Hey Shankar Vidantam here.

Thanks so much for listening to my podcast.

I want to bring you a special hidden brain bonus episode for your weekend.

One idea that intrigues me is the intersection of magic and psychology.

It just so happens that longtime NPR producer Barry Gautamer is also a talented magician.

So we teamed up to bring you a new segment we're going to call Magic Brain.

I'm joined in the studio now by Melissa Melnicki. She's NPR's talent relations manager.

But the real reason she's here with me right now is that she is an unsuspecting volunteer

for an experiment that we're about to run on her. Melissa, hello.

Hi Shankar, how are you?

I'm doing great. I'm not sure you're doing so great.

And you might not be doing so great after I introduce you to our other visitor who is in the studio with us.

Barry Gautamer is a producer at Morning Edition.

But the reason he's here is that for 15 years Barry used to be a professional magician.

My stage name was the sort of amazing Barry.

Sort of amazing because I wasn't quite as good as the other magicians out there.

Barry, I think you're going to show Melissa something.

I have a deck of cards in my hand. You can see they're all different.

I'm going to spread them out in my hands face down. Please take a card any card.

All right. And Melissa, careful now.

Okay. Whatever you think you're going to pick first, don't pick that card and pick a completely different card.

Or not. Any card.

...