Feces Peanut Butter Cups

Today we have two unrelated posts (that taste great together).

First, an anecdote from this weekend. 

I was supposed to meet Friend A and Person B for lunch today. Friend A is our mutual friend, but Person B is a stranger to me. 

So Person B and I show up for lunch, order some drinks, wait around for a bit, and then Friend A has to cancel out on us. So it's just me and this stranger, Person B, getting lunch together. It was almost like a forced blind date, and I wouldn't quite put it past that being the intention of Friend A.

One other piece of information. I had four mini peanut butter cups in my hoodie pocket. The kind that are wrapped in foil. I had snagged them from Friend C's place where I was at before lunch. But don't get confused. Friend C isn't important. Screw Friend C. All that matters is that he had mini peanut butter cups.

Person B and I got along great, and, as we were wrapping up our meal I decided to gently fuck with her. I pulled out a peanut butter cup and said, "I'd offer you one, but it's the last one I have." I unwrapped it, left the foil on the table and continued our conversation. As things went on I picked up the foil, balled it up between my palms where it regenerated into a full peanut butter cup again. In other words, I had one of them palmed in my hand, I switched it in for the empty foil, and then while apparently just rolling empty foil between my hands, I would let my hands go from slightly cupped to flat, like there was something pressing them apart. The peanut butter cup regrew. 

Now, she didn't say anything the first time. So I did it twice more. And, as with the Distracted Artist style, I didn't put much focus on it, but I was still confused when she didn't comment on it at all. The moment had somehow slipped by again and again and again. I'd eat the pb cup, roll the foil, make a new cup, eat that, roil the foil, make a new one, etc. etc. And no comment from her. Maybe it was too subtle.

We hugged, said goodbye, and went our separate ways. 

Later that evening I got this screenshot from Friend A, of the text conversation she had with Person B.

Distracted Artist works best when they have some idea that you're into magic (this girl had no clue).

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The Ultimate Rep

Reps are a way of getting your spectator to question their concept of how magic tricks work—a way to keep them from immediately dismissing it as being done with some mechanical gizmo or sleight-of-hand. Often this is enough of an answer for people. But using a Rep with a trick can prevent them from going with this easy answer.

Even with something like a Tenyo trick, which is considered a toy by many people, you can still get people to wonder if maybe there's something more going on that they don't quite understand.

For example, take Burglar Ball. A ball penetrates into a plastic box. Presented as is, it can be a fooling little trick. But there's nothing that really grabs an audience about it, except that one moment where—PLOP!—the ball falls into the box. It's a good trick, but not one that's going to stay with people forever.

If you try to dress it up with some intense symbolic presentation about the ball representing something and the box representing something else, the trick actually becomes much stupider. 

So maybe you don't mess with the trick, and just present it as a little moment of mystery. That's absolutely fine.

But I want to point out what a Rep can do with such a trick.

Imagine you perform Burglar Ball and concentrate quite a bit before the ball penetrates, and right after it does a trickle of blood comes out your nose.

Now you have this repercussion of the trick that doesn't align with what the spectator would naturally assume the method was. Maybe they'd assume it's a trick box or a trick ball, and even after examining them they'd perhaps think you handled them in some funny way (you did). But a nosebleed, brought on by... what... too much concentration? Well, a tricky box or a something like that wouldn't require such intense concentration, so what's really going on?

If one of the purposes in magic is to increase the sense of mystery for your spectator, a Rep is certainly a way of doing that.

Now... the Ultimate Rep.

I will never do this. You will probably never do this either, unless you're batshit crazy. 

Take any trick. It can be the first trick you ever learned. Maybe the one where you clip two paperclips to a dollar bill and they fly into the air and connect when you pull the ends of the bill apart.

Now do that trick and right when you get to the climax, forcefully and vociferously shit your pants. Eat a lot of broccoli and drink a bunch of coffee so it's a real loose mess back there. Then wear silky shorts with no underwear so it sprays down all over your legs. 

"Unnnngggghhhhhhh!" you say. "Dammit. They said that could happen. I'm sorry."

What? They said that could happen? People shit their pants enough from the paperclip trick there needed to be a warning in... wherever it was you learned it?

No, it's not a good idea. I understand that. I mention it as an image that will hopefully stick with you so in the future maybe you'll think of repercussions you can build into your presentation that will disrupt people from just resorting to the "easy" answer for how something was done. 

