At 6'6" tall, Penn Jillette is a huge character. He's got a huge frame, a huge personality, and huge appetites. It's a trait that has occasionally gotten him into trouble; he weighed, until a recent diet change, more than 350 pounds. But his gregarious energy mostly expands to fill every moment of free time with professional success. He's an inventor, an entrepreneur, a podcast host, a TV show creator, a Twitter celebrity, a comedian. And for more than forty years, he's been the talking half of stage magic duo Penn & Teller. He talks to host Alec Baldwin about his lifelong atheism, what it's like to perform the same trick for four decades, and why he's committed to debunking nonsense.
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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. My guest today, Penjollette is the speaking half of the duo Penn and Teller. Their act mixes magic and comedy with a subversive element that turns the traditional magic act on its head. In addition to having one of the longest running shows in Las Vegas, Penjoleette is also a musician, juggler, and inventor. The six foot six outspoken atheist and libertarian also finds time to write books, host TV shows, and appear as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars and The Celebrity Apprentice. Recently, Pendolet performed Defeat harder than any magic trick. He made a hundred pounds disappear. I had wicked high blood pressure, and I was telling myself, because it's easy to tell yourself this, that it's genetic or there's nothing you can do about it, and then there is UH. And I just started eating in order to fix my blood pressure, which ends up as a side effect losing a lot. Were you leaner and and and and and kind of readier when you were young and you got heavier as you got over? Yeah? Sure, I was an American is another way to say that, right, Yeah, America that was doing you. What was the problem. Well, now I'm eating what were you not? What are you not eating? Now? I'm eating no animal products, no refined grains, extremely low salt, sugar in oil. So I'm not able to do things in moderation. One of the reasons I've never had a drink or any drug in my life is I'm very aware that moderation is not my strongest I can't imagine you and I. Yeah, you and I trapped in this room with a bowl of cocaine and the two trail makes bars and the cacao. We wouldn't need the food if we had the cocaine. But so so I've never you know, has has so much as a puff of marijuana. No, that's true. Never, never a sip of beer, because well, my personality is such. Not only do I not do moderation, I also don't respect it. If you tell me about an author that I need to read I will go home and read everything. You know, if you uh, if I when I start to listen to a different kind of music, you know, if all of a sudden I discover alban Berg. I'm listening to all twelve toned German opera for months, and I love living like that. I mean a lot of people seem to strive from moderation. I don't. So you and your wife, you're gonna have a family, You're gonna have like twelve Fortunately you're able to stop that with a vast activation and you don't have to do any moderation. What science can science and science can step in on these things. Interviews? But because so, what's something that you craved or liked or that you stopped eating? It's really interesting? But do you mind me as I find that? Uh, it's exactly like situation comedies. When you were watching situation comedies every night when you're younger, they kind of make sense and you want to watch them the next night. But if you stop for two months and you go back and watch a situation comedy, it's nonsense. Why would anybody watch this? Don't they have real friends? Why are they watching this? Where do they get all that money? For that apartment. And the same thing with with food. Uh I really, for the first you know, a couple of months, wanted uh hamburgers and you know, fried chicken and all that stuff all the time. And then after a couple of months the food I was eating tasted great. It's exactly like you you listen to music. You listen at four on the floor, three chord, rock and roll, and you love it and it's great, and then all of a sudden someone says, oh, and there's jazz, and you go, oh, there's whole difference sounds and different stuff. It's that salt, sugar, fat is just that boom boom boom boom. But you take that away and there's a zillion other flavors. Everything changes, including And I'm a little bit embarrassed about this because I tend to as much as I'm a strong atheist, I still catch myself occasionally in a in a mind body separation, you know, thinking that there's there's some sort of intellectual side different the physical side. I was really surprised how my mood changed. Are you ready to become a Catholic? Very close? He thinks you're great, there's a great here's a great story about Roy of Siegfried and Roy. Yeah, meeting the Pope, and Sigfried and Roy met the Pope, you know, the great magicians. They meet the Pope and uh, Roy gives him a ring and the Pope takes the ring and hands it to the assistant as this is a gift. And then Roy goes, no, no, that that is utual, blessed and give back to me my whole Oh my god. That which is all you need to know about Roy and the Pope. Now when you when you you you just touched on many subjects atheism. You've covered everything. We're done. We guys count now. But the the let let's talk about that meaning. Did you know you were an atheist from from the earlier? You had no? No, I was you know, people do this thing that uh that I always always feel very um. I feel it's very important to point out. They always say, you know, religious people must have treated you badly. I'm a religious personal, treat you well. The point is religious people treated me wonderfully. I have always been treated very well by religious people. I was raised, I have a perfect family life. My mom and dad and my sister and I were very very close. I was raised a Congregationalist Massachusetts wh to mess and I went to church an hour you know north. When I got to be uh junior high age, my parents said I could go to youth group instead of Sunday morning services. I wanted to, and I went to youth group, and I believe I was the only one who took us seriously. And the minister spoke with us about religion, and I read the Bible and then came in with some questions, and I had a wonderful, wonderful minister who was very open and would talk with me for hours. I did this exactly the way the church would want you to do it. There was no horrible rebellion, there was no fuck you, there was no screaming, there was no being molested. I have not one horror story. I've just kind, wonderful, sweet people and an intellectual discussion. And I went, you know, I don't like the idea of putting God before my family. My family is more important to me, and I don't like the idea of their being a love greater than the love I have from my family and friends. And I do believe that humans are good on their own without this, and I don't think anything happens after we die, and my minister and I and there's you sound like a moderate Republican. There's there's no way to tell this story without making him look like a goofball. But he's not a goofball. This is a sensible thing. He called that. My mom and dad had said, you know, Penn is doing wonderful and youth group, but we're having discussions, and I believe he's doing a better job at converting the other children to Atheism than I am with Christianity. So why don't you just not have him come to you group anymore? And I talked to my my parents and uh, my dad till the day he died, prayed for me and would say what he has Carles, and he would say to me all stuff all the time, like, well, Pen, you were such a good Christian. I say, except for that not accepting Christ than Dad, except for that if you separate out the dogma of a particular religion. Because I'm a Catholic, I was raised a Catholic, and over the ark of my present, when I when I've been over the ark of my life, I've I've lapsed and gone back and laps to go back. But a priest who I grew up with, who was a priest in the church I went to when I was a boy, he said, at best, he said, listen, all the great religions have something to offer to me. Hinduism and Judaism and Buddhism and so forth, and Muslim he says, He said, the Catholics just seem to have the nicest places to hang out, the nicest real estate. But you separate all the dogma of any particular religion, and to me, atheism is you just don't believe there's a God, right. And I also, regardless of your individual relationship, there's there isn't really there there there is no moral code that goes along with that. There's a lot of stuff we've noticed about atheists, you know, but there isn't an actual church of atheism. And I wanted to say with a great deal of pride that my mom when she was eight five eight five years old, and what did it? Was this this but this is the Great Father was like God, damn. My dad used to say, and this is, you know, just a tribute to My dad was the most most wonderful man I've ever met. My dad would say to me, I'm going to have to work so hard after I die to get you and your mother into heaven. But I'm going to do it. I just have to work very, very hard. You can make it so much easier for me. Yes, you have to know that. My mom and my dad never said hell or damn or any absenter hard in the house, hardcore, no alcohol, no heller, damn. When I started doing card tricks, my my my father was like, you won't be gambling though. You can do card tricks, but I don't like having a deck of cards in the house. I would say, Dad, I'm just doing manipulations and tricks. Well, that's fine. Now when people obviously, when they think of you, they think of you as part of a tandem and your partner. It's always mystified to me the mute performer, what's that like for him to play that role all these years? It's thirty years forty good god, and uh it is a very shut up when he's home. Well, that's that's the joke. Everybody in the crew will tell you. Penn speaks on stage, doesn't speak off stage. Tell there, doesn't speak on stage, never shuts up. When if you were to come to one of our rehearsals. Uh, it's me sitting over the corner reading the paper, and tell their talking to everybody handling. They tell us essentially, O Lucille Ball direct and but you know, tell her direct Shakespeare. You know he's he's directing The Tempest in Chicago, a wonderful production with real magic. The Yeah, but more more directing and more writing. And he's very articulate. Who's a high school Latin and Greek teacher and he is a classic scholar. Where does he live? Where as his home Vegas? So you guys both live in this Yeah, about five miles apart. And you have a theater that your own theater, and it's really near obligated. The contract is how many months of the year until we die? I mean we do? We do forty six weeks a year for now, yeah, when you if we ever crossed your if you ever, we don't have time off, and we sometimes do run outs on the on the day, on the day, supposedly six weeks. In Vegas. We do about two d and fifty shows a year a little more. It's a pretty easy schedule, but I make it as hard as possible because I play upright bass, jazz bebop for an hour before the show, and then we meet everybody after the show. So we turn a cushy ninety minute gig into three and act like Steve Martin yeah and everything. Yeah, yeah, I do. When Steve's in town. I love to talk music with When you were a child, I mean I grew up and anything magic or anything of the paranormal, if you will, Eurie Geller, crest Skin, all those, I mean, I grew up glued to that. I love that where you glued to that kind of stuff to come into your life. I was. I was horrified by Kreskin Um. I believed when he went on he went on a television show and he did an experiment, as he called it, and I believed that this was an area of science. I was fascinated by science, an area of science that I wanted to study. And my parents, who I said, weren't wealth. He bought me was a little ESP game as piece of ship with little pendulum in the ESP cards. And then I would do that with my parents over and over and then um, because I was becoming a juggler and practicing all the time in the library. If you cast your mind back to the Dewey decimal system. You know that the nine hundreds are religion, magic, juggling. They're all there together, which is great. My whole life is in the nine decimal system. I happened to see a dune in your book The Mentalist from the forties. Yeah, he's he's He was the most popular mentalist mind reader. And I opened the book on magic and theyre in There was the description of how to do the trick I'd seen Christ can do as an experiment, And that moment in the library was a complete breakdown. I mean I went, I could not believe that a scientist, which is the way I perceived it, had lied to me. And I went almost humiliated in front of my parents. By the way, here's the birth of the bullshit show too. By the way, absolutely everything my whole life, and I also pretty much at that point went from straight a's to failing because I said to my physics teachers and scientists, lie. Why am I listening to you scientists? Lie? Scientists? And I hated magic, hated magic because why would you be fooling people? It's hard enough to figure out about the world is hard enough. Yeah, why why are you doing that? And my parents, you know, would try to console me. It's just a stupid little game pad. God, Dad, It's okay, No, No No, I'm a juggler. I'm not a magician all of this. And it wasn't until I met Teller, who I met when I was in high school. Until there's seven years older than me and amazing Randy and may explain to me the very simple thing that if you put a procenium around something, it's all of a sudden moral. If Robert de Niro runs around New York saying he's Travis Bickle and he's a cab driver, he is insane. If he does it in a movie, he's a genius. Yes, And the same thing with magic. If you come to our show, all the stuff we do would be immoral if you take that proscenium. So you did a lot on the street, you were on the street, yeah, yeah, but but always as a juggler, it wasn't. Uh. So we try to follow this very strict moral code in the penn and tell the show, which is what I call the sawing a woman in a half code sawing a woman in the half, which is we saw a woman in to have haves on stage. You see that no one leaves the theater thinking they've witnessed a murder. Nobody. That is my rule for all magic. If I'm going to do a mind reading trick, you cannot leave the theater thinking that I can read minds. It must be exactly the same as not witnessing a murder. There's a lot of intellectual and moral gymnastics that need to be done in order to follow that code and tell her and I A big part of our writing tricks is trying to be intellectually honest. So what is it required of the street performer that you had the street and they score well? I, you know, I uh, with my parents permission. You know, left home when I was eighteen and was essentially homeless, hitchhiking around the country hippie and I supported myself juggling on streets and juggling in bars. And uh, you need to uh, you need to gather a crowd, and you need to collect the money for the bit of a barker question, what's yeah? Or is they called to the carny talker? Um? I was a really really good street performers, a matter of fact teller. I'm not sure how to take this, but tell her always says, you know, the best thing you've ever done in your career was your a bit of street act. There was really nothing better than that. Where was the money good? What was the place that was like? I had a rule that I would only work places that it was illegal, because I thought that was sexy. And I worked head out Square in Philadelphia, and uh, I knew all the police officers, and the police officers would come to my show and say, the second someone can convince me that you're begging, I'll arrest you. Until then you're doing a show, and I would do. I I was making so much money. I was nineteen years old and I was making so much money street performing. I went to an accountant and I said to file taxes. I said, I want to file my taxes and the money I made And he said, what do you do when I said, I'm a street jungle And he said, how much do you make? And I told him and I said, I have you know, I keep records of every hat I passed and