#699: Apollo Robbins, The World’s Most Famous Pickpocket — Pickpocketing the Secret Service, Manipulating Attention, Famous Con Artists, The Psychology of Deception, Self-Defense Techniques, The Secret Language of Thieves, and More

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4:13 I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. No Hello, boys and girls, leemers and squirrels. This is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. This is one I've been looking forward to for a very long. Time.

4:36 Now going meta very briefly for those who have not listened to the show. This is a show about deconstructing world class performers across many different disciplines to tease out the habits, routines. frameworks, et cetera, that you can borrow and apply to your own lives. And sometimes you find Gems in the most unusual of places. And today's guest may be an example of that, Apollo Robbins. Paula Robbins is often referred to as the gentleman thief. He first made national news when he pickpocketed the secret service while entertaining a former US president. And we will get into that story. Forbes has called Robbins

5:16 quote, an artful manipulator of awareness, end quote, and Wired has written that quote He could steal the wallet of a man who knew he was going to have his pocket picked. And that is an understatement, a vast understatement. And uh if you want to get an idea of what that looks like, you can also check out the video that we took for this podcast. on my YouTube channel at youtube.com slash Tim Ferris. So listen to the audio, but definitely also check out some of the visuals. Robin's entertainment credentials include the Warner Brothers film Focus with Will Smith and Margot Robby, along with appearances in Brooklyn Nine Nine and the TNT series Leverage. He was a producer and co-host for National Geographics Brain Games and which was nominated for an Eminy for Outstanding Informational Series.

6:01 Robbins applied his expertise in magic and misdirection beyond entertainment, pulling back the curtain to show how the principles behind these illusions can enhance strategic thinking. and decision making. And we Get into how much Of what he has cultivated.

6:16 can transfer to other areas. And that really at its core is what this podcast is about, to train you to see those hidden threads. Or those through lines. have been published in Scientific American Mind and Nature Reviews Neuroscience. He has delivered lectures at Harvard Kennedy School, MIT Sloan School of Management, and the Society of Neuroscience. He has been profiled by the New Yorker, which is an amazing profile, and featured in the New York Times, the Atlantic, National Geographic and the Wall Street Journal, among others. Robin's TED Talk, The Art of Misdirection, is ranked in the twenty most watched TED Talks of all time and has been hail by the TED editors as a revelation in the flaws of human perception. You can find all things Apollo Robins at Apollo Robinson. Dot com

7:03 And you can find him on Twitter at ApolloRobbins. Without further ado, please enjoy a most enjoyable Most entertaining, most educational. Conversation with The one and only.

7:14 Apollo Robbins. Follow. Yes, sir. So nice to have you here. It is a pleasure.

7:23 And this has been In the works for me, at least, in my own head, since I want to say two thousand eighteen, two thousand nineteen. And then this pesky thing. That we now call Covid came along and disrupted all sorts of plans, but finally. Here we are. So thank you for making the trip, and I'm glad that you are here in person. So we may get a chance Do stand up.

7:45 It's nice that it's in person versus virtual. There's so more. So many more possibilities. So many more possibilities. Well let's start. So people Might assume. That

7:56 Right out of the gate. Maybe as a fetus, but certainly once you entered the world. You had The dexterity Of

8:06 A demigod. And were basically fated to become someone famous for how they use Their hands. Is that the case? No, quite the opposite. I think almost as opposite as it could be on that.

8:20 This is a story I've been told. That once upon a time my father, who was legally blind, had decided to become a minister, went to seminary in Enid, Oklahoma. And was walking down the streets from cemetery, but he had moved into this kinda rough neighborhood was trying to witness and These two teenagers decided to try to steal from him. He didn't know what they were up to.

8:40 But then when they realized he was blind, they decided not to Hustle him. Instead they tried to guide him to where the bus was and Encourage him to go to another area. And he invited them to his church, invited him to

8:52 I have food on a Wednesday night. And they came and they did. They found food and they brought their mom one time. And then Their mom met him and they got married and that's supposedly how my parents met. Well.

9:03 Mm-hmm. Okay. So your parents mate. One thing leads to another. Yes. Perhaps. And then You enter the world, what were doctors' expectations of you?

9:18 They were upside down. So because my mother had had previous children, she had had three and she was a widow. They were also in their teens. They supposed, they assumed that I had the same father. So they didn't test their blood. So there was a factor in the blood. I think it was an RH factor, but it created what they call ABO blood disease. So it required when I was born that I had uh transfusion

9:40 There were a few other things. My mom had lupus connective tissue disease, which created tumors in her Put his So my legs developed around those so they were twisted up. And I think Out of that.

9:50 When I was born there was a product of uh a little the force gump thing that I had to wear braces on my legs like forest gump to get around. But also I had fine and gross motor problems. I couldn't control my hands. It was kinda the joke of trying to clap the hands three times at the therapist. I was a little bit better than that. I can clap my hands, but I couldn't do a lot more. I had to when I learned to write have a large diameter pencil that ha was through a rubber ball. I had to learn to you write that with both hands up until about the second grade. So I had a lot of

10:17 Therapy which I think That idea of persistent learning through Overcoming an obstacle like that. has helped me be resilient with acquiring a lot of skills over my lifetime.

10:26 Could you say more about your father? So was he Blind For your entire life? Did that have some onset? And How did that shape who he was? And of course the implicit question is, you know, how did that affect you? But let's let's start with a simpler version of the question. Could you just tell us more?

10:48 About your father. He was a short man, and I think that that factors in. Uh'cause it he was about five foot four. So it's quite short. He was very physically fit. He climbed rope with uh out using his legs. He was very

11:01 quick to go to a fight when he was younger. And then one time when he was going into College he was starting to be a C PA. And Yeah, he had tubercular mengitis.

11:12 That affected him for about a year, year and a half is a very serious disease at the time. I mean it still is, but at the time it was more pervasive. And it m made him blind during the project for this year and he Born again, he somebody had come to visit him and witness to him during that time, and he decided he was going to change the course of his life to become a minister.

11:32 And That Yeah, I think made him a very dogmatic minister to he really embodied himself thinking about the difference of Paul versus Saul in the Bible. And

11:44 When he came out. He was a travelling minister for most of my early life. He would Travel visit churches. And some of the things I think one of the creative parts that I really took from him

11:56 Was it he would travel to a church not knowing what is presentation was gonna be but he would find an animal along the way, a turtle crossing the road And that became his presentation. He would set it in front of the pulpit. And everybody would circle round him and talk about the turtle as a analogy or a metaphor.

12:11 And he was able to connect these ideas. And meanwhile I would sit in the back with my uh little braces and uh Usually a pen and paper and trying to draw everything that was going on. Art was a big thing for me. And it had been for him before he had lost his sight.

12:25 So I think those influences factor in later to some of the other things. But I think one of the bigger takeaways wasn't the blind spots he had through vision, although it did help That when we would walk around I would try to be his eyes for him. There was this tuger war that He didn't want anybody to know that he was really blind. He didn't often emphasize that A confidence level that was

12:46 Uh Ill suited to his eyesight. Yeah, uh and to his shin's chagrin,'cause he would run full force into a park bench and come tumbling over it. But he created this ministry that was Inside of the Government subsidized housing, what people g people think.

13:03 Is the hood. And he would get beat up in front of me and by gangs sometimes. Or not necessarily gangs, but just Small groups. I guess you could call gangs. Where was this again? Can you remind me? Well now it's branded as a T V show, the Ozarks. But the city was Springfield, Missouri. And he He would go in those air neighborhoods, he would go, he would set up his ministry inside of a a laundry mat.

13:24 And he would draw the kids in with a story, he'd bring Kool Aid and cookies every Sunday. He did that for twenty years. And they would come in and he would tell them these stories. It meant a lot to him. He was non denominational, but he was very dogmatic about his specific interpretation of Scripture. Which to me myself jumping ahead, I'm I'm agnostic. I'm not an atheist, but I'm not Subscribe to any religion.

13:43 But it was such an interesting learning lesson. I think about The difference between most people would judge somebody by their perceptual blind spots of not being able to see But sometimes it's worse the stories that we tell ourselves and how that limits our perception. We'll definitely come back to this. Okay. Right. Like perception, story.

14:01 Perception say shaping story story shaping perception. I want to talk a lot more about this. But since it's Something you just mentioned. The agnosticism did you start off? Religious. And then at some point along the way become agnostic.

14:19 Was it a response to perhaps Your father's dogmatism? How did you get? to self identifying in that way. Yeah, I start off as religious, which I think is the same thing. People start off as extremely patriotic to their certain country where they're born or where you go up in a family where they're very religious it would be

14:38 Under that w flag as well. And my father had me study A lot of different types of scriptures from Jehovah's Witness to the Mormons to because he wanted to be able to debate those for a lot of different topics. The book of Hebrew, he wanted me to study King James for its specific interpretation. I

14:54 had a debate in debate groups for evolution and creationism. That's why I was on teams that did that. I went I was in a uh Bible quiz team where I I would buzz these buzzers and quote scriptures and I went to the world championships and that and placed in the world championships. So it's all these things as a young kid that I was deeply entrenched in that world. And

15:16 There was just poking at this thing that The certainty is what flagged me, just the absoluteness of my father's answer. And it was in juxtaposition of what was happening on the other side of my family. So my mother and this shifts to the other side. It was a dichotomy between the two. Because she had been a widow

15:34 And She had raised these three kids. Yeah. Her husband had died very early. And two of them.

15:42 Had Picked up this beyond a hobby of how they were making money on the other side of the law. They never call it pickpocketing, but they would steal from people at the zoo when they were leaning over to watch things, uh animals being fed, they would cut their pockets or steal their bags at sporting events through bleachers, mostly opportunistic. But later it evolved when the military when he came out he started working

16:06 Again like the series O's are like I feel like that route That was in Ozark is probably what my brothers are associated with but with some type of trafficking group. Drug trafficking. Yeah, drug trafficking up through that pipeline. One of my brothers also did Smuggling for firearms.

16:21 So moving those in and out. So it became very intense and I was exposed to some of that. At the same time that I was growing up with my father as a devout minister. So it was really I think a a fascinating juxtaposition between those two worlds that Seeing deception in that true sense of the word of what we often think it to be. But yet

16:39 Also He was okay with my brothers as people. He didn't know that that's what they did, but I got to see both sides of that. And they did other things publicly. They were truck drivers or other things and exceptional people in many ways. But taught me to see the gray. I think back to your other question now became When I started to go to the church I would sneak out of the back of the church when the services transition and sneak off to another church and say, Well, if the simply God believe that tongues is the first physical and initial sign of baptism in the Holy Spirit

17:06 then what did the Baptist believe? And then I go see their tenets. And then as I bounced around I noticed that there were just lots of little slices of different views or perspectives. But shh. To me has continued to follow me through my life of any time to make claims of truth is Maybe we need more perspectives on this. Mm-hmm. When does Ben Stone

17:26 End of the picture. Wow, that's a great name. And how old were you? How dark do you want to get? I can take it light or dark or gray.

17:35 You pick, dealer's choice. And we've gone dark on this podcast before, so we can we can go there. Once upon a time I ha had had A pursuit to become a syndicated cartoon. Artist. twelve thirteen.

17:47 Fourteen going through that. And I was pretty confident that I could pull it off. I wanted to be the youngest one. There was a guy who was imitating Gary Larson's single panel cartoons. And I had six months of character sheets. I was gonna send'em out to get syndicated. And my parents didn't understand what this was or what this weird thing I was doing. They just knew I like to draw and do cartoons.

18:07 But I think it's important to understand the energy of what that was. And then there is a fight. And Parents have fights with their kids, with their teens. It's just Mine was a little bit more intense. My father Thought I was possessed, so they tried to evoke a demon out of me.

18:19 Because of the cartooning. Not because of the cartooning, but because of some argument that we had. The argument I say this is proximity to my large uh case of six months of cartoons. My parents some variation of a waterboarding process occurred. And the water poured over on all my art.

18:35 And That's the dark side that it destroyed and When you had that much work invested in it's a reset. How do you start over? What do you do? And for me as a kid That was what I pictured as my escape. The cartoon was gonna be your skill plan. Yeah.

18:49 Mm-hmm from that world. And I was down in our basement, I was going through some boxes and I found this little magic gadget. It was a piece of plastic looked like a thumb, and I was very curious about what that was. And somebody said it's a magic trick. And I said, Well how did that end up in our stuff?

19:04 So I call a magic shop that was downtown and There's this guy picked up the phone and he was probably seventy something at the time. His name was Ben Stone, so long way around to answer your question. And Ben Stone. I I said, I so I've got this plastic thumb. I don't know what it is. I said, Is this Do I act like my fingers cut off? What do I do? I'm like fourteen, I'm very precocious. I'm borderline at this choice in my life, like I'm shoplifting I'm running away from home for less two weeks at a time, living out in the woods sometimes. So I'm kinda a transition place of which way I choose is my path. That's a vulnerable Yeah.

19:35 Place where you could have inflection points. Absolutely. Or vectors in a lot of different directions. And I had lots of ingredients to go a certain way. Later as I met people in my life, I resonated with them because of that. Because I had that tree I had that fork to make a decision. So Ben had a big impact at that decision. And that's why I wanted to give you the context for it. For sure. Yeah, I appreciate that. And so What happens then? You're like I have this fake thumb.

19:59 What do I do? Ben says come to the magic shop, downtown Springfield. There's about Twelve miles from where my house was. So I rode a bike, I went with a friend. He didn't show anything about the fake thumb, but he used it as a trap.

20:09 The uh He did this point move around. Yeah, which is great. It's exactly what should have happened to me. And he made he moved a slide of hand with the coin, he made it jump around. Disappear, jump through his clothing, jump through his body. How

20:25 Fascinating'cause I was thinking, if this old guy can do this, I could probably pull this off myself. Then he pulled out a deck of cards, called the Svingali deck, and he did bunch of tricks with that. He says, So here's a choice. Kind of like a red pill, blue. This uh deck of cards you can walk out of here. And for five dollars you'll be able to do fifty tricks without Even practicing.

20:42 Or here's this. big book and uh it's gonna take a lot of study maybe in four or five years. You'll be able to do Slight of Ham with almost anything. Your choice. And it was his way of vetting at that point, I think.

20:53 And I didn't have money either way. That wasn't the plan. So I I went back to the first time. Road my bike back to my house. And I sold some stuff at a pawn shop. Came back the next day and bought that book. And for the first year I just spent my son

21:05 Time by myself studying. The coin magic by myself. So I wanna pause because we're gonna pick up on this particular thread. But I wanna rewind. I think just a few years. Because you're around fourteen, fifteen at this point. Yeah.

21:18 So I think this takes place a bit earlier. You mentioned Your father and the animals that then become the parable or part of the sermon. Yeah. You can't believe everything you read on the internet, but is it true that you also used to take in orphaned animals? I did. Okay, so can you tell me more about this? Well, do you have a research department? That's great. Got teams everywhere. Yeah. Eyes and ears on the ground. Yeah.

21:44 And um I'm curious. How that came to be And if it I don't wanna make it too leading of a question, but how that has informed Or how it reflects who you are.

21:56 Well it's Very salient, I think. When I was Like eight or so. I guess earlier when I would take walks with my father he couldn't see things, but he's he would stop me when we'd go for a hike through a woods or something and he'd say

22:10 If you look around you right now. Within five foot, there's a world. There's lots of little worlds. There's little communities of things that are happening. You just have to find'em. So find'em and tell me about'em. That was a big thing. I saw a lizard on a tree and he said Walk straight to it.

22:25 And it's gonna run around the tree. When it does Reach straight around behind it. And cup your hand. And he taught me that I could catch a lizard by walking around the tree because it would go to the same position. There's kind of a pattern to that. And he taught me this

22:38 Perspective taking for animals I think helped a lot. It's a variation of empathy. That I think Transfer later on for me. But I had at that time. Squirrels, raccoons, I maybe said bear for a weekend at baby bear. Let's take the bear as an example. See you next week. What what exactly happens?

23:01 How do you get the bear make its way to you? Apparently now they have a mail or service bear in a box, but on the internet you might get something you don't expect if you try to order that. At that time I I had raccoons, which is a predecessor to getting a bear. Uh as I've learned. I had worked with Humane Society As a volunteer from eight I was a

23:27 early entrepreneur from the time I was five. I was always doing some kind of hustle. Was that encouraged? Did that just emerge sort of out of your programming something other people were doing. It sounds like you had a family that was sort of active in extracurriculars. Yeah. If you bring the definition of extracurriculars, yes. There's a specific moment. So at five I was at Walmart. And I saw a toy rifle that I really wanted.

23:54 It was a single bowl had a little toy bullet inside of it, and I thought I must have this. And my parents didn't have money to buy it, but they said if you want to get it You're gonna have to come back and buy it, but write down this number. And I wrote down the number the the cost of what it costs to get that. And they said it's probably gonna be there for this amount of time. So

24:11 You gotta figure out how to get that much money. And so I had to learn to count that much money. So I had to learn to how to count the coins. I was finding pennies everywhere, do anything I could to try to get jobs from everybody. And I got all these pennies and nickels and dimes. And they took me my dad walked with me to the bank and we got these paper rolls and he had me put everything in there. And as we put the paper rolls up, we count up these dollar bills and other things.

24:33 Walked to the store and I brought all these paper rolls of coins and paid for that rifle. And it was probably about a month's work. And after that I thought, How can I do this faster than going around collecting pennies? So I was like, W how else do you make money?'Cause there's a lot of things in the store I want. And so I w from paper routes to creating a little art business where I had a knack for drawing when I was a kid, even though I was disabled a little bit. I was early to pick up on two D perspective, two dimensional perspective, or three point perspective. And so it gave me a unique insight, I think, at that age that I went back to the back of a comic shop, took down the flowers of all the artists there that were the best and said, Hey, if I bring you work, will you

25:12 Instead of g give me a percentage, will you teach me lessons? And so I started mentoring and finding mentors very young. And that Has persisted with everything I've learned since then. Okay, we're gonna talk about mentors. How does the bear in a box fit into this? Do you get do you get so you get paid as it to babysit bears? Uh no. Uh it was a slight A D tangent. So I'm in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. It was podcasting. But I was Along that, so I was doing lots of little efforts, like I was w used to working jobs.

25:40 And I went to the Humane Society and I volunteered for a couple of weekends. To help out. Yeah, I saw a puppy get euthanized'cause it didn't have enough space. And I was like eight. And that hit me pretty hard.

25:51 'Cause they just didn't have space. And I was drawing a lot and I was really interested at that time of being an architect. So I redrew spaces of their cage to do triple stack cages. And they ended up saying they would use the idea. So more dogs could stay there and they added me onto the board of my local human site when I was like eight. So then I said I want to help

26:11 Other kind of animals'cause I w like all these orphan animals and I I study their habitats and I never have said this stuff out loud, so I it really paints a picture of myself that I haven't seen before. But it's fun. So then raccoons were part of it. They were orphaned and they brought two raccoons to me and I raised them And reacclimate them back to be released into the wild. And I had a knack for that of getting animals to successfully re release into the wild.

26:34 At an early age. What do you think made you good at that? When you can't Walk the same as everyone else. You end up watching everyone else. And you become a people watcher and There's a lot of commonality between Animals and people in those ways.

26:49 You start to do a lot of what I I call perspective shifting of Jumping into their head to think Why would they make that decision? Why would they not do that? I think it helps with the animals'cause I had to figure out how do I teach raccoons how to forage. How do I create little plastic containers with mud and crawfish and what are the things they're gonna need and why are they not adopting that? Why would they so it's very interesting behaviors of that at that time.

27:11 So that's probably part of it. But then this lady who was kinda mentoring me on that, her name was Charlie Strafkamp. She was a fascinating lady who'd been a law enforcement officer that got mauled in a bar fight where she was trying to pull some people out of a bar fight and then sliced open her arm and she was had a single arm, but she took care of bears and buffalo and all sorts of crazy things. She's a powerful lady. And she said, Hey, um

27:33 It's amazing what you just did with these raccoons. Would you like to take care of this? Hung bear for me for the weekend. It has diapers and it needs to be fed. It was a magical. It was a awesome little milestone at that time. Wow. How old were you? I was probably nine, eight to probably eight to ten is when I was doing those things. So it seems that

27:49 To your parents' credit, they were open to you having a bear in the house. No in the house. Not so much. Where's it where did the bear and the diaper stay? I had a habitat that I was using for the raccoons. It was uh square footage large enough to let them move in room. Shed type of place, or was it more of an outdoor enclosure? It was an outdoor enclosure that was chain and fenced in with some options for it to go inside that could work for yeah. Well, I had to build a lot of those and my mom had a background on farms, so she taught me how to build a lot of those. I lived in the city, but We had a strange backyard, strange house. So

28:19 Let's pick up With The book. and the path of magic. So how do you go then? From

28:29 Let's just say broad Magic generalist magic. Two what you have become so well known for. Is it like well first you go to med school, then you figure out your specialty.

28:41 Yeah. And then like you do your residency and you're like, Okay, I actually am not really great at this, but I am pretty good at this, so let me zig and zag. Was it that type of process or How did you meander your way. Maybe it wasn't meander, maybe it was a direct line. I was always kind of full force in whatever I did. Yeah. And I think that that's part of it. That Sometimes when we're trying to get to a place And we just feel like we need to get to that place.

29:02 We can change the vehicle. We just know that we're on that journey. And that's often what it was. I knew I was getting out of where I was. And that was a big thing for me is getting out of the place where I was growing up. So at that point, this was gonna be my next question. At what point did you

29:17 Have the conviction that magic or some variant of magic. could be your sort of metaphorical bus ticket. Yes. Out of that place in the way that you hoped cartooning would be. Yeah. Which is a fun combination.

29:33 The book. Was a dense read. And I think it helps me though, but now when people try to learn from magic The try to learn it. Without mentors and from YouTube videos.

29:42 Where they don't have to deal with people. And so you don't have to do the perspective taking and the management of a person. In the same way. When you're first learning it, you're just learning it to fool a camera through a certain angle, and you only have to do it once. Uh so it's a different thing. And at that time when I was read from a book I didn't have a mentor. So

29:59 I was reading this dense. Copy that described how something was supposed to look magical. Yeah, I'm trying to Transfer that into an idea. And doing that for in front of a mirror and

30:09 I sort to find ways to do it, whether they were the way the book intended or not. But what I had at my disposal I think is also Because I've been exposed to like my brother stealing things and other things. It allowed me to have a

30:22 Perspective that I didn't have the same baseline other people did for Guilty knowledge for an anxiety. That happens when you get caught. And so I was willing to try things that other people

30:33 thought it made them shake, it made their skin shake, make them do uh and I I was very comfortable with doing a lot of uh unusual things with magic that really started to shape For instance, instead of trying to do what we can call complete vanish, where a coin's gonna disappear, but rather than retaining in your hands you hide it. Somewhere in a pocket or somewhere else.

30:52 I thought why not put it on another person? No, they they won't find it there. And I'd had that experience one time I was shoplifting Early probably th What were your go to shoplifting items? And were you shoplifting to use them or to resell them or something else? There was a a group you call'em hobos back in the day, but there was a group of people that lived out uh behind the some of the grocery stores and they knew sometimes when I run away from home I'd go stay with them.

31:16 And sometimes they would need food or they would need other things or cigarettes or other things like that. And one time when I went in I uh stole some cigarettes and I didn't smoke. But stole some cigarettes in. The guy kinda recognized me, uh and he came up to talk to me. Well he he recognized me from my thing my family. I live close by. Um and he came up to talk to me. And I didn't want to be found with them.

31:37 And I think he saw me do something, so he went to check me. It was an interesting thing just by instinct I didn't put them on any kind of pocket on me, I had left them underneath my arm, facing out the back. So as he's checking my pockets, I reach around behind my back with my right hand, I remove the cigarettes from there.

31:53 And I load him in his apron that was on him. Um So he definitely wasn't gonna look there. And I I left and I got away, but later he's gonna find the cigarettes in his apron. But I think that influenced my style of magic too'cause very quickly I would take traditional magic effects. And things that would be called like a

32:11 impossible location where something disappears from myself and appears somewhere else. So why doesn't it appear on someone else? What else can I do with that? So I started developing a lot of that too. So where'd you go after the book? When you have this initial. tome that you're digesting and shaping and Experimenting with. Yeah.

32:31 Course one. You flip the last page. Yeah. I Was trying to find

32:39 A magician I had seen when I was like Seven. And There was a guy that I thought he was magician, but I didn't realize it was a magician quite at the time. And when I was like second grade

32:51 This guy had come through my school And It was just an announcement from the principal that called the teacher out of the room and there's this guy working on the window and he was o in overalls. And he was working on the window and he asked one of the kids to help measure a rope and then he cut the rope and it went back together. It wasn't a show, it was just these magical things were happening from this old guy that was fixing the window. And then everything that came out of his toolbox that he was trying to use was doing some weird thing. But it wasn't a magic show. It wasn't presented in that social contract. And

33:17 Yeah. hit me over the head. And later I found that that plastic thumb that I found was a gift To my parents from him. So later I went back to try to find him.

33:26 I found his widow. And she told me about this magic club that was in my home town. And when I showed up, they said, Oh, you're new to magic and then I started doing some things and they So why can you do that? I there's two things I could do. I'd manipulate coins.

33:39 And they can appear, disappear, small objects like that. And I could do what's called equivoc. an influence of a series of choices that I learn early on when I was eight from some book, but I Had used it over the years.

33:51 And I could do that, which was is a category of minimalism. That is jazz based. And Did you say jazz? Yeah, my whole style is jazz based, which is

34:00 And that's an important thing. Yeah, please say more. Okay. So in equivoc, just so I understand what that means. I'm trying to dissect the etymology, but I'm gonna get stuck in the weeds there. Yep. You are in very subtle ways directing someone's choice even though they think they have free will and selection. You give the illusion of agency. I see.

34:19 Yeah. Allowing them to play a game of darts but you're painting the Bullseye on the wall after the dart is landed. I see. And yet they don't realize that. They feel with conviction that that was all choices that they made, that they navigated to. And I And that's

34:33 Takes a fluidity of thought. There's little feedback loops that people You kinda blend in the segues and people don't notice those and the way you use your words. And so the way that please. Correct me if this is a a lazy or inaccurate description, but for people who don't know the term mentalism, one way that could manifest is someone

34:54 Demonstrating mind reading. Or something along those lines. What is the right way to think of mentalism? I think there's a variety of ways, but if you think about Card. Magic, when you see a magician pick a card, where did that come from? It came from at one point some card mechanics.

35:11 Or card sharps that two de cards some of that filtered across and made it into the entertainment world. And there's this other category of a lot of those from thieves and things factored into magic. There's a interesting thing. Genealogy there, I think. But

35:24 Mentalism came from psychics and mediums. And that category was This impersonation that I have. Some type of Exceptional ability to read minds, influence, predict the future, talk to the dead, whatever it might be. The different label is at As a camp

35:39 mentalists usually d will not claim that they have real powers. They'll say that they're doing it under the flag of entertainment versus psychics and mediums who often use the same tools will sometimes convey that they have those uh gossiping powers. Yeah. Got it. Okay. So you could do The

35:59 Coin manipulation. Yes. And you also had Some mentalism game and they're and they're like. Wait a second, you just said you were new to all this, so how Are you able to do these things? And ycause you gave the specific example of the equivoc. Yeah.

36:14 And then what happens? I told him I'd read these books. And I learned it on my own. And they were surprised by that. And they said, Well That must have felt good. Yeah. Yeah, it was nice. And I also learned early there That even though I learned some things wrong.

36:28 By their interpretation. Yeah, it created a new thing. And they say, Well, that wasn't what they meant. I was like, Oh, that's great. So what did they mean? And now Is that what you mean by jazz influenced?

36:38 Like if you make a mistake, do it twice and then it's jazz or different thing. If you think of a lot of Performance magic. It is very sheet music based, very classical. It's very structured. There's a lot of geomet and the sight lines and the calculations of that. There's very precise scripting of what's going on.

36:58 My style has always been very jazz based. to a fault in many ways, but that I would feel constricted by any script. So for me uh As soon as I had an idea. My landscape was to try it with an audience immediately before I'd even Try it uh test it out. Pick up a turtle.

37:14 Walk in front of that audience, figure it out. Yeah, well yeah, jump off the cliff and build a play on the way down. But yes, the turtles is a great metaphor for that. But it was obvio I mean, the first time I did a show with my wife And initially we had this a separate tangent to go down, but we were walking to go on stage and m there was a certain skill set we learned with each other As she said, uh but What's the structure for the show? I said, I don't know, I haven't met the audience yet.

37:38 And I didn't and she was like Which is this collision of two different minds. Which she changed me for the better. But at that time. I didn't want to start until I knew uh until I met the audience it's like, let's create this together.'Cause I thought there was a value in creating and to me early on in magic, that's what I was trying to do too. Cause all the books said I had to do this in phase one, then phase two, then phase three. It's like I get that, and that's useful for some things. But also I want the organic feeling that this person feels like they're having this experience and it's not happening to anybody else.

38:07 This only happened in this moment. Right, so Did that magic club figure into your skill development? Was it a launching pad? Where did you end up going?

38:18 From there. They Offered me books. More books. So you like books. Yeah. And they said, uh well, if you could get through that book that you first read. Why don't you take these other books and learn some of those things'cause There's this great quote I don't know who it's attributed to, but when we buy books we think we're buying the time to read them.

38:36 Yeah. I I feel it's it's my unread stack would agree. Yeah. And I I think that that's what what they were suffering from at that time is that you have this energy, you read my books and teach it back to me. Genius. Yeah. So they did that to me, and that was a really cool thing. There was there was a couple of people that influenced me. It's a magic trick of its own type. It is, yes. But Ben was a mentor. He wasn't with the club, but Ben did some things. He did one thing. There was um a magician I really admired who helped me on the business side named Mark Sparks, who was a traveling performer who was brilliant. And I'd seen him make a coin fly up from one hand to h another and

39:11 Anything I could try to excuse or slide a hand didn't make sense of why that could happen. And other books I'd read. It didn't make sense of why that could happen. So I went back to Ben Stone in that shop called Mysteries Magic Shop. I said Ben. What is with this coin? Well, I think it's this. Here's my hypothesis one, two, three.

39:25 And he goes, Ah, well that's obviously Darryl Fitzkey. Said Fitzkey. And I said, Oh no, that's not my radar. And he says, Well, Fitzsky wrote three books, it's a trilogy, go read that. And so I picked up one of the books, uh Magic by Misdirection and the Psychology of Magic.

39:39 I read it and it was a hard read. And I came back and I said, Biv, it wasn't in there. And he says, Well he wrote two other books, The Trick Brain and Showmanship for magicians. So I read all those. I came back and I said, It wasn't in any of those.

39:50 Because I must be wrong. And Ben tricked me again. He tricked me to use my To read three books that have influenced me till this day. I have a very structured analytical approach for performance that I needed.

40:05 But also for the psychology of magic and understanding how An illusion is constructed in the audience's mind. And I needed that at fifteen because I wasn't thinking about that. And so that was the biggest thing I would say. And there was many other people that from that time period a gentleman Ed Dillard, who was a year round Santa Claus, who did amazing things. He would go into a mall and he created experiences. That was a great thing'cause he was a year round Santa Claus. Yes, he he lived it all year, right? So anybody who saw him but when you'd see him in a mall

40:35 Uh you you see people go up and a kid sits on Santa Claus. But what would be effective with him is a twelve year old It's a at Santa Claus. And he says, It's good to see you, Nick. So What's been happening this year, Nick? It sounds like you've had some problems with your friend. We wanna talk about it.

