#454： A Magician's Search for Wonder in the Modern World
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Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, my guest Nate Shaniforth shares how he became a professional magician only to become disillusioned with his career. He talks about how he embarked on a search to rediscover the magic of magic which took him to the slums of India where he encountered a 3,000-year-old clan of fire eating street performers and rekindled his sense of wonder.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now magicians
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usually become magicians because they experience a sense of wonder seeing a cool trick as a kid
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they want to recreate that off for audience members on a regular basis but what happens
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when a professional magician stops feeling the magic of magic that happened to my guest today
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his name is nate staniforth and today on the show nate shares how he got into magic and became a
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professional magician only to become disillusioned with his career nate then talks about how he
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embarked on a search to rediscover the magic of magic which took him to the slums of india where
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he encountered a 3 000 year old clan of fire eating street performers and rekindled his sense of wonder
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if you're feeling burnt out from your work or disenchanted with life this episode is going to
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have some insights for you after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is
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slash real magic and nate joins me now via clearcast.io
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nate staniforth welcome to the show thank you very much for having me on so you got a book out here is
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real magic a magician's search for wonder in the modern world i love this story because i'm a guy
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i'm a romantic at heart like i love the you know the idea of wonder and awe but also i live in the
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21st century and so it's easy to be cynical and jaded and you're like does wonder exist but you're
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also looking for it at the same time so this is your search like you're a magician you're you're a guy
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who spends his career inducing wonder in people but you had this moment where you lost the wonder
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and you went looking for it again before we get there let's talk about how you became a magician
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because i think this is interesting how did you get into magic because every kid goes through a
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magic phase i did but for some reason you you had your magic phase you decided i'm going to do this
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for the rest of my life how did that happen yeah so just just to touch on something you said there
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you know long before i knew anything about magic tricks i i loved the experience of being amazed and and
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of of feeling that you know that sense of wonder or awe or or and and i feel like as a as a child
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that comes relatively easy you know when you're young it's easy to be amazed and you notice that
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as you get older and older it becomes harder to find and so so as a kid like i remember one night
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when i was young my parents took me out to see a meteor shower and i i it was the first time i'd seen
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the milky way you know because in the city the the city light obscures um the sky so all you can see is a
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you know a few stars but when you go out in the country it's just it's staggering if you haven't
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seen the milky way before it just knocks you down and and i remember loving that experience so much
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feeling like that was real magic and then you know a few years later when i discovered magic tricks
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the the connection that that i made in my mind was that the experience that you're sharing with an
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audience with a good piece of magic is the same thing as you're getting from the night sky or a
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sunrise or a sunset and so you know from the beginning that's that was my interest in magic
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using using the the craft of the magician to share that experience of wonder with people
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and how did you discover magic did you like you were one of those kids who watched david copperfield
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on tv and you're like i'm gonna walk through the great wall of china like that guy what happened
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yeah that that came later for me it was an accident i ended up uh reading the lord of the rings
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you know those movies came out when i was a little bit older but when i was young it was just the
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books and and i wanted to be able to cast spells the way that gandalf the wizard did in the book
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and so i ended up you know going to the library looking for a book of actual magic that i could do for
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people on the playground and it turns out that's not how it works but but i learned how to make a
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coin disappear and and that was pretty good no i remember like thinking like the awe you know when i
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went through my magic phase i went you know checked out all the books in the library about magic tricks
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and i remember when i learned how to do the french drop is that what it's called sure with the coin
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we make a coin disappear i looked in the mirror and like the first time i did it and it looked like it
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disappeared like i blew my mind yeah the the thing you learn as a magician like the the astonishing thing
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from the magician side of of the performance is how little it takes to take a grown educated adult
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and make them believe in magic for a moment you know i remember i my first piece of magic was very
