The School of Greatness - 815 The Power of Storytelling

Episode Date: June 26, 2019

WE COULD ALL USE A LITTLE MAGIC. Storytelling is an important part of everything you do. Whether you’re trying to sell something, speaking, or building relationships, you can’t ignore the power of story. It’s what causes us to have an emotional connection to something. Magic is an art form that uses storytelling. It’s not just about magic tricks. It’s about what you feel while you’re watching the trick. It’s about what the magician is telling you that changes your memory of the event. And it’s about how you take what you’re seeing and relate it to your story. How can you use the power of magic in your own life? On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I’ve combined lessons about capturing your audience from some of the greatest magicians alive: Penn Jillette, Oz Perlman, Julius Dien, Derren Brown, and Lior Suchard. Derren Brown uses magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship to create series and specials on stage and television. He’s won two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Entertainment and has also written books for magicians as well as the general public. Lior Suchard is considered to be the world’s greatest mentalist. His mind-blowing performances of thought influence, miraculous prediction and startling mind reading have made him the most sought after mentalist on the planet. He entertains audiences all over the world, which have brought him a list of fans stretching from A-list Hollywood celebrities to heads of state and notorious businessmen. Born and raised in London, Julius Dein has fast become one of the world’s most recognized social media stars. Mixing together mind-blowing magic with hilarious comedy and travel culture, Julius Dein has over 20 million followers across the internet. Oz Pearlman is a world-class entertainer and one of the busiest mentalists in the country. You might recognize him from America’s Got Talent where he placed third out of thousands of acts. Oz has also appeared on a variety of both national and international networks, a few of which include NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The TODAY Show & ABC World News and been profiled in Forbes, The New York Times, to name but a few. When he isn’t blowing the minds of audiences around the world, Oz is an avid marathon and ultra-marathon runner. Penn Jillette is a magician, actor, musician, inventor, television personality, and best-selling author best known for his work with fellow magician Teller as half of the team Penn & Teller. The duo has been featured in numerous stage and television shows such as Penn & Teller: Fool Us, and Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, and are currently headlining in Las Vegas at The Rio. He has published eight books, including the New York Times Bestseller, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales. All of these amazing magicians use the same tools to draw in their audience and capture their imaginations. It’s more than impressive tricks, flashing lights, or fancy outfits. So get ready to learn how to harness the power of storytelling on Episode 815. Some Questions I Ask: What is your greatest superpower, Darren Brown? (12:35) Do you feel like you had a good childhood? (17:10) How did you learn how to tell better stories? (19:25) Does mentalism have to do more with emotional intelligence or observed behavior? (35:20) What’s the perfect person to work with as a mentalist? (36:40) In This Episode You Will Learn: Why the stories we tell ourselves restrict us (8:10) The four pillars of magic (15:00) The power of the sense of wonder (16:50) Why you need to combine your message with an emotional response (22:05) The formula for going viral (24:45) Why you should reverse engineer based on the outcome you want (30:45) The power of partnership (38:24) Why empathy is important in art (41:26) If you enjoyed this episode, check out the show notes, video and more at www.lewishowes.com/815 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes

This is episode number 815 on the power of storytelling. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Khalil Gibran said, the appearance of things change according to the emotions,

and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves. Today, we've got a powerful episode. It's from some of my favorite people that I've ever interviewed. And it's the people that make us inspired, make us wonder, that make us believe in something greater than ourselves. It makes us believe in magic. And I've had some incredible magicians and illusionists on the show over the years. And they're always some of the most fascinating people for me because I want to understand what's inside their mind. How do they captivate an audience? How do they have the entire room, their attention on one thing and make them see something else? How do they get people to believe in something that actually didn't happen, but create such an amazing experience at the same time?

We've got Darren Brown, one of my all-time favorites. He's a hypnotist and illusionist and a mentalist who began his career in UK. And he has done some incredible Netflix specials that just literally blow my mind. Every time I watch them, I'm always inspired. He's got best-selling books, unbelievable TV shows, and a live performance as well. And you're going to make sure to check him out, Darren Brown. We've got Lior Souchard.

When I saw him perform live years ago, I'm always able to figure out what some of the acts and what some of the things are that people do on stage. I couldn't figure out how he did any of it. It blew my mind. And it continued to blow my mind in this segment here. Julius Dean, who's one of the hottest up-and-coming street magicians and illusionists, who has blown up on social media. He's one of the most recognized social media stars for his mind-blowing magic and hilarious comedy with travel culture. We've got Oz Perlman,

world-class entertainer and one of the busiest mentalists in the country, whose clients are huge politicians, professional athletes, and A-list celebrities. He's on the media and the press. I see him constantly on the Today Show and GMA and on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. He's done some incredible things. We've got Penn Gillette, who is the world-renowned magician duo Penn and Teller. He's been over 40 years with Penn and Teller, and he's redefined a genre in magic and inventing their own very distinct niche in comedy, the longest-running act in Vegas as well. And in this interview and series, we talk about the power of storytelling and people's desire to be fooled, why we want to be fooled and tricked, how wonder is individual but universal. We talk about quick tips on maximizing your social media impact and

