Notes

FUCK I get it now! EVERYTHING! Fuck! I was watching an other talk about memory, and I started recalling clue facts about this and here is what I made out of it.

In the first one, he rides a car blindfolded, I was kind of curious about how he did it, he probably could see somehow but how, well, I don't know. Let's move on for now.

Now he asks the sandals weird guy to come up, he stands out, because of the suit and socks and sandals so, I just thought it was weird but ok... Then he makes this trick to make him move his hand at the same time as he moves it, looks like magic when it happens, even more when he asks the girl to come up and do the same thing but then, we get the first glance at "bad magic" or very clever talk, the most clever of all the i think 15 I have seen in a row just now. We see a new camera angle, well not new but a camera angle that a magician would never do, recorded magic tricks always use the best camera angles to not reveal the tricks, and they go over them many times to know they are safe on camera.
But this was pretty obvious, he was rubbing his leg against the leg of the guy, maybe even stepping more and more on his bare feet, remember he has socks and sandals.. And he also said, "I wan't you to lower your hand when you feel the pressure but only when you feel the pressure lower your hand", this means he is giving him instructions I believe than when he steps on him he lowers his hand at the same rate as he steps on his feet. he either selected him for this exact thing oh having this kind of footwear or he was in cahoots with the guy.

This made me see things different now. Now, when they were on the part where he touches him but not her. He is just basically saying to her what to say. When he asks her "what did you feel" and she does not know how to respond because she obviously did not feel anything he tells her with a question, (like a "tickling" sensation?) and she just says yes, in the back, he just touches her twice we can't see that but it is pretty obvious. It is just to make it more wow-ish.

Now, where we are at. This two guys up stage, know what's up, either in cahoots, or just going with it because they know where this is going at, or they get paid, they explained this to them beforehand (that's in cahoots I believe, sorry I don't know other words for it, english is not my main language...) either way, they are faking this thing just to prove the point at which we are getting at.

Then there is the bottle trick, it is a simple principal about physics, it is called the Prince Rupert's drop, basically, glass can be heated, better done at melting point, and then cooled quickly in water, just let a drop of molten glass in the water, this will create a sperm-like shape, a round droplet-like shape and a tail. as the water cools down the edges, the outside hardens really REALLY tough, but the center is still hotter than the outside, this difference in temperature makes the outside really hard, but the inside not only brittle, but has explosive force, energy due to a lot of stress.
A heated thing expands, and a cool one shrinks and hardens , almost all elements behave like this, so, the outside is shrinking and the inside is trying to expand, and it cools like that with that stress, it keeps the stress there even after it cools down to the same temperature, from there comes the explosive thing.. Now, when you clip the tail of this thing, which cooled much more equally due to it's thinness, it is easy to break, the head is nearly impossible to break even with a hammer. When you clip the tail, it breaks and the pressure starts releasing from there, this can only be seen with REALLY God damn slow cameras, at 130,000 fps. It runs down the tail, keeps releasing it's pressure and when it gets to the head it all just explodes.... Same was done with the glass bottle, it was heated and then cooled down really quickly in some way, that it left really brittle the inside. The glass he gives her, is either stronger, or not glass at all something harder, what ever, but really sharp, and a very VERY small scratch, a somewhat strong hit on the brittle inside of that bottle and it just goes ballistic, just a small dent is enough. Almost microscopic, in unravels a chain reaction.. Pretty simple and good physics thingy to impress anyone, go watch Smarter Every Day's channel to know about this, or just google Prince Rupert's drop.

Now, that was just flashy and to make people that don't know about the drop thing, really wonder what the hell was up with that, but in fact, this might not even be the case, this might have been a simple normal coke bottle, but coke bottles are not superman.. If you have a bottle of coke, a beer or what ever, and you open it, and tap, like REALLY hard with your hand the hole of the bottle (this works best the more liquid is there) the bottom just pops out, this is because liquids can not be compressed and when you tap strong and fast on the hole, you are creating pressure, pressure that needs to go somewhere and it goes out the weakest point, the bottom of the bottle, why the bottom? Well, if you know your beer, the bottom is the thickest part of the bottle, and likely, when they are made, they cool in the same way Prince Rupert's, quickly, not slowly letting it cool all at the same rate and where the thin sides met the thick bottom, that is the weak point, but from the inside not the outside because the shape of a bottle is stronger from outside forces going in, but fragile of inner forces going out. Gas pressure is not enough, nearly enough to break it how ever you shake it, but a quick hard tap is. In fact, you can step in a bottle's hole and it won't break, but step on it sideways and it breaks away, it is all about it's structural support. (Have you ever popped a rose's petal making a circle shape with your hand like a half closed fist and tapping it with the other? It sounds really loud when done right, it is just that, quick, sudden and hard pressure change) So there you go, a little bit of science for you.

Now, let's move on for those 5 people (with high hopes) that are still reading.

The most amazing trick of all, the nail and the plates.

Here I am going to stop a moment to remind you, that we got a look at the guy's leg when he made the trick of the pressure points to lower the arm and shit. We looked at it because of the camera angle; the public did not, and what did he say when "Steve" comes up and checks underneath the table cloth? "oh you can check underneath, go ahead, I have no fancy systems here... They insist just because I was a magician to put a nice black table cloth here" And when they call up Steve the guy says "you knew!" So again, in cahoots. This is not I bad thing I shall say, this just makes magic better, but we'll get to that.

So the guy Steve knows what's up, knows he either must pay really close attention to the magician cue or just knows everything and just needs to make it believable. So, he comes, sits down, the trick is presented but wait, he uses the same blind fold trick again, kind of a weird thing to do, open and close with the same trick (the same idea of the blind fold). So, he starts doing the trick and then, I was really scared, I did not knew anything of the above I was just enjoying the show, amazed and that shit, and this amazed me too, my hands were sweaty so I did not pay attention to it like I should. Now that we know the guy is in cahoots, something really strange happens when he gives the blind fold to the guy, he asks if he can see something through the blind fold, he says Yes, well he says "mh hm", confused the magician, again like with the girl before says as a fact not a question "you CAN'T see through it" and he confirms, but knowing he is in cahoots, he must actually be able to see though. An other alternative, is that he actually can't see but we'll get to that in a moment.

If he can see, then at the end it does not matter because up until this point only he knows where he put the nail, he could have put a mark in the cup or something or the wood is somewhat different to the others the one with the nail. So he just has to look at that mark on the wood, he is not blindfolded, the magician is, and even though the blindfold was fake and he can see, that makes no difference. If the magician provided the plates and knows how the wood of the one with the nail looks like, then he can tell the other guy where to move the hand, he says if I move over here is there a cup?, but listen carefully, just before he says "can we do the left hand?" And the magician repeats this letting the public know it was just a question, a joking question that he does not wan't to nail his right hand because he is right handed, because with that hand he masturbates, what ever, that joke distracts you and makes you believe it was just that, but most likely, it was a direction from Steve to move it there because as we know at the end, the nail is in the furthest right cup and they don't wanna crush that one... This is believing that he can't actually see and that was a direction from the guy. Now lets explore further.

He later says, "He asked me if we could do a left hand, ABSOLUTELY not" what an odd choice of words, what does the magician care? If he punctures the left or the right hand, what ever, but he says this, this leads me to believe that the magician can actually see though the blind fold and see that if they go left, they are gonna nail their hands really good, Christ-like and all.
So they go left (their left), at this point the magician knows there is a cup at the right of where where they started, and by asking again, knows there is also a cup to the left (if he can see, what ever with this) if he can't well, he is just using cleverness because he was the last to scramble them and he would have set it up for the nail to be just there, where he wanted to and just by simple math knows there were 4 cups in a row, one goes down, does not know where they are starting but he tries to start at the very far left, now, the guy asks if there is a cup again and they go right, crush an other, he takes him to the furthest right, the magician knowing that going left he is out of danger just goes with it, and just one last cup to crush with no nail, if he can't see and does not know, there are just 2 cups left, he knows the farthest to the right has the nail, so if he just has 2 hands and 2 cups, the cup in the right hand must be the nail one, easy peasy. If it is the magician, to make the guy know where it is and what to say, he taps his hands when he whistles, signaling him what to guess, he just says stuff like guess it is in neither of the cups because that would be something a playful assistant would say, not someone in cahoots, a normal human joking reaction, as stacking the cups on top of each other, he is just playing to be the funny guy waiting for the cue of the magician. The magician then points out, very clearly that Steve has been making the decisions all along, and goes for it. The public does not know shit, they are just as confused as you and me, and amazingly, they survived, hurray! and everybody claims and cheers, being distracted by the suspense and the fear they do not notice any of this cues.

