>> Female Presenter: Hi. I'm Julie Wiskirchen
from the authors at Google team here in Santa Monica. And today I'm very
excited to welcome Penn Jillette. [Applause] >> Female Presenter: You probably know Penn
as the more vocal half of the magic duo Penn and Teller. They have a long running
Vegas show and they also host the TV show, "Penn and
Teller: Bullshit!". He co-produced and co-directed the film "The Aristocrats",
has appeared in numerous film and TV shows, including
Dancing with the Stars and is author of six books. And
today he's here to talk about the latest which is called "God No!: Signs You May Already
be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales". So please
welcome me in welcoming Penn Jillette. >> Penn: Thank you. I was very excited to
be at one of these Google shindigs. Can you all hear me okay
with the microphone being so low, set for a low person?
The book is called "God No!: Signs You May Already Be
an Atheist and Other Magical Tales" It's laid out in my version of the ten commandments
which is the ten suggestions. And I wrote the book.
The basic reason I wrote the book was because Glenn
Beck told me to.[laughter] I get a lot of heat a huge amount
of heat. I don't know if any of you watch Paul Provenza, my
partner on Aristocrats, Paul Provenza. There's a show called the Green Room. And
I was on there with two of my heroes -- Martin Mull and Tommy
Smothers. And Tommy Smothers tore me into an asshole for ever
going on the Glenn Beck show. He thought that--. He's completely--.
He's 100 percent right that when you go on a show that you disagree with philosophically,
you're giving that show your name. You're giving
them your brand. You're giving them your support in
a certain sense. So that I shouldn't go on anything
to do with Glenn Beck or FOX News anywhere. That argument
is completely 100 percent valid. The other argument,
the other side, I believe, is also completely
valid. Which is if you only go on shows with people who agree
with you, who's going to go on Glenn Beck and say the
simple sentence, "there is no God?" Who is going
to sit with Glenn Beck and when he says Penn did you go to Ringling
Brothers clown college?" And I say, "yes, Glenn, and
you're a Mormon so we're both wearing funny underwear
but for different reasons." [laughter] Glenn was always
pleasant. Polite. I only went on like four times I
guess. And one of the things I said to Tommy Smothers was, is there anything I ever said
on Glenn Beck that was wrong, that you believe I was lying, that you don't agree
with me? He said, "no, no, no, -- that's not the point." If Hitler had a talk show and
I said, "yes, I'd go on and I'd try to tell the truth." So Glenn
Beck and I have maintained this slight friendship. You
know, e-mail friendship. Gmail friendship. [laughter] Where
we write back and forth, you know, not every day and send pictures
of our cats. But we do write probably every four or five
weeks, back and forth. And he was working on this, one of
these rallies to destroy America that he was involved
with. And he was putting together the ten commandments.
And he made this argument, which I thought was really
counterproductive for a theist to make. The argument he
was making was that the ten commandments were so built
into our morality, so important culturally and in our
hearts that you didn't even have to believe in religion
in order to have these ten commandments. Now, that's the
argument essentially that Sam Harris makes in his -- the
moral -- what's the other word of Sam Harris' new book -- yeah.
Moral Landscape. The Moral Landscape. That's the exact argument he makes.
It's the argument Dawkins makes all the time and it's the
argument that atheists make forever about morality that
morality exists outside of religion. You can be moral
without religion. It's an argument that you can very
rarely get a religious person to accept, and yet, here is
Glenn Beck making that argument as though it were a
religious argument. And he called upon me to write my
ten commandments to show -- because I'm the only atheist
Glenn Beck knows [laughter] To write my ten commandments. And turns out they don't actually
overlap, because the first three commandments Judeo-Christian
commandments are pretty much "I am God, suck up to me".
And those aren't very important to the atheist. But some of the other ones like "thou shalt
not kill" I think that atheists can get behind maybe even more than
the religious people who have kind of "thou shalt
not kill somebody God doesn't want you to". They have
kind of another thing around there. And I'm also not
very down with the coveting thing because I believe
what you do inside your head doesn't matter very much.
It's the way you act towards other people, what you actually
do. And fantasies and thought experiments that
are immoral are fine as long as action ends up being moral.
So, after I wrote these for Glenn Beck, I decided
it would be a good book. And I laid out my ten suggestions
as I was told to write by Glenn Beck and then filled
it with stories -- some of which have to do directly
with religion and living an atheist life -- and some of
which deal with me trying to get laid at a gay bathhouse and
dropping my cock in a blow-dryer. [laughter] And which
some of the reviewers who are reviewing this in a very serious theological
way have had a lot of trouble finding out what
the parable of the cock in the blow-dryer really means to
atheists. But then again Christ was cryptic, too, now wasn't
he? [laughter] There's a reason that my cock being dropped into a blow-dryer
is important to this book. The subtitle of it
is Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical
Tales". And it opens with -- the only thing I'm going to read to you from
this. I'm just going to take questions because you're people I want to talk to.
Otherwise I would just read from the book. But I'm going
to read just the first page, because it kind of sums up
what I mean by signs you may already be an atheist. I
don't know why am I reading this. I can go off the top of my
head because I wrote it. But you may already be an
atheist. If God, however you perceive him, her, it, told
you to kill your child, told you however God communicates
with you to kill your child, would you do it? If your
answer is no, in my booklet, you're an atheist. There's
doubt in your mind. Love and morality are more important
to you than your faith. If your answer is yes, please
reconsider. And one of the things I hit upon in this
book a lot is that, even people who claim -- I mean I
guess I'll quote one of my closest friends, Rob Pike, who
is a scientist here at Google. Not here on this
particular campus, but maybe on one of those. And Rob
Pike once said to me he was so much of an atheist he
didn't really believe that other people believed in God
[laughter] And he did not say that as a joke. And
there's another book out by Andy Thomson called "Why We Do Believe in God". Then there's a
parentheses and S afterwards. "Why Do We Believe in Gods". And
one of the points he makes is the point -- I think it's
very important -- about the Abraham example in
the front of the book, which is people who believe in God
live their lives as though there was no God. They live
their life with no consideration for divine intervention
and no consideration that God's going to help them.
There's a cliché which is not true. There are no atheists
in fox holes. And I would argue that there's nothing
but atheists in fox holes. If you really believe
that God was watching over your every move. If you
really believe there was an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent
being that watched every sparrow fall and counted every
grain of sand, then why wouldn't you walk through the
battlefield going "hidey hidey-ho. And I'm over here".
[laughter] And know that God would make the bullets go right around
you the way they did in Pulp Fiction. If God can save
John Travolta, he can sure as fuck save you, right? [laughter]
Every time you stop at a stop sign, you're saying, "well, you know,
I'm not sure God is going to pick the exact time of my death,
so I better look both ways before I go through here."
And I just think there are a lot of people who just say
they believe in God kind of as a knee jerk reaction to
a society that kind of says that's a good thing. And I was
writing this book to kind of say that, "maybe they could
reconsider. Atheists are growing very, very quickly in
this country, but not quickly enough for my taste." And
there are a lot of books written about atheism by really
smart people. You've got Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, [inaudible],
Ali . And this as I said is a book written by a
really stupid atheist. Just to give you an idea that not
only smart people, but stupid people as well, can be
atheists. I'm just going to open it up to questions on
anything. You want to ask about the book. About bull
shit, about anything we've done. I'm here. This is the
last interview of my day. So I'm very happy to answer
questions off subject. Sir? >> Male #1: What's the difference between
an atheist and an agnostic? >> Penn: Well, you know an agnostic is a word
that I believe from reading the Thomas Huxley biography that
came out a little while ago. Agnostic is a word that was developed as a weasel word.
Thomas Huxley was Darwin's pit bull. When Darwin wrote his
book, "On the Origin of Species" and changed the world.
Probably the most important scientific breakthrough. His
wife, Darwin's wife, didn't want him going out and
arguing these points. And Darwin also was not a confrontational
man. So they kind of sent Thomas Huxley out. And
somebody, maybe Darwin's wife is major culprit. Maybe
Darwin himself. Maybe Huxley. Didn't want to use the
word atheist. So Huxley took the word agnostic, meaning
"don't know," and kind of threw it out there as that's
what he was. He was agnostic. So he wouldn't scare
people away with the atheism and can maybe slide in his
message of evolution. My view of that after, you know,
150 years of using the weasel word agnostic, is that it
still doesn't answer the question. If I ask you, "is
there a God." An epistemological question, "is there a God". And more specifically, can
you know there is a God. The answer, "no, you can't know
there is a God." Or "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer. That is agnosticism; it
answers the epistemological question. But if you're
asked, "do you believe in God?" That's an entirely
different question. And I think, especially from
talking to evangelicals, especially from talking to
Mormons, born again Christians, especially the religious
people in our culture in the United States, doesn't
really hold up for all religions, but for the Judeo
Christian, --what was called by a wonderful science fiction
writer the Mediterranean death cults-- those particular religions, belief is
considered to be active. You can't passively believe.
You actively believe. And that is a basic Judeo
Christian idea that belief is active. And from that
point of view, I feel very strongly that, if you don't
know, you don't believe. It's not saying that you will
not believe. It's not saying that any evidence that
comes along wouldn't change your mind instantly. It's
not even saying that you don't go back and forth and five
minutes ago I believed, right now I don't. Five minutes
from now I will. But the question, "do you believe in
God?" Does not seem it can be answered with, "I don't
know," unless you claim not to have a sense of self and
not have a sense of what you, yourself, belief. So I
believe if you answer the question, "do you believe in
God?" with "I don't know," you're really saying "no."
You're really saying "no, I don't believe in God." So
I've been trying not to use the word agnostic except for
very specific epistemological arguments. But for theological arguments, saying "listen
you've got to be atheist or theist. And more important
than that, do you live your life as though there
were God or as though there weren't a God? Do you live
your life as though you're going for just reward or punishment.
Or do you live your life as though there was some
sort of good and pleasing and loving things you could do without worrying about what's
going to happen to you after life. So I kind of dismiss
the whole idea of agnostic and go right to atheist.
It's -- I just don't think it's a dirty word. I think it's
a sexy word even though it's a little hard to spell with
the I and E in there. We can learn. [laughter] We can
look it up. Yes? >> Penn: [inaudible] There was a horrible
nightmare there. >> Penn: Well, good. You got all organized
out there with your question.. >> Male #2: Hi. The first two pages of the
book that I glanced through before the thing, you mention many
times, like five or six times at least, that you never used alcohol, you've never used
drugs. And the Bull Shit! show, you make the same assertion
in other places. Why does it matter? >>Penn: Yeah, I don't know; I don't know why
it matters. I end up saying that all the time because it's so unexpected
and people just expect it if you're in show business
and you look like me and you're enormous and you're my
age and you have my hair and you have my job, people just
assume I'm a heavy duty drug user. And Trey Parker considers
it to be my biggest flaw that I'm not. [laughter]
And in order to make Trey Parker happy, when he's
always complaining that I'm never high and things
would be much more interesting high, when I went to the dentist
and knew I was going to get some heavy dental surgery
and knew they were going to give me stuff that would really
fuck me up, I invited Trey Parker over that afternoon.
So the only person who had hung out with me high
is Trey Parker and we made a little pact that whenever I get
serious dental work done and they're gonna put me under and
liquid Valium, Trey is going to be there because we meet on
this Trey Parker level. [laughter] You know, I think it only
matters because I graduated from high school in 1973 in a
rural high school -- Greenfield, Massachusetts, a dead
factory town -- and every single student that I knew in
my classes was tripping and on heroin and drunk all the
time. And the reason I, one of the major reasons I did
not go to college is I wanted to get away from people who
were on drugs. I was so sick of being around people
who were stoned and so sick of being around people who
were drunk by the time I hit 17, that I get in the habit
of repeating it all the time just so people after the show don't ask me to go get high.
I will say, politically, I'm in favor of all of that being completely legal.
The fact we lock up people for what they put in their
own body is an atrocity. The amount of people we put in jail
-- not only the horrible inhumane act that is, but
also, on a much less important level, the amount of people
we spend to lock up people who are just putting stuff
in their own body is awful. But I mention it too much and maybe because my mom and dad
were teetotalers. My grandparents were teetotalers. And
there may be certain kind of family pride in that. And also I tend to--.
Things that make me different from other people, I tend to
push and celebrate like other people to do that. If you
watch everything I do, that particular point comes up
really often. Not as much as I say mother fucker, but it
comes up pretty often. It's just true. >> Female #1: Hi, I have two questions if
I have a chance to get to both of them. And they're totally unrelated.
So the first is about Sam Harris. You mention the
Moral Landscape. I happen to be ironically reading the End of
Faith last year when I was in Jerusalem and I was there just as a
tourist, you know. >>Penn: [laughs] As opposed to a pilgrim or
terrorist [laughter]. >> Female #1: I was also there for work though.
But what I found most interesting about that book, and if you're
familiar with it you'll know what I'm talking about, is
that Sam Harris kind of makes the point that World War III
will effective be caused by the fighting between the Christians, the Muslims and the Jews and
I was kind of wondering whether or not you agreed with
that perspective that he has. >>Penn: You know, all the stuff that comes
out that's depressing, all the World War III, end of
the world stuff, I always go back to thinking about my dad
in 1971, you know. What the world must have seemed like
then when students were shot at Kent State. When our
president was, regardless of what your politics are
or what you thought of Nixon or the Nixon administration,
he had lost his mind. With all the Nixon jokes aside, the President of the
United States had gone crazy. He was going to step down.
We'd gone off the gold standard. The UN was out of its
mind. Vietnam was going to go on forever. And that
time that my dad had to deal with when he was my age,
really seems like the end of the world. And I am -- I think
a -- I can't defend this, but in my heart I'm a real
optimist. Everything seems really good to me. I think
it might be part of being raised by a mom and dad -- my
dad didn't get the memo that dads were supposed to do
conditional love and moms unconditional love. I just had
a mom and dad and sister that loved me completely and
supported me and I have always had good friends. So things have gone
pretty well. So maybe that distorts your point of view. I
know about all that apocalyptic stuff. I've talked with Christopher
Hitchens who will just say all your optimism can be shot down with one word -- Nigeria
-- you know. It's full of Muslims. It's going to go nuclear and it's
the end of the world starting right there. Boom. And
Christopher Hitchens. Whenever you're in a disagreement
with Christopher Hitchens, it's like having a traffic
accident with a police officer. You know who's wrong. [laughter]
Anything I argue with Hitchens on, I believe I'm wrong.
And Hitchens is, with his view of politics, he kind of thinks
that same thing. I also know that it feels to me like
what we're seeing with religious extremists also feels
desperate to me and is dangerous and is horrible and the
deaths that are coming. It does feel desperate. It
feels like since 9/11, this is just what I'm feeling.
I have no basis for this. I want to separate that. This
is in the realm of poetry not the realm of fact. It seemed before 9/11,
atheists were really strident and aggressive and loud and
unpleasant and religious people were kind of like more
laid back. When you watch TV, that's the way they looked
in their little boxes. It was atheists kind of banging
their fists and yelling and the religious people kind of
being sedate. And since 9/11 not just because of 911, it
seems we're seeing another thing happening. We're seeing
a lot of smiling, gentle atheists and a lot of absolutely
panicked religious people. So I think one of the reasons
that everything feels so scary right now is that the
number of atheists is going through the roof and is going
through the roof in a very, very different way. It's not
going through the roof that there are atheist socialism.
It's not going through the roof in the Ayn Rand thing.
It's just going through the roof of a lot of people caring
about the world we have now and caring about each other and going through it. So I read
that Sam Harris stuff and he makes really good points and he's probably
right but I just don't feel it. I don't think that the
wars are going to be centered that way. I think that
people are getting more and more disgusted with just
this top-down kind of thinking . And I think that everything,
you know, everything that's changing. And a huge part
of that is the Internet. And a huge part of that is making
information available to so many people. I think it's
really hard in a world that has the Internet and Google
to keep people in these cloistered environments where
they have to keep that raw hate going. Now, suicide
bombers are all well-educated, all really nice guys, all
really wealthy. It's not the poor uneducated people.