your audience impact, how giving away some secrets captivates your audience, but not all of them, and the importance of putting yourself in the audience's shoes first. I'm very excited. Make sure to share this. Tag me. Tag the people that you're listening to as well when you're listening to them. lewishouse.com slash 815. I'm very excited about this one. Let me know what you think. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode with the Magician Masters. I've toured for like 20 years in the UK and I do a brand new show every two years. So this show, Miracle, was like one of the recent shows. And in that whole experience, that kind of career, nothing was as interesting as doing this every night. Because basically there's kind of two components

to this idea of faith healing, at least as I see it, and certainly as I was doing it, and I was learning from the faith healers and using their techniques. One is adrenaline, so you create, as you know with your own background, you're not really feeling the pain. Yeah, feeling like, yeah.

So if you get adrenaline going, it's a painkiller. That's the first thing. So if you've got some back pain and, you know, a wild lion walks into the room, you're not worried about your back, right? The pain goes. So adrenaline kills pain. That's the first part of it. The second part of it, which is where it gets really interesting,

is the stories that we tell ourselves, which is a recurring theme in my interests and life and work, and how we get restricted by that. And what I didn't expect was how, I thought it was going to be people saying, oh, I had back pain and now it's gone. But within a week of doing the show, I remember a woman coming up in floods of tears. She was maybe in her 40s. She'd been paralyzed down one side of her body since being a kid. And for the first time, she's able to move her arm. No way.

And this is how you can, of course, you can start to go mad as the healer and start to believe in it, right? Believe you're like a god. Start to take an effort to think, yeah, exactly, this isn't something I'm doing, this is something you're doing. So that psychological component. So basically, it's like the part of our, you know, not for everybody, of course. I'm only dealing with a percentage of the audience, right? So I've got maybe 2,000, 3,000 people in the audience, and here are 300, right?

So we're kind of, the numbers are getting smaller. Most people aren't feeling it, or maybe they didn't have pain, or whatever. Exactly, yeah. And then the number that get invited up is smaller again, right? It's like the more suggestible people are the more like. Yeah, exactly. The people that certainly experience the most.

But the fact that, you know, if you x-ray this woman before and afterwards, clearly nothing has changed, right? But her, somehow in the story she was telling herself about this condition, I can't move my arm, this is something I live with, it's a restriction that I have. Maybe a bit of adrenaline at the start and then the kind of the challenge of like,

if you couldn't move something before, try it now. Notice what's different and come up and tell me. Just that sort of, okay, I'll think about it differently, just snapped her out of it. She's not just feeling a difference, she's actually kind of physically moving. And night after night, these things happen. And it varied from night to night,

and some nights were more dramatic than others, but it was extraordinary. And then, and again, percentages getting smaller, right? So now we're at the top, like, probably half a percent, which is always going to be kind of extraordinary. But people then saying, like, a year later, this is, you know, this is a permanent thing. Again, I'm thinking it'll work for 10 minutes when they're on stage.

Right, because they get the adrenaline. Yeah, but they'll go back and they're going to be as they were, which is where those healers, where it starts to get nasty. Because then they're saying, if this healing doesn't last, it's your fault. You didn't have enough faith and so on. So that's where it gets nasty. So I'm being open and saying, look, you're going to go back. It's probably going to be the same.

Don't throw those pills away, regardless of what I said earlier on. But some people it works for. So it continued to work for me. Well, here's the thing. My girlfriend, Jen, she's a doctor of physical therapy, and she works on people who are in chronic pain right who are broke who pulled muscles who like have bad neck pain you know back pain knee pain all these things joints and she'll get them on her table and literally have them start changing the story around it's

an emotional thing that they're holding on to. They're just really tight. When you get people to relax, they can usually move better. And the pain goes away. And so the way you were doing it, I was just watching. I was like, wow, you're just getting people to really relax. You have them take deep breaths. You have them close their eyes at one point and see the best version of yourself. But it wasn't really even

relaxing. It wasn't like a... Because you can't stand on stage and have people just relax for 20 minutes. It was. It was just amazing. It was crazy. And then I started to think, maybe I could

present this as a thing, because you could pack out Stadia if you said this is a secular healing show. I'm not making any claims. But that is when you start to go mad because we never advertise it as a healing show. But you heal people there. Or people are feeling better.

Yeah, but you don't want people coming to the show wanting healing because then you're into kind of a dark area. So anyway, yeah. What you do when you're doing cooler is you start to guess where people's, or not guess, I shouldn't say that, but you start to call out where people's pain is. And you're just, by looking at them,

you're just like, your left knee, and they're like, what? And you're like, yeah, my left knee can't, you know, whatever. And that isn't someone going, ugh, it's not very obvious, but yeah. But it's amazing. Yeah, but again, I'm using the techniques that the healers use.

