Alex Stone

[00:00:01] Hey, everyone, this is Lynn Vartan and you are listening to the A.P.E.X Hour on KSUU Thunder 91.1 in this show, you get more personal time with the guests who visit Southern Utah University from all over. Learning more about their stories and opinions beyond their presentations on stage. We will also give you some new music to listen to and hope to turn you on to some new sounds and new genres. You can find us here every Thursday at 3:00 p.m. or it on the web at suu.edu/apex. But for now, welcome to this week's show. Here on Thunder 91.1.

Lynn Vartan [00:00:46] OK. Well, welcome in, everyone. It's Halloween 2019 here on campus. It's been really fun to watch everyone walking around in their costumes and for A.P.E.X, we're sort of celebrating Halloween in that we are celebrating the world of magic. I have magician and author Alex Stone here in the studio with me today. And he did his talk today based off of his book Fooling Houdini. So welcome into the studio, Alex.

Alex Stone [00:01:15] Hi. Happy Halloween.

[00:01:16] Yeah. Thanks so much for being here. I love your book and I'm so excited to be here and talking about it. And I hope everybody reads it because I just think it's fabulous. Everyone should read it. Absolutely. Well, you have such a fascinating story. And I know that the book tells a little bit about this. But just to kind of get our audiences a little bit more intrigued with your world. I'd love to just ask you a little bit about your background. I know that in your bio and to get started that your your introduction into magic came early and was a bit fraught. Can you tell us a bit about that first story?

[00:01:54] Well, my father bought me a magic kit when I was five years old. He was traveling through New York and he went to FAA shorts, the old toy store, and brought me back a magic kit. And I was instantly taking with it. My first live gig was at my own sixth birthday party. I was my own magician. But it did not go well. I was not really performance ready. I was heckled to tears and just brutally just ripped to shreds. Those kids were were were brutal. But I didn't give it up. I kept with it and largely thanks to my father's encouragement and well past the age at which it would be considered appropriate. And I still do magic to this day. But I actually got more into it. As embarrassing as it sounds, when I moved to New York and discovered as an adult this crazy subculture of magicians and and that's what kind of got me into it later on. What led me to ultimately write this book about this kooky world filled with these sort of brilliant eccentrics. And they also have a background in science. We can talk about that. But I also began to look at and become intrigued with the many connections between magic and science, especially psychology, but also mathematics and physics and whatnot and and merging those two instincts. Sorry, interest is actually what led me to write this.

[00:03:12] So when you when you moved to New York, I mean, the idea of writing a book probably wasn't that first thing. No. No. Why did you move to New York? Would tell me a little bit about the science background and how all that sort of links together?

[00:03:24] I moved to New York for a girl, dumped me like the week I got there. Oh, no. But also because I wanted to be a writer. Yeah. And so you always did want to be a writer. Yeah. I want to be like a writer. Journalist. And so I kind of moved in here for that as well. So my first job was actually teaching English. But then a little bit after that, I started getting jobs at magazines. And then eventually I landed at Discover, which was, yeah, a science magazine when I was a writer and editor there for many years.

[00:03:54] But your degrees are in science.

[00:03:57] So I have an English degree which has my Spanish relatives were quick to point out. Didn't you already speak English? And then I went to graduate school a bit later at Columbia for physics, and that's where I worked in an astrophysics lab studying the birth of the universe. I studied this thing called the cosmic microwave background. OK. So that is it's like the heat signature from the big bang. It's like imagine like a camera flash. You know how like it's like the after image of that. So really early on in the birth of the universe, nothing could escape. No light, nothing. Then about three thousand years or so after the big bang, you get the first light that escapes and it's everywhere. But no one actually discovered until the 60s these guys who were out there weren't even trying to find it. And it's in the microwave range. And then they found this light source that was coming from everywhere. And then turns out, oh, you know, no big deal, just the big bang. So a physicist, researcher to kind of understand why the universe looks like it does, why there's what's called structure, why there's galaxies here and nothing here. And so I worked in this lab that basically investigates that.