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similar it was a coin vanish and i did it for for the children at school just at recess we were playing
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football and then i decided to make this coin disappear and and you know the kids saw it and
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they didn't know i was a magician they didn't know that was they were seeing a trick so they just saw
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this coin disappear and they started they sort of started like screaming and jumping and running around
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so the teacher on duty at the playground i was terrified of this woman she stormed over and demanded that i
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show her whatever i showed the kids to make them you know scream and run away so i made the coin
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disappear for her as well and and this was not a lady that you ever messed around with she was
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terrifying and and i remember my hands were shaking when i did this trick for her but when i opened my
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hand and showed her the coin was gone and i looked up it was like the transformation was total
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she she was no longer this you know this authoritarian dictatorial teacher uh presence on the playground it
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was like she was a little kid again and and that far more than the secret to the trick blew me away you
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know that that you could use anything and and take someone through that transformation that that felt
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incredible to me it's like what do you think what do you think is going on there why
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why do we feel wonder like is it just like the mystery that we don't know is it i mean what do
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you think is going on there yeah i mean i think it's i think it's a lot of things going on but but i
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think especially for adults you know and and and i say this as an observation of my own experience as
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much as you know seeing the people around me but i know that in my life i'm very good at making
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things ordinary you know humans are really good at getting used to things and and when i think about
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my favorite moments it it is it's those moments that have that have pulled me out of that sense of
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the ordinary and and magic is so good at doing that because it takes something that you think you know and
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turns it on its head right away it's almost like skydiving you know i think that i don't know if
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you've been skydiving before but but it is a total violation of everything you think you know about
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how you should behave you know because they open the airplane door and you jump out and it's just
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that that is such a you don't do that that you have to be crazy to do that but but when you make that
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jump there's this sense of freedom and release and and that's how good magic feels as well what's the
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career path like to becoming a professional magician because that's something i have no like i mean if i
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were like my kids said i want to become a magician i would i would have no clue to tell them like well
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here's your next step so what does that look like yeah well and you know i grew up in iowa um and and
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no one from iowa grows up to become a professional magician you know i think maybe if you grew up in
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new york or las vegas or los angeles where there are other professional magicians you could you could
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see someone else and try to copy their career path but but for me that that just wasn't the case
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so i think you know i think i i my in my experience i just had to make it up as i went
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and you know in in my town i grew up in ames iowa and there was this there was this athlete he was in
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middle school when i was a kid and then he went to high school and he was a phenomenal basketball
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player and you know the whole town would go out to watch him play and then he got signed on to the
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local college team and then he made it to the nba and then he was he's the the head coach of the
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bulls now fred hoiberg but but growing up and seeing this guy rise from a small town in iowa to
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you know national superstardom that was it was an incredible thing to see because it made me realize
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that even as a young magician like it's it it's okay to have an unusual job it's okay to do something
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that not everyone else is doing and i thought if he could make it to the nba maybe i could make it as a
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magician so i just started doing shows everywhere i did them for birthday parties and cub scout
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banquets and you know the advantage i had is that i was the only act in town uh if you wanted to
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hire a magician for your children's birthday party i i was even at age 11 i was the only option
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and so you know i just i got in a great deal of experience even by the time i finished high school
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that that allowed me to make the the jump to becoming a professional i think a little
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a little more intuitive it didn't seem like as big of a jump because i'd already had so much
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flight time did you go to college i did yeah but i i went because i got an acting scholarship and i
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thought maybe i could learn something about becoming a great magician by studying stagecraft
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and dramatics but in the end the best way to learn how to do magic for people is just to do magic for