40:49 And he would say these things and just know so much about someone and he was mentalist as well. Not to also throw off that he had a Inner ear microphone in his ear and the parents had the other side of it. But he had this great book of Latin that was Santa's book and it was all carved out of leather with this beautiful book and he would tell anybody about anything about themselves but through the auspice of Santa Claus. And I just Loved this beautiful approach that it wasn't so much of what I saw magicians initially getting into magic for was to fill a hole in themselves. They were hiding behind what they were doing. They're trying to get this validation from somewhere and they needed attention. And that wasn't the driver for me. I was trying to figure out

41:26 Is there something here? I can create sparks in people, an experience like that guy did in my second grade when it came in as repairing the window or the Santa Claus. And so I think it started to shape the I had one skill set which outside of magic I could steal things. That I could blend in and There's A few th factors also I it states a little bit martial arts. I had some understanding of animation, and all of them kind of

41:48 Sew together to create a style that I developed. How did animation and form? The style. There was a great book called The Illusion of Life by Disney's what do you call them, his nine men But it talks about the illusion of life, how to create And

42:02 Just frame by frame when you're hand drawing. how to create life motion and one of those is secondary actions and what they call slowing in and slowing out, something moving at this the top of a curve, how it will have more frames versus on the bottom of a curve. And I started realizing there's overlaps and relationships of that to Aikido. And when you study Aikido, there are certain half moves and half circles. And so I when I started blending those together with slide of hand, I realized I I could lock people in a dance. When you're doing a cross body lead, how does somebody know that you have a lead and how do you transfer that with your hands? So by putting those together, I started to see that I could manipulate a person's body and tell them a story that they wouldn't register consciously. And I could lock up their body without them knowing that I had Kind of locked up the mechanics. Lock up meaning like game control, hijack.

42:47 Yeah, put him in a frame, as you would say on the street. Uh yeah. So uh I could put him in a frame that I didn't need other people, a team of thieves to help me. I could do it by myself. And I could use certain things that would draw. I noticed from animation because of that there were certain motions that drew attention and that later became a thing too.

43:07 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me. on the road. So what is AG1? AG one is a science driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. go to drinkage one dot com slash Tim. That's drink AG One, the number one. Drink AG One dot com slash Tim. Last time, drink AG1.com slash Tim.

44:06 Check it out. So a lot of people Try magic in some form or another. Very few people.

44:17 make it to the point where they are performing, giving TED talks, getting profiled by the New Yorker, et cetera. Very few. What were some of the most important inflection points, say picking up where we left off, right? After reading these books, after having These various inputs.

44:36 I guess maybe could have been during these various inputs like the martial arts and the jazz and the dance and so on. What were some of the Critical moments, let's say. Could be decisions, could be interactions, could be people you meet. That

44:52 helped to set the trajectory. I'm so fortunate to have had some incredible people influence me Along the way. And I've kind of surfed through my career from

45:04 person to person that's made an impact on me. But there's one I'd say that makes the most impact, which is my wife. I'll circle back to her because she's probably the biggest. But at that time when I was in Las Vegas, I was married when I was young. And so I it was my first wife. When did you first get married? I was eighteen. So I I was married, I had a son

45:21 who now I have two kids. I have a son who's thirty and a daughter who's six. So fascinating two different worlds. But At that time I had to provide for my family, so it amped up that entrepreneurship that I think made it a very serious thing that I had to find out. If I'm gonna do this, and I I was in a juxtaposition between two worlds. I had given up art.

45:40 'Cause of this incident with my father But in school and high school I had some teachers recognize that I shouldn't and they pushed me toward design and illustration and computer graphics. And I had two careers that I could do simultaneously, the design aspect of that. And then moonlighting with The magic style and comedy clubs and things.

45:59 So I was doing both of those in high school. But then I was transitioning into doing that full time by the time both of those simultaneously w as I graduated high school. And There was a a gentleman who who was a touring magician from Las Vegas came through town and he saw me performing And he said, You should go to Vegas. I said, Yeah, that's what everybody says. And he says, Come visit me. I said, I've never flown on a plane before. I don't even know what it's like outside of like Missouri. And he says, Come.

46:24 And I flew to Vegas to visit this guy. His name was Daryl uh Martinez Siccoin, the magician's magician. He picked me up at the airport, he drove me straight downtown into a gambling spot and he was a gambler. Show me that world. And he said, Vegas has everything to offer, but it will give you nothing. Which was perfect for me.'Cause I love working for it.

46:42 And I formed a model real quick. I looked at all the magicians that were around me and I recognized that they blew me away. They had exceptional skills, things I didn't know were possible, but they didn't have everything. They either had high skill, Which I put underneath the talent. They low business sense maybe. Or their ambition to take that effort to the next place. And the combination of those were

47:02 atrophy to different areas. And I felt like even if I don't have the same skill level, I can bring some of that back or find other angles. And so I decided to move out to Las Vegas and to try to go after that and then I'm jumping through a timeline real quick, but I was initially

47:17 working at doing a couple of design jobs and my second one was For a series of slot machine design, designing uh the animation sequences for slot machines and doing all the illustrations for that. And I was doing freelance artwork for a hypnotist named Justin Trans. And I was designing all this stuff and he said, Why are you here?

47:34 He says for a couple of years you've been in this work little place and you're doing freelance artwork for me. He says, But Your performing capabilities is you you could do something else. I see, what's a good reason? Give me one good reason. He says, Wouldn't it be an amazing story sometime later in your life If people said, Why did you quit your job as an artist and become a magician or performer full time? It was because a hypnotist told you during a lunch break.

47:55 Ha. I thought that was a great idea. So I went back into my job and I gave my notice that day. Wow. And that was a Friday. What a gift. I well it depends on how I mean I know you're sitting here, so I'm not sure what the intervening experiences look like, but it seems like a gift. That was a big point. 'Cause that was a jumping point, right? And It had a context in that

48:16 I was a senior designer at that time and the company I was working for and the reason why I didn't say their name They had led off f a large production team. That supported the graphics I did. I'd hand my designs to them, they would port them across to bigger uh things. They'd let them go. They but they found a way to get around their contract. So they outsource them to another company and then let that company fire them. Okay. So they wouldn't know any severance or they would dodge something. They dodge all their severance. And that may Yeah. Yeah. And that made an impact on me. So they just given me a bonus. They just give me a raise.

48:47 That was the context at that time that he said that well, why are you here? And it wasn't about the money for me and it was that moment of Yeah, what would happen if I did this thing? I don't know how, but let me just clean the slate on this thing and see what happens. And Coincidences I still believe happen in that weekend.

49:02 A friend of mine said, Hey, I'm going on tour for a couple of weeks. And there's a show called Caesar's Magical Empire. And I was wondering if you can come fill in for me. For those two weeks. Starting on Tuesday.

49:13 Uh perfect timing. Sounds great. I'll give it a shot. What did you have ready at that point? Like filling in, does that mean you have A thirty minute set, a fifteen minute set, I'm not sure if that's the right term. Sixty minutes, because I think of comedians working on standup material and to get A polished hour, I mean could take years for some folks, right? Yeah. So what did you have when This opportunity falls from the sky. Hey, could you fill in within the next week?

49:40 I've been doing it professionally at the same time. So even back in my hometown, I had contracts with I did restaurants, I did nightclubs. I had Fifteen different Contracts at the per week. So you had things you knew had already worked up. You knew you could string them together. Yeah, and I I knew I could make an impact and the big skill I had that was unique when I came to Vegas, I decided let's just drop the other stuff and just

50:01 Focus on the stealing.'Cause at that point there was one other guy who was really good uh two other guys uh were In that space. One of them had passed away, he was a friend. And uh he worked at that place. And so it was a good angle for me to explore further and more. To differentiate yourself. Yeah, to different as a brand.

50:18 I'll give you just paint a picture of the it's a fascinating thing. My first show I ever did in Las Vegas Separate from Caesar's just a corporate event. For a large corporation. And it was a red carpet event, they had limousines pulling in. It was very different for Missouri Boy when I first moved out there. And these agents uh they said uh so Well right, go steal things from people, I guess. And they gave me hundred dollar poker chips to give to people as gifts.

50:42 I went up to this guy and the the agent was watching and the first time I tried to steal When you say agent, this is someone who works at the casino? Uh these are agents that hire for entertainment. In Las Vegas. And they were watching and they were trying to vet if I was a good fit And the first guy this is like your audition gig, in a way. Kind of, yeah. If they're gonna hire me back again. And so I walk up to somebody that was important, they brought this big VIP up to me right away. And as I go to stew his watch His watchband was very worn out and it snapped in two pieces while I was stealing it.

51:11 Yeah. Uh I could feel my ears turning red. I just was running through the game. Do I give this back to him? Which is more important?

51:24 'Cause I got a lot of pressure at that moment. So I I was performing with him and another gentleman and then I said Oh, and here's your watch and he's shocked that I have his watch. And Before he even processed, I said, I pulled out the other piece of his watch and gave him the second piece of it.

51:36 Which was a leather band. And I said, See that lady over there? Yeah, that lady? I said yeah, see her watch. I'm gonna let you see it a second time. This time I'm gonna store watching, I'm gonna try to do it without breaking it. Now that's a lot harder, but I'm gonna try to see if it's possible. He goes, No, you can't do that. And I was gambling on the idea that he didn't need the money. He probably knew that he needed to replace this ban.

51:54 But I'm reframing it that hey, that's a whole nother level. You guys wanna try it? And let's move past this idea that I just broke his watch. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Which that's always been my script for. Yeah. And that that's constantly what was required for me I didn't take cigarettes, you took cigarettes in the apron. Yes. So that's uh my career was has been Uh majority of those, right? My first day after I'd left my job as a designer, I'd come over to work at Caesar Palace I was accused of stealing this lady's rings. I was doing a

52:22 Performs in front of a group and She said, My rings and her husband said, Where'd they go? And she's somebody stole them. I hadn't even touched her And I said, What did you have? And she goes, I I had diamonds and rubies and emeralds, so my and I just said, Oh, I must have sent them as a child support payment. I just turned it as a a joke. And then the the husband really got mad. Didn't like it. No. And so once everybody cleared out, th they came at me, uh come up to me, came at me too.

52:46 And he said. Give us the rings. I said, Do you really believe that I have your rings? Or are you joking? And he says no, uh give us the rings and he says, We're going to the police. They started to leave and I said, Stop, don't walk away.

52:58 Thing is what? Said if you walk away right now, you'll never know if I have your rings. 'Cause I could hide them anywhere. But I want you to know that I don't So I'm gonna walk in front of you.

53:07 I'm gonna keep my hands out to the side. You watch me, we're gonna watch the police together. So we walked out in the casino, we went to security and I got strip searched. And his wife went up, she's very dramatic, which may and To me conveyed that she was sincere about her belief. That she really believed that that happened. So then she Up in her room found her ring sitting on a sink and she'd been washing her hands.

53:27 Do you get an apology? I did. That's good. But I think it may also help It wasn't just an apology. It helped me secure a job there beyond filling in for a friend. I got it for five years. So that five years came from

53:41 How I handle that situation. And over that time I had people grab my throat, pull out a gun one time, pull out knives. I had Hold on a second. This is at shows, right after a show. During shows all over the place. stolen something or they're upset that you're gonna be able to get it. Or maybe I have, yes. But if it's in a social context of entertainment, right? Right, right, right, right. Yeah. But it's still that's a different thing than if you mess up on a magic trick. If you mess up on a magic trick, they caught you, look, I understand how your trick works. In the space I was playing it was accusations, law enforcement.

54:16 Lawsuits. And I was constantly doing with that. I learned certain rules. Don't steal from someone who's been drinking. Don't steal from someone who has Alzheimer's or any potential for that, because that's a really hard one to fight your way out of if they believe they had something they didn't. And I started making my own set of rules and it changed one big thing in my style, which was Right. I'm gonna treat this like a vampire. I'm gonna Like the vampire.

54:37 Vampires had to be introduced into the household because they need to be able to do it. You're right, they need to be invited. So I'd say in three minutes I'm gonna be wearing a watch. Try to catch me. And if they say yes, then But that was the first time I had ever seen that happen. When I had studied the history of theatrical pickpocketing and other thing, there wasn't that open challenge. Yeah.

54:54 Beware, this is about to happen. If you engage, that's the game we're gonna play. Are you ready? But it now meant a whole different thing, but it came from All those concerns and lawsuits and everything they also almost happened. Never never landed. But now I developed a style that was A very different style, very potent style. But instead of surprise, it was suspense. Yeah, exactly. It was suspense. It was also like a preemptive strategy.

55:18 Yes. So you would have less need to be good at reacting. 'Cause they're sort of setting the ground rules and inviting getting invited as a vampire. So at what point then, you said five years, is it within that span that Jimmy Carter and the Secret Service show up? Yes. So at that time. I had been there

55:37 And I'll I'll give you more context. So when I was performing it was A Specific role at the beginning of the show. twenty four people would go into a certain area. And they'd be there for ten minutes before they went on to the next part of the show.

55:52 During that time. I would steal from four people and pass their items off for the function in the show. And one person then I would bring up front steal all of his stuff while everybody's watching. And give it back and then later everybody would find it. And it comes back to them later.

56:05 I would do that. Every ten minutes. Six times an hour, five hours a night. Five nights a week for five years. So

56:13 some math is somehow around two hundred thousand people plus my side gigs that it became a lab for me to experiment. Can I take someone's glasses while they're wearing them? And what does that do? Is it possible? Can I steal their belt? What are the boundaries? And that was a place for me to experiment on the aspect of that. So could you please tell the story? Of The secret service.

56:34 So about Probably near the end, about three years after I've been performing at Cars Palace, there was a special night when we had come into work and they had a Big meeting before the show. And the manager said We have

56:46 Previous president of the United States coming in to visit. And we Or going to have some have some people go home that haven't had background checks. Yeah, because they've done background checks on all of us. And he said there you'd be photo ops as he goes through the show. It's he's got a small party with him. But the whole theater's just gonna be sectioned off for that.

57:04 They have Secret Service will be here, so don't be alarmed, but they'll be stationed throughout the casino and throughout the theater. And then We We're all departing and he said, But uh Apollo, they asked you not to meet the president, not to shake his hand. They don't want it to get in the news if you're to steal from him. And everybody just kinda laughed.

57:21 And I went back to him and said, Well, that's not fair. I'd like a picture with the president. It was Jimmy Carter at that time. Not that I was in the era of Jeremy Carter. He was an express. He was on a tour, book tour. And He said, But you know, they didn't say anything about the secret service. I said, What does that mean? You didn't hear this from me.

57:40 Yeah. Where do you think you could? And I'm so happy that you posited that then versus now,'cause I'm in my twenties. I probably wouldn't do those things now in the same way. I mean I still still from secret service today, but it's a different context. Um wait a minute. Yeah. All right, we'll come back to that. There you go. Get back to that All those secret service bar mitzvahs that you go to. Yeah, it's a thing. Okay. All right. Yes. Okay. You you wouldn't do it exactly the same way. And then what unfolds. So you you get this side chat, which is like a side chat. Technically they didn't say you couldn't do something with the secret service, and then and then what? He brings in the head of security for Caesar Palace.

58:21 They talked to me about Certain provisions and warnings, don't take any of their firearms, don't touch them. That would still be considered a felony. If they do take you to the ground, it's on your own, you're on your own for this. We have denied plausible deniability. And that this could be rather serious, which I thought was a really interesting challenge. And I moved into that. I was approaching the show and as I I was

58:44 Moving through I saw two of'em were stationed at a certain point and uh I went up and uh started to hit those guys. And I see kid it was the way I approached them. That got in their space and I stole several of their items. So the two secret service agents, I guess is the right term. Maybe. Yes. And uh

59:00 to a lay person to civilian, I think two more complicated. But maybe two actually provides more surface area slash opportunity. But when you say you went into their space, could you paint a more detailed picture? Of taking items from two very well trained people who have a lot of situational awareness.

59:22 Who know what you do. Sure. You used a great word there. You said surface area. And surface area, they have a lot to protect on themselves. Both where they keep their firearms, their credentials, the keys The itinerary, all these things. So they just

59:37 treat it as a whole, but it's got all these little parts. And Yeah, I like to think of attention as like a limited resource. It's really useful to think of the economics of attention if they spend their attention one place versus another How do you toggle that? It's not traditionally like look here and not there. You're curating their attention. So in that, there's ways to approach it, and it's usually contextual. It changes from person to person.

59:58 And when I approached them. I hadn't had an experience with anyone like that before. And the context was different. They knew who I was, uh specifically when I walked up. Uh there's a nickname for me in the show. They called me Klepto. Uh they said it's not happening was I think the first thing I heard from them.

1:00:13 And I said, No, it shouldn't at all. I said, yet, I think is the word you're looking for, right? I so I kinda push at the boundaries of their confidence level. Yeah,'cause I was coming in pretty confident. When him step back. As I approached.

1:00:27 There's a way that I approach That gains access to someone's space. If you Think if someone's personal space as a bubble and their properception of how you get into their Awareness of their space is kinda shaped like an egg.

1:00:39 And it's larger up front. It's Narrow on the sides and it's shallow on the back. And You can break eye contact with someone to sneak underneath that as you move through. I can show you more of that later. But

1:00:50 As you gain access, there's a way of Approaching from the side, they can often help. So when I started to saddle up next to one of the gentlemen to show him something. He stepped back and they have a term for it called maintaining occupied space. And it also indicated to me With uh slight brush.

1:01:06 But In my world, I have to know a lot of being able to determine what's inside people's pockets and the print of a jacket, what it means, being able to make pretty good estimates of what a good target is inside of the outline of a pocket. So as soon as he stepped back on the left, they indicated to me that he might have a firearm on that side versus on his right side. So it was probably underneath in a holster underneath his jacket. I so I just acknowledge I put that on the surface. I said, You're very well trained. I said, It's gonna be much harder to do anything with you. I said, You've been doing this for a while? And he says, Yes, I've been doing this for a while. And I said, Okay, so I'm gonna have to do it to you, sir. And so I leaned into the next guy and the next guy's like, That's not happening. And he was very serious.

1:01:41 But now as I'm facing him and this other gentleman is here. He doesn't realize that he's giving me access from the side the first guy. Yeah, the first thing he's off the clock. He thinks he's off the clock. And so just by That's one of the things that by setting the expectation he thinks he's done and the play has moved on.

1:01:57 But now I reach underneath my arm and I steal from inside his jacket and I steal what I found to be his credentials. It was wallet passport shaped. And I still his glasses from his outside pocket and I still a couple of things. And as I was talking to the other guys as you're doing that, does the other guy notice? No, he doesn't notice and he can't see'cause uh he's watching my hands and th they're trained to watch hands, but there's all these pause points I learned over the years from different thieves and other ones of holding out places and if I steal something, you're not gonna get to see it go in and out of my pocket or anything. It's gonna go somewhere else.

1:02:28 So I can put it on them in a more accessible spot, or I can put it on me in another place. So I did some of that. But at the end of that. With the two guys. I said, You know, I didn't get anything except for this, I don't really know where it is. And I pull out this

1:02:40 Paper that was kinda trifolded. As I'm opening up I see what it is. It's now the itinerary where they're taking Carter to. And I said, I can't really read it with these glasses on. He realizes that I'm wearing his glasses that were in his pocket. And he goes, Hey, he takes my glasses. And he looks at the paper and he says, Hey, and he snatches it away. I said, You know, I really don't think you should read that without the proper ID. And then he really reached in the pocket and he realizes that he doesn't have the credentials. And the other guy's laughing very hard at him. I'm sure. And he said, I'm not gonna be the only one. Ooh, Dad's not gonna be happy with that. When he finds out. And so they said, Yeah he says you're gonna do this to the other guys. So he got on his mic and he starts telling me to go to other teams. So I now have an advocate in and in

1:03:22 to approach the other teams'cause this guy's sending me'cause he didn't want to be the only one. But that that's kinda what I was mentioned about the Jazz. I mean, I didn't know I've never stolen with somebody with presidential itinerary and uh credentials and glasses in that combo before, but I have to kinda add lib with what I find and how I give it back and it is a unique thing that he knows is the only time I've done that is with him until I did it to the other guys. So what was the significance, if any Of that whole Evening.

1:03:50 To you or your career. Maybe it was indirect in the sense that it increased your confidence that enabled you to do X, Y, and Z, but If there was significance, what was the significance? I think legend is too strong of a word.

1:04:04 But it but d there are things. Nothing travels like a good story. It does. It gives people a story to tell. And it did. And it was one of a handful of legends or lore, I guess, lore is a better thing, that traveled beyond me. And I've found that Lore can take you So fast so far, but also it can encapsulate what people think you are versus what you are.

1:04:25 And it can be hard to underpromise and overdeliver when people have this expectation of what you can do. Because it spread into oh you stole their bullets and you took out their bullets out of their guns. And I've heard all sorts of variations of that. Uh that I began working for the government from that day forward. William Wallace. Yeah. Twelve feet tall. Yes. Shoots flaming lightning out of ours. And it was much better when people underestimated me.'Cause uh working against overconfidence was a great way to play. And I was asked to speak for the Secret Service. It was around a time where there was a shooting at the Pentagon and there were two Officers outside and a gentleman had

1:05:01 Approached. And he drew firearms and both of them missed it, even though they thought they were watching for his hands, but they were both tasked on a similar thing. There's a interesting thing in psychology called the inattentional blindness. Dan Simons and his Chris She Brees was his partner. They did a book called Invisible Guerrilla where you watch uh basketball being passed and it grows. Yeah.

1:05:21 And I I like to refer to that as task blindness. I think it's a more approachable term. But when someone is tasked, they often miss other things. And at that time I was asked to come speak to the secret service afterwards. So I was like, I'm not being arrested, I guess is a good thing, but now I'm traveling to D C and I'm gonna g talk to the Secret Service. And I was asked about that, about task blindness and attention blindness. And this overlapped into two fascinating neuroscientists that I met, Steven Macknick and Susanna Martinez. And they were have been studying magic and visual illusions, but they were also very interested in cognitive illusions. And in that space they wanted to see what could be done with attention.

1:05:59 And they approached me and said, Can we do an experiment? Do you have any ideas? And at first it was like a little um Session. Where they had different Magicians that were legends, pen and teller. Specifically tell her

1:06:10 Talking about theories. And they were seeing is there anything there to pull research out of? And I posited that I think we only have two sight lines. And this circles back to my early days with animation. And I said I I've noticed when I'm stealing

1:06:23 That if I move in a straight line That There's a transition point from A to B that when something is no longer at A that people expect to be there. They bounce back, their attention bounces back like a rubber band to be. But if I move in a half circle from A to B, when we get to that destination point

1:06:39 Nobody ever looks back at their point of origin. I said so I I sense that there's two s types of sight lines And there's a kind of suppression that happens during those. And I think that that's an interesting place to experiment with. And they said, Yes it is. We could do that with eye tracking software. And we did.

1:06:54 And it turned out to be right. And that Was the change. That was the flip of a switch'cause then I it was Part of a paper that they publish in Nature Journal.

1:07:02 And then I was asked to speak at the International Society for Neuroscience, ten thousand neuroscientists. Broaden your lane. It did. Or you gained more lanes. Yeah, and it when it realized that it wasn't just me stealing, but that that same concept of psychotic versus smooth pursuit eye movements and their impact on different things started to branch out in other areas And then I was asked to speak on attention and uh the

1:07:24 current models of attention at MIT and Harvard and other ones, it all changed right there. How did you connect with the scientists? Just so I can connect The Lore. Yeah.

1:07:34 The stealing bullets, right? Yeah. From midair with the secret service to connecting on the scientific side. How was that connection made? Tell her. Well just tell her. It was Teller. Teller said he was approached about

1:07:49 This is And at that time him and I become pretty good friends and we spent a lot of time together. Penn was also a friend Teller was interesting, like the research side of it on the back side. And he asked me to come join at that effort. Got it. Okay.

1:08:03 Micro gingerbread topics that I've let alone. that I've committed to myself I would return to. So the first is In terms of making the coin. levitate into the other hand. Did you ever figure that out? I did.

1:08:18 Okay. And A lot of blood, sweat, and calluses, but yes. Okay, I think that gives me the answer that I'm looking for, because we have a mutual friend, Simon Cornell. Yes. And I don't want to speak out of school, so I'm not gonna get into the how of it, I suppose, but I've seen him do this and just rest assured, it is so much harder than people think. It is. It's something that your body wasn't trained to do, you've never had a use for that. And to train it to be able to do that.

1:08:44 To make something animate uh is A combination of unusual muscles that people wouldn't usually use. Yeah, it is so much harder than people can possibly imagine, which makes me think of speaking of teller. presentation that he gave, I think it was at the entertainment gathering. And he said, I'm going to show you a video, and I think there's a balloon involved or ball. Yes. And he shows the magic trick, let's call it the performance on video. He says, All right, now I'm going to explain how I did it. Yes. And he explains it and then he shows it again. And he says, Now are you more or less impressed? I'm paraphrasing here tremendously. But it was a love story, right? Yeah, it turns into a love story with an effect. That's why I thought was the greater lesson of those him showing it and exposing it.

1:09:22 was this beautiful piece of him coming and spending time with this if I can giving part of his life to it. The second thing I wanted to ask about You have thousands, tens of thousands. of repetitions because you're doing

1:09:35 Four people every what was it? Twenty minutes? Ten minutes? Ten minutes. Multiple times an hour, over and over and over again. So you're getting a lot of reps. What do you do when It doesn't work. What's your recovery? Or how do you handle that? Because I can't imagine as you're experimenting, you must push the envelope and

1:09:53 I imagine I mean in with any skill, it's not going to be a hundred percent hit rate. Yeah. So what do you do? Even at let's say, for instance, the Magic Castle, it's like you see how people recover when things don't work out exactly as planned. Absolutely. And for me that's part of the art. I mean it's fascinating. So what do you do in those circumstances? I think it there's a subtext to what you're asking that is unique to the way that I the context in which I steal. I have a different social contract with my audience.

1:10:18 Than a thief does on the street. So because I can talk to someone I get Different access to their body, I can justify what I'm doing

1:10:28 It functions more like sparring in martial arts. that if they start to pick up on a thing, there's a feedback loop that I can see. And the cost of them fixating on that catch Comes at the cost of them losing something else. So as soon as they start to detect one thing, if they cover their head, you go to the body or Yeah, and once they catch that one thing they might find themselves three pounds lighter in other places because they've lost all these other things. Okay. So it changes the definition of fail. Is fail getting caught stealing a watch?

1:10:55 Or a belt, or glasses. I was pretty good at rolling with that and improvising with those things and realizing that if they started to catch that, I could turn it into another situation. And I would load strange things on people like I loaded Uh bag of oregano on a grandma and I said, What's this my grandma? Hold on. This is actually The perfect place. For me to just read an excerpt from a profile of you. Sure.

1:11:20 Which was by Adam Green and the New Yorker. And the title of this, I recommend everybody read this. And if you have anything you'd like to correct in the piece, we can cover that too, but a pickpocket's tale The spectacular thefts of Apollo Robbins. So this is one of my favorite Fairy tales. Yes. When Robins hits his stride It starts to seem as if the only possible explanation is an ability to start and stop time. At the Rio, a man's cell phone disappeared from his jacket and was replaced by a piece of fried chicken. The cigarettes from a pack had

1:11:49 in one man's breast pocket, materialized loose in the side pocket of another, a woman's engagement ring vanished and reappeared attached to a keyring in her husband's pants. A man's driver's license disappeared from his wallet, and turned up inside a sealed bag of M and Ms in his wife's purse. Okay. So hard for me to even make any sense of half of that. But You're loading things on people is where you were. Uh yeah. I take things off, I switch them, I alter them.

1:12:18 you're creating for yourself options. Yes. Also, right? It's not like you have one trick you're executing and if you flub it. Trick is done. Yeah. That's why I mean to sheet music versus jazz. They don't know where I'm going, so we can always change the path.

1:12:31 In fact, when I used to work in situations where I would just w walk around with a group Which I miss'cause I don't really get to do that. I'm mostly a keynote speaker now. But w I used to do a lot of corporate type of events where I would move through a crowd and I would walk up to the guys and say, guys, you know why I'm here, right? I'm supposed to steal everything you have. And so I just say that up front. It stops most conversations. I said, You got anything on you? And you just see them check. They would just bump their walls or thing and I'm just clocking. It's like okay, so I got the keys here. Yeah, so I'm making a mental map. And now I'm about to move into the show. They telegraphed all of their possessions. Yeah, it's because they don't believe it's true. They just we're having a conversation. And I'm now making that effect. It's like that seems to be a room key here, that's over here, this is what here.

1:13:17 And as I move through them in Real pickpocketing, they call it fanning. Small movements with my elbow or my hand can give me an idea of what things are in a breast pocket or other things. And I can manage a shark and taking little nibbling bites, feeling things out. Yes. And just taking inventory, you could say. Yeah. And now I'm crafting okay, so we're outround in boxing, same thing. Where people are gauging distance, they're seeing how people react. What's their pattern, what's their defenses. Absolutely. Or their vulnerabilities. Yeah. Which is interesting because now that I don't have that, I've gone back to martial arts. Because it was one of the few places I could get that feeling. And I I was studying a Filipino style martial arts and as I was new in it, one of the things I I could do in the first part was

1:13:57 They would go to draw secondary weapons sometimes like a trainer blade and it wouldn't be there. Can't do that trick a lot, but it's a great trick when they go to draw and then it's not there. They're very surprised, you know. Sure they're very surprised. Following this gingerbread trail, I just wanted to address a couple. All right. Your wife. Yes. So you mentioned I think that she's the most important

1:14:21 Influencer had the biggest impact. on you, your career. How so? Yeah, and and life in general. She brought I think when you're a specialist in an area, it's easy to get so fixated that everything in your world revolves around that. And mine was all around

1:14:37 Con artists thieves and I had a soft spot for those guys. I knew a lot of those guys uh were intimate friends of mine that had done things that w you would think of like Oceans Eleven, where they pulled heist on casinos and switched out devices and things. And I knew those guys well and that was my world. It was my cadre of team. And around that time uh I w had this weird inquiry to do it T V show about

1:14:58 Picking up women. Just'cause a as a side thing, people said, Hey, you know, you seem to be really good at this thing and I w I wasn't Ever a person who did notches on the belt But it's another thing, the perspective taking, it's related to that. And how you establish rapport and things. And there's a friend of mine who was

1:15:14 hostage negotiation. He had a special forces background. He says, Hey why don't we do this book Together. And we'll go shoot this video and we'll ask women how they would like to be approached. Then we'll put hidden cameras on'em and see when people approach him. How ridiculous people do approach'em.

1:15:28 Then we'll talk about that. And I sound like a great idea. He calls me, he got a film crew coming in and some models and other things and he says, Hey, we're having this thing late night at a party in Las Vegas at a On my spot. He says, Come in, I said, it's too late for me. He says, No, just come.

1:15:44 When I show up he's talking to a group of women. And I thought they were. Probably uh Escorts at that point. Professionals. Yeah,'cause they were close to the VIP section and it was a g a small group, younger women, some older guys at the table. And I'd seen that a lot in Vegas. But when I get closer, I'm talking to him and uh one of the ladies in the group As they were introducing themselves, she had a background in psychobiology. She had just graduated degree in that. She was working as a crisis counselor on a hotline talking people off the cliff. She would do some pretty intense stuff.

1:16:14 And studied abnormal psych. And very kind of intense, playful. And uh he said I was a thief when he introduced me to this group of girls. And I stole That is a hell of an intro. Like you're gonna get a conversation. It does. And This lady uh that Later turned out to be my wife. She asked me.

1:16:35 Can you steal something for me? I said, What would you like? She says, chocolate covered strawberry from that table over there. And she points at this table nearby at VIP section. I said, Got it. So I grabbed a menu, walked over, pretended to be with the staff, asked them if they're being taken care of, stole the chocolate strawberry under the menu. And then I walked it in there, I threw it over my shoulder to add a little flare. I got it.

1:16:53 I went to hand it to her and when She wants to take a bite of it, I put it in my mouth and I just winked at her, so she'd have to kiss me to get the strawberry. And it's that playfulness, I think that's the important thing. It's bold. It's bold. It is but it worked. Yeah, but It almost didn't work because her advocacy and her academia and

1:17:10 It was the opposite. It was too slick. And she felt that pressure from the group. She d gave me the kiss, but We end up leaning against the wall talking about psychology. And that dove into a deep thing. She's have you ever thought about this? Later on, but She said.

1:17:24 Have you ever thought about all the stuff you're learning and how it applies to bigger problems in the world? And She was the one that encouraged me to do the event with the neuroscientists. She was the one that encouraged me to take the piece with the New Yorker. Which I didn't even know what the New Yorker was at that point. I turned it down twice, uh Adam Green would tell you. I I was like uh here, somebody better over here. It wasn't my thing. barely knew who the politicians were. It wasn't my world. I didn't think about that

1:17:48 She said, Let me have you watch a debate. And when I saw my first presidential debate I went back to Teller. I said, Teller, you're a Latin professor. What was that? So why do I know all those things? They're so similar to this thing that the yellow kid used to do, or Titan Thompson used to do this thing with this. Wait a second, meaning you observed a lot in the debate. Yes. That

1:18:09 Paralleled. Very similar concepts. There is a term called Gish Galloping. I forgot the guy's name for Gish. Gish Galloping Gish was a debater who would often do a package of Assaults on a person or of their human character, uh should be

1:18:26 He'd say during his three minute window of a debate, he would say my My opponent would have you believe this, this, this, this, this. And then the opponent It's counter measure for that becomes Well, they're overwhelmed.

1:18:38 They don't know how to respond'cause they got three minutes and he pauses a lot of questions and they don't have three minutes functionally to answer those questions. And that very similar to me was a noise to signal ratio piece that's used to overwhelm people inside of a a cash exchange was shortchanging. And I recognize that as one approach. Short changing, so like giving Somebody Change, but less change than overwhelming a cash register attendee at that time. Right. And using ambiguous statements with different ways that they could take that for I can clarify more on that later.

1:19:09 A counter to that Gish Gallop, for example, uh back to equivocate for equivoc. If somebody were doing a series of personal assassinations, they also what they're doing is Diluting their argument. 'Cause now if I say ten bad things about you Or you said that about me, then I'd say as you can see, he's very impassioned about what he says.

1:19:26 But it knows there's a central theme between all of those. That central theme is X. And that's the equivoc, right? I can take all the things that you said, repackage them as another thing, and because you diluted all your points Because you put them all into the one bracket. So the countermeasure of that is to dilute that down, give you one point back, and I hijack the narrative.

1:19:43 All right, so you're talking to teller about this. Yes. And he was a Latin professor. Okay, so that wasn't that was a euphemism or a joke. He was an actual Latin professor? He was before in his career. I said I said you know more about uh Socrates and Plato. So can you tell me what and he says, Yeah, you need to go back, uh read Plato's Republic, you need to study about Socrates. And he started prompting me to go back to learn this route. That's amazing. Yeah. Back to the classics. Back to the classics. So from chocolate strawberry in the mouth to broader applications in psychology, or at least harnessing psychology, recognizing maybe the common threads across multiple domains that you'd already been exposed to and had had polished in your craft.

1:20:28 Two. Presidential debate. To then reading Plato and Aristotle. We had this unusual thing and it She moved to Las Vegas pretty quickly after we started dating.

1:20:43 Where was she? She was in Los Angeles. And Was it hard to get her to move to Vegas? It was a negotiation. Because she didn't want to come visit and be under So when I asked her, I said please come visit me and she said. I I have a lot of work that I'm doing here and I don't currently have the money to do that.

1:21:02 And I said, I understand. Can I ask when you write, what is your Per page fee. And she said, My per page fee is usually about this amount. I said, So if I asked you to help me write this bio and some other portions for me, I would actually be getting a discount by paying for your airplane versus paying for the writer's fee. And she said. Yeah, I guess so.

1:21:20 I said, all right, so come help me write my bio and I'll buy you a plane ticket. But it's that Play that When she came out She helped.

1:21:30 me a different direction that wasn't f solely focused on entertainment. And she also just because of her counseling background, she really broke apart a lot of my early childhood. And she had had these complexities too. She had moved from Vietnam. And she'd Grown up, her father was incredible. He would w wear police uniforms and help people smuggle things in and out of the country while she was growing up. So she had these really interesting kind of Engagements with deception too that she was trying to manifest through psychology. And at that time I was consulting for a mentalist named Darren Brown in the UK, doing some

1:22:01 Things for him. So she was fascinated by that with her training in psychology. She said, Well, that's not exactly what that is. And then at that time I had this group of thie. that were professional criminals and she kinda became a den mom to all them. They become a if the FBI was watching or the NSA watching our house They would have seen all these guys come in and out. And she was the demom of all that. She really helped take us all for a turn. Wow. Okay. So

1:22:27 This is off the map. This has nothing to do with the questions that I've written down, but I'm curious. When you're describing, for instance, the semicircle A to B versus the linear A to B, it makes me think of sports and exercise science and how The practitioners, the people on the field. The top coaches, the top athletes. are always a few years ahead of the literature and the science and so on. Which

1:22:52 is not to denigrate the science. It just takes a while. People need to write grants typically. They need to really pick and choose their shots. Yeah. And uh a lot of what's experimented with in the field doesn't work and that's okay as long as a few things really work. And I'm curious if given that you have this broader awareness and you've had these interactions with neuroscientists and so on,

1:23:14 If there are any beliefs you have based on your Experience as a practitioner. Around attention. Or perception. That

1:23:25 Has not yet made its way. Into the Scientific. Circles. Absolutely. But you'd be willing to say, you know what? I can't say it with a hundred percent certainty, but I would bet.

1:23:37 Mm-hmm. A B or C. I think In order to validate their research, they have to go after low hanging fruit, which is A single variable.

1:23:44 Real life has context and multivariable. And so when you go out in the wild, the reason why it's sports or between Kahneman and Gary Klein, they did a lot of research on first responders, uh to smoke jumpers and other things, the context of an expertise is hard to boil down in a lab. Super hard, also really hard for replic with animals and uh say animal learning, chimpanzee's project Nim for people who are interested, highlights this very hard. And the the the society aspect of that, for example, and uh the replication of that tend to show the same darkness of an ideal society and what does that mean to manufacture one in the space. Where I find fascinating probably with current research, I'm really interested, I guess An armchair social psychologist. I really read a lot in that space.

1:24:28 But Harkens back to My dad in my childhood, which is I think that there's a really interesting place right now when people focus in politics on the left and the right. But there's a bigger

1:24:38 problem with how people engage with uncertainty. That there needs to be a lot of work done on the study of the Tolerance that people have for uncertainty. And it we've had the pandemic. We've had craziness. We've had the economy. And I think it's really interesting if you look at that instead of left and right, if you look at that as north and south.

1:24:57 that you have people from both sides that need an absolute answer when they're confronted with something unusual. And that need to fill in the gap. That need to have an absolute answer for something that they've seen happen versus a tolerance for uncertainty. I think could help inoculate.

1:25:12 people from some of the problems that they're running into. There's gonna be a future where the arms race uh I like to people think of it as arms race of technology, like when they think of AI, deep fakes, but it's our arms race of imaginations and tends to be thieves will beat you to it. They'll be innovating in that space pretty quickly, and they are right now with deep fakes and other things. And it's Useful to see How people are going to deal with

1:25:35 having something that looks very real. You're now in this very interesting time. That all the research Historically for mankind with deception tends to be on spotting a lie, spotting something that's fake. And I think we're on a cusp where that's gonna flip over. And we're gonna have to try to spot the truth.

1:25:51 And what does that mean in the future? Yeah, where you gotta spot the truth. And how do you deal with that? And I think that's really There needs to be a lot more research on how we develop comfort with uncertainty, how we authenticate. All those types of things. And there's there's books in the literature that's starting to come out in that space. And that's definitely I'm leaning into that too, because I feel like since my job is distorting perceptions

1:26:10 And uh creating erroneous sense making then I should really Try to lend a helping hand if I can. So we may come back to that. But I want to First return to something that we discussed briefly, but didn't really flesh out, and that is

1:26:25 Let's call it for lack of a better Term your style. Yeah. Before we get to your style, what is the significance of any of that ring? This ring is made from a silver coin.

1:26:34 And My Magic used to be based around silver. It's it's unusual. If you talk to a magician, uh professional magicians, and for people who aren't watching the video, I've been watching you play with it and manipulate it and take it off and put it back on. And I would imagine Given what you do, that you might choose your adornments. Yeah.

1:26:55 So that's why I ask. All right. Everything has a purpose. There's lots of things that can be done with this. Actually when I Pickpocketed. Pinjulette. I met him the first time and he's a big guy. Yeah. Six foot six at least. Big guy. Yeah.

1:27:08 And he had heard about uh historically Among Magicians pickpockets are A kind of um Fake. There's a lot of people that say, Give me your wallet before the show and then they've steal it out. And I didn't have that background. I came from a different lane. And so he had heard from a friend that I could really steal. So he put me on the spine from a bunch of people and the first time I met him. He's he just walked up to me and says

1:27:30 So you can steal stuff. And I said, Yeah, I I sometimes I can. He says, Then steal something from me and he held out his arms and I remember him wearing like a Tommy Bahama shirt and some short and small block pen that was clipped inside of his shirt pocket and He said Still something for me now. I said, You know that's kinda like saying be funny now.

1:27:48 He said, Yeah. So let me tell you about something that happened to somebody one time. If I still have watch from someone is one plus one, you say, Oh, you're fast, you got my watch, I didn't notice. So but one time I was talking to a guy and During the conversation I stole his pen and I took the refill of his pen out. put his pen back together, put it back in place. And later I was asking him to sign something.

1:28:08 And when he went to Shine, he couldn't. No realise he couldn't even write it down. And he says, Okay, yeah, but are you gonna steal something from me? He said, Can you draw a circle around this ring for me?

1:28:18 And he pulled out his pen and go to it and then he stops and he stares at me and he realizes he's the guy in the story. And he just he opened his pen and saw that the refill wasn't there and he goes Fuck. You. And I said, Now Penn, isn't that better than taking your wallet and I threw his wallet on the table. Okay. That's amazing. Now why is that made of a solar dollar?

1:28:40 So Silver dollars in coin magic, silver has a unique property in the uh the way that it feels on your skin, the way it's soft, the way it can move, and also the sound that it makes. But just Specifically for slide of hand, silver works very well for slide of hand. As a memory of that, even when I'm not performing, I had one converted into a ring. So they punched a hole and rolled it into this ring. And it's a reminder to me of where I came from for that. Very cool. Very uh attention grabbing. Also.

1:29:06 Which I would imagine helps with Things like what you just described. It can be used. It can be used as a level of confidence I can talk to you about. And I I'll show you something with that actually. Um Do you have anything in your pockets right now? I do. Yeah. I have some credit cards. Okay, great. And I appreciate you let me know where those are. Um

1:29:25 If I asked you right now and just something we could just fell for it. Gotcha, bitch. Take this uh set your pen down for a second. And take the my ring and put it in one of your hands. And now Whether under the paper or behind your back. Put it in one of your two hands so I can't see which hand it would go in.

1:29:41 Oh I'll do it behind my back. Sorry about that, yeah. That's all right. You got it? So You put in one of your hands now, don't do the third option, which is putting in your pocket. No, not gonna do it. Okay, bring both your hands out. Now I'll try to guess which hand it's right now, it's in your right hand, correct? It is in my right hand. Can I see?

1:29:57 Yeah. Okay, do that again. Okay. Okay? Bring it back out? Yeah. Now it's in the left hand.

1:30:05 Correct. Is that right? Yeah, it is. So you try that with me, okay? So I all right. Yeah, I was trying to think like logic through this. Yeah, like Sort of like rock, paper, scissors,'cause I was like He would expect me to probably go with the same hand because I would maybe think it I should switch in. I I sort of overcomplicated it for myself. But just Princess Bride all over again. Yeah, just Princess Bride all over again. Yeah. So try it with me and see what your process is, okay? Alright. Right hand. It was pretty fast. Yeah. Did you peek it or how did you get it?

1:30:33 No, I was looking at the the body language. Okay. Yeah. Oh shit, I heard. You're distracted? I'll do it again. I'll do it again. Hold on. Alright, so we're doing it a second time. There you go. That's it.

1:30:43 So it's a big move.'Cause fixation would say stay there. You're now assuming that I took the same pattern as you, I switched the other hand, I could try to talk you out of that to go back to the wrong choice, but you made the right choice. I need you to miss so I can make my point one just one more time. Yeah. One more time. Which hand? Right hand. Would you like to change?

1:30:58 No. So this is not a minimalism effect or it'd be much better. I think but I also have a fifty fifty chance. So fifty fifty chance, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But but but I want you to be able to make your point. Well, uh so in this that's a little mini con with a little ring. And We often hear people talk about biases, so like confirmation bias. But when you embody in a real interaction like this

1:31:16 You would never associate what we just did as confirmation. I think I have an advantage over you. Also. Because you're angled to me. Oh, okay. So you were able to see kinda when my hand came out. I didn't see your hands, but I think it's easier for me to observe your body language. In a sense because you're angled at me. But that No, it's it's an interesting hypothesis. Uh but I think that that's the interesting thing

1:31:38 If it was never in my hand. And you were wrong every time, you might think I was cheating, yes? Sure. Because when we lose We're more curious and when we win we're less curious about why we're winning, right? Uh

1:31:49 Yeah. Oh Okay. So now you for those people are watching now you have identical rings one in each. Okay, got it. A very unique special ring that you start the conversation on. You found your own path.

1:32:07 So in that that's Little Metaphor for a con, right? That one little ring, cause that whole story that you jumped into, that little rabbit hole with asking about the ring. Is a great baseline that now people assume there's one and there's that baseline piece. But to me that is that greater question that when we're succeeding, we're often not curious why we're having success.

1:32:26 And it's a very unusual thing for us to say, Well, let me check it the other hand, when you win, right? When you win, yeah. Yeah, but that's confirmation bias. And it's really helpful to know what that is. And it's very easy. You didn't jump into the hole like most people do. Most people will say, Well, you know, I I play poker with my grandma since I was four. I'm really good at reading people. And they walk away with this confidence. And that's the con aspect of that. But in this way confidence. It is confidence. You see me playing low status with that and I need you to miss in order for me to be able to do Um but that kind of thing, everything is about helping people get to that. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, that was a great demo. And that actually ties into the

1:33:06 question of can you elaborate on what makes your style? How is it different from what people think of as magic, maybe what they've seen. Growing up. I'll give you an experience one time where I had Uh, let's just see kinda backstage.

1:33:21 One time I was performing for a corporate event in Las Vegas and It's similar to the one where I had the broken watch piece. But this is later in my career. And uh it was a new agent. And I was talking to her off to the side and so I uh I met a couple of the people that were there, one of the ladies who ran the thing named Lisa. Several other people. But then this other guy came up.

1:33:39 Well dressed guy and he said, So I heard you steal things, is that right? And I said something like that. And so steal something from me. I said, I'm sorry, uh what was your what was your name? This is Jamal. I said. Nice to meet you Jamal.

1:33:51 Before this, let's go back that I walked into this event Thinking. I don't want to do anything I've done before exactly. There's some little components and you'll hear some things coming back what I just talked about with pen.

1:34:02 But I knew that I could figure out how to put something inside of a bag of Ms. And then reseal it. In real time without anybody noticing.

1:34:11 And I thought what could I do with that? Let's just find out. Yeah, yeah. And That's where it started to become a jazz. So this interaction with this guy Jamal, when he came up, he says, uh, so you can steal something from me?

1:34:24 And I said, I don't really know. What was your name? He goes, Jamal, I said, How do you spell that, Jamal? And he said J A I said, Could you write that down for me? And he pulls out his pen and goes to write it down and his pen wasn't working. And as we've heard before. Yeah. And up until this point My stuttering, the break of my speech, the br uh the break of my sight lines with him.

1:34:42 has been very low status. Break of your sight lines meaning eye contact. Yeah, I didn't keep straight eye contact with him very much. I asked him about his suit. That's really fancy. It was all those status. And then everything just changed. Then it's this thing I said, Would this help you out, Jamal? And it's straight eye contact and it's the refill to his ink pen. And he had way underestimated and stepped way too close, he realized suddenly. And

1:35:05 When that moment happened to him. You saw him holding his pen with one hand. his refill with the other and he was just looking and he's stunned. He's in this cycle of trying to make that'cause the only solution it could be is the one he didn't want to accept. Uh right. So he's canceled out the truth. So where is he gonna go from there? Yeah. That I had stolen it, taken apart, put it back together and put it back on him. Couldn't be that. So what else could it be? Pausing time.

1:35:25 Time travel. So in that Now at that moment, while he's in that bewildered state, I just said Well, at least you didn't lose your money. Or your wallet.

1:35:33 And when I did that, I just glanced down,'cause I noticed he has watch on his left wrist, so he's probably right handed, so he's probably gonna keep his wall in his back right. So I just glanced back toward his back right pocket. And he jumped on that big he reached in, pulled out his wallet real quick, check to see if he had everything still in his wallet. And I laughed, eh, I saw his attention shift back to the pen. And I I pushed down his hand, I said, You still have everything and he put it away. And he says, Uh, you've got to do this to Lisa.

1:35:56 Said, Yeah, great to meet her. I just looked over his shoulder to where I thought at Lisa might be. And he took off to go get Lisa. Shove this lady towards me and this agent. And I'm dance, Mikey dance. Yeah, and I have a I'm having well I'm there to perform. I know, I know. And I'm talking to the agent, I have a a drink, and it this is an important thing, the drink, because it's a part of the style. It's not alcohol, it's just water, but

1:36:18 It's the I don't need anything from him. I'm not being validated. And a lot of performers will try to spoon feed the audience, but it's letting them bring a thing to them, letting them have a reaction without you needing to feed back off of it. And letting people have this experience for themselves. And so when he pushed the lady up. I didn't quite look at her at first. I said, sorry, it's nice to meet you. I looked over and I said, What was your name? She goes, Lisa. And she hadn't quite come close to me at all. I said. She said, What's happening? I said, Uh sorry, Lisa, he wants me to steal something from you. She said, What? I said, Do you like chocolate? She says chocolate.

1:36:48 I said yes, uh there's some chocolate in your purse. She said, What? She opens her purse and she finds a bag of M Ms in her purse. And uh he's reacting very strongly to this and he's watching this third party, he thinks. And then she said, How did those get out of my purse? And I said, The same way Jamal's driver's license got out of his wallet.

1:37:06 Now he's jumped back into the equation. He rips his rod out again, really his license is missing. And he goes, Where in the fuck is my driver's license? And uh he said It's in the chocolate. As I take a sip of my water, I just walk away. So I let them piece it together themselves. She tears over the Ms and she finds the license in her thing. Okay. So if we zoom out then. Yes. Amazing story. I mean I would have to think a hundred percent, maybe ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of people listening have never Experience something like this. What are the ingredients you mentioned some of them. Are there other ingredients that you can call out explicitly that are sort of the some of the hallmarks?

1:37:45 That differentiate. Yeah, and Uh that's quite different in m magic is it tends to be that they'll have a set of Effects that are linked together in that one. I walked in trying

1:37:57 I had a set of skills that I could do But I hadn't pieced them together. And I take advantage of the movement. Kinda like you would if you were sparring in that way. When he lean in forward, I step back with my left foot and I

1:38:09 Said it's nice to meet you, but at the same time As my right hand comes up with the back end of my hand I Kinda put my hand towards his chest as he came in a little bit too close. My left hand came up underneath the sight line and slipped inside of his jacket and took out his pen really quick. And I went down the line of my

1:38:24 arm and into my pocket, so he couldn't see anything uh being extracted. And then I step back and then I remove the pen, take it apart, and to find another reason to come back in to put it back there. So outrageous that you can do any of this. It's amazing. But it it's a strange thing. And then each one of those moments on the back side of that is I didn't know what was gonna happen, but what I saw is when His attention. Locked to that pen. And he was spinning. Anyway.

1:38:47 You can think of attention as being external or internal. inside your head or external aware. And you can think of as being broad or narrow. And on those access, it's very useful of do I want him to be broad, external, or do I want him to be internal narrow? And how do I flip somebody from one to those to the other? And I'm very attuned to the doing that.

1:39:06 Uh moving people between those four stages. And so that was a big part there was to do that to him. And When he Pull that out anytime he he uh had the money. I just coped his driver's license out of his wallet.

1:39:19 And let him put his wallet back. But he was already still thinking about the pen. So I could see he was thinking about the pen. So when I pushed down his hand, I just took the wallet out. The problem is his train of thought would go straight back to it. If I reveal, Oh, I've got your license. He would go straight to it. So I thought, hmm, I guess I'm gonna put this license inside the M and Ms. Let me see how I can do that.

1:39:40 Well you should meet Lisa. It's like what a great idea. Perfect. Yes. And I think she's the one I met. Maybe there's more Lisa, but let's see where he goes. And I said, Yeah, it'll be nice to meet her. So he goes off and he takes off to get Lisa. I see another Lisa that I have met. So just in case. I put it inside the Ms. And then I walk over while this other lady Lisa is talking to these people. I open her purse, drop it in there.

1:40:00 Put it there and then I go back to where I was. He doesn't know this. So it was the rightly set. It was, lucky for me, otherwise I'd have to be doing some introductions. Okay. So I have to ask What is it like for your wife to have a fight or argument with you? Cause it could be seems like it could be a total nightmare. Or she would have to become such A master

1:40:26 In your craft to be able to mount a defense. Mm. Or that she would be like I I've uh some friends who are therapists and sometimes their their kids will say, Stop therapizing me, mom. And they'll be like, I know what you're doing and So what what does that dynamic look like? Or is she like Weapons badge on the table. Like take your tools, put'em away. I don't want any of your horse shit. Like we need to have a talk. It'd be easier to have game on, game off. Uh I think uh we don't. We we do use it in our social interactions with each other as well. But she does it too so her career path, she became a mentalist. She left her career as a psychobiologist. Okay, all right. This is this is non trivial. Okay. It's huge. And so she studied mentalism after meeting Darren Brown. She went deep down that she started performing for companies.

1:41:12 But she had the background to science that I didn't have, so she'd translate for me. We had a daughter together a number of years later and In between those, we had these unusual experiences of going in very dangerous places with different criminal groups to learn about them together, me and her on these adventures around the world in different strange places. Why did you do that?

1:41:31 Like to learn what types of things. It's Easy to say that a magic tricks comes from this book. It's a different thing to say, but where did this really come from? Where did this idea really come from? A certain type of pocket or a certain type of thing.

1:41:45 And there were legends of people doing things in certain places. There's these group of women called the Forty Elephants that used to be in the UK. And uh around uh probably eighteen ninety to the nineteen forties, they ran a criminal group there and they could steal a large amount of things by altering their clothing and doing a s uh variation what's called boosters or boosting. And That's my world. An encyclopedia of things like that. And who's the people are doing it now? There's a resurgence of footage showing up now that YouTube is so pervasive with security cameras of women doing things that are like that. Where They're stealing a flat screen TV, 32 inch flat screen TV, and putting underneath their dress and walking without changing their gate. They're taking

1:42:23 Ten pound. cases of beer or wine and just making it vanish in their clothing and walking without changing their walk. There's a very interesting thing there that it becomes How is that knowledge being transferred? It probably goes back to at least the one data point I know the forty elephants. I ch usually when I interact with different cultures of these, I track back through signals that they use.

1:42:44 Or language or terms that they use. And I try to track where they learn from and we chased after that. And that's Ava and I did that a lot. So to your original question, how do we as a couple We both are fascinated by that space. We now have a kid and I'd say it's more interesting probably for our kid of

1:43:00 We don't teach her that it's bad to lie. We try to talk to her that Deception is a social lubricant. It happens all the time around us, from the moment we put on makeup to something else. Uh whether it be a defeat for cancer by using decoy cells. There's all these things that have a reason, but it's about your intent. And that's the big thing. Could you say more about that? Because that that would be very um

1:43:22 heretical to I'm sure some people listening. Right. Wait a second, no deception bad. Yeah. Yeah. No exceptions. Yeah. Black and white. That's the dark side of the force. So Could you say a bit more about how you

1:43:36 Teach your child, your children about Deception. Or If you want to tackle this a different way, you know, is there a pro social or a positive use of deception And a way to frame that for people.

1:43:49 That's definitely the flag I fly under now is I think that there's value in learning about deception. That one of the reasons why we have critical thinking is to counter Deception. And it's helpful now when people say we need more critical thinking to understand what was the original reason for it. Why do we need this reasoning process inside of a communal culture? We need to understand the role of deception. And there's been uh chas in the history of the study of the psychology of deception of trying to say, Well, let's catch somebody and lie, or lying is all bad.

1:44:17 But it's not. We use lies and uh levels of disclosure on our first dates. It's funny if you hear me now versus what my father's thinking would have been as a child. Sorry, my son is advocating for deception. But what I'm advocating for is a awareness of what deception is and it Expanding And I'll give you an example. Take the concepts that are used. Here's a concept. I'm gonna make someone think that they have acted when they haven't.

1:44:42 That's a very generic concept. Acted on something, taking an action. When they have it. Okay. So I'll give you two context for that. If I as a pickpocket steal from somebody in another country and they don't

1:44:55 Not too familiar with the language. And I run away. Their response will typically be to yell for police. One way of stopping that is to have a second member of my team come up to them while they're emotionally charged and to take a police report and give'em a ticket. And they think they have acted when they haven't. They have a peace of mind that they've taken some action.

1:45:14 And while they're emotionally charged, what do they need to see? Maybe a clipboard, a badge, a couple of things. Yeah, I don't need to show'em much. But That concept, if you can distill the concept of that. How do I fight malaria?

1:45:24 It's female mosquitoes that transfer the germ and malaria. But if I can release a hormone to a female mosquito to make her think that she has made it when she hasn't. It makes su her think that she has behaved taken an action when she hasn't taken the action. You can stop the spread of malaria. It's the same concept. So this use of deception is really the broader aspect. How do we deceive a cell? How do we deal with the coronavirus? It can be used in medicine, it can be used in different areas. Using truth to deceive, that's a very powerful thing. It's uh it's the difference between Malinformation versus disinformation is

1:45:55 Malinformation is the use of true facts to deceive, and paltering is the name for it in business, of using it in advertising, of using a series of true statements to mislead. Can you give an example? I've never heard that term before. Which paltering or if I said It doesn't have to be a business example, but it would be an example of using the truth to deceive. If I release a series of true statements in a certain order You're going to connect those and tell yourself a story.

1:46:20 If you vet any of those true elements They will Show up to be true. But because they were delivered to you in a certain order they'll create a belief.

1:46:29 And that's the bigger thing. How do I craft a belief in you? And that's been done a variety of ways on both sides of the political spectrum, that we could say. It's done in advertising as well. There's a great book on propaganda by uh Eddie Bernese, where he explored it with doing a study On the Most important meal of the day.

1:46:48 And uh it was At that time I think. Funded by the pork industry. And They found that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. He says, So the all American breakfast, bacon, eggs and Toast is most important. But that wasn't part of the original study, the bacon and the eggs to become part of the all American breakfast. But repackaging that in there as well. And a smaller thing, if I w want to convey an implied statement to you, if I said

1:47:11 Do you believe in ESP? Then I don't have anything to do. Okay, let's say let's go with no then. I'm not sure where it's going. So if you say no Uh I say some people don't believe in an ESP. Yeah. And some people don't believe we ever walked on the moon. Both those statements are true but I imply a third statement. That now if you don't believe in ESP that you're similar to the people with conspiracy theories who never believe walk on the moon.

1:47:34 Association. Association. By using true statements. And so it's also as a legality, it's a lot harder thing to grab onto. And if I want to pull back one layer further slippery. There's a lot of room for deception in advertising and product marketing also. I mean there's a so I didn't know that term, but there's a term called puffery. Hm. which is It's an implied

1:47:55 structure or function claim, but you can't make structure or function claims for instance With dietary supplements. or in shampoo because then it would be governed by the FDA. Would be And I'm simplifying this, but classified as a drug and therefore you would have to go through all of these

1:48:12 Different steps and studies and so on. To avoid that. So puffery is the use of words that have basically no meaning whatsoever. Okay. So If you sell sh if you sell shampoo that is a hair volumizer. No.

1:48:27 Agreed upon. legal definition of volumize, but it conjures an image of a very distinct effect. Absolutely. Bullshit. Absolutely. And you just When you have a label for this and you get a few examples, you start to see it everywhere. It's all over the place. In any case. I I hope that people expand beyond just trying to get someone to lie. Ca so much many of the things now that

1:48:52 are impacting people in major ways or going beyond fabrication. They're going to narratives that craft belief systems. So my push there, I think is a nice way to stay off the political phrase just to go after How I how about I show you how these things are traditionally done? I'm gonna show you the anatomy of those. I'm gonna try to familiarize you with those that like I said, deception awareness. Oh I see. You're saying okay. We can talk about

1:49:16 politics or a modern incarnation of This type of perceptual shaping, but let's do it vis a vis the forty elephants. Yeah. Cause at my goal if I attack a political piece In the outcome of the behavior I'd like is I would like for people to move more center. And I want there to be a kind of Diplomacy between people. So can I get'em off the extremes. And I believe that

1:49:42 teaching them without having to target them with their current beliefs to use these other metaphors instead of a turtle. I'm using cons and other deception. But to the another point of something more ambiguous, I talked about change raising earlier, short changing somebody a cashier. If I want to be softer in that, I could just As a sleight of hand artist, I have the ability to change a bill from one bill to another, right? I can do that very quickly, but so do thieves. And if I go to a cashier and I said, Uh, can you give me

1:50:09 A hundred dollar bill. And I give you ten ten dollar bills. That doesn't raise a lot of suspicion in the way that a hundred dollar bill would in the other way where they vet that. But now you take those ten tens, you put'em in the register, you hand them to me, and I take the hundred. But I just look at the hundred and I say, Excuse me. And when you look at the hundred, you see now there's a ten there instead of a hundred. What is my claim? I just said excuse me.

1:50:30 I didn't tell you that you gave me the wrong thing. I didn't make a bolster of a claim. I'm just allowing you to Assume story. Write your own story. And if you assume the wrong story and think you made a mistake and gave me a ten instead of a hundred. You're gonna take that back, give me a hundred and I made ninety dollars.

1:50:45 But if you went the other way and you were highly suspicious, you're on top of it and you say, What? Say, could you give me two fives? So that allows me to go either way.'Cause I have this tan, I can take that lane. So do you want can you give me two fives? And that's what means by equivocate. The equivocation of those things is this ambiguity Used to deceive that can be taken in multiple directions.

1:51:05 Although you're kinda fucked on that exchange, right?'Cause you get the tent. I hope to be able to have the recording. I want to talk for a second about books. So When you're younger.

1:51:19 There were these various books. You mentioned a few of them. I think one of them was JB Bobo's Coin Magic. Yeah, that was the book that Ben Stone gave me, yes. Right. Had large impact on your life, your thinking, and so on. Are there books in later chapters that have had an impact on you that come to mind?

1:51:38 At specific points there was one. Where Some people uh that I had worked with started to say, Are you it was almost an implication that was getting and that they thought I was psychic. Uh, and I I wasn't buying into that. There was an incident happened, somebody had stolen something from me at that show at Caesar Palace with hundreds of people And I had a backpack and somebody got there and stole out. set of special coins that I had that were very sentimental to me.

1:52:01 And set of a case. And that's a bummer, probably of no use to them. Yeah, but it was uh both emotional and significant to me, and I come back up by just changing my street clothes. And I said, Hey, what's the main bag? And the ticket ladies didn't know. Yeah, we What did they look like? They said, Yeah, there's a guy back here and I said old young this

1:52:18 Uh dark hair, light hair, and they said, I d I'm not sure. I said. Did he go in the show route or did he go side door? He said side door. Since in the Luminarium, which is like A couple hundred people in that space now. And they said, Yeah, he's there. And I was like, Oh man.

1:52:31 So can you spot him if we go in there? And we go in. When I go to look for him, I end up Because they helped you spot him. No, they didn't know how to describe him. I call my boss and I said Hey, can we do an announcement? Somebody stole my stuff, can you do an announcement that we know that they stole it? And he says no. I said

1:52:47 All right. So then I went back in st changing my uniform for the the show. And I went through everybody's pockets. I started going through assessing and profiling a few hundred people and I found the guy And You're eliminating different people. Grandpa's not gonna do this, this guy's guy's family's not gonna take that chance. This and so I narrowed down to couples and other things, and then I see this guy and

1:53:06 He's with another girl on I went up to him and I said, Hey man, what's your name? And he goes slick. And I And he called himself I mean that's not the thing, but as I went by I he was wearing like jogging pants and he only had something in his front left pocket, so I tapped the thing not tap, tap, but enough for me to know what it was and it was my case. So Then I stole it back from him with I'm no one and I went and told my boss, hey, I found this guy. Can you call security? And he said, He's laughing. He's just like, No, you took the evidence. He says, But how can you find this guy? He says, What? And he's telling everybody else. But at that time, back to your books question. I I always get on tangents.

1:53:42 I really wanted to understand what was happening there. And it's like is N L P is this everybody says N L P is that what this is? And it wasn't that, but it was what you were doing or what he was doing. People were thinking about what I was doing as far as and I didn't believe it was I had Yes, but you're trying to deconstruct what you yourself. And I was pushing at the science and I was really and so I found out about Robert Cialdini and his book on influence and different studies on the history of persuasion. I started ordering textbooks from universities and really going into that.

1:54:10 But then now my Areas of interest. The nice thing is I'm friends with a lot of the authors that I know. So Dan Simons just wrote a book called Nobody's Fool. that is going specifically after a problem that I'm very interested in, which is If we posit this idea that We need more critical thinking.

1:54:28 We really need to define what critical thinking is. Because Critical thinking I think is being used as a filler. term to fill in the blank whenever we got a problem for reasoning. And I think it needs to be more specific than that to solve the problem. What behavior do we want to change? Do we want

1:54:43 People to have an alternate hypothesis. To question there? Hypothetically. Because when is that the case and when is that a conspiracy theory? And it now becomes

1:54:52 the fixation on beliefs and When should we question what we think we know? And that's a very specific thing. So a lot of the things I'm reading right now are how beliefs are constructed. When should we question what we think we know?

1:55:05 And how often do we update our belief systems? Is there firmware that needs to be updated? And how do we go about doing that? And I'm trying to find what my role is and trying to help with that. Outside of Technical magic books. Mm-hmm. And I'm using magic broadly. Could be any facet of

1:55:22 That type of performance. What books have you re read that come to mind. When I'm h hovering around right now, I I say that rereading it, but I'm gonna be soft on the title. I think it's called How Minds Are Changed.

1:55:35 It's an important book that goes into the impact of deep canvassing And is it possible to change someone's mind in a conversation with any lasting results. And what is the Process of doing that. And that's different than a traditional magic book. And

1:55:50 Also, when should you and why should you? It poses the idea of questioning your own beliefs and how you arrived at those and how necessary it is for you to update yours. And I go back to that quite a bit. There's Book called The Person in the Situation. I think it's Nisbet. And we can get all the specifics. Yeah, put them in the shows. I do suffer from that when I buy a book, I think I'm gonna buy the time to read it. But I do have several that I go back to repeatedly

1:56:14 And it tends to be that they are for specific functions of the things that are driving me in life. A friend of mine wrote uh a book called Deception in a Digital Age. And He was with the FBI. His name is Cameron Malin. It's a fascinating uh book in that space that I go into a lot. Does WizMob hold any special place in your heart or mind and what is wisdom.

1:56:35 Okay, if you go to books to the spirit of your question, which is what I should have listened to. I don't blame you for not listening to my spirit. It's an acquired taste. No, there's probably so Bobo's coin magic, right? And then there was the Fitzkey books that Ben Stone tricked me into reading. God bless that guy, huh? They still reverberize'cause magic then A study of misdirection. And then

1:56:56 Wismo was it was this juxtaposition that there was a professor Uh, David Maurer, who was studying the language of thieves. And not just he wrote two books. He wrote The American Confidence Man. Which later became Big Conn and it was one chapter of that was turned into the movie Sting. And that influenced a lot of other parts of that book were turned into elements for other movies. They are cons and heist movies. And

1:57:19 I was very interested in'cause he was a linguist professor who was studying the language of thieves. was a specific type of theft and It's not just a pickpocket on the street. The name of WizMob is this idea that there are

1:57:33 Thieves that travel. And they don't just work as a team, but There are some thieves that have learned all the roles in a team. They could shift between those roles so they didn't need the team anymore, and they were called cannons. This term.

1:57:45 Came back from the UK a long time ago. And Maurer was tracing that back and he noticed that it was showing up in Chicago and other places that cannons were around But he started to meet. Some people that were coming into Louisville, Kentucky for

1:57:59 I guess the Kentucky Derby to for this event. And he found that there were groups of canons that would find each other internationally. And play as bigger teams. And they were fascinating'cause it was hard for surveillance to catch'em'cause they could change their composition as a team, change their tactics.

1:58:14 And they had very different skill levels. And that Lidifier for me to try to find it a canon to try to find wiz mob. And the New Yorker article that is all about that, of me finding my first canon. And then a year ago when I moved to Washington, D C, another cannon reach out to me by email.

1:58:32 And it said hey. We have Similar interest with Maurer's work. I'm one of the original WizMom. I said, What I I said, Well that's an easy thing to vet. And I said, So it's in writing, right? So I gotta vet this guy out.

1:58:43 And he talked about when he was fourteen years old and he was a six foot four black man coming to at that time it was very hard against him in space, so he had to invent whole new approaches to stealing and also what racism meant in that kind of community. And he was writing a book about that. And he wanted to get together with me. He lives in the D C area. We haven't still haven't got together, so sometime if you want to get together with the two of us. I'm in. That is the driver. That's where I used to spend a lot of my time that book, Maurer's book. Taught me to be a student of these arcane disciplines. So question on

1:59:16 arcane discipline as it applies to The team roles. People may be familiar with the different positions on an American football team or Basketball team.

1:59:28 probably are not familiar with the different roles. that a canon could take. So what does a team of thieves look like? Or at least what are the Fundamental roles.

1:59:40 I think a lot of people Don't know the structure of a pickpocket. team they tend to know football, basketball, baseball very intimately and very impassioned. But for a pickpocket team, it tends to be different. There are names. It is. Yes. Uh there's names for'em. Uh historically, the wire, the stick, the shade, the stall, and they all have functions of uh in what people would think as oh, that's just a diversion. But it's more than that. And

2:00:06 As you move from country to country, there's different approaches of how people steal in one country versus another. And It tends to be that you see them move like a school of fish through a crowd. So if somebody's in an event and they've locked onto a target, as that target moves through whether it's a casino or an event. You'll see the thieves move with them as a school of fish. And

2:00:26 the roles with that, the wire is kind of embodied in a character From a movie called Harry never holds. And it was about a pickpocket. that would steal from people and he would hand off his stuff. If anybody rolled him up, he's the quarterback. They don't want to catch the quarterback'cause he's the most valuable player. No function as a metaphor.

2:00:46 How would he pass who would he pass to? And the other roles in the team become the stalls or the sticks, which They set up a frame, they stop somebody's elbow from moving backwards and grabbing hold of the thief's hand. They might open a newspaper, they might look at a book if it's on a subway, but they're gonna be underneath the edge of an elbow, so a hand can't get back. That's what I mean by like setting a frame on some. Setting interference. Yeah. So they came and moved back then. Then there's the shade. The shades kinda counter surveillance. They're looking to identify undercover law enforcement. As they scope through a crowd, they're very good at identifying

2:01:20 What they look like and also where the cameras are. And there's a steer who identifies the good target. Pause for one second. So the shade is that a Pre-game. activity or is that done real time? How do they alert people Two

2:01:36 An issue. Well that's often an indicator of who they are too. A shade might use a physical indicator. Sometimes as different groups go, they used to use Nextel phones or they used to so I've seen that happen at a mall when I f visited DC a number of years ago. I've seen it happen different ways in Japan with like kissing noises in Naples, they do whistles. It's different sounds. Columbia Diversion teams will use Like a finger up the back of the neck, which indicates that we have surveillance and split. And they'll do probe testing where

2:02:03 Maybe as somebody's going in to do a steal they'll If they since they've got heat from a surveillance, they might drop their sight line. Towards a lady's purse. And If someone bounces off their sideline and tracks to that.

2:02:15 They know they've got heat. And so they give a signal to their team to dissipate. So there's Okay, so we stopped the shade, I interrupted. So what came after Shade? Steer. A steer is somebody who qualifies the mark. And these are right out of wisma, but As I shared.

2:02:28 meeting different teams, it's been fascinating to find people on the street. That still use variations of these terms'cause that means somehow they learn those from someone. So what does the steer do? They qualify the mark. They so let's say they do a testing bite and they're like Well think about the cost risk association of if we're gonna make a play on someone we might go to prison for it. We need to qualify the market. So how do you qualify?

2:02:52 It's changed now with phones, but if you have earbuds or any kind of cord going down to a device, I now know where it is. And I can qualify that. And so for a lot of Eastern European teams and in England and other places They just know that you're gonna have a phone. So more people become targets just for their phones because they know how to fence those and run those in the market. There's clever things of what they can do with a phone now. I think I'm running through your whole bank accounts really quick, yeah.

2:03:16 So it's more than access your bank account vis-a-vis your phone. Yeah, and I don't know exactly this place'cause it's not like a zero day major hack. Not like a sponsored state hack. They do have some way of getting into your phone pretty quick, and I've seen that Over the last three years take a surgeons of Doing a nightclub. It could be as simple as Pointing it back at you, get your facial recognition. Some kind of automation that they're running.

2:03:37 to be able to run through all your accounts, through your passwords, shut you out, set up dual factory authentication, lock you out of everything, and just take you. Per choice. Yeah, so that's a whole different thing. But back in the day, once upon a time, when the steers would go, they'd be more interested in when you go to an ATM or a bank and y you qualify they call it peeking the poke, seeing what But what money is inside the wallet. They had names for all these things. Uh the

2:04:01 Pit, the kick. The bridge, the Fob. Uptown, downtown for different pockets. They all had names and they could use them around each other. They Had

2:04:10 A lot of it was a very rich language that has some of us permeated into our culture. But It's a f a fascinating place. I think for me when I'm looking for a team, I often look for the steer. Either that the steer or the shade.

2:04:24 If I'm in a crowd I'm looking for their scout. Because the scout's moving sightlines. He's looking I look at for people that are are there targets? Or there are law enforcement?

2:04:34 And I can identify those. And if I can identify him, somebody else is looking at him. So then I just track sight lines through a crowd to see who's looking at them. And then I'm gonna look for their signals and I can start to identify the group. And then I can start to l look at how they're doing their own. So from a defensive standpoint. Someone's going on a road trip, they're gonna be going through all sorts of countries, can they be in crowded environments surrounded by lots of people, chances are There's going to be

2:04:58 If not solo operators, teams in these environments, right? Let's say it's Festivals and so on where certainly teams are at work, much like the Kentucky Derby. You go to Carnival, you can bet your ass there are gonna be some pros there. What can you do? What would your advice be to someone who doesn't want to get Their stuff taken.

2:05:17 I would imagine there's just don't carry anything you don't need to carry. There's other preventive measures. I mean, you hear about money belts and this, that and the other thing. What are your thoughts? Just like self defense. It's a mindset first.

2:05:30 And Over the last Thirty years, I guess, that I've been doing this kinda crazy, three decades. I've seen society

2:05:38 lower their situational awareness and increase their overconfidence. And it's a juxtaposition between the it's the pandemic of the Dunning Kruger effect. It's this level of unconscious incompetence or this illusion of invulnerability. And there's articles saying that pickpockets don't really exist anymore, that that's gone down. I disagree and pickpockets aren't the only problem. Like I just talked about the hacking uh element of this. Deep fakes is a whole new thing. I mean the recent thing that's just gone to case with impersonating you might have seen this on ransom. Case where they implied that they ransomed a daughter and this is a they used a deep fake to

2:06:12 Screaming that she's been kidnapped. Yeah, I mean that's gonna drive anybody. to uh take the behavior right away. So they were able to extract the ransom? Mm-hmm. I believe so. I know that's being prosecuted though right now. And I think it's one of the early lessons. There's a also

2:06:30 Weaponized as far as in the military right now. There was somebody in person named the mayor of Kiev within the last three months. That was speaking to other mayors in Europe. And it was Russian based. But they were on a real time live Zoom call while they were talking to these people and uh doing a real time live deep fake. On a Zoom call?

2:06:49 And then about an A few minutes in there was some kind of glitch. Lar in there, they got enough information there was a glitch, and then they called back to speak to the mayor of Keeve and they said he hasn't been on a call. So there's a future there that's coming that is Intense. So A lot of these concepts where I mention them from pickpocketing and things, that's why

2:07:06 And notice I didn't go to just getting a better money belt. I went to the w the Importance for Concepts. 'Cause the overconfidence will work against people. Oh yeah. You see people in any major city. We're sitting in New York City right now. The number of people I have seen See a go signal. And walk across the street.

2:07:24 With earbuds in, looking at their phones. Not checking either direction. Yeah. In this city. Yep. Is unbelievable. I mean hundreds of them. I've seen hundreds. And it's chang like I w two times when I've been to Japan, the first time I went there, there was this Kind of connection of everybody around and then the second time

2:07:43 Couple decades later Point back. the latching in of the smartphones and it really does become this kind of not narcissism, but this uh kind of

2:07:52 Egocentrism of they're through their virtual world, they're exploring out there and while they're plugged into that Like the Matrix, I guess you'd say their physical body becomes vulnerable. And so as a predator mindset of looking at people like that, There used to be a term among thieves called the griff sense.

2:08:09 And they felt that the griff sense was more important. than technique. The ability to extract that from someone and be able to know where their attention was. How much there Investing their attention on a thing. Now it becomes more salient when somebody's holding their phone and you can see where their attention is and you can see what they're doing.

2:08:29 beat a dead horse here, but I am curious. Let's just say You've tried to identify the minimum of the essentials that you want to have on you. Right. You got it you got a safe at the hotel. Not saying that's automatically safe, by the way. But

2:08:43 For argument's sake. You've tried to leave as much behind as possible. You have no cash. You're like, I'll try to use Apple Pay, you got your phone. Where should you put it on your body? Are some targets, I would imagine some are harder than others. They are so You're inside Jacket Pocket.

2:08:57 They used to think that that was the hardest pocket to steal from because they would call it kissing the dog. That was the old term. Kissing the dog, man. I would have to see the Mark's face. With most other extractions. You wouldn't get to see me.

2:09:10 My team would lock you up. I would work in a a blind spot angle. And I've been doing extraction that way. But if I had to steal from inside your jacket pocket. I've come up with a few ways to extract that without you having to see my face per se. Yeah, I can show you maybe some of that a little bit. Headbutting the dog. Yes. Headbutting the dog. Make sure they don't remember. So inside Jacket Pocket is a spot. I think it's more of

2:09:30 When you take things out to make a payment. It's useful to leave something there. There's A great I think that often beats security is what they call satisfaction of search, where they're looking for a thing An anomaly. They find something that satisfies that and they stop looking. You can reverse that and use that for thieves.

2:09:46 Give'em something to find. Give'em a if you're gonna y go make a purchase out somewhere. Quarantine a portion of your money. Any valuables that you have sentimental or other things, don't wear'em publicly and those uh if you're Moving into any kind of isolated spot.'Cause it's not just pickpox, it's gonna be for be getting mug too. And you can hide'em in plain sight. So for example

2:10:05 What is your EDC? What are things you carry with you? Now more and more people are carrying everyday carry. Yeah, EDC everyday carry. And definitely a pickpocket's library, right? Your water bottle, a coffee cup, uh those things. If I take things that are of value, sentimental value. An improvised. Safe could be a coffee cup. I put these items inside of a coffee cup, put a lid on it. And now even if you rob me, strip me, uh taser me, and strip me down.

2:10:29 You probably won't search in that coffee cup. That's the mindset. That I'm talking about. So the idea of Treating the unimportant as important and the important as unimportant. If you want to simplify it.

2:10:43 And I think you can take that to your hotel room. Are you going to buy some kind of stash concealment that looks like after shave or you're going to do those things instead of leave something there in the safe because you need to satiate their Curiosity. You need to give the dog a bone to find. You need to, as Herb Simon in behavioral economics, he would call it satisfacing. You need to something that satisfies your curiosity. Glad I asked. Thank you. Yeah.

2:11:05 What is the illusion of knowledge project? That is a current effort? New company that we're trying to create. And I've kind of tiptoed into that as we've been speaking about

2:11:16 It's a soft business model. We're trying it's still shape of what the market is for that. But we think it's important to point the finger at the problem. That we see on the horizon. The benefit is I have an amazing network of people that I've learned from. It used to be thieves, but now it's security specialists and other ones, and just specialists around the world that are incredible experts in these areas. And I was thinking My background's in entertainment. We did some T V work, different things.

2:11:39 Can we repackage shows whether it's T V or live experience or content. Yeah. can help people engage with Things would

2:11:48 they might not think are important. Their data, their other things. Can you reverse a room escape and make it a heist and while people are trying to break into a thing they learn about their personal data? These kind of examples. Yeah, uh it probably is now stolen that I've said it out loud. We could we could add in a bunch of bleeps if you like. Yeah, no, it's a leave it in there. It's just karma for me doing the other things I've done. But it's the kind of things that give you those ideas. So we did a project along that it was a video project called The Illusion of Knowledge. And it's this Daniel Borson quote, the enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it's the illusion of knowledge. And that marries so well with my background growing up around cons.

