#679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder

26:45And you could just say that, or you could use the blah, blah technique that we talked about last week. And then he took a seven of diamonds, waved it on the table, and it changed like right 10 inches in front of me into a king of clubs. And this was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen in my entire life. It was just like reality broke down in front of me. Everything I knew about life and physics and blah, blah, blah. It was just this transcendent consuming moment. And I sort of made semi-incoherent noises of like, wait, what the heck? And Brian, not realizing I hadn't been turning up so far, quote unquote, reminded me, oh, the blah, blah technique like this from last week where you do this and this.

27:29And so in seconds, I went from being profoundly, transcendently amazed to seeing how it was done. And it was like, whose quote is it? Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand. Archimedes. Archimedes, yeah. It felt like that. It was this revelation that from this not easy, but simple technique, you could do the most profoundly, transcendently amazing thing I'd ever seen in my life. And the implication of the leverage of that was just extraordinary. It's like discovering that You can sort of poke a table and power the entire city with the energy of that poke. It was just, I was so fascinated and just started going to that club every week and just became completely intrigued by what is this art and craft and what the hell?

28:10And the motivation was purely understanding. It was just knowledge seeking. I just want to understand this thing I'd seen. Yeah. If you see something amazing intrinsically, I want to understand it and learn more about it. So that's where you got your first hit of magic dope. Oh yeah. Oh, it's a powerful drug. All right, so you get that hit. And the way I want to play this is I'd love to flash way forward, and then we're going to fill in some of the gaps along the way. I like it. I can see the screenplay now. Exactly. I'm writing the screenplay in my head as we go. I've already bought your life rights.

28:45I hope you don't mind. It's fine. I wasn't doing anything with them. Yeah, you signed the release, right? I wasn't doing anything good with them. All right. the name of the show that i saw at the magic castle what is it glitches in reality glitches in reality all right so glitches in reality setting the stage i've never heard your name before but elan says trust me i'm not sure if we can get space but if we can get a seat you need to come and i take that very seriously he's an enthusiastic guy but he's not a bullshitter and I wanted to move anything and everything necessary to come to the show just based on pure faith.

29:27Landed the show and Jordan was kind enough to also get a spot for a friend of mine who had never been to a magic show, which will be relevant shortly. Rule number one, unless you only ever want to go downhill, do not go to Simon's show first as your only magic show. You should just quit while you're ahead in that case and we go in my favorite magic not that i have much vocabulary much experience but as a spectator as an awe seeker but also a truth seeker maybe we'll come back to that at some point i love anything that is reasonably close up just like the card changing in front of you 10 inches from your face completely and by far the best magic show i've ever seen.

30:11So I want to say that publicly, number one. And we can parse out why that is the case. But the combination of wonder, explanation, surprise, and also for me, your ability to showcase almost a decathlon of magic in terms of, to my muggle mind, a wide breadth of different skills, if that makes any sense. Yeah, completely. And when you, towards the end, began to set up and tell the story of FISM, and we're going to come back to that, Elon almost ejaculated in his pants. I don't know how else to put it, and I don't want to make too strong a case, but I thought he was either having a seizure or ejaculating.

31:03I wasn't sure, maybe both. he was so excited because you guys are friends and he had told me that after the world championships which we'll get to in a moment he thought you may never perform this trick and we'll get to what this trick is yeah ever again and it was one of the most spectacular mind-bending things i've ever seen in my life. Thanks. You're welcome. Could you please tell the story of the world championships? Oh boy. And I know there are a million ways this can be told and guess what? They're all good. Yeah. So how many hours have you got? We have all the time. I'm still working out how to tell this story because again, there are so many ways it can be told.

31:49Let's start with a short version and then you can unpack, request unpacking any bits you think are relevant. And maybe, do you mind if I make this participatory journalism? Sure. And I'll give people just a snapshot from the screenplay. Absolutely. I defer to your expertise. All right. The sort of in-media res, we start in the middle of the action. And so to set the stage, pun intended, you can correct me on some of the particulars, but you're being judged by your peers at this event. they are watching magic all day long you are close to the end you perform your trick and then invite people up to inspect your work if they don't believe it's real and it effectively shuts down the venue because there is a rush of 2 ,000 plus people to the stage to inspect this to the extent that it becomes a problem for the organizers it becomes a safety risk it's just the ultimate magical mic drop no one had ever seen anything like it yeah okay now you can start wherever you the only small correction i'd make to that i mean it wasn't quite 2 000 people it was a lot it was hundreds of hundreds of people but the thing that made it even more powerful for me personally was that i didn't actually invite them up what happened was i had one person on stage who gets given the thing that is created and they then go back to their seat i'm I'm like, thank you very much.

33:22You know, you get to keep that. That now gets to linger in the world. And I just went, cool, thanks, bye, and just left the stage. I'm like, thank God that's over. Oh, my God, that was so stressful. We did it. We got there. And then I was just backstage decompressing going, oh, God, thanks. Oh, man, so glad that's over. Finally, I can relax. For months, I've been looking forward to this moment where I can finally stop stressing. Then a friend comes backstage and goes, you should come look at this. I'm like, what? He goes, just come look. And I walk out, and I see that this mob has gathered, like spontaneously.

33:52It wasn't even invited. I didn't expect this would happen. That makes it even better. Yeah. I'm just like, oh my God. Holy. Yeah.

34:01Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. These days, every new potential hire can feel like a high stakes gamble for your small business. So you want to be 100 % certain that you have access to the most qualified candidates. That's why you should check out LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the right people for your team faster and for free. Add your job and the purple hashtag hiring frame to your LinkedIn profile to spread the word that you're hiring. Simple tools like screening questions make it easy to focus on candidates with just the right skills and experience so you can quickly prioritize who you'd like to interview and hire.

34:38It's why small businesses rate LinkedIn Jobs number one in delivering quality hires versus leading competitors. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to faster. So post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Tim. That's linkedin.com slash Tim to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

35:00So as a kid, I was not particularly happy. I was not having a great time growing up. Nothing super horrifying, but I just didn't fit in. Again, I now know neurodivergent, that tends to not be a good time if you don't know that and you're a kid in a normal sort of area. and I realized I was always interested. I figured this out in hindsight. This was looking back. I saw the pattern. I was interested in stuff that involved kind of breaking out of reality, like ESP and aliens and the X-Files and space exploration and quantum physics and science fiction and just ways that life felt just so mundane and uninspiring and gray and dreary and just ugh.

35:38And all those things for different reasons weren't accessible to me. Australia didn't have a space program, so I couldn't be an astronaut. Quantum physics was real but too hard. hypnosis was real but not that interesting to me aliens don't seem to be real sadly as far as i can tell who knows there was just no way i wanted out of reality i wanted life to be more extraordinary and so when i saw this magic club and i saw this card trick at age 18 it was the first time in my life that it felt like again there was like a crack in reality that i could sort of see something brighter and more extraordinary through and again i only realized this like a decade later looking back and trying to make sense of the path.

36:15It only becomes clear in hindsight. So it makes sense now. I got so captivated by magic. It was the first time I could kind of engage with that, with something more extraordinary and that altered state of consciousness that was profound. And so I became obsessed, but again, I wasn't particularly gifted at it. There was no apparent natural talent, but I loved it so much that I kept going despite the absence of natural talent. And as we know, that's what tends to make a difference is if you love it enough to stick with it and enjoy the process with no thought as to the destination, which will become a theme as well, I think.

36:46And so then fast forward a bunch of years, I'm working full time at a graduate job, which I don't really like, but it's good experience. And some of the people there were great and I'm glad I did it, but I didn't really fit in. It wasn't really... What was the job? I worked for Accenture, a big business consulting company. And again, I met some great people there, shout out to Grant and Thomas and Jackie and everybody else. But it wasn't really my thing. It didn't play to my strengths. It played to a lot of my weaknesses, which I didn't really understand at the time. And the magic was continuing to grow in the background as a real passion, but there wasn't really a sense I could ever do that professionally.

37:18I didn't see much of a market for it where I lived. And I started to sort of win little competitions locally, which was amazing. This was the first time I displayed any sort of noteworthy skill at anything, which was kind of addictive. It's a good feeling. We want to feel significant and competent at things. And I hadn't mostly in my life. How did you decide to participate in your first competition? It was a thing, a guy called Nigel McCullough in Melbourne, a magician, ran a little one-day magic convention, a get-together just to have a bunch of workshops and shows, called Melbourne's Magic Malarkey in 2001.

37:50And it had this close-up magic competition. And at the time, I can't remember why, I think I'd read something or just this idea that it's worth trying things even if they fail because you gain experience from it. And again, at the time, this was a new idea to me because I was young and everything. thing. And I went, yeah, you know what? Why not? You know, step into the arena, you know, try a thing. There was 0 % chance in my mind that I had a shot at it. And I ended up winning it, partly because, again, the thing with competitions, it's often who turns up on the day. For sure. And also the theme that I've often not really realized how what I'm doing will be experienced or perceived by others.

38:27Again, neurodivergency. Well, we talked about this. I don't want to take you off track, so keep your place. But But even before we started, I was asking you if you had any greatest hit stories or stories that were really well received by the audience. And I'm paraphrasing it, but that's not a superpower that I have in terms of identifying what will be interesting to other people. So that's my job. I've frequently been surprised by what people have and haven't found resonant. So I enter and I unexpectedly win. And I go, holy shit, very unexpected. And so that was the first sort of sense I got that maybe I'm kind of onto something here.

39:02Maybe I've got something I'm doing that's working. That's kind of exciting. So I kept starting to enter other competitions. And also I learned from it. It's great to have a deadline. It's great to have a challenging, slightly healthy, stressful thing to work towards. So I kept sort of doing that. I found competitions useful as a way to grow. And I kept winning little ones locally, which was really gratifying. And then fast forward a few years of this and still working full time at the job, doing magic on the side and on weekends, often when exhausted from 12 hour days at a big corporate job, and then going out to like open mics to grind in material and try and get experience and workshop things and just burning the candle.

39:37It was just like holding the candle in the fire with tongs, not even more than both ends. I was just really burning out, but I was so excited. I needed to make a living and still chase this passion. Again, with no thought that it was going to be a profession or anything at this point. It was just like, I just loved it intrinsically. It was fascinating. And then 2009, so the Magic World Championships, the SING-FISM, which stands for something in French that we can get into or not. It's basically a way to think of it is like imagine like the UN of magic clubs. And again, magic clubs, professional organizations for technicians, designers who try to create the illusions of impossibility, right?

40:12That's the way to think of magic, special effects design, but live and in some ways more powerful. And so organizations where these people get together and workshop and talk and exchange ideas, some of those then affiliate with FISM, which is French for International Federation of Magic Societies. that began in like the 50s as a way to kind of like try to unite, like to make some international collaboration, which is a really healthy, nice thing. And it's like any organization, there's politics and there's a bunch of bullshit, but mostly it's a really good thing overall. And the main thing they run is every three years, they have a big competition that is kind of the de facto Magic World Championships as a way to kind of, I think of it as, to paraphrase Rick and Morty, every three years FISM says to the world of magic, show us what you got.

40:56right and the world of magic shows what it's got and it's always got something cool and also a lot of stuff that sucks and everything in between and in 2009 it was going to be in china for the first time ever it's mostly been in europe throughout its history it's always in a different city around the world and i ended up with the opportunity to be the only australian entrant because clubs get given entry slots pro-rata based on membership and australia has a very small population and so again getting those critical masses is very hard in australia and it's one of the reasons i eventually came to the US to seek more people and more inspiration.

41:28There are plenty of really cool people there, but again, the critical mass just isn't there as much. And I went, oh my God, the prospect to who gets the chance to represent their country at the world championships of anything, particularly a kid who didn't really have much he felt he was talented at. This was extraordinary and terrifying and all the things. And so I did it and much like kind of Rocky, I just wanted to compete and not embarrass myself and my country. That was the goal. Just to compete at a world stage was already more than I'd ever imagined. And I ended up, worked for over a year on preparing the routine and getting ready for the competition and ended up tying for third prize in the close-up magic category, which was so far beyond what I'd imagined.

42:11I think about that thing that the bronze medalist is often happier than the silver medalist. Totally. The silver medalist missed out on gold, the bronze medalist missed out on having nothing. You know who's even happier than the bronze medalist? Who's that? The person who tied for bronze. Because maybe fourth place was a long way below you. But when you tie for third, you are a hair's breadth from nothing. You just squeaked into something. And I was ecstatic, and it was amazing. And very quickly, I realized that I was like, oh my God, I've made it. This is incredible. And then it did nothing for my career or life in any way whatsoever.

42:44So that band-aid got ripped off pretty quickly, which was probably healthy in hindsight. there was the moment where the Chinese media came up and I was there with a friend who'd won second prize in his category. And we were going, Oh my God, this is amazing. The Chinese media come up and go, you are, you are prize winners. And we're like, yeah, thinking, yes, this is awesome. We're going to be famous now. And they go, Oh, what did you win? I go, I tied for third in closeup magic and Charlie here came second in parlor magic. And they went, uh, not first. I'm like, Oh no. But like, and then they just, Oh, sorry.

43:15And left. it's like i don't i don't think we got 15 minutes of glory before just the cold water was dumped on us which is the shortest route from exuberance to just oh charlie brown walk away from the room so that happened that happened then in 2012 three years later i enter again it's now in the uk this time and the very short version of that very long story is i prepare a different routine again for over a year. And I find out about two weeks before the competition that a big chunk of what I'm planning to do isn't going to work. Now, normally what you would do is pull out of the competition at that point or try and find something else to replace it and come with something.

43:58I possibly naively stupidly chose the latter. Turns out I'm not a quitter. Once we're doing it, we're doing it. And it was insane. I am still kind of astonished. You could call it Legal Insanity that went for it, worked with an amazing group of people, friends, shout out to Dave and Yao and YC and everybody in Melbourne who helped with that and all the names I'm now forgetting in the moment and somehow got something adequate over the line. And it ended up winning the award for most original close-up act, not best close-up act, but most original, which isn't necessarily the same. And I think it was because in that insane pressure cooker of having to come up with something, I came up with something so bizarre and unusual out of just sheer brute force necessity of what can we do with what's available.

44:46There wasn't any time to develop any sort of good polished methods. We had to just use some bizarre stuff and just decide, you know what, I don't even know if this is going to work, but let's try it. And miraculously, it did work, barely. Like I still watch the video of that and just, oh God, the amount of things that almost went wrong but failed to is still insane. Somehow it got across the line and got this originality award, which again, I hadn't expected. I hadn't been aiming for originality. I'd just been aiming to not shit the bed in front of 2000 people. That was a hundred percent of my goal at that point of like, oh God.

45:18Sometimes close bedfellows, pun intended. Right. Exactly. There's still this amazing photo somewhere of me on stage in 2012, accepting this award with this completely bemused expression on my face. I'm elated but just surprised by the last thing I saw coming. And so that happened. And the idea that I threw together at the last minute that came to me at like 4 a.m. while stressed out and vaguely panicked was I'd always been obsessed with this idea of can you take this fleeting transcendent instant of wonder and somehow preserve it into something physical and tangible that lengthens that moment, lets you sit in that space longer because I love that space.

45:59That space is powerful and life-changing. And the idea was, what if you did an act where you create one of these things live? Because these things exist, but you see the finished result, but not the process. And what if you could create the illusion of it being created instantly so a piece of the act then lingers beyond the end of it into the world? And that was the idea. And in 2012, I did this first kind of very rough, janky, thrown together, seat of the pants version of it that was not good, but worked. And I loved the idea. And I also then gave up on magic competitions because they're great.

46:33They serve a purpose. But at the time I was trying to have a career, I'd now quit my full-time job to go full magic, which I don't necessarily recommend, but has been going, okay, we'll come back to that. And I was trying to make a career. I was trying to find a way to make a living, which is often the opposite of art and creativity, sadly, not always, but sometimes. And this idea of this, like, creating the impossible object in the act, I didn't see any commercial potential to it. It was so high touch, so much setup, played so small. And I'm like, I love this, but I need to shelve this and work on something else.

47:03But it nagged at me. It ate away at me. And putting effort into magic competitions, I wasn't seeing any career payoff to that at the time. So I went, you know what? I've got to focus on actual getting gigs, earning money, shelve the competitions and the creative projects. and for 10 years that stayed that way until in 2019 again this still this is the short version highly highly abbreviated yeah this is the incredibly abbreviated story i started ended up in jigsaw puzzle design separate story we'll get to and left magic as a profession which was really liberating because i love magic i love it as an art it's a horrible business to be in like most of the arts the comedians know the jugglers know all the variety entertainers know the actors know, most of the musicians know it's rough, it's brutal, it's hard.

47:51And a lot of my weaknesses were very relevant. My strengths didn't play well. My weaknesses were very hindering, and I found it really hard to build a career. And so when the prospect of getting into creative product design came up, work on a thing with a good team of people, put it into the world, and have it scale passively in the background, not completely passively, was amazing. And you don't have to turn up to be earning the money. And also being a magician is like being unemployed. Every gig is often a once-off. So you're constantly having to hustle and hustle for the next gig. And I'm not great at that.

48:24So quit magic full-time. I'm like, great. It's now a hobby. Ah, glorious. I can just do the bits I'm excited by and passionate by. And then the pandemic happened and all kinds of crazy stuff happened. And it was a weird time for everybody. And during that time, the 2022 Magic Championships was coming up. And I just went, great, this is awesome. I'm a hobbyist amateur magician now. I can just go and hang out. It doesn't matter. There's no stress. And then I realized that I know myself now. I'm going to enjoy it more if I'm... I'll always pick creating over consuming. If you have no choice. It's more rewarding.

48:59You got to get that, you know, that little garnish of trauma, right? That little... Yeah, really feel it. It's like the spicy chili or the bitter coffee. Like, oh, you feel it. You know you're alive. and I thought well I could do maybe get booked to do a show there's all kinds of events and then I remembered that 2012 routine that kind of very janky version of a really beautiful idea that I'd loved and worked on I went you know and I'd been thinking about that ever since in weak moments I would sort of work on bits of a version of an idea on how to fix it and improve it and they go no no I shouldn't be working on this I should be working on my career and then a year later I'd be like oh I think I have another idea on how to solve this problem.

49:37And I kept trying to find it kept not being solvable. It was one of these impossible problems. And then in that lockdown, hiding out in the Midwest in 2021, away from everything and all the insanity and the chaos. And I was like, I think I finally have the last piece of it. This is not quite the right analogy, but having the idea and actually actualizing it, executing it, as our buddy Derek Sivers says, ideas and execution is so different. And I was like, I think I can do this, but it's going to take months of work to even test it to find out. And the way the Magic Championships works is the year before they have regional continental qualifiers.

50:13They're the North American, the South American, the Asian, the European, the African, and the Oceanian mini championships. The North American Championships was coming up in about six months. And I went, you know what? I need a deadline to make my brain hyper-focus. I'll enter that. It'll be small. This was still during lockdown. It was post-vaccine. scenes, but still in lockdowns. It won't be very well attended. If I can't get this idea together and it shits the bed, it'll only shit the bed in front of a relatively small audience. And if it doesn't shit the bed, I'll know, all right, I've got something and I have a year to really work on it to make it good.

50:46I went, great. Low stress, just high enough stress to do it. And so I spend the next six months in crunch mode going, okay, let's take a swing at this. Let's see if I can bring this thing to life. And I work like a maniac. I go into full workshop rehearsal, testing theory mode. And I go to the North American championships again, just to kind of see if this thing's got legs or not. I don't really know yet. I don't know what I've got or not. And I win the whole thing. I become the North American close-up magic champion. And once again, I'm shocked. I'm completely surprised. I did not see this coming.

51:17And I go, oh, I guess it does have legs. Oh shit. Okay. All right. We got something here. And then, how much do you know about when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, what happens inside the chrysalis? I'm going to go with very little. Okay. Just so I don't get caught. As the emperor with no clothes. I also am not a biologist. Was it an entomological biologist? This is one of the most amazing things I've learned about the natural world. You would think that the caterpillar maybe changes shape a bit, then sprouts wings and now it's a butterfly. Turns out the caterpillar basically liquefies into primordial sludge.

51:52with small chunks of neural matter still in there. And then from that primordial soup, the butterfly then just basically grows into its full form, which is astounding. And it retains memories and experience through this process. And they've done scans of this to see that this is what happens, which is one of the most, again, magical in the sense of seems impossible, turns to sludge and then reforms into a completely different organism. And I realized in the months I was working before the real championship that at the North American championships, I felt like I had, I'd won the prize for like best caterpillar in show.

52:27And I'm like, this thing's great. Great caterpillar. Oh my God, what a caterpillar. Damn. But I had this hunch that I think this thing could fly. I think this thing might be able to grow wings. Like maybe. And that meant it had to turn into sludge. And there's a lot of people who can relate to that creativity. And so for the next like eight months, I went to the Magic Castle because one of the best things about that place is it has these areas where magician members can go and do little impromptu shows for whichever public members are around. It's hard to find open mics. You need places to test stuff.

52:59You only get good by doing and experiencing. And that's hard to find for most variety arts, magic included. And it's one of the reasons I live near the place. and I went there on quiet nights because to get the routine to this better place, I had to kind of break it and test out these things that you can only test them in front of people. You need an observer's mind is where the magic happens. And it wasn't good and it was awkward and it was uncomfortable and I hated it. And I would wait till there were just like three people rather than gathering a big crowd to get good energy. I'd be like, ah, no, I don't want anyone to see it sucking while it's in this crappy phase and just went there night after night just again and again.

53:35It was brutal and it was unpleasant, but slowly wove it together and started to find a way to get the improvements. So question just on that process, because I saw the room where you did a lot of that practice, tiny little room, and I saw the performance when things worked. Okay. So when you're workshopping this rough material, and it makes me think of a long time ago when I was in the Bay Area, I was actually a judge for an amateur comedy competition, but there were a couple of pros, and they would bring their notebooks up on stage and something would just die on the vine. Wouldn't get any response and be like, okay, we're going to cut that one.

54:11And then they'd pull up in their notebook and on stage they would make their notes. And I loved seeing the under the hood process. When you are performing for say three people and it sucks to use your word, does that mean it works but it's not pretty? Does that mean it just completely falls apart and does not work? It doesn't produce the illusion. And what do you say or do when people have come to be entertained and it doesn't work? The answer is sort of all of the above. There are so many different failure modes, which again is sort of the engineering mindset, the different ways it can fail. With this particular thing I was working on in this story, there was one particular thing I needed to accomplish secretly without anyone seeing.

54:56It was some mission impossible type shit. You know, your mission should you choose to accept it is, you know, the parameters should have been impossible. and I was trying to find a way to make this work and I had a hunch there might be a way, but it relied on sort of like nuanced body language-based misdirection and like how human perception actually works and how to kind of slip that through the cracks in ways that were really hard to theorize and you have to kind of feel it. And so I would prefix it knowing that there was a solid chance of it failing by going, hi, I'm testing on something new.

55:24If it works, it'll be amazing. If it doesn't work, it'll be hilarious. So win-win, either way, hopefully you will get an entertaining experience so they set expectations informed consent they know what they're getting into and it's a weird place because I don't know which one of those it's going to be and if it works they are going to see something astounding and then they're going to see me go was that any good? which is such a jarring experience for them to see me just break reality and they go was that any good? did you see the thing that I hoped you didn't see? they're like what the hell? But then if they did see the thing, they'd be like, I mean, yeah, because I'm letting them know I want their feedback.

56:04And it's often hard to get people to give you that feedback because often they mistakenly think that being polite is better. Is helpful. They don't want to hurt your feelings. I know. It's the opposite. Like, hurt me. Punch me in the face. Like, let's go. Give me the pain. I need to know. I want the painful truth of the beautiful lie. This is what we need right now. And usually you can see it on their faces, even if they're trying to hide. You can sort of see that their eyes flicker to where the thing happened. And I'm like, damn it. All right. Well, lesson learned. Back to the drawing board. Let's try it again tomorrow.

56:32And if it does work, you see the wonder. And so it's great. We got it that time. Now let's try and make sure that happens every time with an error margin. So you're putting in the reps. Putting in the reps. Just grinding through the reps for weeks and months. And it gets down to the point where I've sort of got two approaches kind of figured out. There's two paths to making this thing work. And they each have different pros and cons. And I can't really decide between them. One is the slightly like risky one that looks better, but has a different problem. Again, a classic engineering situation.

57:02You just have to decide between the trade-offs. And with now it's just a few weeks away and I go, all right, we're going to pick one and focus on it. And I pick the safer one that is less amazing, but like more reliable. So we go to the competition and it's a six day event and it's the competition, but also shows and workshops and panel discussions and events and all kinds of cool. It's a whole big, beautiful celebration. Yeah, exactly. And the competition is the main thing. And annoyingly, my friend Shoot and I, so Shoot is a really good magician friend who was also competing in a different category.

57:33And we'd been training each other, really like supporting each other on the journey and trying to do our thing. And we're both on the final day, which is annoying because what I want to do is rip off the band-aid early and then enjoy the festival. But instead, I have to make sure I get to sleep and make sure I stay healthy. And so I can't go too hard because I spent like a year and a half working towards this. In a way, I spent 10 years working towards this. I don't care if I win. I'm just there to do the thing and to see if we can close this narrative arc because it'll be more engaging. Because the fact that it was exactly 10 years felt just too perfect to let that go.

58:04It's such a beautiful plot arc. I'm like, I want to see if this thing can fly. And if it can't, that's okay because at least I'll know. At least I tried the thing. And Chute's in a similar place. He's just entering because it's been a pandemic. We haven't been able to do this for so many years. He wants to be part of it. So it's the final day. Actually, it's not yet because two days before the final day, I'm lying awake. Chute and I are sharing a hotel room. and I have insomnia, which doesn't happen to me much. And I'm lying away because adrenaline and time zone and just, it's not surprising. I'm lying awake, staring at the ceiling going, God damn it, get to sleep.

