Ava Doe
speaker
52 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Ava Doe’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
What was the first magic you learned? Probably how to tell someone's credit card number without seeing it.
Well, not on radio. That would be illegal. But you could? Yes.
I had stolen a guy's watch on the Vegas Strip. And it was a good three, four minutes after I had stolen it. And he realized that his watch was missing. And he was shocked. So you were practicing on the Las Vegas Strip? Sometimes, but not all the time. It's very dangerous to do so. I wouldn't recommend it.
My parents wanted me to be a doctor, obviously. They eventually found out what I do, but not after I ensured that I could make a really good living. You know, immigrant parents and all.
Yeah, but look, I bought a house.
I should say there's no Vietnamese word for magic. There's only a Vietnamese word for illusion, and there's a Vietnamese word for miracle.
I grew up with staunchly anti-communist parents, but I went to school under communist regime, which means that I was exposed to my teachers who would teach me propaganda, and I would go home and my parents would say everything I've just learned was wrong.
You know, we were asked to call him Uncle Ho and there were all these things that Uncle Ho did for the country. And we sang songs to him and I would go home. My parents would say he was a mass murderer and he had committed all these war crimes. And so I was exposed to these different perspectives on the same set of reality very early. Which was confusing for a child.
Absolutely, yes. And it was emotionally confusing as well because I liked my teachers, I liked my parents, I liked everyone, you know.
There was this stretch after the war where a lot of Vietnamese people were escaping by boat, the boat people. And my father was part of those people who would smuggle people out of Vietnam.
He had immersed himself in police culture. He bribed them to hang around them, to learn how they talk. He would feign a deeper northern accent. He would use the words that they would use. She says he once paid an officer for a uniform. And if the police ever caught up to him and his escapees, he would pretend that he was one of them.
I didn't see why it was a secret. I already knew how to keep secrets by then, so I was surprised. I think I thought, maybe she didn't think I could lie well enough.
I wanted to believe that... There was possibly maybe a place in the world where people did say everything that they think and that they weren't running to threats of reality. Maybe there are people who just tell you everything.
We had put on tennis shoes. I had never worn closed-toe shoes before in my life. We had socks on, and I had a jacket on like I do now, but it was 80, probably 80 to 90 degrees with 90% humidity, and I just remember being hot. They arrived in Seattle in 1992, three days before Halloween. I remember thinking that America didn't have any smells anymore. It just smelled like nothing.
I didn't smell food. I didn't smell the streets. I didn't smell sweat. And I hadn't ever seen so many yellow leaves.
He stole my friend's engagement ring after just what it seemed to be shaking her hand and saying a few sentences with her, and then he gave it back. And I thought this was the most bizarre thing, to give it back. If you could steal something, why would you give it back? I've never met an honest thief, I guess.
I said, why did you give it back?
This is now maybe 4 a.m. at an after-hours Las Vegas nightclub, and everything felt a little bit half-tinged with fabrication, you know?
I think he said that I'm a theatrical pickpocket. to which I had no idea what that meant. I didn't know what to make around the premise of stealing for entertainment.
Before we saw each other again, because I lived in LA at the time and Apollo lived in Las Vegas, we had phone calls that lasted an average of four hours. It was anywhere between two to nine hours. We had very long conversations about everything, but a lot of it was about psychology and I thought it was a really peculiar thing to be interested in deception if you didn't have to grow up with it.
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