Apollo Robbins - The Art of Misdirection

If you don't know who Apollo Robbins is, you might want to check a fascinating profile of him published in The New Yorker in January of this year. Quite simply, he is probably the world's best, and most honest, pickpocket.

As you'll gather from the article, and from the TEDTalk presentation below, Robbins specializes in studying the human mind and manipulating your attention so that while you are focusing on one thing, he's robbing you blind somewhere else. Some of you may be thinking you're too smart to fall for that, but whenever you think you are too smart for something, you're not so smart, especially when it's not a question of intelligence but of allocating limited resources and knowing your own limits. So, for those of you who think you are too smart, and for those of you who believe you are amazing multi-taskers, here's a fun reality check:

And here is another fun taste of his abilities:

The incredible thing is that, like with Penn & Teller, even when he tells you what/how he does what he does, you still get fooled and played...