Karl "Koppertop" Hein: Professional Magician, Creator of Illusions

Karl Hein, a.k.a. Karl Koppertop is an international performing magician, lecturer, and creator of illusions. He has appeared on The Pete Holmes Show and Penn & Teller's Fool Us, and his ideas have been featured on America's Got Talent. He has authored numerous instructional DVDs and done seminars for elite magic organizations in dozens of countries including the world-famous Magic Castle.

Episode Highlights

Ever wondered what it takes to bewitch an audience with nothing but a deck of cards and a captivating story? In an episode that's nothing short of magical, we delve into Karl's captivating journey through the global magic scene, his tours, and the rich tapestry of magic communities he's experienced. From the intimate sleights of hand in close-up magic to the dazzling grandiosity of television magicians, Karl shares the secrets behind crafting moments of pure wonder, the kind that leave you questioning reality. He’s not just pulling a rabbit out of his hat; he's revealing the road map to mastering close-up magic and the essence of creating those gasp-worthy moments. And yes, he even gives us a taste of his mind-bending abilities right on the show!

With Carl, we traverse the intricate pathways that lead to magic mastery and discuss the delicate art of sourcing magical wisdom. He enlightens us on the significance of personal style over mimicry, while considering the psychological allure of the unknown that magic uniquely wields. Our exchange is not just about tricks and illusions; it's about the creative fire that drives magicians to push beyond the known into realms of innovation, all while respecting a heritage woven with well-guarded secrets.

Wrapping up an episode that's sure to leave you spellbound, we peek behind the curtain at the creative process that gives birth to new magic, acknowledging the fine line between tradition and innovation. Karl and I share a laugh over the simple yet ingenious routines that resonate within the magic community, leaving both audiences and magicians alike in awe. Whether you're a lifelong fan of magic or just curious about the life of a modern-day wizard, this episode with Karl Koppertop is your ticket to an enthralling experience. Join us for an unforgettable foray into the world of magic on Live2Create, and you might just find that the real magic lies in the stories we create.

We cover a lot of fascinating topics in this episode including:

• The differences between closeup magic, stage magic, and tv magic
  

• The many different ways to go about creating the same illusion
  

• The many skills and components beyond sleight of hand that go into crafting an effective illusion, including choreography, music, lighting, script writing, joke writing, and interpersonal interaction       

• When magicians play pranks on each other

• Karl's ideas about Penn & Teller's Fool Us       

• Performing on The Pete Holmes Show
  

• The problem with revealing the secrets behind how tricks are done
  

• The differences between just performing magic and actually creating it
  

• On being torn between the desire to understand how everyone's tricks work and retaining the awe and wonder of a viewer

• The secrets and essentials for being a successful creative professional, and so much more!

Listen

Read the Complete Transcript

Shane

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the official Live2cre8 podcast, coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee. I am your host, Shane Almgren, and I am joined today from West Palm Beach, Florida, by my good buddy, international performing magician, lecturer, and creator of illusions, Karl Hein aka Karl Koppertop. Karl has appeared on The Pete Holmes Show, and his ideas have been featured on America's Got Talent and Penn & Teller: Fool Us. He has authored numerous instructional DVDs and done seminars for elite magic organizations, including the world-famous Magic Castle.

Carl, once again, thank you for joining me. It is great to have you on the show today.

Karl Koppertop

Thanks for having me, Shane.

Shane

So you're off gallivanting and traveling around the world doing lectures and performances, correct?

Karl Koppertop

That is correct.

Shane

Where have you been most recently?

Karl Koppertop

Well, most recently, I've done a couple things in the US up in Buffalo, New York, and my last large tour was in Japan. So I did two and a half weeks in Japan, and that was an amazing experience.

Shane

Quite a bit of stuff in other countries. Where else have you been?

Karl Koppertop

All over Europe, a lot in, like, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and, of course, all over the United States.

Shane

Are there certain places overseas that have more of a magic community than others?

Karl Koppertop

Yeah, I mean, certainly different countries have different styles and have bigger communities. Spain, in particular, has a very large magic community, especially related around card magic, and Japan also has a very good community, but I mean, the US, of course, probably has the most magicians and the most literature in regards to magic and history. But all different countries have their own take on it, as with any art form.

Shane

So these different countries that have different particular styles that they're into, are you able to go and cater to all of them and do something that they're all used to seeing, or do you go and feature something brand-new that they're not used to seeing?

Karl Koppertop

Most of the time when I'm lecturing or performing, I'm doing my own material, so, in that regard, it's going to be new for just anybody that watches it because it's stuff that I've created versus stuff that has been out and about. So, in that regard, yes, it's all new to the people that are watching, but, of course, some of my styles, some of which are other people's styles, are magician styles that they have seen in the past, so there's going to be a level of familiarity, as well as some things that are going to be completely different. It all depends on where you're at in your magical career.

Shane

Are there any magicians out there whose names we might recognize that your style is similar to?

Karl Koppertop

Not really. I mean, most of the average public is only going to be familiar with maybe a random magician or two that they've seen at a private party or corporate event and/or the big names on television like David Blaine, David Copperfield, Criss Angel in the US, and the other big ones in different countries if you live in those specific countries. And most of those don't do anything along the lines of what I do. What I focus on is more the close-up magic, similar to maybe what you'd see David Blaine do, but more of a different style and presentation, because it's more about the entertainment quality of it than being on TV and being a mysterious stranger.

Shane

So there are different types of magic. You talk about close-up. There's illusions, there's vanishing tanks and elephants, and whatnot. Why don't you describe a little bit specifically how you do a performance and what close-up magic entails?

Karl Koppertop

Well, I do lots of different types of events. So a lot of what I do is cocktail-hour type of situations where I'd be at a wedding or a bar mitzvah or a corporate event where I would walk around a party with more of a social environment, where people are chatting and talking and engage groups of five to ten people at a time and then perform for five to ten minutes where I'm doing all sorts of different types of magic with different types of objects and/or mind reading, to basically give people a very magical experience or experience of wonder that they can't explain and then they talk about once you leave the group. It's all magical about creating a sense of wonder and curiosity and asking more questions than having answers, which I think is something that's an important part of life in general—always having that curiosity to try to evolve your knowledge of the world basically.

Shane

You mentioned mind reading a second ago. Do you want to try a mind-reading experiment right now? Are you feeling lucky?

Karl Koppertop

There’s a lot to it, Shane. [Laughs].

Shane

All right, I am thinking of a random card in the deck.

Karl Koppertop

It's Nine of Diamonds, of course.

Shane

Ah, how do you do that?

Karl Koppertop

Every time, every time.

Shane

Every time. It's, like, 21 years of that. Unbelievable. You told me before that in some of the countries that you go to, you've been treated like a rock star on some of your trips around the world. Are there any particular incidents that stand out?

Karl Koppertop

Well, when I say rock star, I mean I don't think quite like exactly a rock star, but, you know, you definitely get treated with a level of—when you're known within any industry, people within the industry are going to treat you in a way that you wouldn't get on a normal type of vacation or business trip, necessarily, you know.

Shane

No drug-fueled orgies?

Karl Koppertop

Not that I can talk about. [Laughs].

Shane

Ma'am, watch me make this disappear.

Karl Koppertop

I know, right? [Laughs]. But, you know, it's nice to be able to have a small level of fame within a specific community where people do treat you in a respectful manner, and you still go out on the street every day and not be recognized. Um, and it's kind of an—it's a nice thing to have. And it also, you know, constantly pushes you to produce more and to better yourself as well to kind of stay on top of the game.

Shane

How old were you when you first started doing magic?

Karl Koppertop

I started when I was a kid, like 7 or 8 years old, I think, but I really got seriously into it when I was around 12 or 13, when I started going to magic club meetings and magic conventions, which is, you know, where you get a group of people around you that are like-minded and that are your age and interested in doing the same type of things that you're doing. Of course, it increases that interest a lot more.

Shane

Picking up magic early on. Is it like learning an instrument where you have a teacher or you take lessons, or how does that work when you're starting out?

Karl Koppertop

Well, the path is different for everybody, just as it is in music. Some people learn completely on their own, some people have a teacher, as you just mentioned, and there are certainly a lot of mentors in the magic world, and a lot of people have that experience. For me, I learned initially from many different sources, little bits and pieces from many different people that I had met, local magicians, books and videos that I read and watched when I was a kid or a teenager, and then going to magic conventions and seeing different individual people speak and pick up different styles and pick up different effects that I wanted to learn. So, for me, it was all from different sources, but certainly, some people do have a mentor where they kind of emulate that particular mentor’s style and go that route as well. So there's no one path.

Shane

Was there either a certain performance or a particular effect or illusion that you saw early on, where you were mesmerized and were like, “I've got to do that?”

Karl Koppertop

Not particularly. I mean, I always kind of enjoyed magic, and I always kind of liked it. I never really thought to myself—I don't ever remember thinking to myself, “I want to be a magician, or I want to do that.” I just enjoyed doing it. It was that simple. I enjoyed learning. I enjoyed trying to figure the secrets out. I enjoyed performing and having people experience those moments of wonder. And it was never something that I wanted to necessarily do as a career. It was something that kind of happened over time.

Shane

Were you ever paying a lot of attention early on to the bigger names like the David Copperfields or the guys who were on TV?

Karl Koppertop

Not a lot. I never really watched a lot of television as a kid. I mean, I was familiar with David Copperfield. I think I saw one of his live shows. I'm sure I saw a couple of his television specials, but I was never allowed to watch a lot of television as a kid, so I never really had the experience of being influenced by the stage illusionists and the bigger shows like that. You know, later on, of course, I followed some things with, like, David Blaine, but that was more into my—right after college, I think. I've never much been one to watch the big names on television, you know, religiously in any way. I try to follow and keep up with a little bit of who they are and what they do, but it's not my main area of interest.

Shane

What is the correct terminology as far as magic, illusion, trick, effect? Are all of those synonyms, or do they mean something different?

Karl Koppertop

Well, you know, magic versus illusion versus trick. They all have slightly different connotations, I guess, but it all depends on what you kind of bring to it. In the end, it's all, kind of, illusions. Basically, what we, as magicians, do is we create the illusion of impossible things. So a magician might say, “Well, it's impossible to make someone float in midair. How do I create the illusion of doing that?” And in trying to solve that problem, many different magicians, or illusionists, or conjurers, or however you want to call it, come up with many different solutions to solving those problems, which I think is a very interesting thing about magic and how many different solutions there are to a lot of the common illusions that you see.

So, yeah, I mean, in general, when you say a trick, a trick usually implies more of something of a puzzle, so to speak, where you might see a magician do a trick. It's like, “Oh, that was really cool. I have no idea how you did it.” Whereas, what magicians are really trying to go for in giving you a moment of true wonder or astonishment is giving you a moment of feeling that even though your brain knows there's no way that this could be possible, you just can't fathom any possible explanation. And it's not even like it's a trick. It's just like it's real magic, and that's really what you're trying to go for as a magician. So in that, there are several differences between different terms, but there's nothing that's really particular that this is the definitive way of using it.

Shane

One of the things that always fascinated me about magic from a psychological standpoint is that it's a unique entertainment experience where the audience gets the most out of it when they genuinely do not understand what's happening. If you watch someone doing a world-class guitar solo, you realize that you can't do that, but you do understand what it is he's doing and you see the skill. So you can go home, and you can pick up a guitar and start very slowly picking out the notes, one at a time, understanding that eventually it would take years to build up to that speed and dexterity.

But with magic, we don't see any of the technique. All we get is the effect. Or if we do see it, we don't realize it. So how does one walk away from a magic performance and go home and start practicing what they saw if we don't really know what we even saw?

Karl Koppertop

Well, I think what's great about magic is it kind of inspires your imagination. And so if you have no knowledge of any kind of magical technique and you see a magic performance—and you see this a lot with kids—when you see a kid watch a magic show and then they start trying to practice, you know, and making something disappear from their hand, it’s really quite obvious. You watch them do it because they don't know what they're doing, but the inspiration is there, you know, and with magic, you have to obviously learn the secrets. But there's also cases where people have created their own effects and illusions from scratch without having any influence from outside sources, which oftentimes can be the most creative.

So, I mean, basically, when you see a show, you're going to be inspired, and if that inspiration gets you to the point where you have to know all the tasks you take, some people will track down other magicians to try to learn the secrets. Some will learn from books or go to the library. Nowadays, of course, there’s the internet and YouTube, where a lot of magic secrets are on YouTube to be able to go and for people to be able to find, but you still have to put the time in, and that's the currency you deal with: time. You have to put the time in to practice, to learn, to research, to figure out the secrets—if you really want to go down that rabbit hole.

Shane

In music, it's a great compliment if you write a song and then someone else covers it. I think it was one of the Beatles songs. I think it was “Eleanor Rigby” that’s the number one most covered song of all time [inaudible] as to Aretha Franklin, and it's a way of paying respect to a great piece of music. In comedy, it's the exact opposite. You don't ever hear of someone doing cover jokes. You hear about comedians stealing jokes, and doing another comedian's joke is basically the lowest thing you can sink to in the world of comedy. Where on that spectrum does magic fall? Do magicians want other magicians performing their effects, or do they see it as stealing?

