The guest
Apollo Robbins: Sleight-of-hand artist, theatrical pickpocket, and attention/deception expert known as 'The Gentleman Thief'; profiled in The New Yorker and a research collaborator with neuroscientists studying attention.
What this episode covers
Apollo Robbins traces his unlikely path from a disabled childhood in Springfield, Missouri, raised between a blind, dogmatic minister father and a family running hustles and trafficking, to becoming one of the world's foremost pickpockets and attention experts. He explains how mentors, animation, martial arts, and a 'jazz' improvisational style shaped a craft built on real theft rather than scripted magic tricks. He recounts signature moments including stealing from Secret Service agents guarding Jimmy Carter, performing 200,000-plus times at Caesars Palace as a living lab, and lifting a Montblanc pen refill from Penn Jillette. The conversation broadens into the science of attention, inattentional blindness, the economics of attention, and how he co-authored research published in Nature. It closes with his advocacy for understanding deception as a social tool, covering paltering, puffery, the Gish gallop, and the coming need to 'spot the truth' in an age of deepfakes.
Recommended on this episode
BookRecommendedISBN verified
Magic by Misdirection
Dariel Fitzkee
“three books that have influenced me to this day of a very structured, analytical approach for performance that I needed”
“I picked up one of the books, and it's called Magic by Misdirection on the psychology of magic. I read it, and it was a hard read.”— Apollo Robbins
BookRecommendedISBN verified
The Trick Brain
Dariel Fitzkee
“three books that have influenced me to this day of a very structured, analytical approach for performance that I needed”
“Well, he wrote two other books, The Trick Brain and Showmanship for Magicians. So I read all those.”— Apollo Robbins
BookRecommendedISBN verified
Showmanship for Magicians
Dariel Fitzkee
“three books that have influenced me to this day of a very structured, analytical approach for performance that I needed”
“Well, he wrote two other books, The Trick Brain and Showmanship for Magicians. So I read all those.”— Apollo Robbins
BookRecommendedISBN verified
The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
“there was a great book called The Illusion of Life”
“Animation, there was a great book called The Illusion of Life by Disney's — what do you call them? His nine men.”— Apollo Robbins
BookRecommended
A Pickpocket's Tale: The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins
Adam Green
“I recommend everybody read this”
“this is actually the perfect place for me to just read an excerpt profile of you, which was by Adam Green in The New Yorker.”— Tim Ferriss
BookRecommended
How Minds Are Changed
David McRaney
“It's an important book... I go back to that quite a bit”
“I'm going to be soft on the title, I think it's called How Minds Are Changed. It's an important book that goes into the impact of deep canvassing”— Apollo Robbins
BookRecommended
Deception in the Digital Age
Cameron Malin
“It's a fascinating book in that space that I go into a lot”
“A friend of mine wrote a book called Deception in the Digital Age, and he was with the FBI. His name is Cameron Malin. It's a fascinating book”— Apollo Robbins
BookRecommendedISBN verified
Whiz Mob
David W. Maurer
“That book, Maurer's book, taught me to be a student of these arcane disciplines and see what I could learn”
“Then Whiz Mob. Whiz Mob was that it was this juxtaposition that there was a professor, David Maurer, who was studying the language of thieves.”— Apollo Robbins
BookRecommendedISBN verified
Propaganda
Edward Bernays
“there's a great book on propaganda by Eddie Bernays”
“there's a great book on propaganda by Eddie Bernays, where he explored it with doing a study on the most important meal of the day.”— Apollo Robbins
BookRecommendedISBN verified
The Unsinkable Titanic Thompson
Carlton Stowers
“there's great books on him, the Unsinkable Titanic Thompson”
“So he seemed like some kind of Robin Hood/superhero. But there's great books on him, the Unsinkable Titanic Thompson.”— Apollo Robbins
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Invisible Gorilla
Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
“Dan Simons and Chris Chabris was his partner. They did a book called Invisible Gorilla where you watch a basketball being passed”— Apollo Robbins
BookReferenced
Nobody's Fool
Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris
“Dan Simons just wrote a book called Nobody's Fool, that is going specifically after a problem that I'm very interested in”— Apollo Robbins
BookReferenced
The Person and the Situation
Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett
“There's a book called The Person and This Situation. I think it's Nisbett.”— Apollo Robbins
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Big Con
David W. Maurer
“He wrote The American Confidence Man, which later became Big Con. It was one chapter of that was turned into the book, or into the movie The Sting.”— Apollo Robbins
BookReferencedISBN verified
Coin Magic
J.B. Bobo
“One of them was J.B. Bobo's Coin Magic. Apollo Robbins: Yeah, that was the book that Ben Stone gave me. Yes.”— Tim Ferriss
BookReferenced
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert Cialdini
“So I found out about Robert Cialdini and his book on influence and different studies on the history of persuasion.”— Apollo Robbins
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Art of Deception
Kevin Mitnick
“Kevin Mitnick, a famous hacker was one of those guys. Tim Ferriss: The Art of Deception.”— Tim Ferriss
BookReferenced
The Republic
Plato
“you need to go back, read Plato's Republic. You need to study about Socrates.”— Apollo Robbins
ProductReferenced
Svengali Deck
“And then, he pulled out a deck of cards called the Svengali deck, and he did a bunch of tricks with that.”— Apollo Robbins
ProductReferenced
Montblanc pen
Montblanc
“And he had a Montblanc pen that was clipped inside of his shirt pocket. And he said, Steal something from me now.”— Apollo Robbins
ProductReferenced
Tommy Bahama shirt
Tommy Bahama
“And I remember him wearing a Tommy Bahama shirt and some shorts.”— Apollo Robbins
MediaReferenced
The Sting
“It was one chapter of that was turned into the book, or into the movie The Sting.”— Apollo Robbins
MediaReferenced
Ocean's Eleven
“If people have ever watched Ocean's Eleven and they wondered, I wonder if there's a real Ocean.”— Apollo Robbins
MediaReferenced
Ozark
“again like the series, Ozark, I feel like that route that was in Ozark is probably what my brothers are associated with”— Apollo Robbins
Big reveals from this episode
- Robbins stole credentials, glasses, and Jimmy Carter's itinerary from Secret Service agents at Caesars Palace after a manager noted nobody told him he couldn't steal from the Secret Service.
- At Caesars he stole from people roughly six times an hour, five hours a night, five nights a week for five years, an estimated 200,000-plus people, treating the gig as a lab to experiment.
- He pickpocketed Penn Jillette by removing the ink refill from his Montblanc pen, reassembling it, returning it, then asking Penn to draw a circle, before tossing back his wallet.
- His observation that there are only 'two sight lines', linear A-to-B versus a half-circle that suppresses backward glances, was validated with eye-tracking and published in Nature.
- Because he was exposed to his brothers stealing, he lacked the guilt-anxiety that makes most magicians shake, letting him plant stolen objects on other people rather than hiding them on himself.
- After lawsuits and confrontations, he flipped his style from surprise to suspense, openly announcing 'In three minutes I'm going to be wearing your watch', treating consent like inviting a vampire across a threshold.
- He frames deception as a neutral concept: making someone think they've acted when they haven't can stop a robbery victim from calling police, or stop malaria by hormonally tricking female mosquitoes.
Worth remembering
- Robbins was born with ABO blood disease requiring a transfusion, plus fine and gross motor problems that forced him to wear leg braces and learn to write with both hands using a fat pencil through a rubber ball.
- As a child he rehabilitated orphaned animals including raccoons and once babysat a baby bear in diapers; he was added to his local Humane Society board around age eight after redesigning triple-stacked cages.
- Magic-shop owner Ben Stone offered young Robbins a choice: a $5 Svengali deck for 50 instant tricks, or a dense sleight-of-hand book that would take four or five years to master.
- Ben Stone tricked Robbins into reading Dariel Fitzkee's trilogy (Magic by Misdirection, The Trick Brain, Showmanship for Magicians) by claiming a coin secret was inside.
- Daryl Martinez, 'The Magician's Magician,' told Robbins that 'Vegas has everything to offer, but it will give you nothing.'
- A hypnotist named Justin Tranz convinced Robbins to quit his senior designer job that very day with the line that it would make a great story later in life.
- Robbins references the 'Invisible Gorilla' inattentional blindness study by Dan Simons and Chris Chabris, calling it 'task blindness.'
- He met his wife Eva when a friend introduced him as a thief; he stole a chocolate-covered strawberry for her, then put it in his mouth so she'd have to kiss him for it.
- The '40 Elephants' were a UK women's criminal gang (roughly 1890s-1940s) who stole large items by altering their clothing, a technique called boosting.
- Edward Bernays' propaganda work helped invent the 'all-American breakfast' of bacon and eggs as 'the most important meal,' reportedly funded by the pork industry.
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