Alex Stone Shows You How Magic And Memory Can Heighten Your Sense Of Reality
Go on, admit it. The idea of being a magician has haunted you since childhood. Who hasn't at some point wished they could perform miracles and win the admiration of the masses?
The truth is, anyone can, but not everyone has the time, energy or discipline.
But the good news is that in Fooling Houdini, magician and outstanding author Alex Stone takes you into the world of Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind. And the best part is that you learn about using your memory better too.
So tune in to this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast and enjoy the full transcript below.
Anthony: Alex thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It's a real honor and exciting because I myself have a relationship to magic and the whole world. So I hope to touch on that a little bit. The book Fooling Houdini is an absolute marvel I think. Not just because of my interest in magic, but it's about learning as such.
One of the themes, and you can correct me if I'm wrong about this, seems to be self-acceptance as being kind of the best thing we can do for ourselves, and that going through the process of self-acceptance is kind of like "fooling" around with yourself a little bit as if life is kind of a game. Would that be a fair assessment?
Alex: I think that's a wonderfully nice way of saying it, yes.
Anthony: With all that said, what's your first memory of being interested in magic?
Alex: It was definitely when I was 5 years old and my father went on a trip to New York for an academic conference of some sort. He was a professor and he bought me a magic kit at that famous store FAO Schwartz. It's like a famous toy store, which closed, I believe, recently.
It was just like one of these little kids kits, but he brought me back, and I was 5 years old in just remember like being enchanted by it. I couldn't stop playing with it, and I learned all the tricks and went around just showing them to everyone every time. We had guests over and to my friends.
Honestly from there on, I was interested in it and it became like a thing that my father and I kind of bonded over and did together. But that was very vivid memory. Gosh, come to think of it, it probably is up there with some of my earliest memories actually. Because I was only 5.
Can Kids Be Fooled?
Anthony: One group of people that tend to be very difficult to fool is young people because they don't know the cues of Mr. Action so to speak. So it's kind of a fascinating age. What experience do you have doing magic for kids?
Alex: You are absolutely right. I learned that at my first show when I was 6. It was my own birthday party. I performed for my friends and it was a disaster. They were trying to touch everything and yelling at me and heckling me. I remember crying and going to my room and being really upset.
But you know, it's a fact that children are very difficult to perform for. I mean not just because, I mean obviously they have a hard time sitting still and they can be rambunctious. It's hard to do anything with kids because of that, but they're also, I talk about this a bit in the book, psychologically I think quite good at figuring out magic tricks. You know there could be a lot of reasons behind that, but I think part of it is that they don't have quite so many assumptions going in.
They have a way of thinking about things where they're kind of testing out new ideas, and on some level, they're better at figuring out tricks than adults are. I've seen this time and again. If you talk to magicians, they'll say the same thing that kids can be remarkably difficult to fool. They often figure out tr
Published on 9 years, 8 months ago
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