58:36And then suddenly, it's one of those moments where my eyes widen and I just suddenly see the matrix and I'm like, holy shit. I suddenly think I've seen a way to combine these two approaches and get the best bits of both. Two days before game time. Yeah, and this always happens to me. This every day, it's a running joke with friends in Melbourne who know the muse only visits 48 to 36 hours before the deadline hours before go time every damn time that's when the muse turns up i playfully anthropomorphize my muse i think of her as like i'm like arguing with her going could you one time turn up three weeks out and she's like no and i'm like oh you know what terribly sorry appreciate you please don't stop turning up yep no all right that's i guess that's what it's gonna be looks like that's the schedule yep all right thank you appreciate you please don't don't leave so she turns up at 4 a.m two days before and just punches me in the face with this idea i'm like oh my god hang on and shoot is asleep in the he's a pretty sound sleeper we've traveled together a lot now for many gigs and i realized hang on i think often you need to think with your body i find you need to sort of work through it and block through it so i get up very quietly trying not to wake him up and in the darkness is like dim light of the moon through the slit in the window.

59:48I sort of work through this idea thinking, am I insane? Will this work? And I kind of think, I think this might have legs, but I don't know if I'm just sleep deprived and delusional. So I write down a bunch of notes on it for my future self in the morning to go like, in case I forget. And then I don't get to sleep. I'm just lying there. My mind's racing. I'm like, I think, hang on, maybe is this kind of work? And finally, shoot, wakes up. What the fuck are you doing? He's used to it. He's not surprised. The amount of weird shit we've seen each other doing for magic over the years. It's all so much stranger than fiction.

1:00:20He just looks at me and is like, uh-huh. I go, okay, so full disclosure, I haven't slept, so I might be a little manic. What do you think of this idea? And Shoot is legendary for being a friendly, beautiful human but very sort of blunt with his feedback and his opinion. He breaks a lot of people's spirits, unintentionally, because he's just... The dream destroyer. Exactly. Very sort of... Yeah, like a younger Mr. Miyagi. I don't know. And I go, okay, here's the idea. We all know everything about each other's act at this point. I'm going, so this version, this version, I think if I do this and do this, and then that, and that gives us the best bit of this, but without the drawback of this, because this angle and this perceptual focal direction, this here, and then this.

1:01:00What do you think? Is this something? Has it got legs? And he looks at me and thinks and goes, I can't say no. Which from him is high praise. He's like, yeah, because normally you'd be like, ah, but this wouldn't work. So I'm like, oh shit, okay. And I ran it by Jordan as well. Later on, I'm like, again, haven't slept, might be a little manic. I'm learning how to interact and filter properly. And he's like, yeah, I think maybe. And I'm like, all right. So then I spend the next day and a half, because that's all I've got, blocking through this new version. It's not a massive change. And when you say blocking, what do you mean?

1:01:33Blocking in the theatrical sense, as in kind of walking through it physically, like going through the whole motions. Because a lot of magic, again, the Vernon theory of naturalness is about looking like your body has no tension where there is actually a lot of tension or vice versa or faking tension where there is none and you kind of need to in the same way that a special effects designer is lying with their cgi lying for the benefit of the audience lying for to create something beautiful you have to sort of lie with your whole body sure in a really a way that's really takes a long time to kind of get intuitive and is one of the hardest things about learning magic at a high level.

1:02:09You know, I just realized also something about you, which, tell me if this is an accurate perception, and that is you may not be able to put yourself in the minds or the shoes of, say, certain listeners of stories, but you would have to be quite good at putting yourself behind the eyes, at the very least, of your spectators, of your marks, because the angles matter. Yeah, absolutely. And the knowledge and the preconceptions and the assumptions and just the ways people perceive reality around them absolutely is literally the medium with which the magician slash illusionist works. And the common misconception is the hands or the cards or the coins or the whatever.

1:02:49But no, I mean, those are the tools, but you are sculpting the perceptions of an observer into a beautiful, amazing shape. You need to be present to that. That is the sculpture that you are crafting. and the thing where I find that's different about things like what stories would be interesting is perception of physical reality is a much more universal consistent thing than people's creative preferences or personal preferences or wants or needs or desires or interests that is hugely variable between people and I think in any sort of at least for me the the neuro divergences are more about those things are more divergent what I like what I'm interested in what what I want to hear about, what I don't.

1:03:29Whereas perception of physical objects... Perceptual faculties for survival that have evolved over time. Exactly. That's pretty much the same for everybody. Pretty consistent. Not everybody, but way high percentage of people. So you're 48 hours roughly out. You're not sleeping. Come on, Simon. For fuck's sake. Get to sleep. Get it together. Muse is like... Muse is just punching me in the face with amazing things. Punching the face. And I'm like, thank you, I think. So now you think you have something. I think I've got something. how do you balance maybe that's not even the word to use prepping with something new before game time with trying to get some sleep.

1:04:09Yeah, I definitely try to get sleep. Sleep is important. I don't really have a process. I just sort of feel it and I get it to a point where I think it's good enough. I have a bit of a background in improv acting, which is one of the best things I ever studied in my life. And being okay with just kind of, again, the friends from Melbourne who are listening, shout out to Dom and Vium and everybody else, know that I'm inevitably like hours before a show building something new to try in it. I think a lot about this idea of the two thresholds. of imagine that you oversimplify how good is at a performance into a single axis, which is ridiculously oversimplified.

1:04:47But say, you know, at the bottom is the worst thing you've ever seen. So this is like the y-axis on a graph. Exactly. And at the top is the best thing you've ever seen in your life. Again, oversimplification, but for the sake of argument, it's that George Box quote, all conceptual models are wrong, but some are useful. And this is wrong, but useful. And I often think about we're trying to go upwards. We're trying to get high on the scale. You want it to be, that show was really good. Some people think it was the best thing they've ever seen. Some people think it's really good. And there's an infinite number of lines you could draw on that graph.

1:05:16And the two that I think about the most is somewhere very high up is people in the audience are thinking that is one of the best things I've ever seen ever in my life across all categories of experience. Holy shit. That's always where I'm aiming at. I don't think I hit it. I think most people never hit it. Maybe I'll hit it one day before I die. That would be amazing. Maybe I won't. That's okay. but I'm aiming at that. I think about the Bruce Lee quote, the aim the punch two inches beyond the intended point of impact. Aiming at the line, I don't need to hit it to feel happy. But then way lower is the line above which not one person in the audience felt like they wasted their time or their money.

1:05:51And I'm willing to take risks down to that line, but not below it. If I go below that line, then I'll beat myself up. Then I have a karmic debt to repay to the world. But above that line, my conscience is clean, my karma is clear, and I'm willing to take risks to explore and experiment down to that line. And this is a bit different because the world damn championships. So the minimum line's a bit higher. And so it's more, I get it to the line where I'm like, I'm confident that this is going to be extremely likely to work to the highest level. You can never be certain, but I'm confident I've got this and it'll work.

1:06:20And at that point, I chill and get some sleep and try and relax. Okay. And then? And that's the competition. And then I'm up and it's terrifying and I'm ready. one of my favorite little tangent about again a thousand stories we could tell because why is it actually worth doing anything what do we do before we die what makes you happy what makes you what you find fulfilling one of the things back in 2012 that made that performance i did so insane as a weird method is one of my best friends in melbourne dave helped out by and this is massive spoiler first time it's revealed hiding under the table during the act this is not a method this is not something magicians do.

1:07:01This is ridiculous and absurd. This was a desperation move of just a brute force approach, heinously inelegant, and basically constructing things during the act to make this thing possible. Which was such a ridiculous thing to do as a method, but I'm like, we don't have time to come up with something better. We're just going to brute force thing. Under the table you go. Yep. Dave's like, I got this. Again, there's a group of friends there, again, like Dave and Dom and Vium and YC and Yow, that many of us have done this for each other. What do you need? We're on it. Jason Bourne, a non-violent Jason Bourne kind of mentality.

1:07:31Like, what needs to be done? We'll get it done. I've hidden under the table for friends in various other bizarre situations to build shit, which is wonderful. It's like the behind the scenes. And so, it became a running joke that Simon's magic is done by Dave being under the table. Which is not the case. This is not how magic is done, but it became a running joke. And so, again, that was 10 years ago. And for this one, I've realized for six months, I've got a bit that I want to do. I've got a joke I want to make in homage to these wonderful friends and these beautiful people who have helped along the way.

1:08:00And in this act, it doesn't use a table. It uses this tiny little side stand that's part of, that's one of the problems with the 2012 one. It was cumbersome. It was bulky. It was inefficient, inelegant. This one's very simple and clear and minimalist. And on this little side stand that I'm putting the very few props I have, that I've always been a minimalist in my tastes, I make a little video 10 minutes before I go on stage for the world championships. And to me, that's what makes this funny. That's what makes this good, that it's there in the arena. And I record a little video of the table going, all right, guys, going on station 10 minutes, world championships, just pre-show check.

1:08:35I open my little box. I'm like, yep, all the props are there. Is everyone where they need to be? And I pan down and look under the table, and there's a photo of Dave taped under the table. Yep, everyone's in place. We've got everyone we need to be. All right, we're ready. And I send that to the group chat. And that was the thing I really wanted to do. Stuff like that. That's the actual beauty of it. So on the game day, I'm just wondering because you're on the last day. The last day. Okay. So I have had the fortunate opposite experience. The only time that I spoke on the Ted Main stage, I was in the opening session.

1:09:08And I was so grateful because it was a lot of pressure and stress on one hand, but then I could enjoy the rest of the event. Completely. And I knew that I would otherwise just be mentally rehearsing my own act the entire time. So walk us through game day and what it's like leading up to it also. So game day, well, and also before game day, because you're so right, like exactly what you described as what's way better. And instead, I'm watching all the competitions with friends. And it's also a great celebration of magic and amazement. But we're watching going, again, so much of how it goes is who's there?

1:09:43Is there someone way better than you? Who's turning up from all, you know, who are the Belgians bringing? Who are the Italians bringing? You know, who's here from South Korea? What is the world going to deliver that might be amazing? And again, the goal isn't to win, but still, you can't help but kind of want to maybe imagine. No, but then you don't imagine that. That's setting yourself up for disappointment. You don't want to think about that. So game day, get up, final preps, and doing things like this joke of Dave under the table is also what's keeping me sane. Because that's something else fun and beautiful to focus on.

1:10:14Just to let a little pressure out of the tires. And those are, in many ways, the things that really matter in some ways, about just being a human being and friendships and relationships and all those things. So I get there, just double check the props. I've got backups of everything. And also I've spent the last few days trying to write a script. While you're there. While I'm there because I'm not good at scripting. I'm not good at script writing. I've always found it very hard. Oh, I see. Script. You're like writing a totally unrelated screenplay. All right. Script meaning for the act. Well, I was writing some unrelated software, but we'll get us to a separate story.

1:10:44So I was writing my rom-com just to know my script. That's what I'm actually meant to be saying during this act. Got it, got it. And usually my process for quote-unquote scripting is I sort of work out roughly what I want the thing to be about. And I go to the literal or figurative open mic. And I think of it like sketching a line. You do a lot of light sketches and gradually find the shape of the line until you thicken it and thicken it and find the actual the bold line. And that's sort of usually how I work on material. So meaning that you would have a few bullets and then you would improv. and you would gradually find the right sculpting of the words that are the connective tissue between those bullet points.

1:11:23Or even how to articulate those bullet points in the moment. I know semantically the idea I want to get across and the words, I discover what words come out of me in that moment. And for whatever reason for me, I found that's the best way to find the real stuff because in that moment, in the spotlight, it's more real. And I then record all the shows and go, oh, oh, those words are good today. Yeah, damn. What did I say? Oh, that's good shit. I'll say that again next time. And that's slowly how the script emerges most of the time. I don't necessarily think that's a good way to work, but it's the way I've got that I've found.

1:11:53Yeah. But for this one, it's like, I want to kind of have this nailed and I failed to write this script. I keep trying. I've got friends who are like, come on, write your script. Like we're going to, I'm like, I'm on it. I'm going to do it. Lock myself in the room for an hour. Can't do it. Brain just slips off the task. So on the day, I don't have a script. And I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to accept that. I wish I did. I didn't. It is what it is. And I hit up a friend, Jared, an amazing magician who is also there just hanging out performing. And there's this one line. I kind of want to nail the ending line.

1:12:28I know what I'm going to open with. I know a bunch of key phrases that are going to be good. And I'm confident I've got through this many times in rehearsal. And it's always a little bit different, but it's fine. And there's this one bit at the end that it's a chance to give her the final line before the ending. I've never worked out what to say there. And Jared is just an amazing human being, philosopher, writer, speaker. And we overlap a lot in some of our theories of magic. And he's like sort of me, but more poetic and philosophical. And so I hit him up. I'm like, hey, I'm trying to figure out this line.

1:12:57And we just sit down. And the competition's going on. I'm the second last act of the whole day of the 15 competitors on the Friday. And we just sit down. And there's this odd, ironic, zen-like calm because I've now done everything. The preparation's over. It's in that sort of calm before the storm. We've done everything we realistically could. And we just chat about this final line. And it's this beautiful, peaceful moment of just him and I, these grizzled veterans of this bizarre art form, just going, yeah, what's this want to be? And we figure out sort of a line for it. I'm like, that's pretty good.

1:13:29Thanks. Thanks, man. We'll see if I remember it in a moment because I don't know. We don't know what's going to happen. And then backstage, and again, a couple of friends, Dom and Shoot, are there going, okay, we have this term being the special agent. Again, it's like the nonviolent Jason Bourne, just the person who's capable, motivated, and just on top of whatever inevitably is going to go wrong. Something is. So this is like your A-team fixer. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I am often that for other friends as well. And so we all take turns, like who's just on it and gets it and is there. When Dom went on America's Got Talent, I was his special agent.

1:14:04I'm like, we're there, we're ready, just going to deal with whatever's going to happen. And so he's there and it's great and it's calm. And then I do the stupid video joke because I've realized from experience going on stage at something like that is terrifying. And I've realized that it helps me to have something else to think about. And that's part of the reason why jokes like that are funny, little side projects. There are a couple of other ones that are other stories. And one thing I love actually that's relevant at FISM, I've been there five times. I've competed three times, attended two times.

1:14:36And something that has happened every single time is a contestant will go out and begin their act and something will go wrong. They'll have a fumble or a clear issue or a lighting problem that they have per pause. And you've got this audience of up to 3 ,000 magicians from all over the world. And every time this happens, someone has kind of an awkward fumble moment. The audience like applauds supportively in that sort of nice, quiet applause to say like they know how scary it is and how much bravery it takes to walk out on that stage and it's like we see you we got you even if we're hoping someone else wins we want everyone to at least be able to do a great job we want to see something amazing and it's just it's every damn time it makes me choke up slightly when i see that happen it's that's lovely it's my favorite damn thing about the whole thing it's and it's not true for all communities no There are really hyper-competitive communities, and then there are others that seem to be really supportive in that way.

1:15:36Yeah, everyone there is, most people, there's a few narcissists and shitheads and everything, but mostly people are there worshipping at the altar of wonder. They want to feel the thing. They want to see people be able to do the thing. And I know that as well, and that also helps me. I'm going out there to a warm room. It's always warm. People want to be amazed. They want you to be good. And you just have to not screw it up. So I go out and I do the thing. And it goes okay. And I bring the person up and I do the thing. I'm going to create this moment that then is going to linger beyond the end of it.

1:16:07And it goes okay. And the new bit goes fine. It goes really well. It's one of those rare beautiful moments where the thing goes as you planned. Usually things don't. It takes a lot of iterations to get through it. It just works. And it's just deeply satisfying. I do the thing. I give the person to the person. they go back, all the lines land, all the moments hit. And I go, you know, thank you, you know, good night. And it gets the whole room stands up to applaud. It gets a full standing ovation, which again, I did not expect. I was just trying to focus on, I just want to do the thing and not shit the bed.

1:16:41Just going to get through this with my janky ass half written script and remember the line that Jared gave me and like just trying, I'm just completely focused on getting through it. Again, not knowing how it's going to be perceived. I've learned that I just don't know. It might be great. It might be terrible. And the main thing, they have very strict time limits. Minimum five minutes, maximum 10 minutes. A minute over, a second over or under, you get disqualified. And I think the theory is you're professional. You should be able to keep within a five-minute range. Get it together. And I still remember when everyone's standing up to applaud, my main thought is, wait, is this going to put me over time?

1:17:14Does this count as my session? Is this like, oh God, can I, like, is this, I don't know. They're still applauding. This is, I'm getting, but luckily there's a timer I can look at and we're only at like eight minutes future so i'm like oh okay thank god all right we're fine we're fine we can we can accept applause it's great oh man and i feel awkward about it like it's it's that weird duality of it's it's lovely like the recognition is beautiful but also i also feel very awkward about it at the same time i'm a shy ass introvert i mask very effectively and pretend not to be but i'm shy and awkward in most situations and this is definitely one of them so i'm like don't look at me but also thanks i really appreciate it it's complicated so finally i'm like all right and i just go backstage and then the moment happens, the riot happens.

1:17:54The friend's like, come out and look at this. I'm like, oh my God, like what? This crowd is gathered around the person with the object and they're taking photos and examining it. And there's a whole bunch of photos out there of people just looking like they're getting high. Jordan showed me a photo, sort of a diagonal top-down photo from someone who had that vantage point of this. And the variety of extreme facial expressions is tremendous. You have some people who are just, they look like they're inspecting a diamond, right? They're really trying to scrutinize. You have one guy, I think he had a very short white beard.

1:18:31He looks like he's blissed out on cloud nine in an opium den. He's just soaking it in. Yep. It was wild. Yeah, he's taking in his communion with wonder. Yeah. And what an experience. Right. And then thank God it's over. and shoot and i had been joking for weeks about yeah we were so tired we were giving it everything we had let's just try and we're doing this once this is also the only time i'm ever going to do this again i'm never going to enter another magic competition after that at the time is what i'm thinking i'm like this is the shot so i want to give it everything i want to at least give it the chance to just bloom and to be whatever it's going to be i don't want to think you know what if i want to just give it a shot because this is either way this is the end of this 10-year story arc for this routine one way or the other and so now shoot and i like oh my god we're done thank god now we can actually join the party and celebrate and relax.

1:19:18And it's great. But the way this thing works is they do all the preliminaries. There's eight different categories, three subcategories of close-up magic, five subcategories of stage magic. Would you mind just mentioning some of the categories? Sure. So under close-up magic, they have general close-up magic. They call it micro magic, which is just European for close-up magic, basically. Parlor magic, which is more medium scale. And then card magic gets its own category as a specialist. And medium scale refers to the size of the props? The audience. The audience. Yeah. So normally, and these categories are sort of, I would debate whether these are useful categories, but the way they define it is close-up magic is done where you can physically touch the audience, where you're in physical proximity.

1:19:59It's truly close-up. Parlor magic is more for sort of 50 to 100 people in a more stand-up situation, generally. Again, that's an oversimplification, but that's kind of how they roughly define it. It's always a bit nebulous and blurry. And what are some of the, outside of the subcategories of close-up magic, what are some of the other categories? So under stage magic, they have general stage magic, manipulation, which is heavy, sleight of hand focused, so difficult dexterity to give the illusion of impossibility. State grand illusion, which is like big box tricks, basically. Not really my thing, but - Big box, like cutting someone in half?

1:20:33Yeah, that kind of thing, yeah. The cutting person in half is the classic big box grand illusion, as they call it. mentalism, the illusion of mind reading or fake psychological abilities or whatever, and comedy magic. It gets its own category, which again is an odd false dichotomy is all over the place, but that's the category. Still makes it fun. Adds some space. Exactly. Makes it interesting. And the way it works is they award a first, second, and third prize in each of these eight categories. And one of the things I really respect about FISM, because again, it has many flaws. It's not perfect by a long shot, but I respect that the judges don't have to award any of the prizes.

1:21:05If an act is not to standard, they don't have to award the first prize, for example. And often they don't. Oh, interesting. So it's not a ranked podium finish. You could have the top winner in a category get the equivalent of second place. You could, yeah. No one gets first. And that does happen. That has happened many times in its history. They try to make it mean something over the decades. I love that. Yeah. I really respect that. No great inflation. Yep, absolutely. Yeah, it's not just who's best on the day. It's like, is this good enough by the standards we've sort of admittedly arbitrarily subjectively set?

1:21:36But yeah, I respect that intent. What a, just a breath of fresh air. Right? That's kind of cool. Make it mean something. Right, exactly. And obviously, it's subjective. How do you judge art? Should you try and judge art? Should you even have competitions? These are very reasonable questions, but at least they're kind of trying. they're genuinely going in and then of the the winners the first prizes they have the option but not the obligation to give out one overall quote-unquote grand prix you know it's french big prize for overall close-up and overall stage the two big mega prizes that they don't have to award but that's the big final thing but shoot and i like we're done it's great it's over thank god we get to relax and finally party and hang out and then one of the organizers comes up to us and goes, um, forget the words, but like, uh, yeah, be ready to perform again tomorrow.

1:22:22And which is simultaneously amazing and terrible news. It's amazing. What about the cheesecake and rum? What about the things? Damn it. Oh, horrible, horrible success. And this is incredible because we're pretty sure we don't know for certain. This is also what makes it complex. We have probably, it seems likely we have probably won our categories or you can tie for first. They can offer like a special prize. you never quite know. There's a lot of exception cases throughout history that have happened. So we're like, probably means, which is a weird place to be. We're like, we think that means we might've won our categories.

1:22:57It definitely means I shouldn't get blackout drunk. It definitely means we have to do it again tomorrow. And it felt exactly like getting to the end of a marathon, having given it everything to make it to the finish, and suddenly you need to run another five miles. And we're just like, oh my God. Oh God. And we just, we did not prepare for this. We did not think this was what was going to happen. And so So we go back to the hotel room and start prepping for another performance. And for both of us in different ways, that's a non-trivial undertaking. And it's like, oh, God damn it. But also amazing.

1:23:27Oh, my God. This is incredible. Oh, my God. What a joy. Like, it's such a complex yin and yang of emotion. Yeah, that sort of Janice-faced blessing. Exactly. Oh, yeah. And so we then get some sleep and get up the next day and go into preparation mode. And again, that day is its own insane story of all kinds of weird things went wrong. The first place winners all perform again, this time for all 12 judges. The close-up and stage judges joined together to judge everything. So the close-ups haven't seen the stage thing. The stage judges haven't seen the close-ups. They're all now going to watch them and judge, are any of these acts worthy of the Grand Prix?

1:24:03And if so, which one for each? And 10 minutes before walking out for that performance, I am in the stairwell. the fire escape stairwell in my t-shirt and jeans not my suit fixing a problem with one of the props that has gone wrong for reasons it's a whole story there are visual aids it's a separate thing it's and again dom and ruben and vm never i'm not surprised because they're like yeah classic coronel this it's always like this i'm like yeah i wish that wasn't true but it is i yeah one day i'll be fully ready for a performance one day it'll be great and at that point i'm thinking if it comes down to it, I would rather walk out in my crappy t-shirt and jeans with a trick that works than in my nice stage suit with a trick that doesn't work.

1:24:47Luckily, we get both barely. So I walk out on stage fighting the trembles. I'm adrenaline soaked and haven't had time to get in the zone at all. But I do the thing. It goes okay. I'm freaking out, but holding it together. No one can tell. The tremor is very slight in the hand, but I keep it together. and the person, the different person I bring up is amazed and it works well. And I'm like, now it's over. Thank God. Goddamn. Now we're actually done. And so then there's a few hours while the judges deliberate and then there's going to be the awards ceremony. And the awards ceremony is the first time we find out what actually happened.

1:25:21And it turns out that Shoot wins first prize in Parlor Magic, which is amazing and wonderful. And I tie for first in Close-Up Magic, in Micro Magic, which is incredible. Holy shit. I just wanted to make this thing real. and I was so happy back in 2009 to tie for third. Now, one day I'll get my own award. Like, I keep tying for things. It seems to be a running joke. And then we go back and sit in the audience with the trophies, and this is the first moment I've had in days, if not weeks, to pause for breath. I'm sitting there in the crowd amongst friends, and like Vincent, a guy from Australia, came second in Parlor Magic after shoot, which is amazing, and Dom went there to do a stupid joke for a show he's working on and achieved it, and just everyone got some version of what they came for.

1:26:03And it's just beautiful. And all the other prize winners, I would call it worthy. Because sometimes someone wins, you know, like, really, is that who's the world champion of that? But it was all beautiful. It was just this beautiful moment. Everything was great. And I'm sitting there. And when there's 150 contestants or thousands in the preliminaries, you're like, anything could happen. You don't know. You're up against so many people. You don't even think about what the outcome is going to be. So much of it's, again, Epictetus, right? It's out of your control. But now I'm sitting there and they're slow rolling the awards ceremony.

1:26:32And there's other announcements and they announce the next one's going to be in Italy. And that's a whole thing. And they thank the sponsors and they do the thing. I'm sitting there holding this first place trophy and now thinking about, wait a minute, they're still going to announce the Grand Prix. And now rather than 150 people or hundreds or thousands of people, it's down to four people. It's me, the guy I tied with, shoot, and the card guy from France, I think. That's actually slightly embarrassing. Wherever he's from. and when it's one in four that's something your brain can engage with and I'm sitting there trying not to think about it because the internal dialogue is going don't you do this to yourself you son of a bitch don't you do it this is what leads to disappointment don't you fucking think about it can we swear don't you fucking do this to yourself don't you get your hopes up because you get disappointed that is how that happens don't you do it but then the brain goes well look imagine you're a fism judge and you're thinking okay, who do we give the Grand Prix to?

