WIU: The Greatest Live Broadcast Event in Magic History

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Live magic broadcasts have traditionally been pretty underwhelming. Think David Copperfield’s Tornado of Fire.

Or David Blaine’s Dive of Death—a live event so underwhelming you don’t even remember it.

Well, hold onto your assholes, because on July 23rd, the greatest live event in magic history will take place.

Back in April, after Curtis Kam’s passing, I shared a review I’d written of his Penguin Live lecture—originally published in my Love Letters newsletter.

The highlight of that lecture, for me, was a trick where a half-dollar appears inside a tightly rolled dollar bill. I changed the presentation quite a bit and shared my version in that review.

I ended the write-up with this:

Ideally I’d like to carry this ready to go at a moment’s notice, but I’m not sure that would be good for the gimmick. I’ll have to test if the gimmick still works as it should if it’s inside the package for a day or a week or whatever.

Well... I present you with this:

A folding half-dollar that’s been stuck in the folded position since June 20th. Which means, come July 23rd, it will have been in its tensioned state for over a month.

If it snaps into position quickly after that time has passed, I’ll know I can keep the set-up ready in my bag for at least a month before changing the rubber band.

So join me—live—on July 23rd, as we finally confront the question that has echoed through the halls of magic history for generations...

Bi-Reveals

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I was working on a trick for a future post when I landed on a concept I think you might be able to help flesh out with examples.

The concept is called Bi-Reveals.

One of the subjects I’ve come back to, time and again, since the beginning of this site, has been to create a framework that makes it impossible for people to write forces off as a force. This is something most magicians had completely given up on. Instead, they had come at the issue the other direction. “If you have a billboard that says, you will pick the 3 of Hearts, people will know it was a force. So you shouldn’t do anything too grand with your reveals. Take it down a notch. Keep the reveal small and underwhelming, and maybe they won’t suspect anything.”

What a bizarre response to the problem.

How about instead we work on creating processes that seemingly couldn’t be forces?

In one of my older books, I wrote about something I called The Damsel Technique—a style of forcing that incorporates genuine, indisputable free choices along the way. It’s hard to dismiss the outcome as a “force” when the spectator sees their decisions ripple through the process in real time.

Bi-Reveals come from the same spiritual family as the Damsel Technique, but they operate on the reveal side, not the selection side.

Here’s the simplest example.

You place a small wallet on the table. “Inside this wallet is a prediction of something that’s about to happen.”

You have someone slide a joker into a deck of cards.

“Take out the card next to the Joker you placed… well, actually—there are two cards next to it, I guess. Remove either one.”

They take out the Ace of Hearts.

You remove the card on the other side of the Joker, the Three of Clubs.

“You shuffled the cards. You could have placed the Joker between any two cards, but you ended up here. And even then, you had a choice: the Ace or the Three. And you picked the Ace. Are you happy with that, or would you rather switch to the Three? Totally up to you.”

Let’s say they switch.

“Interesting. Given that option, most people would keep the Ace. It’s just a more appealing card. But that’s okay, we just want to go with your instincts.”

You point to the wallet on the table, and with no moves, you crack it open. A face-down card is seen. There’s nothing else in the wallet. You tell them to slide the card out.

They turn it over, and it’s the Three of Clubs.

This is simply Bill Simon’s Prophesy Move to get the Joker in the right place, and then a Z-Fold wallet that allows you to reveal either card as the one card you set aside from the start.

What is a Bi-Reveal

A Bi-Reveal is a reveal that allows you to cleanly show two (or more aka a Poly-Reveal) possible revelations, in a location that is established before the selection is made.

It may use gimmickry, technology, sleights, or linguistic deception to make the person believe the reveal is in the one reveal in the only place that was directly or indirectly stated earlier in the performance.

It’s not just a multiple out. It’s a type of multiple out where the structure of the trick strongly suggests there was only one path, and you’re now seeing its inevitable conclusion.

