Latest / The Magic Guys / Professional Opportunist James Brown! #197

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Professional Opportunist James Brown! #197 · The Magic Guys

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They're guys they do magic they are the magic guys,
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ladies and gentlemen welcome to another episode of
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the magic guys 197 we are
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so close to 200 this is crazy to my left
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we've got doug con good evening
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oh yeah the double piece
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double deuce down below we got nick k where are you there he is man bitches
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oh yeah and i'm josh nabito welcome to the show that was not what i went to
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go for i went this one there we go i'm dealing with a new roadcaster pro 2 sound
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mixer so that's why i hit the wrong cue but you know that's fine.
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Look exciting episode today look at doug's festive fest
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festivity background what you
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got the wife brought it home from the in-laws
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her father used to do magic and they have it's
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actually his partner's in the back this one does i
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think he's the street he's street magic nutcracker you
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know he's got a little let's bring it up he's like
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hey i do street magic you want to see a trick he doesn't
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talk much besides it's like david blaine wow doug
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it's so funny off air your volume was great now you're a
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little a touch quiet because i think you've gotten you've gone
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a bit shy for this episode the nutcrackers were in my way probably yeah
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is it still you sound great still not ideal
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oh well yeah i think it's good now nick how are you
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doing man up a little bit but look out fellas i'm
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doing here we are doing great continue fellows
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podcast for god's sake okay now it's definitely hot
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all right nick i know today particularly is someone's birthday i heard i heard
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that nick's gone around the sun one more extra year so put those happy birthday
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wishes in the chat happy birthday mr ken thank you friends oh yeah oh yeah.
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How's it a good day it feels great it feels really
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good man i didn't think i'd live this long so this is kind of nice i
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thought that when i was 23 that's exactly what
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happens but you know as life goes on you thankfully
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i think i found magic and i think magic saves us all
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in one way which kind of leads us into our guest who
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is responsible for many a great things in my
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life should we get into it fellas i think
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a lot to go for let's go yeah we got a lot we want
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to talk about it because here's the thing here's the
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thing friends they they say you should never meet your heroes but today
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i'm doing exactly that and that's
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because 17 years ago i watched the magician on youtube
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whose performance ignited my passion
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for magic it was that moment that actually changed my life and set me on the
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path to where i am today and now i'm sitting here kind of scared and also super
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excited to meet my hero because they say never meet your heroes but it's about
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to happened friends so please join me in welcoming the amazing james brown.
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Music.
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Oh yeah james welcome how are you my friend Ah, very well indeed.
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It is a pleasure to be joining you fine fellows here on your podcast.
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So thank you very much for the invite and happy birthday, Nick.
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And all I can say, all I can say is you're absolutely right.
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Best never meet your heroes.
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This will be a terrible letdown in all possible ways.
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By the end of this, you'll be thinking, what a twat.
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And you'll be right you'll be you'll be you'll be absolutely right
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you'll be bang on with that assessment so uh
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so thank you very much so although
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you're my hero and you and you and you're self-proclaimed twat
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what did you tell our audience who you actually really are
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i'm james brown i'm a magician a
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pickpocket and a hypnotist and i've been doing this job for
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a long time i do know i'm not entirely certain
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way I think it's sort of coming up to coming up to
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30 years if I'm if I'm right in saying that since I
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started looking into this subject at all 28
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years something like that and I work primarily in
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in close-up magic as a day job but
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I also do quite a bit of work in sort of film and
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tv consultancy and then I have a
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completely separate sort of hat on in the world of hypnosis
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sort of helping to to teach hypnotherapists largely how to how to better make
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use of hypnosis and and and sort of doing a lot to sort of try to educate people
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about what it is and what it very much isn't so that's kind of that's kind of where i am.
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It sounds like a good corporate gig, like booking the corporate events.
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A hypnotism show might have some more draw to it than magic show.
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Yeah, yeah. Actually, do you know what? One of the things that I've been persistently
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working at for the last decade is trying to formulate a hypnosis show that isn't
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the standard line of chairs make people do daft things.
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Yeah, you're doing something more educational for the audience, correct?
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Yeah, yeah. I want to do something more educational, but also very much in the
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hypnosis world, from entertainment hypnosis,
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I'm very much trying to find ways of doing it to make it more magical in a way,
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because I find hypnosis in a comedy hypnosis way is largely reliant upon your
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audience just laughing.
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I mean hypnotists say that the audience is laughing with the people on stage
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but we all know that's not entirely true and you know i i think you know i i think hypnosis is a is a.
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Phenomenal subject but it's it's it's relegated to this kind of end of you know
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end of the peer style you know amusement and i think it should be more here
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in the uk and i know he's worldwide now Deren Brown is probably the only person
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that's taken hypnosis to higher level in that way.
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But I'm still trying to work out that little holy grail. I'm trying to work
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out a hook for a show that just makes it something more than just,
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you know, hey, you've just spent.
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My problem is this. You've just seen me do the induction process for the last 40 minutes.
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And at that point nothing that
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happens beyond here is of any surprise
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to anybody so so again i
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find that an odd an odd thing i think i think i think we can make these things
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much more appealing and magical you know i want i want my audience when i'm
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doing a hypnosis style show i want them to be on the edge of their seats being
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astonished again and again and again by what they're seeing rather than just like, oh, yeah,
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you know, they've done another thing that's made this person look a bit stupid,
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and we've all had a good laugh at them.
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So I think there's more that can be done. You see, it's interesting because
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I'm sort of reflecting on you.
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It was a TED Talk that you did, If Memory Serves, where you were giving examples of how that works.
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And for me, I found that, like, deeply educational and also very entertaining
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on that level as well. So are you thinking about doing a larger-scale version of that?
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Yeah, sort of. So I put together an act a long time ago,
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which is kind of the thing that I've done ever since in various iterations,
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which was essentially I was trying to break the fourth wall because one of the
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misnomers of hypnosis was always that,
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you know, you have to bring them into this trance state and then you have to
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maintain that trance state.
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And i wanted to demonstrate with an act that all the things that that could be done with that.
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Sort of model of hypnosis could be done without it and
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the act that i did on the ted thing which was very much
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off the cuff at the time that was like one of the first times i'd done it to
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be honest and that entire thing was me making
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stuff up as i went along which i look back with a degree
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of like blooming heck i was i was weirdly fearless
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at the time but the whole point of the act was i wanted to show that a person
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could have their eyes wide open have no sense of something going on yet still
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have all the experience which to me made it more baffling for the audience you know if
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the person's up on stage looking like a a drugged
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up zombie then nobody's really surprised that
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they're doing x y and z but if the person's there being completely lucid
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and going like i'm not hypnotized I feel
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absolutely normal yet for some reason I
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can't move my feet or I can't remember my name or you
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know or whatever else was going on to me that
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was more more astonishing also the
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lack of time the fact that these things were happening within moments of them
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coming up on stage that there was no process for the audience to hook into no
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rationale and and again I find that that's kind of the key to magic in a way
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where like the best magic to me is often where.
