What Magic & Mind Reading Reveal About the Brain | Asi Wind

Andrew Huberman 0:00 Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Asi Wind. Asi Wind is one of the top magicians and mentalists in the world. Now, you may be asking yourself, "Why would the Huberman Lab podcast host a magician mentalist?" And the obvious answer perhaps would be that magicians and mentalists reveal to us where our gaps in perception reside, that is where the human brain falters such that magicians and mentalists can take advantage of that and give us the impression, the illusion that certain things happened when they didn't. However, during today's discussion, you will learn that Asi Wind's magic and mentalist work, which by the way is absolutely astonishing, you can see examples of this in some of the links in the show note captions that will take you to YouTube clips in which Asi did some of these tricks and mentalist work on me directly in the studio, and there are other examples out there that we've linked to on the internet as well, that the work that Asi Wind does illustrates how we form memories, how we erase memories, and the specific things that we all can do in order to stamp down certain memories and to erase other memories. Indeed, much of what Asi Wind's work does is to use an understanding of how the brain works in order to create false memories, to erase recent memories, and indeed to use emotion and empathy and storytelling in order for you, the observer, to create a perception of something that happened that may or may not have actually happened. Indeed, what Asi reveals to us today tells us not how a magician or mentalist fools us, but rather how we, with our own brains, lead ourselves to believe that certain things happened when in fact they may or may not have happened and the way that we collaborate with others in order to create those either false or real perceptions. It's a discussion that I'm sure everyone, whether or not you're a fan of magic or not, will find fascinating. Indeed, I learned so much from the discussion with Asi about neuroscience and about how the human brain constructs narratives of the past, present, and future, that it informs not just my understanding of how the brain works, but indeed how to learn better, how to remember things better, and to consolidate that information to really stamp it into your memory so that you never forget. So while Asi Wind is a magician and mentalist, today's discussion is really a discussion about the neuroscience of how to learn, how to forget, how to access creativity, and how art and storytelling, empathy and emotion all can allow us to access powers within us that make us far more effective in whatever pursuits we may be

Andrew Huberman 2:48 after. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, magnesium, and potassium, the electrolytes, but no sugar. As I mentioned before on this podcast, I'm a big believer in getting sufficient hydration and making sure that that hydration includes sufficient electrolytes, salt, magnesium, and potassium. And the reason for that is that all the cells in our body, but indeed especially our neurons, our nerve cells, are critically reliant on electrolytes and hydration in order to function properly. LMNT makes it very easy to get the hydration and electrolytes you need. When I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I do is to drink 16 to 32 ounces of water with a packet of LMNT dissolved in it. I particularly like the raspberry-flavored LMNT, but then again, I also like the watermelon flavor, and the citrus flavor, and the orange flavor. So basically what I'm saying is, I really like all the flavors of LMNT. If you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to DrinkLMNT, spelled L-M-N-T, .com/huberman to claim a free sample pack with your order. Again, that's DrinkLMNT, L-M-N-T,.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out online. Now, I've been going to therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is extremely valuable. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, cardiovascular exercise, and resistance training, which of course I also do every week. The reason I know therapy is so valuable is that if you can find a therapist with whom you can develop a really good rapport, you not only get terrific support for some of the challenges in your life, but you also can derive tremendous insights from that therapy, insights that can allow you to better not just your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course also the relationship to yourself and to your professional life, to all sorts of career goals. In fact, I see therapy as one of the key components for meshing together all aspects of one's life and being able to really direct one's focus and attention toward what really matters. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com/huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by AeroPress. AeroPress is similar to a French press for making coffee but is in fact a much better way to make coffee. I first learned about AeroPress well over 10 years ago, and I've been using one ever since. AeroPress was developed by Alan Adler, who was an engineer at Stanford. And I knew of Alan because he had also built the so-called Aerobie Frisbee, so he was sort of famous in our community for developing these different feats of engineering that turned into commercial products. Now, I love coffee. I'm somebody that drinks coffee nearly every day, usually about 90 to 120 minutes after I wake up in the morning, although not always. Sometimes if I'm going to exercise, I'll drink coffee first thing in the morning. But I love, love, love coffee. And what I've personally found is that by using the AeroPress, I can make the best possible tasting cup of coffee. I don't know what exactly it is in the AeroPress that allows the same beans to be prepared into a cup of coffee that tastes that much better as compared to any other form of brewing that coffee, even the traditional French press. The AeroPress is extremely easy to use, and it's extremely compact. In fact, I take it with me whenever I travel, and I use it on the road in hotels, even on planes. I'll just ask for some hot water, and I'll brew my coffee or tea right there on the plane. With over 55,000 five-star reviews, AeroPress is the best-reviewed coffee press in the world. If you would like to try AeroPress, you can go to aeropress.com/huberman, that's A-E-R-O-P-R-E-S-S.com/huberman, to get 20% off any AeroPress coffee maker. AeroPress ships in the USA, Canada, and over 60 other countries in the world. Again, that's aeropress.com/huberman to get 20% off. And now for my discussion with Asi

Andrew Huberman 7:07 Wind.Ossi Wind, welcome.

Asi Wind 7:10 Thank you for having me.

Andrew Huberman 7:11 I can't tell you how excited I am to have you here today.

Asi Wind 7:14 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 7:14 I've seen you do your live shows twice, once in Los Angeles, once in New York, and both times, there were three major effects. First of all, I was absolutely astonished. There's truly no hyperbole that can capture what you are capable of doing. Um, just by way of example, folks, prior to coming in here, Ossi agreed to do a trick. He let me select a card, uh, an ace of hearts from a deck of cards. I held it. There was another card, ace of diamonds. I also held that. I looked at them. I turned them over in my hands. He's not touching them. He asked somebody in the room for a number, a number, a number. Everyone provides a number, then he asks me which person's number I would like to select. There's no prior agreements or communication here whatsoever. I selected the number seven. He says, "Turn over the cards that are still in my hands." He hasn't touched me. I turn over the cards and now, they are sevens, not aces. Unbelievable, and, uh, and yet, it happened, and, uh, that's but a minor example of the sorts of things that you do. So that's the first thing. Absolutely astonishing. Two, you involve many of the senses, not just visual perception, memory, et cetera, but many of the senses, and groups of people. You are able to somehow create perceptions in people or perhaps these perceptions are accurate that certain things have happened, and everyone agrees that these things happened. So it's not just one person being, quote unquote, tricked. And then the third is that you and I both share a fascination with the human mind and perception, which is really one of the main reasons why you're here today, because you are a scientist, uh, who I believe understands how perception works, understands the gaps in perception and memory, and understands these things at a practical level that no neuroscientist, not I nor anyone else who could tell you about the nuts and bolts of the brain and nervous system could ever approach. So welcome. I'm super excited for our conversation, and my first question-

Asi Wind 9:27 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 9:28 ... (laughs) is when you do a trick with one person, with many people, how confident are you that you're going to get the answer correct? Meaning, are you always operating at the level of 100% certainty that y- you're going to get it right? Or rather, is there a little bit of a gap? Are you running a, like a 90% probability? Um, and the reason I start with this question is that I think it's a very different situation when the mentalist, the magician is certain it's going to work out as opposed to when it's not. And I think it's the dynamic tension of the possibility that it might not work out that gets everyone so engrossed in what you do.

Asi Wind 10:13 Yeah, so, um, first of all, a lot of people think, do you ever fail? Do you ever get it wrong? And the truth is, there's something they don't know. We're gonna reveal some secrets here. Um, a lot of people don't know that we are very much like jazz musicians. I'm not a musician. I'm gonna probably butcher this analogy here. But we write the story as it goes. In other words, you might see me do a trick and think that's what I do every day, but I don't. So in other words, if something goes wrong, 'cause every person is really unpredictable. Uh, I said, "Take any card." Maybe I'm trying to make you take a certain card, maybe I'm trying to influence you, and you're not going for it. I'm okay with making a little detour. You just don't know I'm taking a detour, and I'm improvising and I will go somewhere else, and I'm okay with that. So a lot of the magic that I love to do, we call it jazzy magic, is magic that literally gets written as we go, but I'm the only one who knows it. Uh, and you go, "Wow, it concluded beautifully," right? So there's, there's some times when I, like after a show and I, and I go, "Wow, this did not work and that didn't work." And people say, "What do you mean? Everything worked perfect." They don't know what I see is a little different than what you see. So in that sense, when you're an amateur magician and you're just starting out and you don't have, you know, the, the experience, you can literally just get stuck and go, "Uh, uh, s- sorry. G- let's do it again." And it could happen, but for a seasonal, you know, a seasoned performer, someone who does it again and again and again, I, uh, I'll borrow from a Penn Jillette analogy that I love. It's like Groundhog Day, the movie. Uh, we get to relive the same night again and again and again, and guess what? People are very much alike. I'll hear the same hackling. I'll hear the same thing, or I- I- I start to see types. This person's gonna be confrontational. This person's gonna be... is, is a person who believes maybe in supernatural. Everybody has a vibe, and, you know, even though I'm not a scientist, I'm not a psychologist, uh, I don't have any degrees in any of those, but I'm a prac- practitioner of psychology. I try to stay in track a million times and I start to see patterns, behavioral patterns that I can use to my advantage. And like, for example, I noticed that it's easier to fool smart people as opposed to people who are not so smart.

