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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: Insider to hear these programs and many more truly thought

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Speaker 1: provoking shows from Coast to Coast. Now here's a highlight

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Speaker 1: from Coast to Coast AM on I Heart Radio. I

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Speaker 1: love magic. Since I was a little kid, Jim, I've

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Speaker 1: been fascinated with every aspect of magic. I'm not a

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Speaker 1: great magician, but I sure had my little magic kit

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Speaker 1: and did my little thing. It was great, it was fun.

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Speaker 1: I think it shows. Uh. I think that the nature

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Speaker 1: of it, and that's kind of what this book is about,

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Speaker 1: is about a curiosity for the world and a way

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Speaker 1: of looking at the world in an interesting way. And

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Speaker 1: I think that that really what what is at the

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Speaker 1: root of all of that. Hopefully that's what is the

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Speaker 1: root of your interest as well. I'm sure you saw

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Speaker 1: the movie The Illusionist, didn't you. Amazing great movie, great

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Speaker 1: movie based a little bit in historical a lot of fiction,

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Speaker 1: but based in a definitely historical time and telling weaving

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Speaker 1: a great fictional story about that time. The trick that

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Speaker 1: he did towards the end where he had the woman

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Speaker 1: come up on stage, put the hoodie on her and

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Speaker 1: had her stand in front of a mirror, and then

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Speaker 1: you could see different things happen in the mirror that

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Speaker 1: weren't happening on the stage. Can you develop tricks that

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Speaker 1: really do things like that? Well? There illusions. That's a

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Speaker 1: kind of beautiful poetic fictionalized version. It's close to some

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Speaker 1: illusions that were done in the late late early twentieth

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Speaker 1: century UM late nineteenth century, early twentieth century classical illusions

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Speaker 1: done by some of the great stage logicians. They're always

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Speaker 1: a little bit more dramatic and a little more poetic

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Speaker 1: um in films because but didn't necessarily take the time

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Speaker 1: to do that on stage. But those are based those

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Speaker 1: are all interpretations of illusions that were really done what

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Speaker 1: do you think of Chris Angel, David Copperfield? Are they?

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Speaker 1: You know? Pretty amazing thing is what's happening in magic

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Speaker 1: right now because there's so many different styles and so

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Speaker 1: many dramatically different styles and ideas, and so much creativity

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Speaker 1: being brought to the to the field. David Copperfield, I

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Speaker 1: just saw him recently up in Las Vegas. Still doesn't

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Speaker 1: an amazing show, I say. Still he's changing the show

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Speaker 1: constantly and always bringing new ideas to it. And Chris

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Speaker 1: Angel has just changed the show as well. So those

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Speaker 1: things are always being worked on very hard. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot of creativity brought to the formula and they're always

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Speaker 1: worth seeing. How did they come up with so many

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Speaker 1: different allusions? How much of it is trickery and how

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Speaker 1: much is of it is just you playing tricks with

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Speaker 1: the mind? Well, I mean it's all trickery in some form,

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Speaker 1: and that's something that we read about in this book.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's it's either something that suggested to you

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Speaker 1: and then you walk away with that illusion, or it's

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Speaker 1: some kind of form of flight of hand or or

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Speaker 1: some kind of mechanical device. But you know that's it's

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Speaker 1: all about disguising that within the presentation, and a good

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Speaker 1: performer is does a great job of disguising that in

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Speaker 1: different forms to make it look like it's mind reading,

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Speaker 1: or to make it look like it's it's some sort

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Speaker 1: of spirit, a factor, or or something that's produced or vanished.

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Speaker 1: All of those things are variations that a great magician

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Speaker 1: can create out of the same raw material. Which are

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Speaker 1: those secrets? How did you get involved in magic? Joh Well,

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Speaker 1: I was a kid performer in Chicago. I grew up

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Speaker 1: in Chicago and there were there was a great magic

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Speaker 1: shop in Chicago and great magicians, um. And so of

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Speaker 1: course I think people in my generation talk about the

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Speaker 1: magic shops, you know, because that's that's the community that

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Speaker 1: you grow up with. So my brother, my older brother,

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Speaker 1: was interested in magic, and there was a great magic shop,

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Speaker 1: and I knew a bunch of magicians. And then I

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Speaker 1: performed through school through UM, high school and college UM

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Speaker 1: doing doing shows around you know, kids shows and the

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Speaker 1: occasional ice cream social And then I started working with

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Speaker 1: other magicians and that was really inspiring because I started

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Speaker 1: working on different material for them. I bet you've been

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Speaker 1: to the Magic Castle in l an you know what

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Speaker 1: I'm right now? The president of the Man. It's a

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Speaker 1: great it's a great club in Hollywood, and and uh

