Discourse in Magic

Rob Zabrecky is an actor, a songwriter and, most importantly for our purposes, a magician. Rob was a musician in the band Possum Dixon in the mid 1990’s when he strolled into a magic shop in Baltimore to escape the summer heat. The owner of the store showed him a simple handkerchief disappearing trick and was immediately drawn to it. He performed a version of that trick on stage in front of...

Ryan Plunkett is well known as the author of A New Angle and from his work at The Chicago Magic Lounge .  We’ve been eager to get him on the podcast for some time now.  Ryan worked for a while at a magic store. It ended up teaching him about the things that he hated about magic.  So much of the industry is based on pushing cheap tricks with little actual value. Ryan first started with magic as a k...

We’ve been trying to get The Evasons on the show for a long time now.  Then out of the blue they phoned us up and said that they were in town.  We invited them over to the house to record this week’s episode and the results were pretty spectacular! Jeff and Tessa first met at a fashion show in Toronto in 1983.  They had both been hired to perform some magic tricks. They’ve been performing together...

We’re really excited to have the co-founder of Vanishing Inc Magic Joshua Jay on the podcast. Josh and Andi Gladwin founded the company on the belief that there was a real dearth of high-quality magic on the market. Josh was criticized when he first began selling difficult, high-quality tricks. The critics suggested Vanishing was giving away too much. But Josh says that giving a newbie a rea...

It’s time for another catch-up interview with Jonah and Tyler. The episode starts with a quick recap of the last month. Tyler has made a terrible mistake and gotten a Muggle job. He works at at vape store, which is apropos since he uses an e-cig himself. He got the job by doing some magic for the company and they were so impressed they gave him a job. Jonah thinks that’s a good lesson...

We’ve invited magic legend Johnny Thompson otherwise known as The Great Tomsoni onto the show today. Together with his wife Pamela Hayes Johnny has been performing for packed houses in Las Vegas for decades. Johnny saw a movie about a Mississippi river boat gambler when he was a kid and he decided he wanted to become a card sharp. He bought The Expert at the Card Table at a Chicago bookstore...

We’re excited to have Denis Behr on the show this week.  Denis has consistently released some of the most innovative card magic in the world.  His dedication to the craft shines through in everything he does, especially in his new DVD titled  Magic on Tap. Denis first started with magic as a kid after being given a kit as a kid. Card magic has become his obsession. He never worked as a profe...

You know him from his incredible Instagram presence – we’re super excited to have @JustJoshInMagic on the show this week. Josh became obsessed with magic as a teenager. It was an interest that started as a diversion from his rigorous training as a musician. But soon enough he had traded the saxophone for a deck of cards. As he entered college he could no longer afford buying magic and so beg...

It’s episode 105 and time for another solo chat between Jonah and Tyler. It’s been a month since our heroes sat down for one of these. Jonah had a ton of show throughout March with the Toronto Magic Company . Newest Trick in the Book is now a weekly show every Tuesday which is something that Jonah is really happy about. He continues to work on his time machine phone bit and has an idea...

It’s taken more than two years and over 100 episodes but we’ve finally done it.  We managed to convince one the biggest names in magic to join us for a feature length interview. Teller tells us about his early years performing magic with Penn Jillette and how, together, the built one of the most durable brands in live performance.  He also reveals the secret to succeeding on his TV sho...

He’s an incredible magician, a close friend but most importantly he’s a listener to the podcast. Caleb Wiles is well known for his amazing stage performances and his appearance on Penn and Teller’s Fool Us. As he started diving deeper into card magic he became totally obsessed. As his journey progressed he became known as the magic guy in his class and in his family. Soon enough...

Paul Vigil has burst out of his native Salt Lake City taking his magic to TV and the Las Vegas Stage. He has appeared on Penn and Teller’s Fool Us twice. He trained with Johnny Thompson and worked as a street performer for years – slowly honing his skills. In his early 20’s he was only interested in performing magic for himself. He grew to understand the importance of developing an act...

We’re have a really special guest this week. He runs Ellusionist and made waves with his viral performance on Fool Us. Adam Wilber also produced the best selling trick pyro and we’re really excited to have him in the show. Wilber was six years old when he stole a prop from a friend for a trick. He mastered that trick, fooled his dad and never looked back.  Adam studied education in col...

Our guest this week is a brilliant mind in the magic community. He’s a magician, a priest and a raconteur – we’re really excited to have Jared Kopf. Every child is born with a sense of wonder that gradually dwindles. For Jared it never dwindled. He doesn’t remember a specific moment when he fell in love with the art form. But by the time he was a young kid he had become totally o...

We made it! 100 episodes is a milestone we never expected to reach. Well, Jonah did. It’s why he started the numbering with 001. Even still, we’re super excited to have gotten this far. In this episode we reflect on how important the podcast has been on their own magic careers. “Everything that’s happened to me in magic over the last few years is because of the podcast,” Tyler sa...

We’ve been trying to get Michael Close on the show for a long time. You know him from his Workers project, his book Paradigm Shift and his work as a consulting producer on Fool Us . Michael was raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana and in that small town there was a magic shop. A guy named Dick Stoner ran that shop for many years. When Michael was about five years old he got a Sneaky Pete Magic Set....

Mario Lopez was just a kid when a friend put a lit cigarette into his fist and made it disappear. He learned how it was done and from that moment on he was in love with magic. Mario moved to Granada in his native Spain when he was 18 where he trained with one of the countries top magicians. He was taught the art of performance and how to create the magical moment. But he didn’t teach young L...

Lloyd Barnes grandfather became a travelling magician shortly after the war. He developed many tricks over the years and passed those onto Lloyd. His focus was much more on sport as a teenager – especially boxing and gymnastics. His university career was less than successful – he was thrown out in his final year. But that ignited his interest in magic and soon he was selling tricks and illusions t...

It’s episode 96 and time for another solo episode with Jonah and Tyler. We start the episode talking about what we should do to celebrate our upcoming 100 th episode. We’ve had some pretty dumb ideas in the past – like listening to all 100 episodes in a row. We need your ideas on this one. Hit us up on Instagram! Tyler has an upcoming gig in February that he is really excited abo...

He is Blue Crown Magic , he is Alex Pandrea . He first got into magic when he was five years old.  A clown came to his birthday party and did tricks like disappearing silk or sponge balls.  But his interest continued into young adulthood.  He grew up in New York City and it was through the local magic shops in Queens like Tannen s that he discovered more magic.  He created some new effects as a te...

We are here with a very special guest this week.  David Williamson is an incredible comedy magician and sleight-of-hand master.  David first fell in love with magic as a kid when he read a short story about Harry Houdini.  He learned the French Drop and his teacher said “maybe one day you’ll be a magician.”  He feels that he was bitten by the bug early and he had no other choice but to follow his...

Our guest this week came across our Instagram feed and we knew we had to have him on the podcast.  His work as a cardist is truly awe-inspiring.  John first got into magic after his family got him a magic kit when he was 8 years old.  He learned the boomerang card throw at age eleven and from that point on cardistry became his obsession.  Finding tricks was difficult as he fell into the generation...

Welcome everyone to Episode 92 – our first episode of 2018! We both had a good New Year’s Eve. We relaxed with friends, some hors d’oeuvres and champagne. Last New Year’s we challenged ourselves to come up with some magical resolutions. Jonah resolved to work more on scripting his magic performances in 2017 – something he managed to achieve. Tyler, meanwhile, can’t remember...

Felix Bodden has appeared on Fool Us and has created a really popular Instagram feed.  He first became interested in magic when he was eight years old in 2001 – the same year that the first Harry Potter movie came out.  But Felix became frustrated when he realized there was no such thing as real magic.  His Mom took pity on him and bought Felix his first magic kit.  When you’re a kid everything is...

We’ve been trying to get Tony Chang on the podcast for a long time and it’s finally happened!  Jonah and Tony spent some time together and NYC recently.  But this is the first time we have had the chance to talk to him about his history.  Tony first fell in love with magic when he saw a clown magician as a kid.  He got curious and he went to the public library in Idaho, where he grew up, and found...