Really? And what are those? Are you allowed to share? I always find if I say, oh, this is how they do it, people then go, oh, okay, well, that wasn't how the healer, so the psychic, you know, I do a lot of stuff debunking like psychics and mediums. And I never say exactly how I they do it. People then go, oh, okay, well, that wasn't how the healer I saw. I do a lot of stuff debunking psychics and mediums. And I never say exactly how I'm doing it

because then people go, all right, well, that's not how my guy did it. I did this one in one of the stage shows I did. I had people up on stage and I did mediumship, right? But I'm debunking it as I'm doing it. So I'm saying, I've got your grandmother here. Her name is Alice, is that right? They're like, yeah. How do you know the name? And she's saying, I've got your grandmother here, her name's Alice, is that right? They're like, yeah. And she's saying.

How do you know the name? And she's saying, that's my secret. And she's saying, and she's not saying anything, I'm lying to you, you understand this, but she's saying she had a little dog called Jasper, is that correct, yeah? And she's, I'm making this up. And I'm so glad.

You're making it up. So I'm debunking it as I'm doing it. I'm saying I am lying to you. And you're making it up or you have other. I'm not making, well I'm telling them correct information. But at the same time. I'm saying I am lying to you. And you're making it up or you have other... I'm not making... Well, I'm telling them correct information but at the same time I'm saying I am lying. So it's kind of an interesting... I felt

theatrically kind of an interesting sort of weird play. Anyway, so after the show there was a girl at stage door who said to me could you put me in touch with my grandmother? And I said, well, I hope it was clear from the show that I can't really do it. I'm kind of debunking it. She went, oh no, no no I know it's fake and everything but would you be able to put me in touch with my grandmother and it was just a really interesting moment of our capacity for that kind

of dissonance to like hold those twin ideas in your head they're completely conflicting is extraordinary so our capacity to essentially kind of fool ourselves, I think, is so... To want to believe. Yeah. To want to believe that this person can or that this person's connecting through someone somehow. Yeah, exactly. And I think there's a lot of that you've got to get through before you reach the possibility of anyone doing it for real. What do you think is your greatest superpower? Because I think you can do a lot of things extremely well, and I feel like you're a student of life and understanding people,

and you've been doing this for a long time. But what do you think is your greatest skill set? You're very kind. I'm happy if my breath smells okay. You have a weak handshake, I understand. If I have a toolkit, like a magician has got his deck of cards. I think my toolkit is people's stories that they tell themselves.

I think that's what interests me. Can you give an example? Even just like a magic trick, right? When you watch a card trick and you go, you know, he had me pick a card and then he put the card back in the deck and it disappeared and then it was in my pocket. That's impossible. Now, that is a story you're telling yourself and you're going from point A to point B to point C,

but of course there's like also A.1, A.2, you know, but what the magician's doing is just encouraging you to edit the story in such a way that normally all the sleight of hand happens right in front of you, but you don't pay attention because it doesn't seem important. And then the bits that do seem important are the bits that later are going to join up to form the story, right? And they're a little, like there's a, when I used to do a lot of this kind of magic, and like a thing I'd always say is, so let's say you've got like a deck of cards at the beginning that is in a special order, so you can't shuffle them, but there's a point halfway through the trick

where they can shuffle them. I would normally say at that point, okay, look, shuffle the cards again, but this time do it under the table, right? So they follow that instruction, but it sounds like they've shuffled the cards before to them. Does that make sense? Shuffle the cards again.

Because I say shuffle the cards again, but this time do it under the table. Now, they haven't shuffled the cards before because they were in a special order, but then later when they're reconstructing the trick in their head, let alone when they're then telling someone else about the trick. Shuffle the card a bunch of times. Yeah, I shuffled it at the beginning.

And it's like a false memory that you start to implant. So you're just working with stories. And so what I do, because the sort of magic I do isn't very proppy. It's kind of more based around suggestion. So it really is. There's also conjuring in it as well. I mean, I'm using magic techniques too, but largely, like the bit that interests me and the story is just, yeah, it's people's ongoing perception. If you think about it, again, I go back to magic. A magician can do four things. Any magician. He can make something appear from nowhere or disappear or

transpose or levitate. That's it. In lots of different ways. Exactly. That's like four pillars. Now, with what I do, same four pillars. I can read something. I can influence something or guess. It's more like a reading. I can predict something. Or I can read something. I can influence something or guess. It's more like a reading.

I can predict something. Or I can make things move like the spoon bending or telekinesis stuff, brain power. On that, you build a story. Different, different story. It's like, you know, you talk about motivational speaking, okay? Thinking positive, it's a fact. People need to think more positive. But every person takes it to how they see it

and how they look at it. At the end, it's all about mindfulness and getting yourself into the right position. But same thing here. There's four elements and I build the story, the crazy story around. And I give you, in the middle of the story, I give you traps and I build the story, the crazy story around. And I give you, in the middle of the story, I give you traps and I give you ideas

and I give you, oh, I think I know how we did that. And then something coming to the blog. So it's a show, it's a live show. It's to entertain people. And when I see, and this is the truth, when I see people wondering, and here's an interesting thing that, I don't think, nobody talked about it.

