Justin Higham, British close-up magician and underground card magic legend who fooled both Dai Vernon and Ed Marlo, discusses his new book, "The Intuitive Magician." Justin shares why improvisation, not repetition, is the key to mastering performance. In a broad-ranging conversation, Justin explains his A, B, and C List methodology, the concept of apposite magic, why magicians in 1970s TV detective shows represent the ideal for impromptu performances, and ways to overcome performance paralysis.

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There are lots of magic books that tell us what to think and how to do things, but I'm trying to encourage magicians to think for themselves. And this is something that I encourage my students to do, but this was something I wanted to encapsulate in this book.

You're listening to The Magic Book Podcast, conversations about classic and contemporary books that teach, illuminate, and celebrate the art of magic. I'm your host, Adrian Tennant, a lifetime student of magic and mentalism, occasional performer, and longtime book collector. Thanks for joining me. Today my guest is Justin Higham, a British close-up magician, author, and one of the world's most respected teachers. With over 40 years of experience in card magic, Justin has earned a reputation as an underground legend, someone who's fooled some of the world's greatest practitioners, including The Professor, Vernon, and Ed Marlo. As an author, Justin has written and published several card magic books and manuscripts that have become essential references for performers. He also co-authored "Roger's Thesaurus" with Roger Crosthwaite. Over the past 12 years, Justin has given more than 3,500 individual magic lessons, and it's this teaching experience that forms the foundation of his new book, "The Intuitive Magician: Mastering Magic Through Improvisation" published by Sixth Books.

This comprehensive guide is written for any magician who's ever frozen when unexpectedly asked to perform and offers a roadmap for moving beyond mechanical routines toward truly improvisational magic. [Music] Justin, welcome to The Magic Book Podcast.

Thank you very much, Adrian. Thank you for inviting me.

Let's start at the beginning. Now, growing up in London, can you tell us about your first exposure to magic and what initially sparked your interest?

It was very simply a friend at school who showed me the old French Drop coin trick, and for whatever reason, it grabbed my attention. And of course, because he was a school friend, I sort of kept on annoying him until he revealed how it was done. So not only did I get the exposure to the magic, but also to the method behind the magic, and I found both of them equally fascinating.

In your new book, you mention that the dream of being able to perform magic impromptu began for you around age 10 when you received a book called “The Complete Magician” by Greer Maréchal, Jr. What made that book so special to you?

Well, the prosaic answer is that simply it was my first proper magic book, but there were little hints throughout the first section of the book which were to do with improvisational magic. And of course, being a newcomer to magic, I didn't know that this was something unusual within magic. Of course, the whole thing was unusual to me, but I soaked up this improvisational stuff as if it was a normal part of the overall scheme of magic. And it was only later that I found out that this was actually an unusual thing within magic. That's the main reason why that's a special book.

You discovered Ed Marlo's work through Alan Alan's Magic Spot in central London. What was it about Ed Marlo's approach to card magic that captured your imagination?

So this would've been when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old. And if you can imagine, a lot of the books I was reading then was simply children's magic books. So apart from the Greer Maréchal book, all of the other books I was reading were cartoony-style tricks and jokes and experiments that school children would enjoy. So when Alan Alan detected my interest in card tricks, he recommended three of these Revolutionary Card Technique books to me, which, if you can imagine looking at these straight after reading these cartoony joke books, there's an enormous difference. And these were like science books, but on card magic. So I think it would've been unusual for them not to have grabbed my attention. But anyway, that's how it happened and that's how I got into cards.

You actually travelled to Chicago as a teenager to meet Ed Marlo in person. Can you tell us about that experience?

Yeah, my father very kindly took me to America for about a week and we went to Chicago. My father was a concert agent. He managed classical pianists and other musicians, and he was very much familiar with this world of artists, musical artists in his case. So something in him recognized the idea of going to visit the master or the teacher or whatever you might call it. So he was very open to taking me over to America to meet this amazing prodigy with cards called Ed Marlo. You know, I was 16 at the time, and 16-year-olds tend to idolize people, so you can imagine what was going through my mind when I went to Chicago to meet Marlo. And, um, yeah, we hit it off straight away.

We got along very well, and we had a very long session. We met at 1:00 PM and we sat in this restaurant at the Marriott Hotel. And my father came along intermittently to see how it was going and ended up collecting me at the end of this meeting at 11:00 PM. And so, yeah, and neither Marlo nor myself left the table. We were just engrossed in this long card session. So that was a very special event for me.

Wow. And you famously also fooled The Professor. What memories do you have of Vernon?

Well, he was a very elderly man. He was aged 95 when I met him. He was still very much switched on magically. He could still do a few things with the cards. And I think as far as fooling people is concerned, it's not difficult to fool other magicians, even experts. You know, if a musician met somebody as amazing as Mozart, I'm sure they would play, at one time or another, they would play a melody or a chord change that Mozart never considered. And I think it's similar when you meet these expert magicians.

Sooner or later, you happen to show something that fools them. Yeah, it was a great moment to meet Vernon.

So what did those early interactions with two masters teach you about how magic should be learned and practiced?

Well, I mean, one of the main things is that no matter what level you reach and however good you may think you are, there's always about 10 or 50 or 100 levels above you. Really, when you are in an environment surrounded by magicians who are all much better than you are, you think, "Whoa, hang on!" As any mountaineer would've had the experience of climbing a mountain and you think, "Oh, we're near the top," but it's only because of your sense of perspective. And then when you climb over the next little ridge, you realize that you're not even a third of the way up. So it was like that. You meet these people and you think you're near the top, and then when you meet them, you realize that you're not even a third of the way up the mountain. So yeah, there's always more to learn, more mountain to climb, you might say.

You co-authored “Roger's Thesaurus” with Roger Crosthwaite. How did that book come about?

Well, simply because myself and Roger were good friends, good card friends, and L&L Publishing simply wanted to do his life works of magic. And because me and Roger were friends, it seemed logical to write the book together. He needed help with the writing and taking photos and what have you. So, yeah, I was commissioned by L&L to co-author the book. That's how it came about.

Justin, let's talk about your new book, "The Intuitive Magician." Now, in the Preface, you propose a provocative hypothesis: that we master the performance of magic through improvisation, not the other way around. Can you explain what you mean by that?

There's a kind of an academic turn of phrase, which is that we do something - and if people are unfamiliar with this, then they may mistakenly believe that this is how it happens for everyone. But the idea that we do something, it's actually just, as you said, a hypothesis. So what I'm really saying is that we may do this at a certain stage. The thing is that people really have to get up and running first in magic by learning basic principles and effects and methods and learning magic in a linear fashion. But once they get to a certain level, they may think, "Well, is this all there is to it?" Or they may find that they are not getting out of it what they think they should. So what happens then is that they have two responses. Either they give up or they carry on going around in circles.

So I'm offering a way out of this vicious circle by saying that they should learn to improvise. And through that improvisation, they then will really start to master magic. So it's going beyond the mechanical approach.

Your book opens with a description of what you call "the layperson's archetype" - the fantasy of the always-on-duty conjurer inspired by magicians in detective shows from the '70s and '80s who could produce coins and doves seemingly at the drop of a hat. Why did you choose this as your starting point?

So the personal reason is simply that these were the people that I was exposed to as a child on television. But really the reason is that they're very interesting characters because there are two sides to these magicians. In these TV shows, you would always see the magician on the stage producing doves or sawing people in half, and then they would meet the detective off-stage. And of course they would meet somewhere like a restaurant and they would say, "What are you drinking?" And the detective says, "Well, I don't know, maybe red wine or something," and the magician would just pluck a glass of red wine from under a napkin. And so the viewer is exposed to a fictional representation of impromptu magic. And because of this idealized representation, if you think about it, the director of the show has free will to suggest any effect at all from the performer. And so the effects that they used in these detective shows were all real magic tricks. They weren't TV special effects.

So what it all boils down to is that these were idealized representations of impromptu magic. If you could produce anything at all right now, what would you do? If somebody wants a glass of wine, then the apposite magic in that moment would be to produce a glass of wine, not to produce a beer or something else that you prepared. The difference is that the magician, as we know it, will be prepared with certain tricks and then will try to introduce those tricks into the performance. Whereas on these TV shows, of course, the magician did whatever was appropriate. And so you've not just got the magic, you've got the apposite nature of this magic. So that's why I chose that as the archetype.

You identify something called "performance paralysis" in the book. That is the moment when a magician is asked to perform unexpectedly and their mind goes completely blank. You actually suggest that this is caused by engaging the wrong part of the mind. Can you walk us through what's happening psychologically?

Well, I mean, the basic thing that happens is that you panic. And when you panic, you try to then rummage through your mind for a trick or two. But because you are trying to think intellectually of lists of tricks or tricks you've learned, or your repertoire, you can't do it because you're in this panic mode. And the panic mode actually switches off the intellect. It forces you to engage outwards with your environment. It's sort of a fight or flight thing. And of course, this is not a disaster because we're just being, we're just being asked to do a card trick and we're not being asked to escape from an emergency. But it may feel like an emergency because there may be 20 people watching you and you've got a pack of cards in your hand.

And that's what happens. So what I'm saying is that rather than trying to fight this outward-focused state of mind, we should embrace it and stop trying to struggle, stop trying to think of something, and instead engage with the actual situation to hand. And the best way to do this, in my contention, is to engage with people, have them shuffle the cards, start conversation, ask them questions about magic that they like, that they've seen on TV, what do they like watching, and so on. Get an interaction going first, which then you can feed off to then inspire something. And what it inspires may not be the world's most original card trick. It may just be one card changing to another, but it doesn't matter because the important thing is to get over this waiting room syndrome and get straight into performing. So one of the little tricks that I'd suggest is to — this goes back to the Greer Maréchal book - which is that when you have a card selected, you may not yet know how you will reveal the card. These are some of the suggestions I've given in the book on how to deal with this paralyzing situation.

Well, it's a great setup for the rest of the book. In "The Intuitive Magician," you offer the "A, B, and C List" methodology for organizing a repertoire. Can you walk us through how this works?

Yes, many magicians will know lots of tricks. And when I meet students, one of my methodologies is not to try and teach them lots of new tricks, but to try to tap their brain and to find out what tricks they actually know, but have forgotten. If you make a list of all your tricks, which are tricks that you can do well, tricks you can't do well, tricks that you're learning, you may end up with a list of 20 or more tricks. But then what do you do with those tricks? So what I'm suggesting is to split them up into 3 columns. So the first column is the A-list, and the A-list is, unsurprisingly, tricks that you can do without even thinking. So these may be tricks you've done for years, they may be self-working tricks, it doesn't matter. These are your A-list performance tricks. Your B-list will be tricks that you want to master, you're in the middle of trying to master, but you've not yet mastered.

And very often when students come to me for lessons and they say, "Well, I had a show the other day and it was a disaster." Very often I found out that they were trying to do one of their B-list tricks when they should really be focusing on the A-list. And it's the A-list tricks that help them to develop confidence in performance. Whereas if they try to stretch things on the night by starting to do B-list tricks, then it all goes wrong, and then their confidence takes a nosedive. Oh, one more thing. If you're wondering about the C-list, C-list is — I don't want to get into too much theory. The important thing about the A-list and B-list, the C-list is simply for tricks that you've taken off one of those two lists. But really, if people focus on the A-list, their performance tricks, and B-list, which are tricks they are mastering, then that will help to avoid confusing these tricks in performance.

You also introduced the concept of "Saturday night" versus "Sunday afternoon" magic. Justin, what's the distinction there, and why is it important?

So yeah, that's completely subjective. So there are certainly two types of magic, at least. There are visual, simple effects like a sponge ball appearing. And then there are tricks like The 21 Card Trick, dealing piles of cards. Whether you call them Saturday night tricks and Sunday afternoon tricks or something else, you do need a way of differentiating between these two. So the Saturday night tricks are the visual, quick, surprising, they may be commercial, and the Sunday afternoon tricks are the slower, more mysterious tricks. So, you could divide it up into surprise versus mystery. Saturday night tricks are surprising, Sunday afternoon tricks are mysterious.

So traditionally, Saturday night was going-out night. So if you can imagine that people are in the pub or the club, and you're a magician and you're engaged to perform for them, it's probably best to avoid tricks like The 21 Card Trick. Because first of all, there may not be a clean table to perform on, and secondly, people have been drinking and that, or they're intellectually their mind is switched off. So it's much better under those circumstances, to pluck a sponge ball from somebody's ear or make coins vanish into thin air, than something complex. Whereas Sunday afternoon, it's more of a relaxed environment, people may be mentally switched on, they may be open to watching a series of actions which may be complex but have a mysterious outcome, or a surprising outcome, which wouldn't fit so well in a Saturday night environment. So those are how I differentiate between the two types of magic, but I encourage readers to invent their own terminology. So, one of the main things in the book is not to shove these things down people's throats, but to encourage them to think and devise their own ways of looking at things.

[Music] If you're enjoying this episode of the Magic Book Podcast, please consider leaving a rating on Spotify or a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also follow the Magic Book Podcast page on Facebook. Thanks. [Music fades] You introduced the term to us earlier, that is, apposite magic: magic that's appropriate to the moment and circumstances. So Justin, how does a magician develop the sensitivity to recognize what's apposite in a given situation?

So this is one of the things where it's very easy to get lost in the world of magic theory. I'm a great believer in actually forgetting about magic, and thinking in terms of everyday life. People deal with everyday life improvisationally all the time. Any conversational interaction that you have with people will hopefully be apposite because, you know, somebody's talking about the price of eggs and you're asking them if they want to see a card trick, that's not apposite! So, I think that common sense comes into the equation here. And apposite magic may seem like a very mysterious thing, but in actual fact, it's just simply the application of common sense. I mean, you can think of any colorful example that you want. If there's a group of nuns and you know a Texas Hold'em poker trick, and you think, "Should I show these nuns a Texas Hold'em poker trick?" Well, the answer may be "Yes," if they happen to be poker-playing nuns, but If they aren't, it's probably best not to.

So as I say, it's more common sense and less to do with magic theory.

Well, you also introduce the concept of TIM: that is Talk, Interact, Misdirect. How does this framework differ from traditional approaches to misdirection or attention management that many magicians learn?

The fact is that it doesn't. It's exactly the same. But the thing is that as soon as you use a familiar word or phrase, what happens is that it switches something in the brain of the person reading it. And they go, "Oh yeah, I know." And one of the things I wanted to get away from in the book was this, "Oh, I know, I know" thing. So if you use an unfamiliar sort of terminology for something, then people will sit up and think, "What are you talking about?" And they may realize after a day or a month or a year that you were actually talking about something they already knew. But they've now spent a day, a month, or a year thinking in a different way about this thing. There is an example, a family friend of ours who was a very deep thinker and a philosopher who went into a tobacconist many years ago and said that he was looking for something that was about 3 inches long and it was a cylinder of paper and packed with dried leaves and it came in cartons with printing on the side.

And he tried this little experiment at 3 different tobacconists, and they all sent him away saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, we don't sell anything like that." Now, the object of the exercise was not to make a fool of anybody. The object was to show that we think in these sort of painting-by-numbers terms. We use clichéd phrases, we run off things without thinking about it. So if I were to say, "Now we need to use patter and misdirection," the magician will think in terms they're already familiar with. Whereas if you want to change the emphasis on something, then if you change the terminology, you may still be talking about the same thing, but now, now the reader is thinking in different terms and they're not thinking in conditioned terms, but they're actually reading what you're actually saying, not what they think you're saying.

It's kind of a pattern disruption.

Yeah, exactly. Because much of what we deal with in life is pattern recognition, dealing with familiar patterns. So when you drive a car, it's all familiar patterns. At a car — you're driving down and there's someone coming towards you and there's a space on your side. And so you drive into the space and you wave them through and they flash their lights and then you drive. It's all very familiar stuff. So in those circumstances, it's a good thing that people recognize these patterns because if there weren't any patterns, then it'd be a disaster if everybody's trying to invent a new pattern in the moment. But when you are trying to study something, and especially in a book, you are trying to teach something that would be best taught face-to-face, it's good, I think, to try to break some of these patterns.

Otherwise, you just simply end up reading the book from start to finish, and you've not really got anywhere.

Well, I was lucky enough to receive a pre-publication copy of your book, and another concept that really struck me is the distinction you make between being on stage and off stage, not in the theatrical sense, but as zones of attention during a performance. Justin, can you explain how understanding this helps with, say, a close-up performance that relies on sleight of hand?

Well, one of the main things I noticed about a lot of students is that they will do everything on stage. So they will spread the cards, the card is selected on stage, and the card goes back on stage, and the card is shuffled up to the top on stage, and then it's revealed on stage. And the result is that there's no nuance, there's no light or shade. And so very often the spectator will simply see what's going on because it's quite difficult when you're learning sleights, you are focusing on the sleight, the book is focusing your attention on the sleight. And so we end up unintentionally performing sleights instead of doing the sleights off stage and the effect on stage. If you learn the very simple, very easy to understand concept of generally doing sleights off stage, not always, but it's the general principle, and then drawing the attention to the effect, then it makes life so much easier. So this is a matter of focus. There are two stages really.

There's the physical stage, which is where the space between you and the spectators is really the physical stage. But there's also a psychological stage. For example, I can put something down in the middle of the physical stage, but if I'm drawing your attention elsewhere, then that thing is psychologically off stage. So this is something to get to grips with. It sounds complex, but when you get to grips with this idea that there are these different types of stage, it really helps with the mastery of magic because you're no longer doing everything on stage, you're now learning you can do certain things off stage. And this, among other things, will reduce people's fear of performing, because it's a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Because they are now doing the moves off stage and the effect on the stage, they then get caught less by people, and then their confidence builds. So it's a win-win situation.

Hmm. Well, Justin, you've given over 3,500 individual magic lessons over the past 12 years. What are the most common patterns you've observed in students who struggle to perform impromptu?

