From the unexplained to the mundane, come join
us on a Journey to the Fringe. Love that for
us. We are your podcast hosts who really don't
have a physical form that you're going to be
intaking, which is why we can tell you all about
that, Taylor and Chelsea. I'm really glad we
finally passed that testing. I know. We actually
had to make a few cutbacks on our end to get
to that level. Let's not worry about the lead
that actually came up on it. Don't worry about
it. Don't think about it. It's fine. That's how
environmental impact works. If you don't think
about it or if it's inconvenient for profit,
it doesn't actually do anything bad. Exactly.
If that's one thing that we've learned this week.
We're here today doing one of those things that
we probably should have done many, many years
ago when we started this podcast. And that is
going over somebody who is fundamental, not necessarily
in like anything we specifically talk about,
but within the fringe community. And that is
a man by the name of Uri Geller. Uri Geller,
who has come up on an episode or two already.
Yeah, he's come up on at least two episodes that
I can think of off the top of my head, if not
more. We're finally doing it. He sits in a weird
fringe category that doesn't quite come up perfectly
with anything we really talk about, other than
specific topics and people. But he's very well
known, not just in paranormal and fringe communities,
but world renowned. Yeah, I think he's been on
a lot of like talk shows and stuff like that.
He's probably a little bit more mainstream than
people we usually talk about. Yeah, it's gonna
be I think a three -part look at him. First part's
gonna be looking at basically his start to where
he starts to get famous. From there we're gonna
go from where he is famous to what happens for
the rest of his career. And then we're gonna
look at a few other things on the third part
outside of those. That's fun. Just to keep it
vague because there's a lot of twists and turns
we're gonna have. to go through. Don't spoil
it for me yet. I'm just excited to hear how he
gets famous. Okay, and I'm just curious, when
you hear the name Uri Geller, or Yuri Geller,
what comes to mind for you? His spoons bending,
watches stop and working, first and foremost,
and men who stare at goats, right? Yeah, Project
Stargate, right? Or Stargate Project. There's
a lot of things I learned that surprised me.
I'm gonna really enjoy seeing where he falls
in the asshole ranking at the end of the year.
Who knows? Maybe he's a nice guy. And... I feel
like you know. We just owe him an apology for
saying things like that. I know, but you guys
don't at this point. I'm soon to know. There's
a bunch of places I had to take from for this
episode. Yuri Geller has a website. I took some
information from there. Wikipedia is always a
great source. Yeah, it is. And there's just a
ton of stuff written about him in the Times of
Israel, Jerusalem Post, and many just different
news articles where I pulled from. But for the
most part, a lot of the stuff's gonna come from
him himself or Wikipedia. If I've learned everything,
it's always he himself is a good source. Yes,
Uri Self. Uri Geller was born in Israel on December
20th, 1946. His parents were Hungarian and Austrian
descent. This part comes directly from his website
and claims he's a distantly related relative
to Sigmund Freud on his mother's side. So sometimes
he'll call himself Uri Geller Freud or Uri Freud
Geller. but like not actually proven. He might
be. I didn't look that far into it just because
I don't understand he's a psychic. Why does it
matter if you're related to Sigmund Freud? It's
true, a psychologist. So I just didn't find it
that important to get to the lowest of it And
also once we get going you're gonna realize there
are too many stories to look into to stop it
every single Like this next sentence at the age
of four He had a mysterious encounter with a
sphere of light while in a garden near his house
a retired Israeli Air Force officer who was an
eyewitness to this encounter Validated this mystifying
event decades later. No, that's it. That's all
he says there is way more about that out there
the guy just says it happened yeah he's like
oh yeah I remember seeing this little kid see
it and this was like 30 years after the event.
That's fucking weird. Okay. He seems to try to
place that as like where his powers came from,
but like he's got like five different stories
of where his powers came from. That's the one
in his bio though, so that's the one he's sticking
to for now. I do seem to remember this aspect
of Irugiela from wherever I've heard about him
before. He first became aware of his unusual
powers when he was about five. One day, during
a meal, his spoon curled up in his hand and broke.
