Michael Chaleff
Former U.S. Navy officer, Gulf War veteran, and DOJ federal trial attorney who is now a professional magician, mentalist, and founder of Practical Influence, a storytelling and influence consultancy; TEDx speaker.
2
APPEARANCES
2
PODCASTS
Oct 29, 2026
Michael ChaleffGUEST
I had somebody that came to me the other day and they were just having a conversation with somebody at work.
Michael ChaleffGUEST
You know, people often come to me talking about communication challenges that they're having.
Michael ChaleffGUEST
And they walk in the door, and they talked about the struggle that they've been having with people.
13 MINS LATER
Raymond AaronHOST
But my question was, How come you did such weird and different things? Are you teaching my audience that they should get into a new field, they should completely change their life, become a magician or whatever?
Mark GrabanHOST
And I mean, the one thing that comes to mind, I'm going to frame it as a question of like, is this true or is it more complicated than this? Never ask a witness question you don't know the answer to.
Michael ChaleffGUEST
My time in front of doing prosecution, there were not a lot of those instances where I was having those immense cross-examinations.
Michael ChaleffGUEST
I was a trial attorney and doing mostly investigations and doing depositions of people that didn't want to answer questions.
Mark GrabanHOST
Do lawyers think that you shouldn't ask a question you don't already know the answer