Chris Jones on How Teller Got His Magic Back

He held the restaurant’s menu in front of him as he spoke, blocking the reporter’s line of sight. He lifted the menu from the table. In the space between them sat a large block of ice. Mackenzie began to cry. “I deceived you,” Jay responded while she sobbed. “It’s what I do for a living.” Mackenzie later recalled the event: “It’s a moment I’ll neve

Over the past decade, Dynamo has become the face of magic in England. From 2011 to 2014, he starred in his own television show, Dynamo: Magician Impossible, which racked up more than 20 million viewers. His subsequent British show tour sold half-a-million tickets, and his Australian leg sold another 100,000. Although they had taken wildly divergent

Hearing how my friends had come to invent their tricks fueled my ambition. My goal at the start of this entire adventure had been to understand the mind of a magician, someone who sees the world through the lens of deception—people who strive, as a career choice, to hack the concept of reality for the entertainment of others.

Much like a magician, Anthony instilled a sense of adventure and wonder in people—an honest quest not only to experience humanity and all its complexities through food and culture, but, more than anything else, the determination to give that same sense of discovery to an audience. He once said that travel—much like magic—is about the gorgeous feeli

World-famous magicians have been hiring inventors for decades. In the early twentieth century, Houdini’s success was contingent upon the mechanic Jim Collins, his right-hand man, who was a master of wood and metal. He began working for Houdini in 1910 and helped build his most famous illusions, including Water Torture Cell, which took the pair thre