Face2Face Podcast Transcript: Interview conducted by David Peck with David Ben on March 28th, 2026
The text below was provided to IU Libraries in a PDF format by David Peck. To address accessibility issues inherent in PDF files, IU Libraries is republishing the text on this webpage. We have not edited the content provided by the Face2Face Podcast.
David Peck (00:01.048) Well, welcome back to Face2Face. And it's always just such a pleasure to be able to have these conversations. They're always live for me. And it's kind of a weird digital kind of disconnect when I realized there is no audience right now for us, for my guest and I, and my very special guest and an old friend, David Ben, is here with us. He's a magician. He's a consultant. He's an art critic. He's an author. And we're going to find out more about him and what he does and what he's currently up to. But David, thanks for joining me on the show today.
David (00:06.008) Thank you. My pleasure. We've known each other quite a lot.
David Peck (00:33.738) It's a long time and I was reflecting on that over the last couple days. I think I might've met you 45 years ago and I know my hairline ages me right out of the gate. Not so much with you. The Botox is doing wonders for you, David. It's remarkable. Speaking of magic, we met at Morrissey Magic back in maybe the 80s. And isn't that a remarkable thing just how
David (00:44.47) And my cosmetic surgery is pretty good, I think.
David (00:59.821) Could have even been the late 70s if you're into it because I, Morrissey Magic, of course you know this, is was one of the old bricks and mortar magic shops in Toronto, originally from Montreal. Herb Morrissey was a great performer, but also the archetype of a character who taught me about a different side of life and business. was a real eyeopener working part-time for him over, while I was going to university.
David Peck (01:30.326) Yeah, to say that he was a character is probably a bit of an understatement. So we may get into that, you know, a little bit of autobiography, a little bit of biography about 2 magicians, because isn't that kind of what this conversation is about? Here's the press release. Too good to be true? Question mark. Indiana University acquires legendary magic collection. Now, I know a little bit about what's going on behind the scenes here, but not a lot.
David (01:33.837) Yes.
David Peck (01:57.538) I would love for you to kind of educate me and our listeners. What's the headline all about?
David (02:03.626) Well, I guess the headline is really that as far as the history of magic goes, if you really want to keep something secret, they used to say, put it into print because it just gets buried into an avalanche of other information that is generally just accessible to other magicians if they themselves know where to find it. And I've been actively studying, reading, practicing, performing magic for now. 50 years, which is hard to imagine. And during that time, it's been my great pleasure to have been mentored, and fortunate to be mentored by many great magicians. And over number of years, acquire or be bequeathed, or just chance upon really a body of work that now has formed part of my collection, which is really a survey collection of everything in...magic and a kindred accomplishments pretty well from the 1890s, perhaps a bit earlier to the present day. And instead of being like most magicians who just want to put that up maybe in auction or their family puts it up because well, they've passed. I was inspired to deal with this why I'm in good shape and can be a part in educating people who have access to it what exactly is in there.
David Peck (03:23.192) So I noticed, and for those of you who are actually watching the interview online, and I hope you will do that, or you'll note that David has a background of books behind him. So I guess the question is, David, why didn't you give away those books as well? You've kept some back.
David (03:40.076) Well, the books behind me are mostly art books, but I did keep some magic books. Basically, I acquired over the years collections belonging to great magicians by the name of Ross Bertram, who was one of the virtualists, slight hand artist of the 20th century. P. 3 Howard Lyons, who was an influential publisher in the 1950s, Onward of Magic Secrets and a great correspondent with people like Martin Gardner. I have...lots of material from Di Vernon, who I consider the most influential magician of the 20th century, Sid Lorraine, who was a performer and writer from the 1920s until he passed away in the 80s, plus many others. And so I assembled all this material and just thought it needs a home. I worked too hard to bring it all together than to have it dispersed. And I wanted to have others to have the opportunity to access it, not to train people how to be magicians. And one of the things I want to make clear is that, at least from my perspective, the Lillie Library is not becoming Hogwarts. They're not trying to produce would-be wizards to make their livelihood from magic. For me, one of the great things about magic was that it served as a prism that broke the world into a variety of strands intellectually that I could pursue. And I think magic is a very underserved discipline. In academic circles and I think the Lilly certainly shares that vision. And one of the motivating factors for me to enter discussions with the Lilly about my collection was that they acquired a significant amount of papers and materials related to Ricky Jay, the great writer, performer, just a real artist in our field. And I thought, If the Lilly committed the resources and the time to help put to acquire Ricky's material, it meant that they're quite serious because some collect, some universities have some magic collections that have been bequeathed by hobbyists, but they're kind of buried in the stacks and they generally stopped in the 19, 20s, 30s related to the material where my collection is a broad span of the last, you know, literally 150 years.
David (06:04.747) of magic. with that initiative shown by the Lilly and just the reputation of the institution and the fact that they also have a world renowned puzzle collection and other things, I thought let's do this while I'm alive and let's get a relationship going so that we can make these materials accessible to academics in various disciplines. We can talk about that in a second as well as people who have hobbyists or even professionals who want access.
David Peck (06:36.782) David, do you believe in the notion of having a dead mentor? And I say that with respect, you know, this this idea, I imagine people going to the lily and sitting and that's, by the way, a little quick shout out that if you do want to go and access Ricky's collection or David's collection, ultimately, the lilies collection, you do have to send a note and request just don't arrive on the door. It's going to take a while to catalog all of this. David, remind me here but up to about two years potentially you've mentioned. There's a lot of books. 4
David (07:07.834) Well, I'm sure, you know, they obtained thousands of books from me, most magic periodicals of the complete files of the last hundred years, thousands of pages of correspondence, thousands of photographs. Di Vernon was one of the great silhouette artists of the 20th century. There are 250 Vernon silhouettes plus his personal scrapbooks plus other ephemera. It's going to take them a while.
David Peck (07:37.282) This is a serious research opportunity for magicians for sure. And it's going to attract those. Let's be honest and clear about that. But your hope and your desire is for it to obviously to reach out farther than that. But I do want to go back to that mentorship notion. I've known you a long time. The whole idea of learning something side by side, elbow to elbow has been something that I've thought about, I've reflected on, I've written about for many years. I'm not sure you can get the same kind of instruction out of a book, but it's something very different. There's something more almost. There's there's a ritual to it, you know, and I think what the question I'm really getting. Yeah, of course.
David (08:19.178) Well, I think there's other great benefits to it. I've had the great, you know, I've studied side by side with some great magicians. Ross Bertram pretty well every weekend, every Saturday for four plus years, for multiple hours with no money being exchanged. He just wanted his knowledge to pass on to another generation. And same with Howard Lyons opening doors for me, introducing me to other great. And I think that's part of my responsibility is to do the same, is to make that available the best way I can given the technology and resources that are available today. But one of the things that you get from reading material in particular, rather than video content or TikTok content, is that it triggers your imagination in unexpected ways. Because you're left to do an interpretation, like you're translating another language, in this case, the words on a page to a physical action or choreography. And with that becomes the happy accident, as painters like to say, where you just discover things on your own, you draw connections between subjects. And I think that's a very important life skill, one of the great skills about being a magician. In fact, I was speaking with someone who was an opera singer a few weeks ago, and they asked me, what did I, what does, What do I believe is the single greatest skill that a magician must have? With an opera singer, I think they said that it's getting the mental space in your head to really hit those 5 high notes. But I think the magic's very difficult to do. And it's difficult to do because by and large, you have to have the digital dexterity of a musician, a piano player. The sense of timing of a comedian, the reverberation of an opera singer, the grace of a dancer, and you have to generally write your own material and choreograph it and do all those things. So you're wearing many, many hats as opposed to often performing arts fields, which are, you don't have to worry so many. And you also, the big thing you have to have to make this all work together is a capacity for management. You have to be able to...develop those skills, use them in real time, think about who your audience is, how they're gonna react, pick the right material for that person, interact with them, deal with contingencies when things don't always go right. And so Vernon and another performer, Francis Carlisle, used to say that great magicians had that capacity for management. And I think one of the things that's lovely about studying magic and its branches, be it fraudulent spirit mediums, psychics, professional, you know. Card sheets and hustlers who are all offshoots and represented in my collection. I like to say magic can be used for good and evil. You can do a card trick to entertain someone, but you can also use it to defraud them of money. You can read someone's mind for entertainment purposes, or you can convince them you have some special gift and you can start advising them how to organize their personal finances, which leads into discussions of ethics and magic and whole other things. I, pardon?
