at the University of Auckland, and have been working there for a number of years now, 11 years actually, and have worked in this industry for more than 16 years, and I've seen many things, as things have improved. Anyway, let's get it started. It is the year 2017 and war is happening. Python developers and their environments have been invaded by New Contender, and so anyone here actually use Node.js or MPM, raise your hands, that's quite a lot of you, doing web application development, I presume? Yeah? Okay. This talk is probably, you'll probably get what I'm about to say, but maybe you might have a bear about how to start by introducing a little bit of history. So, how did this start? So, JavaScript is the main runtime language for all web browsers. If you're launching a web browser, you have JavaScript, and it's there, but Python isn't JavaScript. So, if you want to get Python code running in your browser, you basically have to go through this transpilation step or run various fun working machines that you may have seen before, and that Node.js and MPM working together has created this really powerful ecosystem for getting JavaScript applications to run, oftentimes without a web browser, because they are on the server. So, people might ask, well, if Python isn't necessary, why don't we just run everything in JavaScript? Oh, that, well, Python, we really want Python, we really love Python, so we'll just have these Python microservices that run on some server somewhere, and JavaScript can speed front-end, it could be Angular or whatever, and there are a couple problems with that. Not a problem if you have a full application, but the thing is that Python backends become, generally become incapable of producing any kind of markup that search engines that are not Google will be able to understand. So, that is a death sentence for real websites. I work at the university, I have these publications that should be indexable by these search engines, and if they are not indexable by these search engines because they are in a blob of JSON, that is not going to do us any good. And the other thing is that there is zero cohesion between the JavaScript bits and the Python bits, because there are these two separate systems. And that means that how are we going to be able to convey these, our JavaScript needs from our Python packages to our dependence? There just isn't a good way to do that. But more history. So, when I first started, we have this thing 16 years ago, we have these things called a common gateway interface, and generally they are just random collection executable, probably Python scripts that would run on some server, that would produce a markup, and then that is the front end. Because that is all you get, that stays HTML over HTTP, get and post request. And of course, as time went on, people realized that they want more stuff, so we have these big, gigantic frameworks that does everything for you, such as Zope and Plon and also Django. Then they realized that, oh, man, these things are so hard and so annoying to use, and I don't understand. So people come along and start working on things like Web2py, Flask and Tornado, which are much smaller, more manageable frameworks for beginners to start to grasp. So the front end, as mentioned, is what the user sees. They generate something, they provide an interface to the back end, which could be some kind of SQL database. And as time went on, this has became not the front end, because the front end has become the JavaScript that is running in the client's browsers. And that JavaScript originally was created by Bren at Netscape, who thought, wow, browsers would be great if there is a little bit of interactivity, like popping up dialogue boxes to annoy your friends or doing actual real stuff like formalization or popping up ads. That's really annoying. But nowadays, it does a bit more than that. And back to a little more about the Python application stacks that we have come to know as we are moving on with the time. They are usually constructed from a collection of packages, but historically, there were just these big giant monoliths that comes with everything. Sometimes they came to be, oh, we are plugging architecture, but it doesn't change the fact that they were giant monoliths. They are really annoying to use. So they realize that. So Zopimplong, Django has done the thing where they have started refactoring the project in the smaller chunks. Soap has broken up their component extra texture. They have their interface. They are no longer in this one package, but they are separate Python packages now. So it makes it much more easier for a beginner to start working on some of these stuff, and it promotes software reuse. So now you don't need to feel like you have to take this entire big thing before you can start using a software. You can just take this one small library and then start working with it. And of course, with web application, you also got these other scripts and whatnot that are probably a Python package. And people consider this an asset management problem. And installation generally, no one really thinks about that, because with Python packages, you can install some package, and it's there. There are other systems such as build out, but most people don't really use that. And as mentioned, what about JavaScript code? So I'm not really talking about the stuff that you can get from NPM. I'm talking about your Python integration bits, like the configuration bits to get Angular going, for instance. The problem is that we don't really think about that, and we end up getting a bunch of special snowflakes, which are everywhere. I mean, you can say that every project is special snowflake, and that gets that kind of true. But then every Python framework, everybody, Django has its own way, they have Django static files, and it has its own JavaScript registry, and they have CSS registry, and they realize that this is a bad idea, so they refactor everything into a single resource registry. And Flask projects might use jQuery and friends, which they might get through some public CDN, and then they caught that. I'm guilty of this too, because I have some of Flask projects, and I remember using this table rendering library and dropped the JavaScript in there, and they kind of forget about it. And sure, they're simple stuff, they kind of work, but what about portability? What about if we are building real library builders, we want other people to be able to use a library easily, but without telling them how we actually got this thing put together, there's no way for them to do this without going through a lot of hoops. And then as these things are generally the way things have been done are generally not portable, makes reuse basically impossible. So they become liability, basically. It's no longer talking about assets and liabilities, and we only got technical debt now. There's no dependency management, because we just stuck the JavaScript code in there and forget about it. And they're also untested. Not many Python programmers write tests with JavaScript. Well, at least that was then. I hope things have changed now. Things have changed. And of course, Bower and NPM are a thing now, right? Well, that's how we get the invasion. And these are some examples from certain Python projects. On the left, right there, we got one Plong library called mockup, which provides a bunch of JavaScript code that does end up in Plong 5. And we got a standard. But we got these funny guys here, and we're like, Bower or JSON, package or JSON, other things that are really just in the faces of MPM that are not really communicate through the package management. You have to get to the repository to get it. Same thing with Django. This is the Django repo on the right-hand side. And they also have Brunt file in there, which is like, okay, that's like a build script. Well, to be fair, there's a big file over there, too. But they're not things that can be easily conveyed. And to be fair to Django, their package or JSON is really slim. They only really contain the ESLint, the basic tools. I think the same thing for the grant. But they also have this funny guy up there called js-underscore-test. So here's a question. If we decided, if I want to extend that, Django some functionality, how am I going to be able to easily run those tests against the sub-picture? I haven't broken anything during my extension process. And the other thing is that I mentioned these configuration files. You end up with these really cool test guides that have passed that are really specific to the source structure of the Git project, which is oftentimes not the same as the one that you have installed onto your system, within your virtual inf or on your distribution. So these things are generally not reusable. And how do you even know they are there while by Git clone, right? So there's no portability. Every single Python projects have used their own special Snowflake way of talking to NodeJ as an NPM. And it's just no way to reuse these kind of things. And as a personal anecdote, I decided I wanted to extend Plunk Walkup. So since none of the Python tools can do it, since all they use are Git, it's just a Git protocol, I have to, okay, I guess I'll just use Git some modules to embed that thing into my project and then go from there. And I end up having to use Shell Script to start copying their package of JSON, locating everything. And then, of course, add my own dependencies because I have other libraries I want to use. And don't even get me starting the big file. And it turns out that the karma.com.json, which is the thing for starting the test development server for getting a test running, also only customizing because it needs to know where everything is. And then this suddenly gets to the headache. I would even verify that things are even working. And also, most people in the JavaScript community don't seem to test their artifacts, which is kind of weird to me because that's the actual thing that user is running, but they just run the test on the dev and it's done. But I want to be able to test the artifacts. And to do that, I have to basically figure out all these tools, start writing a bunch of stuff. So instead of writing Python codes, some of you probably have seen this blog post from last year, so that's where I was learning like trying to like, okay, how do I be a programmer again? It's like, okay. So we get to do this. We get to write endless configuration files and like scripts that are just trying to get our stuff working. And instead of working on the thing that we should be, so this is what I look like. Okay? Like just ask my colleagues, they'll probably tell you that. But we are programmers. Why are we writing these reBOSS non-reusable copy-pasta configuration files, like spaghetti code, whatever you want to call it, to pass the spaghetti. And also, why haven't we program a system to manage and build these kind of things? To build these configuration files, actually run the thing itself. Instead, we program something to trap ourselves in doing that role. Like, computers are way better than us doing, then I just don't get it. So this is a great sentiment. Like, it's war. Let's fight against invasion. Like, you can watch me go mountain stage. And yeah, that's what's funny, because I want to include it there. So it is very easy to forget how to stay calm. And fortunately, I have a cure. ComJS. And gaze on the fluffy bunny rabbit. That's your eye bleach. So what is ComJS? So ComJS is a framework for Python that builds on top of setup tools which would then let, which would provide a good stable interface from there to know JS and NPM in order to provide a managed and well-defined integration so that we can actually use know JS in a more control manner from Python. And it's written to be modularized, extensible, and with a core focus in building, actually a reproducible way to build these deployable artifacts that would go on to the web server, which would then go to clients. And of course, the whole process sounds suspiciously like compile, assemble, and link like a C ecosystem. So that's, you want to turn an acronym, that's the acronym. And the other funny thing is that actually habits of rabbits is actually a funny way to describe, an app way to describe how JavaScript is produced and consumed in the modern day development environment. So that's what we're going to talk about in a little bit later on in this video. I'm going to talk about this in a little bit later on in this video. And you're suspiciously like another standard, right? You've probably seen this before. No, no, no. That's not my goal. Because setup 2 is already a standard. And I'm just merely extending it. Rather than coming up with something completely new like the Pong guys have done, or other people, actually, or do build something that basically is a standard. So that's the common ground. So that's not a standard. That's not a new standard. That's an existing standard that I'm reusing. And of course, ComJS is a library, so it does provide a common set of helpers that will make using these decorations much, much, much more easier manner. And setup 2 is in this utility is actually a lot of features in there. I took full use of it. So this is a sample configuration. Yeah, it's readable. And it's called JSON, which actually defines the package.JSON for the Python package. So all the Python dependencies are captured there, which can be accessible by other packages, the dependents, I should say. And a bunch of entry points, which for those of you probably know that's the next talk, but I'm not talking, so I hope it will be fine. And there is this other funny thing called extras underscore comJS. I tried to capture this using entry points, which you might probably see somewhere further down, but the problem is that the JavaScript figuring out where these artifacts are, or where the JavaScript code is, can still be very cumbersome. But at least I want, there must be a way to manually provide this. And this is my best attempt, but this is something I'm also working towards in solving. And the other aim of ComJS is to get out of the way. You want to use something and then just put it aside. So ComJS is designed for that. And that ComJS, as ComJS is also licensed under GPLs, you don't necessarily want to import from it, and then basically have the GPL be in your application for a philosophical reason that you want to avoid it, because entry points are just basically text files. So it's actually, the dependencies relationships actually got inverted. So you're not going to be using the text files or using the declarations in your application rather than the other way around. So unlike one of the other projects called FanStatic, which was an attempt to formalize the asset management in Python, but you can see that you have to import from that library in order to do anything. And a lot of declarations for one end every file and then it gets annoying. At least they did try. It's an interesting thing to do. So you have to import from within Python. And the other thing is that ComJS aims to be modular. So there is a set of common-based classes. And there are specific functionalities, again, defined through entry points. Okay. So I guess I can show you a demo now if this would work. Oops. I'm already in here then. Okay. So in here, I have a bunch of Python videos since I haven't actually released this on Pipe yet. So there's a development version. So I basically have to install it like so. Hopefully this will work. Let's take time because there's a really old notebook. And do I even have Internet? Nope. Try this again. There we go. Complaining about lack of Internet access. My apologies. If not. So I have another one that I already pre-installed. So ComJS, so you have a bunch of other modules that you could have. So let's back here. So in a bare installation, we basically have just the bare minimum stuff. So you can see that for modules that are not already installed, it does not show up. You're not forced to have all of these tools be available in your system in one go. And the other thing is ComJS aims to allow Python projects to include JavaScript.  So that JavaScript has to go somewhere. So it's inside your Python, get repo somewhere. So in order to provide, so I want to aim to provide a consistent invocation method through the command line or the API. So here's a screenshot. I guess I can just try to get this demo going for you again. So if we want, we can just install the rest of the packages. So this is a processing. Normally, we just do this through pip, but again, it is not possible. So let's go in here, run setup. PY, develop. So we fetch the dependencies, and then if we run this, hopefully this would work. Oops, because I forgot to install it. Oh yeah, the other thing is I forgot to mention is that the Node.js, because I haven't installed any of the Node.js dependencies. So one neat thing is that I also provide the MPM integration. So if I want, I can just show the dependencies like so, but I also need a bunch of stuff. So if I want to use the webpack version, I can just have that installed, and then it will just concatenate everything together. And I'm just going to install the dev package for the testing, which I'll demo later. And of course, it will just go in, do the thing, go through MPM, download the dependency, and I'm not going to wait for this, so I'm just going to go back to here and then, what's wrong with directory?  Here's the artifact. So that's all of the random artifacts that I've pre-created from beforehand. And the other thing is that I want to provide something that makes it easy for people to run tests against the JavaScript that you may have in your Python packages. So that Python programmers can actually start running tests much like when you might test an application using unit tests, like Python, TackView, unit tests, and some of your package test suites. There's no such thing really for JavaScript with Node.js, so I want to be able to provide that at least for the Python programmers. So we have something like this. So you saw how I created the artifact previously. So if I run, so this would just create the artifact through the required JS to a chain, but what if we want to run a test? So it's a stick, another command in the first. So comma is a standard test runner for JavaScript, Node.js development, and we do that, and it should start invoking the test. And there you go, pass all the tests, and then once it's done, now you actually go through and build your artifact, rather than, and of course, coverage is a thing I forgot to show. Probably should just put in the tech that we fled, so I can stop hitting that. And so you can see the coverage. You can also enable the other flags to enable coverage for your tests, so you make sure that you actually run your test, rather than them not really running. And then the other thing is that since we are really doing this for Python, there must be a way to include all of these artifacts. As part of the final Python wheel, which would then be distributed to the end user, because as I mentioned, they don't necessarily want to have com.js installed. They don't want to have Node.js installed, really. So why do we have to force them to do that? So if we have a way to formalize the building of these things, again, this can be achieved through setup tools, which I've done. So it would look something like this, when you run Python setup, you know, be this wheel, and then you have the ability to automatically get this done. So one thing I probably should show is that, so this is the, whoops, I hope it's working. Yeah, so these are the relevant sections. So define the file name, for the artifact, the specific entry point that will produce the tool chain required to get the artifact generated. Again, all these things can be customized because they're just entry points. Very easy to do. Of course, not the coding part, but definition at least, make it so. And whoops. So currently, version 2.1 is out. That's been a year. I'm working on the next version, which actually involves a lot of API changes because I blame Webpack. Webpack is actually really painful to deal with. Hopefully soon. And so all the other project packages also require a little bit of refactoring. So anyway. So instead of finding a war, peace can finally be achieved. So we should be able to disarm the configuration files, which are very specific and possibly toxic, and turn them, transmute them into some kind of conveyable form that other packages can digest. And then the entire package workflow is completely streamlined and completely reproducible. You can just make sure that your environment, your Node.js environment is installed, as mentioned, dependencies are all there. And there's no longer, I need to worry about these foreign invaders that are in your Git repo when you can just give them a path to turn them into useful fellow citizens through proper immigration channels. Right? Thank you for your time. No, we got plenty of time. Yeah. This might be too big of a question to ask right now, but I, you know, I'm not an expert at Node or anything. And I guess I was just wondering if you could explain a little bit more about the syntax of the entry points and how that relates to the Node module and allowing you to import it. Yeah. This is a point. You're right. This is pretty technical. I don't want under the hood that I ended up having to really gloss over, but again, if you and I can chat later or anyone else for that matter, because I'll be around. So if you really want to know how I got the library, because I actually do have Nunger, which also have a library that uses that. And I bring all these together. I hope that's a good enough way to demonstrate this particular use case. Yeah. Other questions? Hey, I don't know too much about this, but I was just wondering if you'd explored going the other way around.  And, you know, is that a more tractable route? That can be. There is actually, I think there are projects that are kind of doing this, but I personally find the Node.js MVM ecosystem to be really fragmented. Like, there is just no, nothing like set up to those entry points there. Like, I mean, there are Autosystems similar, but nobody seems to have agreed what things really are. And also the ecosystem for Node.js have a lot of churn. Things just change all the time. I gave up, basically. I think there's one at the back. Anyway, you can come talk to me if you really want more details. So, yeah.


Welcome to what I can I can I'm about to introduce a gentleman who doesn't believe in predictions But I can predict with certainty that you're going to enjoy the next hour or so I know this not only from my own experiences of having talked with this gentleman many times But also from the fact that just over a year ago I had the great pleasure of interviewing him right here in this room And I see many faces of people who are here back back then and it was so much fun And there were so many stories and ideas left untold that right there we we agreed that we would do this again So this is actually part two. I should also mention that this evening is being done in conjunction with J ref the James Randy educational foundation And we'll talk a little bit more about what that is but I will also tell you that through the the hard work of John Armstrong and DJ growthy DJ is the president of J ref and John of course is on the board of trustees and runs a lot of stuff And between the two of them it is being worked on that this will be a series and that we will have more of these Long-term interviews long-form interviews involving people who intersect these two related worlds of the skeptical world the paranormal world the Magicians world and sort of everything in between So no better way to get that started than for me to re-introduce For part two of our conversation the gentlemen of the evening. Please welcome the amazing James Randy I think they like you Well, no, they just applaud you see they do that automatic. It's a reaction. It's built into the DNA. It's a long story I don't want to get into it Alright, let's move from that long story to a short story because I have been informed that you have a topical Tale you'd like to tell yes, I I'm sure first of all. I've got to say that I am very honored to have been asked back here The first one is pretty good. I don't know what I'm going to say this time, but I hope it's just as good or I Am Welcome me welcome you folks back to the castle again many of you have probably not been here since the fire and I'm amazed at the improvement of the close-up room for one thing. Have you seen that and in the dining room? I really like the changes that are made in the dining room I'm so happy to be here at the castle, which is still with us ladies and gentlemen as I am so there But I am reminded Of the story of the two gentlemen at Miami Beach who are in Adjacent deck chairs now you see I saw the improvements the beautiful rug upstairs and stuff like that It turns out that the castle luckily was heavily covered in insurance and that did the job And I'm very happy to to assure you that If you should light another fire, it'll be taken care of But the two gentlemen at the at the beach in Miami side-by-side in deck chairs One looks over and the other one he says how do you do sir? My name is fine when I came here under strange circumstances So says what circumstance? He says well He said you know I was in the textile business and we had a fire It was a terrible fire and then when the insurance agent came to me I realized I was really well covered in insurance I made so much that at this early age I've retired and that's what brings me to Miami Beach. How come you're here? He says well, that's very similar story Very similar story. I was in the hardware business and we had a flood our terrible fun Oh, you had no idea it was just and that brought me here the other fellow looks at him puzzled. He said a flood He says yeah flood How do you set a flood? No, no, I'm I'm very very Happy to announce to you that The castle has recovered beautifully as you can see and the shows are back in full swing There's still a few adjustments and things to be done, but they're being done and our castle is back in business I'll try I'm leaving tomorrow morning, but I'll I'll be here So have you seen any good magic here? Have I seen any good magic here such a question? I tell you the the other night Well, I've been here three or four nights now in a row and I must say that the show I saw a couple of nights ago I went around I took in every possible show one after the other bang bang bang like that and That was simply the best night I had ever spent at the magic castle I've spent a lot of nights here full evenings and that one was That all of the shows were simply superb I was stunned by it and if you haven't seen the shows yet folks, you've got a great treat ahead of you well the The last time we spoke At one of these we talked a bit about some of the magicians you you admired in your youth and That would include Harry Blackstone senior was one of the people we talked about and several others Do you feel that there is a significant difference between The magic that was going on when when you were Coming up as a teenager and and what's going on a magic now and and I'll ask you this both plus and minus well, I Must say that the the one thing I've observed in In my long career in magic is the rise of the Asian element I went right after the war. I went over to Japan. I was actually entertaining troops there Canadian and American troops as a microback sort of thing and I got to see Japan right after the war I Was approached by so many young folks backstage Who wanted to get into magic and they had all seen Channing Pollock, this is an interesting angle. They had already they had seen Channing Pollock and Had one gentleman a very serious young man who approached me with this manager and the manager spoke English very well thank goodness and He explained to me that this young man wanted to go to New York and wanted to get on the Sullivan show that was the big thing in those days, of course and They wanted my advice on how to go about this and Deep from within my wise brain. I said yes. I suggest that you'd want to go over there and announce your your your arrival in Great style with a press agent and they hire a press agent and dress in Japanese costume because America is very curious about Asian folks and particularly the Japanese they want to get to know them and I think that would be a great success and He translated to the artist who then This gentleman speaks Japanese so we can have little chats on the side Baranaki on the tech would decide no, I'll tell you so she must yes watch your language Japanese watch yours He was horrified Horrified that he should wear Japanese costume and I was informed that he wanted to look like Channing Pollock Because they had seen The movie the famous movie the nightclub movie with Channing Pollock European nights was yes. Thank you Thank you very much. My dad takes care of me and Yes, and they wanted to do dove magic and I said no you never there Hundreds of kids all over the place and adults of course doing dove magic acts and they don't want that They would like something flavored Asian and oh no, no, we can't do that He came over with his agent Without the press agent stuff in advance and such and he sort of vanished and went back to Japan He and I'm sure that they thought to themselves. I wish we'd listened to the old duck there with the beard Because that could have been a sensation that would have been wonderful because I had a connection with the Sullivan show Even though I never played the show, but I had Mark Letty the agent in New York who booked all the Solomon shows Yeah, and that it was a great gig for him. Yes every act that went on the Sullivan show went through Mark Letty and I could have talked to Mark I could have gotten him on the show in Japanese costume, but he wouldn't have any part of it They all wanted to be Channing Pollock and since Mark Letty was managing Channing Pollock I would say the odds of getting a dove act on the Sullivan show were particularly low. Yes very very low. Yes So so that's all that was an interesting route But we never we never get to the answer to my question What was the question the question was do you feel there's a difference between the magicians? Who were prominent when when you were coming up as a teenager and the magicians who are prominent now well, of course the advent of that television made a great deal of difference and a great deal of difference and phenomenal difference and I know I remember an episode with Harry Blackstone senior Harry Blackstone senior. I saw this in Canada. Oh, it's going to be a nice day after all I Saw a disaster with poor Harry He was doing his business where he had the I'm talking about senior now up in Canada on a CBC show there Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and He did a business where he wasn't aware of the fact that he was mic'd he's used it He was used to bellowing out at the audience like this. He never used a microphone on stage And he had a great voice that carried to the far ends of the theater. I assure you and He got the fellow up on stage It was an audience participation thing where he had to cue the guy and All of the cues came through very clearly When I turned around to give me a hush in the back and The guy said yeah, of course Well, we heard every cue and I sat there at home watching this and black-and-white TV saying It can't happen that way Harry got over it Okay, but he wasn't aware of the fact that you know that wasn't as much right and this is why Harry, Jr.. Yes Or what's called a belly switch? So that even when his hands were occupied he could by Pushing out with his with his stomach. You could turn his microphone on and off For for such queuing and he would do it. He did it with such Precision that you would never catch it. I mean it would take you many many Later, I was studying to see it One of the things that I wanted to bring up We do want to talk a bit about J ref which is the You've been involved in various organizations in the skeptical field, but this one is the the one that is ongoing and and flourishing One of the things that that has been happening with J rev is the amazing meeting yes, which is a convention in Las Vegas every summer and You just had the ninth of the Tams to the amazing meeting Exactly and how many people approximately were at the first one? There were 22 Okay, that's not even approximate. That's precise. Yeah, that was not done in Vegas That was done in Fort Lauderdale. Okay, a little try and we had 22 people and how many were at the one this past July as? 1672 And One of I was there. It was a terrific time and there as with previous years there There was some overlap with magic Jamie in Swiss has been involved. I think every year on the on this oh, yes, but also Penn and Teller and There are others who come in his guests Michael Weber has performed Banna check and a whole slew of Magicians people that the folks here were to recognize I Was there this year? I had a great time but one of the things that I found very interesting was the amount of diversity in The people there. Yes We're very proud of that too and and as well. You should be this this the reason I brought this up I was thinking about it because today is Martin Luther King day. Yes, and so as as I was listening to a news thing about that fact It reminded me that at the amazing meeting there was a very significant diversity both ethnically But also as far as gender there was almost an equal number of women Actively involved there as as men and actually in terms of the speakers. I think it was Almost exactly 50-50 now. You've never seen a magic convention where the ratios Are like that. That's true. The the age spectrum was very wide So far as I could tell the economic and Cultural yes spectrum highly buried. It's a wonderful fact. My question is How much of this is something that is deliberately happened through outreach or something and how much of it is just kind of a natural organic? growth well for one thing we've encouraged Female speakers and we have no problem with that. There are some very competent Harriet Hall for example as a doctor Harriet Hall She is a wonderful speaker and she does it regularly for us we have attracted this Ethnic diversity as I said as you said, pardon me and and the the gender diversity as well And we have all three genders there Well, no, maybe four or five. I'm not too sure but in any case the young folks that go in there, too Now the women who go and the young folks who go don't go there to play the roulette wheels Right they go there because they want to hear what we have to say. Mm-hmm. And when we have diverse Diverse groups afterwards of special Meetings and such in small rooms and whatnot. They all fight for one another in order to get into these things The diversity of the kind of people that we attract to a skeptical meeting most of the skeptical meetings are Middle-aged and older Ponchi white gentlemen And we're talking about skeptics meetings not magic clubs Let me tell you the story of Jerry Anderson's Jerry Anderson set the at the Fort Lauderdale Magic Club. Okay, Jerry Anderson was a dear friend of mine Oh, how I miss this man. Those of you who knew Jerry Anderson would know that he was the most honest man in the world He could not lie He would have turned into a pile of dust if he had tried to lie And he was a wonderful very very close friend of mine I miss him dearly But I celebrate the fact that he existed I'm not mourning the fact that he's gone, but Jerry is up there or down there. I'm not sure Somewhere he's sort of with us all the time as a matter of fact at the JRF meetings We always have a table set up for Jerry Anderson with his illusions on it and a picture of Jerry Anderson right there And that table will always be there at every meeting from now on Well The least we can do really the least we can do so Jerry Anderson now He did a hmm He participated with us in so many ways he was so much a part of our activity and when we and it came down to Him doing special stuff for us. He would go out of his mind with it He would try to arrange it. He would make phone calls gonna be a nice day. I'm sure I said it Did you pay the bill? That may be a message from Jerry Now the the Jerry Andrews thing he came out to my house in New Jersey because he was lecturing at Magic Clubs in in New Jersey and That was a wonderful experience for me. He stayed at my home. He told me endless stories some of them true. I'm sure oh Yeah, he was very honest and He went out to the Fort Lauderdale Magic Club now the average age the Fort Lauderdale Magic Club is deceased and The the the manager of the club and everything they had the club was a much younger Matt and When Jerry got out there he sort of looked around when he saw these these hurry old heads out there That's a nice. That's a good question. Actually. It's not a bad word out there it looks like this and He was saying to me I hope they understand what I'm gonna say because Jerry's Stuff was on a very high level for the magicians if you ever attended one of his lectures very high level and he had all of his pamphlets and books out there for sale He gave his talk and then he asked for questions the first question he got was so inane that His heart sank I could see him just heard a slump and he answered it as best he could the second question Really set him up and he turned to the manager and he said I guess that's the end of the question period They hadn't understood a thing. He told them and they wanted to ask inane questions about thumb tips and such and So the president of the club said okay, well now be offering for sale these books and Jerry said no No, no, I'm not gonna sell the books. They wouldn't That's because he was such an honest man He knew they would go on a shelf or into a cabinet someplace and never be read The the recovery would never be turned back in order to see any of the the effects in it But they just collected these pamphlets from every magician that came to town and then the manager came over to him Gave him the check and he said no, no, no, I can't accept the check for this not not for this show No, they really didn't understand what I was saying. So I took the check from the manager. I said, I'll get it I put it in my pocket. I took it home got his checkbook to pause the slip in there mailed it to his address in Eugene, Oregon and He deposited it in the bank I mean a party I mailed it directly to the bank. It was deposited in his account. He never knew that he got that check He would have been embarrassed, but that's the kind of guy that Jerry Andres was and Jerry Thank you for being here Indy Many of many of the people here of course remember Jerry because he used to come and work the close-up room At least once a year It was a guaranteed thing that he would come down and always have New new things to argue about which was one of the great things to argue about exactly Let's talk about some other people that you've known one of things that was interesting to me at TAMM was that there were certain people who Whose names may or may not be well known to the general public, but who in the world of of skepticism are rock stars Oh, yeah, you know I'll name some of the ones that people would recognize Richard Dawkins for example Was was a huge Figure at this event. He's my God And Neil deGrasse Tyson. Oh, yeah, what a wonderful speaker and a great character. Yeah, yeah terrific Tell them the story about the shoes Yeah, the the first TAM that Neil deGrasse Tyson did for us I went out to the airport to to meet him and We bumped him into the car and drove him to the to the Monte Carlo to the casino where we hold these things every year and we chatted and I'm a could be very very reachable gentlemen and Went to his room and he started to unpack his suitcase while talking to us. He took a pair of shoes Eat your hearts out on this He took a pair of shoes and he just tossed them at the cupboard They both did this kind of a thing and ended up like that in the cupboard And he looked at it with a certain amount of satisfaction. He turned to me said I meant to do that I Looked at him. I said I believe you So I can lie too But just a beautiful move to boom like that and he was a little stung by it I'm sure maybe it was the ambiance of the place or the vibrations. I'm not sure but speaking of Rock stars in the world of skepticism and science and the like brings up a name Who came up at dinner last night actually Carl Sagan? Oh, good. You were quite close with and Probably the single most famous scientist to the American public of the last several decades now when Carl Sagan died a few years ago one of the things that surfaced About him. Yeah, that had not been kind of well-known or publicly known was that he was a pothead Yes, but he that he smoked marijuana regularly. I'm not taking sides on this, but you were kind of public in in being a bit shocked by this and Upset by it. No, I wasn't really upset back max. I was I was surprised because it had never dawned on me I had spent a lot of time with Carl both at his home In Cornelius or is it? Yes, exactly. Who's the Cornell, right? Yes Cornell. Sorry and and many you know He'd been visiting us He came to a lot of Tams and such and lectured for us and such and I knew him well personally him and his wife Andrew in and at that time I knew Lynn Margolis the former wife as well and His well a couple of his sons. I knew one of them very much into magic Dorian Sagan. That's correct I used to give lessons when he was about 14. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did not know that. I'm proud of you. Thank you Yes. Well, anyway, yeah Carl When I found out that that he was using Marijuana, let's face it. We don't have to use slang terms for it I was quite surprised but Then I thought to myself wait a minute He was a very intelligent gentleman. He knew what he was doing He knew I'm sure what his limits were and I don't think he would have ever overdone it to drive for example after after Getting high But if it made any difference in his career and made him into the guy that he turned out to be I've got to have a better understanding of it and I've had a better understanding Whatever since I've never involved myself in it. That's my personal choice But no, I I didn't have any trouble Forgiving him for there's nothing to forgive any because he's a growing adult, you know But I must I must give you the event that happened I was sitting in my office with Andrew Mayn at the the foundation headquarters in Fort Lauderdale and Something came up. He was Andrew was sitting reading some some mail and on the couch in my office and I saw something come up on my Computer monitor there and I laughed and Andrew looked up and says what's so funny and I read him an astronomical joke an astronomical joke off the screen and Andrew laughed and I reached out like this and my hand froze and Andrew was looking at me. He said what's the matter and I really did this I looked at my hand as if it was a strange thing that I'd never seen before I Said Andrew I was going to call Carl Carl had been dead for years And I was so shocked at what I was going to do was automatic to pick it up and go click click and He was number two on the dialer and I knew he would answer at the other end. You see I was going to read him joke I was horrified I looked at my hand and I immediately took him off the automatic dialer I put Andrew in on the dial in the same place same number at his home But what a shock that you don't realize that people that were that close to you I've actually gone and you know, you're not gonna be able to talk to them again Strange experience not without a round table and You've known I mean look this comes partly with with longevity you are now 83 Going on a hundred I always say because I'm very ambitious But I mean how many different places have you been in that just in the past year you've done several major tours all through all through Scandinavia and Yeah, I had been On tour I did Canada. I did nine cities in Canada in nine days Starting in Vancouver and going to Halifax and that's the whole of Canada So longevity is clearly Part of what makes you makes you you but one of the downsides of that is that? When the older one gets the more People you know who yeah who died. Yeah, someone once asked die Vernon. How do you deal with? Losing so many friends and his answer was you find younger friends But I want to bring up a couple of people who you know Here's a name that that someone mentioned this earlier and I thought what a good name to bring up I'm I'm interested in this and it's a name that some people here will instantly know and some won't but we'll explain who it is William Lindsay Gresham. Oh my oh Yeah, well, I see some recognition. Yes to those who don't know Gresham was a writer He wrote his most famous work was nightmare Ali He wrote that what I think is the best biography of Houdini called Houdini the man who walked through walls now It's it's filled with inaccuracies, but it's but it's the best read of all of all the Houdini biographies that I've ever read It's the most Engaging to read if you're willing to ignore how many facts you got wrong But he also wrote other other novels and and other books and and not fiction works and And was very immersed in the magic community was based in New York and knew a lot of people including you So I ask you tell us about your What comes to mind when his name comes up? Well, if you have a copy of the book I'm sure they'll all rush to get a copy of the man Houdini the man who walked through walls I I gave some assistance to to Bill Gresham In I tried to get a lot of those errors out of there, but they were they were too good They sounded too good. I guess and he kept them in there. They weren't serious errors. They were just Maybe dates or whatever, but I gave him a lot of assistance on