What is a sense of wonder? What is it? What do you think sense of wonder? What is it? What do you think is a wonder? What is wonder? When someone is wondering. They're curious. But you left, you went like, oh, my God, oh, my God. Some people will cry.

Some people will go like this. And some people will just, hmm. There's a lot. I mean, we know. Emotion, yeah. Exactly. You know, laughter, you know, it's universal. This is laughter.

Sadness, you know, it's the opposite. Angry, you know, it's universal. This is laughter. Sadness, you know, it's the opposite. Angry, you know, it's like this. Wonder, it's very individual. If you think of wonder, not everybody will go like this. Not everyone. Some people will go like this. Some people will be like shocked. Once I had a show and nobody clapped their hands at the end and I was felt sorry. I said, no, you don't understand. They were too shocked. Oh, wow. So I had to reprogram the show to get to applause. So it's very interesting when you think about it. And when I see the audience wondering, becoming children again, that's amazing. Wow. That's why I do what I do.

Do you feel like you had a good childhood? Define a good childhood. Well, you say you want people to be like children again. That means... I believe, you know, I have two children on my own. And you know, the children, did you see that there's an amazing scene

from the movie The Prestige? You see a magician taking a little bird and he goes like this and the bird disappears and the audience goes, oh my God.

And the bird appears like in another place. So everybody's like clapping their hand and the little boy is asking, place. So everybody's like clapping their hand and the little boy is asking, what happened to the first bird? And really the magician had like a mechanic, something that he makes sure that he kills the first bird.

Oh no. Something like that. But children has a sense of wonder. They touch the iron because they're curious and then they get the burn. And they, you know, I see my kid is doing something from Lego and he's like, oh, look what I've done, what I've done. It's amazing.

They have this. When we grow up, we start to lose this. You go into the box, you have your work and, you know, everything in the news and we start to lose this, this amazing feeling. Of wonder. Of wonder. And I'm here to get back. And you know, I don't want to name dropping, but you know some of the amazing feeling. Of wonder. Of wonder. And I'm here to get back.

And you know, I don't want to name dropping, but you know some of the people that I perform for. It doesn't matter who you are. You can be known, I don't know, rich, poor. Everybody's like leveled. And they have this sense of wonder, which is amazing. It's a wonderful feeling. How old are your kids?

Four and two. And do you perform mentalism on them? It's hard because mentalism is very, sometimes it's not visual. It's not like magic visual. Sometimes it's very intellectual. Something you think about later. You think about, so it's hard to express it,

but working on that. You're working out with them? A little bit. Because you're not like, voila, like there's something in front of you. Exactly, exactly. It's not an act. Exactly.

That's why when I do a big show, even if I do a show for 3,000 people, the stage and the screens, the production will be modest because it's not going to be explosions and stuff like that. Smoke and everything, yeah. There's, of course, lighting

and we have screens and we have cameras because it's all about the interaction, but it's not going to be like fireworks and stuff like that because it's all about what's happening there. It's not about how big it is. It's how emotional it is. How important is storytelling in mentalism?

It's everything. That's everything. It's everything. How did you learn how to tell better stories? I didn't. I didn't. I'll tell you a little story. I think it was like 10 years ago, I did a show and a guy came to me and told me, I have

a show for a company, for a swatch group in Switzerland, the swatch brand. And I have all the retailers. Do you think it's amazing? You think you can do something connected to the watch? And then I'm like, hmm, it's like, I have an idea. And then started infotainment. Infotainment. Infotainment, which is creating this stuff. I said, okay, so I know how to guess things for dice.

What if it wasn't a dice? What if it was different messages of a company? And you look at something and say, oh, you're looking at how important is the connection with the workers. And then I find myself talking about the messages, conveying the messages, but in a way that people remember it. So for Swatch, I took 10 people on stage. I told them to, one of the acts, hold your hand above your watch, count to three, and I actually stopped all their watches. Stopped completely. You didn't touch their watches? I told them.

I was going like this to them. The watches stopped. You didn't touch the watches? The audience goes wild. Never touch the watches. The audience goes wild. Wow. One lady from those 10 people said, my watch is still working.

And I started to act like, no way. What's going on? What's going on? What's going on? No, no, no. It didn't stop. And I was, let me see. Let me see.

And I was going like, oh, you have this watch. And that was like a moment because then I said, what do you have? What do you have? And I talked about all the other brands that I could stop, but I could not stop this watch. That's powerful. And the message was, I can't do it. That's brilliant. And it was a metaphor. Of course, by the way, I can't do it. That's brilliant. And it was a metaphor.

Of course, by the way, I could stop any of the watches. I just made it look like I acted as I do. And I saw the owner of, Mr. Hayek is the owner of, he passed away. But back then, he was like, because you had 700 people who sell his watches. And now we wanted to say, how good is the watch? Wow. So then I found myself flying for lots of corporations, Fortune 500 companies, cybersecurity.

For IBM, I did a competition. Who is smarter, me or Watson? You know, the artificial intelligence. For Google, we did something, who is faster in searching? Master mentalist or Google? So I create this. And I think this works on a principle that if I ask you, what were you wearing three weeks ago on Monday?

Nobody knows. Don't know. But if I ask you, what did you do on the day of September 11 when the plane hit the Twin Towers? You remember exactly what you did. Yeah. Can you remember what I was doing? I know.

No, but I remember what I was doing. Yeah. Why remember it because it was an emotional impact bad negative one you remember also the good you do fail videos as well we're like oh we messed up right right that was initially i there was a you know a couple of tricks right where i like i didn't get it right and then there was a situation i can't remember which what happened oh yeah this is what it was it was in it was in my rome video that went insane on 135 million views on facebook yeah over a million shares and what it was it was um these these three asian ladies sitting by like the coliseum i saw this one exactly. You saw it. Exactly. I see you burst out laughing. You saw that in front of me. Yeah.

And I went over to them and I plucked like a sponge ball from behind their ear. Right. And I was expecting, you know, applause, just some type of reaction. And they, and they just stared at me.

Right. And I just kind of stared at them. And it was just this moment of nothingness. And you know, I, I put that into the videos as kind of fast paced, viral was just this moment of nothingness and you know i i put that into the videos this kind of fast-paced viral you know like crazy like high energy magic like boom everyone's you know tagging their friends sharing but then the most the most tags and shares the most tags and seem to be from comments this clip yeah exactly the most comments where everyone's tagging their friends going lol this is yeah so so i was from the fail it's from a fail trip

right right right. Exactly. And then I have the slow-mo with the sad music. Yes. All around me. Yeah, exactly. I wouldn't say that too much

or you might get striked on YouTube. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. What I would say is that when you're looking on your newsfeed, things are going viral from all walks of life,

whether it's inspirational talks to, you know, to asking for, you know, cancer research donations to puppies to to magic tricks to social experiments to you know health awareness everything in its different formats political stuff everything exactly right so so people that say oh you're a magician you know you know it's not even true because most magicians don't go viral i'm right i mean i think i'm the only really the only really really really viral magician i've got a few friends that are doing social media really well but i'm definitely the one that's consistently making viral videos so

i wouldn't for magic for magic um so i wouldn't i wouldn't say that oh you're a magician that makes much difference because a lot of magicians that can't get any views exactly exactly but what i mean there are a few great guys don't get me wrong um but what i would say is um you there is there is a formula to going viral okay particularly particularly on facebook right and the formula is to remember okay that that um on facebook people are just scrolling let's scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll so you got to catch them right on youtube is a different story youtube is about long form, it's a different story. YouTube is about long form content. It's about fan base, right? Facebook is about virality. It's about sharing. It's about something exploding on the internet, right? So you've got to remember YouTube and Facebook are very different. They're both

powerful. So what I would say is that for my YouTube audience, you know, I've got a more, my Instagram audience, I've got a more loyal fan base to understand what I'm up to in life. With Facebook, it's just about viral. You know, if you can smash a hundred million views on a video, you can build a huge audience. And from that, you can target, you know, target ads, you can build a business, you know, get exposure, you can potentially, you know, start to get loads of emails from building your brand. But let me answer your question. So on Facebook, people are scrolling, you need to catch their attention. So forget about a long introduction, right? The first three seconds are crucial. So if I was in your position, right? Let me say in my position, I've just released a video on Facebook called Miami reacts to magic. It's on about three and a half million views in three

hours. And the first three seconds of that video, something really interesting is happening. It's like bang magic trick, someone freaks out, right? So it's catchy. First three seconds. So you got that formula down, you know, okay, here's the moment exactly putting that first yeah and to put that into your position say you were going to do an inspirational talk on how to build a business for me if i was in your position which is which is a similar thing to what gary vaynerchuk has done some of his videos have had 20 30 50 million views on facebook um he starts with something interesting so he'll ask you a question you know so so it might be you know the first three seconds might be so what do you want in life that could be an example you know or it could be like when you die what are you going to regret just something that brings people in right so that's so that's why i

would say have a have a snappy introduction have a question evoking question exactly exactly yeah it doesn't necessarily have to be a question but just think to yourself are people going to find this interesting yes because i've seen the difference between putting a boring introduction and an interesting introduction and it can lead to the difference of millions of views right because if people click off straight away it's going to have way less people who are going to share that video it's going to go way less viral okay so that's the first part first part so okay so forget these long introductions it's not a youtube video people don't know who you are you're talking to people that some of them may have no idea who you are right especially when it gets reshared onto some random person's timeline in the in the

philippines yes you know they just want to they want to see something in action yes right second thing right make sure that what the content you're making is is comment people want to tag their friends right so if you're doing something inspirational you want to create the type of content that people want to tag their friends. So whether it's funny or emotionally eliciting, or it's cute, right? It's very important that you're, you're creating format that people want to tag their friends because that's what, that's what, you know, Facebook is all about and Instagram as well. People tagging their friends, making, making each other aware. The most viral videos in the world are the ones where people,

people are tagging their friends and, you know and shareable videos, which is inherent to the video being viral. Right, right. Okay. So that's the next thing. Yeah. Is there another element? Oh, there's having, I think, clickbait, having a clickbait thumbnail.

Having an image. Do you always have an image thumbnail on Facebook as well? I actually take it separately. Yeah, I take it separately. Separate image. Yeah. And you upload it with the video. You can make a thumbnail in Facebook videos.

Is that the deal? Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I subtitle everything. On Facebook, 70% of people sometimes won't turn on the sound. Right, because they're at work, they're scrolling, you know, there's no sound.

So I subtitle everything manually. I know Facebook have like an auto subtitle, but I don't even bother with that. I just subtitle it manually, make it crystal clear. You want to make your content crystal clear. Where some videos lack is there is a lack of clarity. So maybe 15 seconds to 19 seconds, something happens that's not very...

Confusion. Exactly. And then there's no easier place to exit than the internet. You just carry on scrolling, you click off. I'm lost, gone. Exactly. So it's got to be crystal clear throughout the entire thing.

What's the duration, the length that you found is the best length for something to be shared yeah so if we're talking facebook i guess right now we're on the facebook topic i'd say between one and two minutes facebook are pushing long long form longer form content um so if you can make a two three minute video that's this that's viral that's a great video then so be it but six second videos don't really seem to do if you look on if you look at your your feed now it's not really many six second videos anymore are they because on the algorithm facebook are pushing long form content the same way they're introducing new tv shows and they're introducing monetization for videos over a minute and a half they're

introducing this in the halfway exactly that that's being introduced yes um so yeah i think so a minute to two minutes and if you can extend it to three or four and still keep it interesting and good edits and exactly subtitles crystal clear and unique and you know or thought provoking then you can kind of stretch to three or four sounds right i keep my videos i try and keep them between two and three minutes because i know that that's going to reach most of my audience because it's a it's a longer form video so it's going to you know show better than because it's a longer form video, so it's going to show better on the algorithm. And then what about the end of a video? We talked about the beginning, the middle.

What about the end? Yeah, well, it's nice to have a twist. So if you look at the most viral videos on the planet, with the Viners or even with my video, so the video that got 135 or whatever it is 133 million views from uh from may there was a funny twist at the end which is where i steal the guy's girlfriend with a magic trick and it was more of a sketch than an actual trick but people tagged the grandparents right is that yeah yeah it was with yeah exactly yeah the older lady and the older guy yeah yeah running after you

in rome yeah the video it was called how to impress the girl with a magic trick and the final clip was that i make a lollipop appear from fire yes and then she she gave me a kiss on the cheek and then the final

the very final clip is me walking off with her and her husband running after me shouting hey that's my wife yes

cut people it's just funny people want to share I mean that video has over a million shares crazy yeah

and right now it's getting shares probably about you know 50 to 100 shares a minute right at this very second. Still.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we reverse engineer. Yes. So my work as an engineer, I don't, I could barely screw in a light bulb. My wife makes fun of me.

But the way that I think, the way that we, like the way that I dissect my routines is I first think of the effect. So I think, what do I want you to think happened, right? Here's what would be really cool to me. So it'd be really cool to me if I could tell you to think of anyone, but I'm influencing where you're going to go with that person before you even know it. And I'm

going to tell you that person's name and I'm going to- Don't make it an athlete. That's too obvious. Don't make it this. Exactly. Oh, so, okay. Narrowed down. Psychology 101. It's the same way that a salesperson, if they're very pushy, the used car salesman says, you get this car, get this car, your guard is up. But if you walk into a place and they kind of talk to you and they go, you know what, this might not be right for you. I think maybe your business is better elsewhere.

You're intrigued. This guy doesn't want my money? What do you mean? That's how you hook people in. There's so many little facets. There's an interesting thing, pickup artists. Did you ever see that book by- Neil Strauss. Yeah, Neil Strauss, The Game. He's a good friend of mine.

So a lot of those guys start as magicians and a lot of what they talk about is very applicable to what I do literally, but not for picking up girls or anything. It's knowing how people think in their decision-making, knowing how social dynamics work, how people think when they're one at a time or versus in a group dynamic. And I, you know, I work on that all the time. That's so much of my show is knowing how I'm going to affect and influence somebody when they're amongst others, when somebody is with their peers, colleagues, or whether they're with their boss, all of those things play in when I do a show. Really? Oh yeah. Huge.

So when you see someone, when you go into a room or a restaurant and you're thinking like, when you see someone, do you think like, what's the trick? Or I mean, what's the thing I want to do? Not the trick, but the, you know, Jason Bourne, you know, Jason Bourne, the first movie, one of my favorite scenes ever is when they bring him into the restaurant and he tells you everything right now. Boom. I know what that guy's wearing. I know what that license plate is. I know that. That, no BS, is exactly what I've trained my mind to do. In every room.

If I walk into most rooms, like I had a show last night for 85 people in San Antonio, Texas, I knew every single person's name in that room. Every single person's first name. How? That's memory work. So I've worked on memory. So you met every person.

