Ben Seidman hangs out with The Magic Guys! #175

They're guys. They do magic. They are the Magic Guys. Oh boy. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 175 of the Magic Guys. To my left, I got Nick Kay. Welcome to the show, friends. Oh yeah. And down below, look, we got Doug Kahn. He's in the building. Man, I'm excited to be back. And let's just go with this, fellas. What a night to return. Yeah, you've come back with a banger. I really did. I didn't want to, actually. I wanted to hide out a couple more weeks. But you're like, hey,

guys, guess who's on tonight? I'm like, I'm back. Yeah. I think we've brought everyone out of their homes, out of their, you know, in the cave to come out for this episode. We can see everyone in the chat already. Tim, the Magic Buzz, Andrew, Scotty P, Seth, Scott Link. Look, all the crew. Or the live crew, if you're listening to this post-podcast. You could have been here live to ask your questions in the flesh. It's going to be so good. Oh, my.

I know. I can't wait. So, Nick, I think we just dive straight into the goodness of what the people want. You know what I mean? Well said, friends. Now, again, you can put your questions in because I have so many questions for our next guest, my friends. Because our next guest is an American sleight-of-hand performer, actor, comedian, and creative consultant. The man is literally a one-man orgy. There is very little he can not do.

I'm super excited to see him. I've been a big fan of his work since the very week that I got into magic.

So please join me in welcoming the amazing Ben Seidman. Music. Oh, yeah. Ben Seidman. Hey, everybody. Ben, thank you so much for being here, buddy. Like, again, I've been a fan of your work for a very, very long time. But please take a moment, introduce yourself, and tell everyone who you are. I mean, you just did it. I'm Ben Seidman, and I do magic tricks. So here we are. I don't know how you even do the elevator pitch for you.

Like I was, you know, I've known you for at least you've been on the radar for a while. And I was kind of like looking at your bio before the show. And then we started chatting before the pod about some of the things you've done. And wow, we're in for some stories tonight, I would imagine. Oh, thanks, man. Yeah, I try to stay busy. And I really, I don't like stopping. I really like doing this stuff. So I, yeah, I try to work as much as I can.

Wow. Well, in saying that, I mean, what a privilege to be able to be busy as a performer doing the thing we love. Like, I think I heard you say it once, how many shows you do a year, but what, like, just for the people listening at home, how, like, how many gigs are you doing a year? That's become somewhat of a legend because that was, that was at a time, I think that probably came from the first time I did Fool Us.

And at that time I was doing an absurd amount of shows and I've intentionally scaled it back because it was just too much. The travel was beating me up way too much but at the time of that it was it was over 200 a year but i scaled.

That's awesome what's your market for that number of shows oh well at that time period it was it was much more of a variety i was doing a ton of colleges and i don't do too many college shows i still do maybe like 10 15 a year but i priced myself out of that market to some extent so i don't do as many as i used to and i was doing some cruises back then i i haven't done a cruise ship and in years, but but I was doing a bunch of cruises then and you know, some corporate some

theaters, some comedy clubs, too.

And I guess there's a little less variety right now, unless I'm working on some other project, like some sort of TV thing, either in front of the camera behind the scenes, but but now I'm doing like mostly corporate shows and private parties at some theaters to some ticketed shows, but that's like the bread and butter is mostly corporate and private.

So the thing is, performing aside, you actually have so many accolades with regards to your own creativity and the sort of contributions you've made in that realm. Can we talk about that real quick? Sure, absolutely. I'm an open book. There's nothing that you can ask me that I will. Look, I'm not going to say I'll answer anything, but you can bring up anything you want to just throw my way.

Yeah well we all signed the waiver before we started so we're all we're all on board well yeah all of your viewers have signed a non-disclosure agreement right exactly now we do have questions coming in but i'm going to jump in front of scotty p who has a great question for you in a moment's time but i really want to know what it was like working on mind freak which has been so influential to magicians all over the planet so what's it like working alongside chris angel i guess

that's one of the that's one of the only questions that you can't ask me i'm gonna. You know, that was, that was a real adventure. I was in my early twenties when that happened. I was living in Vegas and I timestamp this like what year would this have been? Yeah. This was, this is going to be 2000. I want to say 2006, if I'm not mistaken, I had moved to Las Vegas.

I was, I was still in college and there's a, basically a study abroad program, but for other campuses around the U S. So instead of switching countries, you're like trading places with someone or moving to another campus. And there's one spot open at UNLV, which is the university in Las Vegas. And, you know, I was coming from a college in Wisconsin. And there was there's, let's just say there was less demand for people who wanted to go to Wisconsin than people who wanted to leave Las Vegas.

And there was one open spot and I wrote this letter about how you know you had to apply for this thing so I wrote this letter about how being in Las Vegas it was the only place in the world I could get the education that I needed and I got that spot and so that's how I moved to Vegas and you know finished my last year of school and that was the beginning of me really working my way into the magic community to some extent and that's like that's what put me there and that's how I I,

you know, being in Las Vegas is how I met Chris and ended up working on Mind Freak, which was my first, that was like my first real gig out of college. And starting working with them actually started when I was in college. The fun sort of like behind the scenes story of that job is that I had one more semester at school. And I was studying theater. And I declared a theater major so that I didn't have a backup plan, basically. And I mean, I've always loved I've always loved theater and acting.

And, you know, that was kind of my educational background. But it was also a way to be like, no, I'm going to do I'm going to do magic. Like, I'm not going to graduate with a useful degree that would allow me to do anything else. So. So, yeah, I declare that major and I had one credit that I needed.

And my advisor was like oh this could be anything this could be a directing class it could be a screenwriting class it could be an internship and i said hold that thought and i called up chris because i he had just purchased a trick of mine that i created so he could do it on mindfreak and i called him and i was like hey do you want me to come consult for you for free for a semester all you have to do is sign a piece of paper he was like yeah of course so that was that

was the beginning and then when i graduated when i graduated uh banachek who was heading up the magic team at that time called me and said like hey that the whole team and chris wants to come on full time and then that's that's when i like actually really got the job and started getting paid as a consultant about manifesting your destiny that's how you do it folks yeah i'm so curious because i mean you know i think for most of us that are very

excited to be going to magic live i mean that's kind of the mecca of magic in some degree right like how many people People just say, I'm going to go to Vegas and try to make it like, do you think it's important being in proximity of like something that is a magic Mecca or do you feel like you'd be okay no matter where you are located?

That's a good question. I mean, it's impossible for me to know and everyone has their own path. I do think that these cities like New York, Vegas, LA in America, at least, you know, Chicago has a really good scene.

I do think that there's something about being around people who are better than you that I think is really beneficial, especially, I mean, all of the time, really, but especially in those like early years, as you know, in your development as a performer, you don't have to be in one of those cities. In fact, there are huge disadvantages to moving to one of those cities.

You know, the first of which being, if you want to work, if you want to gig, there's so much competition, like if you move to Vegas, or New York or LA, and you want to get booked, like you are competing against some of the best magicians in America, of course. So that's, that's definitely a disadvantage. But being around people who are exceptional is great, because, you know, you force yourself to get better, you have to get better, because you are around people who are better than you.

And so that was sort of my thinking with it. It wasn't like, I moved to Las Vegas, because that's where the performers go. And that's where people It wasn't that it was like, let me put myself in a room with like, you know, Michael Close and Helen Ackerman, Matt King and Paul Vigil, all these guys who are just incredible, like exceptional at what they do. And, and, you know, hopefully some of that will rub off on me.

Well, magicians aside, you know, Scotty P is asking, do you have any crazy Carrot Top stories? Did you cross paths with Carrot Top? Obviously being in proximity in Vegas. Is there a story behind that? Yeah, I know, Scott.

So I first met him working on Mind Freak because at that time, Chris's like Chris's show, we shot the TV show out of the Luxor. And and that's where, you know, Scott's been. Sorry, Carrot Top, a.k.a. Scott, has had his show there at the Luxor for years.

And so he was always around and hanging out. out and then we you know we just we hung out a bunch of times like outside of that show too wow and then surreal carrot top hanging out at the chris angel stage and and the last question on this on this era is what are your thoughts on on chris angel you mentioned you have you know a good insight on him what's your yeah i mean like so let's talk about you know there's two different things there's the there's the persona and

there's there's the person right a lot of magicians criticize chris and he definitely deserves some of that criticism to one degree or another one thing i always said to defend him is that like regardless of what you think of him or the show he did get a lot more eyes on magic and a lot more people thought magic was cool who wouldn't have or got into it who wouldn't have and that's like a pretty invaluable valuable thing that being completely i was telling you pre-show those

first four years of that show even five great work amazing accomplishments like the most magic ever on television yeah all these stuff american thinking about it that that's awesome of you to say doug i mean i will also say that there are plenty of i by the way i'm sorry about the children streak streaking outside of my window i don't know if you can hear that i promise you no relation someone someone's going.

To make your card gimmicks for you in the closet i promise exactly keep splitting those cards you know that there there's plenty of things that people will say that you know chris like did some bad magic or did a lot of bad magic and like hey you can you can definitely make that argument we can have that conversation you know the the best of was some really really great stuff and And what I can say, really, more than anything, I can't speak for the whole show.

I can say that the ideas I contributed, I'm very, very proud of. And some of the effects that he did that I developed, very proud of. Do you have a favorite? Is there one you're more proud of than any other? I don't know. I mean, the first trick of mine, which is the one that kind of got me the job, was the safety pin on back trick.

And I still do that in my show today. day so like honorable mention to that because that is still so much of a part of my life i do we did a couple of other like random things that are they're almost easter eggs like a lot of people didn't see them but we did a signed card in ice rink where someone signs a card and, you know he was on an ice rink people are skating around he sets it down on the ice puts his hand on top steam starts to rise from his hand and

he lifts his hand up and now the card is frozen like three inches below the ice and he has to take an ice skate to like chip away the ice to pull it out that's cool yeah i was really proud of that and there was a there was a. Vanishing deck that or rather dissolving deck that i remember i was working with luke dancy and Sean Fields, who were also consulting at the time.

And we were trying to figure out he wanted to take a deck of cards, have a selection, bring the deck of cards into a fountain or like a pool of water, and have everything dissolve away except for the one card. And we were trying everything we're trying all this like, weird gimmicky stuff. And then it hit me and I came up with this idea that solved the problem. And that was that was like a great moment for me.

I'm still very proud out of that method it's really difficult and really clever damn it'll be available no no no no no no you know you're not walking away from this one sideman how the deck you crazy yeah yeah that uh i actually look i you know that was a thing that i created for the show when i was working for the show so i'm not at liberty to say i i would tip it if i it was just something that i created and even sold or put in lecture notes i could talk about the method,

but I don't think I'm legally allowed to.

Yeah, I've always asked folks when you do consult, does your intellectual property that you share whilst creating for them no longer belong to you? I mean, you created it, but is the wage that you take whilst being the consultant. And is that basically the exchange? It's like, here's your wage. Thank you for working for us. But everything that comes out of your beautiful brain now belongs to us. Totally depends on the contract, right? Every situation is different.

And magic consultant is not like, it's not like accountant where there's a lot of people who do this job. You know, it's kind of like a case by case basis. And usually the artist or the artist's management negotiates that out with the consultant or the consultant's management.

And you know they come to some agreement so with that i remember the the safety pin on back i specifically put in that clause like i can perform this forever but but that was before i was officially a consultant he bought that outright and so when i started working as a consultant i'm pretty sure that like the material that i developed like is owned by mind freak enterprises or whatever but you know that being said there's certain methods that that you know

can be applied to other things and it would be an absurd legal battle for for a tv magician to come after someone to try to say like oh that 40 of this method was used on this other thing that you did i think it's more like what is the effect what does the audience see and you know if it's the exact same thing then you might get into a sticky situation.

Yeah, because I remember he did sell that through some of his Mind Freak volumes where they teach that. Joe Monti ended up teaching that in the DVD. I remember it really well because I thought it's a wonderful, wonderful piece of magic. I wasn't, this is the first time I've actually heard that you would look for it. Yeah, I kind of I didn't I didn't actually appear on that. And that was kind of a there's a little weirdness there. One of the bad Crisley Angel stories.

Yeah, well, I had stopped. I wasn't working for him at the time.

He and I had kind of had sort of split away from each other at that point. And and so I don't even remember how everything went down. But but but yeah, I also because that's a you know, what he teaches is very different than what I actually use on stage.

Age so i'm not too upset about it but um yeah yeah so have you seen magic oh sorry doug go ahead i'm just wondering if you've seen the recent chris angel show and or if you recommend it i have not and i do recommend it i want to see it i want to go to vegas and we're there we did not stay in touch so i haven't seen him perform live or on tv since i stopped working for him and we've run into each other in passing but we haven't we haven't hung out since on the show okay so

i was curious uh tv magic versus stage magic so you had a hand in both of those entities obviously with chris is that right oh no not at all i had nothing to do with the stage show okay really when i first opened uh i would like to put that on the record i had nothing to do with the stage show great angel let's go to nick's question drag a great segue here that's right.

Highlight this thing so yeah so with regards to tv magic i was saying that you had the privilege of meeting so many cool people and reading your tv specials and performances we read it says here on your wikipedia page that you did perform for the late robin williams what was that like performing for someone of that greatness was he as lovely as he seems yeah he was incredible that was that was an amazing amazing night for me so there was there's a theater in mill valley which which

is in like the San Francisco Bay area. And it's called the Throckmorton. And I, yeah, I have no idea what's going on with it now, but at the time there was a comedy show that was running and they would bring in acts and do, do these shows. And, and so I got to go, I got to go second to last on this show. And then after me was Shelly Berman, who I don't know if you know that name, but he just an absolute legend, incredible, incredible comedian, and just like a beast.

He would come on stage. I saw him once at the improv in LA and I remember they introduced him and he came on stage and it was so old at the time. He like walked so slowly to the microphone and you could just feel the tension of the audience. Everyone was like, is this guy going to die right in front of us? He was so slow and he just got out to the microphone and then just murdered for an hour.

Incredible storyteller. And and so yeah, so Robin came to the show to see Shelly and they knew each other from way back when.

And there's also another gentleman named Mort Saul, who he's like, the original political comedian. So you know, if you think about, like Bill Maher, Mark Maron, Jon Stewart, all of these guys who had, you know, had this sort of like political slant, that all kind of comes from Mort Saul. So Robin came backstage after the show to hang out.

And said some very nice things to me and i like i was like like could not wrap my head around it and then at one point i looked over and i'm in a conversation with mort sal shelly burman and robin williams and i was just like well if i die tonight that's cool no doubt see it's funny because i also read that you had worked alongside johnny knoxville who's one of my heroes and i felt like if i were to work alongside him i would

die can you tell us what that was like for those that are if you work along him you might actually die. Okay very true the yeah like yeah jp is a wild dude we met through i was doing this i did this like hidden camera it was a commercial for toshiba and they just come out with a laptop that was like super thin and super lightweight and the whole concept was like can people put But okay, let me back up. The whole concept was this computer so light, you won't even know if you have it.

And the concept was two pickpockets, Bob Arnault and myself would go and Bob would distract them and I would slip the computer into their bag. And then we would run away. And and then they'd send in a fake security guard to say we have a report of a stolen laptop. Can we search you and then they would find the computer and the person would like freak out and think they're They're going to jail.

And so when we were doing that, there was a great, great dude who was working on that project who also works on the Jackass movies with Knoxville. And so he introduced us. And that's how I ended up doing some stuff with Johnny Knoxville for some of his movies. What an interesting take on a commercial to have people think they're going to be arrested. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. He had a vision for the character doing magic in the flick.

Well, which one? Well, bad grandpa or did he do magic in other places? Yeah, I mean, you know, the stunts that they do don't use any magic, right? But he's always had a fascination with magic and sleight of hand. So so, you know, there's like the new Jackass movie, Jackass Forever. He wanted to make milk disappear into his hat and have a bull crash into him in a bull rink. And so like that was a thing that, you know, I kind of worked out the method for him.

Very simple straightforward method but you know they needed a prop that didn't exist so i kind of explained how to yeah explained how to design it and how to make it and they need a prop that they need a prop that is so simple that when you have the most adrenaline running through your body ever you can still remember to do whatever action it is yeah yeah 100 yeah they wanted a you know what i ended up coming up with was a hat that had slush powder in it which is you know about the

most obvious method in the world but he had to be able to take it off and hold it face down and like move it around and have have there be no slush powder in it i think in one of the takes shows the hat to the audience so they can see inside of it so they can see that it's you know that there's no apparatus and it just looks like a hat but i don't think they ended up using that take i don't know why they didn't do like 20 takes of him getting hit by a ball but yeah i mean

could you just do that snoring action again we didn't quite get it in the microphone when you're passed out yeah yeah that was and that was a very scary thing for him because that's one of the ways that he had legitimately gotten injured on an earlier film with which was working with a bull so he was like you know he was pretty jacked up going into that and then he was unconscious for. A few minutes before he came to and said, I think he said something like, I guess that bull didn't like magic.

But yeah, like super funny, super, super great. But, you know, not like, hey, I'm going to perform a magic trick. Just like, hey, here's like a fun visual gag for the context of the stunt. Yeah, that really shows up.

Were you surrounded by the other Jackass guys during this time as well? Like, was it just Johnny yet to deal with? No, I actually, that one, I, I, that was all remote. So that was still doing the pandemic, pandemic, everything was locked down. And so I, all of the communication with them was like videos and Zoom and phone calls and stuff like that. That is the safest way to work with the Jackass crew. I'll tell you that much. Yeah. I will tell you the first time I met PJ in person, Knoxville,

sorry. Sorry. First time I met Knoxville in person, I went into his office.

And the first thing I said is great to meet you. Please don't hurt me. You don't want to walk around a corner and get punched by a giant glove. I am not the guy. I am not the guy who would hold up well under that situation. So I told I was like, listen, so just please don't hurt me. And he laughed really hard and then was like, all right, I'm not going to do this.

But here's what I would do if you haven't said that and i was like oh dear god and uh wow lucky you did yeah and he said that you know he's like come over here like you know on my desk i have these papers and he would have you know he would invite me over to to look at the papers and he has a foot pedal in his desk and when he presses the foot pedal of like a metal rod it was either a metal rod or a wooden bar flies up at ball height like right right right towards your

crotch and there's there's a a mouse trap at the end of it oh my god so he like triggered it and like he was like and i was like okay great i'm glad we did not do that it was just that that's the initiation yeah switch yeah holy moly that really shows up you know any stunt that magicians try and do you know like david blaine or any human and stunt you know he just let me do a magic trick in front of a bull you know that's got everyone's attention yeah absolutely i feel like maxville would

get along so ben performing aside you know with your consulting and everything else it's pretty evident that you have this amazing wealth of knowledge i mean it covers from sleight of hand to mentalism to building gimmicks and even to pickpocketing and as a result you've been on the wire at a whole bunch of times talking about those sorts of things. And now a friend Dragotea here actually asks, I've seen you on the wide do nine levels of pickpocketing.

I'm very curious as well. How do you go about building this knowledge? Like where do you find all this stuff? I mean, it's not as simple as it, as it seems, let's be real about it.

You know, like I'm someone who like, like yourself, a student of magic, but how do you do it? Like how, where's all this knowledge coming from? Well, so look, there was three videos with Condé Nast. There was two for Vanity Fair and one for Wired. So they're like sister companies. And the Wired one was all about pickpocketing. I've always been interested in pickpocketing since I was pretty young. And not from a criminal or thievery standpoint.

My original burst of excitement was this magician named Mark Bond, who is no longer with us. Great magician, incredible magician in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I grew up. And I saw him do a watch deal and my head exploded. And so that was the little kernel, the little seed that planted in my brain. I saw how strong it was. And so I had always been interested in it. And when I was in Vegas, I met Apollo and I met Bob.

And although I didn't really learn any pickpocketing from either of them at that time, I did end up learning later. Oh, yeah, that's the that's the wired video. So I yeah, I kind of take through the talk through the basics of tech pocketing. You know, there's, there is a little bit of misinformation, and quite a bit of information left out of that intentionally, just because, you know, some of these are real secrets.

And I didn't want a I didn't want criminals to see this and, you know, be able to use it. And, and to some of the techniques are really proprietary. And, and, you know, hard to come by, they're not things that you can just learn in a book. So I kind of, although it really does talk through the basics, I really do kind of. There's some information that is left out and information bombed in it. So if you're interested in that, you can certainly watch that video to learn some of the basics.

But pocketing is tricky because you can't really learn it from a book. You can get the Ricky Dunn book. How do you end up getting that story?

How does that come to life, the Wired story? The Vanity Fair and Wired. Yeah, so that's a good question. So the the Vanity Fair one, the first Vanity Fair came first, and they had asked a bunch of people. I think that one started off more focused on pickpocketing. And then they really liked me when I auditioned for it and took the meeting and told them that I, you know, told them what I would do with it, what I would like to see.

And they kind of came back to me and said, like, hey, we're gonna instead of just doing this thing entirely on pickpocketing, we're gonna lean into your skill set.

So it became about sleight of hand and pickpocketing. thing and and so after that one came out it did really well it got lots of views and then that's how wired found me and funny enough then the vanity fair team saw the wired one and we're like oh yeah that guy was great let's let's bring him back and so they had basically canceled that series they weren't really doing that series anymore but they brought me back to do another episode just because they they love it

yeah and i think i think what really sold it was that you're like your depth of knowledge and specifics you went into really showed that you're sharing more than the average person can google like you didn't just fluff it and be like we're master pickpocketers you know we know how people work no you really like went into granular and i think the thing that as a magician the thing i really appreciated was that when you talked about stealing watches

you even revealed that you'd stolen the watches of the crew that were filming you like was that something you did on the fly or like was that planned or was that even thing to do that or was it you know yeah acting or what you know that the fact that you did that and you got their reaction about a segment of pickpocketing is just you know the icing on the cake one of the things with pickpocketing is you you can't really do that much planning because you don't know what someone's going to

be wearing what type of watch they're going to have you know i if i'm in a situation where someone's like, Oh, steal that guy's watch. They can point to a watch that is possible to steal, but like absurdly difficult, and the chances of getting caught are so high that it's not worth attempting.

So you know, in situations like that, I kind of treated it like a live show, which is when I got there, I did what I always do, which is look at what people are wearing and see if there's any opportunities and you know, where there were opportunities, I took them.

Damn. That's it. And that's a lesson for everyone. Just be aware of the opportunities around you. I guess that's true for all magic, right? Like, even if you're not stealing a watch, you might load something under the watch or, you know, the fact that people have a jacket on means you can do certain effects, put things in their pockets even.

In yeah i mean that really that that really lights off the part of my brain that that was just you know going at full speed over the last three days because i just got out of doing three days 10 hours a day with juan tamarez and and like you know you want to talk about someone who sees every angle who's always we do for opportunities like that guy is you know it it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't get better than that guy because he doesn't do magic he is magic and where is what was going

on there is this magic castle or what yeah so so randy pitchford who basically bought and saved the magic castle brought juan from spain to la so that people could meet him in session with him he's in his 80s you know like we don't know how long we've got him for so it was really important.

To for you know for randy to start this artist in residency program so that like freaking love that man that's incredible love that a million it it was it was di vernon coming and living at the castle i've read a line or two that said one is coming in june and i'm like they're gonna replace vernon with one and i hope they do this with grandmasters on a repeating basis yeah yeah and i that's the goal and that's that's what they're gonna do like it's so

many the older magicians the greats really are not in a good place in their life late in life right one probably is because he is truly grandmaster and taken well care of but there's a myriad of greats that could take this seat and teach the youth and feel great joy in their life and doing so and being respected as being a great in their lifetime and i love that someone's in the position at that establishment to do so yeah i mean that that is randy and spades he he's a good buddy and

And so we've talked about this quite a bit. Like he freaking loves magic. Tell him to pencil me in for two decades from now. Yeah. I'm ready for that chair. Yeah. I mean, it is, it is a, it is an amazing thing.

Like they took Milt Larson's old apartment and they just basically gutted it and, you know, took it from this, like what Milt used to live in. It's like, you know, five-star little resort in a couple of rooms there.

And so Juan's staying there and like, you know, there's, there's a giant round table that's all felt so it's a session table and you know we went in there and our paul wilson is of course making this amazing documentary about one so he was there and handsome jack and simon cornell jordan gold david gabay franco and i we were all just like they're jamming and because one was in town i mean eric mead got into town today mac king came

in it was just like a baby that's the stuff huh so after that's man just like you could probably do you know.

Hours just talking about that experience how long is he there for i don't know i'm not sure actually i think tentatively about a month yeah okay good yeah coming coming out of that session like what have your thoughts been now on magic like has something changed or thought process or yeah what's come from spending that time well i'll say that i am still synthesizing all of the information you know like you can't take the lifetime work of a master and get it

in 30 hours and three days and just like grok it but what i'm you know i took a bunch of notes and i'm trying to put juan's thinking like put that lens under what i do because the spanish style of magic is so different than what i do they approach everything differently and so you know some of that fits me and some of it doesn't fit me at all and so i'm just kind of like putting these puzzle pieces together and seeing how I can make what I do better and stronger and more like incredible.

And as Juan would say, emotional to, to, to see where those, where those pieces line up and where there's something that I have to say, okay, this thinking is great, but I can't really apply it to what I do because my goals are different than what Juan or Juan Luis or, you know, Danny D'Ortiz or some of these Spanish masters would do. So it's, you know, I'm in the beginning of the process. I just came out of these seminars or I guess workshops.

This kind of leads to the question I had ruined anyway. You talk about goals. What is it like for Ben Neidman to set goals at this point after you've done so many amazing things? Like how do you level up now? Wow. Great question. I only kind of know how to answer that, Doug, because, you know, I have I have career aspirations and I have creative aspirations. And sometimes those are are together and sometimes they're not.

And I've been leaning more lately. I've been leaning more into what I want to do creatively than what I think will be commercially successful. That being said, I'm still performing at corporate events. And that is when you say that. Do you speak of in performance wise or cause we know you've released some magic. We could talk about that too. Like if we go over to vanishing ink site, you got a couple of tricks over there. Yeah. Yeah. Well right now answer your question right now.

Yeah. I, I published a couple of things with vanishing ink that I'm really proud of that, that I think add a lot of value for magicians and our.

You know they're not just tricks that you you learn and put in the yeah everyone loves the oracle system it's sold out and i know people love that i've heard heard people tell me about it for years oh yeah thanks man yeah permanent record was more recent and it kind of went under the uh under the radar a bit but i dropped some real knowledge in that one that like it's so funny i think a lot of magicians saw it and thought like oh okay that's just a card trick but there are some principles in

there that can be applied to any close-up magic that will just make everything more amazing so that's what i'm really proud of with that project i'm in the record cool yeah be priced yeah yeah i know it's like it's a it's kind of absurd how like the amount of the amount of like ideas on there that are really really strong and can be applied to any trick versus how cheap it is it's it's yeah i mean it's kind of i think sometimes interest exists about these days on when company releases you know

a tutorial that's full of great working information and that's a huge value especially if it's well produced from like a company like vanishing ink you know yeah they're spending some moolah to get that stuff out definitely so were you talking about that were you talking about putting stuff out for the community or making yourself a better performer oh i'm i'm talking more about the latter i've had this idea idea for a theater show for, I don't know.

1517 years that's been, that's been, you know, banging around in my noggin. And the reason that I haven't, that I haven't put it up on its feet is because it's not like, it's not something that I could do at a corporate event. It's not something that I could do back in the day at a college or, you know, at someone's house for a for a party, it's more of a theatrical show.

And so it's been sort of on the back burner in my brain for a very long time and so i guess what i'm alluding to is i'm finally starting to.

Plot that out and work out the kinks and i'm going to start putting some of those pieces and a couple of public ticketed shows that'll happen early next year so i can start getting that thing off the ground yeah is that a thing that might start to appear in like the edinburgh fringe show and places like that maybe it would be i would i would love to do at the fringe and And it would be a kind of the perfect thing for a fringe show.

The difficulty is that the show is very, very ambitious from a lot of different standpoints. And so doing it with like almost no setup and no teardown would be nearly impossible. So I don't know if at all. My good friend Charlie Caper tells me to do Edinburgh every year and and I would love to do it. But man, it is a grind. It seems name drop much. Yeah. Well, I, I know him as, you know, I love Charlie Taper.

He's one of the true magical magicians of our life that I love that he evolved from the street and that he does so much progressive magic.

Big fan of Charlie Gaber. Oh yeah, he's one of my real close friends and one of my favorite humans. Like I got to do, this was amazing. After he had won Sweden's Got Talent, first magician ever when I got talent. After he won, he got booked on this magic TV series for SVT, which is the biggest channel in Sweden. And it was him and two other magicians.

And he started working with the production and realized that they were like great tv producers but had zero magic experience and he was like you have to bring my friend ben out to work on this and the production is like we know tv like we don't you know we don't need to hire this american kid to come out and charlie was like just fly him out for like for five days he can sleep at my place like it won't cost much just just bring them out and then

i kind of went in and told them what i thought my vision for how the magic should be done and like how to approach it and i ended up getting they basically brought me in for the entire summer so i just like helped direct and help write and work as a consultant for for that show in stockholm which is amazing i got to hang out with them.

That's crazy. So with, I'm curious as a, as a corporate performer myself for you, are you in a place now where your branding is kind of set and you have agents always kind of reaching out to you for work or are you sort of chasing work these days? How are you sort of positioned for when you have to get on and make the bread part of the career? Yeah, I'm not, I mean, everyone's chasing work to one degree or another, right?

Like if you want to be performing magic, there is some amount of hustle to it, but I'm in a pretty fortunate position where a lot of the agents who book those type of events know who I am and will know that I deliver and will bring me in just because...

Look, when there's an event planner or an agent who is booking for a corporate event, 99% of it is they just don't want to look bad to the client.

They just want someone who's going to come in and do their job and be hilarious and amazing and easy to work with and anything else is you know anything above that is like above and beyond they just they just want the client to be like that was insane where do you find this guy this is awesome right there's less risk booking ben simon because of your track record. Also then how amazing the show is it's like i'm probably not gonna you know look bad for this client if I booked then.

Yeah, 100%, which is so funny because to me, the entire thing is the show. In my mind, having original magic routines and not telling any stock jokes, having a perspective, having a show that is unique, that is the most important part. But yeah, when it comes to the actual logistics of who wants to work with who and how do they get booked, it's like, Like, is this guy going to be cool?

Yeah. And what's your thoughts on, your show is so regional and so well thought out and structured and your storytelling is like, you can really tell how much work goes into it. How do you feel when you do the show and then you have an audience member be like, yeah, but another show I saw this guy floated a table with no strings.

It's all chris angel in vegas like yeah no but you know what i mean like do you feel like the audience appreciates this body of work compared to maybe you know this guy bought six tricks and yeah put it together i do yeah i absolutely do because the people who haven't seen a lot of magic are going to leave being like that was hilarious and amazing and i don't know know how that works and holy like i can't i can't wrap my head around this and the people who like watch fool

us and like like magic and have bought a ticket to see a magic show who have some knowledge or some experience kind of appreciate it on a deeper level so you know you kind of cover both bases that's the armando theory which armando lucero is you know one of my teachers and one of the great magicians of our time and armando always talks about wanting to fool the the one percent and not like economically the 1% that like, you might do a trick and say 95% of people are fooled.

And then there's 5% of people who are like, I think I know how that works.

Like he's concerned with that 5%. And it is a real challenge to put everything in magic under the lens of like, how deceptive is this? But but it's a really good experiment.

And you know, so much magic doesn't pass that test so much magic does not pass that test at all and so i you know i i kind of took on that that way of looking at it from armando from both the magic deception part of it but also from the entertaining standpoint like i i don't want to be vanilla i don't want it to be just this thing that's like mediocre that everyone likes but like can i make it really good and have it be a thing that everyone likes. This should be the mindset.

Testify. So many magicians cruising on Easy Street doing stock jokes and crap when it should not be that. It's an art form and we can do what you're saying. I wish that I had had the luxury of listening to artists like you when I was developing artists talk about these important aspects. I feel I would have turned out so much better. But yeah, that's how I do it, right? We're all on this journey, right? Like everyone, when someone comes to me and says like, hey, I do magic.

My show isn't very original. Like, great. You will do better. You want to, just the fact that you're having this conversation means you want to do better. So like, how do you do that? Okay. Like what perspective can you bring to the world to your show that is different? Like, how can you like go through your show? Is there something that someone else has said? Okay, we'll take that out.

Is there a concept that someone else has touched? we'll take that out you might end up with nothing but like you can you can say okay well maybe the theme of coincidence is just inherent in magic that's been talked about maybe i can do something with coincidence that takes a different angle than what everyone else is doing and like maybe i can take a effect that isn't based on coincidences and make it about that like how can i like crack open an old magic book the secrets are all there like

as a creator and someone who invents magic tricks of course i want people to like buy the things that i put out because i want to share these gifts with people that's like important it's not it's not really a financial thing you don't get rich selling magic but uh like as a creator but but i want to i want to share those things so like yes of course i want that but at the same time you could just read Read Amateur Magician's Handbook and then work really hard and do a ton of shows and you

could be an incredible magician with just that. I think the pillar of what you're saying ultimately is when you want to improve in a show or in an act, it's important to take things out than to force things in.

And that's a really, really cool way of thinking about it. Yeah, writing is editing, right? If you're going to write... If you're going to write anything, a book, a monologue for your performance, you know, whatever, whatever it is, it's like the there's the gem, there's the initial idea. But you know, 90% of the work is just going through and like, what doesn't need to be here? Like, how can I cut this down?

How can I reword this? How can I make this 5% funnier? How can I make this 10% more interesting?

So yeah, like, look, the bottom line is, there's no substitute for just doing a bunch of shows like the more you work the better you become that is a hundred percent true there's very few shortcuts that's why you see magicians who go on agt who suck is because you know some of them just didn't do that work they didn't put it they didn't do 200 shows in a year to refine.

Yes and you don't have to do 200 shows in a year but it certainly helps you could go street perform and do more than that you could do 200 in a weekend if you go crazy Yeah, that's one of the reasons why Charlie is so good is because he shows on the street. Now, that being said, Charlie also really cares about his artistic expression and what he's giving to the audience. His show is poetic and beautiful and original.

And Charlie will take, you know, 1000 hours to work on one gimmick or one idea that might not work. But like, when that stuff pays off, it's like, okay, you have the combination of all of the reps doing a million shows.

You have the combination of i'm not going to sleep until i solve this problem i'm going to just keep grinding and working on it and pointing out pointing at it from like different angles you put those two things together and it's like okay now we're talking it's like tommy wonder he's like the tommy wonder of our era that's the way i see trying to totally agree with that i totally agree with that yeah i did a couple of weeks of shows with him

down here in melbourne and he's actually just performing in like what is our largest mall and we're doing like a whole magic fortnightly thing and working alongside him and seeing his act, this beautiful throughput with the bow tie. It is just so wonderful. Like it is so wonderful to be around a brain like his. Like it's staggering. But what's also interesting is that there's not many opportunities to pick a brain like that.

There's not many opportunities to, you know, Obviously, people like yourself, these opportunities on this very podcast to be able to pick your brain and have this knowledge spat out, to me, is so invaluable. Yes, exactly. You know what I mean?

I'm so thankful you came on the show to share this, not only with us, but with our audience. We've got to get folks like yourself on board, and we've got to get Charlie on board as well. Are you doing convention and such, Ben? Are you getting out there? You know what? But there, so there is, there is this interesting thing that happened, which was I got asked to do a bunch of conventions.

Kind of in my 20s and said no to all of them. And that's another lesson is like knowing how to turn things down. That was such a great piece of advice I got early on. And like, turning down things before you're ready for them is that's part of the game. And it's hard because like everyone wants opportunities, right? You got to be on a GT.

Well, so many magicians want to be on television and think that that will solve their problems. And there's nothing wrong with being on on TV, there's nothing wrong with being on AGT, obviously. But going on before you have the goods is not a good idea. And that's what I did with the college market. I had opportunities to do colleges early on. And I waited and I grinded out a bunch of different shows. And by the time I hit the college market, I like had a really solid hour.

And so like, that's it. That's another other thing people you only get one shot at certain things and there are markets and magic where if you go and you bomb it's like well it's going to be really tough to muscle your way back in so knowing when you're ready to approach a market or a specific tv show or a type of thing like that is that is an important skill that being said you can wait too long i have a great buddy Stephen Nicholas, who is a wonderful mentalist and awesome dude.

And he worked on a show for 10 years. And now he's performing. Now he's like actually doing it. But I think he waited too long. I think he actually would have benefited from getting more reps early on. So, you know, knowing when to say no, knowing when it's time to say yes to the thing that you're not ready for. It's a very tricky dance. But I mean, getting that is is like difficult, but an important thing to to think about. A cruise ship, for example, is one of those big points, right?

Like you only get really one shot to... Audition on a cruise ship because they'll give you a review like you get the first one and then they're going to review you and if it's a bad review it's very hard to get back on again yeah, yeah i mean yes the to some extent that then again there are plenty of mediocre cruise ship acts out there too so it's like okay well on the cruise ship front are you familiar with what pitchford's doing on.

The what does he call it the spellbound yeah you do any of that does that interest you i said i said one kind of half truth earlier on which is that i haven't done a cruise ship in like five or six years and the only the only exception to that is that when they did the big public announcement i was i i joined on board and performed for for people along with some other magicians as a part of that announcement you were there for like the launch of the event for the yeah it's like a magic castle on

the cruise castle on sea baby and it's it's a constant it it just stays there huh yeah i i don't know where they're at in the process but like yeah you can you can book a you can book a cruise and there will be much more magic on it than you know.

A normal a normal cruise ship might have a magician on it but this will have a special dedicated so if you love magic just go hang out at spellbound i saw some video for i mean i don't know if it's real video footage or it's something they've ai did but like i was seeing like they've got got invisible like the piano is there they've got like an actual they've built out a segment of what looks like the castle inside the ship pitchford has a good marketing crew he understands how to

make the brand work obviously yeah yeah he is he's he's a real genius and you know him and erica larson who is of course like you know the castle dynasty she is one like we you know with milt and and bill and irene no longer with us erica you know you've got erica and libby and then you know there's jessica like that's the crew and so they're working very closely with randy to to develop that and i think randy has plans for the castle

brand that that are larger than just making the magic castle in la great and making it like really great i think he he sees this as a calling to. Just further the art of magic and have more lay people who wouldn't be interested in magic have the opportunity to see good magic.

So that's another quote. Having lived through all the struggles, I mean, I'm not a West Coast guy, but I've always read Genie and been in the loop, and that joint has been through some turmoil over the last few decades, and to have it in a safe place is so special right now. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a really good thing for magic. Yeah. Cool.

So now we're getting closer to the end of the episode for everyone watching, like every magician we've had on has, you know, different thoughts on this, but the current state of magic in your eyes, what's your thoughts? That's an interesting question. I don't know if I'm the right person to answer because I kind of have been making more of an effort lately to, this is going to sound crazy, but unplug from magic. And I say this because like magic is my life. It's my every day.

I'm always working on magic all of the time whether I'm performing or developing but I I've tried to I've tried really hard to sort of stop paying attention to what other people are doing to some extent like I have my community I have my friends and I have my people who I bounce ideas with and do shows with and hang out with but I I noticed that with the like Like with social media being so ubiquitous, I would just see so

much magic in my feed and so much magic that bummed me out that I found that like kind of pulling back and not knowing as much of what's going on has been like better for my ability to create and how I feel about my day to day and how I feel about magic. So I don't really know that I'm only semi tuned in, I guess I'm, you know, I'm focused on my own projects and what I'm doing and I'm trying to make great magic that gives people the feeling of amazement.

But, you know, that question was answered from a magician's viewpoint. From like an inner perspective. What do you think about the public's viewpoint of magic, you know, continuing the answer from that? Yeah, yeah, I think I think it's very positive. I think we're going through, sorry, I don't know what is dinging. I think we're going through. Kids are hungry. They're tapping the bell. Yeah, I guess so. Shut up and do the wallets.

I think it's really positive, Doug. I think more people are interested in magic now than have been at almost any other time in American history. I think that, like, again, I have this very complicated relationship with magic on social media. And I know you've done, you do a lot. I'm complicated right now too. I'm off all social media right now. I turned it off about three weeks ago. We were lucky to get on today's podcast. Yeah. Yeah. After being as all in as I could be for years. Yeah.

And, and I, I totally, I totally get that and why people do it.

But the problem with magic on social media, or at least one of them is that social media is this, you see something and then you swipe, right? You go to the next video. And like, that's everything. That's everything that magic is not supposed to be, right? It's supposed to be this profound sense of wonder. And that is nearly impossible to deliver through a screen, right? That's what makes magic on TV complicated.

But in the format of social media, where it has to be like, here's a quick thing, boom. And then people like, you know. So the greater problem is that no one who does it actually puts any thought into the process about delivering a story experience in that time frame, right? It's possible to do it, but everyone ignores that. Totally. You're right. And it is a live performance art, for sure. It is 100% possible to do.

I'm not saying that it's not. And there's plenty of people who are doing a good job of it. But I think the algorithm had figured out that if it shows me bad magic, that I will engage more.

And by engage, I mean, what the... And then I swipe, but I guess maybe I stay on it a fraction of a moment longer. And so I'm seeing a lot of rehearsal videos. Like, I just learned this coin slide. I'm going to try it out for the first time. Yeah. And, you know, that doesn't serve anyone except to anger Ben. Yeah. Yeah. I look at people. The internet is the internet, right? I, this is not my area of expertise.

I'm not a content guy. I'm not, when I put out a video, at least at this point in my life, at this point in my career, if something ends up on video, hopefully it's something that I've spent a lot of time and thought on. And if you see me like doing otherwise, then you'll know that something has changed.

I think what I'm taking away is that, and this is something that I feel that we can have a common ground on, is that a lot of times when things are consumed in the social media realm, it's so hyper-focused on how the magic is done. Whereas I think that performers want to focus on why it's done. And we do it to inspire. We do it to amaze. We do it to change somebody's mood for the day. And there's very few people that can do that through the medium of the Black

Mirror. I mean, I think Rick Holcomb probably does a boogie job at that. We've interviewed on the show before. Yeah, I guess if we start all thinking about it in that way, we could be producing a lot better magic.

There are definitely people who are doing cool, interesting stuff out there. And like, you know, just this is very magic-y, but there are, I see some magicians doing stuff with coins where it just, I remember when like I was the young hot coin guy, not hot attractive. I mean, like I could do some like really finger knuckle busting, cool coin stuff. And I see some of the kids now see what some of the things like. It looks like a real magic. And I think that's awesome. And I love that.

And I think that like the medium like lends itself really well to great minute and visual magic in that way. But that's not like my performance style. So So again, I'm not, I'm not going to produce that type of content. And also, you know, some of those some of the moves that I see some of these kids doing, like you watch avi app for a couple minutes, and you're just like, okay, that's, that's, I don't know what that is that I don't know how long that would take to learn.

But oh my god like incredible now you know how some of us feel ben watching your stuff thanks i i don't have a i think my my greatest skill set is one of two things it's either just the inherent like who i am and i didn't do anything to choose that like that was my that was nature and nurture. And I, that's, that's not something you can teach. Like there is, when I get in front of an audience, I get really comfortable and I have fun and I try to stay in the moment and like really hard to teach.

That's just a thing that you either have or you don't, or you get better with experience. But I think if I was to choose a thing that I actually like is my skillset, it's just a lack of satisfaction with anything and always wanting it to be better and being willing to put a stupid amount of time into it. So yeah, not great for happiness, but awesome for creating magic.

That's fantastic and that's that's words to live by i think for getting better and and also you know you're because you're comfortable on stage you know you're i saw you at magic live back when you did a spot 2018 i think it was your ability to you know improv like i imagine comedy is a big part of your world like you probably i'm guessing follow a lot more comedians than you might magicians is that fair to say oh i probably know more magicians but i i know i know a lot of comedians too and a

lot of my friends are comedians a lot of the people i look up to are comics like i really a lot of my comedian friends approach their art.

In a way that makes me go oh gosh this is just like just the mere fact that comedians don't buy trip buy jokes they write them is yeah so different from the magic perspective and so imagine if every magician if every comedian had those six main stories they would just everyone would tell well that would that was vaudeville right that like that existed for a period of time though that was like the cat skills to some extent i think i'm not a comedic do you

feel like doing magic is doing more than one art form at once so we give a little more leeway to developing like you say if you're avi app and your perform your sleight of hand skills are great maybe your performance skills might not be as great because of that i haven't seen avi perform live actually so you know for all we know he could also like i'm not calling out avi though you know what i'm saying yeah no i know what you're saying i just for.

I'm not sure like you know it there are plenty of people who do insane like look at david williamson insane sleight of hand insane creativity one of the funniest people you ever see in your entire life, So what was the question? Like I said, I don't know.

Exactly. Look, and we're, we're at a time. I can't, you know, this, an hour just flies by so quickly, but everyone already, you know, I'm sure everyone here watching this follows Ben, but all, all of his social handles are in the link below and we're going to add a link to his collection on vanishing ink where you can go and purchase.

I'm getting permanent record. I'm guilty of skipping that. And I want to know what you're talking about, the stuff that you can DM, you can DM me once you've watched it. If you want to get it i'll support the wheel man thanks man i can absolutely channels so we're gonna so ben just thank you for having time to come on here first of all but we're going to end the episode like we do with it with every guest and that is to leave ben with the final word.

I don't know anything i don't know what i'm talking about i don't know that i'm very good at it almost anything you should not take any of this as advice and by any of this i mean any of the things i've said everything i've learned i've learned from from trying things and failing and asking other people questions and just trying to get better so don't look at me as any sort of authority figure i don't recommend that i just just try to get a little bit better every day

when it comes to magic and life and you should too, Thanks for listening. It's time for us to disappear now. Disappear now.

But we'll see you again on the next episode of The Magic Guys.