On learning new interesting words...

The way we speak reveals a great deal about the way we think. Early in my magic career, one of the books that influenced me was Stephen Pinker's The Stuff of Thought, about how language provides insight into what's actually going on inside our heads.

Most interesting; it contains a chapter on profanity. (You haven't truly read until you've read a Harvard professor discussing profanity.) In particular, he emphasizes how we have different ways of speaking on the spur of the moment — such as the moment after you drop a hammer on your foot — than we do when we have time to reflect — like when composing an essay for school. 

And one of the great secret skills of a magician is taking things which are thoroughly planned and rehearsed and making them seem as though they are happening right here and now. That understanding has helped me create some truly wonderful magic over the years.

In this extended interview Benjemin Bergen sits down with the editor and publisher of Skeptic Magazine, Michael Shermer, to discuss profanity in great detail. Not so useful for making magic, but a fascinating discussion:  

The book under discussion is available here. I haven't read it, but it looks fucking delightful. 

Incidentally, the notion that your word choice impacts the way people perceive what you say has also spawned a pseudo-scientific discipline (read nonsense) called neurolinguistic programming — or NLP for short. I'm not one to underestimate the value of choosing my words carefully, but any such advice that falls under the umbrella of NLP can usually be discounted. 

PG?

I'm often asked if my shows are appropriate for children. I know that some people are confused, expecting magic shows to be designed for children. I know that there are sometimes economic realities mean that a ticket to a show and dinner for a small person can be less expensive than a babysitter. And I also know that some kids just enjoy more grownup activities. It's a tough question to answer. My secret mantra, given to me by a friend years ago is that "I perform magic for grownups." Which somewhat ironically means that my shows tend to be entirely G-rated.

That's not to say they're for kids. There will be words they won't understand, and I can't promise they'll understand everything, but there's nothing in the show that will leave them traumatized — certainly nothing as bad as Bambi.

Where we settled running Magic Tonight was the rather vaguely worded "family friendly but not intended for children under twelve." Basically a polite way of saying that the show was G rated but that young kids wouldn't find us all that interesting—no fluffy bunnies to see here. That never stopped children from turning up. I would always make it a point to ask how old they were. What I discovered, more than once, was that the children had been instructed to lie and say they were twelve. (How were they supposed to know that we didn't actually care?)

I was struck by Doug Walker's recent vlog essay about the standard movie rating system we all knew growing up. When I was younger, I paid attention to the ratings of movies because I know that they influenced whether or not my parents would let me watch them. In fact, to this day, there are films I've never seen, like Terminator, which were rated R, because at the time I wasn't allowed and by the time I was allowed, the need to see it was no longer pressing. It was also that awkward era where video rentals were becoming obsolete but pure on demand services like Netflix and iTunes hadn't come about yet.

Now I'm a grownup and can watch whatever I want, so I really haven't paid attention to a movie rating in probably a decade or more. So I was shocked to discover that both Frozen and The Hunger Games both had the same PG rating. So take a look at our ****ed up rating system:

Of course now, Magic and Martini is strictly nineteen plus because of the spaces we're using so we can get the most interesting cocktails to go with the show. I can't claimed to have added any mature or adult content anywhere in the show. So who knows, maybe some industrious twelve year old with a very good fake ID will make an appearance at one of our shows.

The Science of Gambling

When you're a magician, the question comes up often, "Can I take you with me to the casino?" Never mind that there are no casinos in Toronto, my background in math means I'm fascinated by gambling but know enough about the odds to not want to do it in casinos. The Royal Institute in London offers up its public talks for free online and I thought I'd share this really interesting talk about the intersection between science and gambling including using computers to cheat at the roulette and blackjack tables, the mathematics of shuffling applied to card tricks and strange ways to win at the lottery.

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And the Q&A to follow up:

A Sense of Proportion

As Douglas Adams famously proved, "if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion."

#TotalPrespectiveVortex

Ethical Magicians?

I've been listening to the episode of Discourse in Magic on "ethics". The episode is an extended interview with my friend, Ben Train. The episode is over an hour long so I'm not sure how many people would be willing to sit through it. It raises some interesting points including ones with which I disagree.

Ben Train demonstrates mindreading on Magic Tonight.

I was interested in hearing the episode because while Ben and I have discussed this topic previously, I have no idea what the hosts of this program thought about it.

The episode is slightly misnamed. It's titled "ethics and morals for the modern magician" although the entire episode is focused around one fairly specific concrete example which was actually a piece of mentalism.

Mentalism is a proper subset of magic but in the past decade has undergone a kind of grass-roots rebranding. A traditional mentalist was (ostensibly) reading minds and seeing into the future. The current mentalist tends to be more of a Sherlock Holmes-style character that gathers information by making very detailed observations and spinning those tiny clues into full fledged theories about whodunnit. One of the reasons that Holmes was so impressive was that he was a fictional character and he had the benefit of an omniscient author who could secretly feed him the right answer. Similarly, the mentalist has the tools of a magician at his disposal to secretly gain access to the requisite information and most of the "observation" is just to keep up the pretences.

The ethical problem they were obsessing over was, "What happens when the audience accepts the red herring?" Ben actually gave some specific examples that I found troubling — people who saw his show and were legitimately misled into believing untrue things. At the same time, I was also surprised by the realization that in my own work, I don't have these problems at all and I couldn't explain why.

I've been a life-long skeptic, inspired at an early age by the writing of Douglas Adams and Richard Feynman, and later by Penn & Teller's Bullshit. I believe (deeply) that false beliefs are harmful and we have a moral obligation towards others not to spread them if we can avoid it. That makes performing magic problematic because a magic trick, properly executed, would seem to be spreading false beliefs; namely that something which should not be possible is. Performing magic while not being  giant hypocrite is a problem which doesn't appear to have an obvious solution. That's also why I perform so little magic for children, but spend a lot of time teaching magic to them. The idea that an honestly curious young person would ask me to explain something to them and that it should be my responsibility to not do that just bugs me too damn much.

Now it's worth considering the possibility that Ben is simply not doing anything wrong. I know there are people who think that the magic they see on television is undeniable proof that demons are working through humans and that it is being covered up by the networks who are owned by the Illuminati. They are so far down the rabbit hole of wingnuttery that they are certainly beyond my ability to help. (And yes, they're real, I've had conversations with them.) But to design a show with that sort of person in mind would be to lose all perspective.

Ben Train demonstrates advanced Mindreading

But there is probably more to it than that. This specific example is problematic because it implies, at least to some extent, that what is being performed is based in science. The label of science is what cranks and frauds reach for to gain credibility. You're relying on the audience's ignorance of science to justify your practice. For my own personal morality, that is a line I choose not to cross, and I don't perform any material in this vein.

This tradition is not exactly new. Magicians have used science as a cloak for their work for over a century. Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin would claim he could make his son float by drugging him.

There are (at least) two ways around the problem, both of which they danced quite close to on the podcast. The first example they brought up was Captain America. Why is it that people are able to see Captain America without becoming concerned about the black market for Vibranium? Moreover, why can't we bring our audiences to the same place?

Performers seem to have an inner shut-eye charlatan which is desperate to convince people that what they do is real. Not only do I have to read minds, I have to make it "believable" — whatever that might mean. Looking at the example of Captain America, it's possible to realize the obsession with realism is misplaced. In order for something to be interesting, engaging or astonishing, it is absolutely not necessary for it to be real. In one of his Stanford theoretical physics lectures which he had facetiously dubbed "Quantum Mechanics for Old People", Leonard Susskind said, "I never use the term real. I find it very misleading."

You can get much more mileage by demonstrating something which is apparently supernatural and having faith (!) in the audience not to start a religion around you, than you can by demonstrating the same phenomenon with a pseudo-scientific explanation.

Part of that is simply having an attitude of respect for my audience. This comes from the other subject they briefly touched on: Penn & Teller. They follow in the "honest liar" tradition along with performers like James Randi. There is deception, but there is (confusingly) no attempt to hide the existence of the deception. When watching them, there is no pretence of trying to convince you of anything. [1] They know cool things, you don't, that makes this interesting.

Unfortunately, we get in the habit of underestimating the audience. This stems from a time when we were younger. Most magicians start out primarily performing for children. When you're surrounded by five and six year olds, it's not hard to be the smartest person in the room. But I've seen many people carry that attitude over to their adult audiences. I try and take the opposite approach and when I walk into  room and assume that I am average or, more specifically, that half the room is smarter than me.

When someone is watching me do magic, I assume (possibly out of courtesy more then an actual evidence) that this person is scientifically literate and know some basic facts about the universe (magic is not real, astrology is bullshit, the dead to not return as ghosts to help with card tricks). I never have to say anything, but if by nothing other than subtext, I can get that across, that frees us up to enjoy the incredible things which happen without obsessing over fake causes. And if someone really wants to know how I learned any of this, I tell them.

Ethics are extremely important in magic. We do walk a fine line. Lying for money is never easy.

[1] When not convincing people that Teller is the Saviour of all synthetic fabrics.

Remembering Paul Daniels

I woke up this morning to the news that the legendary UK magician, Paul Daniels, had passed away. Paul was a theatre performer, television star and self-described sex symbol. I have many colleagues, older than me, who were deeply influenced by him, and I have seen several posts on Facebook from friends claiming that they are professional magicians today because of him. I am a generation too late for that. I had the opportunity to meet him briefly once when he headlined the Magi-Fest convention in Columbus, OH. I was assisting back stage with the gala show, a large stage production with tickets sold to the public featuring the performers from the convention. He and his wife Debbie were co-hosting the evening. Back stage during the show they were both so incredibly prepared and relaxed. You felt that putting on a show came to them as naturally as breathing.

I only had two responsibilities that night. The first was helping to carry Ardan James on stage (for reasons that are unlikely to become clear any time soon.) The second was collecting the sponge balls left behind after Tom Stone's Benson Burner (tl/dw there are 300 of them). It actually turned out that there was slightly more to it than that. My responsibility was collecting the sponge balls up off the stage without looking up Debbie McGee's dress; a task which I think I performed rather adequately.

But what I truly remember from that convention was actually seeing Paul Daniels at that convention. I've been to many such conventions where the guests of honour — who tend to be a little bit older — hide in their rooms and only turn up for their scheduled appearances. This was as far from that as I could imagine. Every time I would walk down a hallway I would see Paul standing or sitting with a different group, often with younger magicians, shaking hands signing things and answering questions. Seeing that, more than anything he said or performed at that convention, had a tremendous impact on me.

Since he performed more magic on TV than probably anyone else in history, there is no chance of him being forgotten any time soon. For those who are unfamiliar with his work, here is a tiny taste of what he brought to the art form: