00:00What I love about Magic, especially with cards, is I love the way they feel.
00:04Like, I love the way cards just move in your hands.
00:07I love the weight. I love the size.
00:10It's two and a half inches by three and a half inches.
00:12It fits perfectly in the palm.
00:14And there's so many different things that you could work on with a deck of cards.
00:19There's 52 cards in a deck, 52 weeks in a year.
00:22There's four suits, four seasons, 13 cards per suit, 13 lunar months per year.
00:28If you count every single pip, there's 364, plus the Joker makes it 365.
00:35So there's just so many little bits of information stored in a deck of cards.
00:40To this day, I'm not even kidding, I fall asleep almost every night with a deck of cards in my hand or next to me,
00:47and I wake up with cards stuck to me all the time.
00:58There's so many fascinating figures in the history of magic.
01:05And if you look at all the old posters and all the art from the last few centuries, it's incredible.
01:11I was obsessed with studying Harry Houdini, and there was a poster that he had made that he died before he was able to do it,
01:18and it was him buried alive.
01:19And I said, what if we do it, but I'm buried under water?
01:25I'm in a coffin, but I'm under six tons of water.
01:29So it's a double coffin with a coffin that's see-through on top of it that's full of water,
01:33and then I'm buried there.
01:35And what if I did it for a week instead of a month?
01:38I'll last a week.
01:38I'll lay in there with nothing, no food, just water and a trucker's tube that they use when they go to the bath,
01:47and I'll fast beforehand, and I'll do it.
01:50So we went to Queens, where Houdini was buried, and there was a funeral shop, and I bought a coffin.
01:58And I just started sleeping in it just to practice.
02:00So I'd stay in the coffin one, two, three, and then I'd go, oh, well, obviously I won't be able to eat.
02:06Obviously I'll need a trucker's catheter, a trucker's tube it's called,
02:12and I would need about four and a half liters of water a day, and yeah, it should be doable.
02:18I practiced, I did four days, and then I was like, I can do this.
02:22And that was the beginning of the stunts.
02:36The stunt that I'm probably most proud of is the balloons, because I was able to show that one to my daughter.
03:00She was 10 years old, and I wanted to give her, do something that was happy and colorful and nice,
03:07because I stopped doing them when she was one and a half, because I was injured.
03:12And I said, I'm never doing another stunt, and I stopped for a decade almost.
03:17And then I wanted to give my daughter something beautiful and show her what I love doing.
03:22So I put together a rig of balloons, and I rode the balloons up to about, no, up to 25,000 feet,
03:30and then released, then jumped down, landed, and was brought to her.
03:34So that's probably my favorite one.
03:36The exciting part of being a magician is you're always practicing, you're always learning,
03:41you're always improving, and there's no end to it.
03:44So lots of the tricks that I do, I've been doing for 30-plus years,
03:48but I'm still changing them all the time, and they're still evolving.
03:52So I think there's just no end.
03:54And I think the reason whenever I'm stopped or people ask me to do magic, I always love to do it,
03:59it's because even though I love the practice of it, I'm also improving slightly,
04:03always trying to make it slightly better.
04:05Wait, George, can you give me exactly half of the day?
04:16No, but I'm saying like this way, because I'm going to be exact.
04:20You want me to rip it?
04:21Yeah, to hold that.
04:22Hold it?
04:22Yeah.
04:23Hold that.
04:28No.
04:29Let's try to...
04:32Yeah.
04:35Seems pretty tough.
04:39Yeah, I know, I can't.
04:40I can't rip it.
04:41Here's something I worked on for a while.
04:50See, now we have exactly half.
04:53I never imagined a deck of cards would take me around the world,
04:56and I'd meet all these incredible people,
04:59and I'd find all these amazing magicians that I only imagined or had read about,
05:04and I would be able to learn from them.
05:06I'm able to entertain anywhere.
05:10If I'm sitting on a train, if I'm on an airplane,
05:12if I'm in a cafe, whatever.
05:13Yeah, no, I'd never, ever imagined a deck of cards would do that.
05:18It brought me over...
05:1952 cards literally brought me around the world
05:22and changed my life in the best possible way.
05:25The world may have changed, but magic is the same.
05:27By the way, the more technology advances,
05:29the more AI and the more this becomes relevant, I feel.
05:33It's like people are looking for something that defies logic,
05:37but they know this is really happening in front of them.
05:40So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:43So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:44So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:45So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:46So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:47So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:48So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:49So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:50So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:51So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:52So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:53So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:54So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:55So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:56So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:57So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:58So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
05:59So I think magic is kind of perfect for that.
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