With a standard multiple out, the effect often changes based on the outcome. With a Bi-Reveal, the setup frames the experience as if this was the only way the trick could have played out all along.

History

As others have undoubtedly done, I would sometimes use a procedure that forced two cards and then I would allow a free choice at the end. To prepare for this, I would have two reveals set up. Maybe one is a poster hanging in my hallway, and the other is written on a cake in my refrigerator.

While this sort of thing can be entertaining, there is a significant difference between:

  • “Pick a card. The four of hearts? Okay, let’s go to my refrigerator, there’s a cake in there….”

and this:

  • “Inside my refrigerator there is a special cake I made. I want you to pick a card.”

The difference between the two is something any moderately intelligent non-magician will understand intuitively. In one version, the area of the reveal is indicated after the choice. In the other, it precedes it.

It’s the difference between a reveal that feels reactive, and one that feels inevitable.

This is why I’m drawn to Bi-Reveals.

What Isn’t a Bi-Reveal?

A card index in your pocket would allow you to say, “Your named card will be in my pocket.” But because you can’t show that pocket cleanly afterward, that wouldn’t be a Bi-Reveal.

However, I suppose if you said, “I have a wallet in my inner breast pocket with a single sealed envelope inside.” And then you had them name a card, you pulled it from your index, you loaded it into a Card-To-Wallet, that would technically meet my definition. But it’s not quite the thing I’m looking for. I’m looking for ideas that are structurally less complex (even if they’re hyper ambitious).

Examples

Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.

Tools like the Z-Wallet, the Quiver Purse, or those card boxes with a flap all qualify. You can place them out before anything has been selected and casually reference them: “That’s where the prediction is.”

Then, at the end, you can open them cleanly and show the reveal. To the spectator, it’s been sitting there in plain view the entire time, containing a single possible outcome.

Let’s say you do the Cross-Cut force. You tell the person to look at either the card where they cut. You tell them they can either look at the top card of the packet or the bottom card of the other packet. “Focus on that card and send the energy of that card right to my chest,” you say, tapping your heart.

If they say one card, you have them place their hand on your chest where you pointed earlier and they feel something in your breast pocket. They remove the only card that’s in there, the card they chose.

If they pick the other card, you unbutton your shirt to reveal there is only one card tattooed on your chest.

In both cases, the reveal was pre-indicated by you tapping your chest. You framed their expectations. And in both cases, the reveal precludes any other possibility.

You tell your friend that we often see shapes in the clouds not because they’re there, but because we expect to see them.

You “prove” this by having them stop at a random page in a book, and you ask them to think of an interesting word they see on the top line. There are a couple of options for them to choose from. They settle on the word “bologna.”

“You sure you don’t want one of these other words? ‘Knife’ is also a good option.”

No, they’re happy with bologna.

You take their hand and walk outside.

High in the sky, in drifting, disappearing script is…:

You actually have both words written in the air. One that you can see in the distance if you walk out your front door, one in the distance if you walk out your back door. Your house itself obstructs the view of whatever word they didn’t choose.

(This would be an example of a reveal that is ambitious, but structurally simple.)

“I’ve predicted the card you’ll choose,” you say. “It’s in my photo roll.”

They go through some process which narrows the deck down to just a couple of cards. They make a final, deliberate choice of one card. They can change their mind.

If they pick Card 1, you say:
“Open my photos. Scroll through. Somewhere in there, you’ll find a picture of a single card—the one you chose.”

And they do. A clean photo of the card, buried somewhere in your camera roll.
It’s the only playing card they’ll see as they scroll.

If they pick Card 2, you say:
“Open my photos and check the most recent picture. Now zoom in… see what I’m pointing at?”

And sure enough—it’s right there. The newest photo, taken earlier that day, casually showing you pointing at a card.

In the first case, there would be one close-up picture of a playing card, but it would be somewhere far back in the camera roll. This is the only picture of a card anyone would see while scrolling through your pics.

On the other hand, directing them to the most recent pic makes total sense and they’d never even see that other pic way back in your camera roll.

You get the idea.

In the future, I’ll share some actual routines I’ve done with this concept, not just these theoretical examples.

In the meantime, if you have any Bi- or Poly-Reveal ideas of your own, shoot me an email.

Mailbag #141

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I have no other place to bitch about this so I figured your inbox is fine. The extremely obvious AI writing in Penguin Magic's new copywriting is very annoying. Em dashes, "It's not x, it's y", and rules of three used eight times each in every description. Am I the only one that cares about this? Are we doomed of 

"You shit your pants. It smells. You'll have to change." 

 type AI slop for the rest of time? YOU'RE IN THE BUSINESS OF A FUCKING "ART" AS THEY WANT IT TO BE CALLED, HIRE A MONKEY TO WRITE THREE PARAGRAPHS. —JM

I get what you’re saying. I think we’re in a weird transitional period. For some of us, the AI “voice” is so obvious that it just feels cheap and cold when we read it. But others, who aren’t as familiar with it yet, can still read that same copy and think it’s well written. It feels better than what they might write, so they assume it must be good.

But as that style becomes more ubiquitous, it’s going to start feeling inauthentic and generic to more and more people.

Think of dandelions.

Dandelions grow everywhere, with no effort. So we call them weeds. But if they only bloomed on the side of one specific mountain every eight years, we’d treasure them like rare orchids.

The problem with AI writing isn’t that it’s always bad—it’s that it comes too easily. And when something is that easy, it becomes impossible to value. It’s fine if you’re writing a letter to your landlord asking to be let out of your lease two months early. But it’s not great if you’re trying to connect with an audience.

I think a lot of magic companies view ad copy as a nuisance to get over with. And maybe for most customers, it is. But for me, when I read obviously non-human writing, it turns off the part of my brain that is persuadable. So sure, you filled up the ad space. But it doesn’t do what you wanted it to do. At least not for me. And I don’t think I’m alone.

Honestly, I’d be more convinced to buy a new release by a bad writer genuinely expressing his excitement for a trick.

I know people think AI “art” is going to replace the human kind. But I don’t buy it.

It reminds me of an argument I had with someone who thought VR goggles would replace skiing. “Why would anyone go to their local hill when they can experience the greatest slopes in the world from their living room?”

I don’t think that guy understood why people go skiing.

And I don’t think the people churning out AI-written slop understand why moves people in writing or other forms of art.

Not that magic ad copy was ever “art.” It’s always been deceptively worded, over-the-top nonsense. But now it’s those things, written by something that’s never once been fooled by—or fooled someone with—the trick it’s writing about.

(Please note: I’ve been using em-dashes on this site since the beginning. I can’t give them up, no matter how fucked out they get by our robot overlords.)

Loved your post: The Power of The “Narrative How”. It was exactly what I needed to read today.

Man, this perfectly sums up what I’ve been experiencing since I started following your style. People just stopped interrupting me or trying to figure out the secret. Something funny actually happened the other day — I was at a bar with some friends, and they asked me to show something. I started telling a really absurd story, and there were a few new people there. One of them asked, “wait, is he being serious?” — and I didn’t even have to say anything. The others cut him off and said, “yeah, it’s true.” And the craziest part? They started asking open-ended questions, even though they knew it was just a magic premise.—DM

This was representative of some of the emails I received after I wrote about the “Narrative How.” If you missed it or skimmed past it, I’d encourage you to take another look. If the ideas on this site resonate with you, that post lays out a foundational concept—one that I believe can create longer-lasting interest than the standard approach to magic.

Hey, just wondering—have you ever tested how many people can actually do a riffle shuffle? I got excited to pick up the Savant Deck after reading your Mailbag #140 cause i liked your approach to math tricks. I learned it and tried it on three different people, but none of them could do a riffle shuffle, so the trick kinda bombed. (If you don’t know it only works if the spectator does a real riffle shuffle. Stuff like the Rosetta doesn’t work. And without the shuffle it’s not really worth doing.) Just curious if you’ve ever looked into how many people still know how to do that type of shuffle? —ST

We never specifically tested that, no. Although it’s an interesting question. If I had to estimate, in my experience performing for friends and acquaintances, and also testing card tricks for strangers, I would say probably 25-30% of people can do a clean riffle shuffle. That number shifts higher the older they are.

I would definitely not pull out the Savant Deck for someone whose shuffling abilities I didn’t know. Stopping someone from doing an overhand shuffle or just smooshing the cards around on the table would be an awkward moment that doesn’t say “magic” so much as it says, “special deck I need you to shuffle a specific way.”

So, here are your options:

  1. Perform for magicians (if you’re a dork)

  2. Save this trick for someone you know can riffle shuffle. (I’m going to pick this up and that’s what I’ll end up doing with it.)

  3. If you perform for groups of people, you can ask, “Who plays cards? I need someone who is really good at shuffling so we can be certain the deck is in a completely random order.” I’ve never found someone who says they’re good at shuffling when they’re not. And this request makes it feel like you’re being more fair.

Until July...

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This is the final post for June. Regular posting resumes Monday, July 7th. The next issue of the Love Letters newsletter for supporters comes out Sunday, July 6th.

Sex-criminal, Michel Salmon, aka Cyril Hubert, from Belgium has been kicked out of the Global League of Magicians and Mentalists.

Michel/Cyril was a karate instructor when he raped a pre-teen girl. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison in 2008. He had also been accused of sexually assaulting others, including his daughter.

This doughy little shithead has accusations against him going as far a back as 1989.

And, honestly, from looking at him, I can’t imagine he brought much to the table as a karate instructor other than a profoundly punchable face.

When not sexually assaulting children, he enjoys holding Rubik’s Cubes, at least that’s what I gather from his dull Facebook profile.

Also from his facebook page:

”Ma passion, c'est de jouer au magicien pour divertir adultes et enfants durant vos événements!”

”My passion is performing as a magician to entertain both adults and children at your events!”

Oh, I don’t doubt your “passion” for “les enfants.” That’s precisely the problem.

For those of you who are in the “just write about magic—leave that other stuff to the justice system” crowd, I don’t think you get it. I am writing about magic. I’m writing about magician Cyril Hubert, whose real name is Michel Salmon, who is a child rapist and likes Rubik’s Cubes.

I will leave you with these two quotes from two different articles about the man. One from 2008 and the other 2018. Together, they’re kind of chilling. And they’re precisely the reason I’ll continue to report on these cases and call out these people who have managed to hide their history from the internet and use magic as an excuse to get close to kids.

[Vanessa was 11 years old when she began taking classes with a pedophile karate instructor in Havelange. She is now on her third suicide attempt.]

Switching gears,

Jonathan S., draws my attention to this article:

He writes:

This Atlantic article is about a sport I had no idea existed: people around the world playing competitive "Which Hand" games, but for real. Experts can figure out who's telling the truth and who's bluffing with startling accuracy. 

This seems like an amazing premise for any Which Hand type routine.

Yes, but… remember to take the premise up a notch. “I can actually do it blindfolded.” Or, “I’m the only player in the world that can predict in advance which hand you’ll choose, round after round.”

Because if your premise is just, “Look at this game that genuinely exists. I’m actually really good at it.” Then you’re veering very close to just pointing out a real thing and then lying about your skill at it. That’s not exactly magic.

Learn this and other techniques in Oz Pearlman’s second Penguin Live lecture devoted entirely to techniques for getting more gigs.

New ideas/tools in the Digital Appendix for The Test, Breakfast With You, and The Enigmatic Card.

See you all back here in July. The year is almost half over. Summer is here. Don’t let it pass you by. Go to the beach with your boys and check out the babes.

The Power of The “Narrative How”

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Last Thursday I wrote.

Next week, I’ll talk about why you might want to use [unbelievable premises]. The “why” I’m going to share has been eye-opening for the people I’ve discussed it with, and I think it offers a fresh way to think about the kinds of presentations you choose.

Well, now is next week. Or, I mean, relative to last week’s this week, when this week was last week, now this week is last week’s next week. Which is now.

For years now, I’ve noticed that when I embed a trick in an interesting immersive narrative, the responses are not only stronger, but the heat on the method itself becomes lesser.

I always assumed this is because the person gets caught up in the story and just becomes less focused on the secret of the trick.

But I have a new theory.

Imagine this:

I say, “I’m going to move this stuffed mouse across the table with my mind.” I concentrate. The mouse suddenly shoots across the table.

Now contrast that with this:

I say, “I have an invisible cat. He’s real frisky.” I set a stuffed mouse on the table and call out, “Get it, Mittens!” The mouse flies off the edge. I reach down to pick up Mittens. “That’s a good boy.”

In the first version, the person watching thinks: Wait… how did he move that mouse? Did he blow on it? Was there a string? Is it gimmicked in some way?

Their entire attention is fixed on the how of the effect—because that’s the only mystery I’ve presented.

But in the second version, something else happens.

When I tell people I know, “I have an invisible cat, and he loves to play,” my friends have learned not to think I’m crazy. Instead they think, “How will this play out? Hmm… an invisible cat. Okay, what am I about to see?”

Any unbelievable premise can create similar questions.

“This stone can generate coincidences.”

“I want you to slap me as hard as you can. I’m able to something weird when I’m in a pain state.”

“My grandmother was a witch. This is her old necklace.”

Anything like this will generate the question, “Okay, how will this play out?”

What’s kind of coincidence is this stone going to generate?

What power does he have in a “pain state”?

What weird thing is going to happen sitting around in this darkened room, late at night, with this witch’s necklace?

Do you see what’s happening here?

At the climax of the effect, they’re getting an answer.

Normally, the climax of a trick creates questions. It builds tension and leaves the spectator needing to resolve something. How did he do that? All the weight of the mystery is on that question.

But when you lead with an unbelievable premise, the climax of the trick can actually relieve tension.

It doesn’t answer the method question—“How did he do that?”—but it does answer the narrative one you planted earlier: “How is this going to play out?”

That’s what I mean by, the Narrative How.

I’m not suggesting they won’t still wonder how the stuffed mouse really flew off the table. But the need to “figure it out” is lessened—because you’ve already delivered a kind of answer. You gave them a resolution—a payoff.

You’re not just endlessly feeding into the dynamic where you know something they don’t know. You’ve posed a mystery—and provided a resolution. Yes, the resolution is impossible. But it’s still satisfying, because it answers the story question, not the method question.

But keep in mind, this only works if you commit to the premise. If you say, “This is my grandma’s necklace. She was a witch,” and then move on without setting up any atmosphere, tone, the premise feels hollow. There’s no tension to relieve at the end because you never really built any in the first place.

The power of creating narrative questions—and then answering them—is that it never gets old.

You offer an unbelievable premise—and then you seemingly prove it’s real. That dynamic is endlessly engaging. Different premises (or even the same premise with different proof) will always spark curiosity, because people love getting answers. They love watching something resolve. It’s like setting up a joke and giving them the punchline.

On the other hand, when everything hinges on how you did it, you're denying them any resolution. You’re inviting them to figure it out. And they will—either successfully, which weakens the moment… or unsuccessfully, which leaves them frustrated.

But you can distract that impulse with narrative resolution. You can redirect their curiosity somewhere where they will at least get some sort of satisfying answer.

Being fooled can be fun. It can be novel. But over time, the novelty fades—and with it, the enjoyment.

But a simple, crazy story that wraps up with a little bow—”He told me he had an invisible cat… and then something I couldn’t see swatted the cat-toy off the table!”—never loses its charm.

And I find, after a while, most people decide to just enjoy that part of the experience rather than waste their energy trying to find out how you did it.

😮

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Here’s a fun game for your next magic club gathering.

YouTube Magic Review Thumbnail or Sex Doll

Which one is registering shock, and which one is inviting you to shove your genitals into their mouth?

Bonus Question

One of these pics is Penguin pitchman, Nick Locapo. The other is the Gladiator Full Size Inflatable Doll (With Dong). Can you spot which is which?

Andy Saves the Day: Xeno Choreography

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Xeno by Marc Kerstein—possibly my most-used app after the Jerx App—just got a major overhaul, adding a bunch of new functionality. I haven’t had a chance to dive into the latest updates yet, so I can’t speak to those, but I can speak to the app as it’s existed for years now.

At its core, Xeno lets you see what a spectator is viewing on their phone (or computer) on your own phone.

I’ve shared ideas for using Xeno in various places over the years, including:

Lucid ACAAN

The Project on Word Transmission

Delayed ESP

Call Me By Your Name

Over on the Facebook page for Xeno, someone asked this question:

“It does not make sense to me!”

Relax, sweetie. I got you. Let’s make this make sense.

Here’s exactly what I do:

  1. Pull out my phone and go into the Xeno app.

  2. As I’m doing this I say, “I’m going to have you look at a list of the most popular boys names.” (Or whatever the premise of the effect is.)

  3. I pause. “Actually, just bring it up on your phone. Go to [I tell them the URL].”

  4. If I need to pair by swiping (which you don’t really need to do anymore), I stand side-by-side with them, looking at their screen and talking about what we’re looking at while I swipe down at my side on my phone.

  5. The phone is now in my hand where it can hang casually during the performance. Or I can put it in my breast pocket where I can get a peek later. Or set it down somewhere. Or place it in my lap if we’re seated. Or pocket it and take it out later if I go in another room while they settle on something.

Notice, initially, you’re seemingly going to have them look at something on your phone.

Then you do something that feels more free and fair and say, “Actually, go ahead and bring it up on your phone.”

This justifies why you brought your phone out initially, but then gets it out of the way in a way adds an even greater lack of guile to the proceedings.

In casual situations, the phone can just be held in your hand at your side the rest of the interaction. That’s perfectly normal. Half the people you interact with during the day are holding a phone. No one cares. Or you can put it away and work a moment into your performance to get the peek. Either way is fine.

Notice how the sequence plays out:

At first, it seems like I’m going to have them look something up on my phone.
Then, in what feels like a freer, more open choice, I pivot:
“Actually, go ahead and bring it up on your phone.”

That shift does two things:

  1. It justifies why I pulled out my phone in the first place.

  2. It makes the whole interaction feel more fair—more hands-off, less guided.

And from there? In casual settings, it’s totally normal to have a phone in your hand. Half the people you talk to every day are holding a phone while they’re talking. No one thinks twice about it. I can keep it at my side, set it down, pocket it, or put it away and work a moment into my performance later to get the peek. Whatever works.

By the way, I know I’ve said this before, but reading Facebook groups for magic apps really makes me appreciate my situation here.

I get to chat with you all, explore ideas, dick around, write a book now and then. People email me to say nice things. Maybe share some ideas. Folks coming here expect they’ll actually have to read something and give it some thought. If I make a mistake, it’s usually easy to fix—even with a book, I can update it in the Digital Appendix. It’s all very chill. Cordial. Friendly.

But magic app creators? That’s a different world. You’re constantly worried about updates breaking the app, being questioned by people who didn’t read the instructions, or getting yelled at because there’s no Android version. Yeah, no thanks.

We passed the 10-year mark on this site recently. If I had started in magic by making apps, I wouldn’t have made it ten months. The people living in my apartment today would still be wondering what that faint pink hue in the living room is from where I took matters into my own hands and my brains splattered against the wall.