908: Christian & Katalina - Mind Trippers

Military veterans, Katalina and Christian Painter have made a successful career of entertaining with their two-person mind reading routine coupled with their comedy mentalism act. For many years they traveled across the U.S. together entertaining on college campuses. After a few years, they decided to “settle down” in one location and limit their travel .They found a niche market in their hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana, where today they present a weekly show entitled the “Mind Tripping Show” in the Hilton Indianapolis Hotel & Suites.

This episode is a bit different from most our episodes. Typically we chat about a variety of topics with our guests. But this week we got off on a tangent from the very beginning and stayed focused on that throughout the episode. Specifically, Christian and Katalina talked about how they developed their show, how they found the venue, how they market the show, how it has evolved, and why it is still successful as they are reaching 20 years with this show. There is invaluable information in this episode, particularly if you are considering finding a venue for your show and what you need to do to prepare for it.

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900: Dan Sperry - The Anti-Conjuror

With this episode we celebrate the 900th episode of The Magic Word Podcast. Every 50 episodes we like to present a special guest who is well known throughout our worldwide magic community. And who better for this episode than Dan Sperry. He was a regular member of The Illusionists who toured the major stages of the world from Sydney, Australia, to Broadway in New York City. He has headlined in nightclubs, Las Vegas casinos, and performing arts theaters. For many years he has appeared on Masters of Illusion television show as well as many other TV shows. Now residing in Florida, he continues to travel the globe, but when at home, he enjoys (believe it or not) performing for children’s birthday parties.

In this week’s episode, Dan shares his story of how he developed his act and his character. He tells us about his early journey as he worked with doves and learned from some of the true masters like Joseph Gabriel that developed into a residency at a casino in Las Vegas. He toured Canada with Murray Hatfield as he honed his dove act and began to settle into his Shock Illusionist persona. He also talks about developing his talking act that led to work with the Illusionists and television appearances.

867: John Cox - What's New With Houdini?

As we end our “Month of Boo'“ on The Magic Word Podcast, we close it out on the 98th anniversary of the death of Harry Houdini who passed on Halloween (October 31st), 1926. It is fitting that we have a chat with the internationally noted expert on “all things Houdini,” John Cox. John is the blogger of “Wild About Houdini” which is a daily blog about the master of escapes. He always seems to find some interesting nugget about Houdini’s life that has been long overlooked or “escaped” his attention.

If you are more of a visual person, then you might enjoy watching our conversation that was recorded over Zoom.

This week, John Cox talks about the many variations of the “Houdini Seance” since the first one by Bess Houdini first held on the year following Harry’s death. These modern day seances includes the current “Official” one hosted by Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brookz and the “Original” one hosted by Tom Boldt and Bill Radner. John also tells us some details about Houdini’s trial in Germany, plus he updates us on the books he is writing including the elucidation on Houdini’s diary from his early years before he rose to his legendary status.