Hi, I'm Lovar Burton and this is Lovar Burton Reads.

In every episode I handpick a different piece of short fiction and read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will

too.

I'm a big magic fan. I mean I love I love magic. I remember years ago I was sitting

in a theater I went to see Penn and Teller off Broadway in New York and I'm a huge fan and

this was maybe 30 years ago and they were just getting known by the public and so they were

really a phenomenon right and so I got this ticket and I went and you know during the course

of the show they started asking for volunteers and I was like oh no don't pick me normally people

be yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and I was like like like near the front row and I just tried to

shrink because I did I did not want to be picked by Penn and Teller to be any part of what they

were doing on stage you know what I mean you know there's an aspect to their magic it's a

little scary to me because it's it's so good and weird you know odd and off-putting sometimes

just like they are so I mean I really think that I was nervous about taking part because of that

feeling of being out of control right because magic can seem to define logic and the laws of

physics I mean it challenges our brains and our reality and I think every person who sees an

amazing trick wants to know how it happened and maybe it's because when someone performs a

magic trick they hold knowledge that they won't reveal to us and in that knowledge comes power

the audience is actually in a state of powerlessness in the story I'm going to read today a young

boy is driven by his desire to know how magic works he wants to know the secrets behind it he wants

to understand how it all comes together so that he can master it and in the end he learns the

consequences of that desire for knowledge the court magician was written by Sarah Pinsker and

...