PASADENA, Calif. — You can’t believe your eyes. We’ve all seen the optical illusions that trick us into thinking that the chair is larger than the table, that the famous dress is really gold and white (or is it blue and black?), that the triangle of blocks seems to move and twist.

Those faulty perceptions that entertained us as kids bear an important message to adults, so says “Brain Games,” the National Geographic series that proves we’re not as smart as we think we are.

Helming that indictment is Jason Silva, the perfect guy to host a show like that because Silva has been contemplating these puzzles since he was a child growing up in Venezuela.

“I would call myself a wonder junkie,” he says. “I’ve been afflicted with a philosophical sensibility since I was a kid. My mother is an artist and a teacher and musician and sculptor. And I grew up in an environment in which art was everywhere. I was a cinephile, loved movies, loved ideas, loved heady films with profound philosophical questions. … I was a heady guy and loved finding other heady friends and getting into heady discussions because it was a high, it just fired me up,” he says.

He was so into it that he formed his own little “salons” in high school where he invited friends to discuss theoretical questions about the universe. “I became interested in designing experiences and designing spaces that evoked certain moods and certain states of consciousness. I became obsessed with that because I felt like I had some kind of control over my life and the fluctuations of my moods,” he says.

He hadn’t always felt in control. When he was 12 his parents split. “That was very traumatic; a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear. I went to a psychologist for a couple months. I think the divorce was a crack in certainty,” he says.

“I think that the one thing you need to provide for a kid is a sense of safety until they reach a certain age, and I think that was a crack in the sense of safety. There was compensation in the family on my mother’s side. We never lacked for anything. It wasn’t like we suffered other than just the fact that mom and dad were not together anymore, which was pretty traumatic.”

Part of his life plan was to attend university in the U.S. and maintain dual citizenship. While at the University of Miami (with a film and philosophy major) he made a short film. Someone at Al Gore’s TV station, Current, saw it. And right out of college, Silva found himself serving as a presenter for the now-defunct network. He was there for five years.

“When I left Current I started making my own content on YouTube, my own short videos about philosophy, technology and creativity. ‘Brain Games’ was looking for a host. They’d done a three-part special, were going to do a full season and needed a front-facing host. And the showrunner at the time asked me what I was doing these days, and I showed him these videos, and he said, ‘Oh, my God, you’re the guy.’ And that was that.”

Still single at 34, Silva says, “I like falling in love. It doesn’t happen as often as I would like it to happen. I just went on a bunch of dates with a girl in Miami. I went there for the holidays and I feel like I started to fall for her. Now we’re separated for a while. She’s there; I’m here now. We’ll see. But I think she got a little scared because it got really intense really fast, then I left. And I miss her, but I don’t know how she feels,” he shrugs, adding, “I’m interested in the nature of suffering and how some people avoid it by not having any attachments.”

He thinks among all his explorations it was his introduction to marijuana at 16 that changed him the most. “It made me realize I could reconnect with my inner child and reconnect with my unbridled curiosity and awe — that adolescence didn’t mean becoming the ‘cool’ guy that somehow is not in touch with intellectual curiosity. So I was able to recapture the awe and wonderment of childhood. It was a life-changing experience. It was just a realization that that kid was still there, and I wanted to nourish that kid.”

He says his mother didn’t object. “My mom was cool with it; the only thing my mom didn’t like was coke. She said, ‘Never do that because that destroys lives.’ But she was a hippie from the ’60s — ‘peace and love’ — so I was never reckless.”