• Ray Cosby
• Tony Clark
• Dan Harlan
• Jon Racherbaumer
• Nathan Kranzo
• Paul Gernter
• Mike Vincent
• Richard Osterland
• Carl Cloutier
• Doug Conn
• Gaston Quieto
• Marcus Eddie
• Akria Fujii
• John Gustaferro
• Rich Aviles
• Woody Aragon
• Kainoa Harbottle
• Caleb Wiles
• Pit Hartling

Why am I listing all of these magicians?

Because this is your opportunity to ask them anything you want. In the upcoming weeks I’m going to be interviewing these well known magicians and more. I know there are questions that I’ve always wanted to ask them and now you can too. Submit your questions below and have your chance to be answered by some of the great thinkers of our time. All questions must be submitted by April 27,2012 at noon EST. This is going to be EPIC!

-Xavior Spade

In about two weeks, you’ll get the chance to get something that has been in development for almost two years. And it’s something that Ellusionist Vice President Jason Brumbalow is really proud of.

Pure Smoke, Ellusionist’s new smoke system, is a major upgrade over virtually every smoke delivery system on the market for good reason: It’s more compact, easy to use, economic and the smoke it delivers is mystical and mysterious — it looks like it’s straight out of a computer-animated fantasy movie.

But the system didn’t happen overnight. In this podcast, JBone talks about the design behind Pure Smoke, its debut at the Magic Live Conference, some of the improvements since that debut and some of the crazy ways magicians are already using it. Also, Jason dishes about some new products coming out before the end of the year.

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InSession, Ellusionist’s new service to connect you with face-to-face, customized magic training, has been generating a lot of buzz on message boards and internet magic sites. One of the biggest posts came from one of the biggest magic sites on the ‘Net: iTricks. On Tuesday, Editor Justin Robert Young had some praise and some skeptical thoughts about the new service, and gave it a good review:

“Although the prices may fall and some personalities will undoubtedly prove themselves more suitable for this kind of work than others, the concept is valid and we wouldn’t be surprised to see is applied on sites other than Ellusionist.”

Back to some of thosee skeptical questions: They were good questions. Young asked them like the pro he is, and Ellusionist Vice President Jason Brumbalow answered them in the latest edition of the iTricks Magic Week in Review. In the podcast, JBone talks about how the idea got started, how resistant the sessions are to someone who decides to record the chat and post it live, an update on shorter time increments and more.

You can listen to the podcast on iTricks here.

Thanks to YouTube, Eric Ross went from underground magic creator to performing on “Ellen” in about a week.

The story is generally known: Ellen DeGeneres saw a YouTube video of Eric performing Rizer. Her staff called and, a week later, Ross is getting gasps and applause in front of a TV audience and millions of TV watchers. What you may not know is what he did between the phone call and the performance.

Ross talked to us about the whole experience, including more about what Ellen’s producers wanted, the trip to L.A., how he came up with his presentation, the night out spent with a star of “Human Centipede,” what he DIDN’T perform, how many rehearsals he had before showtime and how he came across that double deck of Ellen playing cards that he used. Ross also gives us a hint of what kind of doors opened for him after his appearance and what he would have done differently if given the chance again — including that repetition of the Crazy Man Handcuffs.

He even addresses the controversy and criticism behind his appearance. Yeah, controversy. Truth be told, we didn’t know there was any until Dan Sperry and Justin Robert Young broke it down on last week’s Magic Week in Review on iTricks.com. They, like us, believe that an impressed audience is what matters. We made no secret about what we thought of his performance: He killed it.

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Completely understandable: Ponta the Smith has earned quite a few new fans ever since the release of “Sick.” If you were at the Essential Magic Conference, you got a taste of his genius in coin magic.

Recently, he sat down for an interview with Tim Trono of Murphy’s Magic. A tip of the hat to forum Elite member FishSticks for finding this. Enjoy: