For his next trick: Listen closely

Ricky Jay has heard the comments about the oddity of being a magician on the radio and even made a few jokes himself. “I can’t very well ask the audience to pick a card,” he said.

But it’s his other talents and interests that have landed him a spot doing weekly, albeit brief, commentaries on KCRW-FM (89.9), starting Thursday.

“What’s appealing is they really are giving me free rein to say whatever I want,” said Jay, who in addition to being a magician is an actor, magic historian and author. He’s written “Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women,” “The Magic Magic Book,” “Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck” and “Jay’s Journal of Anomalies,” which features essays on ceiling walkers, sword swallowers and the origins of the flea circus, among other subjects.

He’ll begin his foray into radio with stories about a supposedly psychic myna bird and a turn-of-the-century Chicago detective who fancied himself the American Sherlock Holmes.

“I like unusual entertainment,” he said and added that KCRW gave him no mandate to be topical. That’s a good thing, he joked, because “I’ve never been steeped in relevance.”

His four-minute commentaries will air Thursdays at 3:55 p.m., between “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross and “All Things Considered.”

It’s the same time slot filled on other days by the likes of humorist Sandra Tsing Loh and critics Edward Goldman, Joe Morgenstern and Sam Hall Kap- lan. Jay will replace “Theatre Talk.”

Morgenstern said listeners will appreciate Jay “as a prestidigitator without peer, as a performer par excellence and as a scholar peering into precincts of human knowledge that entirely escape the notice of most humans these days.” He added that Jay’s performances and scholarship are “zestful,” because “everywhere he goes, Ricky finds and gives cause for wonder.”