He knows every imaginable statistic about sports. He can name every capital. He knows thousands of digits in the number pi. He can tell from your eyes if you are lying to him and 16 years ago he correctly predicted “222” for the Pennsylvania State Lottery winning numbers. But whatever you do, don’t call this man a psychic. Instead, call him “intuitive.”
Jim Karol, a native of Allentown, Pa., has a memory like you would not believe. Karol spent the early days of his career as a comedian who incorporated magic into a number of his performances. News spread quickly about his talent and he was known as the “madman of magic.” Then, about three years ago Karol came to the realization that his gift went far and beyond magic tricks.
“Three years ago I bought a book with a memory trick that I was going to use in one of my performances,” Karol said. “The trick told me that if you memorize about 50 words, you can make anyone believe that you can read their mind. The next thing I knew, something switched in my brain and I was memorizing things you cannot even imagine.”
Since his realization three years ago, Karol has become addicted to memorizing. He has made a name for himself around the world.” He has toured over 4,000 colleges in the past few years and continues to amaze people with memory skills.
“I have a bit of a headache right now,” Karol said during his interview. “My brain is so used to storing so much information at a time and working so hard that in moments like this, my head actually hurts.”
Karol finds himself memorizing out of habit and out of his control. Driving down the road, he explains that he will come to the realization that he has memorized every license plate that he passed and could recite them back with no effort at all.
“It’s all very crazy,” Karol said. “One minute I’m looking for my car keys, the next minute I’m listing pi.”
Karol’s talent has gained him incredible amounts of popularity. He was recently on the cover of the Wall Street Journal and has appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” the “Ellen Show,” the “Rosie O’Donnell” show and many other TV programs. His most recent project is “Jackass 2,” which hits theaters this Friday.
“The guys on Jackass were a ton of fun to work with,” Karol said. “One of my stunts in the movie is that I can throw playing cards over 200 feet. You’ll see me throwing a number of them at Wee-Man.”
Among Karol’s talents is that he can accurately tell when people are lying to him. As a result of this, Karol is the only person who has been banned from the World Series of Poker as well as 17 casinos.
In his show “Mind Over Madness” at UR in Strong Auditorium on Friday, Karol will incorporate the audience into his performance as much as possible. His shows now consist of taking something somewhat serious and turning it into his own form of comedy.
“Sometimes people don’t believe the things I am saying when I perform,” Karol said. “They’ll think I paid someone off to pretend that I can tell when they’re lying or that my memorization is crap. But then I’ll have kids come up to me from performances years ago and ask me to tell them their name. I always get it right.”
Sure, there is some skepticism. After all, Karol couldn’t believe it himself when he realized all that his brain was capable of storing and reading. He now thinks of his skill as somewhat of a “sixth sense.”
“The government has approached me a number of times,” he said. “They want to examine my brain and think that I would be well-suited to help them out in the military. I’d just tell them ‘no thanks.’ After all, I’m the ‘Psychic Madman.’ This is my thing.”
