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Speaker A: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is AsI wind. ASI Wind is one of the top magicians and mentalists in the world. Now, you may be asking yourself, why would the Heberman Lab podcast host a magician mentalist? And the obvious answer, perhaps, would be that magicians and mentalists reveal to us where our gaps in perception reside. That is, where the human brain falters, such that magicians and mentalists can take advantage of that and give us the impression, the illusion, that certain things happened when they didn't. However, during today's discussion, you will learn that Aussie Win's magic and mentalist work, which, by the way, is absolutely astonishing. You can see examples of this in some of the links in the show, note captions that will take you to YouTube clips in which ASI did some of these tricks and mentalist work on me directly in the studio. And there are other examples out there that we've linked to on the Internet as well, that the work that Ahsi Nguyen does illustrates how we form memories, how we erase memories, and the specific things that we all can do in order to stamp down certain memories and to erase other memories. Indeed, much of what Ahsi Nguyen's work does is to use an understanding of how the brain works in order to create false memories, to erase recent memories, and indeed, to use emotion and empathy and storytelling in order for you, the observer, to create a perception of something that happened that may or may not have actually happened. Indeed, what Ossi reveals to us today tells us not how a magician or mentalist fools us, but rather how we, with our own brains, lead ourselves to believe that certain things happened, when in fact they may or may not have happened, and the way that we collaborate with others in order to create those either false or real perceptions. It's a discussion that I'm sure everyone, whether or not you're a fan of magic or not, will find fascinating. Indeed, I learned so much from the discussion with ASI about neuroscience and about how the human brain constructs narratives of the past, present, and future. That it informs not just my understanding of how the brain works, but indeed how to learn better, how to remember things better, and to consolidate that information, to really stamp it into your memory so that you never forget. So while Ossiwind is a magician and mentalist, today's discussion is really a discussion about the neuroscience of how to learn, how to forget, how to access creativity, and how art and storytelling, empathy and emotion all can allow us to access powers within us that make us far more effective in whatever pursuits we may be after. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is element. Element is an electrolyte drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, magnesium, and potassium, the electrolytes, but no sugar. As I mentioned before on this podcast, I'm a big believer in getting sufficient hydration and making sure that that hydration includes sufficient electrolytes, salt, magnesium, and potassium. And the reason for that is that all the cells in our body, but indeed especially our neurons, our nerve cells, are critically reliant on electrolytes and hydration in order to function properly, element makes it very easy to get the hydration and electrolytes you need when I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I do is to drink 16 to 32oz of water with a packet of element dissolved in it. I particularly like the raspberry flavored element, but then again, I also like the watermelon flavor and the citrus flavor and the orange flavor. So basically what I'm saying is I really like all the flavors of element. If you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element spelled lmnt.com huberman to claim a free sample pack with your order. Again, that's drinkelement lmnt.com hubermanda. Today's episode is also brought to us by Betterhelp. Betterhelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out online. I've been going to therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is extremely valuable. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course, I also do every week. The reason I know therapy is so valuable is that if you can find a therapist with whom you can develop a really good rapport, you not only get terrific support for some of the challenges in your life, but you also can derive tremendous insights from that therapy, insights that can allow you to better not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course also the relationship to yourself and to your professional life, to all sorts of career goals. In fact, I see therapy as one of the key components for meshing together all aspects of one's life and being able to really direct one's focus and attention toward what really matters. If you'd like to try betterhelp, go to betterhelp.com Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com Huberman Today's episode is also brought to us by Aeropress. Aeropress is similar to a french press for making coffee, but is in fact a much better way to make coffee. I first learned about Aeropress well over ten years ago, and I've been using one ever since. Aeropress was developed by Alan Adler, who was an engineer at Stanford, and I knew of Alan because he had also built the so called Aerobi Frisbee. So he was sort of famous in our community for developing these different feats of engineering that turned into commercial products. Now I love coffee. I'm somebody that drinks coffee nearly every day, usually about 90 to 120 minutes after I wake up in the morning, although not always. Sometimes if I'm going to exercise, I'll drink coffee first thing in the morning. But I love, love, love coffee. And what I've personally found is that by using the aeropress, I can make the best possible tasting cup of coffee. I don't know what exactly it is in the aeropress that allows the same beans to be prepared into a cup of coffee that tastes that much better as compared to any other form of brewing that coffee, even the traditional french press, the aeropress is extremely easy to use and it's extremely compact. In fact, I take it with me whenever I travel, and I use it on the road, in hotels, even on planes. I'll just ask for some hot water and I'll brew my coffee or tea right there on the plane. With over 55,005 star reviews, Aeropress is the best reviewed coffee press in the world. If you would like to try aeropress, you can go to aeropress.com huberman that's aeropress.com Huberman to get 20% off any aeropress coffee maker, aeropress ships in the USA, Canada and over 60 other countries in the world. Again, that's aeropress.com Huberman to get 20% off and now for my discussion with Aussie Wind. Aussie Wind, welcome.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: I can't tell you how excited I am to have you here today. I've seen you do your live shows twice. Once in Los Angeles, once in New York, and both times there were three major effects. First of all, I was absolutely astonished. There's truly no hyperbole that can capture what you are capable of doing. Just by way of example, folks, prior to coming in here, Aussie agreed to do a trick. He let me select a card, an ace of hearts from a deck of cards. I held it. There was another card, ace of diamonds. I also held that. I looked at them, I turned them over in my hands. He's not touching them. He asked somebody in the room for a number. Number. Everyone provides a number. Then he asked me which person's number I would like to select. There's no prior agreements or communication here whatsoever. I selected the number seven. He says, turn over the cards that are still in my hands. He hasn't touched me. I turn over the cards, and now they are sevens, not aces. Unbelievable. And yet it happened. And that's but a minor example of the sorts of things that you do. So that's the first thing. Absolutely astonishing. Two, you involve many of the senses, not just visual perception, memory, etcetera, but many of the senses and groups of people. You are able to somehow create perceptions in people. Or perhaps these perceptions are accurate, that certain things have happened, and everyone agrees that these things happen. So it's not just one person being, quote unquote, tricked. And then the third is that you and I both share a fascination with the human mind and perception, which is really one of the main reasons why you're here today, because you are a scientist who I believe understands how perception works, understands the gaps in perception and memory, and understands these things at a practical level, that no neuroscientist, not I, nor anyone else who could tell you about the nuts and bolts of the brain and nervous system could ever approach. So welcome. I'm super excited for our conversation. And my first question is, when you do a trick with one person, with many people, how confident are you that you're going to get the answer correct? Meaning, are you always operating at the level of 100% certainty that you're going to get it right? Or rather, is there a little bit of a gap? Are you running like a 90% probability? And the reason I start with this question is that I think it's a very different situation when the mentalist, the magician, is certain it's going to work out as opposed to when it's not. And I think it's the dynamic tension of the possibility that it might not work. Out that gets everyone so engrossed in what you do.

Speaker B: Yes. So, first of all, a lot of people think, do you ever fail? Do you ever get it wrong? And the truth is, there's something they don't know. We're gonna reveal some secrets here. A lot of people don't know that we are very much like jazz musicians. I'm not a musician. I'm gonna probably butcher this analogy here. But we write the story as it goes. In other words, you might see me do a trick and think that's what I do every day, but I don't. So, in other words, if something goes wrong, because every person is really unpredictable, I say, take any card. Maybe I'm trying to make you take a certain card. Maybe I'm trying to influence you and you're not going for it. I'm okay with making a little detour. You just don't know. I'm taking a detour and I'm improvising, and I will go somewhere else, and I'm okay with that. So a lot of the magic that I love to do, we call it jazzy magic, is magic that literally gets written as we go. But I'm the only one who knows it. And you go, wow, it's concluded beautifully. Right? So there's some times when I, like, after a show, and I go, wow, this did not work. And that didn't work. And people will say, what do you mean? Everything works perfect. They don't know what I see is a little different than what you see. So in that sense, when you're an amateur magician, you're just starting out and you don't have the experience. You can literally just get stuck and go, sorry, let's do it again. And it could happen. But for seasonal, you know, a seasoned performer, someone who does it again and again and again. I'll borrow from a pendulum analogy that I love. It's like Groundhog Day, the movie. We get to relive the same night again and again and again. And guess what? People are very much alike. I'll hear the same hackling. I'll hear the same thing. Or I start to see types. This person is going to be confrontational. This person is going to be is a person who believes maybe in supernatural, everybody has a vibe. And, you know, even though I'm not a scientist, I'm not a psychologist, I don't have any degrees in any of those, but I'm a practitioner of psychology. I tried the same trick a million times, and I start to see patterns, behavioral patterns that I can use to my advantage. Like, for example, I noticed that it's easier to full smart people as opposed to people who are not so smart.

Speaker A: Tell me more about that, because, you.

Speaker B: Know, I'm relying on the bank of information you have in your head against you. It's Tai chi. I know what you know, and I know that whenever you view anything, you have to fill in the blanks with lots of information. I show you a couple of things and say, okay, this makes sense, this da da da. And I know how you think. And the fact that I have an idea of what you know and what you don't know, I can use it against you. And that's a beautiful concept, right? As opposed to someone who's not so educated, I don't know what he knows. And they tend to think very simple, and they're the ones to figure out magic the most, because they don't fill in the blanks. They take it for what it is. You telling yourself a better story, you enriching the experience based on all this, the wealth of information you have about psychology and how this works and how perception works and how memory works. For example, you just described the trick I did for you. It did not describe the trick. You described your memory of that trick. So my job, and I'm borrowing from my master, maestro Juan Tamaris, who's my favorite magician of all time, and I consider him. We'll talk about him quite a bit now. He taught me so much, but he talks a lot about memory, like we are. First of all, we're encoding the information. I give you something to encode. Then I'm asking you to store it either in short term memory, medium term, long term, I don't know if it's even a real term, but a chemical memory, right? When it gets embedded in your memory, and then I'm trying to manipulate how you're going to recall the experience and what you did. You described my trick in a way that I could never do. I wish I could perform the trick you just described. I can't. But I was trying to create at least the impression. You recorded a feeling you had. You did not record what you saw and experienced. You recorded a feeling. It felt so amazing that the feeling was coded in the memory as well. And therefore, you were the co author of that trick. You helped me fool you.

Speaker A: I'm very curious about the role of emotion in the co authoring of these tricks. By the way, folks, the conversation we're having today is not just about magic tricks and mentalists. This occurs at the level of interactions between people one to one. This occurs at the level of media, to the general audience of the world. This stuff scales at every level and in every domain of life. We'll get to how exactly that occurs. I wonder if I could ask you about the reverse engineering of a trick, a hypothetical trick.

Speaker B: Sure, sure.

