486: Jason Ladanye—Nothing Up His Sleeve

Mike sits down with master card mechanic and sleight-of-hand expert Jason Ladanye https://www.cardmagicbyjason.com/, whose impossible demonstrations of gambling moves and psychological deception have earned him a reputation as one of the best card handlers working today. Jason explains how a childhood obsession with cards—and an influential mentorship with legendary magician Darwin Ortiz—shaped his career performing around the world. Along the way, Jason shows Mike how magicians secretly track cards through a shuffled deck, demonstrates the art of bottom dealing, and reveals why the real secret behind great magic isn't fast hands—it's storytelling, conviction, and understanding exactly how people think. And of course, there are several mind-blowing demonstrations of his ability. Follow Jason on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cardmagicbyjason/ and see him LIVE at an upcoming show https://www.cardmagicbyjason.com/see-jason-live/.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Hey, it's Mike Rowe. This is The Way I Heard It. My guest today is Jason Ladanye. If I sound a little nonplussed, it's because I know it's Ladanye. I'm just seeing if you're paying attention.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  I was totally paying attention, dude.

• 0:15Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, the first thing I do is apologize to the guy for mispronouncing his name wrong in my mind for the last two years. I think he forgave me. This guy, I guess he's a magician.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Card technician?

• 0:25Mike Rowe?

  Mechanic?

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Card mechanic. I think that's the proper term, yeah.

• 0:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I stumbled across him on the internet on a lazy rainy Thursday morning a couple of years ago, just scrolling around.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:39Mike Rowe?

  And I saw him do something with a deck of cards. It just defied credulity.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:46Mike Rowe?

  You know, and you play cards.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:48Mike Rowe?

  And I play cards.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:49Mike Rowe?

  And I know some tricks and whatever. I've seen the best. I've seen, you know, Richard Turner and I've seen... I mean, I was just so blown away by his skill.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02Mike Rowe?

  And his attitude.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04Mike Rowe?

  Jason Ladanye, he's so mean to the people who follow him.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Yes, to the skeptics who challenge him and say, "You're cheating. You know, it's trick photography," or whatever.

• 1:15Mike Rowe?

  But it's delightful because as abusive as he is to his many, many followers, he has their permission to be so.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24Mike Rowe?

  Because he's that good.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:26Mike Rowe?

  I think the one I sent you, he tracked an ace and pulled four of them out of the deck in pretty short order while he was shuffling in between each extraction, which was great.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  And insulting the person who sent him the challenge at the same time, yeah.

• 1:39Mike Rowe?

  Right. So basically, the challenge is, you know, "I'll give you $250 if you can pull out four aces of continuous shuffling and blah, blah, blah," which of course he does. But what you don't know is that as he's doing it, as he's shuffling, he's also arranging the entire deck.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54Mike Rowe?

  By suit in chronological order.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57Mike Rowe?

  So when he finds the aces, you're blown away, and then he shows you the whole deck and everything is arranged and suited.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  And he's done that without looking at them.

• 2:06Mike Rowe?

  He never looks at them.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  He's just shuffling them. He's riffling them. And cutting them.

• 2:11Mike Rowe?

  And insulting his audience.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  And insulting his audience and then they're all.

• 2:15Mike Rowe?

  And it's delightful.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16Mike Rowe?

  Anyway, that was two years ago. I sent you a clip and then I've sent you many clips since then because he's, you know, he's in my algorithm now.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:24Mike Rowe?

  And, uh, you know, we're officially calling this, uh, episode, nothing up his sleeve. Cause I think it's apropos, but we could have just as easily called it the best 40 seconds of your day, because that's about how much time I spend every day.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Every day, me too now, yeah.

• 2:39Mike Rowe?

  Watching him do what he does. So last night I came down here to MicroWorks World Headquarters and Chuck was in touch with Jason's manager. And he was doing a show up in Oxnard.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:50Mike Rowe?

  So we took a road trip and we saw this guy in person.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 2:55Mike Rowe?

  And today I was like, look, man, you gotta come down and do the podcast. Bring your cards, you necromancer, you wizard, you dark art freak. Come down here and let's have a chat. And so that's what just happened. We just spent close to two hours. He showed us some stuff that'll make your head explode. But you know what? More importantly, he was exactly who I hoped he would be, which is a version of his alter ego. He's a craftsman. He's a tradesman. There hasn't been a day in the last 40 years that he hasn't had his hands for hours on a deck of cards.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:30Mike Rowe?

  It's become an extension of his fingers and the personification of his purpose here on planet earth. I don't know of anybody who's better at what he's doing right now. I don't even think he's in the prime of his career.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he's coming into it. I think, uh, he's going to be very well known.

• 3:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Very soon.

• 3:50Mike Rowe?

  It's going to be hard to say his last name, obviously. It's Ladanye and he spells it funny too. But Card Magic by Jason is what you're going to want to search after you listen to this conversation. And hopefully after you watch it as well, you know, we do these over on YouTube and this is one of those episodes that you should find because he's going to do things with the deck of cards. Honestly, man, there were moments last night where I couldn't have been more. gobsmacked, had he just pulled his head off his body.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:20Mike Rowe?

  And set it on the table.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:22Mike Rowe?

  And had it continue to talk.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:24Mike Rowe?

  It's just.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know if you noticed it or not, but I literally made noises of like, ah.

• 4:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  And, and like, no way.

• 4:32Mike Rowe?

  And you were gasping.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:34Mike Rowe?

  And, and it sounded like some, you know, important organs. Were shutting down prematurely.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Were shifting, yes.

• 4:42Mike Rowe?

  There were facial tics.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:43Mike Rowe?

  There were, it wasn't a big crowd. That's the other thing I love about this guy, man. He's out there like without a net. He does big houses, he does small houses.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:53Mike Rowe?

  He's really very much on the comic's journey, the comic's circuit. But he has a, a skill set unlike Seinfeld. It's that plus this. And what you're left with is just a, look, it's just, it's marvelous.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  And it seems impossible.

• 5:13Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  And yet he does it with such ease and a little bit of panache and a lot of snarkiness.

• 5:21Mike Rowe?

  Oh, man, he is an R rated performer and I love it, but this is PG 13, maybe even PG. Safe for the whole family. You're gonna love it. There's nothing up his sleeve, but there is a great deal of talent in his fingers. That's for damn sure. Ooh, that sounded virtually dirty.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Really weird, man. You could have just left it with the.

• 5:41Mike Rowe?

  Well, whatever it is, it's right after this. Jason Ladanye.

• 5:50Mike Rowe?

  So as some of you may have heard, I went to Congress 16 years ago to testify before a House Subcommittee. And then again, a year later to testify before a Senate Subcommittee about the need to reinvigorate the skilled trades with some kind of national effort that would make a more persuasive case for a lot of good jobs out there that didn't require a four-year degree. Well, 15 years later.

• 6:18Mike Rowe?

  I finally heard back from the government and I am delighted to tell you about a program called BuildFreedom.us. This is the national PR campaign that MicroWorks has been talking about for a decade and a half now and it's focused on 300,000 or 400,000 excellent jobs in the defense industrial base. These are the electricians and the plumbers and the steam finners and the pipe fitters and the CNC operators and the shipbuilders and so forth. But in this case, all of those trades are focused on building out our national infrastructure through the defense industrial base. So people who are building our autonomous weapons, our planes, our ships, it's only

• 7:03Mike Rowe?

  a matter of national security and it's a very big deal. And on a personal level, it's really been very gratifying. Build Freedom donated $10 million to MicroWorks. The money's available right now for you if you want to pursue a skill that's in demand and work in the defense industrial base. I think it's an opportunity of a lifetime. Go to BuildFreedom.us, see what's available and then apply for a scholarship from MicroWorks. The money's there, burning a hole in my pocket. Go get some. BuildFreedom.us.

• 7:38Mike Rowe?

  All right, I should start with an apology, man. I've been mispronouncing your name in my head for the last two years, I'm sorry.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  That's okay.

• 7:45Mike Rowe?

  It's Jason Ladanye.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 7:48Mike Rowe?

  Like Danny Boy.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 7:50Mike Rowe?

  And boy, oh, boy, dude, you freaked those people out last night, man. It was fun to watch.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Just doing my job.

• 7:55Mike Rowe?

  Do you think of it like a job? Do you think of it like a hobby that got out of hand? I mean, you're just doing stuff, dude. And you can see people's eyes, first they glaze, then they roll in their head, then you start, like, about 40 minutes in, you start to notice, like, the guys I'm sitting with have developed a facial tic. Right? I mean, you're like, you're really...

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Starting a cult.

• 8:20Mike Rowe?

  You're troubling, you're troubling people and amusing them at the same time. So is that really your job?

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Well, I had a similar experience when I was young and I saw magic for the first time. I was learning how the world works and there's rules and everything. So I experienced what you're talking about myself and I knew what that felt like. And I think in life, there's this thing, I didn't know this when I was seven, but you have a, you have something, you have an experience and there's this thing that we want to share it with. Oh, you have to try this or that's just how humans work. So I felt that my brother showed me some card tricks, I was seven. And I just wanted to learn how that works and do that to other people. And then there was kind of a power in that that I enjoy and fooling your father for the first, you know, they, you know, they, these are in very impactful things. And fooling my brother, he was the one that showed me the stuff and I was now my life's mission

• 9:11Speaker 02

  to fool him back, you know, it took 15 years, but I got him. And then along the way, I got good at this stuff, you know. And so when you say, is it a job or not, you know, everyone has, this is how I make money, but I certainly don't feel the word job especially because when I think of that word, I feel like people that the alarm goes off and you go, you know, and you go in and, and you try to take vacations from it and you know, that, that's not what this is. We're constantly going and traveling and having fun and everything. So it doesn't feel like anything I need to get away from, but for some reason in me is always this desire to create even more, even though I've got the show you saw, there's, there's constantly new things I'm always coming up with to further that and make it even worse.

• 9:52Mike Rowe?

  Has there been a day in the last 40 years where you haven't had your hands on a deck of cards?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  No, it's every day, I, you know, unless I'm in the hospital and I'll say I was in the hospital, I still have cards with me, I'll have somebody call.

• 10:02Mike Rowe?

  Do you take the cards in the bathroom with you?

• 10:04Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 10:05Mike Rowe?

  Have you ever taken the cards in the can?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Yes, I have to, yes, yes, there is a, there is a deck in the bathroom, but um.

• 10:11Mike Rowe?

  No, really, like a little table set up by the bowl?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  No, no, not the full table set up, but there might be a deck within reach, let's put it that way. But um, in the hotel rooms, you know, after a show, if something didn't go the way it's supposed to go, I'll, I'll immediately, it's, it might be two in the morning, but I come in and I pull the mat out and I get the cards out and work on that or if I have an idea, oh, this one's a curse.

• 10:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  It's 3:30 in the morning and you just wake up at a no, for no reason, you know, and you're sitting there laying in bed and you say, oh damn, it's three in the morning and you go. Now if they shuffle. Now, wait a second. If they shuffle it, and then you take the deck back and do this, and then that, that would mean I could, yeah, okay, I'll write this up in the morning. And then you lay in there, and then you go 15 minutes later, you're like, but also, if someone does this prior, if you could use it from a new deck, if you start with a new deck, and then they show, and then next thing you know, it's 4:30 in the morning, and you're out writing this up.

• 11:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  You know, that, you can't get away from it, because your creativity starts, and you, I've learned that you can't just say, "I'm gonna write it up in the morning," because you wake up, and you're like, "I had a great idea." That's the thing that pisses me off. You'll say to yourself, "I know I had a good idea, but I can't remember it." Well, why do you remember that you had a good idea, but you can't remember the specifics of it?

• 11:25Mike Rowe?

  What is it about that, the sublimely frustrating feeling of having a thing on the tip of your tongue? I think it's universally torturous, but for creative people, right? I mean, I've had the same thing in the middle of a story where I thought, "Okay, okay, that's gonna be the turn." And then I, but I'm not quite there yet, and then I write to when I get there, and I literally forget what I thought I was gonna do.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  I think the trap is, and I have had this happen several times, and that's why I changed the rule now, but the trap is, "This is such a good idea, I won't forget it." "This is groundbreaking, so I have changed, this is gonna change the world." So obviously, this is so impactful that I'm on board, and then it's gone like that. And I've tried ways to skip myself back into that same thinking, to see if it'll pop back up again, or whatever, but, so the lesson that I learned was, no matter what, if it's 3:00 in the morning, or whatever, if you're driving, you can use your voice phone, your voice notes and things, but you have to write those down immediately.

• 12:24Mike Rowe?

  How much of what I saw last night was really, I mean, I know it was choreographed and had to be, but how much improvisational flexibility do you look for when you do these acts? Because you're super interactive with the audience, and there's no way you can predict a lot of what I saw happen, to a point.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're human, so you can expect certain things. It's a great question. Thank you for asking good questions.

• 12:52Mike Rowe?

  And by the way, that was right from my brain, not AI. We have some AI-generated questions we might rely on later. We'll see how it goes.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Okay. So, again, since we're all humans, we're gonna react similar ways to things. We're gonna see something and have similar reactions. So I can, based on all the shows I've done, I can kinda rely on a certain way. But it might, it may fall into five or six different categories. Either they're gonna do this, or they're gonna do this, or they're gonna do this, or they're gonna do this. And over forty years of practice and twenty years of shows and everything, what happens is you have ten responses ready to go if they go this way. You have ten responses ready to go if they go this way. And you can vary these. Is it the crowd? Do I need to wake them up? Or are they fun, are they rowdy, whatever? So depending on if they fall into, if they do category B, I have, you know, four responses and I can choose the level at which I wanna respond and have some gag ready or something like that.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  So is it improvisational? Yes, but it's kinda like guitar licks. You know, I'm not inventing them on the spot, but I am putting them together in a new way in that moment. You know, I've never played that guitar solo exactly that way.

• 13:56Mike Rowe?

  Are you musical?

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course. I've toured for, I started piano and guitar when I was the same age.

• 14:01Mike Rowe?

  What do you, what do you mean, of course? What do you mean naturally? I mean, like, is, is a musical background?

• 14:07Speaker 02

  I thought you knew, I thought you did.

• 14:08Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, I did kinda know. I knew you played the piano. I didn't know you played guitar. But my question, if there is one, is, you know, what kind of advantages does a musical background bring? Potentially to a?

• 14:21Speaker 02

  The technical, for sure. So piano is all about scales and there's so much a kinda empty technique where you don't have to think. You know, you just do the scale. You push these buttons. There's no music, there's no creativity. Just do this. And that built up so much dexterity in your fingers with independence in hands, right? So the normal person, we use this, our thumbs and everything. We grab a fork, the coffee. We're never using these fingers. We're just got this like this. It's all we ever need. You get into an elevator, do that. And all day long, from the morning to night, you're just doing this, or possibly this, or grabbing something. So there's no reason for you to have independence on this finger, let alone hands doing opposite things at different times. So piano player pushes you right into this new... Thing where you're opening up new parts of your brain.

• 15:02Mike Rowe?

  It's a shared tendon, right?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:04Mike Rowe?

  Like your ring finger and your pinkie only has one.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, but you have to develop independence in those fingers. I can just lift my pinkie or just my ring or just my middle. So my brain is talking to these fingers and they're doing what I want them to do. So at seven, you're not thinking at that. You're just saying, this is what my piano teacher wants me to do. You know, and through repetition, you get good at it. But what I noticed when I met Darwin, and we're skipping around the timeline and everything. But when I was in my twenties and I met Darwin.

• 15:27Mike Rowe?

  That was your mentor.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's one of the best.

• 15:30Mike Rowe?

  Ortiz, was it?

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Darwin Ortiz, yeah, he's one of the best card guys ever. He just understood magic on an entirely different level. And he would give me purely technical. Same thing with piano. We didn't get into creativity and all that. We started just with technical work. You need to do this and this and this. So mindless study. But I noticed that when he would give me something, he'd say, this, don't, you know, just prepare yourself. This could take three years to five years to learn how to do. And we're going to break it up into steps. You just have to do this. And this is mechanical. It's not going to look good. It's just mechanical. And then the next phase would be deception where we try to make it look good. And then after that is the polish where, you know, the person looking swears they saw the actual opposite. You know, it's not just that you can fool them.

• 16:10Mike Rowe?

  That's the fun part, right?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that can take five years to do. And then I'd come back like three months later and show them and you'd be like, well, that's, you know.

• 16:18Mike Rowe?

  It's pretty quick.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  It's pretty quick, you know. So we both figured out that because you had all this independence in your fingers already through piano, that I was able to kind of fast track through a lot of the card moves because I didn't struggle having to lift my ring or be able to pull down with this finger on that side of the deck without moving this finger. Where a regular student would really struggle with that because they didn't have, you know, 15 years of piano lessons under their belt.

• 16:41Mike Rowe?

  Before I ask you to bark for your fish or sing for your supper, you know, show us some stuff. And by the way, I don't want you to do your act or anything, but I do want the viewer to see some of those basic skills you're talking about and maybe how they apply from the keyboard to a deck of cards. Because I'm thinking as you're talking, like, who's your favorite pianist?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Well, I'm cut a little different because most piano players really are classical, classically trained, and jazz players, and you know, I can name Keith Jarrett and Oscar Peterson and guys like that, but...

• 17:17Mike Rowe?

  Have you seen David Cavett, Dick Cavett, interview Oscar Peterson?

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Yes, that's one of my favorite. He's a genius. The guy's a genius.

• 17:24Mike Rowe?

  Unbelievable.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  I've sent clips of that to my friend Tony Cabral, who's the same as, he's a piano player and a card guy.

• 17:30Mike Rowe?

  No sense to me was Rick Beato. I don't know if you watch Rick. He does a thing called What Makes This Song Great and a lot of others. He's the ultimate docent in the museum of music that we all wish we had, and he sent me that because he wanted me to see what a great interviewer looked like.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Well, it's great. I agree with that.

• 17:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  There are great questions and how it works together to go, but you have the genius of Oscar, and he breaks it down to a point, you're just in awe of how simple he's making it sound, but it's not. This is...

• 18:02Mike Rowe?

  This is what I want you to do if you're up for it, just like, like some of the rudimentary things that most people don't even notice that you're, like, you never stop shuffling. You've been shuffling cards every day for 40 years. You like, never stop shuffling. So, um, you know...

• 18:16Speaker 02

  It's an instrument. It becomes, it's, yeah, it's in your...

• 18:19Mike Rowe?

  So as we get into it, you know, I'll be Dick Cavett, you be Oscar Peterson. Oh, and sidebar, have you seen Peter Bentz?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:27Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  And I think I mentioned this before. I've been locked in a room shuffling cards for 40 years. You're gonna, you're gonna name some names, and I'm gonna say, never heard of him.

• 18:35Mike Rowe?

  Well, if you brought Keith Jarrett and Oscar Peterson, I mean, that's 19...

• 18:40Speaker 02

  I actually didn't finish that, because I was gonna say that, you asked me my favorite piano player, and oddly enough, I say most piano players go refined with classical and then the jazz greats that have that classical training. But I was the rebel, and my piano teacher always said, we're gonna do classical technique, we're gonna learn classical, you know, technique through classical tunes and all that, and I'm like... Man, Otis Span.

• 19:04Mike Rowe?

  It's not my jam.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  And Johnny Johnson. That old blues, that just clunkin' blues. They're just so, the technique is just all over the place. But the feel, I want that feel that those guys are gettin'. And Otis Span, and then that got me into the old blues guys too, with Otis Rush and B.B. King and Albert King, and they were so sloppy, but it was so powerful. Albert King's solos are three-note solos, he plays three notes. But he's flooring you, and I knew that there was so much power there, you know?

• 19:36Mike Rowe?

  Is it, like, if you're in the pocket, you can be sloppy and get away with it?

• 19:40Speaker 02

  It's all about feel.

• 19:41Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  It's not about, that's what gets me about these shredder guitar players. Okay, you're playing a billion scales, good for you, great. But where's the feel? You're not saying anything.

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• 21:15Speaker 02

  You've set a billion notes and you didn't say a word.

• 21:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  And Albert can play one note and you are pushed back into, you're just like, oh my god. And it's so apparent when Albert would have another guitar player on stage with him, who would take a three pass solo, shredding, you know, playing or whatever. And then the band breaks down, starts doing the stop time hits and Albert comes in with one note and you're just like, that's, that's it, man, that's it.

• 21:37Mike Rowe?

  Show me your, I, I almost said, show me your instrument. Given the tangent we took last night on stage, I'm not sure we want to, uh.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  We can cut that out.

• 21:46Mike Rowe?

  No, we don't get anything out. Hey, Mark is here with us too, by the way, you're, uh, you're.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  My manager, my, my partner in crime, yeah. Mark is the reason, I just show up and do card tricks and Mark makes this whole operation.

• 21:55Mike Rowe?

  That's him, uh, sitting in the shadows, as any good manager would do, behind Chuck, who is sitting quietly at his desk, as any good producer would.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  This is great, the power, the workers.

• 22:06Mike Rowe?

  That's it, that's it, it's, you know, it's basic division of labor. So that's a, uh, what you call a bicycle deck of cards here with 52.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I like using the original bikes, I'm not a flashy guy, I like tradition. So these are the cards that have been around forever. And I also like using this deck because it's a normal deck that anyone can recognize, right, in CVS, you know, and these are grocery store playing cards. And if you have something fancy that, that costs 20 bucks and it's all different and weird, people look at that and go, oh, it's a special deck of cards. So the stuff I'm doing, everything I do is used as a regular deck of cards, it's all in the hands.

• 22:39Mike Rowe?

  It's like the little black dress that Audrey Hepburn made famous. You know what I mean? She didn't have to go crazy with the sequins or anything. All right.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  So, uh, some of the, uh, work I do called shuffle work is the ability to control cards. So, I am shuffling the cards.

• 22:56Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Uh, that's really happening.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  And you just pulled the ace of spades out.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Yes, of course.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  For those listening, uh, without even doing anything, just, just.

• 23:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, stop listening and go to YouTube.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, exactly, exactly.

• 23:06Mike Rowe?

  You have no idea what you're missing.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  We're building the channel as we speak, okay, here we go. So, eight of diamonds on top and the nine of hearts on the bottom. And if you know exactly where to cut, uh, by estimating cards, uh, you should have no problem finding another ace. Now, there's nothing sticking out of that, can you confirm that there's nothing, people say those are bent cards or things like that?

• 23:23Mike Rowe?

  Let me put my glasses on, necromancer. No, there's nothing sticking out.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  No, of course, that's a legit shuffle.

• 23:28Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  You can see that all the cards change.

• 23:31Mike Rowe?

  And that type of shuffle you just did is called a?

• 23:33Speaker 02

  It's a riffle shuffle, that's what they do in casinos.

• 23:35Mike Rowe?

  Why do they do it like, "Oh, god damn, there's another ace."

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Prevents cheating.

• 23:39Mike Rowe?

  Does it?

• 23:40Speaker 02

  It does, actually, yeah. You don't want to do a three-way cut, we talked about this in the show. See how there's a ten on top and there's a queen on the bottom? If you do a three-way cut, like this, see, the middle goes back in the middle, so that doesn't get mixed. Top and bottom got mixed, but still, it's not gonna stop.

• 23:54Mike Rowe?

  Oh, there's another ace, that's annoying, man.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  So that's that, that's just card control. So that's like some basics. And also, you can make a lot of money if you do this in card games. That's where it all kinda... That was the motivation in the beginning.

• 24:07Mike Rowe?

  I mean, this is a stupid question, but I mean, were you in a game?

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so part of me, you know, because I have, I have integrity.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  I said, "If I'm gonna learn this stuff and do it on stage and be an expert in this field, how could I never really do this in a game? For real." No, that was a real thing, it sounds like a joke, and it kinda is funny. But at the same time, how can I take myself seriously? How can I sleep at night?

• 24:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  I really did have this struggle, because my teacher was a legit card she had all the moves, but he would demo this stuff for casino pit bosses. He was the one that was helping write casino procedure. You know, "You have to do this, this is how card cheats do this, so we need to implement this structure." And he would go to these casinos and make sure that the casinos were following all the right procedures and everything, and demo all these things, so the dealers knew what to look for, the pit bosses knew what to look for. So, he had to have his shit together.

• 24:58Mike Rowe?

  Sorry, but are you allowed in casinos?

• 25:00Speaker 02

  I am, but if I sit down to play, I'll likely be asked to leave. Because they don't want... They don't know what you're capable of. So it's safer to say, not that we accuse you, but we just, you don't, we don't, you know, "Thank you, but here's some free dinner at the..."

• 25:14Mike Rowe?

  But, I mean, for people to understand, like, nobody would ever hand you a deck of cards in a casino.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  No, I couldn't, no, I wouldn't get the job. They vet their dealers. So if you have this skillset, you're not gonna sit behind it, they're not gonna give you...

• 25:26Mike Rowe?

  But how much cheating can you do if you're just sitting and playing the cards you dealt?

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Do all sorts of stuff, yeah. So, you can mark, yeah. So this is what people don't know, you know, by nicking the corners of the cards, by bending the cards, by, you can have paste, this tinted paste that you put on the back of the card. And depending on where you put the paste on the back of the card, right? So you can do that, and then I would know that if it's further from the center, it's a lower card, closer to the center, it's a higher card, that kinda thing. So as the cards are going back into the shoe and being dealt back to me, well, I'm basically playing, now playing with a marked deck. And you can bet accordingly. So the Phil Ivey scandal, sometimes card, this isn't a misprinted deck. But sometimes playing cards are just like money can be misprinted. So if you ever see a dollar bill and one of the borders is really wider, it's a little off center.

• 26:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Cards do the same thing. So can you see how these are relatively centered? I don't know if you can spot it or not, but can you see that this side is just a little thicker? The white border here, it's just a tiny bit. So that's this thickness and look over here, it's just a tiny bit.

• 26:23Mike Rowe?

  I'm gonna say yes, although I'm gonna stipulate it, knowing you're the kind of guy that would lead me to say, like, just to agree with you.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  No, no, I wish I had a deck that, so you don't, you open them up and you never know.

• 26:35Mike Rowe?

  I think you're right. I think that border is infinitesimally.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Which means that if I turn this around, it's now a marked card. They go through the entire deck. Let's say, let's exaggerate it and say it was quite thick. You'd have these thick sides on the side over here and then all the high cards, I would spin around like this. So there'd be a thin little border there. Now, when they're sitting in the shoe, they would look like this. And you would see the border down here and as they're coming out of the shoe like this, once you see the thin card, you know that's an ace or a 10. So you can hit accordingly. So, you know. I'm just sitting and playing, but you're taking advantage of a misprinted deck or you're manipulating the deck yourself. All this will land you in jail, by the way.

• 27:14Mike Rowe?

  So you can go to jail for cheating.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Well, if, here's the rule. If you change the outcome of the cards, it's a felony. So that means if I'm dealt an ace and I use a muck or a palm or switch to switch it to something else, I'm going to jail. But if I am manipulating the card and bending the corners, I'm going to jail. Because I bet based on something how I manipulated the playing cards, right?

• 27:38Mike Rowe?

  And is this a thing they determine in real time or do they go to the tape?

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, what they'll do is they'll get you over time. So they set the case up. So they, they may know you, well, here's the, the real answer is this. Once a table goes the wrong way, you know, table eight is now 175 bucks the other way, or 175,000 bucks the other way. That's a pretty decent red flag because all night long casinos are making money and one table's now 200K in the wrong direction. That's gonna raise some flags. That's just, that's a no brainer. But then they look who's there and then if a week later, it's the same team, same group of people and the tables going the wrong way, now they know. But that's not enough. So they let you do it a few more times and then build the case. And now you, now you, they've got all the tape, they've got you doing it multiple times and now you're, you're going to jail.

• 28:21Mike Rowe?

  Is the basic business of tracking a card.

• 28:26Mike Rowe?

  Is that like in the rudimentary playbook? Is that a, is that one of the first skills?

• 28:31Speaker 02

  No, no, that's not, definitely not a beginner skill, but I can go over some basic tracking. Believe it or not, it's easier than you think. So, the ace, and right now, this would be someone else shuffling the cards and you can still figure out where certain cards are. So, let's put it fifth, for example. So, after a shuffle, and it's a legit shuffle, that means the cards are interlacing like this, which means the ace would just double. So, right now, it's at fifth. So, pretty basic math. After I shuffle the cards, where's the ace gonna be? 10. Or about.

• 29:02Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, if you shuffled them perfectly.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  No, it doesn't, so we can fix that later. We can use other methods. But also, remember, you're, if you have an idea that an ace is gonna come out within one or two cards all the time, that's an advantage you can take up overnight. So, you don't have to nail it, but you know that if we're, if I know that a 10 is within four cards from the top, and I'm playing poker, and the third or fourth or fifth seat starts betting, well, the chances are, I know who's legitimately got the ace. So, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, so we're nine cards, we're one off. But where's it now? It's nine, so where's it gonna be after another shuffle?

• 29:35Mike Rowe?

