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Speaker 1: We're the first people to discover things about the human brain,

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Speaker 1: neuroscientists or magicians. How do magicians steer your attention? Why

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Speaker 1: can't you see what they're doing when they do something

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Speaker 1: right in front of you? And how can someone appear

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Speaker 1: to read your mind? Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me

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Speaker 1: David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford

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Speaker 1: and in these episodes, we sail deeply into our three

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Speaker 1: pound universe to understand why and how our lives look

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Speaker 1: the way they do. Today's episode dives deep into the

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Speaker 1: world of magic tricks. Why do magic tricks work? I'm

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Speaker 1: not talking about the mechanics of how a card trick,

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Speaker 1: or how a magician saws a box in half and

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Speaker 1: it's actually two ladies and two boxes, or how a

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Speaker 1: magician pulls off a trick with mirrors. I'm not talking

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Speaker 1: about that. I want to talk about the way the

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Speaker 1: human brain works and how that opens the door to

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Speaker 1: us getting fooled. And so I'm going to start with

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Speaker 1: an assertion if brains worked in a totally different way,

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Speaker 1: presumably we would have different sorts of magic tricks. Other

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Speaker 1: things would work for us. So, for example, if we

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Speaker 1: ever discover life on other planets, we might find that

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Speaker 1: the aliens visual systems or attentional systems work differently, and

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Speaker 1: therefore an alien magician stands on stage in front of

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Speaker 1: its alien audience and does things that would seem patently

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Speaker 1: obvious to us, and all the aliens would put their

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Speaker 1: green hands over their mouths and gasp, wow, how did

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Speaker 1: she do that? In other words, if they have some

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Speaker 1: sort of flaw in their understanding of the reality of

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Speaker 1: the world out there, then their magicians could take advantage

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Speaker 1: of that and they would be flummixed. So in today's episode,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna take the opposite view. We're going to pretend

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Speaker 1: we're the aliens looking at the humans, and we'll get

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Speaker 1: to see the flaws in the human brain that way

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Speaker 1: that cause us to misperceive reality, which gives rise to

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Speaker 1: a class of people known as magicians, who exploit these

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Speaker 1: neural deficits, either for profit or entertainment. And what's fascinating

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Speaker 1: is that even though we've figured out a lot about

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Speaker 1: the brain, there's a sense in which neuroscientists are always

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Speaker 1: playing catch up to those people who have mastered the

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Speaker 1: art of perception. This can be the stage magician or

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Speaker 1: the mentalist, or the person running a seance, or the

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Speaker 1: guy run the shell game on a street corner, or

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Speaker 1: the professional pickpocket. These people have mastered manipulation through a

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Speaker 1: lot of trial and error. And now we're at a

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Speaker 1: fascinating point where there's a collaboration going on between these

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Speaker 1: two fields, where neuroscientists try to figure out the science

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Speaker 1: of what magicians already figured out works. In other words,

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Speaker 1: neuroscience is following the scent trails of the magicians to

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Speaker 1: figure out what makes these tricks and sleight of hand

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Speaker 1: and illusions full our neural networks. Now, if you've been

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Speaker 1: listening to this podcast, you'll know that the brain lives

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Speaker 1: in silence and darkness, and it's always trying to construct

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Speaker 1: an internal model of the outside world. The critical point

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Speaker 1: for today is that there is not a perfect mapping

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Speaker 1: from the outside to the inside. In other words, it's

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Speaker 1: not as though something happens in the outside world and

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Speaker 1: we have a perfect record of that on the inside. Instead,

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Speaker 1: if something happens outside the spotlight of where you're paying attention,

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Speaker 1: you just don't see it at all. But the brain's

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Speaker 1: job is to put together a story of what the

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Speaker 1: heck is happening in the world out there, and so

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Speaker 1: it will do so even if it has missed that event,

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Speaker 1: even if its story is totally wrong. Its job is

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Speaker 1: to narrate what is going on in the world given

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Speaker 1: its best understanding. So that means if you don't see

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Speaker 1: some sleight of hand, your brain will nonetheless cook up

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Speaker 1: a story like the coin must have disappeared into thin

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Speaker 1: air and then it later appeared in my pocket. Now

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Speaker 1: let's say those aliens don't have an attentional spotlight like

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Speaker 1: we do, so they can see everything happening in the scene.

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Speaker 1: They would be totally amused that you fell for that.

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Speaker 1: To them, you're like a dog falling for a simple trick,

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Speaker 1: like when you pretend to throw a ball and you

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Speaker 1: hide it behind your back and the dog gets fooled.

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Speaker 1: So today we're going to explore the science behind the magic,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to get there with the help of

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Speaker 1: two interviews. First, we're going to talk with a magician

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Speaker 1: and then with two neuroscientists who study why magic works.

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Speaker 1: So first I called up my friend Robert Strong, a

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Speaker 1: professional magician, and asked him about his experience with manipulating attention.

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Speaker 1: So Robert tell us about what magicians need to understand

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Speaker 1: about the brain in order to do what you do.

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Speaker 2: So magicians have spent five thousand years abe testing tricks

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Speaker 2: on humans to find the moments where the attention, where

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Speaker 2: the gaze is upon you, but the attention is not

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Speaker 2: on you, so that the eyes may see them, but

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Speaker 2: the brain doesn't record it. And what we do is

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Speaker 2: we pay really close attention to people for those moments

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Speaker 2: where the attention is somewhere else. And sometimes it happens naturally,

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Speaker 2: but mostly we manufacture it where the attention is internal.

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Speaker 1: What's an example of how you would manufacture where someone's

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Speaker 1: attention is.

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Speaker 2: So the three that I use the most. The first

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Speaker 2: is where I'm interested, is where they're interested. So I

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Speaker 2: show no interest in the method or the secret, but

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Speaker 2: I bring all my folks and attention and my gaze

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Speaker 2: to where the secret isn't that's the classical misdirection.

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Speaker 1: So can you unpack that with an example?

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Speaker 2: So if I were to hold up a dollar bill

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Speaker 2: and I bring my attention and focus to the dollar bill,

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Speaker 2: that's where I want them to be. But if I

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Speaker 2: want to sneak something into the dollar bill, if I'm

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Speaker 2: going to fold a bill around like a coin or

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Speaker 2: something to make a prop that I'm going to use later.

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Speaker 2: What I'll do is I'll show it intron in the subject.

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Speaker 2: So where are you from? Have you ever done a

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Speaker 2: magic trick before? Is this your first time being magical?

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Speaker 2: And so I take my focus intention interest over there.

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Speaker 2: The other thing I could do is I might have

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Speaker 2: a red herring for this. I need a pen or pencil.

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Speaker 2: Do you have one? Let's look. While they're looking, I'm

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Speaker 2: putting the coin in the door, right in.

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Speaker 3: Front of them.

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Speaker 2: Their eyes could record it, but it just doesn't no pen,

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Speaker 2: That's okay. I'll use the bill as a magic wand

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Speaker 2: so it's a red herring.

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Speaker 1: And did you say there were three ways you do it?

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Speaker 2: There's probably a dozen, but there's three that I use

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Speaker 2: the most. The one that I focus on probably the

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Speaker 2: most is humor. Just a little joke. And when you

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Speaker 2: give a little joke, they laugh for just a moment.

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Speaker 2: Their gaze is on you, but they don't record what

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Speaker 2: they're seeing. So if they were actually watching a video

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Speaker 2: of it, they can rewind it, slow it down, and

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Speaker 2: they can see me do the secret move. They didn't move,

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Speaker 2: but in real time, they just don't record it, okay,

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Speaker 2: And what's the third The third one that I use

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Speaker 2: the most is either the trick is over or I

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Speaker 2: apparently fail. So if you chose the King of Hearts

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Speaker 2: and I pull out the Two of Hearts, you go, Nope,

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Speaker 2: that's not it. I go, oh, that just didn't work.

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Speaker 2: I dropped my shoulders, I bring my gaze and attention,

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Speaker 2: like darn, that didn't work. And when they go, oh,

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Speaker 2: the trick's over or he failed, then I could do

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Speaker 2: the secret move right in front of them and the

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Speaker 2: brain doesn't record it. I go, We'll give me one

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Speaker 2: more chance, or tell me what your card is, and

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Speaker 2: then their card is in a magical place like inside

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Speaker 2: a box they've been holding the whole time. A lot

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Speaker 2: of magicians that do really good sleide of hand do

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Speaker 2: a lot of overwhelming them with cues. Can you hold

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Speaker 2: that a little lower? Can you bring that a little

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Speaker 2: bit closer? Can you make sure everybody can see?

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Speaker 3: You know?

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Speaker 2: And just giving them a set of cues one after another,

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Speaker 2: they stop recording the secret move that's right in front

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Speaker 2: of them because they don't want to get it wrong.

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Speaker 2: So if you are an assistant on stage in front

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Speaker 2: of two people or ten thousand people, and I give

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Speaker 2: you a set of instructions, and I just hit you

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Speaker 2: with three or four instructions, especially if number one slightly

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Speaker 2: contradicts number four. All of a sudden, you're looking right

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Speaker 2: at me, but you're not recording the secret move. So

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Speaker 2: if I say, can you hold that a little bit lower?

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Speaker 2: Can you hold a little bit closer, no closer to

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Speaker 2: your body a little higher?

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Speaker 3: Please?

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Speaker 2: And now they're thinking that was he said lower to

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Speaker 2: a Hi. I don't want to get that wrong, And

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Speaker 2: they're trying to split the difference. They're looking right at you,

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Speaker 2: but the brain doesn't record a secret move that happens

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Speaker 2: right in front of them. Another great one is what

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Speaker 2: you do use is called bottom up. Something that just

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Speaker 2: comes from nowhere. So a piece of flash paper, a

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Speaker 2: flash of light, a sound on a sudden movement, an

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Speaker 2: assistant comes on stage, something shiny and bright that just distracts,

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Speaker 2: like the cartoon squirrel. You give them something that just

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Speaker 2: takes their gaze off for just a moment, and that

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Speaker 2: gives you enough time to sneak an elephant to the room.

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Speaker 1: Oh excellent. Yeah. In neuroscience we talk about exogenous and

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Speaker 1: endogenous attention, meaning you know, exogerous attention is something happens

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Speaker 1: the snap, debang, the flash, and it causes you to look.

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Speaker 1: It grabs your attention over there, whereas endogenous attention is

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Speaker 1: where I'm choosing to put my attention or where I

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Speaker 1: think I'm choosing to put it. And that's all the

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Speaker 1: first things you mentioned. We're taking people's in dodgenous attention,

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Speaker 1: but the sudden effect is what grabs their attention. Then

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Speaker 1: you can do lots of things right under their nose.

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Speaker 2: The terms the magicians use are bottom up top down.

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Speaker 2: So if I'm holding a lighter and a piece of

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Speaker 2: flash paper. For a bottom up, I light the flash paper,

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Speaker 2: it makes a big flash in the air of all

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Speaker 2: the eyes and gaze goes up while they handholding the

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Speaker 2: lighter dumps it into a secret pocket, brings him back

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Speaker 2: to the previous position, and when the eyes come down,

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Speaker 2: the letter is now apparently vanished. But for top down,

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Speaker 2: I might say watch this piece of paper closely, bring

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Speaker 2: your gaze in close, watch really closely, and when they're

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Speaker 2: following the instructions, probably by force perspective, I can toss

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Speaker 2: that piece of paper over their head. Outside of their view,

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Speaker 2: all they see is the back of my hand. And

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Speaker 2: when I come back down, apparently holding the paper and

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Speaker 2: balling up into my other hand, the volunteer sees the

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Speaker 2: ball in their mind. When I say sees that, they

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Speaker 2: see their mind's eye go into the hand. And because

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Speaker 2: I am directing them and keeping them really focused in

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Speaker 2: my place, they're not seeing the places I don't want

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Speaker 2: them to see. And then I can apparently make it

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Speaker 2: vanish and had already been gone for a few seconds.

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Speaker 1: Tell us about other types of misdirection that you exploit.

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Speaker 2: One very powerful type of misdirection that I use all

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Speaker 2: the time is something called time misdirection. I'm not a neuroscientist,

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Speaker 2: but my understanding is that the brain has really good

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Speaker 2: instant recall. So in my being out there in the

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Speaker 2: field and doing magic tricks for people, if I do

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Speaker 2: the secret move and then the reveal immediately after that,

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Speaker 2: the brain is really good at rewinding a set or

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Speaker 2: two and going, something just happened, and I know that's

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Speaker 2: when the magic happened. Maybe I don't understand what the

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Speaker 2: secret move was. So magicians try to create a lot

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Speaker 2: of time distance between a secret move and the reveal

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Speaker 2: of the magic trick where the magical moment happens. So

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Speaker 2: a really good example of time as direction is a

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Speaker 2: magic trick that every magician learns at the beginning of

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Speaker 2: their career, and it's in every kid's book. It's forcing

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Speaker 2: a playing card, giving the illusion of a free choice.

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Speaker 2: So if I show I've got a deck of cards

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Speaker 2: where the cards are all different, and I peek at

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Speaker 2: the bottom card and I secretly know that it is

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Speaker 2: the Queen of Hearts, I ask you to cut the

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Speaker 2: cards into two piles. So you take the top half

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Speaker 2: and place it on the table, and I take the

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Speaker 2: bottom half and I criss crossed it across the top

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Speaker 2: of the cards.

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Speaker 3: Like, so, now I talk to you, I say you

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Speaker 3: had a free choice. There's fifty two cards.

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Speaker 2: It would be a small miracle if I can tell

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Speaker 2: you that you cut to the Queen of Hearts before

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Speaker 2: you look at the card you cut to. I just

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Speaker 2: want to make sure you know that I didn't even

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Speaker 2: touch the car cards. And then I go and I

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Speaker 2: pick up the pile of the cards, and I show

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Speaker 2: you that the card that you cut to was indeed

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Speaker 2: the Queen of Hearts. It was simply the bottom card.

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Speaker 2: But enough timeness direction, the audience loses track of which

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Speaker 2: is the top and which is the bottom.

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Speaker 1: Excellent, So tell us how you, as a magician exploit assumptions.

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Speaker 3: That's a great question.

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Speaker 2: I think everything we do as we exploit assumption is

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Speaker 2: because the human brain lives in the future, is predicting

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Speaker 2: what's coming next. And if we take them down that

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Speaker 2: road of giving them all the supporting evidence that everything

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Speaker 2: they believe to be is true is true, and then

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Speaker 2: we pull back the curtain and we show them a

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Speaker 2: new reveal, something that's unexpected, that's the magical moment. So

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Speaker 2: we understand that people believe that if I'm holding a

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Speaker 2: rubber band and I make a very specific sound like this,

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Speaker 2: that the rubber band is now broken. And I gave

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Speaker 2: you supporting visual evidence by giving the illusion that the

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Speaker 2: rubber band's broken. But the rubber band never broke. All

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Speaker 2: I did was pluck it like a musical instrument at

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Speaker 2: the right time. The eyes could see that I didn't

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Speaker 2: break it. But because you hear the sound, the brain goes, oh,

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Speaker 2: that's super familiar. I know that sound. And then they

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Speaker 2: see what looks like a broken rubber band. They jumped

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Speaker 2: to the wrong conclusion for the right reasons. Oh, for

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Speaker 2: the audience that's listening. Here's what I did was I

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Speaker 2: took a rubber band and I put my index fingers

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Speaker 2: and I'm making a long oval.

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Speaker 3: And I took that long oval, and I.

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Speaker 2: Collapsed the top band down to the bottom band to

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Speaker 2: make the two lines, so it looks like a single band.

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Speaker 3: And I stretched it out and made a new circle.

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Speaker 2: And now to complete the circle, I took my finger

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Speaker 2: out of the oval, and now I've got this little

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Speaker 2: nub here I can pluck, and it looks like a

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Speaker 2: new circle or a new rubber band, but in reality,

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Speaker 2: it's a stretched out rubber band. And that plucking sound

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Speaker 2: completes the illusion in the brain that the rubber band

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Speaker 2: is broken. And then all I have to do is

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Speaker 2: open up the oval and show that it was never

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Speaker 2: actually broken, or that it's magically restored.

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Speaker 1: So for the audio audience, it looks like Robert breaks

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Speaker 1: a rubber band. It looks like he's got a single

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Speaker 1: stretch of rubber and he pulls it and you hear

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Speaker 1: the sound and you think, oh, I see he has

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Speaker 1: just snapped the rubber band. And then a moment later

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Speaker 1: he shows you bunk. Here is the complete rubber band again.

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Speaker 1: But Robert, you're saying a big part of that is

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Speaker 1: the sound of seeing it and the assumption of what

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Speaker 1: that translates to.

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Speaker 2: So that specifically as sound synchronization. But we do give

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Speaker 2: an all magic supporting evidence of the illusion, so that

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Speaker 2: way all thoughts of hey, there's something funny going on

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Speaker 2: or this isn't real goes away and you believe in

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Speaker 2: the reality that we're creating terrific.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, all of us, of course live in our own head.

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Speaker 1: We've got our internal models running. We interpret reality, and

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Speaker 1: your job as a magician is simply to navigate what

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Speaker 1: we think is the reality going on. I know you

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Speaker 1: think about forced perspectives like this to tell us about that.

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Speaker 2: So a lot of times magicians just simply understand your

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Speaker 2: point of view literally. So we'll practice in front of

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Speaker 2: a mirror or a camera, and if we get the

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Speaker 2: angles right, we can create allusion that something appears, disappears,

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Speaker 2: or even levitates. And this is one that's pretty easy

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Speaker 2: to explain. But from your point of view, you see

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Speaker 2: a silver ball that is apparently floating, Yes, But from

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Speaker 2: another point of view or another angle, when I turn

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Speaker 2: the sideway, so you can see it's a silver soup ladle,

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Speaker 2: and you were just seeing the bowl of it and

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Speaker 2: weren't seeing the handle, and the handle was simply under

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Speaker 2: my armpit, which creates a beautiful illusion in the kitchen

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Speaker 2: at soup time.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So just for the audio audience, he put the

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Speaker 1: soup ladle under his arm so the bottom of it

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Speaker 1: is sticking out towards us, and it looks like a

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Speaker 1: floating silver ball. And then he takes his hands off

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Speaker 1: of the silver ball and it makes it look like

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Speaker 1: he's levitating it with his hands. It's so simple and

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Speaker 1: so good and so compelling. Check out the video if

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Speaker 1: you're just listening to this on audio. Okay, So that's

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Speaker 1: an example of forced perspective, as in, you know exactly

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Speaker 1: where I am in the case of zoom COVID pandemic.

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Speaker 1: Must have been cool for you in certain ways because

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Speaker 1: you got to do all kinds of zoom magic tricks

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Speaker 1: where you know precisely what the perspective is. But when

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Speaker 1: you're doing this in an audience and live audience with

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Speaker 1: lots of people, what kind of things can you do

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Speaker 1: there in person?

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Speaker 2: Combining everything we've talked about, you can create a series

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Speaker 2: of illusions that happen back to back to back to back.

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Speaker 2: So it's just bombarded with magic. Because one of the

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Speaker 2: things I like to create is just a bombardment of

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Speaker 2: magic all coming out to your senses, all wines and together.

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Speaker 2: It's a cumulative effect and it feels super magical.

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Speaker 1: That's great. And people, even if they're sniffing out some

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Speaker 1: particular part of it, you're hitting them with lots of

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Speaker 1: different things, and so they're not going to pick up

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Speaker 1: on what's going on.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and they focus on the one that fools them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So Robert, how do you make sure

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Speaker 1: that you understand what it is like to be in

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Speaker 1: the audience's shoes looking at you.

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Speaker 2: So magicians have to have a lot of empathy. We're

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Speaker 2: creating moments of delight and joy for other people, so

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Speaker 2: we have to literally see it from their perspective, like

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Speaker 2: physically for the magic to work.

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Speaker 3: But we also have to know.

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Speaker 2: What's their life experience and what's their expectations, what's their assumptions,

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Speaker 2: and kind of put ourselves in their shoes to create

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Speaker 2: moments of joy. And I was wanting to asked, what

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Speaker 2: is the best magic trick. My answer was the ham

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Speaker 2: sandwich heading. Gnulms, a Baltimore magician I think in the fifties,

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Speaker 2: wrote a book and it's just a little paragraph in there.

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Speaker 2: And the way it explains how you get to the

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Speaker 2: best magic trick in the world is if you and

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Speaker 2: I were walking down the street and you said, do

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Speaker 2: a magic trick, and I reached the right packet, I

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Speaker 2: pull out a ham sandwich.

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Speaker 1: You like, that's weird.

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Speaker 2: But if it were lunchtimer walking down the street and

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Speaker 2: you say do magic trick and I pull out ham sandwich,

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Speaker 2: You're like, well, that's convenient timing. But if you had

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Speaker 2: just explained to me a ham sandwich that you had

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Speaker 2: been thinking about all day long, it was from your childhood,

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Speaker 2: you could even get it here. And then you say

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Speaker 2: do a magic trick and I pull up that ham sandwich.

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Speaker 2: It's a freaking miracle. So when I say magicians have empathy,

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Speaker 2: they really good magicians really take the time to think

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Speaker 2: about where are they physically? Who are they? Are they engineers?

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Speaker 2: Are they scientists? What's going on? Do they just get funding,

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Speaker 2: do they just get FDA approval?

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Speaker 3: What's the space they're in there?

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Speaker 2: There's a fountain there, and there's or they're on a

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Speaker 2: ship in the bay or something like that, and then

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Speaker 2: you take the lot all together and you create an

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Speaker 2: illusion that is a freaking experience that they'll remember for

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Speaker 2: the rest of their lives.

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Speaker 1: That was Robert Strong, a professional magician. It's wonderful to

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Speaker 1: watch his performances, and I'm linking some of his videos

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Speaker 1: in the show notes. And next I called up two

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Speaker 1: colleagues of mine, Stephen Macknick and Susannah Martinez Conde. They're

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Speaker 1: both neuroscience professors and researchers at State University of New

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Speaker 1: York Downtown Medical Center. They've been studying the intersection of

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Speaker 1: magic with neuroscience for years, so I wanted to dive

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Speaker 1: in with them. So you've asserted that magicians have been

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Speaker 1: testing and exploiting the limits of attention and cognition for

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Speaker 1: hundreds of years, and neurosciences just beginning to catch up

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Speaker 1: with that. So tell us about that.

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Speaker 4: We have been studying the neuroscience of magic for I

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Speaker 4: guess about the almost twenty years now, and something that

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Speaker 4: we realize early on is that as neuroscientists, we have

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Speaker 4: sometimes been reinventing the wheel and arrive into conclusions and

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Speaker 4: finding things about the mind and the brain that the

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Speaker 4: magicians know for centuries, if not longer. So I have

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Speaker 4: an example causes such as change blindness and in attentional blindness.

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Speaker 4: These are cognitive neuroscience concepts that basically refer to the

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Speaker 4: way that our brain prioritizes attention. So change blindness refers

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Speaker 4: to when something changes but you don't realize, you don't

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Speaker 4: notice the change because you have not been paying attention,

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Speaker 4: sometimes during a gamma change, and we have continuity errors

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Speaker 4: in movies and that sort of situation. And in attentional

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Speaker 4: blindness simply refers to the fact that we cannot attend

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Speaker 4: to a million things at once. We can, in fact,

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Speaker 4: to attend to one thing at once, and so whatever

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Speaker 4: you're not attending to, you are going to ignore. And

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Speaker 4: you could say that you're blind to those events you're

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Speaker 4: not attended.

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Speaker 1: To, and so magicians take advantage of this.

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Speaker 5: What Susanna was saying with inattentional blindness has to do

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Speaker 5: with when we are paying attention to something, we are

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Speaker 5: not able to pay attention to other things. And this

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Speaker 5: implies both a time that we're paying attention but also

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Speaker 5: a space that we're paying attention. So attention also has

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Speaker 5: a spatial component. So that is something that magicians learned

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Speaker 5: a long time ago, that there was a spotlight of attention.

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Speaker 5: And this is something that neuroscientists, cognitive neuroscience also discovered

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Speaker 5: independently from magicians, and in fact, the evolution here of

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Speaker 5: both concepts is so convergent that we came across the

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Speaker 5: same terminology. Both scientists and magicians called this is spotlight

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Speaker 5: of attention and independently of each other. And so this

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Speaker 5: is where when you're paying attention to something, there is

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Speaker 5: actually a point in your visual system that's a relatively

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Speaker 5: small point where you're paying attention. It can be in

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Speaker 5: the center of your vision or outside the center of

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Speaker 5: your vision, and this area is where you actually can

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Speaker 5: perform tasks that require attention. And outside that area we

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Speaker 5: now know to some extent because of research that Susanna

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Speaker 5: and I helped conduct, that you actually suppress everything else. Okay,

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Speaker 5: so that's how the spotlight seems to be working in

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Speaker 5: the brain and what neuroscience brought to the table. But

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Speaker 5: magicians knew about the spotlight of attention from their own

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Speaker 5: research in performing before anybody else.

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Speaker 1: So The magician's task is to draw your spotlight of

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Speaker 1: attention to something they want you to look at while

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Speaker 1: they're doing something else outside of that spotlight that you

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Speaker 1: can't see. So give me an example.

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Speaker 4: Of that example is in terms of attentional management magicians,

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Speaker 4: one term is a misdirection, but it's basically attentional management.

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Speaker 4: And I'm thinking about the magic tree, the cups and balls.

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Speaker 4: This cos back to the Roman Empire. It's still performed today.

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Speaker 4: But when we say the magicians have known some of

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Speaker 4: these things for a long time, it's a really long time.

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Speaker 1: Well.

436
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:28,919
Speaker 4: In the Cups and Balls track, you typically performed with

437
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:33,919
Speaker 4: three upside down cups, and balls appear and disappear below

438
00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:37,320
Speaker 4: the cups, and what they do is divide your attention.

439
00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:41,400
Speaker 4: There's a minimum of three locations with the three cups, and.

440
00:24:41,359 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 6: They're moving them around.

441
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:46,359
Speaker 4: And not only you're dividing your attention on three special occasions,

442
00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:49,640
Speaker 4: but the magicians will be talking at the same time,

443
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 4: tell them.

444
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:50,919
Speaker 6: Some sort of story.

445
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:55,320
Speaker 4: They call it pattern And so what that forces spectators

446
00:24:55,560 --> 00:24:59,800
Speaker 4: is to divide their attention. And so in multiple locations,

447
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:04,320
Speaker 4: cross multiple sensory systems, and as we explained before, we

448
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:07,280
Speaker 4: do not have the wiring to do that. We can

449
00:25:07,359 --> 00:25:12,200
Speaker 4: really only pay attention to one thing, and so magicians

450
00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:15,680
Speaker 4: are masters of the divide and conquered approach of attention.

451
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:19,040
Speaker 1: So how does the cups and balls trick work? I mean,

452
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 1: aside from dividing your attention, what are they actually doing there?

453
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:24,680
Speaker 5: So in the cups and balls, so you have three

454
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:27,960
Speaker 5: cups and you have three or more balls, and what

455
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 5: they'll do is they'll show you under a cup that

456
00:25:30,320 --> 00:25:33,400
Speaker 5: there's nothing there, and then they put down the cup

457
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:35,560
Speaker 5: and they show you another cup and there is a

458
00:25:35,560 --> 00:25:37,919
Speaker 5: ball there. And then they move the cups around and

459
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 5: you can follow. It's not very fast, you can see

460
00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:42,719
Speaker 5: which cup is going where. And then when they move

461
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 5: the cup around, they pull up the cup with the

462
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:46,960
Speaker 5: ball and earth the ball's gone. And then they opened

463
00:25:46,960 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 5: another cup and the ball's there, and you know that

464
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:51,000
Speaker 5: that was what was empty. And they're doing this with

465
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 5: slight of hand.

466
00:25:52,240 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 4: So there's sleight of hand involved that we should not

467
00:25:56,920 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 4: really disclose because we have been sworn to secrecy by

468
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 4: various magic societies. But the main thing from a neuroscience

469
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 4: perspective is that you are dividing your attention arguably and

470
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:13,240
Speaker 4: I do not believe the experiment has been done. But

471
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:15,879
Speaker 4: one experiment I would like to do is to have

472
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:20,680
Speaker 4: people and that track their say, their eye movements, and

473
00:26:20,760 --> 00:26:24,640
Speaker 4: have them observed just one special location at once, one

474
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:29,439
Speaker 4: one cup, one ball. My prediction would be that they

475
00:26:29,880 --> 00:26:32,720
Speaker 4: might have a much better chance at figuring this out

476
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 4: just staying still with their attentional allocation than as we

477
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:39,280
Speaker 4: watch the trick naturally.

478
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:42,480
Speaker 6: But that, of course is not what we tend to do.

479
00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:46,720
Speaker 5: So we wrote a paper about the Cups and Balls

480
00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 5: using Taelor the magician from Pen and Teller, and he

481
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:56,160
Speaker 5: actually performed it on camera in multiple different ways that

482
00:26:56,200 --> 00:27:00,880
Speaker 5: we would consider to be a stimulu of different conditions

483
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 5: for our experimental paradigm. And then we showed subjects these

484
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:09,359
Speaker 5: different videos with different conditions and we were able to

485
00:27:09,480 --> 00:27:11,640
Speaker 5: learn a few things about how the Cups and Balls

486
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:12,040
Speaker 5: has done.

487
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:12,199
Speaker 1: So.

488
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 5: First off, the general zeitgeist in magic is that you're

489
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 5: drawing people's attention by moving your hands in a certain

490
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 5: way and moving the cups in a certain way, and

491
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 5: while you're making a big move over here, they don't

492
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:29,159
Speaker 5: notice a small move over there. That's an axiom of magic.

493
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 5: A big move covers a small move, and the small

494
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:34,840
Speaker 5: move would be, of course, we're manipulating the balls, and

495
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:37,199
Speaker 5: the big move would be to draw your attention. And

496
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 5: that can either draw your eye position as the spectator,

497
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 5: or it can just draw your attention without moving your eyes. Now,

498
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:48,000
Speaker 5: Teller had a theory going into this study, and the

499
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 5: theory was that certain kinds of motions were more attention

500
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 5: grabbing than others. And in fact, he specifically thought that

501
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:59,800
Speaker 5: there was one type of motion that he and pen

502
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 5: had actually developed and was so strong that it was

503
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:09,479
Speaker 5: perhaps the strongest form of stimulus that would draw humans attention.

504
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:13,040
Speaker 5: And they developed this while they were developing their famous

505
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:17,640
Speaker 5: cups and balls trick from Pennineller. That trick is famous

506
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,320
Speaker 5: because they actually do it and then they do it

507
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:26,080
Speaker 5: again with transparent cups, and the transparent cups still work.

508
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:29,399
Speaker 5: And so this was a huge shock, and it also

509
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:33,280
Speaker 5: violates all sorts of magical rules or magical ideas, because

510
00:28:33,600 --> 00:28:36,399
Speaker 5: first off, you're not supposed to do the same trick twice.

511
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:39,239
Speaker 5: That's another axiom in magic, because there's a chance that

512
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 5: the audience will figure out that trick.

513
00:28:42,040 --> 00:28:42,720
Speaker 1: But cups and.

514
00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 5: Balls are so strong, it's so robust of a trick,

515
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:48,680
Speaker 5: and they're so good at performing it that they actually

516
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 5: can do it twice in front of an audience without

517
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 5: any risk of the audience figuring out the trick. But secondly,

518
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:56,960
Speaker 5: there's definitely not supposed to do it with transparent cups

519
00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:00,240
Speaker 5: because it is literally possible to see the slag of

520
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:03,880
Speaker 5: hand in this case. It's much easier anyway to see

521
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 5: the slight of hand in this case. But it still

522
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:10,120
Speaker 5: works because the attentional management is so strong, and he

523
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 5: feels one of the ways they get away with some

524
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:14,640
Speaker 5: of their biggest moves in the cups and balls is

525
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 5: with this one thing that he feels was really important,

526
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:21,520
Speaker 5: which is that if you do something where the ball drops,

527
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 5: that is, the gravity actually accelerates the ball at nine

528
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 5: point eight meters per second square down. That that is

529
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 5: perhaps the strongest thing he thought to draw a human's attention.

530
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 5: That there's something about things dropping in the gravity, well,

531
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:40,080
Speaker 5: that will draw a human being's attention very strongly. And

532
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:42,200
Speaker 5: they were able to do certain things in their act.

533
00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 5: Again we can't talk about the details, but certain things

534
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:47,480
Speaker 5: in their act were drawn because of dropping the ball.

535
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:49,479
Speaker 5: So they would have a ball on top of the

536
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 5: upside down cup and he poured the ball off into

537
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 5: his hand and while the ball was dropping, he could

538
00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 5: get away with magical murder. Okay, that's what his theory was.

539
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:04,720
Speaker 5: And so we did an experiment where we actually did

540
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,719
Speaker 5: a bunch of different conditions, including the ball dropping and

541
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 5: including him moving the ball with his hands and other

542
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:14,560
Speaker 5: things to test what was the strongest draw for attention.

543
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:17,640
Speaker 5: And what we found was that dropping the ball in

544
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 5: the gravity well was indeed very strong, but there was

545
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:24,240
Speaker 5: actually something that was a little bit stronger, which he'd

546
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 5: never done before because it's not a very good magical technique,

547
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 5: but he discovered that it actually worked really well, in

548
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 5: fact stronger than pouring the ball in the graviol which

549
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 5: is we asked him to just pick up the ball

550
00:30:35,600 --> 00:30:38,240
Speaker 5: with his hand and put it down on the table,

551
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 5: which is not part of the general set of movements

552
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 5: that a magician would do, and that actually drew the

553
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 5: eyes of the audience even better and it allowed him

554
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 5: with his other hand to potentially do more trickery. So

555
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 5: we were really thrilled by the outcome because we discovered

556
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:01,520
Speaker 5: something that not only advanced science did, it also advanced magic.

557
00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:04,400
Speaker 1: That's terrific because It implies that we care about the

558
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:07,160
Speaker 1: social aspect too, not just the physics. But our attention

559
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,680
Speaker 1: is drawn by a human is doing something and I'm

560
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:13,600
Speaker 1: going to watch that. By the way, as a side note,

561
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: I did some experiments a while ago that showed that

562
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:19,880
Speaker 1: something that grabs attention even more than let's say a

563
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:23,920
Speaker 1: ball dropping in gravity is when it violates the nine

564
00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 1: point eight meters per second square, when it's actually dropping

565
00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 1: faster or slower. That is a huge attention grab. I

566
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:33,360
Speaker 1: don't know how you pull it off on stage, but

567
00:31:33,560 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 1: for example, one of the reasons that it's so compelling

568
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:40,680
Speaker 1: when we watch The Matrix or the movie three hundred

569
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 1: is because things are speeding up and slowing down. Let's

570
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:47,120
Speaker 1: say Trinity jumps up in the air and we have

571
00:31:47,320 --> 00:31:49,440
Speaker 1: very clear predictions about when she should hit the ground,

572
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:52,640
Speaker 1: but she stays in the air longer than she's supposed to.

573
00:31:53,280 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 1: That sort of thing really grabs our attention.

574
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 4: I wonder if a neural adaptation also plays into that,

575
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 4: because these kind of unexpected events sort of like keep

576
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 4: you on your toes, and that a fast motion followed

577
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 4: by slow motion, like you may imagine that your neurons

578
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:13,720
Speaker 4: would adapt to a certain rate of motion and then

579
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 4: the unexpected or the change is what then drives again

580
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 4: neural firing. But there's there's nothing else that you brought

581
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:25,400
Speaker 4: up that I wanted to comment on, and it's it's

582
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:30,040
Speaker 4: the social aspect of magic that is so important at

583
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:32,560
Speaker 4: so many levels, and that is one of the main

584
00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 4: tools that magicians use. For one, humor, it's a fantastic

585
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:43,520
Speaker 4: element of misdirection. One of the magicians that we originally

586
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:48,160
Speaker 4: collaborated with, Johnny Thompson, the Great TOMSONI he died a

587
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:50,880
Speaker 4: few years ago, but he used to say that when

588
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 4: the audience laughs, time stops and the magician can do anything.

589
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:03,400
Speaker 4: And that's because emotions, priority, tie attention so powerfully related

590
00:33:03,440 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 4: to this, Magicians they cultivate relationships with the with the audience,

591
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 4: they're they're empathetic figures. It is in the in the

592
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:14,160
Speaker 4: magician's favor that the audience wants the magic to work,

593
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 4: that they want the magician to succeed rather than trying

594
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 4: to prove it wrong. But that's so that's another element.

595
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:25,760
Speaker 4: And finally I wanted to touch on the fact that

596
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:32,080
Speaker 4: a number of magic tricks rely on bringing on stage magic.

597
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 4: They rely on bringing a volunteer on the stage, and

598
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 4: that is just so compelling for the audience because spectators

599
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 4: are identifying with the volunteers, just wondering what's.

600
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 6: Going to happen.

601
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 4: Imagine mirror neurons firing wildly, and while the attention is

602
00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 4: fully allocated on the volunteer, then the magician can do

603
00:33:56,280 --> 00:34:00,040
Speaker 4: whatever they need to be doing. And what's more, sometimes

604
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,960
Speaker 4: within that the magician draws an attention to something while

605
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:06,840
Speaker 4: they're doing something else. But there is also an element

606
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:12,239
Speaker 4: of time misdirection, because it is not necessarily that the

607
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 4: magic manipulation is happening right now while the magician is

608
00:34:18,239 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 4: misdirected and then maybe setting up a trick for later on,

609
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 4: or they may be disposing of evidence for a trick

610
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 4: that happened minutes ago. So things are not happening necessarily

611
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:35,239
Speaker 4: in the chronology that we perceive them from the audience perspective.

612
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: We've touched on this issue about attention, and that's something

613
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:42,799
Speaker 1: that we study in neuroscience, but there are actually so

614
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 1: many things that we discover in neuro about what our

615
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:49,760
Speaker 1: limits are, whether that's about color or about time perception

616
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:52,319
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Give us an example of the

617
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:56,879
Speaker 1: way that magicians operate more broadly taking advantage of these

618
00:34:57,640 --> 00:34:58,799
Speaker 1: cognitive limits.

619
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 5: Sure, So, following up on Susanna's comments about the late

620
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 5: great tom Sony, so he had one trick that we

621
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:12,279
Speaker 5: discussed in our book Slights of Mind, and it's a

622
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 5: visual illusion trick. And the way it worked was he

623
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 5: had a beautiful volunteer, which of course the idea of

624
00:35:20,239 --> 00:35:23,880
Speaker 5: using volunteers, or in this case, he wasn't a volunteer,

625
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:26,719
Speaker 5: was actually an assistant. But one thing you can do

626
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:30,280
Speaker 5: with volunteers or assistants is pick people who are interesting

627
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 5: looking or have an assistant whos beautiful or whatever to

628
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 5: draw attention of the audience to that person. And that

629
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:39,440
Speaker 5: was the case here. She was wearing a white dress.

630
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:43,840
Speaker 5: It left little to the imagination as it was described

631
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:45,640
Speaker 5: to us. We haven't seen the trick, but it was

632
00:35:45,680 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 5: described to us. And so he on the stage he

633
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 5: would tell the audience that he could turn this dress

634
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:57,440
Speaker 5: into a red dress. And he would say, let me

635
00:35:57,440 --> 00:35:59,400
Speaker 5: show you how I do it on the counter of three,

636
00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 5: one two three, and then all the lights on the

637
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 5: stage would turn red, turning everything red, the white dress,

638
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:10,480
Speaker 5: the assistant himself, and he would admit that that was

639
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,000
Speaker 5: a bad joke, but he did. You have to admit

640
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:16,480
Speaker 5: do it that he turned it into a red dress.

641
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 5: But now he's really going to do it and entre

642
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:23,400
Speaker 5: it like this. At that moment, the lights would flicker

643
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 5: again back to white, and the dress was red under

644
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:31,120
Speaker 5: white light. So what he actually did that? And this

645
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:33,720
Speaker 5: is a spoiler alert that we have to warn people

646
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:36,440
Speaker 5: about that we're going to spoil this trick. We had

647
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:39,440
Speaker 5: the Great Tom Sony's permission to spoil the trick, but

648
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 5: we also have to put spoiler alerts whenever we do this.

649
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:45,879
Speaker 5: But the way it would work would be to have

650
00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:51,840
Speaker 5: the bright red lights on the woman, so super bright

651
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:54,560
Speaker 5: people are looking at her. He's used his voice to

652
00:36:54,680 --> 00:36:58,120
Speaker 5: direct attention to her, and this is for some period

653
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:01,600
Speaker 5: of time, which is causing an after image to develop

654
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:05,320
Speaker 5: in their visual system based on this brightly lit woman

655
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:08,640
Speaker 5: against a back background. And then when the lights turn off,

656
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:14,280
Speaker 5: there are gimmicks in the stage that a trapdoor opens

657
00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:18,320
Speaker 5: and her dress is pulled off. And the dress is

658
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:21,560
Speaker 5: a special dress that's very tight, but she's got an

659
00:37:21,600 --> 00:37:26,320
Speaker 5: even tighter dress on underneath that's the same, looks the same,

660
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 5: but it's actually red. Okay, So the white dress is

661
00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 5: on top of the red one. So just within a

662
00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:35,399
Speaker 5: few milliseconds, the white dress is pulled off. She has

663
00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:38,400
Speaker 5: a red dress on while the stage is black. But

664
00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 5: they're everybody's seeing this positive after image that that happens.

665
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:45,839
Speaker 5: It's called iconic memory. That happens for just a very

666
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:49,040
Speaker 5: few brief milliseconds when you turn off the lights, you

667
00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:52,240
Speaker 5: can see a positive after image, and then the lights

668
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:56,160
Speaker 5: come back on and you see her with real lighting,

669
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:58,440
Speaker 5: with white lighting, with the dress change.

670
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 1: So let me just repeat this in that during the

671
00:38:01,239 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 1: few milliseconds when the lights went off, in between the

672
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 1: red lights and the white lights, the audience is still

673
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:10,399
Speaker 1: seeing her as though she's there because they're having an

674
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:14,440
Speaker 1: after image. It's as though the stage hasn't gone black, right.

675
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:16,800
Speaker 5: Well, they can tell something's happened, and the light flickers.

676
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 5: People see in their normal course of life. They might

677
00:38:21,200 --> 00:38:23,040
Speaker 5: be in the bathroom and about to leave and they

678
00:38:23,040 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 5: turn off the lights and they'll see that they get

679
00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:28,840
Speaker 5: an after image. But we learn to ignore these things

680
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:32,480
Speaker 5: through life, right. But he's got the audience paying attention

681
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:36,240
Speaker 5: intentionally at the woman at the time that this happens,

682
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 5: and so when the lights are actually off. What they

683
00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:42,319
Speaker 5: can't see is any motion or the trap door or

684
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 5: the dress going down through the trapdoor in just this

685
00:38:45,200 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 5: hundred milliseconds or so that actually happens. They can't see

686
00:38:48,560 --> 00:38:50,759
Speaker 5: it because there is no light on that time, and

687
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 5: then the lights come back on and she's still standing there,

688
00:38:53,200 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 5: and it reduces the chances that they're going to see anything.

689
00:38:57,400 --> 00:39:00,919
Speaker 1: Okay, so he's taking advantage of a visual illusion here.

690
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:03,680
Speaker 1: So tell us about the difference between visual illusions and

691
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 1: cognitive illusions.

692
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:08,400
Speaker 6: But we should start with defining what an illusion is.

693
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 4: An illusion is a perception that doesn't match reality, and

694
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:18,360
Speaker 4: we talk about visual or conit evlusions happen in the

695
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 4: brain as opposed to optical illusions that have to do

696
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:23,680
Speaker 4: with the physical property supplied.

697
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 6: Right, So, if we take a glass.

698
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:28,560
Speaker 4: Of water and we put a pencil inside and it

699
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:32,759
Speaker 4: appears to ban, that's an optical illusion. It has to

700
00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 4: do with the refraction indexes of air and water. It

701
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:41,839
Speaker 4: doesn't happen in the brain per se. But visual illusions

702
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 4: and cognitive evlutions are constructed in the brain, and the

703
00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:50,480
Speaker 4: difference really has to do with a water level. They

704
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:55,480
Speaker 4: take place in the hierarchy of information processing, so a

705
00:39:55,560 --> 00:40:00,399
Speaker 4: visual illusion would be primarily a sensory illusion. We can

706
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:03,600
Speaker 4: also talk about there are attack delusions, auditory illusions, and

707
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:06,279
Speaker 4: so on. They happen close to the input. In fact,

708
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:09,440
Speaker 4: some of these visual illusions we can largely explain at

709
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:12,320
Speaker 4: the level of the retina instide of the eyeball, whereas

710
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:15,319
Speaker 4: a coality evlution happens higher up in the brain. And

711
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:19,439
Speaker 4: then we're talking about what we call cognitive processes, such

712
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 4: as attention and memory and decision making. Magicians are going

713
00:40:25,160 --> 00:40:30,080
Speaker 4: to rely much more often in cognitive evlutions attention and

714
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:33,240
Speaker 4: to a lesser extent, memory and decision making.

715
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 1: So give us an example of a cognitive ilution, well, a.

716
00:40:37,160 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 6: Cognitive elution that happens in magic.

717
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 4: Well, we have already talked about failing to perceive sleight

718
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:49,080
Speaker 4: of hand techniques and so forth, due to not paying

719
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:52,200
Speaker 4: attention to that place at a time, or due to

720
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:56,840
Speaker 4: having your attention divided. One of the great magicians and

721
00:40:57,200 --> 00:41:02,160
Speaker 4: magic theorists is a Juan Tabarith from Spain, and that

722
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:07,560
Speaker 4: he famously conducts a magic tricking which he vanishes a coin,

723
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:10,440
Speaker 4: and that he has pumped the coin, he has it

724
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:13,480
Speaker 4: grabbed in the pomp on his hand. But at some

725
00:41:13,640 --> 00:41:16,200
Speaker 4: point he makes a gesture to the audience. He says,

726
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:19,319
Speaker 4: wait a second, and that he actually he's showing them

727
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:23,520
Speaker 4: the coin. But because he's so masterful that manipulating attention,

728
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:28,400
Speaker 4: the image of that coin is getting into their readiness,

729
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 4: but they do not see the coin because he's manipulating

730
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:32,560
Speaker 4: their attention so well.

731
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:35,240
Speaker 6: So he really pushes.

732
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 4: The boundaries and challenges just how much can I get

733
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 4: away with in terms of showing the audience exactly what

734
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:47,400
Speaker 4: I'm doing without them noticing because they're not paying attention.

735
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 5: We talked about how attention, which is a cognitive illusion,

736
00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:55,960
Speaker 5: can happen where you pay attention to the wrong place.

737
00:41:56,719 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 5: One of the ways to do that, the most common way,

738
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:00,560
Speaker 5: perhaps is to get you to look in the wrong

739
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:03,120
Speaker 5: place with the center of your eyes, so you're looking

740
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:05,120
Speaker 5: over here while they're doing something over here, and in

741
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:07,840
Speaker 5: the perfe of your vision you can't see very well anyway.

742
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:11,880
Speaker 5: So that is one way to misdirect attention. We call

743
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 5: that overt misdirection. Now, with covert misdirection, it's much more

744
00:42:17,080 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 5: interesting and Wantemoteth is a master of it, and one

745
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 5: of the things he's been able to do is he'll

746
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 5: do something with his hands. I can't do it because

747
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:26,239
Speaker 5: my hands would be off camera here, but say, down

748
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 5: near his waist, he'll have you looking at something he's

749
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:31,279
Speaker 5: doing in his hands, and he'll look at it while

750
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:34,840
Speaker 5: he does it. And because of his gaze position, that

751
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:39,640
Speaker 5: audience learns through normal human and interactions to look where

752
00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:43,040
Speaker 5: your interlocutors looking. So he is really well aware of this.

753
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:44,759
Speaker 5: So if he looks down at his hands, you guys

754
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:46,239
Speaker 5: are trying to pay attention and I know what's in

755
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:48,680
Speaker 5: my hands now, even though it's off camera here. But

756
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:50,560
Speaker 5: then what he'll do is, while he's doing it, he'll

757
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:53,600
Speaker 5: look up at you and then look back down. And

758
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 5: when he looks up at you, you sense that he's

759
00:42:55,640 --> 00:42:57,720
Speaker 5: looking up at you, so you look back at his eyes.

760
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:02,400
Speaker 5: And while you're doing that, even before you've moved your eyes,

761
00:43:02,680 --> 00:43:05,360
Speaker 5: you'll move your attentional spotlight to see is he looking

762
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:07,879
Speaker 5: at me right? So you haven't even moved your eyes.

763
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 5: He's moved his eyes up, got you to pay attention

764
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:13,960
Speaker 5: to his eyes while he does his magic trick. While

765
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:16,880
Speaker 5: you're you're still looking at his hands with the center

766
00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:19,400
Speaker 5: of your vision. But he's got you to pay attention

767
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 5: to his eyes and then he looks back down before

768
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:25,440
Speaker 5: you would move your eyes, and it's this really uncanny

769
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:29,040
Speaker 5: feeling that he did something huge right at the center

770
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 5: of your gaze and you're certain of it, and still

771
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:37,000
Speaker 5: this magical effect happens. It's very powerful feeling of magical

772
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:39,160
Speaker 5: wonderment when that happens.

773
00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:43,359
Speaker 1: He must have to time that really carefully, exactly when

774
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:45,359
Speaker 1: to look up and then when to do the sleight

775
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: of hand. How do magicians get good at doing this?

776
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 1: How do they get the feedback from the audience about

777
00:43:51,680 --> 00:43:53,040
Speaker 1: you know when they're timing this right.

778
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:58,400
Speaker 4: Well, generally magicians they they start with sleight of hand

779
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:03,759
Speaker 4: techniques and then they add the misdirection layer on top

780
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:08,480
Speaker 4: of having mastered slide of hands. When we actually started

781
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:12,200
Speaker 4: studying magic, and that we did learn magic for a year,

782
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 4: and that we perform magic in front of a judge

783
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:20,360
Speaker 4: panel to gain entry to the Magic Castle in Hollywood,

784
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:23,279
Speaker 4: and that we barely made it, but we made it.

785
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:27,680
Speaker 4: So we are magician members. But the magicians that we

786
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:31,800
Speaker 4: our various magician mentors at the time, they were telling

787
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:34,280
Speaker 4: us that the way that we were going into magic

788
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:39,799
Speaker 4: ourselves was very unusual because we already knew a lot

789
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:42,840
Speaker 4: of the without calling it misdirections.

790
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:45,440
Speaker 6: Early, but we knew a lot of the.

791
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:48,640
Speaker 4: Misdirection principles right from a cognitive science perspective. We knew

792
00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 4: a lot about attention. We knew a lot about memory.

793
00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:53,680
Speaker 4: For magicians that generally comes much later.

794
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:11,120
Speaker 1: So this is a good segue. Why do you, as

795
00:45:11,239 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 1: neuroscientists study magic.

796
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 5: We feel as neuroscientists that one of the very best

797
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 5: ways to find out what the brain is actually doing

798
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:29,239
Speaker 5: is to study illusions, and so we had trained in

799
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:32,800
Speaker 5: studying illusions I did as part of my thesis. Susanna

800
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:36,240
Speaker 5: and I both studied illusions as postdocs in David Hewbles

801
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:39,880
Speaker 5: Live at Harvard Medical School, and we knew that the

802
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:45,439
Speaker 5: reason studying visual illusions was really important was that it's

803
00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:49,120
Speaker 5: where the physical reality doesn't match perception, and so we

804
00:45:49,160 --> 00:45:53,360
Speaker 5: can study perception in a very pure sense by studying

805
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 5: the neurons that are responding to the illusory effect, but

806
00:45:56,680 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 5: not the physical reality. But if you really want to

807
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:02,800
Speaker 5: understand the underpinnings of perception itself, we realized we really

808
00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 5: had to use illusions because it's where we could study

809
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:09,440
Speaker 5: perception in a very pure sense where the physical reality

810
00:46:09,560 --> 00:46:13,879
Speaker 5: was not a confounding factor. Now in doing this, we

811
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:19,959
Speaker 5: started the illusion contest because we realized that it would

812
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:22,439
Speaker 5: be fun and it would bring in the public into

813
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 5: the world of vision research. If we had an annual

814
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:32,360
Speaker 5: illusion contest where scientists and later on graphic artists and

815
00:46:32,400 --> 00:46:36,160
Speaker 5: people from all around the world various backgrounds could submit

816
00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 5: what they've noticed in the world that is illusory, and

817
00:46:40,120 --> 00:46:43,720
Speaker 5: the whole world would be able to vote on these things.

818
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 3: Well.

819
00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 5: Shortly after doing this, we were asked by the Association

820
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:51,440
Speaker 5: for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. They asked us to

821
00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:54,719
Speaker 5: run one of their meetings in Las Vegas, and I

822
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:56,239
Speaker 5: think they were hoping we were going to do the

823
00:46:56,280 --> 00:47:00,480
Speaker 5: illusion contest there, But Susanna and I decided that instead

824
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 5: of doing the illusion contest, we were going to do

825
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:07,359
Speaker 5: something different that's more related to consciousness itself. When we

826
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:12,719
Speaker 5: did this conference on the Consciousness in Las Vegas, we

827
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:15,959
Speaker 5: were driving up and down the strip doing our administrative

828
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 5: duties and booking hotels and booking restaurants and all of this,

829
00:47:20,719 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 5: and we're trying to think what could we do to

830
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:25,759
Speaker 5: bring the public in that isn't just the illusion contest. Again,

831
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:28,239
Speaker 5: we already have that going on for the vision community,

832
00:47:28,680 --> 00:47:31,480
Speaker 5: and we realized that we're passing by these hundred foot

833
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:35,719
Speaker 5: signs of Pennant Teller and other magicians on these hotels,

834
00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:39,880
Speaker 5: and that they magicians were the artists of attention and awareness.

835
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:43,839
Speaker 5: And this was a huge epiphany for us. We realized

836
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 5: that they are the ones who create not only interesting

837
00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:53,160
Speaker 5: related cognitive allusions to science, but they create the best

838
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 5: illusions that science could benefit from stealing their techniques and

839
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:01,920
Speaker 5: learning and poaching what they do in the stage and

840
00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:04,600
Speaker 5: bringing into the lab with the hope that we would

841
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:08,800
Speaker 5: actually increase the rate of discovery in science by increasing

842
00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:12,839
Speaker 5: the quality and the robustness of the illusions. And we

843
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:15,960
Speaker 5: also discovered when we did this. We started talking to

844
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:18,879
Speaker 5: our friends in the consciouence community, and one of them

845
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:22,759
Speaker 5: was the late Great Daniel Dennett, and he knew a

846
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:25,080
Speaker 5: lot of magicians because he was part of a group

847
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 5: of people who were part of this new atheism movement.

848
00:48:30,600 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 5: And we're doing a lot of podcasts and doing a

849
00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:36,879
Speaker 5: lot of different shows to talk about aseism, and these

850
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:42,640
Speaker 5: groups were generally scientists and philosophers and magicians and magicians

851
00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:45,600
Speaker 5: would talk about in these groups how magic was being

852
00:48:45,719 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 5: used to trick people in religious ceremonies to think that

853
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:55,120
Speaker 5: actual miracles were happening. And in fact, one possibility in

854
00:48:55,160 --> 00:48:57,880
Speaker 5: the history of magic is that that's how magic actually started,

855
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:05,279
Speaker 5: was as a religious ceremonyal behavior to invent miracles. When

856
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:09,439
Speaker 5: we started meeting with these magicians, because Dennett knew them,

857
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 5: started calling the for example, James Randy, the Amazing Randy.

858
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:17,400
Speaker 5: Randy got us hooked up with Penn and Teller, Apollo, Robbins,

859
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:19,880
Speaker 5: all these different magicians, the great Tom Sony and we

860
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 5: started having meetings in Las Vegas to talk about a

861
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:28,080
Speaker 5: collaboration between magic and science, and that became a symposium

862
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:32,640
Speaker 5: that we had at our conference that introduced the idea

863
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 5: of neuromagic, the idea that we can actually take magic

864
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:39,759
Speaker 5: tricks and study them in neuroscience. And it was during

865
00:49:39,800 --> 00:49:43,919
Speaker 5: these meetings that something very important happened. We realized that

866
00:49:44,239 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 5: magicians didn't just have great tricks, but they actually had

867
00:49:47,840 --> 00:49:51,359
Speaker 5: theories about the magic. Okay, they had theories about why

868
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:55,239
Speaker 5: they worked in the mind. And what we discovered as

869
00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:58,440
Speaker 5: scientists was more than half of these ideas were just

870
00:49:58,600 --> 00:50:02,280
Speaker 5: completely wrong. They were just you know, flat out Nope,

871
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 5: we'd already rolled those things out in cognitive science. Some

872
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 5: of those theories, like for example, the spotlight of attention

873
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:14,760
Speaker 5: were actually correct, So there was convergent evolution between magic

874
00:50:14,800 --> 00:50:17,160
Speaker 5: and science, which is really interesting to us. But the

875
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 5: most important thing was that some of those theories we

876
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:24,560
Speaker 5: didn't know if they were correct or not scientifically, and

877
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:28,359
Speaker 5: they had plausible ideas in magic that very well might

878
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:32,680
Speaker 5: be right. And this could really cut decades off the

879
00:50:33,239 --> 00:50:37,440
Speaker 5: science of cognitive neuroscience because we could potentially have the

880
00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:40,239
Speaker 5: illusions that magic brought to us, but not only the illusions,

881
00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:42,759
Speaker 5: but the theories kind of handed to us on a

882
00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:45,200
Speaker 5: silver platter that we could now just go test in

883
00:50:45,200 --> 00:50:47,240
Speaker 5: a scientific method fashion.

884
00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:50,120
Speaker 1: And what do you see as the future of magic

885
00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:52,399
Speaker 1: and how does that intersect with neuroscience.

886
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:58,040
Speaker 4: I think that we can basically benefit from each other.

887
00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:02,359
Speaker 4: I believe that art is whether we're talking about painters

888
00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:07,719
Speaker 4: or magicians or musicians, say they do a bit of

889
00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:12,399
Speaker 4: research in the informal sense through see what works, see

890
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:16,400
Speaker 4: what doesn't. If every performance is a bit of an experiment,

891
00:51:16,880 --> 00:51:21,359
Speaker 4: but it's not systematized. And so, as Steve expressed, there

892
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:26,640
Speaker 4: are volumes like literal libraries of magic theory in which

893
00:51:27,080 --> 00:51:30,200
Speaker 4: these theories have never been put to the test, they

894
00:51:30,239 --> 00:51:33,839
Speaker 4: have never been systematically investigated in a laboratory.

895
00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:37,200
Speaker 6: So what I think that science.

896
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:40,799
Speaker 4: Can really contribute to magic is in the realm of

897
00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:47,240
Speaker 4: magic theory helping magicians understand why tricks.

898
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:50,040
Speaker 6: Work the way they do, why misurrection.

899
00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:52,439
Speaker 4: Happens in the way that it happens, and that then

900
00:51:52,600 --> 00:51:56,480
Speaker 4: magicians as artists can take this knowledge and then use

901
00:51:56,520 --> 00:52:00,359
Speaker 4: it in different creative ways. But I think that well

902
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:03,400
Speaker 4: times can bring to magic and do art and do

903
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:07,960
Speaker 4: human endeavors in general, is greater understanding.

904
00:52:08,520 --> 00:52:11,080
Speaker 1: And I think you guys have written, if I'm remembering correctly,

905
00:52:11,120 --> 00:52:15,920
Speaker 1: about how understanding magic can also be used for let's say,

906
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:19,799
Speaker 1: treatment and diagnosis of various cognitive disorders in neuroscience.

907
00:52:20,360 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, so one of the things that magic does is,

908
00:52:26,320 --> 00:52:30,080
Speaker 5: for example, with misdirection that we talked about, is manipulate attention.

909
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:34,480
Speaker 5: So it should be possible to use these kinds of stimulation,

910
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:39,960
Speaker 5: that is, magic tricks to manipulate attention and determine the

911
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:45,440
Speaker 5: differences between patients who have cognitive decline that affect spatial

912
00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 5: attention and patients that do not. For example, it could

913
00:52:48,040 --> 00:52:51,960
Speaker 5: become a, for example, a diagnostic and one of the

914
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 5: reasons we believe this is because there are magicians that

915
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:59,799
Speaker 5: are specialized for performing for children and in the field

916
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:03,560
Speaker 5: of it's interesting because it's similar to science. They have

917
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:06,359
Speaker 5: annual conferences that they go to and they get up

918
00:53:06,360 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 5: and give talks to each other, and they reveal how

919
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:11,520
Speaker 5: certain tricks work and don't work to each other in

920
00:53:11,640 --> 00:53:14,480
Speaker 5: very much similar culture that scientists do when they get

921
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:16,799
Speaker 5: together for annual conferences and give talks to each other

922
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 5: about what they've discovered. And one of the things that

923
00:53:20,800 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 5: they do is split these rooms into different kinds of magic.

924
00:53:24,000 --> 00:53:26,919
Speaker 5: One room would be for children's magic, whereas other rooms

925
00:53:26,920 --> 00:53:29,280
Speaker 5: will be for adult magic. And the reason is because

926
00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:32,759
Speaker 5: children have a different attentional system, especially below the age

927
00:53:32,760 --> 00:53:35,840
Speaker 5: of five, than adults, and so certain types of magic

928
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:38,080
Speaker 5: you're not going to work with them in the sense

929
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:41,320
Speaker 5: that children actually have a gain of function for detecting

930
00:53:41,360 --> 00:53:45,040
Speaker 5: the trick, so they'll actually have a chance of seeing

931
00:53:45,080 --> 00:53:48,600
Speaker 5: something wrong in the trick or seeing a method that

932
00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:51,279
Speaker 5: adults won't because adults are much more likely to be

933
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:54,680
Speaker 5: led down the garden path because their attentional systems are

934
00:53:54,680 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 5: better than children. And this is also true with people

935
00:53:58,680 --> 00:54:01,800
Speaker 5: who have different kinds into attentional deficit.

936
00:54:02,120 --> 00:54:06,200
Speaker 4: When an Acdoral example is that, contrary to popular opinion,

937
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 4: magicians don't like to perform in front of drug people

938
00:54:10,160 --> 00:54:13,120
Speaker 4: because they're harder to misdirect. You really need to be

939
00:54:13,160 --> 00:54:18,239
Speaker 4: able to allocate your attention precisely to be misdirected by

940
00:54:18,239 --> 00:54:20,799
Speaker 4: the magician. Otherwise if the magician, if they cannot be

941
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:24,200
Speaker 4: in control, that makes their life much harder. There are

942
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:28,840
Speaker 4: specific magic shows that are devised for children and that

943
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:32,359
Speaker 4: they frankly don't tend to really so much or misdirections

944
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:33,040
Speaker 4: per se.

945
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:34,680
Speaker 6: They're more kind of like.

946
00:54:34,760 --> 00:54:40,920
Speaker 4: Comedy magic small small percentage of magic compared to comedy,

947
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:46,680
Speaker 4: and that in fact, children's magicians will often do something

948
00:54:47,040 --> 00:54:53,719
Speaker 4: that almost no magician performing for adult audiences will do,

949
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:57,880
Speaker 4: which is to announce what they're going to be doing next,

950
00:54:58,560 --> 00:55:03,880
Speaker 4: and that is to the children's attention. But in a

951
00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:07,880
Speaker 4: regular magic show, audiences will be surprised and that it

952
00:55:08,040 --> 00:55:12,239
Speaker 4: works against the performance to say I'm going to make

953
00:55:12,360 --> 00:55:15,320
Speaker 4: a rabbit disappear or I'm going to make a rabbit appear.

954
00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:18,959
Speaker 4: In a show for children, the magician will more often

955
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:21,960
Speaker 4: than not make that type of announcement to get the

956
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:23,399
Speaker 4: children to stay on tusk.

957
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:28,320
Speaker 5: The magician Silly Billy, who we talk about in our book,

958
00:55:28,680 --> 00:55:33,440
Speaker 5: is an amazing children's magician, and he says that you

959
00:55:33,560 --> 00:55:36,400
Speaker 5: have to you have to do different kinds of tricks

960
00:55:36,400 --> 00:55:39,560
Speaker 5: that draw the attention for very short periods of time.

961
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:42,239
Speaker 5: Like that's why with children you take a coin out

962
00:55:42,239 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 5: of their ear. They you know, you have to do

963
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:48,320
Speaker 5: things that they know about the world. So because certain

964
00:55:48,360 --> 00:55:51,080
Speaker 5: things they don't, they won't know that it's magical, but

965
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:53,160
Speaker 5: they just so much of what about the world is

966
00:55:53,200 --> 00:55:55,440
Speaker 5: a surprise to them anyway, you know, it has to

967
00:55:55,480 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 5: be something that they know is actually not true that

968
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:01,000
Speaker 5: they don't have quarters in their ear, for example.

969
00:56:01,400 --> 00:56:05,160
Speaker 4: And children are just sometimes not so appreciative of the

970
00:56:05,280 --> 00:56:10,440
Speaker 4: art of magic. Frankly, because when we started working with

971
00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:14,800
Speaker 4: these magicians, our oldest child was a toddler, and I

972
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:17,719
Speaker 4: remember at some point we had them with us. He

973
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:22,759
Speaker 4: met Apolo Robins, who's a theatrical pick pocket and he's amazing,

974
00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:27,880
Speaker 4: and he was getting a coin to appear and disappear

975
00:56:28,160 --> 00:56:31,799
Speaker 4: over babies, you know, ears and hands and all over

976
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:34,200
Speaker 4: his body like he would do on stage and it

977
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:39,960
Speaker 4: was just the most amazing magic, such a special opportunity,

978
00:56:40,640 --> 00:56:45,160
Speaker 4: and her toddler was just angry that this man had

979
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:47,840
Speaker 4: given him a coin and then he took it away,

980
00:56:48,080 --> 00:56:50,400
Speaker 4: and then he couldn't know where he was, and he

981
00:56:50,640 --> 00:56:55,759
Speaker 4: was just basically not appreciating the magic whatsoever.

982
00:56:56,120 --> 00:56:57,240
Speaker 6: He was just rage.

983
00:56:58,040 --> 00:56:59,960
Speaker 1: This didn't mean you another question I mean wondering about,

984
00:57:00,120 --> 00:57:03,440
Speaker 1: which is can magic tricks be performed on animals? What

985
00:57:03,520 --> 00:57:04,359
Speaker 1: do you guys know about that?

986
00:57:04,680 --> 00:57:09,360
Speaker 4: I think that it's definitely possible to trick animals, dogs,

987
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:13,319
Speaker 4: plain FETs, and that you can go to YouTube and

988
00:57:13,440 --> 00:57:17,480
Speaker 4: that search for magic with animals, and that you'll see

989
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:21,360
Speaker 4: all sorts of monkeys and dogs and cats being tricked

990
00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:25,760
Speaker 4: with magic in various ways. Now that is misdirection, however,

991
00:57:26,760 --> 00:57:30,280
Speaker 4: because I think that magic is not just being tricked.

992
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:34,000
Speaker 4: Magic is being trigged, and then there's an element of wonder,

993
00:57:34,160 --> 00:57:37,880
Speaker 4: there's an element of art, there's an element of joy

994
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:42,000
Speaker 4: even because something that happens with a magic trick that

995
00:57:42,160 --> 00:57:47,080
Speaker 4: is very interesting is that people most often they laugh

996
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:49,880
Speaker 4: as if it's the punchline of a joke. So there's

997
00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:55,000
Speaker 4: this enjoyment something i'n expected happening magic and audiences laugh

998
00:57:56,200 --> 00:57:58,600
Speaker 4: in surprise and enjoyment.

999
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,200
Speaker 6: I don't know that.

1000
00:58:02,360 --> 00:58:07,640
Speaker 4: Other animals have this kind of experience, so I think

1001
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:09,680
Speaker 4: that that question remains open a little bit.

1002
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:12,240
Speaker 1: I think it was Friends the Wall who pointed out

1003
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:17,000
Speaker 1: that chimps just aren't entranced with human magicians, and they

1004
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:20,040
Speaker 1: just simply don't pay attention. Do you suppose it would

1005
00:58:20,040 --> 00:58:23,920
Speaker 1: work if you performed magic for chimps but you were

1006
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:27,120
Speaker 1: set up as a hologrammer in VR looking like a chimp,

1007
00:58:27,160 --> 00:58:28,360
Speaker 1: would they pay more attention?

1008
00:58:28,760 --> 00:58:32,120
Speaker 4: In the case of our own human toddler, he was

1009
00:58:32,320 --> 00:58:36,240
Speaker 4: very reward oriented, so he wasn't appreciating the magic in

1010
00:58:36,280 --> 00:58:39,640
Speaker 4: which something was being taken away from him for no

1011
00:58:39,720 --> 00:58:42,920
Speaker 4: good reason. Is the magic would have been, I don't know,

1012
00:58:43,040 --> 00:58:46,200
Speaker 4: to produce toms of candy like one of these production

1013
00:58:46,720 --> 00:58:47,600
Speaker 4: magic shows.

1014
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:49,840
Speaker 6: He might have been a lot more engaged by that.

1015
00:58:52,200 --> 00:58:54,760
Speaker 1: Tell me about magic tricks that take advantage of something

1016
00:58:54,760 --> 00:58:55,640
Speaker 1: about our memory.

1017
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:59,919
Speaker 4: Yes, so we have terrible memories and magicians know that

1018
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:04,440
Speaker 4: and they take advantage of it. And in fact, something

1019
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:08,600
Speaker 4: the magician's use in many shows is what we can

1020
00:59:08,680 --> 00:59:13,880
Speaker 4: call the recap, and what that does is generates a

1021
00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:15,040
Speaker 4: memory illusion.

1022
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:17,080
Speaker 6: So if you have.

1023
00:59:17,120 --> 00:59:19,320
Speaker 4: Ever been to a magic show or watch a magic

1024
00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:23,680
Speaker 4: show on TV. Oftentimes the magician will do some wonderful

1025
00:59:23,680 --> 00:59:27,280
Speaker 4: feit of magic, often with a volunteer, and after that

1026
00:59:27,360 --> 00:59:30,760
Speaker 4: they will say, well, we didn't know each other. You

1027
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:33,680
Speaker 4: can hear you got your choice of course, and you

1028
00:59:33,760 --> 00:59:35,800
Speaker 4: did this, and then this happened, and then that happened,

1029
00:59:35,800 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 4: and I couldn't have known, and then this amazing thing happened,

1030
00:59:39,480 --> 00:59:43,920
Speaker 4: and the description makes sense and everybody agrees, and that

1031
00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:48,360
Speaker 4: the show goes on. Now here's the thing. That description

1032
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:53,280
Speaker 4: is not perfect. It deviates from reality. It doesn't deviate

1033
00:59:53,400 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 4: from reality in a very obvious way that would make

1034
00:59:58,280 --> 01:00:02,280
Speaker 4: people just figure out, okay, this is not what I saw.

1035
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:06,920
Speaker 4: There's something fishy going on, but it's not an accurate description.

1036
01:00:07,520 --> 01:00:10,640
Speaker 4: So what happens then is that people go home and

1037
01:00:10,680 --> 01:00:13,800
Speaker 4: they talk to their friends and that I saw this thing,

1038
01:00:14,040 --> 01:00:15,200
Speaker 4: I went to this magic.

1039
01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:16,680
Speaker 6: Show, this happened. That happened.

1040
01:00:17,320 --> 01:00:21,160
Speaker 4: But the way that they're describing it now is not

1041
01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:25,200
Speaker 4: the original way that they witness it. That's the magician's

1042
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:30,040
Speaker 4: recap that they're using as their description. And so it's

1043
01:00:30,160 --> 01:00:32,200
Speaker 4: like now when they try to figure out how the

1044
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:35,400
Speaker 4: magician did it. It's like trying to put together apostle,

1045
01:00:35,840 --> 01:00:39,640
Speaker 4: and not only you don't have all the pieces, but

1046
01:00:39,720 --> 01:00:43,280
Speaker 4: you have some wrong pieces as well. So it's impossible

1047
01:00:43,320 --> 01:00:48,400
Speaker 4: to reconstruct whatever happened exactly on stage. And that's why

1048
01:00:48,680 --> 01:00:52,400
Speaker 4: when people come to us sometimes they and they say, well,

1049
01:00:52,800 --> 01:00:54,280
Speaker 4: I saw this amazing magic trick.

1050
01:00:54,640 --> 01:00:56,000
Speaker 6: Can you tell me how it works?

1051
01:00:56,160 --> 01:00:58,160
Speaker 4: And we may say, look, we're not gonna tell you,

1052
01:00:58,200 --> 01:01:02,160
Speaker 4: because one we're not supposed to, but also what you're

1053
01:01:02,200 --> 01:01:05,360
Speaker 4: describing and what took place are probably very different things.

1054
01:01:06,440 --> 01:01:09,880
Speaker 1: Right. I've seen this where magicians will say something like, okay, now,

1055
01:01:09,920 --> 01:01:12,400
Speaker 1: as you've seen, I have not touched the deck of cards,

1056
01:01:12,440 --> 01:01:15,360
Speaker 1: even though they have, And so it becomes something like

1057
01:01:15,440 --> 01:01:19,120
Speaker 1: you know, eyewitness testimony in courtrooms, where you know your

1058
01:01:19,160 --> 01:01:22,520
Speaker 1: memory gets overwritten with this statement that you think must

1059
01:01:22,560 --> 01:01:24,080
Speaker 1: have been true even though it wasn't.

1060
01:01:24,280 --> 01:01:28,760
Speaker 5: So they might say something like you chose a number,

1061
01:01:29,160 --> 01:01:31,760
Speaker 5: when in fact they picked a card and got the number,

1062
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:34,880
Speaker 5: which is two very different things, because if a magician's

1063
01:01:34,920 --> 01:01:38,120
Speaker 5: controlling a deck of cards, they're choosing the number for

1064
01:01:38,320 --> 01:01:42,720
Speaker 5: you in certain circumstances, right, And so it's not that

1065
01:01:42,760 --> 01:01:45,400
Speaker 5: you picked the number, right, And so this kind of

1066
01:01:45,880 --> 01:01:49,920
Speaker 5: discrepancy in the memory can specifically, you know, have you

1067
01:01:49,960 --> 01:01:52,560
Speaker 5: go home and because it was a recapped to you,

1068
01:01:52,560 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 5: you described it that you picked a number right, and

1069
01:01:55,280 --> 01:01:57,920
Speaker 5: it may not gel in your memory that you actually

1070
01:01:57,960 --> 01:01:59,600
Speaker 5: picked a card rather than a number.

1071
01:02:00,280 --> 01:02:00,520
Speaker 3: One.

1072
01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:06,360
Speaker 5: Thing that I think that scientists could study in magic

1073
01:02:06,640 --> 01:02:10,880
Speaker 5: that would be of real value would be the field

1074
01:02:10,880 --> 01:02:18,160
Speaker 5: of magic called mentalism. Now, in mentalism, it's largely standard

1075
01:02:18,240 --> 01:02:21,880
Speaker 5: magic tricks, but instead of manipulating coins and cards and objects,

1076
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:26,280
Speaker 5: it's manipulating information. It has to do with the way

1077
01:02:26,400 --> 01:02:30,480
Speaker 5: the brain actually works, and we don't know how it works.

1078
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:35,320
Speaker 5: So there are, for example, magic tricks that famously the

1079
01:02:35,560 --> 01:02:40,480
Speaker 5: answer is the number thirty seven, and for some reason,

1080
01:02:41,200 --> 01:02:45,160
Speaker 5: people are able much more likely than chance to pull

1081
01:02:45,200 --> 01:02:48,320
Speaker 5: the number thirty seven out of their brain as an

1082
01:02:48,360 --> 01:02:50,760
Speaker 5: answer to this trick. And you do this trick in

1083
01:02:50,800 --> 01:02:55,000
Speaker 5: a way where you are essentially using the audience to take,

1084
01:02:55,360 --> 01:02:59,880
Speaker 5: in a sense, a statistical likelihood function of what they

1085
01:03:00,240 --> 01:03:02,800
Speaker 5: the whole audience is answering. And when you do this,

1086
01:03:02,880 --> 01:03:06,280
Speaker 5: there's like fifty people there and ten or fifteen people

1087
01:03:06,320 --> 01:03:09,280
Speaker 5: say thirty seven out of When you feel like you've

1088
01:03:09,320 --> 01:03:12,840
Speaker 5: just chosen a number one out of fifty right, and

1089
01:03:12,880 --> 01:03:15,360
Speaker 5: the chances should be two percent, but they're all you know,

1090
01:03:15,640 --> 01:03:19,680
Speaker 5: fifteen percent of them are choosing the same number. It's remarkable.

1091
01:03:19,720 --> 01:03:22,720
Speaker 5: And so this kind of thing and other things about

1092
01:03:22,760 --> 01:03:25,360
Speaker 5: the way we manipulate symbols in the brain and the

1093
01:03:25,400 --> 01:03:29,480
Speaker 5: way that we manipulate certain kinds of information, I think

1094
01:03:30,040 --> 01:03:34,480
Speaker 5: these tricks work. It's very mysterious from a neuroscientific point

1095
01:03:34,480 --> 01:03:37,040
Speaker 5: of view. It's not explained by sleight of hand in

1096
01:03:37,400 --> 01:03:40,520
Speaker 5: and that understanding the neural underpinnings of this would be

1097
01:03:40,560 --> 01:03:45,160
Speaker 5: a real insight into how the brain actually manipulates certain

1098
01:03:45,240 --> 01:03:46,040
Speaker 5: kind of information.

1099
01:03:46,640 --> 01:03:48,920
Speaker 1: What is an illusion of choice?

1100
01:03:49,360 --> 01:03:53,400
Speaker 4: Well, an illusion of choice would be a situation in

1101
01:03:53,560 --> 01:03:58,680
Speaker 4: which you feel that you do have a choice, when

1102
01:03:58,680 --> 01:04:02,600
Speaker 4: in fact you don't. And without disclosing too much, I

1103
01:04:02,640 --> 01:04:04,320
Speaker 4: think it would be fair to say that in a

1104
01:04:04,400 --> 01:04:09,160
Speaker 4: magic show, very few of the choices made by a

1105
01:04:09,360 --> 01:04:14,200
Speaker 4: volunteer in the audience are real choices. The magician is

1106
01:04:14,240 --> 01:04:17,440
Speaker 4: typically in control of the choice, and that can be

1107
01:04:17,480 --> 01:04:18,960
Speaker 4: done in a number of ways.

1108
01:04:19,000 --> 01:04:21,520
Speaker 6: But illusions of choice.

1109
01:04:21,400 --> 01:04:25,440
Speaker 4: Are yet one more type of cognitive ilution that plays

1110
01:04:25,520 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 4: or come players from rolling magic tricks.

1111
01:04:32,400 --> 01:04:36,800
Speaker 1: That was Stephen Macknick and Susannah Martinez Conde, two neuroscience

1112
01:04:36,880 --> 01:04:41,040
Speaker 1: colleagues at Sunny Downstate who study the intersection of neuroscience

1113
01:04:41,080 --> 01:04:45,080
Speaker 1: and magic. So what does a stage magician have in

1114
01:04:45,240 --> 01:04:49,160
Speaker 1: common with a pickpocket, or a seance director or a

1115
01:04:49,200 --> 01:04:54,800
Speaker 1: street hustler. They all have curious minds that chew on

1116
01:04:54,920 --> 01:05:00,200
Speaker 1: these questions of perception. How could someone misperceive this? How

1117
01:05:00,240 --> 01:05:03,960
Speaker 1: can I cause a momentary pull of attention so that

1118
01:05:04,040 --> 01:05:07,080
Speaker 1: I can do something right here and no one would

1119
01:05:07,120 --> 01:05:11,240
Speaker 1: ever see it. People like this have for centuries been

1120
01:05:11,440 --> 01:05:16,760
Speaker 1: carefully observing and exploiting human minds. So as a result,

1121
01:05:16,880 --> 01:05:21,480
Speaker 1: nowadays there's a close relationship between magicians and neuroscientists, to

1122
01:05:21,560 --> 01:05:26,560
Speaker 1: the degree that some magicians now collaborate with neuroscientists to

1123
01:05:26,720 --> 01:05:31,480
Speaker 1: create performances that explicitly incorporate knowledge about the brain. That

1124
01:05:31,600 --> 01:05:37,680
Speaker 1: means designing tricks that highlight specific pitfalls of perception or cognition,

1125
01:05:38,160 --> 01:05:41,280
Speaker 1: ones that weren't known about before but have come from

1126
01:05:41,600 --> 01:05:45,880
Speaker 1: the laboratory. So it's a two way street. Now increasingly

1127
01:05:46,200 --> 01:05:50,920
Speaker 1: we're going to see neuroscience informed magic performances, and you

1128
01:05:50,920 --> 01:05:54,120
Speaker 1: can think about exploiting this to an enormous degree. When

1129
01:05:54,120 --> 01:05:57,960
Speaker 1: we think about the future of magic. For example, I

1130
01:05:58,040 --> 01:06:01,480
Speaker 1: did an episode some months ago about the possibility of

1131
01:06:01,760 --> 01:06:06,080
Speaker 1: mind reading by reading brain signals, and this raises questions

1132
01:06:06,120 --> 01:06:10,440
Speaker 1: about the potential for magic tricks that involve a deeper

1133
01:06:10,680 --> 01:06:14,920
Speaker 1: understanding or manipulation of brain signals. This could lead to

1134
01:06:15,520 --> 01:06:21,040
Speaker 1: new forms of interactive and immersive magical experiences where we

1135
01:06:21,120 --> 01:06:25,760
Speaker 1: find ourselves totally fooled by an internal narrative that tells

1136
01:06:25,840 --> 01:06:29,520
Speaker 1: us one thing, even though something else actually happened. So

1137
01:06:29,920 --> 01:06:34,000
Speaker 1: whatever direction our new technologies evolve, it seems likely that

1138
01:06:34,080 --> 01:06:38,400
Speaker 1: the repertoire of magic is going to keep expanding, and

1139
01:06:38,560 --> 01:06:41,840
Speaker 1: I can't wait to go to a magic show twenty

1140
01:06:41,920 --> 01:06:45,680
Speaker 1: years from now, where we, like the aliens who can't

1141
01:06:45,720 --> 01:06:52,080
Speaker 1: see obvious things, will find ourselves amazed, astonished, and bewildered

1142
01:06:52,520 --> 01:07:00,400
Speaker 1: by the mismatch between the external world and our internal cosmos.

1143
01:07:02,280 --> 01:07:05,560
Speaker 1: Go to Eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information

1144
01:07:05,680 --> 01:07:08,960
Speaker 1: and to find further reading. Send me an email at

1145
01:07:09,040 --> 01:07:13,160
Speaker 1: podcasts at eagleman dot com with questions or discussions, and

1146
01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:16,720
Speaker 1: check out and subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for

1147
01:07:16,880 --> 01:07:20,720
Speaker 1: videos of each episode and to leave comments. Until next time,

1148
01:07:21,040 --> 01:07:24,240
Speaker 1: I'm David eagleman, and this is inner cosmos.