Well, during the cocktail hour, I walk around. I say hello. You met everyone. Even if I don't meet them, they's memory work. So I've worked on memory. So you met every person. Well, during the cocktail hour, I walk around. I say hello. You met everyone. Even if I don't meet them, they have name tags. I'm going to know everything about them. I know who worked for the host company. I know who didn't. I know who's superior to who.

And I've got the social dynamics on this. This guy's got a wedding band. I can see that it's scuffed. I know this guy's been married probably 15, 20 years. Everything like that is fodder for the show. Sure. Additional stuff feels like, wow, this guy's good. That is the show.

So when you hear about cold reading and stuff that a lot of psychics and mediums do, I'm not here to tell you what's real and not real. I just know that so much of what I see a lot of psychics do, I could do exactly the same and I could do it with no supernatural abilities. I can do it based on the here, the now, my five senses and what I'm able to do. Asking a couple of questions and yeah, just being aware.

Leading questions, knowing where people's motivations are. I know that they want to hear a certain thing. So I'm going to bring them in that direction. It's kind of like if I knew one thing about you, let's say Lewis, I learned one thing about you. Let's say I knew exactly that you were going to think about your brother, who's a world known jazz violinist, number one in the world. What I might do is mention my siblings and go into that and then have a facet where I ask somebody else in here to think of their sibling. And then I wait that moment and I kind of put the hook in. And I know that I've just said it where you're going to go, well, what does my brother do? And I know that information. Everything I've done is craft a

scenario that's going to set in motion you asking me the question that I know the answer to. Something you do is setting up a word you already know. Not always, but I try to do multiple different, so I have, that would be, if I did that more than once, you would instantly catch on. So what I do is I mix methods. In my show, I teach you how I did one thing slightly, and then I do the same thing in a totally different way,

and you go, what the F? So that's the fun of it. If I did a show and you didn't understand anything, you would get very bored and you'd get exasperated and annoyed with me. I like to spread breadcrumbs. The whole show, I teach you little things, takeaways, and that's why you have fun.

So you're teaching people what you're doing as you're doing it. Absolutely, like elements of it. You're not trying to hide the magic of it. Oh no, I will show people how to detect lies during the show. And so I'll do things, body language reads. I'm not teaching you to be a mentalist, but I'm giving away a little

bit of the craft while I go, because that's what hooks you in. You go, wow. And so as it gets, every phase gets a little more impressive and then it do something even crazier. You go, well, if he did that, how did you do that one? It just makes it more fun. You need to build. Sure, sure. Does mentalism have to do more with emotional intelligence or observing people's behavior? So it has to do with both in the same way that a hypnotist, if you say to me, I don't want to be hypnotized, I don't want to be hypnotized, I'm not going to be hypnotized, then at the end of the day, you won't be hypnotized. Does that make sense? The power of suggestion. But a hypnotist, a very talented, good one

can diffuse that person's underlying tension or why are they so nervous or what are they scared of or what's the problem? So in, in most scenarios, I try to get to the root of, will this person be good to work with or not? And when I'm doing a big show, I can quickly avoid people that I just don't think are going to be fun. Because some people, if let's say I walk up to you and you just had a really rough day or you got really bad news. And I don't want that. I don't ever want to bring up, my show is not ever going to bring you bad news. It's a fun show. It's interactive.

So I'll kind of shy away from that. But to answer the question, I think that it's more about observing people than the emotional intelligence. Because certain people, I just can't read more about observing people than the emotional intelligence because certain people, I just can't read well. There's no way around it. Yeah, like, so I can do certain things with them, but we won't get to the next level with them. It's just that simple.

There's no way around it. And then they'll come up to me in the show and be like, well, why didn't you do something more with me? And I'm like, I'm sorry, I couldn't. And then they're like, oh, yeah, exactly right. Exactly right.

It was a bit more opaque than others. So what's the perfect person to work with? Or who do you see? What's the type of person you see? You're like, yes, that's going to be a good person to work with. It's, it runs the gamut of the extreme. So the people that are most believing and most into it are always the most fun. And also the ones that are at the opposite end that are the most skeptical because nothing's better than having somebody arms cross body language like this. And I seek them out in the show. I have a lot of funny bits that are just literally finding that person that that's going to say, there's no way you're going to know this. And that's the best moment ever when you get that right. Cause that's when you get the explosive reactions on stage,

on TV and the ones like the David Blaine things where you just know in today's day and age where everything can be faked, everything can be reshot, but authenticity can't be faked. Like when you see someone's real reaction, you know, it's not actors, you know, it's, you just can't fake it. It's very difficult to fake surprise and being blown away. People can notice when it's, when it's off, you know? Yeah, of course. They can. Is there ever a, what do you call it? If you don't, you don't call it a trick, but you call it something else. Trick, routine, effect, whatever They can. Is there ever a, what do you call it? You don't call it a trick, but do you call it something else? Trick, routine, effect, whatever you want. Is there ever an... I don't mind trick.

