yes indeed now. Let me just run over very briefly our association and not all the details Statute of limitations on some of those. That's true. That's true. What year was it actually? Originally, I approached you and we started talking about project alpha in 1979 I was a 17 year old high school senior good gravy and then started working with the Mac lab In November of 79 and before we then by the time that we've actually exposed it It was February of 1983. Wow. He has all the dates. That's his folks. Good night. Thank you Now what you've just heard about is some of the details behind the beginnings of project alpha This was done With some scientists and I use the term in quotes at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and It was a thing it was an infiltration thing. It was a scam Freely admitted it was a scam. We had to show that parapsychologists When they thought they had a red hot subject on hand would decline to call in magicians And it turns out that Mike here was an amateur magician at the time And so was Steve Shaw as I say now Banna check and I I made an agreement with them that if they went into the Mac lab and all they had to do was apply and give a Plausible story about how they obtained their psychic forces. Ho ho ho That if they applied and they got in there that I would more or less monitor the whole operation But I wouldn't tell them what to do I would just react to what had been done in the lab that particular week This went on for three years as you say Mike and over that three-year period The guys would call me and this is in the days before internet and Skype and a few other things like that Of course, they'd call me and they'd in between bouts of laughter They would report what had just happened in the lab these two guys Steve and Mike Absolutely flummoxed the people at Washington State University. I won't mention names There's no reason for doing that because these folks are still with us They're still around and still working hard and they are academics and they deserve our respect, but They fooled them the alpha kids really fooled them into believing that they the alpha kids had psychic powers of various kinds and all of this will be handled in commercial My new book a magician in the laboratory, which is forming up right now now Mike has to get away very soon He's on a business trip after all, but I'm going to put into his hot little hands I'm going to put a copy of the chapter on the alpha kids for his approval and perhaps for a few tears as well But we'll find out about that later on No, you were an amateur magician I was you you about mentalism and that sort of thing and you would contact me I'm Steve had contacted me separately. They didn't know one another that is correct And they just a just letter to the effect, you know If you ever have to to test the parapsychologist to see what they're doing I'd be your man, and I didn't know what to do with these two letters that I received And I stuck them in a file called alpha Not much imagination there, but it worked out very well for us And eventually I had the two of them and I thought to myself wait a minute What's in the news right now is that half a million dollars have been given by McDonald Douglas aircraft corporation Yep, James McDonald by Jane McDonald himself now well deceased and So he won't sue us exactly. That's always a relief is well-deceased Yes, yes, okay, and I thought hey, this this would be a great place to send in the two kids And I told them contact them give them a plausible story and by golly you were accepted Steve was accepted and There was another fellow. What was the other the fellow's name? He wasn't a kid He was the other fellow that was carried on with you guys and that you mixed with such the the so-called psychic there. Oh Tom Richards Tom Richards exactly. I had forgotten the name. Thank you who cloaked himself as a Researcher. Yeah, even though he was generating the phenomenon himself Now we'll go into a couple of anecdotes on how you guys caught Richards It was very evident to you and I don't think he was really trying to hide it from you guys Necessarily, I don't think he was just I don't think he was very good But it was enough to fool the scientists well it was as I said it doesn't take much to do that look at it this way These scientists were well-trained academics. They weren't just people off the streets. They they had a trading in science They knew the scientific method But they thought they knew too much. They thought that they couldn't be fooled because they had degrees That's the way I have to look at it That's very true. Plus. I think they thought That because they were so smart and they were good in their specific fields. Let's say a professor of physics doesn't expect the the physical properties of something To willingly and knowingly cheap and deceive him whereas it would have been far better I think as a test if you had somebody with a psychology background at least yes that knew that the subjects in in In these particular tests Steve and I yeah, we're really out to deceive them And I must say that and when you see this this whole episode as I will describe it in my book Remembered the book It was simple The easy things that you guys did. Let's get into a couple examples of that there was there was one I remember and we've got it on the the tape as a matter of fact on the videotape And that was an eight millimeter film on those days. I believe we're 16 millimeter I'd forgot back in those days. It was yes powered by dinosaurs. Yes in days before video tape was easily available and I must say that I was astonished at one episode there where a spoon Apparently bent without it being touched But we won't get into all those details at the moment The point was that the spoon had gained a few micrograms in weight because they'd all been very carefully weighed And they had little tags little like clothing tags with string put around the neck of them and I had told Phillips I said his name. Sorry. I had told him Be sure that the spoons and the various props are carefully Permanently marked and identified in such a way that the identification marks can't be changed and they're all catalogued and photographed But he decided not to do that He would just put little paper tags on them with the string and whatnot What you guys had done was simply slip off one of these and put another one on that you knew the spoon Would be slightly different in weight right and they were astonished the spoon actually gained weight Well, and it actually changed shape because that's the one that I moved off to the side and started working with another one Yeah, and leaned on the neck of the original spoon So that the cameraman couldn't see it and a miracle happened, but there you see folks That's how easy it was to fool the scientists because the scientists said over dealing with kids here kids can't fool PhDs Oh, yes, they can and they did no question of it whatsoever now other examples give us another example of how easy it was First of all, let me let me back up for a second and say that it wasn't easy because while you were actually working with us As part of project outfit you were making our job harder Yeah, because every time we would tell you a new technique how we delivered something exactly you would write off a letter to Phillips Say and basically said, you know, for example, if you're letting people handle things don't do it If the boys are touching objects, don't let them do this keep this thing more controlled So you were putting in Safeguards that they didn't think of and so Steve and I would show up the next time that we were at the lab and go Darn or handy He the parapsychologists weren't getting smarter. You were educating them better. Yeah. Yeah I mean our job much more difficult. I was being perfectly fair Yes, I hadn't retained by them. I hadn't even had the agreement I agreed to serve with no payment whatsoever if they wanted me to go there They had to pay my transportation in my hotel. That's all I wanted. I didn't want any any remuneration for it personally To me and not at all. I never asked for that and I refused to take it But the point was that when you offer your services like that they look at you They say why would he do a thing like that? There must be something wrong Well, there was something wrong, but it wasn't with me. It was with you guys exactly right