Asi Wind: What Magic & Mind Reading Reveal About the Brain

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday [Music] life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine my guest today is AI wind aie wind is one of the top magicians and mentalists in the world now you may be asking yourself why would the hubman Lab podcast host a magician Mentalist and the obvious answer perhaps would be that mag 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 AI wins 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 aie did some of these tricks and mentally 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 aiwin 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 aie wi'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 AI 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 learn so much from the discussion with AI 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 AI wind 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 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've mentioned before on this podcast I'm a big

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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 10 years ago and I've been using one ever since Aeropress was developed by Allan Adler who was an engineer at Stanford and I knew of Allan because he had also built the so-called aobi 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

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Canada and over 60 other countries in the world again that's Aeropress docomo to get 20% off and now for my discussion with aie wind aie wind welcome thank you for having me 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 hyper herbally that can capture what you are capable of doing um just by way of example folks prior to

coming in here aie agreed to do a trick he let me select a card uh 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 number everyone provides a number then he ask 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 uh 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 Etc 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 you're here today because you are a scientist uh 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 a like a 90% probability um 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 yes so um 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 going to reveal some Secrets here um a lot of people don't know that we are very much like jazz musicians I'm not a musician I'm going to 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 uh I said take a 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 we'll 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 uh and you go wow it's concluded beautifully right so there's there's some times when I like after a show and I and I go wow this did not work and that didn't work and people say what do you mean everything worked 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

you know the experience you can literally just get stuck and go sorry let's do it again and it could happen but for a season you know a season performer someone who does it again and again and again I I'll borrow from a pendulate analogy that I love it's like gr Hog Day the movie uh we get to relive the same night again and again and again and guess what what people are very much alike I'll hear the same hackling I'll hear the same thing or I I I start to see types this person is going

to be confrontational this person is going to be is 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 uh 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 Behavior patterns that I can use to my advantage like for example I noticed that it's easier to fool smart people as opposed to people are not so smart tell me more about that because

you know I'm relying on the bank of information you have in your head against you it's ta 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 you say okay this makes sense this and I know how you think and the fact that I 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 educate

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 uh 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 you did not describe the trick you described your your memory of that trick so my job

you know and I'm boring from my master myestro Juan tamari who's my favorite Magician of all time and I consider him we'll talk about him quite a bit now um he taught me so much but he he talks a lot about memory like we are first first of all we 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 uh I don't know if it's even a real term but a chemical uh 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 coted in the memory as well and therefore you you were the co-author of that trick you you help me fool you I'm very

curious about the role of emotion in the co-authoring of these tricks and 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 uh at every level and in every domain of Life we'll get to how that exactly that occurs I wonder if I could ask you about the verse engineering of a trick a hypothetical trick sure sure sure so tell me

if this trick is possible and if so one of the possible ways that you would do this um I 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 year 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 1 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 that it seems like a straightforward but astonishing trick it's a classic 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 uh 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 um all going in the wrong direction of course um I can also think of the end uh 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 wow we need two hours to dissect this one um so here's the deal I just noticed something as you were going through all the options is someone I assume you're not a magician no um 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 cuz then your mind starts racing and and thinking of everything you said is a wonderful exercise in uh problem solving right how could

be achieved and then you slowly ruled 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 um but it's nice because um we're teasing the mind we're teasing we're challenging the mind in an era where it seems like all the information is out there we have I my smartphone can do you know more than my first computer could right in in my pocket so we are we are up against and by every time I I tell

you this it's a bit of a tangent here um every time technology advances magicians get scared say oh I people are when they can do all these marvelous things I mean how are they going to care about the number you just spoke or or carard changing in my hand and I attribute that to again your desire to see something marvelous without by the way there's there are people that don't want to see magic like I do something that's really is seems impossible and they go slide of hand they they come up with a very simple

solution they not need picking about exactly how you did it they go oh he's fast he's fast with his hands or you know they come up with a very simple solution that 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 when I 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 uh ways to achieve this effect and because we don't possess I don't 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 um and because of that we we have to ch eat we have to do some dirty work which I don't want you to know about um and so in other words every trick that I 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 I it's not as clean here I cannot be as direct here I have to choose maybe certain people in the the audience again I'm tiptoeing around it so I don't reveal how it's done um 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 how and then start racing and and at the end you reach a dead end hopefully it's magic you Excel and I enjoyed it and and that's I want you to surrender and and it's a surrender it's not uh you're not being defeated you you you give into the to this place where magic could happen you you make room for something that should not happen in this world to happen and and that's why I love magic so much it it is a a bit of a reminder that I'll tell you a

story there is a joggler who is not a magician he's and 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 wonderful magician uh who does this wonderful act it's the ZIP code act he says to people um 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 blah blah and like he describe it's amazing it's wonderful now this joggler not a magician watches a magician who is doing a trick there's a scientific explanation to how it's done it's not it's not anything beyond that um 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 havee 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 present representation of a skill inspired somebody to do something that is real and therefore push his limits is human you know realistic limits to a level that a lot of people go that's not possible right and 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 least ignite you to to think about it so I it's it's it's really a a big reason uh an important reason why I love magic so much 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 the specific order of operations to make it happen I I don't expect that but I can think of um

two kind of um end points for exploring this one is or at least two one is to manipulate what's on the paper right like 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's 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 correct 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 might not um but we all do this we all confabulate false memories there is a huge topic into itself but um we all confabulate memory is not perfect so um I imagine this third possibility is one that you work with and that you massage um how does one think about memory in the context of these experiments that uh I just called them experiments these tricks

that you do I like by I love that word right and and here we agreed that we're were going to talk about science today as we always do when whenever I see you um 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 it's a little bit

of why I call it an experiment um so for instance um is there a way that you can get people to believe that they saw the numbers let's make it very simple 3 8 and seven when in fact you held up a piece of paper that said something very different is that have you done that before I I I see where you're going with this uh and I and I love use the word experiments one of my heroes Chan Canasta was a psychologist who who used psychology in his work uh as a magician as a

mentalist and he didn't he never called his pieces uh tricks or magic he called them experiments and he was careful about it he it's not just uh an aesthetic Choice he wanted to to plant this SE in their mind experiment means it could fail okay which is a very good starting point for any dramatic uh because if something is going to work and but if there's something at stake something could fail people are more engaged so I love the word I sometimes use the word uh what an experiment yeah it's like a these um 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 the movie free solo cor with Alex hell we all know at the beginning he lives he 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 a magic trick into itself that's the Brilliance of David Blaine who I consider one of my dearest friend and my 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 I 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 in now in vegus at the wind 10 minutes and you know sitting uh in the audience watching David do that is so inspiring because I look at it symbolically

he is is showing us cuz he was inspired by a kid who survived um being trapped under ice for a long time in recovered to full recovery and and he goes if he can do it then everybody could and it's it's a beautiful to meets the message is so strong just beautiful I'd like to take a brief moment and thank one of our sponsors and that's ag1 ag1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens I started taking ag1 way back in 2012 the reason I started taking it and the reason I still

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drink a1.com huberman and you'll get a year supply of vitamin D3 K2 and five free travel packs of ag1 again that's drink a1.com huberman Orient me again the question was 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 uh whatever um 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 is

that something that can be done absolutely absolutely there's a there's actually a piece where you you have a piece of paper literally printed a piece of paper and you control someone's mind you say uh I'm going to make you see things distorted you're not going to see reality the way everybody in this room incling 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 2 plus two what's the answer and it goes 16 okay and let's try

something easier 1 + one it goes 24 and he he he's this guy is cognitively Smart Sharp he's not on drugs it cannot answer those questions it's an augmentation of reality and there that manifests in many forms in Magic the idea of seeing something that is in in a sort you know in the optical illusion land of what you see is not what you see and that's probably applicable to every trick you you'll ever see what you see it's not what you see it's what I want you to see and and I I love that

and again the the that Chan Canasta guy spoke to you about he would go it 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 uh choose one and they say King of Clubs thank you go to another table and he will do it all night and people what is he doing he's not doing any magic to them nothing he's just surveying the audience to see how they think right and this is information that we collect uh over the years like

there's a something called um 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 are you sure that's the one so there's a famous famous um thing that he he used to do he would say I can make people change their mind or not and he says it up front he says I'm 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 how can that be so the truth is and I'll reveal a little bit about that there is no trickery here as far as you know slide of hand or anything like that he literally 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 and and and to me and I I I I have a conflict a dilemma about this because my whole foolest act which if want we can talk about is really based on on this conflict or this uh problem I have um sometimes the the method is way more beautiful than the effect itself so that's why I have no problem telling the Chen did that Chen found a way with uh using specific you know language or or gestures or whatnot without revealing too much to make somebody

either stick to their choice or change their mind he could literally control their bias toward one or the other yes um does it involve touching their body in any particular way maybe maybe yeah many many times in your um performances and the performances of other mentalists and magicians they will say you know I pick a number or pick a card and then uh right before the trick is about to advance they'll say are you sure okay oh that's a big one and they'll say yes I'm sure or no I'm going to switch okay um and

based on what you told us already um it's clear that the skilled Mentalist or magician can work with either scenario is maybe it's a bit of a it's the improvisation um but what I want to know is when you look at somebody's physical body how they sit their shape um 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 um since we're talking in generic terms and we're not presenting you with a line of people and asking um you which which person would do what um would you be willing to share what some of those cues are so I'm um you know me I wear this black shirt I have other shirts but I don't uh wear them on camera and um you know 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 so it's not the big things that that will reveal to me what cuz I I do kind of like profile a little bit for the magic purposes uh 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 uh and it's not the shirt it's not how you wear your hair uh it's really small things and uh I can talk about many people that influence me avner The Eccentric is one of my favorite

performers um his name is literally The Eccentric it's a it's a different name but he goes by alar the Ecentric and he's a wonderful performer it's it's even hard to categorize what he does but he's I'm doing this service a clown a mime a jogler a magician and I've never seen someone who's better at what we call audience management there something we call audience management is how do you interact with people and he's able to get again I'm I'm butchering his his uh uh his his class to to something very simple but he gets three

s's from a person meaning I can ask you nonverbally to agree to participate with something I want you to do MH and he will do small things like just a little gesture and they he can see if they go for it he sees if there's that dance can we is that person comp complying to something very small or is he resisting and then easily I can go to the next person so and he's a master a master at uh doing that even breathing if I breathe a certain way when I this is it blew my

mind when I first learned from anner it's like when you walk into a place so you don't see me I'm behind a 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 really yeah so if I go you feel you you kind of tend to relax with me it now if you want a more uh exaggerated examp 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 we're kind of like empathy is a big big part of what we do uh 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 it's it's more I 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 are you know a mother will be proud of her or her son's playing guitar and much more forgiving if he makes a little mistake or something but you'll 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 to feel empathy towards me I want you to be I'm rooting for you this makes a lot of sense um 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 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 um 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 okay um so when you

select someone to come up in front of the crowd um are you uh basing that on some level of empathic Attunement that they're they're in sync with you absolutely so it starts with the first thing look you come in cold the audience as you said uh the first I quoting what a here the first thing they do is they say I hope this doesn't suck and also the performer says I hope it doesn't it's not going to suck uh the the starting point is it depends expectation could vary you know if something is really highy

and go oh this is going to be great or you've seen the artist 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 happened to be there and there's a magic show let's check it out there's there's tension there's almost like they're auditioning you uh I I wonder if it's going to be worth my time so and I don't care if people bought a ticket to see my off broadberry show or not the first 10 15 minutes it's

really about telling them in so many you without words but telling them I'm here for you I'm here to connect with you and I'm here to to create this some some wonderful thing that we're going to feel together I want him to feel that it's like an intimacy 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 uh the most common one is you know the magic was great but you we liked you they feel connected to you and I love that because to me the magic is important it's I want it to be really deceptive I want it to be you know 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 and that's the only difference I can have because there's a lot of magicians a lot of people can

do magic that's 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 uh of of uh like I wanted to remember the experience

and the feeling rather than particular oh the not I want to to care about what they experienced emotionally and that's how I recall the trick that you did outside U the person who initially connected us a just absolutely terrific um what I call close contact uh card magician Franco pascali yes here in Los Angeles um he has amazing uh card skills he does um something with his card tricks I noticed um I'll go to the magic assle 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 um when he lands a trick um meaning when the person takes the card and says oh my goodness you know like how did you know it's like the 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 and then he goes back to being the the 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 um 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 that's nice and it

reminds me of the experience of seeing you do magic or Mentalist work sure um I'm yet to see you go oh my goodness but I think it's the um the sense that you're collaborating in something and there's this giving over of self like I'm I trust aie to take me someplace with this so the resistant people the people that sort of like I'm not going to let him fool me right what's so amazing is that in your shows often times those people are the ones that are the ones walking out just shaking their heads I

know because brought some of them along to your shows going there's no way there's no way and yet you you 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 so first of all the transformation let's somebody's a Believer and you you show magic and nice it's it's wonderful we can celebrate magic together but if somebody's a skeptic really skeptical and have had really I and I and I sense that

I could convert them I could transform them and the audience watches this transformation so we going from here to here that's a a wonderful thing so I every now and then I will recognize the person who's like and you slowly start to see him melt and softens it's almost like a musician at a wedding you know there are the people that jump up and dance immediately but if you're a skilled musician you get that person that you know their their wife is saying come on let's dance and M 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 are 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 so here's the deal magic could be an often is intimidating

I am basically challenging your intellect I in and some people if they take it the wrong way they 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 and they they will reject it aggressively like I've had thankfully it's a percent uh a time when I you know we do walk around magic and I go and some people as soon as they see me go no no no no thanks they don't want to see

it and and I I to me that that drove me knots like why don't they want to see they don't even know what I'm about to offer you're going to violate their sense of self trust that's I think the fear absolutely and and as a magician or as an artist if I 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 the I'm I'm using it for your own good I I you know I

did a whole fullest act exactly about knowing and not knowing so I uh I'm not going to spoil too much if people want to see it they can see it um I'll tell you a backstory on this if you don't mind so Tommy the three major um Heroes of magic are Ju Tommy wander and Chan Canasta are they alive still Chan is not not and uh Tommy past Juan is still kicking butt in Madrid I think I saw him at the castle he's very um very um exuberant yeah okay he's so he's a a hero

and and uh I'm his student so but let's talk about Tommy for SEC so Tommy for a long time he he did Magic that that magicians did not know how it works it's it was so devious that even magicians did not know how it works and at some point he released some DVDs to teach his magic and the trick is is very simple you borrow 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 unscrewed the alarm clock and inside is their watch no I mean yes yes 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 expl and and I I I I I

broke the rules of magic like my My non- Magician friends will come over and say let let me showare something and I show them the trick and they go wow that's amazing let me show the explanation and their mind was blown are you willing to share a little bit of what the explanation is or is that not no no okay but but I will explain a little bit so the EXP I tell what the explation was that it revealed that he's an engineer that he can build props that are like ingenious uh in some again

I'm going around it but at some point the person who opens the Box is's doing part of the trick and he doesn't know it he's he's creating the trick but he doesn't know he's contributing something to it um and it's just beautiful metaphorically symbolically it's on so it hits so many levels at least and that planted a SE in my mind I want to create an effect that the method is prettier than the trick itself so I worked for 5 years to create an explanation a pseudo explanation to a trick that was just beautiful and

it was an opportunity to I don't have you seen it I don't know if youve this the one you did for pen and Teller yeah I um you can describe it or I can describe it I mean let see how I remember it um you're right uh I I have more interest in listening than speaking um but I'll I'll tell you how I remember it okay um you're in a very you're in front of a very large audience that includes the um scientist slash uh show guys at pen and Teller who basically debunk stuff they're

kind of they tried to figure it out they try and figure stuff out um some they are asked to pick someone in the audience they pick a guy as I recall you wore a green and white sweater wow you have a good memory yeah um he stands up and um ask him to pick a card I think I forget what it is a jack of clubs perhaps um 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 then he goes and you say are you very sure and he say no I'm gonna switch so now you first of all you have a good memory uh that perhaps perhaps um I've been I've been accused of I have a little bit of an audiographic memory for certain things but not a visual uh memory that's perfect they're sort of adjacent we could talk about that sometime at something helps you if you need to learn neuron Anatomy that's about it can be cultivated okay

so then he switches the card let's just call it um uh I don't know Jack of uh Spades right okay um or King King of Spades say let's say Jack of Spades and then next to you on the table up on the stage is a a table a round table um with a plexiglass Box Cigar Box Cigar Box it's clear no no not yet no not yet later later okay at first it's just a wooden cigar 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 um open the box yes and you pull from the box of course the card that he selected and everyone say goes oh my goodness how could that possibly be because obviously anyone could have been selected in the audience he switched his choice Etc um but then you reveal how the trick is done or at least seemingly reveal it which is that beneath the Box there's some uh a bunch of different decks of cards on 52 on a Turn Style

So within each one a um right and I I missed a piece of it you you pull out the whole deck and only one card is turned over and all the other cards are blank 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 Turn Style so you can actually dial it and let's let's keep the ending surprise right so there's there's a surprise ending to it right so so then it at least seemingly makes sense

as to how AI did this he has a all the different option possible options available to him physically but the audience doesn't realize that also that the mug by the way engages a magnet system that allows him to dial the 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 good meaning it's all the so the straightforward explanation is it's all physical trickery by way of props correct so here's the deal uh 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 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 is uh which is amazing detail that you remembered he did switch from the King of Clubs to the King of Spades something like that yeah now so people felt what it's like to see a good car trik 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 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 Shak that was revealed to me um 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 10 times in

a row I couldn't and then he explain to me how it's done and the secret was so simple and stupid no didn't that you share with us no no no but I gotta tell you it was primitive it was simple and in the moment he revealed the gimmick that caused the anchor Chief to disappear I could not see the trick again every time he do it's this yeah it's like falling out of love something like yeah that's really I mean a previous guest on the podcast Carl di Roth one of the best bioengineers nor scientist

and psychiatrist in the world um went on Lex Friedman podcast and they were talking about love and Carl said something interesting that's very relevant here he said um he's a colleag you mine at Stanford very poetic guy um he said you know 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 H you know this is different than the love of a child or a sibling or a parent or a pet Etc or a friend right that you 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 um and falling out of love involves of course the ending of the story moving forward but also a in some cases sadly a revision of the events of the past I like I it's great it's it's very close it's very close to to the feeling you have as a magician the first time you a tree get exposed right it disappoints you because you have a desire for it to be real the the desire of

a young magician is when I see something like that is that it's a supernatural power and the F the first thing you you 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 and the desire like everything we spoke about my desire to be to see magic uh the the the fact of 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 sh fad of 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 is 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 the the actual how you did it is 1% of the the whole procedure and there's much more to doing that trick effectively which is storytelling

connecting uh doing it in such way that somebody cares about it and and that is a lifetime of of uh pondering and contemplation so you have maybe you'll find 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 that's what happened to me so I in some magic which is the exception is the table that we spoke about that I didn't fool us or Tommy W'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 uh something that looks very complex perhaps now would be the appropriate time for you to reveal the the 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 of pen 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 Turn Style table the magnet the the coffee mug you proceed to strip away the the curtain the curtain around the table and pull out a piece of paper not 52 decks of cards it's a picture or 52 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 um 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 kind of there's a bit of a let down it's interesting but it's just mechanics magnets and and then you reveal that uh their understanding is actually not real yes and and the reason I wanted to go there it's so I wanted them to feel magic then to feel what it's like to know something and the the fact that it's irreversible you can't unknow a trick once you know how it's done

and then I 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 experienced magic only through their eyes when I see somebody 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 explanation 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 cuz that's my job and therefore it makes it honest 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 Rubin who needs no introduction um but by the way he's a big fan of magic

um has said to me before um that there are only two things in life that are absolutely true one is nature right they're real truths they're real laws and Rules of Nature yeah and the other is uh for him uh professional wrestling because uh Rick loves professional wrestling he's a lifetime member of the aw and the WWE I've gone to see 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're collaborators and so unlike everything else which is completely made up and you're not sure what's real and what's uh fake with professional wrestling and with nature it's a 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 uh violated right what we believe is there isn't there Etc um and yet we are doing this consensually we we're doing this and so we're agreeing like let's

collaborate in in a in a lie that there's this thing called Magic um 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 um and unless you're of a certain ilk out there in the world that simply is not the case the laws of nature hold 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 right they're

doing real things in wrestling but they're not actually trying to harm one another correct right they're collaborating but it's almost a cargraph fight right yes I think there's some my understanding is based on discussions with Rick and professional wrestlers um that Rick has introduced me to is that there's some room for improvisation and occasionally people will hurt one another um accidentally sometimes there are real conflicts that are created yeah just like in the theater people will have relationships off stage Etc and it creates conflict on stage and that's the where the theater of life meets

the theater of the stage and vice versa so I would would add to that maybe maybe I'm wrong um that you do a magic show and you know an educated person a smart person who knows that what I do is trickery Conjuring uh but every now and then they might ask I wonder if that was real that little part he just did maybe that was real so there's there's a moment I think in Magic where even the smartest guy who knows I do tricks I go yeah this is all tricks but maybe what he just

did now maybe that was real like make it when you say real you mean violates the rules of physics so um taking a card holding it up clenching your fist making it disappear I'm giving simple kind of silly mind reading or or is they say maybe he's able to do those things psychologically or whatnot right and maybe that happens also in wrestling they say yeah it's fake but I think that moment was real so there's an inkling or moment where because I think you to create this drama and to me that that existed magic is

he real is he fake uh did I figure it out or did I not figure it out am I close or am I not there's constant conflict in a magic show that you go in and out of and I wonder if that happens in resting as well where you you know it's fake but maybe there's something that was real or this happened and that was not planned so I think that this just the thinking the fact that you invested into thinking what is is real and what is not is intriguing I'd like to just take

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20% off any of insid tracker's plans again that's insidetracker tocom I think um there's a much larger theme here that we're veering toward and I'm getting excited because this has to do with how the brain works and it and there examples in different domains but to come to mind now Rick and I sometimes hang out um here in Los Angeles and that there's a place where we do sauna and cold and it looks out on the ocean and um Rick once turned to me and said um you know isn't it interesting you know we know

that there're all these animals under the water dolphins and whales and all this stuff sharks and uh but when we see a dolphin or a group of dolphins or we see a whale breach it's like people are just delighted now they're beautiful animals but often times it's just a tail slapping the top and I think and he said I wonder if it's because it reminds us of how much is going on there underneath the surface and and I love that because I think a he's right you know I've done some snorkeling some scuba diving you

see lots of stuff and it's a it's a brilliant experience to see all that and to be a fish of sorts and be breathing underwater but there is something Magnificent about seeing an aquatic animal breach the surface and it and it goes beyond just seeing the animal it's like a reminder of all these other things that are likely happening that are outside our usual perception and so that's what comes to mind there um and then I had another example but I but I can't think of it now um where oh it's in um Sports you

know I always think of there's unskilled skilled Mastery and virtuosity and and virtuosity in music like yoyo ma um or in sport I don't know pick up I don't know Michael Jordan whatever favorite sport this idea that maybe they don't even know what they're going to do next that there's some improvisation at the level of extreme Mastery where you're going to see something you've never seen before and I think that's what Delights people it's not just about getting the ball into the end zone or the ball into the basket or playing a piece of music

it's the idea of something happening for the first time and maybe again as with the earlier example that the person performing The Athlete the musician Etc the magician the mentalists they themselves are delighted by what just happened they didn't even realize it was going to happen and you collaborate in this like wow life holds far more than I experience on my daily perceptual kind of framework yeah could very well could be and I think your shows bring people to that I I want to um return to a couple of ideas first of all we've been

talking about emotion and collaboration a lot sure um we've had a guest on the podcast David Spiegel he's our associate chair of Psychiatry at Stanford who does clinical hypnosis uh which it brings people into a state of calm plus a very constrained context where they're more likely to think about certain things than others how much of what you do with an individual group of people in your craft involves hypnosis constraining the context in other words eliminating certain patterns of thinking to make other certain patterns of thinking more likely is that like a a storytelling like

you start telling me a story a horror story or a mystery or a comedy story I'm shutting down whatever you're not talking about is that is that something that you do yeah so so first of we have theatrical hypnosis people that do shows where they get they gather about 20 people stage and they start making them dance like chickens right um I've never been full on with with this type of performances for various reasons I just I to me that's not the best way for me to engage with an audience or or or to manipulate

them however there's some there's certain things that we do in in in Magic that if you say certain things in a certain way it will produce a certain answer and it amazes me too I like there's some SEC we call them psychological forces that you you see uh a string of words in a certain order and and it will produce with with with high percentage a yes or a no or I want this and that that and like would you you want to pick the this deck of cards or that deck of cards type leading

that could that could be the simplest of of the idea but it could it could be even more complex than that um and and it amazes me because it's almost like a recipe you follow the recipe put in the oven boom okay you know but there's in Magic when I se certain certain things there's a moment when I I'm waiting for you to say something and I I I don't know if you're going to follow what I just did and then I hear it and I go there's a joy it's like yes it work and

this reveals something fundamental about the brain for instance I could imagine if I have two mugs in front of me for those listening if I hover my finger on one of them longer than others and I say would you like to drink from this mug and keep it there for 10 seconds or this one and I just tap the other one briefly do you think you bias the probability of which one somebody will pick absolutely because and that's what that's a great example ER I could it depends on my character first I need to know

who I'm doing it to are you the Challenger are you the guy who's going to go with anything okay let's say it's the guy who go with anything think there's a likelihood he will go with the one you touch longer but if it's the Challenger he will say oh I I see what's Happening Here Andrew is trying to make me take this one and therefore I'm going to take that one so and that's that's the simplest idea of of of challenges and I could challenge you again and say with doubt and then I could say

are you sure you want the one that I tapped just briefly I'm not telling you it that way but I'd say are you sure and if you say yes you're challenging me again and now I'm certain you're a challenger so you're collecting data basically you're collecting data and and because I've done it thousands of times I do the exact same spell the same you know order of events and I and I and I get to to try it and sometimes I say okay let's phrase it differently you know there's routines where I do when I

I need someone to say a certain something and and I don't just rely on the psychological Force I I have other Tools in my arsenal of of of tools and but it surprises me the am the the percentage this the the rate uh and that's Chan did a lot he understood the idea that if people feel challenged they do this if they feel like maybe that you're desperate for them to change they'll act a different way and again I'm tip toing again because I don't want to demystify Magic here I I'm trying to say that

there's a real way for and and you know Daniel conman and Emma tersi they talk about it in in their work you know they're thinking fast and slow for example which which to us is a magic book how people make decisions and he they they often say if you you phrase a question one way versus another way and even though the same thing is at stake it's the same equation if you phrase it this way they'll prefer that if you phrase it that way they prefer the other one it and it makes no sense because

that's the bottom line is like which one do you want well I think the brain runs algorithms and um some of it's historical in how we are raised I give an example A friend of mine has twins and I said uh how's it going with the twins um describe their personalities and how they differ and he said that one of his twin daughters um no matter what you tell her she says no she challenges you but not as a way to disengage engage as a way to engage nice interesting yeah interesting um and the other

one is very willing to engage in things doesn't challenge but engages through you know active collaboration um when we had Chris Voss a former FBI negotiator here on the podcast he said one way to get information from people on in these uh scenarios he used to do before is instead of asking them a question you give a hypothesis you keep your hair really you know nice you got great hair you must um you must like spend a lot of money on clothes now people will respond he tells me by either agreeing yes or no I

don't really spend a lot of money you just got information but you're not asking do you spend a lot of money on clothes you basically State a hypothesis yes and then they are either going to accept or refute your hypothesis and people almost reflexively respond to hypothesis about them from others by wanting to defend the truth and that's a way that FBI negotiators and others get information rather than ask questions give them hypothesis and people will defend their truth to the point of giving up information they wouldn't otherwise yeah and and if you want to

I know you're here to for me to reveal my tricks so I'll reveal something hypnosis they do this quite a bit and it's a beautiful strategy of of of doing it they'll make a few statements and they're simple statements they're accurate they you can argue with those statements they they ring true and you believe them and then maybe the last thing they're going to say is not quite true but because of you average the information and you go okay it's he's speaking the truth now he's telling us the truth but in between those statements there's

some inaccuracies there that are starting to manipulate you but they're half truth like it's it's like for example I say the this this is a round Table Right and uh and you feel you can feel the light right even if you close your eyes you could feel the light and you can even feel that even if you didn't know that this is a bigger light than this one because of the heat now this might be a false statement but it makes sense and you can start to feel heat on one side and you start to

go yeah is is it's logical it it's very sensical therefore it's it's true but it's a half truth maybe if we measure that this is a stronger life who knows but and I and I say you know and you feel there's a bit of a hum here and the more you focus on it and it's get and it's getting louder now because you're paying attention to it it's getting louder it's not getting louder you know actually you're guiding perception but I'm guide exactly I'm I'm I'm directing your attention to the things I want you to

you heard the plane mhm it's an illusion no it's a real plane so you know but this is something that hypnotists do very well you know guiding you you know going to NLP and all that it's all related the idea of like um sounding like they're telling you things that should make sense and they're accurate but they're not they're sort of accurate and it becomes more and more ridiculous until they tell you dance like a chicken and then you Dan like a chicken yeah it's so interesting because um perception obviously is governed by the brain

at least in part brain and body but nervous system and we have essentially two attentional spotlights meaning we can pay attention to two things at the same time but probably not five and we can merge those spotlights and we can make them more intense so to speak or we can dim them and make them more diffuse you know there's a bunch of things that we can do with attentional spotlighting what you're talking about here is attentional spotlighting bringing people's perception to real things that are happening but heightening one's perception of those so getting more granularity

on what's Happening like right now I'm in contact with physical contact with a pen in my hand but I wasn't thinking about how it feels but if I put all of my perception there close my eyes and really think about it the whole nature of the perception changes corre the physical object hasn't changed nothing else in the room has changed but that driving of attentional spotlighting and intensity is essentially what governs our whole reality I think of everything we're talking about here and I can't help but think about like media social media politics you know

very like third rail issues uh things or top very third rail topics right and yet this is essentially what we do the brain people want um a short-hand way of navigating a very complex world and media marketing Etc is in large part designed to capture people's attention and then funnel it towards some specific endpoint vote this way by this way don't vote that way or don't vote that way and and it's uh I feel like given our discussion you one has to wonder to what extent we we are all living in that what I guess

people call it a simulation it's not a simulation it's a we are all being biased by these external forces do you see examples of quote unquote magic and Mentalist work at the level of media at the level of politics without talking about sides or centers you know of course first of all I feel like social media has changed the way audience behaves in the theater tell me more about that so first of all I know now you have Tik Tok and Instagram and and it's really short clips of information and people go through them really

quickly so there stimulation they need to be stimulated way more often than they used to so I can't do a routine now that really drags with long monologs and it's slow the speed changed and and the fact that you know and I and I I think about this a lot I mean there's a blackout when when I did Inner Circle there's a blackout before I appear so I I come in and I I can still see people to the very last minute on their phones and I'm like wow it's the going from one stimulation to

a real stimulation with almost no gaph there's not even a second a buffer between this stimulation to what I'm and and it always bothers me cuz I want to to clean their pallet I want to reset their pallet and it bothers me that they're on a phone yeah it's like um going from the the Super Bowl to the NBA championships or from the ballet to a rock concert it's like um yeah I actually have a theory which is that for those that are willing to introduce gaps in stimulation sleep we'll talk more about sleep um

rest walks where we're not looking at our phones or just kind of um not necessarily bored but that those gaps we know we know with certainty are when the brain both processes information stabilizes information that we've learned and comes up with new ideas there it's it's almost like nowadays if you want to get really good at some craft just introduce more gaps in between intense focus and learning around that thing and exposure to that thing I I I couldn't be more certain about this it's it's true and again Juan again Tamar talks about the the

the the power of pauses and and one of the things we try to do is that people will embed um a memory so it's not just that you encode the information and you want them to store it you want to start long term and to be able to recall what they've seen now if you move from one action to the other it's just not going to work so there's a thing that Juan does where he's like he's holding a card and he says can you see the reflection in my glasses and every's like what is

it doing look do you see reflection and and meanwhile he's holding a pling card to point to towards the glasses and then at some point he places the card on the table and accidentally en knocks a a glass filled with water everywhere and people p like they start cleaning it and and it's like it's inter a huge Interruption to what just happened and then he says uh does anybody know what card this is and most of the times nobody knows he goes you never saw this card and they go no you never showed it to

us oh I never showed it to you and there was one event where he did where he replayed the video to them says look I'm holding it for 15 seconds in front of you in a very awkward way and they don't remember it because something dramatic happened immediately after no there's no moment for them to isolate the two events and the other event was way more uh impactful and therefore more memorable that it erased the small memory the small event the the there's a big event and a smaller event and that took over that's why

maybe I don't people crash into they have an accident you know whatever they don't remember the 10 or 5 seconds before it kind of erases it m so we often when we do magic we do want to give him a moment to really relax and to digest what they've just seen so they can store it very well if it's something you want them to store but if it's something you want them to prefer to forget than creating a dramatic moment adjacent to it and with no Gap it's the way to go yes this is we

clut it we clut their mind with information when we don't want to store it we will slow down and feature it and give it enough time to breathe and live when we want them to record it so the speed the emphasis the pauses all of those things are manipulating how they remember things can I share with you a little bit of Neuroscience please bit knowledge this is relevant both to what you just said and to learning of any kind there's a phenomenon called Gap effects which are very well demonstrated in neuroscience and psychology of learning

um but but before I explain those it's really important to know that when we learn we're exposed to something and then the actual rewiring of Connections in the brain occurs typically during sleep or rest periods away from the learning there's the stimulus just like exercise you don't get better heart you know V2 Max and muscle strength Etc during the exercise there's an adaptation that occurs later and with uh learning of cognitive material or information of any kind even if it's very emotionally impactful experience or information the rewiring of connections occurs later typically in sleep or

sometime later now during sleep the replay of the memory occurs but at a rate about 20 or 30 times faster and for some reason Nobody Knows Why in Reverse okay so a string of numbers 1 2 3 4 5 six seven in sleep is played 30 times faster and SE 7654321 nobody's NOS why this is the way the brain encodes information about space about information uh of any kind now Gap effects are the very well demonstrated effect of let's say you're teaching me how to um shuffle cards or a sequence of numbers or scales on

a piano I'm practicing I'm practicing I'm practicing but somebody figured out that if every once in a while there's a gap introduced where I cannot perform the rehearsal I do nothing the brain does the same thing the hippocampus a center in the brain required for memory and encoding of new memories plays that same sequence at 20 to 30 times faster in Reverse so this way so what this means is that when we introduce gaps the brain is still processing the information but much faster and the introduction of the Gap somehow allows whatever we just learned

to be encoded far more than if we don't introduce a gap which is exactly what you just said but with a bunch of nerdy Neuroscience speak to it but this has been shown for music for math for conceptual knowledge Etc and what it says to me is that if we want to learn things controlling the Cadence and the um the availability of gaps and the adjacency like how densely cluttered or spaced out things are is key and um I'll just share briefly and forgive me because I'm going long here but um the way I remember

the video of you with pen and Teller and the green and white sweater and a few other you took a nap right after no what I do is I watch something or read something and I sometimes highlight and take notes but then what I do is I close my eyes sometimes I take a walk and I just think about what I just saw now I have a problem and I was recently referred to as neuroatypical which I'm starting to wonder if that's true but you know uh I'll get assessed and we'll see um that oftentimes

irrelevant details are what get encoded to memory as opposed to the core feature but um we'll see um I I like to think the core the core components are what I remember um but often details that seem irrelevant get encoded like I can remember details of things that are kind of maybe trivial um to most so I these Gap effects are are a real neurobiological phenomenon there's no question about it and I suppose I should pause to let that sink in I know and people should take a nap right after this go sleep and think

about this conversation I think it's so interesting because so that explains something about encoding of information but the causing people to forget something is equally important so often times when you do tricks or when other magicians and mentalists do tricks I notice that you'll get people to count with you okay let's all right let's just count the cards count them with me it'll be one two three is there something about the counting itself or the Cadence of the counting that is that is um valuable yes uh we we try to create tension you know it's

a drum roll think of it as a drum roll that all the way to the punchline um and you you're trying to create this tension oh my oh my God oh my God and then it happens right and on the relaxation the moment right after that when you relax that's the moment to do the things you don't want them to encode the those are the the most vulnerable so in other words when you go to a magic show Do Not Laugh do not relax remain tense and you'll be good but the moment you relax you're

off guard you're not scrutinizing you're relaxing uh um so we we do play a lot and slini was a master of that the idea of tension and relaxation so those are just one of the tools that we would use in order to do what we need to do at the right spot look here here's an interesting example you've heard the term misdirection I think every person in the world have heard and understands the idea of misdirection a magician is misdirecting you and yet that information does not help you in the real world right you know

the concept you know it exists you know a magician will make you look at the wrong place at the wrong time and you would or maybe the right place at the right time and you would still follow in other words knowing the principle knowing that he's doing it it's still effective and that is amazing so to me that is uh the reason I don't TR to enrich people people's knowledge about magic and to give a little bit of information of of behind a curtain the things that magicians say oh we going to you know there's

a beautiful saying that I just love and I don't know who who's uh responsible for this beautiful quote but I love it I quote it all the time uh people think that magicians are guarding the secrets from the audience but it's the other way around we are guarding the a audience from the secrets so um because we know that once you know how it's done you won't enjoy it but I believe also that there's a level of knowledge that you can know about magic that next time you see magician you would enjoy it more because

you understand that to do one C trick could take months and months of work and we we think about every word in every move and how we interact and how we you know hook you into wanting to be fold create the desire for you to see magic and it's such an intricate process so maybe you know revealing revealing a little bit about magic is not a bad thing so you understand the complexity of this art which unfortunately is invisible art cuz a Pianist sure you can see how skillful I am but if you come to

me after show oh you're so fast with your hands that's an insult I want you to say but you never touched anything so it's it's it's a bit of a a conflict here it's like uh the show that I saw that you did in New York right off Washington Square Park um uh you didn't touch any of the cards or materials the audience did it all for you which are the inner circle you had a people actually maneuvering the cards and doing things they weren't collaborating with you in fact it made it far less like

that you ought to be able to do what you were doing um which is which is remarkable I think that um you know as you're describing this I I can't help but feel that the understanding of mechanism or how it's done just a little bit is is a little bit of what I've tried to do with the podcast where I think people obviously want to know what to do for their health but if they understand a little bit of the mechanism behind it maybe a lot of the mechanism in some cases then I think it

enriches their understanding and gives them flexibility when things are perhaps not you know optimal sort of like someone learning a recipe uh versus understanding why you add a little bit of baking soda so that when there isn't any baking soda maybe there's an alternative or you make an adjustment someplace else right that's a what a real cook can do um as opposed to somebody just following a recipe I think that with magic this takes us back to the first question I think with magic um it's so exciting to me that the magician The Mentalist themselves

might not get it right like if I know you're going to get it right it's exciting because for if I bring someone else along that's never seen it before but what I want to know is that you know the trapes artist could fall exactly I don't want them to fall but that the idea that they could fall is what makes it really excited absolutely and we fake it a lot there's a lot of times where I will intentionally create a scenario where it seems like it's not going right right you know I'm in trouble and

I need to get out of it and you go he's okay he he's good good but this one no and then then you realize it was a part of the illusion and this is like even even the trouble was an illusion don't trust anything sorry I didn't mean to interrupt there you paused for me to remember and I inter want to digest it right this is like this is built into every script of every romantic comedy and every action movie like everything's you know there's a challenge then there's moving forward and then things are about

to go well and then oh my goodness they're on the wrong trains it's going to be and then that's the tension build and then there's resolution of some sort and then sometimes there's a Twist at the end where the resolution isn't there and that's how you get a SQL right it's it's kind of the same yes thing I I wonder um and I hope that someday Neuroscience will understand the kind of what the core algorithms in the brain are for a story a story that involves a question and a hypothesis some characters and some trajectory

a potential you know error and then some resolution and then maybe it opens up the possible possibility of mystery again because as you describe a magic trick or a mentalist act it seems to follow that sequence you introduce the people the cards the props Etc and then there's a story and here's what's interesting I see this in comedy also one of the things that's exciting is when we think we know what's going to happen next and it's it's either that we are very surprised there's a violation of the expectation but even more interesting sometimes is

when we're like no no no no no this where we think that something's going to happen and you're actually taking us towards that unbelievable possibility this is something I find amazing that you know sometimes even when we expect something or especially when we expect something if it's an outrageous outcome there's no way that's when we are most excited CU we're involved we're part of the drama so I love what you said about the idea of a recipe right following verbatim in a passive way I don't know how it works but eventually I think this would

lead me to a cake somehow as opposed to understand what what the chemistry is and why this happens and why this and that I think that um you become more invested and you are part of the act so it's it's almost like I I am obsessed you know also with painting something that I I I I just do often and I remember I can easily recall the experience I had be when I went to a museum and watched some art before I painted and the way I view it today as a painter as someone who's

touched pigments mixed them put them on a on on a canvas or paper and all of a sudden I look at it a little differently and I think it changes the interaction that I have with the painting because I understand the language I understand the the struggle I understand the challenge understand all of that and it's the same with anything like when you read one of my favorite reads of all time and I to this date is ven Go's uh letters I remember you know I saw ven go before I saw it after and the

story and that's that's why I think we can talk about AI for a second but the story of of the letters with the paintings make them complete different images when I see now the sunflowers or the chairs or the Landscapes and I have some context to go by uh they become a a part of a much bigger story and to me that enhances the um the experience so a few friend you know me and a couple of my friends uh went to a museum the met and there was a beautiful wooden sphere half opened like

that and the detail was like you need a microscope to see and to appreciate the delicate carving of the wood and we all looked at it in awe it was like it's amazing and I said to them you know you look at it and you you see the year it's from the 1800s and you go wow the technology they had in 1800s to do that and the patience and the time all of it is part of the the artwork but if I told you I we fold you um this was 3D printed 20 minutes ago

it took about five minutes and it's we can make a million of them right now it's the exact same object it looks as impressive but the story is different and I think that is Again part of the experience we have a recipe when you understand it the experience you have is different so I I I do I do believe that knowledge um really can enhance an experience change it completely so that's something I I'm being on uh stories seem to be the the kind of bento box that arranges information best in my opinion you know

uh for those that don't know bento box right like a like a box a little different compartments and you have different things and you know the the brain can okay let's just a some some first principles ground truths um we can only perceive a certain number of things at any one time but we're sensing tons of information so the brain is a selective filter and a prediction machine and so and it does a bunch of other things to Keep Us Alive but that's basically it um all my Neuroscience colleagues are probably like wait wait wait

but what about this okay but that's that's pretty much it Keep Us Alive predict things and perceive certain things that we can sense not others things outside our sensory apparatus like infrared vision and sensing you know certain forms of of heat and electromagnetic energy some yes some no depends on what animal you are so okay so stories and the sequencing of things seems to be one way in which we best learn information from the time we are very little we are read stories and um and our lives play out like stories so I think that

the idea that um additional information about context this is from the 1800s not just the box that it's encapsulated in but it gives you a sense this is important it's old it tells you this was harder to do back then uh hard presumably and and as you said that it brings to mind all these ideas about what went into that like the pyramids they're very very interesting but especially interesting given when they were built exactly right and what that meant for certain people and and not for others so I think that so there's that which

I think is so key because it extends way past magic is really about how the brain works and learns information and perceives the world in moments and what we remember what we don't remember and then there's another thing I'd like to touch into and maybe we touch into this first which is that you mentioned that you paint yes so I've come to learn that many people who are virtuosos in their craft as you are have hobbies or practices or things that they do that are sort of adjacent to craft C I think Joanie Mitchell the

singer often talked about painting as a way to get into a mindset of singing even though that wasn't the specific intention it just kind of LED there a little bit like a like a sprinter might have I don't know some Dynamic stretching that they do that sort of like semi-related but not the main thing or maybe they would listen to music and kind of Bounce Around to the music maybe that's a better example so it's not directly in line with the practice but it puts the brain circuits that are required for that practice into a

certain mode uh for you maybe it's painting for me it's drawing um how often do you paint what do you paint and do you paint with the intention of anyone ever seeing your paintings yes I I'm not sure I I post them uh in my show it was an opportunity for me to make a portrait of all of my heroes so it was a mini exhibition as people walked into the theater to see all those portraits of the people that affected me touch you know influenced me and so forth magicians to M I would say

90 most of them anner is was there too uh he's not a magician per se he's also a magician but yeah mainly magicians Houdini was melini uh Tommy wander Chan Canasta David Blaine uh people that really are part of who I am today MH so to me that's that's an aspect of its own why why do I paint these people is because it's an opportunity for me to meditate with these people that I adore and owe so much too um but why do I paint first of all it's intuitive I I didn't so it's was

not a cerebral decision oh I I I think I need something to supplement my life you know and I I need painting uh I always love to work with my hands I always love to draw I love imagery I love design um and I I always gravitated towards wanting to paint and by the way most of the things I do they're not like I don't look at them through a scientific point of view it's I do them intuitively and then later I understand in a more scientific way why or I ask scien scientific questions why

am I doing those things and I think for art is important start with intuition start with what makes sense to you or feels right and then start asking questions the whys and how's and what does it mean you know painting in itself there's lots of science you know if you if if you mix blue with yellow every time you're going to get green that's science but when you paint I think you need to forget about the science it needs to live in the back of your mind and you need to to to let your I

don't know what your spirit your your your mojo take over and and paint with you so but I started to learn so much about magic from painting and I tell you why you need a bird eye every now and then you need to detach yourself from something that you do so so much of and you build all these biases right when I approach a trick or work on a trick I I come with a similar approach you know it's almost it becomes formulate and formula is poison for art when you when you approach something with

a predetermined you know preconceived notion of of doing something you you might repeat yourself so much that it's boring and you're not allowing yourself to grow and to maybe find things that you never knew existed in you or outside of you so painting in a weird way when I when I read biographies of let's say Lucy and Freud which who I really love and he's talking about art at some point I I feel like I'm reading a magic book it's so applicable to Magic he's talking about intention he's talking about you know he I'm going

to misquote him for sure he says every time I approach a canvas I approach it as if it's the first painting I've ever painted and this is to take it even further the painting the painting that was ever painted um because he wants to approach it with the attitude of a student with the naive with the virginity of of first time so you don't repeat the same stake oh I you do this skin oh I've done this before I can do this again you kind of want to divorce yourself from all these things you know

and start the the search again from as close as possible to this first time because there's something beautiful about that there's a technique that painters use Andrew W did it a lot um he will paint the painting it would look at it it says something is wrong about it and I don't know what something is there's this something about this painting that just does not work then he will take the painting and look at it with a mirror so he looks at the reflection of the painting so he flips the image very much like the

uh the way we think at night um and when he looks at the reflection he goes ah the nose is wrong he couldn't see it when he looked at it he couldn't see that the wrong was off or you know distorted but when he saw the reflection he could because he was able to cancel his biases he saw almost a cousin painting of the one he just made MH which is a beautiful thing but this analogy also I think acts for me with magic it's a it's a way for me to look at Magic from

a mirror to look at it differently from a different angle cuz art I find that the Arts are very much connected there's so much similarities and when I I lectur to magicians about magic I quote art books more than I quote Magic books I I quote cantes from donot about magic you know someone wrote a book in the 1600s and he talks about the two imp what we like to call the two impossible Theory not the two perfect Theory the two impossible Theory and he he talks about that perfection in writing is is restraining exaggeration

and and it's in it's a whole paragraph about that art needs to be believable there has to be truth in it to be enjoyed so and and it's so much true for magic I can't just even when we do something that's impossible I still want the ground to be plausible maybe maybe this could happen therefore I need to restrain exaggeration I need to restrain the impossibility and that that again this is uh a novel from the 1600s donkey my favorite book of all time teaching us about magic and Lucen FR is teaching me about magic

and Andrew W and V go and all these people so I think that's why I love this diversity uh of you know I love photography very much I always have a c a camera with me film photography I love and composition the idea no one uses that word usually with adjacent to Magic they never talk about oh it's a composition but if you understand a composition and you apply it to Magic you have a whole new way of looking at how how to create a piece of magic just by using that word that term that

painters and photographers use so that's to me just an amazing reason uh a good reason to to paint I love that you're touching into some of the core modular the the the ground truths of of Art and of magic and how they they overlap because what we're really talking about here are ways in which the brain works stories and this restraining exaggeration I'll just share two two things um I'll try and keep it brief um one is that again Rick Rubin um incredibly uh uh virtuoso in at the level of creativity and bringing out People's

Best in in terms of Music other domains too um but mostly music um often says that you know that the art has to have some recognizable feature like this is this artist that people have perhaps heard before but then something new but you can't completely depart from what was done before there has to be some recognition um you also talked about wiping away of using a completely new canvas this example you gave um when Rick came to our studio here he looked around and he go I like this place he's very into physical spaces and

uh the walls here are black there's some other stuff too he and he said uh you know well cuz both Rick and I came up through punk rock music he's like yeah I think a smaller place black wall I was like cool um his studio is mostly white and but then he said you know but I'd get rid of all the art and the plants and I said why and he said because it's distracting you know he doesn't have art or Awards on his walls it's all blank so that every new project is a completely

new project there's no it's interesting previous stimula entering the picture it's a new project so you don't want pictures of awards that you won for that album or anything I go what do you do with all that stuff and he's like just get rid of it like me too by the way I I I I totally understand that very interesting So Clean Slate then the the other thing that just is is so striking to me is you know this idea that there has to be something that is a truth a a a mathematical or a

physical truth present in art um one of the best ways that one can understand how the brain creates perceptions is that um the brain creates abstractions of what's out in the outside world light sound touch smell taste come in but that's all translated to electrical and chemical signals and then the brain reconstructs an image by the way the lens of the eye you'll find this interesting as a photographer inverts and reverses the image so that when it lands in the brain the neural retina first stage of visual processing you're actually I'm looking at you you're

right side up but you're actually landing on my the the the perception in my brain is that you're upside down and flipped I am and then now you got me you had me for a second um I am too um uh so and then the brain reconstructs an upright image it's really wild so the brain is constantly abstract making abstractions about what's out there so if I were to say um take a photograph of you and show you a picture of your face you'd say yeah that's me but if I said aha but I'm an

abstract artist and to me you look like and I basically do a bunch of squiggles and a thing and and I show you it doesn't look anything like your face you'd say yeah I don't see it however if I somehow have the artistic genius which I don't to create an image of you where the eyes are distorted their position or maybe the the shading something is different in a way that lets you see and other people see your face in a way that is similar enough to AI wind that we recognize you but different enough

that it looks interesting we're effectively creating the kind of abstraction that the brain creates like some level of interest in an emotion or in a um something right a reflection in your eye could be who knows right and so the brain is an abstraction machine it doesn't actually know what's out there it's taking best guesses and so I think when when we see great art it's able to capture enough of the real physical truth of that thing but to touch into some of the ways in which the brain abstracts I'll give one more example rothos

which are simply to some people who don't like them I love rothos are simply color on canvas but Rothco whether or not he intended it or not did something absolutely spectacular with his art which was he eliminated the white space and the canvas and in doing so was able to allow things to come forward in color space as we call in visual Neuroscience certain colors are not visible unless they are adjacent to other colors and when you eliminate all the white space the canvas and you take away the frame then colors that you haven't seen

before and color transitions that you can't see Pop and that's the Brilliance of a Rothco it's not that it's two colors in a square and a rectangle and you know this is why they're worth millions and millions of dollars they're they're so spectacular because they capture a physical truth about color space that's inaccessible in a framed painting or a painting that includes some visibility of the canvas so rotho shows us color space the math of how the brain produces color contrast and Hue and wavelength intensity and color is also intimately tied to value in the

brain in a very interesting way and we're not looking at it thinking all that but we feel something that's like if we appreciate Roth goes like hm that's interesting that captivates me does that make sense yeah yeah no I have a question to you do we do we know that Roth did it through that lens of understanding science you just described or did he just intuitively felt this is a great composition these are a great color scheme and I will do that like what do we know it's most most likely the latter yeah um I

have a colleague Beville Conway who's at the National Institutes of Health who's far more versed in this stuff than I am so he might correct me I'd love to get him on the podcast sometime um but uh Co it's very likely that Rothco felt something upon seeing colors in a in a restricted kind of tunnel of vision and then realize that if this could be brought to scale because rothos tend to be pretty large then and um something special was happening sort of like Chuck Close took tiny little images of faces and now he had

a visual issue with faces prop agosia Etc so people can look that up failure to recognize faces as faces um they just look like objects and realize that he could create you know composits of these things as a big face and it's very different experience to look at a a face that's made up of tiny fragments of many many faces now now here's where it gets interesting because there are many many artists that sit out in front of museums like the met and sell paintings that are very inexpensive that are very accurate Renditions of things

picture of Taylor Swift picture of Bob Marley not interesting it's cool they can do it or the the real you know the kind of um uh uh you know curbside trickery take a painting paint in front of people what's what's he or she doing and then flip it over it's the person it's cool in the moment CU you're like wow they can paint upside down but actually it's not interesting at all because what they've created is BAS basically a decent photograph image just upside down so they might as well hang upside down while they do

it it's not interesting it's not great art so what I think what we're converging on is that great art takes us through a trajectory that involves the I believe now after this discussion that takes us through the Arc of excellent storytelling it involves a surprise recognition of truth a return to mystery all these components that you describe for magic are present in art and presumably are present in a great song as or play as well yeah you know I I I I love everything you said and I I often contemplate about why I respond to

a certain painting but the painting outside the mat of the guy I don't and I never I was never able to come up with a sufficient answer but this is as close as I got and and I often ask why do I like this but not this why do I like that and I don't like this I think that I making a judgment about the motives of the painter and do I believe him is it honest is it a true honest expression that extends out of him on a canvas and a lot of times and

that's the closest I got I go they see these patterns and dripping paint and the splatter and this and that and it's super like like a lots of people wow this is cool and I'm the snob goes I think it's and and the reason is when I see it I think I think I see the motive he says I'm going to do something cool I'm going to do something that is eye candy and I'm going to use every trick in the book to make it happen as opposed to somebody like Lucien who pains with his

guts I believe every brush stroke I believe it's an honest painting that comes from here and there's no motive to try to wow you or to to tell you look I'm I'm the best I'm I'm so great so that's as close as I got to understanding why I respond to a Lucin Freud but not to that street artist who does this you know Sparkles with his with tooth I don't know toothpaste I don't know I I I you know took everything I had all the top down inhibition to not go yes yes I think that

the critical distinction is that the street artist is doing it for the audience for people and for the sale they're doing it to make a living audience pleaser right whereas the the the other artists the sort of let's call them the greats are doing it for themselves it's something in them that needs to get out and it's honest right and I have so many examp examp that just leap to mine I'll use one from a completely different domain um I grew up skateboarding I was not good enough to make it a career but I have

great appreciation for there was a guy in the 90s he's still around sadly he suffered an injury had him paralyzed for a while but now he's walking cycling and skateboarding again his name is John Cardel John cardiel is is just a a legend in the landscape of skateboarding I I knew him back when still know him a bit and the way he would do things was just so spectacular he just like it just the energy in it it wasn't because it was so big and so far and all of that yes but there was something

in the energy of it and I'll never forget there's there's a documentary about him I'll put a link to it um in the show note captions where someone's describing a conversation they had with him where he does something spectacular and then he he shows up he sort of goes up to his friend and his friend said yeah at that moment John turned to him and he goes that one was for me and I just I I think of that now like like joh like cards as they call him just it always looked like everyone was

Delight just thrilled by what he does right he's a true virtuoso but it's the sense that like he's not doing it for your entertainment he's doing it for him it's the expression of something inside Rick talks about great art as your own offering to God this is not about your audience this is you and your thing whatever is inside you and it's your offering to God and I think it's such a key thing it's the it's the exact opposite of someone doing something to please the audience and of course one Delights in in audiences being

pleased but it that can't be how you approach your magic it must be because it just feels so good the truth is uh the show I create Inner Circle uh it was created because I wanted to do that show I mean if you if you tell me somebody's going to come and watch an hour and a half somebody doing a bunch of carart Tricks it sounds boring um but I think every art form is an excuse to tell something bigger you know V go recorded his Sensations when he looked at the sunflowers and and recorded

his emotions on a canvas every brush stroke the the speed in which he placed every brush stroke and the colors he chose to put every decision he made was a recording of his Sensations his state of being at that moment when he painted it so who cares about sunflowers we've seen a lot of bouquet of flowers and roses and this and that matis is this famous uh quote he says that the hardest thing to paint is a rose because one has to First forget about all the Roses he painted before were painted before and that's

it's so true because to me uh a steel life is something that students do in in in art schools here's a bouquet of flower painted so why are we looking at Veno and saying wow the sunflowers what a beautiful piece of it's because the sunflowers are just an excuse for him to record something of him he recorded him himself on the canvas and that's what we're seeing we're seeing the personality the excitement the obsessiveness that he had and I think that's that's one of us to me I mean I always start with I want to

do this show cuz I think it's beautiful cuz I think has something to say I hope people like it I love people too and to me the people are also part of the brush Strokes I make a lot of room in my show for people to flourish to become a part of the show that's part of the expression that I'm trying to create it's not just about me it's about them too but that's an artistic choice in itself where do you draw I don't want to say inspiration but um the components for a show so

I can think of um you can look historically and see what people have done learned from Masters um teachers um from your own experiences like if you let's say you were to travel to I don't know Australia or South America could would you bring back components of your travels to uh the show you create um I don't know um or you know what's your process for for figuring out or sensing into what you want to do and I feel like discussions like this are very important for people to hear because not everyone wants to be

a magician or Mentalist or scientist or podcaster but what we're getting down to here are the core components of of creative expression so where do you um where do you draw on the what what do you bring is it your daily experience does it come to you in the form of a bodily sensation is it in your dreams is it in your discussions do you try and resurrect cool things from the past where does it where do you draw from it's all of it it's really all of it I'm a sponge of of everything around

me I I interact with art with books with information with friends conversations every everything is uh a source of inspiration everything is and it goes through my filter like I I'm always amazed at the fact that you know 20 students can paint the exact same thing the exact same say please this is a flower paint it and you'll have 20 completely different paintings is because everybody I think filters um this information through their sensory whatever it is and I think that's what we at least that's what I think I'm doing I'm constantly consuming not just

art everything a flower this a conversation with a friend uh and social media maybe you know what yes yes I think everything affects me me sitting with you right now will affect me will change me will become a part of the the uh Mosaic of of of experiences I have and it will affect me like this conversation right now is changing Me Maybe I'm poetic about it but I I really think that way I I think that you know if I had any success I owe it to all of the people that surround me all

of my friends you know uh terrific painter Laura Alexander who's unbelievable her contribution to me is IM immense I mean and it maybe you can draw direct lines maybe you can't but I feel like every person I've that was part of my life is the the reason the outcome that I produce is because of those of those people so I I don't know if I I don't look for I don't search for inspiration I think I what I do at least I I really want to let things sink in and I want to consume I'm

curious I always want to know more to listen to more to see more like for example if if I go to a museum and I see a painting I I I like to dwell on why do I like it why am I responding to this why is this triggering me what is this revealing about me and I don't think there's one way that that I say oh this is this is the process this happens I do this then a trick is born sometimes sometimes it's the Tommy wander story right I see someone who is doing

a trick and the explanation to the trick is way prettier and I go wow it's amazing that the things behind a curtain are more interesting than things in front of the curtain that to me it planted the seed and 5 years later there was a piece so I yeah I think inspiration is become a sponge let it you know you need to consume this I learned from my friend Jimmie and swiss he says to do good art you have to consume art create art get critiqued just do those three things consume art uh create art

and get critiqued um also when you consume art it reveals something about you so at first when I start painting I loved everything surrealism pointalism give me Hyper realism and slowly it narrow down because through observing art I start to learn about what triggers me it the art revealed taught me what am I responding to what pushes those buttons right and I think that's a valuable important uh step in becoming an artist consume art and let it teach you something about you then create art and then critique it by yourself and maybe people you trust

I think again you do those three things you you're pretty good I'm starting to understand that in your magic and Mentalist work you're a Storyteller and to some extent to some extent and and the characters uh can involve cards or numbers or information and you cast people in the audience often into those stories and depending on what they give you you might assign them a different role of course and you do know what the conclusion of the story could be and maybe ought to sometimes there's some element of surprise even for you but that you're

working with a certain pallet of paints and they're predictable enough that you can get where you want to go but as you said before that the improvisation of it is is part of the Delight for you absolutely and because people are resonating with your emotions there's this empathic Attunement excuse me empathic Attunement uh that you create that people also feel like they're part of the experience it's it's not it's so very different to watch something that you do on YouTube versus to be in a small setting versus a larger setting um and all of these

are spectacular and we'll provide links to these and if you get the opportunity to see AI uh live you absolutely should do it it's it's like um it will clearly fall into the the the far extreme of experiences amazing experiences that you'll have I I I guarantee it um I I think in discussing like what art is and and people thinking about um learning I think often we wonder like if you're a sponge are are you you're taking in everything but are you do you constrain your days in a way that you know like you're

not you're hanging out with the Met you're not looking at the stuff on the sidewalk outside the Met as much you so you have a taste you have a sense of taste what you like corre um and you're drawing from different things I Delight in animals of all kinds and so much of what I do and so much of what I think about in terms of how the human animal works is based on some overlap with the kind of core modules that exist in other animals and I won't take us down that path but um

