Q+A: Brian Brushwood, Scam School

Let's face it. Sometimes? Your friends? Not so interesting. You might be sitting at the bar, rehashing the latest slight your pal is dealing with in love/work/family, wondering how you got so boring.

But that's when you bust out the matches, the napkins, and the quarters and start doing the bar tricks that magician Brian Brushwood teaches in every episode of Scam School. (You can read my review of the podcast here.) No matter how dull the conversation was before, these tricks will bring a little life to the evening.

Brushwood agreed to answer a few questions for Atomic Podcasts, shedding some light on his most popular tricks, how he started his unconventional brand of magic, and the injuries he's incurred while practicing and performing his most dangerous stunts.

You have a successful career as a magician—when and why did you decide to add a podcast?
After my first TV deal tanked, I was pretty ticked. I had come up with an exciting format with some outrageous things to try, but the top brass at the network made me comb my hair, put on a sweater, and shoot demos of the cheapest and least interesting ideas. Needless to say, they got a very bland product, and I was unsurprised when they took a pass on it. That’s when I really got interested in podcasts. It was an opportunity for someone like me without a big, established name to have much more creative control over their show.

Do you have a most requested trick? Why do you suspect it's so popular?
Every time I come back to a college, the first question from the students is “are you going to do the Mr. Happypants routine?” (Check it out here, starting at the 2:20 mark) I’m pretty sure he’s the real star of the show now…

Your Wikipedia entry refers to the type of magic you do as "bizarre"—fire eating, escapes, breaking cinder blocks over your head. What drew you to this type of thing in the first place?
I started off trained in classic manipulation and sleight-of-hand. Real knucklebusting stuff with cards and coins. Then, during one show, I threw in the human blockhead as an afterthought (see here at 1:30), and the reaction was amazing. It blew away everything the heavy sleight-of-hand had gotten. So I learned to eat fire. Then I learned to break bricks over my head, and bit by bit, the show became the bizarre monstrosity it is today.

A lot of these tricks involve fire, alcohol, and some risk of bodily harm. Have you ever gotten yourself in trouble as a result of your tricks?
Everything in the show has taken a little bite out of me. I’ve burned my lips eating fire. I’ve got scars down my arm from pieces of falling bricks. I’ve even cut my lip doing the “skewer through tongue” bit (Find it here, at 0:43). But so far, nothing too scary has happened. Houdini had a philosophy of “no permanent damage;” he’d do anything that wouldn’t kill or incapacitate him, and I’ve tried to follow in those footsteps. I might get a burn from the fire or a scratch from the brick, but hopefully I’m not looking at anything that would take me out of performing permanently.

What are your favorite podcasts?
The Totally Rad Show, PC Gamer podcast, This Week in Tech, and Dan Carlin’s brilliant show “Common Sense.”