The Carbonaro Effect

I smell the roses....but I'm always really studying the other people smelling the rose.

And magic tricks, illusions, riddles, arguments, "paradoxes", and human behavior?

I have to know. I have to figure it out.

The fact that everyone doesn't think like that is very strange to me.
Weird, I know.

And a few hours later, Richard wonders how he happened to "come to", face down, in a neighbor's rose garden.

When I watch shows like this, I always wonder how many times the performer had to do the stunt, before they found the the right participants.


Kind of. Asking questions until you get a "Yes", and then running with that answer...is solid sales technique. I learned it initially from a Tom Hopkins book. And I see it used extensively in the "Psychics cold reading" business. Quickly running through the "misses" until you get a "hit", makes the misses almost invisible. Solid sales technique..no matter what you're selling.

Magicians often do this when they are filming a special. They try a trick on several people, and some of them don't react well enough to sell the trick, so they are edited out. In live shows, they simply either don't do a trick where this can happen, or use planted accomplices (it's extremely common) to guarantee that the responses are the ones wanted.

For example;
"Pick a number between one and one thousand. The numbers must all be odd, and they cant be the same."

Maybe 70% of the people will say"357", although there are other correct answers. And if the subject picks a different number, that segment is edited out.

What the audience hears is, "Pick a number between one and one thousand". And the magician says "Is it 357?", and the person yells "Yes! How did you know?". To the audience (and some participants) it looks like a miracle or real mentalism.