Magic on Amazon Prime In October! We are now in October, or what I consider Magic Month, I thought I’d share with you ALL of the various magic related programming that can be found on Amazon Prime. I don’t have access to Netflix, so I can’t cover them other than to say that is the home to Justin Wilman’s shows. This list is probably not complete, I may have missed one or two things. OH, and not all of these shows are free to watch. Many are. But also a lot of them require either rental or purchase and I think one of them requires a subscription, but that episode in featured in two pl ..read more

  Our feature today is Harry Sears. He was born Harry S. Knight, December 28, 1885 in Washington D.C. He appears to be the only son of William and Grace Knight. The Knight family can be traced back to living in America  as far back as the 1600s. Seems the first KNIGHT to be born in America was named Charles. His parents are not listed onboard the Mayflower, but were in Massachusetts shortly thereafter. Now, Harry though being born in the Nations Capital, Washington DC, but actually grew up in the Philadelphia area. I haven’t been able to find who inspired his interest in magic, how ..read more

  I now hold in my hands, a copy of The Inventive Magician's Handbook w/Props by Judge Gary Brown, and please try and ignore anything you've read or heard me say previously. I had a feeling I was going to be a big fan of this book when it came out because I had many conversations with Gary during his process of writing it. I even saw some of the tricks long before he thought he'd be writing another book. But even with these little glimpses, I was not prepared for what came in the mail. I knew from the beginning, a professional magic book that came with the props was going to be huge. Th ..read more

  I just watched a lecture by Jim Steinmeyer over on Vanishing Inc and he mentioned his Impuzzibilities books. Apparently, according to Jim, when he first put these out, many of his friends kidded with him about this project. From his comments it sounds like they gently were poking fun at him for putting out such material. Why? Well, many effects used a method that many thought 'out of date' or 'obvious' or maybe even hackneyed. But this was far from the truth. In his defense, he also said he never expected to put out more than one book. That was not the original plan. But now, he has 1 ..read more

That's a bold statement to say, "unlike anything you've ever seen in magic". But, having had dozens of conversations with the author about this book, I can attest to the fact that it's both something very different, and something very special. As far as the creativeness of the author, yep, I can also tell you, Judge Gary Brown is big time creative. He can take some of the simplest concepts and turn them on their head and give you a brilliant new piece of magic. I have a number of Gary's creations that I use. One in particular is a feature routine in my show.  What you have in this book ..read more

  The movie, Lost in the Shuffle, which I posted about some time ago (click here) is now finished and is showing throughout the country and the world! The movie/documentary stars Shawn Farquhar, Juan Tamariz, Alexandra Duvivier, Richard Turner, Michael Vincent and others.  FOUR SUITS. FIFTY-TWO CARDS. ONE MURDER MYSTERY. In the hands of a skilled magician, a simple, everyday deck of cards transforms into a vessel of wonder and (im)possibility, so it’s little surprise that for almost as long as there have been cards, there have been card tricks. Seen through the eyes of some of the ..read more

  Cornell University recently featured a profile of one of their Alumni, Steve Cohen. We know him as The Millionaire's Magician and featured performer at Chamber Magic in NYC. I've read many articles about Steve in magic magazine's but it's always nice when a real world periodical does a piece on one of our brethren. Here is a link to that article:  https://alumni.cornell.edu/cornellians/cohen-magician/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3TCK6vn60DEpTiBrAQJy8MNCkWlbI4Fl8BYbt2Gbae0AFfQ-WetT2eN7M_aem_PjXgu3VvboLJa0iO3ychIg ..read more

  I just learned that William Rauscher has passed away. This won't be a long biography, but rather just a moment of admiration and reflection for one of magic's most prolific authors. I can hardly research a topic for The Magic Detective Blog or Podcast, without referring to one of his many books. I remember on one episode of my podcast I was thinking about Bill and thinking he had 4 or 5 books and then I started adding them up and laughing because he had SO MANY fantastic books, far more than I ever even imagined. And some of them are personal favorites. I love his book that he did wit ..read more

Newmann was born Christian Andrew George Naeseth on November 28th, 1880 in or near Kenyon Minnesota. He had two brothers, Marius and Chester, as well as a sister named Gunda. The one brother Marius, actually worked in the Newmann show for a period of time. Where does a young Minnesotan discover magic? In the case of George, it came about from seeing a man named Harry Heller the Man of Mystery. Here was a showman who stole the name of the two most popular magicians of the time, Harry Keller and Robert Heller. According to the book, The Great Newmann Show by James Alfredson, the man’s real ..read more

  I think I'm a couple months late on this, but it's new to me and might be new to you. There is an online streaming show called Hot One's, where the host, Sean Evans, interviews celebrities and they eat wings that get progressively hotter as the interview moves forward. It's a very interesting show. It's fun to see celebs as real people. David Blaine made an appearance on the show and ate the wings. You'll have to watch the episode to see how he did. But what made his appearance better than most, he does some magic at the end of the show.  You can watch it here ..read more