Makoto Halverson on Penn & Teller: Fool Us! : Doppelstranger Card Magic

welcome back you're in luck i've found the perfect magic trick for you check it out hi i'm makoto halverson a street magician when i was younger i watched full less with my grandparents i loved penn teller's passion for magic and i saved up all my allowances to buy their magic books i learned the art of misdirection from them i'm fascinated by how magicians use language and psychology to influence people my magic exploits the way people see and hear things you can make them believe they saw something that was never there my grandparents are still my biggest fans and encouraged me to get started as a street magician i'm out there working 10 to 12 hour days there's no better way to master your magic this is my first time to perform on national tv and it's a whole new ball game hopefully my street smarts will be enough to outsmart penn teller tonight [Music] [Applause] ladies and gentlemen give it up for makoto halverson thank you have you ever walked down a busy street thought you recognized a friend went up to say hi but it turned out to be somebody else i have can be embarrassing i've hugged the wrong person before called a random lady mom oh that's really awkward i learned on the internet that there's a word for this phenomenon of mistaken identities they're called doppel strangers it's like a doppelganger but a stranger instead of being a double of a person it just kind of looks like them basically what happens is your brain sees a few key details like the person's hair or the way they walk it fills in the gaps creating a very compelling hallucination we can actually recreate that experience using a pack of cards allison in a moment i'm going to have you name a playing card from the pack but before i do i'd like to clarify something for everybody watching i didn't meet you backstage secretly before the show and asked you to name a particular card to help out with my demonstration did i no i asked the wrong person why does this keep happening it's okay this should still work could you please name a card for us anyway uh three of clubs the three of clubs do you want to change your mind that is penn and teller's card after all oh cute no okay the three of clubs worked perfectly for me there is a three of clubs now just like the person who isn't there when you think you recognize them we're gonna isolate the three of clubs away from the other cards in the pack by placing it inside oh actually before i put it in my pocket i should show you guys the pocket is empty and ordinary no slits no extra compartments to help me out now we're going to isolate the three of clubs from the pack in the pocket out of sight but in our minds now allison would you please touch any card you like from the pack that one there you touched the two of clubs very very similar to the three of clubs naturally just missing the tip in the center there it's pretty much the same card so if you saw the two of clubs in a glass elevator on the other side of the mall perhaps as it was ascending for a moment you might think it looked just like the three of clubs a lot of fun let's see if we could do that twice it's always better the second time so i've been pulled watch allison would you please touch another card for us from the pack anyone you like oh that one there yes you touched the ten of hearts now the ten of hearts is quite a bit different than the three of clubs but it does have a lot of pips on there so maybe if it was dark and you went to where you were in an escalator and you passed them by uh when they turned the corner you might think for a moment that the ten of hearts looked like the three of clubs and that's what looks like magic we can't do it more than three times anyway would you touch one more card for us oh that one there yes you touched the ten of clubs well the ten of clubs obviously looks like the ten of hearts from earlier and it's wearing the same suit as the three of clubs so if you saw the ten of clubs uh behind a closing gate perhaps at an airport you might think for a second it looked just like the three of clubs which is impossible so you've had three cards selected from the pack and they all looked like the three of clubs that you named but of course that's impossible because the three of clubs was in the pocket the entire time so these three cards could not have been the three of clubs and in fact they never were was very impressive thank you allison wow what's your favorite place to perform i really love harvard square i used to street perform over there it's right near harvard university and because street performing was a part of the culture there for 20 30 years people just stop watch have fun and support the artists when i was a kid i'd visit my grandparents around that area and see people with you know huge 200 300 you know crowd shows around them and now those people are my friends and i think that's really fun and so is it hard to move from the street to the stage it's very different actually because on the street no one show matters all that much so if i mess up then i could just you know do another show whereas here you know you get the the one shot to fool the boys well uh let's see if the boys know how you did your trick oh absolutely boys hey we got a really good really really nice uh it's a version for people uh at home it's a take off of everywhere in nowhere which is a wonderful card routine and the choices that you had were all free choices uh you really were making completely free choices you were getting where you had to get while handling the deck which is takes a great deal of skill to get there without without setups without anything else you're just you're just totally there and the theme the theme was really really nice about how you can mistake somebody you know sometimes this isn't the same thing but sometimes people come to me and say hey here you tell her they'll say to me even though i'm panned and i've even heard that teller has a been mistaken for me even though he's much shorter than me and i think i probably slipped a couple things in there that uh gave you some uh information what we were thinking kodo you did not fool penn teller oh that's to be expected halverson

Channel: Makoto Magic

Views: 96,661

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Id: u_s68Y5DxV0

Length: 6min 39sec (399 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021