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Nothing's nothing's being done you know
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if you're doing close-up magic i think the more the more
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you do things the more you manipulate the cards the more
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moves there are the more the more the
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audience goes well you know he must have done something then
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but you know if you do if you do a card
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trick where you know somebody somebody selects a
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card or peeks a card and you just immediately put the deck down
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and you don't touch it again and and it still appears
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underneath the person's watch now they're going to be
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like this this is magic there's no
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two ways about it and i kind of felt the same thing applied
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to hypnosis that i wanted to cut out all of
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that process that led to that outcome if i may i'm curious i've seen magicians
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that portray hypnosis using magic methods would you go that way in a stage performance
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for your show or would you stay true to just uh no i tend i tend to.
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I tend to stay true I might use magic
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for for for the magic button for example
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so as a quick example for this and I'm
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saying this because I saw on I looked at one of the earlier podcasts and
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you mentioned double cross way back in sort of episode 70 and
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you all sort of said you know all those of you on the podcast
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said you know you bought it but didn't really do it because everybody else
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was doing it i i i do a
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version of double cross which is utilizing a
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a very well-known phenomena within within science
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and medicine which is the simple idea that when you
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think about when you put your attention to a
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part of your body you then notice that
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part of your body i talk about this in pickpocketing as well that
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until i mention your until i mention this none of you are aware of your own
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underwear but the moment i've mentioned your underwear you're all very much
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acutely aware of the sensation of your underpants against your body or not or yeah or not.
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Nicely done nicely done doug uh yay
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so you know
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if you think about your left ear like if you really put
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your attention to your left ear you can you can sense you can have a sensation
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which is indistinguishable from touch so in that context with with double cross
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i will make use of something that is within the sort of slightly more hypnotic
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range for the entire setup which is essentially i i i say to somebody hold your hand out
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and I say to somebody else point your finger down and I
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just draw the hands closer to each other and that's the
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moment I do the mark and then I never touch
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that that person with the mark again and I get this
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the first person's finger and I touch the back of their hands and
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I say to them you know you can feel that yeah focus on
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that sensation when we lift the finger away I want you to
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notice that you can start kind of still feel that for a few moments
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and then it disappears and and that's true and they
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say now watch what happens when you bring your attention back
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to that spot you can feel it again can't you
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and people go yeah because what
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they're actually feeling is the direction of their attention yeah
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on their own skin but once you've set that up you can slide up and down the
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arm with the other person's hand and now they can feel this movement along their
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skin but because you've got that set up it's very easy at that point to say
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here's where it gets really crazy.
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When you touch your own hand they're gonna
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feel it on theirs so now one person touches their
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hand and they have a pk effect so they touch their hand and the other person's
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going i can feel it there and then i say touch somewhere else on your arm where
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can you feel it and they point to the same place and and now you set up that
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pk thing you say i tell you what let's let's try something else And I hand them
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a normal Sharpie and I say, and I just literally hold my hand up.
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And I know that the mark's going to be about there on the other person's hand.
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And I say, very, very slowly, just draw a little cross.
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Tell me if you feel this. And as they do that on their own hand,
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the other person is going, oh, my God, I can feel that. That's incredible.
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And then I've got this lovely hook line, which is right now,
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everybody else thinks this is just your imagination. But you and I know differently, don't we?
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And I let that hang for a second. And then I just gesture with my own hand.
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I just turn my own hand over, which signals them to look. And then they turn
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the hand over and suddenly both people have got a permanent mark.
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Oh, my God. Because this is actually ridiculous.
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And everyone listening right now has just gone and bought another double cross after hearing that.
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Because that is like some James Brown gold right there.
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For a present because you could even do that with you
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don't even need the double cross ending really if
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you didn't want to but obviously that's just blowing their
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minds out the door yeah i mean that extra ending the
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the nice thing about this is you you
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give it's a little bit like a coin bend you can
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just bend a coin give it to somebody and then you can say some stuff and
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they open the hand the coins bent okay great but if you
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add a little bit of suggestion in the right places and you
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build on that suggestion now now you
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actually give the person the moment that it's happening in
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real time in their experience in the hand so
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now nobody's you know the person who's who's who's felt
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the coin get hotter who's felt the coin bend who's
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felt the coin cool down again or get heavy or whatever else is never going to
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think oh you probably just gave me a bank coin or or or somehow you bent the
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coin before you gave it to me they're never going to think that In the same
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way that when I do this version of double cross, even, and the best part is,
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like a couple of days ago, I did a gig, I think about four days ago,
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was it Friday, whenever it was, I did a gig.
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And the person afterwards came up to me and went, a magician did a trick like that.
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A week ago to me but they just stamped on my hand without me knowing because
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of course for them they felt the moment that it took place so so how could it
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have happened before then they
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felt it happen yep so so for me a lot of a lot of what i'm trying to achieve
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is that so to go back to doug's original question i i i want i want the hypnotic
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thing to to be real i might add
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a magic button to the end if I want to, but I don't,
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you know, I, again, I have a pet hate, a real, I've got a lot of pet hates,
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actually in the world of magic, to be honest, but one pet, let's go, man.
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This is the time to let all of that out. Just let the anger go. Let it go.
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We can be your therapist tonight.
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The one thing that I've seen so often in it, it, it, can I swear at all on this podcast?
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Absolutely. Let it go.
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It's a little swear word it's it boils my
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piss this boils my piss it really does there's
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yeah oh my god it's when i see
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magician at a corporate show stand up
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and do a demonstration of sort of
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some kind of influence that you know teaching influence particularly
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i'm not talking about a show i'm talking about a training event and
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they stand up and they they teach the audience a
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sales audience about the power of body language and influence
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and then they just proceed to do blimey neck
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i can never remember the name of it but the trick where you get four people
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or whatever to draw a picture and the boards are marked
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and you know that's that's the method but they sell it as demonstration of their
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skills in influence and that annoys me because there are real skills of influence
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that you can demonstrate you don't you don't need to lie and and perform it that way so.
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You know, I think if you're going to if you're going to do something that is
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hypnotic, that is suggestion based, then then do it.
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Don't don't do a pseudo routine as if it's the same thing when you when you don't need to.
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And if you can't do the hypnosis thing, like, OK, I mean, you know,
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OK, like pseudo hypnosis routines are fine, but you you can't do those if you're
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selling yourself as being an authority on the subject.
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Be a magician doing a routine which has
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a you know a hypnosis kind of lean
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to it but but don't stand up in front of
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educated people as if you you
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know what you're talking about and then do something as if you're a.
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Body language expert yeah yeah we
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do have we have some of them here too you know
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everyone's trying to make a living i guess but
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yeah i can you know there's so much other.