David Peck (11:29.664) I could use some help in that area, David. I could use a little bit of help in that area.
David (11:33.692) Right. Well, we can deal with that. But the idea that you need that capacity of management, I think, to really process all of that. I think that's one of the great things about seeing being surrounded by a broad range of material. It gives you that opportunity to see things from different points of view and read and learn about the strategies that others have used to manage all of that. So because I think those lessons transcend performance of magic, they're useful in day-to-day life.
David Peck (12:07.5) I think where I was kind of going with that ultimately was not just about the idea of mentorship and side by side and knowledge and so on was about the ritual of actually going to the lily, of sitting down, of pulling out some of these texts. I'm getting goosebumps of thinking. I love that happy accident comment that you made. Isn't that why we do science for those moments, right? It's about curiosity is this superpower that leads to these discoveries. 6
David (12:34.662) Right.
David Peck (12:36.332) I just thought of myself sitting at the library, the fire burning to the left of me, you know, my, you know, anyway.
David (12:40.007) Well, the Lilly also has a lot of the materials available online and I think so you can maybe have a virtual fireside place there but I think just getting access to things that are remain hidden for so long and getting some direction either from others who've walked down that path in or outside or digitally with some place like the Lilly.
David Peck (12:45.748) There you go. Different experience. That's right. Hmm.
David (13:06.211) Or other performers or specialists in other fields, be it philosophy, be it science, be it ethics, be it cinema studies, it, you know, pick your discipline and there's gonna be a tie into magic. One of the things I love about magic is that we've been around for thousands of years. If any profession has to deal with adversity and change from being burned at the stake as a witchcraft to, you you name it, the advent of you know, motion pictures to destroy the live performance market to radio, to television, to, you know, all of these things provide challenges. yet magicians have adapted both with material style manner of performance and still building on the legacy of the magicians who came before them to adapt and thrive.
David Peck (13:57.294) I think this is fair to say, as we mentioned earlier, I've known you a long time. We've had this friendship and relationship and I've always had a sense from you that it wasn't just about the effect. It wasn't just about the magic, the performance, the applause, the theater. There was something else going on below the surface. And I'd love to hear if I'm on the right track there. know, Bentham talked about the intellectual pursuits, right?
David (14:22.247) Well, I think so because I think that one of the lessons I learned from a man named Mel Stover, who was a brilliant sort of hobbyist, but puzzle inventor, bridge expert, who's some of his puzzles are in the collection at the the Lille. Mel, when I was performing a big break for me was a theatrical show called The Conjurer some 30 plus years ago at 7 the Shaw Festival. Niagara on the lake. And Mel said to me, never forget, people love and hate the exact same things. So at the end of the day, you want to do things that you're interested in doing, and it's your passion that comes across for those things that will ultimately go across the footlights. And so applause is great, and not to belittle it, but if you've done it a long time, by and large, you've probably had your fill of applause, and they're There are other things at stake that motivates you to pursue this as your passion. And for me, I love the ingenuity of the magic solution. I love the stagecraft. I love the theater of it. I love the fact that magic is pre-tick-tock and that you have to distill your magical effect down to its essence. It's all compression. So how do you story tell a beginning, a middle, and an end? And just a few seconds. And those are lifelong issues, both for magicians and today in our society when soundbites last a matter of seconds and to really grab that attention and hold people. I think there are many lessons that you can learn from studying how magicians have approached it. So those are the things that I look to. And just, I love the history because magic is really a universal. I joke that Magic is really like the Big Mac as an economic barometer where people price a Big Mac in different jurisdictions around the world and it can determine the relative value of currencies on the marketplace on how much will it cost to buy a Big Mac. Magicians have debated the same sorts of magical problems throughout the world for hundreds and hundreds of years. And so you can go to any culture and see how they've applied some of those principles. Collection of the Lillianite books from Japan, from China, from various jurisdictions. And when you look at them over the historical context, it tells us a lot about how far we've come and how far we haven't come and how we're very different yet how we're the same. And I find that just an endless source of fascination that I can profit from both intellectually and let's be frank, economically.
