What is Magic? And What Makes it White?

Almost everyone gets magic wrong in one of two ways: they think it's make-believe, or they think it's some far-off supernatural force with nothing to do with them. In this episode we take the question seriously — what is magic, really? — and find an answer that's stranger and more grounded than either. Magic, it turns out, is the meeting of two real things: the inner world of a person, and the real forces of the world that inner world can reach. We talk about the documented science of how belief and ritual change us, the honest place where that science runs out, and the line that divides white magic from black — which is not the power, but the intent. A conversation about what magic is, where it's real, and why the hand that holds it matters. The podcast has an accompanying blog post:  What is Magic? And What Makes it White?