Penn Jillette - The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - FULL VIDEO

[Music] hello and welcome to the origins podcast I'm your host Lawrence Krauss in this episode I'll talk to my good friend Penn Jillette the famous magician writer comedian atheist and filmmaker what you may not know about Penn is that he actually reads more widely and thoughtfully that almost anyone I've ever met and it's also one of the most rigorously ethical people I know I wanted this opportunity to have a personal conversation with Penn about a wide range of issues from science and politics to freedom and liberty as well as free speech and I also wanted to talk to him about magic humor and honesty in performing and I was able to surprise him with a little sleight of hand of my own patreon subscribers can find the full video of this program at patreon.com slash origins podcast I hope you enjoy this brash quick personal and enlightening conversation with one of my favorite people Penn Jillette [Music] thanks for being here well thank you for having it it's a it's something I've been looking forward to I I've always wanted to have on this program and omnivorous intellect and and the definition of the word intellectual people may not realize but in my opinion you are an intellectual we'll try and display that I believe the best definition of intellectual I've ever heard is someone who's willing to change their mind with information that and in that a nice definition is a grand it's important that did not just be changed their mind with information with information this means you don't need the emotion yeah you can do it with information and that's a that's a separate skill yes being able to change your mind is a different skill than changing your mind with information absolutely absolutely and yeah and you have changed your mind I think a few times I knew pretty off and you like information but we'll get there what do I do at first I want to ask I want to start to go back in time why magic uh I think um I never chose magic it shows you I had I had a I had a many many children have a romance with magic yes sure I had quite the opposite I disliked it I cared and still care desperately and maybe even in in a silly way about the truth I care about it very much and the idea that there was a profession where where people gave false information drove me crazy and so when you may not know this because no one in the world does but the act that was on after the Beatles was the magician you know it's always really funny because never ever yeah remembered but on Ed Sullivan and I would watch television to see the rock-and-roll bands yeah and ignored the magicians and I was a juggler and jugglers although they're the same strata the body of showbusiness they entirely different philosophical thing you want all your skill to show in juggle yeah you want your skill to be hidden in magic and there was a was an event that I believe and I you know that I'm obsessed with this I've told this story so many times that we know that it's not true in the detail yeah sure yeah but emotionally it's maybe one of one of my well origin stories yeah there's the kind name Kreskin still around I know I'm Canadian mind reader supposedly and he came out with a that he would do all he didn't want on Carson cuz Garson hated him but there was some show he did we came out and demonstrated my grading ability and talked about the science of this at that time the best I can figure from when the game was released and so on and going back and doing a little bit of forensics I was probably 13 okay um he came out with that I was very into science and her crazy into science I read science all the time I love science and that was going to be my life and I watched him do this scientific experiment as he presented as a person on TV and he had this ESP kit that he sold yeah pendulum with the idiomatic movements and the ESP cards and my parents my dad was a jail guard I have wonderful relation my parents they were not wealthy sure but this was science so I could buy the CSP kit yes I bought the ESP kid my sister much older than me she's she was 23 when I was born so I was raised essentially as an only child yeah with my sister living in town and so my mom and dad every night would run through this stupid ESP kit with me and I kept all the records and kept everything carefully and did all the graphs and all the science and then his luck would have it I was very into juggling the juggling sesh in the library if you remember your Dewey Decimal System is that and grain very very close to religion yeah yeah all of them the 900 yeah and and juggling is near the magic right so I remember that I saw a book by done injure and I just kind of thumbing through it and the tricks started to look similar to what Kreskin had done oh I see SP and I finally looked through and found the trick and my reaction was so inappropriate you had an inappropriate reaction I can't believe it I I was heartbroken I was destroyed yeah the fact that a scientist yeah I'm putting this in my terms yeah sure in fact but a scientist went on TV and lied to me inconsolable and embarrassed in front of my parents mom and dad I was making you do this and it was all stupid it was all joy and I went from and this is absolutely true from straight A's in science to flunking to being directly to my science teacher I want nothing to do with you people you lie to people and my entire school career changed there and I went from a straight-a student to flunking the rest of rest that was the mark Asian Wow and my hatred for magicians and scientists who to me were the same with some you got to see this always a 12 you're sure absolutely there's no background no you know you know yeah no perspective of what what the difference and then through a kind of an interesting series of events I met tell her yeah and tell her simply said to me he said you can do magic without lying he said you can say we're gonna do this we're gonna play around with this but you can do it and tell her also says something to me that was so insane that's a conversation we've still been having to this day teller said magic is essentially an intellectual art form it has to be intellectual because it happens at the intellectual level its intellectual a way that music has intellect added on to it dances into letting that analysis even writing is intellect added on to it but some magic is actually happening in the intellect yeah it is it is experimenting if you wanted to be pretentious and boy I do yeah I know see you would say that magic is playful epistemological study right you're deciding how do we ascertain what's true it I want to continue that's this is fascinating but it's would you say it's kind of like humor then which is another thing I mean humor also happens completely and intellect yes it is it is like that except humors subject yeah he's not the very thing is talking about that magic is pretty straightforward yeah it's subject is where actually what you're doing yeah there's there's no turns on it there's no twists on it and tell her and I Jerry Seinfeld 30 years ago gave me permission to use this line as my own he said you quoted all the time you don't have to say Jerry Seinfeld you're doing it honest but every time I do it yeah Jerry Seinfeld said all magic is here's a quarter now it's gone you're a jerk now it's back you're an [ __ ] show's over what that means to me is that magic always insults the audience on several different levels on the one level here's a quarter now it's gone you're a jerk on the other level of I just got back from my studies in China and here's where I discovered it also insults them in you know torturing women in front of Mylar you know chanted tacky tasteless there's all this this level because just changing at this point just we're right at the cusp and is changing but up until now essentially a masculine art form that is built on some of the bad parts of adolescent boys not that there are any good parts of adolescence here but um their worst parts really builds upon them because it's this kind of us and them and I know this and you don't I can fool you and tell her and I became fascinated with could we do a magic show with really good tricks I mean that's important yeah yeah really good tricks that didn't insult the audience but I could just come out and say we're gonna do this and also follow a rule that is the most stringent rule we put on ourselves that we have not always followed we failed we fall short of this although the show we have now damn close okay I want to follow the sawing a person in half rule which is by the way this there's something I'm telling you is not at all magic culture yes is strictly Penn & Teller that's that's who I want to hear about when you ostensibly saw a human being in half on stage and a magic show nobody and to be careful I mean nobody may be someone very young or extremely mentally ill but we can just say nobody yes leaves the theater believing they witnessed a murder yeah no one leaves the theater that way that's my rule for every trick in the show no one should leave the theater believing something that I know not to be true that's a very important rule really hard yeah because I want to tell you that I'm doing certain mind-reading things by reading your body language but I'm not yeah yeah and I want to tell you this thing is a memory thing but I want to tell you that that person but now I can lie to you during the trip yeah as long as the end of it is on the enemy now I can also don't have to tell you how it's done yeah you just can't leave the theater believing something that I know not to be true that I told you was this relates about that by the way I want to very hard it is very hard get hard I want and I want it this relates to a quote that I think that I read in something you wrote but first I should say actually when you talk about the worst in adolescent boys because you and tell her in some way in many ways are the least macho I'm the least overtly macho people I know in the sense of you're not a delight you're you're you you may have the mind of a jar but in terms of watching us well that's another one of the the rules which we say crudely women with big tits know it yeah we have never commented on anyone's appearance on stage and I mean this if you're a very very attractive man or woman yeah or if you have a blue mohawk yeah or if you are a little person yeah yeah or if you if we've had people on stage under four foot yeah I've had people on site I've been to many of your shows and I've always been amazing bring people up on stage and it's and you know come no no because they know everything about them there's no surprise there's no interest there's nothing and it's none of my [ __ ] busy and I've just done this thing was all so hard and I did it because I knew it had to be done mmm but I was putting it off I was putting it off for about a year and it's harder than it seems at first I have now made our show I I hesitate to say this because I sometimes slip up yes for kinetic reasons for rhythm yeah but I believe our show is now completely gender neutral uh and it's really hard cuz ladies and gentlemen has to go yeah yeah and the other thing that's very hard for me is that as you know I'm very very badly educated and well for that for that reason inverse lies certain kinds of speaking are important to me yeah so using the plural third-person for singular yeah finger nails on chalkboard yeah cuz it's the way I was everybody in my neighborhood did that yeah yeah yeah I didn't want to so I always want to say he or she yeah so saying they is feels like it shows me as being stupid and uneducated and I don't want to do that but I now have realized that that's right so I've gone through our show Wow and it is so it's only they is the pronoun and I use people's names but I never say the man over here or he or she and there's one or two places where rhythmically it's very hard to know that I mean that person when the line has to go commando yeah and I'm fighting the poetic rhythm they're just the pros any of it I'm fighting that so hard against what I know is right but I think in the long run it's worth it and me up was I made you know it happens yeah I meet a couple of missed calls gender-wise sign that and I gotta tell you it happened in the first bit of the show and I was still going [ __ ] yeah at the end of the show and after the show it was like you know standing ovations 3,000 people they come back to get my mics off and I'm going oh that poor person yeah yeah yeah that's the reason that was the reason the reason is it's the right thing to do yeah that was one of the things that I said you know Penn hurry up fix this then that won't happen again D yeah okay but you know you you work so especially in the show we're not doing a show like let like Letterman or fountain yeah we're den you sure we do this same show yeah many nights so one of the joys of that is getting the exact sound of the words to be perfect if it I can put in iambic what I want it I can hit this I can do that the accent is here so when you say to me oh by the way Penn you're changing all your pronouns the the the the speaker in me yeah rages yeah but the the humanitarian in me says it's about [ __ ] time you should have probably done this in 1970 I mean we'll get that because of what I've always as being privileged to be your friend the two things I know about you is that a you're an incredible humanitarian B you're incredibly disciplined III I'm amazed at your discipline but we'll get to that but enough of enough about and but you know one thing so you were talking about how to do a show and I went on this segue because I wanted to hear this but but now I want to get back you how how to do a show without a you know without having the public have the wrong impression there's a quote from your book that I that I think is interesting one of your books and it relates to Randy you said Penn & Teller wouldn't be Penn & Teller that Randy and he said you can spend your time studying how to lie to use that to tell the mm-hmm so tell me about that in Randy and and and and in fact in that also in that that discussion of Randy's importance he also taught I love the anecdote you told me about Randy so couldn't maybe you remember that which one well the one that related to what after he told you that you were at the Randy foundation and you did something oh yeah okay well you know Randy James Randy really interesting cab yeah and I see mistakes in Randy that I see myself repeating Randy did not go to college mmm Randy did not finish high school kind of like me he finished high school in a plea-bargain and didn't really properly go through school and his education was terrible and he he then discovered that he loved studying science on his own love learning things on his own and then like Houdini before him he discovered that a lot of scientists were being hoodwinked by people doing magic tricks and because of his lack of education there was a huge amount of prejudice saying we don't need some piece of carny trash to come in here and tell us what this guys doing we're working on the way the line interacts with the metal if he's going you need some guy who knows how to do a switch man we remember how much he affected me i he was the first person who told me this and then at Rupp Sciences the big problem of science and I've seen it internally is it makes a presumption that people are telling the truth yes and the minute you lie the scientists have no defense that was it that was it doing doing doing doing magic for Richard Fineman yeah you know what I mean and Richard Feynman was a worldly guy yeah yeah ivory tower sure yeah yeah I just brilliant but you could tell that even doing a simple card trick for him his mind did not want to go to the fact that what you were saying might not be true and I remember Randy saying you know Ellie this famous story for him but I remember hearing him say you know when he was trying to show the the scientists who were claiming they were discovering mind-readers that hey I'm gonna send these guys in and I'm just gonna say if anyone asks you are you lying and tricking say yes yeah yeah and no one ever bothered because the scientists and science and that's a a survey Achilles heel of Sciences you assume researchers are telling the truth when they lie it takes a long time to recover that won't tell ya and it's now we're now getting and one I mean to me one of the most fascinating things about science is that the whole thing is a set of procedures to stop you from lying to yourself yeah that's the whole the science because we know that we all do lie to ourselves yeah and it built-in to overcome the scientists science overcome scientists like so when you're when you're obsessed with that mmm and then you actually have a real