Penn & Teller Fool Us Eric Mead - What the coins??? - Fooled

Nonna's foolís let's meet our next magician my name is Eric Meade I'm a magician from Aspen Colorado magician is professionally what I call myself put my real job is family man you know when you have a child of seeing through their eyes makes everything fresh and great again there are many ways to try to fool Penn & Teller I'm going to perform what's considered to be a classic piece of magic but the interpretation of it and this particular version of it is very different and I know for a fact that Penn & Teller will understand the main principle of the trick but along the way there's at least one and maybe three moments that will fool them I've written my script in a way that if they're even fooled a little bit they're gonna have to give it to me [Music] thank you very much thank you thank you it's probably just a coincidence that the man who first told me the 90/10 rule of magic works behind the scenes on this very program it was the great Tom Soni himself who explained to me that if a magician shows somebody a trick and 90% of that trick fools them but there's a little 10% slip over here that does not fool them the average person will say that the trick did not fool them even though they can't explain 90% of it contrariwise if that same magician shows that same trick to his fellow conjurer's it only takes that 10% sliver for them to admit that they were fooled I don't know if it's true or not but I want to put it to the test tonight by doing something I think unprecedented I'm going to explain in advance how most of the trick you're about to see works first of all gentleman there what you can take notes if you want to first of all there's a principle at the center of this trick that you will certainly recognize it's at least 400 years old probably much older and you yourselves have used versions of it on this very stage so I'm sure that you'll recognize what that is immediately secondly you will see some sleight of hand and I know that you know what sleight of hand looks like so I concede all of that there will be a little bit just a little bit of verbal misdirection which may or may not have already begun and finally that's it that's it that is truthfully honestly at least 90% of what you're about to see I'm not interested in that 90% nor should you be I'm only interested in the little remaining 10% the part where you and you get reminded of what it's like to see magic and to do that you need to be close would you please come up here and join me on the stand ah good to see so the composition by John Ramsey the particular arrangement I'm going to play for you today is by a dear departed and much mr. Tim Conover this is a classic called the cylinder and coins I have some unusual props which I'll tell you about in a moment but for you the important props are these four silver dollars this is a drink coaster tonight it's going to act as a little stage like a little raised platform this is where all of the important action will take place and the little piece of cork sits out there on the stage the cork is just the end of a wine cork but I shaved off of the knife just a little piece of cork it will play the role of the MacGuffin sure familiar with that term and be hidden inside the little cylinder oh and the cylinder I should tell you it's just a little strap you can take that off of there it's a little strap of leather that's had its ends together its Hollow you can completely see through it pen if you want to check it out you're welcome and I'll let you see down through there okay so the important thing about the cylinder is that there's no top or bottom so anything dropped inside will pass right through and as I said the cork goes inside the cylinder and we're ready to begin this would be the time you want to pay really close attention one two three four coins the idea very simply one by one I'm going to take these coins and I'm going to make them disappear each in a different way the first one the wand passes through my hand like this and that corn sort of melts from my hand and appears down inside the cylinder even though you're staring at the cylinder and it's right out in the open three coins left behind one two three nothing else in my hands that's number one that's number two in that third one wait there it goes that third one just a little like it disappears completely now you're very polite a lot of times when I did this for non magicians they'll grab hold of my wrist at this point and start looking at my skin to see if there's a slit or a pocket or something there's not but I can make it look like I have like if I make a little fake incision right here in the back can I push down that coin goes right through to the inside or I could push it down inside and then touch it with the magic wand and it instantly disappears down inside the filling that leaves just this from the last the final coin and we'll do it like this from my left hand over actually since the last one let's do it right hand long distance from the tip of the wand it goes like this across the table and it disappears down inside the little cylinder and just so you have something interesting to talk about when you go back over there I could not have dropped them in because they are resting underneath that little piece of cork [Applause] running out of time here thank you very much so I want to do this last part very quickly we'll do the whole thing in Reverse the little piece of cork goes in my hand the coins inside the cylinder did I say coins the coins I'll leave them sticking out there right the little piece of cork is in my hand the coins to the last second you see them inside the cylinder and then we travel back in time to where one of those coins was right here at my fingertips that's coin number one a second coin out there in the air that's number two don't blink that's number three three coins from nowhere and of course we didn't start with three we started with instantly disappears and don't even try to pretend that didn't fool you [Applause] thank you very much [Music] [Applause] and do that they are now working very hard yeah talking about what happened there you just have big magic should be up close do you think that there's a chance you've fooled them I think it's unlikely that they're going to say they were fooled and here's why everything that I said up front is true they recognize the main body of the trick they know that there's sleight of hand and they could just say that and I would have to concede that that's correct so the question is would they the question is where do they draw the line if they're I'm certain there are a couple of beats along the way that we're puzzling or mystifying to them is that enough to say that they were fooled I don't know I doubt it but we're about to find out I I don't know I like just watching them squirm you know Eric you chose to do something really really difficult which is coin magic in front of us there are certain principles in crime management we just know and there's certain things that we did say probably the most brilliant thing you did was to do an introduction where you changed the rules of the game on us who changed it from having a pretty good idea how it was done overall to this 10% thing which has nothing to do with fool us it's totally what you pushed on us but you know part of the magic thing is game theory and you played the game theory perfectly and then you threw it in our laps and said you decide whether I fooled you or not so yeah we know coin magic yeah we know you Eric but it is in our laps and [Applause] GPG just got s deed will be [Applause]