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people do magic for people i mean what i mean i imagine it's just you're on the road a lot right it's
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just like constantly touring correct yeah it it is you know i think i had this vision of
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having there be some point where you make it where you feel like you've arrived and and you know
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finally you're on tour and and that lasted for about a week and after that i was just faced with the
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relentless reality of traveling you know 100 days a year 150 days a year 200 days a year and uh
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and and you know there's a very small window of my day where i do the show and the rest of my day
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was just dedicated to getting from one place to another one place so it's a grind i mean and also
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i mean here's another thing like about magicians and performers really magicians like they give off
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this aura of mystery you know they make everything look effortless and easy but you know we did this
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post on uh harry houdini and sort of his work ethic a couple years ago and you know researching it like
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i was blown away about how disciplined and how much willpower and how much of a hard worker this
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guy's was like it was it was just it was mind-blowing it was a grind i mean do you did you take that sort
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of workman-like approach to your magic as well yeah houdini was my hero growing up and and i think for a
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lot of people you know there's no here's the thing about magic there's no practical reason to be a
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magician if you want to be famous there are far better ways to become famous if you want to be
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rich there are far better ways to become rich so you only do magic if you love it and and you know
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some of the most hard-working people i know are magicians because it it just takes an extraordinary
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amount of work not only to perform the shows and to go on tour but to develop the material and to teach
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yourselves the skills that you need so so yeah i mean houdini sort of set the example for everyone
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uh there's a quote of his that i have on my studio wall he says the real secret to my success is
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simple i work from seven in the morning to midnight and i like it and uh you know i i hit
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malcolm gladwell's 10 000 hours you know you've read that to become a master at anything you have to hit
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10 000 hours i hit that when i was 22 and you know i think that's true for most magicians who
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who are serious about it it just it takes a lot of time and a lot of work right so this is kind of
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interesting quite i mean that kind of raises the question is magic like an art or is it more of a
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craft like plumbing or carpentry i i it's both and i think i think the reason i love it or one of the
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reasons i love it as a profession is it it's both it's sort of like building a cathedral you know first
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you need to have this grand aesthetic vision and this this you know this wonderful dream of how it
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will look when it's done you need that otherwise you know you'll never build anything but then you
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also have to become a bricklayer and actually start to make it and uh and finish it and you know so
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i think i think i'm similar to many other magicians and that the day is divided in two where every day
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i have a series of things that i have to practice just to keep my skills up but then you also have to
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look at you know the long term what am i trying to build what am i trying to create how do i want
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this to feel and that allows you to you know create things on stage for people that that really feel
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amazing and you also during this time when you were touring you started getting touring you got a
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girlfriend you even got married like what did your girlfriend think now wife think was like you said
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i'm a professional magician right because yeah you're like is this going anywhere or what's what's
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happening uh we met uh while i was still in school she was in school as well and and before i had made
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the jump to becoming a professional so i think we both you know knew what we were getting into a little
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bit but it it is it is unusual you know that first year i was on the road all the time and um it it it's
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certainly hard being away from home so often i will say though that you know i think it's important
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to keep it in perspective going on tour is hard but it's not like fighting in afghanistan you know
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it's not like there are many couples who have it have it much harder than we did and so yes it's hard
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to be apart but um you know i don't want to whine about it because right we both signed up for it and
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uh uh you know it turned out all right all right so you started you became a magician because you
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loved that feeling of wonder awe that you experienced when you did a trick or you saw the
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look on other people's face where they were just like blown away their minds blown got in it for that
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reason you hit the road you reached a point where you lost it tell us about that moment when you
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finally realized like i just don't feel the magic anymore in magic well so so let me say this first
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i think most professions have this problem where they you know on the outside it looks glamorous and
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it looks wonderful and exciting and and that sort of glittering veneer conceals a grinding day-to-day
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reality within you know i i don't know anything about being an architect i think on the outside
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being an architect looks amazing but i'm sure there are probably vast swaths of the job that
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are tedious and and you know very much a grind and and the same is true for being a magician you know
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we've already spoken about the the rigors of travel and and the amount of practice time that it takes but
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i i i found you know i i as soon as i graduated from college i jumped into the world of touring as a
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magician and after five years i was just burnt out i i i had thrown myself at this i dedicated my
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entire life to this and i was just i was tired and and it didn't you know for for someone whose job
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depends on being able to share that experience of wonder none of it felt very amazing at all
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and and there was one night when i was on stage in milwaukee and i you know i had been on the road for
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for a long time and in the middle of the show i just stopped and i said i'm sorry i'm done i'm
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i'm gonna go good night and i went back to my hotel room not knowing what to do because
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i i felt like whatever ship i was on was sinking and i needed to figure something else out yeah i mean
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i do think that that's why i love this book because i think that happens like you said it happens to
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everybody uh you know they get a profession or they start this thing that they love but then it
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just they lose lose the spark and it becomes a grind i mean what's compelling about your story is that
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your whole job is to convey magic right convey that feeling and you lost it too you know yeah that's
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right you know when when you lose that spark in another profession you can you know maybe fall back
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on the craft or or even just feeling like you're you're doing something useful for for the world but
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as a magician when you lose that that sense of of um that spark or that you know that sense of wonder
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about the work that's the very heart of the profession that that you lose and so i felt like
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i was such a phony on stage because i was trying to give people this experience that that i couldn't
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feel at all and you know a magician has to believe in the magic on some level or or it doesn't feel like
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magic you know it just feels like a trick nobody likes being tricked nobody likes being deceived
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but but a great magician can can use that craft of deception to give you something real sort of like
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fiction right like a a good novelist can can make up the entire story you know magic is fake in the same
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way that a novel is fake but that doesn't matter you're you're using it to give give the audience
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something real but but as a magician when you become disconnected from that that sense of wonder
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the whole thing just falls apart did this has this ever happened to other magicians like did this
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happen houdini for example you get jaded about the profession he did you know most people most people
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don't know this about houdini but but he spent the last i don't know third of his career trying to
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get out of the magic business and you can read his letters and he talks about the rigors of being on the
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road and how exhausted he is and and you know he he tried to get into the movie business uh he started
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the houdini motion picture corporation because he wanted he wanted to find another way to work
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and uh yeah i think i think it is i mean i you know as we said i think it's a liability in any job but
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but it's especially true for the magician because because of the uh the importance of of uh wonder and
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and you know feeling that when you're trying to give it to the audience so what did you tell your
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wife when you said uh you know i don't know if i can do this anymore and yeah well i mean she she
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she had been part of the process the whole time you know talking while i'm on the road and you call
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home and and then when i'm home you know at first i was thrilled to go out on tour and and then i was
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ambivalent about it and then i i dreaded it and i you know it was like a like a death sentence you
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know watching that date come closer and closer on the calendar and and i think you know i think
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she wanted me to figure it figure it out too because no one wants to live with someone who's
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just miserable about their work all the time so so she was totally on board with me finding a way to
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to sort of dream it all up again and and find a new way to approach my craft but um but but yeah
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i i i certainly didn't know what to do right well the one thing you came up with which out of the
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blue is like i'm gonna go to india right and the land of mystery like what you know sometimes it
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honestly it was a coincidence like sometimes the universe is just an amazing place and incredible
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things happen on their own that on you know on tour there's plenty of time to read because you get
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sick of playing games on your phone very quickly and so i you know i just read a lot when i was on the
