Discovery channel: You Couldn’t Do This

From Canada.com:

You can retire from TV, but you can never get away from science — especially if you inculcated a lifelong interest in how things work from a young age. Jay Ingram, one of the original hosts of Discovery Canada’s Daily Planet newsmagazine, gets in touch with his inner child with his return-to-TV special You Couldn’t Do This.

Ingram explores the science behind magicians’ death-defying acts, showing how the most dangerous stunts can’t be explained away by illusion, misdirection and sleight-of-hand. Sometimes, what magicians do is real, aided and abetted by the old-fashioned laws of physics. Understanding science can make it possible for a human being to be fired from a cannonball or contort oneself into innumerable different positions and poses, all of them painful. Seeing is believing, they say, but one of the first laws of science is that you can’t always trust your eyesight alone to tell you what’s going on.

True, by taking a hard, science-based look at the world of illusion, Ingram risks playing the part of party-pooper. Ingram is more science nerd than spoilsport, though, and You Couldn’t Do This is worlds removed from Breaking the Magician’s Code.

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