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Ways around it i guess one of them is actually learn body language
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and become an expert and then hypnosis if
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you uh talk about the history of
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it at all and if so if you could talk about it now is
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that like i'm wondering how long has hypnosis been around yeah
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and and further to that question when hypnosis
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you sort of mentioned the inductions i just wanted to know leading into
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this like how legitimate is one of those rapid inductions
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where they just shake your hand like a handshake induction where it's like snap
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and you're under immediately like how legitimate is that
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okay history of hypnosis
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very quickly it goes back it goes back for as
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long as human beings have been alive frankly the the
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the name is coined a roundabout
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it's not quite true but it's around about the time of a
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guy called james braid an english physician who kind
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of really adopted the the word hypnosis from the
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greek hypnos to mean sleep but that
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kind of right from that moment it was already it created a misnomer because
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there is no link whatsoever between this thing that we now call hypnosis and
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sleep just none whatsoever but the human ability to influence has been used for ever and a day.
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With regards to inductions, they all work. The problem is that.
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They don't really work for the reasons why an awful lot of hypnotists think
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they work, because in and of itself, none of the words do anything.
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Just just because it's a bit like the thing about correlation is not causation.
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So just because this correlation between I say these words in a certain way
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with this this ritual and it appears to have this outcome and I can repeat it
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and repeat it doesn't in and of itself mean that those words and those rituals.
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Are the actual causality of the outcome.
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And we actually know that they're not and we can demonstrate
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this very easily and one of the one
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of the easiest ways that you can demonstrate it is just get a number of
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people and do say the same thing to all of them and see
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that they all respond differently because if it was the words
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in and of themselves the response would be
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the same wouldn't it but it's not so they're
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not it's in its in
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its in its simplicity i would say
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that what we're talking about is the human
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brain's ability to to mistake thoughts
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for external experience and
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we do this all the time we're constantly confusing our
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own thinking for reality and we do it in
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our relationships you've all done it if you're in a relationship you'll
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know this constantly your partner will say
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something or there'll be your facial expression and your
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brain will look for what does that mean and you'll
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immediately have this this thought i'm in trouble you
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know they're cross with me and your body will send a signal that's
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that creates this tension and because you.
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Have a thought which could be words and images and
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you have this sensation within you you put
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the two and two together and go it must
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be true and then and now your cognitive bias
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will just continue to ratify that that
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belief and then a week later you find out that none
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of it was true but it doesn't change the fact that the next time they pull that
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face you'll descend into that hell again same with you know things like phobias
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and so it's a mixture of that idea of confusing your thoughts with reality and
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And then this notion that we have of projected agency,
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which is, again, something that humans do all the time.
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We give agency to two things when, in fact, almost every time we're the agent as a quick thing on that.
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Every time you do a magic trick, you as a magician probably have the delusional
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thought that it is the magic trick itself that is the agency in the effect that
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it has. But it's not. They're the agent.
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It's the person watching you that is the agent to the experience, not you.
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You may have given them the ingredients for sure, and how you do that will matter.
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But ultimately the the agency for
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why they felt and reacted in the way that they did
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came from them because magic happens
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in the mind of of the person witnessing it
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which again you can demonstrate because you can show the same trick to 100 people
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and some of those people will just be absolutely mind blown and some of them
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will just be like why because in and of itself the thing that you're doing is
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not the agent for the experience that the person has.
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Yeah yeah that's a hard that's a
23:24
hard pill to swallow as well that's deep yeah nick
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had a question so go on nick we just
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have a couple of questions from the chat scott link was asking firstly
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can it be accomplished non-verbally i'm not sure if he's referring to inductions
23:39
but i certainly think you can do it can be yeah yeah yeah i mean so again we're
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talking about so there has to be a frame of reference there's a great thing
23:49
called the aims window illusion it's one of my favorite illusions, A-M-E-S.
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It's well worth going and having a look at.
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And it's this, I think it's called a trapezoid shape, which rotates around.
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And when you put like a pencil through it, it looks like the pencil's moving through this window.
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And the reason it works is because
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in our civilization, we know what this idea of a window looks like,
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you know, the rectangular shape with the lines
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through it and the panes of glass so because
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we we know what a window looks like on on multiple
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drawings like the first house you drew as a child with the you
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know the squares and the lines in the windows we have
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that frame of reference for what a window is so that's so that's the the base
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information that is allowing our brain to be fooled by the illusion but when
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when they've shown that illusion to tribes that don't have that frame of reference
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for a window they don't see the illusion,
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Yeah. So, yeah, there it is. The aims window. It's a stunning illusion.
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It just it freaks your brain out completely.
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It goes one way and then it passes through. But the reason why it works is because
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you and I know what a window looks like. If you show it to somebody that has
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no frame of reference for the window, they do not fall for the illusion.
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So again non-verbal inductions
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work because the person has
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a frame of reference for this thing that
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you're doing that's why they work if
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you were to speak to somebody who had no frame of
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reference for this in any way no cultural reference to
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it it would not work if you walked up
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to people on you know on a
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street in a place that had never had you know that just doesn't have a westernized
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frame of reference for hypnosis you know yanked their arm and went sleep they
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would just be like what are you doing which by the way most an awful lot of
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people will do anyway but if somebody has a belief in a frame of reference then you know.
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I've done it at conventions i've done
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it at the uk hypnosis convention quite famously actually
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i got a bit of a name for this a few years ago i
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was i'd done a talk on on all of this stuff and a few people still hadn't quite
26:04
got it and i went look i'll demonstrate something for you and we're in the corridor
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now and i wrote on a piece of paper just the word sleep in big in in sort of
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big font fold it in half and then wrote on the outside read this with intent and expectation,
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and as somebody walked by i went oh this is for you and they they read the outside
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opened up and then collapsed to the ground and everybody everybody was like
26:27
oh my god this is incredible And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You've misunderstood.
26:31
It worked because we're at a hypnosis conference.
26:34
It didn't work because those words are magical or that I have superhuman powers.
26:39
It worked because we're here and this weekend has made it work.
26:46
That's why it's worked. Yeah. yeah so again
26:50
you can you can do these things but they
26:53
always work the best at a con at a convention and by the way magic has a habit
26:59
of falling into that category too how many times have you been at a magic convention
27:03
seen the best thing ever and then you've bought it and then you've taken it
27:08
out to the lay audience and lay people have gone.