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Speaker 1: it really, I mean it's fifty five years old, it's

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Speaker 1: been going strong, and it right now really epitomizes that

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Speaker 1: that kind of renaissance and magic, the the new approach

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Speaker 1: to that people are bringing to it. And we get

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Speaker 1: over seven hundred magicians a year coming through Los Angeles

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Speaker 1: and working to the Magic Castle. So it's a great

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Speaker 1: place to see magic in a great place for for

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Speaker 1: it's a hot it's a really an experimental laboratory where

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Speaker 1: magic is being developed all the time. You must know

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Speaker 1: our buddy Brandon Scott. Oh, Brandon is fantastic super guy,

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Speaker 1: isn't it you really is. Well, let's talk about some

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Speaker 1: of the myths about magicians that have been told over

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Speaker 1: the years. What's out there? Well, you know, it's funny um.

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Speaker 1: And that's really what the story that the Secret History

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Speaker 1: of Magic is about. Because magician um, because it's a

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Speaker 1: deceptive art. You know that deception is always close to

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Speaker 1: being associated with other things. And one of the things

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Speaker 1: that's happened in magic over the years is that is

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Speaker 1: that by the nature of it being secretive, people fill

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Speaker 1: in holes in the story, and when they fill them in,

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Speaker 1: they start adding to them. So we tell ourselves myths

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Speaker 1: as well. Magicians tell ourselves myths about the creation of magic.

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Speaker 1: And so we look at old myths from um from

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Speaker 1: the Egyptian times and we say, well, this is the

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Speaker 1: first magic performance that's recorded. Or we look at magicians

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Speaker 1: that brag about being involved in in some kind of

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Speaker 1: espionage and we say that, We say, well, that must

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Speaker 1: be an example of magic being used for those purposes.

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Speaker 1: And a lot of that is exaggeration, and those are

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Speaker 1: really the creation myths that we use to kind of

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Speaker 1: honor the art and make it more special than it is.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the deceptions of magic have been pretty consistent

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Speaker 1: through the years, and what magicians have been doing has

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Speaker 1: been consistent through the years. Um, it isn't really that

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Speaker 1: confused with witchcraft. It isn't really that confused with with

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Speaker 1: psychic phenomena, except at times when it became really popular

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Speaker 1: to do that. And so magicians tell themselves their own

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Speaker 1: myths over the years, Well that that's that's true. And

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Speaker 1: you know, I think nowadays people love to go see

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Speaker 1: magicians for a couple of reasons. One is to get baffled.

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Speaker 1: The other is to try to see if they can

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Speaker 1: figure out the trick. And uh, it's a very interesting

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Speaker 1: it's a very interesting form of entertainment and clearly one

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Speaker 1: of the oldest forms of entertainment. But it's also it's

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Speaker 1: also about being mystified without having consequences to it, and

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Speaker 1: that's a really interesting thing that doesn't happen to us

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Speaker 1: very often in life. It's a it's a reminder, as

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Speaker 1: we say in the book, it's a reminder to all

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Speaker 1: of us that there are things, many things out there

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Speaker 1: that we don't understand. And that's an important lesson because

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Speaker 1: we've always had those as humans. But those things always

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Speaker 1: have certain consequences to us. They always bring a certain

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Speaker 1: level of confusion or a certain level of unease. And

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Speaker 1: in magic, what you're really doing is you're able to

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Speaker 1: sit back and enjoy that feeling of wonder, that very

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Speaker 1: basic feeling of wonder, without the feeling of the of

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Speaker 1: the consequences or the concerns or the other thing that's

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Speaker 1: going to come back and bite you in the end.

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Speaker 1: In the old days, the old magicians of the time

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Speaker 1: and the Houdini's, the Black Stones and people like that,

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Speaker 1: what made them so good because they didn't have the

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Speaker 1: benefit of tech technology that we have today. How did

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Speaker 1: they pull these tricks off? There was there's always been

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Speaker 1: a kind of leading edge of technology where technology is

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Speaker 1: used in magic. But you're right, those people did not

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Speaker 1: depend on on cutting edge technology. Those people are always

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Speaker 1: always fantastic showman. Um. And that's of course the indefinable

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Speaker 1: thing that's really hard to talk about today because you

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Speaker 1: can't you can't you know, someone Houdini now and haven't

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Speaker 1: performed for you, And there really isn't even good footage

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Speaker 1: of him performing. Um, So it's hard to it's hard

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Speaker 1: to figure out what was happening on that stage. But

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Speaker 1: the best thing, the best accounts that we have are

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Speaker 1: that those people were magnetic performers. They made people interested

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Speaker 1: in what they were doing. They made people invested in

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Speaker 1: what they were doing. So when Houdini was chained or

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Speaker 1: put you know, water tank and then was covered up

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Speaker 1: on the stage, everyone played that part along with him.

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Speaker 1: Everybody realized what it was like to be inside that tank,

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Speaker 1: and so he became the everyman for for the audience.

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Speaker 1: And of course that's exactly what any great performer tries

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Speaker 1: to do. Is is solicit the audience to their side. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: You know a lot of them like to use supernatural

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Speaker 1: type powers to try to pull them in, didn't they

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, excuse me? Who who use supernatural powers? Some

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Speaker 1: of the magicians, well they There's always been, you know,

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Speaker 1: people on the edge of claiming to have supernatural powers.

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Speaker 1: And I would say that at the point in which

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Speaker 1: it's a vaudeville act, I can tell you it's probably

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Speaker 1: pretty safely didn't involve supernatural hours because you had to

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Speaker 1: depend on it working every single night where you're going

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Speaker 1: to go food and town to down. So there have

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Speaker 1: always been mind readers, uh, people that were involved in mesmerism,

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Speaker 1: people that supposedly contacted the spirits, and of course as

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Speaker 1: those turned into acts, those acts were really another level

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Speaker 1: of deception. Those were very sophisticated magic acts, sometimes not

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Speaker 1: always that sophisticated, that he involve magic and use magic

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Speaker 1: to create a simulation of supernatural powers. And of course

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Speaker 1: magicians were always at odds with psychics or people who

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Speaker 1: claim to be psychics, because they said that they could

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Speaker 1: discern the reality of those acts. Did they think that

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Speaker 1: psychics in mediums were performing trickery? Magicians always have UM

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Speaker 1: since the mid eight have been battling with psychics and

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Speaker 1: pointing out that they they are performing trickery. And the

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Speaker 1: magicians can get to the bottom of this question because

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Speaker 1: they can discern what's real and what's trickery. And overall

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Speaker 1: they've done pretty good. Uh. You know, people like Whodini

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Speaker 1: have done pretty good. He did pretty well in UM

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Speaker 1: John nevilmasclin in discerning zychics and saying this is a fake.

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Speaker 1: But they're famous examples of of everyone being mystified, great

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Speaker 1: scientists being mystified, and magicians being mystified as well. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I remember the Houdini movie. I think Tony Curtis was

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Speaker 1: in it, that he played Harry Houdini, and Houdini was

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Speaker 1: obsessed after his mother died with trying to find a medium.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know if he was trying to find

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Speaker 1: the good medium Jim or trying to find the bad

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Speaker 1: ones and uh and illustrate them to the world. It's

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Speaker 1: that's a really good question. I think he started when

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Speaker 1: he was a young man. This often isn't said in

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Speaker 1: his biographies. He worked as a fake medium for a

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Speaker 1: little while, and so he knew what that game was.

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Speaker 1: He knew what that game was, and when his mother died,

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Speaker 1: just as you said, he was obsessed with the idea

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Speaker 1: of being able to contact her UM and so I

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Speaker 1: think I think he, you know, was led to looking

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Speaker 1: for real psychics. There was a question of were there

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Speaker 1: real spirit mediums who could contact his mother, and Udini,

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Speaker 1: knowing about the fraudulent aspect of it, was instantly disappointed

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Speaker 1: in encountering just fraud and he turned that into a crusade.

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Speaker 1: I mean he really at the end of his career,

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Speaker 1: part of his show was devoted to exposing spiritual mediums,

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Speaker 1: the frauds that he'd seen, and explaining how they did

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Speaker 1: their tricks. And he saw this as a as a

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Speaker 1: kind of a crusade for him, uh to inform his

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Speaker 1: audiences that these things weren't real. So you're right, he

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Speaker 1: first looked forward genuinely, and then I think he sought

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Speaker 1: them out to point out to people that it wasn't real. Now,

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Speaker 1: there was another person by the name of His last

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Speaker 1: name was Robert Howden, and who was he? Well, Robert

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Speaker 1: dan that he's a Frenchman, was a was a very

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Speaker 1: influential UM magician in the mid eighteen hundreds. And the

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Speaker 1: reason that name is confusing and the reason that name

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Speaker 1: could be pronounced different ways, No, that's okay because there

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Speaker 1: because a very young man, a young immigrant to America,

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Speaker 1: UM was inspired by that name, and he pronounced it

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Speaker 1: differently too, And that was a guy named Eric Weiss.