David Peck (17:13.656) You know, I think it was, well, was Ecclesiastes, whoever wrote that that said there was nothing new under the sun. And then, you know, many years later, Pascal said that the creative act was the connection. I'm sure others have said it as well. Do you feel, you talked about the ingenuity and you've talked about curiosity and I want to get into this idea of the, it being almost like an umbrella for other pursuits, as you've mentioned a couple of times, I think. is that, is the connection 8
David (17:39.905) Well, one of the things I've always enjoyed is that magic doesn't really care where you come from, creed, religion, wealth. The people who love magic are really embracing ideas. And I've been friends with some really prominent business people who love the magic. And they love the idea that they could put something as simple as a deck of cards in a briefcase or leave it on their desk.
David Peck (17:43.767) Important for you?
David (18:11.309) And actually debate intellectual problems that people are trying to solve or improve or streamline to get that efficient, beautiful solution for hundreds of years. And you feel part of that process, that legacy, and seeing what people have done before you and your own stamp and twist and turn on how to improve it. So I think that's one of the enriching things about magic as a creative pursuit. And frankly, I think...I advise people not to pursue magic as a livelihood because it is very difficult. And the story I like to relate is that there was a great magician, Dr. Elliott from the East coast and the 1890s early 20th century who was also at Harvard and he His father went to T. Nelson Downs, one of the great magicians of the time period, to try to talk, to get Downs to tell his son to give up magic. He should be the doctor he's trained to be. And Downs apparently said, well, I can't, there's no point. Once you're bitten by the bug, you're bitten by the bug, you can't go back. And I say for people who want to consider doing this as a livelihood, there are very few...academic programs in the world that actually have the rigor of something that you would train for dance or music or things like that. And so, and that's not what the Lully is about, at from my understanding, without trying to, as I said, create professional magicians. Mind you, Jay Marshall, the late Dean of American Magicians said to me, one of the reasons he gravitated towards magic, and he was on the Ed Sullivan show, I think 17 times, was because you never have the highs and lows of other variety of arts. It's actually probably easier to make it as a good living during magic than as a musician or an actor or a visual artist, interestingly enough. But what I think magic can do by studying it is learn about our world and extrapolate principles from that. There's a big buzz about Houdini this year because it's the 100th anniversary of Houdini's passing and Houdini is generally the name on most people's lips in the public if they think of a magician. One of the things I marvel about Houdini is the fact that he really invented the concept of the flash mob as a marketing tool. in the early 20th century, he'd say, I'm gonna do a straight jacket escape suspended upside down from a five pole. He'd get...tens of thousands of people just coming out to see that stunt. If that isn't a massive 9 flash mob, I don't know what is. So those techniques magicians have been playing with for years and years and years and I think those sorts of insights into business and to marketing and to creative problem solving because as you know I believe everything comes down to problem solving. We're magicians, we're professional problem solvers and I think the lessons that the techniques that magicians use about defining objectives and how to generate solutions using idea generation techniques and how to evaluate the best solutions, differentiating between real risk and perceived risk. I that's important. The financial markets, it's important in your livelihood if you're escaping from a straightjacket suspended, you know, many stories up and then putting those implementation strategies together. Those are all magic techniques that can be applied in a variety of fields.
David Peck (21:51.566) Do you think the Lilly collection gets us a step closer to a university, maybe Indiana, offering up a program, you've talked about rigor and intellectual pursuit and so on. And I think you and I both agree on that beautiful thread that connects so many different disciplines that are connected to magic. And you know, from a philosophical perspective, on a simple level, for example, you know, what what is what is the ethics of deception? Like, what does that even mean?
David (22:03.17) Right. Forever.
David Peck (22:19.906) Well, let's go to the lily to find out.
David (22:22.049) Right, well, I'm hopeful of that. I'm of the era when I went to University of Toronto and enrolled in the sort of cinema studies program, which was just getting off the ground. There was no real formal cinema studies program initially. It was a variety of professors who shared a passion for cinema, who started banding together to offer courses on it, not to create filmmakers, but just to give insight into film as an art form, how it's created, manipulated from a historical point of view, content, right? I mean, you can go off on all these different branches. And so I would, I'm hoping that if you build it, they will come to use that phrase. And how it's going to come initially is attracting or making some scholars aware in different disciplines that they probably never considered looking at their particular discipline through what I call the prism of magic. 10 To see what metaphors or examples exist related to magic that had great impact on theirs. For example, ethics. There's the expression of Carl Germain, a great wizard, magician from the early 20th century, who has apparently said that magic is the most honest of professions because we tell you we're going to lie and cheat and we do. And I like to now think of, when does that lie and cheat become...so significant that you can't say it's performed honestly, which gets us back into that realm of mentalism or attributing other things other than the actual fact that we're deceivers.
David Peck (24:02.798) How about foreign policy or law or, you know, it just, it's everywhere?
David (24:07.195) It's everywhere. It's everywhere. And I think one of the great things about magic is that it teaches you to challenge assumptions. I'm hoping the experience for people when they see magic is what I have had this discussion, the glance versus the gaze. And when they glance at something, I want them to experience wonder because wonder ignites curiosity. And science in the arts. And unless you can experience wonder and have that say, how is that possible or get caught up in that emotionally, this whole concept of aesthetic motion coined by Roger Fry and Clyde Bell, where music they say is sort of the ultimate of aesthetic motion. There are pieces of music that actually move people to tears. When motion pictures first came out and you saw the train running into a station, people were scared. They hadn't really seen that. Horror movies, illicit aesthetic emotion, that fright. We know that we're not really in danger, but you experience that sensation. And so I think that once you get past that, however, and I think you'd never want to release, know, give that up. You want to at least experience the rush of wonder initially. But once you get beyond that and you start really gazing at something to work out the nuances and figure out how things are done, that opens up so many other avenues and applications and other fields. And I think that's what magic is really fantastic at. Creating people to challenge assumptions because once they see wonder or they're curious about how to do something, they can then start challenging assumptions. That's what magicians do. Just because the pack is shuffled doesn't mean it's actually shuffled. Just because, you That's whole idea of an illusion in a way. You assume, you make an assumption that this is what you're seeing when in fact it may not be true. And I think in today's world, pick your discipline. Doesn't matter. Challenging assumptions in this ever-changing world is very important. Because with magicians, they know that Zen philosophical statement that the only thing constant in life is change, but the assumptions you work today may not apply tomorrow. learning to challenge assumptions 11
David (26:35.551) is just a great life skill. Not to disparage anyone's idea, it's just to say, for me personally, what's going on here that I'm not seeing? Is it as I see or is there something else at work? And that I think is a necessary life survival skill in this day and age.
David Peck (26:53.386) Well, what's so beautiful about that to me is it's not about being, you know, as a philosopher, I've been accused of being cynical before and no, no, I'm just asking a deeper question. I'm trying to peel back a layer to get to a better sense of, of meaning and, and, and, and understanding. And I think, I think that's where you're taking us.
David (27:11.104) Right. mean, I love getting caught up in illusion to it and it inspires me to go beyond, but I'm also pretty pragmatic. As you know, I practiced briefly as a lawyer and that was I left the practice of law in 1990. So that was a long time ago, but the training was great. And I think being a magician has taught me to be very pragmatic. And I think that's people who study magic and I think at the Lilly if various you know what I think of various disciplines I think of how much how many characters and novels and screenplays have been magicians and There's just hundreds of hundreds of novels and other books related Featuring those characters the locked room murder mysteries and the knives out series. It's all stems back from that sort of whodunit Mystery it has a magical mindset to it. Obviously psychology, ethics, science, the whole movement today of scientists studying behavior and the concept that you think you have free will when you have none. Well, magicians have been, I coined the phrase, virtual participation decades ago. You want people to think when they're participating they're actually have a hand in determining the course of events when really if the magician orchestrates things properly. That not a free will that a participant has is really limited. So these apply to different areas of study, the materials there. I'm hoping we get visiting scholars because there are scholars now at various universities around the world who specialize or have an interest in magic. And they've been able to access a couple other collections, a collection at the Library of Congress and at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. Those tend to stop early part of the 20th century as opposed to mine. Which continues right through to today. So I'm hoping that those scholars visit and want to have access to what's on at the Lillie, just not my work, but Ricky's work. And more importantly, I hope this is a catalyst for other collections to go there. I still have a lot of material to dispose of. We have one of them through Magic Canap, a charitable foundation I set up with the 12 Patrick Watson and Daniel Zuckerbrot years ago, we have probably the world's largest repository of film related to magic and magicians. And so we plan on placing that at an institution and obviously the Lilly is the most likely candidate, but you know, they have to be able to house, there's just many questions at this time.
David Peck (29:57.152) Of course. So, David, I'm going to quote you here. for me, so for me, magic is the prism that refracts problems into individual strands or beams that enable me to see the world in many colors and multiple dimensions, close quote. I mean, you've just been talking about that at great length, really, it seems to me. So the student, the scholar, the academic is coming to the lily to best.
David Peck (30:24.734) Look for footnotes about another problem about about another issue about right isn't
David (30:29.82) Right, I think they can come for a couple of reasons. One is they may have a specific question. They may be interested in spiritualism as practiced in the late 19th century in America when it had its rise with the, particularly after the US Civil War. In fact, after great personal hardship in the world, particularly war, be it the Civil War, the First World War, know, pick your battle, when many people seem to have perished unnecessarily, the bereaved want to know are they okay in that afterlife or that spiritual sense and you know, it's a fine line, you know belief systems like that. It's open for people who can really abuse it but for people who study that then and now the lily will be a great source. People place bets on just about anything and my collection at the lily has a great deal of gambling related material and the evolution of card cheating over the past hundreds of years and other casino related games or just private games.
David Peck (31:42.923) A first edition of the Grand Expose of the Science of Gambling, right?
David (31:47.454) Yes, so, of which there's less than 20 copies in existence. So for someone who's interested in that, early Americana, those histories, vaudeville, how the entertainment industry exploded and with the birth of the railroads or the development of the railroads across America while Europe was in theaters of war and the center of power sort of shifted in the entertainment industry from the strife that's over in Europe. 13 To taking root in that golden age of America. So there's all of those things that somebody can explore, but others can just explore. in the book, the main text by the people who invented the greatest illusions of the last 150 years, just from a design point of view, how they put that together. So we'll get that, and I'm hoping when they stumble into those areas, they will spend the time to stumble onto another area that they hadn't considered. And then it's drawing those connections between those areas that give a big picture. So this will all take time though. It's not gonna be an overnight sensation. In fact, the line in show business is that a person is a 10 year overnight sensation. And you forget the 10 years that I imagine that for the Lilly or any other institution that wants to build a similar program, their goal should really be to become a 10 year overnight sensation.
David Peck (33:00.075) Yeah. You've just returned from Europe. You've been lecturing to magicians on a variety of things and probably showing them the odd card trick here and there as well. Can you talk a little bit about maybe a theme that stuck out for you or maybe a question that kept coming up as you went from place to place?
David (33:21.628) Yes. Well, I think the main question is, I've been, I keep saying, fortunate to have studied with some master magicians and they by and large haven't seen the style of work that I do. What's this concept of naturalness of making your movements choreographed so that when people just glance at them rather than gaze at them, they just flows by and it makes everything seem sort of effortless. I was primarily brought over there to be a living example of a style of performing that I obviously believe for my mentors is creates as the greatest impact for magic. But it was also to demystify or break down sort of my process on how we compose magic. You forget that magic isn't just pulled out of thin air that people actually compose it. They don't get the credit for composing it. There were never any performance rights organizations for like there were for musicians who compose songs and are selling sheet music. Where you get a royalty when that piece of sheet music is sold. So by and large, magic and its secrets has been fair game and that's a whole other area for protection. How do you protect secrets? How do they get disseminated? How do you profit from them? And not just magic secrets, but any secret. Well, magicians have been, you know, grappling with that for for centuries. So from my point of view, it's really, I spent a lot of time talking about semiotics, how I structure material that everything is a series of signs, which to quote Verne, you sort of layout so the spectator defeats themselves with their 14 own logic. I leave breadcrumbs of imagery. And the perfect example is I could shuffle a deck of cards and it looks like the cards are being mixed, but really not a single card has been altered in its sequence. so from, the denotation is that the cards are, you know, you see me shuffling cards, but the connotation is, well, they're in some random order, which may not be the case at all. And so I spent a lot of time talking about the imagery, the signs that magicians have as part and parcel of their work, and how to orchestrate those things so that the spectator defeats themselves with their own logic. So I...I, you know, many different topics, things related to, yeah.
David Peck (36:00.662) So, so many. mean, I'm going down an epistemological route to sort of that from to like nature. We're not going to dive into that now because if we do, we'll lose most of our listeners. so, so as we get closer to a wrap here, David, and I knew this was going to happen, we were going to get to the end and I was going to feel like, wow, we just, we just barely started. The conversation is definitely not over and I'm hoping we can step into a few others. Before I ask you a question about
David Peck (36:29.25) You mentioned accessibility. You also talked about responsibility, at least yours. I want to talk about that a little bit. any favorites in the collection that really stand out for you that I don't know that you might want? Of course, it would depend on a discipline, but that you might want people to pay attention to.
David (36:31.14) Yes. Sure. Okay. Well, as it becomes available, P. Howard Lyons was a major breakthrough in magic publishing. He published a small magazine called Ibbidum in the 1950s where every cover was individually silkscreened by his wife, Pat Lyons. And Howard sort of introducing sort of an avant-garde approach to magic. And one of the things, not only do I have all of Howard's personal papers that he of his own material, but his correspondence with people like Martin Gardner and others just debating ideas. I have lot of the personal papers of Stuart James there. Stuart James invented Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats theory of idea generation before de Bono was born. He invented Brian Eno's, David Bowie's Oblique Strategies deck before they were born. And that material is in there as far as some of their writings. Vernon's silhouettes. I think you'll see online he cut a silhouette of Roosevelt when Roosevelt was campaigning to become president for his first term, cut by Vernon, signed by Vernon and Roosevelt, but part of a collection of hundreds, including his scrapbook. And one of the things that distinguish great performers is their ability to communicate 15 their love for their audience across the footlights. I think that's one of the things that's a hallmark of a great performer. And you see that in Vernon's even as silhouette kind of that period for the subjects. There's a real sort of love there. There's obviously some rare gambling tax. There's Quinn's book. And what I loved about his book on cheating is that he would do a speaking circuit on the evils of gambling. And he would used that time to also get into illicit card games, even though he was supposed to be reformed gambler. The copy that I have was signed by Quinn. One of the interesting things when I look at my responsibilities, that this collection belonged to so many people, I was just the custodian of it. And Magic Collectors use a metaphor of the river, we pan these objects out of the river, and there's a certain categorical imperative that we put it back into the river, fully in better shape than we retrieved it so somebody else can pan for it themselves and experience that. Now, some collectors may take issue that this giant body of water that is my collection has now been siphoned off, but I like to say it's a sanctuary, sort of a reserve where you can go and still pan for treasures, but it's now available to...everyone to go in and experience that thrill of discovery.
David Peck (39:43.894) Yeah, I love that. So many more happy accidents that are going to be occurring as a result of this. just as we wrap, and if you do want to reach out, you can do that. You can do it through the Lilly Library online, and it's going to be available in the not so distant future. I would imagine they'll probably maybe step the release and stay tuned for more information. David, can you just... I'm fascinated. I love sanctuary. I love reserve. You said you need to provide accessibility as a responsibility, like as your responsibility to others. And I wonder, you know, the whole idea of keeping secrets is completely the opposite. There's a generosity there that stands out to me.
David (40:21.333) Right. Right, but you know, magicians tend to forget, you know, there's different levels of knowledge and magic. And I think a lot of people get upset when they see there's the public exposure of magic secrets. When virtually most of the great text and magic over the last 150 years were written primarily for the general public because that's how they encourage other people to get into the subject. And frankly, unless you, as you said earlier, spent some time reading it and deciphering it, it's just, they're just gonna put it down because it doesn't make any sense to them. But that responsibility, I look at, I acquired as a collector in Toronto, Tom Ransom, whose interests in particular were Victorian and Edwardian conjuring books. 16 And he spent, Tom's in his 90s now, he spent pretty well, you know, close to 80 years buying, selling, upgrading magic. And I ended up with his collection and the pristine copies of all those. But Tom also put notes and annotations in the Flyleafs there, bibliographical data, corrections, things like that. So people were interested in that era of magic. They can go there and they can not only see a beautiful copy of that book like it just came out the press but Tom's loving clippings that he put in there and each book has my book plate in it but I also put a pencil on the book plate the source. I TSR I mean that came from Tom Ransom's collection. So combining all these things and again I really hope I guess there's two barometers for success that I will use as as measurement. One is the people who come to use that both internally, academics at the Lili, and also visiting academics and visiting scholars or people with an interest in magic. But equally important to me is I would love other collectors or people who have papers or things related to magic to contact the Lili to say, maybe this is the home for it. Because I would dearly love to create an epicenter of magic.
David (42:46.812) And I think that epicenter can be the Lilly Library, but it's not gonna be just Ricky's collection. It's just not gonna be mine, but I'm hoping that this is the thin edge of the wedge that we grow together over the next 10 years. So that all of a sudden people, know, automatically think of the Lilly as a spot where they can discover whole new worlds and imagine the impossible.
David Peck (43:11.692) Yeah, that's a beautiful way to end. But I do want to ask you one last thing about the lily itself. Was it their commitment? Was it their passion? You know, it's one of the world's largest rare collections of books and manuscripts and some pretty, pretty incredible pieces there. Can you just as we wrap
David (43:25.245) It's well it starts with unequivocally from my point of view it started with the vision of Joel Silver at the Lillie and and his team and I've had you know conversations with them I've had visits from them into Toronto it's across the board and the enthusiasm they see across the board to develop this as an area, make it accessible to the public. And the other thing that I really loved about the Lillie was they've had a history of people doing independent areas of study for academic credentials. That you don't necessarily have to have an undergraduate degree in magic because there really isn't such a thing, but you can specialize in area. They will assist in helping you achieve those goals. 17 There's something also, I think about its placement geographically. you know, there's the Midwest shares a certain thing, I think with my background, you know, in Canada, that everybody thinks the world takes place in other centers, you know, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, pick your spot, right? But there's something very beneficial being an outsider. Because when you're an outsider looking in, you can have one foot in and experience that, but you can also look at it a different perspective. And I've produced theater, particularly magic-related theater for decades. And anytime I see a show, I love buying tickets and sitting in the last seats of the audience. Because you get to see the spectacle on stage, but you also get to see how the audience reacts. And you really get two shows in one. And I think that's a great vantage point. And I think being where they're located, the Lilly, they get the best of what's happened in LA as a magic center, Las Vegas, New York, Chicago, which was a fantastic magic center. So being in that heart land, I think allows you to have one foot in, one foot out and observations key, I think to developing as an artist or in any discipline. So that's one of the reasons it just seemed right to place it there.
David Peck (45:56.398) Well, I love that you've done it. I've loved that you had the vision and the foresight is along with the lily to accept it. look forward to having more conversations. Indiana University acquires legendary magic collection is the headline of the press release. Stay tuned for more information about it. David, thanks so much for joining me. And I know we really have just scratched the surface and looking forward to how's this turning the next page.
David (46:22.504) Okay, cheers. Thanks for having me.
Interview conducted by David Peck for Face2Face on March 28th, 2026