Although he had applied no physical pressure
to it. His parents were somewhat shocked, and
Rory did not mention the incident to anyone else
at the time. He developed these powers in school
by demonstrating them to pupils, which directly
contradicts that last sentence, but anyhow his
mother thought he inherited this from Sigmund
Freud. You ever hear that about cigarettes, right?
Yeah, how these spoons just curled up. Yeah,
it's like the number one thing people know about.
And sometimes a cigar is just a bending spoon
that you cannot control in any way. If there's
one thing that I learned in college, it was that.
When he was 11, he went to live in Cyprus, where
he remained until he was 17. And this is outside
of both Wikipedia and his own bio. He claims
that this house also doubled as a safe house
for Massad, so he got like spy connections during
this time. Whether or not we can verify that,
like I said, all these stories, there's just
so many of them that you can't look into every
single one of them. Did you check with Mossad?
I put an email out and now we're on a list. That's
all they said. Hopefully we'll get an email.
No, that's what they said. They responded, we're
on a list. Okay, good. We've got one email now.
He then returned to Israel, served as a paratrooper
in the Israeli army and fought in the Six Day
War of 1967 during which he was wounded in action.
From 1968 to 69, Uri worked as a model being
photographed for many different ad campaigns
and in 1969 he began to demonstrate his powers
of telepathy and psychokinesis to small audiences.
By the end of 1971 he was a household name throughout
Israel thanks to his numerous stage appearances.
He was given a huge boost by then Prime Minister
Golda Mir who when asked on a national radio
program what she predicted for the future of
Israel she replied don't ask me ask Uri Geller.
His performance included his trademark spoon
bending describing hidden drawings and making
watches stop or run faster. Geller said he performed
these feats through willpower and the strength
of his mind alone. His apparent ability to bend
metal objects during his television appearances
came to be known as the Geller Effect and made
him a celebrity. That's where he starts to get
big in Israel, and for a second here we have
to adjust what we're looking at with the story.
away from Uri Geller and towards a man by the
name of Andrija Poricic. Poric, it's a hard name
to say, but he's an American medical doctor.
He lives 1918 to 1995. He's an inventor, doctor,
researcher, and he's really big into the UFO
paranormal psychic community. He made a ton of
money off of basically creating hearing aid technology.
So he devoted his life to studying psychic phenomenon,
and he identified gifted individuals, which included
people who I haven't looked into at this point,
but probably are future episodes, Eileen Garrett,
Peter Herkos, and the Brazilian psychic surgeon,
Eriko. As well as looking into UFOs and extraterrestrials,
psychedelic mushrooms, and altered states, in
1971 he stumbled across Uri Geller. So Puharich
heard from inventor Itzjak Bentov that a young
Israeli performer was doing things that didn't
look like stage magic. Buharach was intrigued
and he flew to Israel to meet Uri Geller and
he became instantly convinced that Geller's abilities
were real, and possibly extraterrestrial in origin,
which is also why he upplays that orb story from
when he was four. In Puharich's book, Uri, 1974,
he describes his belief that Geller was in contact
with a non -human intelligence called Spectra.
This framing is what permanently welds Geller
to UFO lore, but also keeps him separate. Puharich
arranges Geller to basically move to the US in
1973, and he puts him in touch with the Stanford
Research Institute, SRI, and Edgar Mitchell.
of Apollo 14 and previous asshole lore. Through
Puharich, he secures experiments at the Stanford
Research Institute with physicists Hal Puthoff
and Russell Targ on Uri Geller, and this positions
Geller as a subject of interest for US intelligence
agencies. And basically, this guy sets him up
for everything that we remember him for. This
is basically putting him at the forefront where
he's going to go on his media campaign as well
as be researched by actual scientists who think
that ESP is a real thing. Like the Men Who Stare
at Goats thing, right? Exactly. Which we did
a full episode of. And that's why, Chelsea, you
think it's interlocked, these two, Uri Geller
and Men Who Stare at Goats or Stargate, correct?
Interlocked as in... They're inseparable, like
he is a key fundamental part of Project Stargate.
He's in it? I think that's... good enough. Anyhow,
the first thing he does when he gets to the US,
he does some like off the books experiments and
talking to the scientist SSRI, but the first
thing he gets booked on is Johnny Carson. Right,
yeah. And he goes and does the Johnny Carson
show and I'm gonna share my screen with you Chelsea
so you can see what happens here. Okay, this
is before Project Stargate or whatever. This
is before Project Stargate, this is even before
any scientific papers are written about him.
which is going to happen at a certain point it's
just that hasn't happened yet and you we're gonna
watch this i'm gonna describe it once you watch
it so that everybody can kind of know what's
going on here i prefer that they don't Basically
what happens here is he thought he was on here
for an interview, is what he says, but Johnny
Carson has a table set up of all these different
experiments that he says he's able to perform.
One is that they have ten vials of water that
are in metals so that you can't tell which one
has water in it, only one does and he's able
to identify it. They have stopwatches there so
you can stop time, they have spoons that he can
bend, they have envelopes of things that people
on the cast have drawn. guess what they are and
they just said like pick whatever you want yeah
so he takes a shot at guessing which one of these
has water in it so he does this for a while and
then he's like no I can't do it just not feeling
it today Johnny just not feeling it and then
he's like okay I'll move on to the spoon fair
enough Also, I love just like offhandedly Johnny
Carson smoking like non -stop this whole episode.
Look at the carpet, too Yeah, so he makes somebody
else hold a spoon and then he starts rubbing
the spoon and then he's like Oh, oh look at that.
It's bent. I bent it. I Was expecting Johnny
Carson to light another cigarette with that cigarette
he just went out. Yeah That's amazing what you're
allowed to get away with He doesn't want to do
anything That's more or less the show Chelsea
gave him a bunch of experiments where he wasn't
able to bring anything They just provided it
and it goes completely flat and he's like, no
you don't believe in me. So I can't do it. You
can't make me do it on the spot because I only
got 20 minutes. Plus I didn't bring these spoons,
so this is just not feeling right. How do I know
you didn't rig them so they can't? These are
unbending spoons. These are unbendable spoons,
of course. So to give people an idea of what
we just saw, on August 1st, 1973, Geller appears
on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. James
Randi says that Johnny had been a magician himself
and was skeptical. We're going to learn about
James Randi in the second part of this three
-part series. He was skeptical of Geller's claimed
paranormal power, so before the date of taping,
Randy was asked to help prevent any trickery.
Accordingly, the show's staff repaired its own
props without informing Geller and did not let
Geller or his staff anywhere near the props.
When Geller joins Carson on stage, he appears
surprised that he was not going to be interviewed,
but instead was expected to display his abilities
using the provided articles. Geller's point says,
and you heard this, this scares me. And as you
know, I told your people what to bring. and I'm
surprised because before this program your producers
came and he read me at least 40 questions you
were going to ask me." Geller was unable to display
any paranormal abilities, saying, I don't feel
strong, and expresses his displeasure at feeling
he was being pressed to perform by Carson. And
according to Adam Higginbotham, the result was
a legendary emulation, which Geller offered up
flustered excuses to his host, as his abilities
failed him again and again. Quote, I sat there
for 22 minutes humiliated, end quote Geller told
me. When I spoke to him in September, Quote,
I went back to my hotel devastated. I was about
to pack up the next day and go back to Tel Aviv.
I thought that's it. I'm destroyed. End quote.
This appearance on this tonight show with Carson
and Randy had orchestrated to debunk Geller's
claimed abilities backfired according to Kickin'
Bottom. To Geller's astonishment, he was immediately
booked on the Merv Griffin show and he was on
his way to becoming a paranormal superstar. That's
crazy. Quote, the Johnny Carson show made Yuri
Geller. End quote. Geller said, to an enthusiastically
trusting public his failure only made his gifts
more real if he were performing magic trips they
would surely work every time so like just failed
up with it interesting and then of course after
that is the famed Stanford Research Institute
experiments on Uri Geller I should say I do say
I do apologize interchangeably Uri Geller or
Uri Geller it is he will always say worry Geller
but he always says Western people call him Uri
Geller and that's just like what they do so I'm
gonna fall back to that sometimes too by accident
because it feels more natural, but his name is
technically properly said Uri Geller. So Hal
Puthoff and Russell Targ. Do this experiment
on him, and here it is. SRI performs an eight
-day experiment on him in August of 1973 between
August 4th and 11th. This was designed to test
Rory Geller's paranormal perception using picture
drawing tasks under controlled conditions. Geller
was usually placed in a locked, acoustically
and electrically shielded room, while Target
drawings were created elsewhere, sometimes in
another building, sometimes on the East Coast,
sometimes on a computer screen. The authors,
Putoff and Targ, present this series as evidence
that Geller demonstrated Okay, that was going
to be my next question. August 4th, Saturday.
Geller is locked in a shielded room. Targets
are chosen by randomly opening a dictionary and
drawing the first drawable, drawboard. Target
1 found Fuse, drawn as a firecracker. Geller
says he sees a cylinder with noise coming out
of it and draws a drum and cylindrical shape.
Target 2 finds Bunch, draws a bunch of grapes.
Geller reports drops of water and purple circles
and then draws a bunch of grapes. Both Target
and Geller's drawings have 24 grapes. The authors
emphasize that they found no sensory leakage
in the shielded room protocol. Quote. In our
detailed examination of the shielded room and
the protocol used in these experiments, no sensory
leakage has been found, nor has any defect in
the protocol been brought to our attention. Day
2, August 5th, Sunday. Geller is again in the
shielded room, target drawn in an office half
a mile away. Target 1. Outland of a man that
evolves into a devil with a trident. Geller produces
several drawings. Moses. Tablets. An apple with
a worm and snakes and a composite of the Ten
Commandments. God and a trident. He does draw
the trident, but not the figure. Target 2. A
simplified solar system. No orbit lines. Geller's
immediate reaction is space. His drawing resembles
the target's and also omits orbit lines. From
this, it seems clear that Geller does not simply
copy lines from the target picture, but rather
he does perform some mental processing on them
before drawing them himself. August 6th, Monday,
a picture is drawn by a scientist outside the
usual group and locked in the shielded room before
Geller arrives. Geller is then led to the room
and asked to reproduce the picture from inside.
He draws several images, rejects them all, and
says he gets no clear impression. Target draws
a rabbit. Port states, he drew a of pictures,
all of which he rejected as not being applicable.
He said that he got no clear impression and passed.
The target was a rabbit and nothing Geller drew
in any way resembled a rabbit. Crucially, the
author adds that the picture was drawn by a scientist
Geller is not fond of, and that Geller guessed
this at the outset and later felt vindicated
when he learned he was right. August 7th, Tuesday.
Two target pictures attempted while Geller is
in the shielded room and hooked up to EEG. Targets.
They drew a tree in an envelope. De Geller. Experiences
difficulty. Produced no matching drawings and
passed again. Report notes. Quote. He experiences
difficulty. Did not make a drawing that corresponded
to either drawing and then passed. End quote.
And then key lines again. Quote. The same skeptical
experimenter who drew the rabbit was the EEG
operator on this second unsuccessful day. End
quote. Wednesday, August 8th. Three targets this
time. Geller feels unsure and passes on the first
drawing. He says it might be a horse, but the
target drew a camel. Geller draws for the second
target a curved line with squares underneath.
This says he doesn't know what it is and passes.
It was the Golden Gate Bridge. And Geller quickly
says he sees a flying swan for the third target
over a hill. Draws a bird and is confident the
target is flying as a flying seagull. His drawing
is judged correct. Then comes the important part
here. Quote, in these experiments deducted with
this shielded room, six days' work was done.
Good results were obtained on the four days where
there was no openly skeptical observer, except
the experimenter whom Geller had learned to accept.
End quote. So, of the first six days, there's
what they deem four good days, unless of course
somebody who's skeptical in any way of Yuri Geller
is present, in which case they fail completely.
It continued from there. August 9th, Thursday
experiment moves to a different shielded room
near the computer facilities. Target is drawn
on a computer graphics screen. It's a kite. Geller
in the shielded room asks via intermediaries
whether the target is a geometric or an object.
He first draws a square with a diagonal and then
some triangular airplanes and then passes. The
author considers his first drawing a good representation
of the target. Friday, August 10th. Again, two
computers store targets. First one's a church.
Picture drawn and stored in computer memory.
No visible trace remains. Geller's attempts share
some elements common, but he doesn't identify
it as a church and passes. Second one is an arrow
through the heart. Target is stored with the
TV intensity off, so it's invisible in the lit
room, which I don't quite understand what that
means. Geller immediately draws an arrow under
a rounded brick and then an arrow inside a suitcase.
And the author says, quote, we consider the arrow
in the su - case similar to the target, which
was an arrow through a heart." End quote. And
I think we can skip just to the conclusion of
the report here, Chelsea. As a result of Geller's
success in the experimental period, we consider
that he has demonstrated his paranormal perceptual
ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner.
They frame the week as a success overall and
emphasize the hits and treated the failures as
either unsuitable targets, emotional issues,
or experimental complications. And they're very
critical. They even say at this point good results
were obtained on the days where there was only
no openly skeptical observers present. Every
day that they have bad things happen, they're
like, yep, skeptical person's there, so it's
just not pro - that's not good. I feel like that's
not the answer though, so is there more to -
What's going on here? That's what Stanford Research
Institute's conclusion is, is that he has psychic
powers unless somebody who's skeptical is anywhere
near him. I don't know, I'm just so skeptical
of Uri Geller. I just - Oh, don't worry, we're
gonna learn more about what happens from there.
Yeah, I just - the odds of getting something,
I'm just wondering what the odds are of rightfully
guessing something. Like, if I was in a room
for eight days - Not only that, Chelsea, from
me describing those days, did It did not seem
like he was having open conversations with the
scientists who believed him. Now that you say
that. If you're somebody who's able to glean
information easily from conversation with people
who especially believe you have powers, it would
be very easy. That's true, as if you're a grifter
for a career. And they even said at one point
he asked whether or not it was geometrical or
objects for the kite and then started drawing
a kite and then was like, no, that's not it.
okay so i don't know why i just glossed over
that while i was listening to that because i'm
thinking there has to be something logical to
what the hell is going on here and don't worry
chelsea we'll get to that next episode But the
SRI study is so fundamental that in the project
Stargate, which started in 1970, the United States
intelligence sources believe that the Soviet
Union was spending 60 million rubles annually
on psychotronic research. In response, the claims
that the Soviet program had produced results,
the CIA initiated funding for a new program known
as Scan8, scanned by coordinate in the same year.
Remote viewing research began in 1972 at SRI
in Menlo Park, California, and proponents, which
included Russell Targ and Hal Puth, of the research
said that a minimum accuracy of 65 % required
by the clients was often exceeded in the later
experiments. Targon put up began testing for
psychics for SRI in 1972, and this included this
experiment on Ori Geller. This apparently successful
result garnered interest from the US Department
of Defense. And because it was so interesting
to the Department of Defense, they brought in
a guy by the name of Ray Hyman, professor of
psychology at the University of Oregon. They
said, hey, Can you look at this to make sure
everything's above board? Uh huh. He was specifically
asked to evaluate Uri Geller. And that's where
I'm gonna end this episode. Somehow he seems
to be failing up with sheer coincidence and I
don't know skeptics be damned because the skeptics
are the thing that stop him. This is like I I
don't even know okay first of all what a cliffhanger
to leave this on and second of all I wish I had
this talent. What a talent to have! Yeah, the
talented bullshit people. Sorry, sorry to Ben
Spoonz. To Ben Spoonz. Well, I will say, I don't
know if this is the place to put it, but I'm
going to say it before I forget it. When he's
been on Coast to Coast AM, people have reported
watches stopping while he's talking on the radio
in various places where they're just listening
to him on the radio or old watches start going.
And so George would always give or art George
one of them That's actually a great comment to
make because I do think it's gonna come up in
the next episode something along those lines
So I want you to keep it in mind as we're going
forward. I'm gonna try I really I literally just
said I have to say it now before I forget it
Because yeah, I think there's almost something
directly quotable that happens in the next episode.
That's very similar to that. Okay, I just remembered
but for now I have been Taylor, here with Chelsea.
We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for
listening and we'll see you next week. Bye. Thank
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