I have a special fondness for street magic and the people who do it. I’m sure a lot of card lovers share the same view.

Sometimes, we’ll watch the occasional magic special at home. The latest discovery is Magic for Humans, a show by Justin Willman that’s available on Netflix. (Source: YouTube)

If you love street magic yourself and haven’t discovered this show yet, it’s one I’d recommend as an interesting take on some classic tracks – with a few newer ones thrown in for good measure.

An especially cool episode looks at a combination of tech and magic: Dennis Hong from UCLA is featured in an episode that teaches a robot how to do a few tricks. If you’re a fan of AI, tech or robotics, it’s especially fun to watch! (Source: UCLA)

Magician Justin Willman has a certain charm about him while he does his tricks. He seems to love pushing the line of what people are willing to believe.

For example, successfully convincing people they’re invisible, and seeing how they act with this in mind in front of a crowd – and there appears to be no hypnosis involved in doing it, only a lot of clever convincing (or stooges, but their actions seem natural enough not to be).

Another episode of the same shows has Willman convincing people that he has access to a super drug that’s not too much unlike NZT from the show Limitless. After giving them this supposed magic drug, he makes them guess how much money is in a jar – and the answer to this is written on the inside of the jar’s lid.

For the purposes of this magic trick, the participant’s answer is always the correct one: What’s written on the inside of the jar is what they said, adding to the convincing effect that they’ve just taken a drug that makes them smarter. How he does this particular reveal is a separate trick entirely.

The delight when people feel like they’ve just stumbled upon something that increases their mental capacity immediately is incredible.

But my wife pointed out what’s more incredible than the magic trick or the reaction: “Do you realize that they just took what could have been either Ambien or rat poison from a stranger with no questions asked?”

Whoops.

Assuming that he’s not using stooges to pull off this trick, it’s an important look at human nature.

As long as things feel “official” or “real” enough, people are generally willing to go along with it.

We see it in magic tricks, we see it in the telling of urban legends as gospel truth and in fake news stories that spread like wildfire. We see it when people who aren’t doctors pretend to be and their credentials don’t get checked out because they’re wearing the right lab coat.

What’s the point of magic tricks?

Turns out that it teaches you that what you see isn’t always what’s really going on. Magic tricks teach us to question everything, to think twice, to consider the hidden aspects and to not take anything at face value.

For another episode, Willman sets up cameras and concocts a staged crime: Then, he enters after the crime has been committed in uniform and runs them through what the participants saw: This trick proves  just how unreliable eyewitness testimonies can be, how they can be swung to certain answers – and how it can lead to wrongful convictions from there.

It’s brilliant, and it proves the point even more.

Magic tricks teach questioning everything, and it could be what saves someone’s life or their money when someone else isn’t being truthful about their motives.