TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Conjures Up Brian Brushwood

Professional magician, techno wizard, you might say, and overall rogue. The guy has gone on to do numerous super cool things, including appearing on Penn and Teller Show and lots of other really awesome stuff. And this was a chance for us to chat with him way back in And uh, it's great to hear him again because I don't I don't run into him very much. He lives out in Texas, so I don't get a chance to see him very frequently. But enjoy this episode of tech Stuff conjures up Brian Brushwood. Brian,

thank you so much for being on our show. Dude, thank you so much for having me And we know we've talked about this for months. I'm glad we finally made it happen. Yeah, Brushwood and I are we're like BFFs from way back. Yeah, we're rooms. That's true. That's true. And so yeah, Brushwood is a he's he's he's an amazing, amazing kind of guy. One of the nicest guys you guys could ever meet. I really do mean that, Mr Brushwood. You gotta ruin my reputations about this, alright. He's he's

also a complete jerk. No. Now, so we wanted to talk today about lots of different topics. But before we get started, in your own words, can we get sort of a kind of a minute long or two minute long bio of who you are? How got interested in stage magic and technology and all that kind of good stuff. Sure, man, it's really weird. I'm in a transition phase right now because if you'd asked me five years ago, the answer

would have been dead simple. I would have told you I am a touring stage magician who tours colleges doing a punk rock magic show with fire eating escapes, mind reading. I stick a nail and one eye pops out, the other eye, I break thirty pound breaks over my head. Uh. And it was And that's that's all I did. But

as I've transitioned, we launched Scam School. I pitched it five years ago right around this time, and now it's four years strong, two twenty episodes, and now I'm hosting four other podcasts as well, but I'm still doing the live stage shows. So my identity, my identity is kind of in transition right now as I as I do more performing in front of the camera instead of in

front of audiences. And now it's even more complicated since uh, we just launched the Scam School Book, which hit number one in Canada number three in the US on the iTunes store on the day of launch. So now I guess throw author in the mix as well. How about that? Huge props to you and that's awesome and uh, you're also the Scam School Show has also been featured on

Discovery dot Com. Yeah, they apparently, and it was the awesomest thing because I guess Discovery dot Com had been talking with Revision three and they were talking about some kind of partnership for a while, but since nothing was confirmed, nobody at Revision three really told me because you know, it's like they didn't want to tell me if there was nothing to tell, but I guess within minutes of the deal being finalized, Discovery dot Com through the first

episode up under their life section, and so I found out about it because somebody on Twitter was like, Hey, were you just not gonna tell us that you joined Discovery dot Com? And I'm like, what, So take a look, and sure enough, there it is and it seems to be very well received. I'm excited about it. That's fantastic. Yeah. And and as a you know, as a friend and fan, I was very pleased to see that join our our family here, and it was a it was a surprise

to me as well. I had not I had no knowledge of any sort of Revision three work at that point, but it was very pleased to see you brought on board. Anytime I can see talented people who who are good

at at at entertaining and informing, that's always a pleasure. Uh. So we wanted to talk a little bit today about the fact that since you have an extensive experience being a stage magician, uh that kind of gets your perspective on how stage magic has changed over the years and how the role of technology has sort of played a part in that, and that just get an idea of

what's important when you're a stage magician. Yeah, absolutely, I mean I would say as as far back as you look, there's been a very tight relationship between technology and magic. And uh, what's the Arthur's C. Clark quote from Childhood's End. He says, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic is one of our favorites. Yeah. No, and then the magicians love that quote because it makes us sound important.

But the but you know, you look back, and it seems like every time there's a novel new tech knowledgy, uh, there is a magician to either exploit it secretly in a stage show or to make it integral to his stage performance. You know. You go back, you know you've got Jean Eugene Robert Houdon uh doing doing bullet catches, you know, and this is in the nineteenth century when they're still using a musket type rifles. You got uh, you know, Penn and Teller doing doing cell phone tricks,

you know. And of course I I do an illusion in my stage show now where I make a ghost appear on everyone's cell phone in the audience. And there's something about the novelty of new technology that that puts a finger in that same part of the brain that good sleight of hand does where it's just it's just incomprehensible and you can't even understand how that's possible. That's yeah,

that's really cool. I'm uh, you know, not to not to pull back the veil too much from from the whole magic thing, but go ahead, pull it back in the back here in the bidz uh. You know, we might refer to certain certain types of technology specifically made for stage magic, often referred to as as gimmicks, a gimmick that you use in order to pull off a trick. And I think it's an interesting thing that I see with a lot of people who just start off in magic.

The beginners often, I think, place more stock in a gimmick than they do necessarily in stage presentation. And I'm curious as to what your view is on that. What do you think is the most important tool in any stage magician's toolbox? Us, Yeah, you nailed it right on

the head. When I first started in magic, I was what eighteen years old, and wandered into a magic shop in Austin, Texas that was run out of the garage of one of the local magicians, and since I didn't have a car at university, I had to take two different buses. It took me a forty five minutes just to go the eight miles to get there. And uh, this guy talked to me for like the three hours straight. I just had my mind blown because I picked magic just out of the blue as as a hobby to try,

and I didn't really know much about it. But one of the things he told me that really stuck with me is like when when people first start doing magic, they always want the self working, no fail gimmicks. They want they want the tricky deck of cards to force someone a card rather than relying on slide of hand, because you know, it's a confidence booster and it's something that always works. But then there's some kind of guilt that builds in you. It makes you think, like, I'm

not really a magician. I should be doing everything with a real deck of cards. And you learn how to do these these fancy forces or these flourishes, or you know, turn over one card so it looks like a different card, and then after a while, once you have that down, you get lazy and say, why am I doing all this extra work? When the one who notices the difference, and then you go back to using gimmicks. So it's

like pendulum. Yeah it is, but but but you come out the other side because it's one of those once you get enough flight time, you build an engaging presentation. And I'll tell you that's the biggest I don't want to say betrayal, that's the biggest confusion that people have.

A lot of folks get into magic in their fourteen and hitting puberty because they feel powerless and they want a way to get other people to be interested in something they're doing, and so they follow the script the way it's written, They do the moves the way it's written, and either they get stuck in that rut and they become those socially awkward people who can't relate to other people except with the deck of cards in their hand, or they pull through it and they realize, wow, it's

not really They'll they'll realize, like, out of everything, the one joke they made up on the spot got a bigger reaction than any of the prepackaged can jokes that they had before then, and then they realized that the magic is just that social lubricant. It's just that excuse to start interacting with someone. And it's really it's your

personality that matters way more than anything. And you. I mean, there are parts of Penn and Teller's show that are utterly transparent to anyone who knows a thing or two about magic. And yet there are some of the most important, beautiful routines that they've ever written because they speak to something bigger than the they're doing. Yeah, I'm always reminded of their routine of doing the cups and balls with

the transparent cups. Yeah, and even as you're watching it, and even as they're explaining how they do it, they're doing it so seamlessly and so smoothly. That's so clear that they've they've really polished that routine that it's still feels like magic. Well, I think there's a real, uh, there's something that we really crave in the illusion of

being educated. And I say the illusion because because by the time that trade, ostensibly the whole purpose of that routine is for them to teach you how to do the cups and balls, because you see it done with transparent cups. By the time that's over, I would I would challenge you to a hundred thousand yen. That is that a hundred bucks, So like that not recreate even

one phase of that routine accurately and likewise. One of the things people seem to like most of my stage show is I begin with this four and a half minute illustrated history of fire eating, right explained from the earliest references to resistance to fire to UH to the touring UH you know stage performer Richardson in the sixteen hundreds. I explain the progression of fire reading, and everyone's oh, I just so educational. I learned so much, and I

was like, you cannot repeat back one fact. I gave you that entire time. But it's that blend of feeling like you're learning while you're seeing something visually interesting that seems to uh, seems to sit well with people. Excellent, yeah, um, and it's it's interesting to me on this show in several different episodes, and Chris can can attest to this because he had to listen to me do it just

a second ago. I stress the importance of of critical thinking and really taking taking time to think things through, because otherwise you just tend to accept stuff on a surface level, and it becomes very easy to get tricked into things. This is one of those things that magicians that actually can depend upon depending on their their routines. But but there does seem to be an interesting relationship between people who are are who get into stage magic

and people who are advocates for critical thinking. Um. But and I mean that all that I'll really began with Houdini. You know, Judini was obsessed with trying to contact his dead mother and this is at the height of spiritualism in uh, you know, early twentieth century. But being a magician, he was offended when he went to spiritual mediums and saw they were using standard slide hand tricks. And yet these people with the straight face, We're saying, no, I'm

contacting the spirit world. He's like, no, you got that palm, you know, and he would he would call him out. He was he was kind of he was kind of an a hole about it, you know. Yeah, and that tradition continues to this day well well, and and to be honest, nobody was doing it after Houdini until James Randy came along and back in the nineteen sixties and started off with with I don't know if it started with a hundred dollars out of his own pocket or

a thousand dollars out of his own pocket. But he's always offered this, uh, this, this dollar amount challenge to anyone who can demonstrate any psychic esp or super a natural phenomenon under double blind test conditions. Uh And and

nobody's gotten anywhere close. And in fact the challenge is now, of course the world famous million dollar challenge, and it actually extends to things beyond your typical you know, the we typically think of things like being able to move something with your mind or prove that dowsing is real, but it actually I've seen him extend that to uh, to technological claims as well, for example, monster cables. There you go, That's where I was headed. Beat me to

the punch there, And I guess it's true. I think I've read an article recently saying that a wire co hanger demonstrated the ability to perform just as well as a hundred dollar monster cable. Yeah. We, as a matter of fact, talked about that on a previous podcast. Yeah, that exact same subject. Yeah, But which it's interesting to think that it's a stage magician, someone who is skilled in the arts of deception. Who who comes forward as

an advocate for this? And then but then again, you're talking about the people who know these tools, because like you were saying with Houdini, there these are the tools of the trade, and they're seeing it being done not for entertainment purposes, but to pull the wool over the eyes and try and builk people out of money. Well, I think go ahead, I was gonna say, in a way, the people that that sell paraphernalia like that, the the high end audio cables that work theoretically just as well

as a code hanger. They're involved in an act of showmanship as well. Oh, certainly showmanship. And also there's there's certain things. Um when there's a market need for something, whether it exists or not, somebody will figure out a

way to fill it. And that's why I don't think Marnster cables are going anywhere, is because whether or not it's true, if you have more money than sense, you want to believe that there's something better than the ten dollar cable, and and Monster is gonna be there to say yes, yes there is, and here it is. And and the thing that really drives me crazy is you could actually come into contact with a system that is measurably through very very finely two instruments better than a

cheaper system. But to the human ear is indistinguishable, right, because we're not capable of hearing that well. And and in fact, uh, there's a man, it must have been. It was over a decade ago that I read in Wired magazine. I wish I could remember the name of the audio engineer that he set up a super calibrated sound system at one dance club and people were complaining that it just it just wasn't loud. And meanwhile he's looking at the decibel meter and this thing is like

almost damaging your hearing, it's so loud. So he goes to radio shack and gets a I think it was like cents in Peter that would that would clip the highest end. But the the audio queue of hearing the high ends being clipped made them think that the speakers were maxed, and even though the volume was actually lower, people reported how much more they liked the music, how much louder it was. That's that now that I don't find that hard to believe, but it is. It is

pretty amazing. It is amazing, I'll tell you, man, it's amazing to me, what what a mystery our own minds are. And that's one of the things, my favorite, one of the greatest things I got to do at the University of Texas was I was part of this honors program where they only took a hundred and fifty students each year, and they'd have over a thousand applicants, but you could take. You took pretty much what they told you the first couple of years, but the last two years you took

whatever classes were related to your thesis. You had to have a thesis in order to graduate, and some of the students would write their first novel, some of them would write these two three d page biographies on obscure

figures from history. And I was doing magic on the side at this point, and I thought, well, maybe it would be awesome if I could get away with writing a paper on the history of magic, because that would be fun, or even better, if I could claim that it was my thesis to get a trick published in one of these magic journals, So, you know, still putting a significant amount of work on myself, but at least it would be fun and magic related. And when I

went into pitch, my idea to the dean. She said, well, what do you want to do for your thesis? And I got as far as saying, well, for the last couple of years, I've been doing magic on the side, And as I drew in a breath to continue, she interrupted saying, and you want to do a magic show as a creative writing thesis. What a great idea. And so as it was full, I got to take whatever courses I wanted for the last two years, as long

as I could justify being related to magic. So I took courses on you know, on artificial intelligence, on psychology, on history of witchcraft, on pseudoscience and the paranormal. Uh, it was, it was amazing. But it was those courses on brain development that really cemented in my mind what wonderful,

flawed machines we all are. And once you see, once you spend a few years deceiving people, and even better, hearing back from people after the fact, having them describe to you what they think you did or what they remember you doing, it is unreal how wrong all of our memories are, all the time, on everything. And once you accept that, I find I find I'm a lot happier about everything. I don't argue anymore. Like if I remember something happening one way and someone remembers in another way,

I'm like, whatever, I'm probably we're probably both wrong. Thing like that. And likewise, when you look at um, you know, eye witness testimony, you you you devalue it severely because you understand that even if they're not intentionally lying to themselves, they there's just no way that they can accurately remember anything. So you're making me feel a lot more comfortable about the fact that I offload a lot of my own mental uh, my own mental practices onto my technology. Now, oh,

you should, you should. And in fact, I think that we're entering an age where, unfortunately in the legal system right now, we still are in a place where where we value eye witness testimony far more than we should because there's and if you've if you're familiar with the work of Elizabeth loftus, uh, it is unreal. They've been able to induce false memories and other people by asking leading questions. There was one story where they took a young kid named Chris and they laid out five stories.

Four of them were tales that actually happened to him. One was a totally made up story about being lost at the mall, and they asked a bunch of questions about all five and uh, and then like two weeks later they said, well, which of these one of these was a made up story that never happened to you? Chris? Which one was the one that we made up? And he picked an actual story from his past as being a made up one because he couldn't believe that he

wasn't lost at the mall at age five. It's kind of like, wasn't there that story about the other the other experiment with the showing an ad a fake ad for some popcorn uh to some people during a thing, and then like a survey two weeks later, they asked them how the popcorn was, but no one in the study had actually had any popcorn, but they all remembered trying it and then it was delicious because of the ad. Oh wow, I haven't heard now that was that was just I think that was in when I heard that.

I think I heard that on Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Um, that's fantastic. Yeah. And this is why focus groups aren't so great for marketing purpose is because the leader often sort of steers it in the direction of the of what the the company that has organized this focus group is trying to achieve, like oh hey, look it works, Yeah, right,

let's go with it. Yeah, Which that's the important of double blind experimentation, which we you know, of course they do very very well with the with the FDA, and for you know, new drugs. When it comes to consumer marketing, there's probably not much of a reason to try that. And for those out there who don't know what a double blind test is, all right, So a blind test means that the person who's taking the test has no knowledge of whether or not they are in a control

group or the test group. Double blind is that the person administering the test also does not know if that person if they are administering a test to the control group or to the test group, so that that it limits the chance that data will be uh leaked to a test subject and influence his or her results. Yeah.

That one of the earliest cases of that where it's so important is Michelle Eugene should Rules, a French scientist and this is back in the I believe the nineteenth century when dowsing was super popular, and dowsing is of course, you know, finding water with a forked stick or holding a pendulum over a substance, and it swings one way if it's supposed to be one thing, or swings another

way if it's another. And when he tried it, he set out the way he tried it was, of course, he set out a bowl of mercury, held out the pendulum, and that things started swinging like crazy, pulled the mercury away and it stayed totally still. Still. He was like, holy crap, maybe there's something to this, although he didn't say that because he was French soccerate crap, this crap. But then he had it. But but he had the idea.

He had his assistant set up a partition and he just held out the pendulum and the assistant would either set down an empty bowl or a bowl filled with mercury. And once he didn't know which which one it was,

it didn't do anything. Yeah, I know that James Randy had suggested a similar test where it would involve burying uh PBC pipes with water in for example, under a certain area of land, covering it all up, and then the person ministering the test would have no idea where the the PBC pipe actually was they would just observe the test subjects as they would walk across, and the test subjects would let them know if they had found a hit or not, and that that would be you know,

a typical, very simple double blind test, although the actual administration would require more. But out of everybody who goes for the James Randy million dollar Prize, the dowsers seem to be the most intense because they truly believe what

they're doing is a science. And the reason they truly believe it is because they have so many stories of personal validation where they looked for water pipes behind the wall and they found them, they looked for water at their uncle's farm and they found it, or you know, they look for a lost object, they find it. And the problem is, uh, you can be right, you can get lucky, and you can maybe you rely on your intuition,

uh and not realize you're you're doing that. So even if they're and get a hit, that doesn't mean that it proves that dowsing works. It means that it proves that that either you know, one of the other things happen. Yeah, yeah, And this kind of leads us in this whole this whole belief the fact that we're we we are fallible constructs, you know, we we don't We make mistakes and often we don't realize we're making the mistakes, and that there are ways of tweaking that. That kind of leads into

the discussion I want to have about social engineering. Now you have your show Scam School, which has a lot to do with social engineering. Can you explain to our listeners what is social engineering? Oh? I think the definition is is clinically something like, um, you know, a set of tools designed to induce a certain response in people in certain environments. I I just claim that it's cheap, dirty psychological tricks to get people to do what you want.

But whether it's you know, and on Scam School, we try to keep it light, so more often than not, were we explain the ways that you can use uh, you know, magic tricks or psychological manipulation and to get the girl's phone number or to win free beers off of your friends. Uh. But uh, one of the best experiences that I got to have was, uh what three years ago, I got selected at south By Southwest to give a keynote presentation on social engineering. Scam your Way

into anything or from anyone. And in the research putting together on that, I read a number of books, including Robert Chaldini's Influence, which is fantastic, so many amazing tidbits in there that are all based on you know, real psychological surveys, stuff like um uh, there's these fixed action pattern patterns, these psychological backdoors that that anyone from con artists to magicians can use to to make people feel

obligated to do certain things, for example reciprocation. There was a Dennis Reagan did this uh fake art experiment where he had a group of people come in and they were either they were assigned in twos. Now one of them was a real experiment tee, the other was a fake experimentee and they spent all day reviewing our on the scale of one to five. I love it, I

hated this at the other. And about halfway it was time to take a break, and so Mr fake tester goes off to the bathroom and when he comes back and one of two things would happen. Either he came back empty handed and they just went back to work, or he came back with with two cokes in his hand and he would say, hey, I went to the bathroom and I grabbed myself a coke, and I figured I grab one for you. Here you go, enjoy a coke.

And then they go back to testing. And then at the very end of the day, Mr Fake tester would in both in both groups say hey, I hate to bug you about this, but we're doing this raffle for work, and if if I sell enough, there's a chance I could win a car. As many as you could buy, the more the better. And they measured how many of these of these tickets he would sell, and under reciprocation, people bought either two or three times as much as

they did without reciprocation. Now, some people say, like, okay, well if maybe maybe when they gave him a coke, they liked the guy more and that's why they went ahead and bought more tickets. But it turns out that wasn't the case. Exit surveys show that even if they actively disliked the Mr Fake tester, they still bought two or three times more than they would without reciprocation. Socially impelled to buy those those tickets. Yeah, well, and it's

it's that we hate owing people anything. And there's there's other things like a social proof. There's there's the idea that the trappings of authority forced people to to to comply, even if that that authority is just a well tailored suit.

They did studies where they measure how many people would follow when somebody started jaywalking, and if that person was just work wearing work clothes, they would be you know, X number of people would start following if you started jaywalking, but when it was a guy in a suit, three times as many people would follow him. Yeah. I remember when I was in high school. I remember seeing a demonstration where I just thought it was incredibly cruel at the time. It was a it was a a fast talker.

It was a guy who just spoken and jargon, meaning this jargon and demonstrating how how social pressures would make people agree to things even if they had no idea what was being said. And I would demonstrate it by bringing someone who was unaware of the fact that he was,

you know, just a flim flam guy. You know, I thought that he was was introduced to him as if he were an expert in a particular subject, and then he just started, uh having this conversation and saying that after it was over said, well, the reason why she never stopped me to ask what was going on is there's a social pressure on her too act like she understands it, and you know, it would be it would be mortifying to admit that you don't know what what

someone meant when they said something to you in front of a crowd of other people. Yes, well, and in fact, that's a that's probably the biggest component of what makes state hypnosis possible. People always ask whether or not hypnosis is or real or not. It's like it's it's it's real to the extent that you believe it's real. But

but the big guess factor is the ability. Like you'll notice that most hypnosis shows begin with with very small tests, and it's very clear that this is a test, Like I'm telling you what to do, um and imagine this and react as if it's real. And then he says imagine this, imagine this, and at some point he stops saying imagine, but instead he just says, now you're hot, and now you start acting like you're hot because that's what you've been doing. And then he says, now you're cold,

and now you're fanning yourself. Are you're you're shivering because you're cold. And then and then he just starts setting up scenes and at some point you've entered this contract where he says what to do and you acted out, and at some point you realize twenty minutes in that you're committed and the only way out is to is to ruin the show, to be like, I'm not hypnotize.