1:27:27And my brain was like, there was a riot. Something happened that's never happened before. And I'm like, don't shut up. Shut up, internal voice. Shut the fuck up. Don't you do this. Don't get the hoops up. But this goes on for like 10 minutes, 20 minutes. And they're slow rolling this thing. I'm there with this internal. I'd like to thank our bronze sponsor. And I'm there in this deep internal struggle of like, don't think about it. Medit Zen. Remember the mindfulness. Focus on the breath. But then the inner voice is like, but maybe. And I'm like, no. And I'm thinking about it because it's the first time I've had to catch my breath.

1:28:01And I am thinking about the last year and a half and the last 10 years and the last decades and this whole damn journey. And it becomes very clear to me over that half hour sitting there that if, as much as I try not to think about it at all, if they say my name, I realize I'm absolutely going to burst into tears. And I'm not a crier. I cry like once every year or two, like maybe. And I realized, oh yeah, there's no way. Because I'm already just at the memories of what it had taken and what it had cost and how much it had taken to walk this path and get to this point and how I never thought it would get anywhere, let alone here, let alone what I'm, despite myself thinking.

1:28:42And I realized, oh yeah, I'm just going to break down. And I realized in that moment that one thing that's always made me sad is when people cry, so often the first instinct is to hide or apologize. or pretend not to. And that always breaks my heart. I wish that weren't the case. It's sad that society teaches us to hide that or to shelve that. And I kind of decide, you know what, the only thing, it's like a little side quest in my head now at this point, just so I can not think about it, is that all we can ever do is try to lead by example. And even that, you very rarely get a chance to do. And I do, you know, what does it be the change you want in the world, even if it's in a tiny, almost trivial way.

1:29:20And I go, you know what? If this happens, don't think about it. Don't think about it. But if, but don't think about it. Okay, if it happens, I realize I'm not going to hide it. I'm not even going to wipe a tear away. I'm just going to let it rip. And at least, I mean, I'm going to cry. At least I can do it on my own terms. And then they say my goddamn name. And as predicted, I burst into tears, just uncontrollable, like convulsive sobbing. and I walk up on stage and I stand there. And the only thing I'm thinking about is try to keep shoulders back, head up. Make it clear that you are not going to hide.

1:29:55And I just stand there on stage. And I find out later that the presenter was like awkwardly kind of expecting to give me the mic to give a speech. I'm just fucking heaving and sobbing. Someone called it ugly crying. Just like holding this enormous goddamn trophy, just bawling my eyes out on stage. I found out later this was live streamed as well. So I'm like, okay, cool, great, fine. And then the main fism guy comes over and we pose the photo and I'm still just weeping and then walk off stage and try to find a tissue. What did it feel like to let it rip? Really cathartic, really good. It felt right.

1:30:31It was the right decision. I mean, it's not what I would have chosen to do if I'd had the option, but it was very clear that I was not going to have a choice. This was going to happen whether I wanted it to or not. and so it felt good to yeah to not hide and to not yeah not be ashamed because that's that's what i want for everybody else what did the hour or two or three after that feel like so then they announced the stage grand prix person which is this duo from belgium who also did this amazing stage act and then we come back out and then all the winners come back out which is you know three times eight plus a heap of people on stage for like all the photos and the video and to everyone to come up and it was just this sort of sort of genteel pandemonium in the in the loveliest sense because again everyone's there out of love and it's just had been this beautiful thing and basically everyone felt good about all the announcements and just and we just stood on the stage and all the official photographers took photos and then everyone else took photos and a bunch of people wanted to pose for selfies and and then eventually there's this photo somewhere once it had sort of started to calm down, as in went from 3 ,000 people down to only a few hundred people.

1:31:39And then Shoot and I just kind of sat down on the steps at the front of the stage and just sat there, just empty hair, completely just, and then people kept coming up and just saying, you know, it was great or congrats or can we get a photo or can you sign my thing? And it was just this sort of, the first time I'd felt like sort of clear headed in weeks or months or just like the catharsis of it. I don't even know how to describe it. In addition to the catharsis, were you or are you able to, in that case, let's make it specific, were you able to sit in the afterglow or celebrate? And I ask in part because I'm not terribly good at it.

1:32:18Or were you like, let me catch my breath and then already a few days later thinking about where you might be pointed? A bit of both. It was one of the many things. And I mean, one thing, I still haven't fully processed it. You know, this was July last year. It's now April. It feels like eating a six foot wide donut. I don't know how to get all of this knowledge. I'm not sure how to do this. Yeah, I'm nibbling at it, but it's not going in. It still hasn't gone in yet. I'm still actively figuring it out. What, did that really happen? I keep forgetting it happened. It's not fitting into my brain.

1:32:51But one of the things that came out of it, two big things. One was, for the first time, I felt my imposter syndrome, which nearly everyone has, unless you're a raging narcissist. I think everyone has imposter syndrome to some degree. I felt it just pop like a soap bubble. Just a delicate little pfft and felt free of it. Which isn't the same as having an ego or anything, because not everything I do is good. But that demon on the shoulder that tells you, no, you suck, you're not good enough. That was finally a big enough event that even that demon got squashed by it and couldn't rebut. But Dean was like, oh, all right, okay, fine.

1:33:26You can do good stuff. All right, fine, shut up. That was one. And the other thing was it was the first time in my adult life since finishing high school that I felt like I could stop and catch a breath for a moment. Because I'd never felt that before. I always felt like I hadn't proved myself. I hadn't figured out a career. I hadn't achieved the thing. There was always something to do. There was always that pressure, that forwards movement. And for the first time, I felt, you know what, I'm going to take a few months and just do nothing and just sit. And just regroup and catch my breath. Because also, I was unsurprisingly massively burnt out.

1:33:59I was so burnt out at that point. I'd been going. Not shocked. Yeah, right. I mean, pandemic alone and everything else, plus all of that. But the thing that was great was, shoot, and I flew back to LA. And we slept. And then the next day, we did what we had been knowing for months, or over a year at this point, that we knew what we wanted to do more than anything. And we went to a cafe. And we just hung out and had coffee. without stress or worry or the upcoming pressure. And it was perfect. That was what we were talking for years. You know, once this is over, oh man, we can just hang out and have coffee.

1:34:36And like that's the best possible thing. The simple things. And then we went to the Magic Castle that night just to have a drink. And I remember we, actually, no, sorry, the night we flew back, we went to the Magic Castle. This is before the coffee. And we kind of went, you know what? Let's go have a drink at the castle. Why not? Hang out. and we as we walked up the hill to it we we were going i wonder if anyone's heard because it had been that day it was that same afternoon like i wonder if anyone's heard i don't know maybe maybe not and we walk in and everyone has heard like it was all everyone who works there the people in the kitchen like everybody had like it was the number one news we're like oh god and that night was amazing what a homecoming right and because the thing is the magic castle was i mean again it's the real place, but there had been, even pre-pandemic, it'd be going through kind of a dark age in that it had just been less inspiring.

1:35:26There were fewer really amazing people hanging out there. It was under management that wasn't particularly tapping into the beautiful, wonderful things about the place. And I'd found myself just less inclined to go there on any given night. Normally you go there and you have an amazing night and it's incredible and you meet amazing people and see amazing things. And that had just been happening less and less in the years leading up to the pandemic. And then the pandemic obviously was awful. And so many people that night mentioned versions of, you know what this feels like? This feels like the old school castle again.

1:35:55And there was a vibe. People I hadn't seen for years were there. And this is the closest I will ever come to saying something self-congratulatory. Because even just being Australian, it's like, ah, awkward. But this was something someone else said. So I feel less uncomfortable about it, even though it's still very uncomfortable. and this friend said well yeah you know because the magic castle was founded back in the 50s in the vernier on having the best magic in the world was there and that was true and for a long time that had kind of stopped being true and the best magic was maybe in madrid or south korea or germany or a bunch of other places that are these real hot spots of magical innovation and excellence and it hadn't been the castle actually for a long time and then she said in this amazingly dramatic way.

1:36:40But tonight, that changed. And I was like, ooh, chills, tingles. And also, I don't know how to handle the implied responsibility of that. I'm still kind of figuring that out. I don't know. I'm mostly just not thinking about it as much as I can. So, you went to have a drink. What was your drink? What's your go-to? I had a vodka, lime, and soda. The low-calorie option. Trying to keep it together. If I'm not thinking about the calories, it's a French 75. What is a French 75? I think it's champagne, gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup. Sort of like a fancy Tom Collins. Cheat day. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

1:37:14I have a long list of questions that I would like to ask. Let's go. We'll see if we can answer them in less than an hour and a half each, unlike the last one. So feeling lucky having started later with magic. Yeah. Why is that? The main reason is a lot of good things begin from empathy, understanding the experience of the other person or people in so many ways in so many fields of human endeavor and magic in particular like you observed earlier requires an understanding and awareness of the mind of the observer of what's happening perceptually and one of the things that i think is really difficult about magic is that once you learn how it's done it becomes very hard to remember what it was like to not know how it was done totally it's very hard to maintain empathy with the audience experience.

1:38:02Very, very difficult. Even more so than most other arts. I have thought about this. I don't want to take us down a side alley too far, but I'll let out a secret that we probably won't have time to unpack today. But you speak Chinese very well. I do. Mandarin. And I've spent time in China. I've spent time in Japan. And I often wonder what it used to be like to look at Japanese or Chinese writing when it just looked illegible. Yep. but I can't revert. Absolutely. And it's similar. It is very hard to maintain that sense of what it is actually like to literally see the magic, to see the thing that looks impossible because you can't once you know.

1:38:43And I think I see a lot of magicians who get into it when they're younger. There's often this disconnect of, so I have very clear memories as an adult, technically, legally, legal adult, 18. I can remember seeing what are considered in the magic industry, very sort of simple, almost beginner tricks. And I can remember the visceral memory of being profoundly affected by them and being profoundly amazed. I run to many magicians, like not the good ones, the good ones get it, the good ones understand, who have long ago lost touch with the power of these illusions. And they're like, oh, that's just basic.

1:39:15Listen, man, do not underestimate the power of that because I have those memories still. And those guide so much of my creative process with magic of like, I remember what it felt like to see these things, just barely. I try to hold those memories because they're so precious and valuable because they enable that empathy with the audience. Right. So you can position switch in a sense, perhaps more effectively than people who started so young that their reference set of experiences makes it very hard to stand in for the audience. Yeah. And it's still hard for me, but less hard. All right. So we hop, skipped, and jumped across a few lily pads, and consulting was in there at one point.

1:40:01And so Accenture, I'd like to talk about that. That's a name that a lot of people recognize, very well respected. Mostly. Depends who you ask. Depends on when it was. Exactly, right? They hit the complex history. Depends on the point in time, but a recognizable name. Absolutely. It looks like Fortune 300 company, at least back when I worked there. It's huge. Huge. So I guess a few questions related to that. The first is diving into some phrasing that you used that I think I'm capturing accurately, which is you said that Accenture played to some of your weaknesses. Yeah. What do you mean by that?

1:40:38I mean, this sort of gets into the, and this is the thing that, again, as I mentioned earlier, I feel very sort of nervous, timid about talking about it because I've spent most of my life adult life actively avoiding hiding the neurodivergent stuff. And I figured, why not? When you ask me on this, there's a good chance to just rip off the band-aid in the most public possible arena. We're going to the honest, truthful phase of my life or something. But in my early 20s, I was diagnosed with, at the time, Asperger's syndrome, like high-functioning autism spectrum thing, which to the surprise of no one at the time, so many people have the same experience.

1:41:12It was a relief. I was like, oh, that's why all that stuff was confusing and awkward and didn't make sense. It's bad news. Like, it's not good news, but at least it makes sense now. There's some explanatory power. Yeah. At least I kind of now know what we're working with and can start the incredibly long, difficult process of working on what to do about that. And that then was the next couple of decades of my life, trying to work out what to do about that and how to learn those skills that weren't there naturally and learn how to read nonverbal signals and communication and just all that that's still ongoing.

1:41:41It's still a challenge every day. It's a pain in the ass, but there are worse problems. I don't know. So human interaction is challenging. It's difficult. There's extra layers. There's a lot of extra thinking and analysis to figure out. And in a high pressure business environment, there's a lot of that. And so it was a lot of situations I found very awkward and uncomfortable and stressful, even more so than they would be for anybody, I think. A lot of it's like trying to figure out what is universal and what is unique. And the answer is lots of both. And also, I'm now realizing I spent so many years focused on trying to work around that and make up for those deficits and do the extra work to deal with it, that is now increasingly apparent that I probably also have some kind of executive function disorder situation going on.

1:42:25Maybe ADHD, maybe something else. I'm not going to self-diagnose. I'm going to wait till I can actually get to a professional to deal with that. Because again, things I didn't realize weren't universal. Difficulty with scheduling, with remembering things, keeping track of time, being organized, organizing data, things like that. All the kinds of things that you're doing a lot of in a high-pressure, high-powered business strategy consulting environment. And I was doing okay. I was getting the job done and doing a pretty okay job of it, but it was just exhausting. It was killing me to do so. All the extra cognitive load to deal with some of those things that are not easy for anybody necessarily, but were extra exhausting.

1:43:01And at the time, I now have learned the term masking, hiding it, trying to do the work to pretend to not be dealing with this stuff, because for all the reasons that people learn to do that and learn that they should. And I'm only just now kind of going, you know what, what if we try not doing that? What if we sort of acknowledge it? And I think one of the reasons I hid it was I've just seen so many people use it as an excuse or a crutch where they're just kind of being an asshole and go, oh, I'm on the autism spectrum, so it's okay. I'm like, what? No, it's still just an asshole. And I think I'd seen too much of that, that I wanted to make sure I didn't give myself that out, that I didn't give myself the crutch.

1:43:36There's a quote from Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors. Amazing author. I love, God, that man, I feel so lucky to have gotten to his books when I was a early teenager. Learned so much about just being a human being in the best way. And one of his characters, Granny Weatherwax, one of the witches, who's just an amazing character, there was this quote she says to one of the other witches that, yeah, the hard way is pretty hard, but it's not nearly as hard as the easy way. and there's deep wisdom there but i think maybe i ran too far with that i think maybe i made it too hard for myself and that's been good and now let's try maybe acknowledging it a bit so yeah it's very scary and very intimidating well i appreciate you being so candid i know that there are many people not only in my audience but there are many people in my audience who have children who also fit this profile many of my very close friends right now have neurodivergent children.

1:44:29So it gives them permission to also have conversations, which is important. If we look at Accenture at the job, I find this of interest to put under a microscope for a little bit because it's also a path that contrasts with maybe some of the often apocryphal but storied histories of, say, magicians or authors who throw caution to the wind and if you're going to be a writer, write goddammit. And they don't have a backup plan and they're just living hand-to-mouth, barely making hands meet and they figure out a way to make writing financially viable. But then there's the other track, which I would say, just based on what I'm hearing, this would fit into, which is similar to, say, a friend of mine who's a very successful novelist, Soman Chainani.

1:45:23And even after he had had one or two New York Times bestsellers, he still had an SAT tutoring company. Very small. I mean, I think he was a solo proprietor. But he kept it running because he didn't want to feel too much pressure imposed on his creative love and what he hoped would have wings, but that he didn't want to bet on. And there are sort of philosophical differences here, right? One is give yourself no options that you take the only option you can. Burn the boats. Exactly, burn the boats. The other is a good idea to have a little bit of savings, maybe, a little bit of stability, so that you can develop your craft without having to make a lot of creative compromises.

1:46:07How did you feel during this process when you were basically Bruce Wayne by day, Batman by night, or on the weekends? It's a very generous analogy, but I'll take it. You know what? I'm feeling generous today. And how did you make the decision to go full-time? What did that process look like? I realized when I joined Accenture, I joined it with the intent of sort of doing it for a couple of years, seeing what it was like, get enough experience on the resume that it would hold its value. That was at least the conventional wisdom at the time. And then do something else, like start a startup or like go full magic or something I didn't really know.

1:46:49And I remember before I joined Accenture, there was this like, I think I was also lucky to get into magic late because I was just barely wise enough to make some smart choices. Barely. Wisdom is a heavy word for what you have when you're 18. Lowercase wisdom. Yeah. Compared to a nine-year-old. Right. You've got a little, yeah. Very wise. And when I joined Accenture, I realized I had this sort of flash forward to going, yeah, I'm young and idealistic. I'm going to join for a couple of years, then quit and do something that leads me towards something, whatever. I don't know. And I just had a sudden flicker of like, wait a minute, I've heard this story.

1:47:23I've heard how this can go. And then you blink and you're 40 in middle management and wondering where the decades went. And I kind of sensed, wait, that could be me. You never know who you are until you're there in the moment, until you're faced with the actual trolley lever, right? You don't know which what you'll do. And so I went on this round the world pilgrimage with all my remaining savings at the time. It was the first time I came to America to see the Magic Castle, to see Vegas and all the Cirque du Soleil shows and all the stuff I'd heard of. And this is before? This is before Accenture.

1:47:55This was in the months. Because I realized it was going to be a while before I had free time. I was going to go into this high pressure corporate environment. And I did it as kind of a almost creative pilgrimage to kind of, I thought it was like almost injecting inspiration into intravenously to kind of keep that fire. burning. Stockpile some fire. Exactly. Hide my soul in my sock where they can't find it and drag it into the corporate drudgery. That was sort of the mindset at the time. And I think that was good because I did have a sense I wanted to do something, but I didn't know what or when.

1:48:25And so at Accenture, while I was there and earning an okay salary, I still lived pretty frugally and I stockpiled savings. I deliberately didn't buy a car, even though I could have afforded one. And instead, I spent that money on trips to the US to keep getting inspired and connecting and everything and building savings. I didn't live extravagantly because I kind of had a sense, whatever's next. I don't know what's next, but it's going to be good to have a stockpile of savings. And then I realized that the phrase I wrote once in a diary entry was, fear and enthusiasm battled and fear kept winning.

1:48:58I'm like, I want to leave and do something cool and do the thing and go full magic or something. But it's scary. I don't feel ready. And then finally, after sort of three more, I was at the company for five years. And after three years longer than I intended to be, just out of fear and out of the golden handcuffs and the stability. And one day, finally, some pieces clicked together in my head. There was an actual moment where I realized I'd read an article by a palliative care nurse about her observations on people's end of life regrets. And the number one, as is well documented, is that they never tried the thing.

1:49:31Didn't try the thing. Always wondered. never found out. And I realized, yeah, I don't want to die that way. I want to know, even if it fails, at least you know. So I was, okay, number one, I have to try the thing. Number two, I'd been waiting until I felt ready, enough savings and enough career contacts, enough good magic material or whatever. And I realized I was a perfectionist and I was never going to feel ready. And so number three, if there's no right time, then sooner is better than later. And I started drafting my resignation letter. It was one of those rare moments. normally life doesn't work with these epiphanies, but that was one where it was.

1:50:05There was A, B, C. It was a simple equation. It was an algorithm. I'm like, yep, that logically checks out. All right, fuck, I guess I'm doing it. And in your mind, did you think to yourself something along the lines of the management or strategy consulting? It's like, okay, I'm going to do this for X number of years to accumulate A, B, and C, and then assess course or do the thing. Completely. Absolutely. So with magic, did you have something similar? You're like, okay, I'm not going to leave this open-ended. I'm going to say travel to LA. I'm going to be in the thick of things. I'm going to give it six months or 12 months and then reassess.

1:50:41Or was it like, okay, come hell or high water? It was something in between the two. It definitely wasn't the former. There was no plan. I just went for it. I think I just went out there again, sort of, I kept the beginner's mind. I'm just going, I don't know what's going to happen. Let's go and find out. Let's jump into it with full strength and full intensity and just reevaluate as we go. I think that's the only way to sort of, again, be like water, right? Stay open, no fixed positions in the martial art, see what happens. And it basically didn't work, which is the weird twist. My full-time job was magic for the next 10 years.

1:51:12And I would say I failed at it. I mostly lived off those savings. I was earning money, but not enough. The savings were dwindling. And most of those years, safe space, no one else is listening. It's fine. It's just us, Tim. For that 10 years, I mostly earned poverty line or below income for those 10 years. It was hard because the tragedy is what gets financial success is not artistic ability. It's networking, client relationship management, negotiating, et cetera, et cetera. So those business skills that are replying to emails in a timely manner. All that stuff that I just did not have at all, or being able to find the right people.

1:51:48But again, shy, introverted, spectrum-y type. I wasn't good at finding people. I was good at connecting with people I really felt resonance with, but they often weren't the ones who could build my career. And I just never found a way to make it work. And in the end, when the puzzles came along, I was so ready to be done with it. I love the magic, but not the business of it. And you have, though, at least for the show that I saw, assembled a core team of people who do compliment. Which is amazing. And it is the first time I've really felt this. And it is, I feel a lot like, I think a lot about the parable, is that the right word, of the cat who sits on the hot stove and gets burnt and it learns not to sit on the hot stove.

1:52:28But it also doesn't sit on the cold stove. And I've been thinking about that a lot recently, about looking back over my experiences in the 10 years I was full-time magic and going, oh God, no. But maybe it's a different stove now. I haven't made conclusions on that yet. I don't know. But Chad Rabinowitz, the director and producer of the show, who's amazing, incredible magic director. of which there are not many in the world, you might be the only good magic director in North America that I know of, he nudged me to do this. He went, come on, we should get this show up. And I'm like, oh, God damn it.

1:52:56No, professional magic sucks. I failed it. It was bad. It wasn't for me. I'm done with it. And he's like, come on, let's do the show. And I'm like, you know what? I would like this to happen, just creatively. And I'm like, I don't know, maybe it doesn't have to be a failure this time. I'm not sure. I don't know. So I wanted to highlight that, that you have this core team now. and then we will talk about the puzzles before we get there i have a whole slew of miscellanea that i need to address or let's go bother me so the first is hotbeds of magical innovation i'm always fascinated within these subcultures of which locations seem to be producing interesting things and i just wrote down madrid south korea germany yeah and before we started recording we were also looking at some of the tabletop games that I have behind me which I'm testing out and there are certain places that just take tabletop gaming very seriously Germany would absolutely in the world of magic what are the top high concentration spots for magic innovation I think the biggest one right now is probably South Korea the South Korean magic scene is extraordinary right now.

1:54:10And it really, the rest of the world found out about it. I think it would have been roughly 2012 at FISM, the one that I got the weird originality prize out, when a guy called Yuho Jin won the stage Grand Prix. It's still one of those just defining moments I remember in my life of being there just in the audience, hanging out. I'd competed on like the first day, like, yeah, got it off. And acts come out and Yuho Jin comes out and just is transcendent. It's just amazing. It's one of those Grand Prix moments that captivates everybody. And I remember afterwards, just instant standing ovation. I remembered thinking, I'm just going to stand here and applaud until I cannot physically applaud anymore.

1:54:50I'm just going to clap these hands until they fall off. That is amazing. And this was the world kind of going, oh my God. And there were a bunch of other South Korean magicians there as well, who also placed very highly. And I was going, what is happening in South Korea? I'm not qualified to speak to the details of it, but apparently there'd been this, you know, there was the Korean War and the North Korean situation and there'd been like this artistic slump for a long time, but then a couple of people there had really done a lot to re-incubate it. And this amazingly collaborative scene had emerged where they were like really innovating.

1:55:20There was government funding, I think, like Arts Council funding that was helping as well. And just to this day, just South Korea, it's really exciting. I was literally just having a conversation yesterday with this entrepreneur and also a very, very skilled writer named Bobby Hundreds, who's here in LA, famous for creating the iconic streetwear brand. And he is Korean American. And we were talking about South Korea because there are so many sectors in which South Korea just comes out of seemingly nowhere and begins to dominate. That's true. And of all things, breakdancing for many years, they had the best breakdancers in the world, the most innovative.

1:56:02They were doing things people didn't think was even in the realm of possibility for human bodies to produce. This would include even comparing them to Olympic gymnasts. I mean, they're doing some of the most incredible things anyone had ever seen. And then you have desktop gaming, right? PC gaming, archery. They've been the most dominant in Olympic archery, no close second place forever. And this is something I want to study. So I'll just make another note, South Korea. Revisit South Korea. You were mentioning the categories of magic in the FISM competition. And I'm wondering if there are any particular experts or specialists, they don't have to be specialists, but people who are particularly impressive to you in the world of mentalism.

1:56:55My opinions on mentalism may be controversial. We can start with your opinions on mentalism. I am not a fan of mentalism. Why is that? All right. Oh, God. This is going to get me hate mail. So, what the hell? Radical honesty. Let's go. So, again, this is not universal. There are exceptions to this. There are wonderful people who do mentalism. Some of them are friends. They're cool. But... And for people who don't remember the definition, maybe you could just define the term. Mentalism broadly, you could define it as magic used to create... rather than the illusion of vanishing and reappearing and things like that, you used to create the illusion of psychic or psychological abilities that you do not have.

1:57:34Think of a number from 1 to 17. Yeah. Oh my God, you got it right. Holy shit. You must have either psychic powers or like really good body language-y NLP stuff that overwhelmingly is not the case. Here's the thing is, oh boy. Oh, this is really going to piss some people off. Can't please everyone. You really can't. Here's the thing. One of the things I realized back when I first got into magic, I was really intrigued by mentalism. because how would you not be? It's compelling. It's powerful. It gets a reaction. Of course, you feel like all the things that, many of the things that draw you to it.

1:58:03But I eventually realized that a very common, I've always held the golden rule, do as you will be done by, ethic of reciprocity. It doesn't always work because people are different, but it's a pretty good place to start from. And I remembered way back seeing a magician as a teenager and being amazed by something and going, oh, how did you do that? It's a natural, healthy, scientific question. and getting like a glib dismissive reply. And I was like, this guy's an asshole. I felt dismissed. I didn't feel good. And so when finding myself on the other side of that interaction, I take it very seriously.

1:58:36And I realized that the things I do magically personally are all things where if someone goes, how did you do that? I have to hide the method to keep it amazing, but I can go, it's a combination of sleight of hand and misdirection and a bunch of other complicated things to create the illusion of a thing that definitely didn't happen. The coin didn't actually disappear. I did a bunch of complicated shit to make it look like it disappeared. And that is the truth. That is the literal truth of what happened. So you can give them a lot of the truth without ruining it. I don't know if this is too much of a reveal.

1:59:04We can take it out if you want. But you do a fair amount of this in Glitches in Reality. And do you explain some of the elements and bob and weave in a very interesting dance, which I really enjoyed. And it is very much doing as I would be done by. Right. That is how I would like to be treated by a show. So you can do that with what you do. Yeah. And also, if people do, say, find out the actual method, all of them, I think, stand up as, yeah, that's, wow, that's intriguing. I'm proud of it. I'm not going to be ashamed by the revelation of the truth. It's not like, oh, no, I'm ruined. I'm a fraud now.

1:59:37Yeah, I did what I claim to do. We did clever, complicated, sneaky stuff. But with mentalism, I found when I was doing it, and people said, oh, my God, how did you know I was thinking of 17? I realized I couldn't tell them any of the truth without completely destroying the illusion. because with mentalism, what you are claiming to do is completely false. You are claiming a category of ability you absolutely do not have. It is all a lie. You know, like 1%, yeah, maybe sometimes you kind of take a guess and read a bit of body language, but that's like 1 % of it maybe. And I just didn't feel comfortable with that because I also realized doing magic, I meet people.

2:00:10I've met you through magic. We literally met a show. And I realized if I was doing a mentalism show, you would be impressed by me doing things that I absolutely cannot do. And the foundation of our relationship would be based on a lie. And I realized I didn't want to live that way. If I meet friends or dating context or whatever, I don't want our relationship to be based on a fundamental miscategorization of my art, craft, job abilities. And I just, I think, again, exceptions, I think you kind of have to be a bit of a sociopath to be okay with that. And again, or have not really thought through.

2:00:46And I think a lot of lovely people who are mentalists, I think they just haven't really thought through what the ramifications of what they're actually doing are. The social ramifications. Yeah. Yeah, the social. Or the cultural. What if you open your act by saying, I have none of these abilities? Yeah. If you proceed your act with that disclaimer, does that solve the problem or not really? It helps. Someone like Darren Brown, who is a masterful showman, a beautiful human being. And again, one of the people I would call mostly an exception. but the problem is I think it doesn't quite like your show miracle oh god yeah as an example Darren's amazing like incredible incredible inspiration but like even Darren who goes out of his way to kind of be a you know servant of the truth I don't think there's any disclaimer strong enough because the illusions are so powerful and so compelling that people are still going to go oh yeah yeah the disclaimer's fake obviously you have some kind of actual powers and these things are actually possible and real and they're just not and it just makes me uncomfortable I don't know I'm not going to say mentalism's evil or anything you know come on I need my headline on YouTube.

2:01:43Yeah, right. I'm kidding. But it just, it makes me uncomfortable. Okay. Yeah, it's not my thing. So you don't have to name names, which is what I was sort of going for with my initial question. But if we skip that, are there magicians, broadly speaking, and you could look at this question in a way that makes sense, who have just such ability to compute or do unusual things mentally that stand out to you? I would imagine there are types of performances where there's a lot that you need to sort of hold in working memory. I don't know. I'm just kind of speculating. Put it this way, I'm probably paraphrasing as best I can.

2:02:23Teller from Penn and Teller, who is an extraordinarily brilliant performer and person, talks about the fact that often the method to a lot of magic is just that no one would ever imagine you went to as much effort as you actually did to do a thing. half the times the secrets are hidden by the being so off the scale crazy extent of effort and work that no it wouldn't even occur to someone and sometimes something you watch all the time is people will see a magic trick and often guess the method correctly and then talk themselves out of it going maybe he whatever whatever no no one would do that it's a what is i have no idea and they will actually get it and then go it couldn't be that that's ridiculous now because it seems too simplistic or it just seems like too much work are both sometimes a sometimes b sometimes both together magic is so much broader and so much deeper than people ever realize there are so many different rooms in the house of magic you could spend 10 lifetimes on it and not even get close to everything there is to know and learn so given that the breadth and depth is I mean I hesitate to say infinite but just beyond the scope of anything one human could digest let alone master If, say, someone wanted to, as an adult, delve into the world of magic, as a practitioner, not to become a professional, but to experiment with something that might be enjoyable, to become more aware of perceptual.

2:03:56faculties and how perception can be shaped, how might they start? Because if it's, say, baseball or a given sport, you're like, okay, we can break this down into a few components. We can practice those components. Here's a logical progression so we can put A through F in some type of logical buildup. If I said, I would love to experiment with magic somehow, how would we even navigate that? And what questions might you ask me or what recommendations might you make? Because I know there's so many different types and so on. I think the truest answer is it's hard. There isn't an easy answer. Again, we can only ever speak for ourselves.

2:04:32I'm always wary of advice because all advice is wrong for somebody. Everyone's situation is so different. Totally. I found that I, again, when I was a kid, I had a magic set and I had a few magic books and none of them helped me. I concluded I was terrible at magic and had no potential. Which tells you something about those books and those kits. And for me, what made the difference was going to that university club and having a person to guide me. Because a good teacher, teaching's hard. Teaching's a complex art and craft. And I teach a lot of magic. I used to teach beginner magic courses in Melbourne at this organization.

2:05:05And I still sometimes take on students if it's the right kind of person and the schedule allows. It's the job of the teacher to adapt to the student. And having a person to see what I was struggling with, the unique struggles I was having that everyone wouldn't, and then be adept to that and guide that. Knowing whether it's you or someone, what is it you want to achieve? Why do you want to get into magic? What do you want out of life that is making you think about magic? These are all relevant questions that will then affect what you would teach and how you would teach it and what that journey would be.

2:05:33Yeah, I would say it's the pervasive ADD, meaning awe deficiency disorder, that I think humans suffer from increasingly. This despondent nihilism where there is severe deficiency in moments of awe. And the ability to conjure that simply, or maybe not simply, but both in learning the skill myself, but also to provide those moments. Even if it's just for kids who maybe aren't going to discern what I'm doing as easily as an adult. That's fine. I mean, I don't want to perform at birthday parties, so maybe it makes sense for me to practice for adults. the only let's call it magic book that ever clicked for me yeah and i didn't take it seriously this was a gift but i did buy a handful of books here and there yeah and similar to your experience most of them was like i'm not good at this i can't do it this doesn't work there was one very short book and it was basically science magic tricks it was very straightforward it was like okay here's how you can take a fork and a spoon and say shove them together and use a toothpick to balance it on the side of a glass and it just blows people's minds.

2:06:45It doesn't seem to make any sense. And then you can burn the ends of the toothpick and it looks insane. And you can pick it up in two minutes and then demonstrate it. And that was extremely gratifying for me. I also just like learning new things, taking it seriously for a period of time and seeing what comes of it. It's like, okay, if I did a sprint for a few weeks with magic, whatever that would end up meaning, what could I do? Right. And there are certain things that go through my mind where I'm looking at, for instance, some of the demonstrations that you did very strong opener, by the way, in the show, love the opening.

2:07:23I'm just looking at some of the things you can do with your hands. And I'm like, okay, there's no fucking way that I'm going to develop that in a few weeks. Also, because I simply just don't have much like learning to speak Mandarin. It's like you can take someone who's never spoken Mandarin and try to get them, even if they have very good hearing, to mimic some of the tones and sounds. They're not going to have the musculature and the control in their throat, in their vocal cords to produce those sounds. It doesn't matter how smart they are. Similarly, I'm like, okay, I probably am not going to develop the attributes to do some of a lot of what you can do.

2:07:59But I wonder what I could do in a shorter period of time. Yeah. And you could if you gave it long enough, but that may not be a thing that you care enough to do. And there's nothing wrong with that. So when you're teaching, let's say these introductory courses, what did the course look like? So it always began with exactly that question. And I usually kept it about 10 to 15 people. Now it's more one-on-one or very small groups usually on the occasions I do it. And it was always going around and asking, first of all, why is everyone here? Like, why are you here? What do you want? What are you hoping to get out of this?

2:08:27And let's see if we can find an overlap that we can achieve. And also ask if they've ever either learned a martial art or played a sport or learned a musical instrument or even just learned to drive a manual car. And I'm looking for some way I can find an analogous experience of going up like a mastery journey of like going from, I have no idea how to do this thing. And now I can do this thing because a lot of people just tap out. They get demotivated and they are under the common misconception that it's about natural talent or natural dexterity that, oh, my hands are not big enough or not dexterous enough or I won't be able to do this.

2:08:59And it's like, no, well, if you learn that other thing, you'll be able to learn this. And that's trying to find that way to reach them. Because I know from experience, that's one of the common stumbling bits. And then usually starting by teaching a couple of basic tricks. And I always go for get some instant gratification, right? Because you want to have that responsive. You want to get them in some sort of flow state. Give them a very simple thing. And then right from the start, the thing I do that's pretty unusual compared to most teachers is from the very beginning, I'm teaching them to put their own unique presentational spin art.

2:09:29It is always ideally do this trick in a way that no other person would do it exactly the same way. What are you saying? How are you saying it? What's your vibe? Who are you? And how are you as you going to do this trick for whoever you do it for? And the theory is that particularly in a casual sort of social performance as opposed to a formal show like you saw, I sort of think that ideally the performance should be a bit different every time. You should never say exactly the same thing because the situation is different. the being present to that person in that moment and like how to guide that, how to feel that, how to keep it adaptable and keep it real and everything.

2:10:03How long were these courses that you've done in the small groups? The ones I did back then, it was four weeks, four three hour sessions once a week for a month. And it was pretty good. There's a bunch of people who I'm still in touch with who got started there. And that's always very gratifying, but I love the different reasons why people would do it. Like there was a bartender who wanted to get better tips. And I'm like, Oh cool. That's a very different thing to like. That's cool. That's a great use case. Yeah. There was a woman in her 70s who was developing arthritis and wanted something to do with her hands as more fun occupational therapy.

2:10:32Great. That's a totally different objective that we'll teach to very differently. There was an author who was working on a novel. He was a published author, legit, who wanted to research for a magician character and wanted to make sure he actually understood the source material. And I'm like, I respect that. Good for you. Like, I actually want to know what you're talking about. It doesn't matter if he gets the side of hand down. He just needs to understand and be present. I'm like, this is great. These are all wonderful reasons that we can feed to all of these. so in my case i would say that i would like to be able to use found objects so rather than travel with a kit yep very relatable rather like the dinner with the toothpick and the silverware it's like i can do that anywhere yeah it feels more organic it's more relatable and it could be i mean this isn't magic but like i had a friend who was incredibly good at turning paper napkins into like roses and all sorts of stuff and it was wonderful because it traveled with him he could do it anywhere the question i have next i suppose because you mentioned kind of lead into this with what you just said are there any films or books that relate to magic in some way that you like or that magicians like and the reason i ask is because i'm sure there are a ton that you do not like and i have one friend who's an extremely high level professional drummer i loved the movie whiplash yeah he can't watch it though because there are all these technical aspects that they took a lot of creative license with.

2:11:53So are there any movies, docs, books, anything that comes to mind? Absolutely. There's a few. Because the one, an interesting one, because you've got the, to start with the very famous one, the prestige is interesting because I would rate its magic accuracy is extremely low, but it's a good movie. I like the movie. A couple of things actually gets pretty good, but mostly very, like they never kill the doves in the cages, the whole twins thing. It's very not representative, but good movie. I liked it. In terms of magic accuracy, there's a book, I would recommend to anyone a book called Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeier, which is the only magic history book I've ever completely enjoyed.

2:12:30I'm not a good nonfiction reader. I'd need a plot to keep me going. Hiding the Elephant's amazing. You learn a lot about perception, psychology, history, hootie. Goes into some of the details. Really interesting and a good read. Arrested Development, a cult classic sitcom. I remember when it came out in the Melbourne magic scene, we were watching this show. It was just hilarious. and incredibly written, going, and there's Joe Bluth, the magician character, who plays this awful, awful magician parody character, but it's accurate, awful parody. And that's not normally the case. Like, Burt Wonderstone, for example, it's, again, good movie, not accurate for magic.

2:13:06Like, it's this whimsical, silly thing of fine. Joe Bluth, whoever wrote this, knows the magic industry. Like, it's too on the nose. Like, it's accurate. It's kind of like when musicians talk about spinal tap, and them getting lost backstage, and not being able to get through the curtains, they're like, all right, this person knew. Yeah, Joe Bluth, Arrested Development is that for magic. It's so dead on. Like the Gothic Castle is a perfect parody of the Magic Castle. The Alliance of Magicians is so, in the same way that the real estate people are parodies of awful real estate tropes, the magic is so accurate in that, in this twisted parody way.

2:13:38It's so good. It turns out, I think it was Mitch Hurwitz as like a Magic Castle member and knows the industry. I'm like, yeah, that checks out. So there are a number of docs that I've watched. I've had this maybe fascination from a distance with magic for a long time, but I've never jumped into it. I haven't known how, in part because it's so expansive in its scope. I'm like, I don't know how to do this. Whereas if it's something like a language, it's like, okay, well, let's figure out what the thousand most frequently occurring words are. Let's figure out the sentence structure. I know how to break it down.

2:14:09Whereas with magic, I'm like, ah, how do we boil this ocean? I'm not really sure. But I have watched a bunch of docs. I really enjoyed Delt, which is a fantastic documentary about Richard Turner, who lives near Austin in San Antonio, who lost his eyesight. Extraordinary guy. And he's one of a kind, an amazing character, an incredible card mechanic. Also, an honest liar about, is it the amazing Randy? James Randy, yeah. James Randy. And that leads into my next question, and here's how it connects. So for people who watch An Honest Liar, Randy was famous as a magician, but he was also famous, and I'm not sure if he's still around, but as a debunker.

2:14:52and he wanted to identify frauds and charlatans. And he actually provided a real service in a bunch of cases where there were some very manipulative cult-like figures who were convincing people to leave their medications and donate money and do all these things that were certainly not in their best interest. I have noticed, at least among some of the magicians I've had exposure to, who are from either the US, UK, or Australia, that there's a strong atheistic identity. Yeah. Okay. Very common. Right. Now, on one hand, I can see why that would make sense if you feel like you are able to identify part of your skill in magic is deconstructing illusion and truth-seeking.

2:15:43But are there religious magicians out there? There must have been at some point. There still are. And the reason that I'm curious, is it almost a prerequisite to have an atheistic, right, at the very least agnostic stance to be accepted by magicians now? Yeah. If they're from a sort of secular Western frame. The short answer, there absolutely are religious magicians. And much like any demographic trend, it's a huge spectrum of someone who's a chill, observant, Quaker or whatever, who does magic, all the way up to someone who's an evangelical whatever, who uses magic in their sermons and everything in between.

2:16:20And again, this is not my area. I'm not really highly qualified to speak to it. But if you ever want a fascinating Google rabbit hole, just Google gospel magic. Gospel magic. As a genre. And there is a genre of magic that is, you know, products and books and things are released for about how to use magic with religious themes to communicate religious concepts. And it is fascinating. Without placing any value judgment either way on that, it is an eye-opening little niche that exists. Again, magic is broad and deep. There is so much more in there than you can imagine. Jigsaw puzzles. Yeah. How on earth do we get to jigsaw puzzles?

2:16:56while struggling to be a professional magician and work out how to make a living and pay my rent and afford healthcare in America and all those things. And struggling really badly, I realized that also it really hit me that with magic, even the best case, you know, you become David Copfield or Penn and Teller or whoever, Shin Lim, you're crushing it, your shows are successful. It hit me that I realized I don't enjoy doing the same thing day in, day out. and it suddenly hit me that even if I achieved you know quote-unquote success in magic I still think I wouldn't be happy and that was a really confronting realization yeah totally and also you know I was reading a lot you know passive income is good trying to work out my long-term financial future how to like learning more about business theory and everything else and basically long story short someone I knew was thinking of making some jigsaw puzzles and ran into the idea that I had been working completely separately with the engineering and geometry and math and programming background on these things called geometric vanishes.

2:17:56The most famous one is the infinite chocolate illusion that many people will see on the internet. Which I haven't seen, but I need to look it up. Look it up. Infinite chocolate illusion. It's great. You chop up a block of chocolate and rearrange the pieces and it looks like you remove a piece, but the block is still intact. It's a really delightful, very clever little geometric illusion. I had a bunch of ideas on ways I could use this. A lot of the material I do starts with me seeing something that's pretty good. And I'm like, I think this could be better. I think there's more here than is being explored.

2:18:23That's where a lot of my things begin. And again, I went, what is an egg on it? I'm like, what is, okay, let's really, let's, and went away like as per Jordan's very accurate story. And I'm like, what is going on here? Let's really get into this and started like drawing diagrams and doing mathematical research and reading the source material. And six months later, I found that when I work on things, 19 out of 20 of them go nowhere or like, okay, but not great. And I'm like, oh, well, that's fine. That's just the ratio it takes to try stuff. And this one was like that. I sort of had some ideas, but it never got there.

2:18:52But I'd done all the reverse engineering. I knew what an egg was in that regard. And then it was a sort of like, what if we like just make a product that goes on shelves and jigsaw puzzles are popular, but at the time they were all kind of boring. You know, they would just get a piece of art, whack it on a puzzle. and while we were talking about this we ran to the idea of like wait a minute could that geometric vanish be applied to a jigsaw puzzle I'm like I don't know but maybe and I went away and didn't shower for six days and went like fully into the tank went into full creative mode and realized yeah I think it can there's a few complicated constraints on how it would have to happen and how the die lines would be cut but like I think this is doable and again long complicated story led to then did some prototypes and eventually put the puzzles up on Kickstarter.

2:19:41And by absurd coincidence, this happened to be right at the beginning of the first 2020 pandemic lockdown. So for you guys, good timing, probably. Kind of too good. I learned a term apparently that originates from Xerox, a success disaster, where something is so big, it causes problems. and it's actually worse than if it had been smaller. Sometimes I call that the hug of death. Yeah, completely. In so many ways, because also this was a time where in the pandemic lockdown, global supply chain crisis, this was like before it was cool. We were having a supply chain crisis before the rest of the world was.

2:20:19It was just insane and dealing with it. But the puzzles were good and I suddenly realized, oh my God, this is a thing. Maybe I don't have to just want to shoot myself in the face from trying to be a professional magician all the time. Like maybe I can actually be a product designer and create beautiful things that bring people happiness and wonder and joy that then I just scale and sell and I don't have to be just like dealing with the contracts and the negotiation and the hustling and just the exhausting dynamics of doing it. And it was this real revelation of realizing that all the things that I'd learned in software engineering and in psychology and in magic, they're all kind of the same.

2:20:54It's all experience design to some degree. And it was an amazing exercise to be able to apply all of that thinking and realize it absolutely translates across different fields. And applying that to a jigsaw puzzle to give the same experience of surprise, wonder, delight. And it was a real eye-opener for me. And now as I think about the future, I'm like, okay, what else can we apply this thinking to? What is the next thing that can use this kind of background and understanding of human experience and psychology and engineering and everything else to optimize something else in a surprising way? you have some good friends as far as i can tell to help with thinking through these things as well we'll find out you have a good crew lots of special agents so that is the number one back puzzle of all time it is on kickstarter yeah and i highly recommend people check this out so i have not yet received mine but certainly magic puzzle company yeah people need to check out magic puzzle company.com people can find you at simon cornell.com where would you like your show to go what is your sort of ideal dream manifestation of that what does it look like mostly this show began the short answer is i don't know yet i'm going in there with the beginner's mind i'm not sure i've learned that no matter what you expect i was talking with this is my good friend viom viom sharma medical doctor and magician in melbourne after fism i went through as i've learned is not uncommon after a massive success.

2:22:20I went into a deep existential depression for about six months, which was a really weird, complicated, messy time for all kinds of reasons. One of the many things that helped me claw out of it was something actually he said that you can, as we see throughout history all the time, you can have the best plan. You can have everything figured out. You know what you're doing. You've got the plan. It's going to be great. And then out of nowhere, it can fail. Or you can also have no idea what you're doing, no idea where you're going, but move forward, work hard, be a good person, keep your eyes open, and things can just work out out of nowhere.

2:22:52And so it made me kind of feel more okay that I didn't know where I was going or what I was doing, which is a lot of the cause of what do I do now? How do I make a living? What is going to happen? And so that's kind of where I'm at with the show right now. I don't know, but I want it to... I first had the idea for this show back in 2013 as sort of a full show version of this idea of take a moment, preserve it in the world in a wonderful way. And And it has never quite hit the full vision, the vision in my mind of what it was going to be. It's very close now. Thanks to Chad and thanks to another friend, Tim, who introduced me to Chad and a few other people.

2:23:22Again, the team, the wonderful people who have been involved. Right now, I mostly want to see it hit the full vision. I want to see the full version of it. It's like 90 % there now. It's a few more improvements. And just for my own internal spiritual satisfaction, I want to close this plot arc. It's what took me to the world championships. I just wanted to end the story. I just wanted to like try the thing see what happens find the thing yeah complete the story arc and then I don't know and then whatever comes next we'll find out maybe nothing maybe that'll be it and it'll go nowhere that often is what happens with these things maybe it'll go somewhere who knows I mean sometimes doors close sometimes more interesting doors open than we could have planned for right and from the ashes new phoenixes are sometimes born is there anything else you would like to say any requests to my audience anything at all that you'd like to add before we wrap up this first recorded conversation.

2:24:12How many more hours have you got? The world's confusing. The world's complicated. It's difficult. It's hard. For most people, it's just really damn hard. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't have to be great as well. I don't know. Yeah. I'm wary of advice, you know? Yeah. But I mean, pontificating is not necessarily equal prescription. Yeah, true. True that. I think that's a good place to wrap. Try the puzzles. They're delightful. Try the puzzles. I'm a person who is incredibly critical of his own work. Every time I watch back a show, I'm like, the audience liked it, but I'm unhappy. The puzzles are so good.

2:24:48They just really make me smile with just how well they turned out. It's a beautiful thing. It's the reason they've been backed as much as they have been backed. And there's a lot of excitement, as people will see online, if they go look around. Magicpuzzlecompany.com. Check it out, folks. And for links to everything we've talked about, You can find them in the show notes as per usual at tim.blog slash podcast. Thank you, Simon. My pleasure. And until next time, folks, be a little kinder than is necessary, not only to others, to yourself as well. And thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again.

2:25:24Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

2:26:06And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog.com. Type that into your browser, tim.blog.com. Drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Allbirds. It is summer 2023, finally, and this is the summer to explore. I'm about to do that myself, and I'm looking at the floor in front of me, literally three feet away.

2:26:45What do I have? I have my Allbirds. So before you set foot out the door, set foot in the Ultimate Travel Shoes from Allbirds, super comfortable and sustainable shoes. Allbirds are versatile enough to go with any outfit, durable enough to wear on any terrain, and lightweight enough to make packing a breeze. Plus, the Tree Dashers, Runners, Pipers, and other Allbirds tree shoes are made from insanely comfortable, breezy eucalyptus fiber. They're the only shoes your suitcase needs. I am speaking from experience here. I've been wearing Allbirds for the last several months, and I've been alternating between two pairs.

2:27:18I'm traveling with them right now. I started with the Tree Runners in marine blue, in case you're curious, and now I'm wearing the Tree Dashers, and the Tree Dashers are my current daily driver. I wear them for everything. They're easy to slip on, easy to tie. Everything about them is just easy, easy, simple, simple. I stick with the Blue Hoos, and the Dashers in this case are in buoyant blue. The color pops. I've received a ton of compliments, but putting the color aside, the Tree Dasher is an everyday running and walking shoe that's also great for light workouts. It's super comfortable, and I've been testing it on long walks in Austin.

2:27:52I've also been testing it on the trails and pavement in places like New Zealand. And get in vacation mode before you even leave the house with Allbirds. Find your perfect pair at allbirds.com today and use code TIM, that's T-I-M, for free socks. Just add them to your shopping cart with a purchase of$48 or more. That's allbirds, A-L-L-B-I-R-D-S, dot com and code TIM, T-I-M. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Aeropress. I love Aeropress. with more than 45 ,000 five-star reviews and customers in more than 60 countries, it might be the highest-rated coffee maker on the planet. Let's rewind just a bit, because back in 2010, 2011, I tested the entire gamut of coffee brewing and filtering options alongside a former barista world champion.

2:28:42This was for research for the four-hour chef. That concluded with a statement that the AeroPress was, quote, bar none, my favorite brewing method. end quote. I even mentioned it and made a cup of coffee on late night with Jimmy Fallon using the AeroPress. Here is the back backstory. Remember the Arobi, the amazing UFO-like disc that you could throw farther than a football field? Alan Adler, a mechanical engineer and Stanford University lecturer, created that. Then, after conquering the 1980s toy market, he began to obsess over one thing, coffee. The result was the AeroPress, which debuted in 2006.

2:29:18It was quickly adopted by by the specialty coffee community, and it became so popular with the barista community that someone in Oslo, Norway started a World Aeropress Championship. Because the Aeropress combines the best of three brewing methods, you get a cup that is full-bodied like a French press, smooth and complex, as if you were using a pour-over method, and rich in flavor like espresso. Best of all, it's super small. You can pack it in your bag when you travel. It takes literally five seconds to clean. It is all practical, no fuss, and you don't have to drink mediocre coffee at your office or Airbnb.

2:29:54Now they have a new extra large version called XL that serves two times as much coffee as the original AeroPress. Pick one up at aeropress.com slash Tim for a fraction of the cost of a fancy machine. That's A-E-R-O-P-R-E-S-S dot com slash Tim. And my listeners, that's you guys, can get 15 % off. Just use the link aeropress.com slash Tim. One more time, that's aeropress.com slash Tim.