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Speaker 1: When he decided to become a magician, took the name

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Speaker 1: Robert Udan h o U d I n and decided

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Speaker 1: that he wanted to use that name as his own

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Speaker 1: name on stage. And because he was inspired by Hudan,

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Speaker 1: and so he became Houdini, he added an eye on

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Speaker 1: the end of it, and so Houdini's name actually was

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Speaker 1: a tribute to the magician Robert Dan. Robert Dan was

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Speaker 1: a really important French magician, very influential, wrote a brilliant autobiography,

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Speaker 1: memoirs about his career, and UM, now it's pretty plain,

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Speaker 1: exaggerated almost everything in his memoirs. Um in a really amazing,

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Speaker 1: wonderful literate way. I mean, told a great story, but

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Speaker 1: he exaggerated his own claims to originality, his own claims

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Speaker 1: to innovation. He was one of a number of innovative

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Speaker 1: performers at that time, and he wound up his career

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Speaker 1: with a kind of amazing story in which he went

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Speaker 1: to Algeria from the French government and perform magic to

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Speaker 1: point out to the holy Men in Algeria that the

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Speaker 1: French magic was more more powerful than their own magic.

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Speaker 1: And it's been written up as a diplomatic mission or

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Speaker 1: an espionage mission, an attempt to stop and uprising. And

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Speaker 1: we think that while he absolutely did go and performed

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Speaker 1: the show, that a lot of that was exaggerated as well,

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Speaker 1: that he there was some confusion over the nature of

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Speaker 1: that mission and what he was actually trying to do.

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Speaker 1: But it's a really interesting example of magic history because

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Speaker 1: on that stage in Algeria, we had the old magic

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Speaker 1: and the new magic coming together at one moment, and

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Speaker 1: so you had the traditional magic of of the shaman,

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Speaker 1: the Algerian holy Men that who are now encountering you

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Speaker 1: Ropean magic, and this was sophisticated magic and scientific magic.

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Speaker 1: I say sophisticated because it was using scientific principles um,

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Speaker 1: not because it was necessarily any more sophisticated than anything

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Speaker 1: else than anyone was doing. So he fooled them and

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Speaker 1: he performed a great show, but he was also treated

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Speaker 1: as a showman in a jury. He wasn't treated as

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Speaker 1: a religious figure. What would an audience prefer the stage

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Speaker 1: type magic or the other type. Well, it's very interesting.

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Speaker 1: You know, the fashion right now is really for for

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Speaker 1: a close up magic. And that's a word that you know,

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Speaker 1: I'd say a hundred years ago magicians wouldn't even have

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Speaker 1: known what that word meant. But what we said when

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Speaker 1: we say close up magic, now, you know you can

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Speaker 1: see that at the magic castle. That's someone with a

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Speaker 1: deck of cards or a handful of coins and they're

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Speaker 1: doing magic just for a table of people up front

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Speaker 1: and personal. That's right, and that's always been around. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if you read about what magicians were doing hundreds of

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Speaker 1: years ago, um in Great Britain, or in France, or

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Speaker 1: through Europe or even in India, that is what we

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Speaker 1: would now say is close up magic. Um. It was

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Speaker 1: slight of hand, it was something small. It was done

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Speaker 1: for a small group of people, and it was it

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Speaker 1: was to call attention to themselves and then to work

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Speaker 1: for toss coins. But it's interesting what happened is that

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Speaker 1: after then there was this resurgence in stage magic. Magic

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Speaker 1: was now big enough to go on stage. It was

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Speaker 1: in Vaudeville. It was a music hall, and so there

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Speaker 1: were different specific, different styles of magic that were developed.

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Speaker 1: And I think today now you can see a little

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Speaker 1: bit of all of that. You know, you can go

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Speaker 1: somewhere and see stage magic um, which has been popular

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Speaker 1: for many years, and then you can also see plus

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Speaker 1: up magic. You can see someone do something small and

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Speaker 1: right under your nose. And I think I think the

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Speaker 1: fashion right now actually among magicians is for close up

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Speaker 1: magic um. You know, there's a great resurgence in that,

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Speaker 1: and there's been some really sophisticated innovative work done in

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Speaker 1: close up magic and some great close up performers. And

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Speaker 1: you've you've got to have some pretty good slight of

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Speaker 1: hand if you're going to do close up, but it's

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Speaker 1: almost impossible to do it's almost impossible to do that

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Speaker 1: kind of show with up without a really solid level

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Speaker 1: of sleight of hand. And I think one of the

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Speaker 1: reasons those shows are appealing to audiences is you can

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Speaker 1: perceive that level low skill. I mean, even if you're

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Speaker 1: fooled by it, you understand that that person is really

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Speaker 1: skillful in what they're doing. And so there's a there's

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Speaker 1: a level to that that that truly makes it an

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Speaker 1: artistic performance. Listen to more Coast to Coast a m.

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Speaker 1: Every weeknight at one a m. Eastern, and go to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com for more