You liked that title, didn't you?
In this "This American Life" podcast, Ira Glass and David Kestenbaum discuss some of the methodology behind effect creation, with a discussion of Penn & Teller's Red Ball effect, and David Copperfield's Statue of Liberty effect, during which a tale is told about David pulling off some dope ass silver-tongued social-engineering -- it's amazing.
If you have an hour to spare, listen to this episode. If you don't have time to spare, you'll just have to imagine what happened.
-- J.R.