Monthly Update #30 (June 2025)
Magic in the Who Cares Era and the science behind awe and wonder.
Welcome to the June edition of Marty’s Magic Ruseletter. Yes, it’s late as usual, but I believe it’s a good one (I would say that, though, wouldn’t I?). This month’s update explores three fascinating concepts that could change the way you think about magic.
First, I examine Dan Sinker’s provocative idea that we’re living in the “Who Cares Era”—and what this means for performers trying to capture genuine attention in an oversaturated, AI-infused technosocial world. Then, inspired by Dr. Anu Atluru’s insights, I examine the concept of “heavy magic”: effects that carry real emotional and psychological weight, moving beyond mere entertainment.
While neither of these pieces originated in the realm of magic literature, both offer profound implications for magicians seeking to elevate their art beyond mere tricks and puzzles. Finally, I unpack a 2007 research paper that tackles one of our field’s most elusive goals: the scientific understanding of wonder itself.
Whether you’re looking to deepen your performance philosophy or simply curious about the psychology behind what we do, this month’s selections promise to challenge your assumptions about the art of magic.
Without further ado, let’s get going!
New on MBOT: The Thread that Binds
Reading time: 16 minutes
Ever wondered whether you should craft magic for your personal artistic expression or design effects tailored specifically for your audience’s needs? In this in-depth article, I examine the distinction between being a magical artist and a magical designer, and introduce a design thinking framework for creating new material.
Using my romantic wedding routine, “Red Thread of Fate,” as a case study, I demonstrate how design thinking principles can transform your approach to magic creation. You’ll uncover research-backed insights into what makes magic truly memorable (spoiler: card tricks are the least memorable genre unless you incorporate other props!), learn about memory hooks 🪝 versus false anchors ⚓, and see how intentional design choices can foster deeper emotional connections with your audiences. Whether you’re developing material for particular occasions or simply want to become a more purposeful creator, this article provides practical tools to help you think differently about magic construction.
Magic in the Who Cares Era
I recently stumbled across Dan Sinker’s blog. Dan is an amazing writer and, although his stuff has nothing to do with magic, I’d thoroughly recommend spending some time reading his blog. (He also has an impressive beard, fit for a real-life wizard.)
One recent article particularly resonated with me. In it, Dan defines something he calls the “Who Cares Era”, in response to a story about AI-slop content that was published in the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer:
“It’s so emblematic of the moment we’re in, the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.”
(You might want to read Dan’s article in full before you read my thoughts on it. It’s only a 5-minute read.)
This dystopian view of the present prompted me to consider how I might perform magic during a time when nobody truly cares about anything. Where attention fatigue is the norm and people use indifference as a defence mechanism. As an eternal optimist, I don’t entirely share this disturbing worldview, but I do sympathise with Dan’s perspective. (I also think this is an interesting thought experiment, similar to an episode of the excellent Black Mirror, that might help us improve our performances.) Dan describes the current state of affairs as “disheartening,” and, in many ways, that word best captures the current zeitgeist—especially when you consider the AI-driven political upheaval happening in the United States.
When you’re exhausted, a “Who cares?” mindset becomes a form of armour; a means of protecting yourself from being constantly engaged, outraged, or emotionally invested in the endless stream of things demanding our attention (can you tell I’m not a big fan of the attention economy?). After years of ongoing public crises—the pandemic, political chaos, regional conflicts, and economic uncertainty—caring about anything, even something as mundane as a card trick, seems like too much effort or, perhaps, a waste of time.
Pick a card? Who cares. Is this your card? Whatever. We’re competing not just with smartphones and nonstop notifications, but with a bone-deep weariness that makes wonder feel like hard work. But here’s what I’ve been thinking: What if magic isn’t meant to compete with the Who Cares Era but to offer an escape from it?
The two primary driving forces of this phenomenon appear to be cognitive overload and the erosion of shared culture. We are bombarded with so much stimulation—YouTube videos, rolling news updates, and AI-generated slop—that everything blends into meaningless noise (even the unique, fun, and interesting stuff). Without common cultural touchstones or collective experiences, we retreat into our own small bubbles, asking “who cares?” about anything outside of them.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Dan’s article ends with a more positive call to action:
“As the culture of the Who Cares Era grinds towards the lowest common denominator, support those that are making real things. Listen to something with your full attention. Watch something with your phone in the other room. Read an actual paper magazine or a book.”
In this era, choosing to care about something—being genuinely enthusiastic or invested—feels almost radical because it makes you vulnerable in a world that rewards cynical detachment. Giving a shit is an act of rebellion while not giving a shit is a form of survival. For magic, this means performers are fighting not just for attention but against an audience’s protective shell of indifference that keeps them from being disappointed or manipulated yet again. However, this same indifference, sadly, prevents people from experiencing wonder, amazement, and astonishment.
So, assuming we live in such a bleak reality, how might we change the way we perform so that people care about us and our magic?
We’re all so tired. Tired of being marketed to, tired of influencers, tired of everything trying so damn hard. This exhaustion has created an interesting paradox for magicians. The old razzle-dazzle approach to magic and illusion now feels hollow, even cringeworthy. The tuxedoed mystifier claiming supernatural powers? Please. We’ve seen too much and been fooled too often to buy the snake oil they’re selling.
But here’s where it gets interesting: this very exhaustion might be pushing magic toward something more honest, more human, more real.
I’ve been noticing a shift among the magicians who genuinely connect with their audiences these days (this transformation has been happening for years, but seems to be accelerating). They’re not the ones claiming to possess mystical powers or maintaining an air of otherworldly detachment. Instead, they’re the ones who acknowledge the elephant in the room: “Yes, this is a trick. Yes, I’m deceiving you. But isn’t it wonderful anyway?”
Penn & Teller, the reformed “Bad Boys of Magic”, pioneered this approach decades ago, but what once felt revolutionary now feels necessary. When Teller performs his beautiful “Shadows” routine, we know it’s a trick—we always did. The beauty lies not in believing it’s real magic, but in appreciating the artistry while our minds struggle to comprehend the method. It’s this cognitive dissonance that makes magic such an appealing and satisfying art form.
This kind of radical authenticity serves multiple purposes in the Who Cares Era:
It respects the audience’s intelligence. We’re too tired and cynical for condescension. Acknowledging that we’re all in on the deception together creates a partnership rather than a power dynamic.
It shifts the focus from fooling to feeling. When we stop pretending that magic is real, we can begin exploring its deeper meaning. The impossible becomes a metaphor, a piece of poetry, rather than a cheap trick. Of course, the method should still deceive; however, the focus is on the emotional reaction we want to elicit in our audience—how we want them to feel.
It humanises the performer. The honest magician becomes relatable—someone sharing their passion (or obsession) with impossible things rather than a superior being demonstrating their mysterious powers.
Derren Brown—the celebrated English mentalist, illusionist, and writer—exemplifies this approach brilliantly. He explicitly tells audiences he uses a mixture of psychology, misdirection, and showmanship—no supernatural powers whatsoever. Yet, paradoxically, his effects feel more magical because of this honesty. We’re not watching a god; we’re watching a human being create impossible moments through skill, subterfuge and artistry.
This authenticity extends to presentation style as well. The polished Vegas showman patter feels increasingly out of step with audiences who’ve grown up watching YouTube and TikTok, where performative authenticity is a form of digital currency. The stammering, shaking amateur who pulls off a miracle feels more magical than the slick professional who’s reciting a stale script full of cheesy jokes.
Paraphrasing Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, magic is inherently honest—it’s a lie that tells the truth. In the Who Cares Era, perhaps we need to foreground that honesty. Yes, I’m lying to you, but I’m lying to give you wonder. I’m lying to remind you that the world still contains mysteries. I’m lying because we both need to believe, just for a moment, that impossible things can happen. That the world won’t always be this bad. That people do care.
The honest liar doesn’t diminish the magic—they transform it. Instead of “I have supernatural powers,” the message becomes “We humans can create wonder for each other.” Instead of “Believe in magic,” it’s “Believe in our collective capacity for awe and amazement.” In the Who Cares Era, that feels exactly like the kind of magic the world needs.
Make Some Heavy Magic! 🪨
Another thought-provoking article I read this month was “Make Something Heavy” by Dr. Anu Atluru (on the recommendation of Larry Haas in his superb bi-monthly magic newsletter). This concept elegantly complements and serves as an antidote to the Who Cares Era.
Dr. Anu Atluru’s article argues that in an era dominated by fleeting, easily shareable content, we should deliberately create things with metaphorical weight—works that demand presence, resist easy distribution, and accumulate meaning through sustained attention. She explores how “heaviness” can be cultivated through complexity, emotional richness, physical presence, and slow revelation, ultimately proposing that creating such weighty work is both an act of resistance against disposable culture and a path to lasting impact.
This brilliant article reminded me of the transmedia theories of media scholar Henry Jenkins, known for his work on participatory and convergence culture. He makes a helpful distinction between “spreadability” and “drillability” in transmedia storytelling that perfectly captures what’s happening to magic in the Who Cares Era. Spreadable content is designed to travel—to be shared, remixed, and circulated widely. It’s the viral card trick, the 60-second visual wonder optimised for TikTok. But drillable content, as the name suggests, invites depth. It rewards those who dig deeper, who invest time and attention in exploring its mysteries. Things that have weight require drilling.
This connects to the ideas in Dr. Atluru’s article. Visual magic often becomes weightless, spreadable content that slides frictionlessly through social media feeds and disappears without a trace. But cerebral magic, such as live close-up magic and mentalism, the kind of wonder that happens in the space between people—that’s drillable. It has mass. It can’t be reduced to a shareable moment on social media because its essence lies in the depth of engagement.
This weight comes from:
Presence - The physical proximity, the shared breathing space, the eye contact. You can’t upload presence.
Context - The specific constellation of people, place, mood, and moment. The same trick performed for different people can become an entirely different experience.
Vulnerability - Both the performer and the spectator must risk caring, risk being embarrassed, risk looking foolish. This mutual vulnerability creates weight that no video can capture.
Memory - Not the “pics or it didn’t happen” kind, but the profound, felt memory of wonderment. The story they’ll recount repeatedly to friends who “had to be there.”
Now, I’m not saying we should abandon social media magic. A well-crafted Instagram reel or TikTok can serve the same function as a street magician’s quick trick to gather a crowd—it draws people in, gives them a taste, and ideally leaves them wanting more. Think of these short tricks, whether performed in person or online, as a canapé or amuse-bouche to prepare your audience for a more substantial meal of magic.
The key is being intentional with these two types of content. Use spreadable material as a spark to draw people toward drillable experiences. A visual card change on TikTok might lead to a longer YouTube performance, which could in turn lead to ticket sales for a live show. Each level invites deeper engagement from those who care.
Perhaps this is why mentalism remains so popular in the Who Cares Era. You can spread a visual card change across social media, but you can’t meaningfully share the experience of having your thoughts read. It requires presence, rewards attention, and creates the kind of “drillable” moment that Jenkins describes—something that invites deeper engagement rather than passive consumption.
In the Who Cares Era, perhaps the most radical thing we can do is craft experiences too weighty for the internet to carry. While everything else races to become more shareable and disposable, magic can double down on drillability, on presence, and on the undeniable excitement of being there when the impossible unfolds.
For those spectators who dare to care, we offer something increasingly rare: intimate wonders that exist only in the mind, too heavy for any algorithm to carry, too precious to be reduced to forgettable flotsam and jetsam. The heavy things endure because the current of content can’t sweep them away. They sink deep into memory and remain there for a lifetime.
The Wonder of Magic
I recently came across another intriguing research paper on magic that seems to have gone unnoticed. In his 2007 MIT thesis, “The Wonder of Magic: Eliciting Wonder and Analysing its Expression”, Seth Taylor Raphaël provides empirical insights that, similar to the paper I mentioned in Monthly Update #29, challenge many long-standing beliefs within the magic community.
Raphaël conducted an experiment with 70 subjects who watched 10 magic trick videos while their reactions were recorded (via software on a laptop). The study tested two key variables: presentation style (story-based vs. puzzle-based) and whether explanations were revealed.
I found many of the findings surprising. Here’s a summary of them:
Explanations increased enjoyment: Contrary to the golden rule of magic (“never reveal the secret to a trick”), participants who saw explanations enjoyed the experience more and wanted to see more magic. This challenges some of our fundamental assumptions about preserving mystery. Does knowing the secret really ruin the magic?
Story matters, but only sometimes: Among those who chose not to see explanations, story-based presentations were found to be significantly more enjoyable than puzzle-based ones. However, this difference disappeared in the general population.
Generosity follows a good presentation: Participants who watched the story-based performances were more likely to donate to charity, suggesting that how we present our magic can make the world a more generous place.
The paradox of wanting explanations: While 60% of the participants claimed they wanted to know secrets, those who chose to see more tricks instead rated the magic higher overall. In short, the more people enjoyed the magic, the less they wanted explanations.
Children love magic the most: Kids rated magic nearly 3 points higher than adults—confirming what we all know in our hearts.
Like all studies, this one has several limitations. The primary one is that it used video rather than live performance. It also mainly sampled from academic communities, meaning that cultural differences in how people react to magic were not taken into account in the study. Nevertheless, the findings suggest we might need to reconsider some of our assumptions about secrecy and presentation. (I believe this provides a good argument for not revealing magic secrets during a performance, but instead incorporating more puzzle elements into your tricks—something I’ve discussed in previous issues of the Ruseletter.)
Raphaël distinguishes wonder from mere curiosity, describing it as an emotion with inherent reward that doesn’t diminish with age—even as our extrinsic rewards for learning decrease. This aligns perfectly with the idea of creating “heavy” magical experiences that foster deeper engagement. In an era where caring feels risky, perhaps the question isn’t whether to reveal secrets, but how to create experiences so rich that the “how” becomes far less important than the “why”.
This last finding about children gives me particular hope for the future. In the Who Cares Era, children remind us that wonder isn’t extinct—it’s just been suppressed by the process of growing up and becoming adults. Children still allow themselves to be amazed without embarrassment. They still care.
Perhaps that’s the ultimate remedy for the age of AI-induced indifference: not attempting to generate new forms of wonder, but recalling how to access the childlike wonder we’ve always held within us. As magicians, we’re not merely entertainers—we are custodians of the human ability to be amazed, creating safe spaces where adults can shed their protective cynicism and remember what it feels like to believe, even briefly, that impossible things can happen.
In a world that asks “who cares?”, magic whispers back: “You do. You always have. Let me remind you why.”
Three Videos Worth Watching 👀
As usual, here are three videos worth watching.
Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder
Duration: 58 minutes
This is a fascinating interview with Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California and the author of AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.
Here are some notes I made while listening to the talk on the eight types of awe and how I think they might connect to the performance of magic:
Nature - The overwhelming sense of vastness and beauty we experience in natural settings, from towering mountains and endless oceans to intricate patterns in a single leaf.
Spiritual Experience - The transcendent feelings that arise during meditation, prayer, or moments of divine connection that make us feel part of something greater than ourselves.
Visual Art - The profound emotional response to exceptional artistic works that reveal new perspectives on beauty, truth, or the human condition through visual expression.
Music - The spine-tingling sensation when melodies, harmonies, or rhythms transport us beyond the ordinary, creating deep emotional resonance and connection.
Big Ideas - The intellectual awe we feel when encountering revolutionary concepts, scientific discoveries, or philosophical insights that fundamentally expand our understanding of reality and the universe.
Collective Movement - The powerful experience of being part of synchronised group activities, from protests and ceremonies to concerts and athletic events that unite us in common purpose.
Life & Death - The profound emotions surrounding birth, mortality, and the mystery of existence that remind us of life’s preciousness and our place in the eternal cycle.
Moral Beauty - The awe we experience witnessing others’ courage, kindness, strength, and acts of exceptional virtue, compassion, and human goodness that restore our faith in humanity.
A magic trick could potentially fit into several of these categories, depending on how it’s crafted and presented. This is one of the unique aspects of magic as an art form. It can evoke multiple forms of awe simultaneously:
Big Ideas - When magic demonstrates seemingly impossible concepts that challenge our understanding of reality, causality, or the nature of perception itself. Think of effects that make audiences question what they know about physics or consciousness.
Moral Beauty - Magic that celebrates human connection, healing, or transformation. For example, a trick that involves a lost object with deep sentimental value, or routines that bring people together in moments of shared wonder and vulnerability.
Spiritual Experience - Effects that tap into themes of fate, destiny, or the interconnectedness of all things. Magic that feels like witnessing something sacred or mystical rather than mere trickery or cleverness.
Visual Art - Highly aesthetic displays where the magic becomes poetry in motion, with beautiful props, movements, and staging that would be captivating even without the mystery.
However, here is a crucial and slightly depressing insight: most magic tricks do not fit into any of these categories—they are simply puzzles or throwaway pieces of entertainment. Truly inspiring magic goes beyond the “how did he do that?” reaction and instead prompts more profound questions about meaning, connection, or even the nature of life itself.
This may explain why much magic fails to leave a lasting impression. It is technically impressive but does not engage the deeper psychological mechanisms that foster genuine awe and wonder. The magic remembered for years usually touches on these more profound themes: big ideas, moral beauty, spiritual experience, and visual art.
If you watch the recording right through to the end, you’ll hear a well-known magician ask Dacher a question about awe and magic. I won’t spoil the surprise by revealing who!
Cyril Takayama on America’s Got Talent
Duration: 6 minutes
Watch Cyril Takayama’s performance on America’s Got Talent. I was surprised to see such a high-profile and successful magician on the show. His auditions involved performing a close-up card magic routine using chopsticks.
I thought the trick was excellent, but the judges’ reaction was harsh as Cyril received two buzzes. Were Mel B and Simon Cowell right to criticise the pacing of Cyril’s act? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Inventing Magic
Duration: 62 minutes
Here’s the first episode of Inventing Magic with Blake Vogt and Daniel Garcia. In this hour-long recording, Blake collaborates with magician and magic consultant Daniel Garcia to create an original magic trick from the ground up. They aimed to develop something that could be published in Genii Magazine using only everyday objects they had nearby.
This video provides a rare insight into how professional magicians develop new material, including dead ends, sudden breakthroughs, and the collaborative refinement that transforms a rough idea into a practical trick.
The video reveals the true secrets behind the creative process—ongoing brainstorming, testing ideas on the spot, and the excitement that comes when you find something that actually works! Garcia’s expertise is evident as he quickly visualises and refines the mechanics of the routine, while Voigt keeps them focused on the practical aspects for publication.
Well, that’s a wrap for another monthly update. Hopefully, the July edition will be on time. You never know, miracles do happen!
Yours Magically,
Marty