The Alans are making a magical return to “Penn & Teller: Fool Us.”

Jason Alan, a 2002 Salem High School and 2008 Youngstown State University graduate, and his wife, Stacy, will make their second appearance on the CW series where magicians present tricks to the irreverent pair of illusionists, who try to decipher how it was done. Their episode will be broadcast at 8 p.m. Friday on WBCB-TV in Youngstown.

Magicians who succeed in fooling Penn & Teller get a trophy and an opportunity to open for them at their Las Vegas theater at the Rio Hotel & Casino

“We’re excited and nervous at the same time,” Jason Alan said.

Stacy Alan added, “We haven’t seen it yet, so we won’t know what it looks like until it’s on.”

They aren’t allowed to reveal whether they “fooled” Penn & Teller until the episode airs, but they did get to have more interaction with the stars this time.

Their first appearance was shot during the COVID-19 pandemic and aired in January 2021. No one else could be on stage with The Alans, and Penn & Teller were about 50 feet from them.

“We used Penn & Teller in the trick,” Stacy Allen said of the upcoming episode. “We’re actually interacting with them on stage, which is pretty cool.”

Magic has been a passion of Jason Alan since he was a teenager. He started doing it as a hobby when he was 13 and by college it was a way to make some money when he wasn’t competing as a decathlete for YSU’s track team or studying exercise science. Quaker Steak & Lube in Austintown was one of the first places where he regularly performed in the Mahoning Valley.

He didn’t really consider magic as a career until one of the professors in his major told him, “‘You’re not enjoying this. You like magic. Go do that.’ So I graduated with a degree in general studies.”

Doing magic appealed to him in the same way athletics did.

“There’s a physical side to it,” he said. “Sleight of hand is very demanding. I enjoy that part, I enjoy mastering things. I’ve learned things that have taken me a few months to learn, and I’ve learned things that have taken me 10 years. It’s fun to see people react to something they don’t know how long you worked on.”

Stacy Alan had no interest in magic until she met her future husband. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Kent State University and her master’s degree from the University of Akron and was working as a mental health therapist.

Now she puts that training to use performing psychological magic in their act.

“The character I play on stage, I definitely talk about psychology,” she said. “A lot of the effects I do, I’m using psychological theory, so it’s really fun for me. I get to use my background in a totally different way just to make some of the effects more entertaining. And Jason really encouraged me. I was learning to do classic magic, and Jason encouraged me to look into mentalism, which is a form of psychological magic.”

She took to it quickly, her husband said. He remembered an early private show they did together. It was the trick she performed that got the host to pay them to do an extra hour.

“He told me, ‘You’re good, but she’s really good,” Jason Alan said.

The Alans, who perform every month at The Metropolitan at The 9 in Cleveland, said the exposure from their first appearance on “Fool Us” helped get them booked on cruise ships, which they do about nine months a year, and to do more theater gigs.

They hope Friday’s episode has a similar impact.

“We’d love to do more theaters,” Jason Alan said. “We’re on these cruise ships in big, beautiful theaters and on land and across every state there’s an amazing theater in every city. Our goal is to do a theater show in every state.”

agray@tribtoday.com