I just Delight in animals why that's why I follow so many raccoon accounts on Instagram um so I'm trying to figure out like when you well walk us through a day uh you are Night Owl we talked about this before so so what time do you go to sleep at night you mean morning typically 4:00 a.m. 4:00 a.m. is when you go to sleep and it's not just because you're a per a Performing Artist on stage it you've always been this way yeah okay and a lot of magicians are and my mom is the same

way my brother maybe he's a little changed now but he he's also if he follows his nature he will fall asleep around 4: and I I wake up around noon 2:00 p.m. do you wear an eye mask or have curtains right yes yes I a little bit of light and I'm screwed okay so then you wake up uh what do you do I was about to call it your morning routine but your afternoon your hour afternoon your morning right your morning what is your typical thing do do you pay attention to your dreams do you

recall your dreams is there information there we walk I I don't know I I I do know that a lot of my resolution I resolve a lot of you know tricks or magic in general it's problem solving and a lot of times I have a a problem and I can't solve it and as you said it happens a lot I sleep I I see everything reversed and then I I come up with a solution in the morning it's a clear as day to me that's what needs to be done you write it down or you

just I immediately I put to practice I I literally just I'll grab it's if it's a deck of cards I would say okay I need to do this and I I will burn it into a a muscle memory but definitely nighttime is where most of the thinking happens I sleep well I I think I sleep pretty well I try I mean I try to start very relaxed I want the first few hours of my day to be pretty relaxed it's usually a ritual I have a coffee machine where you need to grind the coffee you

need to do everything and I I love the ritual of making the first cup of coffee it's the first thing I do um I try to avoid answering you know emails or things that are Urgent or that I don't want to to start my day with this energy you are you on social media early in the day no no no I I I consume social media to a degree and I think it has a place I mean there's some beautiful things I found on social media that that you know shows I want to see friends

that do beautiful work and they post it and it's wonderful paintings uh there's lots of things social media is not a black and white thing for me that oh it's just bad I think it's a platform and you can curate it in such way that is beneficial interesting and and could give you valuable information it's the obsessiveness it's the the the intensity that that's a little and the the fact that there are no filters or there's an algorithm deciding for you what you should see that's a little scary but no I I don't I I

start the day with those things um and slowly I go for a walk or I I love walking I thinking I think better when I walk what's the what's the logic behind that yeah well I'm delighting this first of all the way you describe your morning routine is very similar to Rick rubin's morning routine he wants to capture some of the elements from sleep ease into the day gradually walk get sunlight um uh and allow whatever processing occurred in sleep and in the Lial states around the morning and the clarity that comes with the early

day to crystallize into ideas and not deal with email and kind of um you know kind of operational things it it's just a set of mind if I start now taking care of emails and this and I need to send that in the package you know then that dictates the day for me well it's tactical what's interesting is it's tactical it's not creative in fact it's by definition it's not creative because it's being defined by what other people put on there there's an investor I forget his name great investor um hedge fund guy young kid

I I'll I can't remember so forgive me um but this quote is not M he said that email is basically a public post to-do list so people are telling you where to drive your attention and behavior so your process is very similar to Rick's um I like to write and I have most of my clarity in the morning as well although um sometimes too many tactical things enter my my framework I'm working on that but um I think that what you describe is the life of of an artist and a creative capturing the unique um

components of what was put together in your brain based on your unique experiences and it's from you and for you and ultimately people benefit because they they delight and are astonished by the by the end uh by the end result so what you describe it sounds to me like the an amazing kind of perfect day for a creative I think um it's so important for people to hear what you describe is also runs countercurrent to what most people do during their days which is to immediately allow the context and the tactics of their actions and

thinking to be driven by some external Force that is not from them yeah it's from someone else's mind and and so and it's and it's incredibly there's a strong gravitational pull like what's in the news what are people saying where what's in my text what do people want from me what do people think of me Etc that but that is um that is absolutely uh poisonous for Creative work it's pollution it it really it it puts you in a panic mode uh and by the way we have so much stuff to do that would never

catch up with anything so let's make peace with that you'll never catch up with what you need to do because it's it's just it's it's exhausting so I understand that you know the first few hours I can devote to me to to feeling good relaxed and slowly I I will introduce okay I want to what do I what do I want to do right now what's the first thing I want to tackle right sometimes I have an urgency you know like I was practicing the Rubik's Cube so I had a Rubik's cube right next on

my side and the first thing I W the first thing I wanted to do by choice is to do and start solving a gik cube because I had to get good at it for a routine of mine so I tried I would like to start today with my as you said my own decisions things I want to do first this will make me happy then I'm going to or I have a deck of cards next to you know right next to me and there's a move I'm trying to get right and the first thing I

want to do is try it in the morning um that's another reason I love card so much it's tectile even though in my new show which we can talk about I I decided there will be no more cards it's just you know it's a tribute to the human mind it's called incredibly human um and it's about the things that are possible and yet they're on the verge of impossible so uh a former rendition of it was uh when I memorized the entire audience I know everybody by name and it's just a skill I memorized 120

people every night so do you use a pneumonic approach where you you know like Andrew sounds like or reminds you of some other things so are you doing a pair pair Association sure so I tell you a story about it there's a there was he just died at 907 something like that old man but he he was sharp to to his last day Harry Lorraine was a memory guy he performed as a magician but also uh taught people how to remember things wrote a lot of books um so I and he was known for that

he was on the Carson Show he memorized the entire audience and it was really cool it was a thing signature piece of his and I wanted to do it in my show so we called him and said can we get permission to use that piece and he says sure so can we meet with you and you teach me you know those little details the minutia and and I I came with a notebook and a pen I'm ready to take notes how do you remember 120 people every night 120 people's names so I'm say okay so

what's the work on it and he goes you just remember them you're saying first and last names or first names first and last first and last names you can do first he did first and last yeah goodness gracious so he says just remember them yeah but tell me the techniques and I thought it was a joke I wrote nothing that day nothing and I was so scared of it and and I I tried to remember people and I couldn't and it was so daunting and I realized that in order to remember a lot of people's

names the first thing you need to conquer is fear it's feir I was afraid I that I won't be able to do it and and one night I did a small venue with like 30 people showed up I said okay that's manageable I can memorize 30 people so I did it and you you don't know that you know their names until you do it because all I do is I say shake their hands oh thank you so much please take your seat I was the Asher sit down thank you now the show starts and this

is a test for me do I remember their names I don't know and I go Susan B blah blah blah BL and I and I was able to do all their names do you still remember any of their names I tell you a story about that to remind me though I will I'll come back to that um so it felt like I had superpowers it was amazing to me I think as it was maybe to them and then some some then I started doing it in that venue with about 60 people so I remember I

I have everybody sit down and there's a point in the show where I take two coins large coins and I glue them with tape on my head so I I'm blindfolded and I sold two Rubik's Cubes at the same time blindfold it and I forgot talking about memory I forgot to have somebody uh you just have a stopwatch just to to time me how long it takes me to do it I just forgot and I go guys I'm so sorry I forgot is does anybody here has a watch or or an app that he can

measure take time and one guy goes yeah I can do it and I recognize his voice and I and I did not know I could do it I go Robert and he goes yes so I did not just remember how they look I remember how they sound and you didn't know that you remembered how they sound it was just part of your it was a surprise to meh and then to make and it's crazy you s you're sitting next to Susan right and Stephanie and I describe how they look like almost to a tea and

it amazes me how much we do remember and that's crazy because the voice like your voice my voice people's voice are very distinct we and I now I know it that I can hear somebody peripheral you know and I I know um so that's that's about memory how do we we get how do we get to this memory so um to to your question you ask me if if if use the pneumonics or stuff the truth is we need to care if you care about someone's name like let's assume you see somebody in a coffee

shop and do the one thing you really wanted is to talk to this person because I don't know you're attracted to them I don't know and you say hi nice to meet you I'm aie what's your name the moment they say they're name you will never forget it because you care you want a lot of times we say hey what's your name we don't mean it we don't care about the answer and that's a big part of why we don't remember it but if I say you you know you need to meet this guy this

guy you should know him uh you will make an effort so the one thing I did the most was repeat their their name what's her name Andrew oh Andrew nice to meet you I repeat it a few times as I talk to them or we have a little conversation and I also realize that the more you interact with them the more you remember it so in the show I always I faked it I struggled on the last two people I said I I don't know your name remain standing I'll get back to you and it

was geniv I remember the story geniv say you know I don't know her name yet so I said I don't remember your name but you told me you just came from Africa you were on vacation for two weeks and I start recalling so much information about her and it Genevie I'll never forget your name and she sits down and it's amazing but the more they tell you about themselves the more you retain and the more you remember because as you said it's a story and now there geniv is just not it's not just a random

person with a name geniv it's somebody who's been to that place and this place and she's you know you can connect it to a story or to something you can visualize right every now and then you know stove is Stave and you know I would make those pneumonics uh um or try to find a feature almost like the way a caricaturist does you know exaggerate a feature and attach it to the name somehow like antthony maybe has lots of ants all over him you know stuff like that but the truth is I only did it

with those I struggled it was a backup plan I but most of the people I hear the name I cared I wanted and I had confidence that I could do it and I did it the brain definitely remembers information that has an emotional sance to it it so caring about something some set of information name or otherwise definitely will um help encode to memory the other is to put things into motifs of song it is no coincidence that children learn songs to learn the alphabet A B C D the inflections the motifs within that song

of the alphabet is what allows us to remember that our entire lives as opposed to a b CDE e f g think about the number Pi out past 3 14 out to some number of of um you know you know some people can remember it out very far if you set it to a song with some repeating motifs like the alphabet song or Happy Birthday song you can that's how people remember very very far because the brain creates these modules it doesn't um take bits of information and just throw it in there it it creates

libraries of information where just as in the library certain books are grouped with other books and more disparate tops ICS are positioned further away in the library uh from one another um for those of you that are younger than than me you can look up what a library is just kidding um but this is how the brain works right and so it's amazing that you did that and and it also just um really highlights um that when we do this we are remembering far more than we think we remember um some people are more visual

some people more auditory but it's all coming in there provided that people have access to those senses um it's just spectacular I have to return to something because I took us away from it which was you said is there something about walking that allows for Creative um thought um I'm of the mind now based on my observation of extremely creative individuals and um talking to them as well as some understanding of the Neuroscience of creativity which by the way there isn't a lot but it's sort of happening more and more um that there are sort

of two polarized States um one is being very very still with the Mind active this is true of rapid eye movement sleep we're paralyzed the mind is very very active it's a state in which memories are encoded especially me uh emotional memories um many people his name seems to keep coming up but Rick Rubin Carl daero Einstein and others reported having practices where they would deliberately sit or lie down and to be very still and deliberately make their mind very active even thinking in complete sentences as a way to come up with ideas a deliberate

practice the other is to be in movement but to not really try and force your thinking down a particular trajectory some people seem to favor one or the other I come up with a lot of my ideas while jogging or running or walking as as you do so there's something about either stealing the body or making the body just active enough that the mind is allowed to take off down novel trajectories um and that's very difficult I think for a lot of people just sit down with pen and paper and write things out so anyway

um your practice of walking in the morning is one that perhaps people should uh want to explore I think that um when people hear about having a super memory for names or um being able to read people so much of what you describe as like being able to read People based on their physicality um all these questions come to mind and so I can't help myself do you believe in um these kind of Notions like if people are sitting arms crossed that they're more closed and difficult to get to whereas people who are kind of

more forward leaning in their they're more willing to engage I mean does that stuff really hold in your laboratory of experiments of magic and mental mentalism so body language is something that I read much about I I believe there I'm not an expert uh when it comes to body language but I do I do think that I don't even control it it's just somebody can signal a closeness to them or an openness to them all right but I also found it to be very misleading a lot of times like people people do certain things because

they're cold or this or they're shy and and being shy could be misunderstood as or perceived as snobbish and vice versa right so there's that could be really misleading what I rely on is interaction when I interact with people or if and and I I'm saying it in the the the slightest possible way when I challenge them with something very simple and I see how they deal with it that reveals a lot about them immediately cuz look we need to make decisions on the spot like even if I just can you please open your hand

