Welcome to Insights at the Edge, produced by Sounds True.

My name is Tammy Simon. I'm the founder of Sounds True, and I'd love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation.

The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world by making transformational education widely available.

We want everyone to have access to transformational tools such as mindfulness,

emotional awareness, and self-compassion, regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges.

The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools

to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing

countries. If you'd like to learn more

or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit soundstruefoundation.org.

You're listening to Insights at the Edge, and today my guest is author, artist, teacher, and magician, Damien Eccles.

Now, this is not the first time I've been in conversation on Insights at the Edge with Damian Eccles.

Damien was a guest about five years ago, and I was all prepared to spend

our time together talking about his experiences in prison. For those of you who aren't familiar,

Damien spent 18 years in prison under a wrongful conviction of murder.

Eight of those years were in solitary confinement.

His story of his wrongful conviction was documented in a couple of films, Paradise Lost, West of Memphis.

So I was all prepared to talk to Damien about how he survived his prison sentence

with his heart and his human capacities so intact.

And as our conversation started pretty soon, Damien, I don't know if you'll remember this,

you said to me pretty early in the conversation, I don't want to talk about my prison experience

anymore. And I had this moment, I was like, oh, oh my, what are we going to do? And I said,

what do you want to talk about, Damien? He said, I want to talk about magic.

...