Latest / The Magic Guys / Joel Meyers hangs out with the Magic Guys! #293

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Joel Meyers hangs out with the Magic Guys! #293 · The Magic Guys

• 0:02
  They're guys they do magic they are the magic guys,
• 0:12
  Well, hello, friends, and welcome to the Magic Guys podcast.
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  I'm your host, Nick Kay, and this is episode number 293. So close to 300, friends.
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  As you know, this is a live podcast, and as a result, we have folks in the comment section.
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  Of course, you can put your questions in there for our guest who's coming up on today's show.
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  Good to see the guys in the chat there. We have our friends,
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  Thomas Conger. We have Scotty P., Robbie B., and we have Grandpa.
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  Good to see you again, Grandpa. Friends, I'm writing solo today as both Doug
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  and Josh are elsewhere, taking over the planet in the realm of magic.
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  But fear not, we have another amazing magic guy joining us on the podcast,
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  which I'm going to get straight into because I've been dying to catch up with
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  this gentleman for a while now.
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  Because friends, today's guest.
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  Is a bloke who just achieved about almost everything you can in magic.
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  He's performed in over 50 countries, appeared on America's Got Talent,
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  Penn and Teleforce, Wizard Wars, Fake Off, and seven seasons of Masters of Illusion.
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  He's performed for some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Bradley
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  Pitts, Johnny Depp, and Jennifer Lopez, known for a famous song, Taco Favorite Kisses.
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  He's earned himself a reputation as one of America's most accomplished touring
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  magicians and mentalists.
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  Now, I had the pleasure of actually hanging out with this gentleman in Las Vegas
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  a couple of years ago, where I ended up having a few drinks with both him and his father.
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  And I can tell you guys that beyond the television appearances and beyond the
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  stage, he's genuinely one of the nicest dudes in magic that I've ever had to pleasure.
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  We're here to talk about many things, including his amazing book called Disillusion,
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  which we'll talk about in abundance.
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  We're going to talk about magic. We're going to talk about fame, family, faith.
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  We're going to talk about an abundance of things. And of course,
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  if you do have any questions, you can put them in the chat. So please,
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  without any further ado, join me in welcoming Mr. Joel Myers.
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  It was a show with that intro, bro. That was so cool, man. It's so good to see
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  your face, Nick. How are you, brother?
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  Buddy, it's so good to see you. And for the folks that haven't met you,
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  have been meeting you for the first time possibly, which I doubt very much given
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  the success you're having in that amazing country of yours, please tell our
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  friends. Who are you? What do you do?
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  Well, my name is Joel Myers. I tour and do magic full-time all over the world.
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  I perform on lots Lots of cruises, lots in Las Vegas constantly.
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  I'm all over Las Vegas all the time. Corporate stuff, private events,
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  lots of television stuff, as you said.
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  Every year, constantly doing TV stuff. I'm touring a show right now called Dangerous
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  Minds with Anna Dangerous and another show called Disillusion Project.
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  So that's a little bit of everything going on in that kind of blah.
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  It's a lot. What aren't you doing, man?
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  What aren't I doing? I'm not sleeping. Dude, I'm definitely not sleeping.
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  I probably got eight hours of sleep in the last three days. So,
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  yeah. I have little kids, too. So, when I'm home, I don't sleep as much.
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  You look great for a guy who's being robbed of his sleep. I had a late one last
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  night myself. I got home at like three. I wore home.
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  I had a buddy of mine that I've known since kindergarten. We hung out until
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  like three in the morning just drinking cups of tea.
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  Nice. Oh, that's the...
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  That's what uh that's what the us guys between the ages of 35 and 45 i'm guessing
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  nick you're in there i don't know your exact age so 41 buddy right there in
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  the middle we're the same we're the same age man same age you got a full head
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  of hair and you're in shape and you look great me i look like a potato,
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  you look.
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  Like a potato man yeah french fry i remember having drinks with you and your
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  dad first how is dad is you good,
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  i love that you were i forgot my dad was my dad comes with me he comes with
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  me to a lot of big shows i don't remember where i was performing whenever we
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  saw each other i think you were there for magic live we were there for magic
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  live but it was a it was a big blue building i think it was called the oceanic
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  or something casino where we met,
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  it was at the fontan blue that's the one,
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  Yeah, Fontainebleau, it's really nice. I think it's better than The Wind now,
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  which I'm saying that, and then I'm performing at The Wind in like two weeks.
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  I can't be bad. I like The Wind.
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  But yeah, I think I was performing at the Fontainebleau then,
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  but I do a lot of corporate stuff up and down the strip too.
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  So I've done stuff at MGM, at the Palms, at Mandalay Bay, at The Wind,
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  at Fontainebleau, all over the place.
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  So yeah, I'm in Vegas. I don't live there. A lot of people think I live in Vegas,
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  but all of my really close friends, I'm really good friends with like,
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  you know, a lot of the guys, Murray saw Chuck and, you know,
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  I know Flom since we were teenagers.
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  I've known Adam Trent since we were pretty young. I don't remember when I met
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  Adam Trent, but Justin Flom and I met each other when we were teenagers.
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  So I got a lot of friends in Vegas. So every time I'm out there,
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  I'm always hanging out with different buddies and stuff.
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  We were with a group whenever you were there too. I think we were with Xavier Spade.
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  Yeah. Was Spidey with us? Was Spidey with us? Spidey wasn't around.
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  No, no. Yeah. Spidey wasn't around. What a dog.
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  Yeah. Xavier and I were working on a project that we were releasing through Bacon Magic.
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  And so we're all filming a bunch of stuff and he was just like i want i want
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  you to meet somebody and i was like cool and that's that's where we met and
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  so oh yeah yeah and your chops were insane with a deck of playing cards and
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  then i started following your content and you're just insanely talented so yeah
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  super stoked to know you yeah man yeah oh no i appreciate that man it's it's
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  been a pleasure and i wanted to yeah
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  i i had some really nice dnms with your dad which we'll get into a bit later as well but yeah,
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  in amongst our chat you know you you're it's my knowledge that like your dad
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  got you into magic at about the age of six and yeah, you know,
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  I was curious, like, what do you think that he, that, that, that he saw in you
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  that made him encourage that?
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  My, I had a really unique childhood, bro. Like my dad was very encouraging of everything.
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  We had such unique childhood, but by the time I was, my brother's about two
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  years younger than me and my brother and I, by the time we were in our early
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  teens, we had like a whole bunch of different snakes and exotic animals.
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  We even had a live four foot alligator in our bedroom.
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  Like that's the kind of, you know, an alligator, like that's the kind of like,
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  you know, lifestyle we were brought up. And so my dad was very much like,
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  whatever you want to do, you can do. Florida life, huh?
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  Yeah. No, I don't. You know, I only moved to Florida during the pandemic.
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  Oh, you did? We were raised in the Midwest.
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  Yeah, my dad's from New York. My mom's from, was born in Staten Island.
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  And then my mom's family migrated to the West Coast in California.
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  So my dad brought us to the Midwest, like when we were kids.
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  Because he wanted to like get away from the big city life. And he still lives
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  in Missouri, in the Ozarks in Missouri, which is like the middle of the United
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  States. So, but I live in Florida. I moved my family, my wife and kids here during the pandemic.
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  And then it's really easy for me because I, I do a lot of just,
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  I'll do cruise contracts out of Florida and stuff. So, so yeah, perfect.
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  Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's really interesting because like for myself,
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  I'm, I'm one of three siblings and I'm the youngest.
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  And so I had like older sisters and as a result, I was always outranked and
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  they tend to like take over the television and so forth. And like,
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  you know, whatever choices were going to be made, it's what we watched.
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  Like it was too bad. You're a little and I would just get suppressed.
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  That meant being more creative because I wanted to find a means of either one
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  expressing myself or two entertaining myself.
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  And so I got into music and I got into all types of things. Do you think that
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  the time that he sort of restricted for you watching television and playing
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  video games and so forth helped your creativity?
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  Yeah, so you're cutting out a little bit. I don't know if that's your end or
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  my end, but you're cutting out just a little bit.
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  So was your question, so you're saying whenever you were a kid,
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  you kind of, you didn't have the ability to be able to do some things that normal
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  kids did. So you ended up kind of expanding on your creativity.
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  Is that kind of what you're asking?
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  Yeah, yeah. And I know that your dad would restrict a lot of your TV and video
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  game time. Oh, yeah. Okay, I see what you're saying. Yeah, dude.
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  Dude, my dad would take away the cables to the television. So it was just a black TV set.
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  And he would do the same thing with like the computer and stuff.
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  So we were forced to be creative. So my dad was very much like,
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  my dad would always call my childhood my preparation time. So I started magic
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  when I was six, but I did a lot of things, including magic.
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  And magic is kind of what stuck. So I did, you know, sports and music and acting.
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  And I sang and danced and I did gymnastics. I mean, I did hockey and I did football. I did everything.
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  And then magic was always the thing that kind of ticked every box for me. I loved psychology.
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  I loved people and interacting with people. I loved entertaining.
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  But magic covered all of these disciplines at once to where I could entertain,
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  I could be on stage, I could be the center of attention.
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  I could be, I could do things that had an impact on people in the way that they
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  thought, things that nobody else could do.
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  And then things that made it look like I was kind of like a superhero.
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  And then on top of all of that, I could do it in a way that was performative.
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  And self-expressing. And then even with my hands, because I have ADHD and stuff.
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  So I'm always like, you know, taking things and being like, oh,
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  you know, and doing sleight of hand stuff with everything since I was a little kid.
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  And so it always came really natural to me.
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  And because my dad was so like, you know, encouraging and, you know,
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  and he definitely didn't let us do anything that wasn't creative. So, yeah.
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  You know, so I'm curious, like growing up because, you know,
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  you've, you've got this amazing persona now, like looking at you and it's so
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  genuine, remarkably. Yeah.
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  So cool. And so stylistic. And, but to me that like, hanging out with you,
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  this is not something that like, it's not a makeup, like they stress each other
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  up sort of thing. This is unequivocally you. And I'm curious. Yes.
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  That level of originality. and i'm curious that growing up like who did you
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  want to be like because i don't know anyone like you yes you're Joel man you
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  know what i mean oh thanks man yeah you know it's funny i i didn't really,
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  you know i was with some magician buddies of mine that were taking some photos of my show,
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  a few days ago when i was in uh new york city and and and they were talking
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  about how i changed a lot since my early or my mid-20s when i was on the like
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  the first tv show i did was that show wizard wars and when i did that i think
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  i looked really different it came across really different,
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  on the Wizard Wars show. And I think it's because...
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  You know, I've gone through lots of chapters in my life. The people I looked
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  up to as a kid, the magicians and stuff I looked up to, I looked up to kind
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  of everybody, and a lot of them are friends of mine now.
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  Like, I'm friends with Banachek and Franz Harari and, you know,
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  a lot of those guys from the 90s that, you know, you grew up watching and loving.
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  But, I mean, at the same time, the guys that I thought were,
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  like, the coolest magicians were, like, the guys that were really,
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  like, edgy and kind of pushed the envelope.
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  And, you know, like, I like guys like Jonathan David Bass when I was a kid.
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  Like he was like dove you know he did dove stuff and i don't know what he's
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  doing now but like he was on world's greatest magic and i would watch guys like
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  that you know who had this really cool style i always kind of gravitated to
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  the guys who had really cool style,
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  but i also have always been obsessed with like making sure that you know every
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  aspect of what you're doing with your,
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  i guess your brand i hate saying that but i mean like i i was always obsessed
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  with like i wanted to make magic look really cool and relevant and, you know,
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  and like it's an art form that deserves to be at the highest rankings of like,
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  you know, respect. And I always felt like that.
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  And I always felt like, you know, that that was a big responsibility.
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  Like I still to this day feel like magic is bigger than any of us. Like magic is so...
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  Cool and has been around so long it's the oldest you know performing art and
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  and so i always felt like magic was like needed the highest level of like people
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  looking at it at the coolest level so i think that's kind of where my style
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  over time has morphed into it it's because i don't want people to look at me
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  and think that magic isn't cool relevant or worth their time,
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  it really bothered i was watching a david blaine special when i was in my late teens probably
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  and an old lady he approached said she didn't like magic and he didn't know what to say it was just a
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  special and then he ended up doing some magic for and convincing her in the
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  moment but i that kind of moments really stuck with me i really didn't want
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  to hear anybody ever say they didn't like magic i always felt like magic was
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  like i had so much i still have so much
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  reverence for magic and so much respect for magic that that's probably a big
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  part of my style is actually it it is who i am,
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  you know though i like fashion i like i like i like style like fashion is just who i am it's.
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  I know a part of it is also that I want magic to come across as like cool,
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  relevant, and something that people should be interested in and should want to,
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  you know, want to pay attention to, I guess. Does that make sense?
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  Absolutely. And, you know, for myself, when, when performing and finding my
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  style, it's, I guess we're kind of products of our environment.
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  And the reason I bring that up is that, you know, the audiences that I perform
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  for, I can handle the corporates to the, to the tradies, to the,
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  you know, no matter how wild they get, like this week alone was like,
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  a handful of corporates and, and even a Bucks party was thrown in there. Right. And it was nice.
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  And, and, and, and out of all the ones that I did, the Bucks was the least paying
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  one, but my favorite one for the whole week of gigs I did, I did six gigs,
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  one, one after another this week. It was great.
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  Yeah. You've been touring for over two decades now and your audience from like,
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  we're talking like from cruise ship, old people, for example,
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  to college shows, to all kinds, to all manner of audiences. Right.
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  Do you find that those audiences help dictate what you want to produce as a
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  magician? Cause it certainly does for me.
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  Yeah, I would say so. I would say my strength and this, this might be where
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  I differ from some magicians is my strength and my, my, I've developed into
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  becoming really good at magic over time because I've done it so long.
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  I think I wasn't like really good at magic in my 20s as much.
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  I was more really obsessed with performing and then magic I ended up becoming
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  really good at because I toured nonstop. I never, ever, ever take breaks. And I'm always on stage.
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  Every single week I'm on stage. And generally I've gotten to the point now where
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  I very rarely do, I don't do a lot of close-up gigs anymore.
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  I used to do that stuff. and I like it, but I just, I end up not getting booked
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  for that anymore. I think it's because the way my brand comes across is that
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  I look like I'm supposed to be on the stage. So that's where I always get asked to go.
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  So I very rarely, and then I have agents in every market. So they all tend to
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  know kind of where I, you know, I do a show. I do different variations of this show.
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  And so I would say, you know, my ability to connect with audiences,
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  you know, I've done over now, you know, it says on my bios and stuff online
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  that I've done over 50 countries.
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  Now I think I've done over 70 countries. And what I find is that the audiences
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  in general yeah there's different audiences obviously but i feel and you know
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  this but i feel like my ability to connect with any audience is my strength.
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  The magic has gotten to the point where i'm really good at it because you become
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  really good at something when you're obsessed with it since you're six years old,
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  but the strength in and this has been any of my peers that i've you know,
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  i've been a friend of over the years any of these guys like justin willman or
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  any any of these magicians that i've known since i was a kid you know or even
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  matt franco you know any of these guys that they'll all say the same thing is that.
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  That connection to the audience is so important.
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  Just if the audience doesn't connect with you, if you can't connect with any
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  audience, then you're not going to be as successful.
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  And that's why any magicians, and you and I were kind of touching on this right
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  before we went live on the podcast, but a lot of magicians I find,
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  they concentrate so much on the technical side of it.
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  And so I think connecting to audiences is way more important than anything.
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  Unfortunately, most magicians don't want to hear that.
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  But, I mean, I geek out over magic for sure.
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  And I, you know, but, you know, my strength and my success, the reason why I'm
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  successful at this, the reason why I live in, you know, a beautiful home and
• 15:51
  have beautiful cars and drive, I'm not bragging, but the reason,
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  it's I work hard and I tour.
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  And, you know, I can support my family entirely on my shoulders of touring.
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  Because of that, because of my connection to an audience. That's what it is,
• 16:06
  you know. Yeah, so you're serving them in a sense, right?
• 16:09
  Right yeah the audience you mean yeah,
• 16:13
  yeah dude yeah you're a hundred percent you're you're you're becoming a bit
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  subservient and i i hate to say pandering but there is pandering to the audience
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  you are pandering a little bit but overall you're you're you're absolutely,
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  you're there for them and and
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  i think a lot of magicians are a bit there a bit too much there for you,
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  you know and i have conversations with a lot of different magician friends of
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  mine about that like you know and And some of the most successful guys in the
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  business, I've had deep conversations into three or four in the morning about this.
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  Some of the biggest magicians in the business, we've had these conversations
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  late into the night that many magicians have trouble balancing that thing of
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  like, I do it for me versus I do it for the audience. When I started as a kid,
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  I absolutely did it for me.
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  Now it's a career, it's a job. I have agents, I have a manager,
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  you know, I have a family.
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  So now it's a job, but it's a job that I do passionately because it's also my passion.
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  But the passion, the passion lies mainly in the audience and my connection with
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  them. So, yeah, I'm definitely, you know, giving to them. Yeah,
• 17:14
  you know, you're the same way, right? You totally get it, especially doing that.
• 17:18
  You do such a variation of gigs and shows, right?
• 17:21
  Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, like one of the things we were talking about last
• 17:24
  week is that like I had a full beard.
• 17:26
  As of, you know, last week, but I had events that I had to shave it off for.
• 17:31
  And that's because I do events where like, I do a lot of custom events.
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  And one of the things I specialize in is what I call marketing magic.
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  And it's about using your brand, but allowing magic to sell that.
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  So it allows me to do custom style routines where I either do full custom iPad
• 17:47
  magic, where I'm producing their products out of the iPad and so forth.
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  You know, I got one at the end of the month, which I just had to submit the
• 17:53
  storyboard for to get approved.
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  And where I'm performing with a six by three meter screen and they want me to
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  like do things in the screen and tell a whole story and pull things out of the
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  screen and yeah it's awesome,
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  you know and do that level of of performance and but and it's an amazing privilege
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  they pay for which is why we have this level of success you know and assets
• 18:09
  that we've accumulated over time you know because we,
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  we have a service that we can offer people like i'm doing a wedding this this
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  weekend and it's the type of thing where you go okay cool like this is a service i offer but,
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  i'm not there for me i'm there to make your event better, I'm there to ensure
• 18:24
  that all of the guests have a wonderful time.
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  The same way that I'm one booked for a corporate, I'm there to ensure that everyone's
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  there, you know, or if I'm doing a restaurant gig, like you have a purpose and,
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  and that's one of the things that I find kind of fulfilling.
• 18:37
  Yeah, you definitely get back. I mean, the audience gives back to you most of the time.
• 18:42
  I mean, sometimes it can be a bit like pulling from the audience.
• 18:47
  I was on a Virgin cruise ship last week, and I had to do the same show four
• 18:51
  different nights, the same show.
• 18:53
  Normally, I do two different shows, two different nights, and I'll do like a
• 18:58
  7 o'clock and a 9 o'clock one night, and a 7 o'clock and a 9 o'clock the other
• 19:01
  night, but two different shows on one cruise contract. So Virgin,
• 19:04
  they didn't have time to tech a second show.
• 19:07
  And because they didn't have time to tech the second show, I have a lot of tech
• 19:09
  needs in the show because they didn't have time. I needed to do all the same show multiple times.
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  So I had a ton of audience members coming back, a ton of them.
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  And what they say afterwards is, oh no, it's just as good or it's better than the second time.
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  But you can feel the difference in the audience because you can feel if there's
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  800 people in the audience and 300 of them were at the same show the other day,
• 19:31
  you as a performer, especially somebody who's experienced, you can feel there's
• 19:34
  a difference and how they're understanding it and taking it in,
• 19:38
  you can 100 feel it and so and that's the kind of thing too where like repetition
• 19:43
  really man like doing doing it over and over again and doing it you know
• 19:48
  copperfield has said you know he would do things 5 000 times before he felt
• 19:52
  like maybe it was good now you know what i mean i totally adhere to that dude
• 19:55
  there's some material i've been doing for golly probably 25 years,
• 19:59
  i was talking to franz harari about that at his birthday party like.
• 20:02
  A year ago we were talking deeply about that like about how you repetition and
• 20:07
  like just doing it a million times and then it's still is it like is it you
• 20:10
  know you still analyze it you know i'm sorry i went a totally different direction but,
• 20:13
  no it's great i actually it totally leads into my next question if i may and
• 20:16
  it's that when you have a show that is entirely working and it's successful
• 20:19
  it's making a few bucks etc what's going to do,
• 20:23
  How do you decide whether or not you just leave it be or risk changing it?
• 20:28
  Yeah. Oh, man, that's a good question. I don't ever change. Well, let me see.
• 20:35
  I'm at a point now where I've been doing some of the materials so long that
• 20:38
  I know some of it works so well with my character and who I am.
• 20:42
  And that changing the entirety of the show doesn't really happen that much.
• 20:47
  Like right now I'm doing, I'll change pieces. Absolutely. That happens.
• 20:51
  But changing the entire show like okay so right now I'm touring three different
• 20:55
  shows I'm touring Dangerous Minds with Anna Dangerous,
• 20:58
  And that show is Anna was a semi-finalist on AGT last year.
• 21:02
  So she does crossbow act and she did it with another, she did it with her ex-partner
• 21:07
  on AGT and got, she was a finalist years ago and that was called a deadly games.
• 21:12
  And so in that show, she's using crossbow and all of this. So I have to enter,
• 21:15
  we're intertwining that with mentalism and magic and my style,
• 21:18
  what I do, ban a check helped with some of it. Some of it's going to be on TV next year.
• 21:23
  So I had to take disciplines and things I already do and meld it with what she does.
• 21:27
  Then the disillusioned project is a show about my story and about faith and
• 21:30
  i took pieces that i already do and kind of worked it into my story and then
• 21:34
  i took other parts of my story and made magic around that but the entire show
• 21:38
  isn't completely brand new,
• 21:41
  i just don't believe in that i i don't i have trouble darren brown's really
• 21:45
  good at like one of those guys who will tour the different shows all the time
• 21:48
  and completely change the material and for me personally.
• 21:51
  Unless i was like a darren brown where i was that level of famous like any guys that i know,
• 21:58
  matt franco shin limb you know guys in vegas any of these guys who are doing
• 22:02
  successful shows they will tell
• 22:03
  you they've been doing some of that material for 15 or 20 years i mean
• 22:07
  so like to change the entirety of the show when you're at this place i don't
• 22:10
  even think is really feasible complete in my opinion i mean for me personally nothing against
• 22:15
  you know i know franz harari likes to change things out and some of these guys that you know,
• 22:19
  i do know guys that like to change things out but for the most part most pros
• 22:22
  that i know including myself i'll change out pieces and i'll add pieces but that's after,
• 22:27
  probably at least a year of workshopping it,
• 22:30
  and then trying it out you know and a lot of times the tv stuff has helped me
• 22:34
  with that like doing shows like masters of illusion has helped me with that
• 22:37
  like going into masters of illusion and,
• 22:39
  being forced to come up with 10 new acts for a new season and trying all this
• 22:43
  stuff and then be like oh that could work if i did it this way for my show you
• 22:45
  know that kind of thing so so so yeah i I mean, I hope that answers your question.
• 22:49
  My wife's looking at me because she knows I go too far at Babel.
• 22:54
  She's like, she's over there decorating and she's like.
• 22:58
  No i think i i what i like about that is that because i came from musical background
• 23:03
  when i used to play in a band drink so what i found was that when you write
• 23:08
  when you wrote a set list you know like you had to play,
• 23:12
  the the hits you know and then change a couple of routines in between like if
• 23:16
  i want to saw tom jones and he didn't play what's new pussycat i'd be upset
• 23:19
  about that you know doesn't have to be a whole new show,
• 23:23
  yeah murray sawchuck is like my big brother but he's actually got pretty big
• 23:26
  balls with that where he'll go and he'll be like i'll change it i don't care
• 23:29
  i'll just do this that's okay like he's just super like murray will do that
• 23:32
  murray will be like i'll just change things out
• 23:34
  and like so does like carrot top carrot top does the same thing he'll be like,
• 23:38
  carrot top will come in and do stuff the day of that's current from the day
• 23:41
  before like a like a topic the day before like there are guys who can do that i i,
• 23:48
  you know i've i've taken plenty risks man especially some of the tv stuff i've
• 23:51
  done like spidey will tell anybody like spidey and i some of the first tv things
• 23:54
  we ever did we took huge risks but that was where kind of calculated because they were for tv,
• 23:59
  i think it also depends if it's for television if it's for your live show if
• 24:03
  it's for your bread and butter show you know that kind of stuff oh that makes
• 24:06
  sense yeah yeah i didn't know you were in a band that's pretty cool what is for me yeah,
• 24:11
  yeah it's a joke that every time every time i mention i'm on a that i play in
• 24:14
  the band like everyone takes a shot because it's mentioned every episode take
• 24:18
  a shot of my diet coke that's.
• 24:21
  Fun i wanted to ask get, you know, there's an amazing progression that you've
• 24:25
  had in, in, in obviously your successes.
• 24:28
  And I always get curious.
• 24:31
  What was that first real moment where you realized you've broken into this upper
• 24:37
  echelon of the entertainment industry? Like, was there a particular booking
• 24:41
  that you got or a phone call or something that just went?
• 24:45
  There wasn't one thing, dude. There were times I was just telling my wife this
• 24:48
  yesterday. She's in the room with me. So it's funny.
• 24:52
  There was a time I was on the I had done the show Wizard Wars and I did Fool
• 24:55
  Us when it was the first season in the States.
• 25:00
  And then i did at the same time i did this tv show called fake off it was on
• 25:03
  true tv at the time and it was with me and spidey and a buddy of mine named joseph rayon,
• 25:09
  and when we did that show you know we met jennifer lopez and some big celebrities
• 25:13
  the after party and stuff and i remember thinking is this the thing like is
• 25:16
  this going to be because we knew it was airing in 30 days,
• 25:19
  and that got us some recognition in the states when we did that that was probably
• 25:22
  like 11 or 12 years ago now but that was a thing that i did think was a big thing but but i mean,
• 25:28
  you know it it's honestly dude it's it's kind of like a ride like it's for me
• 25:32
  i feel like it's been a ride like i can talk about times where i've met and
• 25:36
  hung out with johnny depp or machine gun kelly become friends with some of these guys or.
• 25:41
  Or or brad pitt or any of these guys you know or jennifer lopez or
• 25:45
  and you know these times where i've gotten to do magic for in like i've gotten
• 25:48
  to perform multiple times at some of the richest people's houses in beverly
• 25:51
  hills or elon musk and and crazy snore scenarios like performing magic on elon musk's plane
• 25:57
  like you know like you know while they're traveling from Texas to New York, you know?
• 26:02
  So there's lots of moments like that where it's like pinch me moments, like this is crazy.
• 26:06
  And I can't possibly explain to people how crazy this is.
• 26:09
  There's lots of those moments, but there isn't a moment of like,
• 26:12
  oh, because I don't think, like, I always make jokes that even the most famous
• 26:16
  magicians are kind of almost famous because even like David Blaine in Copperfield,
• 26:20
  like, you know, if you're hanging out with them at a casino or something in
• 26:23
  Vegas, people aren't running up to them like they would Ariana Grande.
• 26:26
  Like they're not running up to them and screaming. So I have a tattoo on my
• 26:29
  arm that says Almost Famous. And the joke is...
• 26:33
  Not only I'm on, because I'm on TV and stuff that, you know,
• 26:35
  it's, you know, I, you can say I'm almost famous, but it's, it,
• 26:38
  the joke is more about magician in general. Even if a magician is famous,
• 26:42
  is he that famous, you know, like the name is famous.
• 26:45
  Like David Blaine is a famous name, but is, if David Blaine's walking around
• 26:49
  the strip, are people running up to him? Like they're running up to Johnny Depp,
• 26:53
  you know, so my wife keeps smiling.
• 26:57
  So yeah so so yeah i there wasn't i mean i know this is long a long answer to
• 27:01
  that but i feel like there wasn't a moment of like you know me going like oh
• 27:05
  i've you know because there's been many different crazy moments like you know
• 27:08
  if you're performing in a big room in vegas in a big theater in vegas
• 27:12
  and doing that multiple times that always is really cool but it's kind of ongoing
• 27:15
  it's just like riding a wave you know what i mean,
• 27:19
  so i'm sure you have lots of those moments too you know yeah it's been such
• 27:22
  a small progression i think that's one of the most interesting things A lot of people have this,
• 27:27
  this notion that when they have success and money, that it's very romanticized,
• 27:30
  that they're like an overnight success.
• 27:32
  And they all of a sudden make millions, for example. And it's like,
• 27:35
  nah, man, I've always just laid every brick as perfectly as I can.
• 27:39
  I've just had little victories that I've stacked up, which has been,
• 27:42
  you know, an accumulative result of like what I have now, you know,
• 27:47
  and all the successes and companies that I have in my life.
• 27:50
  My wife gave me this tape and said, you need to cover your mouth. You're talking to me.
• 27:54
  No, we, I can't tell you how much we hate when we're asking questions and it's
• 27:58
  like trying to pull teeth.
• 27:59
  I'm like, use your words, man. Use your words. We want to get to know you like,
• 28:03
  you know, she's joking. Cause I'm always talking. And like, if I didn't good
• 28:06
  thing, I have a show that is on a set time or every time I do my stage show
• 28:10
  or when I'm on a TV show, it's set. And the producers are like, you're done now.
• 28:16
  Cause in this scenario, I'll keep talking. So we have a question from Tim Askin
• 28:19
  before we go into the next section. And he says, being all over the world,
• 28:22
  what are the best audiences?
• 28:26
  Ooh, the best audiences. Dude, that's, if you're talking about like demographically,
• 28:30
  I think there's definitely differences.
• 28:32
  And Nick, I know you know this. There's definitely differences in different,
• 28:35
  you know, in different parts of the world as far as like, you know, different audiences.
• 28:40
  I think American audiences are definitely really fun, generally speaking,
• 28:44
  but they're kind of chaotic and can be all over the place.
• 28:46
  And that's why you've seen scenarios with people bum-rushing stages with like,
• 28:51
  you know, Dave Chappelle and different people over the years where they'll run
• 28:54
  up on the stage. Because I think American audiences tend to be really interactive
• 28:58
  and they want to be really.
• 28:59
  And my show calls for people to be interactive, but people will,
• 29:02
  American audiences are very interactive.
• 29:04
  I think Canadian audiences are a bit more reserved. Maybe Wes Barker or Alex
• 29:08
  Boyer or, you know, some of those guys will tell you differently.
• 29:12
  But my experience is they tend to be a little bit more reserved.
• 29:16
  So, yeah, I mean, dude, the best audiences, I really like, that's what I actually
• 29:20
  like about doing the occasional cruise contract is there's so much eclectic,
• 29:25
  you know, such an eclectic audience.
• 29:28
  It could be, there's some cruise contracts where it'll be an older audience,
• 29:31
  you know, primarily older people.
• 29:33
  But for the most part, it's such a diverse audience from all over the world
• 29:37
  that I really like those audiences.
• 29:40
  So, yeah.
• 29:41
  All right. So television. You've done a lot of it, my guy. You've done Wizard
• 29:46
  Wars. You've done Fool Us, Masters of Illusion, America's Got Talent.
• 29:49
  I'm most curious about Wizard Wars because I love that show.
• 29:54
  The reason is, is that we do a type of version of theater sports,
• 29:58
  which is called Magic Sports, where we quite literally play the same theater
• 30:01
  sports games you would do.
• 30:03
  Like if anyone studied theater, there's a thing called like emotional rollercoaster
• 30:06
  where you'll be acting out a scene, you hit a bell. Oh, cool.
• 30:10
  And then you've got to act out that scene with a different emotion but you do
• 30:12
  the exact same routine but like that's awesome imagine you're performing a magic
• 30:15
  routine ding and then you've got to perform with this particular emotion anger
• 30:20
  horny all kinds of stuff so dude that's awesome that's i would have so much fun doing that yeah.
• 30:25
  Yeah it's it's it's killer fun we did a show of it just a couple of weeks ago
• 30:29
  actually which was hilarious you know like there's so many games play and it's it's challenging,
• 30:36
  for that reason i love wizard wars because it's in the spirit of what we do
• 30:40
  at the end of our show, which is called make a trick.
• 30:42
  And what happens is we get things that are donated to us, particular items.
• 30:46
  We then take those items and then in between each routine, because we're two
• 30:50
  teams, we have to try to figure out what to do without, without stuff.
• 30:54
  Yeah. That's great team. Yeah. So I think we...
• 30:58
  Go ahead wizard wars was like that dude that was that was a long time ago that
• 31:01
  was probably like 15 years ago and that's where a lot of,
• 31:05
  magicians that were that are pretty notable now that's where we all met like
• 31:09
  it was legit like everybody hanging out like i already knew justin flom i already
• 31:13
  knew adam trent i already knew spidey you know there's a handful of guys gregory
• 31:17
  wilson and shim she those guys i already knew.
• 31:20
  And a few other people bizarre was bizarre i think bizarre was my consultant
• 31:26
  on that i've known bizarro for a while from vegas and stuff but
• 31:30
  he was i know he was on i'm trying to remember if he was my consultant or somebody
• 31:33
  else's consultant i know i think it was bizarro was my consultant i bet you
• 31:37
  a million bucks if somebody watching this,
• 31:39
  was on set of wizard wars they could say it or spidey would know for sure but
• 31:43
  i think bizarro was our consultant yeah yeah so there was a lot of guys,
• 31:46
  that were that was the first time that i remember when chris ramsey and spidey
• 31:50
  were partners on that and spidey and i wanted to be partners on it but they
• 31:53
  wanted to pair because spidey and i had already done fool fool us together and,
• 31:57
  and we were about to do fake off together this other show and so spidey and
• 32:01
  i wanted to do a wizard wars together.
• 32:04
  And they said they wanted spidey to pair up with another canadian guy and so
• 32:07
  it was ramsey and i remember being like blown away this was before ramsey was
• 32:11
  had a lot of social media clout,
• 32:13
  and i remember being like he's really good on stage considering he was like
• 32:16
  i never perform on stage and so there was a lot of like cool like experience
• 32:20
  that people didn't even realize behind the scenes of like some of these guys
• 32:23
  trying this stuff beyond even the,
• 32:25
  you know the idea of taking these random objects and you know making magic out
• 32:29
  of but it was really like that i mean they really gave you a short amount of
• 32:32
  time we had don allen was the you remember him,
• 32:35
  amazing magic designer he was incredible he was our he was our builder and he
• 32:40
  designed everything for everybody
• 32:42
  and i just saw matt johnson do you know matt johnson matt johnson,
• 32:46
  yeah good he's a good friend of mine but we were just hanging out we were in
• 32:49
  puerto rico like was I in Puerto Rico two days ago,
• 32:53
  yeah two days ago and and and matt johnson and i were hanging out talking about
• 32:57
  wizard wars that's where he and i first met and where we all sunk our teeth
• 33:00
  and like the idea of like oh this is like real like you can do like real hardcore,
• 33:06
  you know trying to come up with magic on the fly with random props i was given
• 33:09
  like dominoes a ballerina skirt and a guitar pick,
• 33:12
  yeah yeah dude i've done shows where like i got a i got a prosthetic leg i got.
• 33:19
  Like a pack of maltesers and an eyebrow comb like you know and you've got those things you know,
• 33:27
  what's cool too is there's a lot of guys that you would never know were even
• 33:29
  on that show like i think a lot of people are surprised that i was on it because
• 33:33
  that know me now because they're like they don't recognize me,
• 33:36
  like there's a there's a handful of guys that look really different now that
• 33:39
  were on it and some guys like chris funk i think looks the exact same i'm always
• 33:43
  like he's i always tell him i'm like he's like you never changed man you look the exact same so
• 33:47
  but yeah yeah that was a great dude that was a great that was the first big tv show
• 33:52
  a lot of us ever did and it was a big deal at the time yeah so yeah that was a great show dude,
• 33:57
  there's a tv moment that i i i read and to me it sounds like the things of legend
• 34:02
  and i want you to tell the story so i'm just gonna feed it to you so oh no.
• 34:05
  There's a story on agt,
• 34:10
  oh no when you were doing a thing with it with the surrealists and there was
• 34:14
  a moment where mel b ran away yeah i'm talking about could you yeah this story in its entirety because,
• 34:23
  i don't want to spoil it like it's such a ripper go ahead yeah that was we were
• 34:28
  elbow deep it was me and spidey and our and joseph ray home and we were elbow
• 34:34
  deep and doing multiple TV shows at the time.
• 34:36
  And then we were doing a live tour as this group called The Surrealists.
• 34:39
  And so AGT wanted us to come on and create a really shocking moment.
• 34:44
  And so we came up with this act we called Phobias at the time.
• 34:47
  At the end of the act, one of us has a live tarantula that appears in our mouth.
• 34:51
  So, and then I, basically, we manifest people's fears, which if anybody knows
• 34:57
  anything about any reality TV shows,
• 35:00
  especially like Got Talent premise, you don't want to come on before you,
• 35:04
  they know, have a chance to understand who your character is.
• 35:08
  Like, Nick, we know that you have a great personality, you're a very kind person.
• 35:11
  If you came on and did something just to shock them immediately and they didn't
• 35:14
  know this about your personality, that would not be necessarily a good thing
• 35:19
  because you might over-scare them.
• 35:22
  Right and that's what we did essentially the the the act was supposed to be,
• 35:27
  where we talk about the three of us come out and me and spidey introduce ourselves
• 35:31
  and then joseph rayom isn't talking because he's scared of public speaking,
• 35:36
  but in reality he's got a tarantula in his mouth and you don't know that till the end so he's like this,
• 35:41
  Like, because he's, you know, freaking out that he's got a giant spider in his mouth.
• 35:45
  So, so the, but the, the cool twist about it is we come out and say he's scared
• 35:50
  of public speaking. I say most people have a fear of something called glossophobia
• 35:54
  is the fear of the unknown.
• 35:55
  And I say many people have real anxiety about, you know, what they can't know.
• 35:59
  All you can really do is take a guess, but you never really know what's going
• 36:01
  to happen. So I say I have a brown paper bag.
• 36:03
  This is going to like, you know, signify the unknown. Mel B reach in and tell
• 36:07
  us what it feels like in there. Cause I put something small in there. It's not a big deal.
• 36:10
  And she said, it feels like a little piece of rope. She said,
• 36:13
  it feels like a piece of rope.
• 36:14
  And I say, that's why so many people have such a fear of the unknown because
• 36:16
  all you can really do is take a guess, but you never really know.
• 36:19
  And I take it out and it's a snake. And then the snake made her run.
• 36:22
  So that wasn't even supposed to be the shocking moment. And that's whenever
• 36:25
  she got terrified and ran. And she wouldn't come back in for like a long time.
• 36:27
  So Joseph's standing up there with a tarantula in his mouth forever.
• 36:32
  And he's just like this. And Nick Cannon, Nick knows that the tarantula is in
• 36:36
  his mouth because we tell him before we go out that we need timing on when he's
• 36:39
  going to go out. So Nick Cannon's laughing because he knows that Joseph has a spider in his mouth.
• 36:45
  But the end of it, the live tarantula comes out. We have somebody think of something
• 36:48
  they're scared of. And Simon says he's scared of spiders. And the tarantula
• 36:53
  walks out of Joseph's mouth. And it freaks everybody out. And Simon has trouble believing it's real.
• 36:58
  But that's basically it. It became kind of legendary because they used it in
• 37:02
  a lot of the commercials that year.
• 37:04
  It was a long time ago. That was probably nine years ago or something, maybe 10 years ago.
• 37:08
  But it was legendary because they use it in all the commercials and everybody's
• 37:11
  like what did they do because she was terrified and they said and in the commercial
• 37:16
  it said it was like the most shocking season of agt which was very exaggerated in my opinion.
• 37:24
  So joseph was stuck stuck holding a tarantula in his mouth for an extra like
• 37:28
  five or six minutes that they you guys hadn't accounted for because we weren't
• 37:31
  expecting mel b to run off as she did which is funny because she's scary spice
• 37:36
  right funny that yeah that's good um,
• 37:42
  I'm curious, in that moment, what's going through your mind?
• 37:44
  Are you kind of thinking like, oh, this is going to be brilliant?
• 37:47
  Or, oh, my God, we're screwed?
• 37:49
  I thought it was going to be brilliant until she wouldn't come back in.
• 37:52
  And then I was like, and then I got annoyed. Then I was like,
• 37:55
  this girl really doesn't care about like, you know, I think she's just, I think, you know,
• 38:02
  looking back at it now, it was a while ago now, man, that whenever that happened,
• 38:06
  I have a little bit of a different experience now with these TV shows and stuff.
• 38:10
  I probably would have done something a little bit differently then like because
• 38:14
  she was really freaking out i might have leaned over to like heidi klum and
• 38:17
  had her do it or simon cowell and at the time i was sticking on melby because
• 38:21
  i wanted to really get a reaction sort of the producers,
• 38:24
  but i didn't know it was going to be that big of a reaction so,
• 38:27
  you know what the thing is right there's there's two really good moments that
• 38:31
  we're sort of experiencing in this story and it's either one really great television
• 38:35
  or two really great magic and this is a good mixture of both.
• 38:38
  What's your advice for creating either?
• 38:42
  For creating really great television or creating a really great moment.
• 38:48
  Really great magic. Oh, man. Dude, creating really great television can be really
• 38:53
  different than creating really great magic.
• 38:55
  The amount of times I've been in front of a TV camera and the intention of what
• 39:01
  I'm doing I know is going to come across differently because it's on TV.
• 39:05
  So most magicians aren't doing
• 39:07
  stuff on TV or in front of a camera necessarily. They're doing it live.
• 39:10
  I mean, hopefully, because magic is, in my opinion, is better as a live medium, right?
• 39:16
  So I think it's very different. Doing it in front of a camera,
• 39:18
  doing it in front of a TV, doing it in front of a camera like this is extremely
• 39:22
  different than doing it in front of a TV or a studio audience.
• 39:25
  And in that moment, that whole intention is to push through the boundary of
• 39:31
  the camera to the audience that's viewing it on the other side.
• 39:34
  And you're using the audience, the studio audience, as.
• 39:38
  Almost like a tool a bit to kind of project that that's why the got talent shows
• 39:42
  are so successful right because the
• 39:44
  got talent shows you're looking at four judges and you're watching it through
• 39:47
  their eyes and those four judges how they're judging it dictates how you should
• 39:52
  judge it and that's why the show,
• 39:54
  has been you know over 20 seasons successful and if you really think about it
• 39:58
  logically it makes no sense that these people like
• 40:00
  you know sofia regard i don't know how to say her name from modern family or
• 40:05
  uh simon color these people who aren't really necessarily talented themselves
• 40:08
  they're just you know, famous,
• 40:11
  you know, but they're judging, like Penn Jillette says that.
• 40:13
  He's like, if Tiny Tim or Bob Dylan went on a Got Talent show,
• 40:17
  they wouldn't make the first cut because that's not what it's about.
• 40:20
  So doing magic on TV is extremely different than doing it in front of a live
• 40:24
  audience. And in my opinion, you have to put all your concentration and energy
• 40:28
  to doing it for your live audience because that's 95%.
• 40:31
  Even for somebody like me who's on TV, you know, sometimes 10 or 15 times in a year,
• 40:36
  I still, all my focus is always in the live show because doing it on TV,
• 40:40
  you can manipulate it however you want to make it work.
• 40:43
  And even if that manipulation isn't like actually setting something up with
• 40:45
  an audience member, you can pre-show audience members, you can pre-show a talk
• 40:49
  show host, which right before the camera will run, you can do it.
• 40:52
  I mean, you know, you can, I don't know how much we can say.
• 40:55
  I assume we can say stuff like that on this podcast, right? Is that allowed?
• 40:57
  Absolutely, yeah. Okay, cool. I'm saying magic things. I'm like, thumb tip.
• 41:06
  So so yeah but i i always believe man that the focus should be the live you
• 41:10
  know and i'm friends with plenty of big social media magicians
• 41:13
  and some of them are my very close friends and they know that my opinion is
• 41:16
  i i respect them and what they're trying to do but my opinion is always that
• 41:19
  magic is a live medium and that the energy should be,
• 41:22
  being put into the live show and that's where you're gonna that's where it's
• 41:27
  supposed to be that's where it's supposed to live,
• 41:29
  so i don't know if that answered your question at all because that was a very
• 41:31
  eloquent question and then i just i just pissed all over it,
• 41:38
  i think the fact that you just called it an eloquent question which is i really pride myself on on,
• 41:43
  and whenever i try to interviews i try to i try to do my do my research do my
• 41:47
  diligence and what makes me happy is when someone goes oh good question that
• 41:50
  that's it like that makes my day so yeah you can tell you do your research these
• 41:54
  are really good questions really thought-provoking questions and really uh,
• 41:58
  and and they're very there are eloquent questions i appreciate it very much,
• 42:02
  no i thank you for for answering them more importantly and sharing the knowledge
• 42:05
  you have there's a before we head up to the next section that i have because
• 42:08
  i've honestly i've got way too many questions and we've only got about oh shoot,
• 42:12
  but i wanted to know you performed for such a huge abundance of of celebrities
• 42:17
  and has there been any particular ones that you've met either unexpectedly that
• 42:20
  were super lovely or super awful or any that kind of stand out.
• 42:26
  Super awful i'm not gonna drop any of that i have those but i'm not gonna drop
• 42:31
  that uh i would say and the reason why is because sometimes i'm still in well you met bon jovi,
• 42:37
  no i haven't met him no but there's certain scenarios bro where i still end
• 42:41
  up in these circles with some of these people so i don't because there's certain
• 42:44
  areas where you go back right you end up i perform in beverly hills at this
• 42:47
  very wealthy person very famous person's house,
• 42:50
  pretty frequently you know you know i'm friends with machine gun kelly's drummer
• 42:53
  and and they've known each other since they were very young and you know so
• 42:56
  i've i've gotten to do you know cool stuff for machine gun kelly and he's you know,
• 43:01
  he's got some great reactions and really loves magic and you know one i i'll,
• 43:06
  tell you one thing that's really funny i went in a certain very famous place
• 43:09
  in la that we all know about that is very exclusive,
• 43:13
  that we all know about it's very you know harry potter-esque if you catch my drift.
• 43:19
  I think you're getting what i'm talking about and i saw a certain celebrity
• 43:23
  snorting cocaine in the downstairs bathroom,
• 43:26
  and then and i'm not gonna say who was snorting the cocaine but i will say that
• 43:30
  johnny depp was in there and he ended up following me around this venue watching me do magic all night
• 43:35
  and i that was the first encounter i had with him and it was a very cool he
• 43:38
  was very cool but it was very funny because i was asked if i wanted a bump,
• 43:42
  and in all my life and i've never
• 43:44
  done cocaine or anything like that surprisingly compared to what i uh,
• 43:48
  how i come across but i've never done that but of all the times that's the one
• 43:51
  time where i was like maybe with johnny depp that might have been a time to do that.
• 43:59
  So yeah so that that was a that was a crazy time but yeah i mean mostly man
• 44:03
  mostly people are really cool and because of magic because it breaks down those
• 44:06
  facades you know when you meet people you're not meeting them you're meeting
• 44:09
  the representative and magic breaks those barriers down right and so
• 44:12
  it's one of the things i love about when you're doing it for whoever when you're
• 44:15
  doing it for somebody who's very wealthy or very intelligent or very successful
• 44:18
  or very famous or whatever you end up,
• 44:21
  ripping down that barrier you just become two people hanging out which is one
• 44:24
  of the coolest parts about it,
• 44:25
  yeah now with the time we have left,
• 44:29
  i i think we need to talk about the book,
• 44:32
  what book nick what what book are you well it's amazing your book what.
• 44:39
  Book i wasn't prepared for this i wasn't prepared you know so,
• 44:43
  there's there's such a huge level of success you've achieved and and i think
• 44:48
  it's obviously i feel like this book is more or less a bit of a memoir to aspiring entertainers.
• 44:55
  Yeah it's it's a bit of a so so So the book is called Disillusion, Truth Lies Between.
• 45:01
  And it's called, and it's, the truth lies between is kind of an interesting
• 45:04
  name because I'm saying, you know, both the truth lies between in disillusion,
• 45:08
  but it's also truth and the lies and the between all of that.
• 45:11
  But yeah, it's a memoir. It talks about the beginning of my story.
• 45:14
  I had a lot of, went through a lot of loss and really horrific things that actually
• 45:17
  started me in magic as a young kid.
• 45:19
  I lost several members of my family in the same week from different causes.
• 45:23
  And so they didn't die at the same time from like a car accident or something.
• 45:27
  They were each kind of passing away in the same week from different things,
• 45:30
  which I've never heard of that kind of thing, really. You don't hear about that
• 45:33
  kind of thing unless it's like in a movie like Final Destination or something.
• 45:37
  And so because of that, that kind of set me in motion to kind of live out of
• 45:41
  fear and kind of, you know, I used to sleep on my dad's bedroom floor to listen
• 45:45
  to the rhythmic sounds of him breathing because I was afraid that he was going to go next.
• 45:49
  You know because i had lost my my my sister who was seven years old hit by a
• 45:53
  car i lost my mom a few days later you know and she was she ended up becoming
• 45:57
  really sick and then passing away and so,
• 46:00
  you know so i started living in fear and then magic kind of became an escape
• 46:03
  for me to where i kind of escaped to where you know playing cards when i would
• 46:08
  shuffle and do these cool moves and these things it would distract me and make
• 46:11
  me feel like i was in my own world,
• 46:13
  and it really helped it was a big therapy for me you know and magic was something
• 46:16
  i always did but But then I really started doing it with, like,
• 46:18
  a vengeance when I was that teenage kid, you know, at 12 years old. Looking—.
• 46:23
  Looking back at Younger Joel, you know, there's this, there's,
• 46:27
  you know, will you say that like, if you're looking back, do you think Younger
• 46:30
  Joel was kind of chasing these successes and fame in order to like fill the
• 46:35
  space that had been taken, like this recognition, acceptance and security?
• 46:39
  Yeah at first so in my early 20s i was obsessed with being on television and
• 46:44
  and getting notoriety and having accolades and like and it was absolutely.
• 46:49
  To kind of validate this part of me that felt like you know this empty space
• 46:54
  in me from what i'd lost if i could fill it with something that made me be like
• 46:57
  relevant to people and make people think that i was,
• 47:00
  the coolest guy in the room the coolest guy that they met so so i was always
• 47:03
  like kind of obsessed with that and i think it did stem from that.
• 47:06
  So a lot of my book has to do with that.
• 47:08
  And it has to do with your identity and where is your identity?
• 47:11
  Is your identity in who you say you are?
• 47:13
  Is your identity in who the world says that you are? You know,
• 47:15
  the reason why it's called disillusioned is because the illusion of the world
• 47:18
  is that the world tells you who you are.
• 47:20
  If you don't figure out who you are and you don't figure out your identity,
• 47:24
  then the world will tell you what your identity is automatically.
• 47:28
  You're going to figure out who you are, whether you want to or not.
• 47:31
  But is it going to be in the way that is actually who you are.
• 47:36
  And so it took me going through these, they were very miraculous moments in my story.
• 47:41
  You know, my sister, before she passed away, she had a dream that she went into,
• 47:46
  we were at a friend's house, she went into the house to go to the bathroom.
• 47:49
  She was seven years old. And when she was taking so long, we went in to check
• 47:52
  on her and we said, where were you? And she said, I got really tired.
• 47:54
  I fell asleep right here on the rug and I had a dream. And I had a dream I was in heaven with Jesus.
• 47:59
  And I said, what are we doing, Jesus? And he said, we're waiting for mommy.
• 48:02
  And then the next day, my sister was hit by a car. And then three days later, my mom died.
• 48:06
  And so she had a premonition that came true.
• 48:11
  About my mom passing away, that she was gonna be in heaven.
• 48:15
  And then years later, I was doing research about near-death experiences.
• 48:19
  And I found that out of all of these near-death experiences,
• 48:21
  there's a guy named John Burke who is writing this really cool book about NDEs.
• 48:26
  And if you Google this now, if you look up people who've seen
• 48:30
  what have they seen when they die you'll you won't find one scenario that anybody
• 48:34
  who claimed to see anybody other than jesus and my sister was added to that
• 48:37
  list so that was one of the miracle things that i put it in the book you know
• 48:40
  the details about that because it's,
• 48:42
  it's so crazy to me you know some of these miraculous moments and so that's
• 48:46
  really you know kind of what the book is it it talks about magic and and all
• 48:50
  of that also and me touring and performing and the celebrities i've encountered
• 48:53
  in the tv shows i've done but it's really more about identity.
• 48:56
  You know, circling back to identity, there's a level of accountability you got
• 49:01
  to have in oneself and take a good look at yourself.
• 49:03
  And I know that you speak to things like the brokenness you felt through life
• 49:08
  experiences, searching for truth in things, obviously, we know with the passing
• 49:12
  and where do we go afterwards and addiction, but what was the hardest truth you had to confront,
• 49:18
  about yourself without giving too much away in the book? Yeah.
• 49:20
  Yeah, yeah. I would say though, it's that I was not, when I realized that this
• 49:26
  world couldn't satisfy something, I think one of the biggest lies in the world
• 49:30
  is believing that the world can satisfy something that only God can fill.
• 49:34
  And that was the biggest thing that I had to confront. So I would try and fill it with alcohol.
• 49:38
  I would try and fill it with notoriety, with magic, with TV credits,
• 49:42
  with celebrity endorsements, or friends, friends that are famous,
• 49:46
  that I'd be like, oh, I'm friends with this guy.
• 49:47
  And he thinks I'm cool, you know, or this guy or whoever, or making money or,
• 49:51
  you know, how attractive people think I am or my wife is or how we look together
• 49:56
  or what we're presenting or what car I'm driving.
• 49:58
  And then I would just find that each time I would, each time I would try and
• 50:01
  achieve something and I would achieve it, you know, you know,
• 50:05
  my, my stepson told me he looked, he was looking online and he was like,
• 50:09
  you've been on national TV over 70 times, 70, like seven zero.
• 50:13
  Now, as a kid, I would have been like, oh my gosh, I would have felt like I
• 50:16
  made it, but it never, it felt worse as I accomplished things.
• 50:19
  It didn't feel better. And so I think that the biggest, like I said,
• 50:23
  to circle back, the biggest lie that is that the world can satisfy,
• 50:27
  like this world could satisfy something that only God can really satisfy.
• 50:30
  The only true peace I've had is whenever I've experienced who Jesus is in my
• 50:35
  life. And when I started praying to him and experiencing his grace in my life
• 50:39
  and who he is in my life, it changed my life.
• 50:41
  And so, you know, it's not religious to me. I don't care about religion And
• 50:44
  it's nothing like that, but it's, it's the only thing that's given me peace
• 50:47
  and inevitably my family, my relationship with my wife, my relationship with
• 50:51
  my kids, you know, and even my relationship with my friends.
• 50:55
  You know, you, you've, it's lovely that you talk so openly about your faith.
• 50:59
  You know, we were having this brief discussion prior about how,
• 51:02
  you know, even at my church, for example, people have fronted me and been like,
• 51:06
  so this magic thing, like, what's up? Is this like, I'm like,
• 51:08
  it's, it's slide a hand. It's not like the occult. It's not,
• 51:11
  I'm not a sorcerer. Yeah.
• 51:13
  These things, like y'all got to be, you know, be chill, you know?
• 51:17
  And, and they didn't do it because they were trying to rebuke me in any sense.
• 51:21
  They were approaching, coming from a place of love and saying like,
• 51:24
  Hey, you know, like we love you. We want you to be okay. Can we talk about it? I'm like, yeah.
• 51:31
  And, and, and I've told them so many scenarios of providence that I've experienced
• 51:34
  through performing, you know, that when you go and meet people.
• 51:37
  You made, you made mention that you perform most recently in this church.
• 51:41
  Can we, can we talk to that real quick?
• 51:43
  Yeah, so the book is Disillusioned. And then there's a new show that I'm also
• 51:48
  touring called The Disillusioned Project.
• 51:50
  And it's essentially the live stage version of the show, or of the book.
• 51:55
  And so we premiered it at Prestonwood Church. Jeremiah Johnston invited me to
• 52:00
  come do it. He wrote a book called The Jesus Discoveries.
• 52:02
  And it's a lot about the, he's the leading expert right now in the Shroud of
• 52:05
  Turin, which I know you know about.
• 52:07
  Some people who don't know about the Shroud of Turin, it's basically,
• 52:11
  it's he believes it's irrefutable evidence of the resurrection of jesus and
• 52:14
  if you look it up now you'll see a lot of podcasts
• 52:18
  including guys like joe rogan who are really interested in it and and because
• 52:21
  they're finding they're finding a lot of evidence on it and so this guy jeremiah
• 52:26
  johnson invited me to come speak and the way we met was pretty miraculous.
• 52:30
  And he invited me to come speak. And what that ended up turning into was I ended
• 52:34
  up morphing this show together called The Disillusioned Project.
• 52:37
  And so we premiered it for thousands of people. It was like 8,000 people about,
• 52:43
  three and a half weeks ago in Dallas, Texas at Prestonwood.
• 52:46
  And that's where we did my first book signing and everything with the book.
• 52:50
  But essentially, it's about identity.
• 52:52
  And then it also, I tap into, most people talk about mediums and psychics and
• 52:57
  whatnot from either one or two perspectives. either like the atheistic skeptical,
• 53:01
  side where they say none of it's real or they do it as the religious side,
• 53:04
  which is like, it's all demonic.
• 53:06
  And so I tap into it and I do a real, I don't do a real, but I do a seance.
• 53:10
  That's a mock seance and explaining what this is while I'm doing it.
• 53:13
  And I did it in a church, which came across incredibly well once I did it.
• 53:18
  Beforehand, everybody was very like, what is he gonna, like,
• 53:21
  they were very upset that I was coming in at first, I found out later.
• 53:24
  But then afterwards, we got insanely good feedback, like overwhelmingly.
• 53:28
  Nobody said anything bad. They were all like, everybody needs to hear this.
• 53:31
  And so now it's cool because now I'm being asked to kind of pioneer it and go
• 53:35
  out there and talk about it and talk about – because nobody's really doing it this way.
• 53:38
  But essentially it's my story mixed in with my experience in magic and how the
• 53:43
  world needs to see that we're being deceived now more than ever and that this
• 53:47
  world is lying to us more than it ever has.
• 53:49
  I mean, even AI. I mean, AI, we talk about it all the time. Like you can't differentiate what's real.
• 53:53
  But we act like that's normal that now we can't differentiate what's real.
• 53:56
  It's a big deal that you can't differentiate what's real. That's a big deal.
• 53:59
  And as magicians, we should be on the front lines understanding what that even means.
• 54:03
  You know, fighting magic and Christian storytelling of all things is such a
• 54:08
  thin line to walk. And we do have a small conglomerate of Christian magicians
• 54:13
  in the discord that I congregate with and chat with, you know,
• 54:16
  quite openly. It's great.
• 54:17
  And I'm just curious how you create something that's artistically compelling,
• 54:22
  yet also spiritually meaningful for an audience, but not to the point where
• 54:27
  they feel like they're being preached at.
• 54:28
  That sounds like such a thin line to walk. No, no. That's a good question.
• 54:31
  Did you ever hear a show called The Maze?
• 54:34
  No there was a show that was it was very well hidden on purpose it was by this
• 54:38
  guy named jim monroe and jim is a good friend of mine now and you know over the years but he used to,
• 54:44
  tour the show in the states called the maze and he purposely hid it he didn't
• 54:47
  have like website for it he didn't he tried to hide videos of it,
• 54:51
  because he didn't want people to come in with a preconceived idea of what the
• 54:54
  show was going to be because he didn't want people to know that ultimately it
• 54:57
  was about revealing what he believes the truth of the world is
• 55:01
  and whenever you come in with that kind of perspective you're automatically
• 55:04
  combating the audience you're kind of asking the audience to be an adversary a bit with what you're
• 55:09
  trying to tell them you're you're kind of.
• 55:12
  You're you're kind of challenging the audience and he didn't want to necessarily do that but,
• 55:16
  i believe that anything in the world is a bit exclusive whenever it's like like
• 55:22
  christianity is a bit exclusive anything where it's like this is the truth this
• 55:26
  is the way it's going to be a going to feel a bit exclusive,
• 55:30
  but it's the only exclusive thing that's actually incredibly inclusive right
• 55:34
  it's very very easy to understand and accept what this is i was one of the biggest
• 55:41
  advocates against it i was very cynical
• 55:43
  against it and i sought out all this physical evidence for the validity of it,
• 55:48
  and that's a big part of my book too is,
• 55:50
  you know i believe that my my faith is not blind my faith is based on a lot of evidence yeah.
• 55:56
  Most people don't think that. They think this kind of thing is all about faith,
• 56:00
  is about believing something you can't see. Well, that's not true.
• 56:02
  Even when Jesus came back from the dead, he showed faith that,
• 56:05
  he showed evidences that he was alive again. He showed evidence.
• 56:09
  So now extreme claims require extreme evidences.
• 56:13
  So I go into a scenario where I'm gonna tell people about my belief based on several things.
• 56:19
  The evidence that backs it up, my own story. Nobody can refute your own story.
• 56:23
  Nobody can go against your. If I tell you a miracle happened to me,
• 56:26
  you could say, well, that sounds unbelievable and too good to be true.
• 56:29
  And I could say, I know what happened to me. You can deny it. I know what happened.
• 56:33
  It's really hard to refute somebody who is that passionate about their own story.
• 56:36
  And then the next thing I believe is, dude, I'd be dead right now if it wasn't
• 56:40
  for like prayer. And I used to make fun of prayer. I used to like be like thoughts
• 56:43
  and prayers when bad things would happen. I used to make fun of it.
• 56:46
  But now I see the miracle of it. And whenever I pray about things,
• 56:48
  man, I see like the fruit of that and things happening and changing.
• 56:51
  And it's like miraculous things happen. My son, they told me my son wouldn't
• 56:55
  ever speak. He was nonverbal autistic and now he speaks, you know,
• 56:58
  and it was me praying over him. You know, he doesn't speak like I'm speaking
• 57:02
  now, but he's getting there.
• 57:03
  And so, you know, there's constantly things that are defying,
• 57:06
  you know, the odds of, you know, my wife was born in Baghdad and lived in Dubai
• 57:11
  and was Muslim and now she's Christian and I prayed for her a couple of times
• 57:15
  and then she immediately became, you know, completely independent of me.
• 57:18
  So there's all these miraculous things that I've found in my life that you can't deny.
• 57:22
  So if you're going in to try and put on a show and talk about it,
• 57:25
  you know, you have to go at it with those kind of ideas.
• 57:28
  You can't just go at it and be like, I don't think it's going to be as successful
• 57:31
  if you go into it and just say, well, this is just, you know,
• 57:35
  what I think or, you know, here's a scripture verse and then here's a trick.
• 57:38
  Like you got to come at it from a totally different angle. And the magic should
• 57:41
  be supportive of that, but not the main thing.
• 57:44
  Yeah. It's important what you keep at the center of these types of things.
• 57:47
  It's not about putting things first or second. It's what lives in the center.
• 57:51
  That's the important thing I've learned.
• 57:53
  Yeah. Yeah. Dude, we could talk about some of this stuff for probably two hours
• 57:58
  at minimum, because I know we've done an, about an hour, but I feel like we could do easily.
• 58:05
  Like we could probably do four hours of this.
• 58:07
  Easy. We're going to just get on a FaceTime phone.
• 58:12
  Yeah. Well, you know, in the same breath, let me ask you one more question,
• 58:16
  maybe a couple more. And, and of course, you know, there was so much to talk
• 58:19
  about. We would love to have you come back as well. You know what I mean?
• 58:21
  And just talk all things.
• 58:23
  But one thing I'm really curious about is, is like with, with your faith,
• 58:27
  has it changed the way you define your successes now?
• 58:30
  Yeah, I'm absolutely. You start seeing life through a different lens, right?
• 58:36
  Um, whenever your identity is in what you do, if you put your,
• 58:40
  if you put your value and something you can lose, you'll always lose.
• 58:45
  So if my value is in money and I lose the money, I have no value anymore.
• 58:49
  If my value is in I'm the best magician in the world and something happens to
• 58:52
  my hands or my body and I can't do the magic anymore, well now,
• 58:56
  I was talking to Rook, Machine Gun Kelly's drummer about this while we were
• 59:00
  with Machine Gun Kelly. And he's not a Christian guy, Machine Gun Kelly, but his drummer is.
• 59:03
  So we were talking about this right in front of him and he was listening,
• 59:06
  but he wasn't like engaging in the conversation as much. You know,
• 59:09
  he was, you know, smoking and stuff, just hanging out.
• 59:12
  And I was saying, his drummer had messed up his legs. He got hit by a car in
• 59:16
  Beverly Hills and messed up his legs.
• 59:18
  And I said, did you feel like your identity was gone? Like who you were as a
• 59:22
  person was no longer valuable? He said, absolutely. I had no hope.
• 59:27
  So if you put your faith in something you can lose, you'll always lose.
• 59:32
  And so me finding out, first of all, the truth, Jesus claims to be the truth.
• 59:37
  And when I found that all the evidence pointed to that and then me praying to
• 59:41
  him, my life started to change immediately.
• 59:44
  Then I found that I didn't need anything else to define me. Even if I lost,
• 59:48
  bro, this is the craziest part.
• 59:50
  My dad's a really strong Christian who you met, and this is a good way to end
• 59:52
  this because we started with it this way.
• 59:55
  My dad, when he lost my mom and my sister, who was his wife and his daughter,
• 1:00:00
  who my daughter is now my sister's age, how old my sister was,
• 1:00:04
  and my daughter is named after my sister who passed away.
• 1:00:07
  So whenever that happened, my dad, instead of looking at it from the posture
• 1:00:12
  of what was me and I should die now because of this horrible thing that happened to me.
• 1:00:15
  My dad looked at it and said, I'm so grateful that I had the seven years I had
• 1:00:19
  with my daughter. I'm so grateful I had the 41 years with my wife.
• 1:00:23
  And now I'm 41 and my daughter is almost seven and has the same name.
• 1:00:28
  And now I understand what that means, that no matter what happens in life,
• 1:00:32
  nothing can get thrown at me and hurt my body.
• 1:00:35
  And even if my body gets hurt, I'm okay ultimately, my soul and who I am,
• 1:00:39
  because my identity isn't in my body.
• 1:00:41
  It isn't in my physical you know
• 1:00:44
  situation it's my identity is in who God says I am not in who I say I am,
• 1:00:49
  Boris, that's amazing. Mic drop. Drop on my board.
• 1:00:56
  So stupid. Okay, so we've got, we're going to promote, let's wrap this up and
• 1:01:02
  give you the final word in a moment's time. Before we do, just a big thank you
• 1:01:05
  for coming on the show, buddy. Again, I've been admiring you from afar.
• 1:01:09
  And, you know, I want to say this on the air that like your father and I had like a massive D&M.
• 1:01:14
  And the reason I bring that up is that with my walk, I, I, I just,
• 1:01:19
  I hadn't, like I was Christian my whole life, but I hadn't read the Bible properly.
• 1:01:21
  And I was about to turn 40 and I thought, oh, like I just started reading it.
• 1:01:25
  And that's when I met your dad and he was so helpful.
• 1:01:28
  Oh yeah. He was so helpful. That's great, dude. I love to hear that.
• 1:01:31
  That's amazing. Yeah. And I just wanted to let you know that like I was chatting
• 1:01:34
  to him. He was so helpful. He, he kind of like put me on my walk.
• 1:01:38
  I got to see the fruits of what it means to be a good man as well
• 1:01:42
  and it was just really inspiring and i just wanted to make that public knowledge
• 1:01:46
  and celebrate him and on on the on the pod right now so like yeah i think you're
• 1:01:50
  pretty blessed that and when you see him you'll be like you know that guy you
• 1:01:53
  met some year ago i just did his podcast,
• 1:01:56
  let him know that like i just i i think so highly of him so guys again you can
• 1:02:00
  scope out our website our merchandise at themagicguyshow.com and we'll finish
• 1:02:05
  this show the same way we do all of our shows by giving our guest,
• 1:02:09
  the final word.
• 1:02:18
  Guys, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate you
• 1:02:21
  guys listening. If you guys are interested in hearing more about my story,
• 1:02:24
  check out my book, Disillusioned Truth Lies Between. My website,
• 1:02:27
  meyersmagic.com, M-E-Y-E-R-S magic.com.
• 1:02:31
  You can follow all of my tour schedule and everything. My Instagram is joelmeyersmagic.
• 1:02:35
  Check it out. I'm touring multiple different shows, Disillusioned Project and
• 1:02:38
  Dangerous Minds with Anna Dangerous.
• 1:02:41
  Guys, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Really appreciate you
• 1:02:43
  guys. God bless each and every one of you, and we'll see you guys real soon,
• 1:02:46
  hopefully when I come back. Thanks, guys.
• 1:02:50
  Thanks for listening it's time for us to disappear now disappear now but we'll
• 1:02:56
  see you again on the next episode of the magic guys.