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road in the hotel or on the airport in the airplane or backstage after a show or before a show and and
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on the leg of the tour where i quit in the middle of the show i just happened to be reading this
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it was an academic text about traditional indian street magic and so when i left the theater and
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went back to my hotel i you know i was laying on the bed in like the super eight or whatever it was
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reading this book about traditional indian street magic and it the whole thing started as this crazy
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idea like what what if i leave this whole world of touring in america behind and forget everything
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i know about being a professional magician and travel to the other side of the world and and try
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to dream it all up again you know the the mission statement at the beginning was how can i put myself
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back into the the mindset of being in the audience you know maybe i could go because india india has this
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tradition of magic that's famous in the world of magician so i wanted to go see snake charmers and
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fire breathers and street performers and and see anything that would amaze me to try and rediscover
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why i like magic in the first place i mean one trick that you described that sounded brutal but i
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never knew it existed was like this like is it the resurrection trick that happens in india it has a
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few different names yeah but but it's i mean the thing the thing you have to understand about
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the magic that i saw over there is that it's 3 000 years old there's a a tradition of magic that
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stretches back for 3 000 years with the secrets passed from you know the parents to their children
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and then over and over and over again and you know to be fair some of those illusions look like
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they're 3 000 years old and when when i saw them you know with modern eyes sort of looking with all
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of the experience i had as a magician some of it wasn't amazing at all but there were a few pieces that
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were just staggeringly good and yeah one of them is where you you know so that usually the magician
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works with his son it's a a combination act where the son is the assistant but i i saw and it was
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brutal the father took a um a sword and seemingly butchered you know his child and there's this boy
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who's bleeding and then he covers just lying on the ground and he covers him with a sheet and brings him
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back to life and you can imagine how you know 2 000 years ago 3 000 years ago if you saw that in a
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village it would just feel like a miracle well in like what is the tradition of magic in india so like
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it's it's old um and we're forming like these street tricks like the the cobra stuff the the rope i guess
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that really didn't happen you talk about in the book but this thing yeah yeah the rope trick is a hoax
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right but but let me say this so every culture in the world has its own culture and tradition of magic
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it's just like food or theater or music right magic is a cultural expression um as as much as the other
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art forms and so uh you know magic in one culture would look different than magic in another culture
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um in in india there's this tradition of these nomadic tribes of street performers that would travel
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around the country performing from village to village and and you know so much of their their
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material reflects the challenges of living in a place like india where it's hot and um you know
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sometimes you're faced with extreme poverty or or you know lack of nutrition so so like a
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an illusion they performed is they show a basket that's empty and they cover it with a cloth and they
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open it up and it's filled with food and they pass all the food around and they show a bowl that's empty
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and totally empty and they cover it with cloth and it's filled with water and everyone can have
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something to drink and uh you know it it's it's very far removed from the world of card tricks
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that you know sprung up in in europe but i thought it was fascinating and and uh you know i went there
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looking for those illusions but what i found very quickly was that you know and i found them and they
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were great but but even more amazing than the magic that i saw was the culture of india and the people
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of india and the experience of traveling in a place that was so different from my own country and my own
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culture you know i was totally out of my element and uh and as a result i couldn't fall back on any of
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the sort of i don't know patterns or or behaviors that you know you normally use in your own culture
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everything was new and everything was uh different and i i felt like i had to pay attention and i was
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alert and awake and uh and and that more than the magic i saw was was unbelievably wonderful yeah i mean
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that's a great i mean wonder is experiencing something new so by putting yourself in a completely
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foreign situation you're more likely to experience that yeah i mean it's like what we were speaking
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about earlier how if it's true that as adults we we become very good at making things ordinary
00:24:26.200