the book And it was in the very final stages. He had to rush it off to the printer and He promised me as a result. He said you'll be the first of the last name of the book So if you look at the copy of that it's dedicated to me and the dedication page And when you go to the very end and says thanks for all of his help and guidance to James Randy So I'm the last one and the first one in the book. So there The Alpha and Omega Exactly that's more What kind of guy wants he he was He was a very strange character lived in them I think was was a crook man Hudson or Anyway, yes, he Well, he was a great writer. He wrote many books that you should read look up look William Lindsey Gresham Don't forget that Google will tell you everything about him. I assure you and Most of that is true But no he he had a great interest in magic. He got to know all the magicians such He he traveled a great deal as well He went all the way to England to research a book that he never got got written on a spirit medium that he took an interest in and he went to the Society for Cycle Research the UK went to the SPR and did a lot of research there and Unfortunately, I lost track of his wife after he died and I've not been able to track it because I'm sure she has the notes That he made that those would be wonderful to see Because he really was a good good researcher. He he tried very hard To get these facts together. Who didn't you story? He fluffed up a bit. We admit that. Yes, but again great read. Yeah, it was good fluffing one of the interesting things about Gresham Ray Hyman who was a longtime friend of yours and was very close with Jerry Andrews because Ray's based up in the Portland area now and Ray in addition to being a An academic and a very fine magician He has a particular interest in the topic of cold reading Something that I'm sure most and Ray as a psychologist by profession. Yeah and Ray is not certain of this but but he thinks That the first time the word cold reading with the the meaning that we ascribe to it now of telling people things about themselves on the fly without prior knowledge That the first time that appeared in print may have been in Knight Merrally. Yes The term is nowhere near as old at least in terms of being established in print It's nowhere near as old as we tend to think of it. We assume it goes back to the to the 19th century but at least in terms of it may have been in in the spoken vernacular but but I Haven't found an earlier Example of its use. I don't know of the Merrally was around 1946 or earlier 47 okay, and and so Entire own power played the in the film lead in that film and Gresham was really disappoint in the film because it didn't really well There were lots of sexy bits in the in the novel, but none of that was used that was Hollywood in those days and But he was very disappointed that it didn't really round out the character The film has some very powerful stuff, and it's finally been released Just a few years ago. Yeah, it was tied up the rights were tied up for a long time And so all during most of the video era you couldn't get it But but it is now out and on DVD. I hope they haven't colorized it I would hope not I would certainly hope not Um Let's jump around a little bit we we touched momentarily on on on say on cysts and and somehow that that Gives me a segue Into a piece of videotape that I would like to to introduce or have you okay? This is my single favorite clip of James Randy and Thomas have we got up? Yeah, this is Thomas who is part of which one is this? This is the one where you went on to a little show called the Tonight Show Hosted by Johnny Carlson 22 times over the years, but on this particular occasion you decided to do a demonstration of Psychic surgery. Oh, yes but yes we Went outside to see the audience the potential audience Standing outside in line waiting to get into the studio and I went along and I I chose a reasonably corpulent gentlemen And asked him a feed volunteer and he gladly gave permission now this this is psychic surgery so-called That those words are in quotes imagine that okay and We now stage blood is terrible. It stains the skin which blood won't do And it's just not compatible with a really good demonstration So the blood you're going to see here is real but it came from Carson's secretary she actually went to the the resident nurse there at NBC and She volunteered to have 20 cc's of her blood taken now that's that's dedication that's dedication you got to admit and She didn't mind at all. She was a good sport about it all and so the blood I'm using here is really blood and I make a joke I Make a joke halfway through this thing because the tension building in the audience was quite considerable quite considerable and I had to make a bit of a joke. I think you'll know when the joke comes I hope you'll laugh may I also mention I'm not going to reveal the joke You'll you'll see it, but you told me and I was very impressed by this that the joke was an ad lib Yeah, you had not preplanned it but rather you felt that there was so much tension and you came up with this gag on the spot And I think it's one of the great moments Because I was I was seeing people literally in the audience doing this kind of thing I'm looking away said I didn't want them to do that. So it sort of broke the tension So without further ado, this is from 86 approximately many years ago. Yes, you know some mid 1980s. This is James Randy Demonstrating something which at the time was kind of a brand new Sensation people were reading about it and there were books coming out about it And this was probably the first time that almost anyone in the American viewing audience had a chance to see psychic surgery You all say Now this is the time to look away if you if you need to because it's going to get a little gory from now on The psychic surgeons the Philippines are Hey, thanks, Andy. Okay, everything's fine. They're pretty heartless folks. They just Don't much care for the feelings of people. They don't certainly care for their health at all And of course, they're not in any way trained to do this sort of thing They just put on an act as if they are trained now what you're about to see is A bare-handed operation which appears To take place by actually penetrating the body believe me But you're seeing is strictly special effects. It's sleight of hand and nothing more and this is the way it looks Great sound effect anything that gets down there. We don't get it on your trousers are being helped it This is terrible getting worse and worse Operations all over and I'll mind your folks. I want you to bear in mind, please That people are showing this as if we're really serious as if it actually did take place And as if surgery were really performed people do this they go to the Philippines they spend their money And they frankly return home in most cases to die It's Little bit funny to watch it perhaps and you say gee, I know it's play acting It's not play acting when they go by the tens of thousands every year Samford I want to thank you for being a wonderful volunteer. I think you deserve a round of applause for that The official appointment secretary is here. Really? Okay, we'll uh, we'll leave that editorial alone Can I wash my hands? That still has a pretty powerful, uh, oh, yeah zing to it these many years later. How did you practice that? Well, that was my dad actually down the table. Yeah now, uh I had done it at many lectures before that when it was an item that was in the news all the time Right. I mean this was getting the psychic surgery thing which was located mostly in the Philippines a little bit in South America and and It was huge. There were there were a major articles about it in time magazine in the equivalent And television reports and so forth and and Well, I just worked out a couple of methods of doing it That was a combination of two different methods Of doing the the same effect and uh, hope you didn't catch me, but uh, yeah, it's uh It's it's not too difficult to do I could teach anyone to do that Now had you in in researching this had you had the opportunity to actually go and witness A psychic surgeon or wouldn't get into a thing like that But uh, I I'm seeing some of the films some place. It was very evident what they were doing And they were really bad at it But they didn't have to be good at it because the people already believed that they were doing miracles So what it worked no matter what and they collected a lot of money. They got fabulously both of them And this was back in the days Now with with cable television and literally hundreds of channels to choose from The the television pie is split up into very small pieces and even the the broadcast shows get Compared to the old days get very small ratings. This was when Carson owned the night And and so the number of people who would watch the Carson show and talk about it the next day was Huge you could literally could not walk down the street if you'd been on the on the Carson show the night before What was the kind of reaction that came in the days following this particular appearance on Carson?  This is a spiritual thing. You should not make fun of spiritual things And these are holy men of god and etc. Etc. On the other hand a lot of people saying good for you I'm glad that you exposed this sort of thing But I was on my way to japan a couple of months after that and I stopped in the Philippines Because I'd gotten requests from the newspapers there And I stopped in the Philippines tried to get through immigration and they stopped me Now, uh, what was his name the uh dictator uh, marcos. Yes, marcos. Thank you I get a lot of stuff out of this Yeah, uh, fair enough marcos was the uh dictator of the Philippines at the time And he knew this was a good piece of business that was bringing in millions of dollars In tourist money uh to the Philippines and he wasn't about to let that happen So I was escorted by the police to the hotel that I was staying at and I had two guards outside my door to make sure I didn't get out And I was essentially under a house arrest or hotel arrest. I guess you could call it At that time I stayed there for three days and uh, I appealed to the american consulate I couldn't get any answer out of them. I called the canadian consulate and they came around right away I was a canadian citizen at the time So they that made them react rather quickly and uh, I was escorted to the Airport and put on the plane and I continued on to japan So we know at least uh, it was before 1987. Yes, because that's when you changed citizenship. Um, Is that This is an odd question to ask Is that the only time you've had a situation where the government agents Held you in your hotel room or oh, yeah to push you out of a country It was the only time that happened. It's uh, it's not a pleasant experience I can tell you you never know whether someone's going to come out in Along in the middle of the night and do you darns? I mean, yeah, they could they could do all kinds of Syrup teaches things we magicians know about syrups such as stuff, of course But they could do deadly syrups just stuff And and marcos was a beast. He was a total beast The best thing ever happened to the philippines is Him dying That's a good thing for the philippines and for the world I would say not so good for the shoe industry No, no, no, no, no The women shoe industry took a dose after that of course And middle of marcos had like something like 1400 pairs of shoes that she had accumulated If you have to explain them it's no, no, no, it