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Tag: magicians

Penn and Teller: ‘We compare death threats with Richard Dawkins’..

Penn and Teller: ‘We compare death threats with Richard Dawkins’..

By Craig McLean in the Telegraph..

What kind of trickery is this? First of all, Teller struggles to unscrew the cap on the bottle of fizzy water plonked on the hotel boardroom table. Having a couple of decades on the diminutive 66-year-old magician, I give it a go. Failing miserably, I hand it to his hulking partner, Penn Jillette, 59, who is twice the man of each of us. Or, he’s the two of us combined. He can’t open it either.

Penn and Teller quietly harrumph. The temperature in the over-air-conditioned conference space drops another notch.

The magicians have travelled from Las Vegas to a hotel in central London. Also on their schedule: a trip to the BBC’s Manchester studios to visit Blue Peter. They’ve been trying to think of a kiddie-friendly trick. They think “maybe the muffin trick. But adults are very good at underestimating children’s ability to make choices,” says Teller with a hint of reproach, “so they often try to make us do things that seem absolutely innocuous.”..

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What were you thinking!..

What were you thinking!..

By Amy Fernandes for DNA..

Meet mentalist Nicolai Friedrich, one among the new breed of magicians who shuns elaborate props and tricks of old, instead harnessing the mind to enthrall and entertain. Amy Fernandes comes away in two minds

He has no rabbits, doesn’t cut women in half, or chain them in boxes only to have them emerge free. Nicolai Friedrich is amongst the new breed that vociferously claim they are not magicians, but mentalists who work with the mind. Your mind!

Like other mentalists, he’s young, chic, dresses casually in jeans and tees, holds stage performances, is funny and witty. And when you meet him, he doesn’t produce a rose from thin air; instead, he presents you with your date of birth, your home address or your grandmother’s name, as he did at the Nicolai Friedrich show held at Mumbai’s Hotel Sofitel.

The German illusionist knows how to play with your imagination and gets you to think what he wants…

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WHAT MAGICIANS CAN TEACH US ABOUT HOW OUR BRAINS WORK..

WHAT MAGICIANS CAN TEACH US ABOUT HOW OUR BRAINS WORK..

  Jane Porter for Fast Company…

How do you make something disappear into thin air?

David Copperfield famously made the Statue of Liberty vanish, but even the most elementary of magicians can make a scarf disappear in their hands. It’s the stuff magicians make a career out of.

But studying magic isn’t just for the Houdini-wannabes of the world. “You could learn so much about the human mind through magic,” says Alex Stone, author of the bookFooling Houdini. “Creativity is about questioning assumptions. … Every kind of creative endeavor is a sort of magic trick.”

Stone, who has been obsessed with magic since he got his first magic kit at the age of five, believes studying magic is like a crash course in applied neuropsychology, teaching us how and why our brains work the way they do.

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