[00:05:04] So you had a job. You were doing all this stuff? Yeah. 

[00:05:10] So this is a cautionary tale. It's a spooky to think it's the perfect Halloween tale. Yeah. I mean, so I guess I kind of have a habit of letting my hobbies sort of take over and torpedo my life. I dropped out of school for a while to join a band once and now and then during this period, I got really obsessed with magic. And in my defense, magic is actually a lot more innovative and sort of dynamic than I think a lot of people might assume. It's really vibrant in terms of a community. It's almost like an avant garde art community. Rhymes of the. Of innovation, I guess initially I would have thought magic is kind of like the same eight tricks over and over again. But the truth is, like every day people are coming up with new effects or new takes on old effects. And magicians have even started holding tournaments and contests to sort of test each other's skill and try to fool each other. Yeah, one of the questions I get a lot is I can magicians, you know, be fooled. And the answer is they've made a sport out of it. There's even a magic Olympics in my years that where magicians get together and they hold in their different categories and they literally try to fool each other.

[00:06:25] And this is something, you know, about first hand.

[00:06:27] Right. So in 2006. Right. Sort of not long after I've kind of gotten involved in the in the magic world in New York and stuff. I competed at the Magic Olympics, which that year was in Stockholm, Sweden. And, you know, I didn't really know what to expect at the time. I was sort of cocky and was like, oh, I'm totally gonna drop this thing. And I went there. And what I discovered was that it's not unlike the regular Olympics. People have been preparing for this one five minute routine for years and years and years. I mean, literally, people have been working on like one routine. It's like bad the magic Olympics. It's like figure skating. You do a routine in front of judges and then they give you like a 1 to 10 ranking ranks of like that. And then then like there's seven categories at card magic, mentalism, stage magic that know it. It's very intense a whole week and in exhibition events. It's it's a blast. I really recommend it. And the next one is in Quebec City in 2022. Oh, great. I actually I say go. Yes, do it. It sounds like fun.  You can get your tickets now. They're on discount still. It's a blast. I mean, seriously, I will never forget the magic Olympics. But the good and the bad, the good being, the event itself, the bad being, my own performance. I was not prepared, not even remotely. And there's a rule at the Magic Olympics that says if you are within the first two minutes of your act deemed to be beneath the minimum skill level that every competitor should have, the judges will illuminate a red light of shame and you have to get off stage right away.

[00:08:06] So that happened to one performer and that was me. Oh, sorry. It was pretty it was pretty rough at the time. I have to say, I can laugh about it now.

[00:08:14] But I'm sure it felt terrible.

[00:08:16] Yeah, I mean, well, you know, it felt terrible. And I people walked up to me afterwards. One guy came up to me afterwards and he said, without even irony, he's without a trace of irony. Put his hand on my shoulder. And he said, don't worry. In 20 years, you'll laugh at this.

[00:08:32] Oh, my God. It was like I'd been diagnosed with cancer, obviously overnight. We were like, yeah. But I mean, it was really hard. But it was also, you know, made me appreciate just how much effort and skilled magicians put into their acts and and how magicians really are like coming up with new ways to fool each other. Like there's stories that there's all these great stories in the Magic Olympics. Like there's this one story about this magician by the name of Leonard Green, who is Swedish. He was a doctor who'd like fiddle around with cards. I guess I don't know if it was a very good doctor, but he's not known for that. But he entered the Magic Olympics one year in the card category and he was actually disqualified or got like zero points because the judges said his in his tricks were impossible to do with like a regular deck. So they accused him of using stooges in the audience, which is illegal and like using a trick deck. And so he didn't win. But it turns out that he had just invented all these crazy new sleight of hand techniques that no one had ever known before. And he just fooled them. He fooled them. Too bad he beat them so bad that they were like he cheated. So anyway, long story short is like he comes back three years later having more or less establish himself a little bit more. And I guess he gives them the deck to inspect and is now proving himself to be above board. He wins gold and now he's this legend who's put out like he's just he's known as either a TED talk, actually. He's really learned we'll look him up. Leonard Green. And he's really a genius. Cool. So I don't know. Things like that were really inspiring to me because I was like, oh, wow, there's a lot of innovation. There's all these new ideas and, you know, and and so that got me even more involved. And after getting my ass kicked. You guys, I asked him. I just I decide I'm going to try to really learn magic, get good at it and study not just the techniques and the craft, but also the psychology and the science and the history behind it, the philosophy of it, what it all means. Kind of like the science and the art.

[00:10:25] Yeah. And at what point did the book come into play? The book idea and the trajectory?

[00:10:32] After I actually competed because I wrote an article about it, the Olympics for Harper's. I got in a lot of trouble for that because I exposed some secrets in the article. And I remember not long after it came out I got a letter, the only piece of certified mail I've ever gotten. Yeah, from the Ethics Committee of the Society of American Magicians telling me that I was in violation of Article 6, Section B of the Code of Ethics said Exposed Secrets. Long story short that there was gonna be a trial. I had it all planned out. I was going to try to get like a lawyer. Yeah. You kind of fought back. Yep, I did. I did. And in the end, like we reached some agreement where I was like excommunicated from my local society. But I think I still managed to maintain like membership in my national society so that the secrecy thing is very serious. I mean, look up for those who've seen Arrested Development, the character Jobe is cutting close to reality. It's a lot truer than it isn't. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:30] So, you wrote for Harper. Yeah. And then did that sort of evolve into the book?

[00:11:34] Yeah. Sort of. Yeah. I think that was still a still at Discover and someone was like, hey, you know this is really interesting stuff. You should write a book about it. The article didn't come out until like I. I wrote it and then they sat on it for a while. Didn't come out until a couple of years after I wrote it. But after the Olympics. But it's almost like this is really interesting stuff. You should write a book about it. And then I was like, oh, it never occurred to me. And then I talked to someone and they're like, Yeah. And then I started to. That's kind of it. It kind of grew organically over time.

[00:12:02] And then the research that you did from there. But you did clown school. Yes, you did.

[00:12:09] I went to Vegas again. Yeah, I went to Beijing for the 2009 Magic Olympics. I went to Magic School. Like Hogwarts for grown ups. Basically, it was like this whole act. It was actually in LA, also in Vegas. It's magic school like you. And there are lots of schools. And there are actually more and other countries in the states. But this one was really cool. And you get a certificate and stuff like that. And I went to tons of conferences all over the world are so many lecture to like lecture events and workshops. And you went very far down the rabbit hole. But then I also, in addition to that, did a lot of research into the science of it and talked to psychologists and read a lot of books on psychology and neuroscience. And I investigated the math. Math of shuffling with a Professor Columbia. Yeah, I met the the world's one of the world's greatest card sharks. Who's actually legally blind. Yes. Which led me to investigate the science of touch and tactile sensitivity in how one's how our senses adapt when one is lost. Yeah. So it was a really kind of fun, sweeping adventure.

[00:13:25] It's amazing. And I tell you, the book is just so enjoyable. It really is that blend, as I was telling you earlier, just this wonderful conversational style humor, but yet so much hardcore history and science and just this great blend that just had me just completely engrossed the whole time. The book is called Fooling Who Dini and the author is Alex Stone, who is here in the studio with me. Well, it's time for a song. And of course, you know, I have some magic based songs, but I have some magic based songs. And then I have a non magic based song to play for you that also ties in to Alex's life and past. But first, we're going to play. Of course, one of the favorites and that is Abracadabra by the Steve Miller Band. You're listening. KSUU Thunder 91.1.

[00:19:09] OK. Welcome back, everyone. This is the A.P.E.X Hour and I am joined in the studio with magician and author Alex Stone. The song that you just heard was, of course, Abracadabra by the Steve Miller Band. Welcome back, Alex. Hi. So we've been talking about your book, which is called Fooling Houdini. I highly recommend it. And I want to ask you, people probably ask you this all the time, but there's a quote that in your book that I'd love to read that talks about the definition of magic. I mean, what is it really, you know? And that from your book is Magic at its core is about toying with the limits of perception. And as any neuroscientists will tell you, one can learn a lot about the brain by studying those bizarre moments wherein it succumbs to illusion. Magic lives in these moments at its best. Magic is a kind of psychological cage match. I love that. And I would love for you to just tell me maybe riff on that a bit about what is magic? What really is magic?

[00:20:08] Right. Yeah. I mean, it's a good question. I think that or at least what I was trying to get out there is that magic works because it exploits these little gaps in our perception that govern how we see the world all the time. So it's you know, it's a kind of deception for entertainment, but it really exploits fundamental psychological mechanisms like things like scientist have a name for these things in intentional blindness, for instance, the fact that even when you're looking right at something, you might not see it. If you're distracted, you know, there are experiments like the famous gorilla experiment. Right. Just Google that and you'll know what I'm talking about. And the pedestrian experiment where, you know, people don't notice when two people switch and there's this whole literature in psychology on cognitive illusions and biases. And these experiments are many of them are magic tricks done in a lab.

[00:21:07] And one of the things that you mentioned when you talk in the book about this is about, you know, how we're we're not really that great at our our focus or I'm not great about multitasking. I was curious what because I don't know that this is something that you've got to too much. What if somebody wanted to improve their receptiveness? Because I've been watching you interact with people all day. And I noticed that you look at everything you see. I feel like you see everything I've been watching. You observe everyone and watch everything and notice everything in the room. So that's something I think you probably worked on because you develop. If somebody wanted to develop that, what could they do?

[00:21:48] So, yeah, there are practiced ways of seeing, you know, any time you get better at something, you look you develop sensors that you didn't already have and you can improve your powers of observation. And there are experiments that people have done even on show showing that you can like improve at sort of attending to more than one thing at a time. I haven't think about it like if you're watching a basketball game, it's really easy to pay attention to the person with the ball, try paying attention to other people, you know, at the same time or I mentioned this in my books because I'm more of a classical music nerd like I like a lot of listen to a lot of Bach and you know, you of counterpoint. You have all these different voices and sometimes it's your ears. You want to listen to the sort of main voice, the melody, the melody. If you try to, like, listen to the bass, for instance, and you try to focus on that because it's harder to focus, there's a way in which you kind of hear everything simultaneously. Yeah, but the truth is, it's really hard to get very good at these things because it's so in our blueprint. And it's one of the reasons why even when you know how a magic trick is done, it can kind of still fool you a lot of times, even if it doesn't, even if you intellectually know how it done, how it's done, or even if you understand the principles of magic, you can still be fooled. And that's because it's it it really does take advantage of these fundamental things that have evolved over millions of years. And they're hardwired into our neural circuitry. How we're like we're very good at we're very good at focusing on one thing that's sort of one of our great achievements as a species is that we can focus on one task. But in order to be able to do that, you have to be able to suppress your awareness of other things. Right. And that's what makes us bad at multitasking and makes us easy in some cases to fool. But it's ultimately an asset. And I think that's one thing that's important to stress in a lot of the things that magicians exploit are kind of the flip side of these powerful human attributes.

[00:23:40] Right. And I know that you talk a lot about, you know, the our inability to multitasking and that that's why we shouldn't text or talk. Yeah, right. Ha. So that's I think that's a that that's a really fascinating thing. Do you think that we should not multitask? Are you do you actively practice not multitasking in all areas of your life?