loses impact. Yes um, I have speaking of of The things like uh Performing psychic surgery. I notice that sitting on the floor right down there. Uh, there is A check checkbook a checkbook, but the top check on there says it it's made out for One million dollars. That's correct The from the james randy foundation the educational foundation. I just say There's only one flaw On a flaw it's a it's a provision That way yes, so it's paid to the order and that's blank you can enter your own name And then it says the bottom prove any paranormal ability and we'll replace this fake check with a real one So there and we give these out of souvenirs and it does advertising on the back It tells about my family business and a few things like that. Yes And I will mention that through the good graces of uh of dj growthy and j rev we have Enough of these that there's one for everyone here Oh boy, that's one check at least Not a full pattern Yes And but but we have a whole bunch of them back there. So at the end of the evening's conversation uh, we'll manage to distribute them and uh anybody who wants to apply the information on how to do it is right here I've I've already applied not how to win right I've already taken mine just okay in advance preparation already entered his name on the pays Now this this brings up an interesting point however, uh I made an offer some time ago. Now. There is a million dollars in a special account It's 1.2 something a million at the moment We have reached into that fund every now and then and taken some of the interest off the top to help Run the foundation when we needed extra funding Um, that is a genuine offer and I put up on swift named in honor of jonathan swiss our webpage Uh, I put up a notice quite some time ago saying that if there's any doubt whether the million dollars exists All you have to do is get in touch. I give phone number email address the whole thing everything that is needed and uh People are still claiming the so-called psychics out there saying oh no, I investigated. There's no million dollars That's a fake.  He lies about these things There is no million dollars. Well, there is a million dollars that was given to us by an obviously very wealthy man who contributed to our cause and um It's sitting in the bank and it's waiting to be snapped up now We have not received one request For the documentation that the prize actually exists and yet psychics all over the world are still saying I get notices on it every day saying. Oh, no, I checked it out. There is no money That is a fake offer altogether, but no one has ever applied for the evidence. There's a message That's correct. Yes. Yes. This is dj growth here our president by the way For those of you who couldn't hear what dj just said, uh, the information about the contest or contest challenge which you will uh Is online uh the statement about their About the real existence of this funding is there Uh, speaking of the this challenge, uh, not too long ago. There was an episode of was at nightline on on abc where, uh Representing jref. There was a banner check. Yes, uh, and typing in the background was jamie in swiss and uh They conducted in they went to new york and conducted several tests to applicants None of which panned out for the applicants But how did you feel that was handled in terms of How abc presented it Because I know sometimes you you feel I with with reason, uh that you are not given A fair representation representation. Yeah. No, I was uh, we were reasonably satisfied weren't we dj? Yes, reasonably satisfied abc did its best And ended very well. So we're very grateful to them for that But uh, we did We did a stunt too that dj was behind this. I thought this was a corny stunt and I was wrong dj. I apologize profoundly He announced he was going to send some Let's say actors Out to see jane von prog When he was doing one of his sessions. He charges a huge amount of money I don't know exactly what it is But it's a lot of money just to sit in an audience and have him tell you vapid stories And uh do cold reading with you and he doesn't do it all that well, frankly One of his favorite stunts in the cold reading stuff. You you you folks know what cold reading is, of course, okay And uh, but one of his stunts I'd love to see and you can see him do it so frequently He'll say something like I I'm getting a an m name. It's I think it's michael. Do you know a michael and uh, the the uh, the victim will say oh, yes Michael is a member of my family. Uh, yes, he was a cousin. I believe wasn't he and She'll say no. No, he wasn't a cousin He was my brother and he'll say yes because he's just saying to me that he wasn't a cousin. He was a brother Now this is this is quick and it's quick thinking But it's a very standard thing with fun product all the cold readers They give back to you what you just told them and then when you grabbed the person after you say How impressed were you with that? They say well, he knew who michael was he identified. No, he didn't you told him that Oh, no, no, no, but that's exactly what they did They they reconstructed differently and a good cold reader should be able to make people believe that that's the way it happened Now I know some of the Television shows i've certainly not seen anywhere near all of your television appearances. I have a life to live but And there and there are a lot of them is my point There are a lot of them, but but I do recall Several times seeing you on the larry king show. Oh, yes, where uh, they would put you on usually with one or two Uh psychics such as james ron prog or celia brown or one of those and I felt at least when watching this that larry king Was not being very even-handed on this and and I don't know larry king. He seems like a nice enough guy, but He's smart enough to know better But larry and I have always gotten along rather rather well I realize he has to do a program. It has to be something that gets a lot of attention. Uh, his producers are Are very, uh Adamant that there has to be some woo-woo in the thing that will survive the program and not be completely drowned but In in later years he got worse and worse on me and I did many many larry I don't know how many larry king shows I did, but uh, I I did a great number of them Oh, I gotta tell you larry king story He'll hate me for saying this but I he used to do a radio program right after he Did taping when he was in the washington area and he asked me before the program He said did we come to the radio show after I take issue? I was in town and I had the opportunity to do it. So we did the the tv But I don't know who was on with me at the time then Then uh, he said we'll go over into the radio show now In a in a small studio, but it had a big reach that radio program and I I was talking I was delivering some tirade of some kind of or another and I looked over at larry and larry was sound asleep He had dozed off and he was literally like this You could see that the body doing the deep breathing thing and I looked over and I had to carry on in the program I had to continue the conversation and I kept on doing the business on the table And he wasn't moving at all then suddenly he looked up and looked around and I said but larry, what do you think? And then I had to save him I said I mean regarding the fact that and I gave I gave the details of what I'd just been talking about and he fell right in with it He sort of smirked at me when he fell right in with it, but he had he was literally snoring on mike That was very gracious of you to to let him off. Yeah, I thought so yes But when you would have an experience on let's say on larry king show where it came out feeling very Not even handed and where he enabled some of Yeah, your your adversaries let's say In ways that didn't necessarily make you look good Did this lead to Discussions prior to your next No visit on the show. No not really because the exposure was so valuable any kind of exposure on the larry king Was uh show was very valuable and I figured to myself I should be able to hold my own You know, I I've been around for a while and I I should have the experience to get around these things I did Generally rather well But I guess larry had a program to do and he knew and he was getting feedback In his earpiece as well, you know make them look like a fool or something I don't know what was being said, but uh, he was getting cueing at the same time. Yeah, the peter pop off approach exactly Well, we're we're talking about a lot of different television things and uh One of the tv clips that I know we have lined up on the computer You specifically said you wanted to show and it's it's been so long since I've seen it I've to be honest have forgotten The details except I know it's from the 1970s and it's on barbara walters morning show. I believe The show was called uh Not for women only not for women only. Yes And it was a network show It was first called for women only and then they changed it not for women only very wisely very wisely So this was a daytime show with with a huge viewing audience And this was on an episode where there were you were not the only magician involved And as we can see Doug Henning and mark wilson sitting there In the middle and Doug Henning off to the right Now let me tell the surrounding on this thing now, uh He she had Barbara had a dreadful little woman who hated my guts She hated all magicians and such and she made it very obvious But uh, you know wilson we're gonna and uh Henning we're going to talk about general things and magic and such But I was sort of under the gun And I wanted to set up a thing whereby the galler drawing thing where he had it sealed up in an envelope And he'd be able to tell you what it was now the way galler does it He hasn't done right in front of him in in the uh in the dressing room with mirrors all around and everything I guess we can figure out methods for you're doing that sort of thing and see And of course that isn't mentioned when they get on camera That the drawing was made in the dressing room with galler who's Who's shielding his eyes like like this you see And um in any case I had to work out a method of doing it now they on the tables That the audience sat at they had these yellow pads With a barber wall to show or something On them and they had rule night and they had pencil detached each one of them And this is well before the show and I said to to Barbara. I I said well, Barbara here Why don't you make a go over in the corner there and make a drawing now? I had prepared it in such a way that I would know what the drawing was from What they call what was it called carbon paper? You remember carbon paper? I did it a little more subtly than that. I did it with soap actually, but it's that's another story all together And the idea that you published in the ibadum Magazine of the 1950s Howard like a canadian magic journal. Yeah. Yes. Oh, yes Many many moons ago and so I gave the pad to Barbara And she went over to the side of the room and her producer came over and took the pad away from her No, she didn't know how it was done But she just said no we'll do that in the dressing room Barbara and she threw it down And she led Barbara into the dressing room and Barbara came out of the dressing room sometime later with an envelope and I told her I said no seal it in a second envelope as well, Barbara to make sure that I can't see through the envelope And the producer sort of did this kind of thing saying what what is going on here? You'll see in a moment why but So Barbara went back and then came back with the envelope in a book And I knew I wasn't going to get to that book and I looked at at wilson and Henning You were already seated on the set the audience were just coming in at this point And I looked at wilson and I said you get a pink and I looked at Henning and I said So I knew I was on my own and I had to use a technique which if you want carefully here This is a bad quality videotape. I apologize for that But uh, you may see the gimmick that I used if so just nod quietly and look smug Okay, and then I'll tell everybody after it's what it was Tested by the Stanford Institute and by other scientists and is said to have psychic powers We had the former astronaut Edgar Mitchell on with us who believes in very much an early yellow and randy You've been going around their country Somewhat as Houdini used to in the past trying to debunk those who say that it's psychic power You say it's magic, right? Well, barbie you see in what you said just now There's something rather revealing to me because you say that he's been tested by the scientists at the stanford research institute First of all stanford research institute is not connected in any way with stanford university though It happens to be on the grounds it takes its name from its locality And the stanford research institute as an institute did not test a regular Two scientists there whose specialty is lasers nothing to do with psychology nothing to do with conjuring certainly whose specialty as lasers went through some private tests with the regular under anything but test conditions And since then the psychology department down there and I've read this in one of the psychological journals has tested them Gave him a hundred envelopes that he was supposed to guess the contents of and he failed each and every one of the hundred Let me show some things he did with me and I'm I'm a pretty honest person. Okay. I mean we all know This is my house key Erie Geller took it. Let's take this other one. It's a matching key. He went like this with it with his finger That's all no pressure and the key Bent you can see that and I've carried it around because I found that I'm a believer now He also people in the audience said that they're keys bent. Well, I can't prove that but I can't prove that mine did Here is my identical key. Touch it and make it bend Now we have another piece of metal. I need another piece of metal. I didn't use metal. He just used his finger No, that's very true. That's very true. But I want I want to show you a comparison Another key now. This is the bent one now. Which camera is taking this? Can we can we get a close-up here now? All right now You can see the bent one here. There is a definite bend in here. Is that right? Okay now watch watch it very carefully I am going to see if I this is a different one from this one. This isn't a duplicate. Am I correct right? This one has a stamp on it saying 207 West something. This doesn't have a stamp on it You see the little stamp on it there? Would you hold the end of it very likely in between your fingers Barbara? And I'm just going to stroke it now I'm not putting enough pressure on it to bend it. No, okay. I'm just going to stroke it with my fingers very lightly like this Now look at the bend that's in the other key. No, I won't take my eyes off this key Very good. I'm glad to hear you say that Would you show up to the camera, please? Now is it bent as much as this key or not? Are you going to keep this key too? Next Barbara spoke about the drawing replication trick one of the only five tricks that galler has ever been known to do Her producer had challenged me to do it hoping for a failure. Of course Barbara had made a drawing to test me and carefully kept it in her hot little hand Right until she showed it on the set both mark and doug thought I'd go down in flames, but I had a couple of twists for them and for the audience Can we show that this is where he read my mind and reproduced a picture that only I had Okay, just to say look at me visualize everything that you drew once more Mm-hmm. I'm gonna show what I got and if I'm wrong then I'm wrong, but it's really came very strong in I'll just I'll tell you what first. I thought it wasn't what it comes to appear now Uh, first I thought there were two churches with peaks on our two houses then He turned to a letter m and then he uh It could be Two mountains with a round thing on or two people I Am I wrong you're right That's why May not be because of that but because my drawing Is a drawing similar to one that my child does it's a mother and child We have not had this this envelope out of our site Randy has in no way been close to it the closest you've been to it to my knowledge right now We produce you put it back in the book I want to make sure that it is under good control All right, Barbara. I'm going to ask you to concentrate on what's drawn inside there Watch this Wilson. I'm a surprise You're concentrating on what you're doing. You said to mark watch this. I don't want you to see the end of the pen Move it you may look and say, um, how I don't look quite right I'm a very bad artist you have to pardon me Barbara, but uh, all right I've made what I believe to be an impression of it now. It can't be altered in any way Would you be kind enough to open up the envelope and let's see how right I was Oh, like Erie says, thanks god. I hope I'm right on this That's the way you said it to me. Well, open it up and show it to the camera. She'd be so kind Where's the canvas? Here's the camera. Is that a house? It's a little, well, I don't draw it. It's a little house and a sun and here's a little person A house, that's the house. That's the sun and that's a little person Well, you'll pardon me for being a very bad artist, uh, Barbara But I didn't get the sun at all. I got the little person But I got the little person inside the house and the smoke coming out to the top here That's all we could get out of this. Thanks god. Thanks god. I got this. Yes. Yes, we got the house Please tell you have to tell us how you do it. I'm gonna add the sun here to make our results All right, uh boy, I haven't seen that in so many years. I forgot you the bit about adding the sun Yeah after the fact that did anyone see the gimmick I'm talking about the envelope trick now First of all, there's a bit cut out of there because she had to remove the outside envelope And then I asked her to hold it up to the light to make sure that she couldn't see through the envelope She said well, maybe I can a little bit and I said, okay, then well open up the I had already made the the drawing apparently I used a new invention You'd heard I've heard of thumb writers, of course This is a belly writer If you look at it carefully and you if you see if you see that again I had simply taken a pen Off the table and I had stuck it with the active end out here in my belt like this And I simply kept my hand in front of it and when the time came I I took the Paper like and when I said Watch this wilson. I had already caught a glimpse a glimpse of through the The thin envelope of what it was and I started to draw and I was doing this and moving back and forth And as I as I would move towards her. I would I was writing the the thing with my belly And it certainly worked well enough Have you had any contact with miss walters since then oh many times yet and and did she Come round to to feeling you were not a threat to her belief system Oh, yeah, no no bubber said she's a very bright lady and she's very uh very active and very uh, you know very alert and such but um She always asked me How did you do that thing with the drawing? I mean she did she does ask me that and it's our running gag more or less I've never cracked now don't tell barbara walters So I want this gag to go on for it. We're never in ever Now you may have noticed that as uh, uh, we were turning off the video It was clear that this was a youtube Uh video. Yeah, in fact, uh j ref has a youtube channel With a lot of oh, yeah a lot of footage as well as uh some audio podcasts and and just a lot of things And they have just recently been informed that The j ref channel is in the top 10 non-profit channels On all of youtube Which is pretty impressive. Oh, yeah, and any of you who missed the uh the the first conversation we had here Back in september of 2010 a little over a year ago It is up on the yeah on on the j ref channel. So uh You can you can find all the stories that we've jumped over this time. Yes, indeed So How are we doing for time by the way? We're good. How are you guys doing for time? All right, I want to move into something a little bit uh special to make good on a promise we made A year and a couple of months ago The last time we did a talk We we Had you offer to to perform something not on video, but right here And uh, and then we wound up out of time And so we agreed that when you came back You would perform something. So I believe You have something That you intend to perform. I don't know what it is and I don't know, uh I saw your eyes drop down towards well. I saw this I figured that might have something to do with it It does indeed. All right does indeed shall I know she'll like Leaving get out of the way or stand here and add color.  Wait till I dip down very deep into the bag here And this is What we reveal to your Anxious gaze. All right. Now these are They're printed by the bicycle company. I didn't know whether you knew this or not, but giant esp cards A circle plus mark Way three wavy lines the square And the five pointy star now actually there are numbers to these things I didn't know I always do them by numbers that has one line This has two lines. This has the three wavy lines Four sides of the square and a five pointy star. So one two three four five, you see and um, I have here Whole oh, you get quite a few envelopes here into which these will fit, but Even more importantly, these are folded pieces of black paper quite quite opaque. I assure you And I'm going to hand these out To members of the audience here. Now. These are are not confederates of mine. Are you there sam? Yeah I'm going to hand these Envelopes out to you can take these if you would be Would you shuffle them up make sure that they're all mixed and these we're only going to use five of these And there's quite a number here sir. Would you shuffle these up? All right, we'll see how well they shuffle envelopes and such and Um These five cards here I'm going to ask you to this gentleman right here can do it for me You've seen the the cards very plainly one two three four and five I'm going to ask you to turn them face down And then shuffle them up very thoroughly. Well while I look away and make sure that you don't know which card Is which okay? Okay Let us um You can be my uh I go between would you would you go down to the end of the row here? And ask the one two three four. Yeah, the the five people on the end of the row there to select any one of those those envelopes, okay Each one of them Okay So if the envelopes are marked in any way, this is impossible to tell anything But I'll take the rest of the envelopes here if you would be so kind Thank you very much. I was going to ask for a round of applause for you, but that would take too much time Okay, now, uh, where is the the black that yes, would you go down to the end there and distribute Or distribute ask them to choose one of the black folding pieces, please So if these were marked or Especially gimmick with little beads. Oh, sorry these are anything in the quarter. Uh, this randomizes the whole thing Okay, so five of them been handed out and I'll take the rest of them I may thank you so much. Okay Now you have these cards mixed up now. I I shouldn't be looking towards you at all But we're going to remedy that as well I want you to go down there and each of you folks when you take one of these cards Keep it face down. I don't want you to know what it is. Okay, so go down to the row keeping the faces out of sight And distribute Those cards are asking to choose one keep them down so they do they can't see what they're that they're getting Okay, now You five people doesn't care for the instructions. I want you to take your card without looking at it Place it inside the black piece of paper Okay And take it and put it inside the envelope just slide inside the envelope Very good Okay, now, uh, you can use the clasp on it or you can lick the The the gun monitor whatever you want or you can do both depending on how secure you want to feel Okay, now when those have all been done Now Would you pass them up to this This gentleman right here pass them down down the row and I want him to mix them up thoroughly turn them over and Completely randomize them now. This is is fair a shuffle as you're ever going to get Very good. Oh look at that He did a double lift Okay, so they're mixed up in such a way sir that you don't know which one is the original envelope that you had for example All right. Are they are they sealed? I see a flap is flapping on one of them. Oh, no, no, it's it's sealed Oh, okay. All right. Now, uh, bring them to me if you'd be be so kind Now we really have we got better light here because No, I guess I guess we can't I can't do much with it But in any case here are five envelopes There are several ways that are solutions that have been offered to me for this And I want you to it's very difficult for you folks in the back I'm sorry. You can't see and we don't have a camera on this but nonetheless I I'll hold them up under your side and you'll see if you get the idea now Each one of these envelopes has a card of which I do not know the identity I think you'll agree with me on that. Okay Fair enough. Now I'm going to pick Watch for the people in the front row have to be the witness for this, but I'm going to pick up Each envelope or one envelope here to start with by the extreme corner and I'll hold it up like this so you can see it okay, now This is hard to oh, I'm sorry. I put my finger on the other side Um holding it up between Two fingers like this. You'd say to yourself. Wait a minute Is there a bead in the in the corner of the envelope? Well, if there were the envelopes are already mixed up anyway, right? So that's not going to make any difference I think you'll agree with that All right So much for that one for this one. I can pick it up by an opposite corner for example So there shouldn't be any possibility of me Faking this kind of thing Can you see through it? I'm verifying that The black The black size of the inside paper is there but nothing else is showing through All right, I'm going I'm going to I'm going to put that one out at the front like that because I get a special feeling about that Yeah, sure if you believe that then uh I think I've got oh this this didn't get quite sealed here. So maybe I better not All right, let me first of all I I'm sorry. I'm having a difficult time. I I have a a really very bad hip folks. I don't want you to apologize for it too much But it is a very difficult thing for me to manage up here All right, I will Wait a second. Oh goodness We have a hard time here. All right. I'm going to put this one in that position and uh now what I'm going to do is Again, you can't see this. This is very unfortunate, but I'm going to Kneel down here Oh the knees Yeah, I'm going to remove Each card now I believe these are in the order one two three four five. I'll announce that in advance. I'm going to remove each envelope For those of you sitting in the back, he has made a row on the uh on the floor Going from your left to right. He is now opening the envelope that after rearranging everything He is opening the envelope that was at the far left end All right, and I'm going to place it right back where it was. Okay There it is and that's a used envelope. This one the same way Oh, this one wasn't licked at all. You really should have had the nerve to lick it Because I I don't put much poison on them at all Oh Yes, and we don't need that anymore and we'll put that right there And let's see whether this one he's removing the cards, but with that blank heavy Paper still arrived. We're still on it. Yes. So at the moment we can't Look at the ceiling You want sorry Someone has just pointed out that there are some mirrors on the ceiling directly above you Uh, I'm not sure how that would help with the conditions we've got here. Well, it would only work if you weren't sure If you were laying flat on the floor Oh, this is the audience using mirrors to cheat. I understand Ah Yes, they'd have to be laying flat on the floor. No, no They're actually able to see it from looking over you ready because there's there's mirrors right above So some of the folks are actually getting of you All right Yes, so I understand. Yeah. Oh, you know that story too, do you? Okay now Oh, jeez Do you want to have keep proceeding? Oh, I'm good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much Oh It's a dirty laugh But I appreciate it Okay, I hope that I'm correct on this otherwise I have to kill myself, but I'll do it by starvation It's much easier that way, yes Well, let me just shake these out of the The wrappers that I have here. Oh Well in the first position one is in number one position Number two is in position Number three Number four And number five On a table in front of a bunch of college students. I couldn't possibly do all this Wounded hero thing on the knees and but This principle. I think is a rather subtle principle Max and I have have discussed this because I I got into details on it and I wanted him to share this particular Illusion with me this trick. Let's put it that way. Well, that's a dirty word, isn't it? Yes You're you're actually exposing to these people that I actually didn't know what trick you were going to do Well, in any case, um I have shared this with max because frankly Hey at any three folks you start to become aware of your mortality I can tell you that to welcome to vest. Um Because of that, I really wanted to share this I'm sharing it with matcack and with max because I want to to leave this behind I want it to go someplace because we have found in magic. I think you'll agree with me On this max. Uh, I think rather vehemently That the way to improve our trade of magic Of conjuring term. I much prefer Is to share it with responsible other performers And put it out into the world Sometimes you see it come back vastly improved And it's because they get a chance to work on and they have a different view Of how they should present it or what the gimmick could be Done with what what we could do to improve it I think that putting it out into the world like that and letting it be distributed and not publicized with the public I'm not talking about that, but you folks are not the public And I want you to know that Doing a simple thing like this. I did share it with a couple of magicians in the past both deceased So don't notice each And try to keep going. I promise to do my best. Thank you very much. I I know he's a man of his word and he will but those magicians added something to this In presentation and Again, they didn't think that I would have to do it on a floor out of sight with no cameras on it and such But I think you will trust the the witnesses that we have here and I want to thank you five people I have heard Well First of all, I will say that I Consider myself to be recently well read when it comes to this subject of mentalism And I can tell you that what randy has here, although it is It has a relationship to ideas that have been around since Actually the 1700s max showed me this last night He showed me the history of the general principle that is being used here But the the particular details that randy has brought to this are are new and original with him and Well, you've seen what the result is You uh, you touched on something as you were talking about the fact that you had generously decided to share this particular information with with myself and with banajak About leaving something behind and and and a legacy I think it's woefully premature for us to be talking about the james randy legacy Because given your remarkable vigor I think 83 is still pretty early in the game for you Yeah, I hope so Having said that it's arguably not too early to be talking about Certain aspects of the randy legacy and so with that in mind, can I get DJ maybe and thomas to come over and bring over this This thing we have hiding off to the side. We have a thing like we have a thing. You don't you don't know about this But we're about how do you know? I don't know about it. Yes. That's that's my job If you had sealed it up in a novel of I would know As we all know the magic castle has very recently undergone a massive facelift By necessity, but as a result there have been many improvements and changes in the decor One thing that has been sorely lacking from the magic castle For low these many years is what is hiding behind that black cloth and uh thomas if you would do the honors That is a That is a splendid poster Of randy the amazing randy the man no jail can hold And it has uh It has been beautifully mounted in frame by the the jera folks and uh, we have spoken to milt and uh There will be a particularly Main place for this to be uh up and up and on view We're going to have it at the very opening of the Walkway when you walk from the restaurant to the palace And so you'll you'll walk past randy every night you come to the magic castle and that way Even though we're we're delighted when you are here even when you're not here, you'll be here Well, thank you. Thank you so much But I I must say something max this is an original this is the original printing of the original Man no jail can hold a poster. There is a slightly larger when it's about 25 percent or so larger which is a reprint But this has A secret in it and I ask you all to investigate it by coming over and looking at it very carefully because After I got the artwork and this is done by a man who signs himself as jason A j a y s o n who is now a very famous comic book artist and his work fetches huge prices But he was only starting at this time many many years ago when he made this for me free and gratis And I've always been grateful to him for that. Uh the point is That this one Has a message which I added to the artwork Afterwards harry houdini's name is represented in there And if you can find it That's almost enough to win you the million dollars It is a very 25 cents 25 cents long very very devious It is way, but houdini's name is on that poster and that'll give you just one extra reason to uh to come study it When it's on display only say houdini. It says harry houdini Okay, all right, so I challenge you to find it Randy we thank you so much for for uh for this poster. We also thank you for taking the uh the time to to spend this evening with us And uh the final thing i'll say The final thing i'll say is uh, i'm gonna make you commit right now in front of all these people that will do a third one Yeah James randy thank you so much. Thank you Oh, thank you all