Jamy Swiss

An acclaimed master of the challenging art of sleight of hand, Jamy Ian Swiss has performed magic throughout the United States for presenters ranging from Fortune 500 companies to the Smithsonian Institution. Swiss is the author of several books including a collection of essays entitled Shattering Illusions; The Art of Magic (the companion to the PBS documentary); and collaborated with Edward Tufte on a chapter in the book Visual Explanations. Swiss has made television appearances in the United States, Europe and Japan, including U.S. appearances on CBS 48 Hours, PBS Nova and the PBS documentary The Art of Magic, Comedy Central, and repeat appearances on The Today Show. Behind the cameras, Swiss has produced and written for television including Penn & Teller’s Sin City Spectacular; The Virtual Magician, which aired in 47 countries; and the Discovery Channel special, Cracking the Con Games. He is also a co-producer of New York’s longest-running Off-Broadway magic show, Monday Night Magic, created in 1997. In speaking engagements, Swiss uses “magical metaphors” to address business audiences about creativity, brainstorming, risk management and more; in the past year he has been a presenter at the EG: The Entertainment Gathering (www.the-eg.com); Serious Play, the Art Center Design Conference (http://www2.artcenter.edu/designconference/); and the Flash Forward Conference (www.flashforwardconference.com), where he also hosted the Flash Forward Awards program. An expert in all manner of deception, Swiss has lectured to magicians in 13 countries; to scientists and academics on “The Illusion of Psychic Powers”; to prosecutors and police agencies about con games and street scams; and to casino industry executives about cheating at card games. He is a founder of the National Capital Area Skeptics, and of the New York City Skeptics; a contributor to Skeptic magazine; an associate of the Center for Inquiry Transnational; and a longtime colleague of James Randi, the world’s premiere debunker of psychic fraud and paranormal claims. The subject of a lengthy 2008 profile The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik writes, “Swiss is widely thought to have one of the most masterly sleight-of-hand techniques in the world today … like seeing Yo-Yo Ma.”