 We have as a guest today Dr. Steve Novella who just dropped in on us somewhat unannounced but also somewhat planned. Steve, tell them who you are. Now as Randy said, I'm Steve Novella. I'm the host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe which is a weekly science podcast affiliated with the James Randy Educational Foundation. So Randy, we were talking about earlier the intersection between the human brain which is my specialty. I'm a neurologist and magic because magicians are actually put into practice a lot of practical knowledge of the human brain about how to deceive the way people process information, the ways of exploiting the foibles of the human brain. The point that I would make here is that as a magician, I discovered that as a young magician, just as a kid, I discovered that I had to know a lot about psychology and the way people's brains work. Now I never got into it as deeply as you have, of course you spent your life at it, but I did learn a few things and some of those things I think I was able to impart to not only the other magicians but a few scientists along the way. For example, one thing that we learn as soon as we get into the profession is that people assume a lot. Now we assume a lot, this is my analysis of it, because otherwise we'd become catatonic. We'd just stop dead. You look at traffic lights. Red means stop and green means go and yellow means go like hell. If you had to wonder as you reach the edge of the pavement, have they changed the meaning of the lights? Are the colors changed around or am I not seeing them correctly? I often tell my audiences when they sit down after they've been comfortable and I've talked to them for a while they say, you know, you folks make a lot of assumptions and I hope you will for the sake of my act. I didn't see anyone test the chart. When they came in here, did you test the chart and make sure it was sufficient to support your weight? No, you took it for granted. You have to make assumptions. And I also point out to them, for example, in when I'm teaching young fellows to do magic routines and think as a magician, I say never walk on stage and say, I have here a regular deck of cards. No, because that allows them the possibility of thinking, maybe that's not a regular deck of cards. But if you take a deck of cards, unwrap it, break the seal on it, shake it out into your hand, toss the box away, start shuffling it, the assumption is it's an ordinary deck of cards. Now they're not convinced of it necessarily, but at least they make that tentative assumption. Right. But if you make a specific claim, then you're inviting them to question that claim. Exactly. And you don't invite them to question any of these things. Our brains make a lot of subconscious assumptions for us. Indeed. And once you learn what those are, then you really can freak people out. That's what the basis of a lot of optical illusions is exploiting those assumptions that our brain is making just by the way it evolved process information. For example, if something smaller, it probably is farther away. Things get smaller as it gets farther away. So you could trick people with optical illusions to think that something is farther away by presenting them with a smaller version of something than they're used to seeing, for example. How do magicians take advantage of that kind of thing? In an illusion box, now we all know that there are boxes that are designed especially to create optical effects and illusions. Suppose you have a large square box there into which a girl would fit sort of curled up if she wanted to curl up and if she were there, and when you open the front of the box, you see nothing. Now the girl, this is hypothetical, of course, maybe behind the box, hanging out the back a bit, for example. And believe me, that could happen. If you design the inside of the box, now I've seen magicians make big mistakes where inside of the box it's black, for example. When you look at black like that, you see nothing. You're not seeing empty, you're seeing nothing. If it's bright red or yellow or something or blue or whatever, you can sort of see the back of it, but it's still a massive color. Suppose you wanted to put stripes in there. Which way should the stripes go? This way or that way? If you wanted to give the illusion of depth, you mean? Well, I want them to be able to see to the back and know they're seeing the back without revealing anything. And imagine it working either way, but maybe vertical stripes would work better? No, if there's a false back in the box, that is, if it's actually forward more, because if the stripes are this way, they can do convergence on them. I'm talking about physiologically now and optically, but if the stripes are this way, they can't do that. So there is a preference. Again, this is not making a big point, but it's the kind of thing that we have to think about when we design these things. So with the horizontal stripes, you could make it look as if they're looking to the back of the box, but in fact the girls could be hypothetically standing behind. But they can see the box is empty because they can see the back of it, you see? Yeah, that's very, very interesting. Can you give me another example of a way in which magician on stage would exploit those kind of neurological assumptions people make in order to carry out an illusion? Addressing the audience, for example, the magician may put his hand in his pocket casually and chat with them and make a few jokes, perhaps. He may do that for a very good reason. Not because he's trying to get rid of something or get something from his pocket. He wants them to get used to the fact that he often addressed them by putting his hand casually into his pocket and then nodding at them and walking about the stage casually. Now, next time he puts his hand in his pocket, it may be to get or to get rid of something. So they've begun to accept that that's the way this man behaves. He does this sort of thing. So that's a good, well, neurological situation for you, if you wish. Yeah, so you habituate them to the elements of the trick, which are critical to the trick itself, but you don't want it to stand out. Give you a really good working example of that. Many years ago when I was just a tad, so well, I've always been this tall. Little guy and I went to the casino theater. I'll never forget it. I saw a Chinese magician who for years I've been trying to think of the name of and he was Chinese from China and I have not been able to refresh the memories of any of the magicians of today. They must have seen him because he did tour the United States and Canada, but he had a wonderful effect. He had a limp, first of all. He was a little gimpy, but he handled it very well and you saw that he had this problem with his gate and he would go around the stage, big smile, wonderful production of goldfish and every sort of wonderful animal and object. And he closed his show with a big extravaganza with all the girls on stage, some very statuesque young ladies, I'm going to say. With this gimp on it, you got sort of used to seeing him almost stumble about, not quite, but just a slight hesitation in his gate. And then they dressed in big headdresses and costumes, very flowery and his chief assistant came forward a statuesque blonde and she put on this lion head of some kind and with a big cape and bright gold colored costume and he was in a dark green costume with spangles all over it and he put on some other sort of dragon head and the two of them danced about on the stage and mixed in with the the rest of the crew and then they went down to the back of the stage, weighed out stage and then came forward. They marched forward holding hands and suddenly he lost his gimp and she picked it up and when they reached the front of the stage they took off the heads, that was the magician, that was the girl and they had changed costumes on the way somehow, changed position. But the gimp, when we saw him leave the theater after if he wasn't limping, that was entirely an act that he sold the audience on accepting that he was the one who was stumbled about the stage. And of course the the the reason why we are interested in this kind of thing both as skeptics and as magicians, the lesson here is that anyone could be fooled because we all have the same meat in our heads, the same the same hard wiring, the same processing and is that a technical term? Meat in your head? Yes, okay. We're all meat heads and therefore anyone could be fooled. We are not perfect processors of information, there's a lots of ways in which the way we perceive things and think about things is flawed and that can lead us to erroneous conclusions. Now magicians use that for entertainment by leading us to erroneous conclusions and then revealing something which then entertains us but of course psychics and frauds and charlatans can use the same tricks in order to exploit the innocent or exploit people and no one is beyond being fooled because we all have the same human neurology. Exactly and we have the same weaknesses and the same strength. I'm astonished, you have been astonished about this all of your life, but I'm astonished every time I discover something new that this hunk of gray jelly behind my ears will do or won't do because there are a lot of things that it won't do. But I'm rather satisfied at the age of 80. I guess I've learned a few things somewhere along the line. Steve I want to thank you for coming in today. It's a great pleasure to see you and your companions that came along with you. It was fun and we'll have to do this again sometime. Thank you Randy, always a pleasure. We thank you for watching this latest episode of James Randy Speaks. For more of James Randy and the Educational Foundation make sure you visit randy.org