And the people that flew the planes on 9/11 all had
access to computers. And that argues against the whole
thing, but I still have this hopeful thing in my heart
that I think things are just getting better and I think
we haven't even started to see what the kind of communication
that's happened with the Internet, what Google is going to
do. I just think it's so much bigger than the Gutenberg
press and the Gutenberg press invented the United States
of America. That's the idea that's based on that kind of information
being shared. And I'm just waiting for the country,
for the politics, that's truly and honestly based on
Google. And I mean that Google as the brand name and
also Google as the generic term for search engine,
because you don't want me to use it that way because then your
brand name goes away and you're all fucked. [laughter] >> Female #1: My second question is about
the irony of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and how that
Pastafanarianism, or however you pronounce it, is growing to a
point where it becomes kind of ridiculous because it is,
in and of itself, a religion even though it's supposed to be
not having a religion. >> Penn: You know, there's nothing --. When
a joke goes too far, you know, there's the expression it's really
funny till someone loses an eye and then it's hysterical.
[laughter] I think that's absolutely true. When you have the
flying spaghetti monster elevated and used in those
court cases, it's really terrific. I mean, if, it really
does, those absurdest things really do test the
laws and test what we really want to do. I mean, there was,
what I was hoping for with the SubGenius. The SubGenius
was around in the 70s. I don't know if anybody remembers Bob Dobbs. But I
was a SubGenius from the beginning along with Mark
Mothersbaugh, all those cats, late 70s, early 80s cats. And I was really
hoping that that would do with the flying spaghetti monster
had done. But that was much more, that was--. Bob Dobbs
was a religious/ anti-religious idea that was done
by artists. And I believe the flying spaghetti monster
is anti-religious idea that's done essentially
by scientists. And therefore, flying spaghetti monster is
a much better tool to argue. And that argument is important.
I mean, I've been talking to Andy Thomson who wrote
this great book Why We Believe in God. And he's a forensic
shrink. He talks to people who do horrendous stuff.
And one of the things we were talking about along these
lines of 'even people who say they believe in God don't believe'.
It's very interesting that in this country in our
legal system, we have guilty, we have not guilty, and we have
not guilty by reason of insanity. We do not have any
sort of plea for "God told me to." And if you go to the
Bible belts, the absolutely Bible belts, with a judge who's
an absolute believer, with an all fundamentalist
Christian jury and you go in front of that jury and
your client says that she was told by God to kill her
family, like the Yates case, she was told that. You don't get
anybody in the press or anywhere saying, "we better look into this
and see if God told her to". [laughter] "We'd better check".
I mean, that's a laugh line and yet when you read the Bible, it happens over and over
again. And religious people have this sense that they
believe absolutely in the literal interpretation of
the Bible and all that is absolutely true, but has no application
whatsoever to our time now. And just the fact that going
in to a court case and saying, "God speaks to you and you
hear voices," you know? Exactly like seeing the burning
bush. Exactly like it's described in the Bible. Is
laying down the foundation for an insanity defense. It's
weird that our court system that has "in God we trust" on
the money and wants to put the ten commandments on the
wall, completely, completely ignores the possibility that
there is God in our lives. >> Male #3: Hi Penn. I just want to say one
thing real fast before a question. I've seen you a couple of times
and every time you have this -- you're very good at stopping
the hysteria and going, "the kids are all right;
stop worrying about everybody". And I appreciate the fact; you are a very prominent
voice for that point of view. My question is
actually -- I'm going to move a little bit away. You
spent a fair amount of time in England recently doing Fool Us, which of course I would have
never seen being in the United States. I've only heard rumors.
>>Penn: No, no, there's all sorts of commercials on now so you can see it
>> Male #3: So my question is how do you feel that the audiences, both in terms
of, if you want to talk about the theist/atheist split,
because I know there's a big difference between the U.S. and England, but also as a magician.
How do you feel the audiences are different across the pond than your native
Vegas? >> Penn: It used to be true and I think -- when
I say used to be before me I believe it was true in my lifetime.
I've been on the road with Penn and Teller for
about 35 years and I believe when we started out. And this is very
hard because there's no control group. You know,
we've also gotten more successful. Other things change
as well. But it felt like -- and maybe this was all
an illusion, but it felt like in the first ten years of
touring that where we went mattered. It felt like you could
feel something when you did a show in Toronto as
opposed to doing a show in Houston. It felt like when
you were doing jokes and standing out there, there
was a different reaction. 15 years ago, I could still feel
a reaction -- New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, San
Francisco, LA -- when we would do jokes that were anti-religious,
we would get polite applause. In the Bible belt
when we played, the first joke we did that was anti-religious,
it would stop the show with applause with screaming.
It was so positive to that. It threw off the timing
of our show because in the Bible belt, I believe, every
atheist in town had come out to see Penn and Teller [laughter] It was 100
percent. And also they were so sick of being surrounded
by this that even the slightest little. Our live show
was a magic show. There are two references to atheism in
a 90 minute show. It doesn't really deal with it very
much. Just a couple little places [snaps fingers] here and there, but
those places would explode. And then over the past five
years, I've noticed that less so, too. There's a
homogeneity of audiences. Used to be that Vegas was very
different than New York. Now it's not. And now, because
we have a very successful show called Penn and Teller: Fool
Us in London in UK -- it's very successful. I would say
that almost half of our Vegas audiences are now from the
UK. It's just this crazy weird demographic with the
economy in Vegas being terrible. It being the time of
year when people from the UK take vacations and us
being very popular over there. And I think the whole
idea -- we did a show 18 years ago over in London. We
did live shows. We did TV shows over there. And I felt
there was a real difference in the audience there. I
just felt reserve quality, a slightly more intellectual
quality, a pride in intellectual quality. Like, I think
that they didn't get more jokes than the Americans. They
want to let you know they got more jokes than the
Americans. And now, I don't feel that at all. I think
that things are moving so quickly in terms of
communication. We have a show that's in England and
can't be seen outside of the UK. And when I mention that
show in front of American audiences, ten percent of the
American audiences have seen it. That wouldn't be true
ten years ago. And you know, none of us especially in
this room, none of us have any idea what's really
happening with copyright. Not only do we not know the
legality, we don't even know the morality. I've talked
with people who've really thought about this. Not as
much as you've talked to people who've thought about
this. But how you deal with a show that's in London,
produced for UK audiences, being seen over the web in the
USA. It's a very complicated issue on who that hurts, who
the gate keepers are, and whether it's right to go around
them or not. I don't even have an opinion on that. But
it has made this homogeneity that I think is wonderful.