I mean, at the end of the day, I'm tricking you, but my goal isn't the trick. Right. If you figure out how I did it, some of the time, it's more impressive than actually not knowing. Really? There's certain things I do where when you know, if you actually figure it out, somebody will walk up to me and goes, you couldn't have possibly done this and this. I go, that's exactly what I did.

He goes, there's no way. He goes, that's insane. So it's some of the things are even more impressive once you figure them out because they seem so ballsy. They go, you just did that in front of thousands of people. Like that could have gone wrong. What if, what if? And I go, that's exactly, that's the rush. I've been working with Teller without a break, and that's important, because you can talk about Mick and Keith Stones, and you can talk about how long they've been working, but they had three- or four-year breaks where they didn't talk to each other. Teller and I have been working continuously without a break,

and really without even 10 days. Of a break? Yeah, for 44 years. 44 years. And we are the longest running headliners in the history of Las Vegas. Wow. Not just running now.

We've been running in the same theater, the conveniently named Penn & Teller Theater, for 19 years. And we've been in Vegas now for 24, 25, something like that. But it's been 44 years. I started working with teller actually a little before I turned 20. And it's all I've ever done.

And my children have said to me, now if you weren't doing a magic show with Teller, what would you be doing? And I said, well children, I would be in prison. This kept you focused, yeah. There's nothing else I know how to do. I have no other skills. Your dad has no other skills at all.

This is what I know. Yeah, we are, I believe, I believe Tommy Smothers, when the Smothers brothers retired, said, it's now Penn and Teller who've been working the longest. And that's the way that'll be for a while. The idea of a partnership started having words like codependence as pejorative words started sneaking in on partnerships. Partnerships can be very, very powerful.

And the codependence becomes really interesting because there's stuff that I might have ended up being good at that I have no skills in at all because Teller's so good at them. Because when we started, when we were young, if one of us was a little better at something, they just did it. You do that, I'll do this. Yeah. So there's all this time that I don't know how to do that because Tell, they just did it. You do that, I'll do this. Yeah, so there's all this time

that I don't know how to do that, because Teller's good at it. So you can almost look, we didn't start out, you know, people talk about how, boy, you two are amazing, because your strengths and weaknesses fit together perfectly. We didn't start out that way. You develop that, you know, it's like,

oh, I can't do that anymore. Right, right. Well, with me, with Teller too, it's like, oh, I can't do that anymore. Well, with me, with Taylor too, it's that we never could. When you're in your early 20s, you're learning what you're gonna do. And if they put you on a track where you're not, you know, and you see that in sports, right? I mean, guys who were in high school, professional sports figures, are always the best

at every single thing in their high school. And then 10 years later, they can't play those other sports. They become, you know, they become that. And you see that in theater, too. You see people who are tremendous. When they were in high school, they are comedy and drama and writing and directing and producing and acting. They can do everything.

And then 15 years later, they only direct soap operas. drama and writing and directing and producing and acting. They can do everything. And then 15 years later, they only direct soap operas. Yeah. Those are the skills they have. Everything else has fallen away. Teller is probably the best alive now, among the best that's ever lived, at being able to see the stage

from the audience point of view and forget what he knows. It is a skill that is always important in art. If, whether you're painting, whether you're doing music, you have to have the feeling of what is it like to be someone else hearing this. It has to be the opposite of solipsistic. You've gotta see yourself outside. Really useful skill, but in magic. When you're doing a performance or?

Yeah, yeah, sure, you have to know, you have to have a theory of mind. When you're talking to somebody, you have to be able to, in order to say a sentence to you, I have to be able to imagine what you're like hearing that and who you are. And if I were doing this interview with someone that English was a second language, it would change the entire interview. If I was doing this with somebody who was particularly, you know, it matters who you're talking to.

And to get a general, what's it like for a person to walk into the Penn and Teller Theater? What is that person like? Well, that is what you need for comedy or music or anything. But in magic, you've got a whole different thing because you know things that they will never know that if they did know would change their experience professionally. So Teller's able to say, no one's gonna see your left hand

going into your pocket there. And you go, how do you know? And Teller's able to do that shift, that eco shift. There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you enjoyed this, please share it with your friend. Tag me. Let me know what you thought about this.

And the link for that is lewishouse.com slash 815. You can go back to that link and see all the show notes, check out who each individual is, the links to their specific episodes. So you can listen to those as well, the full interviews with them because they're all very powerful. And if you don't follow me on YouTube yet, make sure to go to youtube.com slash lewishouse. We've got almost a half a million subscribers over there. We put all of our videos out there from our podcast as well. And we've got some amazing inspirational content that we don't have on the podcast that we release every single week. So go to youtube.com slash lewishouse.

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an idea and bring it to life. You are the alchemist of your world. You can turn an idea, a thought, and bring it into reality. That is magic, my friend. You are a gift and you are born for a reason. It's time to bring your gifts to the world. Bring magic, real magic to the world by being your truest self and offering your gifts to others. I love you so very much. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.