‪Penn & Teller: The great nail gun trick

welcome back to call us tonight two people have noticed a full Penn & Teller they'll be playing on their stage in Las Vegas that's incredible I met performers tonight but this is the bit I've been most looking forward to if you're of a nervous disposition or if you work for health and safety look away now because playing Russian roulette with a pneumatic nail gun for your pleasure and if you're watching Simon Cowell this is real Saturday night entertainment Roy will you please welcome on stage the fabulous the unique Penn & Teller thank you this magic trick is kind of about memorization kind of about focus and kind about concentration now memorization acts without a fashion for many many years we tried to make our version a little bit less totally cerebral by adding in a nail gun I hope you're all aware of how bad nail guns are they're responsible for about 30,000 emergency room visits a year in the United States that's our compressed air over there and it's forcing out the nails with a great deal of power certainly enough particle all the way through that board into another board and fasten them together for construction purposes but I've thought of that but putting the board on a metal table put the nails stick out a little bit now we're talking about memorization and the trick looks like this now the nail gun is loaded right here and that's motive what's called a strain which is two pieces of rigid plastic that hold the nails perpendicular equidistant from one another when you pull nails out of the string whatever the nail gun come from those spaces it still fires the air and makes the noise but it does not fire a nail so all I have to do is memorize this sequence and I can do this that's the trick now you've noticed by now that I'm not just alternating as a matter of fact the pattern does not repeat for the whole trick now if you've seen a memorization act in vaudeville there obviously would not have been a nail gun would have all been done with numbers and words the performer would have gotten maybe 40 single digit numbers yelled out by the audience memorized that almost random sequence and then written it back perfectly on a chalkboard while reciting Shakespeare sonnet chosen by the audience and this is the exact same trick just like wire-walking it's the exact same trick if the tightwire is set four feet off the ground as if it's set 50 feet off the ground and yet he had a little bit of danger we have a little bit of danger to the bed it makes the whole show just a little more now most most memorization acts are magic tricks there lies we don't mind you knowing that because teller and I believe it is morally wrong to do things on stage that are really dangerous it makes you audience complicit in unnecessary human risk see thoughts about this being a lie think that proves it right there tonight having done it again see you next time

Channel: Darth Yucko

Views: 3,428,876

Rating: 4.8593254 out of 5

Keywords: Penn & Teller (TV Personality), Nail Gun, Teller (TV Writer), Penn Jillette (TV Writer)

Id: Jko5BGhc-Ys

Length: 5min 28sec (328 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 15 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Mackinstyle]

This is my favourite because not only is it great theatre, but Penn also makes a very clear point about proper magic never having any danger.

[u/MirrorNinjaBot]

mirror - US restricted

[u/austinrfnd]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1811179/ Looks like we are getting a Season 2 to Fool Us?!?!?!

[u/Patches67]

What if there are no nails in the gun? It's a rigged table.

[u/darucon]

Being a general contractor who works with nail guns on a daily basis, its clear that some of you have no idea what your talking about :D

[u/Tobotron]

The only way penn and teller would perform this trick is with no nails in the gun. They are hidden in the table

[u/TILFromReddit]

Nail guns require the tip of the nozzle to be depressed in order to actually fire a nail. Safety feature.

[u/Jespy]

I can do this! Took me a while and I had like 24 ER visits last year because I kept failing. But I now memorize it as long as I only put one nail on the cartridge. Success.

[u/vatothe0]

Seems pretty clear the nails are flipping up from the wood, not shooting down out of the gun.