Now, let's roll to the beginning, the blindfold car, this is why it is not clear to me if one can see though it or not, this last part makes me believe you actually can, or they are 2 different blind folds, whichever is a possibility and I have covered solutions for both outcomes. Now, he either gives the blindfold to a total stranger and rides her to some place and then takes it and puts on the blindfold and on top, the black cloth. Again, two outcomes. see though, or not see through.

You can see though it. Ok, this means that the girl is in cahoots, she lied that you can't see as the other guy and that's it, he can see, he can drive, not as good as one might wish but he can go to point A to point B.

Now, you can't see though it, the girl is actually a stranger and she confirms you can't see though the blind fold.. but, if you can't see though that, why the black cloth? (bag or what ever) My idea is that the guy puts the blind fold, and then the black cloth is one of those fabrics from which you can see though from really close or from the inside, but from the outside on a really bright day like in the video, you can't see the inside or through it from more than a cm apart. So he just pulls down the blind fold when he "adjusts" the bag, and the bag is FOR HER and us to not see that he is no longer blindfolded, not for him to not see the road, what was the point of making the girl war those two things? just so that she can confirm you can not see with all that on your head. And he just drives, he even makes a joke about where the shift gear is... When you drive, how often are you looking down to search for the shift gear? or the break as he does here at the beginning of the ride? Just to create tension on the girl, he later drives and shifts and breaks like nothing because when you have been driving for so long, shifting and breaking become second nature you don't need to look at it to use it that is stupid, but in the girl's mind, she is just about to be taken on a ride by a blindfolded man, that can not even know where the break is, to inspire fear in her, she does look concerned and worried to hell. At this point, I feel like she is actually a real stranger and that you can't actually see though the blindfold, so, take that as my choice for the cup's trick.
When they arrive, or just before that he adjusts it, or if she IS in cahoots, she pulls it up for him, what ever, he just gets it up again for the camera reveal an shazam!

So, in conclusion:

Having someone in cahoots when doing magic is not bad, it gives a new level to the trick, they used to use assistants, fixed ones, and people were like "meh, they know each other they practice the tricks", then they started using the same thing but dressed as normal people so we can "say oh well, it was not me but it is one of us and if he says it's real it must be true! He would not lie to us!?" And here is where the real magic happens... THAT's the trick, the whole point of the talk, the guy WANTED us to catch on this very obvious clues, so we can figure out ourselves this and realize, that this presentation, this talk, is one that is worth watching twice to fully get. To keep us thinking like me, there was something cheesy about that, and unravel this whole thing and be mind blown that this was not just a bad TED talk episode, this was not just a really REALLY sloppy magician, that this was the most clever and well practiced and scripted 20 min video I have ever seen in my life that made me write this long ass shit that took me like 2 hours, in a different language than my native one (I did it to practice, let me know if anyone read it what mistakes I made) to explain this whole thing, that the talk is worth watching twice and that shock factor and watching it twice, rewinding, makes it much harder to forget, memorable, because after understanding it, realizing how HUGE it was, it seems unfair they put all that effort in making this possible and we just call him a bad magician or a bad episode of TED talk and give it a dislike. Whoever reads this, I am sure you went back and watched the whole thing again and you are as mind fucked as me... If you read this and have not watched it again closely, I encourage you to do so and let me know what you think.

I am just amazed by this.
Cheers.

PS: About the name of the boyfriend of the girl, well the Ex... I have no idea, either he knew because she was in cahoots, or he used the simplest, most used tricks of mind readers and what not that requires actual skill, you say letters just randomly and expect a positive response from the subject until you nail down the name.