Latest / The Ageless Warrior Lab / Robert Strong: How Magicians Hack Your Brain | EP 54

Transcript

Robert Strong: How Magicians Hack Your Brain | EP 54 · The Ageless Warrior Lab

0:00
SPEAKER_00: We create false memories and we have a working understanding from millennia of doing magic tricks that neuroscientists are just starting to figure out of how the memory works, and that helps us create better miracles.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: I want to do magic where people leave smarter and they have better critical thinking skills.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: Even the smart people are easy to be tricked and fooled.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: No way.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: This is not possible.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: This is not possible.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Agents Warrior Lab.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm BJW Coral Belt and 30 Gentlemen member Dave Meyer, here to draw wisdom from Brazilian Jitsu and the martial arts and explore how it applies to success in business, relationships, your long-term health, and making the most out of your life.
0:48
SPEAKER_02: What you're about to hear is a conversation I had with my good friend, magician Robert Strong.
0:54
SPEAKER_02: Robert isn't a martial artist, but he's a master of misdirection and exploiting the limits of human perception.
1:01
SPEAKER_02: He's also a masterful dancer dealing with timing and balance, and these are all things we deal with every day in the martial arts.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: And I know you'll find what Robert has to say very intriguing.
1:11
SPEAKER_02: I always do.
1:12
SPEAKER_02: As a magician, Robert has performed for most of the Fortune 500 companies.
1:17
SPEAKER_02: He's performed in all 50 states, in 50 different countries, and on every major TV network, and even twice at the White House.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: Beyond being a world-renowned comedy magician, Robert is a keynote speaker for major corporate events where he combines comedy, magic, and real practical business takeaways.
1:36
SPEAKER_02: He's a best-selling author of Amaze and Delight: Secrets to Creating Magic in Business.
1:42
SPEAKER_02: He's also a co-founder and CEO of Speak About AI, a bureau for business keynote speakers and thought leaders on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: We talk about the ways magicians exploit the limits of human perception.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: And Robert twists my brain with some impromptu magic.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: So sit back and prepare to be amazed by my guest today, magician, author, and keynote presenter, Robert Strong.
2:10
SPEAKER_02: Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to sit with me.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate it.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: My pleasure.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming here.
2:16
SPEAKER_02: I'm very excited about this.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: As I mentioned to you, you're not the first non-martial artist to be on our Ageless Warrior lab, but there are a lot of principles that appear in magic and in the way that you mess with people's brains and expectations and confidence and all kinds of things that are similar to lessons we draw from the martial arts.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: And I just thought this would be a fun chance to get a chance to sit and talk to you.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: Before we go into that though, just I'm curious because you're not just a magician, you are a comedy magician.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: Those are two different things, not always separate.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: I'm just curious why you drew them together and what are the similarities there before we dig into the brain science of sure.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: So the history is first I fell in love with a trick.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: A trick.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: The trick.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: I fell in love with a trick.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: But you have to show people the trick because you can't trick or fool yourself.
3:02
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Magic is unique from any other art form.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: You can dance for yourself, you can sing for yourself, you can play guitar for yourself, but you can't trick yourself.
3:10
SPEAKER_02: Oh, very interesting, yes.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: So magic is designed to have an audience.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: So first I fell in love with a trick, but then you have to show it to someone.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: So then you show it to an audience.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: And then they get the dopamine, the serotonin, the oxytocin, the endorphins from the experience of seeing the magic trick, the wow factor.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: But then they also get it from the humor.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: So you stumble on a joke, they laugh, and then you get the endorphins and the oxytocin and the serotonin and all that.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: So I fell in love with the joke also.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: But now I'm kind of moving to creating like these experiences in the brain for the audience that is just so wow that there's not words to describe it that when you look at them, they look and feel and behave like nine-year-olds.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: They're just wow.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I'm trying to do is constantly optimize for that wow experience.
3:59
SPEAKER_02: And of course, we'll talk a little bit about it, the different types of audiences you've had, because you in the corporate world, you were bringing these experiences to places that one would not assume that they often are, which I think is really great.
4:10
SPEAKER_02: I just have to tell you, because you're talking about the wow, an experience I had.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: A good friend of mine had a birthday party a million years ago, probably 30 years ago.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: And he had a close-up, is that what it's called?
4:20
SPEAKER_02: The close someone who does stuff right in front of your hands, like a close-up magician.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: I don't remember his name.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: I think I told the story to you many years ago and you knew that he was like really high-level guy.
4:28
SPEAKER_02: Must have been very expensive.
4:29
SPEAKER_02: Was it Brian Gills?
4:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:31
SPEAKER_02: And we were in his backyard.
4:32
SPEAKER_02: It was a party, and he was just going around doing tricks.
4:35
SPEAKER_02: By the way, arrested development.
4:36
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
4:37
SPEAKER_02: Can I say tricks or are they illusions?
4:40
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: I am tricking your brain.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: I am not really doing magic.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay, fine.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: So tricks.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: It's not really magic.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: That's the point I was just going to ask you about.
4:47
SPEAKER_02: So Brian Gills, he was there and he was amazing, right?
4:51
SPEAKER_02: He was pulling things out from behind people's ears and doing card tricks or something.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like this very attentive martial artist.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: I thought it was impressive.
4:58
SPEAKER_02: Like I could understand how it would be done.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, he's probably tossing something to another hand or has something up his sleeve.
5:04
SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
5:04
SPEAKER_02: And then we sat at a table and he picked me to do something with, and he was doing this kind of stuff and touching, and there was cards, and there was a card, and I was supposed to pick the missed card, and I was sure I knew where it was.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: And then I said where it was, and it wasn't in his hand, and people are laughing.
5:20
SPEAKER_02: And I don't understand why people are looking at me and laughing.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: And then at some point he said, Well, you may want to check your forehead.
5:26
SPEAKER_02: And he had stuck a card on my forehead without me knowing it.
5:31
SPEAKER_02: I swear to you, I'm not kidding.
5:33
SPEAKER_02: I do not remember.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: I was, and at that moment, I remember saying to myself, okay, this is magic.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: This is not sleight of hand.
5:40
SPEAKER_02: This is actual magic.
5:41
SPEAKER_02: And of course, I don't really believe that.
5:43
SPEAKER_02: But allowing myself to just let go, I'm not gonna try and figure it out.
5:47
SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna enjoy this was magic.
5:50
SPEAKER_02: And that's the feeling I think you're trying to create.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: So we've known each other for 20 plus years.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna break my own rule of magic right now.
5:57
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: The card wasn't stuck to your head.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: I usually don't correct people in their stories of how they remember magic because it's their memory and it's always better than the reality.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: That is so funny.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: So there are three shows I'm doing.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: There's the one I plan to do, there's the one that actually happens, and there's the one you remember.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: That's the one I'm designing.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: And right now, you just realize that you played the best magic trick on yourself because you've told the story, and every time you've done it, it's been a copy of a copy of a copy of a story to create something that's probably never happened.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: You're misremembering, it was on his forehead.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: He was showing you the cards, you were looking at the cards, you couldn't find your card, and the audience was laughing because as you were looking where his interest, focus, and attention was in plain sight.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: He had put it in plain sight on his own head.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: See, okay.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: Now I normally don't correct people's memory, but I want to make a point for this podcast that you played the trick on yourself.
6:47
SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay, good.
6:48
SPEAKER_02: All right.
6:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, we've now established that I can't clearly pay attention to anything and can't remember anything.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, that's what we exploit to create those miracles.
6:55
SPEAKER_02: Right.
6:56
SPEAKER_02: So, and by the way, it's not maybe for this discussion, but memory is incredibly malleable.
7:01
SPEAKER_02: And that is absolutely factually true.
7:03
SPEAKER_02: That a lot of times people think they remember things and they we exploit that.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: In real time, we create false memories and we have a working understanding from millennia of doing magic tricks that neuroscientists are just starting to figure out of how the memory works, and that helps us create better miracles.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: We can prime something, we can use wording.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, I would saw through the CEO at the event, and I say he or she is now separated in two different parts, and now we're gonna put them back together again.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: People afterwards say, I understand how you put the blade through them, but I don't understand how you separated them.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't correct them.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: I never actually separated them.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: The wording creates a false memory.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: Right.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: In addition to that, just to put in there, is magicians know that the memory is very precise and accurate for up to three seconds.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Once you get seven seconds, it's very inaccurate.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: So we create what's called timeless direction.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: So we fill spaced for longer than seven seconds to degrade your memory so that you won't remember the method of how we did it, even though it happened in plain sight.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: A camera will record it, your eyes will see it, but the brain won't record it.
8:08
SPEAKER_02: All right, so let's talk about this a little.
8:10
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's so many things here that are interesting.
8:12
SPEAKER_02: So, from the point of view of a fighter, right?
8:14
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: Anyone who's a real fighter understands the power and danger of misdirection, right?
8:19
SPEAKER_02: If you are misdirected, if I'm getting you to pay attention to this and I throw that, or if a mugger on the street gets you to look down at your watch, get your attention off of where I want your attention, which could be a thief, like a pickpocket, which is where it crosses very close into the line with magic.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: I should just say, I've said to cop friends of mine, and they all agree, that in my training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, if I've met a lot of guys, and some of them are criminals and ex-cons, and some of them are cops, and the line between them is very thin.
8:48
SPEAKER_02: And the cops I know all say 100% same kind of person.
8:52
SPEAKER_02: I think you could possibly say the same thing between thieves and magicians, and the line is pretty thin.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: We're doing the same thing.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: We're tricking your brain, we're deceiving you, we're lying to you.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Magician says, I am a magician, which gives you a social contract to say I'm gonna lie and deceive to you.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: In this context, it's safe and it's okay.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get your wallet back, you're gonna get your watch back.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: But a con artist does the exact same thing but doesn't announce that they're a magician.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: Right.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: So you're not in a social contract that it's okay to lie and deceive.
9:20
SPEAKER_02: How does this misdirection occur?
9:22
SPEAKER_02: Why are our brains so flawed?
9:24
SPEAKER_02: Tell me from your point of view, what is misdirection?
9:27
SPEAKER_00: So there's many ways to parse it, and the way that I choose to parse it is Darwinian evolution.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: What is going to get your focus and attention through millennia of evolving?
9:37
SPEAKER_00: So something bright, something moving, something moving towards you is going to bring your focus and attention.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: So if something is retreating, getting smaller, and is getting darker, it's out of your frame of focus, you're not gonna pay attention to it.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: So if there's a charging animal and you're fearing for your life, you're not gonna worry about that butterfly or the falling leaf.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna pay attention to the thing that's moving towards you.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of times magicians will move towards you to catch the attention, to find the thing.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: To bring the focus and attention there.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: Right.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: Okay, very interesting.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: And similarly, if something's moving away, we just we do that.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: Another thing is repetition.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: The first time you see it, it's novel, it's new, you give it a lot of focus and attention.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: Second time you see it, you go, there's not a lot of new information here.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: The third, fourth, fifth time you see it, you go, don't even pay attention to it.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: And that's when the magician deceives you.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: It looks like they're doing the same thing for the fourth or fifth time.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: They're doing something different, but you've discounted it as unimportant because Darwinian evolution, it's there's no new novel information here.
