Talking magic, truth, and Trumps allegedApprenticeTapes.
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But, well, and I dont know how honest I should be here, Ive changed a lot.
You once said that magic in this country is controlled by retards.
What were you talking about?
Instead it would be divorced fathers dropping off their children.
And that was a hard decision, because we couldve said magic show and sold X number of tickets.
But we wouldnt say that.
What are they doing?Well, the answer is, we were doing a magic show.
But you wanted to be framed differently?Yeah.
People within a genre try hard to fight their way out of it.
And it worked.It did.
Now, Teller might think differently about all this.
In what way?Teller got into magic at 5 years old.
I didnt get into magic in any real way until I was 19 andmet Teller.
My whole life up that point was about dirty rock bands.
And most of my friends in high school were girls.
So the idea of a boys club that excluded them which is what magic was made me furious.
More like five.Were countingHoudini, Thurston, and Blackstone.
it’s possible for you to get to 15.
But consequently any trend you see is completely wrong because youre working with very small numbers.
But Im askingyou.[Laughs.]
I will now violate a nondisclosure agreement.
This year onFool Uswe had six women magicians working solo.
And out of those six, five fooled us.
Now the average rate we have for being fooled is 12 percent.
But solo women fool us almost 100 percent of the time.
Ive been wanting to see that for 50 years.
David Blaine does the exact opposite.
He wants to present everything as though it were real and not a trick.
Thats strange to me morally.
I dont agree with wanting people to leave your show believing something thats not true.
This looks real, but its not.
I want to talk about a trick in your Vegas show.
Youre explaining how the illusion is done.
Why not?I think its a fabulous trick.
The audience loves it.
And I dont like it.
I dont like it because it could be in another magic show.
You put that in Copperfields show, its great.
But the introduction with the thread and then cutting the thread at the end helps it work for me.
That said, its not right in the pocket for me.
Andeverythingelse in our career: right in the pocket for me.
Our goal when we started was Lets do a magic show for people smarter than us.
No other magicians have ever said that sentence.
And when you start being honest with the audience, they start to play a game within themselves.
Is our ability to internalize counterfactuals a problem for society?Well, thats interesting.
One of the most important things society needs is agreement on how we determine truth.
But Im also a little skeptical about how much that gets underlined for entertainment.
What do you mean?We know a guy walked into that pizza place with a gun because ofPizzagate.
We know he believed in that.
We also know that hundreds of thousands of people knew about the Pizzagate conspiracy idea.
But those are two very different facts.
We dont know how many of the people who knew about Pizzagate shrugged it off.
All we know is thatoneguy took it seriously.
Probably more than one guy did, but its very hard to get real data on that.
You hear stuff like, Trump supporters are homophobic.
Trump supporters are misogynist.
This is a mistake that was made by Democrats.
They would accuse Trump supporters of being things that Trump supporters knew they werent.
There are Trump supporters that have best friends who have gay sex.
You cant put a they-jot down thing on that.
For 50 million years our biggest problems were too few calories, too little information.
For about 50 years our biggest problem has been too many calories, too much information.
We have to adjust, and I believe we will really fast.
I also believe it will be wicked ugly while were adjusting.
How will that ugliness manifest itself?Donald Trump.
Youve talked in the past about how the antidote to bad ideas is more ideas.
YouTube is set up to push you crazy.
If I search for vegan recipes, Ill end up with 9/11 truthers.
So you think liberals who talk about Trumpisms effect on a declining discourse are being hysterical?I do.
You knowSiegfried & Roy?
Of course.I was having lunch with Siegfried and he was telling this story about dating a woman.
I am not straight.
I think thats the only real truth Ive ever heard.
I dont want to be atheist, libertarian, gay, straight.
I dont even want to be a man anymore.
The only team I want us to be talking about is all 7 billion of us human beings.
I want to get back to showbiz-related stuff but, like you said,youre a well-known libertarian.
But can the state use violence to build a library?
So the flaw in libertarianism is that maybe a small amount of coercion might be worth it.
The other problem with libertarianism: it may not be modern enough.
Libertarianism has to do with everyone being able to find meaningful work.
Doug Stanhope.Yeah, Doug Stanhope said isnt our goal100 percentunemployment?
Isnt that a good thing?
But if there arent meaningful jobs, is there any reason for libertarianism?
I have been very seduced lately by the basic universal human income.
Sometimes the answers no.
But I think libertarianism is a good thing to have in the conversation.
But do I want that idea to be discussed?
Does Mark Burnett havetapes of President Trumpsaying damaging things duringCelebrity Apprentice?Yeah, I was in the room.
Youve heard him say …Oh, yeah.
Can you tell me what youve heard him say?No.
If Donald Trump had not become president, I would tell you all the stories.
But the stakes are now high and I am an unreliable narrator.
What I do, as much as anything, is Im a storyteller.
And storytellers are liars.
Stress is the wrong word, but I was not at my best.
You sit at this table and this man rambles pontificatesis giving him too much credit.
And because you live in the modern world youve heard Trump ramble.
