Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I love
Speaker 1: of all things tech. And you are about to listen
Speaker 1: to a classic interview episode of tech Stuff that was
Speaker 1: originally published on April twenty, two thousand twelve. In this interview,
Speaker 1: we get to talk to one of my friends, Brian Brushwood.
Speaker 1: Professional magician, techno wizard, you might say, and overall rogue.
Speaker 1: The guy has gone on to do numerous super cool things,
Speaker 1: including appearing on Penn and Teller Show and lots of
Speaker 1: other really awesome stuff. And this was a chance for
Speaker 1: us to chat with him way back in And uh,
Speaker 1: it's great to hear him again because I don't I
Speaker 1: don't run into him very much. He lives out in Texas,
Speaker 1: so I don't get a chance to see him very frequently.
Speaker 1: But enjoy this episode of tech Stuff conjures up Brian Brushwood. Brian,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on our show. Dude,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me And we know
Speaker 1: we've talked about this for months. I'm glad we finally
Speaker 1: made it happen. Yeah, Brushwood and I are we're like
Speaker 1: BFFs from way back. Yeah, we're rooms. That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, Brushwood is a he's he's he's an amazing,
Speaker 1: amazing kind of guy. One of the nicest guys you
Speaker 1: guys could ever meet. I really do mean that, Mr Brushwood.
Speaker 1: You gotta ruin my reputations about this, alright. He's he's
Speaker 1: also a complete jerk. No. Now, so we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk today about lots of different topics. But before we
Speaker 1: get started, in your own words, can we get sort
Speaker 1: of a kind of a minute long or two minute
Speaker 1: long bio of who you are? How got interested in
Speaker 1: stage magic and technology and all that kind of good stuff. Sure, man,
Speaker 1: it's really weird. I'm in a transition phase right now
Speaker 1: because if you'd asked me five years ago, the answer
Speaker 1: would have been dead simple. I would have told you
Speaker 1: I am a touring stage magician who tours colleges doing
Speaker 1: a punk rock magic show with fire eating escapes, mind reading.
Speaker 1: I stick a nail and one eye pops out, the
Speaker 1: other eye, I break thirty pound breaks over my head. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was And that's that's all I did. But
Speaker 1: as I've transitioned, we launched Scam School. I pitched it
Speaker 1: five years ago right around this time, and now it's
Speaker 1: four years strong, two twenty episodes, and now I'm hosting
Speaker 1: four other podcasts as well, but I'm still doing the
Speaker 1: live stage shows. So my identity, my identity is kind
Speaker 1: of in transition right now as I as I do
Speaker 1: more performing in front of the camera instead of in
Speaker 1: front of audiences. And now it's even more complicated since uh,
Speaker 1: we just launched the Scam School Book, which hit number
Speaker 1: one in Canada number three in the US on the
Speaker 1: iTunes store on the day of launch. So now I
Speaker 1: guess throw author in the mix as well. How about that?
Speaker 1: Huge props to you and that's awesome and uh, you're
Speaker 1: also the Scam School Show has also been featured on
Speaker 1: Discovery dot Com. Yeah, they apparently, and it was the
Speaker 1: awesomest thing because I guess Discovery dot Com had been
Speaker 1: talking with Revision three and they were talking about some
Speaker 1: kind of partnership for a while, but since nothing was confirmed,
Speaker 1: nobody at Revision three really told me because you know,
Speaker 1: it's like they didn't want to tell me if there
Speaker 1: was nothing to tell, but I guess within minutes of
Speaker 1: the deal being finalized, Discovery dot Com through the first
Speaker 1: episode up under their life section, and so I found
Speaker 1: out about it because somebody on Twitter was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: were you just not gonna tell us that you joined
Speaker 1: Discovery dot Com? And I'm like, what, So take a look,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, there it is and it seems to
Speaker 1: be very well received. I'm excited about it. That's fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and as a you know, as a friend and fan,
Speaker 1: I was very pleased to see that join our our
Speaker 1: family here, and it was a it was a surprise
Speaker 1: to me as well. I had not I had no
Speaker 1: knowledge of any sort of Revision three work at that point,
Speaker 1: but it was very pleased to see you brought on board.
Speaker 1: Anytime I can see talented people who who are good
Speaker 1: at at at entertaining and informing, that's always a pleasure. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to talk a little bit today about
Speaker 1: the fact that since you have an extensive experience being
Speaker 1: a stage magician, uh that kind of gets your perspective
Speaker 1: on how stage magic has changed over the years and
Speaker 1: how the role of technology has sort of played a
Speaker 1: part in that, and that just get an idea of
Speaker 1: what's important when you're a stage magician. Yeah, absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean I would say as as far back as you look,
Speaker 1: there's been a very tight relationship between technology and magic.
Speaker 1: And uh, what's the Arthur's C. Clark quote from Childhood's End.
Speaker 1: He says, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
Speaker 1: is one of our favorites. Yeah. No, and then the
Speaker 1: magicians love that quote because it makes us sound important.
Speaker 1: But the but you know, you look back, and it
Speaker 1: seems like every time there's a novel new tech knowledgy, uh,
Speaker 1: there is a magician to either exploit it secretly in
Speaker 1: a stage show or to make it integral to his
Speaker 1: stage performance. You know. You go back, you know you've
Speaker 1: got Jean Eugene Robert Houdon uh doing doing bullet catches,
Speaker 1: you know, and this is in the nineteenth century when
Speaker 1: they're still using a musket type rifles. You got uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Penn and Teller doing doing cell phone tricks,
Speaker 1: you know. And of course I I do an illusion
Speaker 1: in my stage show now where I make a ghost
Speaker 1: appear on everyone's cell phone in the audience. And there's
Speaker 1: something about the novelty of new technology that that puts
Speaker 1: a finger in that same part of the brain that
Speaker 1: good sleight of hand does where it's just it's just
Speaker 1: incomprehensible and you can't even understand how that's possible. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really cool. I'm uh, you know, not to not
Speaker 1: to pull back the veil too much from from the
Speaker 1: whole magic thing, but go ahead, pull it back in
Speaker 1: the back here in the bidz uh. You know, we
Speaker 1: might refer to certain certain types of technology specifically made
Speaker 1: for stage magic, often referred to as as gimmicks, a
Speaker 1: gimmick that you use in order to pull off a trick.
Speaker 1: And I think it's an interesting thing that I see
Speaker 1: with a lot of people who just start off in magic.
Speaker 1: The beginners often, I think, place more stock in a
Speaker 1: gimmick than they do necessarily in stage presentation. And I'm
Speaker 1: curious as to what your view is on that. What
Speaker 1: do you think is the most important tool in any
Speaker 1: stage magician's toolbox? Us, Yeah, you nailed it right on
Speaker 1: the head. When I first started in magic, I was
Speaker 1: what eighteen years old, and wandered into a magic shop
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas that was run out of the garage
Speaker 1: of one of the local magicians, and since I didn't
Speaker 1: have a car at university, I had to take two
Speaker 1: different buses. It took me a forty five minutes just
Speaker 1: to go the eight miles to get there. And uh,
Speaker 1: this guy talked to me for like the three hours straight.
Speaker 1: I just had my mind blown because I picked magic
Speaker 1: just out of the blue as as a hobby to try,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really know much about it. But one
Speaker 1: of the things he told me that really stuck with
Speaker 1: me is like when when people first start doing magic,
Speaker 1: they always want the self working, no fail gimmicks. They
Speaker 1: want they want the tricky deck of cards to force
Speaker 1: someone a card rather than relying on slide of hand,
Speaker 1: because you know, it's a confidence booster and it's something
Speaker 1: that always works. But then there's some kind of guilt
Speaker 1: that builds in you. It makes you think, like, I'm
Speaker 1: not really a magician. I should be doing everything with
Speaker 1: a real deck of cards. And you learn how to
Speaker 1: do these these fancy forces or these flourishes, or you know,
Speaker 1: turn over one card so it looks like a different card,
Speaker 1: and then after a while, once you have that down,
Speaker 1: you get lazy and say, why am I doing all
Speaker 1: this extra work? When the one who notices the difference,
Speaker 1: and then you go back to using gimmicks. So it's
Speaker 1: like pendulum. Yeah it is, but but but you come
Speaker 1: out the other side because it's one of those once
Speaker 1: you get enough flight time, you build an engaging presentation.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you that's the biggest I don't want
Speaker 1: to say betrayal, that's the biggest confusion that people have.
Speaker 1: A lot of folks get into magic in their fourteen
Speaker 1: and hitting puberty because they feel powerless and they want
Speaker 1: a way to get other people to be interested in
Speaker 1: something they're doing, and so they follow the script the
Speaker 1: way it's written, They do the moves the way it's written,
Speaker 1: and either they get stuck in that rut and they
Speaker 1: become those socially awkward people who can't relate to other
Speaker 1: people except with the deck of cards in their hand,
Speaker 1: or they pull through it and they realize, wow, it's
Speaker 1: not really They'll they'll realize, like, out of everything, the
Speaker 1: one joke they made up on the spot got a
Speaker 1: bigger reaction than any of the prepackaged can jokes that
Speaker 1: they had before then, and then they realized that the
Speaker 1: magic is just that social lubricant. It's just that excuse
Speaker 1: to start interacting with someone. And it's really it's your
Speaker 1: personality that matters way more than anything. And you. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are parts of Penn and Teller's show that are
Speaker 1: utterly transparent to anyone who knows a thing or two
Speaker 1: about magic. And yet there are some of the most important,
Speaker 1: beautiful routines that they've ever written because they speak to
Speaker 1: something bigger than the they're doing. Yeah, I'm always reminded
Speaker 1: of their routine of doing the cups and balls with
Speaker 1: the transparent cups. Yeah, and even as you're watching it,
Speaker 1: and even as they're explaining how they do it, they're
Speaker 1: doing it so seamlessly and so smoothly. That's so clear
Speaker 1: that they've they've really polished that routine that it's still
Speaker 1: feels like magic. Well, I think there's a real, uh,
Speaker 1: there's something that we really crave in the illusion of
Speaker 1: being educated. And I say the illusion because because by
Speaker 1: the time that trade, ostensibly the whole purpose of that
Speaker 1: routine is for them to teach you how to do
Speaker 1: the cups and balls, because you see it done with
Speaker 1: transparent cups. By the time that's over, I would I
Speaker 1: would challenge you to a hundred thousand yen. That is
Speaker 1: that a hundred bucks, So like that not recreate even
Speaker 1: one phase of that routine accurately and likewise. One of
Speaker 1: the things people seem to like most of my stage
Speaker 1: show is I begin with this four and a half
Speaker 1: minute illustrated history of fire eating, right explained from the
Speaker 1: earliest references to resistance to fire to UH to the
Speaker 1: touring UH you know stage performer Richardson in the sixteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: I explain the progression of fire reading, and everyone's oh,
Speaker 1: I just so educational. I learned so much, and I
Speaker 1: was like, you cannot repeat back one fact. I gave
Speaker 1: you that entire time. But it's that blend of feeling
Speaker 1: like you're learning while you're seeing something visually interesting that
Speaker 1: seems to uh, seems to sit well with people. Excellent, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and it's it's interesting to me on this show in
Speaker 1: several different episodes, and Chris can can attest to this
Speaker 1: because he had to listen to me do it just
Speaker 1: a second ago. I stress the importance of of critical
Speaker 1: thinking and really taking taking time to think things through,
Speaker 1: because otherwise you just tend to accept stuff on a
Speaker 1: surface level, and it becomes very easy to get tricked
Speaker 1: into things. This is one of those things that magicians
Speaker 1: that actually can depend upon depending on their their routines.
Speaker 1: But but there does seem to be an interesting relationship
Speaker 1: between people who are are who get into stage magic
Speaker 1: and people who are advocates for critical thinking. Um. But
Speaker 1: and I mean that all that I'll really began with Houdini.
Speaker 1: You know, Judini was obsessed with trying to contact his
Speaker 1: dead mother and this is at the height of spiritualism
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, early twentieth century. But being a magician,
Speaker 1: he was offended when he went to spiritual mediums and
Speaker 1: saw they were using standard slide hand tricks. And yet
Speaker 1: these people with the straight face, We're saying, no, I'm
Speaker 1: contacting the spirit world. He's like, no, you got that palm,
Speaker 1: you know, and he would he would call him out.
Speaker 1: He was he was kind of he was kind of
Speaker 1: an a hole about it, you know. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: tradition continues to this day well well, and and to
Speaker 1: be honest, nobody was doing it after Houdini until James
Speaker 1: Randy came along and back in the nineteen sixties and
Speaker 1: started off with with I don't know if it started
Speaker 1: with a hundred dollars out of his own pocket or
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars out of his own pocket. But he's
Speaker 1: always offered this, uh, this, this dollar amount challenge to
Speaker 1: anyone who can demonstrate any psychic esp or super a
Speaker 1: natural phenomenon under double blind test conditions. Uh And and
Speaker 1: nobody's gotten anywhere close. And in fact the challenge is now,
Speaker 1: of course the world famous million dollar challenge, and it
Speaker 1: actually extends to things beyond your typical you know, the
Speaker 1: we typically think of things like being able to move
Speaker 1: something with your mind or prove that dowsing is real,
Speaker 1: but it actually I've seen him extend that to uh,
Speaker 1: to technological claims as well, for example, monster cables. There
Speaker 1: you go, That's where I was headed. Beat me to
Speaker 1: the punch there, And I guess it's true. I think
Speaker 1: I've read an article recently saying that a wire co
Speaker 1: hanger demonstrated the ability to perform just as well as
Speaker 1: a hundred dollar monster cable. Yeah. We, as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, talked about that on a previous podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that exact same subject. Yeah, But which it's interesting to
Speaker 1: think that it's a stage magician, someone who is skilled
Speaker 1: in the arts of deception. Who who comes forward as
Speaker 1: an advocate for this? And then but then again, you're
Speaker 1: talking about the people who know these tools, because like
Speaker 1: you were saying with Houdini, there these are the tools
Speaker 1: of the trade, and they're seeing it being done not
Speaker 1: for entertainment purposes, but to pull the wool over the
Speaker 1: eyes and try and builk people out of money. Well,
Speaker 1: I think go ahead, I was gonna say, in a way,
Speaker 1: the people that that sell paraphernalia like that, the the
Speaker 1: high end audio cables that work theoretically just as well
Speaker 1: as a code hanger. They're involved in an act of
Speaker 1: showmanship as well. Oh, certainly showmanship. And also there's there's
Speaker 1: certain things. Um when there's a market need for something,
Speaker 1: whether it exists or not, somebody will figure out a
Speaker 1: way to fill it. And that's why I don't think
Speaker 1: Marnster cables are going anywhere, is because whether or not
Speaker 1: it's true, if you have more money than sense, you
Speaker 1: want to believe that there's something better than the ten
Speaker 1: dollar cable, and and Monster is gonna be there to
Speaker 1: say yes, yes there is, and here it is. And
Speaker 1: and the thing that really drives me crazy is you
Speaker 1: could actually come into contact with a system that is
Speaker 1: measurably through very very finely two instruments better than a
Speaker 1: cheaper system. But to the human ear is indistinguishable, right,
Speaker 1: because we're not capable of hearing that well. And and
Speaker 1: in fact, uh, there's a man, it must have been.