Karl Koppertop

Well, it depends. I mean, it's very individualistic, I think. I know several very well-respected magicians that create their own effects and create their own routines and their own stage pieces, and they fight very much so to keep that only them performing those pieces because those are unique to them and their babies, you know. And on the other side of that, there are many creators that create magic, and then they give it to the community or they sell it to the community of magicians, and then, you know, to them, it's a big honor to have someone perform their effect on television, because they themselves aren’t a performer. They're more of a creator. Or to see people—the everyday magicians—performing their effects is also an honor. So I think there's a wide range of spectrum there and different opinions on that matter, depending upon who it is that you're talking to. I mean, in the end, though, I think everybody would agree that it's wrong for one performer to take someone else's original material and perform it as if it is their own without any kind of permission going about that, you know.

Shane

Is it possible to trademark, copyright, or patent performances or techniques?

Karl Koppertop

It's a very difficult process, and it's not really something that you can do. There has been some, I guess, legal incidences that happened. Most notably with Teller, from Penn & Teller, and some of the pieces that they've done. They've copyrighted some of their illusions or their routines as plays, essentially, and as you can copyright a play and you can copyright all the different actions of that play, you can copyright, therefore, how a specific routine is performed. But when it comes to the actual magic secrets and the effects and methods, it becomes very difficult and just not cost-effective to try to patent or try to enforce any kind of copyright on most of those types of things.

There's exceptions, and those are pretty rare. In general, it's more of a gentleman's type of agreement where if you've created something and you publish it and you get credit for it, now it's kind of yours. But, of course, there's also lots of contention in the magic community between different individuals who claim to have invented one thing, or, you know, there’s all different sorts of little rivalries over material. But that's just going to happen no matter what, you know.

Shane

I know that sleight of hand is a skill that has to be mastered. It's like playing the guitar or the piano, but does mentalism require a skill that has to be practiced, or is it more just memorizing data and routines? I just watched the invisible touch routine. Are you familiar with that one? And I watched a tutorial of it, and it's a great effect that almost anyone can do immediately once you know how it's done. Is all of mentalism like that, where it's just a psychological sort of misdirection, or is there some skill set that one really needs to hone?

Karl Koppertop

Well, I think that is in itself an illusion. That's part of the big reason why magicians, as well as mentalists, don't teach their effects. It’s because most of the effects that you will deal with are pretty simple in their concepts or in their nature, but that simple concept is very difficult to actually go out and perform. So even though, for example, if you watch a tutorial on how to learn this specific routine, it seems very simple. But for you to actually go out and perform that, and in a way that affects people and that has that effect of mystery and amazement on people, is a lot more difficult than it initially seems. It's like the very simple magic trick that I think most people are familiar with. The common term, of course, is called the pinch drop, where you apparently have an object in your hand and you take it into your other hand, but you actually don't take it, and then it disappears from your hand. It's a very simple idea. You pretend to take something, but you don't. But to watch someone that's just starting off try to do that takes hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of practice to make that simple thing look very natural and the actual fooling of someone. So, yes, there is a level of what we do is very simple, but when you go beyond that, it's actually very, very, very complicated and very much in the details.

On top of that, you know, all different types of magic and different realms of the art form have different skill sets. You know, if you're a stage illusionist, it's easy for a closeup magician to say, “Well, someone that's on stage is relying on this prop, this box, that makes the actual assistant disappear, or the person from the audience, or whatever it is. It's not the actual magician doing any sort of skill.” But there is still skill there. The skill is in how you choreograph, how you choose the music and the lighting, how you present yourself on stage, how you talk to an audience, and how you command their attention.

All those things are skills that don't just come immediately to most people. They have to be developed, and that's the same in any kind of art form, especially with magic. And in close-up magic, it's the skill of dealing with people to develop rapport. That's a really important skill. But again, with the magic side of it, it's being able to perform something, so it's natural, and it doesn't seem like something's going on when actually many things are going on beneath the surface. So there's a lot more than meets the eye.

Shane

That movie, The Prestige, with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. They were the two magicians who were rivals and were constantly trying to one-up the other. Is that a thing that actually happens in real life?

Karl Koppertop

I feel like there's moments in history that has happened, but it's certainly not a very common thing, I don't believe.

Shane

Do magicians play pranks on each other?

Karl Koppertop

Sure, absolutely. I mean, within the magic community, you develop certain groups of friends going to conventions and maybe within your own city, of people that you get together and meet with, and oftentimes, groups of magicians can be quite the practical jokers. Some are very well known for that. The Amazing Johnathan, for example, wrote a book about it—about some of his famous pranks. And, you know, some are much more so than others. But, yeah, it's a lot of fun, even messing with your fellow magicians.

Shane

The Penn & Teller show Fool Us. Was that show done just purely for entertainment because the producers thought it would get ratings, or was that a legit vehicle that Penn & Teller were using to find new acts or learn new tricks by actually getting fooled?

Karl Koppertop

I believe it's a bit of both. I can't speak, obviously, authoritatively on that because I'm not one of the producers or Penn & Teller, but anything that's on television, in general, is going to be all about the ratings, and you have to have the ratings to be able to get the show on television or at least to keep it on television once it's been on. From Penn & Tellers' perspective, I think there's the hook of Fool Us, which I think is kind of bittersweet. I know from some conversations I've heard about from them that, you know, they're not—having the focus being about fooling them and about it being on the secret is not something I think that they would think is ideal, or most magicians in general.

Most magicians don't think it's all about the secret. It's more about the effect you have on people and the presentation of how you perform it. But by having that hook and by having that easily defined thing for people to tune in and to watch to see if they can be fooled, it gives them the opportunity to have many great magicians that create original works of art come on their show and present their many different styles. So on that end, I think it is a great way for them to be able to show magic in many different forms and a lot of performers that you would not normally see on most other television shows. Most of these types of people wouldn't go on shows like America's Got Talent or have their own specials for a variety of reasons, but they fit really well into that specific format, and so I think it's been a really good thing for magic and having the ability to show many different types of magicians and styles of magic.

Shane

So the showcase aspect of it is cool, but the actual fooling part is more of a gimmick, and I think you've articulated before—about why the whole fooling process is so tricky to define. Can you go into that a little bit?

Karl Koppertop

Yeah, I mean, when it comes to the fooling process, some people say, “Oh, the whole thing is kind of fake.” But no, from my experience with the show as well as many friends of mine who have been on the show, it's definitely very much a case of either they're fooled or they're not fooled. I've had friends that go on the show that have on many instances fooled Penn & Teller before but have chosen to do material that they've already kind of revealed to Penn & Teller, and Penn has said, “We’re familiar with your magic. You’ve fooled us many times before, but we know that trick.” So they are definitely true to you have to fool them to be able to get the Fool Us status, at least for the most part. But it's definitely something that's an interesting challenge as a magician going on the show, because you want to have your work be perceived in a very good light, but you also want to try to fool them to be able to get to—essentially win the show, you know. So it's different for everybody that goes on the show. I think it's different for Penn & Teller, too, in how they approach different acts. Some of them they're going to really like as far as performance pieces go and want to support the artists, and others they’re not going to like as much. It's just kind of the nature of one's opinion, you know.

Shane

You've done some stuff on The Pete Holmes Show, and I think you had some ideas featured, at least, on America's Got Talent. Is that correct?

Karl Koppertop

Uh-huh.

Shane

How'd you end up on The Pete Holmes Show?

Karl Koppertop

The Pete Holmes Show came about—I was kind of—yeah, I had a couple videos in my bio in regards to magic, his experiences on Conan, so I was familiar with who he was, and a friend of mine, Justin Willman, had done some stuff with Pete, I think through Pete's podcast. I was at the Magic Castle, and Willman and a couple other friends had brought Pete Holmes in, and then, maybe a month or so earlier, a couple of weeks earlier, I had seen them and done some stuff at a magic convention for Justin and a couple other magicians and had fooled them and impressed them. So they had asked me to come over and do some stuff to Pete, and at that point, I proceeded to then perform a bunch of my original material for that small group, and Pete, being a great reactor at magic, loved it and had a great time, and, I think, saw all the other magicians reacting and just said—you know, I think he wanted me on the show because of that reaction that he had, and then he saw other, not just people but magicians having it in general.

Shane

There was a TV show several years ago where a masked magician revealed how a bunch of really well-known illusions were done. And then, at the end of the series, he took off his mask, and it turned out to be a magician named Val Valentino, and he spoke directly at the audience—that he had put the show together to get a new generation of kids interested in magic. What was the fallout from that show as far as other magicians were concerned? Did they buy his explanation that this was a good way to drum up more interest, or did they just see it as a guy who has given away all their secrets of the trade and ruining the experience for everyone?

Karl Koppertop

I think, again, you have to look at magicians as a unified group that has many different types of opinions. I was never familiar with that—his coming out and announcing himself. I don't remember that, but I remember, you know, when the show first aired, magicians pretty much immediately knew who it was, and you know, there's a lot of magicians that were, of course, very, very upset by the show, and I think the whole range across the whole spectrum. In general, you know, we, as magicians—at least, I speak for myself. You know, I'm willing to teach anybody the secrets of magic effect as long as I feel like they have the skills and the desire to go out and perform it themselves and to make other people have that amazing experience of astonishment. But just simply telling the secret doesn't do any justice to what I just did as a performance or to them and their understanding of magic. It just doesn't do much.

And I think the same is true with that show—is that it was not geared towards teaching people magic. It was geared towards just exposing secrets, which I think is just not something that's—for a lack of a better way of saying it, it’s just not cool. There's no real reason behind it besides trying to get ratings and being sensationalist. Yes, some of the possible effects would be that it inspires some people to get into magic that maybe wouldn't have without having watched that show, and seeing the reactions that maybe the magician had, and learning the secret. I think that's a side note. I don't think that's necessary. I highly, highly doubt that's the actual reason why the show was done. I'm pretty sure it was done because someone got paid money to do it, and they thought that they could make money off the show.

Shane

One of the reasons I really wanted to have you on this show is because you're not just a performer, you're also a creator, and that's the whole theme of this show—creation. There are a lot of people who play instruments, but they don't write music, they don't compose, they just play stuff that other people have written, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. You know, you have world-class symphonies playing stuff that Beethoven wrote. But coming up with your own stuff, writing your own material, creating your own effects, that's a whole different animal. So at what point did you move from just being a performer into getting creative at this?

Karl Koppertop

I think it starts at the very beginning, and people that have that creative aspect and magic kind of start off with it also at a very young age, for the most part. It starts with, you know, finding your own ways of performing other people's material. And just as you talked about with the symphony, you know, the people that become famous, or the most famous, in those types of industries where they're not creating their own music but they're playing other people's music, become famous or become well-known in music because they play those pieces with their own sense of emotion, and what they bring to it is, in its own way, to a degree, unique. And it's the same with magic.

You can be a performer that performs other people's material, but in a very unique way that definitely puts your own stamp or your own style on it—your own presentation, your own jokes, your own creation of drama. Whatever it is, you try to bring yourself to that. So there's that aspect of being creative in your performance of classic effects or other people's material, but then there's also the methods of how you actually create magic, and that also comes into play when you say, “Well, what is it that I want to do? It's not just: I want to go out and perform this effect, but this is an effect that I want to try to do, but there's no real way that I know of to do that. There's nothing I've read about in the magic books that tells you how to achieve this effect, or the ones that I have read just aren't quite to my liking or don't fit my needs of how I want to perform it.” So now it's up to you to kind of create your own method, and so when you can combine that, where you create your own method for achieving a specific illusion and then your own unique way of presenting it, you know, I think that's definitely an evolution of the art form, and it gives you—it truly makes you a magician, because a magician, to me, is not someone that just performs. It’s someone that really creates magic, you know.

Shane

I know the goal of magic is to fool whoever your audience is, but is there a sense, when you're developing a new trick, to throw in something additional into the mix to fool your fellow magicians as well? How much is done for the sake of the audience, and how much is done with your fellow magicians in mind?

Karl Koppertop

Well, it depends on what your audience is. If you're a children's entertainer and you're trying to entertain a bunch of six-year-olds and fool a bunch of six-year-olds, you don't put as much thought into how that's going to fool adults or fool your fellow magicians. And different types of audiences think differently about what they're watching and about how they analyze it. Kids think differently at different age groups, adults think differently, different types of adults think differently, and of course, you know, magicians themselves, because they have a certain amount of knowledge, also very much approach how they watch a magic show quite a bit differently. It's the same as if you are in the movie industry and you're watching a movie on the big screen. You know how special effects are done and how stories are written, and having all that knowledge affects the way you view a particular movie. And it’s the same with magic, and so that process is going to be different for everybody.

For me, I, personally, try to put as many layers in my creations as possible, because I really want everybody to have to walk away with a positive experience, and even if a fellow magician isn't fooled, I want them to appreciate that there is a level of thinking there, a level of skill that was there, a level of performance that was there that impresses them and makes them say, “Wow, that was really amazing. I'm really glad I got to watch that.” And of course, you also want to hope to fool them as well, and that comes down to using different techniques or unexpected techniques or techniques in different ways, and it's possible to fool your fellow magicians, at least temporarily, to give them that moment of amazement and surprise that you don't feel very often anymore as a magician.

Shane

Are there any tricks or effects out there that you've seen that you don't know how they're done, and it's bugging you to find out?

Karl Koppertop

I just saw one recently, actually. I was at a magic convention in Buffalo, New York. It's a big gathering of some of the best close-up magicians in the world, and everybody gets to go on stage and perform—at least most people do. And there's a couple acts. There's one in particular of a very old effect, where someone picks a card, and it rises out of the deck. But in this case, the way the gentleman did it, someone’s just freely named card rises out of a deck of cards several times, and I think he fooled pretty much every magician there, some of the best close-up magicians in the world. So it definitely makes you go, “Wow, I have no idea how he does that.” You want to know, but at the same time, you also kind of want to hold on to that mystery.

So it's kind of a bittersweet thing. Sometimes you want to have those mysteries you just don't want to know, and we certainly have those as magicians, experiences where you get fooled for whatever reason, and you say, “Don't ever tell me the secret to that. Let me hold on to that moment for a while.” You know, it's a good moment to have. That's why we do what we do to give people, the average person, those moments of complete wonder and astonishment that they can remember forever.

Shane

And you can still enjoy the experience as an audience member?

Karl Koppertop

Yeah, absolutely. I enjoy it as an audience member, but in this case, it was particularly interesting. I had seen this deck before at the FISM Olympics of Magic in Italy last summer. I had seen this gentleman perform a very similar version of the effect. It was cool because I was one of the few people that had already seen it, and so I was talking to a lot of people. I said, “Hey, make sure you pay attention and watch this guy.” Sure enough, even with them being able to expect it, it kind of builds the anticipation, and it makes it even more amazing when you have no idea how it works as a magician, and you're like, “Wow, that's amazing. I have absolutely no idea how that could possibly happen.” It just gives you that sense of wonder. It's a really great feeling to have.

Shane

So in the magic community, could you shoot him an email or just call him up and be like, “Hey, I'm a magician too. Here's my secret handshake and card. Tell me how you did it.”

Karl Koppertop

Uh, no, it doesn't really work like that. No, I mean, some people are very sharing of their creations and the secrets, others not so much. In this case, I have a feeling that he is looking to compete at some of the magic competitions down the road, as he already has. So it's in his best interest to keep that a secret. So not as many people know it because word spreads pretty much like wildfire when it comes to secrets of magic, of new effects, and so, you know, if you can keep something a secret longer, the better off you are in that type of situation.

Shane

I know probably every single time you've ever done a trick—ever, ever, ever—somebody goes, “How'd you do that?” What is the protocol for when you can share how you did something? I mean, there's some people who probably genuinely want to learn how to do some tricks. I mean, is it like a secret society? Is it a fraternity? Do you have to get a card? Like, what gives you access to being taught how something's done?

Karl Koppertop

That's really on a completely individual basis. Speaking for the majority of people, I would say that it comes down to if someone comes up to you as a magician and you perform something and then they express that they have an interest in magic, and by the way they speak and the way they talk, you know that they have read, they have studied, they have researched certain things, and especially if they, themselves, perform a few effects. If they can perform a few things, and they perform them relatively well, then you have more confidence in saying, “Well, if I teach you this,” they're likely to learn it and actually go out and perform it, versus just acquiring a secret. So that's really what it comes down to: if they have the abilities and the skills to go out and do it, you're more likely to reveal your secret. It's not always the case. Sometimes you might still say, “No,” or “This is a product I have for sale. You might have to buy it,” or it may be simply that you just don't want to release that to the magic community or to this particular person.

Some people keep it very tight within a very small group. They have a group of friends that they share their effects and routines with, and they kind of jam with each other on ways to make their individual routines better, but outside that small community, they don't really share with anybody else. There are all different approaches that people will take—what the criteria is to decide if they're going to teach someone an effect or not. But in general, there has to be a really valid interest beyond just saying, “How did you do that?”

Shane

So if somebody's going, for example, to purchase an instructional DVD, you can be fairly confident that they're not just trying to get a secret. What is—or actually, first, how many DVDs do you have in your series now?

Karl Koppertop

Well, they kind of come and go, but I have around a dozen or 14, 15, somewhere in that range.

Shane

And when you get one of these, is each one just dedicated to a single technique or a single effect, or is there—do you get a bunch of tricks with the DVD? How does that work?

Karl Koppertop

They're all different, you know. I mean, just like with books, you know, you can get books with many chapters, many different effects, or different stories, and other ones are just one. And so, with mine, I have some projects that just go over a specific routine of mine or other projects that will go over many different ideas. They're all kind of different in their approach as to what they—they all have a specific purpose, but they're all very different in how I've approached that.

Shane

Are there any props, like a deck of cards or something, that you never leave home without?

Karl Koppertop

I usually have a deck of cards on me. I usually have one or two other effects with me, but a deck of cards is probably the main thing that I just enjoy carrying around with me to always have something to play with and to perform with. So that's for me, but other people have different props that they might use on a regular basis, but definitely a deck of cards is probably my preferred go-to.

Shane

Outside of the creative process, are there techniques that you work on on a fairly regular basis to keep your chops up? I mean, I still play my scales, and chords, and arpeggios every day on the piano.

Karl Koppertop

Of course. Not as much as I used to. I mean, there certainly are magicians that practice constantly and all the time, especially when it comes to technique. But I think, after a while, as a performer, you know the techniques you really need the most or use the most aren't ones that you can practice as much. It's more: you have to be in front of an audience, whether it's on stage or walking around at an event to groups of people. So oftentimes, you know, I might go out into the town and just perform for some fun, to practice some new routines or material. Of course, if something is brand new, then yes, I have to practice the technique at home or with fellow magicians to practice and to get better at my technique. And there are certain techniques that you do have to kind of keep your chops up on. But for me personally, it kind of comes in waves where I'll go through periods of a lot of practice and then some not a lot at all. It just kind of comes and goes for me.

Shane

When you come up with something that you think is worthy of getting its own instructional DVD, from conceptualizing that to actually filming it, how long does it take you to work up that routine?

Karl Koppertop

Well, that's different for every routine. Some have happened from beginning to finish in the period of a month or two, but most of them have taken many, many, many years to develop. It really just depends. For me, my process for creating effects has mostly been improvements on other people's ideas. So I'll start off with an effect or an idea, and I'll make slow changes to it over time, and in the course of those slow changes, they have evolved into something that is completely different. And if you saw the original thing, you might say, “Oh, that's a—” you’d notice that it's a similar type of thing, but if you really look at it, sometimes the effect it has on people can be very, very different, and there definitely has to be significant changes to be able to say, oh, this is now your own creation, you know, or significant enough they’re going to say that it's not yours or your ideas are valid to publish those ideas, and you just have to kind of analyze each of those on an individual basis.

But from start to finish, you know, I've had projects that, from the time I started working on the idea, you know, probably 10, 15 years, and other ones, like I said, a couple months. So there's a pretty broad range there, from beginning to completion to after you're putting a product out. But in reality, a lot of the products I've put out have been put out for a variety of reasons, but some of them, you know, I still don't feel like I'm finished with and will constantly still change. I mean, I think an artist's work is never finished. As the old saying goes, and I think it's very true, you always keep coming back to things and reanalyzing them and improving them.

Shane

When you're creating a new effect, how much of it is putting together old elements and maybe a combination that's not been done before, and how much is actually coming up with brand new techniques? And I'll frame this with another music analogy. Every time somebody writes a new song, they're putting a new melody together or rearranging chords in a different way, but no one is inventing new chords. All the chords that exist have been discovered. As far as magic techniques, are there still techniques to be discovered and invented, or are you guys just using all the known techniques and combinations that haven't been done before?

Karl Koppertop

Well, I can't speak for music, but there was a time, of course, when there were new chords still being invented, and I guess maybe that's the case that there's still new techniques being created in magic as well. A lot of those techniques that you study in history, you know, have been around before, at least to some degree, but there are certainly, as the performance of magic changes, the techniques also have to change, and so as you change from instrument to instrument, those techniques have to change as well. So you might have, you know, similar types of notes or chords from a piano to a guitar, but the way you play them and the way you do them are, of course, very different. And so, as magic changes to different mediums—so in today's day and age, you know, there's magic on television, which requires different techniques and different methods than magic on a stage. Magic done for short little YouTube clips have different techniques and different methods that they're going to use. Audiences of today—their attention spans are not the same as they were 20, 30 years ago, and so, similarly, you have to use different techniques and different presentational styles to be able to capture audiences' attention.

And just as in the styles of magic, too, it used to be 30 years ago that the standard way of performing close-up magic is you'd sit at a table, people would surround you at a table, and you'd perform on a little mat on the table. Nowadays, most of the places I perform, I'm walking around and strolling around groups of people that are all standing without necessarily having a table. So I have to use different techniques, something that sitting down at a table would use that a lot of the literature was using. So early on in my career, I invented one or two things that took old ideas and brought them into this new environment, and doing so created new techniques that then many people have used and then built upon. They’ve improved versions of my techniques, and I've improved upon those versions. And so, yeah, techniques are still being invented and created in all different realms of magic, but there's also still similarities to the past. You have to be respectful of that as well.

Shane

Is there a particular trick or technique that you came up with that you're the most proud of?

Karl Koppertop

Not really. I mean, there's some that I'm more well known for, I guess, but there's nothing that I'm necessarily the most proud of. It's just that I don’t—I take pride in my work, I guess, but at the same time I'm not overly, overly confident—you know, proud of it. I just do what I do to make people happy and to spread the magic. You know, it's not something that's about pride for me, really.

Shane

I've asked all my songwriter and music producer guests which songs they've heard that they wish they would have written. Are there any effects or techniques that you've seen and you go, “Man, I wish I would have come up with that”?

Karl Koppertop

Sure. There's certainly ideas that come out here and there, especially—you know, particularly that happens most often with ones that are simple, when someone has a very simple idea that is just right there, and when you see it, you're like, “Oh my gosh, I could have thought of that. I should have thought of that, but I didn't think of that.” Those are always the most frustrating ones, especially when they can fit right into what you do or into the audiences you perform for. So that absolutely does happen. Most of what I try to create, with a few exceptions, are more complicated.

They're more routines that are more involved and that have multiple layers to them. So there's a lot more work that goes into that sort of thing versus, sometimes, just that little tiny spark of creative genius. For example, I have one effect that a lot of magicians will say, “I wish I had thought of that.” It's a very simple thing where you just ask someone to give you five, and they give you five, and a $5 bill appears at your fingertips. It’s just using a very old technique of producing a playing card to produce a $5 bill. But you're just changing the medium and giving it context. And now, all of a sudden, it's something that anybody can do almost any time, within the context of what people do all the time, of giving you a high five or giving you five. And that's something that's just so simple, but no one thought about it, you know. And so that certainly happens in other situations, too, for me, where I see something, and I go, “Wow, I wish I had thought of that.”

Shane

Is there anyone in your field whose brain you would love to pick that you haven't had the opportunity to yet?

Karl Koppertop

There's certainly a few people that I really respect that I really haven't gotten to spend a lot of time with. There's a well-known magician in Spain named Juan Tamariz, whom I've met a few times and never really spent meaningful time with. He's a very great thinker and is considered one of the best magicians alive. There's a famous magician in England named Derren Brown. Him and his team, I think—I really respect the work that they put out, and it would be great to pick his brain to understand some of his process. And certainly, you know, quite a few other people, too.

But I've been fortunate enough to meet and become friends with many of my teachers and heroes in magic over the years of performing, as well as lecturing and sharing my ideas with other people, to become friends with some of my heroes, which is a really cool thing to be able to do. And I think down the road, the same thing will happen to people that have learned from me and that I have inspired too. It's already happened to a degree, and that's a cool thing when you know that you've inspired someone, and then you can become friends with them, you know.

Shane

If somebody came to you and said, “Karl, I want to be a professional magician, and I'm just starting out,” what advice would you give them?

Karl Koppertop

Well, I think advice is a very—you have to be very careful with giving out advice because any advice that you have is very particular to you, to your own experiences, and so I try to be hesitant about giving out advice unless I really have gotten to know the person and really get to understand what their goals are, what their skills are, where they're coming from, where they want to go. And if that experience overlaps to my experience, then I can, of course, certainly say, “Well, this is how it applies to me,” and I can certainly help them out. You know, it's not—anytime you work for yourself in any sort of do-it-yourself business and/or art form, there's a lot of personality traits that, to be successful, you have to have or you need to find ways around if you're going to be successful and have a good career, you know.

When it just comes to being an entrepreneur and owning your own business, you have to know how to run a business and be disciplined to do that. And that's not for everybody, you know. And just because you love an art form doesn't mean that you can make a living as an artist or as a musician, even though you're maybe the most talented at it. It's not just your talent that's necessary; it's a combination of things. Or, if you have that talent, finding the right people that can then promote you and support you.

There's multiple paths. For me, I take the path of being that balance and trying to do it all, where I create my own, but I also have my own promoter, but I don't promote myself a ton, just enough to do the amount that I want to do. And so, yeah, to answer your question, my advice would be different for everybody. There's no specific advice I'd give. It really is on an individual basis, I believe.

Shane

What is the most challenging aspect of being a self-employed, business-owning performing magician?

Karl Koppertop

I don't know. That's a hard question to answer. I think that the most challenging thing is it changes throughout different phases of your life, so I don't think there's any.

Shane

The business side, or is it more on the performance side?

Karl Koppertop

Well, again, I get those in phases, you know. In the beginning, when you're not as good of a performer, the challenge is to become a really good performer by performing a lot so that you're giving people—to me, the way I always—one advice I give to magicians—not advice, but one thing that I say that I think is really necessary is that, as a performer, you have to give people an experience that they feel like they have to share with people they know. You have to give them an experience that has affected them in such a way that they need to validate that through their friends or family, their coworkers, their bosses, whatever that is, their clients. And if you give people that experience and they feel like they have to share, you're going to get work, as long as the people that you're in front of are people that can afford to hire you and afford to spend money on you, you know. And that's the same, I think, in any field.

I think Steve Martin said something similar. He said, “You know, be so good, they can't ignore you.” And that's what it comes down to is if you are performing in your level of—if you reach that challenge of becoming so good at your craft—whether it be music, or art, or magic in my case—that people can't ignore what you do, even people that are skeptical, or don't like magic, or have bad experiences with a magician in the past, or don't like the feeling of not knowing. If you reach that point where they can't say, “Oh my gosh, I really had a great experience. I don't like magic, but I love you,” or whatever it is, and they feel like they have to take what they've just experienced and share that with someone else, I think you've succeeded. That just takes a process to be able to get that good all the time, not just once, one out of 10 times, but every time have that experience, you know, because some audiences are very easy to entertain and some are not.

But as your career progresses, absolutely, it becomes more about the business side if you want to be successful at it, and that's just—there's multiple elements of that. How you make the money, but also what you do with it. How you invest it. How you save it. How responsible you are with it. How you market yourself. How you advertise yourself. How you carry yourself and brand your image. As with any business, it’s all these different aspects of business that you have to be aware of or at least have someone else be aware of and in charge of for you, which opens up a whole other can of worms. And having agencies, representation, and, you know, it's very difficult to find people that have your best interests in mind if that's the case. I've never really gone that route to a degree, but I have friends that have, you know, and that can be a really great thing or a really bad thing for somebody. So there's really all different approaches to it.

And those challenges are going to be changing throughout your career. It’s also another challenge with many friends I’ve had where they reach success, you know. Being very successful is a challenge in and of itself. How do you keep that success going, or how do you come to grips with no longer being that success anymore? You know, if you have a well-deserved television show or a huge run on a play or a theater run where you're performing for sold-out crowds and established venues, where do you go from there? Do you continue doing the same thing? Will the next thing you do be good enough? There's challenges. There's all these challenges throughout your career, and that's the beauty of life: you're always growing, you're always having those challenges, and how you face them.

Shane

Do you have a mapped-out career trajectory, or are you just along for the ride?

Karl Koppertop

I try to be. I'm more of the mindset of going along for the ride. I don't really have a mapped-out trajectory in that I feel like, to a degree, I've already achieved what I would like to achieve, and that’s that I'm able to make a great living performing, doing what I love to do, meeting new people, and having the effect that magic has on people. I've never had the dream of being what most people look at as a success—of being on television, or being in Vegas, or, you know, having the sold-out shows. It's just never been what I have aspired to be. It's not the style of magic that I love to do, and so, for me, the success comes in just being content and happy with where I'm at in life. And I think we talked about this before, about an interview I had. I think it was with Tony Hale. You know Tony Hale from Arrested Development.

Shane

Buster. Buster Bluth.

Karl Koppertop

Yeah, you know, as an actor or as any kind of performing artist, you get the question a lot of, “What’s next? What's next in your career? What's the next thing that you're going to do to be a success?” Because, you know, as an artist, it's like people don't ever really look at you as a success unless you are at this extreme pinnacle of being, you know, a David Copperfield or a Brad Pitt in the acting world. But, you know, his point was, you know, you don't go to your dentist or your doctor and ask them what's next in your career?

Because there are many careers out there where you go to school, you get your degree, and now you've achieved, and the next 30 years of your life is just practicing your career. And, to me, that's what I feel on that—I've learned, I've practiced. There's many different places and directions I'm going to go with what I'm doing. But, to me, I have my career, and I have what I'm doing, and I feel like I'm already there. And I've been there. It's just a matter of enjoying the ride now, you know, and going with that flow.

Shane

Well, Karl, that was very beautiful and eloquently put, and I think we could probably all learn something from that. And on that note, that brings us to the last segment of this interview. So, without further ado, here are 15 questions.

If your job only paid the bills and not a penny more, would you still continue to do it?

Karl Koppertop

I think so. I mean, I can't see myself doing much of anything else, and I feel like if it only paid the bills, I would be fine with just paying the bills. I don't necessarily do what I do for the money, but of course, with anything I decide I want to do, I want to be successful. I want to feel like I am succeeding, especially in the monetary aspect of it, just because that's part of the game of life. That's not the only game of life. Money is only a portion of what life's about, and, to me, the value of money is what it allows you to do and the freedom it allows you to have. But if you're not careful, it can also enslave you. So, to me, I think I would be doing it regardless, one way or the other. I think any artist would say the same that really love what they do.

Shane

What talent or skill do you not have that you wish you did?

Karl Koppertop

Oh, I don't know. I think there's many talents and skills that I wish I had, and I've thought about this recently and, you know, trying to want to pick up other hobbies. I feel like talents that really have an effect on people, I think, to me, are the ones that are the most important, you know. So, you know, magic certainly has an effect on people. Music, of course, has a really great effect on people. Comedy has a great effect on people.

So I think things along those lines of I wish I was maybe a better musician, or a musician. I’m not a musician at all. I'd like to learn how to play the piano a little bit better, and things along those lines. And in regards to my own particular field, I think, you know, being more naturally talented at comedy would, I think, help me in my magic and the magic side of things. I think that's also—it’s just, you know, being something that can make people laugh is always a great thing. I think there's many skills to have, but, to me, it's about, like I said, affecting people in a positive way.

Shane

Fill in the blank. I'm a success if I _____.

Karl Koppertop

I feel like I'm a success if I keep doing what I'm doing. We talked earlier. I feel like, as long as I am having a positive impact on people's lives and on my own life, I'm a success.

Shane

How about. I'm a failure if I _____.

Karl Koppertop

I think you’re a failure, or I'm a failure if I stop failing. I think it's true that the secret to success is failure, and if you start looking at failure as failure, then you have truly failed. But if you look at your mistakes and your failings as positives and as a way, a means to a greater end, then that is, you know, one definition of success, and I think that's an important way to look at life and always try to be more optimistic.

Shane

What is the best piece of advice that you followed to get where you are today?

Karl Koppertop

I mean, there's been many different things along my path or along my career, specific moments that kind of stand out, but nothing in particular that I can really say has really had a profound influence on my overall take. I've always been a big fan of balance in my life, and I guess that comes from maybe studying the Renaissance and Leonardo da Vinci. It wasn't really advice, but it's kind of an example of looking at people that kind of had a broad range of skills and talents. I've always tried to—or my goal has always been in magic—kind of have that broad base and to be able to do many different types of skills and talents, and I think that's done well for me.

Shane

What's a piece of well-intentioned advice you're glad you ignored to get where you are?

Karl Koppertop

Well, I think early on, when you own your own business—this wasn't something that I would say that I ignored, but I quickly learned that it wasn't for me—that when you have your own business as an artist, or any business in general, there's a never-ending supply of advice of what you should do to make your business better. And I think for my business, it came down to letting go of some of those things that I felt like I should be doing all the time, based upon these models of how other people have run their businesses, and finding what works best for me. To have faith in my own model, my own process for running my business, and for developing my art. And I think that’s something that was not initially easy advice to kind of ignore or to disregard, but I think it's done well for my happiness and for my overall business.

Shane

What trait do you like best about yourself?

Karl Koppertop

I think I'm pretty well-balanced.

Shane

What character trait do you like least about yourself?

Karl Koppertop

Well, I don't know. I feel like there are certainly times where I procrastinate, and I am not as efficient in achieving some of the goals that I'd like to achieve.

Shane

I'm unfamiliar with this procrastination of which you speak.

Karl Koppertop

I'm sure you are, Shane. I'm sure you are. [Laughs].

Shane

Fill in the blank, Karl. I believe every child should have the opportunity to _____.

Karl Koppertop

I feel like every child should have the opportunity to grow old but not grow up, to enjoy life as long as you can with that sense of childlike curiosity and wonder.

Shane

If you could suggest one piece of self-improvement that everyone on Earth would adopt, what would it be?

Karl Koppertop

I think more empathy. If we had more empathy towards other people, there'd be a lot less fighting, a lot less war, a lot less politics, where you can see things from different people's perspectives and really understand where they're coming from, and realize that if you had their same experiences, you might feel the same way.

Shane

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Karl Koppertop

Having recently watched Heroes, I would have to say a master of time and space like a Hero would be a pretty cool power to have.

Shane

If you could have dinner with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be?

Karl Koppertop

I think, going back into history, I feel like Tesla is certainly a very interesting individual that was a genius and ahead of his time.

Shane

I thought you’d say Leonard da Vinci.

Karl Koppertop

Yeah, da Vinci too. [Laughs].

Shane

A hospitable nearby planet has been discovered, and you've been recruited to help colonize it. You may take any three items with you that you wish.

Karl Koppertop

I mean, of course, for me, a deck of cards is an important thing to have on me at most times. Recently, I've been into working on the Rubik's Cube and Rubik's Cube Magic, so I think a Rubik's Cube is something else. And the last thing—I don't know—nothing really comes to my mind right now.

Shane

A person to colonize the new planet with two things.

Karl Koppertop

Perfect. [Laughs].

Shane

All right. Last one: You just won a lifetime achievement award, and we want your acceptance speech. There won't be any music to cue you or rush you off the stage, so you can get to all of the “thank yous” that you need. And if there's any personal cause that you want to champion, this is your soapbox, so let her rip.

Karl Koppertop

Well, there are many people to thank, of course, starting with my family and my mother specifically. You know, she always encouraged the magic bug in me and used to bring me to magic meetings as a kid when I couldn't go because I was too young to go by myself. Along the path, there have been many magicians that I have learned from and that have inspired me without knowing it, as well as have taken the time to teach me. I wouldn't be, of course, where I'm at today without all of them.

And if I had, you know—within magic, my dream, I guess, would be to let more people in the world see the type of magical performances that I've seen because I've seen so many different types of performances, from very good to very bad, and I know what magic can be at its highest art form. It can be an amazing thing that really inspires wonder, inspires curiosity in people. It can move you emotionally and can really affect you to do good for the world and to see things from different perspectives, which I think aligns with what we talked about earlier—about, you know, I wish more people could see things from different perspectives, and only in doing so can you really find the truth.

One of my favorite quotes has always been a Homer Simpson quote, which is: facts are meaningless. They can be used to prove anything. I think that's really true, and it's kind of one of the bases of magic and deception. It’s that it's not about having facts, it's about having all the facts. And you can have half or three quarters of the facts but come to a very different conclusion based upon how you approach those facts and about how—what you want to bring to them. And without having all the information, it's really hard to really get at the truth of the matter.

And I think magic can teach a lot of people about that sort of thing, in that magic will give you a different perspective if you really take the time to look at it and analyze it because you're shown these things, these complete moments of impossibility, which you know are real and that are in essence an illusion or a trick, but your mind can't find any possible way around believing what you've just seen, this impossible thing—something floated or disappeared, or your mind is just read in an impossible way. And that should inspire you to try to search for different ways of approaching the world and seeing the world as opposed to just from one perspective. And I think if more people saw the level of performances I've seen and I hope to perform in my performance career, I think more people would have those types of experiences, and I think the world would be a better place, and I think the art of magic would be as well.

Shane

Oh, that is very eloquent and very insightful.

Karl Koppertop

I'm glad you think so, Shane. [Laughs].

Shane

Who else's approval do you need?

Karl Koppertop

Right now, only yours.

Shane

If people want to book you, where should they go to do that?

Karl Koppertop

Well, my website is karlkoppertop.com. It's Karl with a K, and Koppertop K-O-P-P-E-R-T-O-P.com. For any magicians out there listening to this or aspiring magicians, my real name, of course, is Karl Hein K-A-R-L H-E-I-N, which is my website for magicians, where I sell a lot of the instructional DVDs of my creations that we mentioned earlier, and those are more for magicians that are already magicians and that aren't necessarily newbies. But feel free to email me or contact me through either of those websites, and I'll be more than happy to answer any questions about the art of magic or point you in the direction if you have an interest in going those routes.

Shane

Well, you’re off the hot seat. Karl. Thank you very much for joining me.

Karl Koppertop

It's been my pleasure. It's been great talking to you, as always, Shane.

Shane

Good talking to you too, buddy. Talk soon.

Once again, that was international performing magician, lecturer, and creator of illusions, Karl Hein, aka Karl Koppertop. For booking information, please visit www.karlhein.com, and if you're a magician wanting to learn some of his original performances and techniques, please visit www.karlkoppertop.com.

I’d like to thank everyone for joining me today. You are listening to the Live2cre8 podcast, and this is Shane Almgren reminding you to dream big, be inspired, and live creatively.