how much I make, and I have it all laid out here, and I had when I brought it to the bank and when I did everything. And he said, in your nineteen. I said yeah, And he said, if you go to the I R S And tell the you made this much money juggling, they will arrest you as a drug dealer. They will assume you're a drug dealer. And then he said, and oh, by the way, I think you're a drug dealer. By the way, I don't believe. And I said, well, no, no, I'm really making this. He goes, take the money, don't put it in the bank, keep it in cash, walk away, And when does that change meaning that you're doing that? And then I put all that money. Well, first of all, totally ruined my voice because I'd work for five people outside no training, just scream and put chloris, put chlorosceptic in a coke can and just go. Or is your costume to try to oh yeah. My rule on street performing was you have to look so that people are embarrassed to give you less than a twenty. So I wore a three thousand dollar watch when I street performed. I wore a really expensive suit, really expensive pants, was perfectly groomed, much more than what I went, like Michael Douglas than the artful does. Absolutely absolutely. My idea was I want to make as much money as Johnny Carson, so I'll be out there looking like Johnny Carson. So the idea was I would gather a crowd and you come up and go, man, he's really funny. He's really a good juggler. You'd be with your date and go, I can't give him fifty cents. I get a twenty. You can't do that and uh And then Teller would alternate with me in the same spot, which we kind of owned, and the um, the local hoodlum children uh loved us because what I would do is I, you know, have them take care of my money and buy props from me and take care of that kind of stuff. Trusted them. So anybody else that came in to take that spot, the police arrested them and the local kids are asked them. So we had that spot to ourselves, and I would go to all the store owners that are around there. I would go up after every show and say, you're getting enough traffic in and out. I'm not blocking Everything's okay. The police officers liked us. He joined the Chamber of Commerce, yes pretty much, and we did that very well. Then then I really got interested in doing uh Tell, and I wanted to do a full evening show. We thought that the ideas that we had were more than just the twelve minutes. So we took all the money that we've made street performing and put it into buying lights and sound and and producing. Our very first shows were at the Walnut Street Theater. They had a space that would seat like seventy people and they had put that aside with a grant for experimental theater, and the experimental theater company UH could not get it together in three months to put an experimental show on. Now you know, they couldn't in three months get it together. So they came to teller they gone to college with, and said, you're doing your little show, can you just put it in and we'll let you have the theater for free. Now they were getting grants, we could have the theater for free. So we put the show up and we charged whatever it was ten dollars, and we got wonderful reviews and put the place up and then the UH, the head of the Walnut Street Theater called us in and said, uh, so the theater company up there, they gave you the they gave you the space, and how much money they give you to put this on? We said nothing. They just gave us a space, which is a big help man, huge help not to pay rent. We could really make money on this. We're supporting ourselves. This is trip we're getting going. He goes, yeah, yeah, And they were paid money to put a show on in there, and they just give to you afraid. So you guys are welcome to use the theater whenever you want. And they're losing all their grants. So we became we became the people that killed the experimental theater in that particular, and they were like, what did you do to us? We said, we didn't even we didn't know. We were supposed to lie. We could have said we can't make money in there, but as it turned out, we could make money, you know, and in a hundred seed theater, we we could fill it up and make money doing nhhos a week. Um. So you you you perform inside and you start to do the show. And what kind of a show was it back then? We we did we was the three person and show that we had a we had a third partner who did classical music, and it was called the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society and h we got we did a thing that was so nuts. Teller was in charge of the putting the ads together and putting them in the paper, and I was in charge of getting critics to the show. So I just put on my leather jacket and went, you know, to the list of people that were critics, and walked up to their desks and said, Hi, I'm Penn. We're doing a show next Friday. We can give you free tickets. Would you come and review our show? To the you know, to the head critic and the Philadelphia inquirer, who went, what are you doing here? No, you'd go through your press agent and do this, And he said, why should I come see your show? And I went, because I can do this? And I picked up his little spindle that he put papers on and rammed it in my head and jammed it in my nose, doing a thing called blockhead and old Carney trick and you know, and then took out a cigarette lighter and did a little bit of fire eating stuff and said, come to our show. And he was not supposed to review little shows. He was the big credit, but he came to see our show. And then he wrote a rave review and which piste off everybody because other big shows are opening, and then teller said you have to call him up and thank them. So I said, okay. So I called him up and said, thank you for your review. It's gonna sell a lot of tickets. We're doing really well. And he said did you like the review? And I said, well, it's gonna sell a lot of tickets. It's gonna do really well. And he goes, wait a minute, did you like Did you like the review? I said, well, it's selling a lot of tickets and I appreciate it. Thank you very much, sir. And he said, what are you saying. I'm saying it's awful. You don't understand the thing we were doing. It's you say kind stuff about us. But I did this show so someone would understand it. You missed the point of everything. I was saying. It broke my heart. And there was a long pause and he said, uh, can I do an interview with you for like a few hours, and then I will write another review. I'll see the show again. And I said sure. I told tell her just tell us to just take up. I said, yeah, hey, I told him his review sucked. What are you doing? And he, uh, Two weeks later wrote another bigger review that said, more to your liking, this is a retraction of my previous review. I said they were wonderful, and they are, but everything else I said was wrong. And then he went in to wrote a whole other reviews. So now we've got a hundred seat theater that have had two front page of the Entertainment section reviews within two weeks. So all of a sudden, we're selling ticket sold hundred seats. You know, selling a hundred seats is not that hard, but it was huge to us. And then a producer sauce there, and we went out and played in San Francisco for three years at a theater there there was a hundred or something. Remember reading an article once about because I'm thinking about Vegas and when I know about Vegas acts, and I've been to Vegas a few times, but not not a lot. I'm not a gambler. I go see shows. Is that vice? I don't. I don't. I never I never get dog gamble. With your background, it seems like I always would. I would go and people would gamble, I think, and I lost, and I thought, I I can't afford this hard money to throw it. And I'd see guys who do that. I mean, I don't want to name names, but I got some pretty high end friends of mine who really blow a lot of dough on that. I go, God, how do you do that? And so irresponsible? Many other ways to waste money, Yeah, exactly, like like boats, I likes the worst than gamp agains so because you can drown. But I was reading this article once, this wonderful old article about Wayne Newton, and they said, how uh you know? The big punch line was that the guy goes he and he takes with a stop watch the measure of the show, and Newton would come out with the encore and say, hey, you know we we never do this. I never do this, but I just love this crowd. I never played this song, but you know, I'm just gonna throw all my my, my my preferences to the wind here and he comes and we never stayed for another song. I'm gonna do one more song and he just teases the oars and the guy and every show the show exact and exactly the same, exactly. The show was exactly like one hour and in fourteen minutes. Have you ever seen Way Newton show that it was? It was just great. I'm so it was phenomenal. Yeah, it probably still is. I haven't seen in a few of the idea of the show being for the man who you and your partner do two and fifty shows a year, regardless of the fact that it's in your own space and you know it's it's obviously it's a very lucrative thing. Is like, do you go out there and there's a menu, like a playlist? We do? We do the same show, you do the same show. Now we're always writing new stuff. So when I say the same show, it's the same show as the night before, not the same show as the year before. Um. And I love that. You know, there's this thing that happens um in the variety arts. You know, I'm just old enough. I'm sixty. You're a yes, I am, I am, I'm a I am a proud egg man. Um, I'm sixty. So when I was learning to juggle at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I could just me the guys who worked Vodeville their whole life, right, I could just meet the guys who wrote a show when they were seventeen years old and we're doing it when they were eighty and hadn't changed in it and the joy. Yeah, but there were guys jugglers, you know, because juggling it's not like music. You can't do a whole different routine with juggling. You learned that trick. It takes you six years to learn the trick. That's the trick you're gonna be doing for a while. You know. You know how to throw a cigarette behind your back, catching your mouth and throw a match catching then light them. That's what you're gonna do. That's your closer for the rest of your life. And there's something you're able to do after doing something ten thousand times, not a thousand, ten thousand times, where you're able to communicate with the audience in ways that you don't even know what's giving them the information when you first do a gag. You know, one of the things you see on Saturday Night Live. You know, I always want to say, boy, I'd like to see this sketch after they did a ten thousand times, as Dyldan said, I want to play guitar without tricks. You know, all the tricks should be gone and it would just be the material that you're just selling. And I just love that, So tell her and I try to be very conscientious and there's some stuff that's only a few months old, but there's other stuff that we've been doing forty years. There's one trick that actually predates Penn and Teller that Teller did alone, that he's doing yeah, actually, yeah, it's a Judini trip that Teller does, and god damn that we're in rehearsal. So we decided to really spruce up the show and worked with John Randall is a great, great director, great director. We decided to we haven't worked with the director ever, and so we're going through stuff we've done ten thousand times, and we're going through with the director and going through a moment by moment, getting us in in the afternoon to do a trick we've done ten thousand times. Like, what the funk are you doing? We know how to do this, but we get in there and we wanted to do it, wanted to dig in. And I'm watching tell Her from the wings, you know, just the other night, watching him do a trick that is the first trick I ever saw do. So I saw him do this trick when I was first meeting him, before there was a Penn and Teller watching him to the first trick every so, and I'm watching him going, you know, and Tell, here's whatever. He is sixty seven years old. Now I saw him first do it when he was you know, and uh, I'm watching the trick and I go, God damn, he's better, you know. And we have this thing in our culture that if the Rolling Stones are doing satisfaction, oh well, they should have outgrown that. They should have done this. We've done this temporary thing in our culture that forgets the fact that, god damn, people can't get good at ship. People get really good at stuff. One thing Penn and Teller got very good at was shocking David Letterman during their multiple appearances on his show. Here's an unsuspecting Dave suggesting that their act was missing something, you know, the originality and originality. But you know, I guess the thing that I missed most out of the whole deal was it just didn't seem to be an element of a real surprise. They just continue to be any surprise with the Then Tell are lifted a hat off Dave's desk, casually revealing a pile of live cockroaches. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing you can hear all of my other interviews with entertainers, politicians, and entrepreneurs in our archives at Here's the Thing dot org. Like my conversation with Gillette's friend David Blaine, another world famous magician known for extreme feats of physical endurance. You're standing on a beam for you were up there thirty six hours hours. How is that on your body? Well? You know what. When I was a little kid in school and I get in trouble and the teacher would say, go stand in the corner. I's like, come on, this is easy. Like you can stand for forty five minutes is supposed to be hard, So yeah, and then you can apply that so it's like how long can you stand in one place? So that's really what it's about. Take a listen at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. In addition to his show in Vegas my guest Pen Gillette regularly appears in television and film. He's also done some stage acting. He had a part in The Exonerated, a play that brings to life the stories of a half dozen former death row inmates. Pen doesn't strike you as a man who was afraid of much. But he says for that project, the fear was real. They put me into that with Bob Balaban directing it, and I was terrified, you know, because I had never done that kind of legitimate acting. And I was on stage like me a pharaoh, and you know, and uh and Peter Peter Coyote and people that can act, you know, and I us loved it. I love taking someone else's work. I love thinking about that. And a few times I've done little movie things and stuff I've just uh, I've just really should do I really mean that you should do more. I mean, I know that means stopping doing this orphans well, I think I can think of a lot of things. Seriously, I think a lot of but I I really really like Hickey and uh and I did a wonderful but there was a wonderful moment when there was they were doing that the movie about blacklisting, uh with de Niro, I forgot the name of it, but he was having a friend um uh. But I was going to play the part. I was auditioning for the part of Bunny and I got to read with DeNiro. I got that far that I get to read this. I'm sitting there in front of the camera and we're going through our script and he's just kind of mumbling through it. He's not doing anything, you know, he's just that I'm going on, this is no big deal with DeNiro up reading my part, and I'm going, Wow, I'm doing a really good job here. I mean, even even compared to the near I'm doing really good. And then there comes to the moment where he has to grab his friend who sold him out to the h to the blacklisted him. You know, who is me, who's a college friend, and like, hug me and grab me and do this, And all of a sudden, I saw really world class acting like six inches away from my face, and I was like, I couldn't even stay at the scene. It was like, whoa, you're good. And it was just I would love to have the experience of somebody, you know, within a scene because I'm always addressing the audience and it's so interesting to me when you see really really good actors how they get into that, get into that moment, you know, and that thing. But so for you, you're you're committed to do this for a while. The Vegas thing, Yeah, you know when whenever, whenever I can find time, you know, whenever I can find a week or two. I you know, it was like tell her flies back and forth the Chicago to direct The Tempest, and I just finished up this movie that I crowdfunded, that I that I rived in. It's a movie called Director's Cut, and it's a crazy, crazy movie. H the idea of the movie. I was really fascinated by by the idea that information is out there. Information is out there, so now when you make a movie, it all gets put into hard drives and it's on sharers and people can get it. So I postulated a guy who was obsessed with an actress, obsessed with her, and the movie was being crowdfunded, and crowdfunded his way onto the set and then got the codes to get all the outtakes from the movie and then kidnaps her and then uses all the footage to make his own movie that tells his own story with him as the star. So we had Missy Pyle who says, like the sequel to Human Centipede, Yeah, well yeah, it's not as sick as that, well, not as sexually sick, but intellectually meta of a seque, very very many and uh, and uh, I play Uh, I play Herbert. There's a guy who does this and who's on the on the set, and then I get to have the scenes where the two men who are acting in it are doing a scene with her, but she's in my basement. So I've tried to match the scene to match that. So it's all about continuity and changing that and all about movie making. You and I should do a horror movie, a really low something really tawd me and disgusting, and yeah, well, cons anything, anything, anything, anything I could do to I'll make a couple of atheists, no catholic and an atheist atheist, and we'll get someone to do for you, like, yeah, you can, you can do even even the fact that you're doing this like this, I'll work with you a little bit. It's not that's cool, Yeah, exactly. And now the tell me what is movie night? You're a movie fan? What's movie nights? Um, Tuesday nights? After my show, people come over and we watch in Vegas over my house. You have a killer screening room. Yeah, and we have about Sometimes people come over love movies and well, yes, but this is not showing the love of movies. This is just thirty people screaming, and people think when they come over that it's going to be witty. It's not witty, simply obscenity. It's simply spewing out the bile from the week. Is a group it's a group encounter sits mock the movie much more than more than. And now we're in the middle of we're watching every season of and I am so trying to convince Keefer to come by one night because I would love to have him there. Yes, how how tall are you? Exactly came? You know, juste we we And it's just it's just screaming. He's just gonna get because you know, I tend to because I have my children are nine and ten years old, and because I do so many shows and as so much stuff going on, I really don't get a chance to hang out with friends. So this is my two hours a week. That just it's what what's something? Yeah, exactly what some guys to do with poker. It's just it's just yelling. So when did you become this arbiter of bullshit? When did? When? Did it? It? Just the things that you strike you as bullshit, that's whatever word you want to use. This genuous or false, whatever it sat in your craw how long before you decided you didn't do a TV show out of this? We we have always wanted to do a skeptical TV show always, and we started pitching that in the eighties. Tell it to Yeah and we're because we're both. You know, there's two very strong schools in magic. There's the Houdini school, which is the we are or as Robert Houdan said, we are actors playing the parts of magicians. Uh. It also starts with the sixteenth century the Discovery of Witchcraft, which is the first book written that says this stuff is fake, we are doing tricks. There's that whole school that believes that the magician is someone who helps us study how we ascertain truth. In other words, I've studied trickery, so let's talk about the truth. Then there's a whole other school, which is you know David Blaine, for instance, who's a friend of mine and who we get along with. Well, we have a very strong philosophical disagreement. He believes that the magician's job is to distort reality, that you must leave his show thinking things that aren't true. He believes that strongly and can make a very coaching argument for it, which I disagree with, but I know I like them. Um, there's those two schools, and tell him I've always been strongly in the Houdini amazing Randy camp on that Ben ps, I don't see a David Blaine theater in a Vegy yes, by the way, So I don't know I'm putting my money on, although we had him on the show and he's he's great, he's wonderful. He's a great, great magician and and a great guy. Um, So we've been pushing this and I would go in and say, the nuts always have the passion and the scientists always have this low key, measured way. What we will give you in bullshit is we will do the best to give you the scientific point of view, done with the passion of a nut. And I'm willing to give you all that passion and rip my heart open and be wrong and go off half cocked. But I'm going to do it for the other side, and and the and the topics came to you, like what was the first show. The first show is very complex because the first show was about talking to the dead, and we conceived the show to attack you know John Edward and those people who say they can communicate with the dead. And I conceived it intellectually, and then while thinking about it, my mom died at the age of ninety in two thousand and we started doing the show in two thousand one, and this happened. Forgive me for only in this one way comparing myself to Hudini. But Udini had this intellectual dislike for people who claimed to talk to the dead. And it was a lot of Houdini's posturing, I do better tricks than them. I do tricks no one can figure out their tricks. Aren't that good? And then his mom dies and Um, Arthur Conan Doyle Ryla Holmes, writer was a big believer in in spiritualist. Judini wanted to be around him because Udini um was the son of a rabbi. But uh, but it was not well educated, and Arthur Conan Doyle was very respected and very well educated. And Udini was thrilled to be traveling in that circle. He was cheap carney trash, traveling the circle of the intellectuals. He loved Eric Yeah, and his mother. Judini's mother died and Arthur Conan Doyle's wife did automatic writing, okay, which was you would just without thinking, you would just write, and it was the spirits talking through you. And Arthur Conan Doyle said, well, you know you miss your mom so much, because Judini was another similarity, a mama's boy, which I was. I was very close to my mom and Houdini, you know, okay, it's a little dangerous, you're gonna talk to my mom, but okay. So his wife sat down and then did automatic writing, and at the top of the page, I would have given the bay to be there was across and the first words were dear Harry, and then it went on. Now, what Arthur Kona and his wife didn't know was that his mother didn't speak English. He was born in Budapest. He claimed to be from Appleton, Wisconsin. He was actually born in Budapest. He was the son of a rabbi. Across at the top, probably not right, and his mother never once called him Harry, that was his stage name. So Judini felt what it feels like to have your image of someone you love distorted. And Houdini went ape ship and then the second half of his career was all busting these people. And so we were going to do talking to the dead, and I we did that show, uh, you know, within a year of my mom dying, And so it was very very passionate because the point that people don't make is a lot of times the people that do this communication with the dead, they say that they're bringing solace to people. The most valuable thing I have in my life is the memories of my family, my mom and dad, also my children. The new memories I'm making, but let's let's go from the past, the memories of my mom and dad. If I come to you grief stricken about my mom and you claim that you're communicating with her, and then we have some sort of communication, what you have done you can call it bringing solace, but you and also see it as distorting my memory. You've now said something that she never said. And I cannot think of a crueler thing. In order to get power and make money, you're doing this, and it's actually the most dis Yeah, and it's it's it's horrible. I am naturally not cynical, and when you're naturally not cynical, you bump into this stuff all the time. I tend to, uh, I tend to be skeptical, but not cynical, and people always put those together, and they are very different emotional states. You know, Skepticism is is cold and cynicism is hot. You know. Cynicism is, uh, everybody's full of ship, everybody's lying to us, everybody's doing this. Skepticism is let's get to the truth. And those are two very different things. You know. When I talked to Bill Maher about this, because Bill Moore is proudly cynical and I am proudly skeptical, and we are different things. It's a very different reactions. And and I think that if you get to Pollyanna and I am very Pollyanna, I am much too optimistic. I'm much too straightforward. It's one of the things you get, you get with a with a perfect You know, everybody in show business complains I'm from a dysfunctional family. I drop out of those conversations. You know, my my dad never got the memo that dad's supposed to give you conditional love. He never got that. He was just unconditional love and supportive and even thinks he didn't understand. My parents tried, from the time I was seventeen until the day they died, tried to get me to cut my hair. And the really funny part of it was that this boy, this baby laugh is my mother when she was in her eighties and I was in my forties. My mother actually said, I just love this moment. My mom sitting there and she goes, you know, Pen, when you were a young man, having the long hair was fine. But now that you're older, I mean you're older than middle aged and you have some gray in there. You need to get your hair cut. And I said, Mom, this is how far we've come. We've now come to the point where now it was okay when I was young, that never happened because every single time she saw me, that battle went on. But I want to say, and I want to say this proudly to the world, that before my mother died, I went out one evening when visiting her and we remembered to get milk on the way home, something I had never done my entire life before. As we sign up, I know what play you and I should do. What's that We're gonna do a play together? We're gonna do Beckett. I would nothing. I would like nothing. Sure, I mean we made bomb, made bomb, but we do it for us? Oh, I would I would I would do it for us, I would do it for I would. Do you have anything we set that up, Glenn look. Clan says yes. Clan says yes. If you missed Penn and Teller during their sick week run on Broadway this summer, you can catch them in Vegas by Alec Baldwin. And this is here's the thing. M