Speaker A: So tell me if this trick is possible, and if so, one of the possible ways that you would do this. I think I've seen you do something similar to this, or other mentalists do something similar to this. You're standing in a room full of people, let's say 50 people, and you have a piece of paper and a pen, and you say, okay, I'm going to write down a series of numbers, and you write them down, you fold it up, you put it on a table next to you, you set the pen down, there's no contact with it anymore. And then you go around the room and you just ask people for numbers between one and 25. You ask a certain number of people, and then somehow you return to the paper, you open it up, and that's the sequence of numbers. It seems like a straightforward but astonishing trick.

Speaker B: It's a classic.

Speaker A: A classic, okay. Classic of magic for people like me. We want to know at least one solution to that challenge. How does, what's one way in which a magician could do that? Obviously, we start to go to the physical explanation, okay, somebody underneath the table that the piece of paper was on wrote down the numbers they heard and put it on the table. Another solution would be that there was a stack of papers up there with any number of different combinations, but then it's a very large number, big stack of paper. Then it becomes hard to hide and on and on, all going in the wrong direction. Of course, I can also think of the end product way of doing this, where the piece of paper that you show has the numbers that the people stated, but somehow we think it's those numbers when it's actually other numbers. Like there's some sort of visual illusion that we all agree on seeing, but here I'm just guessing. So how could one do that trick?

Speaker B: Wow. We need 2 hours. Today's sake, this one. So here's the deal. I just noticed something as you were going through all the options as someone, I assume you're not a magician. No, I just realized that a quality of magic is that it ignites your imagination and your creativity. You just basically saw something that has no explanation, and you're a knowledgeable guy, you know a lot about a lot of things, and it in a weird, in a good way, it bothers you. Why don't I know that answer? I know so much about the mind and how we sleep and how we, you know, how certain exercises affect our bodies and blah, blah, blah. But this series of number, I don't know. And that drives you nuts a bit. But it's good because then your mind starts racing and thinking of everything you said is a wonderful exercise in problem solving. Right? How could be achieved? And then you slowly rule them out as too much paper, too much work, hiring somebody under a table to write maybe a solution, but you have to pay somebody just to do that job. But it's nice because we're teasing the mind, we're challenging the mind in an era where it seems like all the information is out there. My smartphone can do more than my first computer could right in my pocket. So we are up against, and by the way, every time I tell you this, it's a bit of a tangent here, every time technology advances, magicians get scared, say, oh, people are, when they can do all these marvelous things. I mean, how are they going to care about the number you spoke or car changing in my hand? And I attribute that to, again, your desire to see something marvelous. By the way, there are people that don't want to see magic, like I do, something that really seems impossible, and they go sleight of hand. They come up with a very simple solution. They're not nitpicking about exactly how you did it. They go, he's fast. He's fast with his hands. They come up with a very simple solution. I don't know why it satisfies them, but it does, and it's because they lack the desire to see magic. So to me again, and we're going back to the co authoring, I really need someone, a partner, whenever I do magic, that someone has this desire to see something that's beautiful, that's going to bend the rules of what we know is possible. Right? And they're joining me. So to your question, how is it done? There's many, many ways to achieve this effect. And because we don't possess, we can talk about this if you want, about the supernatural. I don't believe that anybody possesses supernatural powers or even close to that. And because of that, we have to cheat, we have to do some dirty work, which I don't want you to know about. And so, in other words, every trick that they do has a little scar, a little, a moment I wish did not exist. And by the way, a magician, when they choose a trick like that, they need to say, oh, I can go this route or this route. They're going to pay a price with this version. Oh, I cannot do it this way here. It's not as clean here. I cannot be as direct here. I have to choose maybe certain people in the audience. Again, I'm tiptoeing around it so I don't reveal how it's done. But you're making a sacrifice with every choice you make. The goal is, at the end, to make somebody as smart as you go, how? And then start racing. And at the end, you reach a dead end. Hopefully, it's magic. You excel, and I enjoy this. I want you to surrender, and it's a good surrender. You're not being defeated. You give in to this place where magic could happen. You make room for something that should not happen in this world to happen. And that's why I love magic so much. It is a bit of a reminder that I'll tell you a story. There is a juggler who is not a magician, and I'm not going to mention names for a reason. So he juggles on the streets and, you know, make some money on the streets, and one day he goes to see a magic show. And the magic, the magician, a wonderful magician, who does this wonderful act. It's the zip code act. He says to people, tell me your zip code. And then he tells them where they live. Tell me where you live. He tells them the zip code. And then he describes places around them. Oh, you have a Starbucks there. And he describes, it's amazing. It's wonderful. Now, this juggler, not a magician, watches a magician who is doing a trick. There's a scientific explanation to how it's done. It's not anything beyond that. And again, it's wonderful. And he goes, how did he do that? And then he comes up with the solution that the magician must have memorized all the zip codes in the world. Not the case, but that's the impression. He goes home and starts memorizing all the zip codes in America. First, he spends thousands of hours to memorize zip codes for real. He's doing the real version of what the magician did, and he performs it now all over the country. He's doing the zip code act for real. And the beauty of this story is that a false performance, artificial representation of a skill, inspired somebody to do something that is real, and therefore push is limits, is human, realistic limits to a level that a lot of people go, that's not possible, right? And I think it's a beauty about this. And again, goes back to your question, how is it done? So maybe the solution you just came up with is better than what I do, but I disignited you to think about it. So it's really a big reason, an important reason, why I love magic so much.