and I give him something how how eager they are to do it how they do it can they follow directions um I want also people that will you know that are able to do the things I want them to do for a specific routine and by the way certain some routines I would use this type of person this one needs a teenager this one I want an somebody a little older every every routine I I I kind of assign a different character and it's again it's trial and error I tried with a certain person for

a long time and I I now I get it it's my relationship and by the way as I'm aging that also changes like but there's a piece where I used to do and I always preferred an older woman to and you could see there's some a motherly quality to it because that's kind of like the the role she was in but now as I'm aging it's this not it's not going to work as as well um I think there's you're creating relationships like for example I'm a guy and I if I work with another guy

that's some sort of an energy if it's a female it's different if it's a young old my relationship with these people changes and how they feel do they feel comfortable with me certain certain things I can do with a a certain individual but not with another so that's something I constantly think about I choose my Spectators very very carefully you mentioned that you taken things from your environment and from many diverse sources um art and interactions with people Etc um you seem like a very positive person I generally upbeat and enjoy your work I get

that impression um very much so but I'm assuming that you also experience anger frustration um Etc do you separate that from your creative work um do you try and buffer yourself against that and the reason I ask is that many of the creatives that I know are artists of which you are um they they're very feeling people it's it's required for the craft you need to be a permeable to some extent but of course you want to be semi-permeable you don't want every emotion or thing that you encounter to yank you all over the place

but um magic is this thing of delight and it's this thing of of love and um and that all sounds wonderful but how do you deal with things that you know that upset you and frustrate you do you do you actively try and push those out from the creative process or do you kind of incorporate them into the creative process want the truth or what what do you need I only want the truth the truth the truth is I am I'm I consider myself a perfectionist and I demand so much of myself and also the

people working with me I could dwell on the smallest detail I look at the poster and I say the font is wrong that would bother me the spacing the curing between the letters i i it's hard for me to let go of the the smallest smallest smallest details I drive myself nuts and I have no doubt that I sometimes hopefully sometimes drop my crew nuts believe me I can relate I I you know uh Grant aets uh chef from Mia a dear friend and one of the greatest Minds one of the smartest people I've ever

met he's a chef he makes food but you know he cares about the plate that the food is going to live in so he has a guy designed the plate for the food that's going to be on top of it what's the smell in the restaurant what's the temperature what's the carpet like what's the color everything counts there's nothing like for example I know fine restaurants do this a lot but it's a nice detail in his restaurant when you go to alenia they know with you it's going to be easy because you're very recognizable but

they immediately know your name no matter who it is the entire crew every person in the restaurant knows what you look like and what's your name and they will address you by your name that's amazing to me allegedly it's got nothing to do with food and yet it does because everything counts and that's the life I live everything counts every detail is important nothing is too small I drive everybody nuts that's the truth and and I'm included yeah no it's it's really important for people to hear because well I know for myself when I see

things that that irritate me um because of the way they're composed or something um I've had to learn over the years to I always say I don't run other people's businesses you know I'm focused on my stuff I don't get involved in other people's art but when you when I see things that I love and that look right yeah it's so satisfying but to be in the world as as you are or as I am perhaps it can be frustrating so we need selective filters right so I I guess provided that it's it's aimed at

our craft and that people aim at their craft and what they're creating um then it's great but um It's Tricky if one is trying to engage with the World At Large to not let this stuff kind of bombard the senses it can be uh you know like for somebody that loves great food it must be frustrating to walk down the street in Manhattan the smells are range from delightful to horrible um so uh we're A peculiar species us humans but it's the species that have these unique tunings and these preferences and they lean into those

preferences and how they create that that produce the The Marvelous work that is your magic and and V goes um that's a you put me in a good category here we need we need you yeah we we need uh well you are and and and we need people like you so for you if you're drawing from many things um and there's anger about something you see in the world frustration are you able to transmute that into your craft or is it a process of okay I got to dump that move that out so that I

can focus on beauty focus on uh positive inspiration or can anger and frustration play a role I think there is beauty even in the angly I mean I look I you you're right I live I live in New York um it's my favorite city in the world and it's it's a LoveHate relationship it's ugly and beautiful at the same time it's rich and poor it's it's sophistic itting simple it's it's it's a city of opposites um you know I I these are things I always think about like you go and you see um like this

area that's really run down and the signs are kind of like fading and this and you can think wow people not taking care of it they're not cleaning this it's ugly but you you know what when I have my camera on me that's what I want to take a photo of of it has character and it tells an amazing story so to me the ugly the old the wrinkled the The Not So Beautiful is very interesting and beautiful so I and again it's not that I'm think about it and then I make the choice I

first respond and then maybe I'll think about it I I usually have a camera on me all time and I the rule is very simple I don't take a photo until something tickles me says take a photo here and I take a photo some are some are good some are bad I don't care but something in that moment made me want to do this and take a photo and a lot of times it's not the obvious pretty clean stuff it's sometimes the the ugly the violent you know some of the most beautiful um photos ever

taken are taken at War by ban right uh it's us it's us and and and we're interesting even when we're ugly and and when we're we're angry we're still interesting so I to me that's yeah I don't know if I make a distinction that's very helpful by the way it were you always um sensory and emotionally tuned to the world around you since you were little do you feel like you could feel feel your way through the world this I like this I don't like like kind of um sensing things at a at a it

seems to me that you are able to detect things people experiences with a lot of texture you know like that um it's hard for me to think outside myself that's why I think I don't know any other way I'm not I'm not a therapist but I'm just reflecting on um uh creatives that I know and and you seem to fall into this category of like things affect you or have the potential to affect you and so your nervous system is tuned to observe and to absorb fortunately you have a selective filter there that can't be

bombarded by by life um or stuck there but do you recall being a kid and like like do you have like Visual and emotional memories of things that are strong I think I'm I'm very sensitive I think I I I get it's I'm ticklish you know it's I I think with my heart as much as I think with my brain I really think so I am you know I want to think I have thick skin I don't I I I get hurt easily uh I have empathy it happens to me often that I I I

remember walking in New York I I cry easily and I was and I saw just a person crying but I could feel their pain I don't know this person I start crying and I think [Music] um you know I I I a big part of why I love being a magician is because I'm a part of a family that I would not replace with any other family like my best friends John Graham shimshi Blaine Doug McKenzie these are very important people in my life and and uh I'm moved by the fact that you know I

wanted I wanted to do a couple of cart tricks I wanted to do magic but I got something really way way I I it's a family I've joined a family Juan who I talk and caught a million times I feel like you know what a privilege you know this Master gave me so many gifts taught me so many things for no other reason than wanting to share something with me I'm in awe of that and it reminds me that I now need to do it with other people so when we did Inner Circle we we

grew a family there's a bunch of kids you know uh uh Jacob Denny Luke uh you remember Nam yes I do Charlie uh struth uh Ari there's a b you know and we became uh a family I remember that um I got an award from the Magic Castle which is a flattering thing and you spoke about Awards I'm I appreciate Awards but I I have I think Awards could be very deceiving so I immed when I got when I got my award I got Magician of the year which is very flattering um I looked at

for exactly 10 minutes I closed it and I gave it to somebody I did not want to own it but here's the real the story that I'm trying to tell you here is that so I had to fly from New York to Los Angeles to receive the award and one of the kids said uh can I join you sure but you have to buy your own ticket and you know Airbnb whatever um and then another one and another one all of them came with me all of them to see me get an award and I

remember the award became secondary to the fact that they came to see me get an award so we went to get coffee and I took him to the Magic Castle for the first time I made him perform we went downstairs to the basement I said you're performing now and it you could it was a highlight for them and I that was my word it's so interesting because once again it's it's the story of the experience as opposed to the end product of the experience that is uh what captures us and what and it's clearly how

we embed memory and how we come up with concepts of self and our life Arc it's really beautiful and um in your case it's about magic and Mentalist work but it it clearly um exports to uh all domains of life I I'm certain people are are getting it to put it that way speaking of the Arc of life tell us what's coming next what's the what's the next uh act uh what's the next um I don't want to call it a trick because it diminishes from your craft your art um what what what excites you

most these days about what's coming next in your professional life so I'm I'm I'm now just about to to debut my next show which is incredibly human um I'm super excited about this show because you know in a strange way that show is this conversation we just had it's about the human mind it's about what we can do it's about pushing limits it's about kind of proving to ourselves of how magnificent we are um so that it's a it's a very you know it's very different than my first Inner Circle because this one is in

theaters it's in you know thousands some seats you know theaters and um it's what I wanted to show to be visual ual I want to have a painterly quality to it so there's lots of things that are just going to paint the stage with lots of things I can't I don't want to spoil anything but it is a tribute to the human mind I'm excited about doing it we have so far announced uh six dates and there's two more big things coming up that I cannot talk about um that are very exciting but they're Brewing

slowly but for me right now this show that I'm about to do is the most exciting thing figuring out how to make the best version of that show fantastic well aie I um I want to say on behalf of myself and everyone listening and watching um you are a truly unique and spectacular individual thank you um both for the work that you do and the way you approach it but also for what you teach us about ourselves about the human mind and brain about what makes us tick indeed what's possible in us I it's just

ringing over and over again in my head that what you do is less about showing what's possible in the world a card can do this or the it's it's about what's possible inside of us both alone and in groups and as it relates to perception and Imagination it's really truly spectacular and I say that having again seen you do your acts live and seen some online and um I'll certainly come out to uh the upcoming show and the mystery shows that I'm not allowed to know about I also would be remiss if I didn't say

that you know this empathy that you have and the fact that you as you described it you you think with your heart um uh I don't know much about your life aside from what you've told us here today but um I imagine that can be a a challenging experience at times to live life that way that sensitivity but I just want to say thank you we're we are all gifted this magic true magic that you do because of the way that you think with your heart and your empathy and your openness and willingness to share

while you did not reveal how every trick is done sorry um you made it very clear that to do so would be to erase some of what's possible in us and um and so I also Place great value on the fact that you've kept some of the mystery or let's say much of the mystery of magic and Mentalist work a secret to us so that we can have it revealed to us in real time through your shows and other venues for magic and Mentalist work so on behalf of myself and everyone listening I just want

to extend an enormous debt of gratitude for what you do and for being you thank you so much means a lot thanks thank you for joining me for today's discussion with aie wind please check out the links in the show note captions to oie's social media handles and to his live tour happening now the incredibly human tour if you're learning from Andor enjoin this podcast please subscribe to our YouTube channel that's a terrific zero cost way to support us in addition please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and apple and on both Spotify and

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