Covid is a 400 page book, 22 pages explaining magic tricks. It's the first real manual of magic that we have in english. And it was so good that it was plagiarized for the next two centuries by the magic community. There were disputes about how religious he was. Whether there were some who see in inscott a man who really was bordering on an almost kind of modern atheism. But i give scott credit, and i give his book credit as being a work of scepticism.
The most fundamental lesson that all magicians learn is that seeing is not believing. In episode 195, Michael speaks with internationally acclaimed sleight-of-hand artist and 35-year activist for scientific skepticism, Jamy Ian Swiss, about his lively, personal book, The Conjuror’s Conundrum, that takes readers on a magical mystery tour of the longstanding connection between magic and skepticism. Shermer and Swiss discuss: Swiss’s first encounter with fraud, the paranormal and supernatural, magic and mentalism, hot/cold/universal readings, pychics, talking to the dead, James van Praagh, belief, the afterlife, “the amazing” Kreskin, the Alpha Project, and more…