I think it should be eventually harder to kill people
when we feel like it's one world. And one world is not
going to come from religion and one world is not going to
come from politics, but one world is inevitable with
technology. >> Male #4: Is it all surreal to have starred
in Hackers where they're talking about 14.4 modems [Penn laughs]
and then 15 years later be standing in Google where you're upstairs
from a gigantic server farm, literally standing in the Gibson. >> Penn: [laughing] It is. It was goofy. It
was goofy to be in Hackers. And they asked me to do that part not because
I was the biggest box office act they could get, but
because I've always been an early-adopter and always been
a big fan and I buy things as soon as they come out.
You know, I tried to get an invitation to Google plus
as quickly as I can but it takes me three weeks after other
people. What the fuck is up with that? You fuckers. Why
aren't I on that fucking list when I've early-adopted
everything you cock-suckers have put out. [laughter]
Then I have to go to some college student in Memphis to have her give
me an invitation to your fucking thing. Fuck you
all in the neck. [laughter] But I've always been an early adopter. And
I remember saying, oh, this is so embarrassing. In 1988
or 89, I was having supper with Rob Pike who was then at
Bell Labs and is now here. And I said to Rob Pike, "oh,
deer." I said to Rob Pike, I just finished backing up a
book that I had written and I'd written it on my computer.
And I said afterwards, "you know? I think my computer
does pretty much everything I'd ever want it to do." And
Rob said, "shut up, you stupid fucker". That compelling
argument "shut up you stupid fucker" is exactly why
I keep being an early adopter. It's really wonderful. What
up there? >>Female #2: He has a question.
[laughter] >>Penn: [inaudible] He has a question. How
do we do that?. >>Female #2: Go ahead on the VC.
[inaudible] [laughter] >>Penn: I've seen the greatest minds of my
generation. Shoot. >> Male #5: Yeah, we're not on mute. >> Male #6: Put the volume up. >>Male #7: Just ask you a question Adam.
>> Male #8: yeah, ask it >> Male # 9: You could write it.
[laughter] >> Male #10: So, I want to ask a question,
but I don't know if you can hear me or not. >> Penn: I can hear you. Go, go, go. >> Male #10: All right. Cool. I guess my name
is Adam and first of all I want to say I'm glad you share my
taste for shirt color. Secondly, my biggest hobby for
the past 20 years has been magic. And I'm just wondering
if there's a correlation being a magician and being an
atheist. I'm sure you know many magicians throughout your
career. Do you notice people who have and interest or
an affinity for magic have a predilection for
atheism? >> Penn: I've tried so hard to make that argument.
"Discoverie of Witchcraft" is the first magic book. And
it comes out of the 16th century. I forgot the date. 1500
some time. And it is a book that's really heavy. It's
a book that separates the idea of magic supernatural from
the idea of conjuring, prestidigitation, doing tricks.
Since that book, there has been a very strong movement in magic towards skepticism.
Then you get to Houdini and Houdini is an escape
artist for the first half of his career using most amazing
catch phrase for it. An American man born in Budapest,
a Jew at a time of immigrants. "I defy the jails
of the world to hold me". Pretty heavy expression. Uses
that and becomes very famous. Uses that and then his
mom dies and he's appalled by the spiritualists claiming
to hear from the dead. Spiritualists who would take his
mom, he wife the rabbi who never learned English and send a message to him from the beyond
grave with a cross at the top that said Dear Harry and Harry wasn't
his name. His name was Ehrich Weiss. His mother never
called him Harry, but he would get these messages from
beyond the grave. And he changes his whole career. There's
not another superstar of his level that changed
the intellectual idea of his career halfway through.
And when I say of his level, it really is for
the 20th century all you've got left is Elvis and Houdini.
I mean those are the two battling it out for Most Famous Entertainer.
I mean, Jolson, the Beatles and Madonna have lost. It's down to
Houdini and Elvis. And I've tried really hard to make
Houdini into an atheist. I've read everything. And he
was certainly a hard core skeptic. He was certainly very
skeptical and maybe a non-believer completely of life
after death. But I believe he was religious. You can
call him a skeptic. I don't think you can call him an
atheist. And this battle, this battle between magicians who think that magicians should
be skeptical, should be atheist, should deal with this is
inside the proscenium. Now we lie; out in the real world,
we tell the truth. There's a lot of people on that side.
You've got Amazing Randi. You've got Banachek. The whole
J-ref nonreligious magician people. Jamy Ian Swiss. Mike Close.
Eric Mead made. You know, the really great magicians
in that kind. Then you have the other magicians who were around
during Houdini's time and continue to be around today who
really believe. And I have had conversations with David
Blaine and he actually believes this. He does not want to
use the word trick. And he believes that the purpose of
magic is to add mystery to the real world. He would like
to, on purpose, muddy the information that's out there,
using tricks and not saying they're tricks, so that people
blur that whole idea. Our point of view is very
strongly, we're all working on the mysteries. There's
so much confusion out there anyway that using lies and
cheating in order to confuse people about reality seems
to me to be morally wrong. But David Blaine and Criss
Angel, if you want to call them magicians. Uri Geller and Kreskin, although I
think if you call them magicians they will sue you. But
from my point of view, possibly magicians. John
Edwards. People who use tricks in order to confuse us
about reality. So I'd love to say that, being a
magician led to skepticism. And it does lead to a
conversation and an obsession with how information is
transferred and how to control that information and how
to distort that information. And some people use that
very much for "here's a way to tell a better truth."