[00:24:02] I'm a total hypocrite at this. I mean, I'm a bad I'm a bad multitasker, but I'm also just a nerd. Fidgety person, I do it all the time and I do it dreadfully like I literally I catch my rabbit every but every time I screw something up, I notice like almost every time I screw something up, it's because I'm trying to do too much at once. Yeah. So yes, I act like I actively like I have a thing on my computer that blocks the internet for four hours at a time so I can write. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I'll I'll I I have to figure I'm very easily distracted because I. Yeah. Because I can't otherwise. And I tried meditating when I can and I tried doing things that but I'm very aware of how bad I am at it. Whenever I try to do more than one thing at once, it usually or cooking like I'll be cooking and I'll be try hurry conversation and I'll I'll burn myself or I'll cut myself or I'll spill everything all over the place. Yeah. So but in this day and age I think we're it's such a we're so information saturated, you know, it's like an everything is always at our fingertips. It's so easy to to be doing too much at once. And I think that we're just not built for it. You know, our brains are designed for pedestrian speeds. Right. That's we evolved at a different world than we live in now, you know. Right. And and so I think that's part of why, you know, we're susceptible in some ways.

[00:25:20] Another thing that magic seems to be or at least seems to be linked to is a cheating or the other side of it. You know, the other side of stuff. And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how your opinions about how that what that really means. You know, what is magic in that more sort of insidious side of things.

[00:25:43] I mean, there's a long history of magicians cross pollinating with con artists and card cheats and gamblers and hustlers because many of the same techniques are used. You know, the same thing you can use to do a card trick can be used to cheat at a poker game. The same thing that might be used in the shell game to palm out the pea and scam people on the streets could be used in a at a magic show. And more generally, like hustlers and cheaters often intermingled with these people. And some of the great magicians learned and cut their teeth in these in this world. One of the people that I talked about in my book is this character, Richard Turner, who is one of the great card cheats in the world. And he's not a criminal. He's a very honest guy. But he's had offers from the mob and from people all over the place, been offered millions of dollars, offered to kill his wife for him. And he's got his crazy story low. The incredible thing about Richard is he's blind. Oh, my God. Blind as a child. And he does everything by touch. And I've seen him many times and I've gotten to know him. And he is truly one of the most incredible technicians when it comes to cards and false shuffles and second, third deals and cuts that I've ever seen. And it's truly amazing and inspirational. There's a really good movie about him actually called Dealt. Oh, cool. I recommend.

[00:27:01] Yeah, Dealt I want to check that out. Yeah, it's really amazing.

[00:27:03] But he, you know. So talking to him got me thinking a lot about the underworld of magic. And I also spent like a lot of time watching the three card Monte guys on the streets of New York who were- you see it less and less each year. But when I was doing my research, they were still around on Canal Street. And I mean, I saw people lose five hundred thousand dollars at a time. Oh, my God. All cash, you know, a hundred bucks a pop. And it got me thinking about just how well how good these guys were at their job. I had a hard thing to do to convince someone to pay, to play a scam. And the sort of thing I I kind of came up with or what I realized is it's not that they convinced the person that it's not a scam. It's more that they convinced them that it is a scam, but that they can write themselves into the con and the cheater. Right. But anyway, back to Richard. Richard is an amazing guy. And that got me thinking about because he does everything by his sense of touch. And he's so good that he was hired by the US playing card company to be their touch analyst and they would send him decks of cards like whenever they would do like a new deck of cards and he would feel them and he could tell if they were just off by like a million like but not even a millimeter or a fraction of a millimeter could tell Intel he can you can put a stack of cards in his hands and he can tell you how many are there. I've seen him do it. It's insane. And that got me thinking a lot about, you know, we've often heard that when you lose one sense, the others rally to fill the gap. And he's an example of this. And it turns out there's a literature on this on how blind people, especially the earlier they've go blind, the more sensitive their touches. They're hearing perfect pitches, more common among blind. Right. Right. And there's a neuroscience underlying this, which is a fairly recent discovery called Cross Modal Plasticity, which is a fancy word for when one does the crazy thing. Actually, they've they found that when blind people use their sense of touch on the part of the the part, the visual cortex, the part of the brain that normally processes idea is active in them. Oh, wow. And this is something that was thought to be impossible a generation ago because it was thought that once that sense died or was no longer there that. Part of the brain just sort of stop. Stop. We're actually what's going on here. The sense is that the visual cortex is kind of being recruited by the the tactile, tactile reaction. And in a way, and it's quite literally like they're seeing with their fingers. That's amazing. Yeah. And so it's just this beautiful example of how how the brain, how miraculous and magical the brain is.