27:12
Yeah yeah yeah yeah and the other way around as well where yeah we don't think
27:18
it's any good and then laymen are like what the hell this happened yep you know
27:23
absolutely yeah so i mean i i said years ago i think magicians are the worst
27:28
arbiters for what is and is not good magic,
27:31
we're we're terrible at making that decision and maybe
27:36
there's a little bit of the the dunning kruger effect going
27:39
on there i think maybe the longer you're in magic for the the
27:42
the better you discern these things because you've
27:45
had more opportunity to to really learn and progress
27:48
that's it right there if you get
27:51
a chance to perform it enough you realize it's not about you and
27:54
your flashy tricks your crazy gimmicks it's about
27:57
what the people experience in their brain and making it appeal
28:00
to them emotional emotional yeah i've got a
28:03
couple of friends here in the uk who are stand-up comics and we've
28:06
all had this conversation with with regards to how
28:10
how long have you been flogging your own dead
28:13
horse so you know a comedian will write a gag
28:15
and think i really like this gag and they'll
28:18
present it to an audience and it just doesn't work and they'll
28:21
go maybe it was the audience tonight i'll i'll
28:25
i'll do the gag again tomorrow and then they'll maybe rewrite write
28:28
it they'll tweak it a little bit more how many audiences
28:31
don't not responding does it take for you.
28:34
To finally realize not a good gag and and
28:37
i think magicians can do the same we can we can we
28:41
can perform something because we've fallen
28:44
in love with it yeah uh yeah you know
28:46
but maybe because of a sense of ownership but it's not necessarily a
28:49
great piece of magic it could be even worse for magic because
28:52
you do your ta-da moment and the audience applauds politely
28:56
anyway and so you think it's good yeah yeah
28:59
true true i mean i i i personally
29:03
think that i think it's i i'm fascinated that the
29:07
holy grail of card magic is any card at any
29:10
number but i'll be honest i've yet to see even
29:13
like if you there's a the burglas effect there's
29:16
a video on youtube of a film they made of the burglas effect and it has lots
29:21
of clips of david burglas performing it to lay audiences and i mean don't get
29:27
me wrong burglas was was just a phenomenal man at every level he was a lovely
29:32
human being and he was he was one of the,
29:35
You know, he was a pioneer of magic without a doubt.
29:40
But Arkhan appeals to magicians way more than it appeals to lay people, way more.
29:47
And I've learned lots of variations on any card at any number.
29:51
And i realized a long time ago that a
29:54
a half decent second deal is
29:58
just as deceiving to a lay
30:01
audience as any convoluted clever
30:04
psychological variation of it and we
30:07
all know if you've been in this game long enough you know that you.
30:10
Can get somebody to misremember a trick after
30:13
the fact if you if you layer it correctly and
30:16
then and then as you talk about it after you
30:19
finish the effect you can create you can create false
30:22
memory syndrome quite simply and i
30:25
think that you know again it's just i just
30:28
find it fascinating that that from our point of
30:31
view we've we've gone this is the pinnacle of card
30:34
magic but lay people may may have
30:36
a very different view to us may well
30:40
think you know talking about lay audiences and and how
30:43
people react if we can jump back for a
30:45
second to when you won the magic circle close-up
30:49
magician of the year award that video
30:52
we're jumping back a long time aren't we that's you
30:55
know that's a while ago but still to this day people are
30:58
just discovering that for the first time probably you know
31:01
that was such a mic drop moment when you've done this routine with
31:05
a coin and their
31:07
coins on their shoulder and then and then it's under their watch and then you do
31:10
the you know the famous but then what if your watch
31:13
just gone and now that's on your shoulder like such a
31:16
crazy circle when that video came
31:19
out or once you perform that what was like the aftermath of that happening like
31:25
everyone start flying to do that exact sequence like yes is the answer i did
31:31
yeah yeah i think that i mean look it it popularized because again i.
31:39
I looked at that. So the, the, the real history of that routine was I saw Greg
31:47
Wilson do, and I can't think what he called it, but he did, he did the chip, right?
31:52
Yeah, the chip. yeah he did chip on shoulder and he
31:55
had uh but he had a coin version as well which used two
31:58
coins and he was always one ahead with the coins so he
32:02
did the coin on the back of the hand and he'd have the arms up either
32:05
side of them and he'd he'd load one
32:08
coin turn into the body vanish another
32:11
coin and it would reappear and he was loading a coin
32:13
and then vanishing the other one and to
32:16
be honest i looked at it i thought it's a lovely routine but i
32:19
also realized that the chance of being caught with
32:22
the second coin is massive and inevitable it's
32:26
inevitable that you'll be caught with the second coin if you're
32:29
caught with one coin i you know you put the coin in your eye and
32:32
somebody sees you put it in the eye it doesn't matter there's any one coin
32:35
all they've done is they've caught the misdirection in the moment and
32:38
you can you can just keep going and you'll probably catch them on the next beat
32:41
anyway so i i
32:44
put together this this one coin routine and
32:49
yeah i just did it the magic circle
32:52
close-up comp was interesting because my journey
32:56
into magic was not the same as a lot of people's I
32:58
did not come up in and I didn't have parents that
33:02
were magicians or uncle that was a magician I didn't go
33:05
to magic clubs as a child in fact I
33:08
knew as close to nothing about magic until I
33:10
was about 18 in fact I was 18
33:13
I was at university and I had
33:17
no interest student magic growing up in fact frankly i.
33:20
Didn't really like the magic i saw on tv the exception.
33:23
Was there was a paul daniels magic show on.
33:26
Tv when i was a kid and for about
33:29
10 minutes in the show they would
33:32
cut to a little card table at the side of the
33:35
studio and there would be a guest magician who would
33:38
come and do a bit of close-up magic and that that appealed
33:41
to me there was something about that that was special the
33:45
the big illusions just didn't resonate i think
33:48
even as a child i looked at it and went you know
33:51
i kind of realized it'll it'll be the box
33:54
won't it it'll be the box um which funnily enough is one of the things you're
34:00
you're so well known for ah it's the box it's just it's definitely the box yeah
34:05
thank you brumcha so i went into that competition and.
34:13
Treating it like a gig
34:16
like just just I just treated it
34:18
like a gig I so I turned up at the magic circle for
34:21
that competition I'd been cajoled by people
34:25
to enter it and I'd be like okay I'd only joined the magic circle like a six
34:30
months earlier and I think I'd been twice to the actual headquarters and back
34:35
then there was no online option so it was just a club as far as I was concerned
34:39
it was just a more famous club but I didn't live in London so I trekked all
34:43
the way up to London with this.
34:45
And I turned up there, and I was quite stunned to see a room full of magicians
34:50
all wearing various sort of top hat and tails.
34:54
Well, not top hat, but kind of wearing like magicians' outfits.
34:59
And they all had acts that they'd invented for the competition,
35:06
and they were all in their little corners just going through the act.
35:11
And i i'm there with like jeans and a t-shirt or jeans and a shirt a short sleeve
35:16
shirt which i which i was then told are you going to get changed and i'm like.
35:22
No this is this this is what
35:26
i wear when i'm performing it's just
35:29
what i wear and it turned out that that in and of itself was a big problem like
35:34
i don't this is probably wildly hypocritical But I was told that the competition
35:39
act and the response it had got was certainly part of the journey for why the
35:44
Magic Circle dropped the clothing policy.
35:46
Because up until that point, they had a very strict clothing policy.
35:51
Again, that may be wildly hypocritical, but never mind. So, yeah,
35:55
I'm there. Everybody else is practicing.
35:58
I'm drinking a cup of coffee and reading a book.
36:01
And people are saying, you know, do you know what you're going to do?
36:05
And I'm like, well, I, you know, not really. Yes.
36:10
In exactly the same way that I know what I'm going to do when I go up to a,
36:14
a table in a restaurant i i've got i've got the things that i do and we'll see we'll we'll,
36:22
we'll see what happens and all the all
36:25
the lines all the all the little moments it's just
36:28
what what popped into my head at the time and i'll
36:31
be honest i was not expecting to win at all
36:34
i i was i was utterly shocked that
36:37
i won that competition i think it had a big effect with with
36:40
regards to the in-world magic
36:44
but i don't think it really made much of a difference to
36:47
to my to my career in that sense
36:50
but possibly because i i'm
36:53
i'll be entirely honest i'm really crap
36:56
at business part of the reason for that is i just money is
37:00
money is not a metric that's ever interested me
37:03
it's it's not how i how i how i
37:06
rate life you know and and i
37:09
realize that's that's weird for people these days but i don't i don't rate success
37:15
on on how many zeros are in my bank account i that's just it's just not the
37:20
thing that appeals to me in in in the world that we live in so it's yeah i probably
37:26
could have made a lot more out of it i'm sure,
37:29
That is what every millionist is, by the way.
37:33
So your early projects were so strong.
37:37
Are you actively still like maybe producing things for the Magi or thinking
37:43
about it or no? No, not really.
37:47
Now and again. So to be honest with you, in the last 10 years,
37:50
the only things I've really done is when Grant Clark, who runs Illusionist, is just a mate of mine.
37:58
Separate from magic and his business he's just somebody i consider a friend
38:03
and now and again he'll phone me up and he'll say any chance we can get you
38:07
to come in and do something for us and and again it's just a job you know i
38:11
just turn up they pay me i do a thing i leave that's it.
38:16
I yeah i don't i don't really
38:19
think that i have anything specific that
38:23
i want to offer and i don't do i like
38:26
lecturing i do like lecturing but there's
38:28
not a lot of money to be made out of that unless you have a
38:31
suitcase full of you know stuff to
38:34
sell and i don't let's be real james you.
38:37
Do have some stuff in fact someone here was asking can we
38:40
please ask him where you can purchase the hide and seek let's get
38:44
a little story time from nick's collection we didn't plan this
38:47
but nick just so happens to have a few james brown
38:50
items what do we got there i don't see hide
38:54
and seek is one of the one of my favorite things that
38:57
I ever developed and it and I mean I don't
39:00
wear jackets anymore to be honest it's just not a style that
39:03
suits me these days but when I wore a jacket hide
39:06
and seek the the teleport effect in particular
39:09
was without a doubt the favorite effect
39:13
that I had unfortunately while its mobile phones
39:16
have moved on in such a way it's not really as pertinent as
39:19
it was at the time but I fooled I
39:22
mean I remember being at Blackpool when we when we launched
39:25
it I'd broken my my my
39:28
hand like three days before in fact
39:31
it was I I had it in bandages and
39:34
strapped you know like supposedly strapped up I went back home after Blackpool
39:39
and I actually had to have it set and put in a cast because I hadn't been to
39:43
the doctors yet and it was I'd really smashed my handed so my right hand was
39:47
out of action almost entirely and it was phenomenally painful.
39:52
But I remember showing Jan Frisch the effect and he he was absolutely convinced
40:02
that there must be some some incredibly complicated gimmick at work.
40:07
And when I finally told him how it was done, I won't I won't use the word that
40:11
he said, but I looked in the chat.
40:13
Apparently, the word twat in America is more offensive than it is in England.
40:18
Yeah, sorry. Grow up.
40:23
Just grow up but he basically said the the
40:25
c version of that which just made me laugh hysterically but
40:29
yeah i love that effect it was a great one i i if
40:32
i'm much more interested these
40:36
days in finessing things
40:39
i i love i love just adding like i
40:42
mentioned with the the um the double cross i love taking
40:45
something and just going right how can
40:48
we elevate this i think the older we get we realize the
40:51
routines we do need so much more work you
40:54
know yeah yeah just just down to timing and
40:57
things you know i i i've been tempted
41:00
i did the thing with elusius a while ago again they asked me i didn't it wasn't
41:05
my idea they came to me and said could we could we do a cut you know could we
41:10
re-release your card under box and i went well actually i've got some updates
41:13
to it which might be interesting so we did i'm i'm tempted at some point just to kind of.
41:21
Spend a bit more time on that because,
41:24
I love the ending, the entire deck into the box. Oh, sorry. Somebody just said
41:30
you didn't answer where hide and seek. Oh, yeah.
41:32
So here's the truth. I don't have control over any of that stuff, and I never did.
41:39
Unfortunately, the magic companies tend to own them and have the rights to them.
41:44
So RSVP Magic here in the UK, which is Russ Stevens' company, has the rights to that.
41:51
So i would guess if you go to rsvpmagic.com.co.uk i'm not sure which it is you
41:59
probably find it's available as a download on there i'm gonna guess so so that
42:03
would be an answer i don't see a penny for that it's another reason why i've
42:07
i part of the reason why i've stopped doing stuff because.
42:11
You know i got slightly fed up of the fact that do you
42:14
want to know how much i earn out of still fancier potter jam yeah please
42:18
500 pounds plus 25
42:22
copies that's it wow yeah wow and it is it's one of the best-selling close-up
42:29
dvds apparently i mean i don't know whether that's true but i've been told that
42:32
it's one of the best you know it was not now sadly the companies have to do
42:37
it that way to compensate for
42:38
the amazing amount of mediocre products they'll put out that don't sell,
42:42
Absolutely. I fully understand that.
42:44
But, you know, it's slightly galling when you look back and go,
42:49
they're still making money and I didn't.
42:52
It's a great time to re-release that and the card to box and whatever else you
42:56
want to put out. All your early work.
42:59
What about the Power Academy, James? What about the Power Academy and the Rumble Suburbs?
43:04
Yeah, well, so again, all right, look, the reality is pre-pandemic,
43:10
and I don't want to dwell on this for long, if you don't mind,
43:14
I was married for 17 years, and it wasn't good for me at all.
43:19
In fact, it was really quite damaging for me in lots of ways.