And some people use that to "I want to fuck people up and
confuse and mystify." And I've had discussions with
those people. I've talked to David Blaine and Criss Angel for hours and hours and hours
and they still stick with you know I want to tell people I've done
a card trick here but now I've got super underwater
powers. Okay. And then there's people like Derren
Brown probably the greatest magician in the UK and in some
ways greatest magician period. Derren Brown is wonderful
who started out leaning way towards David Blaine. And
if you're following Derren Brown's career now in the
past four years, he's pretty much over to as close to
the point of view of Penn and Teller as you could want.
And one of the reasons is that my partner, Teller, is in
e-mail conversations with him every day and that
discussion between Teller and Derren Brown has gotten
Derren Brown to put on a book most recently that is completely
on the side of skepticism. So I want to claim that
all magicians are atheists. I want to claim that
magic automatically leads you down the road to skepticism,
but that's not true. >>Female #2: Any other questions on the VC. >> Male #10: Thank you. >>Penn: Oh, thank you. I forgot that you were
there. >>Male #10: I forget sometimes too. >> Penn: Yes. I was pointing to you. Just
say it. I'll repeat it. >> Female #3: [inaudible] >> Penn: She said, considering what you named
your children, what names did you reject? [laughter] My children's names.
My daughter is 6 year old. Her name is Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette.
[applause] And my son is five years old and his name is Zolton
Penn Jillette. Now, the middle name being my first
name. I don't think is too wacky. His first name being
Zolton. That's my wife's maiden name. And her father
had five daughters. They all changed their name when
they married. So the only Zolton he has in his
grandchildren is my son's first name. Which I hope gets
more scratch out of my father-in-law. [laughter] So that's all perfectly motivated.
The name Moxie for my daughter. Moxie is a great, great brand name.
Moxie is a soda. It's called in New England a tonic developed
in Maine in the late 19th century and and Coca-Cola
took their whole template from Moxie. And Moxie
is a drink that if you were not served it by your parents
as a child, you cannot drink it, because it's horrendous
cough syrup. But if you're served it by your parents,
it brings all these memories of home. So I happen
to love Moxie. And Moxie is an interesting word. Because
Moxie, as far as I know, starts as a brand name and
then goes into a generic name with a different meaning
because of the advertising in Moxie and it means gumption.
It means guts. It means balls. Try to use a great name
for a girl. Moxie. The middle name CrimeFighter
is something I take a lot of heat for. If anybody saw me
on CNN Piers Morgan thing. He jumps all in with how
this is child abuse that my daughter's middle name
is CrimeFighter . And the reason for that is not me. The reason
for that is my wife. My wife does not have a middle
name. For instance, Harry S Truman if you're writing it
correctly. Check this out on Google. The S doesn't have
a period after it. Because S was his middle name. S. No word at all.
I'll get it. It's okay. And my wife didn't have a
middle name. So my wife was carrying on backstage saying
middle names are fucking bull shit. We don't need a middle name. I don't have a
middle name. We're not gonna have a middle name. I said Moxie Jillette is really nice.
She said fuck it I don't want a middle name. I
go just put anything in there. And our piano player, Mike
Jones, is backstage with us. And Mike Jones just finished reading my novel
that I wrote before this called Sock and in it one of the characters says "just call
me CrimeFighter". And Jonesy says why don't you give her middle
name Crime Fighter. And I went, "Ha-ha-ha-ha". My wife said you want a middle name?
You got it. It's Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette. [laughter] And now
I've got to defend it against dipshits on CNN. But it
does have one upside which is, when she gets her driver's
license and when she is pulled over although I know --
you're all guys. You're working on cars that drive
themselves. And it's going to be in Nevada first and I'm
pushing hard for it to be in Nevada first. And when you
really have cars that drive themselves and they really
work and you want someone to try them out in Nevada, let's all make a solemn promise
we will not make the same mistake we did with Google fucking plus
[laughter] and we will all call our dear friend in Nevada, Penn Jillette,
and say do you want your car to drive itself. And
you have a lot of money and you don't mind dying, so why
don't you buy one right now and get it right now. And I'll
go, "Hidey hidey-ho" and I'll love you all again and the Google plus gaffe will
all be forgotten. [laughter] But if she is driving
her car, when she's pulled over and notice I say when not if,
when she's pulled over and the police officer is going
to give her a ticket. She'll be able to pull out her license
or I guess her Android. Pull out her device. Show
her driver's license and say, "you know officer,
we're on the same side. My middle name is CrimeFighter."
And maybe she'll get a pass. Now, that's a story I tell
as a joke. But my wife who's a little bit of a weasel.
She was pulled over speeding in, with the children
in the car, in Vegas. When Moxie was 2 years old.
And she was pulled over and the officer is writing
out the ticket and my wife said, "you know, my husband
is Penn Jillette. You know his daughter? You know
about his daughter? And the police officer said, "yeah, she has kind of a funny
name." She said, "yes she does. Her name is Moxie CrimeFighter
and she's on your side, officer". [laughter] And
he went, "okay. Just go on." [laughter] So the name CrimeFighter is
a middle name has already saved us 120 bucks. [laughter] Now
the real question you asked was what names did we reject? We rejected
a name for my son, also suggested by Jonesy, Mike
Jones, our wonderful jazz pianist. He also suggested
this name for a boy and I wanted to use my father-in-law's
surname for his first name. So I rejected this. But
man is it a good name. If any of you are naming boys right
now, please consider this. He wanted me to name
him Curly Howard Jillette. [laughter] First name, Curly.
Second name, Howard; last name, Jillette. And for those of you
who are too ignorant, Curly Howard is one of the Three
Stooges. Curly Howard is perhaps the greatest philosopher. I mean his real name
Jerome Horwitz, worked on the name Curly Howard, is perhaps
one of the biggest heroes in American history. And I
loved Curly Howard 'last name here', Curly Howard because if he turns out
to be a tight ass, mother fucker, kind of a dick, he can
just go by C. Howard Jillette and that's fine. He can
just say, "call me Howard; call me Howey." It's fine.
But if he turns out to be mother fucker, rock and roller
who knows how to go [screaming] [laughter] Then he can be called
Curly. So I offer that up to you. We are having no more
children. They sliced my dick. It doesn't work anymore.
I'm not going to have any more children. So somebody let
me know if you're having a child, name him Curly Howard
Blank. Also, great name for a girl. [laughter] Curly Howard does
not have to be a boy's name. Curly is a pretty boss name
for a girl. So that's it. >> Male #11: Never going to top that. But
since technology and magic are becoming indistinguishable, have
you been incorporating more technology into your magic
over the years. >> Penn: That's exactly wrong. Because of
Google, and before that because of magazine shows and TV. Now
there are wonderful stories of technology and magic
working. I mean, the first use -- some of the first uses
of ether were in a magic show sawing women in half.
The first movies were done as part of magic shows. Robert-Houdin
was sent to fight an uprising in Africa with white man's
magic. And used an electromagnet to show he had powers
strongest person in the village would go over and lift --
what's called the Light-Heavy chest. Lift the chest
easily and then he would say, with his powers, "you are now weaker than a woman." He was
then unable to lift the box because the whole stage is electromagnet.
Run the whole thing through. That showed the power of
the English, sorry the French, was greater than the
power of the native tribes, indigenous witch doctors.
And then he would also run electrical shock through the
handle and slam the guy back. So there's a long
tradition. Even braille was used early to give psychic
readers a way to look at notes without the blindfold you
can hand braille messages to them. Early braille messages have been used by magicians. They've
always been tied to technology. Unfortunately for
magicians, everybody knows the cutting edge of technology
now. People really, one of the things that Google
and other technology companies have done, is really
given technology to the masses. I mean, people get things instantly
with the exception of my Google plus account. [laughter]
As far as I can see that's the one mistake Google has made.
[laughter] You get stuff instantly. So people have a really good
sense of what technology can do. Even if stuff is impossible.
They have a really good feeling for the trajectory. So
anything that you're going to do that's going to be rapid
calculation. It's going to be knowing huge amounts of
information. People can figure out how to do that. Anything
with small movement, people can figure out how to do that.
All the magic acts working, I'm going to be lying a little bit on this, so I'm going to
be more careful. In our 5 and a half hours of new material that we've
done in Vegas -- Penn and Teller new material -- in
that entire 5 and a half hours, done over the past 12 years, there
is one thing that uses technology later than 1940.
One thing. The vast majority of things use technology
that's right around the time of theater lights. And probably
half of it is all technology that predates even that.
Technology that would go back to the 16th, 17th century.
That is not only true for us, it's also true -- I have to
go through the whole thing. It's also true for David
Copperfield. He's using two things that were probably
within the past 30 years. I don't mean -- I mean, just
the technology. Not the other stuff. There's a lot of
original stuff there. Lance Burton, nothing in the
past 40 years. Criss Angel, nothing. [laughter] It's really
fascinating, because the psychology of fooling people --
you have to stay away from things that are beautiful.
That's the most important job in developing a magic
trick. If I'm doing a magic trick for you, and the
solution to how it's done is beautiful, and the solution
to how it's done is smart, and the solution to how it's
done fills you with joy, I will not fool you. The aha
experience -- the discovery of something; the learning something -- that
beautiful aha that rushes over you is so heavily desired
in people that in magic you have to stop people from
looking for it. So if I have a trick here that
has a really clever use of a 45 degree angle mirror
that's reflecting this and you think it's here it's
actually there and you're looking through and
you can describe that by going, "it's a mirror like
this." And what you think of that it's this wonderful
aha feeling, that won't fool any of you. Because one of
you will think of it. One of you will love it. And you
will whisper to the person next to you'"It's at 45 degrees". . And they will go and
that beautiful meme will spread through the whole audience and no one is
fooled. So it's gone. So you have to make sure that the
way you're doing things is as ugly as possible. You have
to make sure it's gaffer's tape. It's a half told lie I hear. It's stealing something
from your pocket. And it's about 20 different things
that you can't whisper to somebody. And you have to make
sure that, if you were to tell somebody -- we end our
show with what I think is a fabulous magic trick. It's the
bullet catch. And it's a trick that's killed 14 people
on stage. It's the most dangerous trick in show
business. And we believe that our method is safe or we
wouldn't do it. And we don't ever claim that what we do
is dangerous, because I believe that doing things that
are really dangerous on stage is an immoral act. If
you're coming to the show to see me get hurt, fuck you. I
don't want to see you in the audience. We are there to
celebrate life. To celebrate cleverness. If you're
looking for a real accident, go see NASCAR, you douche
bag. We're not going to get hurt. If you're waiting for
that, be disappointed. We do this trick that is a celebration of life where bullets are
signed by people from the audience. No plants. People from the audience
who really know guns. And they're shot across the
stage. And I ostensibly catch them on my teeth. Teller ostensibly catches
a bullet in his teeth. And it goes through glass. It's
a way good trick. Way good trick. And it fools people a
lot. And the reason it fools people is -- and I won't
test you on this--, but the reason it fools people is the
way we're doing it is so messy and so ugly that you don't
care. If I started to explain to you in detail the way
we did that trick, you would lose interest. And there's
no moment in it. There's not one moment in it that any
of you would go, "oh, yeah -- I get it!" Because it's
all these little, tiny, eeny-meeny, really, really that all build up and
you kind of thought this. And it's all these smaller lie
that conceals the bigger lie. You know when you're
putting a hoop around something, you want to show there's
no threads and there's no wires and you put a hoop around it. Well, that's a very big
lie to put a hoop around it. So you put a hole in the hoop that goes over the
wire and your little lie the hole in the hoop that no one
worries about conceals the big lie how this thing is
floating. Now that's just one example. If you want the
bullet catch, it's ten of those things. And I would
also, the way you keep magic secret. Jim Steinmeyer great writer on magic, has said that in magic
we're guarding a safe that's empty. There are no
real secrets in magic. The way that you conceal it is make
it ugly and uninteresting. I offer this challenge on radio
many times. And I'll offer it here. Because this
room -- the stakes get very, very high. And I won't tell
you what the magic trick is because that would be violating
a trust of a friend of mine. But there is a magic trick
that I consider to be one of the greatest magic tricks
done in modern times. It's not done by us. It's done
by somebody else. And it is impossible. And I
will guarantee that more than half of you have
seen it. Not live, but you've seen it. And two thirds of
you have heard about it. Really good trick. And people
will come up to me all the time and say, "how does blank
do that trick?" How did he do that trick?" So you
know that it's a man. Since there are only four women in
magic and most of them are in China, I'm not giving you much.
And I say to those people, "he has a patent on how that
trick is done. It is in the patent office. And the
patent is about 100-page patent that explains in detail
how everything is done." And this is exactly what
I say on the radio. You can all go to Google. You can
all look up "patent office". You can all look up "magic tricks". You can go through
those that are patented and you can find your favorite
trick and then you can go and start to read it. Start at
the abstract and you can start reading that 120 pages.
And you will find out in as much detail as I know how
that trick is done. I mean, absolutely your dream come
true. You'll find out how it's done. And then I finish
on the radio by saying, "once you've found that and
you've read the whole thing and you've understood it and feel good about the
answer, just get in touch with me and tell me you've done it." And I've done that
on the Howard Stern show. I've done that on Opie and Anthony. I have done that on many,
many, big national shows and no one has ever come back to me. Now, I've had
five or six people showing off saying, "oh, yeah, yeah,
yeah -- I figured out the trick you were talking about.
I found the patent. I read a little bit of it." That's
not good enough. You have to be able to feel like
you could build it from reading that. So what mostly
conceals magic is not that we can have technology that's
ahead of what anybody else has. Because in the 18th
century, the 19th century, it was possible for wealthy
magicians to get their hands on technology that the masses
didn't have. Now in the 21st century, two magicians
from Vegas, regardless of their success, are not going
to be able to get their hands on technology that everybody
in this room doesn't know about. And you people in this
room are working not on keeping that to yourself, but
getting the information out there. And getting the information
out there is the beautiful thing you're doing
in the world. It may lead to world peace. And while you're
doing that, you're fucking up magicians and I'm fine with
both of those things. [Applause] >> Female Presenter: We just have time for
one last question. >>Penn: She's got it. She's already starting. >> Female Presenter: Wait for the mic. And
then Penn is going to sign some books. >> Penn: Okay. [laughter] >> Female #4: I'm leaving for Vegas in five
minutes. Besides your own, what other -- beside your own show what
other magic show do you like in Vegas? And what's your
favorite place for dinner? >> Penn: Be very careful. And notice what
is glaring in its omission from what I say. Because the magic
shows that I don't mention as shows you should go to are
shows you should not go to, but I will not warn you against them. [laughter] >> Penn: You should go see Mac King. Mac King
is the greatest comedy magician alive. He does an afternoon
show at Harrah's. I underline the fact -- you can
remember him as macking But it's Mac, M-a-c-k-i-n-g. You won't see
big ads for it. It's not a big deal. It's an afternoon show.
Every day except Sunday and Monday at 1 and 3. It's like
8 bucks to get in. You can get a free ticket with a
drink or something. But it's the best comedy magic show in
Vegas. Absolutely see it. No reservations at all. And
the place to eat is one of the two 5-star Thai
restaurants. I mean, even better than the Thai food out
here. [laughter] Serious. Is called Lotus of Siam. And Lotus of
Siam is not on the strip. It's in an industrial mall
about two miles off the strip. And the industrial mall
has a Salvation Army clothing store. A sex swing club.
And Lotus of Siam so I'm thinking that's a whole evening
for you.. [laughter] >> Penn: But Lotus of Siam is as good as any
restaurant anywhere in the world. And it's in the dirty
industrial shopping mall in Las Vegas. Go there. Don't
be a pussy. Say, "bring me food." Don't order off the
menu; just get what you want. Lotus of Siam, Mac King and you'll be happy. And
also you can come see our show and that will be nice, too.
And then there are no other magic shows in Vegas that
you need to consider. [Applause] >> Penn: I'll sign some books.
Forgot to mention it in the title but he starts talking about it at 15:24.
Good post. I actually ended up watching the whole thing. Haha. It was a good talk.