Speaker A: Staying with my question of how a trick like that is done, you really want to know? Well, I don't think you're actually going to tell me these specific order of operations to make it happen. I don't expect that. But I can think of two endpoints for exploring this. One is, or at least two. One is to manipulate what's on the paper. Right. The other is to manipulate what people say or are likely to say, perhaps by selecting people that are likely to say certain numbers because you have some understanding of that. I don't know how that would happen. The other is to completely revise people's understanding of what just happened in a group. And I think the last possibility is the one that intrigues me and most people the most. The idea that even in the company of other rational, well rested, sober, meaning non inebriated or on drugs, people that sometimes it helps that there could be a collective perception that is not accurate, but everyone agrees to confabulate together. And the reason I ask this, and I focus on this third possibility, is that we know that the memory system is a confabulation system.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: A good example of this would be people who, sadly, have some form of dementia. They often will find themselves in a room doing something. And if you ask them, hey, what were you doing? They don't say, I don't know. They say, oh, you know, I came in here to do something, and they create these elaborate stories of what got them there, which may make sense to them, may not, but we all do this. We all confabulate. False memory is a huge topic unto itself, but we all confabulate. Memory is not perfect. So I imagine this third possibility is one that you work with and that you massage. How does one think about memory in the context of these experiments that I just call them experiments, these tricks that I like?

Speaker B: Experiments. I love that word.

Speaker A: Right? And here we agree that we were talking about science today, as we always do whenever I see you. And in experiments, as people may or may not know, you ask a question, but you pose hypotheses. So you say, like, how do we cure cancer? But then you pose a hypothesis. You say, I think it's going to be cured by doing blank, blank and blank. And then you test that and you try and rule out your hypothesis. So it's a little bit of why I call it an experiment. So, for instance, is there a way that you can get people to believe that they saw the numbers? Let's make it very simple. Three, eight and seven. When in fact, you held up a piece of paper that said something very different. Have you done that before?

Speaker B: I see where you're going with this, and I love using the word experiments. One of my heroes, Chan Canasta, was a psychologist who used psychology in his work as a magician, as a mentalist. And he never called his pieces tricks or magic. He called them experiments. And he was careful about it. It's not just an aesthetic choice. He wanted to plant this seed in their mind. Experiment means it could fail. Okay? Which is a very good starting point for any dramatic, because if something is going to work, but if there's something at stake, something could fail. People are more engaged. So I love the word. I sometimes use the word. What's an experiment?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's like these crazy people that climb up the side of buildings with no ropes. I mean, we don't want to see them fall, but the possibility that they could fall is what's exciting. The movie free solo with Alex Honell. We all know at the beginning he lives. He lives, and yet you want to see it in case he might not live. And even though you know, he lives in some ways, that's a magic trick unto itself.

Speaker B: That's the brilliance of David Blaine, who I consider one of my dearest friend and one of my favorite magicians in the world and what he does. I mean, we can talk about him at length, but, you know, blending real stuff with magic and it's almost. Sometimes it's hard to tell what is real and what's not. And I even love that aspect and a lot of people don't know, but all the stuff he does is real when he's holding his breath night after night now in Vegas at the wind, ten minutes, and sitting in the audience watching David do that is so inspiring because I look at it symbolically, he's showing us, because he was inspired by a kid who survived being trapped under ice for a long time and recovered to full recovery. And he goes, if he can do it, then everybody could. And it's beautiful. To me, the message is so strong, just beautiful.

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Speaker B: Again, the question.

Speaker A: Yeah, so the question is, have you done, or is it possible to get people to think that you're holding up a piece of paper that says, now I forget the numbers. My working memory wasn't engaged enough to do it. Whatever. 348 that's not what I said earlier, when in fact, they are looking at a piece of paper that says something different. Is that something that can be done?

Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's actually a piece where you have a piece of paper, literally printed piece of paper, and you control someone's mind. You say, I'm going to make you see things distorted. You're not going to see reality the way everybody in this room, including me, will see it, starting now. And it's literally a piece of paper that says two plus two. And everybody can see it. The entire audience can see it's two plus two. What's the answer? And he goes, 16. Okay, and let's try something easier. One plus one. He goes, 24. And this guy is cognitively smart. Sharp is not on drugs. It cannot answer those questions. It's an augmentation of reality. And that manifests in many forms in magic. The idea of seeing something that is in a sort, in the optical illusion land of what you see is not what you see. And that's probably applicable to every trick you'll ever see. What you see, it's not what you see, it's what I want you to see. And I love that. And again, that Chan can ask, the guy spoke to you about, he would go, they would take three cards, let's say ace of hearts, king of clubs, seven of spades, three cards. He'll go to a coffee shop and say, choose one. And they say, king of clubs. Thank you. Go to an art table. And he will do it all night. And people, what is he doing? He's not doing any magic. Nothing. He's just surveying the audience to see how they think. Right? And this is information that we collect over the years. Like, there's something called I can influence you, let's say, to take a specific card. But it has to be done in such way that it feels like it was a free choice. It was not a free choice. And the difference between a good or a great magician and a decent magician or an okay magician is that one makes you feel like, I chose this card. There is no way. You made me pick this card. There is no way. And that's a sort of augmentation. It's you feel like you have control and yet you don't. And you feel it with conviction. You could swear that's the one. So there's a famous, famous thing that he used to do. He would say, I can make people change their mind or not. And he says it up front. He says, you're going to choose a card, okay? Any card you like. I'll go to the audience. You point to any person you want. They'll choose another card. Whatever they choose will be the card you're thinking of. And then I'll give them 10 seconds to change their mind. And if they do, it will still be correct. They can change their mind as many times as they want. And I don't care. Once they say, that's it. That's the card, that will be the card you're thinking of.

Speaker A: How can that be?