then one of the ways you can break yourself out of that is by plunging yourself into an environment
00:24:32.060
where nothing is ordinary and and you know as a result you're you're not living from moment to moment
00:24:39.220
on your certainties but instead on your instincts and your observations and and you know magic and travel
00:24:46.180
are very similar and that they both uh can deliver this cataclysmic death blow to your sense of
00:24:53.200
certainty about the world and your place in the world and so rather than living in the story that
00:24:58.820
you tell yourself about the world all the time you're just living in the world itself and that that is
00:25:03.980
amazing what i thought was interesting is you know you india has this reputation of being this land of
00:25:09.240
mystery and wonder but when you got there like you found that i think you talked about you described how
00:25:14.980
people in india were actually pretty ambivalent about that reputation in fact they try to be like
00:25:19.800
they'd go out of the way it's like no we're scientific we don't believe in that stuff those
00:25:23.720
are just tricks what do you think is going on there yeah i mean i think that the image of india as a land
00:25:29.420
of mystery is antiquated and you know outdated and has its roots in a lot of sort of questionable
00:25:36.500
colonial uh practices from from so long ago you know it it was it was easy for the european powers to
00:25:46.480
um embrace rationalism and science in their own culture and and to say that anyone who didn't live
00:25:54.180
like that you know must live in a land of mystery but india is a modern superpower and and you know the
00:26:00.480
people i met were were were quick to assure me that the reputation of india as a land of mystery is
00:26:07.380
just a fabrication and uh and you know some of them loved seeing magic and some of them didn't just
00:26:14.500
like just like in america just like in the united kingdom you know i want to be clear that i didn't go
00:26:19.120
to india because i thought that it was a land of mystery i went because i wanted to find those people
00:26:25.460
who were performing the illusions that i was reading about in the book and you know i could
00:26:30.240
have gone anywhere if i was reading a book about traditional japanese magic i would have gone to
00:26:34.580
japan or china i i just got lucky and and went to india and like what did these street magicians you
00:26:41.280
know have the tradition that goes back thousands of years when you told them like i too am a magician
00:26:46.520
like what did well how did they receive you well so let me let me set the stage just a little bit
00:26:52.980
at the end of the book that i was reading there was this lengthy interaction with with one of the
00:27:00.140
tribes of traveling street magicians that has settled in a slum outside new delhi called shatapur
00:27:06.180
depot and and when i finished the book and decided that i was going to go to india i wrote the the author
00:27:13.920
of the book an email and said listen i'm going over there are you still in touch with any of these people
00:27:18.020
and could you facilitate an introduction and that worked out so so on my trip i knew that i had to
00:27:24.060
be on a particular corner at a particular day at a particular time and one you know the leader of
00:27:29.320
this tribe would would take me in and and talk to me about his his illusions and i get to see all the
00:27:35.000
stuff that i read about you know i i had never been in a slum before and it was just it was unlike
00:27:43.360
anything i've ever ever experienced it was like you know you look at those pictures of dresden
00:27:47.540
that was bombed in world war ii and that's the closest thing that i can it was just rubble and
00:27:53.140
garbage and tarps you know forming houses and and in this wasteland of an environment i discovered one
00:28:01.040
of the most kind welcoming families you could possibly imagine when they discovered that i was a magician
00:28:07.060
and i wanted to talk with them about magic they welcomed welcomed me into their home like i was a long
00:28:12.560
lost member of their family and and you know i thought i was just going to speak for an hour and
00:28:18.240
i spent the whole day with them and they cooked this enormous feast and and showed me all of the magic
00:28:23.540
that that i wanted to see and they also wanted to see the magic that i did some of the pieces in my show
00:28:29.460
have their roots in in that traditional indian magic and so it was it was incredible for me to
00:28:35.880
be able to show them my version and they could they could show me theirs and you know we we had
00:28:41.200
nothing in common i i'm a magician from iowa and and they live in a slum outside new delhi so we had
00:28:47.120
nothing in common but magic but but that was enough no as you described that you know they're living in
00:28:53.000
the slum but yet they're able to make a life for themselves right i mean it's that's magic it's like
00:28:59.580
that's like alchemy right you're turning lead into gold that's that's exactly it it felt like an actual
00:29:05.280
miracle and and i'll tell you what's even more amazing the the leader of that tribe works as a
00:29:11.100
magician in india he performs at parties he performs you know wherever he can he just hustles
00:29:16.140
for a living he hustles like you would not believe and he saved enough money to wire his home in the
00:29:23.480
middle of the slum with internet access so that he could using the internet and a computer that he was
00:29:30.780
able to afford after just saving up after show after show after show after show so so his children
00:29:36.020
could learn online and you know hopefully hopefully have a better life and and uh that when i saw that
00:29:44.220
and i i understood just from speaking from to to him what what he had to do to make that possible
00:29:50.400
like how many people see that slum and and just dismiss it you know as as as um you know like i said
00:29:59.000
a wasteland not knowing that inside there's this family who are making this incredible life for
00:30:05.520
themselves and for their children it was i i was there you know almost a decade ago and i think
00:30:11.840
about that every day it was just remarkable so was it was it that so the experience that in the
00:30:18.360
totality or was there like a moment where you saw a you know an illusion and you're like you had
00:30:25.000
you were wow i mean was it or was it both like i you know i i in the book i i talk about some of
00:30:30.900
the illusions that they showed me but but even and they were remarkable and and there's one in
00:30:36.080
particular i saw this version their version of the fire breathing illusion that i i still can't explain
00:30:41.100
to this day but far more amazing than any of the magic i saw were the people themselves how
00:30:46.040
in this incredibly tough i mean just unbelievably tough i'd never seen anything like it that they
00:30:52.940
were able to create this life for themselves and treat you know i i i guess i didn't know what to
00:31:02.960
expect and and the reality that i discovered blew me away and that was far more amazing than any of the
00:31:10.680
magic that i saw so you know i've i've talked to other people who've had this similar experience you
00:31:15.420
know they weren't a magician but they they somehow got disenchanted with life and so they go on this
00:31:19.580
like trip or a journey and they experience that transformative moment where they rediscover
00:31:24.520
wonder again now the hard part it seems is like how do you bring that back with you
00:31:30.460
to your ordinary world right you had that feeling in india but like at some point you had to return to
00:31:35.880
ames iowa so how did you take that back with you yeah it's one thing to be amazed on the other side
00:31:41.860
of the world when you're living out of a backpack traveling through the foothills of the himalayan
00:31:45.840
mountains it's another thing as you say to bring it back to iowa you know i i think that's probably
00:31:51.620
that's probably the the main idea that i came home with that you know i went to india to rediscover
00:32:01.380
the sense of wonder but you don't have to go to india it you can find that that same spark that i was
00:32:08.420
looking for anywhere you can find it in music or movies or basketball or poetry or mountaintops or
00:32:14.500
sunrises or sunsets right it's more about it's more about how you look than where you look and
00:32:19.960
even more than that it's about remembering to look you know i know in my own experience how easy it is
00:32:28.720
to disappear into the the to-do list of every day and to break every day into nothing more than a list
00:32:36.060
of things that i want to work and do and accomplish and that's it and and you know you can you can lose
00:32:42.780
a day or a week or a month or a year or a lifetime without ever pulling your head out of that machine
00:32:48.980
and looking around and and and the idea i came home with was if you stop and try to find that sense of
00:32:59.820
of of of wonder and awe wherever you are you will find it you just have to remember to look for it
00:33:07.000
there's that there's that joseph campbell quote and i'm going to butcher this but he said something
00:33:13.240
like people talk about searching for the meaning of life but what they're actually looking for is
00:33:19.560
is the rapturous joy of feeling alive and when i think back on my my time in india and also just
00:33:27.300
in my experience as a human being my favorite moments aren't aren't my victories you know the
00:33:33.460
moments where i feel like i've succeeded at something they're the moments where i feel like
00:33:37.120
i'm most awake and alert and alive and you know people find that in all sorts of ways but but for me the
00:33:46.100
single greatest distinction between having that in my life and not having that in my life is is the
00:33:52.900
daily practice of looking for it if you look for it you'll find it it's just you have to remember to
00:33:57.960
look where do you look on a day-to-day basis well so so many places you know i i think travel is still
00:34:04.000
a very good way of doing that but um you know i've i have two young children now and the youngest who's
00:34:10.000
three has this this routine that he does every night before bed he insists on going out to say good
00:34:17.180
night to the stars and it sounds like it sounds like uh it sounds sort of ridiculous you know it
00:34:23.460
sounds like a cliche until you try it and and then it doesn't sound like a cliche anymore then it doesn't
00:34:28.920
feel like a cliche every night when we go outside and just you make two minutes before going to bed
00:34:35.400
you just carve out two minutes to go up and look outside and remember that it goes on forever above
00:34:41.580
you and forever below you and forever all around and that somehow you are here to be a part of this
00:34:46.440
that has you know that has influenced me as much as going to india anyway i'm grateful to him for
00:34:52.860
wanting to do that because when it's cold when it's late when i'm tired i don't want to do that
00:34:57.760
but but having him insist on going out to say good night to the stars has been very good for me
00:35:02.580
certainly yeah having kids definitely can help you find the one because they're looking for they can see
00:35:07.560
it right yeah you know and they can see it and i i remember when i was a young kid you know as a young
00:35:14.700
magician you see you see here's what happens as as a kid you see how your adults the adults in your
00:35:23.820
life act all of the time teachers parents grandparents neighbors but but the young magician gets this sort of
00:35:31.520
window into a different side of the adults in your life because when you show them a piece of magic
00:35:37.360
they for a second they're not adults anymore you get to see this glimpse of how they were when they
00:35:44.020
were kids you know i talked about that teacher on the playground when i made the coin disappear
00:35:47.680
but i saw that hundreds of times and and it makes you realize as a young kid looking forward it you know
00:35:56.260
towards adulthood that you lose something when you become an adult and and my interest in magic was was
00:36:02.780
as you know as much in that as anything what do you lose what what have these people lost what happened
00:36:08.460
to you and how can how can you get it back how's your career as a magician looking like now you know
00:36:15.540
i i just had this book come out and so writing a book is it's a all-encompassing experience in a way
00:36:24.840
that i did not expect at first i was you know writing while i was on tour and i'd i'd go back to the
00:36:31.220
hotel room afterwards and write for an hour and then again when i woke up the next morning before
00:36:35.360
the flight but uh to finish the book i stopped touring and just finished you know just just wrote
00:36:41.440
and uh when the book came out in january i i went back on the road again and i'm about to start my
00:36:47.580
fall tour and so you know it's i'm in this strange spot right now where i write books and i tour as a
00:36:53.980
magician and you know i'm making it up as i go but but i love it and i feel very lucky that i get to do
00:36:59.920
all of this you feel like you the magic's back in your magic it is yeah i i feel like after having
00:37:06.220
finished the book i can see the magic in a way that i couldn't see it before i i know what i'm
00:37:11.380
shooting for and i think i know how to hit it well nate is there some place people go to learn more
00:37:15.680
about your work um you know i think the i think the best place is just the book i i put everything
00:37:21.160
that i have to say about magic and and wonder and disillusionment and and rediscovering wonder
00:37:27.460
in your daily life you know all of that is in the book so if you're interested it's called here is
00:37:32.300
real magic you can find it on amazon or at any bookstore and anyway i hope you enjoy it nate
00:37:37.960
stanforth thanks for coming on it's been a pleasure thank you so much my guest today was nate staniforth
00:37:42.440
he's the author of the book here is real magic you can find out more information about his work at
00:37:46.660
natestaniforth.com you can find the book on amazon.com and also check out our show notes at
00:37:51.660
aom.is slash real magic where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic
00:37:56.440
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:38:13.200
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoyed
00:38:16.900
the show you've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a
00:38:20.040
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00:38:23.920
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00:38:27.220
of it as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay