Unraveling Secrets: Benjamin Hale on the Mysterious Disappearance That Haunts the Ozarks
Maintaining an attitude of healthy skepticism is deeply important to me. There is an oddball legacy of people I greatly admire, stage magicians with side-careers as outspoken skeptics, bullshit-debunkers: James Randi, Penn Jillette, Ricky Jay — and the OG example, Harry Houdini. They know bullshit when they see it because they themselves are skilled professional practitioners of it. A magician who wants his audience to truly believe his tricks are magic isn’t an entertainer, he’s a very dangerous person. And that’s someone I have absolutely no desire to be. But people are so primed to believe in magic, even when you slowly, demonstratively let the audience see you put the rabbit in the hat, they all still gasp when you pull it out.