Speaker B: So the truth is, and I'll reveal a little bit about that, there is no trickery here, as far as, you know, sleight of hand or anything like that. Hill early was a master at making people either want to stick to a decision or change it. He would basically manipulate their insecurity their ego, something about them to either resist changing or to really want to change. And to me and I, I have a conflict, a dilemma about this, because my whole fullest act, which if one we can talk about, is really based on this conflict or this problem I have sometimes the method is way more beautiful than the effect itself. So that's why I have no problem telling that Chen did that. Chen found a way with using specific language or gestures or whatnot without revealing too much to make somebody either stick to the choice or change their mind.

Speaker A: He could literally control their bias toward one or the other.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Does it involve touching their body in any particular way?

Speaker B: Maybe.

Speaker A: Maybe? Yeah. Many times in your performances and the performances of other mentalists and magicians, they will say, pick a number, pick a card, and then right before the trick is about to advance, they'll say, are you sure? Okay.

Speaker B: Oh, that's a big one.

Speaker A: And they'll say, yes, I'm sure, or no, I'm going to switch. Okay. And based on what you told us already, it's clear that the skilled mentalist or magician can work with either scenario. Maybe it's the improvisation. But what I want to know is when you look at somebody's physical body, how they sit, their shape and other features, maybe how they dress, how they stand, maybe something about their eyes or their face, can you make better predictions as to what sorts of numbers they'll pick, whether or not they're going to stick to their choice or change their choice? Okay. I think there's a lot of interest in this, and maybe you could, since we're talking in generic terms and we're not presenting you with a line of people and asking you which person would do what, would you be willing to share what some of those cues are? So I'm me, I wear this black shirt, and I have other shirts, but I don't wear them on camera. And I comb my hair a certain way, I sit a certain way. I mean, what sorts of predictions emerge from that? Or am I striking on the wrong variables?

Speaker B: So it's not the big things that will reveal to me what, because I do kind of like, profile a little bit for the magic purposes, what kind of trick I will do with you and what I can't do with you, what I will do with this guy or that guy. Right? And it's not the shirt, it's not how you wear your hair. It's really small things. And I can talk about many people that influence me. Avner the eccentric is one of my favorite performers.

Speaker A: His name is literally the eccentric.

Speaker B: It's a. It's a different name, but he goes by Avner, the eccentric, and he's a wonderful performer. It's even hard to categorize what he does, but he's. I'm doing disservice. A clown, a mime, a juggler, a magician. And I've never seen someone who's better at what we call audience management. Something we call audience management is how do you interact with people? And he's able to get. Again, I'm butchering is his class to something very simple. But he gets three s's from a person, meaning I can ask you non verbally to agree to participate with something I want you to do. And he will do small things, like just a little gesture, and he can see if they go for it. He sees if there's that dance. Is that person complying to something very small, or is he resisting? And then easily, I can go to the next person, and he's a master. A master at doing that. Even breathing, if I breathe a certain way when I. This is. It blew my mind when I first learned from Avner. It's like when you walk into a place so you don't see me. I'm behind a curtain, curtain, something. And I walk in, and the first thing I do is, or as opposed to do. I take the breath in or out when I. The first step I take on stage and the audience, in a weird way, mimics that.

Speaker A: Really?

Speaker B: Yeah. So if I go, you feel. You kind of tend to relax with me. Now, if you want a more exaggerated example of that, if you watch a movie and it's really tense and there's tension, you will start feeling tension. Right. We're kind of like, empathy is a big, big part of what we do. That's why one of the things I choose to do in my show when I first start is not to start with the most amazing magic to blow your mind. Oh, my God, he's amazing. It's more. I gear the first pieces towards connecting with you. I'd rather say something really endearing, funny, connecting, truthful, honest, before I start trying to blow your mind, why I want to connect with you first. So we. You know, a mother will be proud of her son who's playing guitar, and much more forgiving if he makes a little mistake or something. But every little achievement he will make, she will be so proud of him because she has empathy. She wants him to succeed. She wants him to do well. So I want you to adopt me. I want you to feel empathy towards me. I want you to be. I'm rooting for you.

Speaker A: This makes a lot of sense. I do some live events, and I don't think about whether or not I exhale or inhale when I get out there, but I definitely try and get out there and just kind of take it all in and relax. And we have what I hope is a relaxing, interesting conversation. And you kind of work with the amplitude of excitement. And I'm not thinking about it in any kind of conscious way, but this is actually a wonderful tool that I hope everyone will export from this conversation, which is, if you ever need to do public speaking, breathe, have probably a good, long exhale as you get out there will be great. Everyone will relax. It's also tough for me to see live theater, because oftentimes, if it's not going well for them, I feel embarrassed for them. I think people vary, however, in terms of their levels of empathic attunement. Some people are very tuned into the emotional states of others, and some are not. So are there people in audiences, assuming a relatively random array of people, that are fairly rigid, like, you wouldn't want to, you wouldn't call them up to the table. So when you select someone to come up in front of the crowd, are you basing that on some level of empathic attunement that they're in sync with you?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So it starts with the first thing. Look, you come in cold. The audience, as you said, the first item, quoting Avner here, the first thing they do is they say, I hope this doesn't suck. And also the performer says, I hope it's not gonna suck. The starting point is, it depends. Expectation could vary, you know, if something's really hyped and go, oh, this is gonna be great. Or, you've seen the artists and you trust them, but if you come in cold, you don't know the person. You don't know if it's going to be great or not. You just happen to be there, and there's a magic show. Let's check it out. There's tension. There's almost like they're auditioning you. I wonder if it's going to be worth my time. And I don't care if people bought a ticket to see my off Broadway show or not. The first 1015 minutes, it's really about telling them in so many without words, but telling them, I'm here for you. I'm here to connect with you, and I'm here to create this, some wonderful thing that we're going to feel together. I want them to feel that.

