Regular readers will know that I make my living as a performing artist, swallowing swords and reading minds all across the country.

image copyright 2007, Amanda Bohart

As advertised on this blog just last week, I recently appeared on a number of radio programs to promote a show that was sponsored by Clear Channel Communications and Immix Wireless. We managed to record one of those interviews, which happens to contain a short performance of a piece that I created, present regularly and which has been causing waves amongst certain performing circles.

I’m pleased to be able to share that performance with you here – which also happens to be the first radio recording of the piece to-date. A few words of explanation before you listen, however.

The experience that you are about to hear is not strictly a radio piece. This is a bit that I perform in every possible venue – walking around, one-on-one, on-stage – and can play for one person or thousands at a time. As it so happens, it also makes a very good radio bit.

As a “mentalist” or “psychological illusionist”, many of my colleagues react strongly against the use of playing cards in a mindreading presentation. I agree entirely that the use of playing cards can very quickly turn a profound bit of mindreading into the mere experience of a “trick”. Those that I have worked with can, however, attest to the fact that cards can be used to great effect in mindreading presentations – and this radio performance is no exception. In fact, when those participating merely think of a card, without actually involving anything more physical than the spectator’s own thoughts, it can do the inverse of what most “mentalists” experience – it can convert an inherently skeptical spectator into one who realizes that something more profound than mere trickery has just occurred.

This piece has been demonstrated to be both extremely entertaining as well as extremely impossible and is an excellent example of how suggestion, persuasion and applied psychology can create a compelling mindreading performance that people want to see over and over again.

Click to hear a clip of Roderick Russell on 95.5
file is 4.13mb is size and clip runs 4 minutes 30 seconds in its entirety

Enjoy!

tags: cell phone magic, cell phone mentalism, clear channel, immix, magic, mentalism, mindreading, playing cards, predictions, psychological illusion, radio, radio magic, radio mentalism, radio mindreading, roderick russell, sword swallower, sword swallowing, telephone magic, telephone mentalism

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at Apr 24, 07 | 2:36 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.