Speaker 1: It was over a decade ago that I read in
Speaker 1: Wired magazine. I wish I could remember the name of
Speaker 1: the audio engineer that he set up a super calibrated
Speaker 1: sound system at one dance club and people were complaining
Speaker 1: that it just it just wasn't loud. And meanwhile he's
Speaker 1: looking at the decibel meter and this thing is like
Speaker 1: almost damaging your hearing, it's so loud. So he goes
Speaker 1: to radio shack and gets a I think it was
Speaker 1: like cents in Peter that would that would clip the
Speaker 1: highest end. But the the audio queue of hearing the
Speaker 1: high ends being clipped made them think that the speakers
Speaker 1: were maxed, and even though the volume was actually lower,
Speaker 1: people reported how much more they liked the music, how
Speaker 1: much louder it was. That's that now that I don't
Speaker 1: find that hard to believe, but it is. It is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. It is amazing, I'll tell you, man, it's
Speaker 1: amazing to me, what what a mystery our own minds are.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things, my favorite, one of
Speaker 1: the greatest things I got to do at the University
Speaker 1: of Texas was I was part of this honors program
Speaker 1: where they only took a hundred and fifty students each year,
Speaker 1: and they'd have over a thousand applicants, but you could take.
Speaker 1: You took pretty much what they told you the first
Speaker 1: couple of years, but the last two years you took
Speaker 1: whatever classes were related to your thesis. You had to
Speaker 1: have a thesis in order to graduate, and some of
Speaker 1: the students would write their first novel, some of them
Speaker 1: would write these two three d page biographies on obscure
Speaker 1: figures from history. And I was doing magic on the
Speaker 1: side at this point, and I thought, well, maybe it
Speaker 1: would be awesome if I could get away with writing
Speaker 1: a paper on the history of magic, because that would
Speaker 1: be fun, or even better, if I could claim that
Speaker 1: it was my thesis to get a trick published in
Speaker 1: one of these magic journals, So, you know, still putting
Speaker 1: a significant amount of work on myself, but at least
Speaker 1: it would be fun and magic related. And when I
Speaker 1: went into pitch, my idea to the dean. She said, well,
Speaker 1: what do you want to do for your thesis? And
Speaker 1: I got as far as saying, well, for the last
Speaker 1: couple of years, I've been doing magic on the side,
Speaker 1: And as I drew in a breath to continue, she
Speaker 1: interrupted saying, and you want to do a magic show
Speaker 1: as a creative writing thesis. What a great idea. And
Speaker 1: so as it was full, I got to take whatever
Speaker 1: courses I wanted for the last two years, as long
Speaker 1: as I could justify being related to magic. So I
Speaker 1: took courses on you know, on artificial intelligence, on psychology,
Speaker 1: on history of witchcraft, on pseudoscience and the paranormal. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was, it was amazing. But it was those courses
Speaker 1: on brain development that really cemented in my mind what wonderful,
Speaker 1: flawed machines we all are. And once you see, once
Speaker 1: you spend a few years deceiving people, and even better,
Speaker 1: hearing back from people after the fact, having them describe
Speaker 1: to you what they think you did or what they
Speaker 1: remember you doing, it is unreal how wrong all of
Speaker 1: our memories are, all the time, on everything. And once
Speaker 1: you accept that, I find I find I'm a lot
Speaker 1: happier about everything. I don't argue anymore. Like if I
Speaker 1: remember something happening one way and someone remembers in another way,
Speaker 1: I'm like, whatever, I'm probably we're probably both wrong. Thing
Speaker 1: like that. And likewise, when you look at um, you know,
Speaker 1: eye witness testimony, you you you devalue it severely because
Speaker 1: you understand that even if they're not intentionally lying to themselves,
Speaker 1: they there's just no way that they can accurately remember anything.
Speaker 1: So you're making me feel a lot more comfortable about
Speaker 1: the fact that I offload a lot of my own
Speaker 1: mental uh, my own mental practices onto my technology. Now, oh,
Speaker 1: you should, you should. And in fact, I think that
Speaker 1: we're entering an age where, unfortunately in the legal system
Speaker 1: right now, we still are in a place where where
Speaker 1: we value eye witness testimony far more than we should
Speaker 1: because there's and if you've if you're familiar with the
Speaker 1: work of Elizabeth loftus, uh, it is unreal. They've been
Speaker 1: able to induce false memories and other people by asking
Speaker 1: leading questions. There was one story where they took a
Speaker 1: young kid named Chris and they laid out five stories.
Speaker 1: Four of them were tales that actually happened to him.
Speaker 1: One was a totally made up story about being lost
Speaker 1: at the mall, and they asked a bunch of questions
Speaker 1: about all five and uh, and then like two weeks
Speaker 1: later they said, well, which of these one of these
Speaker 1: was a made up story that never happened to you? Chris?
Speaker 1: Which one was the one that we made up? And
Speaker 1: he picked an actual story from his past as being
Speaker 1: a made up one because he couldn't believe that he
Speaker 1: wasn't lost at the mall at age five. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like, wasn't there that story about the other the
Speaker 1: other experiment with the showing an ad a fake ad
Speaker 1: for some popcorn uh to some people during a thing,
Speaker 1: and then like a survey two weeks later, they asked
Speaker 1: them how the popcorn was, but no one in the
Speaker 1: study had actually had any popcorn, but they all remembered
Speaker 1: trying it and then it was delicious because of the ad.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I haven't heard now that was that was
Speaker 1: just I think that was in when I heard that.
Speaker 1: I think I heard that on Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Um,
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. Yeah. And this is why focus groups aren't
Speaker 1: so great for marketing purpose is because the leader often
Speaker 1: sort of steers it in the direction of the of
Speaker 1: what the the company that has organized this focus group
Speaker 1: is trying to achieve, like oh hey, look it works, Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: let's go with it. Yeah, Which that's the important of
Speaker 1: double blind experimentation, which we you know, of course they
Speaker 1: do very very well with the with the FDA, and
Speaker 1: for you know, new drugs. When it comes to consumer marketing,
Speaker 1: there's probably not much of a reason to try that.
Speaker 1: And for those out there who don't know what a
Speaker 1: double blind test is, all right, So a blind test
Speaker 1: means that the person who's taking the test has no
Speaker 1: knowledge of whether or not they are in a control
Speaker 1: group or the test group. Double blind is that the
Speaker 1: person administering the test also does not know if that
Speaker 1: person if they are administering a test to the control
Speaker 1: group or to the test group, so that that it
Speaker 1: limits the chance that data will be uh leaked to
Speaker 1: a test subject and influence his or her results. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That one of the earliest cases of that where it's
Speaker 1: so important is Michelle Eugene should Rules, a French scientist
Speaker 1: and this is back in the I believe the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century when dowsing was super popular, and dowsing is of course,
Speaker 1: you know, finding water with a forked stick or holding
Speaker 1: a pendulum over a substance, and it swings one way
Speaker 1: if it's supposed to be one thing, or swings another
Speaker 1: way if it's another. And when he tried it, he
Speaker 1: set out the way he tried it was, of course,
Speaker 1: he set out a bowl of mercury, held out the pendulum,
Speaker 1: and that things started swinging like crazy, pulled the mercury
Speaker 1: away and it stayed totally still. Still. He was like,
Speaker 1: holy crap, maybe there's something to this, although he didn't
Speaker 1: say that because he was French soccerate crap, this crap.
Speaker 1: But then he had it. But but he had the idea.
Speaker 1: He had his assistant set up a partition and he
Speaker 1: just held out the pendulum and the assistant would either
Speaker 1: set down an empty bowl or a bowl filled with mercury.
Speaker 1: And once he didn't know which which one it was,
Speaker 1: it didn't do anything. Yeah, I know that James Randy
Speaker 1: had suggested a similar test where it would involve burying
Speaker 1: uh PBC pipes with water in for example, under a
Speaker 1: certain area of land, covering it all up, and then
Speaker 1: the person ministering the test would have no idea where
Speaker 1: the the PBC pipe actually was they would just observe
Speaker 1: the test subjects as they would walk across, and the
Speaker 1: test subjects would let them know if they had found
Speaker 1: a hit or not, and that that would be you know,
Speaker 1: a typical, very simple double blind test, although the actual
Speaker 1: administration would require more. But out of everybody who goes
Speaker 1: for the James Randy million dollar Prize, the dowsers seem
Speaker 1: to be the most intense because they truly believe what
Speaker 1: they're doing is a science. And the reason they truly
Speaker 1: believe it is because they have so many stories of
Speaker 1: personal validation where they looked for water pipes behind the
Speaker 1: wall and they found them, they looked for water at
Speaker 1: their uncle's farm and they found it, or you know,
Speaker 1: they look for a lost object, they find it. And
Speaker 1: the problem is, uh, you can be right, you can
Speaker 1: get lucky, and you can maybe you rely on your intuition,
Speaker 1: uh and not realize you're you're doing that. So even
Speaker 1: if they're and get a hit, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it proves that dowsing works. It means that it proves
Speaker 1: that that either you know, one of the other things happen. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And this kind of leads us in this whole this
Speaker 1: whole belief the fact that we're we we are fallible constructs,
Speaker 1: you know, we we don't We make mistakes and often
Speaker 1: we don't realize we're making the mistakes, and that there
Speaker 1: are ways of tweaking that. That kind of leads into
Speaker 1: the discussion I want to have about social engineering. Now
Speaker 1: you have your show Scam School, which has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with social engineering. Can you explain to our
Speaker 1: listeners what is social engineering? Oh? I think the definition
Speaker 1: is is clinically something like, um, you know, a set
Speaker 1: of tools designed to induce a certain response in people
Speaker 1: in certain environments. I I just claim that it's cheap,
Speaker 1: dirty psychological tricks to get people to do what you want.
Speaker 1: But whether it's you know, and on Scam School, we
Speaker 1: try to keep it light, so more often than not,
Speaker 1: were we explain the ways that you can use uh,
Speaker 1: you know, magic tricks or psychological manipulation and to get
Speaker 1: the girl's phone number or to win free beers off
Speaker 1: of your friends. Uh. But uh, one of the best
Speaker 1: experiences that I got to have was, uh what three
Speaker 1: years ago, I got selected at south By Southwest to
Speaker 1: give a keynote presentation on social engineering. Scam your Way
Speaker 1: into anything or from anyone. And in the research putting
Speaker 1: together on that, I read a number of books, including
Speaker 1: Robert Chaldini's Influence, which is fantastic, so many amazing tidbits
Speaker 1: in there that are all based on you know, real
Speaker 1: psychological surveys, stuff like um uh, there's these fixed action
Speaker 1: pattern patterns, these psychological backdoors that that anyone from con
Speaker 1: artists to magicians can use to to make people feel
Speaker 1: obligated to do certain things, for example reciprocation. There was
Speaker 1: a Dennis Reagan did this uh fake art experiment where
Speaker 1: he had a group of people come in and they
Speaker 1: were either they were assigned in twos. Now one of
Speaker 1: them was a real experiment tee, the other was a
Speaker 1: fake experimentee and they spent all day reviewing our on
Speaker 1: the scale of one to five. I love it, I
Speaker 1: hated this at the other. And about halfway it was
Speaker 1: time to take a break, and so Mr fake tester
Speaker 1: goes off to the bathroom and when he comes back
Speaker 1: and one of two things would happen. Either he came
Speaker 1: back empty handed and they just went back to work,
Speaker 1: or he came back with with two cokes in his
Speaker 1: hand and he would say, hey, I went to the
Speaker 1: bathroom and I grabbed myself a coke, and I figured
Speaker 1: I grab one for you. Here you go, enjoy a coke.
Speaker 1: And then they go back to testing. And then at
Speaker 1: the very end of the day, Mr Fake tester would
Speaker 1: in both in both groups say hey, I hate to
Speaker 1: bug you about this, but we're doing this raffle for work,
Speaker 1: and if if I sell enough, there's a chance I
Speaker 1: could win a car. As many as you could buy,
Speaker 1: the more the better. And they measured how many of
Speaker 1: these of these tickets he would sell, and under reciprocation,
Speaker 1: people bought either two or three times as much as
Speaker 1: they did without reciprocation. Now, some people say, like, okay,
Speaker 1: well if maybe maybe when they gave him a coke,
Speaker 1: they liked the guy more and that's why they went
Speaker 1: ahead and bought more tickets. But it turns out that
Speaker 1: wasn't the case. Exit surveys show that even if they
Speaker 1: actively disliked the Mr Fake tester, they still bought two
Speaker 1: or three times more than they would without reciprocation. Socially
Speaker 1: impelled to buy those those tickets. Yeah, well, and it's
Speaker 1: it's that we hate owing people anything. And there's there's
Speaker 1: other things like a social proof. There's there's the idea
Speaker 1: that the trappings of authority forced people to to to comply,
Speaker 1: even if that that authority is just a well tailored suit.
Speaker 1: They did studies where they measure how many people would
Speaker 1: follow when somebody started jaywalking, and if that person was
Speaker 1: just work wearing work clothes, they would be you know,
Speaker 1: X number of people would start following if you started jaywalking,
Speaker 1: but when it was a guy in a suit, three
Speaker 1: times as many people would follow him. Yeah. I remember
Speaker 1: when I was in high school. I remember seeing a
Speaker 1: demonstration where I just thought it was incredibly cruel at
Speaker 1: the time. It was a it was a a fast talker.
Speaker 1: It was a guy who just spoken and jargon, meaning
Speaker 1: this jargon and demonstrating how how social pressures would make
Speaker 1: people agree to things even if they had no idea
Speaker 1: what was being said. And I would demonstrate it by
Speaker 1: bringing someone who was unaware of the fact that he was,
Speaker 1: you know, just a flim flam guy. You know, I
Speaker 1: thought that he was was introduced to him as if
Speaker 1: he were an expert in a particular subject, and then
Speaker 1: he just started, uh having this conversation and saying that
Speaker 1: after it was over said, well, the reason why she
Speaker 1: never stopped me to ask what was going on is
Speaker 1: there's a social pressure on her too act like she
Speaker 1: understands it, and you know, it would be it would
Speaker 1: be mortifying to admit that you don't know what what
Speaker 1: someone meant when they said something to you in front
Speaker 1: of a crowd of other people. Yes, well, and in fact,
Speaker 1: that's a that's probably the biggest component of what makes
Speaker 1: state hypnosis possible. People always ask whether or not hypnosis
Speaker 1: is or real or not. It's like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: real to the extent that you believe it's real. But
Speaker 1: but the big guess factor is the ability. Like you'll
Speaker 1: notice that most hypnosis shows begin with with very small tests,
Speaker 1: and it's very clear that this is a test, Like
Speaker 1: I'm telling you what to do, um and imagine this
Speaker 1: and react as if it's real. And then he says
Speaker 1: imagine this, imagine this, and at some point he stops
Speaker 1: saying imagine, but instead he just says, now you're hot,
Speaker 1: and now you start acting like you're hot because that's
Speaker 1: what you've been doing. And then he says, now you're cold,
Speaker 1: and now you're fanning yourself. Are you're you're shivering because
Speaker 1: you're cold. And then and then he just starts setting
Speaker 1: up scenes and at some point you've entered this contract
Speaker 1: where he says what to do and you acted out,
Speaker 1: and at some point you realize twenty minutes in that
Speaker 1: you're committed and the only way out is to is
Speaker 1: to ruin the show, to be like, I'm not hypnotize.
Speaker 1: So it's like, uh, and hypnosis is real, and that
Speaker 1: there's no way I could just walk up to somebody
Speaker 1: and say, hey, get on stage and pretend to be
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga. There'll be like, no, absolutely not. But hypnosis
Speaker 1: is real in that it is a construct that creates
Speaker 1: a situation where somebody goes way outside of their comfort
Speaker 1: zone because that is a safer choice than than blowing
Speaker 1: up and ruining the stage show. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: there is I don't want to take away from stage
Speaker 1: of Hypnotist, because there is an aspect to it where people,
Speaker 1: when they vividly imagine something strong enough, it does induce
Speaker 1: a physical response. If you've ever been to a movie
Speaker 1: and laughter cried, you know, you're crying about a person
Speaker 1: who never existed and a thing that never happened, but
Speaker 1: you make it real in your mind. You know. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's as real as hypnosis is. Well, I have
Speaker 1: to tell you, Brian that if you ever asked me
Speaker 1: to get up on stage and pretend to be Lady Gaga,
Speaker 1: that's a pact I'm willing to make with you right
Speaker 1: here and now. Good, no hypnosis necessary. You have sold sir.
Speaker 1: We have more Brian Brushwood goodness to come, but first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. The
Speaker 1: reason why I wanted to bring up social engineering is
Speaker 1: that it's not just important in things like like stage magic,
Speaker 1: but also that's one of those tools that that a
Speaker 1: lot of people we call hackers use in order to
Speaker 1: get access to to secure systems, And as has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with sitting down at a computer typing in
Speaker 1: three different passwords and the third ones the one that works,
Speaker 1: but despite the way Hollywood would have us believe, but
Speaker 1: has more frequently has something to do with befriending someone
Speaker 1: or or opposing as a maintenance worker of some sort
Speaker 1: and just engineering your way through people to get access
Speaker 1: to secure systems, because that's way easier than trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to break through a a technological secure system. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: if you think of technology as a sealed room, I mean,
Speaker 1: you could either try to pick that lock, or you
Speaker 1: could beat down the door, or you could just ask
Speaker 1: nicely for the person behind encounter to open it for you.
Speaker 1: And obviously there's a lot of people where that last
Speaker 1: one works best and and the far and away. The
Speaker 1: best example of this is if if you haven't read
Speaker 1: the original book, catch me if you can, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: way better. The movie was was fine, but the book
Speaker 1: is unreal because it's actually written in the voice of
Speaker 1: Frank abcnail, very honestly talking about his exploits, you know,
Speaker 1: over the the what two or three years that he
Speaker 1: flew all around the world cashing over million dollars in
Speaker 1: bogus checks. That's one where it's it's a case where
Speaker 1: he realized that wearing the trappings of authority, by looking
Speaker 1: like a doctor or looking like a pilot, he was
Speaker 1: able to pass checks that otherwise would never pass. Muster
Speaker 1: people would be like, this is obviously bogus, get out
Speaker 1: of here, we call the cops. But but when it's
Speaker 1: a when it's a pilot, you know, held in such
Speaker 1: high regard, people just shut up and cashed him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Uh. Kevin mitt Nick's book to that that came
Speaker 1: out recently has been uh has been doing well. And
Speaker 1: I think it's the same thing as the person just
Speaker 1: explaining what what he was doing at the time. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: I just as an aside that we probably shouldn't get into.
Speaker 1: I find it kind of amusing that we're talking about
Speaker 1: social engineering in an election year here in the United States.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, I mean that's a boy. I mean
Speaker 1: you'll see, you'll see all kinds of trappings of authority.
Speaker 1: That's why part of the reason the little things like
Speaker 1: people can't wait to get to that level of success
Speaker 1: where they can have the secret service around them, because
Speaker 1: that starts to reinforce the idea that this candidates important,
Speaker 1: and it starts to reaffirmed that the trappings of authority
Speaker 1: become as important as actual authority. I'm just waiting to
Speaker 1: reach that level of success where I can get a
Speaker 1: decent table at a restaurant. That's I like to set
Speaker 1: realistic goals. I'll tell you what, man, it is unreal
Speaker 1: what a little what one phone call will do in
Speaker 1: front of me. My friend Dan Martin is one of
Speaker 1: these guys who scams his way into upgrades left and
Speaker 1: right and pretends to be his own manager. He he
Speaker 1: gives another name and says, you know, I'm the manager
Speaker 1: for Daniel Martin. You've probably seen him on list a
Speaker 1: bunch of different stuff. And of course nobody wants to
Speaker 1: admit that they don't know who the hell damn Dan
Speaker 1: Martin is, right, and they're they're like, oh, yes, no,
Speaker 1: that's great, And he's like, well, listen, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: He's got a very important client that he's trying to impress.
Speaker 1: We understand there's an hour and a half. Wait, is
Speaker 1: there any way you guys can take care of us?
Speaker 1: And uh and and sure enough, you know, and I've
Speaker 1: seen him do it where we we skipped an hour
Speaker 1: long line to go to the steakhouse. We sit down
Speaker 1: and then the management comes over and says, oh, thank you,
Speaker 1: Mr Martin. We're so glad to have you here. I
Speaker 1: understand you have a celebrity guest. And without missing a beat,
Speaker 1: he turns to my assistant at the time, Captain MG.
Speaker 1: We called him, uh, this big tall guy. He's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably you've probably seen him in the office. He's
Speaker 1: one of the guys who works down in the in
Speaker 1: the warehouse and instantly people are like, oh, I think
Speaker 1: I do remember you, and a couple of because again,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to admit that they don't remember the guy.
Speaker 1: And and Dan's whole idea is like, look, man, I'm
Speaker 1: doing these people a favor. They're gonna go home and
Speaker 1: talk about the celebrity time. Oh gosh, this reminds me
Speaker 1: of a story my dad tells. Um So, my dad's
Speaker 1: a science fiction author and an English professor and occasionally
Speaker 1: would teach a stint down at the Governor's Honors Program,
Speaker 1: which in Georgia is a program that selects I think
Speaker 1: it's around between six hundred and seven hundred high school
Speaker 1: students to study for a summer uh in in very
Speaker 1: focused groups, depending upon, you know, whatever their major is
Speaker 1: for that program. I actually went in Communicative Arts, which
Speaker 1: was you know, English when back in back. But before that,
Speaker 1: my dad was teaching there in the eighties, and he
Speaker 1: tells a story about how he and some of the
Speaker 1: other teachers went to I think it was like an
Speaker 1: International House of Pancakes or something like that, some some
Speaker 1: sort of diner, and they walked in and one of
Speaker 1: their one of their fellow teachers as an African American
Speaker 1: fellow who wore wore traditional African garments occasionally, and they
Speaker 1: just decide it on a whim as they walked in
Speaker 1: that he was a visiting dignitary from Africa also, and
Speaker 1: he put on the whole role of it, and even
Speaker 1: went so far as saying, these greeds, what these greeds?
