The World Wants To Be Charmed

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Here we are.

As Josh and Andi once told me at Magifest when I asked how they liked their prostates stimulated: We’re into double digits.

Happy 10-Year Anniversary, my dears.

A few weeks ago, I asked if there were any quotes people had saved from the past decade. I got way too many to post here, so here’s as many as I worked my way through before I got bored with the process. Each links back to the post that spawned it. Thanks to everyone who submitted quotes. And thanks to everyone who has supported the site these past ten years.

See you in June.

Art decorates space. Music decorates time. Magic decorates reality.
A side-effect of our relationship with screen-based entertainment is that the value of in-person experience begins to rise.
A 15 minute trick should be 14:55 of interesting concepts, intrigue, mystery, new experiences, anticipation, unsettling questions, excursions, mini-adventures, absorbing rituals... and then an impossible climax which either amplifies everything that came before or puts some kind of twist on it.
Anthropomorphizing things is what we do to explain to children. And it's a big part of the reason why magic often comes off as being for children and magicians come off as being condescending.
Don’t snuff the afterglow.
Everyone knows this is fantasy. But that's the power of it. You create some outlandish, weird, chimerical scenario and then do something so strong - not to fool them - but to briefly put them in a situation where this fantastic scenario is the only explanation they have for what just happened.
For me, magic is not about telling people stories. It's about giving them stories to tell.
Here's a thought experiment. Imagine you went to a friend's house and sat around a table and one of them said, "Hey, I have a fun idea. Let's engage in an activity that's predicated on all of us playing along with the notion that I'm the most handsomest boy in the whole-wide world!" What would your enthusiasm for that activity be? Well, I hate to break it to you, BUT THAT'S BARELY FUCKING DIFFERENT ENOUGH FROM WHAT MAGICIANS DO TO QUALIFY AS AN ANALOGY!
I believe that anticipation keeps you happy and your mind and heart young. The happiest people I know have things on the horizon they're looking forward to.
I find this to be a very satisfying way to think of amateur magic. This is the hobby of magic as world-building. You're building an alternate reality that seems like ours in most respects but where strange and mysterious things regularly take place.
I frame self-discipline as an expression of free will.
I really like thinking in terms of "thrill" "enthrall" and "excite" as opposed to "fool" when thinking about the experience I want to deliver. It gets me in the right mindset in regards to thinking presentationally rather than methodologically. For the people who write me and ask how to go about coming up with more engaging presentations I think it's helpful to have those words as the target you're shooting for. That's going to have a greater impact on what you present to people than if your goal is just their basic ignorance of your methodology.
I'm not even doing it strictly to "entertain" people. I'm doing it to give people an interesting, novel experience. It's about creating memories. Memories are just new experiences in the past.
If someone watches you do something for 5 minutes do you want them to leave having an experience that made you look incredible or having an experience that made their world seem more incredible?
If you want people to think what you're doing is real, you're a sociopath. Seriously, I think that's a pathetic mental disorder and I feel bad for you and worse for the people you perform for. And it's a poisonous attitude that has held back magic for centuries. If coming off as "real" is a priority for you, then what you're saying is, "I want to dupe dumb people and look ridiculous to smart people."
If you're playing the part of the traditional magician, then feel free to play it cool after the effect. But if you're rejecting that role and instead you're showing them some strange object you found, or trying some experiment you read about, or doing something where they are manifesting the power, then you NEED to react, or the whole experience falls apart. Not reacting is just another way of saying, "That was me. I did that. I'm special.”
Immersive presentations allow you to wring multiple different performances and experiences out of similar effects, which is important when your audience pool is small.
Instead of having a trick that is easily dismissed as being separate from reality, give them an experience that bleeds into reality and doesn't offer any clean lines or easy answers. Create dissonance and make them live in uncertainty for a little bit.
It is always wise to emphasize the interactivity and the mystery because people are craving these things.
It's only when you smear that presentation into their world that you change the nature of the trick into something formless and less definable. The blurred edges prevent them from knowing exactly when the trick started and ended. What they can dismiss as "just a trick" gets muddled. And when a trick gets enmeshed with someone's real life, that's when it becomes their experience as opposed to just your trick.
It’s pretty funny. Like, real person funny, not magician funny (i.e. not funny)
"Magic brings you back to a childhood state of astonishment," is too easily turned into this in a spectator's mind: "Magic will make your feel dumb. You know, like a dumbass baby who doesn't understand shit. Here, let me take you back to the time when you were the dumbest and most vulnerable as my gift to you." And on top of that, is it even true? Are babies constantly in amazement? If so they seem pretty chill about it for the most part. So I would have a hard time saying that to someone.