Speaker A: It's like an intimacy.

Speaker B: Yes. And that, to me, by the way, is way more important than me fooling people. Like, if somebody came to me after the show and said, oh, wow, your magic is unbelievable. I have no idea how you did it. That's the lowest compliment I can get. And thankfully and gratefully, often I get the most common one is the magic was great, but we liked you.

Speaker A: They feel connected to you, and I.

Speaker B: Love that because to me, the magic is important. I want it to be really deceptive. I want it to be impossible and beautiful and whatnot. But to me, it's also a vehicle to connect with people, because at the end of the day, that's what it is. That's the only difference I can have, because there's a lot of magicians, a lot of people can do magic that you can't figure out. That's the lowest bar. You fool me, good magician, make me feel magic higher and maybe feel magic and connect. It's like if somebody cannot even explain what I did in my show and goes, you had to be there. That's something Steve Martin says all the time. You had to be there. I can't tell you with words what it's like to see his show. You have to see it in person. That, to me, is a very high goal of, like, I want him to remember the experience and the feeling, rather than particularly, oh, I want him to care about what they experienced emotionally.

Speaker A: That's how I recalled the trick that you did outside the person who initially connected us. Just absolutely terrific. What I call close contact card magician Franco Pascali here in Los Angeles. He has amazing card skills. He does something with his card tricks, I noticed. I'll go to the magic castle as often as possible, and I just watch and like to take this in, and I try and think about the neuroscience behind it, as you can tell. And when he lands a trick, meaning when the person takes the card and says, oh, my goodness, how did you know? Or it's like the ace switches the card, whatever it is. Franco also acts surprised. He joins you as an audience member, momentarily he goes, oh. And then he goes back to being the magician. And I find that especially important for people to understand, because you do the same. And I always say, having studied the lectures of many, many spectacular scientists and lecturers, that the best lecturers in the classroom obviously are teaching the material from a place of deep understanding of the material, one would hope, right, so they have mastery of the material in some case, virtuosity with the material. But as they're presenting the material to people who know nothing about it, they themselves are showing their delight in the material as if it's the first time they've ever seen it. And so they are both student and teacher at the same time, and you feel immense resonance with them.

Speaker B: That's nice.

Speaker A: And it reminds me of the experience of seeing you do magic or mentalist work.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: I'm yet to see you go, oh, my goodness. But I think it's the sense that you're collaborating in something, and there's this giving over of self. Like, I trust ossie to take me someplace with this. So the resistant people, the people that sort of, like, I'm not gonna let him fool me. Right? What's so amazing is that in your shows, oftentimes those people are the ones that are the ones walking out just shaking their heads. I know because I brought some of them along to your shows going, there's no way. There's no way. And yet you got them. So do the resistant people serve a role, even if they're not called up? Of course, yeah. What role do skeptics play in convincing other people that something happened that didn't really happen?

Speaker B: So first of all, the transformation. Somebody's a believer, and you show magic and nice. It's wonderful. We can celebrate magic together. But if somebody is a skeptic, really skeptical, and I've had really, and I sense that I could convert them, I could transform them, and the audience watches this transformation. So we're going from here to here. That's a wonderful thing. So every now and then, I will recognize the person who's like. And he slowly starts to see him melt and softens.

Speaker A: It's almost like a musician at a wedding. You know, they're the people that jump up and dance immediately. But if you're a skilled musician, you get that person that, you know, their wife is saying, come on, let's dance, and won't move. And then maybe you hit a certain motif in the music, and the person taps their foot a little bit, moves their head, and then there's certain people that they won't dance at all unless their song comes up. And then they, like, dart to the dance floor. Sounds a little bit like that. And you've captured them. You've captured their emotion, you've captured their willingness. You've captured their whole body willingness to participate in something that a minute before, they were either too embarrassed, too stubborn, or too tired to engage in.

Speaker B: So here's the deal. Magic could be and often is intimidating. I am basically challenging your intellect. And some people, if they take it the wrong way, what they hear is, you're telling me that you're smarter than me. You're telling me you know things I don't know, and I'm not even close to knowing, so screw you. And they will reject it aggressively, like I've had. Thankfully, it's a percent a time when we do walk around magic, and I go, and some people, as soon as they see me go, no, no, no, thanks, they don't want to see it. And to me, that drove me nuts, like, why don't they want to see? They don't even know what I'm about to offer.

Speaker A: You're going to violate their sense of self trust. That's, I think, the fear.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And as a magician or as an artist, if I use that, but my goal is to also educate them as I do the magic that we're creating, this safe space where these things could happen. And it's clear that I'm using it for your own good. You know, I did a whole foolish act, exactly. About knowing and not knowing. So I'm not going to spoil too much. If people want to see it, they can see it. I'll tell you a backstory on this, if you don't mind. So, Tommy, the three major heroes of magic are Juan Tamaris, Tommy Wonder, and Chan Canastae.

Speaker A: Are they alive still?

Speaker B: Chan is not. And Tommy pest. Juan is still kicking butt in Madrid.

Speaker A: I think I saw him at the castle. He's very, very exuberant.

Speaker B: So he's a hero, and I'm his student. But let's talk about Tommy for a sec. So, Tommy, for a long time, he did magic. Magicians did not know how it works. It was so devious that even magicians did not know how it works. And at some point, he released some dvd's that teach his magic. And the trick is very simple. He borrows someone's watch. It disappears. And there's a table right next to him with a little box and a ribbon. And he literally grabs the ribbon. So he never touches the box, lifts the box, gives it to somebody. He opens it. Inside, there's an alarm clock. They unscrew the alarm clock, and inside is their watch.

