The Choreography of Attention

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Today we will watch two short videos of Apollo Robbins, a pickpocket and entertainer. In the first video, he will demonstrate his amazing talent. In the second, he will show and explain how he accomplishes his feats.

Apollo Robbins is a peculiar variety-arts hybrid, known in the trade as a theatrical pickpocket. Among his peers, he is widely considered the best in the world at what he does, which is taking things from people’s jackets, pants, purses, wrists, fingers, and necks, then returning them in amusing and mind-boggling ways. Robbins works smoothly and invisibly, with a charm that belies his talent for larceny. One senses that he would prosper on either side of the law.

“My goal isn’t to hurt them or to bewilder them with a puzzle,” he says “but to challenge their maps of reality.”

Recently, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and the military have studied his methods for what they reveal about the nature of human attention.
You can watch these videos at https://www.ted.com/talks/apollo_robbins_the_art_of_misdirection?language=en
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUSO_Mj1TQ.

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