More and more I find it's the elements that I put around the trick itself that really capture people's attention.

Also, if anyone does shit their pants for a trick, please film it. You will be the proud recipient of 2 Jerx Points.

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Look at these fucking dingbats...

Gardyloo #32

It's Gardyloo #32. That rhymes. And you know it rhymes. Why deny it?

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Oh look, the GLOMM signal was tripped again.

I hope this isn't true. Never a good feeling when I need to conduct an old-fashioned GLOMM-booting.

Here's the story. We'll see how it plays out.

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Hey, speaking of creeps, I want to try to get to the bottom of something. Does anyone have any information about the story of mentalist Ford Kross convincing a woman she was cursed and that the only way to remove the curse was for her to have sex with him?

A reader recently mentioned it in an email, and I've found some references to it in some old message board posts, but I was wondering if anyone had more information. Did it really happen? Did she take him to court?

It certainly seems like a story that got around a bit and one that maybe he even told himself. I'm just curious about it. Is this just some weird rumor that never actually happened? Or was this guy a genuine sociopath who really did this? Or—almost equally pathetic—did he make the story up because he thought mentalism was populated by the type of guy who would be charmed and impressed by the story of someone using threats and coercion to get a woman to have sex? It's fascinating to me either way. 

I won't disclose anything anyone tells me (or who said it) without checking with you first. So feel free to say whatever you want to me completely off the record. I'm not a blabbermouth.

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Jeff Haas passed along this video to me a couple months ago and I just got the chance to watch it. It's a talk from the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco by Laura E. Hall, an escape room designer. It's somewhat long (an hour) but worth it for anyone who has an interest in puzzles, games, escape rooms, VR, and, indirectly, magic as well.

In my opinion, the most important thing for magicians is something she says early on:

"A side-effect of our relationship with screen-based entertainment is that the value of in-person experience begins to rise."

I find this to be so true. There's this pessimistic attitude that all people care about is burying their heads in their phones. And so, to co-opt that, you have a lot of people creating magic for youtube, instagram, and facebook. And that's fine if that's what you want to do. But what I've found is just what she stated in the quote above: Now, more than ever, people really cherish an in-person, real world experience. If you can engineer these experiences for people you will be rewarded significantly. 

People have suggested that technology will make magic obsolete, but my experience has been that the ubiquitousness of technology has made my "real world" magic performances even stronger.

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Joe Mckay, who has done a number of favors for this site, has asked that I shine a little light on this project of Chris Wasshuber at Lybrary.com. You can read about it below. If you're into magic magazines you may find it to be worth your energy to contribute. To be clear, this is not me asking for this, so don't go sending me your responses. Chris' email is below. I already know where all the good magazine effects are. They're in the JAMM.

I want to try an experiment which will only take a bit of thought from each
of you, but the rewards to each one participating will be huge.

Please email me your three favorite articles, effects, features, etc. you
have read in a magic magazine. Any magazine qualifies. Can be the big ones
Genii, Magic, LR, MUM, can be the old classics, Jinx, Sphinx, Hugard's,
Stanyon, Mahatma, Gen, Magic Wand, Magigram, can be smaller lesser
known ones like Oracle, Blueprint, etc. any magic magazine is fine.

Give it some thought. Your three absolute favorite items. I only need the
reference, the year/volume/issue/page number as well as title and author of
the article.

I will compile all of the submissions I get and everybody who contributed
their three favorites will receive the entire compilation free of charge.

In other words, you will get a crowdsourced best of the best from the world
of magic magazines. Sort of a treasure map you can use to find the most
interesting items. Depending on how many submissions I will get I might
even be able to rank them. If say an article is recommended by multiple
folks then that would be something worth noting in the compilation.

Please give it some thought. Reflect on your magazine reading over the last
years. What stood out? What articles do you still remember vividly? What
has helped you in your own progress as magician? What effect from a
magazine made it into your working repertoire?

Chris' email is wasshuber@lybrary.com

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You may remember our friend and JAMM Muse for April, Alice.

Well, she is in a Maxim magazine contest that is going on now. And since she's part of our Jerx family, you may want to consider supporting her efforts by voting for her.

She's a doll and from what I understand, if she wins the contest, her entire Maxim spread will be based on Dan Harlan poses.

Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Coming in The JAMM #8

Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Once again the Sultan of Brunei is traveling through town and you've been asked to join him in a poker game. You and your crew have a high risk plan to put the odds in your favor but it involves switching in a deck of cards while the original deck is in the Sultan's possession. (He trusts no one and never lets the deck out of his control.)

You need your friend to stand in for the Sultan as you practice invisibly switching in your cold deck for the warm one he has in his possession.

This is not a real gambling move, but an almost self-working demonstration of a deck switch done under next-to-impossible conditions.

JAMM subscribers will get it in the issue coming out next week.

Building the Perfect Peek

There are two things that had a significant impact on the way I handle peek-based effects. The first was a series of focus-group tests we did on peeks. The second was showing people a well-known mentalist doing a center-tear where the information is glimpsed in the process of tearing the billet and having many of the people watching it say something like, "He looks at the word while he's tearing it."

Strip away everything you know about peeking and assume you're a layman. You're asked to write down a word (or draw a picture or whatever) and then hand that word/picture to the magician. You are never going to be more suspicious about what's happening than when you first hand that information to the performer. And yet, that is often when the peek occurs. 

Here are the precepts I follow when peeking information that I find work best in my performance situations.

1. Don't Peek When Their Guard Is Up

I'm sometimes amazed that the idea of peeking the word during the process of doing a center-tear took off the way it did. There may be real logistical reasons to do it like that—for the sake of pacing and getting it done quickly. But for the sake of deceptiveness I think it's a step backwards. I think magicians/mentalists just like it because it's more clever.

Imagine that was the original way of doing the center tear (peeking the information mid-tear). If someone had come forward and said, "I've come up with a way to do the center tear where you can legitimately turn your head away, and close your eyes during the tear and immediately flush the pieces away or toss them in a fire or throw them off a cliff." Everyone would see this as a big improvement. But that's genuinely what you can do with the center tear when performed the "old" way. 

Trying to surreptitiously glance the information as you tear it is a loser's proposition. Just Occam's Razor it. The notion that you can get a glimpse of the information as you tear the paper up isn't that hard to conceive. (I would say it's easier to conceive that than that you could casually tear around the needed information and then conceal a hidden piece to read later.) Especially because they often do see you looking at the pieces.

"Oh, no, Andy. I demonstrate how they should hold out their hand to take the pieces so their mind is occupied and they don't see me looking at the word. They think I'm just looking down at my other hand." First, I think you're under-estimating people abilities to gauge sight-lines. And second, while I think it's a good idea to get the glimpse under the guise of something else, you can't expect people to forget what's on the forefront of their mind because of some lame justification. 

Imagine you're on a business trip with a sexy co-worker and because of some hotel snafu, you have to share a room. The bathroom is too tiny to change in so after her shower she needs to change in the room itself. You turn your back to give her privacy and every time she glances your way it's clear you're not looking at her. Your lack of guile in this moment—when she is most vulnerable—will go a long way towards building trust and allaying her suspicion. 

If, on the other hand, she comes out and is slipping into her clothes and while she does that you turn and say, "Did I leave my cell phone over there?" And give a half-hearted attempt to shield your eyes, she's going to know what's up. Magician's will say, "Ah, but I fooled her by justifying looking over there as if I was trying to find my cell phone." No. Your weak justification isn't enough to make someone forget their primary concern in that moment.

Similarly, if you write a word down, I tear it up, and glance at it at the height of your suspicion (and when you hand me the word you wrote down it's going to be the height of your suspicion) even if I give some alternate reason for glancing in that direction, you're going to know what's up. You might not understand all the details, but I've concentrated the moment where something funny happens to such a small bit of time EXACTLY when your guard is up that I don't really give you any other option but to suspect it happened when it did.

Don't peek when they're expecting it. My general rule is that I like to have my head turned away completely during the time where I'm dealing with the logistics of them giving me the information. When I'm placing the billet aside, or ripping it up, or putting the business card with the drawing in my wallet, or handling the cards during the process of them looking at one, these are all the moments when I look nowhere near the information.

Even if you feel like you have a decent justification to look towards the information (like that one where you act like you spazz out and can't put your wallet back in your shirt pocket so you need to look down to guide it in), wait it out and do it a little later when their guard is down.

2. Insert a Time Delay

There should be a break in the action before you peek the information. This is what will allow your peek to take place at a point in time where there's less heat. If you take the picture they drew on the business card and put it in your wallet and then immediately start saying what the picture is, then you're suggesting you got the information in that small portion of time when the card was put in the wallet. 

Similarly, if you take the billet, rip it up, then immediately start saying what you saw, you're drawing all the attention to the moment where you took and ripped the billet because that's all that happened. 

Magicians and mentalists are always concerned about justifying why they rip the paper for the center-tear and why they have to put the card back in the wallet for a peek wallet. But those moments are much less problematic if they're not the only thing you do before revealing the information. 

Instead, give them more to think over by extending the process. Take the drawing back and, with your head turned away, put it in your wallet and set the wallet aside. "We'll get back to that in a moment." Shift gears slightly, insert a time delay, and you can catch people off guard when you get the peek later. They are no longer at the point of highest suspicion. So when you move the wallet later on you're no longer under the same amount of scrutiny as you would be right after getting the drawing.

3. Start the Reveal of the Information Before the Peek

Whenever possible I try to do this. It definitely messes with people's ability to formulate a hypothesis of when and how you figured out the information. 

So let's say I have you draw any animal and slide the drawing into my wallet, site unseen. The wallet is set aside. This all happens while my head is turned. Now I talk about something. Maybe the parable of the blind men and the elephant. I ask you to imagine touching different parts of this animal you're thinking of to see if I can pick up on the feelings and assemble them into the right creature.

I concentrate. "I think I'm getting it. There's hair on this animal isn't there." If you say yes, then I'm all set. I can say, "Yes. It's not a bird or a fish or a reptile. But it's not all fur or hair. There's...." I trail off. I start rubbing my fingers against my thumbs as if I'm feeling what they're feeling. "Touch the different parts of the animal in your mind again. Yes... I'm getting a different sensation. Almost like maybe... leather almost?" During this I'm touching different things on the table. Trying to find something similar to what I'm feeling. When I say "leather," I pick up my wallet and rub my fingers against it and peek the information as I'm squinting and trying to place the feeling. Then I just play off whatever I see. If it says "dog" I don't immediately say dog after handling the wallet. The wallet is set aside and I continue on with trying to feel the animal. "But not smooth like that. It's more rough. There's a lot of hair or fur on this animal, but also this rough area. Oh... I know what that feels like. It's like a dog's nose or his paws or something?" Of course you adlib something that makes sense depending on what you see.

The idea is just to start the process pre-peek which will screw with their timeline if you never even looked in the direction of the written or drawn information.

(But what if you're wrong on your guess? Well, I think that's not an issue. Being wrong on some sort of 50/50 guess early on in the process isn't something I'd have a hard time talking my way out of. So, for example, I say the animal has fur and they say no. "Hmmm. Okay. Well I'm getting some sort of texture." Then I'd rub my arm a little. Rub the table. Pick up the wallet and rub that (getting the peek). Rub my shirt. This is all as if I'm trying to place the feeling I'm picking up. "Feel the animal in your mind again.....I'm still getting something hair-like." It's definitely not a fish or a snake. "Oh... it could be feathers." I'd then be feeling around as if the feeling of the animal is manifesting under my hands. "But not a normal bird. Oh, I know... I think it's a penguin.")

4. Justify Your Gaze With a Motivated Action

You need to justify your gays. Remember, god created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

Whoops... confused this with my other blog (justifyyourgays.biz).

The final step is to get your peek under the guise of a motivated action. In the above example I look at the wallet in the moment I'm feeling it. Which makes sense in the context of that routine. 

In the routine posted Monday, he gets the peek as he asks if the item the person is thinking of is bigger than the wallet. 

If you've stolen out the center in a center-tear then you have almost unlimited justifications to peek the information because you're apparently not looking where that information is anymore. 

If the information is in a gimmicked stack of business cards, don't look anywhere near the stack until you've had some kind of time delay. Then you can clear the table for some reason and set the stack aside and get your peek at that point in time. 

The key word here is "motivated." A motivated action has a "because" in it that is obvious to the spectator. "He picked up the wallet because he wanted to feel it." "He picked up the stack of business cards because he wanted to clear the table." 

It's these factors taken together: not peeking at the height of their suspicion, including a time delay to take the heat off the location of the information, starting the revelation before doing the peek, and then obtaining the peek in a motivated action, that I've found generates the strongest reactions from effects that are peek-based.

Your Tuesday Ad Post

Hello.

This is a typical Tuesday/Thursday post letting you know that if you like this site you should consider supporting it by subscribing to The JAMM.

(And this is a small heads-up to say that there will be some changes to the way this site operates in the coming months. If you already support the site, it's not going to affect you, except perhaps in a positive way with more exclusivity to certain content and physical items in the future. I won't go into too many details at this point as I don't know them all. More info on that is coming soon.)

Law and Order: GLOMM

I always enjoy when magic is used in any capacity other than the "look at me!" style. I am least interested in magic as a way to win friends and gain attention or approval. That's what your personality is for, my dear boy! 

So I particularly enjoyed this story from a reader, Chris, last name withheld, as you'll soon understand why. Chris is a friend of the site and a homicide detective in the Northwest U.S. 

A few weeks ago he sent me this email in regards to how he has used magic in his line of work. Apparently when he dusts for fingerprints he calls it "woofle dust" and this gets people to think he's an idiot which makes them lower their guard and become more susceptible to his interrogation techniques. 

No. I made that up. Here is the email he sent. Even if you have no interest in the use of magic outside of a traditional performance, this write-up has a peek justification that I really love.

I am a police detective, and I carry my business cards in a leather Jaks business card wallet, which does not look out of place because I wear a suit. 

For the last several years I have been doing a drawing duplication (obviously after the peek), but I do it in the following context. 

At a key point in the interview I will steer the conversation to Sherlock Holmes, and talk about how he was the greatest detective ever, etc. I ask the person to make a simple drawing of an object they either owned or still own that is very important to them.

Then I talk about how Sherlock Holmes was famous for being able to ask someone four questions and be able to figure out what they had drawn. 

When they are done with the drawing it goes back in the wallet “so there is no way in hell I can see it,” and I then ask them these four questions:

1. Did you own this item when you were a kid, or when you were older?
2. Is it bigger than this wallet?
3. Does the item have monetary value?
4. Do you still own it?

Okay, let's pause here for a second. It's in that moment where he asks "Is it bigger than... this wallet?" that he picks the wallet up off the table and gets the peek. I think this is perfect peek justification. Peak peek justification, if you will. I have a theory on peeks that is partially born out of the type of  testing I wrote about on Friday, and then reinforced based on my experience. I've talked about it a little bit before (and gave an example in The 10% Peek), but I will write it up more explicitly in Wednesday's post. Now, back to the email...

Those are just the basic questions, I obviously elaborate on both the questions and the answers they give me. 

I then make a quick drawing of what I peeked on a second business card and set it face down on the table. I act like I am not sure, and then ask them to tell me what they drew. Here is where it gets interesting. With just a little encouragement you are going to get a long story about the object, why it is important to them, how they came by it, etc. Crying is not unordinary. 

When I do this for regular people, I just let the conversation flow onto other things, never pushing the “look what I did! I got it right! look at the drawing I made!" I just wait until they remember the whole point of this and ask what I drew, then I push it towards them and let them take a look. 

So, it is a lot of fun with just regular folks, and really gets a person to open up. But more importantly, it does the same thing with a suspect. Not only do they open up and you make a connection with them, which greatly aids in getting a confession, but they generally stop lying to you after that, because in their minds you must be able to tell if they are lying. 

This may seem slightly manipulative, and it is, of course. But you're allowed to be manipulative when interrogating someone. At least in the U.S. You can just straight-up lie to them. You can tell them you found their fingerprints at the scene if you haven't. You can tell them their friend confessed to everything in the other room even if they haven't. You can tell them they failed a polygraph test regardless of the results.

So I'd be doing this type of shit all the time if I was in Chris' situation. In fact, I'd really push it and start doing the most ridiculous stuff to see what might spur a confession. 

"You know, these little sponge balls were developed by the CIA. They're drawn to guilty parties. Oh wow, mine disappeared from my hand, and now you have two. Oh... that does not look good for you. Wait... just hold on to those. Maybe it was a false positive. Oh no! Now they've turned into a penis. The judge isn't going to look kindly on that... it's the ultimate sign of guilt. I guess this interrogation is over. Take him away, boys. I mean, unless you want to confess and maybe get some leniency."

