An Update On Project Alpha and Your Emails

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

00:10This is the Q&A episode, which normally I wouldn't blame anybody for skipping.

00:17It's usually more details, it's questions about how we came upon a story or what we think of various things.

00:24But this one's going to be different.

00:26It's going to be special because there are some times that the very act of telling a story affects it.

00:33And we're living through that right now because the story isn't finished.

00:42The World's Greatest Con.

02:05I'm joined in studio by my co-creator, Justin Robert Young.

02:09We are going to answer your questions, but Justin, how do you want to begin this?

02:15Well, we should probably begin with a little bit of news that we came to over the last seven days.

02:24And that is that one of our characters in this story is Mark Schaefer.

02:32He was a lead researcher at the Mac Lab.

02:36And through various different communications that we've had with folks that were indirect communications that were at the Mac Lab, it has come to our attention that he is no longer with us.

02:50And July 18th, 2018, unfortunately, he suffered fatal injuries in a bicycle accident in his home of Colorado.

03:00We've tracked down enough information on this to confirm it.

03:06But something that I know for our team and specifically for Banachek and Mike Edwards, it was hard.

03:15It was very hard to learn that, that not only is he gone, but also that they had drifted so far apart from each other that it was not known to them until the rumblings that have existed around this podcast.

03:33And I hope I'm not talking too far out of school to say, you know, obviously we're in communication with each other.

03:40There's a text thread with our two primary protagonists of our show.

03:46It was a deeply affecting moment to get the news, because I believe it was Mike that let us know first.

03:55And then there was kind of a scramble of like, wait, is this right?

04:01And I'll not say what was said after that, but I got the sense that up until now, Justin, we've only told closed stories.

04:14The loops have all been closed. Yeah.

04:17Turns out Hitler lost. Yes.

04:20Turns out they figured out the price is right.

04:23It turns out that 21 happened a long time ago, but this story had a couple of threads that are unresolved.

04:29And that's part of what we loved about it is the fact that history hasn't settled on it.

04:35And that's why we wanted to tell the tale of the boots of the ground story of the boys.

04:43But to be there and watch and wrestle with the fact that time not only has been running out, but has already run out for so many aspects of the story was confusing.

04:56It is safe to say and you hear in the show that Mike and Steve would both love to have more closure on this.

05:05They would love to be in communication with people that they went through on this.

05:11And I know from both of them that they feel comfortable with the way we told the story as being true to their point of view.

05:22I know that the two people that they would most like to close the loop with were Peter Phillips and Mark Schaefer.

05:30I think it's safe to say that knowing that Mark Schaefer is no longer around to close the loop, compounded by the fact that he was the younger of the two, is something that weighs on on them, that that this window has half closed.

05:47And we'll see where it goes.

05:51Obviously, if there's anything else that is broadcastable based on the permission of all involved, we will bring you that.

06:00We are committed to continuing to tell this story.

06:04I know so many people, especially based on the feedback that we have gotten via this episode of the questions that you guys have been connected to it.

06:13So that's the update.

06:16Internally, I think we've done a pretty good job of not talking out of school about any private communications that we've had outside of conveying feelings that are happening.

06:28As far as you and I and our quest on the world's greatest con, I think that we discovered with this season and with this story, new complications with a currently open narrative.

06:46Something that that once once the story is finished, you have the historical documents, you can speculate and that kind of stuff.

06:57It was it was really a difficult challenge to tell the story without overly speculating because currently living people would have other opinions about it.

07:08But but now now we're realizing that not everyone is available for an interview forever and ever and ever. Yeah.

07:16At the point that we started this project, unbeknownst to us, Mark Schaefer was no longer with us.

07:24So that is that is what it is.

07:28You know, beyond that.

07:31There are indirect communications between our show and people who have worked at the Mac lab, not Peter Phillips specifically.

07:41And anything else that we can get, we will bring you if, you know, it is gettable.

07:47I guess the safest thing we can say is if there's more of the story to tell, we would very much like to tell.

07:55We would love to. Yeah.

07:57But let's go ahead and get into our questions here.

08:01What did Mike and Steve's parents think of their involvement in Project Alpha and the Mac lab?

08:08They had to have known. Right.

08:09If they didn't know, what did they think they were doing?

08:12And I will actually answer that because I have texted Mike Edwards. Oh, wonderful, wonderful.

08:17Because, OK, before you reveal the answer, I wonder just how good about being undercover they were.

08:23Like if Mike Edwards was able to keep it from his own parents, I suspect not given what we've what we've learned about Mike Edwards upbringing.

08:34Mike says my parents were supportive in my efforts with Alpha, however, much like I came to realize it should have been handled better at the reveal.

08:43So I think that is is safe to say that his parents were were into it, but they were probably queasy at the point that the reveal was getting to it.

08:54And I think that that he has gotten from them the idea that, as he states in the show, if he could go back in time, that would be the thing that he would do. Yeah.

09:04And I do feel like they were loudly heard not only by us, but but the listening audience as well.

09:11I think that was pretty clear.

09:12And I think it is also very clear that the absence of Banachek's parents are a key part of the story of his story.

09:21So I think, yeah, there there is there is not a lot of Banachek's parents opinion that I think has been represented in this story.

09:30I thought the phrasing of the follow up question was interesting on this one.

09:34Kristen says, why do you think Randy took all the credit?

09:38Was that just his personality or do you think it was to protect the boys to some degree?

09:44First of all, that was part of the needle that we tried to thread is we don't think Randy took credit.

09:50We think that Randy's natural instincts were to make sure that the story remained as simple as possible.

09:57So it could be as popular and easy to share as possible.

10:02And it is flatly and factually a simpler, simpler narrative that he told.

10:09You could make a case that one might one might make a case that he was an old school showman, as said by Mike in in in the show.

10:20But but I honestly hadn't considered the possibility that it was to protect the boys.

10:25And and I don't think that was a primary concern of his, especially since the boys names are released.

10:32They do appear in the fourth paragraph of the Discover article.

10:36So so I don't think it was a protection thing.

10:40I think you and I have talked about this.

10:44There are times in any creative endeavor where two people may disagree, but we always lean back on everything in service of the story.

10:54And I, I would be surprised if if Randy's crowding out, if you want to look at it that way, of the boys was in service of much more than the story itself.

11:08Everybody involved in the story that we spoke to has said this would not be nearly as big.

11:14We probably would not still be talking about Project Alpha 40 years later if Randy was not the one banging the pots and pans together in front of the press that made it such a big deal.

11:24Everybody involved in this, up to and including Peter Phillips in the speech he gave to an organization that will remain nameless.

11:33He's, you know, if anything, he makes it a black mark on Randy's actions that he made such a mountain out of a molehill of what was a very simple scientific skirmish now turns into this gigantic clash between right and wrong.

11:51I will also say that it is not shocking to me personally that when Randy found the perfect formula to reduce this, he found himself at the center of the stage with the spotlight hitting him the hottest.

12:08That is who he was.

12:10He always knew how to find his mark.

12:13He always knew the way that he could transfix the press.

12:17I do think that part of his center stage antics are the reason why this is still a relevant story.

12:24So it all it all blends together.

12:25But I don't I agree with you, Brian.

12:27I do not think it was for protection of the boys.

12:30I'm realizing now that in interviews, I've mentioned this.

12:33It's usually the first thing I've blurred out.

12:35But I don't think on this program we've ever pointed out that not only were you an intern at the James Randy Educational Foundation, but you were the very first intern at the JREF.

12:46You know, and behind the scenes, it's something that I wrestled with doing a disclaimer.

12:52In the show, just to say that there was a connection between World's Greatest Con, the entity co-created by me and you and the James Randy Educational Foundation and James Randy as a person, I was friends with Randy and you were the one who introduced me to him for the very first time.

13:08So I wrestled with it.

13:12I ultimately decided not to do it because I don't think that it really contributed anything.

13:18I don't think anybody would listen to our show and be like, well, more Randy propaganda. Right.

13:24Which I think that would be something that you would want to put the bumper sticker on there for if somebody might think that I did.

13:31Which, by the way, we'll get to the most surprising aspect of this entire journey.

13:36I'm very glad we didn't do that.

13:39And we had one goal, which was tell the untold tale of the boots on the ground experience of the boys.

13:47Jeff writes, long time, first time.

13:49My insights are neither clever nor unique, but I had to get this off my chest.

13:53Can we all agree that Ricardo Maltaban indeed was the world's greatest con? You know what?

13:59Not only is that probably true.

14:02Yeah, but we have.

14:04Let's tell a tale. I don't.

14:07Should we even try to make that audio work? No, no.

14:10This is the place where we can play it.

14:12Set it up because this also feeds into our journey of making it because. Yeah, that's right. So.

14:20So bring us bring us into the trip leading up to and through Lubbock.

14:29OK, so there's a lot of back and forth and figuring out what is the real story here.

14:35A lot of retakes, a lot of editing and production.

14:38And we had roughly three very solid rough cuts.

14:42But we knew that we needed to wrap this story up.

14:47And around this time, I was invited to fly out to Lubbock, Texas, to host a live onstage Q&A with William Shatner, who is.

14:59maybe biologically he's 93, he turns 63 the moment that spotlight hits.

15:06He is truly an incredible, amazing storyteller and he asked to have dinner beforehand, had a great time chatting.

15:14So you were the moderator of this event, they were showing Wrath of Khan before, the full movie, so everybody's sitting there watching Wrath of Khan and then for a 45 minute Q&A out comes Brian, out comes William Shatner.

15:31And the two of us are seated together and very clearly, and this is one of the amazing things about William Shatner, is he very intentionally asked, what are you up to, why are you here, what is this?

15:45And I'm like, oh, I do podcasts or whatever.

15:47The one I'm most pleased with right now is called World's Greatest Khan.

15:50World's Greatest Khan, oh, okay, all right.

15:53And files that away, surprises me on stage when he corrects the pronunciation and does the following.

15:59World's Greatest Khan is the name of the podcast.

16:03And I thought, this is so K-A-N-J.

16:06The World's Greatest Khan.

16:08Which might be one of the greatest moments of my entire life.

16:16Yes, and trust me, I wish, wish, wish, if I would have known that this was coming, I would have broken into the sound room so I could plug into the board and we could have gotten clean audio on that.

16:29We just got it from the audience.

16:31I was just recording from the audience for Brian's own personal posterity so we can remember interviewing William Shatner.

16:41I think it is worth bringing up the fact that logistically, Lubbock's about halfway between Austin and Las Vegas.

16:49Yeah, so this is what I wanna reset up, okay.

16:52So the reason why we needed to rush to get all four episodes in rough cut form was because we knew we had scheduled with Mike and Banachek that we were going to meet them in Las Vegas to record episode number five.

17:07So the episode that you just heard, if you were listening to this as it's being released week by week, the one that you just heard, that was recorded on this preset date.

17:15But that meant that for me, as head of production, I had to get a rough cut done at the very least so they could hear the completed story and they could have the conversation that they had in episode five with full knowledge of what happens.

17:31We didn't want to do three and a half episodes and then have something at the end that they wouldn't be able to remark on.

17:39So I spend, as Brian is preparing to interview William Shatner, I am spending all day in this hotel in Lubbock getting episode four ready, sending episode four to Brian to listen to, for me to listen to before we send to Mike and Banachek.

17:57We send it to Mike and Banachek.

17:58Thankfully, they were extraordinarily complimentary about it, but the clip you hear of Brian outside at the end of episode four was necessary for us to do.

18:12That was not planned.

18:13It was not what we had in the script.

18:17That is real as rain.

18:19Brian indeed was halfway between our studios here in Austin, Texas and Las Vegas.

18:25It just so happened that it was in Lubbock, Texas where he was interviewing William Shatner that day.

18:32And it created a curious artifact because we didn't know what we were going to get out of episode five.

18:38And upon listening to it, we both thought it was close enough, good enough.

18:44Like we had assumed this was a four episode story and then it would be over.

18:49And then when you listen to it that way, it's episode four is fairly unsatisfying unless you know that episode five is coming.

18:58We had a rough cut of episode four, not knowing what episode five was going to be.

19:04The end of episode four was never meant to be permanent.

19:07And I will say that from my perspective as a writer and producer.

19:10I figured there would be some kind of rejiggering down the road, but when we shared it in its form, all anybody at the end of four said is, where's five?

19:22And we thought five was just going to be bonus stuff, but instead it's not only a wonderful conversation, but it's a conversation that changed minds, which we'll talk about later.

19:34Ken writes, Mike Edwards that went to the college class and fooled everyone to use his evidence for the Mac lab.

19:42Did he ever go back to that professor or that school after Project Alpha was complete and out in the open?

19:48Mike Edwards texts back, I never followed up with Professor Whitsatt.

19:52I did hear that he did learn that I was one of the magicians several months later.

19:57One of his students saw a magic show I did and reported that back to him in the pre-internet days, there was very little chance of him following the development of Alpha over the next few years.

20:05In the end, his name was never mentioned.

20:07So aside from this show, David Whitsatt has never really been connected with Project Alpha because most of the tellings of Project Alpha didn't focus on Mike and Banachek.

20:17So this is the first time that that has been out there and that is the latest that we know about Professor Whitsatt.

20:23That is somebody who I would love to hear a boots on the ground account of what that was like.

20:29Grant writes, knowing the ways that a con can pass these kinds of tests, what kind of experiment would you design to be as magician proof as possible? You know what?

20:42I have a list of things that you must do.

20:45You must have a conjurer in the laboratory.

20:48You must not alter the protocol.

20:51I mean, to be honest, James Randi nailed it.

20:54That would be a very good way to prevent a con from happening is have an experienced deceiver in the room.

21:01And as we pointed out, Mike and Steve Shaw at the time, they were those conjurers who called out what they perceived to be a fraud.

21:09Let's also point out that Randi eventually got into this game when he offered the million dollar challenge.

21:16The proof of winning a million dollars was doing a double blind test that was designed by the JRef and had to be agreed upon as fair by the person for whom was applying for the million dollars.

21:30If you're unfamiliar or don't remember from earlier in the series, this was an open challenge.

21:36Anybody who said that they could demonstrate a psychic or supernatural phenomenon, you were invited to come and prove it.

21:44No one has ever to this moment won the million dollars, but we are friends with Andrew Main, somebody who worked for years designing those protocols, and they are similar to what Randi wrote back in Project Alpha.

22:00Also not overly complicated.

22:02Everybody sees, yeah, no, I get it.

22:05I'll douse over five buckets.

22:07One will have water, the other will be filled with sand.

22:11I won't know which one is which.

22:13I got to do it three times in a row.

22:15That's an example I just made up.

22:18Don't hold me to it.

22:19But the point is the remarkable thing for people who attended any of the conferences where this was executed live, was to see the powerful confidence with which applicants would approach it, to see them confidently saying, yes, of course, if it works, then it should work.

22:38And then you see the surprise afterwards, and then usually in online posts or forums or discussions, because memory is malleable, you begin to craft a narrative that makes that less of a painful moment, which down the road could be its own episode itself.

22:58John writes, I was born in 1984, and I grew up loving Ghostbusters.

23:04In the real world, after a decade plus of so many people expecting something to prove the paranormal, what if scientists really proved it?

23:11That sounds like a good setup for a movie.

23:14In the movie, a physicist, a great BSer, and a true believer find each other.