2:12:25 And Since my Job has always been instilling confidence, not just the extraction of personal items from a person, it's getting people to make other decisions. And as I learn about that

2:12:35 I think it's very important for people to understand that we are all puppets. That we all have strengths. And it's a benefit for people to know that about themselves instead of saying, But I'm not a puppet and realize that they do have a string. And what does it mean for somebody to pull that string? And that awareness of how what it looks like in different ways that those strings can be pulled, I think can help bring people so that the flags go up. So we're creating this project, the Illusion Knowledge project, to kinda highlight some of that.

2:13:02 Where can people find that? Or can they not yet find it. They can't find it yet. It's uh there's a trailer that's uh we have this w website called Equivoc, and Equivoc is E Q U I V O K E Or they can go to my website. It's easy. Uh my website is I stealstuff.com.

2:13:19 And it's easier for people to remember while they're driving. But if you go to that there will be a link to Equivoc, there's a link to those things. Explore and poke around. I don't have much content out there that I I'm at a phase where I have two kids. I have one that's thirty, one that's six, and I wanna try to do the thing that I can to change the world in the way that I can. So a lot of these are legacy type things that Build it first, build business model later, which is probably the best approach, but it's something that I'm doing right now.

2:13:48 You know, it's um It may not always be the most fail safe approach, but it is I think the approach that I see a line with intention and integrity very often in people who are and I mean this in the Most complimentary sense possible.

2:14:05 High level craftsmen. or craftswomen. It's not impossible to do, it can be difficult to do. But I don't think it's an incorrect approach. Does that make sense? Because you can conversely And look, I invest in a lot of

2:14:17 Or I have historically invested in a lot of startups and early stage companies and so on. And it can be incredibly profitable to start with a model and then figure out what fits around that. However, when you have a craft And when you have the refined perception and ability to operate in the world that you have that you can expand into these different domains. I think that approach makes a lot of sense. I really do, because you can corrupt

2:14:42 The sincerity of the knowledge you've accumulated by force fitting it into a model. Yeah. Well said. I think I don't know if the right metaphor of spoken hub But it's

2:14:52 Is a little bit like that that I have Different ways I've been able to make a very good living. through whether it's speaking or doing workshops or doing training or creating things to teach security And as I'm doing those Since I got

2:15:06 My Boxes checked. I felt Okay, let's be exploratory. Let's what else can I use this thing that I have, this network that I have. And

2:15:14 Instead can it be something that is uh using the fun part of where I came from. So I have to ask because this is just my brain won't let it go. Yeah. So the forty elephants. I just love this name. Are there other Historical figures.

2:15:30 Or Bands of merry pranksters slash criminals. who have particularly memorable names or stories for you. Like if if like if you had to put together your League of Legends, is there a short list? I've

2:15:45 had the good fortune meeting a lot of interesting characters. There's some That I've spent time with and there's some that I've just read about. In uh the space of like famous thieves or con artists or

2:15:56 Is the unsinkable Titanic Thompson who Titanic Thompson. Yep, his uh the nickname was Ty, from those who knew him well. There's books been written about him. I think people have talked about doing movies over the years. Supposedly he would advertise he was coming to a Town because he gambled on everything and people were drawn to that. He was a proposition bet hustler. But he had super skills. He acquired a lot of proposition bet hustler.

2:16:20 Meaning he bet on things that he would just win. He had special set of skills or support staff, covert support staff that allowed him to make outrageous bets on weird things. Can you think of an example? Yeah. one, uh he would bet just first on like golf. He's very good at golf. And he would play somebody and he'd be beating them and he says listen, I'll give you a handicap, I'll play with left handed. And then he would beat him again and they didn't realize that he was left handed. But he's that good. They could beat people right handed. Back to Princess Bright again. Yes. And so he definitely could switch the hands. He was very famous for being able to throw things accurately inside of Cup from a distance, other things he could throw a card from a long way away through a window and uh being above a pool hall was one story where

2:17:02 He would Be trying to toss a hat, missing occasionally, and uh side bets on a poker game. And he says Yeah, this better grand that I can toss a card through that window all the way down where the window is and so we'd Take the bet, and throw a card through, and then they close down the window and get a second bet.

2:17:15 Then can he he says out? Listen, I'm gonna throw it through the window, it's gonna come back and it's gonna stick to the outside of the w window. No, just silly. And it would. And you see those in the literature, but like no, that's like magic territory. Uh and then he would So maybe eating pretzel and he says, The pretzel. I'm gonna take that pretzel and throw it over that three story building over there, or that walnut. And they'd say, No, that can't and he would. And he'd throw a pretzel over a wall. So you seem like some kind of Robin Hood slash superhero

2:17:42 But there's great books on him on the unsinkable Titanic Thompson. I Have the good fortune of knowing the last surviving member of his team that was the guy who was down below in the pool hall with a fan and rubber cement who painted the window. But he would do amazing things to layer these very intricate cons besides that. So there's a handful of those guys The unsinkable Titanic Thompson, Joseph Wheel, the Yellow Kid, the uh Count Victor Lustig. He's a guy who sold the Eiffel Tower twice. And it's amazing. How do you sell the Eiffel Tower? And it is a beautiful con of you took advantage of the time when the Eiffel Tower was Not had the significant value that it did. It was after a World's Fair.

2:18:17 And it might need to be turned into scraps. So he put out a bid as a city official to be able to Look for somebody who could tear it down. And then as different contractors bid on it, he found a guy who really needed the job. And meanwhile the wife of the guy says, I think there's a rat. I smell something, there's something up here. Any it?

2:18:35 The beautiful turn in a con, which he recognized that the wife had that suspicion. And he answered in neat way, he just said, Listen, I'm I gotta make something on this. If you guys really want this deal, I'm gonna need a cut. So They decided, Okay, hey, that's the rat.

2:18:48 That's the thing. He he is suspicious. He's a city official who needs a cut. Instead it's a whole fake. So not only did he get the money he was getting, he also got the extra money as well. Oh man. So there's a all these guys, all these interesting lessons of these guys. But I had a Personal best friend for Seventeen years. Rod the Hop.

2:19:06 And He It's significant. If people have ever watched like Oceans Eleven and they wondered Well, I wonder if there's a real Ocean. Uh there's a couple of guys that Ocean's character would probably be attributed to do, but Rod would be on that short list. Among Thieves at least. And he was a legend among thieves and people didn't know what he looked like generally'cause of the nature of the work. But he

2:19:24 Played a lot of different styles, he's a card hustler, card sheet. But there's like a southern style, a gardenia style, um These different styles of playing long and short games. They're using devices that shoot out your sleeve and grab things called a joint. Or Keppinger hold out. He was very good at a lot of those things. I met him when I first moved to New Vegas. He was sitting off in a corner. I said it was a thing where some magicians were and he was off the side of that.

2:19:46 And he was playing with Plastic cards. And he was shuffling him at the table. And not in a way that magicians handle cards. And he had an edge that was a little bit more of felt like family to me. And I saddled up to him, talked to him a little bit. So not the way that magicians handle cards in the sense that

2:20:03 You recognize more of like a working card mechanic. Yeah,'cause mechanics Can't have flourish. They can't pick up the deck off the table. They don't shuffle in the same way that they do. All their slides have to be done within the constraints. Of what the casinos have manifest.

2:20:19 So w it would look very mundane on the surface, but there's a lot going on there. And also plastic cards. Magicians would never want to use plastic cards, but poker players would. So when I began talking to him, we kind of hit up a friendship and talked a little bit. And as he learned more about my past and I was going through a divorce at the time too. I was around twenty one. He knew I needed some money and he said, Hey, you wanna complain with my team? And they were hitting casinos or at least

2:20:43 Side spots, kind of periphery casinos or gas stations and hitting slot machines and things and he could Cheat a slot machine and make it pay out. A bonus. We needed

2:20:52 watch guards, you needed me to learn a Cody system and stuff. And I said, Sorry, man, I've grown up around some things like this and there's this line. That I know once I step across the line I'll always move it. So I can't, man, but I really appreciate it. He says well How about

2:21:06 All these magic books, what are you trying to what are you gonna do with those? I said, I don't know. I guess I'm gonna have to sell them to And he said, Well, I'm not going to be able I'll buy those from you. So he bought all my magic books from me. And one of his team turned on him and he ended up getting arrested. Right after that.

2:21:21 And I got this box of books back with this kinda little note as a friend. Saying I knew you wouldn't take the money unless I did this and give me all my books back. Till later when he got out of prison I said I'm doing some new stuff now.

2:21:34 And I need some friends. You want to be a friend? And I asked him to join our team. So he joined the team and we had about a dozen guys. Kevin Mitnick, a famous hacker, was one of those guys. They're at a deception. Yeah, and uh he was a dear friend who just recently passed away. Oh I didn't know that. Yeah. And uh but I saw him right before he got sick last year for cancer, but very Dear friends, I've learned so much from But Rod used to do heist on casinos. R Mitnick had all of his legends. It's a a story for another time. But I've been influenced by amazing guys in that way that I've learned about. So what did the team do? What was he doing on the team?

2:22:11 Definitely I can clarify a bad business model. So that was WizMob Incorporated, inspired by the book you mentioned, WizMob. And the idea was that we would team guys together and send them out for as a speaking agency. For security, maybe teaming with their counterparts and law enforcement. Mittnikari had that game going. He was doing full penetration testing. So he just hung out with us as a subject matter expert. Like when It was beneficial to learn what are covert communication systems that pickpockets use versus car cheese versus guys that would break into a place like a cat burglar functionally. So all those kind of guys we had kind of in our cadre. And they all had different ways of approaching those things.

2:22:49 So it was valuable also him and pulling and tugging. at social engineering, which I consider very similar to an evolution of con. He had me come in and speak at Def Conn, I and at his company No Before Later. But We learn from each other in those worlds. Well we've covered a lot of ground here. Is there anything that we haven't covered?

2:23:07 That you'd like to cover? Is there anything you'd like to Share with the audience, ask of my audience. Anything at all before we Start to Wine to a close?

2:23:20 My daughter's six. But when she was around three She was learning a lot of new words that I don't say. And You try to choose what's a good word and a bad word and how often if you use the word no too much do they become numb to them, so maybe use other words besides no. And I was always interested in how different experts do parenting and what that might be.

2:23:38 But there is Words she asked me, what does boring mean? What out? Really think about it too much. I said it. It's a word that's not a bad word, but it's a word I don't use really.

2:23:47 Because I Don't really have it. I don't I've never been bored. But Part of it is'cause boring. Means that your imagination is broken.

2:23:55 So you gotta find a way to do it. You gotta find something to do. And you gotta use your imagination better. And I didn't realize what that would do, but now I have a kid who's never said that they're bored. And that's a huge thing. What happens when we just change a word?

2:24:10 What does it do to a behavior? So in all the long drives she's taken with us across the country, she's never said I'm bored. She knows what it means, she hears her friends say it. And she doesn't think if my dad tells me not to say it,'cause I I tell you can say it. But she chooses not to. And it's a thing that I'm obviously proud of her about that, but it's also to me such a valuable thing of The state of

2:24:29 is where creative epiphanies often happen. But what if we just remove that word? And think of it in a different way. And we think about it as

2:24:38 When she is in that state, she's just I need some help. I need to think of something to do. And she's just doing that. And I said, Well, there's so many things and you only got so much time.

2:24:47 Where do we want to start? And I said, Should we go this way, that way, or what? And it it becomes a different thing. I said, do you want to do something that you want me to help you generate? Come up with some ideas? Yeah, she says, No, I just What.

2:24:57 Think for a little while. So she'll just look out the window and think and uh really and so it's a fascinating thing to look at how her Long her attention span is compared to a lot of her friends. Do you think that that has Helped her.

2:25:13 Despite not having a Not having had the four scump races. Mm-hmm. to become a better watcher in the same way that you became? A good watcher?

2:25:25 I think so. I think that is one of the contributors. I think also I'm a big proponent of I used to call it covert learning strategies. Uh.

2:25:34 The Miyagi aspect of I'm gonna do covert learning to repackage the hard lessons as something else. Oh, you wanna learn how to levitate a coin. I think it's in uh three books. Absolutely. So you only read volume one, I think it's in two or three. And there's two things'cause if if somebody has a big ego And they don't think that they need to learn something, or you have learned helplessness where people don't think it's possible for them to learn it. So what if I hide that? Another Pro social application of deception.

2:26:00 Maybe I can use that to help them learn a thing they thought was irrelevant. And secretly I've taught that. Yes. And now, by the way, you can do it. And so I'm really interested in that space and we do that to her all the time. That now if she says

2:26:15 Like trying to teach her a little a memory system. Can I repackage as a series of other things that now this little tour that we took was secretly a mind palace and now she learns how to do that. So what are the different ways that you can Trojan horse. Absolutely. Ha ha. Apollo, what a gift. What an incredibly fun conversation. Think we may stand up and try to do some things. So for people who are interested in some more visual, you can go to

2:26:41 Tim Ferris on YouTube and we will Hopefully post some goodies there for you. Where are the best places for people to find you online? I'm on Facebook. Although there seems to be like five or six of me that isn't me. But uh as imposters do. Sort of appropriate. So I haven't canceled them out, but uh there's uh one me on Facebook, uh I'm on Instagram not very active, but I'll probably be more.

2:27:03 I haven't engaged with the new version of Twitter. I haven't fulfilled onto the next one to say X. TikTok I'm not coming close to. Just my security mind. Yeah, don't do it. Yeah. But on uh Twitter Apala Robbins. Yeah, so pretty much Adipala Robbins across the board. Mm-hmm. There are a lot of my audience very, very interesting folks are on Twitter, so it's worthwhile mentioning that just'cause that might be fun to see. Yeah. How things come out of the woodwork. And then as far as websites go. Yep. Best website are websites.

2:27:32 They funnel through the same thing of Apollo Robbins dot com or I stealstuff.com. I steal stuff. This other new one that is gonna be a separate thing is Equivoc and That one will be probably a combination of an entertainment blog with other video content and other things where we're going to be Try to point to tools that are important in this space.

2:27:54 There's a a guy that I think is amazing that studies deception. Simon Henderson, he's from the UK. Him, Anthony Percanus, and my wife Ava Does. All of them as a collective will be doing Interviews, videos, and other things for those guys. So if you want to come play in the space, learn a little bit about cons, we won't attack your political beliefs, but we will attack what you believe.

2:28:13 What a great place to end. Apala, thank you for such An incredibly Not just entertaining, but educating and invigorating conversation. I'm so glad. That you made the time. And for people listening.

2:28:27 You can do more. Then you may believe you were capable of doing so. Paulo and I and hopefully you will seek to prove this out. And we'll put links in the show notes, as always, to everything we talked about at Tim.blog slash podcast. And as usual

2:28:43 I'll say it again. Till next time. Please be a bit kinder than is necessary. Not only to others, but also to yourself, and thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?

2:29:04 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bold Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmas, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts. guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try out Just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser. Tim.blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

2:30:00 Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Sundays for Dogs, ultra high quality dog food without the prep or mess. I want to give my Pooch Molly the best of everything. This is especially true when it comes to the ingredient quality of her food. I've tried tons of different options. But most healthy dog foods are an expensive frozen mess. I've tried them, it's a disaster. They're a pain in the ass to thaw on serve, and the prep work eats up time I'd rather spend hiking with Molly. let alone the cleanup. So there's a lot that goes into it. And I was looking for other options. Sundays for Dogs solves my problem with air-dry, high quality dog food I can store and pour right from my pantry, no mess at all. The magic behind Sundays for Dogs is in their proprietary air drying method. To lock in nutrients, they gently dry the meat low and slow. And unlike other brands,

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2:31:37 This episode is brought to you by Mementis. Mementus offers high quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, including sports performance, sleep, cognitive health, hormone support, and more. I've been testing the products for months now. And I have a few that I use constantly. One of the things I love about Mementis is that they offer many single ingredient and third party tested formulations. I'll come back to the latter part of that a little bit later. Personally, I've been using Mementous Mag38 Ltheanine and Apigenin, all of which have helped me to improve the onset quality and duration of my sleep. Now the Mementus Sleep Pack conveniently delivers single servings of all three of these ingredients. I've also been using Mementus Creatine, which doesn't just help for physical performance, but also for cognitive performance. In fact, I've been taking it daily, typically before podcast recording, as

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