So it's like, uh, and hypnosis is real, and that there's no way I could just walk up to somebody and say, hey, get on stage and pretend to be Lady Gaga. There'll be like, no, absolutely not. But hypnosis is real in that it is a construct that creates a situation where somebody goes way outside of their comfort zone because that is a safer choice than than blowing

up and ruining the stage show. And on top of that, there is I don't want to take away from stage of Hypnotist, because there is an aspect to it where people, when they vividly imagine something strong enough, it does induce a physical response. If you've ever been to a movie and laughter cried, you know, you're crying about a person who never existed and a thing that never happened, but you make it real in your mind. You know. That's

that's that's as real as hypnosis is. Well, I have to tell you, Brian that if you ever asked me to get up on stage and pretend to be Lady Gaga, that's a pact I'm willing to make with you right here and now. Good, no hypnosis necessary. You have sold sir. We have more Brian Brushwood goodness to come, but first

let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. The reason why I wanted to bring up social engineering is that it's not just important in things like like stage magic, but also that's one of those tools that that a lot of people we call hackers use in order to get access to to secure systems, And as has nothing to do with sitting down at a computer typing in three different passwords and the third ones the one that works, but despite the way Hollywood would have us believe, but

has more frequently has something to do with befriending someone or or opposing as a maintenance worker of some sort and just engineering your way through people to get access to secure systems, because that's way easier than trying to

figure out how to break through a a technological secure system. Yeah. Absolutely, if you think of technology as a sealed room, I mean, you could either try to pick that lock, or you could beat down the door, or you could just ask nicely for the person behind encounter to open it for you. And obviously there's a lot of people where that last one works best and and the far and away. The best example of this is if if you haven't read the original book, catch me if you can, Uh, it's

way better. The movie was was fine, but the book is unreal because it's actually written in the voice of Frank abcnail, very honestly talking about his exploits, you know, over the the what two or three years that he flew all around the world cashing over million dollars in bogus checks. That's one where it's it's a case where he realized that wearing the trappings of authority, by looking like a doctor or looking like a pilot, he was

able to pass checks that otherwise would never pass. Muster people would be like, this is obviously bogus, get out of here, we call the cops. But but when it's a when it's a pilot, you know, held in such high regard, people just shut up and cashed him. Yeah, and Uh. Kevin mitt Nick's book to that that came out recently has been uh has been doing well. And I think it's the same thing as the person just

explaining what what he was doing at the time. Um. Also, I just as an aside that we probably shouldn't get into. I find it kind of amusing that we're talking about social engineering in an election year here in the United States. Oh yeah, no, I mean that's a boy. I mean you'll see, you'll see all kinds of trappings of authority.

That's why part of the reason the little things like people can't wait to get to that level of success where they can have the secret service around them, because that starts to reinforce the idea that this candidates important, and it starts to reaffirmed that the trappings of authority become as important as actual authority. I'm just waiting to reach that level of success where I can get a decent table at a restaurant. That's I like to set

realistic goals. I'll tell you what, man, it is unreal what a little what one phone call will do in front of me. My friend Dan Martin is one of these guys who scams his way into upgrades left and right and pretends to be his own manager. He he gives another name and says, you know, I'm the manager for Daniel Martin. You've probably seen him on list a

bunch of different stuff. And of course nobody wants to admit that they don't know who the hell damn Dan Martin is, right, and they're they're like, oh, yes, no, that's great, And he's like, well, listen, here's the thing. He's got a very important client that he's trying to impress. We understand there's an hour and a half. Wait, is there any way you guys can take care of us? And uh and and sure enough, you know, and I've seen him do it where we we skipped an hour

long line to go to the steakhouse. We sit down and then the management comes over and says, oh, thank you, Mr Martin. We're so glad to have you here. I understand you have a celebrity guest. And without missing a beat, he turns to my assistant at the time, Captain MG. We called him, uh, this big tall guy. He's just like, yeah,

you probably you've probably seen him in the office. He's one of the guys who works down in the in the warehouse and instantly people are like, oh, I think I do remember you, and a couple of because again, nobody wants to admit that they don't remember the guy. And and Dan's whole idea is like, look, man, I'm doing these people a favor. They're gonna go home and talk about the celebrity time. Oh gosh, this reminds me

of a story my dad tells. Um So, my dad's a science fiction author and an English professor and occasionally would teach a stint down at the Governor's Honors Program, which in Georgia is a program that selects I think it's around between six hundred and seven hundred high school students to study for a summer uh in in very focused groups, depending upon, you know, whatever their major is for that program. I actually went in Communicative Arts, which

was you know, English when back in back. But before that, my dad was teaching there in the eighties, and he tells a story about how he and some of the other teachers went to I think it was like an International House of Pancakes or something like that, some some sort of diner, and they walked in and one of their one of their fellow teachers as an African American fellow who wore wore traditional African garments occasionally, and they just decide it on a whim as they walked in

that he was a visiting dignitary from Africa also, and he put on the whole role of it, and even went so far as saying, these greeds, what these greeds? I would take great, No, honey, you're gonna need more than one. So but yeah, they tell the whole stort about how they ended up the check was picked up, and Dad's the sort where it was a very funny story, but you could tell there was still that a little

bit of guilt. Yeah. Well, and that's that's the That's the problem with magic in general, is there's some part

of me that that is compelled. I think that's part of why scam School is good for my soul, because I don't want to be that that that jerk who goes around letting people believe he as wizard powers and there's some part of me that wants to tell everyone it's all a lie, which is why I really do respect stage magicians who who go other way to say, all right, I'm going to perform an illusion for you.

