For the next three weeks you get a new e-mail accurately predicting the outcome of a fight that week. The odds of having guessed the outcome of all four of these fights by chance is one in sixteen. Pretty good!
The following week another e-mail comes but it"s labeled with high importance. The a.n.a.lyst has made another prediction, but what is exciting this time is that the published odds on the fight are 10:1 in favor of the guy the a.n.a.lyst says will lose. An additional payout of 2:1 is offered from his bookie for large bets made on the underdog (whom the a.n.a.lyst predicts will win). He needs to make the largest bet possible to maximize the winnings. A $5,000 contribution from you will return $100,000.
That"s a lot of cashola, and his betting record looks solid. You follow the instructions in the e-mail and wire the money before scanning the real estate section of the newspaper in antic.i.p.ation of your winnings.
A few days later, your guy wins! But you never hear from the a.n.a.lyst again. What gives?
There was no system, Poindexter. You got taken. Here"s how.
The a.n.a.lyst collects a hundred or so e-mail addresses through Google searches and sends out e-mails like the first one you got above. But there"s one small difference. In exactly half of the e-mails, he predicts that the winner will be Boxer B. The next week the a.n.a.lyst sends out only fifty e-mails to the winning recipients of last week (the Boxer A group). Half of these e-mails predict that Boxer C will win this week and half predict Boxer D will win. The next week, only twenty-five e-mails are sent out to the previous week"s winners, Boxer D, and so it goes. Finally, you"re a member of a select group of six people who get the final prediction and the request for money. Two of you actually send the dough. One of you won and one of you lost, but either way the "a.n.a.lyst" keeps the $10,000.
Our legal system is based on the idea that criminals can be put away if they are proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. To a magician or con artist, the concept of reasonable doubt is dubious. Rather, they know that people will accept evidence as ironclad when they fail to perceive that they are being duped. Scams like this show how easy it is to string people along based on their flawed estimation of probabilities.
Bernie Madoff, the king of cons who pulled off the largest Ponzi scheme in history, used private golf clubs and other exclusive establishments to lure investors. He cultivated the illusion that only very special people could invest with him, people he trusted and who in turn could trust him. He played hard to get: "I don"t need your money. Investments are risky. I don"t know if you want to be in my inner circle." Madoff, in the eyes of his victims, was one of the good guys who championed the interests of the small investor. Meanwhile, he was milking their oxytocin circuits all the way to the bank.
Zak has good advice for how to avoid a con. Oxytocin"s effects, he says, are modulated by your large prefrontal cortex that houses the "executive" regions of your brain. Oxytocin is all emotion, while your prefrontal cortex is deliberative. If you know how easily your oxytocin system can be turned on by charlatans, you should, with mindfulness, be less vulnerable to people who might want to take advantage of you. But don"t be too vigilant, he warns. Oxytocin causes us to empathize with others, and that is the key to building social relationships.
Magicians also elicit oxytocin in the brains of their audiences, but to different ends. They want you to trust them, so they, too, pretend to be vulnerable. Remember Randi"s book test? The poor old coot. He was b.u.mbling and lost. He could not read that woman"s mind, no matter how hard he tried. Everyone in the theater was oozing oxytocin.
Thus magicians" banter is often about the need for help, says Zak. "I"m not sure this is going to work" or "This is technically impossible" or "I am at great risk." They induce oxytocin release by sucking you into the illusion, and in turn you trust them to lead you out safely. They often touch volunteers called up on stage, put their arms around them, and give them small gifts. Magicians tend to be extremely friendly and, like Mac King, disarmingly innocent. With a magician, you know you"re being scammed, says Zak, but you let it happen anyway because it feels so oxytocin good.
The Magic Castle.
Susana looks out into the blackness from a small stage in a tiny pub called the Hat and Hare. This is it, our big night, June 7, 2010, the culmination of our yearlong effort to learn to perform magic tricks. We are here at the Magic Castle, a funky mansion with many pubs nestled in the Hollywood Hills, to try to win entry into the prestigious Academy of Magical Arts as performing magicians-only we are billing ourselves as the world"s first neuromagicians. Can we bring it off? Can we convince the panel of nine professional magicians sitting in the dark before us-including Shoot Ogawa, the most famous Asian magician in the world, and Goldfinger, aka Jack Vaughn, the Society of American Magicians Hall of Famer and perhaps the most prominent African American magician in history-that we deserve to be members of their inner circle?43 Cross Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with an English pub and Disney"s Haunted Mansion and you"ll get the Magic Castle. The building is the Area 51 of magic and bills itself as the most exclusive club of magicians in the world. This is the sanctuary where many of the world"s greatest magicians let down their goatees, hang out, and relax. Once a month, they invite a few wannabe magicians to audition. We are trying out in a group of six people, which is larger than usual. You can"t get an audition without a current member sponsoring you, and even then only about half the candidates pa.s.s on the first go. Many more are encouraged to try out again after another one to three months of practice. The Castle sometimes provides a mentor to give weekly lessons until the candidate is up to snuff. Those who pa.s.s muster are eligible for a Gold Pin membership, which provides access to the extensive library of magical arts, lectures, and shows, plus the right to vote on academy matters.
Over the past year we had been practicing an act that we developed with the help of Magic Tony, our close friend and tutor. In recent months, as our date with destiny approached, we met in Starbucks, IHOP and other breakfast joints, wine bars, and even a large empty cla.s.sroom in the psychology building at Arizona State University, where Tony is a graduate student. Tony taught us cla.s.sic tricks-using cards, ropes, bits of paper, Jell-O, and gimmicks-and helped us dress them in modern garb. On stage, we wear white lab coats, with our name and the t.i.tle "Neuromagician" st.i.tched on the left breast pocket.
In our act, we demonstrate that we can make an exact replica of a person"s brain using a special Polaroid camera and a pan originally designed to hold live doves. We provide false explanations of how the technology works using rope tricks and magicians" gimmicks. We read minds. And then, in the end, we perform surgery on the brain, which is made of Jell-O, to extract a playing card that a volunteer has been "holding in his mind" all through the act. Our patter is mostly nonsense delivered with an air of authority and, we hope, humor.
Susana clears her throat and begins, "h.e.l.lo, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for coming to tonight"s Wonder Show. As you may know, Wonder Shows were one of the ways preindustrial scientists and inventors disseminated their discoveries to the public. In the nineteenth century, photographs were prohibitively expensive, and literacy, for that matter, was not yet ubiquitous. So scientists went on the road to show the wonders of the age and the discoveries that were changing the world."
What Women Magicians?
Susana addressed the audience as "ladies and gentlemen" but there are very few women, at least in the United States and Europe, who make their living performing magic. We have asked many magicians why this is so. The answers we"ve received are more amusing than illuminating: Women can"t lie. Women don"t get tricks. Women can"t do math. Women can"t command respect. Girls don"t receive magic sets as birthday presents.
The lack of women in magic is self-perpetuating. Teller points out that fifty years ago there were hardly any women in comedy. Now nearly half of all comedians are women. So the larger issue at play may be the lack of cultural tradition and role models for aspiring women magicians. In Asia, for instance, female magicians are much more common. At the 2009 Magic Olympics in Beijing, Max Maven told us over tea that, historically, Asian women often performed religious rituals involving magic, and that geishas incorporated magic into their elaborate entertainment routines.
Taking his turn at center stage, Steve nonchalantly shuffles a deck of cards. "Wonder Shows are all but gone, now replaced with high-quality publications and TV doc.u.mentaries," he says. "Which is all well and good. But there is something missing on the page and on the screen that can only be fully experienced with live experiments on innocent vict-uh, that is, I mean...real people. Tonight, we will revive the Wonder Show form of scientific discourse. We will show you the wonders of our modern age, with a special emphasis on brain science."
Steve takes a step forward and gazes into the audience. "Let"s get started by asking for a volunteer."
Eight jurors point simultaneously to the only other person in the room: the ninth member of the committee, Scotto (otherwise known as Scott Smith, a professional magician with a day job as a quality a.s.surance engineer at the University of Southern California"s Marshall School of Business). He"s been our primary handler for the audition process, the one who scheduled our tryout and sent us the performance guidelines: No fire. Have fifteen minutes of performance ready. If you perform as a duo, make sure that each person does enough magic to be evaluated individually.
The key thing he hasn"t told us is what the judges are looking for. We a.s.sume they want to see skill with sleights of hand, patter, humor, originality, and timing. Only later do we learn the three main requirements that they are judging us on. We must be good enough never to embarra.s.s the Magic Castle. We must not reveal magic secrets through poor performance. And our timing must indicate that we understand when the magic happens for the audience-that we aren"t just going through the motions.
Magic Trick Categories.
All magic tricks follow certain central themes: Appearance: You produce something from nothing-a rabbit from a hat, a coin from thin air, a dove from a pan.
Vanishing: You make something disappear-the rabbit, the coin, the dove, the Statue of Liberty, whatever.
Transposition: You cause something to move from one place to another-as when Tamariz transports cards from a table into the jacket pocket of somebody he"s never approached.
Restoration: You destroy an object, then bring it back to its original state-as when a magician rips up your hundred-dollar bill and then hands it back to you intact.
Transformation: An object changes form, such as when a coin turns into a different coin or three different lengths of rope are transformed into three equal lengths.
Telekinesis (levitation or animation of an object): You defy gravity by making something rise into the air-such as the cla.s.sic woman with the hoop run around her. Another example is Teller making a red ball hover and follow him around onstage. Or you make a spoon bend with your thoughts alone.
Extraordinary mental or physical feats or extrasensory abilities: You catch a bullet with your teeth or you can tell what a person will choose. Johnny Thompson"s precognition trick from chapter 7 is a good example.
Poor Scotto. He is apparently destined to suffer any abuse we may issue during our performance.
Steve approaches Scotto, saying in a soft, crooning, magician-style voice, "Am I correct that we"ve never met before tonight and that you are acting of your own free will as my a.s.sistant?"
Scotto replies that he"s only spoken to Steve through e-mail correspondence as part of the audition process and that Steve has never asked him to serve as a stooge for the act about to unfold.
"Thank you. Then I"ll ask you to first choose a card as I riffle through them with my thumb. You can tell me to stop anywhere you like."
Steve cuts the cards and extends his right hand in front of Scotto, running his thumb down the corner of the deck. The click of each card is clearly audible in the minuscule bar. Even the red velvet curtains that cover the walls can"t absorb the loud snaps.
About halfway through the deck, Scotto says "Stop." Steve removes the cards above the stopping point and allows Scotto to take the chosen card, which is now on top of the half-deck.
SPOILER ALERT! THE FOLLOWING SECTION DESCRIBES MAGIC SECRETS AND THEIR BRAIN MECHANISMS!.
Of course it is a force. We are setting up a complex trick in which we will magically transport a card into the middle of a brain made out of Jell-O. But first we need Scotto to pick a card identical to the one we embedded last night into the fake Jell-O brain. It is the jack of diamonds.
To force the card onto Scotto, Steve loads the jack of diamonds as the top card of the deck, then shuffles the cards without actually moving the jack. When this false shuffle is complete, Steve cuts the cards into his left hand, which puts the jack of diamonds in the middle of the deck, but he sticks his left pinky just above it so that he knows exactly where the card is. From the front of the deck, the cards look flat, but from the back there is a clear gap caused by the "pinky break." A master wouldn"t have had to actually stick his finger into the deck. The pinky would simply hold open a small gap. But despite months of practice, it"s clear to Steve (and probably everyone in the room) that he"s no master.
With the pinky break in place, Steve runs his left thumb down the front corner of deck ("the riffle") and waits for Scotto to say "Stop." But no matter where Scotto chooses to stop, Steve will lift the cards from the back of the deck at the pinky break, ensuring that Scotto"s "choice" is the jack of diamonds. Steve"s misdirection involves looking into Scotto"s eyes as he lifts the cards, so as to keep Scotto"s attention away from the sleight of hand.
Learning tricks like these, we"ve been surprised to discover, is just as much about what you do with your eyes and body as it is about what you do with your hands. The trickiest part for us has been to learn to do things without attending to them-or, more precisely, while attending to something else. Pulling off these simple sleights requires about as much dexterity as you need when learning how to shuffle a deck of cards for the first time. But to learn to pay attention to irrelevant things while specifically not attending to the secret methods-all the while not looking guilty? Very difficult.
END OF SPOILER ALERT.
If we learned one thing during our magic training, it is that the route to success is practice, practice, practice, and more practice. This is true of every motor skill you acquire throughout your life-learning to walk, kick a soccer ball, play the piano, hit a tennis ball, block a punch in tae kwon do, ski down a black diamond slope, or put a pinky break in a deck of cards. But now we aren"t just directing a ball to a specific point at a specific time, we are also using our own spotlight of attention to misdirect.
