Season Finale: Control The Delusional Podcast with Kevin Blake Ferguson

One of the occupational hazards of presenting illusions and telling stories on stage is that I sometimes people believe them. Most of the time, it's a fan after a show who thinks I have something supernatural in common with the psychic they go to, or a corporate executive who half-jokes about training the sales team. When this happens, I do my best to clarify that I am an illusionist, and that the illusions they have seen are just that: illusions. But every now and then I will get contacted by someone who won't believe that the illusions are illusions, or that I am anything other than a real wizard, and nothing I say will convince them otherwise. Every so often these true believers will ask me to use my powers for their purposes. I always say no. Except once, 5 years ago, in the curious case of Red, a man who contacted me to cast a spell to save his marriage.
It all started one cold, foggy summer morning when I woke up to my phone vibrating on my bedside table. This was a common enough occurrence, as I was in the optimistic habit of setting my alarm for 6:00am, hoping that I would miraculously awaken with the vigor and strength of a 50-year-old triathlete but invariably reacting to the bedside table buzz more with the groggy, weak-eyed confusion of a teenager late to school than any kind of breakfast-making master of the morning. This morning, however, the buzz was not an alarm, but a missed call from a 408 area code.
'Spammer,' I thought, rolling over and falling back to sleep. The image of a room full of off-shore talent calling everyone in California to sell timeshares on the moon drifted dreamily through my head.
An hour or so later, with the sun a bit higher in the sky and the morning fog having receded a bit more from the horizon and also my brain, I checked my phone and saw three more missed calls and a series of text messages from a man named Red. He told me that his wife was leaving him, and wanted me to do "black magic" to prevent that from happening.
We all look for ways to control the uncontrollable. How do I get girls to like me? What can I say in an argument to make things better? How can I convince my boss to give me a raise, or my coworker to stop pushing their priorities onto me? I felt for Red. I had been through breakups before. I remembered that insatiable longing for the old time, for happiness, and the need fight against the hard, unbreakable framework of destiny. I remembered the overwhelming sense that there must be something I could do to fix it all, that I wouldn’t hesitate to shoulder the burden of gods to re-weave the vast assurance of consequence into the good, gray blanket of a new fate beneath which I could sleep soundly, instead of the somnambulant torture of the hard tile of the bathroom floor. I remembered the nutty stuff I did when I thought I was going to lose someone I loved. Was texting a magician to see if he could cast a spell to save his relationship any crazier than any of the stuff I did? Well, yes, it was, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I would save Red. It was an imperative of the heart, and also, it seemed like it would liven up my morning. I hatched a plan.
I told Red that there was something I could do, but I’d need his help. Attraction enchantments were spells that happened in three parts, you see. One on the side of the spell-caster (me), and two on the side of the spell receiver (Red), and three on the side of the enchanted (that would be Kate, his wife). I gave Red a list of instructions over the following days. First he was to write in black ink, ideally with a fountain pen, but ballpoint will work (a pencil will not, because it needs to be permanent) an exhaustive list of every reason why he thinks she wants to leave him. Be honest, I said, otherwise it won’t have any chance of working. He was to do this in secret and make sure she didn’t see the list. It was important he not do this in their bedroom, or in any room in which she had belongings