Foundation Nation
Foundation Nation
S5 - E7: Part 3 of a special 3 part series "Spellbinding Stories from Mentalist Nate Jester"
Prepare to be spellbound as Nate Jester, a masterful Seattle mentalist, joins me, Matthew Cote, on Foundation Nation to unravel the mysteries of magic and mentalism. Nate pulls back the curtain on a career steeped in wonder, sharing tales that will leave your mind reeling and revealing the subtleties that separate mentalism from traditional magic. Whether it's his admiration for the intellect of his audience or the complex tricks that still perplex him, Nate's insights transport us into the world of the greatest illusionists like David Copperfield and David Blaine, seen through the lens of a seasoned expert.
In our series closer, we shift from the stage to the spirit of giving, with Nate recalling how his magic has intersected with philanthropy to bring joy and dental care to children in need. This remarkable journey through the art of mentalism underscores the profound impact of live performance, igniting wonder in the eyes of beholders. For those seeking to infuse their events with an extraordinary flair, Nate's anecdotes are a treasure trove of inspiration.
Hello and welcome to Foundation Nation. I'm your host, matthew Cote. Today on the podcast we're going to talk about some interesting recent goings-ons in our beautiful state and maybe even a few things going on in this amazing round thing we call home.
Speaker 2:Hello, welcome to Foundation Nation. I'm Matthew Cote. Along with my guest on this mini-series.
Speaker 3:My name is Nate Jester. I'm a mentalist here in Seattle and I entertain private parties and corporate events. Thanks for having me Awesome.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's awesome. I'm glad you're here. We've been spending this little mini-series talking about magic coming to the United States, magic and magic and mentalism and mentalists. What do you call two mentalists Mentalists? What do you call one mentalist A mentalist? Is that, like Legos, there's not even a word Legos, it's only Lego, one Lego, lego, a billion Legos, lego. Do you know that? I just found that out.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, yeah, I would have called them Legos.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, you know, look at all those Lego Lego, yeah, interesting.
Speaker 3:Okay, according to the Lego Engineers article that I read, I'm going to have to correct the terminology around my house with the kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey, pick up all those Lego. Don't cry. It's hard to stop and not drop the S I'm gonna stick with Legos, yeah, for instance yeah. I'm like speaking wrong anyway. So what's been going on? What are you and the family been up to these days?
Speaker 3:Working.
Speaker 2:Working.
Speaker 3:I'm working, kids are busy with school. My oldest is in La Crosse, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:La Crosse is. My boys are in that too. Yeah, that is fun to watch. Yeah, have you been to any of the events yet?
Speaker 3:He's like three practices in his first high school sport. Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 2:That's cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Wait till you go and you see somebody like high stick them. Yeah, I played ice hockey.
Speaker 3:I'm telling you I'm like it's gonna hurt but you're gonna love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're gonna get the pain. Amps you up, oh man.
Speaker 3:You're gonna get. You get out all your anger, your frustration, and then you go home and sleep like a bear.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, and wake up all crickly and cracked like old men, yeah yeah, that's why I like it, yeah, so I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the more intense mental. Well, actually I want to do too. I want to talk about magic tricks and mentalism, some of the, some of the like how some shit that kind of blew your mind and you're maybe even still to this day like how the hell. So let's start with a couple of magic tricks that you've encountered in your life that are kind of like interesting or challenging, or you questioned or just straight up, blew your mind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so earlier on, my mind would be blown years ago. I've been doing this for 32 years, 32 years, 32 years, god damn. I don't even say that on my website anymore, because it sounds too old. I just said 20 plus years experience. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm old, I'm good, call me.
Speaker 3:Those young Gen.
Speaker 2:Z years are like how old is this guy? Yeah, yeah, how is this yeah?
Speaker 3:Like I said, I started when I was 12. So that's when my mind would be blown. But it's like, think of it this way a concert pianist or a chef yeah you know walk into a restaurant and just be like, oh my God, oh my God, what did you do? Like I have no idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Or what that song? How in the hell do you do that? They wouldn't necessarily have that point of view. Yeah, they've been doing it so long. You know techniques, something new and innovative comes around. But you're just. You appreciate the variety, the freshness, the skill, the creativity, the development.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's largely where I am, and that's what I really like to see.
Speaker 2:So give me an experience that you've run to say in the last two years.
Speaker 3:I hired a consultant to work with me. He worked with David Copperfield and David Blaine and he's not a performer. He would create tricks and that's what he did. For these guys is, when you get top level like that, they usually work with consultants like David Blaine, like I said, and they help them create illusions and stuff. So he blew my mind on just thought processes that he shared with me that essentially, in my opinion, enabled me to tap into these guys mine, copperfield, blaine and others, damn yeah, and dine them over.
Speaker 2:You know, in Europe Is Copperfield and Blaine. Are they mentalists or magicians, or what do they say they are?
Speaker 3:I think they're both magicians, magicians okay, some magicians can do mentalism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure Can do mental and vice versa, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just went full on just because I love how impossible it is. I actually grew. I kinda I don't wanna say I dislike magic, it just I think the audience is too smart. There's a trick that is probably one of the most popular tricks and if you've seen them, if you're listening right now and you've been to a party where a magician did a trick recently in the last 10 years- Is it the knife with the orange and the money inside? Oh, there's that, there's that.
Speaker 2:I know how that works.
Speaker 3:So do I.
Speaker 2:I see something with my eye one time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there's a trick where a magician will take out like a bunch of ones and then flick them and then there are hundreds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. Yeah, so Come to my house, baby.
Speaker 3:So my opinion is that's amazing. Excuse me, that's the majority of everyone's opinion and I used to like that trick.
Speaker 3:Sure, I won't ever do it again. No, I don't like it. Shit Nowadays, I can't stand it. It's driving you crazy. Well, I think, well, I wanna give away anything. But if you could really do that, what would life be like? Yeah, right, okay, yeah, so what I prefer to do? So I believe, when you walk home, when you go away, when you drive home from that and you think of the possibilities, the illusion gets weaker.
Speaker 2:Sure, or try to like resolve it in your mind.
Speaker 3:Like, if you're listening right now, I mean think about it. How could that be done? It looks like a miracle. It looks like water into wine a miracle.
Speaker 2:And you're saying thinking like that is not good, I'm saying.
Speaker 3:The more you think, you conceptualize it and you re, if you just watch that and you go home, you're driving home, you go to bed and you think about it, I think it gets weaker. Okay For a thought-provoking person, okay, somebody who is interested and attentive Okay. So my audience. What I show them is mentalism, where the longer you think about it, the stronger it gets.
Speaker 2:The opposite.
Speaker 3:You'll go home and if you saw what I did and you were there in the experience, yeah, it's the opposite. It just it's so unbelievable that it just gets stronger and stronger. And that's yeah, people are talking about it at the water cooler they're talking about it at the board meeting.
Speaker 2:The printer, the next week.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the printer.
Speaker 2:When I'm printing my ass G when I'm. It's the only reason I go there.
Speaker 3:Hey, it's your business, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 4:Foundation Nation is proudly sponsored by Jace Technology Solutions. Call Jace Technology Solutions at 253-376-7579 for all your computer repair, it and network solutions.
Speaker 2:Is there a tr? Well, ok, so I want to know two things Is there a magic trick? What is considered the most impossible magic trick that's not completed or not done or not performed? Is there anything like that out there? Oh, man, or mentalism, is there somebody out there that's going some day? I'm going to make Mount Rainier a peer in Everett Is there some shit out there that people talk about in the community of your industry, at their hands or from your você, or just like somebody's gonna do it someday, kind of thing?
Speaker 3:There's not a pinnacle like that, but there is an entire industry where there are creators creating illusions, where we purchased them.
Speaker 2:Okay, so what is their top of the pyramid? What are they going for?
Speaker 3:So not necessarily mentalist, mentalist error. More on technique, right Okay. So we're less prop oriented, right Okay. So you like shaving your arms and stuff, aren't you oh yeah, yeah, not quite so a magician? You could buy props. You could buy gimmicks and stuff. That's what we call them. So a lot of people ask me how a magician would learn the tricks. It's an entire industry, just like the medical industry. Oh, okay, there are. The second biggest convention in the world is in Las Vegas. It's called Magic Live.
Speaker 2:I don't know this. Can anybody go to it?
Speaker 3:I believe. So yeah, if you pay for it. But anybody can learn magic basic level stuff. You can just research it on YouTube. And we thought kind of like oh, they're giving away secrets and they are, but it pushes pros to do better stuff. But it's just the drive.
Speaker 3:If you have the drive to go read a book and figure it out. Watch a video. Chances are you'll understand half of it and then in a certain amount of time, you'll forget it. So it really doesn't do much. But ideally, if you're like me, you're doing stuff they can't be Googled.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Which if you wanna check me out and see what I'm doing, what I'm about, so I got videos on my channel.
Speaker 2:You had some kind of viral video. Yeah, what was the video about? What's the name of the video?
Speaker 3:It was, believe it or not, it was a card trick People listening, they might have seen it. It went viral this last week. It got 32 million views on YouTube. Yeah, get some, it was crazy. It was crazy. I had all these YouTubers contacting me. That's cool. It was an amazing experience.
Speaker 2:That's cool, and so what is the title? If they were gonna search it on YouTube, what would they search for?
Speaker 3:So you can type in my name Nate Jester. Okay, unshuffled, and it's actually a YouTube short, so a short. If you don't know what that is, it's a video that's under 60 seconds.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:And it's in a video vertical format. So Nate Jester, unshuffled marked cards, like I said, under 60 seconds You'll see the views. It's people connected with it. I was surprised, I was kind of I thought it would be light and it took off and people. It touched a lot of people, it was pleasant.
Speaker 2:That's cool, that's cool. Okay, so what do you learn in next?
Speaker 3:Right now I'm working on well. I'm going out to Mississippi next week and I'll be doing a news appearance. How do you spell Mississippi, M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-B-I? Yeah, all right, it's called Morning Sip. Morning Sip, Sip, that's what they call it. I deal with these morning shows. It's always curious.
Speaker 4:That's funny. It's funny to learn their names.
Speaker 3:One show is called Morning. That's it, Morning.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to do with their city. Yeah, well, you wait until you get a real lazy guy to be hmm, hmm, hmm, welcome to hmm.
Speaker 3:Yeah, rotten.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I have sandwiching illusions. It's like, how can you make it more so? Like my stage show, I do an hour-long set for an audience and things happen, but at the end of it everything is brought together, right, you know, like that I think it's the movie a momento, momento, yeah.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:I remember that one lots of movies where things or like even sixth sense, not quite like that, but everything, yeah, everything that occurred Was there for a reason, right, and then it just, and then it comes together at the end. So that's what my show is like it's it's, it's choreographed, it's a movie, it's an experience. So what I'm trying to do is find other ways to take the the mind. Once you realize what's amazing about an illusion, you just want to recreate it and then build on it Mm-hmm. So I'm taking these strong illusions and then Sandwiching, I'm putting together to drive the audience in certain directions and then make it a not hot. We call it like an aha moment and then ideally, you get another second moment after that. That is just the mind. I Don't want to cuss, but you know, yeah, yeah, it's just, you're gonna fry people's minds. It takes it to the next level, like wow, that is something I've never seen.
Speaker 2:So what areas do you travel in?
Speaker 3:Just the United States. I've been, I've been to Ukraine Okay, that was actually on a mission.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, my dad was involved. He's a. He's a. My dad's a doctor, and so we went overseas. He does medical mission work.
Speaker 2:Okay, good for him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I went over there. I cleaned a bunch of teeth. This is 98 98 teeth 1998.
Speaker 2:Oh 1998.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I did a mission cleaning teeth at orphanages.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I did a bunch of magic for the kids.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a fun story. We'll have to talk about that sometime. That's cool. It's cool. Yeah kids like magic. Yeah, I'm gonna, so you like. Did you have to give them like pain meds to?
Speaker 3:know what I did. We were trained by a dentist here and then, honestly, we just put if I can remember right, this is 24 here 20 gosh 26 years ago. We put a light like a little light gun that they sat on, and then we just gave them a coating, oh, and then everybody got toothbrush and toothpaste oh, they don't got fluoride over there. They don't have that and I think toothbrush and toothpaste were at these orphanages. Yeah, at least back then that big deal they didn't really have it.
Speaker 2:Hey, man, so I wanted to thank you. Anything else you wanted to touch on before we End this series?
Speaker 3:No, it's um.
Speaker 2:Mentalism is amazing, it's cool, it's fun. Yeah, I mean, having somebody Blow your mind in person is something that everybody should experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nate Jester. Thanks for coming, man. This has been a great little mini series. I'm excited to see everyone's reaction. Um, matthew Cote, this is foundation nation, along with my guest.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm Nate jester. If you want to take your company's event to the next level, you can find me at seattlemagiciancom.
Speaker 2:Seattle magiciancom check it out. Thank you, have a good day and we'll catch you on the flip side.
Speaker 4:Foundation nation is proudly sponsored by jace technology solutions, called jace technology solutions at 253 376 7579 for all your computer repair, it and network solutions.