43:26
And I lived a double life, essentially. i
43:29
i most most performers put
43:33
a mask on to go on stage i was
43:35
living the other way around the only place i was able to
43:38
be me in any way was when
43:42
i was performing and it was the rest
43:45
of my life where i was masking a
43:48
huge amount of pain and
43:52
trauma i when the
43:55
pandemic came around and i got out of that relationship
43:58
and i that that was a really difficult time the pandemic for
44:02
me kind of readjusting life like restarting
44:05
life just completely restarting life i stepped
44:08
away from power academy because i i just
44:11
couldn't cope with that on top of everything else
44:14
and my business partner danny still one of
44:17
my greatest friends just completely
44:20
understood and he says the door's always going to be open but I just haven't
44:24
you know he he shifted direction as well and became much more kind of business
44:29
focused and I wasn't comfortable with that because it just didn't sit right
44:34
ethically for me to go I can help you become a successful businessman when I wasn't really a.
44:41
I don't like that dishonesty in the world that we live in at all.
44:44
And I was desperately seeking authenticity at the time.
44:48
So I stepped away from Power Academy. I haven't stepped back.
44:53
I think that I got a feeling that sequence of pickpocketing and reality bending
44:58
kind of got mothballed slightly. I don't even think they appear on the site.
45:02
I think you can still get them, but you have to kind of directly contact Danny and ask for access.
45:08
At some point because he said look it's intellectually all yours anyway at some
45:12
point he'll i'll probably get all the all the downloads and i'll work out a
45:18
way of doing something with it.
45:20
Secrets of pickpocketing i would put out as is
45:22
again because i i still i'm still
45:25
very proud of that project reality bending i
45:29
i i wasn't i was never i was never happy
45:32
with that content wise i was happy but just how
45:35
how we filmed it the quality just it just didn't
45:38
it didn't resonate for me at all so it's it's
45:42
it's it's on it's on the back burner to put
45:44
it that way it's it's not dead in the water but i
45:47
just haven't had the the the headspace to
45:50
uh to do anything with it so sorry that
45:53
got weirdly deep there i do no no no and
45:56
thank you for being so vulnerable you know lets people know who james brown
45:59
is because we all love learning from you
46:02
but obviously you know you have to enjoy what you're doing and everyone's
46:05
in different parts of their life and but in saying all of
46:08
that like you know if there's ever a way that the magic
46:11
community can support your work whether you release stuff independently or whatever
46:16
you know you just click your fingers and you just know that everyone's there
46:20
ready to to learn directly from you you probably don't even need an out an outside
46:24
source now to do that kind of stuff yeah i mean yeah i mean i i've,
46:31
Because of where I was,
46:34
I think people assumed that I had all this confidence and stuff because of the
46:40
way I projected on stage.
46:42
But actually I had, and I still to this day, I massively struggle with...
46:48
Sort of self-belief i guess i'm i'm you
46:51
know you call it i mean call it what you want whether it's humility
46:54
or not i don't think it is necessarily i think it's just a symptom
46:57
of trauma really from
47:00
in lots of ways i grew up in a in a very kind of right-wing
47:03
conservative church environment which didn't
47:06
do me good in lots of ways as well and then the relationship didn't do me good
47:12
and i i'm you know as I said to you guys I'm baffled baffled by the idea when
47:19
you were like you know oh my god you're my hero and I and I and I can just feel
47:23
every particle of my being going,
47:26
no no no no no you imitate Nick perfectly by the way I don't yes yeah yeah I
47:34
love doing what I do And I'm happy to receive praise for what I do as long as
47:42
it's not misdirected to me as a person.
47:46
I think that's what it is. I'm absolutely happy at the end of a show for somebody
47:49
to say to me, oh, my goodness me, that was amazing. Thank you so much.
47:55
You've really made us all feel great.
47:57
No problem with that at all. but when it's directed at me when somebody goes
48:01
right you're incredible and at that point i go.
48:06
Really i don't know i just yeah with that slightly you're like well you should
48:10
see me in an hour when i'm at home you know in my boxes and i'm laying on the
48:14
couch and yeah yeah and if you subscribe to my only fans you can.
48:21
That's how we can support you now we're getting to it the real pot of jam coming to you.
48:28
I like sharing as well yeah so i
48:31
just say it's like again my my my partner
48:34
hannah is forever telling me off she says you
48:36
give away stuff for nothing all the time and i get in you know she's she says
48:42
for goodness sake you know you should be monetizing this but i i i don't know
48:47
i can't help it you know only fans you do like picks with the boxers and the card to box work yeah,
48:55
It's like you just merge the two. It's the best of both worlds. Yeah.
48:59
And I mean, we won't mention your projects you're doing, but you mentioned backstage
49:03
that you're doing a lot of consulting.
49:05
And so it's like, I guess from the sharing and putting out these videos and
49:10
maybe teaching stuff that you don't have the property to, people have noticed it.
49:16
And you're now getting to do some pretty big-named projects that everyone would be like...
49:23
Would be their dream thing to work on you know anyone in
49:26
the world so you know it's obviously leading you in the
49:28
right direction when you so you're doing some pretty high profiled
49:32
stuff i mean when how often are you are you
49:36
gigging you mentioned you still in love doing gigs is that
49:39
something you try to roster in every week
49:42
oh yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm i'm doing my best to
49:45
to to get you know i like you know i love
49:48
gigging so you know any any time i can get
49:51
a gig in i i get a gigging i go i
49:54
go and do the job i love doing you know it's yeah
49:56
it's good fun you know and if you
49:59
i mean i don't know because obviously some of this is going to go out audio but
50:02
you know if you want i can share with
50:05
you just a little a tiny little something which
50:08
is just using the end of the
50:11
the card in box routine it's just
50:14
a way to get to that a lot quicker and it's just a
50:17
super fun thing that i've called uh room
50:20
of requirement taken out of harry potter just as a hook and it's very very simple
50:25
and it uses a lovely little ruse uh with a cull so you essentially you've got
50:31
your deck i don't have the box with me but it's you'll understand the ending
50:33
you say to somebody name any card the framing for this by the way is i quite
50:37
often do this in cocktail.
50:39
Environments in stand-up cocktail environments and i'll
50:42
say to somebody i'll i'll take the the the
50:45
deck out of the box and i'll look around there's no table and i'll
50:48
say oh sorry and i'll balance the empty box on top
50:51
of somebody's glass somebody's drink and i'll just say sorry
50:54
can can i just use you as a little table for a moment and
50:57
they're like yeah sure so now i say to somebody name any
51:00
cards and whatever card they name i i
51:03
just have the deck to me and i'm just looking for the card and say
51:06
if it's the five of clubs the moment i see the five of clubs i cull under the
51:11
spread and then i angle the spreads to them so we are looking for the five together
51:15
and then i go through the remainder of the deck pointing out any other fives
51:19
five of spades there and i go right to the end it's not there i then come back
51:23
to the beginning go through again are this the hearts and the diamonds.
51:28
And there's the spade again and and by doing
51:31
that without saying anything you've
51:34
demonstrated that it's not there because they've
51:37
seen they've seen all the way through the deck it's now
51:40
just on top i now very naturally go oh
51:43
hang on a minute and i pick the box up and i open the box
51:46
and i kind of look inside and i tilt it so they see it's empty
51:49
and as i close the box up i load
51:53
the card in and put it back on the glass and i
51:56
kind of then go oh i've got a feeling that right i've
51:59
got a feeling somebody over there kept it from another routine
52:02
never mind and then we move
52:05
into the routine so at this point i then say actually
52:08
do you ever heard do you watch harry potter yeah have you heard of the
52:10
room of requirement and then i just give them a recap the room
52:13
requirement is a room that appears when you need it and inside the
52:16
room anything that you need is in the room so
52:19
for example this box could be our room of requirement
52:22
sorry what was the card that you require and they
52:25
say the five of clubs and bear in mind everything up until
52:28
now has demonstrated it's not in the pack and it's
52:31
not in the box and i've not had to say any of
52:34
that it's all in their head they know it's not.
52:37
In the pack or the box and then as soon as
52:39
i say we'll use this as our room requirement what card do you require five
52:42
of clubs and then and then i kind of just you do
52:45
your gesture you know i hover my hand over the pack or
52:48
whatever right and again with suggestion you can
52:51
say to the person in fact you might even know the
52:54
moment it appears and it's astonishing how
52:57
often that person holding the drink will just go oh i
53:01
felt something yeah you didn't but
53:04
you know aaron alexander a
53:06
very good friend of mine talks about this idea of leaving leaving space
53:10
for enchantment that sometimes the best thing
53:13
we can do as a magician is to create to create
53:16
the the the doorway of enchantment and allow
53:19
somebody to walk through in their own time and this moment where you
53:22
where i'm holding my hand and say you know tell me when
53:25
you feel this i'm just waiting because now
53:28
their expectation is going to find an answer and they'll
53:31
go oh my goodness me i felt it and of course then all
53:34
i'm doing is i'm opening the box up they're removing the card
53:37
the moment they remove the card the deck is loaded and i
53:40
put it straight back on top of the drink and now we finish
53:43
up with just the tilt move and you know this
53:45
time and again with the tilt move just a lovely bit you should save this for
53:50
only fans yeah yeah the the tilt move is really interesting because like when
53:55
you when you're here and you do the tilt move a lot of the time we just do this
53:59
sort of reveal you know you've you've you've put it in the deck and then the deck vanishes.
54:05
But if you transfer to this hand and separate as you draw the attention and you ask a question.
54:14
Then you can create the vanish of the deck in a very open space so that it's
54:21
not until you go, I tell you what, would it be even better if we could make the entire pack vanish?
54:27
And it's only then that the audience becomes aware.
54:31
And it's so far away from the body that it kills.
54:36
You know there's a magician here
54:39
in the uk a young magician charlie hewlish who's
54:42
going to be absolutely a big name in
54:45
in sort of another five or so years and he he pointed something out to me and
54:50
i was so angry because i'd done it myself repeatedly and i hadn't joined the
54:57
dots and it's half a top change so the amount of times when i've done a top change that that i've.
55:06
Either not taken the card back and ended up with two in the early days of learning
55:11
or I've not got a grip on the second card and I've taken everything away and
55:17
you just think oh it didn't work it failed and then and Charlie said to me why
55:23
didn't you just use it as a vanish and I went,
55:26
oh my goodness me that is gold that is insane and I now use this as a vanish
55:30
all the time If ever I have a card that's been selected, and I'll say, that was your card.
55:36
I tell you what, would you be really amazed if we could make it vanish?
55:39
Oh, my God. In the context of the performance, that is a killer because it's here.
55:45
You steal it away as you gesture, and then you just bring your attention back on the vanish.
55:51
Holy crap. That is so good.
55:57
I use it for card under watch.
56:00
So i i will say to somebody sign a card
56:03
and this and i'll take it back and i'll say oh let
56:06
me ask you a question if i could make the card vanish how would that
56:09
feel and boom and and
56:12
you're done it's gone it's on the top of the deck it's really easy then to mercury
56:16
card fold do your load however you want to present it but that moment of vanishing
56:21
it just by stealing it away with it with half a top change it's i've i've had
56:26
unbelievable amounts of fun with that And as I said,
56:30
the annoying part was I'd done it repeatedly in the last 25 years by accident,
56:37
and I'd never joined the dots.
56:39
Charlie Heulish, thank you so much for that absolute piece of gold. Thank you, Charlie.
56:44
God, thank you, Charlie. That is ridiculous. This is very good.
56:48
You like this a lot. Wow. You can just have so much fun.
56:53
I mean, holy crap. And then the idea of it having vanished and then is under their watch.
56:59
You know, things like that is, is, and then obviously under the box and,
57:03
and, and the idea of doing the exchange to the other hand.
57:08
With the tilt move, that's kind of like the deck going under the box moment,
57:14
where you're so far, it's seemingly further away from it, and they just look
57:18
and notice now, like it was out in the open the whole time.
57:22
You've basically created that moment in the hands now.
57:25
That moment is so often mishandled. Well, again, that's because understanding
57:30
how the human mind works,
57:33
that your vision is mostly, most of your vision is generated by your mind.
57:41
It's not actually generated by your optical nerve at all.
57:44
Almost, you know, most of what you see is your mind projecting the illusion
57:49
to fill in literal holes in your vision, blind spots in your vision,
57:53
or more putting into focus stuff that's not in focus.
57:56
So you know again an awful lot of what i do makes use of that fact that the brain will.
58:07
Hallucinate repeatedly you know it's that classic thing
58:10
of if you if you've got no if you've already done a steal of a coin the best
58:15
thing you can do after you've you know once you've you've done your fake transfer
58:18
and you've ditched the coin or whatever the best thing you can do with that
58:22
hand is to toss it to the other hand is to throw nothing across because in throwing nothing across.
58:30
Your audience will almost certainly
58:33
and almost always hallucinate the movement of the coin so so their brain is
58:40
doing all of the heavy lifting when it comes to vanishing it you know it's the
58:43
same as if you hold a coin i haven't got one but if you hold a coin you say
58:47
say somebody hold your hand out show them the coin you go you can see it yes
58:50
and they go yeah and then you when
58:52
you tap it on their hand, you don't tap the coin, you reach your thing,
58:56
your own finger forwards, and you tap your fingertip on their hand.
59:00
So you can see it and you can feel it. Yeah, you see it and you feel it.
59:04
So what you're doing is you're conditioning your own finger sensation to be the same as the coin.
59:08
So now you can, you can ditch the coin, you know, pitch and ditch or whatever.
59:12
And then you then you can come back and go, you can still feel the coin.
59:16
And they'll say yes, because they can so now when you vanish the
59:19
coin their brain knows it was there it's
59:23
it's not a if or but or maybe their own
59:26
their own senses fully convince them
59:29
that this experience is real so now if
59:32
you if you've thrown you know you've you've thrown nothing across but
59:35
they've hallucinated the movement and then you tap it
59:38
on their hand and then you vanish it there's no
59:41
way that they're gonna they're gonna backtrack to to the moment that it went
59:44
they can't because their own brain is fooling the living daylights out of them
59:48
and my final comment and i've used this before on this subject is our magic
59:53
our job as magicians is not to fool people it's to give people all of the ingredients
59:57
they need to fool themselves.
1:00:00
What a mic drop. Mic drop. I've done so many air horns this episode.
1:00:04
But for good, all for good reason.
1:00:06
Do you understand why he's my hero? Do you get it? That's crazy.
1:00:13
Do you understand, people? So great.
1:00:16
I mean, I appreciate your humbleness, and I can totally appreciate what you
1:00:20
mean when you say the person you are when you perform and so forth.
1:00:24
There's a reason why I'm Nick K when I'm performing and I'm the other Nick when
1:00:29
I'm not. And I've said this in the podcast many a times where we were talking
1:00:34
about like, you had nine gigs this week.
1:00:36
Are you over it? And it's like, it's the only time I'm happy.
1:00:39
I may as well live in a coffin and let it rise up an hour before my gig and
1:00:44
I have time to shower and get there.
1:00:45
And then I'm happy. And then when I'm done, I may as well go home to my coffin
1:00:49
because there was just nothing else to live for. There's nothing that fills my cup as much as this.
1:00:53
So I can totally empathize when you say that. And we can say that in this forum
1:00:57
because we are a community.
1:00:59
Most of the guys that listen to us here reach out to us and say,
1:01:03
hey, I just performed my first gig.
1:01:05
And it's through listening to you guys for so many episodes that I have the courage to do that.
1:01:10
And we jam on Discord and so forth. So when you look at your work and you say
1:01:14
things like, what I do isn't important, or it's not that, you know,
1:01:18
it doesn't particularly matter.
1:01:19
I will say this, that if you hadn't done what you done and even shared what you shared here,
1:01:25
like you wouldn't have influenced me to
1:01:28
be the guy I am today and to share my magic that I do number one
1:01:31
and number two there's probably you've probably
1:01:34
given birth to another bunch of magicians in this podcast alone
1:01:38
and that is just something that you don't have to feel anything for you don't
1:01:45
have to feel responsible for or gratitude or maybe even apologize for but one
1:01:50
thing that we can say to you is thank you. That's all we want to say. Thank you.
1:01:58
100% a pleasure 100% just
1:02:02
because somebody's written a question which i have literally just noticed
1:02:05
david russell hi dave has put what is james's number one tip on practicing and
1:02:10
my number one tip is is is do it just is that's it i think that one of the you
1:02:17
know one of the things about magic is you do require an audience and there's
1:02:20
only so far that bedroom practicing you know
1:02:23
mirror practicing will will get you but if you
1:02:25
if you if you do if when
1:02:29
if you are going to practice a routine before you go
1:02:32
out and start performing it my advice
1:02:35
would be to to do for
1:02:38
what i call 4d practicing in other words stand
1:02:42
up practice three you
1:02:45
know three dimensionally as if you know in
1:02:47
with full movement as if there's a real audience and and
1:02:50
and picture them picture where they are picture how they're.
1:02:53
Responding and practice practice the whole
1:02:56
thing rather than just the move because if
1:03:00
you practice the move you'll get really good at this
1:03:03
bit here but not this bit up here and it
1:03:06
and i would i would always say you know loosely use
1:03:10
the that use the 80 20 rule in when
1:03:13
you're constructing an act and by what but
1:03:15
by that what i mean is 20 of
1:03:19
the time your audience should be looking at your hands
1:03:22
and what you're doing 80 of the time should
1:03:25
be engagement up here and the only reason that you're getting
1:03:28
them to look down is to give them another piece
1:03:31
of ingredient to to to help the
1:03:34
puzzle be built but but yeah basically
1:03:38
if they're staring at your hands or
1:03:41
you know the deck of cards or whatever the entire time then you're
1:03:45
that's probably because of the way you've been practicing more than
1:03:48
anything else so you know practice practice
1:03:52
four dimensionally as it were and and
1:03:55
and make sure that you understand that the magic the magic
1:03:58
is going to happen up here in in in the
1:04:01
in the engagement between you and them and ultimately it's going to happen in
1:04:05
their mind so yeah i only i only really want you looking at the cards because
1:04:11
in that moment it's giving you all the coins or whatever it's giving you a little
1:04:14
bit of ingredient the rest of the time i want i want you up here with me.
1:04:20
Yeah. Because that's where the engagement takes place. Bloody hell.
1:04:23
If you ever do, you know, a live Q&A finesse session with James Brown,
1:04:28
I will sign up to that in a heartbeat because this is all so good.
1:04:33
This stuff is amazing. Thank you again. You know, like someone said in the comment,
1:04:37
this should be a three hour Rogan podcast. Absolutely.
1:04:40
But James has stayed up specifically in the UK.
1:04:44
It's probably 1am now for him. And, you know, we thank you so much for coming on.
1:04:49
Before we sign off and give James the final word just a quick next week we have Mr.
1:04:54
Masato joining us on the podcast and
1:04:58
Doug was the first to get this we have just a festive mug out at the moment
1:05:03
if you want to give them a little look at that that is available on our website
1:05:07
right now the Magic Guys Christmas mug we have about seven of them going out
1:05:13
to it's an excellent mug we like it a lot.
1:05:16
We have we have about 10 or so going out to our friends that ended our comp
1:05:22
in the discord last week.
1:05:23
But anyway, they are available, but look, this is, this is amazing.
1:05:26
I'm, this is one of the episodes I'm like looking forward to listening back to straight away.
1:05:30
Cause there was some such gold moments about double cross and vanishes and,
1:05:34
and thoughts and so good. So anyway, I'll stop talking.
1:05:38
We're going to thank James. All of his links are in the description below.
1:05:41
And we're going to leave James with the final word.
1:05:47
My final word is that magic has the power to really help us engage as human
1:05:56
beings and to bring much needed joy to the world that we live in.
1:06:03
And I don't think there's ever been a time where more joy, more kindness,
1:06:08
more human connection has been as important as it currently is.
1:06:13
So if you are a magician get out
1:06:16
of your bedrooms get from behind the camera and go
1:06:19
and create joy create connection because
1:06:23
what we do does matter not in
1:06:26
the tricks not in the in the ownership of
1:06:29
of magic solutions and ideas but in the fact that we can genuinely create moments
1:06:36
that make people feel better about who they are that'll do thanks for listening
1:06:45
it's time for us to disappear now,
1:06:50
but we'll see you again on the next episode of the magic guys.