10:38
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to pull out, I realize you're not a martial artist, but I'm just going to pull out some similarities that I see as they come up because there are so just so many.
10:45
SPEAKER_02: But one of them is one of the ways I get people to get caught in a finishing hold is I try it several times, not for real.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: And they defend it, they defend it, and then they don't take it seriously, and they've decided it's not to be paid attention to, and then I really do it.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: I'd say if I want to sum up misdirection very cleanly and simply, it's where my focus and interest and attention is, is where their focus, interest, and attention is.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: So magicians train to be disinterested to not pay attention to the hard move that's happening in plain sight.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: Understand.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: So if something requires dexterity, you can't be staring at it because I'm gonna stare at it.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: You've got to control where your attention is, and then you have to have the ability to do something to essentially multitask.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, but you'd practice so you can do it with your eyes shut in your sleep, one arm behind your back.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: You can do it under any circumstances.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: After a red-eye flight, getting off the plane in Mumbai, you can do it because it's muscle memory.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: The other thing that I'd love to teach, and I think you'll love this, is I've been teaching at Google since 2014 magic there.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that you see is when they learn a new trick, the first thing they do is everything gets tense.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: And that's when the audience's focus goes, okay, you're doing something hard.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pay really close attention.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: We call it burning.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna burn you, we're gonna focus their eyes, and they catch how they do, and they can't deceive them.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, simply relax your arms.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Relax your shoulders, breathe.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: Give a pause, be so comfortable.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: And to exaggerate it, if I were to walk in a room like this, holding tension here, everybody's gonna track everywhere I'm in the room because clearly I'm hiding something, physically hiding something, but also I have tension here.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm not relaxed.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: So people are gonna track me.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: So how do I not get tracked and not get their attention?
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Drop the shoulders, relax the arms, and the people will relax their focus, and then you can deceive them right under their nose.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: This is interesting, the way in which you misdirect people's attention, the way in which you cause them to be relaxed.
12:44
SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting to me because it seems like performative magic in some ways would be even harder than actual lawless thievery, because in the lawless thievery, as you say, people haven't announced to you I'm about to do something, but you know, walking into a magic show, like you are fully on, like this guy's not gonna get me.
13:04
SPEAKER_02: And you're a member of the Magic Castle.
13:05
SPEAKER_02: I am.
13:06
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you can explain a little bit what the Magic Castle is, but this very exclusive club for the best magicians in the world, and you've allowed me to get into there and watching every single thing that happens, you just know, like you're a hundred percent of this person's not gonna fool me, I'm gonna watch everything they're doing, I'm gonna listen to everything they're saying.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: So if you can still, in that environment, I think, do the things you're talking about, that's an uber high level of preparation.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: So the con artistry often happens crime of opportunity.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: You don't pay attention, they take your bag, they move off, they create a distraction move.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: It's rarely confrontational.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: And so what magicians are doing is they're actually getting their focus.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: You go to the magic house, you get their focus, and there's several ways.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: One to lose their focus and attention so you can do the dirty work right in front of them.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: One of them is a joke.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: People relax after a joke, you can do it right under their nose.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: Another one is call their name.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: David.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: Your attention focus comes up here, you're not down here, where the secret stuff's happening.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: Another one is to correct you.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Hold your hand up.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, a little lower.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: The moment you think you're wrong, your brain goes inside and says, Oh my goodness, I'm making a mistake.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to get this wrong, especially in front of all these people.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: I could basically take your watch right then when I correct.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: Another one is when you think the trick is over.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: As soon as you think the trick is over, you relax your attention.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Your tension goes down, and then I do the secret work right in front of you.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Another one is to apparently mess up.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: The moment you think I failed, you go, the trick's over.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna happen.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: And that's when I can do the secret work under.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: I've seen you do a lot of those where you create something that makes it look like something has gone terribly wrong, and then at the last minute, something comes back around again.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: It's like, wait a minute, this was all part of the which makes that part of that delight.
14:54
SPEAKER_02: Like, because it's just another you've then fooled me in several ways.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: You've fooled me in the thing that happened, happened.
14:59
SPEAKER_02: You fooled me because I thought something went terribly wrong and actually didn't go terribly wrong.
15:02
SPEAKER_02: Then I have to rethink the whole last five minutes to realize, wait a minute, he played me that whole time.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: Very interesting stuff.
15:09
SPEAKER_02: Is that fun for you to do?
15:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I probably would be a depressed person if I didn't have magic.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: I'd probably go through life miserable.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: I think I love creating joy for other people, but I actually get the dopamine hits that they get by creating those experiences for them.
15:26
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk for a little bit about preparation.
15:28
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, you have a new book that's coming out that you just gave me a sneak preview up, and we will certainly promote.
15:33
SPEAKER_02: We could talk about it here and we'll we'll link to it.
15:35
SPEAKER_02: And if you hear any barks, that's because Doug the Dog is supervising and apparently producing this whole show.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: HR.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: Along with Ryan.
15:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's a canine resources.
15:44
SPEAKER_02: Yes, canine resources very well.
15:46
SPEAKER_02: CR.
15:46
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, preparation, the importance of preparation.
15:49
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, in martial arts, I tell people that competitions, martial arts competitions, are won or lost in the preparation.
15:54
SPEAKER_02: So obviously there is your performance at the day, but it's 99% your preparation, and then the performance will take care of itself if you prepare to properly.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: And I assume that is very similar with methods.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: Exactly the same.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, 99% of the work is completely invisible to the audience.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: The 1% is what they see on the stage.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: And you are making the really impossible look simple, effortless, easy.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: And you're also hiding the method in plain sight.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: And you've got to be confident because if you're holding that tension and not relaxed when it's happening, people are not going to enjoy themselves.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, magic is really about thinking long and hard about the experience you want other people to have and constantly maximizing, maximizing, leveling it up and leveling up.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: If you take up one more layer and level so that they're even more impacted by the magical moment, just wow.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's all in the preparation.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: I can't emphasize that enough.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: I would even try to give you some examples.
16:49
SPEAKER_02: Give me some examples.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: So we don't think of like what are our resources and what's possible that we go, what is impossible?
16:54
SPEAKER_00: And we go, okay, let's figure out a way to do that.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: I have a trick that I wanted to level up.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: It's called oil and water.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And the trick that the audience sees, and you can get it from a lot of kids' magic books, is they mix up the cards and they pile them up together and they put cards on a left and right pile, and we flip them over.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: These are all clubs and spades black, these are all hearts and diamonds red.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: But if you think backwards, you're like the magician touched the piles a bunch.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know exactly how he or she separated them, but I know they did.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to make it absolutely impossible for them to look backwards and do it.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: And so I spent the first hour of every day just working on this problem until I got closer and closer and closer.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: And some days we went backwards on it.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: But now I have an illusion that fools magicians.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: And I'll show you and say you get some video of it for Instagram.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: We will definitely take video of it here and we can put it up.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: We'll link to it if you're watching on YouTube.
17:46
SPEAKER_02: If it's not something we can just sub in, even as we're talking right now.
17:49
SPEAKER_02: But that'd be great.
17:50
SPEAKER_02: I would love that.
17:51
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
17:51
SPEAKER_02: You know, another thing I was gonna ask you about was the originality of tricks, like how much of it is learning one and then doing it, and how much of it is actually developing your own trick.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: So there's not a simple answer.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: Magic is so popular right now, there are so many people that are so talented getting into magic that there are now jobs for people to be historians, to be writers, to be teachers, to be producers and directors.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: There's people to build the magic, and it is exploded.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it used to be that each magician was their own lighting person, their sound person, costume person.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: They would load the props, they would design the show, write the script, and everything.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Now we outsource things to different people that have different strengths, and there are all types of magicians.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: There are magicians out there that are doing it for hobby and to collect and all that.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: So some magicians are just buying a script and buying the prop and doing it as prescribed.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: And other magicians consult and we work on stuff, we buy stuff off the shelf, then we change it and all that.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: And then there's people who invented, and I've had some success at all levels of doing that.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: You had mentioned I'm a corporate magician, so a lot of times companies will say to me, We want this to happen on stage, and I always say, Of course I can do it, then I go figure it out.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: And half the time it's crap.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: I do it once, it's done, move on.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Half the time I invent something for them that's never been done before.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, there's something here, and I continue to develop it, and it becomes part of my repertoire and it's mine, it's original, and I performed it for a while.
19:17
SPEAKER_02: So when you're saying like a company, so they might want their product included in the show or their service to be part of the trick.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: Yes, right.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, the most recent one was a banking organization wanted me to be on stage, and they wanted magically for the, I guess the CEO for her to be take over the stage, but they wanted to be like a magical switch.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: So I did some deep diving, some research, pitched a bunch of ideas.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: There were a lot of limitations with the staging and lighting where the audience was, and then I found something on the market that I could adjust just the right way, and I created it, and it's pretty darn good, and I'll keep doing it because it it landed well.
19:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:56
SPEAKER_02: Like in the martial arts, there are new techniques being created.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: Nothing is really that new.
20:01
SPEAKER_02: Humans have had the same bodies and have been fighting each other for thousands of years.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: Probably whatever you think you just invented, some Greek hit someone Phoenician over the head with.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: I mean, who knows?
20:11
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: But there is an evolution, and that evolution in martial arts has to do with the rule set.
20:16
SPEAKER_02: So it's forcing you to move in certain ways.
20:18
SPEAKER_02: We can no longer use swords, so we're, you know, whatever.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: No swords.
20:22
SPEAKER_02: Yes, no, we can use them, but we don't tend to plunge them into the chests of others.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: You guys do, but everyone gets to go home okay.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: So, you know.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: So I think that this sort of evolution happens.
20:33
SPEAKER_02: And one thing I've noticed in some of the shows I've seen you do is you have brought in some of today's technological devices.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: So that's opening up a new thing.
20:41
SPEAKER_02: Like if you can turn an iPhone or whatever into something, is that opening up new possibilities for magicians?
20:47
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you want to do magic with something that they're familiar with because if you're holding something that they've never seen or handled before, of course it might do strange and things and have magical powers.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: So they want something that is familiar.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: They're watch their wallet, their glasses, their phone, a deck of cards they've most people have handled it somewhere along the way.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: So magicians always want to use whatever is kind of current.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Now, money's going away, so we're doing less with money and other things are going away.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's really interesting.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, we're not doing magic with cigarettes and cigars as much as they did in the 60s and 70s, because that was just the common object that everybody had on them.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: It forces us to innovate, but also I love innovation.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: I love arbitrary good rules and arbitrary rules.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: And from a humor point of view, I think what a fantastic challenge is to go in this culture, in this society, in this room with this group, with these people.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: What where's the art in finding to how to make them laugh and how to entertain them and to find the funny between us?
21:43
SPEAKER_00: So I'm never someone who says it's the audience's fault or there's a wrong audience for me.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: My job is to go in and go, what do we have here?
21:50
SPEAKER_00: What can I make of this?
21:51
SPEAKER_00: How can I get a deep connection with them?
21:53
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna come back to that because I think that's important.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: And I that's a big thing that I've talked about even on the podcast in terms of beating someone.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: And fight, understanding what they want better than themselves, understand where they want to go anyway.
22:04
SPEAKER_02: That's a very important way you can defeat somebody.
22:06
SPEAKER_02: It's also a very important way you can create a partnership.
22:08
SPEAKER_02: And that's what I see you as doing is you're not trying to defeat them, you're trying to elevate their joy and your joy.
22:14
SPEAKER_02: But to do that, you need to understand where they're going, who they are, what they want, otherwise, you're not going to be successful.
22:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
22:19
SPEAKER_02: So it's another one of these connections between the martial arts.
22:21
SPEAKER_02: And to me, that's the essence of all marketing and communication.
22:24
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
22:24
SPEAKER_02: You have to speak the language of the other person.
22:26
SPEAKER_02: You have to put that effort out there.
22:27
SPEAKER_02: And I know that's a big part of what you do.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: We may come back to that.
22:30
SPEAKER_02: But on this technology thing, just out of curiosity, do you perceive audiences change based upon their age?
22:37
SPEAKER_02: Like if you have a younger audience, is that going to require a different speaking to them in some different language?
22:45
SPEAKER_00: We could go deep here.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: This could be three hours.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: So there's just decades.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: Like what worked in the 70s doesn't work in the 80s, 90s.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: So there's time periods.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: Then there's cultures, you know, different audiences.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: I would do different things.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Then there's different age groups, but then there's different regions of the country and different job titles.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: There's different things that speak to them.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: So I've got to be a chameleon and find that commonality and do that.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: But it gets really to the minutiae.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: If it's a tech group and they're from the Bay Area, what time of day is it?
23:17
SPEAKER_00: How many drinks have they had?
23:19
SPEAKER_00: It's different.
23:20
SPEAKER_02: That's a good point.
23:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Different first thing in the morning versus an afternoon session versus an after dinner session versus they're at a nightclub and there's drinks and the lights are low and there's flashing lights and there's music.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: I've got to adapt to the moment.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: You were talking about close-up magic earlier.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: When I start a close-up magic gig, there's the start and the finish, and I don't do the same material and do things the same way because the room changes.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: So I've got a little trick that if there's any magicians that find this, I'm very proud of it, especially if there's a couple magicians doing strolling close-up magic at the same gig.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: I say to the audience, I hope you enjoyed the magic.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: But before I finish the last trick, if you like the magic, would you let everybody else in the room know by cheering really loud if I get the trick right?
24:04
SPEAKER_00: So I prime them, they've in a bit of an agreement with me.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: I do the last trick and then I go a level, it goes wrong, and then it goes gets right, and it gets really big, and the room just erupts around me.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm in a room with a thousand people and I'm only entertaining five, 995 eyes go to me and go, I want to have that.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: What just happened?
24:25
SPEAKER_00: What just happened?
24:26
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: I want some of that.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: So I go to the second group, I say the same thing.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed it.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: If it works, let everybody in the room know you enjoyed it.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: They do it again.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: And then the rest of the night, I don't have to invite myself into any groups.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's going, please come to us next.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: No, please, no, we got them next, and they're fighting for me.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: It changes the room to make me the prize, the gold, the gift that they want to spend time with.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: And other magicians are like, he's not better than me.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Why do they like him so much?
24:55
SPEAKER_00: Because I asked for it.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: And then I train the room.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: And the room now is different.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: And so I have to do magic differently when they're fighting for me versus when I'm trying to win them over.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: So even moment to moment within a room.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: And who's in the crowd?
25:08
SPEAKER_00: There's going to be the the leader that everybody's looking to see how he or she reacts.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: And so if I ever get a chance to perform for the CEO of Dell, I miscall him as Bill Gates and go, you know, I'm such a big fan.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden it just takes it down and is like, okay, he can talk shit to him.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: And then once I've won that person over, everybody else is in and all that.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: But then there's the sociopath that I'm never going to win over.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: They're never going to be tricked by the magic.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: They won't fall for the misdirection because they don't follow social cues.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: They see me as an object to get somewhere to what they want.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to be tricked by me.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: So I've got to treat them differently.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: And I've got to use more manhandling physical misdirection because they're not going to look where I invite them to look.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: So I've got to read every moment.
25:52
SPEAKER_02: I know that some of your audiences are tech these days, and those people tend to be sometimes a little bit on the spectrum.
25:58
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
25:58
SPEAKER_02: Right?
25:58
SPEAKER_02: So they're not reacting exactly in the ways that I expect.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: But I present it like a puzzle.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: It's a solvable puzzle.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: And that piques their interest.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: That's what piques their interest.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes they're successful at solving and sometimes they're magic is beautiful because if I trick them, they have a fantastic time.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: If they figure it out, they have a fantastic time.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: I figured it out.
26:19
SPEAKER_02: That is very true.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: There's no losers.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: There's no losers.
26:23
SPEAKER_02: So a lot of what you're describing is, I'm sure some of it could be prepared for, but some of it is real-time adaptation.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm going to argue you do prepare for those situations.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: It's like jazz music or it's like dance or it's like improv.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: You practice over and over and over for the unknown situations so that when they happen, you're completely relaxed.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: And when they go poorly, you have options because you know exactly the best way to get a room back or now how not to lose a room.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: You practice on all that.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of magicians nowadays, especially the Spanish magicians, or some of the best in the world, what they do is they step up to a group with a deck of cards and they'll do an hour and they never know what trick they're going to do because it depends on what card they pick, it depends on what cards on the bottom of the deck.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: They change and adapt.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: So they jazz in the moment.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: So they don't go in and say I'm going to do trick A, B, C, D, and then end with Z.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: They just jazz with the room.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: So they've got such a strong repertoire that they can.
27:17
SPEAKER_02: Is there some you mentioned Spanish?
27:18
SPEAKER_02: Is there something about their culture that allows them to do that?
27:21
SPEAKER_00: There's a specific magician named Juan Tamares who just brought in a culture of sharing, loving magic, loving community, and his style is that jazz style.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: He just knows an encyclopedic, he's got an encyclopedic and he has a brain like encyclopedia.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: He has a big brain.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: His brain do good.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: His brain do good.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: And no matter what happens, he can turn it into a magical moment.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: And what's happened is that culture has been so positive and inclusive and community driven that any time a Spanish magician goes on the American TV show Penn and Teller fool us, they're gonna fool Penn and Teller because you're not just getting that magician, you're getting the whole community working together to create the to optimize for the best miracle possible.
28:08
SPEAKER_02: I gotta make the martial arts analogy again.
28:10
SPEAKER_02: People who are less experienced will have it's good to have a plan in generally in a fight in martial arts.
28:15
SPEAKER_02: Like if you are very clear on what you want, go get it.
28:17
SPEAKER_02: That's actually can be a good thing.
28:19
SPEAKER_02: But for people who are less experienced, they're gonna try the thing they're gonna try and they're gonna force it and they're gonna try to do it.
28:24
SPEAKER_02: Someone who is very good obviously can be relaxed, can adapt in the moment.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Whoa, you just came at me with more force than I thought.
28:29
SPEAKER_02: I'll adapt to that, I'll weather the storm.
28:31
SPEAKER_02: So that kind of fluency, and I think it is very much like jazz.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: People refer to Brazilian jujitsu as a chess game, right?
28:37
SPEAKER_02: Because it does have a I do this, you do that kind of thing.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: But it is very much, you know, I'm a musician, as you know.
28:43
SPEAKER_02: To me, that musical ability really lends itself to my fighting.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: It's understanding timing and going go with the flow and see what the other person is giving with you.
28:51
SPEAKER_02: I never thought of that in terms of performer because one would think, I mean, unless you are literally playing jazz, one would think you're gonna step onto a stage, you know exactly what tricks you're gonna do.
29:00
SPEAKER_02: You've got your lines, it's all very well rehearsed.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: I've never really thought about the need for a magician or someone like that to themselves be in the moment and adapt it.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: So there's different categories that will make for a strong performer, and it doesn't have to be magic, it can be any type of performer.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: And one of them is their ability to be in the moment, read the room, adapt effortlessly, and all that.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: So I've been studying improv my whole life.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a practice.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: Improv.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: Improv.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: So just to like really say the most important thing out loud.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: When you say improv, most people will get sweaty palms, go, I hate improv.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: I've seen the TV show, it's not for me.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: Most people think of that.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: That's not at all what I'm talking about.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: What they're thinking about is you gotta do characters, you gotta be funny, you gotta think fast.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: I wish there was a whole other word for it.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: I I call it applied improv.
29:47
unknown: Okay.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: I didn't clean that.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: I call it applied improv.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: Applied improv is basically learning how to be in the moment, be present, breathe, relax, connect with people, make your partner look good, take good care of yourself, fail good naturedly, learn from those mistakes, and adapt effortlessly to an ever-changing situation and letting go of mistakes and just like being happy with who you are.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: So improv is really about connecting.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: And to do that, it's a practice.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: You can't take one improv class and go, okay, now I now I can effortlessly have a conversation with anyone.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: It's something you do over and over and over and over again, and you drill, you bring it down to its minutiae.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: You can't tell somebody just be happy.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: You're like, wake up, take a shower, put on nice clothes, go outside, hang out with people you like, do something that's fun for you.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Like, you have to give them an actual steps to get to being happy.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: To be able to improvise, you've got to break it down into its smallest parts and practice it so when it happens in real life, you don't have to stop and think, okay, what am I supposed to do in this situation?
30:48
SPEAKER_00: Your body just knows.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: So when I'm on stage and a heckler heckles, I know not to shut them down because I'm a jerk.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of experience, I can shut them down very quickly.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: I'll lose the audience.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: I've got to be disrupted by it.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: The second time I gotta find them a little funny and interesting.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: Third time, I've got, okay, what's your story?
31:09
SPEAKER_00: And then the fourth time I can shut them down.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: And that is just through trial and error, practicing and realizing how to deal with a heckler.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: And it's not rote, it's not always for.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some situations are are different.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the heckler is funnier than mine, than I am, and I'm like, I'm gonna steal that joke.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: That is hilarious.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: And the only kind of hecklers that are bad hecklers are the ones that have what they're doing and saying has no context to the situation.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Right, excuse me.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: They're just drunk.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, you you gotta find a way to get the audience on your side and and and and end that.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: So this ability, you mentioned improv.
31:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is not the improv where we're gonna, you know, try to be funny.
31:47
SPEAKER_02: Try to be funny.
31:48
SPEAKER_02: How does that come to life?
31:49
SPEAKER_02: Is that still people getting together in a room and throwing out situations?
31:52
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, yeah, so they'll break it down to like non-verbal, so it's movement and verbal, so a lot of times they'll do uh nonsense language because we don't have to worry about what you're saying.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of improv is about, and you're gonna love this, it's about being okay with being wrong, making choices, being wrong, and being okay with that.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: And then once you're not scared of being bad or wrong, you can do anything.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: And one of the ways to do it is you set up situations where the improvisers will never be right, they'll always get it wrong.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: And once they realize it, the game is in the fun of playing.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: You're never gonna win.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: You're never gonna be right.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: So who cares?
32:33
SPEAKER_00: It's not scary to be wrong or bad.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: Is that letting go of pretense?
32:39
SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, or letting go of self-judgment.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Letting go of self-judgment.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: And let me go back a little bit.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: If I were to set up an improv game with you right now, your mind will probably be, I hope I get the rules right.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: So understanding the rules of the tell me what I'm supposed to do is.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: What am I supposed to do so I get it right?
32:54
SPEAKER_00: But if you've played a dozen improvs games with me and you have the aha moment that I give the rules and everybody interprets those rules differently, and however anybody interprets those rules, that's the game.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: You'll stop focusing so much on getting the rules right.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna make a choice because you know you're not gonna be wrong in this environment.
33:14
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
33:15
SPEAKER_02: And so that that type of practice allows you in your professional life to adapt and flow as well.
33:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just be in the moment.
33:21
SPEAKER_02: But I would imagine that's not limited to on stage.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: No, that's just a life scale.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: No, it's a life scale, it's a practice, it's it's a philosophy for life.
33:27
SPEAKER_02: It's funny that you say that because I think I do that.
33:29
SPEAKER_02: And we've done some of this stuff together, but I think just for whatever reason, I'm naturally uninhibited.
33:33
SPEAKER_02: I was a performer as a kid, very uninhibited, perfectly happy to go with the flow.
33:37
SPEAKER_02: I was with my wife Galina, who I think you know.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: I think I introduced you to her.
33:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so that was you who introduced me and my wife.
33:44
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
33:44
SPEAKER_02: I was gonna make a joke about so who's the next wife you're gonna introduce me to?
33:47
SPEAKER_02: But I don't think Galina will like that joke.
33:49
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, we were at a restaurant in the area where I live, and there were just a bunch of guys sitting at a table on this outdoor out of a sidewalk restaurant kind of thing.
33:57
SPEAKER_02: And it was interesting to me, like, why are like nine guys having lunch together?
34:02
SPEAKER_02: Like, what is this?
34:03
SPEAKER_02: So I just I was curious, right?
34:06
SPEAKER_02: And I think curiosity is a whole other thing we could talk about.
34:09
SPEAKER_02: So I just turned to Galena and said, What do you think their story is?
34:11
SPEAKER_02: Like, I said, I guess they probably work together.
34:14
SPEAKER_02: And then we looked at it and said, but there's no women, like it couldn't, they couldn't be all working together as guys.
34:18
SPEAKER_02: So Galina, it must be sports related, right?
34:20
SPEAKER_02: So maybe they were like a running crew or something.
34:23
SPEAKER_02: So they started to get up, and again, uninhibited, I just said, Hey you guys, excuse me, I gotta ask, what's a story here?
34:30
SPEAKER_02: My wife thinks you're some sort of a running crew, and I think that you are all adopted by a circus performer who's trained you into an amazing group of acrobats, and it just it was funny, and it became this interesting discussion.
34:41
SPEAKER_02: And it turned out they all work on a podcast, actually Dwarkesh, an AI podcast for someone who I actually know, and we have it, it was just a very funny thing.
34:49
SPEAKER_02: But it was that uninhibited, you know, just be willing to talk to someone, go with the flow kind of thing.
34:55
SPEAKER_02: I think I get that largely from martial arts and from music.
34:58
SPEAKER_02: But it's interesting to me how that's such a kind of a universal helpful principle.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: So I think some people are wired that way.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: I feel everybody can learn it.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: I think people ask me if I get nervous, I don't get nervous.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Earlier in the conversation, I said when I was 12, when I got started in magic, I just love the trick.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: So I just wanted to show people the thing I loved.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: So I didn't even cross my mind that I should be nervous.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: I had to approach anybody and everybody to show them the trick.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: And after just having a successful experience over and over and over again, being nervous never kind of came into my brain.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: There have been a couple times where there's been very high stakes.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: And I just kind of choose to turn that nervousness to excitement.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: And I also remember standing backstage at the Hermosa Magic Comedy Club in Hermosa Beach, California, about to go on stage right after Gary Shanling and the guy from the Tonight Show was backstage after Carson Leno.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: Leno, and I'm like, there's so many big names in this club right now.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing kind of high stakes and tiny little pencil print just on the proscenium stage, just before I went in.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: Somebody had written Trust Your Experience.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, I've got tens of thousands of hours doing exactly this.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: Just go out there, take a deep breath, look around, be real, connect with people, and do the thing that you can do in your sleep.
36:12
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned high stakes experiences, again, martial arts stuff, competition, absolutely, stress, all that kind of stuff.
36:19
SPEAKER_02: And where the preparation is what saves you.
36:21
SPEAKER_02: And that sounds like that's what gave you the confidence.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, was that it's the preparation.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: And also I think humor helps too.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: I think having some perspective and being able to joke about tough things.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: I think nothing's off limits for humor.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: I think there's context that you should pay attention to, but nothing's off limits.
36:36
SPEAKER_02: I remember seeing you on Penn and Teller.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Right?
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Where you were one of the people trying to fool them.
36:40
SPEAKER_02: You did a great thing.
36:41
SPEAKER_02: I and it's always it's an interesting show to me.
36:43
SPEAKER_02: If you don't watch the show, these are two great magicians, obviously, Penn and Teller, and they have this thing where they invite other magicians to come on and try to fool them.
36:52
SPEAKER_02: But the thing is, you have to trust them because they either will say, We know how you did it and didn't, but they don't tell the audience, which is a little bit unsatisfying to me, because I'm like, Well, you're saying you don't know how they did it, but you don't know that you you got it right.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: I I absolutely know when I listen to because they code it in words.
37:08
SPEAKER_02: So if they Well, they'll say something that will indicate that will tell the magician, you got me.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is they really made a safe environment for magicians to come and succeed.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: The early Americas got talent, they made all the magicians look bad through editing and just context, and they got bad magicians, and it was definitely not a safe place to go and show your magic.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: And Penn and Teller, as a reaction, said, We're gonna celebrate magic and make everyone look good and feel good.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: And I trusted that if I had a magic prop fail that was bigger, too big to save, that they would say, you know what, let's rewind the tape, let's do it again, and we'll show them the second version.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have to do that, but I trusted that they were going to take good care of me and make sure that I'm that I'm happy about the experience.
37:55
SPEAKER_02: And spoiler alert, you didn't fool them.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: I knew I wasn't gonna fool them.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I was using a method that they use, so I knew there was a good chance I wouldn't fool them.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: I knew I wouldn't.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
38:05
SPEAKER_02: But it was so fun, those too fun.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: So, Robert, you've talked about up-close magic, and is that always you're all right here and I'm, or does it also involve maybe people are behind me?
38:17
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, and there's things I can't do when people are behind me.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: So you've got to adapt to the situation.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that I think you're gonna love, well, there's two ways I can answer it.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: So, close-up magic now is done on stage often with down cameras.
38:31
SPEAKER_02: Uh whether you're looking down at the person's hands, yeah.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: And then it's projected up on the screen so people can see that.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: But when you're in person and you're seeing the magic, there are times when people can be behind you and that's okay, and there are times they can't be.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: But the thing that I think you're gonna love talking about is something called audience management.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: It's something that magicians think about a lot.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: What you're doing is you're optimizing for your success by managing the audience.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: The obvious one is if you're in a room and you get there before the audience sits down and there's chairs behind the magician, you move the chairs.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: If the audience, there's a big dance floor between you and the audience, you move the chairs onto the dance floor so that they're close.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: You do a theater style, so as many people are close to behave like a group.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: So you change the environment to get the result you want.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: But even one-on-one close-up magic, you gotta go, you come over here and see this, you hold this.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a great way to move somebody from a bad spot is you come over here and hold this.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: This needs to be over here, and you manage the situation so you get the result you want.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: So but also making it invisible to them so they don't realize the reason is to hide the secret.
39:32
SPEAKER_02: Right.
39:33
SPEAKER_02: I know.
39:33
SPEAKER_02: Well, basically, what I'm getting from this, and I'm sure everybody watching this is getting, is just don't trust you for anything.
39:38
SPEAKER_02: If you touch me, if you ask for anything, there's some evil motive behind it.
39:42
SPEAKER_02: Yes, and also not evil, you want to just make sure we have a good time.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but also when a magician is doing magic, usually it's like, okay, everybody needs your attention.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do a trick.
39:50
SPEAKER_02: Right.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: So I'm typically not doing that when you're eating or walking or not giving me your attention because your attention's on something else, you won't experience the magic if your attention's not on me.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: So typically you know.
40:02
SPEAKER_02: Right.
40:03
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so but what's the difference between the up close and a big performance?
40:08
SPEAKER_02: Let's just say in a big room.
40:09
SPEAKER_02: I understand if it's TV, the cameras can do the up-close for you, like you're saying, there's a forget the cameras.
40:14
SPEAKER_02: But how does it play differently?
40:16
SPEAKER_02: You're thinking on up close versus I got an audience in an auditorium or something I'm gonna entertain.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: When they're up close, a lot of the feedback I get is I didn't think I would be fooled by an up close magician.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: Seeing it up close, oh my goodness, I realize even I could be fooled.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: So they assume it's something that, like, oh, it tricks other people, but when it happens to them, they're like, oh no, I can be misdirected, I can be tricked.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: So there's a feeling of like it's personal, it's one-on-one.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: They feel the magic, they're skeptical that they would, they think they're smart, they won't fall for it, but they do.
40:49
unknown: Right.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: And then the stage one is typically bigger tricks that plays bigger so that people don't experience it.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times people are moving towards mentalism or mind reading, and then you're not carrying physical props, but the magic happens only in your head.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: So there's three kinds of magic: there's optical illusions, visual illusions, and cognitive illusions.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: And the mind reading always falls in the category of solely cognitive illusions.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: It's not a visual trick that it's not how your eyes see the world and then connect to the brain when your brain perceives it.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: You're creating an experience in the brain that didn't actually happen.
41:21
SPEAKER_02: Not to put you on the spot, but can you give an example of some kind of a mentalism trick that you think would play well for a podcast?
41:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: I can.
41:31
SPEAKER_00: Let me grab a deck of cards.
41:33
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
41:34
SPEAKER_02: Robert's just gone off to get something.
41:36
SPEAKER_02: I have no idea what he's going to do, but I can tell you, because I've known him for years, that get ready to have your mind blown, whatever it is that's going to happen.
41:44
SPEAKER_02: I almost wish I could take this advantage of the fact that he's out of the room to do something to mess with his chair or something like that.
41:50
SPEAKER_02: But let's see what he brings back.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: Okay, here we are back.
41:54
SPEAKER_02: Go ahead and let's see how this works for a podcast.
41:57
SPEAKER_02: Magic me.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: This is the world's fastest card trick.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: Name a playing card, any card at all, say it out loud.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: A seven of hearts.
42:04
SPEAKER_03: You want to change your mind?
42:06
SPEAKER_03: No.
42:11
SPEAKER_03: There is one card upside down on the deck.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: You said the seven of hearts.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: No, come on.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: Do not be telling me.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: Do not be telling me this.
42:23
SPEAKER_01: This was not planned.
42:25
SPEAKER_01: People, friends, people watching this, this was completely unplanned.
42:30
SPEAKER_02: Name a different card.
42:31
SPEAKER_02: We have our podcast editor who's here off of camera right now, Ryan Peach Turner.
42:37
SPEAKER_02: Ryan, name a card.
42:38
SPEAKER_02: Three of diamonds.
42:39
SPEAKER_02: He said a three of diamonds.
42:46
SPEAKER_02: There's a card that's upside down.
42:49
SPEAKER_04: No way.
42:50
SPEAKER_04: What?
42:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you, no way.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: This is not possible.
42:57
SPEAKER_01: This is not possible.
42:59
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if we're going to be able to keep that in for the audio, but if we if we it is, just trust me that Robert fanned through cards, all of which were face up.
43:07
SPEAKER_02: There was one clearly face down, both times for me and Ryan.
43:11
SPEAKER_02: He turned it up and it was the card we said, this is not possible.
43:14
SPEAKER_02: I gotta pinch myself.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: Would you confirm that this is a random number generator?
43:20
SPEAKER_00: Meaning it said six-sided dice.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: There's six different numbers there.
43:24
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so for the audio listening friends, he's handed me some sort of a Dixie cup with a standard six-sided die.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Let me just check.
43:32
SPEAKER_02: One, two, three, four, five, six.
43:35
SPEAKER_02: It is a normal.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: Place your hand on top, give a shake, shake, shake, and only you see what numbers face up just by peeking.
43:43
SPEAKER_02: I have peaked, I see the number, no other person.
43:47
SPEAKER_01: Do it again.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: Hang on, just for the people who are on camera here.
43:52
SPEAKER_02: Do it again, do it again.
43:54
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
43:55
SPEAKER_02: And again, for the camera, for anyone who's looking, this appears to be a normal die.
44:00
SPEAKER_02: One through six.
44:01
SPEAKER_02: I'm placing it in the normal cup.
44:04
SPEAKER_02: I'm putting it in the cup.
44:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm shaking it around, shaking it around, shaking it around.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: Face up?
44:09
SPEAKER_02: I am peaking.
44:10
SPEAKER_02: I now know what it is.
44:12
SPEAKER_02: What's that?
44:13
SPEAKER_00: You're not happy because it's the same number.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: Do another one.
44:15
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
44:16
SPEAKER_02: We'll do it again.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: You can tell he wasn't happy.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: Look.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: Are you happy?
44:21
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: With that one number?
44:23
SPEAKER_00: The number one?
44:24
SPEAKER_02: And I'm taking it out, and it is.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: This is one more one.
44:28
SPEAKER_00: One more, one more time.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: Give a shake, shake, shake.
44:31
SPEAKER_00: Only you get to see the number that's faced up.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: You look at the top number.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at it.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: You know it?
44:37
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: You're so not happy again.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: Get a new one.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: It's number two.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: It was number two.
44:45
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I see it.
44:48
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
44:48
SPEAKER_02: Four.
44:50
SPEAKER_02: It is number four.
44:52
SPEAKER_02: Okay, enough.
44:53
SPEAKER_02: Enough of this.
44:55
SPEAKER_02: Oh, is there more?
44:56
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
44:57
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
44:58
SPEAKER_02: Well, so that's weird.
45:00
SPEAKER_02: You've impressed me and you've impressed our audience for anyone who doesn't believe that there's been collusion here, which there isn't, but it does bring up another question I wanted to ask you.
45:07
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
45:08
SPEAKER_02: One of the things you're currently working on is AI, what's it called?
45:14
SPEAKER_02: Speak about AI.
45:15
SPEAKER_02: Speak about AI.
45:15
SPEAKER_02: So, real quickly tell me what speak about AI is, and then I want to speak about AI in a second.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'll do it in a story that has some pins in it, and it'll all come together at the end.
45:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay, talk to me.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: 10 plus years ago, as part of Wonderfest, we brought in Peter Norvik, who's an expert on AI and wrote the textbook on AI.
45:34
SPEAKER_02: Wonderfest is an event that happens in San Francisco.
45:36
SPEAKER_00: It's a nonprofit.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm on the board there.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: It brings science education to everyone.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: It's the events are also on YouTube.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: And he spoke about AI when the movie Her came out.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: So I met him.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: The next year, my wife gets a job near Palo Alto.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: We moved to Palo Alto.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: And Peter Norvig is one of the early guys at Google.
45:53
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: And he writes a textbook every couple years on AI.
45:56
SPEAKER_00: So anybody who studied AI reads his book.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: Right.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: So Yvonne, my wife, moves to Palo Alto and I, and she gets a dog.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: It's a Taiwanese street dog.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: It's Doug, and has a quirky personality, doesn't always like playing with other dogs but loves other Taiwanese street dogs.
46:13
SPEAKER_00: Coincidentally, Peter turns out to be my neighbor, and a week later he adopts a Taiwanese street dog.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: So I'm doing doggy play dates with the guy who wrote the textbook on AI.
46:21
SPEAKER_02: By the way, those of you watching this who don't know, I created adoptapet.com, very into pet adoption, and this is why I don't kill Robert.
46:28
SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: So put a pin in that story.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: Nine years ago, I became friends with Adam Cire.
46:34
SPEAKER_00: He's the co-founder of Siri, the voice assistant.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: And he's the biggest magic enthusiast in the world.
46:39
SPEAKER_00: So we're seeing magic shows talking magic, and I'm meeting his AI friends.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: Three and a half years ago, ChatGPT drops, and the entire world can't stop thinking and talking about AI.
46:52
SPEAKER_00: And they are starting to get more inquiries than is reasonable.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: And as a magician, I'm already putting magicians into tech conferences at trade shows doing tech magic.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: And I can do the contracting, the invoicing, the collections, I can do the AV, the tech, the travel, and all that.
47:08
SPEAKER_00: So I talked to them and about the idea of starting a speaker bureau.
47:12
SPEAKER_00: They like the idea, so I launched Speak About AI, and I've got 85 speakers on my roster, people that are deep knowledge experts at the intersection of AI and agriculture, AI and healthcare, AI and retail, manufacturing, manufacturing, aerospace, you name it.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: I've got an AI expert.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: So that is a whole other company that I run.
47:31
SPEAKER_02: So if somebody is interested has an event and they want to have someone talk about some aspect of AI, that's your speaker's view.
47:37
SPEAKER_02: They come to you, you set it up.
47:38
SPEAKER_02: They come to me, I set it up, and it's all people that I've met through my friendships.
47:42
SPEAKER_02: All right, beautiful.
47:43
SPEAKER_02: Well, so we'll have links to that.
47:44
SPEAKER_02: But the reason I bring it up is you just did a trick, it's two tricks in two feet away from me.
47:50
SPEAKER_02: I know they happened, but I foresee a time where anything that's on that two-dimensional screen, people are going to start to question, right?
47:58
SPEAKER_02: Because of AI.
47:58
SPEAKER_02: It's just like every picture, every video, every voice.
48:01
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you just don't know what's real anymore.
48:04
SPEAKER_02: And I wonder how that's going to impact magic because so much of magic is this awe and amazing.
48:08
SPEAKER_02: But with AI, you could create anything you want, and you look like you're watching a TV show or someone looks like they're watching a podcast on YouTube and it isn't real.
48:16
SPEAKER_02: What do you foresee happening in the world of magic where things that transfer over a screen just aren't believed anymore, anyway?
48:24
SPEAKER_02: Does it become all close-up magic for real?
48:27
SPEAKER_02: Or what do you think is happening here?
48:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't see a direct line where AI is going to replace magicians, but I do think that people are going to need more in-person experiences so that they can see it with their own senses and have that feeling and that experience.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: I think when I do magic that I'm saying is AI, it's actually analog.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: It's a lie.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: So I'm using sleight of hand to pull off a trick that I call AI.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: You mean if you're creating a video, for example.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: If I'm doing a magic trick and I say how I'm doing this is I'm using AI, that's a lie.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: But when you say that, that wouldn't be saying to someone in the room.
48:58
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: You're saying if you're doing it on over a video or over in person, it could be.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: In person, if I'm doing a trick, I'm saying the method I'm using to do this is AI.
49:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
49:07
SPEAKER_00: That's a lie.
49:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm using analog sleight of hand methods.
49:09
SPEAKER_00: However, the corollary is true too.
49:12
SPEAKER_00: If I am actually using AI in the method of the trick, I want them to think it's analog.
49:16
SPEAKER_00: That it's sleight of hand.
49:17
SPEAKER_02: What would be an example of AI in an in-person trick?
49:20
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
49:21
SPEAKER_00: So if I open up an iPad, oh, I see.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: And I say, pick any of these objects and you choose an orange, I pull an orange out of the iPad.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: AI is not really manufacturing that orange, I'm doing sleight of hand, which is analog.
49:36
SPEAKER_04: Right.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: However, if I'm tapping into Chat GPT while I'm on stage doing a mentalism trick, they don't know it.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: They think I'm using sleight of hand misdirection and that method.
49:45
SPEAKER_00: So that's the first.
49:46
SPEAKER_00: However, what most of us are doing are using an AI story or theme because we want to do magic that's relevant, new, and modern.
49:54
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of times I'll talk about AI while doing the magic.
49:58
SPEAKER_00: AI might be the metaphor.
50:00
SPEAKER_02: Right.
50:00
SPEAKER_02: So you're not too concerned that people will be basically trained.
50:04
SPEAKER_02: Like, like for example, I don't particularly like social media.
50:06
SPEAKER_02: And one of the reasons I don't like social media is it's just endless, you know, in a very short attention span, but also just because I just don't believe a lot of it.
50:14
SPEAKER_02: And increasingly now I see things that just look like that's not true.
50:17
SPEAKER_02: Like, no, that that that person did not save that shark from that net or something like that.
50:22
SPEAKER_02: That is an AI manufactured.
50:24
SPEAKER_02: My sense of awe is going down because my first reaction now when I see something on a screen or on a TV that looks unbelievable to me is it's fake.
50:33
SPEAKER_00: So the first thought I have is I'm disheartened by the how easy it is to trick and fool people when I have a front row seat to see that.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: When I do magic with the wrong story, people can think that I can predict the future or talk to ghosts or have intuition.
50:51
SPEAKER_00: And when those people believe that, even exposing the magic and saying I don't have it and all that, they double down, triple down more and they believe it.
50:59
SPEAKER_00: So one of the things I struggle with is I want to do magic where people leave smarter and they have better critical thinking skills.
51:05
SPEAKER_00: I think that's even more important now in a time of misinformation and all that.
51:09
SPEAKER_00: I just don't really know how to solve it yet because there's not a big market for people that want to learn how to have better, yeah, think better and have critical thinking skills.
51:18
SPEAKER_00: So I haven't solved that and I'm very frustrated, and I want to work with people on how to get people to use their brain to draw better conclusions and find facts as opposed to being in a cult and falling for misinformation.
51:34
SPEAKER_02: I have also like you've been involved in the Silicon Valley AI year long before people ever heard of what AI is, and have been hearing people saying the alerts about it, like saying, hey, this is big, this could be bad.
51:45
SPEAKER_02: Can't be bad, can't be good, it's another tool, but certainly the value of interpersonal interactions, which I think is already important.
51:52
SPEAKER_02: So many people spend young people, especially so much time on their phone, they're just not getting human interaction.
51:57
SPEAKER_02: Another reason why I love jujitsu, right?
51:59
SPEAKER_02: You're not gonna AI that one, like you're on the mat, interpersonal physical reactions, but also the ability to critically think and not just believe what you're seeing and not become cynical necessarily.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: So you're going into a really great place.
52:11
SPEAKER_00: The amazing Randy was a magician who debunked psychics.
52:14
SPEAKER_00: So the skeptic magician, skeptic is a bad word and probably not the best one to use, but it is magic is also often framed as even the smart people are easy to be tricked and fooled.
52:27
SPEAKER_00: So be skeptical about your own brain that you can fall for misinformation so easily.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: So magicians with their tricks are often used to demonstrate, yeah, we're very susceptible to poor memory, drawing wrong conclusions.
52:42
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's funny that you mentioned that.
52:43
SPEAKER_02: You know the exploratorium very well.
52:45
SPEAKER_02: Yes, the exploratorium is this amazing experiential science museum in San Francisco.
52:50
SPEAKER_02: It's classic, it's been around for a million years, it's fantastic.
52:53
SPEAKER_02: My brother Bill, as you know, used to be one of their lead exhibit designers.
52:57
SPEAKER_02: And anyone who has not been to San Francisco and gone to the exploratorium, you gotta do it.
53:01
SPEAKER_02: You could spend days in there.
53:03
SPEAKER_02: And it's good for kids and it's good for adults.
53:05
SPEAKER_02: So it's all of these things, and they there are these weird things that you can touch and do and see, very experiential, and then it explains to you here's what's happening.
53:14
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of that is like weird things about how your sight can be easily fooled and your hearing is wrong.
53:20
SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to give any of them away because if you go there, but there's some very, very famous ones, including like watching a video and not really seeing what's happening on the video.
53:27
SPEAKER_02: Very famous things, and it did have that experience for me exactly, is you walk away humbled, right?
53:33
SPEAKER_02: And realizing, like, wow, when I think I saw something, but I now understand how why I might not see that, or I thought I heard something.
53:41
SPEAKER_02: You know, one of them, just a random example, there's a million exhibits like this, but one of them is a video that plays, and the person is saying bah with a B A, B A, B A, right?
53:53
SPEAKER_02: But what is playing over the auditory, what you're hearing, is them saying da, D-A, D A.
54:00
SPEAKER_02: And when you close your eyes, you can hear it's da with a D.
54:04
SPEAKER_02: And as soon as you open your eyes and you're watching their face and seeing their lips that are making the B sound, your ears are hearing ba.
54:13
SPEAKER_02: And you can close your eyes, open your eyes, close your eyes, open your eyes.
54:15
SPEAKER_00: I can give you an example of that.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: In that.
54:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
54:17
SPEAKER_00: So that's that concept is called sound synchronicity.
54:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
54:20
SPEAKER_00: When you sync something you see with something you hear, your brain wants it to make sense and not to be incongruent.
54:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
54:27
SPEAKER_00: So it makes it make sense.
54:29
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you an example.
54:31
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
54:35
SPEAKER_03: I have a bag.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: There's a bunch of orange rubber bands.
54:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take out a rubber band, and I am going to break it.
54:45
SPEAKER_02: Robert has just held a rubber band and pulled it apart and broke it.
54:48
SPEAKER_02: And now he has just reassembled it.
54:51
SPEAKER_02: It's now okay.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: So, what's happening here is through the big motion hides the small motion.
54:56
SPEAKER_00: That's a really great misdirection thing.
54:58
SPEAKER_00: What I'm doing is I'm doing something that your brain can't record.
55:01
SPEAKER_00: In front of you, I am taking the rubber band and folding it so it looks like it's a new loop.
55:05
SPEAKER_00: But when I hide it under a big motion, your brain just doesn't see it and it sees something familiar, it looks like a rubber band.
55:11
SPEAKER_00: And what I this is the important part, I am just plucking that rubber band, making a musical instrument sound that sounds like a breaking rubber band.
55:19
SPEAKER_00: That convinces us it's snapped.
55:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, your brain has heard that a hundred times before, so the synchronicity is oh, the rubber band's broken.
55:26
SPEAKER_00: Now you have a false memory.
55:27
SPEAKER_00: Your brain records a memory of seeing a rubber band break.
55:32
SPEAKER_00: The reality is, is I just made the sound and did a similar motion.
55:38
SPEAKER_02: Right.
55:39
SPEAKER_00: And it never actually broke.
55:40
SPEAKER_02: The rubber hand.
55:41
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
55:41
SPEAKER_02: We've got to put you up as a live exhibit in the exploratorium.
55:44
SPEAKER_02: But the point I was making on that was it leaves you humbled, right?
55:49
SPEAKER_02: And I think in a good way, because it makes you realize, hey, you know, just don't trust, you know, be more open to other things.
55:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is very true in the court of law, for example.
55:59
SPEAKER_02: Someone says, I saw that person do that.
56:00
SPEAKER_02: You can say that if you saw that, but understand the thing you saw, the angle you saw may not be right, and you may not be remembering it right.
56:08
SPEAKER_02: And so just don't be so sure that everything you think and see is right.
56:12
SPEAKER_02: They say saying is believing, and it is, but you've got to be willing to say, you know what, I might be wrong.
56:19
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a good for everyone to understand.
56:21
SPEAKER_02: So you come with more skepticism.
56:22
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
56:23
SPEAKER_00: And also understanding how the brain works is it's just so fallible, and the memory is so imperfect.
56:28
SPEAKER_00: And I have lots of personal experiences with that, but I also create those experiences for other people.
56:32
SPEAKER_00: So I'm highly aware of it.
56:34
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, even in magic, there are people that don't even understand how fallible their own brain is and fall for some really terrible misinformation.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: Again, you would think they would be a little sharper on that.
56:44
SPEAKER_02: People are people, people are people or people, but yeah, the exploratorium, that was definitely what I left with, which is the brain is fallible.
56:52
SPEAKER_02: These things you think are immutable, your mind is constantly trying to make sense of things, right?
56:57
SPEAKER_02: It's a shelter in a sense.
56:59
SPEAKER_02: I mentioned my brother Bill, he had done a deep dive into lucid dreaming.
57:04
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
57:04
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
57:05
SPEAKER_02: And lucid dreaming for our people who are watching, listening, who don't know, is when you are in a dream and you are dreaming, but you become aware that you are asleep and you are dreaming, but you didn't wake up, which is an amazing thing to happen.
57:18
SPEAKER_02: Because if that happens to you, you can now say, Well, I guess maybe I can fly and you can do these things because it's a dream.
57:23
SPEAKER_02: Anything goes, but you're still dreaming, but you haven't woke up.
57:26
SPEAKER_02: And his interest in lucid dreaming, it even worked for a while to create a machine, something you could kind of hook up to yourself that would make it more likely that you would lucid dream.
57:34
SPEAKER_02: Because everyone wants this experience if they can't.
57:35
SPEAKER_02: That's what they're going after with drugs a lot of the time.
57:38
SPEAKER_02: So I want this feeling of just changing my reality.
57:41
SPEAKER_02: But his real reason, his real interest in it, comes from sort of Buddhist, deep Buddhist text, where dreams are a big thing in certain sects of Buddhism.
57:50
SPEAKER_02: It's part of your consciousness, right?
57:53
SPEAKER_02: And our mind is our sort of our reality filter.
57:58
SPEAKER_02: When you are in a lucid dream, if you care to observe what is happening in your dream, you are in the filter.
58:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
58:05
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing it's filtering.
58:06
SPEAKER_02: You're not getting any visual input, your eyes are closed, you're not getting any auditory input.
58:10
SPEAKER_02: And yet the filter is going wild because you're in a dream and you're aware of it, and it's this filter.
58:15
SPEAKER_02: And most people are not thinking of their mind as a reality generator, right?
58:20
SPEAKER_02: They're thinking of it as just my eyes show me the reality, my ears get the reality, but it's not.
58:25
SPEAKER_02: Your mind is a reality generator, and it's trying to make sense of any inputs it has, but it doesn't even need inputs.
58:31
SPEAKER_02: That's what dreams are.
58:32
SPEAKER_00: So I'm a reality engineer because I am engineering experiences.
58:36
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
58:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
58:37
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
58:38
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I could just go on all day about all the crazy things that are at the exploratorium that are these similar things.
58:43
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's actually one that's not even a mind-bending thing, it's just it's more a physics of the body thing that really impresses me that my martial arts friends will remember.
58:52
SPEAKER_02: My brother actually created this exhibit.
58:55
SPEAKER_02: And turns out when someone touches your toe, touches your hand, you feel it because of an electrical impulse that goes to your brain.
59:01
SPEAKER_02: But that has to cover a distance.
59:03
SPEAKER_02: And so you sit in a chair and you sit up against this little device that's going to tap your shoulder.
59:10
SPEAKER_02: And your foot is in a thing where the little device is going to tap your ankle.
59:15
SPEAKER_02: And you turn a little dial that can make them tap out of sync or in sync.
59:21
SPEAKER_02: And when you turn the dial and get them tapping in sync, where I can tell you for sure my shoulder tap occurred at the same time as my leg tap, there's a little screen showing you how out of sync they are.
59:32
SPEAKER_02: Because of course, the leg tap takes longer to get to your brain than the shoulder tap, which is closer to your head.
59:38
SPEAKER_02: And then when you put them in sync on the screen where it's telling you they are happening at the same time, you can perceive it's going bup up, bup, bup.
59:45
SPEAKER_02: And it makes me wonder about, you know, if we start sparring, I'm getting all this tactile information.
59:50
SPEAKER_02: But wait, my when you touch my foot, that's getting to my head later than when you touch it.
59:55
SPEAKER_00: The brain is just so fast at adapting, though, that it doesn't make very wrong.
59:58
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't feel wrong.
59:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_02: Anyway.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so anything else you want to say about how fallible brains are?
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just go through life being very skeptical of what you experience because you are very easily tricked and fooled.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: And watch the video of any of those magic tricks and you'll see David's reaction and you'll know.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_02: So you mentioned you've been actually teaching at Google.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_02: Do you still teach magic at Google?
1:00:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't officially teach anymore, but I get brought in for special events.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_02: Does teaching magic affected your view of magic at all?
