New podcast: Interview with Nate Staniforth

October 15, 2008

New podcast: Interview with Nate Staniforth Nate Staniforth freely admits to possessing no magic powers, and promises only “to amaze the hell out of you.”

You knew that from the opening of “Nate Staniforth: Magician.” But you may not know that the magician, who makes an appearance in Crash Course 2, credits his interest, and success, in magic to growing up in magically-isolated Iowa (as opposed to Las Vegas or New York City).

He believes that audiences today have a low tolerance for B.S., that magicians can be inspired by other magicians without copying them and and feels like if he were a better magician, he wouldn’t be as interested in music:

“There are limitations as a magician. You are bound to be amazing. There are only so many things you can honestly talk about as a magician…When you’re in a rock band, you can talk about in your songs love, hope, death, fear, faith, politics, God. You can talk about real things that matter. The blood and guts of being a human being. When you’re a magician, it’s much harder to do that. You can’t really create a routine that speaks about things like that, unless you’re more clever than me…I haven’t figured out a way to talk about anything but mystery.”

That glimpse into his mind is from an interview Staniforth did with Ellusionist after the release of “Magician.” You can hear it in this raw podcast:

Nate Staniforth: The Ellusionist Interview: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Staniforth’s style is laid back and subdued, yet has a lot of warmth. According to his Web site, he is in Tulsa this weekend for a college-activities convention. Check out his performance of a lottery effect: