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Wonder Cabinet

Magical Thinking [Rebroadcast]

Wonder Cabinet

Wonder Cabinet Productions

Society & Culture, Wonder, Philosophy, Ttbook, Knowledge, Interview

4.81K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2018

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

"Magical thinking" gets a bad rap these days. It suggests losing your grip on reality or being so gullible that you'll believe anything - from ghosts to miracles. But what if magic isn't pure fantasy? Maybe it's the gateway to wonder.

*Guests: *Nate Staniforth, Michael Muhammad Knight, Haleema Shah, Chloe Benjamin

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

It's to the best of our knowledge.

0:03.5

I'm Anne Strangeamps, and I believe in magic.

0:08.6

Do you meet magician Nate Staniforth?

0:14.3

One night, I was performing in an on-campus bar at a college in Chicago.

0:21.3

I walked out on stage,

0:23.7

and you could just feel the hostility in the room.

0:31.4

In a minute, something's going to happen.

0:34.8

You're not going to know what to think.

0:36.8

The audience was pretty evenly divided between people who'd come there to watch a magic show

0:40.3

and people would come there to drink.

0:42.3

And there was one guy, six feet, looked like a football player or a boxer.

0:47.3

You suck!

0:48.3

And he started booing before I even walked out on stage.

0:51.3

I'd jump up on top of this guy's table. This does succeed in

0:57.0

getting everyone to pay attention. There's a solution I developed. It's called the lottery

1:04.0

prediction. I handed the football player my wallet. Inside there's a lottery ticket and chose six random people from the audience.

1:13.6

Think of a number that's somewhere between one and 50.

1:19.6

Twenty-seven.

1:20.6

Thirty-nine.

1:21.6

Thirteen.

1:22.6

Two.

1:23.6

And then I asked the football player to stand, open my wallet, and pull out the lottery ticket.

...

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