Human motor skills are countless and often amazing. People born without arms can dress themselves and write letters-with their toes. Contact jugglers, such as David Bowie"s character in the movie Labyrinth, can manipulate gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s with their hands and arms to create the illusion that the b.a.l.l.s are floating in midair.44 Acrobats can do handstands on top of galloping horses. But we acquire all our motor skills in the same way.
You have in your brain swaths of tissue, called the motor cortex, that map all the movements you are able to make. Your primary motor map sends commands from your brain down to your spine and out to all your various muscles. When this map is activated, your body can move. You have other motor maps involved in planning and imagining movements, but for now let"s look at how a familiar skill develops.
Let"s say you are learning to play the piano. When you are a novice, the region of your brain that maps your fingers-yes, you have finger maps-grows in an exuberance of new connections, seeking and strengthening any connection patterns that maximize your performance. If you give up practicing, your finger maps will stop adapting and shrink back to their original size. But if you keep practicing, you will reach a new phase of long-term structural change in your maps. Many of the novel neural connections you made early on aren"t needed anymore. A consolidation occurs: the skill becomes better integrated into your maps" basic circuitry, and the whole process becomes more efficient and automatic.
There is another level to all this, and that"s true expertise, or virtuosity. If you practice a complex motor skill day in and day out for years on end, always striving for perfection, your motor maps again increase in size. Professional pianists (and magicians!) unquestionably possess enlarged hand and finger maps. Their maps are larger than average because they are crammed full of finely honed neural wiring that gives them exquisite (and hard-earned) control of timing, force, and targeting of all ten fingers. Violinists also have enlarged hand maps-but only one. The map that controls their string-fingering hand is like the pianists". But their bow hands, while deft and coordinated, do not become beefed up beyond normal.
Here is one more interesting fact about expertise. As you gradually master a complex skill, the "motor programs" it requires gradually migrate down from higher to lower areas in your motor circuitry. Imagine a guy who signs up for samba dance cla.s.ses. Like all novices, he is terrible at first. During his first several lessons, he is processing his dance-related movement combinations up in his higher motor regions, such as the supplementary motor area. This area is important for engaging in any complex and unfamiliar motor task. The dance moves are at first very complex for him. He needs to pay attention to them constantly, and even so he often loses track.
He sticks with it, though, and after a couple of months he is getting a lot smoother. He is using his supplementary motor area much less for his dancing these days. Many of the motor command sequences he is using now have been transferred downward in the cortical hierarchy, to reside mainly in his premotor cortex. He"s become a competent dancer. He"s not Fred Astaire, but he needs to pay less attention to the basics now. He makes far fewer mistakes. He can improvise longer and longer sequences.
Finally, if he practices often for many months stretching into years, eventually his premotor cortex delegates a lot of its dance-related sequences to the primary motor cortex. Now he can be called a great samba dancer. Dance has mingled intimately with the motor primitives in his fundamental motor map. The dance has become part of his being.45 Susana experienced the gradual acquisition of expertise when she practiced the martial art tae kwon do through high school and college. She has a brown belt and was once the junior tae kwon do champion of Galicia, the region of Spain where she was raised. She found that in the sparring ring, novice martial artists baldly telegraph their intentions through eye movements and body language. The same is typically true of new magicians, who need to think about their tricks as they perform them, and therefore perform them badly.
Accomplished magicians don"t need to pay attention to their moves during a trick because the movements come as second nature, as naturally as walking or talking, leaving them free to attend somewhere else. Juan Tamariz jokingly a.s.serts that each spectator is a "telepath." He says that if the magician thinks, even for a brief instant, "Here"s where I do the trick," the audience will be able to tell. Thus magicians must be able to perform their routines by rote, without needing to engage any conscious processes. If this is accomplished, the audience won"t be able to isolate the critical instant or location of the secret method behind the trick. We all do this in real life to some extent. If you have something to hide from your business partner, spouse, or a law enforcement agent, you will do best not to think about it while in their presence, lest your voice, gaze, or posture give you away.
The French Drop or Deceptive Biological Motion.
Arturo de Ascanio, the father of Spanish card magic, once said that sleight of hand must be so good that attentional misdirection is not needed, and that the misdirection must be so perfect that sleight of hand is superfluous.
We"ve talked a lot so far about how magicians misdirect your attention. But what about sleight of hand? How does a magician learn to perform flawless sleights, and are any parts of the maneuver more important than others?
Sleight of hand involves making your hand movements ambiguous so that it looks like you are doing one thing when in fact you are doing another. For example, the "French Drop" is a cla.s.sic sleight in which a coin is apparently removed from one hand by the other and then moved to another position in s.p.a.ce before revealing that the coin has disappeared. The moves take a lot of practice to perfect, but n.o.body has examined scientifically the critical aspects of the maneuvers, until now.
SPOILER ALERT! THE FOLLOWING SECTION DESCRIBES MAGIC SECRETS AND THEIR BRAIN MECHANISMS!.
In this famous vanish, the magician holds a coin in one hand and moves his other hand as if to grab it. But instead of taking the coin, he drops it into the palm of the hand holding it and uses his grabbing hand to provide cover. When he moves his grabbing hand away (which you are sure holds the coin), you soon see that it is empty. In fact, the coin is hidden in the palm of his holding hand in a way that makes the hand seem empty.
END OF SPOILER ALERT.
Michael Natter and Flip Phillips, researchers in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Skidmore College, recently studied the French Drop by showing videos of both novice and expert magicians performing the trick. They split the movements into three phases: the Approach phase, in which the grabbing hand is approaching the holding hand; the Mid-Capture phase, in which the grabbing hand appears to capture the coin; and the Retreat phase, in which the grabbing hand appears to move away with the coin.
Which phase is most important to the successful sleight of hand? The scientists asked naive observers to watch the videos of the individual phases of the sleight and guess which hand held the coin at the end of the video. They discovered that the Approach phase was not critical to the sleight. The subjects were unable to guess by watching Approach videos from either novice or expert magicians. The Mid-Capture phase, however, was critical. Here, subjects usually guessed the final position of the coin when novice magicians performed the trick but not when experts performed it. The same was true for the Retreat phase, though the effect was not as big as in the Mid-Capture phase.
These results suggest that skilled magicians are more proficient than amateurs in making ambiguous hand movements during the Mid-Capture portion of the trick. They are so good that the parts in your brain that perceive biological motion cannot tell the difference between a real grab and a fake grab.
Steve is talking to Scotto. "Now, there"s no need to keep that card to yourself. Show it around as we set up our first technological demonstration, our first installment of the Wonder Show. Whatever you do, Scotto, it is critical that you keep your card in mind throughout the show. Some of the technology depends on it."
Susana hands Steve a Polaroid camera.
Steve says, "To ensure you don"t forget, we"ll take a picture of you and your card. Okay, hold your card right up next to your face, facing me. Good. Think about the card and say cheese." Steve presses the shutter and the camera spits out a Polaroid image.
Steve turns to Scotto again and says, "This Polaroid camera has been specially modified to image your two brain hemi spheres. We call it the "Hemi-roid." We can use the image to create an exact replica of your brain. Please remain seated while your Hemi-roid develops."
The picture shows Scotto with his card held to his face. But in silhouette over his forehead a line drawing of a brain has appeared.
To make this happen, we placed a transparency of a brain over the film box, between the lens and the film, within the Polaroid camera. Thus all of the images taken with the camera have a big black line drawing of a brain superimposed. The trick here is to know how to line up the brain image with the head of the subject. Like everything else, it takes a bit of practice.
It must be said, we are a bit wooden in our acting skills. It"s one thing to get up in front of a group of peers and talk about research. We"ve done this enough that public speaking is second nature. The problem we have with our act is the script. When we speak about science, we can make up the specific wording as we go. But with the magic act, there are specific lines that must be said in a specific order and with specific inflections and emotions. Acting is a critical skill for a magician. Robert-Houdin once said, "A magician is an actor who pretends to have real powers."
Susana approaches Scotto while Steve returns to the stage. "May I have your card?" Scotto hands it over. "The memory of your card is now engraved in your brain, and we also have a picture of the card-and your brain-so we can simply dispose of the actual physical card," says Susana as she rips the card into little bits. "But just for further reminder, I"ll give you a little receipt to hold on to." Susana returns a card fragment to Scotto.
SPOILER ALERT! THE FOLLOWING SECTION DESCRIBES MAGIC SECRETS AND THEIR BRAIN MECHANISMS!.
Why rip up Scotto"s card now? Because while Susana is ripping up his card, she carries out a cla.s.sic sleight in magic-the switchout. She is secretly holding the fragment from the duplicate card-the one inside the Jell-O brain-between her index and middle fingers. Once Scotto"s card is completely ripped, Susana then hands Scotto the fragment from the brain card, as if it came from the newly torn jack. Later, when we remove the jack from the brain, Scotto will find that the fragment he is holding impossibly and exactly matches the missing corner. Pure teleportation!
It took Susana several multihour lessons with Magic Tony, and two or three destroyed decks of cards, to perfect the sleight. She does it brilliantly in the audition, raising her gaze to look Scotto in the eye and misdirecting his attention at the critical time of the switch. Scotto will tell her later that he knew she must be performing a switchout when she ripped his card, but nevertheless he couldn"t detect it when it happened.
END OF SPOILER ALERT.
After she rips the card, Susana returns to a little table near center stage, which supports a crystal goblet. "Remember to keep your card in mind," says Susana, as she deposits the bits of Scotto"s card into the gla.s.s and covers it with a drape.
Steve puffs himself up and announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, Susana will now introduce the highlighted technology of our show. It"s the Digital Optical Volumizing Electronic Positron-Accessing Neuroprinter-or, for short, the DOVEPAN."
SPOILER ALERT! THE FOLLOWING SECTION DESCRIBES MAGIC SECRETS AND THEIR BRAIN MECHANISMS!.
This is a joke designed for an audience of magicians. A dovepan is a gimmick made of two nested pans with a large covering on top-roomy enough to hold live birds, birthday cakes, you name it. You can buy them in every magic shop. The magician displays the bottom pan, which is empty. He covers it and then waves his magic wand. The top pan drops down into the bottom pan automatically by virtue of a spring-loaded mechanism that is activated when the top and the bottom pan meet. He then removes the cover. Voila, a dove flies out. Or a rabbit hops out. Or-you guessed it-a Jell-O brain appears. It looks like magic.
END OF SPOILER ALERT.
Our dovepan rests on a small table, covered by a surgical drape, to the right of the stage. We embellished it with a huge handle and various electronic devices bulging from its top. Mad science: check.
Steve says, "The DOVEPAN will now a.n.a.lyze Scotto"s hemorrhoid-er, Hemi-roid-and use it to create an exact replica of his brain."
Steve approaches Scotto and says, "May I grab your Hemi-roid?" Finally we hear a few snickers from the serious (not easy to please, not easy to fool) crowd. We both think this is a good sign.
Steve holds up the photo to the jury and hands it to one member to pa.s.s around, saying, "Notice that this Hemi-roid is a true and factual representation of Scotto"s brain." He retrieves the photo and mounts it on the dovepan. Susana says, "And now the dovepan will use the Hemi-roid to make an exact replica of Scotto"s brain!"
Susana rubs her hands, mad-scientist style. "We"ll need to add raw materials to build a brain," she says. "A brain needs lots of fat." Steve grabs an ice cream scoop, sc.r.a.pes a large dollop of Crisco from a bucket, and flings it into the bottom portion of the dovepan. The scoop strikes the pan"s edge, ringing it like a bell.
Then Steve says "We need protein" and hands a large carton of body-building protein powder to Susana. She peels off the lid and shakes "protein" into the pan. Next Steve picks up a full sugar dispenser that he recently stole from a truck stop. Susana pours it all into the pan and declares, "Sugar!"
"And now, most important, salt," says Steve. "Salt is critical because its ions-sodium and chloride-allow neurons to communicate over long distances." Steve unscrews the top of a saltshaker and, with great exaggeration, pours a stream of salt into his left fist.
"The neural signals travel from this end of the neuron"-he moves his right hand along the pathway of the activity from his left hand, up his left arm, and across his chest to Susana"s waiting outstretched hand-"all the way over to the postsynaptic neuron, represented by Susana"s right hand."
At this point, Steve suddenly begins an incredibly dorky rendition of the cla.s.sic break-dancing step in which a wavelike motion begins at the end of one arm and flows through the other arm.
"This process is called "saltatory conduction,"" says Steve, as they hold hands and the wave continues through Susana"s body.
SPOILER ALERT! THE FOLLOWING SECTION DESCRIBES MAGIC SECRETS AND THEIR BRAIN MECHANISMS!.