  Probably 18.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  See what I mean? It's not that difficult. So, I have a good idea from a legit shuffled deck, that someone else shuffled perhaps, and casino dealers don't shuffle clunky, they shuffle pretty fair. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Again, I'm only a few cards off. So, now, if I'm dealing, and I know an ace is one or two cards from where I need it, you can do second deals, you can manipulate, switch cards, you can deal that card from that position and make it look like it really came from there. So, even though tracking is, can be a perfect science, if you clean up the shuffles, but with someone else shuffling, you can still be one or two cards off, and still have a pretty big advantage. That's only one card as well. So, if you have two aces, where's the first one? 6? Next one, 16?

• 30:18Mike Rowe?

  16.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  So, where are they gonna be?

• 30:20Mike Rowe?

  12 and 30.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I mean. Look at you, tracking cards. It's your first day.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Alright, so there's halfway, 26, about 30, same thing, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, halfway right there, 27, 28, 29, 30. So you're within 2 cards on each face, your first try. But you're not within 2, like you, you always get the 1. Well, I can shuffle a little cleaner than that. Most, yeah. So now we're talking about this shuffle. So this is a perfect shuffle.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  So it looks just like a regular shuffle, but it's actually perfect. Perfect because every card's interrupted. It's alternating, there's nowhere in here that there's 2 cards.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  And again, just to shuffle it perfectly, like the first thing you have to know is exactly where 26 is, and you just know this. And then you gotta push them together without any, it's easier to see. So the reason I did it this way, when I drop the cards, is it masks that. So when I'm doing my show, or when I'm doing a gambling demo, I want to kind of hide the fact that it's a perfect shuffle. So when you drop it, it just looks like a regular interlace. If I do it like this, it's much easier to see that that's quite literally a perfect split.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  How do guys hit free, you know, how does Tiger Woods sink putts? You know, he made a deal with Bielsa. Well, how do I split the cards at 26? Same thing. Yeah, when I was 7 years old, I made a deal.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  I know a good deal when I see one. I could make money doing this, so I signed on the dotted line, and here we are today. But the point is, once you get the hang of it, splitting at 26 is just easy to do. I can tell, I can tell from across the room if there's 1 card on the wrong side. You can, you just see, for me, remember when I told you about the card with the border? Yeah. And you said, "Yeah, okay, I can, I can kind of see that side's bigger over there." It's the same thing when you split the deck, you can just see, and even though it's only this 1 card, you can just tell by looking at it, because I look at it every single day, that that's bigger. So I gotta move 1 card from here to there. Once you get that, the interlace is similar to a zipper. When you zip up a j- the teeth, you get the cards that just line up. Does take some practice, I'm making it sound really easy, but within 10 years, it's like a zipper.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  And they all have points like trying, under a microscope, a deck would look like that.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Anyway, you push the cards together, and like a zipper, they all interlace.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  And you're basically getting one picket fence. They're not going to stack up on the tips. They're going to fall into the, they're going to fall in like a zipper.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Just imagine 2 big picket fences. And they line up and then this happens. And then the cards are interlaced like this. And it technically is a shuffle. Cards are being mixed. Legit. You can beat the cut. We can talk about that in a second. But remember that tracking that we were one or two cards off a second ago? Well, now, since we're shuffling the cards pristinely, uh, I might get some decent cards. Oh, two pair. I got a pair of aces and another pair of aces. Now, that can be applied, that can be.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  That can be applied to other people's hands. And you don't even have to track aces. It can be very, uh, very rewarding for me. When I was playing in these games, not to worry about my own hand. It was to give someone else a hand to see how they play it.

• 33:46Mike Rowe?

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• 34:27Mike Rowe?

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• 34:59Mike Rowe?

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• 35:32Mike Rowe?

  Oh, so you could give somebody four kings?

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Well, not even four kings, just give them a decent pair. You just give them a set or something like that. And you watch how they bet, and you could just, it's so much easier to read people when you know what they got. So, in the first year in that game, I was just worried about my own cards. But then I really started getting devious and just learning how these people play and slow, and you just read them like a book, and...

• 35:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, you play them at...

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's much easier when you know what cards they got. So, that was a lot of fun. But anyway, back to that original story we were talking about with, I want to do these under fire, and that also helps with being on stage and doing it. You know, the first time I was in that game, I thought the guy next to me could hear my heartbeat. The blood was flowing through my ears, it was like the biggest adrenaline rush ever, you know? And then afterwards, I was like, you know, the guy was watching the TV, he was watching the game while I was, you know, I'm like, well, that was easy. And then, I'm like, and I made some money, too. So after that, you know, within 20 minutes, I'm like, alright, this is pretty easy. But I kind of cut my chops there and got all this stuff to work and realized that it would work, and then I felt like I was able to pull this stuff off for real.

• 36:35Mike Rowe?

  Have you caught many cheaters?

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had a great story I told on a different show. I found an amateur cheat. He was shuffling the cards face up like this. And I thought, look at this idiot, I'm gonna take advan, I'm gonna be able to figure out where certain cards are, you know, because he's doing this. And what he was doing was running cards like this, yeah, I'm running them singly. So he was running a good card, like the queen to the bottom, and then he could put that to the back of the deck, and then he'd run until he found another good card, like another queen there. And then he put that in the back of the deck, and then he basically began building up his hands at the back, and if there was four players or three players, whatever, he was able to stack them at the back of the deck. And if I deal two, or shuffle two more cards at the back there, if I deal out three-handed... He was gonna give himself queens, you know. So he was doing a very, very elementary.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  I mean, it's very amateur hour to shuffle the cards face up. But the game was so loose that nobody really caught attention. Nobody really cared. But I remember saying, "Look at this idiot." And my ego got in the way because I said, "Oh, I'll take advantage of this. I can see the cards." And then he dealt himself queen two, diamonds, and then was betting pre-flop and in there pushing people around. And then the flop came out, three diamonds. But I had two pair and I was thinking, "Maybe I could full house and beat him," you know. But I didn't. But I paid him for it and I lost like a couple hundred bucks. And then I realized, "Wait a minute. He's in there with queen two, pre-flop, like pushing. That's not right." And then, sure enough, the deal came around to him again and he's running up cards and he's running singles. And I'm like, "Oh, my God. I got beat by a complete idiot."

• 38:05Speaker 02

  This guy, this is this, "You're so bad, you weren't even on the radar." And you're running up a hand. But I always thought like, "I'm the only guy in the air that knows how to cheat a card." You know, but there he was, you know. So it was like a couple of weeks later and I told the host of the game. I said, "You got a problem with this guy here. And if you want, I could, you know, I can do what he's doing."

• 38:26Speaker 02

  But a little bit more sophisticated, but anyway.

• 38:27Mike Rowe?

  What'd the host say?

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, he said, "All right, do it." He said, "Get rid of him." And so what we did is we, I gave the host trip aces. I gave the cheat trip kings. And by pure luck, like, I swear to God, sorry, Chad. By pure luck, this guy Chad got trips evens. Anyway, it was pre-flop. There was, everybody pushed in. There was, there was 2,500 bucks in that pot. And it was like eight players, everybody was in. And my favorite part of the story was, everybody turned up. The host took the money. And the cheat, the amateur cheat said, "Who dealt that?" And I could not stop.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  I was shuffling cards and I was, I was just staring at the deck. I was just like, this big stupid smile was on my face because it was so rewarding. And I just couldn't have. And he's looking, he's like right here, looking right at me. And I'm just like.

• 39:24Mike Rowe?

  That'd be a Le-Danny deal, right?

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Wild. "Whose turn is it to deal?" And I just couldn't hide the smile. And he knew, he must have known because I just was cracking up. And then they got rid of him after that. And that was, that was pretty much the end of that.

• 39:38Mike Rowe?

  So you must have, I mean, you said before you had integrity. Not that I doubt you. It's just that. I guess maybe you can use your powers for good. You can use them to cheat. You can use them to entertain. I go back to what I said to you at first. That kind of crap right there is where the facial tics start. Like when people realize they're in the presence of somebody who can do something that not only they can't do, but that they can't conceive. Buddy of mine sat there years ago, the human calculator. I don't know if you've ever seen.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  I've seen videos of people doing things that I can't explain.

• 40:19Mike Rowe?

  Scott Flansburgh, yeah. He holds a lot of Guinness World Records for just, you know, being able to manipulate numbers in his head faster than you can enter them in onto a calculator. And it's a neat trick, except it's not really a trick at this point. It's as reflexive and automatic to him as breathing is to me, as this is to you. And when you're in close proximity to somebody who is doing something like that, you know, that's when you start to understand really how cults form, right? I mean, that's how you understand. Like, like when you look back through time.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you're right.

• 40:55Mike Rowe?

  And people are like, oh, you know what, man? The sun, there it is again. There must be a chariot and there must be a god dragging it across the sky. There's really no other explanation.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  I'll blackout the sun today at three o'clock.

• 41:07Mike Rowe?

  That's it. Once you know when the eclipse, once you figure out the eclipse, right?

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Now you're a god.

• 41:12Mike Rowe?

  You can run the Mayans. Anyway, how much time did you really spend like thinking about, what do I want to do with this level of skill once I own it?

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Well, I knew that my teacher was on the right side because he wasn't looking over his shoulder. And I knew other guys that do this stuff and they got to run away to Chile for, you know, they got to, they got to live in Argentina for six months. And then the FBI will come in and they'll seize your bank. And the IRS comes in, you're, all your accounts are locked up. And now you're living out of a suitcase in some, you know. In the middle of nowhere, and I didn't, I didn't find that appealing. But also, I was putting a lot of time into character and the entertainment value and drama, dramatic structure, and how to, progression, how to build this show that would constantly kind of keep you on the edge of your seat. So I knew that that entertainment value was something I was putting a lot of time and effort into and how to get.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  I play a really edgy character because I'm a horrible person. The character is just horrible.

• 42:13Mike Rowe?

  You've been, yeah, well, look, if you're not on his Instagram page, check it out, and you'll see that he's cultivated a certain persona. I mean, I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth, but dickish.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  It's horrible. I don't know how to explain it. He's just, it's made up of a lot of movies from characters and things, but sometimes you hear a joke about, some dark joke with a dark twist, and I'm like, oh, that's, that's, that's what my guy would do. I mean, I take somebody's wallet in the show.

• 42:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  And it's bad enough just to take somebody's wallet. And then you get him to agree that this is a good idea. By saying, look at the psychology. You're a skeptic. I asked for a skeptic, he come running up on stage, so you're obviously a skeptic, so this is a safe bet. There's no reason why. Look at the opportunity you're giving out if you don't take this bet. So you get, you know, the guy didn't agree to anything, yet there's this wallet ready to just get lost. And then you're taking his watch at the same time, the guy's car keys, and there's people just putting all this up there. And then you do this ridiculous thing people are gonna know that you're doing, you just take the money, and it's now, go have a sip of this, sit down, you're done. It's just horrible. And then at the end of the show, you're throwing their wallet out into the crowd as a gift. Who's, does anybody want this guy's money?

• 43:24Speaker 02

  And you're taking the, slinging the credit cards out, and that guy's sitting down in the crowd going, that's my fucking wallet.

• 43:28Mike Rowe?

  I don't, I don't think I'm gonna get it back.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, and I'm just laughing.

• 43:33Mike Rowe?

  And the car keys, too.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  And I just laugh and walk offstage, and... And the people like it.

• 43:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  So you had to find that that balance where people are laughing and enjoying that because boy, there's a fine line. If you if you cross that line, you're kicking a puppy.

• 43:48Mike Rowe?

  See.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  That's a very, but I put a lot of time and effort into how do I become this horrible person, but make people laugh and enjoy it. So George Costanza, I mean, it's not the same territory, but is an awful person, but we love it. Larry David, you're you're an awful person, but people love that you're.

• 44:01Mike Rowe?

  Because they earn it, right? It's a permission structure.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:05Mike Rowe?

  And.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Oh, you just said it. You got it. Yeah.

• 44:06Mike Rowe?

  Right. So you like your your talent has to be commensurate to your dickishness.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 44:13Mike Rowe?

  And if it is, then.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  They go along for the ride. They like you. They understand it and they want to play along with it. And now it becomes very entertaining.

• 44:20Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  And that's where it's weird because on the internet, people don't get that. They just see, who this guy's awful. But when you've been to a when you had a show, you get it. And then also longtime fans will start to understand, oh, it's it's a bit, you know, it's a big, long thing. But it's it's this. Do we agree to do this and then come along with me? It's it's that kind of a thing and really enjoy it.

• 44:40Mike Rowe?

  And you're you're terrific in the show with the way. I mean, you come in pretty hot, I think, because there's an assumption that a lot of people.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Well, it's on purpose.

• 44:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, right. So like, you set a bar, but but but that weird level of permission and trust, it builds over the course of the hour.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. But and I have to say, there's a there's a template I'm stealing here, and that is a Bond movie, a good Bond movie. That we we learned in eighth grade, and this is all answering your question about why did I choose the good side of the dark, you know, I enjoy all this stuff. So if I can make great money doing entertaining and doing all the same skill set, and even betting real, those are real, but I have to catch the card. The chip has to land on the card. Those are the real bets. So it's still that. But I can make money doing this without having to worry about somebody I took money or casino coming after me or somebody that I took money off of, you know, hunting me down or whatever. So that's why we're we're talking about this. But anyway, back to the story arc thing. In eighth grade, you learn the story arc, right? The story starts here and does this. We need peaks of excitement, then.

• 45:40Mike Rowe?

  Ups and flows.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. But then we need the plot, and then we build up again. And the next peak has to be higher than the last. And then we come down and. Have uh.

• 45:48Mike Rowe?

  The day of war.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  Exactly, whether we build, we introduce new characters, we have expositories, all stuff, and then it builds again to this peak. Any Bond movie does this, but we learned that in eighth grade, this thing. And that's what gets you to watch a movie where you're just at the edge of your seat the whole time. You know, just like, this is incredible. And movies that don't follow that, you're like.

• 46:04Mike Rowe?

  I'm lost, I'm confused.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Forty minutes and nothing's like, what is going on here? Like, who's this guy? And what is happening, you know, but great movies will do this, and action movies are especially good because they're fast paced. So, that storyline is, the one we learned in eighth grade is this, this thing like this, but that's not exactly right. It's more of a checkmark. And Bond movies do this, where it comes in hot. We come in and there's cars.

• 46:26Mike Rowe?

  It's the Bond open.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. We don't know what's going on, but he's chasing him, the Hitchcock thing where something's happening and I don't know what's, but I'm invested. And then it drops. But then it goes back up. So that's what I'm doing. I come in really hot and obnoxious and it just establishes you right away and everyone, that then people know, okay, this guy, he's all right. It's real. I don't have to, he earned it. Then we come down, but then we have to continually build up to the end and we end on a whole, you saw the end of the show, I don't want to give it away, but. You end on a tier where people are just like. What is this? And that's why people walk away and I'm happy that I did a good show. That's where I want to put my energy, not into. Uh, mucking cards in a casino and hoping that.