Magic doesn't exist. So when you learn magic you're not really learning magic. Instead, you are learning dozens of other arts and crafts that allow you to present the illusion of magic. Whenever I talk to friends with kids and we talk about hobbies for the kids, I encourage them to get into magic. Magic is a great gateway to the world around you, and it helps you identify your passions. Outsiders just think of it as sleight-of-hand. But I can't even begin to list all the areas I've had to explore in order to learn and present a particular trick, or magic in general. Writing, acting, comedy, electronics, memory and mnemonics, psychology, gambling, topology, cons, filmmaking, cold reading, juggling, crafting, dance, mime, mathematics, science, history, carpentry, theater, origami, sewing, forgery, animal training, drawing, optics, physical fitness, puzzle solving, and so on and so on. I love that "doing magic" might involve rubber cementing a bunch of shit together, or memorizing the most popular female names of the 20th century, or determining the sight-lines and angles of every seat in a theater so you can build a stage to vanish an elephant on. Other hobbies don't have that range.
Magic is strongest when it feels like a shared moment of fascination, not just a sequence of moves and punchlines
Make the unbelievable feel real and the real feel unbelievable.
Making someone think they saw an unusual moment is fine. But making someone feel like they got a glimpse of a longer string of unusual events is much more interesting and a better story for them to hold onto.
Most often, the professional wants their show to feel polished and structured, but the best amateur performances will feel raw and spontaneous. They will feel like what's about to happen is happening for the first time.
My goal is never to have them believe. My goal is to have them intrigued and enraptured and swept up in the moment, despite knowing it's not real.
People don't use the phrase "that was magical" to mean "I was fooled."
Self-discipline, for me, has been about training myself that not doing what I've set out to do isn't an option.
Social magic is about coming off not as someone performing a bunch of pre-planned routines, but just as someone with a good sense of wonder.
Stop Humanizing the Props and start humanizing yourself
Story makes everything palatable. Most humans don’t like being scared. Pop out screaming at your roommate from behind the curtains enough times and he’ll eventually punch you in the face. Being scared is another thing our ancestors tried to avoid. And yet, we will pay for horror movies, books, and tv shows. Put fear in context and many people are all for it.
Surprise is the seed. Mystery is the flower.
Suspicion is brought on by an unnecessary expenditure of energy on the part of the magician.
That’s literally the defining aspect of magic: its ability to defy the questioning of the spectators.
The duality (and dichotomy) of advanced preparation is that—when performing for strangers—it minimizes their role in what’s going on (i.e. “well, he was set to show this to anyone he happened to meet tonight”). But—when performing for friends and family—it can emphasize their role in the effect and their importance to the experience.
The experience of MAGIC is created by the gap between what the spectator knows to be true and what feels real to them in the moment.
The first thing to understand is this: for something to be emotionally engaging, it does not have to be *about* their emotions. It just has to be relatable.
The Jerx Describe or Die Maxim: If it's not interesting enough to describe, it's not interesting enough to perform.
The mistake we make is imagining a "perfect" life as a life without difficulties. The perfect life is not a life without these things. The perfect life is one where you skillfully navigate through these things.
The most profound magic directs 100% of our attention to moments that are manifestations of compelling ideas that exist outside of that moment.
The tricks that stayed with people were the ones with an interactive, present-tense narrative that engaged them emotionally.
The world wants to be charmed.
There’s no sleight so easy that some magician isn’t out there fucking it up somewhere
Think of a magic trick like a campfire. When building a fire, you clear out a little space; you go and gather tinder, kindling, and some larger pieces of firewood; you pile up the tinder; you build up the kindling; you light the tinder; you blow on it; you add the firewood; and now you have a fire. And that fire can burn for a long time, if you’ve set things up correctly.
This is the locus of audience-centric magic. Bring them an experience that happens *to* them, in real time, and would not be the same without them there. "Magic is the only art form that doesn't exist without an audience," magicians are fond of saying. And then they perform for people the same way they would for a tree stump.
To increase the power of your magic, remove yourself from the magic.
We can’t just ask if the method is structurally sound and does it fly past people in the moment, we have to ask, “Is this a technique that can be undermined with an ‘easy answer’?
When I say "remove confidence" I don't mean you should be an awkward, mumbling, sweaty mess. It's not your personal confidence that I think you should eliminate. It's your confidence in what's about to take place. Eliminate certainty. Certainty doesn't make for compelling experiences. This is why overly-scripted patter tends to be a turn-off to people in a casual performance. "He's so certain of what's going to happen he made up a dumb little story about it!" This doesn't feel organic or personal to them. It feels like you might as well be replaying a video of the trick as you did it for someone else.
What makes a trompe-l'œil painting engaging is that it seems so real, even though we know it's not. I strive to perform trompe-l'œil of the fantastic.
When something is out of place it's not a normal thing even if it's a normal thing.
When you perform tricks that happen in the flow of people's lives, rather than as a separate moment where it is a "performance," you can get away with a lot of things.
When you’re a professional, you bring your props to the show. When you’re an amateur, you bring your show to the props.
You can’t give your magic meaning. Meaning isn’t given, it’s taken.
You only raise the level of effect as you go on. But also, once you reach that very high “potency” (a 9 or 10-level reaction) you’re done for the day. Let them stew in that for the rest of the night.
Your mindset should be, "I'm going to perform this trick the best I can because I'm curious to see how this person will react to it."

Lucky You

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This is a trick I shared a couple of years ago in my newsletter. I was reminded of it recently by a few people after all the ACAAN talk the past couple of months. It’s not Any Card. And it’s not Any Number. But it’s got a similar feeling to it. It’s based on a trick by Michael Kociolek that I shared here a number of years ago.

Imagine

My friend Aubrey comes over and notices a small pile of items on my coffee table. There are some coins with numbers written on them, a folded card, a little turtle made of seashells and a small polished stone.

“What’s this for?” she asks.

“Oh, I grabbed that from my old bedroom when I visited my mom the other week. It’s my collection of good luck charms I had as kid. The stone is tiger’s eye. The turtle is something my mom brought back from a trip to North Carolina. The card is the Jack of Diamonds, which is my lucky card. And each of these coins I had in my pocket at some point when something good happened to me, so I decided they must be lucky coins.

“I didn’t necessarily believe in lucky objects as a kid. I kind of did, but kind of didn’t. My theory was that if they did exist, then their effect was probably pretty small. But I thought perhaps you could combine them in order to magnify their impact. So I started writing my lucky numbers on my lucky coins.”

“My first lucky number was 14.” I show her a penny with a 1 on one side, and a 4 on the other. “That’s the age I planned to lose my virginity. Later, I changed my lucky number to 25, because that’s the age the rest of the world thought I should lose my virginity.” I show her the coin with a 2 on one side and a 5 on the other. “Then I cycled through other lucky numbers. 36, 52, 69—of course —47.” I point out the other coins and numbers as I go.

“If I had a test, or I wanted to ask a girl out or something, I would load up my pockets with all these ‘lucky’ tokens because I thought it might have some effect. I know it’s crazy, but I really think on some level it worked. I would sometimes test it, and it seems like I’d actually get lucky more often than I should. Here, try this....”

I tell Aubrey to put the turtle and the stone in one hand, and with the other hand to shake up the coins and let them fall on the table. She does.

“Okay, so we have this random set of numbers here. That was just the way the coins happened to fall. Now I want you to make a conscious choice and turn over any two coins. Whichever ones you want.”

She turns over two coins. “So you randomly mixed the coins and dropped them. Then you consciously chose which two to turn over. Obviously, if they had fallen a different way, or you had turned over different coins, then we’d have different numbers facing up. But let’s add these up and see what we get.”

We add up the numbers facing up on the coins and they total 24.

“See! 24... that’s another lucky number of mine. Seriously.” She’s not buying it.

“Here,” I say, “Put these coins in your other hand.” She now has the stone and the turtle in one hand and the coins in her other hand. “Also, put my hat on. This is my lucky hat.” I put my hat on her head. “Take that deck,” I point to a cased deck that is also on the table. “Slide it out and count down to the 24th card.” With the items in her hands, this isn’t easy, but eventually she does. When the card is turned over, it’s revealed to be the Jack of Diamonds, matching my “Lucky Card.”

Method

Set-Up

Get yourself six coins of any denomination. It’s more interesting if you have at least a few different denominations, in my opinion.

Put them on the table so they’re all heads-side up and write these numbers, one per coin:

1-2-2-3-4-6

Then turn the coins over in their place so the tails side is showing and write these numbers across the other side:

4-5-5-6-7-9

In a deck of 53 cards (a full deck plus joker), put your force card 24 cards down in the pack.

That’s the set-up.

To force the position in the deck, this is what you need to do. You need to have the coins end up with either 2 heads and 4 tails up, or 4 tails and 2 heads up. You’re just looking for any 2-4 combination.

If after the spectator drops them on the table they’re in a 2-4 combination, you’re done.

If they’re in a 6-0 (6 of heads or tails and none of the other) say, “Okay, that part was random chance. Now make a conscious choice of any two coins to turn over.)

If they’re in a 5-1 configuration, tell them to make a conscious choice of any three to turn over.

If they’re in a 3-3 configuration, tell them to make a conscious choice of any one coin to turn over.

That’s it. The total on the top of the coins will either be 24 or 30. If it’s 30 you’ll have them count from the face of the pack. You never have to touch anything yourself. It’s a trick so self-working, Rene Lavand could do it while masturbating.

Obviously, the fun part is the little pile of lucky objects and making the person interact with all of them as they go through the trick. You can add more. You can make sure your “lucky song” is playing in the background, and that they wear your “lucky sunglasses,” and they’re chewing a piece of your “lucky gum.”

Michal originally shared the pdf of his version of the trick on my site and you can read it here. That pdf includes all the credits for the effect. Michal’s work is always worth checking out. If you don’t have Plots and Methods, the book from which his version comes from, you can pick it up from Vanishing Inc. for $25.

Book #8 Cover Evolution

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The eighth Jerx bonus book is shipping to supporters this month. Here’s how the cover evolved from idea to the final version by my friend, Stasia.

It started with my love of the artwork of Mort Künstler who passed away earlier this year.

As a nod to his work in men’s adventure magazines, I wanted the cover to be something with similar thematic elements.

I’ve always enjoyed the perspective of this image of his, with the woman dangling and the “camera’s eye” positioned above them.

I had the idea of putting a magician’s assistant dangling off a cliff, with a shirtless magician who had somehow managed to save her from plummeting to certain death with a fortuitously dispatched length of mouth coils.

As I normally do, I sent Stasia a mockup of the idea as it existed in my head, using all of my artistic talent.

And, as always, I thought to myself, “Damn, Andy. Do you even need to commission artwork when you are already such a master of the visual medium?”

But, to be kind, I thought I’d let Stasia take a crack at it as well. Her initial sketch captured just what I had asked for.

But I realized something was missing.

The beauty of Mort Künstler’s work, as you can see in the link at the top, is that his images seem to tell a full story with just a single picture.

What this image was missing was the story element. It captured this precarious position, but there was no hint at how we got there.

(I go into more detail in the book about how this situation relates to performing magic generally.)

So I asked Staisa to add some more elements—a hint of an overturned circus wagon, magic props spread over the cliffside. I wanted the picture to tell the story of a travelling circus caravan accident that sent everything flying out of the magician’s wagon, including his assistant.

The next sketch added those elements…

And that, in turn, became the cover many of you will be holding soon.

Andy Reads the Ads

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In the Credit Swipe trailer, Craig say…

And the ad copy includes this quote…

Craig has taken one of the greatest card tricks of all time and brought it bang up to date with an EDC that makes sense to carry with you at all times.

Can anyone tell me WHAT THE FUCK EDC EVEN MEANS ANYMORE?

This is a trick that uses twelve fake credit cards and a deck of cards. (Although there is a more streamlined version that uses a mere seven fake credit cards.)

I thought EDC was supposed to refer to magic that was either:
a) super unobtrusive and easy to carry, or
b) designed to look like something you already carry every day.

I don’t think the trick is bad. I just don’t love that any trick that can conceivably be jammed into a pocket now gets slapped with the EDC label. It’s become a meaningless synonym for “smaller than a basketball.”

I mean, we’re talking about a deck of cards and a stack of blank credit cards thick enough to stop a bullet. How is that EDC—unless EDC stands for Extremely Droopy Cargo-pants. Because your trousers are going to be dragging with all the shit you’re hauling around.

Tongue Tied is a fun trick where you blow up a balloon and then tie a knot in the nozzle with your tongue

The ad says: The best party trick of the decade.

But here’s the thing: The balloon can’t be examined after you tie the knot.

So I have to ask… have you ever been to a party?

You’re in close quarters. Lots of people. There’s drinking. People are chatty, uncensored, and handsy. And you think no one is going to say, “Wait—lemme see that balloon real quick”?

Like, you just did something impossible with your tongue, and the whole room’s going to be like, “I’m amazed and I take your word for it.”

One-on-one, If you pick your moment, and the right person, you might luck into someone who’s more charmed than curious. Or if you’re doing it on stage or some kind of formal show, people won’t expect to be able to examine everything.

But a party seems to be the one place where you almost certainly can’t get away with it.

Even one skeptical person saying “Wait… can I see that?” is going to trigger a ripple of doubt through the group. And now, instead of being the intriguing magician with the dextrous tongue, you’re the sweaty guy running away with your special balloon

If you could really do this, you'd make everyone examine it. So trying to play it coy just makes it look fishy.

If you start to wonder why a lot of magic ads are sounding more grandiose and out of touch with reality, it’s because it’s being farmed out to AI to do. And AI doesn’t really have any clue of how to talk about a magic trick other than as some awe-inspiring miracle.

Case in point, Firefly by Titanas.

It’s a little light that appears in your hand. But AI has no sense of proportion, so it frames it this way.

Some moments in magic feel like cinema.

Within your hands, a spark of light appears It flutters. Glows. Fades like a memory. And when it's gone... your hands are empty. Your audience is left breathless.

By contrast, here is how the Bible describes Jesus Christ walking on water:

And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.

When AI writing first emerged, it was rigid and mechanical. Now it’s been trained to mimic human rhythm. Counterintuitively, once you start to notice the AI cadence, it feels unmistakably non-human. It falls back on the same tricks. Short sentences. Repetition. Dramatic pauses. Like this. And this.

But more than style, there’s a deeper issue: you can tell these ads weren’t written by someone who truly knows anything about the product. They feel like the work of a mindless sales algorithm wearing a poet costume.

The best gimmicks don't scream "look at me" - they simply whisper... and the world changes.

FIREFLY ILLUMINATE THE WORLD, ONE SPARK AT A TIME

Oh, okay! Thanks, AI! I’ll go do that! I’ll go illuminate the world now!

Mailbag #137

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Saw this on Ellusionist's Insta today and thought you would get a kick out of it. 

In the clip the performer is presenting the Sonore to a spectator who just is NOT impressed at all. She goes "meh" and then the clip ends. This is being touted for social media presence as a successful thing rather than something that should have stayed in the drafts. 

Whats crazy to me is they are using it to promote the product. Even though the reaction is mediocre all of the comments are congratulating the performer for it being an amazing trick or blaming the lackluster response to the classic tropes in magic, the magicians wife they don't understand how COOOL it is etc. etc. 

What is the learning lesson and take away from this clip? Could he have performed it better? Is this the wrong context? Does this actually sell products? No idea but it got my mind racing. —JL

The main problem is that it’s presented poorly.

First, there’s no setup. The audience isn’t given a chance to appreciate what’s about to happen. If you were about to show someone a true impossibility, you’d frame it for them: “You’ve seen cartoons where someone screams into a jar, seals it, and later opens it to release the scream? I used to think that was just a cartoon thing—but watch this…”

Now, perhaps that kind of prelude isn’t ideal for Instagram. But in the real life performance, that kind of setup primes people to expect something weird. It puts them in the right mindset and takes away their ability to later shrug it off with, “Well, I didn’t really know what I was supposed to be seeing.” If you were actually showing someone something impossible, you wouldn’t just spring it on them without warning.

Magicians often imagine that downplaying an impossible moment makes it cooler. But all it really does is give the audience permission to be just as “cool” in their reaction.

Second, he asks, “Can you see it inside? You can’t see it inside?” Which is just… confusing. Because there’s nothing to see inside. Not in reality, and not even within the imagined premise of the effect. Even if the audience accepts that the sound is trapped inside, they’re not expecting to see it. So that line just muddies the moment. It adds nothing except distraction—right at the exact point where you want them focusing on the impossibility.

Third, the sound that gets “released” doesn’t really match the one that was “captured.” It’s like vanishing an off-white silk and producing a yellow one and insisting it’s the same. Sure, it’s close—but now the audience has to work to meet the effect halfway, instead of being hit with something that feels undeniably real.

So you have a moment with no build-up, where the spectator is confused, and an inexact execution that requires the spectator to play along rather than just believe. Exactly what type of reaction would you expect to get from this?

I got a lot of pushback on the Anti-Carefree post—which I expected. Coming out against magic that demands enormous methodological effort was never going to be popular. Magicians have long lionized those who spend years mastering a single sleight. “He spent 10,000 hours over 12 years perfecting the diagonal palm shift.” Great. He entertained no one, of course. But how satisfying it must’ve been to place his suicide note in the pad he tore it from and deftly palm it out the back.

Most of the emails I got were arguing against points I never actually made. So instead of replying to any one message, I’m going to clarify a few things here.

If you want to do hard sleights for your own personal satisfaction, knock yourself out.

If there’s joy in mastering something few others have, then by all means, keep at it. That’s just not what drives me.

I wasn’t arguing against learning sleight-of-hand. And I wasn’t suggesting only doing self-working card tricks.

I said that difficult sleight-of-hand generally isn’t worth the effort. Certainly not for me and not for the kind of magic I’m trying to do.

Whenever someone pushed back on that post, I’d ask them to name magicians who use difficult sleight-of-hand successfully in performance. They would give me a list of names, and every magician they named was someone who you would watch perform and think, “Huh, he’s really good at sleight-of-hand!”

If your goal is to be seen as a skilled technician, then yes—mastering hard sleights might be necessary.

But that’s almost never my goal.

I want to guide people into experiences that feel inexplicable. If someone walks away impressed by my sleight-of-hand, I’ve failed. That means they were seeing the method instead of the effect (even if they don’t know exactly what the method was).

Audiences are smart. They can tell when your energy is focused into your hands. If you’re trying to come off as an expert card manipulator, that’s fine. But if you’re trying to create something more mysterious, that energy works against you.

That’s why I said difficult sleights often subtract from the experience, rather than enhance it.

If you disagree, fair enough. But give me examples of actual magicians doing truly difficult sleight-of-hand in casual settings, where it doesn’t feel like a showcase of their skill. You will find those very hard to come by.

You can’t use my own terminology against me.

A few people wrote in to explain that difficult magic is often more “Carefree” than simpler methods.

One person put it like this:

”After all, which is the more carefree and open false count? Miscounting five cards as seven by dealing them one at a time into a pile on the table (and snap dealing twice) and then merely flicking that packet towards your friend and asking them to place their hand over it... Or some sort of Elmsly count, where you only show cards one at a time, and they never leave your hands while you do so?”

He’s suggesting using Lennart Green’s Snap Deal in order to count five cards as seven.

I admit, that would look very casual. But the Carefree Philosophy is a holistic approach to learning and presenting magic.

If something takes dozens or hundreds of hours to master—and ongoing maintenance to keep it smooth—it’s probably not Carefree for most people.

And I certainly wouldn’t invest that kind of time into learning the Snap Deal just to miscount cards into a pile. For what payoff? It’s questionable whether a non-magician would even note the difference between a performance where cards are counted to the table and another where they’re counted casually from hand to hand. And the time spent mastering that sleight could be used to learn dozens of other routines— make me far more flexible in my performances, rather than trying to channel every interaction toward a couple of tricks I can do that use a Snap Deal.

I’m not trying to talk anyone out of anything. I’m just discussing the strategies that have benefitted me.

If I do want to learn a tough or knacky move, I’ll practice it while watching TV or chatting on the phone—making use of time that’s otherwise idle. But if you only have a couple hours a week to work on your magic (which is generally the audience I’m writing for) then I think it’s crazy to spend all of it on refining a single technique.

Dustings #124

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If you have a Rich Uncle Millionaire supporter slot I will be sending you your gift in the mail this month. In order to do that, I need you to pay your shipping fee (it’s just $1) which will pull your most current address from paypal and put it in the system so I can send it to you.

I sent you an email about this on Sunday at 5:34 pm with the link. If you haven’t paid yet, check that email.

I’ve had an influx recently of people asking me if I’d like them to send me their new magic release. The answer to this is always: Of course, yes. But I don’t like being in the position where it’s my decision whether you send me something or not. So if you want to send me something, feel free to just do it.

If it’s a digital product, you have my email address. If it’s physical, you can find that address here.

If you’d rather not send it for free, that’s totally fine too. Just let me know about the release. If it sounds like something I’ll enjoy, I’m happy to buy it myself.

As a reminder, most things that are given to me, I never end up writing about. But at the same time, the majority of the things I end up writing about (in my review newsletter) are things that were given to me. So do with that what you will.

The only real benefit of sending me something is that you can be assured I’ll definitely take a look at it at some point. Whether I end up using it regularly and writing it up for the newsletter, or whether I have any worthwhile thoughts about it (I usually don’t) is nothing you can plan on.

On a related point, I’ve now started blocking off some time each week to take a look at the stuff people send me. That doesn’t mean I’ll get to it immediately. It still might take a few weeks. But that’s better than I used to be. It used to be literally years. So…progress.

I’ve received a ton of positive feedback about Wednesday’s post, much of it along these lines:

“You did it. You came up with the ultimate version of the Toxic Force. It solves every issue I had with the original and with I.C.F. and the other variations that came after. I can’t believe you gave it away for free.”—SC

Well, to be fair, I was building on the I.C.F. framework and was further inspired by a Michael Murray idea in the same release.

Every version of the number force I looked at required some sort of get-ready, touching the screen when you shouldn’t be, hiding the screen unnecessarily at certain points, remote controls, apps, etc. My goal was to eliminate all of that.

But, if you can’t or don’t want to go the route I suggested, but you still like the I.C.F. methodology, let me recommend this way of holding the phone while the spectator does their tapping.

So the phone is facing you and you’re holding it from the top, while they reach around and blindly tap from the other side. This feels much more fair to me than holding the phone face-down with your hang gripped around it.

GIF courtesy of Markus B., who was the first person to suggest this to me.

I created a trick called Dead Goose back in 2023. I wanted to provide this follow-up showing the prop A.O. created for the effect. It looks great.

This isn’t magic-related—just a general recommendation.

I wouldn’t say baseball is my favorite sport. Not to watch, really. And definitely not to play. But it is my favorite sport to experience in person and to casually follow throughout the season.

A baseball game is on my shortlist of essential summer outings—right up there with a beach day, a county fair, and a drive-in double feature. Without them, summer feels incomplete. (Yeah, yeah, I sound like an old man. Much older than I even am. You’re young. You don’t want to spend time doing the same stuff they were doing in the middle of the 20th century. You’ve got TikTok. You’ve got an AI girlfriend whispering sweet nothings in your ear. Mazel tov. Just remember: your generation’s suicide rate is 600% what it was in 1950. So sure, you’re thriving… right up until you blow your fucking head off.)

I just like how strange the sport is. There are a million little elements you can dive into. The superstitions, the pranks, the fights, the bat flips, the trickery (the hidden-ball trick, pick-offs, “deke’ing”), the walk-off celebrations, rain-delay antics, mascots, the unique stadium elements, the fan interference moments, the unwritten rules, random animal appearances, crazy promotional gimmicks, and the insane things that can happen when a ball traveling 100 miles-per-hour flies into a crowd of people.

There’s no time limit. Games can go into the wee hours of the morning. The fields aren’t even standardized—each stadium has its own odd dimensions and personality. There’s no definitive baseball player. You can be an all-time great player and look like you’ve never seen a treadmill or a salad.

And the action isn’t confined to the field. Stuff happens in the crowd, the dugout, the bullpen, the clubhouse, the announcers’ booth. It’s a sprawling, unpredictable little circus.

It’s a leisurely game, played over a leisurely season (each team plays 162 games a year—at least). I just love the energy of it.

Did you know a baseball player once lit a rival’s foot on fire? Just kidding. It didn’t happen once. It’s a longstanding tradition in the sport. And not to rivals—to teammates. For laughs and camaraderie. How can you not love a sport where that is part of the culture?

If you’re in a country where baseball isn’t really a thing, I think it’s worthwhile to spend 5 minutes learning the basic rules so you can follow along with it.

If you’re a fan, or if you just want to go down a rabbit-hole, the Not-So-Serious Baseball series on youtube is a great place to explore all the weird moments baseball provides that you just don’t find in any other sport.

Talent Swap: PLE

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I’ve long been intrigued by the idea of talent being something that can be transferred from person to person.

Years ago I wrote a post about a trick I did at a Christmas Party in 2013 where I swapped the talents of two of my friends. (Spoiler: It required them to actually learn each other’s talents.)

That original Talent Swap effect requires along setup and coordination between myself and two others. Later, I created a streamlined version—one you could perform more frequently, so long as you had a secret talent that no one in the room knew about. That approach required no accomplices and was published in one of my earlier books.

Now, here’s a new twist on the Talent Swap idea.

This time, the talent isn’t coming from someone else in the room. It’s coming from you—but from a past life.

This angle was inspired by Glen S., who pointed me to this Reddit post that I’m reprinting below.

Quick background: we live with my mom. My side is very heavily Italian. My mom grew up in Italy. My husband is best described as a southerner(family all in Alabama for 200+ years). He is not a good cook at all. He once burnt ramen.

He's been going through a tough time. His dad died 2 months ago. He wanted to do a large dose. His wording was he wanted to take a large dose and follow the advice alot of people give for a heroic dose(dark room, alone, everything turned off, etc). He took 12g of shrooms.. proceeded to go extremely catatonic, spaced out, etc.

When he came out of it the next day, He seemed very at peace and declared that he realized he was an Italian chef in a past life.. me and my mom were both very amused because he has never been a good cook.

He proceeded to say that he was gonna make spaghetti for dinner and he'd make the sauce from scratch. Me and my mom didn't say anything but a "ah... ok..". He cooked it that night. We were expecting a disaster. Especially because we watched him just wing it. He didn't look up any instructions or measure anything. He said that he couldn't remember specifics but making it felt like "muscle memory".

This motherfucker made the best sauce I've ever tasted. My mom was rattled and said it was the best she's ever tasted and it was far superior to hers(and that's not something she'd ever easily admit). She even called it "perfect". Every single person who tasted it was amazed by it.

The main question going through my mind right now is "what the fuck?".

Now, to be clear: I’m not suggesting you take shrooms for this. I mean—you can if you want. I’m not your mom.

But all you really need is a story. A way to frame what’s about to happen. It could be something as simple as saying you want to listen to this past life regression hypnosis with your friends. Or maybe you claim you had a near-death experience, and for a brief moment, the veil slipped… and something came through. A flicker of memory of a skill you’re certain you never possessed in this life.

When would you use this?

Look, I’m not saying you should go out and learn a new skill just to do this. That’s probably more trouble than it’s worth.

But if there’s already something you’ve been wanting to learn—say, fingerstyle guitar or surfing—this gives you a mind-bending way to reveal it.

Learn the skill in secret. And then, after a few months of clandestine effort, introduce it to people. Not as something you learned, but as something you remembered.

That’s the angle. It’s Talent Swap: Past Life Edition.