Magic tricks make the impossible seem possible. Magicians have long captivated audiences with visual tricks, such as pulling a bunny from a hat or sawing someone in half, but tricks that rely on sound ...

To help pay for his undergraduate education, Elias Garcia-Pelegrin had an unusual summer job: cruise ship magician. “I was that guy who comes out at dinnertime and does random magic for you,” he says.

A small experiment using sleights of hand and illusions offers insights into how birds and people perceive the world. By Veronique Greenwood The coin is in the illusionist’s left hand, now it’s in the ...

Most magic tricks require a fairly sophisticated understanding of how humans perceive the world. To fall for a trick, people have to see things they perceive as important and ignore things that are ...

University of Cambridge provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK. Magic tricks can teach us about how the brain works. Magic capitalises on very specific blind spots in people’s attention ...

Pulling a rabbit from a top hat. Teleporting from one cage to another. Finding a coin behind a five-year-old’s ear. Magic has long inspired a sense of awe and wonder, but one portion of the population ...