An Honest Liar Page #8

where we have exerted as tight a control condition

as we could think of, even in consultation with magicians,

to see if the influence holds up.

And we have found evidence that it does,

not as strongly under these controlled conditions.

It's as if somehow, the extra controls seem to inhibit it,

but still an effect persists.

Over the course of Alpha,

the controls did get significantly tougher

and the tighter the controls got, the lower the results got,

but their faith in us never diminished.

We do not claim that this tape provides incontrovertible

evidence of PK.

We regard it rather as a provisional tape,

imperfect, but still with much to offer.

It was at that point I think Steve and I realised

we can't do this any more.

We can't be responsible for this kind of psychological damage

by our ability to trick somebody.

Randi said, "It's just a couple more months.

"We have this TV show coming up,

"and that's when we want to tell the world that you're not real."

Randi, he's really the general.

You know, the general's rarely on the front lines anyway.

And sometimes he's sending

his minions to do his good works.

But always at a distance, he's the one at the strategy table.

He's got the vision for what will come.

The big day comes, the one that Mike and I have been waiting for.

We're going to reveal that everything is a hoax.

I'm going to ask these two gentlemen a very simple question.

Can you tell us, how do you do it?

As I walked up to the microphone I said, "It's very simple..."

Well, to be quite honest, we cheat.

Flash bulbs started going off and the murmurs started up

inside of the audience, and Steve and I then at that point admitted

that Project Alpha and us as psychics was nothing more

than a bit of illusion.

Magician Amazing Randi, you have him now on the phone.

Go ahead, you have the last word.

I was wondering what he thought about the claims that this was

sort of an unethical way of carrying out this experiment

and whether or not it's going to affect the scientific community

and the parapsychologists negatively?

I'm happy to say that the

president of the Parapsychological Association described it

as a magnificent experiment that needed to be done

and from which the results of

may benefit everybody, and I think that's what we headed out to do.

We also should point that that the director of that programme

thought it was a very lousy thing to do.

He was quoted as saying that you probably set back the study of it

- and that it...

- If Phillips said that, then my answer to my having

set back the study of parapsychology, is no,

they tried to set it back.

I brought it into the 20th century.

'I felt really bad.'

They truly believed in these things, and I thought that if they had

realised that they had been fooled by somebody, that they would be

more cautious in the future, but I felt bad that I had fooled them.

So you dropped out kind of in the mid-'70s

and just resurfaced lately, what have you been doing?

At that time I wanted to become rich.

And I met a very important man

who was a chairman of the largest mining company in England

and he showed me how to use my talents,

my abilities to look for oil, gold and mineral.

- And I was very, I am very successful at it.

- You proved it?

Exactly, but I am still controversial.

There are a lot of people who think I am fake and a magician,

but all those people I love because they do free publicity for me.

Let's try to do the drawing.

'Do you know how many times the sceptics tried to shoot me down?'

Do you know how many times Randi tried to ruin my career?

But they failed miserably.

Pick up the National Enquirer or any other paper

and you'll find a billion psychics.

Look at movies that Hollywood produces about UFOs

and the psychic powers and paranormal activity.

Are you kidding me? It's much bigger than ever.

You are negative, you are setting up your own standards

and what you're not understanding is that the key to realising any kind of

psychic phenomenon is first believing in it,

not the other way around.

Once you believe, it will happen, it will happen.

Even you, sir, the not-so-amazing-Randi, are psychic,

whether or not you want to believe.

There are millions and millions of people upon this planet

who have other ways of intuiting and sensing.

I have never said these things have not happened.

Why don't you read a few papers and correct yourself?

People think they believe what they choose to believe. We don't.

We mostly believe what we NEED to believe.

You say that Uri Geller is a fake.

You came here and you've given everybody a lot of lip service

and you haven't done anything.

We're going for a commercial break and you can piss off!

We'll be back...

The public really doesn't listen

when they are being told straightforward facts.

They would rather accept what some charismatic character tells them

than really think about what the truth might be.

I tell you from now on you are going to have

a song of victory in your heart!

They would rather have the romance and the lies.

There are a billion believers out there.

A billion people believe in God.

You can't touch that.

There she goes!

This is what Randi is trying to do.

He's trying to say this is a big hoax

and so everything else is a hoax too.

He is trying to say that nothing divine is being spoken.

But actually our ratings are up.

And the thing is, Popoff got back in the business.

All he changed was he doesn't use a radio any more.

He doesn't need to.

He just does dumber stuff that people accept anyway.

This is water from the pool that the Lord himself led the Christians to

during the horrible Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Tens of thousands died and yet every Christian was miraculously spared.

Randi and I once talked about it and I said, you know,

maybe were on the wrong end of the business, we should be on that side.

I mean, he's making like a million dollars a month or more

and I'm not making a million dollars a month.

And, if Randi and I got together we could come up with some really

nifty tricks that would fool people.

Con people.

OK, one, two, three.

ALL:
# Happy birthday, dear Randi

# Happy birthday to you. #

Let her rip, let her rip.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Let her rip!

APPLAUSE:

Happy birthday, Amazing.

In the early days, I think

Randi sort of hid his true relationship with Jose.

But I don't think Randi hid it for any bad reason.

I think it was just a thing that people would use against him

and I think it took Randi a long time to understand that in this day

and age, you don't have to hide those things any more.

# Let me tell you my story about our birthday boy named Randi

# Who met a guy and thought he was just dandy

# Well, the first thing you know, they form a great team

# And both are living the American Dream. #

I remember when Randi came out.

It was in 2010, at the age of 81.

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