And you know, it's it's very clear they're they're they're telling you up front and they said, but if you're willing to go with me on this trip, you're gonna see some thing amazing. And yeah, and I mean Penn, Penn and Teller do some great stuff where they even go so far as to say, you could question how we do it, but if you learn the answer, then it just sort of takes away from the performance. The question we wish you would ask us is why do

we do it? Yeah, I'm like, wow, what's what's the quote that were the magicians say, magicians are guarding an empty vault, Like, whatever it is you think the method is is way more fantastic than than how it actually is. Nothing but disappointment lay on the other side of that vault door, except in there are a few cases where where the actual method is even more interesting than the trick itself. And once that's true, then then by all means teach the entire thing. And in fact, um it

used to be. The very first episode of Scam School we did was something called the human chimney, where you essentially make smoke appear from nowhere out of your lungs

and Uh. It got great reactions when I did it, but everybody thought the methodybody assumed was happening was not nearly as interesting as the science behind what happens when you you secretly inhaled this poisonous white white phosphor, and the white phosphor SAPs out all of the moisture out of your lungs, creating this super thick water vapor and

it uh. Once, I found that I get much more joy and a bigger right reaction out of people by explaining how it's done and encouraging them to try it, because it's it's interesting when a magician can make spoke ap here out of the lungs. It's magic when somebody could do it to themselves. Yeah, exactly. And I've even heard magicians talk about how they would see someone do uh, like some close up magic and uh, and they would just you know, they knew a way of doing it,

and that was immediately what they go to. They assumed that that's the way. And then when it's demonstrated that there's a different way, and it might be an incredibly difficult and and complex way that requires lots more practice than the simple way, but Stagemsic sioan't say wow, that was amazing. As a matter of fact, the fantastic performer

Tom Mullika is a legend and magic. He's one of the most talented side around artists out there, and he's got that that gift of personality and charisma and he did this. He has this like three and a half minute routine where he appears to eat one at one by one, an entire box of cigarettes. Uh. And there's actually heavy these are lit cigarettes. He lights them all, he smokes them all at once. He has this you know,

it's like that Homer Simpson photo of the mouthful of cigarettes. Uh. He does that and then appears to swallow all of them and there's heavy duty, awesome side of hand going on in there. But he goes to FISM and if you don't know, f I s M is like the Olympics of magic. They have it I think every third or second year a couple of years ago, was in

in China. But he goes to FISSM and just totally bombs because all of the judges just assume this guy's a freak who just swallowed a bunch of lit cigarettes. Nobody knew it was magic and as a result, he he didn't win. Wow. Yeah, that in that crazy. That's that's almost an accolade. Awesome enough all on its own, I'm sure. Yeah, that's part of it. I'm sure that's

why the story is being told. Well, to transition out of this, I wanted to talk more about some of the other projects you've worked on, some of which are closely related to technology. In fact, one of these we've we've talked about on our show in the past, and I think I might have even talked about this before I met you, which is the whole idea of leaving behind a virtual ghost. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, I think I think it might have been before we we

had met each other. Yeah, that's the the afterlife dot me project. Um, if you we don't really have anything up there, but if you want to sign up to be notified when it's uh, I'm going to make sure it's actually still alive here and before that's a f T E r L y f E dot me afterlife

dot me. Uh, it's it's the nuts and bolts are are being tinkered with by Patrick Dela Hanty who's a super talented web developer and uh you're starting to see similar projects pop up, but all of them, they're all sanctimonious, and they're all like, you know, we're here to help with the grieving process, and we're here to we're here to clean up your data after you passed away. After life on Me is freaking honest. After lifetime Me is an opportunity to become a virtual ghost just to annoy

and freak out everyone for the rest of eternity. And essentially what happens is it's a dead man switch where every day, every year, on your birthday, you log in and let it know you're alive, and of course it'll bug you by email to UH to tell you to um, you know, make sure to check in, but if it doesn't hear back, it assumes you're dead. And then it takes all of your past tweets and just starts repeating them on the same times at the same dates that

you said a year after year. And what I love about this is isn't that what ghosts are in history are items that don't know they're dead. These these echoes that think they're going about the daily business of their life when they're not. And the idea that we could do that digitally forever. You know, it's like picking up the kids, marry Christmas, the birthday in the bank. You know, all these things that you say year after year can become these digital echoes for all eternity. I think it's

really cool as an art project. And um, you know, I some people say it's tacky. Yes, it very likely is, but a lot of art can be tacky, and I think it's really cool performance art. Personally, I love it. I mean, I just love the idea of someone reading a tweet and saying, Jonathan's been dead for twenty years and he's still slamming the iPad and think about this, well, and that will be the other thing too. It's like it'll be more hilarious to hear you talking about stuff

that doesn't like like Amy Winehouse die. You know, I think that'll that will become funny over time. But also think about the apt replies where all of a sudden you you whisper a happy birthday to someone from five years after the fact. This just tells me that I just need to make a lot more younger friends. That's right, because I do want to irritate people after I mean, I do it while I'm alive, why would I want to stop after I'm dead? I want to hear tape people,

So you know, it's a great idea. As soon as I heard it, I I completely appreciated it for what it was being being sort of a mischievous prank poller myself. I found it. I found it incredibly appealing. There's still some interview left, but before we get there, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor, UM. So why don't we talk about You can talk about some of the other shows you do, because we haven't really covered

any of those. You've got some stuff on the twit network for example, and also you I do want to hear more about your experience with the Scam School e book please Yeah. Well, Scam School, of course is is the big coming out party that I had for with the internet. UM. But a lot of people were surprised when it turns out I knew anything about technology as

well my past life. I spent a year testing video games for Rockwell semi conductors for a year, which was awesome, and I spent on three years at Dell and their high end sales support, you know, designing networks for small businesses or building high end systems for you know, three D model ers, animators, that kind of thing. Uh. And uh, that's the first time I did this Weekend Tech. It

just seemed like a natural fit. And Leo is nice enough to give me a number of shows to do, and now I'm doing three programs over there, including NSFW. Is is an utterly volatile powder keg where we never know what's gonna happen. Half the time, it blows up in our face. Every so often, we have moments of awesome hilarity. Um, it's it's almost it's a very weird show because it's almost openly hostile to new people trying

to visit it. So if you don't understand what's going on, just give it a couple more episodes and see if it's seeing sin. Yeah, it's kind of like your head with a hammer feels really good. Anytime you have justin Robert Young involved, there's gonna be volatility, exactly exactly. Uh. And then I started hosting a frame Rate with tom Merritt, which is a whole show about this whole emerging space

with new media. This is, in many way is the most exciting time to be a broadcaster or be somebody who's interested in reaching a large audience of all time, because essentially we're seeing exactly now the exact same thing that happened in the nineteen fifties with broadcast television, and then in nineteen seventies with cable television. When when broadcast television began, there was no market because nobody had TVs, nobody knew what to do, and nobody had any money.

So they just took their radio figures and threw them in front of a screen, and then they figured out that television is a different medium than these other things, and they were able to tell their own unique stories in their own unique ways. Same thing happened in the seventies with cable. Nobody was watching, so all of a sudden, there's all this band with all these channels. People are

just throwing stuff. Ted Turner takes his local TBS W TBS station and throws it, calls it a superstation, but then all of a sudden it becomes TBS this powerhouse. Same thing with CNN. It wasn't even possible to have

a twenty four hour news network beforehand. So nowadays we're in the wild West of new media with just distribution from YouTube, with podcasting with with pretty much anyone who's got a story to hell now has a global opportunity to to reach an audience worldwide and it cost him nothing that there's no barrier to access and it's a it's this awesome land rush to see who can become king of which little circuits out there, because whoever gets

there first has a huge advantage. That's the reason CNN was number one for so long was because it was the first twenty four hour cables network and it was everyone else was just couldn't couldn't top it. And so likewise that was the big pushwick for why I did uh scam school. So anyway, that's what frame rate is about, is about the emerging digital transition, watching some new media stars transition to television and vice versa and uh And of course now we're hosting game on on on Twitch,

which is every Sunday night Live. We talked about the video game news and reviews and that's with Veronica Belmont. Yes I should lead off with that they weren't like the man, and that's fine. It's you know, Veronica, I know I love her. She um she has shot me the look of death at least three times in my life, and I have survived. So I got it once or twice myself. There's a hair trigger, you know. Just it's read on the right ground. I don't want to get

in trouble. But one of my favorite things about posting Game on is seeing the Veronica Belmont that that will never show herself on the internet. She is. She is delightfully, hilariously crass. She is a wonderful person. And that's all I'm going to say about this because I'm posting this show. Brian Brushwood had other things to say, but Jonathan Strickland just loves her, all right. So now that we've got that clear, yeah, so tell tell us more about this

e book. Oh my god. So for years I've been flapping my gums about how I want to do a book for the Scam school Book. And originally I had all these designs on a physical book that would have

like magic E kind of properties to it. The problem, of course, is that physical media unless you get picked up by a big publisher who wants to invest a hundred thousand dollars, Uh, it's extremely it's the development costs are are are high, the printing costs are high, especially if you want to do something nonstandard or tricky with

the pages. Uh, and you miss out on what's great about scam School because of course we have all these episodes and the only way to get from a book to an episode would be like a clugi kind of QR code thing. And have you ever used that? If any of you guys ever read a book that a QR codes and actually pulled out your phone and clicked on it, went to the page once or twice, but you know, it's it's definitely, it's definitely there's a barrier there.

It's just like with podcasts and and suggesting, like we we tell in our podcast for people to go and read the articles and how stuff works. But that's kind of challenging because you know, it's two different, separate media. So to tell someone to go and read this article and the article is amazing and that it goes into far more detail than we ever could in a podcast and has some visual effects and all that kind of stuff. Um, it's it's it's a smaller number of people who make

that transition. We love those people and we would love that number to grow, but we understand in it's it's two different media, and often you know what you're doing in one instance is not really you don't. There's no way to pour it over easily. Like if I'm mowing the lawn and listening to a podcast, I'm obviously not gonna jump on line and read an article about, you know, quantum suicide exactly. So it's one of those things where it's like you need to have as smooth a transition

as possible. And about I guess two years ago, when Kindle really started to get more popular, and of course uh iTunes started up their eyebookstore, I was like, oh dude, then it's gotta be it's gotta be e books, and so we we converted some of my old books to e books and we figured out really fast what a nightmare this, This entire industry is in right now. As far as like proper format, and you've got competing formats dot mobi, dot epuby, they handle stuff differently. They have

different capabilities in dot in dot moby. With a Kindle format, it's not even possible to wrap text around an image. All you can have is text, text, text block. Here's an image and you can't control the size of it. It'll it'll reformat stuff. Uh, it was so difficult to try to build this tool that I really became disheartened as far as ever reaching that goal of what I wanted to do if I have something that was rich media, that was detailed, that was pretty, that was highly interactive

and had embedded media content. But then along comes this company booked that's v O o K dot com and they essentially are trying to create a their own platform that once you create the book in book, you press publish and it converts it to don mobi dot epub and it and it sends it out to to Barnes and Noble, to to Amazon and two iTunes. So with one click publishing you're able to create really good looking

e books and with rich embedded media. And so we we participated in their beta program, which was a little bit harrowing because there were times where the entire book would vanish or chapter which because they disappear, we get on the phone, We're like, let's go on. They're like, don't worry, we'll fix it. It's magic exactly like it's beta. But they but they had by the time we were done with the book, I'm I was extraordinarily proud of it.

It is It is unlike any other e book I've seen in that it's uh, it's almost like a Harry Potter book, where where the pictures and illustrations come alive, there's there's seventy audio commentary. I've never seen audio commentary tracks for chapters in a book before. Uh. And and it's amazing because the book itself is a collection of

eight plus tricks from the Scam School series. These are all things that are either street cons to watch out for or ways to score free drink, some kick ass magic tricks and if you really nasty, pranks to pull

on your friends. And it's I love the media format because I can spend two paragraphs explaining how to hold your pinky when you're holding a deck of cards, But none of that's as useful as when you press when you press on the on the photo and all of a sudden, it comes live and illustrates animated for you and shows you exactly what you're supposed to do. So it's got It's got seventy plus audio commentary tracks and

forty plus illustrations. And out of everything, I'm most pleased with the fact that Teller of Penn and Teller allowed me to publish an essay he wrote me seventeen years ago when I was nineteen years old, uh and looking for my place in magic. I wrote a letter to Teller and he was kind enough to write a response, like a four page essay talking about creativity and magic. And UH. Being able to publish that and share the word on that has been extremely gratifying. So I am

very very happy. If you go to scam school book

dot com you can find all all the different platforms. Fantastic. Yeah, And that that is exciting to me because you know, we've been talking about this whole electronic book uh medium and and what the potential is and that it's been several years in the making and it and it's so exciting that it looks like now we're getting the point where people are actually really cracking that nut, where they've managed to find a way to incorporate the different abilities

you have in something like a web based presence and the things you have within electronic text, and that it's being brought together in ways to to really cater to a wider audience. Really because and we all know that people favor different ways to learn information. Some people some people reading texts that's what they like, and some people they have to see it work for it to really have an impact. And this is I was gonna say, this is an important phase we're entering with the books.

Were just as we figured out that television is not radio with pictures, e books are not books on your iPad. It's it's an inherently different platform with different strengths and we weaknesses. And I honestly feel like, like the Scam School Book is the first book on the shelves, you know this minute that truly takes advantage of that unique nature and speaks the language of digital e books, and the reviews seem to indicate that there is something special

happening there that's awesome. Yeah, And I mean I think the next if I were to put on my prognosticator had, I would say the next step as far as the medium starting to come into its own, uh the e

book is is what's happening now. I think the next step is augmented reality, because right now we're seeing it used in things like commercials and that kind of or games, but the idea of having a world of information overlaid on top of the real world around you and anchoring that information in the world to give it real and impactful meaning to the person who's who's looking at it and whatever context that might be, because there could be

endless number of contexts for any particular region. That to me, that's the That's why I keep on whenever I get an opportunity, I keep on mentioning a Google if you're making those glasses, I want to pair absolutely. I fully believe that that you're already seeing this in the military, the video gamification of your job, and uh, and they are. I know, I guess the military really pioneered the idea of of badges and medals and achievements. But uh, but you know, of course we see it and stuff like

World of Warcraft when you're grinding all the time. And a friend of mine is now a he was the CEO of a company put together a business plan to try to pitch the idea of of of of an achievement based system for all of his employees based on their class and their and their missions or their tasks where they could they could level up and get perks, they could win badges, and the whole thing was clearly modeled right after World of Warcraft, and he i don't

know if he ever implemented it, but it was so obviously right when I read it that I fully expect us to see more companies running their businesses like a video. Classic episode our conversation with Brian Brushwood. Brian is an awesome dude. If you don't know him, you should definitely look up his work. He's got several YouTube series the date back for years. He shows you all these as some magic tricks that you can learn how to do and really impress friends, as well as things like bar

bets and that kind of stuff. Lots of really fun social engineering as well, so make sure you go check those out. And if you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, well send me an email the addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com or drop on over to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll find the archive of shows there, as well as our links to social media sites and of course the link to our store. Every purchase you make

at our store goes to help the show. We greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again really soon. YEA for more on this and bathands of other topics. Because at how stuff Works dot com