Channel: eufhaye

Views: 1,217,879

Rating: 4.9221473 out of 5

Keywords: Eric Mead, Fool Us

Id: 9w1vMWsB3wc

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 21 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ryangoldfish5]

I absolutely adore Teller's face when he knows he's been fooled despite him knowing that he should know how it's done. Like when Kostya Kimlat was on the show.

[u/SlimmKC]

I just watched this episode and that is definitely one of the best tricks I've seen out of every trick done in every season. It is also what made me think to look for a magic sub Reddit. I thought it was awesome that this post was the first thing I saw when I opened the Reddit.

[u/FormerMagician]

I was part of the Colorado magic "scene" back in the day, and Eric and I were passingly acquainted since we were in our 20s.

Eric's a beast, and not to diminish this coin performance (which is way better than what David Roth did in season 2), but I think his card work is better still. I saw him do some card stuff behind a bar that was next-level... seriously, when the guy wants to hurt you, he'll pull out material that is otherworldly.

EDIT: and this look from Penn cracks me up... https://j.gifs.com/X6mlRA.gif

[u/magicaleb]

I had the pleasure of meeting Eric Mead. He was doing a photoshoot for the book of his mentioned departed friend, Tim Conover. He said that P&T had been trying to get him on the show since it started, but his schedule just never allowed for the two week shooting in May. He wasn’t sure what trick he wanted to do, but he knew it would be to honor his friend Tim. He was careful about what trick to do, because he wanted to fool them, but he also didn’t want magicians reverse engineering the trick by watching it 100 times before the book was out. I saw Tim Conover perform this version of Cylinder and Coins up close, possibly closer than P&T were. It was amazing, and it sure fooled me. Glad Mead was able to fool them and do Conover good.

[u/[deleted]]

I saw another video of this trick from a few years back where he claims he hasn't found the right wording, even though he had the mechanics down fine. Not only did he find them (maybe editing helps, but it seems pretty good besides), but the tone he has the whole time like (wording might be off) "Don't even pretend that didn't fool you" and laying everything out is such balls-out confidence that this is now an instant favorite clip of mine across all the seasons.

Also, I'm sure I could appreciate it more if I was a magician, but as a layperson, I've seen this every night this week since it aired, and I'm learning about the different approaches to this trick, learning more about the gimmicks folks use sometimes, very skilled sleight moves and fake-outs and stuff, and there's still stuff where I just can't even understand how someone could reveal to me what's going on. Like, I'm not sure what their answer could be.

The stuff I know is so simple and clever that it's elegant, but the stuff I don't make it look like this dude's an actual sorcerer. I'm so impressed =)

[u/ReverendMak]

Great presentation! And Mead's stage presence is awesome.

[u/DanGabriel]

Amazing and beautiful. Just sold me a book on John Ramsay. Can't wait to learn and practice.

[u/StevenBridges]

Absolutely phenomenal!

[u/kbrrr]

I have no words. Great stuff