But youve heard Trump ramble when he thinks hes being careful.
Imagine when he feels he can be frank.
Im not trying to protect myself.
This really is a moral thing.
And if someone were to say, Penn didnt get that exactly right, youd go Who cares?
But now being accurate matters more.Yeah, the stakes are really high.
Nothing I can say here hurts my career.
But for the world the stakes are higher.
He [President Trump] would be reading.
And what Im trying to do here is tell you the story emotionally without telling you specifics.
Okay, I think I follow your logic.He would say racially insensitive things that made me uncomfortable.
He would ask one cast member if hed rather have sex with this woman or that woman.
I would say to him, What are you talking about?
You dont know who it is reporting that.
He had no idea.
He would be a terrible president.
You want someone capricious and petty and narcissistic to be on your reality show.
I want those tapes to be used against him, but it might be unfair.
Because whatever he mightve said was occurring in the larger context of being on a reality show?Yeah.
But youve known them their whole life.
You know the exact context.
Context is really tricky.
But I cant stress this enough: I do not respect Donald Trump.
By the way, Ididntenjoy it.
And I was also the one who liked his father the most.
Don Junior said to me, Why do you like him so much?
And I said, I made a movie calledThe Aristocrats.
I like people when they dont have filters.
I like Bob Dylan.
I like Neil Young.
I love the Beat poets.
Which means if Im in a room with Trump Im happy to hear him talk.
But Im also happy to hear Charlie Manson talk.
I have nothing good to say about Donald Trump as president.
Theres a line from Whoopi Goldberg inThe Aristocratswhen she says something about how people arent shockable anymore.
There are things happening today with college-age people that I dont understand and thats okay.
Thats not quite right.
They were saying they didntwantto play campuses because they thought students were too sensitive.
Not that they arent able to play them.Youre exactly right, I said that bad.
Music did not come easy to me, as much as I loved it.
Is juggling a thing jocks do?Its college-y.
I was not a good clown.
They offered me a contract but I wasnt good never could get a laugh physically.
It was always meta laughs I got.
Crowd-gathering literally means being able to draw a crowd in a public place?Yeah.
I was unbelievably loud.
I could hold a crowd outdoors in the wind of probably 500 people.
I was aggressive and confident and I would not do stuff other street performers did.
I would not look poor.
I wore a $3,000 watch.
I was doing these shows at Headhouse Square in Philadelphia and the money I was making was unbelievable.
So I was two very clear characters: the performer and someone talking about the performance.
There was also a purity to the show.
Twelve minutes and then at the end, Id get about $600 in the 70s!
Teller says those 12 minutes are best thing Ive ever done and hes seen everything Ive ever done.
But Im more interested on what it would mean to call bullshit on Penn Jillette.
Whats your bullshit?The things I worry about the most is that Im completely uneducated.
You couldnt even really give me credit with a high-school education.
That troubles me a lot.
I also just dont have a solid liberal education.
People who are very well-educated always tell me that education means nothing.
But thats because they have it.
I guess Ive been lucky.
DoesPeter Thielthink he got lucky?He was just here.
He was?Yeah, and he seemed to think hed gotten lucky.
Peter Thiel?He seemed to think that.
He doesnt come off like a guy whod attribute much of his success to luck.He did to me.
I like him a lot.
And he contrasts with Trump, who never showed the slightest glimpse of humility.
Reading your books, I was surprised how much you wrote about your sex life.
And I would go, Howard, its just not true.
Lets put all humility aside: I was genius.
I should have won the Nobel Prize for the idea I had in high school to fuck smart girls.
They were fully prepared and there was not one single guy in school hitting on them.
So it took nothing from me.
It was Want to do this?
Wouldnt this be fun?
So in terms of kinky, I never denied it, you know?
But that reputation all comes from Stern.
Stern would ask, Have you had sex with a porn star?And my answer would be yes.
Have you done this?Yes.
But in the real world of kinky sex, I was about as vanilla as they come.
And now that Im 63, more so.
But you know, it was also no drugs and no alcohol.
You always find a way in interviews to bring up that you dont drink.Its really important.
Still Im not invited to things where my friends are going to drink.
If everyone were into sobriety, would you be more likely to drink?I think so.
Has the way you think about Penn & Teller changed over the years?The big change wasCelebrity Apprentice.
For years I was this aggressive Fuck you, magics run by retards guy.
Then I went onCelebrity Apprentice, where I had cameras on me for 15 to 18 hours a day.
And if you have a camera on you for that long, you are unable to fake it.
What blew my mind was that things went okay when I committed to being totally myself.
After that, in interviews, I started talking more like I was talking to a friend.
Consequently theres been a huge change in my tone onstage.
I used to think honesty had to be screaming and aggressive.
I didnt think honesty could be gentle.
I havent addressed your question.
Like, Hey Teller, heres a funny idea, we can just do this really simply.
Because at some level we are only doing things for ourselves now.
We have enough old material to last the rest of our lives.
But theyrebettertricks than weve done before.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.
Annotations by Matt Stieb.
Hat by New York Hat Co.