Speaker 1: I would take great, No, honey, you're gonna need more
Speaker 1: than one. So but yeah, they tell the whole stort
Speaker 1: about how they ended up the check was picked up,
Speaker 1: and Dad's the sort where it was a very funny story,
Speaker 1: but you could tell there was still that a little
Speaker 1: bit of guilt. Yeah. Well, and that's that's the That's
Speaker 1: the problem with magic in general, is there's some part
Speaker 1: of me that that is compelled. I think that's part
Speaker 1: of why scam School is good for my soul, because
Speaker 1: I don't want to be that that that jerk who
Speaker 1: goes around letting people believe he as wizard powers and
Speaker 1: there's some part of me that wants to tell everyone
Speaker 1: it's all a lie, which is why I really do
Speaker 1: respect stage magicians who who go other way to say,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm going to perform an illusion for you.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's it's very clear they're they're they're
Speaker 1: telling you up front and they said, but if you're
Speaker 1: willing to go with me on this trip, you're gonna
Speaker 1: see some thing amazing. And yeah, and I mean Penn,
Speaker 1: Penn and Teller do some great stuff where they even
Speaker 1: go so far as to say, you could question how
Speaker 1: we do it, but if you learn the answer, then
Speaker 1: it just sort of takes away from the performance. The
Speaker 1: question we wish you would ask us is why do
Speaker 1: we do it? Yeah, I'm like, wow, what's what's the
Speaker 1: quote that were the magicians say, magicians are guarding an
Speaker 1: empty vault, Like, whatever it is you think the method
Speaker 1: is is way more fantastic than than how it actually is.
Speaker 1: Nothing but disappointment lay on the other side of that
Speaker 1: vault door, except in there are a few cases where
Speaker 1: where the actual method is even more interesting than the
Speaker 1: trick itself. And once that's true, then then by all
Speaker 1: means teach the entire thing. And in fact, um it
Speaker 1: used to be. The very first episode of Scam School
Speaker 1: we did was something called the human chimney, where you
Speaker 1: essentially make smoke appear from nowhere out of your lungs
Speaker 1: and Uh. It got great reactions when I did it,
Speaker 1: but everybody thought the methodybody assumed was happening was not
Speaker 1: nearly as interesting as the science behind what happens when
Speaker 1: you you secretly inhaled this poisonous white white phosphor, and
Speaker 1: the white phosphor SAPs out all of the moisture out
Speaker 1: of your lungs, creating this super thick water vapor and
Speaker 1: it uh. Once, I found that I get much more
Speaker 1: joy and a bigger right reaction out of people by
Speaker 1: explaining how it's done and encouraging them to try it,
Speaker 1: because it's it's interesting when a magician can make spoke
Speaker 1: ap here out of the lungs. It's magic when somebody
Speaker 1: could do it to themselves. Yeah, exactly. And I've even
Speaker 1: heard magicians talk about how they would see someone do uh,
Speaker 1: like some close up magic and uh, and they would
Speaker 1: just you know, they knew a way of doing it,
Speaker 1: and that was immediately what they go to. They assumed
Speaker 1: that that's the way. And then when it's demonstrated that
Speaker 1: there's a different way, and it might be an incredibly
Speaker 1: difficult and and complex way that requires lots more practice
Speaker 1: than the simple way, but Stagemsic sioan't say wow, that
Speaker 1: was amazing. As a matter of fact, the fantastic performer
Speaker 1: Tom Mullika is a legend and magic. He's one of
Speaker 1: the most talented side around artists out there, and he's
Speaker 1: got that that gift of personality and charisma and he
Speaker 1: did this. He has this like three and a half
Speaker 1: minute routine where he appears to eat one at one
Speaker 1: by one, an entire box of cigarettes. Uh. And there's
Speaker 1: actually heavy these are lit cigarettes. He lights them all,
Speaker 1: he smokes them all at once. He has this you know,
Speaker 1: it's like that Homer Simpson photo of the mouthful of cigarettes. Uh.
Speaker 1: He does that and then appears to swallow all of
Speaker 1: them and there's heavy duty, awesome side of hand going
Speaker 1: on in there. But he goes to FISM and if
Speaker 1: you don't know, f I s M is like the
Speaker 1: Olympics of magic. They have it I think every third
Speaker 1: or second year a couple of years ago, was in
Speaker 1: in China. But he goes to FISSM and just totally
Speaker 1: bombs because all of the judges just assume this guy's
Speaker 1: a freak who just swallowed a bunch of lit cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew it was magic and as a result, he
Speaker 1: he didn't win. Wow. Yeah, that in that crazy. That's
Speaker 1: that's almost an accolade. Awesome enough all on its own,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Yeah, that's part of it. I'm sure that's
Speaker 1: why the story is being told. Well, to transition out
Speaker 1: of this, I wanted to talk more about some of
Speaker 1: the other projects you've worked on, some of which are
Speaker 1: closely related to technology. In fact, one of these we've
Speaker 1: we've talked about on our show in the past, and
Speaker 1: I think I might have even talked about this before
Speaker 1: I met you, which is the whole idea of leaving
Speaker 1: behind a virtual ghost. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I think it might have been before we we
Speaker 1: had met each other. Yeah, that's the the afterlife dot
Speaker 1: me project. Um, if you we don't really have anything
Speaker 1: up there, but if you want to sign up to
Speaker 1: be notified when it's uh, I'm going to make sure
Speaker 1: it's actually still alive here and before that's a f
Speaker 1: T E r L y f E dot me afterlife
Speaker 1: dot me. Uh, it's it's the nuts and bolts are
Speaker 1: are being tinkered with by Patrick Dela Hanty who's a
Speaker 1: super talented web developer and uh you're starting to see
Speaker 1: similar projects pop up, but all of them, they're all sanctimonious,
Speaker 1: and they're all like, you know, we're here to help
Speaker 1: with the grieving process, and we're here to we're here
Speaker 1: to clean up your data after you passed away. After
Speaker 1: life on Me is freaking honest. After lifetime Me is
Speaker 1: an opportunity to become a virtual ghost just to annoy
Speaker 1: and freak out everyone for the rest of eternity. And
Speaker 1: essentially what happens is it's a dead man switch where
Speaker 1: every day, every year, on your birthday, you log in
Speaker 1: and let it know you're alive, and of course it'll
Speaker 1: bug you by email to UH to tell you to um,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure to check in, but if it
Speaker 1: doesn't hear back, it assumes you're dead. And then it
Speaker 1: takes all of your past tweets and just starts repeating
Speaker 1: them on the same times at the same dates that
Speaker 1: you said a year after year. And what I love
Speaker 1: about this is isn't that what ghosts are in history
Speaker 1: are items that don't know they're dead. These these echoes
Speaker 1: that think they're going about the daily business of their
Speaker 1: life when they're not. And the idea that we could
Speaker 1: do that digitally forever. You know, it's like picking up
Speaker 1: the kids, marry Christmas, the birthday in the bank. You know,
Speaker 1: all these things that you say year after year can
Speaker 1: become these digital echoes for all eternity. I think it's
Speaker 1: really cool as an art project. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: I some people say it's tacky. Yes, it very likely is,
Speaker 1: but a lot of art can be tacky, and I
Speaker 1: think it's really cool performance art. Personally, I love it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just love the idea of someone reading
Speaker 1: a tweet and saying, Jonathan's been dead for twenty years
Speaker 1: and he's still slamming the iPad and think about this, well,
Speaker 1: and that will be the other thing too. It's like
Speaker 1: it'll be more hilarious to hear you talking about stuff
Speaker 1: that doesn't like like Amy Winehouse die. You know, I
Speaker 1: think that'll that will become funny over time. But also
Speaker 1: think about the apt replies where all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you you whisper a happy birthday to someone from five
Speaker 1: years after the fact. This just tells me that I
Speaker 1: just need to make a lot more younger friends. That's right,
Speaker 1: because I do want to irritate people after I mean,
Speaker 1: I do it while I'm alive, why would I want
Speaker 1: to stop after I'm dead? I want to hear tape people,
Speaker 1: So you know, it's a great idea. As soon as
Speaker 1: I heard it, I I completely appreciated it for what
Speaker 1: it was being being sort of a mischievous prank poller myself.
Speaker 1: I found it. I found it incredibly appealing. There's still
Speaker 1: some interview left, but before we get there, let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor, UM. So why
Speaker 1: don't we talk about You can talk about some of
Speaker 1: the other shows you do, because we haven't really covered
Speaker 1: any of those. You've got some stuff on the twit
Speaker 1: network for example, and also you I do want to
Speaker 1: hear more about your experience with the Scam School e
Speaker 1: book please Yeah. Well, Scam School, of course is is
Speaker 1: the big coming out party that I had for with
Speaker 1: the internet. UM. But a lot of people were surprised
Speaker 1: when it turns out I knew anything about technology as
Speaker 1: well my past life. I spent a year testing video
Speaker 1: games for Rockwell semi conductors for a year, which was awesome,
Speaker 1: and I spent on three years at Dell and their
Speaker 1: high end sales support, you know, designing networks for small
Speaker 1: businesses or building high end systems for you know, three
Speaker 1: D model ers, animators, that kind of thing. Uh. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's the first time I did this Weekend Tech. It
Speaker 1: just seemed like a natural fit. And Leo is nice
Speaker 1: enough to give me a number of shows to do,
Speaker 1: and now I'm doing three programs over there, including NSFW.
Speaker 1: Is is an utterly volatile powder keg where we never
Speaker 1: know what's gonna happen. Half the time, it blows up
Speaker 1: in our face. Every so often, we have moments of
Speaker 1: awesome hilarity. Um, it's it's almost it's a very weird
Speaker 1: show because it's almost openly hostile to new people trying
Speaker 1: to visit it. So if you don't understand what's going on,
Speaker 1: just give it a couple more episodes and see if
Speaker 1: it's seeing sin. Yeah, it's kind of like your head
Speaker 1: with a hammer feels really good. Anytime you have justin
Speaker 1: Robert Young involved, there's gonna be volatility, exactly exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I started hosting a frame Rate with tom Merritt,
Speaker 1: which is a whole show about this whole emerging space
Speaker 1: with new media. This is, in many way is the
Speaker 1: most exciting time to be a broadcaster or be somebody
Speaker 1: who's interested in reaching a large audience of all time,
Speaker 1: because essentially we're seeing exactly now the exact same thing
Speaker 1: that happened in the nineteen fifties with broadcast television, and
Speaker 1: then in nineteen seventies with cable television. When when broadcast
Speaker 1: television began, there was no market because nobody had TVs,
Speaker 1: nobody knew what to do, and nobody had any money.
Speaker 1: So they just took their radio figures and threw them
Speaker 1: in front of a screen, and then they figured out
Speaker 1: that television is a different medium than these other things,
Speaker 1: and they were able to tell their own unique stories
Speaker 1: in their own unique ways. Same thing happened in the
Speaker 1: seventies with cable. Nobody was watching, so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there's all this band with all these channels. People are
Speaker 1: just throwing stuff. Ted Turner takes his local TBS W
Speaker 1: TBS station and throws it, calls it a superstation, but
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden it becomes TBS this powerhouse.
Speaker 1: Same thing with CNN. It wasn't even possible to have
Speaker 1: a twenty four hour news network beforehand. So nowadays we're
Speaker 1: in the wild West of new media with just distribution
Speaker 1: from YouTube, with podcasting with with pretty much anyone who's
Speaker 1: got a story to hell now has a global opportunity
Speaker 1: to to reach an audience worldwide and it cost him
Speaker 1: nothing that there's no barrier to access and it's a
Speaker 1: it's this awesome land rush to see who can become
Speaker 1: king of which little circuits out there, because whoever gets
Speaker 1: there first has a huge advantage. That's the reason CNN
Speaker 1: was number one for so long was because it was
Speaker 1: the first twenty four hour cables network and it was
Speaker 1: everyone else was just couldn't couldn't top it. And so
Speaker 1: likewise that was the big pushwick for why I did
Speaker 1: uh scam school. So anyway, that's what frame rate is about,
Speaker 1: is about the emerging digital transition, watching some new media
Speaker 1: stars transition to television and vice versa and uh And
Speaker 1: of course now we're hosting game on on on Twitch,
Speaker 1: which is every Sunday night Live. We talked about the
Speaker 1: video game news and reviews and that's with Veronica Belmont.
Speaker 1: Yes I should lead off with that they weren't like
Speaker 1: the man, and that's fine. It's you know, Veronica, I
Speaker 1: know I love her. She um she has shot me
Speaker 1: the look of death at least three times in my life,
Speaker 1: and I have survived. So I got it once or
Speaker 1: twice myself. There's a hair trigger, you know. Just it's
Speaker 1: read on the right ground. I don't want to get
Speaker 1: in trouble. But one of my favorite things about posting
Speaker 1: Game on is seeing the Veronica Belmont that that will
Speaker 1: never show herself on the internet. She is. She is delightfully,
Speaker 1: hilariously crass. She is a wonderful person. And that's all
Speaker 1: I'm going to say about this because I'm posting this show.
Speaker 1: Brian Brushwood had other things to say, but Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: just loves her, all right. So now that we've got
Speaker 1: that clear, yeah, so tell tell us more about this
Speaker 1: e book. Oh my god. So for years I've been
Speaker 1: flapping my gums about how I want to do a
Speaker 1: book for the Scam school Book. And originally I had
Speaker 1: all these designs on a physical book that would have
Speaker 1: like magic E kind of properties to it. The problem,
Speaker 1: of course, is that physical media unless you get picked
Speaker 1: up by a big publisher who wants to invest a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars, Uh, it's extremely it's the development costs
Speaker 1: are are are high, the printing costs are high, especially
Speaker 1: if you want to do something nonstandard or tricky with
Speaker 1: the pages. Uh, and you miss out on what's great
Speaker 1: about scam School because of course we have all these
Speaker 1: episodes and the only way to get from a book
Speaker 1: to an episode would be like a clugi kind of
Speaker 1: QR code thing. And have you ever used that? If
Speaker 1: any of you guys ever read a book that a
Speaker 1: QR codes and actually pulled out your phone and clicked
Speaker 1: on it, went to the page once or twice, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's definitely, it's definitely there's a barrier there.
Speaker 1: It's just like with podcasts and and suggesting, like we
Speaker 1: we tell in our podcast for people to go and
Speaker 1: read the articles and how stuff works. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of challenging because you know, it's two different, separate media.
Speaker 1: So to tell someone to go and read this article
Speaker 1: and the article is amazing and that it goes into
Speaker 1: far more detail than we ever could in a podcast
Speaker 1: and has some visual effects and all that kind of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a smaller number of people who make
Speaker 1: that transition. We love those people and we would love
Speaker 1: that number to grow, but we understand in it's it's
Speaker 1: two different media, and often you know what you're doing
Speaker 1: in one instance is not really you don't. There's no
Speaker 1: way to pour it over easily. Like if I'm mowing
Speaker 1: the lawn and listening to a podcast, I'm obviously not
Speaker 1: gonna jump on line and read an article about, you know,
Speaker 1: quantum suicide exactly. So it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: it's like you need to have as smooth a transition
Speaker 1: as possible. And about I guess two years ago, when
Speaker 1: Kindle really started to get more popular, and of course
Speaker 1: uh iTunes started up their eyebookstore, I was like, oh dude,
Speaker 1: then it's gotta be it's gotta be e books, and
Speaker 1: so we we converted some of my old books to
Speaker 1: e books and we figured out really fast what a
Speaker 1: nightmare this, This entire industry is in right now. As
Speaker 1: far as like proper format, and you've got competing formats
Speaker 1: dot mobi, dot epuby, they handle stuff differently. They have
Speaker 1: different capabilities in dot in dot moby. With a Kindle format,
Speaker 1: it's not even possible to wrap text around an image.
Speaker 1: All you can have is text, text, text block. Here's
Speaker 1: an image and you can't control the size of it.
Speaker 1: It'll it'll reformat stuff. Uh, it was so difficult to
Speaker 1: try to build this tool that I really became disheartened
Speaker 1: as far as ever reaching that goal of what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do if I have something that was rich media,
Speaker 1: that was detailed, that was pretty, that was highly interactive
Speaker 1: and had embedded media content. But then along comes this
Speaker 1: company booked that's v O o K dot com and
Speaker 1: they essentially are trying to create a their own platform
Speaker 1: that once you create the book in book, you press
Speaker 1: publish and it converts it to don mobi dot epub
Speaker 1: and it and it sends it out to to Barnes
Speaker 1: and Noble, to to Amazon and two iTunes. So with
Speaker 1: one click publishing you're able to create really good looking
Speaker 1: e books and with rich embedded media. And so we
Speaker 1: we participated in their beta program, which was a little
Speaker 1: bit harrowing because there were times where the entire book
Speaker 1: would vanish or chapter which because they disappear, we get
Speaker 1: on the phone, We're like, let's go on. They're like,
Speaker 1: don't worry, we'll fix it. It's magic exactly like it's beta.
Speaker 1: But they but they had by the time we were
Speaker 1: done with the book, I'm I was extraordinarily proud of it.
Speaker 1: It is It is unlike any other e book I've
Speaker 1: seen in that it's uh, it's almost like a Harry
Speaker 1: Potter book, where where the pictures and illustrations come alive,
Speaker 1: there's there's seventy audio commentary. I've never seen audio commentary
Speaker 1: tracks for chapters in a book before. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: it's amazing because the book itself is a collection of
Speaker 1: eight plus tricks from the Scam School series. These are
Speaker 1: all things that are either street cons to watch out
Speaker 1: for or ways to score free drink, some kick ass
Speaker 1: magic tricks and if you really nasty, pranks to pull
Speaker 1: on your friends. And it's I love the media format
Speaker 1: because I can spend two paragraphs explaining how to hold
Speaker 1: your pinky when you're holding a deck of cards, But
Speaker 1: none of that's as useful as when you press when
Speaker 1: you press on the on the photo and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, it comes live and illustrates animated for you
Speaker 1: and shows you exactly what you're supposed to do. So
Speaker 1: it's got It's got seventy plus audio commentary tracks and
Speaker 1: forty plus illustrations. And out of everything, I'm most pleased
Speaker 1: with the fact that Teller of Penn and Teller allowed
Speaker 1: me to publish an essay he wrote me seventeen years
Speaker 1: ago when I was nineteen years old, uh and looking
Speaker 1: for my place in magic. I wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: Teller and he was kind enough to write a response,
Speaker 1: like a four page essay talking about creativity and magic.
Speaker 1: And UH. Being able to publish that and share the
Speaker 1: word on that has been extremely gratifying. So I am
Speaker 1: very very happy. If you go to scam school book
Speaker 1: dot com you can find all all the different platforms. Fantastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that that is exciting to me because you know,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about this whole electronic book uh medium
Speaker 1: and and what the potential is and that it's been
Speaker 1: several years in the making and it and it's so
Speaker 1: exciting that it looks like now we're getting the point
Speaker 1: where people are actually really cracking that nut, where they've
Speaker 1: managed to find a way to incorporate the different abilities
Speaker 1: you have in something like a web based presence and
Speaker 1: the things you have within electronic text, and that it's
Speaker 1: being brought together in ways to to really cater to
Speaker 1: a wider audience. Really because and we all know that
Speaker 1: people favor different ways to learn information. Some people some
Speaker 1: people reading texts that's what they like, and some people
Speaker 1: they have to see it work for it to really
Speaker 1: have an impact. And this is I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: this is an important phase we're entering with the books.
Speaker 1: Were just as we figured out that television is not
Speaker 1: radio with pictures, e books are not books on your iPad.
Speaker 1: It's it's an inherently different platform with different strengths and
Speaker 1: we weaknesses. And I honestly feel like, like the Scam
Speaker 1: School Book is the first book on the shelves, you
Speaker 1: know this minute that truly takes advantage of that unique
Speaker 1: nature and speaks the language of digital e books, and
Speaker 1: the reviews seem to indicate that there is something special
Speaker 1: happening there that's awesome. Yeah, And I mean I think
Speaker 1: the next if I were to put on my prognosticator had,
Speaker 1: I would say the next step as far as the
Speaker 1: medium starting to come into its own, uh the e
Speaker 1: book is is what's happening now. I think the next
Speaker 1: step is augmented reality, because right now we're seeing it
Speaker 1: used in things like commercials and that kind of or games,
Speaker 1: but the idea of having a world of information overlaid
Speaker 1: on top of the real world around you and anchoring
Speaker 1: that information in the world to give it real and
Speaker 1: impactful meaning to the person who's who's looking at it
Speaker 1: and whatever context that might be, because there could be
Speaker 1: endless number of contexts for any particular region. That to me,
Speaker 1: that's the That's why I keep on whenever I get
Speaker 1: an opportunity, I keep on mentioning a Google if you're
Speaker 1: making those glasses, I want to pair absolutely. I fully
Speaker 1: believe that that you're already seeing this in the military,
Speaker 1: the video gamification of your job, and uh, and they are.
Speaker 1: I know, I guess the military really pioneered the idea
Speaker 1: of of badges and medals and achievements. But uh, but
Speaker 1: you know, of course we see it and stuff like
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft when you're grinding all the time. And
Speaker 1: a friend of mine is now a he was the
Speaker 1: CEO of a company put together a business plan to
Speaker 1: try to pitch the idea of of of of an
Speaker 1: achievement based system for all of his employees based on
Speaker 1: their class and their and their missions or their tasks
Speaker 1: where they could they could level up and get perks,
Speaker 1: they could win badges, and the whole thing was clearly
Speaker 1: modeled right after World of Warcraft, and he i don't
Speaker 1: know if he ever implemented it, but it was so
Speaker 1: obviously right when I read it that I fully expect
Speaker 1: us to see more companies running their businesses like a video.
Speaker 1: Classic episode our conversation with Brian Brushwood. Brian is an
Speaker 1: awesome dude. If you don't know him, you should definitely
Speaker 1: look up his work. He's got several YouTube series the
Speaker 1: date back for years. He shows you all these as
Speaker 1: some magic tricks that you can learn how to do
Speaker 1: and really impress friends, as well as things like bar
Speaker 1: bets and that kind of stuff. Lots of really fun
Speaker 1: social engineering as well, so make sure you go check
Speaker 1: those out. And if you have any suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, well send me an email the
Speaker 1: addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com or
Speaker 1: drop on over to our website that's tech stuff podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. You'll find the archive of shows there, as
Speaker 1: well as our links to social media sites and of
Speaker 1: course the link to our store. Every purchase you make
Speaker 1: at our store goes to help the show. We greatly
Speaker 1: appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: YEA for more on this and bathands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Because at how stuff Works dot com