Andrew Huberman 12:38 Tell me more about that.

Asi Wind 12:39 'Cause, you know, I'm relying on the bank of information you have in your head against you. It's Tai Chi. I know what you know, and I know that whenever you view anything, you have to fill in the blanks with lots of information. I show you a couple of things and you say, "Okay, this makes sense. This, da, da, da." And I know how you think, and the fact that I have an idea of what you know and what you don't know, I can use it against you, and that's a beautiful concept, right? As opposed to someone who's not so edu-... I don't know what he knows.... and they tend to think very simple, and they're the ones to figure out magic (laughs) the most because th- they don't fill in the blanks. They take it for what it is. Uh, you're telling yourself a better story. You enriching the experience based on all this ... the, the wealth of information you have about psychology and how this works, and how perception works, and how memory works. For example, you just described a trick I did for you. You did not describe the trick. You described your m- your memory of that trick. So my job, you know, and I'm borrowing from, uh, my master, maestro, Juan Tamariz, who is my favorite magician of all time, and I consider him ... we'll, we'll talk about him quite a bit now. Um, he taught me so much, but he, he talks a lot about memory. Like, we are ... first of all, we're encoding the information. I give you something to encode. Then I'm asking you to store it either in short-term memory, medium term, long term, uh, e- ec- ... I don't know if it's even a real term but a chemical, uh, memory, right, when it gets embedded in your memory. And then I'm trying to manipulate how you're going to recall the experience and what you did, you described my trick in a way that I could never do. I wish I could perform the trick you just described. I can't. But I was trying to create at least the impression, you recorded a feeling you had. You did not record what you saw and experienced, you recorded a feeling. It felt so amazing that the feeling was coded in the memory as well and therefore, you, you were the co-author of that trick. You, you helped me fool you.

Andrew Huberman 14:57 I'm very curious about the role of emotion ...

Asi Wind 14:59 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 14:59 ... in the co-authoring of these tricks. And by the way, folks, the conversation we're having today is not just about magic tricks and mentalists. This occurs at the level of interactions between people, one-to-one. This occurs at the level of media to the general audience of the world. This stuff scales, uh, at every level and in every domain of life. We'll get to how that ... exactly that occurs. I wonder if I could ask you about the reverse engineering of a trick, a hypothetical trick.

Asi Wind 15:31 Sure. Sure. Sure.

Andrew Huberman 15:31 So tell me if this trick is possible and if so, one of the possible ways that you would do this. Um, I, I think I've seen you do something similar to this or other mentalists do something similar to this. You're standing in a room full of people, let's say 50 people, and you have a piece of paper and a pen and you say, "Okay, I'm gonna write down a series of numbers." And you write them down, you fold it up, you put it on the table next to you. You set the pen down. There's no contact with it anymore. And then you go around the room and you just ask people for numbers between one and 25. You ask a certain number of people, and then somehow, you return to the paper, you open it up, and that's the sequence of numbers. That ... it seems like a straightforward but astonishing trick.

Asi Wind 16:18 It is. It's a classic. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 16:19 A classic. Okay.

Asi Wind 16:20 Classic of magic. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 16:21 For people like me, we want to know at least one solution to that challenge. How does ... what's one way in which a magician could do that? Obviously, we start to go to the physical explanation. Okay, somebody underneath the table that the piece of paper was on wrote down the numbers they heard and put it on the table. Uh, another solution would be that there was a stack of papers up there with any number of different combinations but then it's a very large number, big stack of paper, then it becomes hard to hide, and on and on.

Asi Wind 16:50 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 16:50 Um, all going in the wrong direction, of course. Um, I can also think of the end, uh, product way of doing this where the piece of paper that you show has the numbers that the people stated but somehow, we think it's those numbers when it's actually other numbers, like there's some sort of visual illusion that we all agree on seeing. But here I'm just guessing, so how could one do that trick?

Asi Wind 17:16 Wow, we need two hours to dissect this one. Um, so here's the deal. I just noticed something as you were going through all the options. As someone who ... I assume you're not a magician.

Andrew Huberman 17:26 No.

Asi Wind 17:26 Um, I just realized that a quality of magic is that it ignites your imagination and your creativity. You just basically saw something that has no explanation and you're a knowledgeable guy. (laughs) You know a lot about a lot of things. And it ... in a weird ... in a good way bothers you. "Why don't I know that answer? I know so much about the mind and how we sleep and how we, you know, how certain exercises affect our bodies and blah, blah, blah, but this series of number, I don't know." And that drives you nuts a bit. But it's good 'cause then your mind starts racing and, in thinking of ... oh, everything you said is a wonderful exercise in, uh, problem-solving, right? How it could be achieved, and then you slowly rule them out as, uh, too much paper, (laughs) too much work, (laughs) hiring somebody under a table to write may be a solution, but you have to pay somebody just to do that job. Um, but it's nice because, um, we're teasing the mind. We're teasing ... we're challenging the mind in an era where it seems like all the information is out there. We have s- ... I ... my smartphone can do, you know, more than my first computer could, right, in, in my pocket. So we are, we are up against ... and by the way, every time I, I tell you this, it's a bit of a tangent here. Um, every time technology advances, magicians get scared, say, "Oh, I ... people are ... uh, when they can do all these marvelous things, I mean, how are they going to care about the number you just pulled or, or a card changing in my hand?" And I attribute that to, again, your desire to see something marvelous.... without... By the way, there's, there are people that don't want to see magic. Like I do something that really is, seems impossible and they go, "Ah, it's sleight of hand." They, they come up with a very simple solution. They're not nitpicking about exactly how you did it. They go, "Oh, he's fast. He's fast with his hands." Or, you know, they come up with a very simple solution that, that... I don't know why it satisfies them, but it does. And it's because they lack the desire to see magic. So, uh, to me, again, and we're going back to the co-authoring, I really need someone, a partner, when I, whenever I do magic, that... Someone who has this desire to see something that's beautiful, that's going to bend the rules of what we know is possible. Right? And they're joining me. So to your question, how is it done? There's many, many, um, ways to achieve this effect. And because we don't possess... I don't bel-... We can talk about this if you want, about the supernatural. I don't believe that anybody possesses supernatural powers or even close to that. Um, and because of that, we... We have to cheat. We have to do some dirty work, which I don't want you to know about. Um, and, so in, in other words, every trick that I do has a little scar, a little... A, a moment I wish did not exist. And by the way, a magician, when they choose a, a trick like that, they need to say, "Oh, I can go this route or this route." They're gonna pay a price. With this version, "Oh, I cannot do it this way. Here, it's not as clean. Here, I cannot be as direct. Here, I have to choose maybe certain people in the audience." Again, I'm tiptoeing around it so I don't reveal how it's done. Um, but you're making a sacrifice with every choice you make. The goal is at the end to make somebody as smart as you go, "How?" (laughs) And then start racing, and then... And at the end, you reach a dead end, hopefully. It's magic. You excel and enjoy this. And, and, and that's... I want you to surrender. And, and it's a good surrender. It's not, uh... You're not being defeated. You, you, you give into the, to this place where magic could happen. You, you make room for something that should not happen in this world to happen. And, and that's why I love magic so much. It, it is, uh, a bit of a reminder that... I'll tell you a story. There is a juggler who's not a magician. He's, uh... And, and I'm not gonna mention names for a reason. So he juggles on the streets and, you know, makes some money on the streets. And one day, he goes to see a magic show. And the magic, the magician, a wonderful magician, uh, who does this wonderful act. It's the zip code act. He says to people, um, "Tell me your zip code," and then he tells them where they live. "Tell me where you live." He tells them the zip code. And then he describes places around them. "Oh, you have a Starbucks there, and a blah, blah, blah." And like he describes... It's amazing. It's wonderful. Now, this juggler, not a magician, watches a magician who is doing a trick. There's a scientific explanation to how it's done. It's not su-... It's not anything beyond that. Um, and again, it's wonderful. And he goes, "How did he do that?" And then he comes up with the solution that the magician must have remem- memorized all the zip codes in the world. Not the case, but that's the impression. He goes home and starts memorizing all the zip codes in America first. He spends thousands of hours to memorize zip codes for real. He's doing the real version of what the magician did, and he performs it now all over the country. He's doing the zip code act for real. And the beauty of this story is that a false performance, uh, uh, an artificial present- uh, presentation of a skill inspired somebody to do something that is real and therefore push his limits, his human, you know, realistic limits, to a level that a lot of people go, "That's not possible." Right? And, and I think it, it's a beauty about this. And again, it goes back to your question, how is it done? So maybe the solution you just came up with is better than what I do, but at least ignited you to, to think about it. So I... It's, it's, it's really a, a big reason, uh, an important reason why I love magic so much.

Andrew Huberman 24:06 Staying with my question of how-

Asi Wind 24:08 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 24:08 ... a trick like that is done.

Asi Wind 24:10 You really want to know. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 24:11 I'm... Well, I don't think you're actually going to tell me the specific order of operations to make it happen. Uh, I don't expect that. But I can think of, um, two kind of, um, endpoints for exploring this. One is... Or at least two. One is to manipulate what's on the paper, right? Like...

Asi Wind 24:34 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 24:35 The other is to manipulate what people say or are likely to say, perhaps by selecting people that are likely to say certain numbers because you have some understanding of that.

Asi Wind 24:43 That's true. That's very true.

Andrew Huberman 24:43 I don't know how that would happen. The other is to completely revise people's understanding of what just happened in a group. And I think the last possibility is the one that intrigues me and most people the most, the idea that even in the company of other rational, well-rested, sober, meaning non-inebriated or on drugs, people, that-

Asi Wind 25:09 (laughs) Sometimes it helps. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 25:10 ... that there's a... There could be a collective perception that is not accurate-... but everyone agrees to confabulate together. And the reason I ask this and I focus on this third possibility is that we know that the memory system is a confabulation system.

Asi Wind 25:26 Correct.

Andrew Huberman 25:27 A good example of this would be people who sadly have some form of dementia.

Asi Wind 25:31 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 25:32 They often will find themselves in a room, doing something, and if you ask them, "Hey, what were you doing?" They don't say, "I don't know." They say, "Oh, you know, I came in here to do something..." And they create these elaborate stories of what got them there, which may make sense to them, may not. Um, but we all do this. We all confabulate. False memories are... is a huge topic into itself, but, um, we all c- confabulate. Uh, memory is not perfect. So, um, I imagine this third possibility is one that you work with and that you massage. Um, how does one think about memory in the context of these experiments that, uh... I just call them experiments. These tricks that you do.

Asi Wind 26:12 Y- I, I like expe-

Andrew Huberman 26:12 But, but-

Asi Wind 26:12 By the way, I love that word.

Andrew Huberman 26:13 Right, right. And here we agree that we're going to be talking about science today, as we always do when- whenever I see you. Um, and in experiments, as people may or may not know, you ask a question but you pose hypotheses. So you say, like, "How do we cure cancer?" But then you pose a hypothesis. You say, "I think it's going to be cured by doing blank, blank, and blank." And then you test that, and you try and rule out your hypothesis.

Asi Wind 26:37 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 26:37 So it's a little bit of why I call it an experiment. Um, so for instance, um, is there a way that you can get people to believe that they saw the numbers, let's make it very simple, three, eight, and seven-

Asi Wind 26:51 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 26:51 ... when in fact you held up a piece of paper that said something very different? Is that... Have you done that before?

Asi Wind 26:58 I, I, I see where you're going with this, uh, and I, I, and I love that you s- use the word experiments. One of my heroes, Chan Canasta, was a psychologist who, who used psychology in his work, uh, as a magician, as a mentalist, and he didn't... He never called his pieces, uh, tricks or magic. He called them experiments.

Andrew Huberman 27:18 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 27:19 And he was careful about it. He... It's not just, uh, an aesthetic choice. He wanted to, to plant this seed. In their mind, experiment means it could fail, okay, which is ve- a very good starting point for any dramatic, uh... Because if something's gonna work and... But if there's something at stake, something could fail, people are more engaged. So I love the word. I, I sometimes use the, the word, "Uh, let's try an, an experiment."

Andrew Huberman 27:48 Yeah, it's like, uh, these, um, crazy people that climb up the side of buildings with no ropes.

Asi Wind 27:54 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 27:54 I mean, we don't want to see them fall, but the possibility that they could fall is what's exciting. The mo- the movie Free Solo-

Asi Wind 27:59 Correct.

Andrew Huberman 27:59 ... with Alex Honnold, we all know at the beginning he lives. He, he, he lives, and yet you wanna see it in case he might not live and even though you know he lives. In some ways, that's a, a magic trick-

Asi Wind 28:11 That's, that's the-

Andrew Huberman 28:11 ... into itself.

Asi Wind 28:11 That's the brilliance of David Blaine, who I consider one of my dearest friend and my, one of my favorite magicians in the world. And what he does, I mean, we can talk about him at length, but, you know, blending real stuff with magic and it's almost... Sometimes it's hard to tell what is real and what's not, and I, I, I even love that aspect. And a lot of people don't know, but all the stuff he does is real. When he's holding his breath night after night in, now in Vegas, uh, at the Wynn, 10 minutes and, you know, sitting, uh, in the audience watching David do that is so inspiring because I, I look at it symbolically. He, he's, he's showing us...' cause he was inspired by a kid who survived, um, being trapped under ice for a long time and recovered to full recovery и he, and he goes, "If he can do it, then everybody could." And it's, it's a beautiful... To me, it's... i- i- the message is so strong, just beautiful.

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Asi Wind 30:46 Orient me again. The question was?

Andrew Huberman 30:47 Yeah, so the question is have you done or is it possible-

Asi Wind 30:50 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 30:50 ... to get people to think that you're holding up a piece of paper that says... now I forget the numbers-

Asi Wind 30:55 Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 30:55 ... my working memory wasn't engaged enough to do it, uh, whatever, um, three, four, eight, uh, that's not what I said earlier, when in fact they are looking at a piece of paper that says something different? Is that, is that something that can be done?

Asi Wind 31:06 Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman 31:07 Hmm.

Asi Wind 31:07 Absolutely. There's a, there's actually a piece where you, you have a piece of paper, literally printed piece of paper, and you control someone's mind. You say, "Uh, I'm gonna make you see things distorted. You're not gonna see reality the way everybody in this room, including me, will see it."... starting now. And it's literally a piece of paper that says, "Two plus two." And everybody can see it, the entire audience can see it's, "Two plus two, what's the answer?" And he goes, "16." Okay. And, uh, let me try something easier, "One plus one?" And he goes, "24." And he, he, he's... This guy is, uh, cognitively smart, sharp, (laughs) he's not on drugs. He cannot answer those questions. It's an augu- augmentation of reality. And there, i- i- that manifests m- in many forms in magic, the idea of seeing something that is in a, in a sort, you know, in the optical illusion land of what you see is not what you see. I, and that's probably applicable to every trick you, you'll ever see. What you see is not what you see, it's what I want you to see. And, and I, I love that, and again, the, the, the chain of canastas the guy spoke to you about, he would go and he would take three cards, let's say ace of hearts, king of clubs, seven of spades. Three cards. He'll go to a coffee shop and, uh, say, uh, "Choose one." And they say, "King of clubs." "Thank you. Go to another table." And he will do it all night. And people, "What is he doing? He's not doing any magic today, nothing." He's just surveying the audience to see how they think, right? And this is information that we collect, uh, over the years. Like, there's, uh, something called, um... I can influence you, let's say, to take a specific card, but it has to be done in such a way that it feels like it was a free choice. It was not a free choice. And, uh, the difference between a good or a great magician and a decent magician, or an okay magician, is that one makes you feel like, "I chose this card. There is no way you made me pick this card. There is no way." And that's a sort of augmentation. It's you feel like you have control, and yet you don't. And you feel it with conviction. You could swear, "Are you sure that's the one?" So there's a famous, famous, um, thing that he, he used to do, he would say, "I can make people change their mind or not." And he says it upfront. He says, um, "You're gonna choose a card, okay? Any card you like. I'll go to the audience, you point to any person you want, they'll choose another card. Whatever they choose will be the card you're thinking of. And then I'll give them 10 seconds to change their mind, and if they do, it will still be correct. They can change their mind as many times as they want and I don't care. Once they say, 'That's it, that's the card,' that will be the card you're thinking of."

Andrew Huberman 34:15 How can that be?

Asi Wind 34:17 So the truth is, and I'll reveal a little bit about that, there is no trickery here as far as, you know, sleight of hand or anything like that. He literally was a master at making people either want to stick to a decision or change it. He would basically manipulate their insecurity, their ego, something about them to either resist changing or to really want to change.

Andrew Huberman 34:47 Hm.

Asi Wind 34:47 And, and, and to me... And I, I, I, I have a conflict, uh, a dilemma about this, because my whole Fool Us act, which, uh, if we want, we can talk about, is really based on, on this conflict or this, uh, w- problem I have. Um, sometimes the, the method is way more beautiful than the effect itself. So t- ... That's why I have no problem telling you that Chen did that. Chen found a way with, uh, using specific w- you know, language, or, or gestures or whatnot, uh, without revealing too much, to make somebody either stick to their choice or change their mind.

Andrew Huberman 35:28 He could literally control their bias toward one or

Andrew Huberman 35:31 the other.

Asi Wind 35:31 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 35:32 Um, does it involve touching their body in any particular way?

Asi Wind 35:35 Maybe.

Andrew Huberman 35:36 Yeah, maybe.

Asi Wind 35:37 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 35:37 Yeah. Many t- many times in your, um, performances and the performances of other mentalists and magicians, they will say, you know, I don't know, "Pick a number," or, "Pick a card," and then, uh, right before the trick is about to advance, they'll say, "Are you sure?" Okay.

Asi Wind 35:51 Oh, that's a big one.

Andrew Huberman 35:52 And they'll say, "Yes, I'm sure," or, "Mm, no, I'm gonna switch." Okay. Um, and based on what you've told us already, um, it's clear that the skilled mentalist or magician can work with either scenario. Is maybe it's a bit of a... It's the improvisation. Um, but what I want to know is when you look at somebody's physical body, how they sit, their shape, um, and other features, maybe how they dress, how they stand, maybe something about their eyes or their face, can you make better predictions as to what sorts of numbers they'll pick, whether or not they're gonna stick to their choice or change their choice?

Asi Wind 36:29 Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman 36:29 Okay.

Asi Wind 36:29 100%.

Andrew Huberman 36:29 I think there's a lot of interest in this, and maybe you could, um... Since we're talking in generic terms and we're not presenting you with a line of people and asking, uh, um, you which, which person would do what, um, would you be willing to share what some of those cues are? So I'm, um... You know me, I wear this black shirt. Uh, I have other shirts, but I don't, uh, wear them on camera. And, um, you know, I comb my hair a certain way, I sit a certain way. I mean, what sorts of predictions emerge from that? Or am I striking on the wrong variables?

Asi Wind 37:00 So i- it's not the big things that, that will reveal to me what... 'Cause I, I do kind of, like, profile a little bit for the magic purposes. Uh, what kind of trick I will do with you and what I can't do with you, what I will do with this guy or that guy, right? Uh, and it's not the shirt. It's not how you wear your hair. Uh, it's really small things. And, uh, I, I can talk about the many, uh, people that influenced me. Avner D- the Eccentric is one of my favorite performers. Um-

Andrew Huberman 37:29 His name is literally The Eccentric?

Asi Wind 37:31 Uh, it's, it's, uh, it's a different name, but he goes by Avner The Eccentric.

Andrew Huberman 37:34 Uh-huh.

Asi Wind 37:35 And he's a wonderful performer. It's, it's even hard to categorize what he does, but he's...... I, I, I'm doing a disservice, a cl- a clown, a mime, a juggler, a magician. And I've never seen someone who's better at what we call audience management. There's something we call audience management, is how do you interact with people? And he's able to get... He- he- he- again, I'm- I'm butchering his- his, uh, uh, his- his class to- to something very simple, but he gets three yeses from a- a person. Meaning, I can ask you non-verbally to agree to participate with something I want you to do.

Andrew Huberman 38:20 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 38:21 And he will do small things, like just a little gesture and they- he- he can see if they go for it. He sees if there's that dance. Can we... Is that person com- complying to something very small or is he resisting? And then easily, I can go to the next person. So and- and he's a master, a master at, uh, doing that. Uh, even breathing. If I breathe th- a- a- a certain way when I... Uh, this is, uh, it blew my mind when I first learned from Avner. It's like when you walk into his, uh, place. So you don't see me, I'm behind a cur- curtain or something and I walk in, and the first thing I do is (exhales) or as opposed to (inhales) Do I take the breath in or out when I f- the first step I take on stage? And the audience, in a weird way, mimics that.

Andrew Huberman 39:14 Really?

Asi Wind 39:14 Yeah. So if I go (exhales) , you feel, you- you kinda tend to relax with me. It- it- it... Now, if you want a- a- a more, uh, exaggerated example of that, if you watch a movie and it's really tense and there's tension, you will start feeling tension, right? We're- we're kind of like... Empathy is a big, big part of what we do. Uh, that's why one of the things I choose to do in my show when I first start is not to start with the most amazing magic to blow your mind, "Oh my God, he's amazing." It's- it's- it's more... I- I gear the first pieces towards connecting with you. I'd rather say something really endearing, funny, connecting, truthful, honest, before I start trying to blow your mind. Why? I wanna connect with you first so we all... You know, a mother will be proud of her- her sons playing guitar and much more forgiving if he makes a little mistake or something. But she'll... Every little achievement he will make, she will be so proud of him 'cause she has empathy. She wants him to succeed. She wants him to do well. So I want you to adopt me. I want you to-

Andrew Huberman 40:25 Hm.

Asi Wind 40:25 ... to feel empathy towards me. I want you to be... I'm rooting for you.

Andrew Huberman 40:29 This makes a lot of sense. Um, I do some live events and I don't think about whether or not I exhale or inhale when I get out there.

Asi Wind 40:36 (laughs)

Narrator 40:36 I'll be honest.

Andrew Huberman 40:36 But I definitely try and get out there and just kinda take it all in and relax. And we have a... what I hope is a relaxing, interesting conversation. And you kind of work with the amplitude of excitement. And- and I'm not thinking about it in any kind of conscious way, but this is actually a wonderful tool that I hope everyone will export from this conversation, which is if you ever need to do public speaking, um-

Asi Wind 40:57 Breathe. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 40:58 ... ha- have probably a good long exhale as you get out there will be great. Everyone will relax. It's also tough for me to see live theater because oftentimes if it's not going well for them, I feel embarrassed for them. I think people vary, however, in terms of their levels of empathic attunement. Some people are very tuned into the emotional states of others-

Asi Wind 41:19 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 41:19 ... and- and some are not.

Andrew Huberman 41:20 So are there people in audiences, assuming a relatively random array of people, that are fairly rigid? Like you wouldn't want to... You wouldn't call them up to the, uh, table-

Asi Wind 41:32 Absolutely. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 41:32 ... okay. Um, so when you select someone to come up in front of the crowd, um, are you, uh, basing that on some level of empathic attunement that they're- they're- they're in sync with you?

Asi Wind 41:44 Absolutely. So i- it starts with... The first thing... Look, you come in cold. The audience, as you said, uh, the- the first, and I'm quoting Avner here, the first thing they do is they say, "I hope this doesn't suck." And also the performer says, "I hope it doesn't su- it's not gonna suck." Uh, the- the starting point is it depends. Expectation could vary, you know, if something's really hyped and you go, "Oh, this is gonna be great." Or you've seen the artist and you trust them. But if you come in cold, you don't know the person, you don't know if it's gonna be great or not, you just happen to be there and there's a- a magic show. Ah, let's check it out. There's- there's tension. There's almost like they're auditioning you. Uh, I- I wa- I wonder if it's gonna be worth my time. So... And I don't care if people bought a ticket to see my off-Broadway show or not, the first 10, 15 minutes, it's really about telling them in so many, you know, not words, but telling them, "I'm here for you. I'm here to connect with you, and I'm here to- to create this... Some- some wonderful thing that we're gonna feel together." I want them to feel that.

Andrew Huberman 42:51 It's like an intimacy.

Asi Wind 42:52 Yes. And that to me, by the way, is way more important than me fooling people. Like, if somebody came to me after a show said, and said, "Oh, wow. Your magic is unbelievable. I have no idea how you did it," that's the lowest compliment I can get. And thankfully and gratefully, often I get the, uh, the- the most common one is that, "You know, the magic was great, but you... We liked you."

Andrew Huberman 43:18 They feel connected to you.

Asi Wind 43:19 And I love that, because to me, the magic is important. It's... I want it to be really deceptive. I want it to be, you know, impossible and- and beautiful and whatnot. But to me it's- it's also a vehicle to connect with people, 'cause at the end of the day that's what it is. And that's the only difference I can have, 'cause there's a lot of magicians. A lo- a lot of people can do magic that's... that you can't figure out. That's the lowest bar. You fool me, good magician.... make me feel magic higher, and maybe feel magic and connect it. It's like if somebody cannot even explain what I did in my show and goes, "You had to be there." That's something Steve Martin says all the time, "You had to be there. I can't tell you in, with words what it's like to see his show. You have to see it in person." That, to me, is a very high goal, uh, of, of, uh, like I want them to remember the experience and the feeling rather than particularly, oh, the night. Uh, I want them to, to care about what they experienced emotionally.

Andrew Huberman 44:24 Mm-hmm. And that's how I recalled the trick that you did outside. Uh, the person who initially connected us, uh, just absolutely terrific, um, what I call close contact, uh, card magician, Franco Pasquale-

Asi Wind 44:36 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 44:36 ... here in Los Angeles. Um, he has amazing, uh, card skills.

Asi Wind 44:41 Amazing. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 44:41 He does, um, something with his card tricks I noticed. Um, I'll go to the Magic Castle as often as possible and I just watch and like to take this in, and I try and think about the neuroscience behind it as, as you can tell.

Asi Wind 44:51 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 44:51 And, um, when he lands a trick, um, meaning when the person takes the card and says, "Oh my goodness," you know, like, "H- how did you know?" Or it's like the, the ace-

Asi Wind 45:00 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 45:00 ... or the switch the card, whatever it is, Franco also acts surprised.

Asi Wind 45:04 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 45:04 He joins you as an audience member momentarily. He goes, "Ho," and then, and then he goes back to being the t- the, the magician.

Asi Wind 45:13 Great.

Andrew Huberman 45:13 And I find that especially important for people to understand because you do the same, and I always say having studied the lectures of many, many spectacular scientists and lecturers, that the best lecturers in the classroom obviously are teaching the material from a place of deep understanding of the material, one would hope, right?

Asi Wind 45:33 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 45:34 Um, so they have mastery of the material, in some case, virtuosity with the material. But as they're presenting the material to people who know nothing about it, they themselves are showing their delight in the material as if it's the first time they've ever seen it. And so they are both student and teacher at the same time, and you feel immense resonance with them.

Asi Wind 45:53 It's nice.

Andrew Huberman 45:53 And it reminds me of the experience of seeing you do magic or mentalist work.

Asi Wind 45:58 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 45:59 Um, I'm yet to see you go, "Oh my goodness." But I think it's the, um, the sense that you're collaborating in something, and there's this giving over of self. Like, I'm, I trust Asi to take me some place with this. So the resistant people, the people that sort of like, "I'm not gonna let him fool me," right?

Asi Wind 46:20 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 46:20 What's so amazing is that in your shows oftentimes those people are the ones that, are the ones walking out just shaking their heads. I know because I've brought some of them along to your shows going, "There's no way."

Asi Wind 46:31 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 46:31 "There's no way." And yet you, you, you got them. So do the resistant people serve a role even if they're not called up?

Asi Wind 46:37 Of course.

Andrew Huberman 46:38 Yeah. What role do skeptics play in convincing other people that something happened that didn't really happen?

Asi Wind 46:43 So first of all, the transformation, let's just say, uh, somebody's a believer in you, you show magic and you... Nice, it's, it's wonderful. We can celebrate magic together. But if somebody's a skeptic, really skeptical, and have had really... I, and I, and I sensed that I could convert them, I could transform them, and the audience watches this transformation, so we're going from here to here, that's a, a wonderful thing. So I will... Every now and then I will recognize the person who's like, "Mm, mm, mm, mm," and you slowly start to see 'em melt-

Andrew Huberman 47:15 Hmm.

Asi Wind 47:16 ... and softens.

Andrew Huberman 47:17 It's almost like a musician at a wedding, you know, they're the people that jump up and dance immediately, but if you're a skilled musician, you get that person that, you know, their, their wife is saying, "Come on, let's dance."

Asi Wind 47:26 (laughs) And he doesn't.

Andrew Huberman 47:26 And they're like, "Mm, mm," won't move. And then maybe you hit a certain motif in the music and the person taps their foot a little bit, moves their head. And then there are-

Asi Wind 47:33 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 47:33 ... certain people that they won't dance at all unless their song comes up, and then they like dart to the dance floor.

Asi Wind 47:38 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 47:38 Sounds a little bit like that.

Asi Wind 47:39 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 47:40 And you've captured them. You've captured their emotion, you've captured their willingness, you've captured their whole body, i- willingness to participate in something-

Asi Wind 47:47 Of course.

Andrew Huberman 47:48 ... that a minute before they were either too embarrassed, too stubborn, or too tired to engage in.

Asi Wind 47:53 So here's the deal. Magic could be, and often is, intimidating. I am basically challenging your intellect. I, and, and some people, if they take it the wrong way, they, what they hear is, "You're telling me that you're smarter than me. You're telling me you know things I don't know and I'm not even close to knowing. So screw you." (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 48:17 Right.

Asi Wind 48:17 And, and they, they will reject it aggressively. Like I've had, uh, uh, thankfully it's a percent, uh, a time when I, you know, we do walk around magic and I go and there's some people as soon as they see me go, "No, no, no, no, thanks." They don't wanna see it. And, and I, I... To me that, that drove me nuts. Like why don't they wanna s- they don't even know what I'm about to offer.

Andrew Huberman 48:41 You're gonna violate their sense of self-trust.

Asi Wind 48:44 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 48:44 That's I think the fear.

Asi Wind 48:45 Absolutely. And, and as a magician or as an artist if I, if I use that, but, uh, my goal is to also educate them as I do the magic that we're creating this safe space where these things could happen and it's clear that the, um, I'm using you for your own good. I, I, you know, I did a whole foolus

Asi Wind 49:10 act exactly about knowing and not knowing. So I, uh, I'm not gonna spoil too much. If people wanna see it, they can see it. Um, I'll tell you a backstory on this if you don't mind. So Tommy... Uh, the three major, um, heroes of magic are Juan Tamariz, Tommy Wander, and Chan Canasta.

Andrew Huberman 49:30 Are they alive still?

Asi Wind 49:31 Chan is not, uh, not, and, uh, Tommy passed. Uh, Juan is still kicking butt in Madrid. Uh-

Andrew Huberman 49:37 I think I saw him at the Castle. He's very, uh-

Asi Wind 49:40 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 49:40 ... very, um, exuberant.

Asi Wind 49:41 Exce-... Uh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 49:42 Yeah, okay.

Asi Wind 49:43 He's, uh, so he's a, a hero and, and, uh, I'm his student. So, but let's talk about Tommy for a sec. So Tommy-... for a long time, he, he did magic that, that m- magicians did not know how it works. It's, it was so devious that even magicians did not know how it works. And at some point, he released some DVDs that teach his magic. And the trick is, is very simple, he borrows someone's watch, it disappears, and there's a table right next to him with a little box and a ribbon. And he literally grabs the ribbon, so he never touches the box, lifts the box, gives it to somebody, he opens it, inside there's an al- alarm clock. They unscrew the alarm clock and inside is their watch.

Andrew Huberman 50:29 No. I mean, yes. (laughs)

Asi Wind 50:32 Yes. But even magicians who saw that, they go, "I have no idea how it's done. No idea." And then I remember watching the explanation for the first time, and I was thinking that the method was by far more interesting, intriguing, revealing, just beautiful. It made the trick less. Like, I said, "You should perform the explanation. Don't perform the trick, perform the explana-" And, and I, I, I bi- I, I broke the rules of magic. Like, my magi- my non-magician friends will come over and say, "Let, lemme show you something." And I show 'em the trick and they go, "Wow, that's amazing. Lemme show the explanation." And their mind was blown.

Andrew Huberman 51:15 Are you willing to share a little bit of what the explanation is or is that not...

Asi Wind 51:18 No, no.

Andrew Huberman 51:19 Okay.

Asi Wind 51:19 But, but I will explain a little bit. So the expla- I tell what exp- the explanation was that it revealed that he's an engineer, that he can build props that are like ingenious, uh, i- i- in some, I, again, I'm, I'm going around it, but at some point, the person who opens the box is doing part of the trick and he doesn't know it. He's, he's creating the trick, but he doesn't know he's contributing something to it. Um, and it's just beautiful, metaphorically, symbolically, it's just on so, it hits so many levels at least, and that planted a seed in my mind. I wanna create an effect that the method is prettier than the trick itself. So I worked for five years to create an explanation, a pseudo explanation to a trick that was just beautiful, and it was an opportunity to... I don't, have you seen it? I don't know if you've-

Andrew Huberman 52:12 It's the one you did for Penn & Teller.

Asi Wind 52:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 52:14 Yeah. I, um, you can describe it or I can describe it.

Asi Wind 52:16 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 52:17 I mean...

Asi Wind 52:17 Let's see how you remember it. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 52:19 Um, right. Uh, I, I have more interest in listening than speaking, um, but I'll, I'll tell you how I remember it.

Asi Wind 52:25 Okay.

Andrew Huberman 52:25 Um, you're in a very, you're in front of a very large audience-

Asi Wind 52:28 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 52:28 ... that includes the, um, scientist/show guys at Penn & Teller-

Asi Wind 52:33 Penn & Teller.

Andrew Huberman 52:33 ... who basically debunk stuff. They're kind of the-

Asi Wind 52:35 They try to figure it out.

Andrew Huberman 52:36 They try and figure stuff out. Um, y- some, they are asked to pick someone in the audience. They pick a guy, as I recall you wore a green and white sweater.

Asi Wind 52:46 Wow, you have a good memory.

Andrew Huberman 52:48 Um, yeah.

Asi Wind 52:48 (laughs) Wow.

Andrew Huberman 52:49 Um, he stands up and, um, you ask him to pick a card, I think, I forget what it is, a jack of clubs perhaps, um, let's just say for the sake of example, jack of clubs. You said, "Are you sure?" You're now on stage, re- mind you, there are hundreds of people in the audience.

Asi Wind 53:03 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 53:03 Maybe more. And you say, "Are you sure?" And he goes, "Yeah." And then he goes, and you say, "Are you very sure?" And he, he says, "No, I'm gonna switch." So now it's-

Asi Wind 53:11 You have a, first of all, you have a good memory.

Andrew Huberman 53:12 Uh, that-

Asi Wind 53:13 Wow.

Andrew Huberman 53:13 Perhaps. Perhaps.

Asi Wind 53:14 (laughs) Wow.

Andrew Huberman 53:14 Um-

Asi Wind 53:15 I've never really

Andrew Huberman 53:15 ... been, I've been accused of... I have a little bit of an audiographic memory f- for certain things.

Asi Wind 53:19 Oh, wow.

Andrew Huberman 53:20 But not a visual, uh, memory that's perfect. They're sort of a-

Asi Wind 53:23 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 53:23 ... adjacent. We could talk about that sometime if something helps you.

Asi Wind 53:26 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 53:26 If you need to learn neuroanatomy, that's about it.

Asi Wind 53:28 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 53:29 Can be cultivated. Okay. So then he switches the card, let's just call it, um, uh, I don't know, jack of, uh, spades, right? Okay. Um, or king, uh, king of spades, doesn't matter. Let's say jack of spades, and then next to you on the table up on the stage is, uh, a table, a round table, um, with a plexiglass box.

Asi Wind 53:53 Cigar box. It's-

Andrew Huberman 53:53 Cigar box.

Asi Wind 53:54 Yeah, no-

Andrew Huberman 53:54 It's clear.

Asi Wind 53:55 No. No, not yet.

Andrew Huberman 53:56 Yep. No?

Asi Wind 53:56 Not yet. Later.

Andrew Huberman 53:57 Later. Okay.

Asi Wind 53:58 At first, it's just a wooden cigar box.

Andrew Huberman 53:59 A wooden box, that's right.

Asi Wind 54:01 A wooden cigar box.

Andrew Huberman 54:01 And a mug.

Asi Wind 54:02 Correct.

Andrew Huberman 54:02 A white mug, not unlike the mug I have here except white.

Asi Wind 54:05 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 54:05 You take a sip from that mug, and then at some point during this exchange, and then you, um, open the box-

Asi Wind 54:13 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 54:14 ... and you pull from the box, of course, the card that he selected. And everyone goes, goes, "Oh my goodness, how could that possibly be?"

Asi Wind 54:22 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 54:23 Because obviously anyone could have been selected in the audience, he switched his choice, et cetera. Um, but then you reveal how the trick is done, or at least seemingly reveal it, which is that beneath the box, there's some, uh, a bunch of different decks of cards on a big-

Asi Wind 54:39 52.

Andrew Huberman 54:39 ... 52 on a turnstile, so within each one a, um... Right, and I, I missed a piece of it, you, you pull out the whole deck and only one card is turned over.

Asi Wind 54:46 One verse and all the other cards are blank. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:48 All the other cards are blank, right-

Asi Wind 54:49 Exactly.

Andrew Huberman 54:49 ... so there's more to it. So then it turns out that there are 52 different decks underneath the table, and it's on a turnstile, so you can actually dial it in. Okay.

Asi Wind 54:56 And let's, let's keep the ending surprise.

Andrew Huberman 54:58 Right.

Asi Wind 54:59 So there's a, there's a ni- a surprise ending to it. But-

Andrew Huberman 55:01 Right. So, so then it at least seemingly makes sense as to how Asi did this. He has a, all the different option, possible options available to him physically, but the audience doesn't realize that. Also, the, the mug, by the way, engages a magnet system that allows him to dial the, the deck of cards to the-

Asi Wind 55:19 Exactly.

Andrew Huberman 55:19 ... correct one that allows him to match the choice, so it truly could be any card in the deck-

Asi Wind 55:25 Good memory. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 55:25 ... meaning it's all, it, the, so the straightforward explanation is it's all physical trickery by way of props.

Asi Wind 55:31 Correct. So here's the deal. Uh, what I tried to achieve with this piece is first to make people feel magic. So the trick, it's a good trick, you know, name any card, the, the card he named was reversed, and then it was the only blue card in the deck, and then all the other cards were blank. So it's clearly the only card he could've named, and he did switch, uh, which is an amazing detail that you remembered. He did switch from the king of clubs to the king of spades or vice versa.

Andrew Huberman 55:59 Something like that, yeah.

Asi Wind 56:00 Now...... so people felt what it's like to see, uh, a good card trick. All right? And then I wanted them to feel what it's like to know. And the lesson here is, you know, you could satisfy your curiosity, "Oh, that's how it's done," and you can go on with your life and that's it. And, and that's what happens to a magician when he first learned the secrets to, you know, something that fooled you. There's disappointment. I remember the first trick that was revealed to me. Um, it was a ha- a little old red handkerchief stuffed into the hand. (blowing air) "How..." Gone. And I'm like, "What? Do it again." And he did it again. He did it 10 times in a row. I could... And then, he explained to me how it's done. And the secret was so simple and stupid that I went, "No. No, no."

Andrew Huberman 56:58 Can that, you share with us? (laughs)

Asi Wind 57:01 No. No. No, but I, I gotta tell you, it was primitive-

Andrew Huberman 57:03 Yeah.

Asi Wind 57:03 ... it was simple. And, and the moment he revealed the gimmick-

Andrew Huberman 57:07 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 57:07 ... that caused the handkerchief to disappear, I could not see the trick again. Every time he does, uh, well, it's this. Yeah. Yeah. I-

Andrew Huberman 57:16 It's like falling out of love. (laughs)

Asi Wind 57:18 (laughs) Something like... Yeah, that's true.

Andrew Huberman 57:20 Really.

Andrew Huberman 57:21 I mean, uh, a, a previous guest on the podcast, Karl Deisseroth, one of the best bioengineers, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists in the world, um, went on Lex Fridman podcast, and they were talking about love. And Karl said something interesting that's very relevant here. He said, um... He's a colleague of mine at Stanford, very poetic guy. Um, he said, you know, love between two people, romantic love that is, is one of the few things in life that we collaborate with someone to story something into the future.

Asi Wind 57:54 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 57:55 Y- y- you know, this is different than the love of a child, or a sibling, or a parent, or a pet, et cetera, or a friend, right? That you're, you're creating a story that's based on real experience of past and present-

Asi Wind 58:05 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 58:05 ... but there's this storying forward of love.

Asi Wind 58:08 That's great.

Andrew Huberman 58:09 And, um, and falling out of love involves, of course, the ending of the story moving forward, but also a, in some cases, sadly, a revision of the events of the past.

Asi Wind 58:22 I like... I, I... It's great. It's, it's very close. It's very close to, to the feeling you have as a magician the first time you... a trick get exposed, right? It disappoints you because you have a desire for it to be real. The ch- the, the desire of a, a young magician is, when I see something like that, is that it's a supernatural power. And the fir- the first thing you, you, you understand is that it's not supernatural, that it's quite simple and primitive, and it fooled you because of all the psychology and, and the desire, like everything we spoke about. My desire to be... to see magic, uh, the, the, the fact of... the idea of misdirection, which we can talk about at length. Misdirection means I provide something very interesting for you to follow, and you will follow that path because it's the most interesting at the moment to follow. And in the background, in the shadiness of, of life, (laughs) some dirty stuff happen. But you don't pay attention to it because I don't feature it. It's not important, and I make you render it as not important. So, he does that, right? And it's disappointment. But there's good news. If you keep up with magic and you start to understand that to do a trick, the secret, the, the, the actual how you did it is 1% of the, the whole procedure, and there's much more to doing that trick effectively, which is storytelling, connecting, uh, eh, doing it in such a way that s- somebody cares about it. And, and that is a lifetime of, of, uh, pondering and contemplation. So, you have... Maybe you'll find an analogy with love again. I don't know. There's also this time when you start appreciating it again, appreciate the secret again, because you understand the nuance. You understand the complexity of this simple thing. And that, that's what happened to me. So, I, uh... In some magic, it, which is the exception, it's the table that we spoke about that I did on ƒoors or Tommy Wander's table, where the effect is so, so, so magnificent that you do appreciate it immediately, but those are rare. Most magic is simple, dirty, and to-the-point.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:55 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:00:55 But i- i- it achieves, uh, something that looks very complex.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:01 Perhaps now would be the appropriate time for you to reveal the-

Asi Wind 1:01:05 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:01:05 ... the, the non-reveal of the explanation of the trick, because one of the amazing things about the trick that you did with selecting the card that the gentleman in the audience of Penn & Teller had mentally and verbally selected is that at the very end, after everyone believes they now understand how the trick is done, the turnstile table, the magnet, the, the coffee mug, you proceed to strip away the-

Asi Wind 1:01:33 The curtain.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:34 ... the curtain around the table and pull out a piece of paper, not 52 decks of cards.

Asi Wind 1:01:40 It's a picture of 52. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:01:41 It's a picture-

Asi Wind 1:01:42 (laughs) . What? What?

Andrew Huberman 1:01:42 ... which means that the explanation that they got, while entirely plausible, if that's actually what had happened, is not at all what had happened.

Asi Wind 1:01:50 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:50 In other words, you pop out at the end that they don't actually know how it's done. You know how it's done, and, uh, I'm not even going to bother to ask you, um, how it's done because you're not going to reveal it. In other words, people were misdirected into thinking they understood the trick, and therefore, kind of there's a bit of a letdown.... it's interesting, but it's just mechanics.

Asi Wind 1:02:10 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:10 Magnets and... And then you reveal that, uh, their understanding is actually not real.

Asi Wind 1:02:16 Yes. And, and the reason I wanted to go there, it- it's so... I wanted them to feel magic, then to feel what it's like to know something and the, the fact that it's irreversible. You can't un-know a trick once you know how it's done. And then I... What I said, "Look, I made a choice. I chose to learn the secrets to magic and I'm paying a price for it. I cannot see magic the way you can. I cannot enjoy it the way my audience can." And in a weird way, I experience magic only through their eyes. When I see somebody who goes, "Wow," through you, I can experience it. But that's it. I cannot firsthand experience magic the way you can. So I said, "I'm not here to make that choice for you, so let me bring you back to safety, to the place you were at. It's a place I envy, to mystery." And then I reveal that the whole explanation was bogus. The whole thing was just another lie. And I'm establishing another thing, that as a magician, I have a license to lie to you. And it's okay 'cause that's my job, and therefore it makes it honest.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:23 And we're collaborating in that to some extent, because when people go to a magic show, they understand that. Another former guest on the podcast, Rick Rubin, who needs no introduction, um, but by the way, he's a big fan of magic, um, has said to me before, um, that there are only two things in life that are absolutely true.

Asi Wind 1:03:43 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:03:43 One is nature, right? There are real truths. There are real laws and rules of nature.

Asi Wind 1:03:47 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:48 And the other is, uh, for him, uh, professional wrestling, because, uh, Rick loves professional wrestling. He's a lifetime member of the AEW and the WWE. Uh, I've gone to see wrestling with him. And the reason he believes it's one of the few things that's real is that everyone knows it's not real, and so everyone agrees to collaborate in this story, this theater of these guys hate each other. This woman and this woman, uh, are now friends.

Asi Wind 1:04:11 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:04:11 They're collaborators. And so unlike everything else, which is completely made up and you're not sure what's real and what's, uh, fake, with professional wrestling and with nature, it's a real truth. I would add to that magic, because when we go to see magic, we want to be astonished. Uh, most people do. We want our perceptions to be, uh, violated, right? What we believe is there isn't there, et cetera. Um, and yet we are doing this consensually. We- we're doing this and so we- we're agreeing, like, "Let's collaborate in a, in a, in a lie that there's this thing called magic."

Asi Wind 1:04:49 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:50 Um, I guess... And that's a pretty ill-defined term in its own right, where, you know, this idea that physical objects can be made to disappear, violate the rules of nature, of physics. Um, and unless you're (laughs) of a certain ilk out there in the world, that simply is not the case. The laws of nature hold. So, yeah.

Asi Wind 1:05:08 Maybe there's another analogy there, because we know that professional wrestlers are faking it, and we know a magician fakes it too. He fakes supernatural powers.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:19 Right. They're doing real things in wrestling, but they're not actually trying to harm one another.

Asi Wind 1:05:23 Correct.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:24 Right. They're collaborating with one another.

Asi Wind 1:05:26 It... But it's almost a choreographed fight, right?

Andrew Huberman 1:05:28 Mm-hmm. Yes. I think there's some... My understanding is, based on discussions with Rick and professional wrestlers (laughs) um, that Rick has introduced me to, is that there's some room for improvisation. And occasionally people will hurt one another, um, accidentally. Sometimes they're real conflicts that are created.

Asi Wind 1:05:44 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:45 Just like in the theater, people will have relationships off stage, et cetera, and it creates conflict on stage, and that's the... where the theater of life meets the theater-

Asi Wind 1:05:52 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:52 ... of the stage and vice versa.

Asi Wind 1:05:54 So I would add to that, maybe, maybe I'm wrong, um, that you do a magic show and, you know, an educated person, a smart person who knows that what I do is trickery, conjuring, but every now and then they might ask, "I wonder if that was real. That little part you just did, maybe that was real." So there's, there's a moment, I think, in magic where even the smartest guy who knows I do tricks they go, "Yeah, this is all tricks, but maybe what he just did now, maybe that was real."

Andrew Huberman 1:06:30 Like make it... When you say real, you mean-

Asi Wind 1:06:31 Mean real, real magic.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:32 ... it violates the rules of physics.

Asi Wind 1:06:34 Real magic.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:34 So, um, taking a card, holding it up, clenching your fist, making it disappear. I'm giving simplest kind of silly ex-

Asi Wind 1:06:39 Or mind reading or, or as, as they say, "Maybe he's able to do those things psychologically or whatnot," right? And maybe that happens also in wrestling. They say, "Yeah, it's fake, but I think that moment was real."

Andrew Huberman 1:06:51 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:06:51 So there's an inkling or moments where... 'Cause I think you... to create this drama, and to me that, that exists in magic. Is he real? Is he fake? Uh, did I figure it out or did I not figure it out? Am I close or am I not? There's constant conflict in a magic show-

Andrew Huberman 1:07:07 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:07:07 ... that you go in and out of, and I wonder if that happens in wrestling as well, where you, you know it's fake, but maybe there's something that was real or, or this happened and that was not planned.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:17 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:07:17 So I think that th- this... just the thinking. The fact that you invested into thinking what is real and what is not is intriguing.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:29 I'd like to just take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. Now, I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact our immediate and long-term health can only be addressed, that is, can only be measured with a quality blood test. Now, one issue with many blood tests out there is that you get information back about lipid levels, hormone levels, metabolic factors, et cetera, but you don't know what to do with that information. With InsideTracker, they make it very easy to understand your levels and what they mean and specific actionable items that you can undertake in order to bring those levels into the ranges that are optimal for you. InsideTracker also offers InsideTracker Pro, which enables coaches and health professionals to provide premium and personalized services by leveraging InsideTracker's analysis and recommendations with their clients. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, you can go to insidetracker.com/huberman and you'll get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans. Again, that's insidetracker.com/huberman.I

Andrew Huberman 1:08:36 think, um, there's a much larger theme here that we're veering toward and, um, I'm getting excited-

Asi Wind 1:08:40 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:08:41 ... because this has to do with how the brain works and it ca- and there are examples in different domains, but two come to mind now. Rick and I sometimes hang out, um, here in Los Angeles and, uh, there's a place where we do sauna and cold and it looks out on the ocean. And, um, Rick once turned to me and said, um, "You know, isn't it interesting, you know, we know that there are all these animals under the water, dolphins and whales and all this stuff, sharks and, uh... But when we see a dolphin or a group of dolphins, or we see a whale breach, it's like people are just (gasps) delighted."

Asi Wind 1:09:16 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:09:16 Now, they're beautiful animals, but oftentimes it's just a tail (imitates water splashing) slapping the top. And I think... And he said, "I wonder if it's because it reminds us of how much is going on there underneath the surface."

Asi Wind 1:09:27 That's nice.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:28 And, and I love that because I think, A, he's right. You know, I've done some snorkeling, some scuba diving, you see lots of stuff and it's a, it's a brilliant experience to see all that and to be a fish of sorts and be breathing underwater, but there is something magnificent about seeing an aquatic animal breach the surface. And it, and it goes beyond just seeing the animal. It- it's like a reminder of all these other things that are likely happening that are outside our usual perception.

Asi Wind 1:09:52 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:53 And so that's what comes to mind there. Um, and then I had another example, but I, but I can't think of it now. Um, where... Oh, it's in, um, sports. You know, I always think of there's unskilled, skilled, mastery, and virtuosity. And the... And virtuosity in music, like Yo-Yo Ma, um, or in sport, I don't know, pick a... I don't know, Michael Jordan, whatever favorite sport, th- this idea that maybe they don't even know what they're gonna do next, that there's some improvisation at the level of extreme mastery-

Asi Wind 1:10:22 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:22 ... where you're gonna see something you've never seen before and I think that's what delights people. It's not just about getting the ball into the end zone or the ball into the basket or playing a piece of music, it's the idea of something happening for the first time and maybe, again, as with the earlier example, that the person performing, the athlete, the musician, et cetera, the magician, the mentalist, they themselves are delighted by what just happened. They didn't even realize it was gonna happen and you collaborate in this like, "Wow, life holds far more than I experience in my daily perceptual kind of framework."

Asi Wind 1:10:58 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:58 Could... Very well could be. And I think your shows-

Asi Wind 1:10:59 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:11:00 ... bring people to that. I, I wanna re- um, return to a couple of ideas. First of all, we've been talking about emotion and collaboration a lot.

Asi Wind 1:11:06 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:07 Um, we've had a guest on the podcast, David Spiegel, he's our associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford who does clinical hypnosis, uh, which it brings people into a state of calm plus a very constrained context where they're more likely to think about certain things than others. How much of what you do with an individual or group of people in your craft involves hypnosis? Constraining the context. In other words, eliminating certain patterns of thinking to make other certain patterns of thinking more likely. Is that like a- the... a storytelling, like you start telling me a story, a horror story or a mystery or a comedy story, I'm shutting down whatever you're not talking about. Is that, is that something that you do?

Asi Wind 1:11:48 Yeah. So, so first of all, we have theatrical hypnosis, people that do shows where they get... they gather about 20 people on stage and they start making them dance like chickens, right?

Andrew Huberman 1:11:58 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:11:58 Um, I've never been full on with, with this type of performances for various reasons. It just... I... To me, that's not the best way for me to engage with an audience or, or, or to manipulate them. However, there are some... there are certain things that we do in, in, in magic that if you say certain things in a certain way, it will produce a certain answer. And it amazes me too. I... Like, there's, there's some psych- we call them psychological forces, that you, you say s- uh, a string of words in a certain order and, and (snaps fingers) it will produce with, with, with high percentage a yes or a no, or I want this and not that and it-

Andrew Huberman 1:12:50 Like, would you, you wanna pick the... this deck of cards or that deck of cards type leading?

Asi Wind 1:12:55 That could, that could be the simplest of the, of the idea, but it could- it could- it could be even more complex than that. Um, and, and it amazes me because it's almost like a recipe. You follow the recipe, put it in the oven, boom, a cake (laughs) , you know? But there's... I- in magic when I sear- cer- certain things, there's a moment when I... I'm waiting for you to say something and I, I, I don't know if you're gonna follow what I just did, and then I hear it and I go... There's a joy (laughs) . It's like, "Yes, it worked."

Andrew Huberman 1:13:26 It works.

Asi Wind 1:13:26 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:13:26 And this reveals something fundamental about the brain. For instance, I could imagine if I... Like, we have two mugs in front of me, for those listening, if I hover my finger on one of them longer than others and I say, "Would you like to drink from this mug," and keep it there for 10 seconds, "or this one?" And I just tap the other one briefly, do you think you bias the probability of which one somebody will pick?

Asi Wind 1:13:45 Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman 1:13:45 Okay.

Asi Wind 1:13:45 Abso- Because... And that's what... That's a great example. Uh, I could... It depends on my character. First, I need to know who I'm doing it to.

Andrew Huberman 1:13:54 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:13:55 Are you the challenger? Are you the guy who's gonna go with anything?

Andrew Huberman 1:13:58 Okay. Let's say it's the guy who'll go with anything.

Asi Wind 1:14:00 G- One of the thing... There's a likelihood he will go with the one you touch longer. But if he's the challenger, he will say, "Oh, I, uh, I see what's happening here."

Andrew Huberman 1:14:06 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:14:07 "Andrew is trying to make me take this one and therefore I'm gonna take that one."

Andrew Huberman 1:14:11 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:14:12 So... And that's, that's the simplest idea of, of, of challenges.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:17 And I could challenge you again and say... with doubt, and then I could say, "Are you sure you want the one that I tapped just briefly?" I'm not telling you it that way, but I'd say, "Are you sure?" And if you say-

Asi Wind 1:14:25 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:14:26 ... "Yes," you're challenging me again and now I'm certain you're a challenger. So you're collecting data, basically.

Asi Wind 1:14:31 You're collecting data and, and because I've done it thousands of times, I do the exact same spiel, the same, you know, uh, order of events-... and I, and I, and I get to, to try it, and sometimes I say, "Okay, let's phrase it differently." You know, there's routines where I do and I, I need someone to say a certain something, and, and I don't just rely on the psychological force. I, I have other tools in my arsenal of, of, of tools. And, but it surprises me the am- the, the percentage, the s- the, the rate, uh, and that's something which John did a lot. He understood the, the idea that if people feel challenged, they do this. If they feel like maybe it, that you're desperate for them to change, they'll act a different way. And again, I'm tiptoeing again because I don't want to mi- demystify magic here. (laughs) I, I'm trying to say that there's a real way for ... And, and, you know, Da- Daniel Kahneman and Amos, uh, Tversky, they, they talk about it in, in their work, you know, the Thinking, Fast and Slow, for example, which, which to us is a magic book, how people make decisions. And he, they, they often say if you ph- you phrase a question one way versus another way, and even though the same thing is at stake, it's the same equation, if you phrase it this way, they'll prefer that. If you phrase it that way, they prefer the other one. It, and it makes no sense 'cause that's the bottom line is, like, which one do you want?

Andrew Huberman 1:16:00 Well, I think the brain runs algorithms, and, um, some of it's historical in how we are raised. I'll give an example. A friend of mine has twins, and I said, uh, "How's it going with the twins? Um, describe their personalities and how they differ." And he said that one of his twin daughters, um, no matter what you tell her, she says, "No." She challenges you, but not as a way to disengage, as a way to engage.

Asi Wind 1:16:27 Nice. Uh, interesting.

Andrew Huberman 1:16:28 Yeah. Interesting. Um, and the other one is very willing to engage in things, doesn't challenge, but engages through, you know, active collaboration. Um, when we had Chris Voss, a former FBI negotiator here on the podcast, he said one way to get information from people on, in these, uh, scenarios he used to do before is instead of asking them a question, you give a hypothesis. "You keep your hair really, you know, nice. You got great hair. You must, um, you must, like, spend a lot of money on clothes." Now, people will respond, he tells me, by either agreeing, "Yes," or, "No, I, I don't really spend a lot of money." You just got information, but you're not asking, "Do you spend a lot of money on clothes?" You basically state a hypothesis.

Asi Wind 1:17:12 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:12 And then they are either going to accept or refute your hypothesis, and people almost reflexively respond to hypotheses about them from others by wanting to defend the truth.

Asi Wind 1:17:25 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:25 And that's a way that FBI negotiators and others get information.

Asi Wind 1:17:29 Right.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:29 Rather than ask questions, give them hypotheses, and people will defend their truth to the point of giving up information they wouldn't otherwise.

Asi Wind 1:17:35 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:35 Yeah.

Asi Wind 1:17:35 And, and if you want to re- uh, I know you're here to, for me to reveal my tricks, so I'll reveal something. Hyp- hyp- uh, hypnotists, they do this quite a bit, and it's a beautiful strategy of, of, of doing it. They'll make a few statements, and they're simple statements. They're accurate. They are ... You can argue with those statements. They, they ring true, and you believe them. And then maybe the last thing they're, they're gonna say is not quite true, but because of ... you average the information, and you go, "Okay, it's ... He's speaking the truth now. He's telling us the truth." But in between those statements, there's some inaccuracies there that are starting to manipulate you, but they're half-truths. Like, it's, it's ... Like, for example, I say, "This, this is a round table, right?" And, uh, and you feel, you can feel the light, right? Even if you close your eyes, you could feel the light, and you can even feel that the ... even if you didn't know that this is a bigger light than this one because of the heat. Now, this might be a false statement, but it makes sense.

Andrew Huberman 1:18:42 And you can start to feel heat on one side, right?

Asi Wind 1:18:44 And, and you start to go, yeah, it's r- it's r- it's logical.

Andrew Huberman 1:18:47 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:18:47 It, it's very sensical. Therefore, it sh- it's true. But it's a half-truth. Maybe if we measured it, this is a stronger light. Who knows? But ... And I, and I say, "You know, and you feel there's a bit of a hum here, and the more you focus on it-"

Andrew Huberman 1:19:02 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:19:02 "... and it's get- and it's getting louder. Now, because you're paying attention to it, it's getting louder. It's not getting louder, you know, actually."

Andrew Huberman 1:19:11 Mm-hmm. You're guiding perception.

Asi Wind 1:19:12 But I'm gui- ... Exactly. I'm, I'm, I'm directing your attention to the things I want you to ... You heard a plane?

Andrew Huberman 1:19:20 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:19:22 It's an illusion.

Andrew Huberman 1:19:23 (laughs)

Asi Wind 1:19:23 No, it is a real plane. (laughs) So, you know? But th- this is something that, uh, hypnotists do very well.

Andrew Huberman 1:19:28 Yeah.

Asi Wind 1:19:28 You know, guiding you, you know, going to NLP and all that, it's all related, the idea of, like, um, sounding like they're telling you things that should make sense and they're accurate, but they're not. They're sort of accurate, and it becomes more and more ridiculous until they tell you, "Dance like a chicken." (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:19:48 Mm-hmm.

Asi Wind 1:19:48 And then you dance like a chicken.

Andrew Huberman 1:19:49 Yeah. It's s- it's so interesting because, um, perception obviously is governed by the brain, at least in part, brain and body, but nervous system, and we have essentially two attentional spotlights, meaning we can pay attention to two things at the same time, but probably not five. And we can merge those spotlights, and we can make them more intense, so to speak, or we can dim them and make them more diffuse. You know, there's a bunch of things that we can do with attentional spotlighting. What you're talking about here is attentional spotlighting, bringing people's perception to real things that are happening, but heightening one's perception of those, so getting more granularity on what's happening.

Asi Wind 1:20:28 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:20:28 Right? Like right now, I'm in contact with, uh, physical contact with a pen in my hand, but I wasn't thinking about how it feels, but if I put all of my perception there, close my eyes and really think about it, the whole nature of the perception changes.

Asi Wind 1:20:40 Correct.

Andrew Huberman 1:20:40 The physical object hasn't changed. Nothing else in the room has changed, but that dr- driving of attentional spotlighting and intensity-... is essentially what governs our whole reality. I think of everything we're talking about here, and I can't help but think about like media, social media, politics, you know, very like third rail issues, uh, things or top-

Asi Wind 1:21:01 (laughs) This is too-

Andrew Huberman 1:21:01 ... very third rail topics, right? And yet, this is essentially what we do. The brain, people want, um, a shorthand way of navigating a very complex world and media, marketing, et cetera is, uh, in large part designed to capture people's attention then funnel it towards some specific end point. Vote this way, buy this way, don't vote that way, or don't vote that way. And, and it's, uh, I feel like given our discussion, you