Penn and Teller Fool Us // Tyler Twombly - Sticky-Note Magic

So let's get started and meet our first fooler of the night. When people find out I'm a magician from Salem, Massachusetts, they usually think pointy witch hats, cauldrons, stuff like that. Outside of the tourism industry, I've never once seen a person flying around on a broomstick. The way that I started to perform magic in a locked psychiatric unit was that I wanted to get into the field of psychology, but I didn't have any experience. I thought, what better way to get my foot in the door than to volunteer? Magic is a great way to demonstrate to someone that their own perception is flawed. And there are many ways we can misperceive reality. I continue to use magic in my work now as a therapist to help people learn about how they misperceive reality. And I'm working to help expose and destroy that illusion. Pen, teller, Alison, people. I've come here to share with you a secret. There is enormous potential for magic in the world of office supplies. Countless grand illusions have been performed with mighty skill on this large stage. And I've come waltzing out here holding just a pad of sticky notes and a pen. At this point, many of you are definitely thinking you had me at office supplies. I'm sure this will be fantastic. But in all earnestness, the illusion that you're about to experience is small and you'll need to come in very close for your effort. However, you'll be rewarded because what you will see will change the way you look at these little pieces of paper forever and prove that the greatest magic happens at the smallest scale. So with that, I'd like to invite Alison to join me. Thank you very much. Now, Alison. Yes. These little pieces of paper often carry simple, mundane reminders to go to an important appointment with, say, the dentist. But they can also be imbued with much more meaning, like the I love you note placed in a school lunchbox. Only to be discovered by one maybe slightly embarrassed child later that day at school. For a little paper miracle to work, we can't just write any old thing down. We need something personally meaningful. So if you could please give us the first initial of someone near and dear to your heart, someone you love very much, someone who has had an enormous impact on the trajectory of your life. OK. Yes. Yes. OK. I'm going to draw two hearts with an arrow between them because we're going to do something very interesting in just a moment. Now, we're just getting started, but to really personalize this, we'll put your initial, which is a in that heart and their initial, which is s s in this heart. And we'll put a little bird in the sky just to give it a little sense of depth, don't you think? Nice. Yeah, two hearts at one point separated by space and time until one day everything changed. That's what we're going to do right now. We're going to bring those hearts together. My greatest honor is that one day wound up on your refrigerator. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Maybe it's just me, but I'm sensing a little skepticism emanating from this general area. Yes. The gentleman in the suits. Teller, could you please join me up here on stage? Honored to meet you. You can stand right here. Now we're going to have you choose a letter, but not just any letter. I'm sure when you were younger, just starting out in your career, you had a big dream, a vision for your life. OK. I want you to think of a big dream that you had that actually came true and the winding path that the pursuit of that dream took you down. All right. So just think of one letter from the alphabet to represent that big dream. And you can whisper it right in my ear. Once you've thought of it, he can speak. Now, we're going to place that dream inside a perfect little bubble. Not totally perfect, but it'll do. This is Teller's dream. And this is where we start to tell our story. Now, in the beginning, a dream is just a dream doesn't go anywhere until that initial exertion of effort sends it off in some direction. Then you got to make some choices. You probably made some choices, some good, some maybe questionable. Sends it off in yet another. But then through a series of events, both serendipitous and planned, we wind up where we are right here today. This is for you. And this is just one single page in the story so far. Thank you very much. Me when you had a marker, because I just love any sort of office supplies. So that was fantastic. Thank you. Do all of your tricks involve office supplies? Whatever happens to be around. Generally speaking, do you work in an office? Well, I used to. And the origin of this trick started there. And so what made you interested in doing magic here and fool us? Well, I didn't think that I would ever do a show like this. But here I am. Surprise. So do you think you'll fool Penn and Teller? No. No. Really? That's flawless. Yeah. I mean, I like that they're still talking. Yeah. Yeah. Very dramatic. Furrow. Brown. All right. Well, it's time to go to Penn and Teller. Let's see if you fooled them or not. Yeah. You know, you told the truth, Tyler, at the beginning. You know, you had us at office supplies. That's when we loved you. We loved you right on the office supplies. It's it's it's just it's just a really funny line. It's also really true. We also love about this is that so often in magic, the props that you're showing are not all the props you're using. But we believe that everything you're using. We see it comes from the comes from the Post-it pad. It's really it's really fabulous. And we also love the fact that it deals with love and how hearts can move around. You know, you love one person and love another. And things move from one place to the other. And also made me think of, you know, still haven't found what I'm looking for. I don't know if you're a U2 fan at all, but sometimes when when when U2 is playing and Bono moves right in front of the guitar player and for a moment, he just covers up, well, the bass player at one time and maybe the drummer another time and maybe the guitar player at another time, he covers up when he when he moves in front of them, you know, and you just think that his heart is moving right over the guitar player in that way. And but I'm getting off into music. I'm really supposed to be talking about magic. But we really we love the act, love the office supplies. And I should get really back to magic. But, you know, our hearts moving around all over the place. Did any of that make sense to you? I think so. I you know, this code is so good. I know it's so annoying. I think I think they got it. And I'm OK with that. OK. That's trick, but they're not off the hook yet. More foolers and more fool us coming up.