A/Bracadabra: Testing Magic

This February was the most recent round of focus-group style testing of magic effects and presentations in NYC. This is something I've been a part of for years in different forms. And it has had a truly significant effect on the strength of my material. 

As magicians, we like to lie to ourselves and each other. "People don't suspect the deck in a color changing deck routine. I mean, unless you're a poor performer. I do the trick every night in my restaurant show and no one ever asks to see the deck."

You hear that sort of thing a lot. So one of our earliest tests was to show people a color changing deck routine on video by one of the masters of magic. When asked to offer solutions in regards to how it was done, 100% questioned the make-up of the deck in their written response, either using the phrase "trick deck" or writing something like, "I don't know how it was done, but I feel like I'd know if I could look at the deck."

Just because they don't ask to look at something doesn't mean they don't think it's suspect. They're being nice. You might not ask the stripper, "Hey, can I squeeze dem titties?" But that doesn't mean you think they're real.

As I wrote in an earlier post: If you change one object to another, or tear and restore something, or harmlessly penetrate something, or change the color of something—and if you do these things in a close-up situation—then I would argue that the trick is not complete until the audience has examined the object of the effect at the end. 

In later groups, we would go on to test a color changing deck effect performed in real life for audiences in two ways. The only difference between the two performances was: in the first performance the deck was put in the performer's pocket at the end, and in the second it was handed to someone and they were free to look at it.

We would often present the testing as part of the initial stages of a magic show that was being worked on (and in some cases that was true). So the premise of the whole thing was that we were trying to select material for a show and we were only looking to go forward with the most amazing tricks. So they would see a handful of tricks and they would rate each one on a scale of 1 to 10 in regards to how "amazing" the trick was. (We found it best to phrase it this way for certain tests. If we instead asked, "How amazed were you," we found the scores got compressed to a smaller range. I think people might be unwilling to say something on the extreme ends about themselves or their experience. But if you ask, "How amazing was the trick," the scores covered a broader range.)

Going back to the color-changing deck, those who got to examine the deck at the end rated the trick 60% more amazing than those that didn't. It wasn't even remotely close, even though it was the identical trick. 

This is something of a microcosm for how this focus-group testing evolved. Originally it was pretty much just us showing people tricks and asking, "Do you have any idea how that's done?" It wasn't "testing" so much as it was making bets with my friends on what sorts of things are obvious in magic and what aren't. (I was right about most thread effects being obvious. I was right that any time you palm a card and remove it from your pocket or fly it's 100% obvious. I was wrong about Miraskill being obvious. The one-ahead principle is something I thought was more obvious as well. (It IS obvious to a good portion of people. But it can be salvaged. More on that another day.))

Eventually we moved into a type of A/B testing with effects. We would perform a trick one way for a group of people and then another way for a different group, just changing one thing. Now, because we weren't dealing with 1000s of people, a 5% difference in whatever we were measuring from group to group wasn't that significant. But we were often seeing things that were 25% or 50% or 100% more "amazing" or "enjoyable" for spectators depending on which version they saw. So even with just a few dozen people we could still make some strong conclusions.

And my performances got significantly better once I incorporated those conclusions into my performing styles. 

I'll be writing up some specific concepts we tested in the coming months. Some might seem "obvious" but it can be telling to see just how much of an impact certain things will have on people's enjoyment of a trick. I'll also be taking suggestions for other things to test for our next round which will likely be early next year. (We'd like to do it more frequently, but it's pretty expensive. You bring in 50 people and give them $40 each, so that's $2000, then another few hundred to rent the space. Even split a few ways it's a little bit of an investment.)

I've held off on some of the specifics of this testing in the past because one of the people involved was planning on writing an essay or a book on it. But he recently texted me saying, "I'm a bitch. I'll never get to this. Feel free to write about anything you want." So there will be more on this to come.

Some people have argued with me and said, "Well, I wouldn't put my act in front of some focus-group." They say it like it's some brave artistic choice. But this isn't like some sitcom that's being watered down by a focus-group to appeal to the lowest common denominator. This is using the focus-group as a means to get honest feedback about very practical questions in regards to what people enjoy and are fooled by. And that's pretty scary to some people. But I think it's valuable to learn what the audience is really thinking. The alternative is like saying, "Hey, if I don't get that AIDS test, then I'll never have to hear that I have AIDS!" Like... that's not a helpful way of handling things.