All my TV shows are done live in front of audiences, and all the material I take on the road and travel with them test them for hundreds and hundreds of shows before I shoot them for TV.

Magic is used in espionage, all the time, for clandestine things. I've got a whole library from a gentleman who was hired by the CIA to create magic technology for the use of anti-terrorism.

Let sleeping dogs lie — who wants to rouse 'em?

I have a bunch of islands in the Bahamas that we made into this amazing, magical place. And we have these birds; they're trained to do certain things on the island, which is awesome. These toucans had a baby toucan, and the baby toucan, every hour that you'd look at this toucan, he would change.

I was 16 at the time, and I came backstage and started hanging out with them. I said, "Well, maybe you can 'vanish' the silk this way." The opening was a black stage while the "Magic to Do" song started playing. All you saw were hands, lit by Jules Fisher, and then Ben Vereen would appear beyond the hands, and at the end of the scene he would vanish a silk. The spotlight would hit a red spot on the floor where you'd see the silk on the floor. He'd pull the silk out of the floor and it became the entire set coming out of the floor.

I'm a magician, not a singer.

What I've tried to do in my stage magic is to take a trick and give it an emotional hook.