We start episode 127 by catching up with Tyler and Jonah. While Tyler hasn’t been performing much practical magic, he has been developing his video and editing skills. Meanwhile, Jonah’s month was steeped with magic.

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

Mario Lopez was just a kid when a friend put a lit cigarette into his fist and made it disappear. He learned how it was done and from that moment on he was in love with magic. He moved to Granada in his native Spain when he was 18 where he trained with one of the countries top magicians. He was taught the art of performance and how to create the magical moment. He didn’t teach young Luis any tricks specifically. It was all about how to perform on stage. Mario is incredibly dramatic on-stage which he says is a product of his environment. Clowns, actors and musicians are everywhere in Granada and they have all had an impact on his magic.

If you’re talking about comedy magic, there are just a few names that automatically come to mind. John Archer is one of them. Not only is his magic baffling, but he’s also absolutely hilarious. He’s known for whipping up his audience, and getting incredible moments out of the magic and the punchlines!

If you don’t know who Asi Wind is, I recommend stopping the podcast episode and checking him out. Not only has he released incredible effects that have ROCKED the magic community (links below), but he is also a leading magical thinker.

In this Episode we got to sit down with the one and only Shawn Farquhar to talk about how to fool Penn and Teller, or win a contest like FISM, twice!