• 47:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  I don't get my knees broken.

• 47:05Mike Rowe?

  Good for you. Um, I don't want to talk about. Well, the chip thing, since you mentioned it and the controversy that accompanies that, like right now on. What is it? TikTok? People are just in a freaking lather.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Uh, that, yeah, that, every time I post anything like that, uh, the algorithm just goes nuts because the comment section, people just can't believe it. It's such a simple, it's such a stupid, the simplicity of it. There's no complexity whatsoever. Here's the card, here's a chip and there it lands. But people in the comments love to argue and they say that it's not possible and they come up with the crazy theories, the magnetic strip in the card and the magnetic, that you have a, oh, here's, oh my God, the theories. I just sit on my couch and laugh some days. Because they're so stupid, but they're so smart at the same time. He's got a fishing line attached to the ceiling and he found where the pendulum would like, that's brilliant. Because if you swing a pendulum, it has to land in the center.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  So he does, and he puts the thing there and it looks like the chip is spinning, but all that's really happening is the string is, and then someone cuts the thing so it lands flat.

• 48:08Mike Rowe?

  Just so people understand.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  That's brilliant.

• 48:11Mike Rowe?

  It's diabolical, but so people understand. You're basically taking up a poker chip and you're flicking it and it's rolling randomly over a bunch of cards.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Fifty-two cards in a washer.

• 48:22Mike Rowe?

  That have been washed and somehow or another, you know where it's gonna land.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:32Mike Rowe?

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• 49:16Mike Rowe?

  They also reinforce the heel and the toe with double plated nylon to stand up to the wear those boots put on your socks. Remember it's not the feet that wear out your socks, it's your boots and they back their socks with a 10-year durability guarantee. If you get a hole or a tear in the first decade, they'll replace them for free. If you're a hardworking guy dealing with sweaty, uncomfortable feet, I'm telling you, these are worth trying. I wear mine every day and I'm glad to have the company on the podcast. CamelCityMill.com. Use code ROW, get 10% off my favorite work socks. CamelCityMill.com, code ROW. And, um. Yeah, that's when the facial tics at my table anyway turned into a full-on like grand mall.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  For some reason, that, uh, the part of my branding almost, I, I, I, these things I've created, I've done it multiple times, and the card catch and the chip, that people, there's a weird suspense element to it, which shouldn't be there. Because you've seen it a hundred times, you've watched, you've shared it with your friends, it gets reposted every year, and you know the ending.

• 50:24Mike Rowe?

  But it's all execution.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  I know, you know the ending.

• 50:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  So we start out, we get all, here's my favorite thing to do, when I do these kinds of tricks. Because they're too short, if you think about it. If I just said, "Watch here, pick a card, boom, there's your card," it's, it's over. There's no dramatic structure. But by getting all of the skeptic garbage out of the way first, I haven't even done the trick, and you're fooled, by saying, "Here, they're all different, you can confirm they're all different, it's not a deck full of bases, yada, yada." And then, you can see it's a fair shuffle, you can see I can't see the cards. So we're just cutting off all the avenues of possible methods, before I've even done it. So the, in a weird way, the structure of the trick is just killing all of that first. So it's really sadistic, if you think about it. Because if I just did it, I would leave you all of these avenues afterwards,

• 51:09Speaker 02

  that you'd be driving home saying, "Ugh, he must have done this, or he must have done that, or he must have done this, or, because he has no control over anything, so it must have been this, or this, or this." So you can sleep at night, because you don't know which avenue, but it must have been one of those. But, if you get the person, before you do it, to agree that this couldn't be it, this couldn't be it, this couldn't be it, this is not it, and this is not it, and this, and you get them to agree to all that, and they sign, they sign on the, "Okay, I, I 100% agree, it's none of these." And then you do it. I'm sorry, it's so good. And then you do it. They have no, you already agreed that it's none of this. So you can't go back, you can't go back on any of that, because you agreed to it. And if, my job is to find all of those, and get them to agree.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  And that's the, just the, my favorite part of this whole job. Because what that does, is it gives you an endless...

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Kind of bubble to live in.

• 52:02Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  That you can replay. It'll never be solved.

• 52:04Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's, that's how you get them from a facial tic to full on incontinence.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  The cult, the cult, yeah.

• 52:08Mike Rowe?

  Well, the cult, but in between is incontinence.

• 52:12Mike Rowe?

  It's just like at my table, that's when people started to soil themselves and they began to realize we're not.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  You know, it's good to have a, a, a ear out in the audience to know what's really going on out there.

• 52:21Mike Rowe?

  Look, I'm here to know that. It was total renal failure at my table. It was a mess and I know you delight in that because if I can go back to your mentor for a minute, I would love to know, like, when you realized you were in the presence of.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Oh my God, I can tell you the exact moment.

• 52:42Mike Rowe?

  I, I want to know that and then I, I want to see the first trick he showed you.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I can do that. So I, when I was like 15, remember I was trying to fool my brother. So I was 15 or 16 years old.

• 52:56Mike Rowe?

  What's his name?

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Michael. And he showed me a real basic card trick and um, I was going, I lived above a library. That's a lot, I know, but. We had access.

• 53:07Mike Rowe?

  Who lives above a library?

• 53:08Speaker 02

  It was in Kukasaki, Kukasaki Hermans Memorial Library in upstate New York. And if you lived above the library, uh, and you maintained it, you got your rent, you had like cheaper rent.

• 53:18Mike Rowe?

  Is that near Herkimer?

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, Herkimer's out, out 90, out 90, a little bit more west.

• 53:22Mike Rowe?

  My human calculator buddy came from Herkimer.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's uh, neck of the woods, but uh.

• 53:27Mike Rowe?

  Maybe all you necromancers are coming out of.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Seth, south of Albany, uh, about.

• 53:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, alright.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  35, 40 minutes. Anyway, um,

• 53:36Speaker 02

  so there was book, card books down there and I was buying, checking these books out, which I still have. I checked them out, never returned them. So even at seven, I knew it was okay to just steal this book. But um, so I, I was fascinated, but the card sections were small. So the book would be a variety of tricks. And there was a section on card tricks. But then I found uh, this guy named Martin Nash. And suddenly he did nothing but card tricks. And I'm like, wait, you can do that? Like I thought a magician had to do coins and rings and silks and like that, that was your job.

• 54:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  And maybe a few card tricks. But like I said, Martin Nash came along and I'm like, whoa, this guy tapped into just a card act. And it's all different and great plots and, and he did nothing but cards. I'm like, that's amazing. And that led me to find more of that. I said, who else is doing this? And there was a guy named Darwin that just by just, I was looking through a catalog and I was Darwin Ortiz Card Magic. And I'm like, alright, it's nothing but card tricks. Let's do it. But when I got Darwin's stuff. I watched it and I just couldn't believe, there he is. I was in the studio when that photo was taken.

• 54:37Mike Rowe?

  He looks like a magician.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  He's just, he's brilliant. He took this to an entirely different level. So, when I found Darwin and I watched these videos, you know, with other magicians, I could kind of see what they were doing. I didn't know exactly, but I could kind of follow along. Or I saw that palm, or that shuffle's a little suspect, or something's going on here, or that cut's a little hinky. But when Darwin did stuff, I'm like, okay, those cards are shuffled. And then suddenly, like, why, you can't, because you mix the, right? And then when he's cutting the cards, I was like, hey, that's a legit cut. You know, but nope, you know, like, what is happening here? And then he'd do a bottom deal, and I'm just like, other magicians, you could see all the stuff flashing around. And with Darwin, it just looked like, are you messing with me?

• 55:23Mike Rowe?

  Just clean.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Yes, at an entirely different level. And he did like an overhand shuffle. And I remember thinking, okay, an overhand shuffle, that's too sloppy. That's like, that's just garbage, you can't fake that. And nope, sure enough. So he had technique on an entirely different level. So anyway, I agreed to, on the back of the book that I was reading was a phone number, and I thought it was the publisher. And I wanted to call the publisher and say, this is great material.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  And please put more stuff out like this, because this is great. And Darwin answered the phone. So back then, you know, that's how you got bit, that's pre-internet.

• 55:53Mike Rowe?

  Literally had his phone number on the back cover.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  For business, you know, because casinos can call and you get work. So anyway, he answers the phone, and I'm like, you're the guy. So after like 10 minutes of, you know, nothing but praise, and you're the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life, all I got, all that. He's like, alright, alright.

• 56:09Mike Rowe?

  And you're what, 15, 16?

• 56:10Speaker 02

  I'm like, probably 18 or here, because I'd studied the books. And then, I'd read all the books, but the first DVD that I got was, it was VHS tape, actually. Darwin Ortizak Card Cheating. That was when I saw, it wasn't just magic tricks, it was the gambling stuff, where I just could not see the moves. Like, I'm sitting there, it's like, what is happening? How can I not see any of this? After all of this, I have 10 years of study, and I can't recognize one thing this guy's doing. So that's what hooked me, and it was on the back of that, where I called his number. So anyway, he agreed to do a lesson. And I went down there and I just, I learned some, my hands were trembling and I had a list of like 100 things to learn. And he said, "Let's just do two of those." You know, let's, let's, and I learned the Hustler's Triple Cut.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  So this is my first lesson. The aces on top, and I did this in the show a few times. And you want to make it look like you're cutting the cards, but you're not. You know, and you can do it, there's ways to cheat that and have it look like it's a three-way cut across the table. And you can add shuffles into that, you can do all sorts of odds and ends, and you can control those cards. So I saw him do that stuff and I'm like, "Okay, that's pretty cool." But the thing that changed, the thing I'll never forget, is I asked to see a bottom deal. And he took the kings out of the deck and he started doing bottom deal. And I'm watching him and I'm sitting just closer than you. Yeah. And he's doing a bottom, but I'm looking at it and I'm going, "This old man.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  He's doing duplicate kings. He's lying to me, he's bullshitting me." Because I can see the top card coming off the top of the deck, I can see it with my eyes. So what he did is he had duplicate kings in the deck and he's putting four kings on the bottom, he's pretending to do bottoms. And I'm thinking, "You know, I drove eight hours and you're showing me some stupid like trick, magic trick or something." And then he goes, "Let me do it again, let me get in stroke." And I'm thinking- Get in the stroke? Yeah, get in stroke, like a golf swing. "Let me, let me get this polished up." And I'm thinking, "That's weird to say that because this is like a fake pseudo gambling demo." And then he shows me the bottom of the deck and there's no kings there. And I'm thinking, "Oh, that's clever, so he must have found a way to hide the other kings that he had." And the gears are starting to tick. And he says, "Let me do it again."

• 58:21Speaker 02

  So he puts the kings on the bottom and he does it again and again I'm seeing the top card come off, so this isn't a bottom deal, you know, no. And then he shows me the bottom of the deck again and there's no kings there anymore and I'm like, "So he must have four sets of, that must be..." You're the guy in the comments section going, "It's fishing wire." So that's what's happening. He has a deck of cyclical kings and every fifth card is an indifferent card that he can show the bottom to prove that the- And I'm thinking, "Those are bottom deals? Are you out of your mind?" Because in my world, a bottom deal is that you, when I first learned it, that you quickly pull the card out without the audience seeing what's going on. Mm-hmm. But with a good stud, a good stud bottom, this card comes off. You see how, see, your eye sees that. Yeah. And a second later, the aces, so you get all that-

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Time on that ace, that top card.

• 59:10Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  And it comes right off the bottom. So.

• 59:12Mike Rowe?

  So what he was doing was that?

• 59:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what's happening, well, I thought, because in my little brain at the time, I saw this come over. I saw the hand grab this. So at that point, I said, that's the top card. But what the retention, that I didn't know any of this stuff even existed. That your eye is fooled because you you get this conditioning and then here you see that top card come off. And everything about that, and at speed.

• 59:38Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  You're never in a million years gonna see those cards coming off the bottom. So I saw it two feet away from it and said, okay, this guy's messing with me because I can see the top card. But it was just an entirely different level of thinking because I thought a bottom deal was just pull it out super quick. So the audience can't see it.

• 59:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  And he was doing it slow enough to show you the top card, to show the hand grabbed the top card.

• 1:00:00Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  And then in the tiniest speck, there's one little moment you can't see when the bottom, the top card gets drawn back. The bottom card comes out and that just gets, your brain doesn't pick that up.

• 1:00:10Mike Rowe?

  So back to the piano. Is this analogous in some way to?

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Absolutely, because it's left hand. So believe it or not, I'm right handed. But in piano, both, that doesn't matter. Your both hands get developed. And especially with the music I learned with bass lines and Boogie Woogie has a really busy left hand. More so that, you know, Boogie Woogie piano bass line is.

• 1:00:27Mike Rowe?

  Never stops.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's swinging ace and you gotta be rocking all over the place. So the left hand is this train that you cannot stop. Meanwhile, the right hand can dance around and do whatever it wants, you know? So I had a lot of development in my left hand and card work is dominantly your left hand. The right hand is providing a lot of cover and doing things and pointing at things or pulling chips around and do. But the left hand is doing a lot of dirty stuff. So. Especially in the bottom deal, if you want to peek under the hood here. I have, I can't open these fingers up. That's the tell. When I open these fingers up, people can tell. So these fingers have to move this way, which doesn't make any sense. And also I have to be able to take this card out without those fingers moving. It's very complicated to do, and in order to push that card out, you have to do that. So look how moving independent, these fingers have to move independent. These fingers can't move.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  If anything squeezes too tight, it doesn't work. So you have to learn how to hold a deck. So the saying is like light, as if you're holding a bird.

• 1:01:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  You know, too heavy, it'll kill it. Too light, it flies away. So this stuff took years and years to learn how to get down and.

• 1:01:25Mike Rowe?

  Feel.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Mike Rowe?

  Feel, feel, feel.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  It's like a golf swing. There's so many, so many analogies that you can come up with where, you know, but he just doesn't write. You have to do it and do it and do it and experience it and experience it and talk to someone else. I think the mentor thing is huge because you surrender and you don't fight back. You just accept that they've got 50 years on this. So when they give you a thing, just.

• 1:01:48Mike Rowe?

  Was he mentoring other people when you met him?

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  He was very picky about, he said something that changed my life. Because he said, if you're willing to put the time into this stuff, we can continue lessons. It wasn't like, sure, I'll give you a lesson. By saying, if you work hard enough, that to me was like, if I don't impress, if I don't have the chops.

• 1:02:10Mike Rowe?

  Earn it.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  He might not be able, he might just say, I'm not interested in teaching you. And I could see that this is what I want. So I needed to make sure some sort of weird, I mean, my father passed away when I was 14. So there was some relationship there where I, this is the person I need to.

• 1:02:25Mike Rowe?

  Impress.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  With something and if he, I can get that approval or something. But, but the, the secret sauce in this that made it even worse was Darwin was not a social person by any means. He was, he was a machine with cards. That's all he cared about doing was just card work and writing and building and performing. So there was never any small talk. You'd come in and you'd, he'd say, how was your, he wouldn't even say that. He'd say, come on in, have a seat. What are we working on? You know, there was no like, how was your ride down or how was this? So I'm, I'm like, oh my God, you know, so. The fact that there was no small talk meant that that approval wasn't like you couldn't buddy up.

• 1:03:04Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  It was just work.

• 1:03:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  So that made it even worse because now I'm fighting for this like, can you just say that was really good?

• 1:03:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  But it and then what I didn't know about the bottom deal and any of the stuff that he taught me, he's a fantastic teacher because he was breaking it up into tiers that I didn't know about. So I would do the thing he said. And say, look, I did all the finger placements that I'd relax my arms after this to sell that beat. Do the cut, keep these fingers together, complete the cut, offset, and then, you know, and he'd say, okay, the next level. Now we're gonna do this and add this to it. And I'm like, well, you mean it's not, it's not done?

• 1:03:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  You know, and then I'd do that next level and then he'd say, okay, now we're ready for this. Now add this beat into it, you know? So it was just never done. And we just fell into this cycle of I'd come down and learn something and then he'd take it to the next. And he had like a long-term plan where we're gonna do these rudiments first. And then we're gonna do this and then we're gonna move on to character and then, you know, entertainment value and business. You know, it was all.

• 1:04:06Mike Rowe?

  She's still around?

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  No, he passed away a couple of years ago.

• 1:04:09Mike Rowe?

  That must have, that must have been hard.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, I had a show that that was with Mark in the city. I had to do a show on the day he passed away.

• 1:04:16Mike Rowe?

  Wow.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  And it was interesting too, because in a weird way, your character is a mask. I don't know if you slip into your, you have a persona that you wear, if you feel like you're you or not, but I certainly become a. And I felt it with Darwin too, the first time we were having a conversation. And he showed me a trick and in the middle, I'm like, who is this person? Like it's a, I could just feel it was like a switch. He became a different person.

• 1:04:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  So when I'm performing, it is a different, it's a thing. And I was able to kind of hide in that. And perform and laugh and do the jokes and everything, even though I knew in the back of my mind that the world was falling apart. And then I finished the show and I just collapsed. I just fell apart. That was, it was awful. But and it was sudden too. It was from COVID, complications from COVID and it was just, it was just empty.

• 1:05:07Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive, pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 1:05:49Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path

• 1:06:32Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. Mark, what did you do? What did you, I mean, as a manager, what can you do when your client is wrecked like that?

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Well, that was, you know, the first time I think I had a grown man cry in my arms. You know, he was crying, he was, he was a mess. We just consoled him and that was it. And it was a tough day.

• 1:07:06Mike Rowe?

  Did you write a eulogy? Did you, did you speak?

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  I had a post. I did a big post with a bunch of pictures and a lifetime of, you know, this is when I met him and, you know, I kind of a... This picture from this year and this picture from this year. And this is the first time we did a show together.

• 1:07:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  I was on stage with him at this point. And and I just wrote a big, long thing. And and the magic community, you know, really got behind it, obviously. But they're family, just like how much of a machine he was. And not socials, families are kind of the same way. So they didn't have, they just had a small, but there was nothing like that. But I've been back down there. And after he's passed and I treat his apartment like it's, I mean, obviously, he doesn't live there. But, boy, it feels

• 1:07:46Mike Rowe?

  A shrine.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  Looking down that hall, it's, it's, it's really impactful.

• 1:07:50Mike Rowe?

  Can we riff on the C word that you just used? Community, like the magic community is fascinating to me, the way all subcultures are. And like last night, you know, we were in Oxnard at a little club. I don't know, it was 50, 60 people, maybe more. About 100, 100 and change. Oh, was it? Yeah. I can't tell, it was dark and everybody had a facial tic. So it didn't seem, you know. But, you know, I was just so struck because so much of what you did reminded me of comics on the road.

• 1:08:29Mike Rowe?

  Like ventriloquism is its own community. Magic is its own community. Comedy is its own culture, you know? All of these things are really kind of blended in your act, not the ventriloquism so much, but

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  That you know about.

• 1:08:40Mike Rowe?

  That I know about. But but what, like, it seems like magic in general now is having a moment. You know, you see these guys on America's Got Talent. You see a lot of, I mean, there's always been, I'm sure the Copperfield had an influence.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw him when I was eight. That was a big, that was impactful.

• 1:08:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  I remember a very specific, and I actually created an effect that could kind of recreated that, that moment of seeing him on stage, he gets into a little cardboard box and they lift him up. And I'm eight years old, you know, and he's suspended over the stage in a box. The box opens up, smoke comes out.

• 1:09:15Mike Rowe?

  He's gone.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  And he's gone. And my mom taps me on the shoulder and I'm like, what? And she says, look. And I look over and David Copperfield is two seats from me on a Harley, like six feet up in the air on a like that, like in my row.

• 1:09:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  And I'm like, that, and that'll change your life, you know?

• 1:09:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  And on a Harley, like what, like, how did, like, you were, like, what? So that was quite impactful.

• 1:09:40Mike Rowe?

  Did you think about going in that direction?

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  No, no, for some reason, I'll tell you what happens, and it sounds so stupid, but it's the word is practical. Because I would go to the magic shop and I'd buy the cigarette through the quarter and the length of rings and the silks and the, you know, disappearing the records, you know, plastic or a little vinyl record that you could make change color and all the polka dot and now there's the polka dots are thing and now they're not and just like all this stuff and, and you know, you're a kid, but you don't realize it at the time, but this is the guy just hawking the stuff that comes in the boxes, you know, so he was great guy, nothing against, I was always amazed and the guy's name was Peter Montecap and he really did teach me a very impactful thing that I use today. When you get the magic trick, like throw the directions away, you know, that's just one thing, what are different?

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  What's, I mean, this tool was invented for this, but what else can we do and explore? So that creativity really came a lot from him because if you just follow the directions, you have one thing, but explore and say, oh, I could do this with it. That was a very interesting thing, but anyway, the short story is I had a giant box of stuff. And then I'm out or, you know, you go to your family outing or, you know, then Jay do it, oh, how many my stuff? You know, or I go to school and say, hey, kids want to see a trick? And then nine kids rip the thing out of your hand and break it into a thousand pieces and say, you're stupid. You stupid idiot, you're left there with a broken piece of plastic.

• 1:11:02Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  So I'm never doing that again. So this silly box of stuff and nothing's ever ready to go. Oh, let me go into my little bag and gets, oh, you want to see a trick? Hang on. Okay, a perfectly ordinary box, you know, I just knew.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  So I knew that with cards, I could do thirty minutes, like the, the deck is all the, everything I need for an hour show is here and I can just go one after another and do it. And I didn't need any stuff. And I'm not a birthday magician or here's an ordinary, it's just, you could do gambling stuff, you could do whatever, but so there was something cool and I could tell that from the Bond movies and Steve McQueen and there was something cool about when Bond's like at the card table, the cigarette and with the cards and he's playing, it was tapping into that. So even at an early age, I could feel that. I don't want to be taking polka dots off of a coffee can. And oh, the die is over here and now the die is over here. And having that kind of kids' magic stuff, it didn't appeal to me at all.

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  So the practicality of just being able to throw this in my pocket and say, if I can do, I can entertain a whole party with this for an hour. That was the reason why I went with Cards.

• 1:12:13Mike Rowe?

  I love that, man. And you said earlier, this idea of your mask and you become a persona. You know, for me, in a way, it was kind of the opposite. Like, I had impersonated a host on TV for like 15 years. And with Dirty Jobs, the idea was, well, wait a minute. What if you're a guest instead?

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Flipped it on its head, yeah.

• 1:12:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, like, what if you just let go of the pretense of pretending to know things you don't? And just be blisteringly honest about your own ignorance? And now the expectations get managed? And now you can be an apprentice and let somebody, right? So, like, the mask thing is really, really interesting to me. And the big gift of that show for me was that I never had to pretend to. Like, the whole hook was, stop, stop doing that.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:04Mike Rowe?

  Just be yourself and see if you can get away with it.

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  I mentioned that to you the other day. It was seeing that through your eyes, but it was real. There was something so real about that show.

• 1:13:13Mike Rowe?

  Well, we never did a second take.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  Well, that's what makes it feel that way. But I could just feel I was with you in the moment, observing and feeling all this stuff as it's coming, not... It could have been a voiceover of, look at what this, now this happens.

• 1:13:25Mike Rowe?

  Holy crap, look at that, right.

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  Now this happens. Now the person has to do this, like, how things are made. Now this, but it wasn't that. It was you discovering, whoa, and you captured that on camera somehow.

• 1:13:36Mike Rowe?

  Well, what I, if there's a parallel, back to Copperfield. Like, you're not going to show up with your polka dot scarf any more than you are a motorcycle and a box that can, right? I mean, it's like, there's just no way. That's a spectacle. And so, by the time Dirty Jobs came around, my working thesis was, production, while necessary, had become the enemy of authenticity. And so, the bigger the thing was, and the more careful we were with our crew, and Taylor knows, he shot a bunch of them, you know? And I'm a nightmare out there because I'm constantly pushing back. Against the beauty of the shot or the deliberateness of the thing. Only because I didn't think anybody else was doing it at the time. And that's why I love what you do on stage.

• 1:14:20Mike Rowe?

  You've got a couple of props that are pretty funny.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:23Mike Rowe?

  But, but in the end, it's not about, it's really not even about the cards.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  Oh, God, no. No, no, no. It's the journey. You're getting to experience getting conned without actually losing your money. You're getting to experience all the suspense, all the comedy, all the entertainment. So you should, when you leave that show, it should feel like you watched a comedy show or a play or something. It's, this is just holding it together.

• 1:14:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it's catharsis. It's the thing you talked about.

• 1:14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:48Mike Rowe?

  You have the flow, the hero's journey, all that stuff.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  So, you know, the stage stuff, it's fun to watch. And believe it or not, I still don't know how a lot of that stuff works. I, that's a curse of being in the magic community. You can kind of see through a lot of the stuff. So, the big stage stuff, I never explored, never, I don't watch any YouTube exposure videos or anything like that. Because I want, I could preserve that feeling of, you know, how did that happen?

• 1:15:10Mike Rowe?

  We talked about this on the ride back last night. You know, part of the curse of living today is that if you really want the answer, you can probably find it.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  The age of information, yeah, of course.

• 1:15:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  Or, here's another little interesting fact. You can find that information, but there's a chance that it's just not even, it's some guy that wants views.

• 1:15:30Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  Do you want to know how this, do you want to know how to build this muscle? Well, do this. And it's just some guy that came up with some new thing no one ever heard of just to get views, but it doesn't actually do anything.

• 1:15:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  So when you're watching, you don't even know if this is the real thing or not. That's a fascinating thing too, because it's the age of misinformation.

• 1:15:46Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's, look, I think, you mean, you've used the word a few times, but, and a lot in the show last night, you know, who's skeptical? Who's skeptical? Well, you know, every hand in the audience should have gone up. Because everybody should be skeptical, because we're surrounded by so much bull crap online. I don't know why our default position isn't.

• 1:16:09Mike Rowe?

  Disbelief, like why would, what's the argument to believe anything you see online today? That's why I love the fact that you're online, because you're lampooning that at the same time you're proving it again and again, messing with, just messing with trust.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  And the survivability of it is amazing, too, because you'd think by now that people would say, alright, alright, he's good, he's putting out videos for 10 years, he's got it. Nope, I can open up a video today and 40% of the comments are saying, no. So it's the Dunning Kruger thing, it's that that person's circle of knowledge is this big and they're right in their world, they are right. So it's endless content because you just find that.

• 1:16:51Mike Rowe?

  But we're not in their world, we're in your world.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So what I always find interesting is that person probably works where? You know, what is your expertise? So why all of a sudden, you know, why all of a sudden is a plumber of 25 years telling me how this works or how that works, or there are suddenly there's expert in special effects and editing and I can see artifacts and they're like, I'm sorry, what do you do again for a living? Oh, I'm a lawyer. Alright, so what part of your law degree did they talk about, you know, special effects training or this? So it's just funny, but that's the internet, that's the problem with the internet. I say, always say this quote, I want to get it on a t-shirt, the internet is a bottomless pit of people that think they know what they're talking about. But what's also fascinating is you can watch a video on Sheetrock. You can watch a video on Sheetrock and the guy's

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  saying, so we do this, we put tape here, then we do this, and then we do this, and then we put this down, and 45% of the comments are, well, that works if you want your wall to fall apart in two years. You know, and why would you do it that way? That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. You should be sued, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna hurt somebody if you do it that way, because that wall's gonna collapse. Everyone's an expert. And the guy that's leaving that comment works at a shoe store. What are you doing? So that is the internet. Everyone, that's a bottomless pit of why do it that way? You should do it this way, or you're an expert, or this is stupid, or what, because they want that clout of, I'm right, I got the top comment because I said this, whatever. But anyway. I just figured out how to monetize that.

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  That is the thing that's holding the whole page together is doubt. And doubt is my, it's like that, that internet meme of some guy sitting in the chair glowing, you know, he's like, his body is just becoming a glowing ball of light. When I get doubt and skepticism, bring it. I've done everything with this for 40 years, he can't get me with it. So whatever doubt you have, I'm gonna do 10 times what you expect and then send you on your way.

• 1:18:44Mike Rowe?

  Who do you admire?

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  Guys that are at the top of the game that are like iconic, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods in, in early 2000, when he was just sinking, and he came on to the scene.

• 1:18:53Mike Rowe?

  He wasn't a golfer, he was a magician.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  And remember when, when he had that meeting, oh man, I can't remember, he had the interview right before he like won everything. And the guy said, no offense, kid. I don't know who that was.

• 1:19:02Mike Rowe?

  Oh, was it the?

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  He said, I'm gonna win, and he said, no offense, kid, but you're not winning your, and then he went out and won, you know? That, that interview was just fantastic. But he just showed that, that everyone said he couldn't do it, and he did it. And that's, those are the people that I really look up to. And Anthony Jeselnik even said it in a recent video, Art Monster. You know, you're just in it for the art. I just wanna continue to explore and come up with new things and change the game. And when I'm gone, in 3,000 years, when the world is just a big pile of rubble. There's two people digging through the, hey, this used to be a library, and somebody's gonna dust off a book and they're going, oh, this is the J. L. Danny book. This guy was, you know, I'm, I'm.

• 1:19:45Mike Rowe?

  And it's numbers on the back, let's call it.

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  So, like, just somebody that came along and just, they put everything into it. Like you said, I go, every day, I'm just, I can't get away from it. Even Seinfeld is another guy I look up to.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  It's a prison, but you like your prison. He's always writing jokes, he's always thinking, you cannot turn it off. And Howard Stern said, that's, that sounds like a prison. And he said, it is, but I enjoy, I enjoy it.

• 1:20:10Mike Rowe?

  Well, what do you do if you're Seinfeld? You just walk away from a couple hundred million dollars from the last season. You've mastered the form and you've mastered the medium. What do you do? He goes back on the road, does a documentary called Comedian, and then comes out with comedians in cars getting coffee. Which is. Proof that production is the enemy of authenticity. And if you're gonna try and reset your thing, strip away anything but the absolutely essential trappings, and then reintroduce yourself to yourself. Right? So, I mean, I love those answers. Do you know, uh, do you play pool?

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  I thought I was gonna get into, uh, golf. I play golf. I really enjoyed that. And I did flirt with the idea, but believe it or not, I felt like I was putting too many things. Because my upstairs neighbor actually had like an actual shark from City come up, and they were like five-hour lessons, you know, her version of Darwin.

• 1:21:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  And she would, it was a girl, so she'd get hustled all the time, and guys would come up and be like, and she would hustle. You know, she'd be like, wait, which, what's the English, what does English do?

• 1:21:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  So that was appealing to me. But I felt like between piano, guitar, and I, guitar isn't like a hobby. I'm transcribing old solos and I put my heart into that. Piano, I'm constantly digging through that. And golf-

• 1:21:30Mike Rowe?

  Peter Benz, Mark, remind him. Game changer.

• 1:21:34Speaker 02

  Okay. I feel like I put my time and effort into all this stuff, and I flirted with the idea, but I said to myself, you know, let's, do I wanna open up? Because I know my personality, and I'm gonna have to find this, and I'm gonna have to, you know, explore and go and go. Because I don't like that idea of just dipping my toe. I'm gonna go all in. And I said, uh, I didn't do it.

• 1:22:01Mike Rowe?

  I'd like to talk about initiative, if I could, for just a moment. Here at MicroWorks, we value it a great deal. In fact, it's the most important quality we look for in our work ethic scholarship applicants. But everybody wants it. I'm talking about the, uh, the quality in a Lyft driver that inspires him or her to carry your bags to the door without even asking. Or the grocery clerk who shows you where an item is on the shelves. Or a doctor who personally calls you to explain your test results. If you're hiring, you want to encourage initiative because it's invaluable. And ZipRecruiter has a way to allow a candidate to tell you- Their own words, why they're interested in your job, not just why they're qualified, but why they're interested.

• 1:22:46Mike Rowe?

  This is a way that allows the best candidates to distinguish themselves from the competition. And a great way for you to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/row. ZipRecruiter is the number one hiring site, in large part because of this new initiative that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within one day. Try it for free. ZipRecruiter.com/row. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Build your team, build it sooner. Meet your match at ZipRecruiter.

• 1:23:31Mike Rowe?

  Try it free. You're not asking for this, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna recommend it anyway. Efren Reyes.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  Mark, write it down.

• 1:23:43Mike Rowe?

  Efren Reyes, E-F-R-A-N. He's Filipino. He's the greatest pool player who ever lived. In fact, he's called the magician.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  This is the stuff I like watching. These guys that just do things that you cannot explain. They're willing, they're willing what they want.

• 1:23:56Mike Rowe?

  This is why you're here. This is why the internet is not entirely as you've described, although mostly.

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  Oh, I focus on my, I said 40%. There's plenty of nice things in your career as.

• 1:24:10Mike Rowe?

  And by the way.

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  I am who I am because of the internet.

• 1:24:12Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 1:24:13Speaker 02

  But I just, you, what I was, the point I'm making to clarify was just, I'm using that piece to continually kind of, how can I do the same thing over and over again? Because I'm.

• 1:24:22Mike Rowe?

  Well, I do want to ask you about your business without getting too personal, but not to belabor the point. I, I'm not saying it's noble. I'm saying that. I don't feel cheated ironically, or robbed, or I don't feel like my time is wasted when I watch your videos.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  Well, it's payoff.

• 1:24:42Mike Rowe?

  But I do, like if I'm just doom scrolling, I'm titillated, then the same way everyone is. But when I'm done, I can't remember most of what I saw. And I don't feel in any way, in any way improved or elevated. Your videos, abusive though they are. They don't leave me feeling cheated. And I mean that as a compliment. Efren Reyes is the same way. You can watch this guy for hours do things with a pool cue that defy imagination.

• 1:25:15Speaker 02

  You're seeing behind, what you're seeing is the subtext. The thing that's not on the screen is what's behind it. That's what's making you just go.

• 1:25:23Mike Rowe?

  You're seeing excellence at the highest level in an area that might not get the acclaim it deserves. Look, I'll sit up all night watching frickin' cornhole. Like if the best cornhole players in the world are draining those things with the baked bean sponsor, I just sit there and watch. I watch the darts, like the dart championship. You see three in a bed, four times in a row. You see guys, it's like, I don't really care if it's horseshoes, pool, cards. Show me somebody who's mastered their keyboard. Show me Oscar Peterson. I don't care.

• 1:26:06Mike Rowe?

  I don't care what the, what the lane is. I'm just super interested in what it took to get to where you are.

• 1:26:14Speaker 02

  That when you asked about my favorite piano players and who my favorite people are, it's all, it's, we're all on the same page there. It's just anybody that's devoted their life to something regardless of what it might be.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  I talked to Darwin about it, because I ask these questions, what makes, what makes the person this?

• 1:26:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  And he said, consistency. So you can see, a guitar player, who you love, Lucky Peterson, I don't know if you're a blues guy, Lucky Peterson.

• 1:26:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:26:39Speaker 02

  He's a great singer, great guitar player, organ player, gospel. See him on a Thursday, and he's drunk and he can't remember a lot, he's just all over the place. So you don't know what you're gonna get. But, you know, find me a bad clip of Stevie Ray Vaughan. Every, single clip I've ever seen of early 1990's camcorder footage, can't like, shaky, can't fit in a club. He is hitting every, he is putting everything into it.

• 1:27:04Mike Rowe?

  All the time.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  Playing on 20, playing things he's never played, like, because if you listen to, if you understand guitar, and I can understand blues, you can see guys got their pockets and they have all their signature stuff. But Stevie's like, every time you hear him, it's something, BB's the same way. You never hear like, the same chop twice.

• 1:27:18Mike Rowe?

  Stevie Wonder.

• 1:27:19Speaker 02

  They have, they have, they have their sounds, but they're not copping, so they're not just copping chops and playing stock solos of like, basics. They're like, exploring. And Ronnie Earl, like, these guys are just playing things that are just, and on every album. So consistency was the thing. And if you, if you're at that level, and you're consistently there, you're gonna be one of those guys. But if it's hit or miss, then you gotta work at something, something's...

• 1:27:42Mike Rowe?

  And the internet gave us this. Like, they, it gives you a portal, right? It's back to the early, like, you can, it's a tool, you can waste your life on it, you can waste your time on it. Or you can, you can use it.

• 1:27:55Speaker 02

  What I find interesting is, with the internet, is that I had no intention of listening to so and so today, but next thing you know, I'm listening to some Junior Wells, or some Buddy Guy from the early sixties. I'm just like, where is this? Why, that, that's a treat. You know, you're just, you're gifted it, by, for no reason. Because you can like, search, but that takes like, work, you know? And then you might not even find a good clip, because you're just searching. But, but the internet is interesting in the sense that you will find some of these people that you and I see and go, that's it. Just, just in your living room, just, there it is, here's, here's the best 40 seconds of your day, right here, you know?

• 1:28:33Mike Rowe?

  I like it too, as a, like, a winnower, in the, like, music's too broad. Don't tell me you're a music fan, who can, who doesn't like music? But, to be able to geek out. Right on, I don't know, maybe it's accordions. Maybe it's, you know, I've been listening to this guy who I met years ago in the barber shop world. How weird is this? It's like, talk about a community. It's like thirty-five thousand diehard dudes who sing the old songs in four-part harmony. This guy's name is Tim Warwick. He sings all four parts. He makes, he just sings with himself and posts it.

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  I think I know who you're talking about.

• 1:29:10Mike Rowe?

  It's so frickin' good.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  Is this the cornbread guy?

• 1:29:13Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Mike Rowe?

  You've heard of cornbread?

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  It gives you goosebumps.

• 1:29:16Mike Rowe?

  You've gotta be kidding me. Google Tim Warwick, "cornbread." It's just a ridiculous tag and he's singing a like.

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  Uh, that takes talent to do that and to compose. You have to have your, a deep understanding of music theory to be able to move the appropriate chord tones around.

• 1:29:32Mike Rowe?

  He's singing in perfect intonation with himself.

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  Yes, but you have to know, it's, it's again, technique, but you also have the mindset to know where this is gonna go and what tensions and resolves are gonna happen. It's one thing just to hit a note, but to be able to compose all that and come up with it is... And then also, how do you say the word "cornbread"? And package what you know into that vessel.

• 1:29:53Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  To feed the internet, because if he just did a song about whatever, you know, "Let's All Go to the Lobby", but to say a silly...

• 1:30:00Mike Rowe?

  "Let's all go to the lobby."

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  But, but to put it into the vessel of a silly word and next thing you know, it's got seventy-five million views and we're talking about, and how many years later?

• 1:30:10Mike Rowe?

  And we're talking about it.

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  We're talking about it now, still. And you know what else I found out with Darwin said about consistency? Is those guys that all that hit that level, it doesn't matter how much time goes. Stevie's gone, but we can still, Stevie Ray Vaughan's gone, but we can still listen to that and still get all of that. And that'll never go away, that'll be as impactful.

• 1:30:27Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  In a hundred and fifty, two-hundred years, that he's, right? It's still gonna happen.

• 1:30:31Mike Rowe?

  It is, what'd you call it again? The internet?

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  Oh, a bottomless pit of people that wanna sound like an expert in any craft.

• 1:30:38Mike Rowe?

  I like, uh, Hunter Thompson wasn't referring to the internet when he said this. He was talking, I think he was talking about the music industry, but he called it "a long, plastic hallway, a cruel money trench where pimps and thieves run free and good men die like dogs."

• 1:30:56Speaker 02

  Oh, this reminds me. My teacher had a very similar, uh, not, not as eloquent as that, but...

• 1:31:04Speaker 02

  Bill Taylor was an amateur magician, was a special effects guy that worked on Casino Royale, worked on, a special effects guy that worked on another one of the Bond movies. And what was the other one? Oh, The Score. De Niro and Ed Norden. He did all the special effects. This guy won Academy Awards and everything. And they're on a message board, and somebody says that, "Oh, the special effects in Casino Royale sucked." And like a 13-year-old kid says, "Oh, that was awful. Those were green screen garbage and blah blah blah, I could see through it." And then Bill Taylor, who did the movie, said, "No, I was the guy. I'm the visual... This is my work. Those were miniatures." And the kid says, "Nah, that was green screen."

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  The kid won the argument. You're talking to the actual guy that did the thing. That's the internet. That's the internet in a nutshell. Nobody had... The kid was as equal to the guy that actually did the effects.

• 1:31:59Mike Rowe?

  It's the great democratization. Look, okay, here's Tim singing Cornbread.

• 1:32:05Speaker 02

  You want me to play it?

• 1:32:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, play it, man. I want to hear it. This is... This is the internet. All right, let me see if you can get some audio on this crazy kid.

• 1:32:14Speaker 02

  Didn't think we'd be here today.

• 1:32:16Mike Rowe?

  I can't believe you've seen this video.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  Church. That's church. We'll talk about that in a second.

• 1:32:54Mike Rowe?

  Thirty-five seconds.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  Those overtones.

• 1:32:56Mike Rowe?

  Insane.

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  Church. Can we talk about church for a second?

• 1:32:59Mike Rowe?

  Please.

• 1:32:59Speaker 02

  Because in music, when I remember my teacher would say classical music, and you need to study Bach, and you need... And I'm like, "Ugh." And I'd hear gospel changes.

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  I said, what is that? Why is that hitting me? I feel something in my body. And that's church. He's doing gospel structure to bring you through the scale with certain tensions. And then just when you think it's going to resolve adds more tension, like a good suspense movie.

• 1:33:25Mike Rowe?

  Exactly what you taught.

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So and then you think you're gonna, it's this, it's, have you read the McKee book at all? He talks about this, Robert McKee.

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  Robert McKee, I did a seminar, yeah.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's again, you create, I'm gonna give you what you want right here. And we just get to it and he says, well, wait a second. Why don't we just introduce this for a second? Oh, you still want that thing? Let's do, so in my show, I'm doing this all the time. Remember I'm squaring the cards up? They want to see that card and I'm like, oh, let's just square these out. You know, you know, it's creating this thing so that when you finally release, it's a bigger release.

• 1:33:55Mike Rowe?

  It's a process.

• 1:33:55Speaker 02

  The same thing happens when the audience starts to applaud too soon. I don't know if you caught this, but sometimes the audience will start to, you have to know. Because if you go now, it's gonna be less at the end. So anyway, with these gospel changes in piano, it's just that same thing where it's like, you're giving me this chord and you're pulling me to home. You're pulling me, but suddenly, you play music at all, the five, so you're on the five chord?

• 1:34:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:18Speaker 02

  And then you got the flat seven and the nine and the 11. And there's that church chord. And then the one is just begging and suddenly it's the four. You know, and you're like, oh, there's the church four, you know? And B3 comes in and then you're still, okay, now comes the one. Nope, here's the major, the three over the one. Then the flat seven, you're just dancing around the one, like just give me the one. And then finally you get to it and then a beat, the hymn B3 comes in, it's amazing. So what I've noticed, especially with all the music, and when I find somebody who's playing something, even modern, even we talked about like modern music isn't cutting it, but when it, something, somebody is tapping into it, it's got all the old blues influence, it's got all the church in it again. This, this modern tune is working because they've sampled a church or a blues groove from like the 60s. That's why it's good, you know?

• 1:35:03Mike Rowe?

  Well, I just, just the idea that it's the same 88 keys.

• 1:35:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:06Mike Rowe?

  That they've been there.

• 1:35:07Speaker 02

  Or seven notes, that's the other one.

• 1:35:08Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  My teacher would always say.

• 1:35:09Mike Rowe?

  Tempered clavichord.

• 1:35:10Speaker 02

  Seven notes, relax.

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  I guess I'd say, why is it so confusing? Okay.

• 1:35:15Mike Rowe?

  It's seven notes, relax. Hey, it's 52 chords, don't get freaked out. By the way, I don't want to do anything you don't want to do. But I do want to encourage people to go where your Instagram, your TikTok.

• 1:35:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can, really easy to find. It's Card Magic by Jason across all the socials. So we're really successful on TikTok, although the TikTok algorithm has been a bit weird lately. There's a lot of suppression and things that happened with TikTok, just as a platform as a whole. But Instagram, that algorithm is great. We post videos, people love it. YouTube's doing great, Facebook's doing great, so that's where you can find me.

• 1:35:51Mike Rowe?

  What's a big show look like for you? Because Oxnard was not Vegas.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  Well, we did Philadelphia, was it Parks? Parks Casino. Parks Casino, seventeen hundred seats, we sold it out. I've never seen anything like that in my life. Now, I used to tour on the road as a musician and we did the gorge. I want to say West Oregon, maybe, West Coast somewhere. They set up the, the grandstands are on the beach.

• 1:36:11Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  So you, as the artist, you're looking out, the water's here, the land's here, and there's ten thousand people.

• 1:36:16Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:36:17Speaker 02

  That's a sea of people. I've walked on stage and I'm like, you know. So we would do big festivals and those were usually, or arena, had they'd split the arena in half and we'd do those types of shows. So twenty-five hundred, five grand, used to that. Now, you know, when I used to do shows back in the early, you know, two thousand ten, two thousand sixteen, somewhere in that neck of the woods, I was performing for fifty people or something. Now, Mark and I were doing three hundred, five hundred, and Parks was our biggest one.

• 1:36:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:43Speaker 02

  When I walked out on that stage, I'm like, it was the IMAX theater screen behind me, you know, and we're doing tricks, so. And right now, it's just me and a camera, and like I said, very minimal. So I think a bigger show perhaps would be a, maybe a live camera that would, because you know how much interaction between me and my, the guests on stage and the jokes and the delivery and all that. Seventeen hundred people, they can't see my face in the background. So do you have a live camera that?

• 1:37:11Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:37:12Speaker 02

  Right, because all you see now is this, but people want the hands. But if we had a live camera, they would be able to make sure that you're seeing what you need to see and seeing my face. Because honestly, I don't know if people know, if you haven't seen the show, jokes and comedy is really holding a lot of the show together. We enjoy that aspect of it. So that's why having a, you know, while I'm doing all the comedy bits, you're just looking at a dead screen. So a little bit more production value there. And also, my teacher Darwin and I came up with this idea that to utilize the screen for some of the storytelling. So when you're talking about the card cheating moves from the fifties, you could be looking at John Scarni and have a more of a. I don't know what you would call it, but.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Multimedia.

• 1:37:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, thank you. Just showing and then like this, this, you know, this mob boss at this time did this and you're just having kind of a little documentary going on behind you.

• 1:37:59Mike Rowe?

  That's the first card book I ever remember seeing.

• 1:38:01Speaker 02

  Scarni on Cards?

• 1:38:02Mike Rowe?

  Scarni on Cards.

• 1:38:03Speaker 02

  I read that book.

• 1:38:04Mike Rowe?

  Did you?

• 1:38:05Speaker 02

  I've broken bindings on books.

• 1:38:07Mike Rowe?

  Here, I'll show you the trick I learned from Scarni.

• 1:38:09Speaker 02

  Would you like the mat?

• 1:38:11Mike Rowe?

  No, no, I don't need a mat. That's a very amateur kind of move right there.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm a professional. I don't need a mat to help me with anything.

• 1:38:17Mike Rowe?

  My, uh, my uncle showed me this when I was, God, probably 12 years old and destroyed me, absolutely destroyed me. So he's like, okay, Mike, here's how it works. I'm gonna look at this card and based on this card, I can tell you with certainty, that's the nine of hearts, right?

• 1:38:41Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 1:38:42Mike Rowe?

  Here, let me do it again. One more time, because if I really want to be clever, I think I can force another one of these if this one tells me nine of clubs, right?

• 1:38:51Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:38:56Mike Rowe?

  Ever since Chapter started advertising on this podcast, I've been getting letters and emails from satisfied customers all over the country. Last week, I got one from Joseph, a retired veterinarian in Texas, who just learned his Medicare plan was shutting down. I can't tell you Joseph's last name because his medical history is complicated and personal, but his situation is not uncommon at all. Given his medical history, Joseph was unable to find a local provider that would include the doctors he'd come to rely on. Happily, Joseph listens to this podcast and Joseph heard me talking about Chapter just last week. And Chapter exists for one reason, to help people on Medicare find the plan

• 1:39:41Mike Rowe?

  that's right for them. It's a free service. Anyhow, Joseph called Chapter. He connected with an advisor named Heidi, and Heidi caught something that most people miss because his current plan was about to close. Joseph had a limited window to continue with his current coverage through a new plan without any additional medical underwriting. In other words, Heidi found a way to get Joseph the coverage he needed with the doctors he preferred. Then she found great coverage for his wife, too. Moral of the story? Medicare plans are constantly evolving. You are too. Call Chapter. Make sure you're on the best plan for you. Also, people who switch plans after calling Chapter

• 1:40:25Mike Rowe?

  save an average of $1,100 a year. 804-Chapter. That's the number. Call it today, it's free. Whole thing takes about 20 minutes. 804-Chapter. Now, my nine-year-old.

• 1:40:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know the feeling.

• 1:40:41Mike Rowe?

  How in the world, man? And then he would do things like, okay, sometimes it gets a little tricky, like, okay, that... It's definitely a two. It's a black... I think it's a club. It could be a spade. I'm not sure. Oh, it's a heart. And then I'd be like, oh, crap. Now, what are you gonna do? And he'd be like, oh, here's what we do. Here's what we do. Let's just get another two here if we can, if this lets us know. Wait a minute. Is that possible? Sure it is. Right?

• 1:41:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, your brain's melting.

• 1:41:09Mike Rowe?

  And then he does this. He's like, here's the thing, man. I don't even have to... I don't even have to look at them. I could tell you that that's a... That's a jack of hearts, and that's a nine of diamonds. And the world is... And I never got through it. I never got over it.

• 1:41:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, you won't. That's what I was talking about earlier. Because here's something interesting about magic. It will live in you differently than looking at a painting does. We can see... The closest I've noticed is seeing a band. When I was 14, I think I saw Pink Floyd in a stadium. I'll remember that. Because a full-size B-52 bomber plane... I'm 14. Oh, that's the band I listen to sometimes at home.

• 1:41:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:55Speaker 02

  Oh, there's a B-52 plane that is now 30 feet over my head, now flying into the side of the stage, blowing up into a massive fireball. And then they start playing Run, you know? Wow. And now there's two giant pigs, and there's a laser show. And then David Copperfield... Or David Gilmour's doing his solo in Comfortably Numb. And a crystal ball comes out. But it's the size of a house.

• 1:42:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  Okay, that's amazing. And now it's spinning. And the whole arena is like this. And then...

• 1:42:25Mike Rowe?

  Two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl.

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  Then... The thing opens and there's a ball of light. I mean, I will never forget that in my life. Now, what's amazing, though, magic has a similar thing where you, just like you're talking about, how, what is going on here?

• 1:42:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:41Speaker 02

  Will live in you like that. But looking at it, no offense against, you know, a painting, but I don't feel, I don't, I can't, it's not, it's like impactful. It's great when I'm looking at it, but I don't, I don't sit at home and just go, oh. So, um, there's some art forms that just, and magic just seems to have some thing in it that doesn't die. Cause you replay it.

• 1:43:02Mike Rowe?

  It's tactile. Like, nobody puts a magic trick in a frame and hangs it on a wall.

• 1:43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:06Mike Rowe?

  Like, that's the end of the process. Here...

• 1:43:10Speaker 02

  When you relive it, it's just as, and that's what I noticed about the Pink Floyd thing. It's like, just as impactful.

• 1:43:14Mike Rowe?

  This is controversial, well, that's not controversial.

• 1:43:16Speaker 02

  Well, I feel like the internet's gonna eat me up because painters, what does he hate against painters? Well, nothing against that. There can be amazing paint, there can be amazing, I've been to the Smithsonian, seen amazing things, but magic for me, in that Pink Floyd concert, is just something that I can't...

• 1:43:30Mike Rowe?

  Well, here, you know, here's a good place to land the plane. Um, with regard to art and music, you know, Oscar Peterson, in the end, was a magician. Not because he came up with a new note, he just played them all better than anybody did.

• 1:43:46Speaker 02

  The way he danced, his bebop theory, and how he effortlessly just danced around the changes, and also didn't seem to run out of gas, um, is something that will never get old.

• 1:44:03Mike Rowe?

  I don't think so either. It's truly eternal. But, in a weird way, so was Bob Ross.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  Oh, that's another great, oh, that's another reason that magic is, I have these amazing memories of being seven or eight years old, and his magic was the same way. Because it's an empty thing there, and it's not anything yet. And my favorite thing about Bob Ross, do you remember when he had that big comeback in, on Twitch, I think?

• 1:44:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:26Speaker 02

  It took the world over. There was like eight billion views on these things every single night.

• 1:44:29Mike Rowe?

  They made a movie about him.

• 1:44:30Speaker 02

  And that was so special because the world collectively came up with the same thing that I know I personally had, when you would say, "Oh no, Bob, you ruined it." Remember that?

• 1:44:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Speaker 02

  He'd have this beautiful sky, and this beautiful lake, and then he'd take that black thing and go, and, but, and I'd, at home going, "You just ruined it." But what was great about that Twitch thing, this was probably five years ago by now... It was a live stream of it. And suddenly he'd do that. Ruined, ruined, just pop, you ruined it, over, ruined it. And then he would then turn it into a shed and then it would all turn to, oh, you saved it, you saved it.

• 1:45:05Mike Rowe?

  That's what you did last night in Oxnard. You made people think from time to time that you might have ruined it.

• 1:45:11Speaker 02

  The failure is a big.

• 1:45:12Mike Rowe?

  You might have ruined it.

• 1:45:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:13Mike Rowe?

  But you didn't.

• 1:45:14Speaker 02

  The woman that dealt the cards the way that she wasn't supposed to deal. That's a great opportunity because that's out of my control. And if you can act, if you, but the big, acting is a big part of what I do. You have to sell it. Because if you're good and you go, whoops, I've made a mistake, I don't know if I, oh no, you know, the audience is going, all right, do your, do your thing. So selling failure is really difficult for me because you're portraying this, I'm a flawless.

• 1:45:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:38Speaker 02

  Thing, I'm invincible, I'm, I'm up there starting cults, I'm not going to make mistakes. But the moment that the spectator does something that's out of your control, you can really use that as fuel. And if you can act okay, when I said, oh, no, no, did you do two? Oh, you know, and then the audience now, it's now you're taking it. Now, yeah, the audience is really invested. And if you can act and play on those things, it sells that failure much more. But that's a huge part. And look at any Bond movie. What happens 20 minutes before a Bond movie ends? He doesn't have his gun anymore, this is the, right, the villain has a huge up.

• 1:46:10Mike Rowe?

  He's tied down, he's half naked, the laser's coming up between his legs.

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's nothing, there's nothing. And in order for it to be a good movie, it has to be clever. So it has to be clever. Because in that Bond scenario where the laser's coming up, if the villain's running out the door and he kicks the plug out of the wall and the laser goes off, we're all not like, oh, thank God. Thank God, Bond got out of this one.

• 1:46:32Mike Rowe?

  Close one.

• 1:46:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's gotta be the Shakespearean thing where whatever the thing was used against him is the very thing that is his demise. So Dr. No with the steel, that's his power. Well, he couldn't hold on to the pole because of his steel thing and he dies.

• 1:46:46Mike Rowe?

  Goldfinger.

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  You have to, but that's the, you have to know your formulas to get the stuff to hit right. So it's all, what you're talking about with all the craft and the work that goes into it. It's no coincidence the trick ended the way it ended because you had to find that it was my ego that got me in trouble. But it's my ego that got me out of it as well. You know, it's, you have to be clever about that. It can't be, whoops, oh, I found your card by accident. There's some sort of weird twist. So I don't want to give too much of the show away, but there's a lot of moments in there that I'm purposely creating something. That is my kryptonite, because apparently I don't have any. That's the biggest struggle for me, if you really want to get technical. I don't have kryptonite. So how do I create weakness for the audience to wonder, will this work? That's been a huge challenge to find that.

• 1:47:32Mike Rowe?

  Can I tell you who else talks about this a lot? Have you seen Reacher?

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, the Tom, the show or the movies?

• 1:47:39Mike Rowe?

  The show.

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  I've watched the movies, I like the movies.

• 1:47:41Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:47:42Speaker 02

  And I've seen the first maybe three seasons, I think, it's a big.

• 1:47:45Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, so the series is a much better portrayal of the physicality of the character. And Lee Child created Jack Reacher. He said the biggest challenge was, I wanted my character to be unbeatable in a fight. But how do I create stakes with an unbeatable character?

• 1:48:08Speaker 02

  Exactly, it's very difficult.

• 1:48:09Mike Rowe?

  But he does. And that's a neat trick, too.

• 1:48:12Speaker 02

  Along those lines, that's what's wrong with John Wick, and I want to stir up the internet.

• 1:48:18Mike Rowe?

  You don't like John Wick, what's wrong?

• 1:48:19Speaker 02

  No, it's awful, because there's thirty people come in the room, and he instantly demolishes all of them. So where's the, where's the, and then thirty more people come in, and we see five minutes of beautiful, choreographed fight scenes. But the character was never in trouble. There was no vulnerability. So are you a fan, you know, what's the movie called? Harry Brown, Michael Caine.

• 1:48:42Mike Rowe?

  Michael Caine? I'm Michael Caine.

• 1:48:46Speaker 02

  Harry Brown, you ever see that?

• 1:48:47Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 1:48:48Speaker 02

  He's going up against the London gangs, but he's eighty years old.

• 1:48:51Mike Rowe?

  I have seen it, I have seen it, right, yes, yes.

• 1:48:53Speaker 02

  It's the death wish formula, where the crime is out of control. But he's an old frail, there's scenes of him in that movie. His wife's dead, wife's passed away, he's in his kitchen eating, and the scene's like, two minutes long of him making toasts. That's it. And he's so sad and lonely and vulnerable, and you know, and you're just watching him, and he takes it and he sips the coffee, and he's just this sad old man. But then he's got to go out and fight like, a mob of twenty, like, gang members. It's amazing, but the vulnerability is why we are on his side and wondering, will he make it? But John Wick is gonna just blow everybody up, and it's no fun.

• 1:49:28Mike Rowe?

  But they killed his dog, dude.

• 1:49:29Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah.

• 1:49:30Mike Rowe?

  And you know what, they've been dining out on that since the first.

• 1:49:32Speaker 02

  I don't know how that blew up like that did. I think video games is why that, people enjoy the fight scenes, but there's nothing really holding it together. You need that vulnerability, and that's what I struggle with, too, is I have to make the audience genuinely believe, he can't get out of this one.

• 1:49:45Mike Rowe?

  Hey, was that real Scotch onstage last night?

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  A lot of it. Yeah, we, Mark and I have a thing where we have a, we like to go spend about a grand or fifteen hundred bucks on scotch and it's part of the branding and I want to say something. I don't know if this is going to land me in jail or not.

• 1:50:00Mike Rowe?

  Probably not.

• 1:50:01Speaker 02

  But our tax guy, we're doing taxes and I've never written off anything, I didn't think you could write scotch off, but because it's, listen to this, I'm gonna be in jail by June, because it's part of your branding.

• 1:50:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  It's part of, you have it on stage, it's now a prop and it is consistently part of your branding, it's all over your social media, you get brand endorsements with it, so having it there, and you said you can't write it all off, but you can have a percent, there's a percent, this is a thing, it's part of your brand.

• 1:50:28Mike Rowe?

  How about that?

• 1:50:28Speaker 02

  So that means we can buy as much scotch and drink as much scotch as we want, that's what I heard.

• 1:50:33Mike Rowe?

  I tell you what else it means, it means this episode, the way I heard it, was brought to you by Noble, Noble Tennessee Whiskey.

• 1:50:39Speaker 02

  Bold, smooth, sophisticated.

• 1:50:40Mike Rowe?

  It's not scotch and that was the first scotch I had in probably ten years last night, it was great.

• 1:50:46Speaker 02

  Did you have the 21?

• 1:50:47Mike Rowe?

  It's a 21?

• 1:50:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Aberfeldy 21.

• 1:50:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Uh, this is the best of the batch that I've got, this is the stuff named after my pop, it's a single barrel, it's a bourbon, it's not scotch, but you guys can take it, break in case of emergency.

• 1:51:01Speaker 02

  Well, thank you so much.

• 1:51:02Mike Rowe?

  No, it's my pleasure, I'd give you two, but it's the last one I have.

• 1:51:03Speaker 02

  Well, that means a lot.

• 1:51:04Mike Rowe?

  But you guys can, uh, you know, split it on the ride home, I guess, or, you know, make it disappear.

• 1:51:10Speaker 02

  Is it okay to finish with showing you something?

• 1:51:12Mike Rowe?

  I'd be honored.

• 1:51:12Speaker 02

  Okay, let's do it. I'll show you something, you know, when you, uh, work with the deck of cards long enough, you start to develop a sense of the cards like you did earlier. That was really amazing. And you know what's great, people are gonna watch, people are gonna watch this and say, how the hell did he do that? That's what's really great.

• 1:51:26Mike Rowe?

  Some will, and you were probably like, I can't believe this guy invites me on his podcast, uh, maybe one of the greatest card mechanics living today and he shows me a nine oh two.

• 1:51:33Speaker 02

  Hey, the scarny, that's a testament to scarny.

• 1:51:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:35Speaker 02

  So, uh, earlier, uh, you were cutting the cards, but this time I want you to cut for me, so I don't know where anything is.

• 1:51:40Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:51:40Speaker 02

  Because if I cut these cards, you would say, oh, he's tracking and he knew where to cut and he would know the top card of the deck. So what I want you to do is give the cards a cut.

• 1:51:47Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:51:48Speaker 02

  And, uh, first of all, you can see they're all different, I'm gonna take that right out of your mind.

• 1:51:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:51:52Speaker 02

  And then give the cards a cut.

• 1:51:54Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:51:54Speaker 02

  So I can't know what the top card is. And complete the cut. No, no, complete the cut. Just like they do in Vegas, right?

• 1:51:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:59Speaker 02

  You cut the cards in half, complete the cut. Now, you might think that... Well, maybe they're marked cards or something. If they were marked cards, I could tell you what this card is. I could look at the back and read whatever. They're not marked, but you might think that. So as a matter of fact, what I'll do is I'll turn my back and you cut again. So, good, give him a cut.

• 1:52:15Mike Rowe?

  Full cut?

• 1:52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cut half over, wherever you want, and then complete the cut.

• 1:52:18Mike Rowe?

  Cut's complete?

• 1:52:19Speaker 02

  If they were marked, it wouldn't matter because I'm not even looking at the back.

• 1:52:22Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:52:22Speaker 02

  I can't see it.

• 1:52:22Mike Rowe?

  Can't see it.

• 1:52:23Speaker 02

  But you could still think, maybe he's tracking. Maybe could he track two cuts? How could, there might be some way he could know what that top card is. So Mike, if you don't trust me, you want to cut the cards again? While I'm not looking?

• 1:52:34Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:52:34Speaker 02

  No way I could track three cuts now?

• 1:52:37Mike Rowe?

  I don't think so. It's not reasonable. Alright, good. There you go.

• 1:52:40Speaker 02

  The suspense is already starting, isn't it?

• 1:52:42Mike Rowe?

  It's thick.

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  Now, the cut is complete, correct?

• 1:52:45Mike Rowe?

  It is.

• 1:52:45Speaker 02

  No way I could know what the top card is, correct?

• 1:52:47Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, it sure doesn't seem possible.

• 1:52:48Speaker 02

  Do you want to cut again?

• 1:52:50Mike Rowe?

  Chuck, how much time has elapsed so far? We must be close to two hours.

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  Uh, hour forty.

• 1:52:56Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah, I'm gonna cut one more time.

• 1:53:00Speaker 02

  Fantastic.

• 1:53:01Mike Rowe?

  Good.

• 1:53:01Speaker 02

  And I'm not looking. There's no way I could track five cuts by now. I'm not looking at the cards. It wouldn't matter if they were marked. You satisfied those cards? I couldn't know anything?

• 1:53:07Mike Rowe?

  I'm as satisfied as I can.

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  Can you take the top three cards? Don't look at them. Top three cards, put them in your pocket. I got a sight.

• 1:53:12Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  Let me know when that's done.

• 1:53:16Mike Rowe?

  These cards are in my pocket.

• 1:53:18Speaker 02

  And you didn't look at them, right?

• 1:53:19Mike Rowe?

  I did not look at them.

• 1:53:19Speaker 02

  And they're in your pocket, and you don't know what they are, right?

• 1:53:21Mike Rowe?

  Nope, no idea.

• 1:53:21Speaker 02

  Alright, get rid of the deck. Alright, here we go. I want you to reach into your pocket and take, there's three of them. Just take any one of the three. Well, not yet. It could be the one in close, the one in the middle, or the one on the outside. I couldn't possibly know what it is. And I'm gonna look away again. I hope, Mike, I'm gonna turn the mic like this. But just take it out. Don't show anybody.

• 1:53:40Mike Rowe?

  Alright.

• 1:53:40Speaker 02

  Just yourself. And I'm looking away.

• 1:53:41Mike Rowe?

  I can look at it?

• 1:53:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:53:42Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:53:43Speaker 02

  Don't say it. Are you looking at one of the cards?

• 1:53:45Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I am. I'm looking at it.

• 1:53:47Speaker 02

  Again, I've been handling cards for forty years. You start to develop a sense for these cards.

• 1:53:52Mike Rowe?

  Uh huh.

• 1:53:56Speaker 02

  Is that? Is that like a high valued card? Like an ace?

• 1:54:02Mike Rowe?

  It's very much like an ace, yes.

• 1:54:07Mike Rowe?

  Uncanally so.

• 1:54:10Speaker 02

  I mean, you could have taken any one of the three out. That's the really confusing part. But is it a? Is it a heart?

• 1:54:17Mike Rowe?

  So much like a heart that it's not even a diamond. It is in fact the ace of hearts.

• 1:54:21Speaker 02

  It is ace of hearts. Oh, I got one. Okay. You can put it face up on the table here.

• 1:54:24Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:54:25Speaker 02

  Now, there's two cards left. Remember, you cut so many times.

• 1:54:28Mike Rowe?

  Five times, yeah.

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  It wouldn't matter if the cards were marked because I wasn't looking.

• 1:54:31Mike Rowe?

  Wouldn't matter.

• 1:54:31Speaker 02

  And then you put three in your pocket and you didn't show anybody, so there's no way I could have seen them.

• 1:54:34Mike Rowe?

  Nope. Didn't look at it myself, actually.

• 1:54:36Speaker 02

  I know. Yeah, exactly. Now, there's two left. You can take either one out. Just don't think about it. Just reach and take one out.

• 1:54:41Mike Rowe?

  I'm just gonna take one out?

• 1:54:43Speaker 02

  Don't show them. Don't show them.

• 1:54:44Mike Rowe?

  I'm not gonna show them. I'm gonna look at it myself. All right, I'm looking at this one. Now, I'm setting it down. I don't want to touch it.

• 1:54:50Speaker 02

  And I'm not looking at it?

• 1:54:51Mike Rowe?

  No, you're not.

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  So this, the first thing that popped into my mind was that even though you cut five times, that it's a black card. Is it a black card?

• 1:54:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it's the very picture of ebony.

• 1:55:05Speaker 02

  Oh, now I might be getting a little confident here. Is it a club?

• 1:55:08Mike Rowe?

  No. It's not a club.

• 1:55:11Speaker 02

  That's right. I'm starting to get too confident. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it's a spade.

• 1:55:18Speaker 02

  Is it a spade?

• 1:55:19Mike Rowe?

  Your deductive prowess is truly unmatched.

• 1:55:22Speaker 02

  See what happened? See what happened when I started to get confident? I gotta take this seriously. It's a spade. Okay, so it's a spade. I want you to imagine a movie theater screen. And you're sitting in a theater by yourself and there's a movie theater. And on that screen is one card playing on the screen.

• 1:55:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:35Speaker 02

  And that card, you're visualizing that?

• 1:55:36Mike Rowe?

  I got it.

• 1:55:37Speaker 02

  That card is a seven of spades. Is it?

• 1:55:43Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 1:55:44Mike Rowe?

  Yes, it's a seven of spades. We're all shocked.

• 1:55:46Speaker 02

  We gotta get my confidence back up.

• 1:55:47Mike Rowe?

  All right, good.

• 1:55:48Speaker 02

  Anyway, you got one card left, but don't take it out.

• 1:55:49Mike Rowe?

  No, I'm not gonna take it out.

• 1:55:52Speaker 02

  If you didn't look at that card, how could I know what that card is?

• 1:55:56Mike Rowe?

  That would again involve a deal with old scratch.

• 1:56:01Speaker 02

  And you know what?

• 1:56:01Mike Rowe?

  What?

• 1:56:04Speaker 02

  Is this the devil's card? Is it the four of clubs? The four of clubs, the devil's card. Take it out.

• 1:56:10Mike Rowe?

  Before I look, why is the four of clubs the devil's card?

• 1:56:14Speaker 02

  That's just the nickname it was given.

• 1:56:23Speaker 02

  It was a good deal. It was a good deal.

• 1:56:26Mike Rowe?

  A devil in my pocket.

• 1:56:27Speaker 02

  It was a good deal.

• 1:56:29Mike Rowe?

  Now, listen. The obvious question that comes to mind, Chuck, is how'd you do that? But what's the point in even posing it?

• 1:56:36Speaker 02

  Well, it's just skill. Just name any card. Just name any card.

• 1:56:38Mike Rowe?

  Any card. Just say it out loud? All right, three diamonds.

• 1:56:42Speaker 02

  Twenty.

• 1:56:43Mike Rowe?

  Twenty?

• 1:56:44Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Come on.

• 1:56:46Speaker 02

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Do you cut these cards how many times? Turn that over.

• 1:57:02Speaker 02

  Thank you and good night.

• 1:57:03Mike Rowe?

  Wow. Oh, God. Who's that other asshole I hate now? Oz, that Oz guy. What do you think of him?

• 1:57:10Speaker 02

  Oz is great. So Oz is doing something very similar. Magic has been around. Magic, listen to this. Magic has been around forever. These techniques have been around forever. You're reinventing it, pushing the boundaries, forging ahead, and repurposing. And, you know, we have new media today. We have new things. And he has found a way to just get it out there and make it bold. And it's great that we can finish here because one of my absolute favorite quotes of all time of like that is just, I heard this and I said, oh, my God. And that's Steve Martin. Be so good, they can't ignore you.

• 1:57:45Speaker 02

  And that went into my soul and I said, you know what? I'm gonna do, right? I have the chops and you're gonna watch them. And Oz tapped into that and I'm doing the same thing where you just, people watch and they just say what you're feeling and how is that, how can this, any of this be?

• 1:58:01Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'll leave you with another Steve Martin bon mot.

• 1:58:06Mike Rowe?

  With regard to articulation, he said, you know, some people have a way with words and others not have way.

• 1:58:19Speaker 02

  Oh, he's brilliant. He's so brilliant.

• 1:58:21Mike Rowe?

  Hey, man. This was so much fun. Thank you for last night. Thanks for your generosity, Mark. You know, thanks for, you guys are a great team. I don't know what your ultimate goals are, but you're gonna be a household word. You're gonna be a Skarny. You're gonna be, and somewhere where Tease is looking down and going, "Pick a card, you son of a gosh."

• 1:58:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know what's great is there were so many moments with, with being with him that he would fool me constantly. And slowly, I would have moments where I would show him something and, and he'd say, "I don't, I don't know." And I'd go, "Yes!"

• 1:58:54Mike Rowe?

  Gotcha!

• 1:58:54Speaker 02

  "I got you." And I stood up and I was like, "Yes!" And I looked back and he's just sitting there politely. And I'm like, "Oh, my God. I'm so sorry. Here's what I did." But I had those moments of, of doing that. It was very rewarding to be able to, you showed me these tools and I took them and was able to do this with it. So it's all about craft and life and learning and, and pushing forward.

• 1:59:11Mike Rowe?

  Ace of hearts, four clubs, seven of spades.

• 1:59:12Speaker 02

  Seven of spades and then a three of diamonds that you're gonna, that you're gonna s-.

• 1:59:16Mike Rowe?

  That would hurt, man.

• 1:59:17Speaker 02

  You're gonna suffer with that.

• 1:59:18Mike Rowe?

  Oh, hell, look at that one. That's the twitch.

• 1:59:19Speaker 02

  It's a twitch.

• 1:59:20Mike Rowe?

  The twitch just started.

• 1:59:21Speaker 02

  Beautiful. A pleasure. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

• 1:59:23Speaker 03

  When you leave a review, which we hope that you'll do, tell us who you are. And before you go, won't you leave five stars?

• 1:59:47Speaker 04

  Five lousy little stars.

• 2:00:01Speaker 04

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