Asi Wind was a guest on The Daily Show recently to promote his More Than Magic tour, and sat down with host Josh Johnson for an 18-minute segment where he not only performed magic, but talked about his philosophy and inspiration for the art.
Johnson kicked off the interview by praising Asi for, among other things, being “the only magician that really looks like a normal person.”
“I’m just not naturally cool,” Asi joked before talking how he got into magic (he saw a magician disappear a lit cigarette into his fist when he was a child) and performing his first trick: a version of Dan Harlan’s Card Toon, where the animated stick figure finds not one, but two chosen cards. Asi then used that routine to explain magic to a lay audience.
“It starts with a dream....” he said. “That [trick] I did with the cards, it’s a modern classic, and this is my take on it. I wanted the idea of that little figure—it would be able to guess two cards. So how do you do this? And you start, and you think, and you make a million versions until you get to a place: ‘OK, this looks good.’ And it’s a lot of work, and our job is to make it look effortless, of course, but it’s not. It’s a lot of work.”
Asi goes on to perform a trick where he burns a hole in a U.S. map with an incense stick, and the burn travels and ends on Johnson’s chosen city. He also uses another deck to cut to Johnson’s chosen card, and easily finds another as well.
“I’m so glad you haven’t started a cult,” Johnson said, suitably impressed, at the end of Asi’s time. “Thank you so much for being here.”
Photos courtesy of The Daily Show