Is Mind Reading Real? Kent Axell Reveals the Power of the Human Mind

Welcome And Meet Kent Axel

Welcome to Vegas Circle Podcast with your hosts, Pocket Chris. We are people who are passionate about business, success, and culture. And this is our platform to showcase the people in our city who are making it happen. And today's guest has built a career on blending psychological illusion, storytelling, genuine human connection. And he's the man behind ghost stories located at Mandalay Bay. So just got a chance to see a show, man. And I'm not just saying because you're in front of me, but amazing.

Thank you. Thank you. Am I relaxed? Do I look good? Yeah, yeah.

Do you call yourself a psychological illusionist?

Yeah, so that's an old moniker that I used to use to separate myself from magician, and it's kind of dumb, but I'm a magician. Okay. And I gotta say your name too. Yeah.

So it's Mr. Kent Axel.

Yes. Yes, that's correct. Say your name right. Yeah. But it doesn't matter. I don't even say it in the show. You don't. I didn't really introduce it. Yeah, no, it's not. You just jump in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We go right into the show. Kind of like we're going right into this show, right? Well, no, we did an intro. So actually, I can't do that. You're much better host. You better think good at the intro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh intro does help, of course. Yeah, my name is Kent. I do I do magic for the that's my camera right there. My name is Kent. I do magic for a living. I do magic shows. I help magicians magish better. And yeah, I I do uh corporate events and things like that. I also run like a small YouTube channel to help magicians. You know, we talk about magic philosophy and performance and all that stuff. So you teach, you actually mentor and coach. Yeah, yeah. Actually, we just got out of a me and another another gentleman who's another mentalist, Banachek. We just ran a retreat for magicians where we talked about the sort of intersection of theater and magic over in uh in Orlando. Oh, okay. And we gave people notes on their sets and hopefully hopefully we helped them. You know, we're gonna run some more of those coming up. So if you're interested and you're a magician, go ahead and check the link below.

From Maine To Magic Full Time

Check the link below to get them in the uh waiting list for the next one. Awesome. Awesome. Where so where are you originally from? I I I hail from Maine.

You're from New England? Okay. Maine. Yes. Okay.

New England.

I know New England very well. I just sold my parents' house and dairy and dairy, New Hampshire. New Hampshire.

I literally okay so literally 30 minutes north of Boston. Yeah, familiar with dairy. Um was that there was that that astronaut was from dairy. No, no, no, no. Stephen King's not an astronaut, Brian.

No, you he's very famous.

He's got a home there.

Um my God, I'm gonna lose my life. Is Stephen King from Dairy too? No, no, no, no.

But he his he was he was famous for saying something about like let's light this candle or something like that.

I look so I'm looking it up on my phone while you're talking here.

I have a connection with the with the Dairy Opera House. Oh, okay, right there at that theater. And and we just produced a show there. Lightly attended, but it was good. Alan Shepherd. Alan Shepherd, that's right. He goes, uh let's light that candle or something like that. But uh there was the Alan Shepherd Museum was underneath the theater. So I stopped in there and I did some magic for them, and they they gave me the contact for the theater, and so now I've got that dairy connection. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, Dairy New Hampshire, it's awesome. Awesome. Good stuff. Uh but yeah, Maine. Stephen King is from from Bangor, uh, or like lived in Bangor for a longer time. I don't think he lives there anymore. There's some as some people say, Bangor. I don't know if I'm even saying that right as a native main. I'm the worst person to say it stuff.

I thought it would be dairy because of it, because doesn't it take place in dairy?

It does, but it's dairy main. Yeah, it's always Maine with Stephen King. It's always Maine. But now that he's moved, I don't know if he moved out of Maine. His house is still there, but I don't know if he moved out of Maine and now his stories are gonna follow him, or if he'll still have them set in Maine. All of them are in Maine, as as far as I can tell, as far as I know.

So you moved from Maine to Las Vegas?

No, I moved from Maine to New York. New York. Yeah, in New York City. I did I went to theater school, school for musical theater. Okay. And then after that, I was auditioning for for musicals and play. Did I did a couple of things here and there, but at the end of the day, somebody started paying me to do magic. You know, people started paying me to do magic for them at at corporate events and private parties and stuff, and I was like, oh my goodness. And I kind of fell into it. And as soon as as soon as like the the the checks started clearing, I was like, yo, this is way, way better than like continuing. Well, the regular nine to five I did have for a little bit in New York when I was starting the gigging thing. I had that for maybe a year or two. But after I sort of figured out the gigging thing uh in corporate events and in private events, it was way, way better than than you know, being in the pool of actors all fighting over the same stages, you know, in New York, New York Sports. All of them going. Of course. And bless people for doing it. It just uh it just it just wasn't for me.

Was that originally the plan was to go be in theater and all acting things? Yeah, well actually.

I produced, you know, I I like co-directed and produced a couple of shows after uh after school, and uh they were back in Maine with some connections that we had back there, and that was super fun, and that kind of scratched the itch, and I still get just open it, man. You're good.

No, I dropped it. You just see me drop it. I was making sure to get splattered everywhere. I literally dropped it all the time.

He's trying to slowly open one of the buttons that kind of scratched the itch, and I still love theater, I still love love doing it. I mean, I would I would argue that the magic show that I'm doing right now is maybe one of the more theatrical magic shows out there. You know, it's not like it's not a lot of things.

It's not like it's a magic show, to be honest with you.

Right, it's kind of like a play, right? It's like an emergency play. Yeah. And but it does have magic tricks in there, and the and the the the the tricks, the effects, the impossible moments are kind of required to punctuate the drama. So I would say that you can't really remove the tricks and for the play to still work. But but yeah, I mean that's and that's that's the ultimate goal for a lot of magicians, is to be able to remove the tricks and for it to still be entertaining. I think it still would be entertaining to remove the tricks and ghost stories, but uh which is the show that I do, by the way. Mandalay Bay. Yes, every week. Yeah, uh at the 1923 Prohibition Bar, Mandalay Bay location. Don't go to the Venetian. I mean, go to the Venetian, but not if you're looking for my show. Venetian's cool too. Mandalay 1923 is a location at the Venetian, and very often people who I have told to come and see the show, they like call me or text me five minutes before the show is starting, and they're like, We're at the Venetian. We're gonna be late. And I'm like, you're gonna miss so much.

You have to you have to start from the beginning.

We have to start at the beginning.

So how how did ghost stories start? Is

Turning Ghost Stories Into Theater

that something you always I know you've been at Mandalay Bay for about three and a half years, yeah, with just specifically ghost stories. Yeah, with just ghost stories somewhere else prior to this?

No, I I was so we'll do this in reverse order. Like from Ghost Stories, so Ghost Stories actually started as like a uh as just a sort of amalgamation of spooky material that I had. You know, I was like, it's like it's artistically sound, it's good magic, strong magic, and now I've got all this spooky material together, and now as we start doing the show, I start sort of playlisting it and noticing what things are connecting to what things and what's sort of like making sense and what kind of dramatic elements I can put in, and and and then all of a sudden it starts to take this sort of narrative story shape, as you were saying. And as we were saying before before we started recording, this does not work on paper in Las Vegas. This show should not work in Las Vegas. At this point, we advertise it as 90 minutes, it's nearly two hours. It is it has an intermission, you know. Vegas shows don't have intermissions usually. You scare us during the intermission. I'm not gonna say why, but you scare us during the intermission. Yeah, yeah. It's get them, it's get us in, get us out, like usually in Las Vegas. And and here it's a very it's a highly intense, highly energetic, slow burn, highly dramatic and theatrical, and I think I I think it delivers. I don't want to I don't want to like toot my own horn here, but I think it delivers.

Yeah, I would agree with you. Yeah, sure.

And in a way that is counter to the expectations of somebody of what somebody will have in for a Las Vegas show.

You know, I think Do you mind me asking, not to cut you off, do you mind me asking is every show different?

Well, yes, to the degree that the people are gonna be giving different responses. Um But is the goal what you I don't want to say, but is the goal what I experienced? Yes, yeah. The goal is approximately what you experienced, is the is the normal through line of the show. Okay. There is a there is a script, it's always gonna go this way. There are a lot of moments where I'm sort of saying something off the cuff where it's not really off the cuff. You know? And we're gonna go one direction or the other based on uh it looks a lot of it looks like you know, no, that's part of the narrative, part of the story is like the in the story, the the character that is on stage is intending to go one direction, and it looks like that intention is interrupted by something and they have to deal with it. But that's you know, that's that's the nature of any story. Yeah, it's part of the journey, yeah. And so to go back to the original question, because I I have a tendency to meander and circle the drain quite a bit, so I'll do my best to keep myself on track. This is a success podcast, after all. Um

Landing The Mandalay Bay Run

talking about how we got into ghost stories, for anyone who's a gig worker, this is really this is actually super, super interesting. Anyone who does who does like gig work, whether you're a magician or whether you're a contortionist or whether you're somebody who any kind of entertainer, musician, whatever, I got this gig, I got this this this thing off of gig salad, which is kind of like kind of like a Craigslist for performers. Interesting. What was happening is there was another show in there in that space, and when that show left, when that show left the space, the owner of the space said, Well, that was a working model, we've got to get something back in there. And he doesn't know where to find magicians, right? So he goes on the internet and he finds this site and he puts it out, and I get a message from him. And within within a couple of weeks, we had met, we had discussed some like starting terms, and we were doing shows. We were doing one show, we did a test show, and then we were doing one show a week, and then it grew to its peak last year was we were doing eight shows a week, two shows a night for four nights in a row.

Really?

And that was brutal on my hand, as you can imagine. And uh, I don't know if he told you. I know I was gonna ask about that. That's something. We'll we'll probably we might get there. Yeah. But anyway, so that so so fr basically from from rather humble beginnings, the show evolved. But the thing was, well, it is certainly lucky for me to get the the message from the owner on Gig Salad. It's also uh I I happened to be lucky enough to also be prepared for that message. Because at the time I was running the seance show at Lost Spirits Distillery at Area 15.

Building Proof Before Big Leaps

Oh, okay, okay.

And that was an opportunity that was I don't want to say created by me because it's obviously a whole team of people, but as I I I approached Lost Spirits Distillery because I wanted to work there. There was such a beautiful venue. Did you ever go?

I wanted to go so bad, I just never could time it or get the or pay for it at the right time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, currently it's it's it's the building has been as it's but it's effectively the this I don't know if it's the same. I haven't been to the new experience, but it's Odyssey Noir. Oh yeah, into the whole district. Yeah, it's the whole dude. We went to the Museum of Ice Cream the other day. Like that's on my list. Yeah.

Odyssey noir is more of like a club diet.

Odyssey noir, yes. That one warehouse at the at the far, if you're looking like out the front door of Area 15, you've got all these buildings on the side. Like you've got the the star thing, you've got John Wick, and at the very end on the right hand side, that used to be Lost Spirits Distillery. And that is now Odyssey Noir, which is like I think they're doing like a sleep no more type thing, like like they did in New York. Okay. But anyway, that that experience uh working at Lost Spirits was Hi Brian, if you're watching this, by the way, and all my Lost Spirits people. That was That was amazing, but they didn't have they were called Lost Spirits, and they were in this really beautiful, esoteric, amazing space, and they didn't have anything sort of spooky happening, and it's called Lost Spirits. And obviously the spirits were the it was a it was a drinking tour where you had to go and find your your your your drinks, basically your pouring stations. Oh, that's what makes sense now. I didn't even know that's what it was.

Oh, you're right. I do remember that.