23:18Just when they get real proof, the Project Alpha revelation hits, and nobody at Columbia University will risk the same embarrassment.

23:24Project Alpha poisoned the well so much that there's no amount of proof that will convince some people.

23:29Even after they saved the world, there's still people who believe that it's faked.

23:34All that cultural knowledge and background makes the Ghostbusters story pop so much more.

23:38So was Ghostbusters, was that 1984 or 82?

23:41We should look that up, because originally one of the ideas that I had was that we could begin episode one with that scene.

23:52And- Explain the scene.

23:53The scene, of course, is Dr. Peter Venkman is the head of parapsychology at some university.

23:59He clearly is only looking to get in the pants of one of the students, and unnecessarily tortures the other by lying and screwing- The male goober, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

24:13And it's, so was it 84 or 82? 84. 84, great.

24:18So that means two years after Project Alpha, this is a punchline.

24:22So before Project Alpha- And Ghostbusters famously was rewritten within an inch of its life at the 11th hour.

24:31The initial script of Ghostbusters, which was Dan Aykroyd's, was extremely supernatural.

24:37It was very much taking the supernatural extraordinarily seriously.

24:42All the friends starting a small business, being challenged by academia and bureaucracy, that was all written very close to the shooting.

24:51Also, if you listen to Aykroyd's Ray Stantz, when he's talking about this is the biggest thing since the Tunguska blast of 1910 or whatever it was, like, he can do that all day long.

25:02That's really Dan Aykroyd, yeah. That's really him.

25:04That's why he loves UFOs, he loves, that's why he made Crystal Head Vodka to be the- Crystal Skull, yeah. The Crystal Skull.

25:12But to me, it was fascinating to consider just how fast things turned around.

25:18So we have early 1983, Project Alpha is released.

25:24By 1984 summer, Ghostbusters opens with a scene openly mocking parapsychology.

25:30I don't think that's a coincidence.

25:33Yeah, I think that there was a cultural tide that had turned very quickly.

25:40I think that Ghostbusters is something that we spent some time thinking about whether or not we wanted to work in, and ultimately, I think episode one is so heavy on us world building with other elements that, you know, there's only so much pop culture tiebacks we could have, and it was more important for us to tie it to the more relevant Stranger Things than it was to Ghostbusters.

26:03But certainly, I don't disagree with this emailer's take on it.

26:09I think that that is something that, without knowing the specifics of where everybody who rewrote that script were, it would not shock me if those broad stroke elements were part of it.

26:23Maybe now's the time for us to reveal, somebody asked me recently in an interview what the biggest surprise of doing this project was, and it took me a minute to realize it, but the thing that surprised me the most is that Justin and I had always figured this undercover heist to expose shoddy research was one of the greatest, you know, we thought we were interviewing nothing but heroes, and obviously, you know, Mike and Steve couldn't wait to get their story out, and we, all four of us, you know, clearly they're the heroes.

27:03I was unprepared for the number of people who tweeted sentiments along the lines of, this is so confusing because they're so misguided and they're messing with academic research and they're clearly the bad guys, and then they get to the end and they're like, well, now I understand, but now I feel conflicted. I was unprepared.

27:23I thought we were telling the very, very simple story as we had always heard it, and just it turns out that there was more there.

27:31I was unprepared for people, maybe listening to this right now, who still think they did the wrong thing.

27:38Well, the story as it is told as conquering heroes has largely been told from the skeptic community, and I don't mean that in the broad sense of people for whom apply critical thinking in their lives, which I think is the broad element of our society.

27:54There's a very specific scene, capital S skeptic community that especially in the aughts and tens revolved around the amazing meeting that happened in Las Vegas yearly, and that was one in which people lionized Randy's greatest hits, and one of Randy's greatest hits was Project Alpha, and it demonstrated the fallibility of academia and so on and so on.

28:20So Banaszczuk and Mike are looked at as heroes from that capacity.

28:25We certainly kind of went into it with that being more of the framework, but even when we were talking to them, they don't see themselves as the full white knight heroes.

28:38They see themselves in tremendous shades of gray.

28:41They see themselves as having unpaid debt and things that they still need to atone for to this day, and hopefully that comes through in both episode four and episode five, that they, Mike, literally texting me right now about his parents' opinion on this still will come back to, man, I screwed up that reveal.

29:06I screwed up doing it on television.

29:10I screwed up saying during the press conference that these are the kind of people that are teaching your kids. That was personal. That was ugly.

29:17They should have called him before it went down.

29:20There's a lot of stuff there that they very much believe they were in the wrong on, and it's not surprising to me in hindsight that that's something that people latched onto.

29:33Yeah, hearing Mike say with a pause, we definitely committed a crime that night, was one of the- About the psychic hurricane.

29:42Yeah, that was one of the eye-opening moments.

29:45Jay writes, I was fortunate enough to hear Randy talk multiple times about Project Alpha and even meet Banachek at the amazing Meeting Six.

29:52So now we are talking to folks who are very much a part of that community that we just introduced.

29:56The last time that we spoke, I- specifically asked Randy about A Magician in the Laboratory, his unfinished book.

30:01And he answered that it should be out the following year.

30:05That following year was 2013, so now 10 years ago.

30:07Alas, I fear it remains unfinished.

30:09Any chance that you have heard differently?

30:11I will say this, when I was an intern at the James Randy Educational Foundation, one of the jobs that I had was scanning old Randy articles.

30:21And I never knew why I was doing it except to say that it was partly for a book that Randy was working on.

30:31And I have only over the last couple weeks put two and two together that almost assuredly that book was A Magician in the Laboratory.

30:39I don't remember specifically the old columns that I was scanning.

30:43I was just kind of told find every Randy column from old skeptic magazines and stuff like that, or Skeptical Inquirer, I can't remember.

30:51But that's what I was putting into a database so he could work on it.

30:56I know internally at the J-Ref, myself and many others were very much pushing for him to become a part of the literary boom that was happening at that time in the world of skepticism and atheism.

31:11There was a lot of people that were putting out a lot of books, and we very much wanted him to be a part of that.

31:18Obviously, it never came to fruition, but I certainly hope that some version of it comes out.

31:25And if this podcast and people being fascinated by the story has any momentum toward that happening, then I certainly hope that it does.

31:38Marcus writes, have you seen the Columbo episode with the very strong connection to James Randy and debunking psychics?

31:47Columbo goes to the guillotine, season eight, episode one.

31:50I, you sent this to me, and I did the thing where I sort of skipped, and every, no matter where I skipped to, it was like, holy moly, they're just putting everything exactly on front street.

32:06That was an amazing episode.

32:08So in this episode, which there is a condensed version that you can watch for free on YouTube because, you know, 80s pacing, the plot is a man who claims to be a genuine psychic is at a laboratory, and a magician is brought in that has a moniker that is very similar to James the Amazing Randy, but it is supposed to be a Uri Geller and James Randy kind of conflict, except in this version, the magician who sets up the undefeatable protocols is indeed defeated, and the psychic wins, only for us to find out that they are long-lost friends that spent time in a African prison together.

32:58The Randy character sold out the Geller character, and now the Geller character murders the Randy character, and then Columbo figures it out.

33:09So things depart a little bit, but there's a lot of callbacks up, and including that the murder weapon is a guillotine. A literal guillotine.

33:19Which James Randy developed for Alice Cooper's tour, famously.

33:25James Randy went on tour with Alice Cooper and cut off Alice Cooper's head with a fake guillotine prop.

33:35So very obviously, the writers of that episode were paying homage to James Randy and Uri Geller on set.

33:43Almost certainly, as they would often do in 1980s television, they would give a fake method for a thing, and so without elaborating, they say, oh, well, here, if you're so innocent, lay in this guillotine prop.

33:57You're like, yes, of course it's safe.

33:59And he's like, oh, you know what?

34:01I noticed there's a left side and a right side.

34:04What if I twist them around and set it up?

34:07And then suddenly, they're not interested in being in the guillotine anymore.

34:11Yeah, so yeah, go ahead.

34:13If you have been caught up in Project Alpha Mania of that era, then this is very, very much in that vein.

34:20This was, I guess, a reboot of Columbo, which had already run for 10 years from the 60s to the 70s, and this was a reboot in the 80s.

34:30Yeah, I think they did a number of series, including, of all people, William Shatner plays a Rush Limbaugh-like character in one of them.

34:39And finally, Trench writes, Brian, did you ever have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Randy?

34:46What was that like?

34:48Yeah, the very first day I met the same voice that you're hearing across the room, Justin Robert Young, we did a podcast, and Justin said, hey, you're gonna be in Florida for six weeks, would you like to drive an hour down and come meet James Randy?

35:07And I couldn't say yes fast enough.

35:09It was a very special moment for me.

35:12And at many conventions, I met James Randy again.

35:16He was always very, very kind.

35:19I guess the first time, much like, part of the reason that Mike Edwards' account of calling James Randy resonated is in 2003, I wrote a skeptical lecture called Scam Sasquatch and the Supernatural.

35:34It was basically a magician's eye view of everything from UFOs to Bigfoots to astrology to fake healers and summoning the dead and so on.

35:43And I wanted to ask about psychic surgery, a trick that I would later do on Penn & Teller's Fool Us.

35:51And so I called the number that I could find on the internet in 2003, and just like Mike Edwards, I had that experience of, hello, this is James Randy.

36:00And just like Mike Edwards, I had, as he put it, vapor lock.

36:07I was like, well, how do you, as a psychic, he's like, yeah, you just use fake blood, make it, you know, skin's pliable, stick your hand in there.

36:16Yeah, I'm like, okie dokie, thanks.

36:19There is a podcast that I did very early in my career with James Randy called The Amazing Show. 15 years. I mean, yeah.

36:31That would've been 2008?

36:34It was done at the time because James Randy had so many amazing stories that we wanted to get down permanently.

36:48I don't know what has happened to that feed.

36:53I don't know what has happened to those episodes.

36:58I'm sure it is on an old computer somewhere in my possession or my mom's house, but if anybody who is listening to the sound of my voice for whatever reason saved those episodes, I would love to hear them again.

37:16And trust me, it is not because I want to hear a very early in his career, Justin Robert Young tried to stammer through an interview with James Randy.

37:29And I will assure you that the entire element of the reviews of that podcast were, Randy's great, why won't the other guy shut up?

37:41But that would be great because there is a lot of stories of him meeting Orson Welles and all sorts of fun ephemera.

37:53And the reason why we did it at the time was exactly for the utility that would exist now, that he wasn't gonna be around forever and we wanted the stories that would eventually fall out of him if you were next to him at a dinner to just live forever.

38:10So maybe if anybody has it, I would love to George Lucas style go in and redo all my parts.

38:17Just edit out all of you.

38:20Just, yeah, I'll just redo it.

38:22You'll re-record all of your lines?

38:23Yeah, like, so Randy.

38:24Not only did I have the privilege of appearing on that program only once, that was the time that I drove down, right?

38:33And then, but I may have an old computer or an old hard drive that has a copy of it.

38:40I'll have to go poking around. Yeah.

38:42Well, there we go.

38:43That is the totality of our questions that we are reading here today.

38:47There is one question that I've received quite a bit, which is, is this it?

38:54Is the story that we told a book, a TV show, a movie, a documentary, without talking out of school, do you have a take?

39:07Is there more here?

39:09Because again, this is the first time we've told a story that the loop isn't totally closed and hasn't already been mined by somebody else.

39:18I believe that the narrative potential of this story has obviously had a lot of worth seen in it by minds far greater than mine in the world of filmmaking, including Barry Sonnenfeld, as revealed by Banachek and Mike during episode five.

39:38There were conversations about other amazing screenwriters that wanted to take a shot at it.

39:44I think selfishly, the way that we told this story from Mike and Steve's perspective reveals a very, very, very elemental form of storytelling.

39:57And the reason why we start out the entire series with why are we obsessed with coming of age stories is because that's what this is.

40:10This is a story of two boys coming from very different backgrounds that find what it means to be an adult.

40:20And in a large part, what the transition from childhood to adulthood really boils down to is understanding that you affect the world around you.

40:31And that no matter how righteous you believe your cause is, there are consequences when we start to look beyond ourselves.

40:40And when you're a child, adults around you hopefully pick up for you.

40:45In Banachek's case, that was not happening.

40:47And so he had to learn that lesson probably earlier.

40:51But I very much think that this is something that could be any of those versions of different storytelling.

41:00And we'll have to wait and see as to what it is.

41:05Well, I do know this much.

41:07First off, I really enjoy the quote from Will Storr's book, The Science of Storytelling, where he overly reductionistly says, all stories boil down to one thing.

41:19The protagonist asks, who am I?

41:21And we see that in this.

41:23And that's something I'm really pleased to see emerge from it.

41:27I also know this much.

41:29This is our third season, and we've got plans for a fourth.

41:33We would like it very much, if you're hearing us for the first time, to give a listen to the back catalog.

41:43We try to create everything as little audio books, evergreen content that should be enjoyed for the first time 100 years after we're dead and buried.

41:53And if you've enjoyed this story so far, please go back and listen to the beginning.

41:59And I'm not gonna ask you to, don't post it on your socials.

42:04That's a dopamine hit that goes nowhere.

42:06Pick up the phone, call one person.

42:08Say out loud, I think you'll like this.

42:11You may, as we've had to with some of our friends, you may have to explain how to listen to a podcast to get them to start hearing it, but it'll be worth it and they will thank you.

42:24And it finally has all.

42:26We can edit this out if you want, but do you want to explain how a certain Titan of magic has enjoyed this podcast?

42:34Okay, a lot of people are very, very busy and they don't have time to learn how to do podcasts. Yes.

42:44Some of these people are extraordinary storytellers and understand the fundamentals of good stories.

42:49And some of them like this season very, very much, but don't want to be bothered on any of the learning how to do the podcast thing. Yes.

43:01Because they're about to go on stage with Penn Jillette. Yes.

43:04And some of those people may have been texting me saying, can I have the next episode, please?

43:10You were just giving one link to a Dropbox for an episode.

43:14At a time, I was a human RSS feed.

43:17And Teller would click the button and the voice would play and he would listen to an episode and then he would just text Brian.

43:26Another, another link, more, another link, more.

43:30Please, please share this story with people who you don't think do podcasts.

43:36So do please, yes.

43:38It works with people even who have never understood what a podcast is.

43:43The beautiful thing about podcasting apps these days is you can do the exact same thing that Brian did with a Dropbox.

43:50You can generate a specific link that will immediately open up the app that they don't even realize they have on their phone and it will just start playing.

43:57So we would love it if you could share it with folks.

46:52All right, thank you guys.

46:53We'll be back soon. Bye-bye.

46:55This episode of World's Greatest Con is written by Justin Robert Young and me, Brian Brushwood, your humble host.

47:12Production and research by Dog & Pony Show Audio in Austin, Texas, with additional production by Will Sattelberg.

47:20Original music by Carson Pace.

47:35Very special thanks go to Banachek and Mike Edwards for allowing us to tell their story.

47:42We greatly encourage you to see Banachek's new show, Mind Games, at the Stratt Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

47:50Additional thanks go to George Slatter Productions, which, along with contemporary news articles, retrospectives, and archive videos made for the bulk of our research.

47:58Write us to world's greatest con at gmail. com. Thanks for listening.

48:03We'll see you next time.

48:05Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.

48:08Dog & Pony Show Audio.