Speaker A: No. I mean, yes, yes.

Speaker B: But even magicians who saw that, they go, I have no idea how it's done. No idea. And then I remember watching the explanation for the first time, and I was thinking that the method was by far more interesting, intriguing, revealing, just beautiful. It made the trick less. Like I said, you should perform the explanation. Don't perform the trick, perform the explanation. And I broke the rules of magic. Like, my non magician friends will come over and say, let me show you something. And I show them the trick, and they go, wow, that's amazing. Let me show the explanation. And their mind was blown.

Speaker A: Are you willing to share a little bit of what the explanation is, or is that not.

Speaker B: No, no.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: But I will explain a little bit. So I tell what the explanation was that it revealed that he's an engineer, that he can build props that are, like, ingenious. Again, I'm going around it, but at some point, the person who opens the box is doing part of the trick, and he doesn't know it. He's creating the trick, but he doesn't know he's contributing something to it. And it's just beautiful, metaphorically, symbolically. It just hits so many levels, at least. And that planted a seed in my mind. I want to create an effect that the method is prettier than the trick itself. So I worked for five years to create an explanation, a pseudo explanation to a trick that was just beautiful and it was an opportunity. Have you seen it? I don't know if you've.

Speaker A: This is the one you did for Penn and Teller? Yeah. You can describe it or. I can describe it.

Speaker B: Sure. I mean, let's see how you remember it.

Speaker A: Right. I have more interest in listening than speaking, but I'll tell you how I remember it. Okay. You're in front of a very large audience that includes the scientist show guys at Penn and Teller who basically debunks stuff. They're kind of.

Speaker B: They tried to figure it out.

Speaker A: They try and figure stuff out. Some. They are asked to pick someone in the audience. They pick a guy. As I recall, you wore a green and white sweater.

Speaker B: Wow. You have a good memory.

Speaker A: Yeah. He stands up and you ask him to pick a card. I think I forget what it is. Jack of clubs, perhaps. Let's just say, for sake of example, jack of clubs. You said, are you sure you're now on stage? Mind you, there are hundreds of people in the audience, maybe more. And you say, are you sure? And he goes, yeah. And you say, are you very sure? And he said, no, I'm going to switch. So now, first of all, you have a good memory, perhaps. Perhaps I've been accused of. I have a little bit of an audiographic memory for certain things, but not a visual memory. That's perfect. They're sort of adjacent. We could talk about that sometime it. Something helps you. If you need to learn neuroanatomy, that's about it. Can be cultivated. Okay, so then he switches the card. Let's just call it, I don't know, jack of spades, right? Okay. Or king of spades. Let's say jack of spades. And then next to you on the table up on the stage is a table, a round table with a plexiglass box.

Speaker B: Cigar box.

Speaker A: Cigar box. It's clear.

Speaker B: No, no, not yet.

Speaker A: No, not yet.

Speaker B: Later.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: First, it's just a wooden cigar box.

Speaker A: Wooden box, that's right. And a mug. A white mug, not unlike the mug I have here, except white. You take a sip from that mug, and then at some point during this exchange, and then you open the box, and you pull from the box, of course, the card that he selected. And everyone goes, oh, my goodness. How could that possibly be? Because obviously anyone could select in the audience, he switched his choice, etcetera. But then you reveal how the trick is done, or at least seemingly reveal it, which is that beneath the box, there's a bunch of different decks of cards on 52 on a turnstile. So within each one, and I missed a piece of it, you pull out the whole deck. Only one card is turned on, and.

Speaker B: All the other cards are blank.

Speaker A: All the other cards are blank. Right. So there's more to it. So then it turns out that there are 52 different decks underneath the table, and it's on a turnstile, so you can actually dial it in.

Speaker B: And let's keep the ending surprise. Right, so there's a surprise ending.

Speaker A: Right. So then it at least seemingly makes sense as to how ASI did this. He has all the different option possible options available to him physically, but the audience doesn't realize that. Also, the mug, by the way, engages a magnet system that allows him to dial the deck of cards to the correct one. That allows him to match the choice. So it truly could be any card in the deck.

Speaker B: Good memory.

Speaker A: Meaning it's all. So the straightforward explanation is it's all physical trickery by way of props.

Speaker B: Correct. So here's the deal. What I tried to achieve with this piece is, first to make people feel magic. So the trick, it's a good trick, you know, name any card. The card he named was reversed, and then it was the only blue card in the deck. And then all the other cards were blank. So it's clearly the only card he could have named. And he did switch, which is an amazing detail that you remembered. He did switch from the king of clubs, the king of spades, or right.

Speaker A: Now, something like that. Yeah.

Speaker B: Now. So people felt what it's like to see a good card trick. All right? And then I wanted her to feel what it's like to know. And the lesson here is, you know, you could satisfy your curiosity. Oh, that's how it's done. And you can go on with your life, and that's it. And that's what happens to a magician when you first learn the secrets to, you know, something that fooled you. There's disappointment. I remember the first streak that was revealed to me. It was a little red handkerchief stuffed into the hand. Gone. And I'm like, what? Do it again? And he did it again. He did. Ten times in a row. I could. And then he explained to me how it's done, and the secret was so simple and stupid. No.

Speaker A: Didn't that you share with us?

