Comments
By domoregood 2025-09-2223:08 The thing I really love about magic is that so much of it boils down to “I practiced for years and developed a seemingly superhuman ability to manipulate this object”.
I really relate to this because despite being at least ostensibly “gifted” my entire academic career, almost all of my professional success has been because I have been willing to climb steep learning curves at the expense of hours of my life and extreme frustration.
In short, I can relate because I too practice a type of “up close” magic which few people can even appreciate.
A good specific example of this that isn't widely known is the "muscle pass".
It amounts to holding a coin in a classic palm position (dead center of the palm), then spending several months strengthening the palm muscles and developing a callus, until you can propel the coin a foot or so without noticeably moving your hand.
Random video demonstrating:
By osullip 2025-09-2311:51 That's also a trick
Edit: but look, it's a good one. A little bit of reality mixed in so it looks cool
“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” - Teller
By tralarpa 2025-09-2314:44 Nice, I didn't know Teller writes package.json files.
Those beady little eyes! https://youtu.be/SCFXV6o7cro?si=T7TCSHAkHvkcI2SX
By theshrike79 2025-09-238:14 FYI the si= part is a unique tracker added by Google to track who clicks the link you shared.
You can, and should, remove it to not give their graph more data about you.
By JdeBP 2025-09-236:49 I can just reiterate my prior comment:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCFXV6o7cro&lc=UgyhehHF9YBGF...
(-:
For M. Kimlat's own commentary and someone else's particularly insightful comment:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49CSV2w0i0g&lc=UgxqIy_Vgt37q...
For the time spent on prep for the second appearance:
> so much of it boils down to “I practiced for years and developed a seemingly superhuman ability to manipulate this object”.
Amateur magician here (but a magician member of the Magic Castle, so I know a few things). Manual dexterity is certainly a useful skill, but it's just a tiny part of the art of magic. You can be a consummate sleight-of-hand artist and still be a mediocre magician, and conversely, some of the best magicians don't use particularly difficult sleights. The best example of that I know of is Dani Da Ortiz's routine on Penn and Teller Fool Us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_KcQt0z-eE
Now, Dani is in fact a master at sleight-of-hand, and so one would think that you are watching a masterclass in sleights, but no. There are a few sleights, but they are not particularly difficult, beginner-level. I could do them, and I'm not particularly skilled. The trick is based almost entirely on timing and misdirection and psychological subtleties.
The degree of psychological subtlety in top-level magic continually blows my mind. The best magicians make it look like magic even when you know how the trick is done. Dani's trick is a consummate example. The performance looks like chaos, but in fact every detail is meticulously crafted and serves a purpose. It's almost like watching a dance.
By incone123 2025-09-2310:15 " The best magicians make it look like magic even when you know how the trick is done. "
Agree with this. I remember being the 'skeptic kid' at a birthday party long ago. The magician involved me in a trick everyone could figure out but it was done with charm and I was completely delighted.
You are absolutely correct.
When teaching this whole routine, Dani spends much more time on the psychological background and nudges that are used, rather than the physical card manipulation techniques.
By lisper 2025-09-2317:54 Yep. I am blown away not just by Dani's execution of this routine, but also by its design. It is a true thing of beauty, with layer upon layer of subtlety that most audience members will never appreciate because they don't know it's there. It is deliberately hidden. It has to be. Being hidden is an essential part of its function. Which is why I always try to seize the opportunity to raise awareness of this sort of thing among muggles.
BTW, if you are a Castle member, Carl Hein is currently doing a routine in the Library Bar that is IMHO in the same league Dani's Fool Us routine. We took some friends of ours to the Castle a week ago and Karl absolutely melted their brains. They're still talking about it. :-)
(And if you're not a Castle member but are in the LA area, contact me privately and I can set you up with a guest pass.)
By crooked-v 2025-09-231:54 That reminds me of a few episodes of Fool Us where they gave the prize to the guest because they knew exactly how the trick was done, but were literally unable to physically detect the person doing it because their skills were just that good.
A learning curve is a model for how much you can learn over time. A subject with a steep learning curve is actually one that doesn’t take much time to reach a high level. It’s the subjects with shallow slopes that take more work to raise up to proficiency.
It's a bit of a fossilized error. Like "this begs the question of...", "head over heels", "sleeping like a baby", and "Have your cake and eat it too" everyone should understand what it means, even if it doesn't stand up to technical analysis.
By agos 2025-09-2310:19 obligatory random mention that the last one is how they caught the unabomber.
No, the typical meaning of a learning curve is the path you walk up the hill - some hills are very steep, which takes a lot of effort.
True, that meaning seems to be typical now. The opposite is the original meaning though.
> Scores of authors use the phrase “steep learning curve” or “sharp learning curve” in reference to a skill that is difficult to master. . . . Nevertheless, from the standpoint of learning theory, these and other authors have it backward, because a steep learning curve, i.e., a curve with a large positive slope, is associated with a skill that is acquired easily and rapidly (Hopper et al., 2007).
Source: Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....)
By rpdillon 2025-09-2313:40 Everyone is talking about curves, but no one's talking about how the axes are labeled.