It was yeah, it was definitely pricey. I remember seeing that. And I think they took you to them in the beginning, but after after a certain amount of time, they stopped like ferrying you to the drink stations, and they they made it this sort of open thing with stages all around, and there were performances on the stages, like contortionists, jugglers, magicians, stuff like that. And and at the time where you had to go and find your drinks, lost spirits as a title made so much more sense to me. Because you have to go and find your your spirits, yeah. And but they didn't have anything spooky there. So I was like, hey guys, like I mean, uh I I hate to say this, but like you should have a I mean, I far be it for me to tell you what to do, but you should have a seance here, for sure. You should have something going on here with with you know with the words spirit, you know. I mean it's kind of like it lends itself, and they said no. So I was like, dope. And then it's not gonna work, yeah. And eventually I was gonna go on tour, and I don't I don't know if and this was a tour for my my stage show, The Mind Reader, which is just another it's like it's like you know what I do when I go into bigger theaters. And so and and that's that's a whole animal in and of itself, but the basically I was gonna go on tour and I'm like, hey guys, I'm gonna go on tour in like three months. So you know, I'm booking these theaters now, and they come back to me like a day or two later and they say, Hey, by the way, I know you're gonna go on tour, but if you were to stick around, we would be doing a seance with you. And this was like a year and a half after I made that suggestion. And I was like drug their feet too long. Yeah, well, I don't know. I but but I then did stick around, and we did I did write and direct the magician part of the seance anyway.

Oh, okay, okay.

And it was this cool thing. It was it was called the seance show, and we we had the first part was like very circus-y, and it had people who it had like you know, aerial artists and and hand balancers and all that kind of circus light stuff, but we're really up close, really up close. And and around this massive round table, you know, so it was like a 16-foot wide or diameter table that had stairs on the side that you could go up and and you'd do the you'd do the performance on top of the table. It was very cool. So so so that show I was doing at the time that they messaged me about doing a show at 1923. So I was able to have them out to see that. You know, and there's there's there's so much just in terms of this podcast, right? I got into lost spirits by really working connections, and then they would never answer the email, and then eventually I just showed up, and I showed up with a set of of tarot cards that were all branded for their different drinks that they had. So I had major arcana tarot cards but that were invented by me that were branded for the different drinks that they currently had on the drinking tour. And so I and I did a five tarot card matching routine with them, where where I would where you know basically we'd we'd choose one and we would have chosen the same one effectively, right? That's the effect. And they were so impressed by that. Me, I just showed up and did that for the C-suite. And then I was like, Well, I've been emailing you guys for a long time. And they were like okay, well, we'd love to have you. Can you start on Friday? You know, that kind of thing. And that was the sort of creation of an opportunity. And then the seance show there was also sort of the creation of an opportunity. And I don't I I can't take full credit or even maybe some credit. I just in my mind it's at least possible that my suggestion to do a seance is what made them do a seance. But they also saw your show. They saw me performing there, you know. The one ghost stories? Sorry. So the people at Lost Spirits basically they would see me performing and they were regardless of whether whether they would attribute the seance to my suggestion, they wanted me to be the head guy. To do something right. So they saw how you can and so they brought me into there, and and then we did the seance thing, and that's another sort of like either fully or pseudo fully created opportunity. And now that that exists, now I've got something else to show, right? I had what I had was you know, every every step of the way here, I've got something to show. You know, at no point is somebody like having to put any massive leap of faith, you know, on me. And and that's that's an interesting thing to think about in terms of like when you're whatever your next step is. If you need someone to say yes to you for whatever reason, you know, like some stuff in between.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's some stuff in between. And you they it it might be possible that somebody's gonna, you know, write you a big check or whatever, or take a massive leap of faith. But then there are many ways to persuade people, but one way is a is a history of of of success. Yeah, or just showing them the the smaller version of the product that you're going to deliver, right? Yeah. Which is what they saw when they saw me performing on stage at Lost Spirits, they were like, oh, cool. Then he he's gonna do this bigger for the seance show. You know I

Mentalism Is Deception By Design

was gonna ask you that, man, about manipulation. Yeah, well then we'll we'll get into that. That's what I was very curious about. Yeah, Mr. You're opening up a can of words there. I know I am. That's what I wanted to ask you. And I I want you to, because I want to be honest with with you and with the crowd. But there is there is more and less manipulation in this in this magic or mentalism world than you might think. We'll we'll get into that in a second. But basically, then we had the seance show. The seance show, then then well, I was able to bring the owner of 1923 over into the seance show to show him that when he was like, Hey, you might be the guy. Because he was talking to me and a couple other people. I had a show at Area 15 at Lost Spirits Distillery. He came in and he saw it and he was like, Yeah, yeah, we're having it to do this. Yeah, right. It's um so so every every step is preceded by a previous step. You know, there's no major leap. But it's like the overnight success is like unless you being like a magician, you have to see it.

It's not like you were saying, like, you put on paper, like there's no way for me to put on a resume, hey, there's ghost stories, and I read it and be like, oh, this is amazing. Right.

We get to see them for entertainment. You could just have to see, yeah.

Imagine, imagine on paper, you'd be like, Oh, and then the guy reads everyone's minds in the room, and you're like, Yeah, okay. Until you see it, I mean like Luke Skywalker. For real.

But um, you kind of got to the journey of the kind of as you came to a an experience, which I think is very interesting. But I, you know, what I'm curious about too is the development of these skills. Like we see the two paths, one being the path or performance, one being a path of uh m magicianry, or I don't know if I'm saying that right. But is it there? There's a correlation that you're putting the two together. Both of these require a lot, I would assume, of time, effort, developmental skills, exercise, practice. You know, kind of what does that journey look like through each of these for you? Because I think we went from one to a pretty large gap, but we're missing the whole part of developmental processes in between that I think is very valuable.

Okay, I was on another podcast yesterday uh called The Minute Magician. And I think he's rebranded, he's changed it to either beyond or behind the curtain. I think it might be beyond the curtain. Okay, like the psychology and and craft of magic or something like that.

Okay.

And we were talking about the skill set that somebody needs in order to do this kind of thing. Now, when we're talking, when he and I are talking magician to magician, I can skip over a lot of a lot of context. We have the context already.

Chris and I, well, at least me, I don't get any of it. Yeah, like I'm so curious.

Yeah, so largely if I'm speaking to another magician, the first thing that I want to tell them is the first thing I want to check with them if I'm gonna either work with them on either a consulting level or on a like helping them tour and perform level or whatever, is whether they have a sort of basic set of theatrical skills that are equivalent to sort of an MC. You know, somebody that can stand on stage, can own a room, can uh stand still if they need to, can move if they need to, speak clearly, if they can perform basic magic, that is all the better. But all of these like basic theatrical skills are very uh that you need to be a magician, are really really nicely intertwined with those skills that you need to be an MC. Somebody who is confident, charismatic, ideally, right? Now we're getting into higher level stuff, but you know, charming. You have to take like a lot of public speaking classes. Public speaking is a wonderful thing for this. But you know, it's not it, it's it's it's not it it might not be sufficient for some people. I know some people who are gr uh who are I don't want to say gross. Great public speakers. I want to say renowned public speakers who I think are not great performers because they they can make a point, but the thing that they're lacking is a connection. I think the connection and being able to hold people's attention. Physicality is huge. Especially, well, I I don't want to bring it, I don't want to keep bringing it back, but especially in the in the show that I'm doing, physicality is is everything. And and clear storytelling, trying to get the point across as to what actually is the there's a there's a big, deep, complex narrative, like storyline that I've written that that rides underneath the cool magic show that I'm doing. And you can watch Ghost Stories as a cool magic show. Like that's fine. You can watch it's just a magic show. That's cool. You can also watch it as something more if you choose to. And oh let me let me make my way back to the point because I oh yeah, so the skill set. The skill set. You would another incredibly high-level performer that I really, really like, who is I think similar in edginess, but incredibly different in material, is a gentleman named Jason Ladani. Do you know who this is? Is he in Vegas? Uh no, uh no, he has performed in Vegas before, but Jason is one of my favorite card magicians. Card, okay. Yes, because he just owns what he's doing as incredible. He is not afraid to be cantankerous and aggressive with his audience, especially on TikTok. He's incredibly big on social media. Okay. He'll take challenges, he'll go, he'll go, you know. It's more complicated than this, but the long and short of it is this guy wanted me to f he has the comment up on screen and goes, This guy wanted me to find uh four aces from a shuffled deck. I'll do you one better. Here you go. I'll do them in order. Here's the ace of spades, here's the ace of hearts. And and you know, he's doing it while he's talking, yeah. And he's he's playing this sort of like overconfident a-hole kind of guy. And I don't know if I can why you would be so give me some basic tricks when I can do this.

So he's gonna be a good thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and it fits him so well and it's so great. And people would put he and he and I, or he and your average mentalist, I know you had a had have had a mentalist on here recently, right? In different categories. We are not in different categories. Same? Same category. And I want this to be super clear for people who are lay people, especially, because look, there's this there's a performer in the UK named Darren Brown.

I feel like I've heard this name.

He might have heard this name before.

I feel like I've seen a YouTube of him or something.

Likely. No, he does he does like real psychological experiments, which are really cool. And he also does stage shows with mentalism. Okay. Mentalism being a subset of magic. Everything that you're seeing is based in deception. Everything that you're seeing is manipulation in a sense. Okay, stay stay on. I'm gonna cut you off with deception. What do you mean by that? When I say deception, that's exactly what I wanted to hear about. So when I say deception, what I mean is that we are concealing things, right? And oftentimes telling you that it's something that it isn't in order to get you to buy into a sort of false reality.

Fair enough.

For me, I have ways of knowing the information that I'm knowing in the room, right? There are ways, right? Are we okay? And we just have to kind of accept that there are ways. Okay, fair enough. Now, and and here's here's a here's a possibility, right? And I don't want to like I don't think most people who I would be interested in being my fans, I don't think that they would be offended that I'm saying this. Right. But you know, somebody like, you know, you go to see Teresa Caputo or the Long Island medium, right? Or whatever. You go to see her, and and then you come to a guy like me who's honest about it, and you say, Oh yeah, but I saw this psychic. I went to see the Long Island Medium. She was amazing. She knew the name of my first pet. Like she she knew she knew what it was. No, no. That's what I wanted to get into. Right. Okay. So, but they'll see her and they'll be like, But how could she have possibly known that? I'm like, How did you buy your ticket? And they say, with a credit card. And I'm like, So you have your name. I can't, okay. I don't know exactly how she got that information, but I know that there are ways. And so now for me, that way is totally unfeasible because we're doing, you know, we're doing sometimes we're doing two shows a night, right? And for me to be up there and try to like memorize all that information or whatever, you know. And that's actually one of the reasons why magicians, to make it even more impressive, will have you you just write the information yourself and then conceal it with yourself, right? Because this is something that you're just thinking of right now on the spot. But you have multiple people. We have a lot of people doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't want to get into it, but you flip me, I mean trip me out where I'm like, how the hell did he do that? Like magic pocket. Well, that's the goal. I'm trying to figure out like, how the hell did he know not to go too bad of a rabbit hole? Yeah, yeah. And how did he know like this personal thing about this person? Yes, yeah. Do you mind me saying, like, one of the people in the crowd, you mind me saying, what is it? Not at all, not at all, please. Like, how the hell did you know the guy in the front row like broke his ankle, like had some like serious situation? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, how the hell does he know this? Like it tripped me out. Yeah.

Well, it's awesome that that you were able to mind read him without him telling you. Yeah. So so the the answer is that no. Sorry, I'm all around I can excited. No, no, I understand. I'm excited too. I'm excited too. But we we gotta Okay. All right. This is what we're doing.

Yeah, I'm getting excited because I've been trying to figure out.

I'm very famous on podcasts for starting a point and then nothing's new. That just means that we have to go apart too, right? But but you know, th they'll see things that are to go back to the Jason Ladani point or or or any card magician, anyone that you associate as a magician.

Okay.

Right? And you might say that you don't associate folks like myself or other people who are mentalists as magicians. And I was speaking about this Darren Brown guy. So the problem that I have is that Teresa Caputo for me is uh is just obviously a charlatan. Obviously.

Especially because you see how it works.

Can we do this under test conditions? You know, I have a I have a three-digit number written down on a piece of paper in my pocket, and I'm thinking about it right now. It was my grandmother's favorite number, you know. Can you tell me what it is? Go, oh, it doesn't work that way, you know. Great, good. Doesn't work that way. The the the spirits are not with us right now. But under test conditions, these these people, you know, they they they always have a reason why it's not gonna work. And that's totally fine. But for me, what they're what they're using deception for is pretty gross. And on some level, we have this spectrum, this gradient between someone like I and this is the this is a bugaboo for a lot of like psychic averse people, right? We have we have at the top of this of the spectrum, you know, in in in terms of fame, somebody like John Edward, right? And he's the guy who did crossing over, right? He would speak to your dead relatives. That was the idea. I remember okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Okay. And then we have at the at the at the at the other end of the spectrum, we have somebody like like any, let's just say any card magician or any any magician using coins. Yes, please.

Can you talk to dead people?

No, no. Well, yes, of course I can. But the problem, the the difficult part about that is uh getting them to talk back. Yeah, they don't answer back. Uh that maybe I said that horribly wrong.

No, no, no. Horribly wrong. That's an old James Randi line.

Exactly. But I'm saying, like, being able to how do I word this without giving it away on in your show? Because it's ghost stories.

Well, no, yeah. So we're we're look, what I'm doing is using deceptive practices like Teresa Caputo and like Jason Ladani and like any magician, whether however honest they are about their actual methods, I'm using those techniques in order to produce a fiction that we can all enjoy. Now it's a spooky fish.

One thing that you did, not to cut you off, and I should have cutting you off. One thing that you did that I thought was kind of genius is you stop and you're telling everybody, look, we got cameras here, we've got so it's like you're kind of drawing us back in to be like, yeah, I didn't do any of the things that you guys are thinking about, like where I'm listening to you know your stories, maybe when you guys are having drinks at the bar or whatever you're doing, but you kind of got us like sidetracked to get us like more sucked in. If that makes sense.

Now, without without getting into the details of that, because that when I thought it was impressive. I said in that, and this is this is something that's called a disclaimer, and I'm remembering in my mind, I'm gonna remember Darren Brown, Jason Lenny, so we can go back

The Disclaimer And Audience Trust

to that point. But I I am at the when when I say in the show that I'm at the center of a controversy, I really do mean this because I'm one of the people that feels the strongest about this. I am at the center of a controversy in that form of honesty because it has become fashionable in the past gosh, maybe 30 years at least, for mentalists who are magicians who are pretending to read minds to steer away from the look of a psychic and steer toward the look of a detective, a professional body language reader or whatever. And I am at the center of a controversy there where I'm like, no, guys, that is just as bad. Right? That is just as bad. You can't let it be. No no no no no. I want to be as honest as possible, and I want to leave people with a good experience that they can walk away from without it without a tremendous amount of baggage or belief in some kind of pseudoscientific nonsense. And so my question for you, without without you know leading the witness too much, is how would how did that moment of stopping the show feel to you? You already kind of said that you bring it bringing you in a little bit.

Because I'm just such a think, I'm going through grab. I'm like, how the hell did he do? Okay, so he had to have, and I'm looking at the camera, I'm looking at everything, trying to figure out like, how did he figure this out? Like, how did he know this person's whatever the situation is or this lady's you know what I'm saying? Like I'm trying to put it together, like, oh yeah, maybe he was listening to us in the the bar area or whatever it is. But you dismantle that.

You dismantle it.

Right. To be the magician is more impressive in my mind than to be the person that is lying, or the detective, like saying, do yeah.

Interesting perspective. This is yet another.

Well it is, but the i it it's the psychology of of magic tricks, deception, and and and and performance arts, theater, you know, like uh but but to your point, it is almost more impressive to I agree with you. And there's debate about this, but people on online, like other magicians, when I when I make these points, they'll come at me like like, oh, why are you afraid of mystery? You know, why are you afraid of mystery? Why do you want people to think it's magic tricks? And I'm like, actually, wait, hold on. I'm not afraid of mystery because you're giving people an answer when you say it's not a great answer, but when you say it's psychic or when you say it's psychological in nature, you're giving people something to latch on to. You're giving them a box to put it in. And when I say it's neither of those things, and it's it's it's simultaneously shallower and deeper than that, and this runs through our evolutionary history, the things in your brain that I'm taking advantage of are so so rudimentary but so important, and you're just left with nothing, no answer to what you've just seen, and and the knowledge that the answer that I'm giving you during the theatrical bits is fiction, then I feel like that is way more mysterious. I would agree. It's harder to figure out. Yeah. Well, if people, if people think it's if people just think like, oh yeah, he's Sherlock Holmes, like he or he's he's he's a purpose to give that kind of vibe, like the Sherlock, because that's what I got out of fun.

Yeah, yeah. I get that Sherlock Holmes kind of vibe, like FBI kind of vibe when you're there. Oh no, no, I'm not doing that on purpose. But if that's if that's what you guys are. That's what the vibe I got.

So but here was here was the question I wanted to ask you about the about the the thing that we're doing in the middle, is called a disclaimer, basically, where I'm saying that this is I'm saying this isn't what you think it is, this is not, you know, the the answers that I'm giving you are not correct. If you wanted to know more about this, you'd go to the magic section, you know. This is this is my my my the important question, a couple of important questions. Firstly, and just be as honest as you possibly can. For sure. You cannot hurt my feelings. Although nobody will take this as evidence because this is this is social pressure for sure. But the question is, does it does it make the experience uh uh less good, more good, neutral? Do you or or let's just start there. Is the show worse for having said that? Or better?

I think for me, human nature is you, everybody wants to put things in a box. Yes. So you're trying to put the pieces together, at least how my brain works. I'm trying to put the pieces together. Yeah. So the whole time, I'm like, what the f how did he do? So that's what you're thinking in your head. So then you're trying to figure out like how did he dismantle everybody in the room and figure these things out. And then when you make that disclaimer, it's like, oh damn, then I'm wrong then. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So you're like, oh, maybe he didn't do that. Right. It's producing doubt. It's producing doubt. Yeah.

See, when I think when I'm if I was an escenario and I were to hear that, the way my brain would work is how was he so good at noticing the things that nobody else is noticing? Yeah, yeah. Okay, that would have been exactly what my mind would have gone to. So this is okay. That's a very good point, Chris.

Very good point. I gotta I gotta bring it back to that because if it if it's not clear in the show, I want I I I'll I'll say it here so that we can at least have it on video. Okay, fair enough. That is not what's happening. Got it, okay, right? There is not Sherlock Holmes stuff happening in that room. None of it. None of it. It's all magic tricks. I mean, do you remember the example that I gave? I said, if you wanted to learn more about what you saw tonight, what did I do you remember what I told you you had to do?

Go to the magic store. Oh, yeah, you did still go to the magic store.

Yeah, I said go to the toy store.

You did say that.

I said you don't go to the psychology section. You don't go to the spirituality section of the bookstore. You go to the toy store and you buy a beginner's magic kit for children. That's how you learn more about this.