1:00:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_00: So in 2014, I was asked to be a magic teacher at Google, and I had no interest in being a magic teacher, nor did I think I'd be very good at it, nor did I have any real experience at it.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_00: And what I did was is I took the job because I didn't want my competition to have it.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_00: I thought here's an opportunity to have 20 students a week, different Googlers, to give me ability to book other gigs and other jobs, which it did.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: And it didn't take very long for me to actually fall in love with the teaching of magic.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_00: I got stronger and stronger at each iteration.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_00: They gave very good feedback and I adapted.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_00: And what I was always trying to do is I was trying to connect what they learned from the magic class to how they could apply it to giving presentations, to being a leader, to creating a fun culture, to have it in their product or solution, or just in everyday interactions to connect better with people.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_00: So I used magic as a metaphor, which led to exactly the book that I'm writing, which is The Magic Mindset, The 18 Traits of Great Magicians and Great Leaders.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_00: There's definitely more traits than 18, but just like you can apply traits from the clueless warrior to just like you can apply traits to the ageless warrior to life, I'm applying what I've learned as a magician to life.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_00: So tell me about the book.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_00: The book.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a hundred pages.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_00: The book itself does a magic trick, but you can pick it up, open it to any page, read that page, learn a lesson, close it, put it down, and forget about it for a week, and then pick up the book and do it again.
1:01:59
SPEAKER_00: But I'm hoping people hold on to the book because it actually does a trick for other people, which is really cool.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_02: Well, okay, so you showed me a PDF of it.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_02: Got a lot of really great stuff.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_02: It may or may not be available by the time this interview comes out.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_02: We will certainly have a link to it.
1:02:14
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure it can be pre-ordered.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_02: And there's a keynote that you've been giving.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_02: Does that tie into the book as well?
1:02:19
SPEAKER_00: So the magic mindset is the keynote, the book is the magic mindset, the PowerPoint presentation is that, and then the magic I do is part of that.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_00: And the idea is that there's one cohesive experience with a website and everything.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_00: So the thing I'm working on, and I'll tip it now, and hopefully people get to see and experience it, is in the hour-long show, the five tricks that I do that goes along with the keynote, there's a big reveal at the end, like the movie The Sixth Sense, where there's a twist ending.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_00: The magic never actually happened.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_00: It only happened in their brains.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_00: So is this a video people can see?
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: Not yet.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_00: They have to actually experience it live.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_00: So the if you see the magic mindset keynote, the five tricks I do there all never actually happened.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_02: Is that keynote online somewhere?
1:03:03
SPEAKER_02: Oh no, that's I see, I understand.
1:03:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, not yet.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_02: So, and for those of you who don't go to corporate events like Robert and I do, the keynote is like the main speaker usually at a conference, like the keynote event, the one thing where the event is.
1:03:15
SPEAKER_02: Specificone for the whole event.
1:03:16
SPEAKER_02: So incidentally, if there's anybody out there in my audience that is looking for a keynote or any kind of a speaker or is running trade shows and wants to draw people to their booth, this is all this is what you do.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_02: On the trade show stuff, drawing people to the booth.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_02: I was thinking of that when you were talking about controlling the room and being one of many roving magicians and getting everybody to clap really loud.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_02: And like, that is essentially what you want on the trade show, right?
1:03:39
SPEAKER_02: You want people to be drawn to the the company wants people to come to the booth, and that's I assume why they have you there.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing is they want the booth to get people, then they want their message communicated.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_00: But most importantly, they want the people in the audience to be qualified to find who the buyers are so that the salespeople get in conversations with the right people.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be a hundred thousand people at a trade show, but there's only a few specific people they need to talk to.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_00: It's my job to identify those people.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing, like anything, I break it down to the tiniest little parts.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_00: No one's gonna stop for a magic trick.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_00: But I do a pattern disrupt, I ring a bell, everybody looks up and I say, Come over, here's a ticket.
1:04:13
SPEAKER_00: I put a ticket in the hand.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_00: They don't even know what the ticket's for.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_00: It's an anchor so that they don't leave.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a promise of something in the future.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_00: And then once they get the ticket in their hand, I start to do magic with the ticket and do magic with them and all that.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_00: Now I've got their attention and I get them to make a lot of noise so that it attracts other people because people want to be part of the party and where it's fun.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_00: And once people are there and you do the magic trick, they can't look at their phone, they can't be on a tablet, they can't be on a computer, you've got their full focus of attention.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_00: That's when you give the product messaging so that it sticks, it's associated with the trick, they remember it, but then you ask qualifying questions.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_00: Who's here a cloud architect?
1:04:46
SPEAKER_00: Who here is in charge of security at their company, and all that.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_00: Anybody who raised their hand, I got a gift for you.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_00: I want you to meet our sales team.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_00: So that's my job is to get the buyers in conversations with the sales team.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_02: You are a clever fellow.
1:04:59
SPEAKER_02: So just before I let you go, you've been super generous with your time.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_02: And more importantly, Doug the dog has been super generous with your time because I'm sure he has plans for you today.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_02: Number one is the can.
1:05:09
SPEAKER_02: Oh, number one and number two, exactly.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say I have animals, and they refer to me when I'm not around as the can opener.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_02: That's who I am.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_02: Hey, when's the can opener coming home?
1:05:18
SPEAKER_00: I am the dog walker, yes.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_02: When I met you, in fact, the way in which you met Galena, who you introduced to me, became my wife was dancing.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:05:26
SPEAKER_02: And uh, you've already talked a little bit about improv, which was something that you were very into certainly back then.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_02: But dancing, you're a rubber.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about partner dancing, ballroom dancing.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_02: It's uh salsa, swing, blues, tango, all that partner dancing, and you were known as like really great at it.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_02: Like fun.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I was great at it, I was really fun at it.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's actually funny that you mentioned that because every time I was somewhere with a woman, like I brought a friend or something like that, and I would say, Go dance with Robert, they would come back just on cloud nine, like you were such a good lead, and they didn't even have to know how to dance.
1:05:58
SPEAKER_02: It's a lie.
1:05:59
SPEAKER_02: I was not a good lead.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_00: Dancing with them the way they wanted to dance.
1:06:02
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so talk to me about dance and how dance fits into all this because I gotta think it does.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_00: So for the Ageless Warrior, the first thing is my definition of dance is moving to the music with a partner in a way that is fun and safe for both of you.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_00: So first of all, you're moving with other people moving a constantly changing environment that you have to adapt to, but you're also keeping them at the edge of their balance while keeping them safe.
1:06:25
SPEAKER_00: Because if they're fully on their balance, they're not moving.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_00: They're not moving.
1:06:29
SPEAKER_00: And if they're moving and off their balance, that's unfun and not safe.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_00: One of the things I think I've said to you when we've walked down an alley in San Francisco is I I probably wouldn't be the worst at fighting, even though I have zero training, because I have a really good understanding of where people's center balance is and how to take them to the edge.
1:06:46
SPEAKER_00: And all I have to do is take them off the edge to maybe succeed if they're not well trained.
1:06:52
SPEAKER_00: Dancing, to me, there ceases to be a leader and a follower.
1:06:55
SPEAKER_00: What's happening is you're moving to the music.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_00: I think of it as like a ream of paper.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_00: It's 500 sheets, it's substantial, but each individual slice of paper is not very much.
1:07:03
SPEAKER_00: So all I do is I make a gentle, subtle, even micro movement of would you like to?
1:07:09
SPEAKER_00: And they have three options.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_00: No thanks.
1:07:11
SPEAKER_00: I would love to, or yeah, but my way.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_00: So if I make this little thin offer of would you like to?
1:07:18
SPEAKER_00: And they go, sure, but my way, I go, okay.
1:07:20
SPEAKER_00: And then I have three options.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_00: No thanks.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to, or yeah, but my way.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_00: And so what ends up happening is there ceases to be a leader and follower, and you're just creating to the music by moving.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's being very relaxed, it's being very comfortable in your body, it's having a good friend, so there's good communication and being able to just co-create these movements.
1:07:40
SPEAKER_00: And we're doing it to work together as a partner, not to take someone down.
1:07:44
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
1:07:44
SPEAKER_00: But I think that when you have this like super awareness of where you are in space and you can move with lots of other couples moving in different directions and not run into them.
1:07:52
SPEAKER_00: And if you do run into them, being able to apologize, adapt in real time.
1:07:57
SPEAKER_00: I think dancing is a great metaphor and also a way to get into your physicality and great way to connect with people.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_02: And apparently to meet people.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, to meet people too.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_02: I love to dance.
1:08:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm not a trained dancer, I'm just a have fun dancer.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_02: And by that I mean partner dancing.
1:08:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:08:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:08:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm not it's fine to just sit and just dance on your own.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you, if we interviewed a thousand people that would dance with you, if they had to choose between someone who's technically good and someone that's fun, they're all gonna choose fun.
1:08:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the majority of them are.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_00: So it's not it's not about knowing the moves, it's not about being technically right.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_00: It's about being someone that's delightful to dance with.
1:08:30
SPEAKER_02: And I think part of that is your improv.
1:08:32
SPEAKER_02: It's okay if you make a mistake, not having self-consciousness.
1:08:34
SPEAKER_00: You make a mistake, you make the same mistake two more times.
1:08:36
SPEAKER_00: It's now like jazz.
1:08:37
SPEAKER_00: It's a new move.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_00: It's a new riff.
1:08:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
1:08:39
SPEAKER_02: That's very, very funny.
1:08:40
SPEAKER_02: And that is true with jazz too.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_02: You make a clunker, but if you play it three times, it's just a really cool sounding thing that you've turned into something.
1:08:46
SPEAKER_02: No, that's very true.
1:08:47
SPEAKER_02: So as a martial artist who looks at the dance, because I can't help, but I'm like, how would you sweep someone off balance?
1:08:53
SPEAKER_02: Because we're basically in a near hip throw constantly, which is a judo term.
1:08:58
SPEAKER_02: It is about managing your space on the floor itself so you don't run into other people.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_00: But let's be clear, this is not choreographed.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_00: You're not like you and the partner rehearsing the same moves over and over again and do the same dance.
1:09:07
SPEAKER_00: What you're doing is you're co-creating in the moment.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_00: And to do that, you're not saying, okay, now I'm gonna dip you.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_00: You've got to take them off their center of gravity and lead them into a dip that's fun and safe.
1:09:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you taught me a dip.
1:09:19
SPEAKER_02: It's the one dip I still use.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_02: And but it really is about leading them into a place where they can turn, and you have created a frame that will support their weight.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_02: It's not gonna be a problem for you.
1:09:28
SPEAKER_02: So you're not gonna go hitting the ground for you.
1:09:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna hurt my back either, yeah.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_02: You're not gonna hurt your back, exactly.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_02: You've got to protect yourself.
1:09:34
SPEAKER_00: Can I apologize for a really great story?
1:09:35
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_00: I was performing for Intel and I was on this five foot stage, and I was doing this really dramatic mind reading and mentalism, and so my back was turned to my volunteer, and I had 500 people in the audience, and I was not looking at her, and I tracked all the eyes of the audience.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_00: She fainted.
1:09:53
SPEAKER_00: She was gonna fall off the stage.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_00: Because I was tracking their eyes and I'd been dancing five days a week, and it was just in my body.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_00: I turned and moved her into a dip until she became awake, and then we called for EMTs and took her away and all that.
1:10:06
SPEAKER_00: We didn't finish the routine, of course.
1:10:08
SPEAKER_00: But it was one of those things, it's like when you practice and practice, practice, you also have this awareness of where everybody else's gaze and attention is, and she didn't fall on the ground or off the stage.
1:10:19
SPEAKER_00: I never got to tell that story before, but I was thinking warriors would probably love that.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_02: Yes, we would.
1:10:23
SPEAKER_02: There's two skills you're talking about there is your being able to see what other people are looking at, so you're aware of them, and then you're having a move ready to catch somebody who is basically falling.
1:10:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah to safe, you know.
1:10:33
SPEAKER_02: That's for the opposite of what we do.
1:10:35
SPEAKER_02: Our goal is to make them fall and let them hit.
1:10:38
SPEAKER_00: It's funny because when I was dancing on cruise ships and I was single, it was people that had no experience and were also drinking and all that.
1:10:44
SPEAKER_00: And I had to learn how to, if someone was going to be a takedown, not on purpose, not intentionally, but they were good.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_00: You have to figure out how to make that the softest landing possible because I literally worked for the cruise lines.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_00: And there were a couple of times where I'm like, I gotta throw my body under them.
1:10:58
SPEAKER_00: That's the only way that this is gonna not look bad and feel bad.
1:11:02
SPEAKER_02: Well, drunk people dancing is never agreed.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_00: No, it's always a bad thing.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_02: But as a martial artist looking at dancing, I see the spatial awareness, yeah, I see the balance awareness, the distance awareness.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_02: So depending upon the dance, is it's like you used to do blues dancing, that's right up hip to hip.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_02: Maybe swing dancing can be hip to hip, but it's much more open hands, spinning, twirling, lifting, that kind of stuff.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna correct you.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_00: In all barroom dances, I open up my frame and I let them choose the distance.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_02: Frame refers to where your arms are on them, how you're supporting them, the structure you're creating for them to kind of join with you on.
1:11:38
SPEAKER_02: That's what you're calling a frame.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it can change.
1:11:40
SPEAKER_00: I'll open up my frame, they choose how close they want to dance, and then they can change their mind and dance closer or not.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_00: I also can create space and distance if I don't want to be too close.
1:11:48
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
1:11:49
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:11:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think dancing is a great thing.
1:11:51
SPEAKER_02: I think it's great for martial artists, I think it's great for anybody.
1:11:54
SPEAKER_02: Like you say, body awareness.
1:11:55
SPEAKER_02: It's fun if you like music.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_02: It helps if you have a little bit of rhythm.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to, but that helps.
1:12:00
SPEAKER_02: Galena, who is a very good dancer and she's a tango dancer.
1:12:04
SPEAKER_02: I'm always very self-conscious to dance with her because she's a very good dancer.
1:12:06
SPEAKER_02: She always tells me, no, she really likes it.
1:12:08
SPEAKER_02: And she says it's because I have good rhythm.
1:12:09
SPEAKER_02: Like I'm not, I'm not pulling her in ways that don't make sense to the music.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, I just think it's very interesting the whole concept of improv, the ability to I don't know, just something about dancing I think is really wonderful.
1:12:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's all about connection.
1:12:22
SPEAKER_00: It's having an experience where you get a flood of great feelings in your brain and you're feel connected to people or the world.
1:12:29
SPEAKER_02: Actually, one of the things I like about dancing is the disconnection that happens afterwards, meaning the lack we're gonna circle back to Buddhism now, the non-attachment.
1:12:40
SPEAKER_02: We have just danced.
1:12:41
SPEAKER_02: I may or may not know your name.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_02: It was really fun.
1:12:44
SPEAKER_02: I had a great time, thank you.
1:12:46
SPEAKER_02: And you're off with the next person, and I'm off with the next person, and it's like I may never see you again, right?
1:12:51
SPEAKER_02: And the ability to be willing to disconnect, to let this moment pass and now say goodbye, because that's how it works in dancing.
1:12:59
SPEAKER_00: I think I got that from improv, the practice of improv of letting go of the moment, just being in the moment and not looking to the next moment, not obsessing about the last moment, and just being present in whatever's the current moment.
1:13:12
SPEAKER_00: So it is very Buddhist, it's very ballroom dance, it's very improv.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_00: I think it's also very magic because if I sit here and I'm planning too much for the next thing or hanging back and obsessing about the last thing, the audience is not going to enjoy themselves.
1:13:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I won't be connected.
1:13:25
SPEAKER_02: There was one thing that you mentioned, just maybe as a last thing, that I've seen you write about Effort, you talk about, which is turning mistakes into good things.
1:13:34
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:13:34
SPEAKER_02: So tell me your view on like something has gone wrong with the trip and your ability to adapt and make that a good thing.
1:13:39
SPEAKER_02: Like we talked about the clunker note for the jazz guy.
1:13:41
SPEAKER_00: I think where it started for me was when I was doing magic and something didn't go well on the drive home.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_00: I go, why did that go wrong?
1:13:49
SPEAKER_00: How can I prevent in the future?
1:13:50
SPEAKER_00: If that does go wrong again, what are three options I can have in my back pocket and ready to go?
1:13:54
SPEAKER_00: And it's just decompressing it and taking it all in and thinking about it and getting in muscle memory, what you could do, but also preventing it from happening and prepping for it in the future.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
1:14:04
SPEAKER_00: And then the second thing is when I started to bring comedy into it, it's like, let's turn it into a comedic moment.
1:14:09
SPEAKER_00: So let's still win.
1:14:10
SPEAKER_00: But then it's also like, how can I, with all the magic tricks I know, jazz it into something that's going to work?
1:14:16
SPEAKER_00: But then I studied improv and then I just learned how to turn mistakes into gifts.
1:14:22
SPEAKER_00: So there's a game in improv called New Choice.
1:14:26
SPEAKER_00: So you ring a bell and you make a new choice.
1:14:28
SPEAKER_00: So if you say it's great to be here at dinner, and I say, I'm happy to be here also, and the director rings the bell, I'm happy to be here also.
1:14:36
SPEAKER_00: Never happened.
1:14:37
SPEAKER_00: I have to make a new choice.
1:14:38
SPEAKER_02: And immediately say, Oh, I'm running late for something.
1:14:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm running late for something.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm ding.
1:14:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm so sad to be here.
1:14:45
SPEAKER_00: Ding, are you gonna torture me again?
1:14:47
SPEAKER_00: Ding, you're not gonna serve my dog, are you?
1:14:49
SPEAKER_00: Ding, vegan, yes, ding.
1:14:51
SPEAKER_00: And when you play that game, you start thinking there's an A-B choice.
1:14:56
SPEAKER_00: Good, bad, up, down, yes, no, in out.
1:14:58
SPEAKER_00: But then when you start getting the bell over and over and over again, you start to realize there's an infinite number of options.
1:15:04
SPEAKER_00: There's no ending.
1:15:05
SPEAKER_00: And when your brain lets go of this like A-B choice, and anything is possible, anything to happen, you kind of relax, you open yourself up to the world, and you find moments that are just joyful and gifts in those things.
1:15:17
SPEAKER_00: And it's really like the secret, it takes years to learn, is about being authentic and honest.
1:15:22
SPEAKER_00: So when I finally say the thing that is completely real and true for me, the director stops ringing the bell and you have the best scene ever.
1:15:30
SPEAKER_00: And what you've just learned is you start to train yourself is to be real and to be authentic.
1:15:36
SPEAKER_02: So being real and authentic in a moment of something going wrong is not trying to cover up for it, right?
1:15:42
SPEAKER_00: It's just going with it.
1:15:44
SPEAKER_00: Being human, and it's gonna be memorable because everybody can relate to the person in trouble syndrome.
1:15:49
SPEAKER_00: How you handle it and you're real, people go, I can connect with that.
1:15:52
SPEAKER_00: But these are all things that you can't put on paper and say, here's a lesson today, and you're gonna get to this.
1:15:58
SPEAKER_00: People have to have their own aha moments to get there.
1:16:01
SPEAKER_00: So it's really about first unlearning the fact that there's a right answer.
1:16:07
SPEAKER_00: Second, unlearning that there's just like two good choices.
1:16:09
SPEAKER_00: It's good to be here for dinner tonight.
1:16:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm unhappy that I'm here for dinner tonight.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_00: And then it's learning that there's really infinite places to go.
1:16:15
SPEAKER_00: And then it's learning that it's like if I say the most true thing, everybody enjoys it and relates.
1:16:22
SPEAKER_02: When I was in high school, I was part of a student exchange thing with Israel.
1:16:27
SPEAKER_02: So I went in the middle of the school year for like six weeks, I remember what it was, and toured around Israel and went and spoke in classrooms and stuff like that to meet other high schoolers.
1:16:37
SPEAKER_02: And I went into one classroom and they had just had some sort of a birthday party or something.
1:16:41
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what was going on, and I came in to speak.
1:16:44
SPEAKER_02: So I got in front of the teacher's table and I kind of was talking, and there was a translator there because these kids, their English wasn't very good, my Hebrew wasn't very good at that time.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_02: And I was telling them about what it's like to be an American, an American student, and what our country is like, and da-da-da-da.
1:16:59
SPEAKER_02: And you know, I was kind of tired because I'd been to a couple, so I kind of sat back on the table, on the teacher's table and just began talking.
1:17:05
SPEAKER_02: And at some point I saw some of them started smiling and laughing and kind of pointing.
1:17:10
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, what, what?
1:17:11
SPEAKER_02: And I realized as I looked down that there was about maybe three-quarters of the birthday cake that hadn't been eaten yet, and I had sat on it.
1:17:20
SPEAKER_02: So I was sitting on the birthday cake, completely, 100%.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_02: And I looked down at that, and they're laughing and I laughing.
1:17:28
SPEAKER_02: And then I just continued looking up and I was saying, so in our culture, it's the highest form of flattery to sit on pastries.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_02: It could be a cake, it could be a donut, it could be, but it it humidified that, and it just became a funny thing.
1:17:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because where was I supposed to go with that?
1:17:45
SPEAKER_02: Like, how bad could I feel that I just literally sat in someone's birthday cake and now it's all over me?
1:17:49
SPEAKER_02: You gotta go with it.
1:17:50
SPEAKER_00: You turn it into an absolutely memorable moment.
1:17:52
SPEAKER_02: You gotta go with it, yeah.
1:17:53
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's been a magical experience.
1:17:55
SPEAKER_02: Great to see you take care of yourself, and good luck in everything that you do.
1:18:00
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
1:18:01
SPEAKER_02: I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Robert Strong.
1:18:04
SPEAKER_02: You'll find links in the show notes to all the things that we discussed.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_02: Thanks to my team, Robbie, Phil, Kyle, Angela, David, and to Ryan Peter Turner, my producer and chief editor, for all your help.
1:18:16
SPEAKER_02: And thanks to the show sponsors and supporters.
1:18:19
SPEAKER_02: And you can see all of them on our supporters page at age list for your lab.com.
1:18:24
SPEAKER_02: I will be back next week with more lessons from the lab.
1:18:27
SPEAKER_02: And until then, keep developing your strengths, your wisdom, and a lot of good in the world.