Speaker B: No, no, no. I got to tell you, it was primitive. It was simple. And the moment he revealed the gimmick that caused the handkerchief to disappear, I could not see the trick again. Every time he does, it's this. Yeah.

Speaker A: It's like falling out of love.

Speaker B: Something like.

Speaker A: Yeah, I really. I mean, a previous guest on the podcast, Carl Dysroth, one of the best bioengineers, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists in the world, went on Lex Friedman podcast, and they were talking about love. And Carl said something interesting that's very relevant here. He said. He's a colleague of mine at Stanford, very poetic guy. He said, love between two people. Romantic love, that is, is one of the few things in life that we collaborate with someone to story something into the future. You know, this is different than the love of a child or a sibling or a parent or a pet, et cetera, or a friend. You're creating a story that's based on real experience of past and present. But there's this storying forward of love that's great. And falling out of love involves, of course, the ending of the story moving forward, but also, in some cases, sadly, a revision of the events of the past.

Speaker B: It's great. It's very close. It's very close to the feeling you have as a magician the first time you actually get exposed. Right. It disappoints you because you have a desire for it to be real. The desire of a young magician is when I see something like that, is that it's a supernatural power. And the first thing you understand is that it's not supernatural, that it's quite simple and primitive, and it fooled you, because of all the psychology and the desire, like everything we spoke about, my desire to see magic, the idea of misdirection, which we can talk about at length. Misdirection means I provide something very interesting for you to follow, and you will follow that path, because it's the most interesting at the moment to follow. And in the background, in the shadiness of life, some dirty stuff happen, but you don't pay attention because I don't feature it. It's not important, and I make you render it as not important. So it does that right, and it's disappointment. But there's good news. If you keep up with magic and you start to understand that to do a trick, the secret, the actual how you did it, is 1% of the whole procedure. And there's much more to doing that trick effectively, which is storytelling, connecting, doing it in such way that somebody cares about it, and that is a lifetime of pondering and contemplation. So you have, maybe you'll find an analogy with love again. I don't know. There's also this time, when you start appreciating it again, appreciate the secret again, because you understand the nuance, you understand the complexity of this simple thing, and that's what happened to me. So in some magic, which is the exception, it's the table that we spoke about that I didn't fool us or Tommy Wonder's table, where the effect is so, so, so magnificent that you do appreciate it immediately. But those are rare. Most magic is simple, dirty, and to the point, but it achieves something that looks very complex.

Speaker A: Perhaps now would be the appropriate time for you to reveal the non reveal of the explanation of the trick. Because one of the amazing things about the trick that you did with selecting the card that the gentleman in the audience, a penn and teller, had mentally and verbally selected, is that at the very end, after everyone believes they now understand how the trick is done. The turnstile table, the magnet, the coffee mug. You proceed to strip away the curtain, the curtain around the table, and pull out a piece of paper, not 52 decks of cards.

Speaker B: It's a picture of 52.

Speaker A: It's a picture, which means that the explanation that they got, while entirely plausible, if that's actually what had happened, is not at all what had happened. In other words, you pop out at the end that they don't actually know how it's done. You know how it's done, and I'm not even going to bother to ask you how it's done because you're not going to reveal it. In other words, people were misdirected into thinking they understood the trick, and therefore, there's a bit of a letdown. It's interesting, but it's just mechanics, magnets. And then you reveal that their understanding is actually not real.

Speaker B: Yes. And the reason I wanted to go there, I wanted them to feel magic then to feel what it's like to know something and the fact that it's irreversible. You can't unknow a trick once you know how it's done. And then what? I said, look, I made a choice. I chose to learn the secrets to magic, and I'm paying a price for it. I cannot see magic the way you can. I cannot enjoy the way my audience can. And in a weird way, I'm experiencing magic only through their eyes. When I see someone goes, wow. Through you, I can experience it, but that's it. I cannot firsthand experience magic the way you can. So I said, I'm not here to make that choice for you, so let me bring you back to safety, to the place you were at. It's a place I envy, to mystery. And then I revealed that the whole expansion was bogus. The whole thing was just another lie. And I'm establishing another thing that as a magician, I have a license to lie to you. And it's okay because that's my job, and therefore it makes it honest.

Speaker A: And we're collaborating in that to some extent, because when people go to a magic show, they understand that. Another former guest on the podcast, Rick Rubindeh, who needs no introduction, but by the way, he's a big fan of magic, has said to me before that there are only two things in life that are absolutely true. One is nature. They're real truths. They're real laws and rules of nature. And the other is, for him, professional wrestling. Because Rick loves professional wrestling. He's a lifetime member of the AEw and the WWe. I've gone to sea wrestling with him. And the reason he believes it's one of the few things that's real is that everyone knows it's not real. And so everyone agrees to collaborate in this story. This theater of these guys hate each other. This woman and this woman are now friends. They are collaborators. And so, unlike everything else, which is completely made up, and you're not sure what's real and what's fake. With professional wrestling and with nature, it's real truth. I would add to that magic, because when we go to see magic, we want to be astonished. Most people do. We want our perceptions to be violated. Right. What we believe is there, isn't there, etcetera. And yet we are doing this consensually. We're doing this, and so we're agreeing, like, let's collaborate in a lie, that there's this thing called magic, I guess, and that's a pretty ill defined term in its own right, where, you know, this idea that physical objects can be made to disappear, violate the rules of nature, of physics. And unless you're of a certain ilk out there in the world, that simply is not the case. The laws of nature hold.

Speaker B: So maybe there's another analogy there, because we know that professional wrestlers are faking it, and we know a magician fakes it, too. He fakes supernatural powers.