A magician shows three party magic tricks and demonstrates how to perform them.

To help pay for his undergraduate education, Elias Garcia-Pelegrin had an unusual summer job: cruise ship magician. “I was that guy who comes out at dinnertime and does random magic for you,” he says.

Whether you’re simply caught up in the amazement of a trick or you’re trying to figure out how a trick was accomplished, there’s something magnetic about magic. Similarly to how Christopher Nolan ...