How to Approach Spectators Like a Pro #274

**Josh Norbido** (0:11)
Ladies and gentlemen, what's up? Welcome to episode 274 of The Magic Guys, where today we have four magic guys. And today, I'm Josh Norbido, like most days, but next to me right now, I've got Doug Conn.

**Doug Conn** (0:28)
Buenas noches, señoritas.

**Josh Norbido** (0:31)
And above him, we've got Nick Kay.

**Nick Kay** (0:34)
Hello, friends. I'm Nick Kay. And next to me is...

**Adam Axford** (0:38)
I am Adam Axford. Good to see you all.

**Nick Kay** (0:41)
Thanks for coming back, buddy.
Again, thank you so much for being on last week's episode, filling in for our sick cats in the game. We had a lot of amazing feedback about it, and your opinions and thoughts are always deeply, deeply valued. So thank you again for being here, because friends, today's episode is about how to approach groups. And if you were listening to last week's episode, you would have taken it upon yourself to see Adam Axford's social media and how he is on an amazing journey to approach and do a thousand different videos on how to approach groups. So he is more than qualified to speak on this. But first, we want to start the episode the same way we do every episode. Josh, we have speak pipes, yeah?

**Josh Norbido** (1:23)
We got some speak pipes. You guys piped them in with your words. And we're going to play one right now from, I'm trying to be a wordsmith like Adam here, okay? I'm trying to say the words elegantly. And our first speak pipe.
Super pro. See, how could you do this?

**Adam Axford** (1:40)
It's eloquent, my friend.

**Josh Norbido** (1:41)
Oh, eloquent. Me not so good, but me try hard. First one is from Gautam and he's put in a speak pipe, which is very pertinent considering we have a mentalist here.
Let's go. Gautam, give us your question.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:58)
Hey, Magic Guys. Thank you so much for doing what you do.
I really love your show and my question is twofold here. Number one, as an industry, we have been able to figure out two macro pseudo explanations. And like, for example, as a mentalist, one is the likes of Denim Brown, Oz Perlman, like we read body language. We have studied psychology for years. Then there are likes of Lewis Lewa, Luke Jeremy, who rely more towards maybe readings, star signs, like it's the same effects, but with a different packaging. So what do you think? Like, is there any other pseudo explanation we can develop other than these two? Like these are the two most prominent ones. My second question to you is like, in the context of magic versus mentalism, do you believe like, of course, if you're doing magic or mentalism only for entertainment purposes, I think they can be clubbed. But let's suppose you want to maybe, again, it depends on your character as well, but maybe let's say, you want to depict something else. Or maybe, if you do, let's say, a sponge ball routine, and then afterwards, you guess a name they are thinking of, does it reduce the credibility of me guessing the name? Because people know in their head that the sponge ball routine was just a magic trick.
Like, the orientations or the chronology of the routines depends on how you are perceiving.

**Nick Kay** (3:17)
All right, that's great.
Let's break it down in two questions for the groups. The first thing is with regards to the pseudo explanations for getting a divination from somebody. Whether it be looking at someone's twitch in the eye, or the way that they burp every time they say the word, something or other. Adam, I think you're the most experienced to be able to speak to this. What are your thoughts on these pseudo explanations?

**Adam Axford** (3:44)
Yeah, I've got a unique one. I don't see anybody else brandishing the moniker Wordsmith. It seems extremely apt, our ability to communicate, use words and language to express our internal thoughts and processes and put them out into the world. So yeah, it's still communication-based. We could be looking at things like facial gestures and tonation of talking, though we're layering it in the fundamental magic ability that we have to communicate using our mouth, which is essentially telekinesis and the medium of transfer is small sound waves that move through the air and reach our eardrum. So we all want to have psychic abilities. We have them.
We hear the things that are said. Some people just want to take the mouth out of that to make it more magical, I guess. Wordsmith. Nice.

**Josh Norbido** (4:31)
I want to throw, and I think that's so beautiful. One other possibility is that it's like a coincidence or like luck somehow.