Oh, well, they don't practice. When they do practice, they don't use a mirror, or they don't practice enough, or they don't know how to practice. They don't know what to say. They don't know when to say it. These are generally the same things that crop up all of the time. So it can be a struggle. I mean, I've known students who've come for lessons for years who still don't have a mirror and they say, "Oh, I just bought one." And the thing is that they've now bought the mirror, but they're not using it.

So there's actually a fear of — people have a fear of using a mirror because if you've been doing magic for 10 years and you've never used a mirror, there's a part of you that is going to fear looking in the mirror and seeing what a mess everything is. Now, this sounds very harsh, but the thing is that when people come for lessons with me, they're not paying me to be polite.

Right.

So they're actually paying me to be rude and to tell them, "Look, I'm sorry, but you're exposing this move. It would help to use a mirror." And the thing is, I am actually too nice to people, even though they're paying me to be rude to them, but I am too nice. And therefore I try to encourage people to use a mirror, but I can't force them to. At the end, it's their choice, but these nonetheless are the main problems that people have: not practicing enough, not using a mirror, and not knowing when or what to say. So the second problem is something I can help with because, as I said, I can't make people use a mirror, but I can help to coach people on what to say and how to say it. So yeah, these are the underlying problems, I think.

Today, most of us are carrying around a video camera in our mobile phones. What's your general advice about recording yourself performing magic, versus looking in a mirror?

Yeah, this is a very interesting point. The mirror aspect, whether you are using your phone effectively as a mirror or you are using an actual mirror, this is very helpful in itself because it forces you to correct yourself in real time. So you are executing a move in the mirror and your elbow sticks out every time you do it and you spot this. And there's something about the fact that you can see it in real time forces you to correct the action in real time. So you are creating this live feedback loop of self-improvement. Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't use a camera. There are certainly advantages to using a camera. The way that I recommend it is to video yourself doing the move, doing the effects, but not to watch it straight away, but to watch it later when you've slightly forgotten what you did.

You can then see yourself in the camera, in the video, more or less as other people would see you. And what I'm saying is both approaches are certainly very, very helpful and necessary, but I would say the mirror - of course, people have used mirrors to practice in front of, actors used them for hundreds of years - whereas we've only been using these little video cameras for a few years. So I think the mirror comes first, and there are all sorts of psychological advantages to using a mirror. But yeah, that's the main difference, which is that the mirror is in real time and you correct yourself in real time and you create this feedback loop of correction.

Well, as you mentioned, actors have been learning their craft through improvisation forever. And you use a wonderful analogy in the book about improvisation being like a relay race, where interaction is the first runner, inspiration is the second, and the actual performance is the third. So Justin, can you unpack that for us?

Well, if you look at a conversation between two people, if you overlook the fact that there are two people and you just look at the statements or the questions they make, then the first statement or question could be considered the first runner in a relay race. And then the other person's reaction will be the second runner that takes the baton and goes with it, then it may be a suggestion or an idea, it sparks an idea. And then of course they hand that over to the third runner, which the other person has a response to the response. So simply in the world of magic, if we meet and you say, "Gosh, that thing you published was interesting, that's inspired me to show you that thing." So your suggestion is the first runner and you've handed that to the second runner. Now, I might show you the second thing, but then halfway through, I might show you something else, which is now a third runner. And this is how improvisation works. We rely on these different runners or these different elements to inspire us to perform.

A well-known example is, we've all had the situation where I've said a joke to Adrian and Adrian laughs. Now, I didn't just choose that joke randomly. I chose a joke which I knew would make Adrian laugh because I know his sense of humor. I know what he likes. So when I know that Adrian will laugh at something, that knowledge in itself is a form of first runner. So they've handed me the baton and I've run with the baton, which is to tell the joke. Now, what happens is Adrian then goes over to Mary and says, "Hey Mary, come over and listen to this joke." Well, the trouble with that is that for Mary, there may be no first runner.

In other words, she may have a completely different sense of humor. So we've all been in this situation of telling the joke to Mary, but she doesn't find it funny because the joke was not for Mary, it was for Adrian. So what you have to do in that situation is you have to then tune into Mary and find out what she finds funny before you can then tell her a joke. And this is a super important principle that a lot of people don't seem to understand. So they will tell the joke, the first joke to Mary, and then they will wonder why it didn't get a reaction. And then they desperately scrabble around for another joke and they say, "Oh, well, I'll tell you this joke." And then they tell you another and it keeps getting worse and worse and less funny with each joke they tell. So this is the thing with magic.

It's no good starting a magic performance without a first runner. So if we are desperate to show magic to somebody, because we've learned this new trick, we want to show it to somebody, and we meet somebody, and then we launch into a performance of this effect for no reason at all, don't be surprised if they don't want to see a magic trick. We are effectively performing without the first runner, which is the inspiration.

Well, keeping with stories, your book includes a discussion of how ancient stories and philosophical frameworks can inform our understanding of magic. You mentioned The Boy Who Cried Wolf as an example of conditioning. How do you recommend magicians develop this kind of associative thinking?

Uh, I'm not sure if it is associative thinking. I think it's more a case of pattern matching. But the thing about this is the answer to the question is actually very, very simple and it's kind of an obvious answer, but I'm a great believer in the idea that we overlook what is obvious. And so what I recommend is that people start reading these old stories, whether it's Aesop's Fables or any other stories, traditional stories, folklore, fairy tale stories, whatever you might call them. Because there's a lot of very interesting patterns within the stories. When you read lots and lots of these stories, what happens is that you start to recognize the patterns in real life. And when you see yourself or somebody else going through the motions of something and you realize that this is actually in an old story, it makes you sit up and think. And it kind of gives you a jolt and you think, "Oh gosh, hang on a minute, that's the old story of XYZ." So for example, in the book, there's this tale of somebody who's writing letters to somebody every day that he, to you know, this lady that he wants to marry.

Every day he's bombarding her with letters. And this is a true story apparently. And after a year, she ends up marrying the postman. So to me, this is a very interesting thing because really, if you think about it, it was inevitable that if somebody is coming face-to-face with somebody, then it's actually the contact is more real than simply receiving bits of paper with ink on and nice sounding words. Whereas she was actually meeting the postman every day, or at least seeing the postman coming and going. So there is a kind of inevitability about the outcome of the story, even though it sounds surprising. Really, it shouldn't be surprising. So there are lots and lots of examples that when you do magic, you will find yourself very often, you will think of doing a certain trick.

And in order to get into the trick, you need to do another trick. And it's just a throwaway piece. Very often people will find the throwaway piece more interesting than the main effect. And you're thinking, "Well, hang on a minute, I wanted you to watch the ace trick. I'm not interested in that silly thing I used to set it up." But people want to see that silly trick over and over again. So the bottom line is that if you read lots of these stories, you will learn a lot about yourself through the stories and through seeing them illustrated in life.

Justin, for listeners and readers who know your previous work - so, technical manuscripts on forces, controls, and pseudo-cheating demonstrations - "The Intuitive Magician" feels like a significant departure. This is less about what to do and more about how to think. Was that a deliberate choice?

Well, it was more an outcome of the teaching. So without wanting to sound kind of like a businessman, I run three different businesses. I run a little agency for magicians, and I give lessons, and I sell the books. And so this book was really an outcome of the teaching. I'm very, very interested in the way that the human mind works, and I'm very interested in the way magicians' minds work. And, you know, I found that there's kind of a gap in the market for a book that teaches magicians not what to think, because there are lots of magic books that tell us what to think and how to do things, but I'm trying to encourage magicians to think for themselves, and this is something that I encourage my students to do, but this was something I wanted to encapsulate in this book. So it may seem like a departure from the other books, but really it was a natural outcome of simply giving lots of lessons to people.

[Music] Just a reminder that you can be notified when new episodes of this podcast are published by subscribing to the email alerts.. You'll find all the details on the podcast website at themagicbookpodcast.com, which is where you can also find transcripts plus accompanying blog posts with summaries, timestamps, and links to resources mentioned in each episode. [Music fades] Justin, you write about "status anxiety," which is the tendency for magicians to compare their current repertoire unfavorably to what they imagine professionals can do. How can magicians overcome this sort of psychological hurdle?

Well, I think one of the things that they can do is to appreciate the magic that they're doing already and to really try to master it and take it to a higher level. So it was what I was mentioning earlier, that when you meet these great magicians and you realize that you're not even a third of the way up the mountain. So when you look at your own repertoire, there is actually going to be room for improvement. And it's a very common and a very ordinary reaction when a gig comes in, for instance. Maybe you're not a professional, maybe you're just an amateur who gets the occasional gig, but when the gig comes in, you think, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to have to, you know, really not just brush up on my magic, but I'm going to rush out and buy lots of new tricks or learn some new tricks." And I think this is the wrong reaction. I think that this is a form of status anxiety, and it's really much better to really master what you are doing on your level than trying to aim too high.

An analogy is that when, for instance, you are learning Grade 3 piano, you don't perform your Grade 3 pieces. You perform your Grade 1, your Grade 2 pieces. And there's nothing logical about looking at other musicians who are Grade 8 piano. You know, you can't do anything about it. You just need to master, get used to performing your Grade 1 and your Grade 2 pieces. And the reason that I say that is that there's a big difference between simply being able to do magic on your own or for family, and actually being able to do your same magic effects in a gig or semi-professionally or for people that you don't know. And so, yeah, don't panic if you're offered a gig. Simply brush up on the magic that you can do, and do it to the best of your ability.

And the fact is that you are gaining performance mileage along the way, so you're actually improving and learning when you don't think you are.

Well, staying with practice, there's a section in your book on what you call the three stages of practice: focused, semi-focused, and zoned-out. Why is it important to progress through all three, rather than jumping straight to automatic execution?

If you think of it in other terms, such as driving a car, the very first time that you get into a car, you really have to focus on what you're doing. So under those circumstances, it can be, of course, very dangerous to try and jump in the car and just put your foot down. So you have to carefully and conscientiously work out what you are meant to be doing. So in the focus stage, you actually, you're trying to find out "What is it that I'm actually trying to do right now?" You then progress from that stage to a stage where you know what it is that you're meant to be doing, but you can't quite do it. And so that takes you to the second age where you are kind of doing repetitive practice. You kind of know what you're meant to be doing now, but you are now trying to learn how to physically do it, and you're doing it over and over again, ingraining this thing that you're learning. And then once you have got to a certain stage with that, you then can do — in the world of magic - you can then progress to the third stage, which is where you can practice without thinking about it.

And Jerry Andrus many years referred to this as "sitting in front of the TV-type practice." So we've all annoyed our partners by shuffling the cards during a movie and what have you. But in actual fact, it's actually very useful for us to do that because now we are developing a kind of an unconscious mastery. Now, what I find in the lessons very, very often over and over again is that people are cheating and they are leaving out the second stage, or they're even leaving out the first stage. And so they go straight to the — I won't call it "unconscious competence," but unfortunately you'd have to call it "unconscious incompetence" because they're now doing the wrong thing. They're doing it fluently, but they're doing the wrong thing fluently. And this is a major problem. So I try to encourage people to go right back to the beginning, Go to stage 1, don't leave stage 1 until you really understand what it is that you're meant to be doing.

You mentioned the importance of "session thinking" with laypeople. So that is creating a shared jam session-like experience, things we're very familiar with from conventions typically. How does this differ from how most magicians approach performance?

I think that a lot of magicians will have a set repertoire and they will attempt to perform that repertoire when they are asked to do magic. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but you can create a much more intimate performance if you go with an improvisational approach or a session approach. Because if you think about in a session with other magicians, you will show me, for instance, a 3-Card Trick. And I might reciprocate by showing you a 3-shell game, which is related to the 3-Card Monte, but it's with other objects. And then that might inspire you to show me the Cups and Balls. And then I might show you a 3-ball routine that doesn't use the cups and so on. So we are, we're having this back and forth, knock about like a game of tennis, and we're inspiring each other. Wouldn't it be a great thing if we could introduce that mindset into an impromptu performance with laypeople?

So rather than, "Oh, Adrian, show us your tricks," and then you run off your 10-minute repertoire, it'd be a great thing if you could show them something that is inspired by the moment, something improvisational, something ad-lib, and then they will react to that, and then you improvise something else based upon their reaction. You end up having kind of a jam session with people rather than a situation where you are simply performing at them with a bunch of pre-rehearsed tricks.

"The Intuitive Magician" is being published by Sixth Books, which is an imprint of Collective Ink. Again, this is quite different from self-publishing your own manuscripts as you've done in the past. So Justin, what prompted you to work with a traditional publisher for this book?

The approach did come through magic, but I think the reason why I went with the publisher, I mean, I had conversations with the publisher asking all sorts of silly questions about, you know, "How much money am I gonna get?" you know, from a publisher versus self-publishing. And he was such a nice guy. He was guiding me through it, no intention to kind of convince me to go with one route or the other. So I just ended up going with the publisher, but also my aunt who was a Mills and Boon, a romance novelist, who's got a lot of experience with writing and publishing. She basically told me in no uncertain terms that it'd be better to go with a publisher. So between the various expletive-riddled emails from my aunt and the very gentle, compassionate conversation from the publisher, I decided to go with the publisher. And here we are.

So interesting. Well, you're in very good company, of course. Caroline Ravn's book is also published by Sixth Books.

They sent me a little sample, so I'm looking forward to reading that.

Well, your new book runs to over 550 pages. Justin, how long did it take you to write, and what was your process like?

Well, this is my lockdown project, which I started in the summer of 2019. And then when the lockdown took place, I thought, "Well, this is my opportunity to really properly write a book." As for the process, there is no process other than writing one paragraph at a time. The thing is, that there's no such thing as putting a blank sheet of paper into a typewriter and sitting down and trying to compose words. It's a case of you are on the bus, or you're in the bath, or you are about to fall asleep, or you are in the middle of a meeting, and you have an idea. And you scratch it down on the notepad, and then you have another idea and it builds up and it becomes a paragraph, and then that becomes two paragraphs, and then you've got a chapter. So really, I mean, the book is kind of in its own way, it's slightly ridiculous in that it's 100 chapters, which sounds crazy, but they're actually 100 essays on magic, which were all inspired by my experiences teaching. So it's less of a linear A-B-C kind of manual on how to do magic, and more of a spontaneously created bunch of essays, which I've then compiled together into a semi-logical order.

Well, with your previous publications, you've primarily reached those interested in card magic, selling through magic dealers. "The Intuitive Magician" seems aimed at a broader audience. So, who do you envision as the ideal reader?

Well, this is a very interesting question. The thing is that there probably are no ideal readers, but there's probably a bunch of ideal readers, which would be people who've been into magic for a year, or 2 years, or 10 years, or however many years they've been into magic, but they feel that there is something missing from their performance, either in terms of technique or presentation, or confidence. In these 100 chapters, what I'm actually doing is I'm attacking the problem from lots and lots of different angles. So people don't need to necessarily read the whole book. They just need to find the bit that refers to their own approach and what they can do about it. The answer to the question really is that there was a very broad readership that maybe people have only been interested in magic three weeks, or people have been doing magic for 30 years, but there are ideas in the book which are designed to make people think about their whole approach to magic, rather than just the nuts and bolts: "Here's the effect, here's the method, here's the patter."

Well, Justin, this is The Magic Book Podcast, and regular listeners know I always ask, what is your most cherished magic book, or books, and why?

Well, I think if we are simply looking in terms of nostalgia and cherished books, the time when I was a teenager, getting into Marlo's card magic would be something very special. And he was publishing his Marlo's Magazines in the early '80s. I was into magic when these books came out. They were amazing books, very exciting books to read. So one or more of the Marlo Magazines would be my choice of desert island magic books, I think.

Marlo seems to be getting a bit of a new audience with the books published by Vanishing, Inc.

Yeah, and that's right. It's thoroughly deserved attention. Marlo is underestimated by a lot of people. They don't quite know why he publishes lots of methods for effects, but the short answer is that the method that works for you may not work for me or vice versa. So, if he publishes three methods and one uses a Bottom Deal, and one uses a Palm and one uses a Double Lift, if you don't know how to palm cards, then you're obviously not going to go with the palming method. And if Marlo had only published the palming method and not the other two, because he personally favored the palming method, well, then you're going to turn the page, whereas you could get your own method from his books by finding the right one. So you don't need to read all three methods.

You just need to read the introduction to each of the methods and see, "Oh yeah, I know this looks like a good method for me." So I'm glad that Marlo's getting recognition now. And yeah, Vanishing, Inc are doing a very good job and yes, they have brought out these new edition of Marlo Magazines.

Well, your book, "The Intuitive Magician," will be published on February 24th. Where can we purchase it?

Well, you can get copies from my own website, which is justin-higham.com, justin-higham.com with a hyphen between the two names. That's my main website for book purchases. Although the book is not yet out, so before the book is actually published, I would recommend that people head over to Amazon, or to the online bookstores where they can pre-purchase or pre-order the book.

Justin, great conversation! Thank you so much for being my guest on The Magic Book Podcast.

Thank you very much, Adrian, for inviting me. It's been a very enjoyable chat, and I hope the listeners have got something useful from the conversation.

You've been listening to The Magic Book Podcast. In this episode, we explored Justin Higham's journey to becoming one of the magic world's most respected teachers and card magicians. We discovered how his experiences studying from masters like Ed Marlo shaped his thinking and learned about the concepts behind his new book, "The Intuitive Magician," including performance paralysis, the A-B-C list methodology, and why improvisation is both the goal and the method for mastering the performance of magic. Justin also shared insights from the over 3,500 individual magic lessons he's given and offered practical frameworks for developing truly intuitive performance skills. You'll find the transcript accompanying this episode on the website at TheMagicBookPodcast.com, plus a blog post with summary, timestamps, and links to resources we mentioned. If you have a question or would like to suggest a topic or a guest for a future episode, please contact me, adrian at TheMagicBookPodcast.com. Thanks for listening to The Magic Book Podcast. I've been your host, Adrian Tennant.

Until next time, goodbye.