[00:29:32] I love it. Thank you for sharing that. Well, you mentioned the music and I think that I read that there's some music in your background. You were a pianist. I think.

[00:29:41] I studied piano starting when I was eight years old. And I took, what, classical piano lessons for basically 10 years until I graduated high school. And then I also played in a band for a while also. And I yeah, I was I loved music. I still do. I don't play that much anymore. I wish I did.

[00:30:00] But yeah, well, you just mentioned earlier that you were listening to some some Bach to sort of develop perception. You know, in listening to the difference between the melody and the harmony and all that. So, of course, it's time for another music break. So I happen to know that you in your book you mentioned you particularly like the John Williams recordings of the Boston suite. Huge John Williams guy. It's amazing. Yeah.

[00:30:24] So we're going to listen to one of the movements I have Lute suite number three in G Minor by Bach. And this is performed by John Williams. This is the A.P.E.X Hour. You're listening to KSUU Thunder 91.1.

[00:33:39] All right. Well, welcome back, everyone. This is the A.P.E.X Hour you're listening to KSUU Thunder 91.1. I'm Lynn Vartan and I'm here with Alex Stone. Welcome back. Alex is the author of Fooling Houdini, just a great book about magic, about mental illness, about the cognitive powers of the mind. And yeah, you can check it out. Do you have a Web site also that you'd like to share with us?

[00:34:02] Yeah, it's under construction. OK.

[00:34:06]  But also I have like an author page on Facebook. Alex Stone. I'm also on Instagram. And I think it's. I'm Alex Stone.

[00:34:14] Great. OK, me. Cool. Yeah. Well, check out the book. It's really fun. I'd love to continue our conversation about magic by talking about. And I think that as a lay person, I didn't really understand that there were so many different kinds of magic. And reading your book, you start talking about some of these different stage magic close up magic card magic. This I don't know. Can you share with us a little bit?

[00:34:38] Yes. There's a ton of different types. I mean, so the. OK. So the basic breakdown usually falls into two big camps. One is the stage magic, which is the David Copperfield stuff like the you know, the song The Person in Half and you know, the big box illusions close. The Magicians kind of derisively call them box pushers. And then there's close up magic, which is the stuff that's done usually at close range cards, coin, string rope, things like that. But even within that, there's a lot of overlap, but also breakdowns. You know, there's manipulation, which is called like which is like the magic where, you know, you're doing a lot of like producing dubs and cards and technical sort of stuff. That's like flourishes almost. It's almost like juggling on steam. And that's called manipulation. Yeah. Usually call manipulation. And it's it's like the ones where you'll see someone like producing card after card after card after card. It's extremely technical. It's almost like the sort of like gymnastics. And then in close up magic, there is, you know, magicians who specialize in like gambling style tricks. Then there's people who specialize and limitations. Then there's, you know, the people who just do coin magic, like, ah, the great coin magicians who innovate figure out new places to hide coins and all that. And then there's mentalism which can be done both on stage and up close. Mentalism is the branch of magic that involves things like mind reading and spoon bending and psychic phenomena.

[00:36:08] So spoon bending is included in mentalist. That's the I always find that a little unusual.

[00:36:14] That's right. Yeah, that's a good point. Like, why is it there? It's because it's like a mind over matter thing. And I think the key. Well, really, I think the key distinction is that a lot of mentalism doesn't look like magic or at least is not presented as magic. Like it's all I can figure out information about you or I can. I know what word you're thinking of. Right. I know what you're like. I can, you know, commune with your dead relatives or things like that. And a lot of times it's passed off. It's passed off in a different context. People have bent spoons and said this is real and gotten famous and rich off of it. In the same way that they've said that they can find oil or water or, you know, and but it's it's all part of the same thing. So the reason why it's called mentalism is because it's like, oh, they're bending it with their mind. I mean, really, it's a magic trick. Rank and learn how to do it in magic books at a magic store. But the literature is in the mentalism realm and it's the people who do it tend to be the same ones who might say, like here, write down, you know, something on piece paper and I'll figure out what the word is or, you know, let me do some or a personality reading. These are the same techniques that are often used in like psychics and horoscopes and things like that. And sometimes people pass it off as as real.

[00:37:30] And then mentalism side of things seems to flirt with the line of ethics.

[00:37:36] Quite a very large with it and oftentimes definitely like I would say, violates it. Yeah. And there's a long history of this actually likes Houdini. For instance, before he was famous, he was. He actually was a fake medium. He would go to towns and like figure out who'd recently died and do these readings, you know, and claimed to talk to dead relevance. There's a huge business back then. And then he felt really bad about it later. And then he spent a large portion of his life debunking spiritualists and spirit mediums, which during that period were huge, huge, huge, huge. Like people would go town to town doing these spirit shows because he was really angry about it. And and also because he after his mother died, he was like he wanted to believe that there was an afterlife. But then when he didn't see proof of it. But you still have that hope because he gave his wife a secret word. And after he died, he said, have a science every year on Halloween. And I'm going to try to communicate to you. And if you hear this word and now the Houdini say out of every Halloween is like a thing among magicians. Oh, wow. But there are people who who use it to trick people, magicians or they couch it some. Times and like some pseudo science of like suggestion or psychology. And yes, there is obviously psychology involved, but oftentimes they'll couch it in like a pseudo scientific language when what it really is, is, is that is basic. It's not that different from a card trick. It just looks different and sort of, you know, it's dressed as lamb, if you will. And. Yeah, and and and but then there's this whole tradition of magicians being skeptics and deep like the James Randi, for instance, he's the magician who would you know, he had a challenge that no one could demonstrate psychic phenomenon. It offered a million dollars anyone who couldn't under controlled conditions. And so there's this interesting dual tradition of magicians kind of exploiting people and using their tricks for evil and then magicians also using their knowledge of how these tricks can be used to protect people and to debunk frauds. Yeah. That that aspect of it is really fast and. Yeah, I think so, too. There's even a psychic investigation committee as part of the site's Society of American Magicians alone investigates like it phenomenon.

[00:39:38] I love it. One other thing I wanted to ask you about was about the future of magic. You know, all of your experience and research and and the characters that you know and the generations that all around the world that you've been exposed to in magic. What do you have any comments or any thoughts about the future of magic?

[00:40:00] Yeah, it's a good question, because I think about what the big thing if you ask magicians, the big thing is the Internet. Right, because. Magicians, every magician now has like a story about they do a show and then some D bag in the show holds up their phone and is like, here's how you do it. You know, I can't believe people do that. So, yeah. So, you know, you didn't find out how a lot is done on the Internet. And so there were a lot of magicians who were worried about, you know, is the Internet going to try magic? But I would argue that it's actually been really good for magic. It certainly has. I mean, there are disadvantages like that in that case, but like in the case of, you know, people exposing tricks during a show. But I think it's also allowed for ideas to be transmitted and traded a lot more. And I think that has driven innovation. And it's maybe forced magicians get a more creative thought, easier to learn magic now than it's ever been before. It used to be that you had to I mean, there were books obviously there's been I think there's more books by Magic than other like any other form of theater. But it used to be a much more of an oral tradition. You had to go to your you know, what I learned was through books. And then also just like going to my magic store and hanging out with the old guys at the pizzeria in New York and learning off. Yeah. Like little you learning at the feet of these old mentors. Now, I think, you know, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of videos online where you can learn. So I think that's actually kind of a good thing because I think I know it's nice that it's easier and more accessible. I don't think exposure has ever really been a threat to magic still exists. It's still popular. There's still movies about it. It's never going to be that kind of dominant form of entertainment that it was in the Victorian era. Right. It's just not because there's movies and music and Instagram. But I do think that the fact that you're you can still hold someone's fascination with a card trick or a coin trick. Now, in an age of CGI and these incredibly high tech, everything tells me that it's. Tapped into something very elemental about us that I think is timeless.

[00:42:03] I love that. Well said. Well, we have one more song that I wanted to get to. And this is an album that I just found. I don't know when it was made, but it's an album by Annie Lennox called Nostalgia where she- It's a bunch of covers. And this cover is the song I Put A Spell On You keeping with my magic theme, which is that Nina Simone's song. But check out Annie Lennox is version of it and see what you think. This is KSUU Thunder 91.1.

[00:45:55] Welcome back, everyone, to the A.P.E.X Hour. We're just having a good time here in the studio. That song was such a cool version of the Nina Simone. I put a spell on you and that version you heard was by Annie Lennox and I'm really into it on. The songs you heard today were Abracadabra by Steve Miller Band, one of the movements from Luke's suite number three in G Minor by Bach, performed by John Williams. And then I put a spell on you, the Annie Lennox version.

[00:46:22] All right. We have just a couple of minutes left. And I'm going to ask Alex Stone, author and magician, author of Fooling Houdini, a book that everybody should definitely check out. I loved it. But, Alex, I'm going to ask you one of the questions that I ask guests all the time. And the question is, what's turning you on this week? And it could be anything. It could be at a movie. It could be a TV show. Could be food. It could be a book. It could be a song. Could be anything but just something for us to get to know you a bit better. So, Alex Stone, what's turning you on this week?

[00:46:53] So this has nothing to do with magic, but I actually just watched comedian Gary Goldman's HBO special, The Great Depression. Oh, and it's a comedy. Gary Gulman is brilliant comedian. And I've always been a big fan of his. But I didn't really know his whole history with mental illness and depression. And he did this special about it on HBO. And it's very funny, but it's also just brilliant and moving and honest and brave and candid in the way it deals with depression and mental illness. He had a very, very he struggled very, very much like terribly with depression and anxiety and was unable to work for many years now. And he's turned it into this very this incredibly meaningful, heartbreaking, but also hilarious show. And I just encourage anyone who has any interest in comedy or the human condition to watch it, because he just he has an angle on it. That's really interesting. And I don't think there's a lot of people who've talked about it in this way and especially not on stage. You know, as a standup comedian, it's hard to take something like that that's tragic and make it funny and find meaning and beauty in it. And he really does that. Oh, cool. I'm going to check it out. As he watched it twice. And what was the title? It's called the Great Depression. And the comedian in Gary Gulman. All right. And his comedy in general is fantastically his all his comedy is great. I highly recommend it. But this special, I think was produced by Judd Apatow. And this special in particular is just it's something special. I think it really elevates comedy to a kind of a level of sort of, I don't know, philosophical. Yes. And it's it's beautiful and funny and sad. And really great.

[00:48:40] Thank you so much for sharing. And I'm excited to check it out. Well, that pretty much takes us to the end of our time today. We've been listening to Alex Stone. The book is called Fooling Houdini. Alex, thank you so much for sharing your magic and your stories and just all of your knowledge with us. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. It was really fun.  Happy Halloween, everyone. We'll see you next time.

[00:49:05] Thanks so much for listening to the A.P.E.X Hour here on KSUU Thunder 91.1. Come find us again next Thursday at 3 p.m. for more conversations with the visiting guests at Southern Utah University. And new music to discover for your next playlist. And in the meantime, we would love to see you at our events on campus to find out more. Check out suu.edu/apex. Until next week. This is Lynn Vartan saying goodbye from the A.P.E.X Hour here on Thunder 91.1.