TechStuff Conjures Up Brian Brushwood

How did Brian get his start in stage magic? What is the Afterlyfe.me project? How do the worlds of technology and stage magic overlap? Join Chris and Jonathan as they interview Brian Brushwood.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
textile from houstuffworks dot com. Well, our guest today is
Brian Brushwood, Magician extraordinaire, critical thinker, skeptic, social engineer, gat

(00:24):
about town like that last one the most. Thank you, Brian,
Thank you so much for being on our show. Dude,
thank you so much for having me. I don't 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 roomy's. That's true. It's true.

(00:45):
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. Stop this. He's he's also
a complete jerk. Now, so we wanted to talk today
about lots of different topics. But before we get started,

(01:08):
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 you 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

(01:28):
I am a touring stage magician who tours colleges doing
a punk rock magic show with fire eating escapes, mind reading.
I stick and 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

(01:49):
four years strong, two and 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

(02:10):
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 it was the awesomest thing,
because I guess Discovery dot Com has been talking with

(02:33):
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 is like, hey, were

(02:53):
you just not gonna tell us that you joined Discovery
dot com? And I'm like, what's take a look? And
sure enough, there it is and it's is 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.

(03:15):
But it was very pleased to see you brought on board.
And 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 extensive experience being a
stage magician, uh, that kind of gets your perspective on

(03:38):
how stage magic has changed over the years and how
the role of technology has sort of played a part
in that and that, uh, and 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

(03:59):
for um Childhood's end. He says, any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic. Yes, one of our favorites. Yeah, no,
and that the magicians love that quote because it makes
us sound important. But the but you know, you look
back and uh, it seems like every time there's a
novel new technology, uh, there is a magician to either

(04:21):
exploit it secretly in a stage show or to make
it integral to his stage performance. You know you go back.
You know, you got Jean Eugene Robert Huddon uh doing
doing bullet catches, you know when and this is in
the nineteenth century when we're still using a musket type rifles.
You got um uh, you know Penn and Teller doing

(04:41):
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 slot 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. And uh,

(05:05):
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 In the biz, 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

(05:26):
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

(05:47):
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 busses. It took me a forty five minutes

(06:08):
just to go the eight miles to get there. And uh,
this guy talked to me for like the three hours straight,
and 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.

(06:30):
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 something kind of guilt
that builds in you and 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.

(06:52):
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?
Then you go back to using gimmicks. Soum, 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

(07:14):
biggest confusion that people have. A lot of folks get
into magic when they're 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

(07:35):
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

(07:58):
it's really it's your personality that matters way more than anything.
And you, I mean, there are parts of Pen 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 trick they're doing. Yeah,

(08:19):
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, doing it so seamlessly and so smoothly, that's
so clear that they've they've really polished that routine that
it still feels like magic. Well, I think there's a

(08:41):
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 trick, ostensibly the whole purpose
of that routine is for them to teach you how
to do the cups of 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

(09:02):
that is that a hundred bucks something 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 reading, right explained
from the earliest references to resistance to fire to uh
to to the touring uh you know stage performer Richardson

(09:24):
in the sixteen hundreds. I explained 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

(09:48):
several different episodes. Uh, and Chris 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 uh, 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

(10:10):
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. And
I mean that all that all really began with Houdini.
You know, Judini was obsessed with trying to contact his

(10:31):
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 of 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
them out. He was he was kind of he was

(10:52):
kind of an able 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.
That started off with with I don't know if it's
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

(11:14):
to anyone who can demonstrate any psychic EESP or supernatural
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

(11:35):
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, That's where
I was headed beating me there, And I guess it's true.
I think I've read an article recently saying that a
wire coat hanger demonstrated the ability to perform just as

(11:57):
well as a hundred dollar monster cable. Yeah, we, as
a matter of fact, talked about that on a previous podcast. Yeah,
that's that exact same subject. But which it's interesting to
think that it's a stage magician, someone who is is
skilled in the arts of deception, who who comes forward
as an advocate for this. Then, but then again, you're
talking about the people who know these tools, because like

(12:18):
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, well, 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

(12:39):
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 Marster cables are going anywhere, is because whether
or not it's true, if you have more money than cents,

(13:01):
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

(13:22):
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

(13:43):
that it just it just wasn't loud. And meanwhile he's
looking at the decibel meter and this thing is like
almost damaging you're hearing it's so loud. So he goes
to radio shack and gets a I think it was
like as in Peter that would that would clip the
highest end, but the the audio queue of hearing the
high end being clipped made them think that the speakers
were maxed, and even though the volume was actually lower,

(14:04):
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

(14:25):
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 or three d page biographies on

(14:47):
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

(15:08):
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 retrol, I got to take whatever courses

(15:30):
I wanted for the last two years, as long as
I could justify being related to magic. So I took
courses on you know, you know, on artificial intelligence, on psychology,
on the 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,

(15:51):
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

(16:12):
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,

(16:35):
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 my own mental practices onto my technology. Now, oh,
you should, you should, And in fact I think that, uh,
we're entering an age where unfortunately, in the legal system

(16:57):
right now, we still are in a place where, uh,
where we value I 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.

(17:20):
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

(17:41):
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

(18:02):
trying it and then it was delicious because of the ad.
Oh wow, I haven't now that was that was just
I think that was 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 purposes, because the leader often sort
of steers it in the direction of the of what

(18:22):
the the company that has organized as focus group is
trying to achieve, like oh, hey, look it works right,
go it? Yeah, which comes That's 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 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

(18:44):
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 ministering a test to
the control group or to the test group, so that
that it limits the chance that data will be uh

(19:08):
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 Chevroule is 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

(19:31):
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 soccer crap. But then

(19:54):
he had it. But but he had the idea. He
had his assistant set up a partition and he just
held out the pen alum and 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 them, for example,

(20:18):
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,

(20:40):
although the actual administration would require more. But out of
everybody who goes for the James Randy million dollar prize, UH,
the dowsers seemed 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 found them, They look for

(21:01):
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 right and get a hit, that
doesn't mean that it proves that dowsing works. It means

(21:21):
that it proves that that either you know, one of
the other things happen. 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

(21:42):
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 and people in certain environments. I I just

(22:03):
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, uh, where we explain the
ways that you can use uh you know, magic tricks
or psychological manipulation to get the girl's phone number or
to win free beers off of your friends. Uh uh.
One of the best experiences that I got to have

(22:26):
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,

(22:49):
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 signed in

(23:11):
in twos now one of them was a real experimentee,
the other was a fake experiment tee. And they spent
all day reviewing art on a scale of one to five.
I love it, I hated this, that 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

(23:33):
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 cars as many

(23:54):
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

(24:15):
ahead and uh 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

(24:37):
there's other things like uh, 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 worked wearing work clothes, they would

(24:58):
be you know, X number of people would start following
if he 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, but it was a it was
a a fast talker. It was a guy who just
spoken and jargon meaningless jargon uh and demonstrating how how

(25:22):
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

(25:42):
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,

(26:05):
and in fact, that's a that's probably the biggest component
of what makes stage hypnosis possible. People always ask whether
or not hypnosis is are 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 biggest 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

(26:25):
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 stopped 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 or you're
you're shivering because you're cold, and then and then he

(26:47):
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 a percent and the only
way out is to is to ruin the show. Would
be like, I'm not I'm not hypnotized. So it's like, uh,
and hypnosis is real, and that there's no way I

(27:07):
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.

(27:28):
And on top of that, there is I don't want
to take away from stage 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

(27:49):
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
am willing to make with you right here and now,
good good, because you know, no hypnosis necessary. You have
sold sir. Uh uh. So. The reason why I wanted
to bring up social engineering is that it's not just

(28:10):
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 has 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

(28:32):
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

(28:53):
to break through a a technological secure system. Yeah. Absolutely,
if you think of technology as a sealed room him,
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 the counter 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

(29:13):
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

(29:35):
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.
Mustard 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,

(29:55):
and uh, Kevin Mitnick'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 and an election year here in the United States.

(30:17):
Oh yeah, no, I mean that's a boy. I mean
you'll see, you'll see all kinds of of trappings of authority.
And 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 candidate
is important, and it starts to uh, reaffirmed that the
trappings of authority become as important as actual authority. I'm

(30:40):
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 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

(31:02):
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. And 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?

(31:23):
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,

(31:45):
you probably you 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 selected. Oh gosh, this reminds me of

(32:09):
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,

(32:32):
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,
uh went to I think it was like an International
House of Pancakes or something like that, some some sort

(32:54):
of diner, and they walked in and one of their
one of their fellow teachers, a Frican American fellow who
wore were traditional African garments occasionally, and they just decided
on a whim as they walked in that he was
a visiting dignitary from Africa, and he put on the
whole role of it, and even went so far as saying,

(33:17):
these greeds, what these greeds? I would take great, No, honey,
you're gonna need more than one. Uh So. But yeah,
they tell the whole story 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 little bit of guilt. Yes, And
that's that's the that's the problem with magic in general,

(33:38):
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
has 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
out other way to say, all right, I'm going to
perform an illusion for you, and you know it's it's

(34:00):
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 something 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

(34:20):
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 we 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 that there are

(34:41):
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 lung and uh. It got great reactions

(35:02):
when I did it, but everybody thought the method everybody
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

(35:24):
that I get much more joy and a bigger 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 apure of the lungs. It's magic
when somebody could do it to themselves. Yeah, exactly, yea.
And I've even heard magicians talk about how they would
see someone do uh. Like some close up magic and uh,

(35:47):
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 complain with it requires lots
more practice than the simple way, but stagement you should say, wow,
that was amazing. As a matter of fact, the fantastic

(36:09):
performer Tom Mulika is a legend in magic. He's one
of the most talented slide 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,

(36:31):
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

(36:53):
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, isn't that is 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

(37:16):
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

(37:36):
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 a I'm gonna make sure it's
actually still alive here 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

(37:57):
with by Patrick Dela Hanty, who's 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 lifetime me is freaking honest.

(38:17):
After Lifetime is an opportunity to become a virtual ghost
just to annoy and freak out everyone for the rest
of eternity. Uh. 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 will 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

(38:39):
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 it 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

(39:01):
that we could do that digitally forever. You know, it's
like picking up the kids, Merry Christmas and the birth
day 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

(39:22):
of art can be tacky, and I think it's really
cool performance art. Personally, I 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. Yeah, well 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 Amy Winehouse die. You know, I think

(39:45):
that'll that will become funny over time. But also think
about the apt replies where all of a sudden 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 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 irritate people.

(40:07):
So you know, it's a great idea. As soon as
I heard it, 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. 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

(40:27):
Twitter 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 I spent a year

(40:48):
testing video games for Rockwell Semiconductors for a year, which
was awesome. And I spent almost three years at Dell
and their high end sales support, you know, designing networks
for small businesses, or build high end systems for you know,
three D modelers, 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

(41:11):
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

(41:33):
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 seeks in. It's kind of 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 ways the most exciting time to

(41:56):
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

(42:16):
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

(42:38):
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 tell
now has a global opportunity to to reach an audience
worldwide and it cost him nothing. That there's no barrier

(43:02):
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 push

(43:23):
wick 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 twit 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

(43:45):
with that we like and that's fine. It's you know, Veronica,
I 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. So it's there's a hair trigger, you know.
Just it's right on the right ground. I don't want

(44:06):
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 um,

(44:28):
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 ee kind of properties
to it. Uh. 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

(44:51):
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

(45:11):
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 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,

(45:33):
it's two different, separate media. So to tell someone to
go and 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 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 it's it's two different media and often

(45:55):
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 uh about I
guess two years ago when Kindle really started to get

(46:17):
more popular, and of course uh iTunes started up their eyebookstore,
I was like, oh dude, and 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 e pub

(46:37):
They 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

(46:58):
build this tool that I really and disheartened as far
as ever reaching that goal of what I wanted to do,
if 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 book that's
v O o kay dot com and they essentially are
trying to create a their own platform that once you

(47:22):
create the book in book, you press publish and it
converts it to dot mobi, dot e pub 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 heroin

(47:44):
because there were times where the entire book would vanish
or chapter which 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,

(48:07):
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 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

(48:28):
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 alive and illustrates animated for you and shows

(48:50):
you exactly what you're supposed to do. So it's got
it's got seventy plus audio commentary tracks and uh 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

(49:12):
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

(49:36):
and what the potential is and that it's been several
years in the making, and and it's so exciting that
it looks like now we're getting to 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

(49:59):
things you have within a ectronic 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. You know, 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

(50:20):
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 weak 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

(50:42):
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

(51:04):
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

(51:26):
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 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

(51:51):
and they are, Um, I don't know. I guess the
military really pioneered the idea of of badges and medals
and achievements. But 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

(52:12):
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. The whole
thing was clearly modeled right after World of Warcraft, and
he I don't know if you ever implemented it, but
it was so obviously right when I read it that

(52:34):
I fully expect us to see more companies running their
businesses like a video game. I'm right there with you.
I expect that as well, especially since gamification is still
an incredibly powerful buzzword in the business world. So well, Brian,
thank you so much for taking the time to talk
with us. This has been a great discussion, really fascinating dude.

(52:57):
Anytime you guys want me to talk about anything, just
give me a call. We will take you up on that. Guys,
definitely check out Brian Brushwood's work. Check out his Scam
School ebook. Uh. The guy does some pretty amazing stuff
and uh and he's just a super dude. So everyone
check that out and we will talk to you again
really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,

(53:20):
Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as
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The House Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it
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