Based on common usage of the term learning curve, I had thought of it much like a power curve where the y-axis is the amount of cumulative effort you have to put in to reach a particular point on the x-axis, which measures mastery. Sounds like the official definition is effort on the x-axis and the total amount you've learned on the y-axis, which would indeed invert the meaning from how I've understood it.
Yes, but most people can hold two competing definitions in their head at the same time!
By InsideOutSanta 2025-09-2312:02 Overlooking your comment, I sanction your opinion.
Jason Ladayne is a great example. His card control is unreal: https://www.youtube.com/user/CardMagicByJason
Feels like the perfect thread to re-link to my favorite card-trick movie - Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants. Not only is he a deft card manipulator, but he is a great story teller with a vast knowledge of magic history.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z7InE1zXAY4&pp=ygUfcmlja3kgamF...
By IAmBroom 2025-09-2316:07 Ricky Jay was legendary, on the level of Houdini, and a gift to Hollywood as an adviser and occasional (but good) character actor. As good as he was at cards, he admitted others were better - but none beat him at throwing cards into targets. The man could probably have assassinated with a poison-laced deck, no lie.
He took on a young "partner" (mentored a student, but without admitting it), and presumably taught him much in his last years. Hopefully nearly all.
By sqircles 2025-09-233:02 Jason is phenomenal. There is absolutely no telling how many hours he has had a deck of cards in his hands.
The foundations of card magic are certainly out there, and for me knowing how the fundamental slights work make it that much more magical to see it performed at such a level. No different than having played a sport makes spectating that much more interesting and appreciable.
By CSMastermind 2025-09-234:46 Saw him live in person and I couldn't see a thing, no clue how he was doing it.
I've seen other famous magicians live and up close you can catch move or notice things but he was pure skill.
By fsckboy 2025-09-238:12 >willing to climb steep learning curves
fwiw, learning curve theory relates how much learning you get through time or episodes of experience. a lot of learning from a small amount of experience (easy to learn) means you will slide quickly down that steep learning curve. a shallow learning curve implies that it takes a great deal of experience to learn.
By itsthecourier 2025-09-232:52 what's your favorite speciality?
By iambateman 2025-09-230:404 reply The show Fool Us is wonderful…and this clip in particular is my favorite: https://youtu.be/5_KcQt0z-eE?si=xO5gTByzV0spzS2e
Even if you never want to practice magic, I highly recommend buying a few Dani DaOrtiz lectures. The way his mind works is phenomenal, and the things he talks about (psychology, how people think, crafting experiences) are applicable across the board.
(I rarely perform his tricks... they're brilliant, but they're so perfectly suited for his style that I can't even come close to pulling them off without seeming like a confused idiot. But I love watching him explain what goes into each trick. This specific trick is available on Vanishing.)
By iambateman 2025-09-231:421 reply I’ll check it out! I’ve watched hundreds of tricks on Fool Us and the moment I watched his act I was stunned. Just absolutely beautiful performance.
By hibikir 2025-09-234:14 He has a youtube channel where he performs most of the tricks in his courses (just not how to do them). After you watch for a while, you realize that he can get great effects out of moves that don't even take significant sleight of hand: He might be doing the most blatant manipulation in the middle of some comedy bits that make it invisible to anyone engrossed in the performance.
Now, that specific Fool Us performance has moves most magicians cannot pull off, but still, a large percentage of the act involves his standard slew of tricks to put a lot of randomness where it doesn't matter, while there is no randomness near the cards that matter.
I was only half way paying attention because I was enjoying the joy of everyone around him.
I wonder if it will hold up the next time I watch. I keep notes for my daughters to read some day and wrote about this tonight (it’s been too long since I wrote them), I hope this video will still be around when they are ready to read the notes so they can experience it too.
By onlypassingthru 2025-09-235:16 May I suggest a little yt-dlp and an external HD to go along with those notes? A digital archive doesn't have to be restricted to family photos.
By jcattle 2025-09-248:03 As someone who has watched this video approximately 100 times already I can tell you: it holds up.
By iambateman 2025-09-2318:28 I have young children and this is a sweet idea. Thanks!
Fantastic. Another great one that blew my mind (and P&T's) is Nick Einhorn from the first season, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma-S9-bgvlg&t=77s
By purpleidea 2025-09-238:071 reply Nah this trick is crap, it's just stooging. Kind of disappointing they let it on.
By the_af 2025-09-244:48 They don't allow stooges in the show.
And the magician cannot lie, since he/she has to convincingly explain how the trick works to the producers, beforehand.
By willvarfar 2025-09-237:071 reply Back when national TV mostly showed national magicians, and sparingly, my family loved "Fool Us" because it brought such a variety of different magicians from all around the world into our living room. My favourite magician I've discovered since being online is Lennert Green https://www.ted.com/talks/lennart_green_close_up_card_magic_...
Really wish he'd been on Fool Us!
By mazokum 2025-09-239:11 Lennart Green is actually one of DaOrtiz "parents" in magic (the other being Juan Tamariz). You can see Lennart's spirit in his use of chaos.