bad actor yeah yeah I mean we're all working together we're all holding hands kumbaya we're all gonna find a way to get rid of all our biases and one of the guys holding hands is this humming off a car yeah you guys are screwed you're screwed exactly and then you know I haven't seen this you know because we're following and Randy's footsteps but some very cruel things said to Randy we don't want some high school dropout coming in here and telling us to do this stuff and you were saying I'm not going to tell you about anything yeah except what the guys doing under the table yeah you know he's just he's just doing this and it really is funny because the scientists were being fooled with stuff that was so rudiment yeah so yeah so deeply rudimentary and one of the things and some of the stuff so heartbreaking miss this woman science writer was interviewing spoon bender guy I don't know we're not wasn't uri geller I'm not sure yeah probably better no it was exactly it's boom ending guy and he had done this miracle air and and Brandi was saying was he ever out of your sight was he ever this and talking through the way yeah I could talk you through a few saw a magistrate shocked did you ever say and finally like five times through the list she said well there was that time when the coffee was spilled and he said what she said oh it was awful he spilled scalding coffee down my front and it burned my chest and I was also embarrassed and I turned and had to get cold water on it and changed my shirt ah and Randy said and that was while he was holding the spoon and she said yes but nobody would burn Porter's the scalding scalding coffee on my chest and Randy when you met the guy you know it's you know I can understand that wasn't even for scientists that didn't have yeah they wouldn't even presume it and it's handed you this spoon and now okay back to the spoon yeah and I guess that's the cause of some of the reaction and when you say the most rudimentary thinks can you imagine how these educated scientists must feel after the fact knowing the most trivial rules right was worked on them but also also there's there's this horribly offensive things that people doing magic they're not even aware of it and they'll say I've heard different versions of this you know I'm a really smart guy and yet you fooled me yeah and you go well while you what do you do you program a machine code while you were working on that I was working on this yeah yeah exactly and you know you're a surgeon yeah and and I I worked on stuff too that doesn't mean I can go in and yeah kid we do different things that's one of the reasons the world works so well and then of course the other side is just as bad which is you know I know nothing about anybody can fool me you were really is very very simple you could just say wow that was good yeah you're done you're done exactly don't have to put a [ __ ] you before around yeah but I liked that phrase because you say it basically made you who you are Brandis phrase that you can study how to lie to learn how to tells you and that really did that really impact on both of you that I mean it really do you remember it well you know tell her gives me a great deal of credit because he says he had that you know I'm a liar who tells the truth idea of magic but he said that I'm the one who is steadfastly obsessed with it I mean there have been there have been meetings we've had where tellers gone I kind of go beginner wording let me get a wording women and the other thing you can't do and this is this is why my my wording was so convoluted on a sawing woman in half because I will not say I have to ultimately tell the truth because there's this thing that mentalists mind-readers every want to call them do where they they do weasel words and then believe they've told the truth oh I said I used my five senses to create an illusion of a sense okay or they'll say this is this is my favorite one everything I do you could do with practice which says I have mine reading at yeah yeah and they'll tell you afterwards they'll be very self-righteous and say oh I told it was all trick yeah no you can't just tell them it's a trick you have to tell them so they understand yeah yeah yeah you know and I that's a really important distinction so it means I'm saying they don't leave the theater believing something I know not to be true not that I told them the truth yeah those are very different things if I'm taking the full responsibility for your understanding yeah which is you know hubris so yeah yeah but it's it is a very lofty goal okay so here's so he so he influenced you but never less he told you this and then you tried to lie to him and talked about the busts yeah yeah when he said when he's else well Randy was very proud of having this bust yeah of Houdini and it was from a museum in Niagara Falls okay and it had burned down Oh Randy had the only copy of this bust of Houdini it was very very famous he was very very proud of it and this is a fairly recent story this is just like 15 I had maybe 20 years ago but not ancient history and we were visiting the the educational foundation and he had this bust here it was all in a case I'm very very proud of it and or tell her and I saw that and I got an idea I had a little idea at my head so while teller was talking to Randy I went off in the other room and made a huge number of phone calls to find someone in Florida who would able to do casting any sort of casting and I found this like b-movie company where the people did casting now of course I have no reason to trust them except I trust everybody yeah so I called them up and said hi this is Panama called Penn & Teller I want to break into James Randy's Center for inquiry tonight and I want to break into a case and take his cast of Houdini and make a copy of it can you do that in eight hours it's amazing you could find something and they said well you know I got stuff to do and I pulled out the checkbook and somebody found that you know ready drop me off at the hotel uh-huh right yeah could I read it pick us up for breakfast the next morning and then I ran back met them in the parking lot I'd scoped out the place I broke in uh-huh and then I said we're gonna open this case and this is valuable and we're gonna make a copy of it so they have all the plaster of Paris and there I am with them for you know six hours oh my god mm-hmm but I wanted to make sure I didn't want to lose the bus to be here so we then had a-negative yeah of course yeah yeah of it now put it back in there and clean deny the Christmas plaster of Paris yeah everything newspapers who were mopping up everything else hell I send them off and then I run back to the hotel alright and I get up and Randy cuz it picks me up we go out to breakfast yeah nothing is said we go in taunted it up and then four months later five months later Randy comes to visit awesome Vegas he comes over to my house and there are 30 gold and bronze he goes over to tellers and there he goes backstage and they're all over the place and nothing is said nothing nothing is said I never said you like this boss here I never say anything and Randy at about bus bus number 70 Randy just goes [ __ ] it I thought you'd get those things in any [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] [Laughter] and Randy of course Randy would not have even said [ __ ] you until he'd figured out the whole yeah yeah I had the whole thing figured out you know I mean Randy would not say how did you do that yeah that is not R & R and easy though you know so I had to say yeah Randy you know that night yeah when was he alone that's right well you have to figure this one out okay okay look that's I've been waiting to do that I've been waiting to do that all week so now I in my life is complete unity yeah exactly I you don't know how hard it was to concentrate on what you were saying let me another quote that I really liked it from you as exceptions prove the rule haha and and I yeah so I talked about that I was actually I I hate to say this mhm I found that remarkably profound I mean your discussion it really it really enacted the fact that everybody use that wrong yeah everyone never it never had occurred to me and I mean you said a lot of things to me actually in the time I've known you frankly and honestly that have caused me say I never thought of things that way well that you know it's just a grammar thing yeah yeah the exception proves the rule has always driven me crazy yeah because the way it's used colloquially it is nonsense yeah I mean the exception destroys the rule that's all there is to it yeah but the way is actually meant in the proper translation is that if it says no parking three to five on Wednesday it means there's part exactly if you say you can't play your music over 120 DB Monday through Friday yeah it's huge revelation it is it really is revelation yeah and then it's a really sensible thing to say and it's a useful way to think about something you know you can't touch me there means you can touch me somewhere else okay no it's really an interesting and and and yeah in the context of what you do I think it's really need some sense magic is some and well you know there's a thing about magic and you didn't ask me this but I'm gonna answer anyways good and I'll pretend I think I've been thinking about this a lot lately is there's this thing that's very popular mmm-hmm whenever shrinks in Psych you know science people want to talk about magic they always say it shows up the flaws in our thinking it underlines the flaws in our thinking and that is such [ __ ] what magic does is it underlies how well our thinking works you know I take this I put into this hand you assume yeah yeah good yeah cuz if you don't assume that every time you're wasted a lot of break yeah it's only not gonna be true when you go to see that one stupid show in Vegas that's the one time there's no way evolution had to prepare you for that exactly so all this stuff were you where you just assumed this and there's all these people who teach magic going we have to teach people not to make these assumptions no no no no no it's a celebration of the other isn't it great that every time that goes across there we think that isn't that great and then I didn't do it and look how surprised I am because it works so well and because I'm not should work broken yeah yeah it's because it works well there are some people who don't act there's some people who for whom it they don't follow that those people don't reproduce that all of that stuff you know and that's why the correlation between being fooled at magic and being stupid is is so so bothersome to me yeah because it really is a celebration of this kind of intellect and how we determine what's correct you know yeah well you know I mean and I think I don't know if everyone runs this way I know my wife feels the right watcher I love to watch or watch magic but I feel the same way and maybe it's the same as humor it's so it titillates you it it it it it literally does it it's when you see that and it isn't what you expected there's something about it that just causes such a buzz well you know uh Salvador Dali's and I I won't get this rotation exactly right cuz I never do but something along the lines of why is it so seldom when I order a lobster in a restaurant they bring me a phone book that's on fire so little of what might happen does happen yeah Matt you know I make them good trick sometimes actually believe me we just went to the Dali Museum I said to tell her you know yeah if I wear a top hat and you wear a big mustache edweird all you and we do a little survey team it'll be wonderful yeah now all we need is a trick put you two walk him out with the top hat on baby or not I don't mean topping me yeah yeah yeah the Derby of course the Magritte Derby I love that I love that okay so it's been a great discussion of magic but I also know music when did music come into your life and become so important and why didn't you do why did it was every time you thought of doing one versus the other I mean you talk about juggling yes I'm realizing more and more then that that the way I used to see music was mostly joining clubs and I have learned and identifying and not virtue signaling but tribes yeah yeah and I'm kind of disillusioned with that but I've gotten with jazz deeper into real music but I really believe that we are weird elf hands and there's this big mystery that I have which is that Guns and Roses love the Rolling Stones and that really confuses me because Guns and Roses loved the Rolling Stones they loved the Rolling Stones which means the Rolling Stones were doing a job that Guns and Roses really appreciated uh-huh so why would they do that job okay so my thought was I loved Bob Dylan mm-hmm still do yeah loved the Velvet Underground I love Frank Zappa I listen to music incessantly I wanted to do that and I kept going man The Velvet Underground they do The Velvet Underground a lot better than I'm gonna be able to boy Bob Dylan you know I'd love to play good day he doesn't bet as my husband really well and is there an angle is there an angle of something I can say to the world that is different than this and then I would look at other people in music and I'd say they get perfect pitch or they made me no such thing very good tonal yeah yeah I don't argue about the science but very good tonal memory they sing harmony naturally mm-hmm they picked it up in their life they just sing harmony naturally like the Beatles would they could just do that mmm think they they have a certain kind of dexterity they have an affinity for that they have really really big ears they really have the sense of that I know I can do a lot of stuff well I seem to be able to write a good turn of phrase to be able to to hold people's attention on stage when I sing in a band or play in a band to be able to do all that but if I go into this mm-hmm I have to say to myself and deep down inside I'm a capitalist yeah kind of overtly I'm account yeah sure I am deciding to compete with Bob Dylan yes okay if I go into magic I'm competing with Doug Henning you win you know and Teller has this theory which I think he's very generous and applying to me that the only people that push an art form are the people who don't belong married don't want to be there Bach came in at the end of Fuchs and everybody was sick of Fuchs Bach came in then wrong place wrong time what you don't want to be is right in the pocket okay Axl Rose is right in the pocket which means he did great stuff didn't push the form yet one bit and I also very forgive me for being perhaps too honest but um I really wanted to feel like maybe I had something to say I've never wanted a job in show business I wanted to do something interesting in show business and there's a huge difference yeah absolutely there are people that I know that say I wanted to do a show in Vegas which to me is nonsense yeah yeah how couldn't you want to do it what show yeah exactly so I was assured you don't mean it's like saying you know I I I want I want to make I want to make that something yeah what do you want to make you know tell me that so there's this nightmare that I have that I don't ever want to be and sometimes I worry that and that is when you picture let's go with Guns N'Roses yeah okay a Guns & Roses concert mmm you've got 30,000 people and the guy fights his way up to the front which is difficult yeah fights his way to the front now he's got about a 5-foot gap full of bouncers okay you know security people but he's got to get across to get to the stage okay and that's hard yeah but he does that he does that okay so he's already accomplished something 45 minutes of work lots of Jeopardy he then gets onto the stage and Axl Rose's away from the mic and our guy our hero grabs the microphone now he knows what's gonna happen okay he knows yeah that three bouncers are gonna grab him yeah they're gonna bring him offstage as soon as they're out of public view they're gonna be very rough with him he knows he's gonna be thrown out the exit he knows it's cold out there and he's not wearing a shirt he knows his friends won't come out to the concerts over but he can't get back in and that he's got to wait there in the cold for his ride home probably two hours okay he knows all of that right he's grabs the mic and he now has for six seconds yeah he has the full attention of 30,000 feet including a cross and he goes oh that's what I don't want to do yeah and I see so many people in show business that you say you mean you fought through this you didn't do the agents you went through the auditions you went through all of that now you've got a public forum and you're going whoa yeah no you know it's funny in academia you know often try and prepare because my life is very different than yours in many ways but I've always thought the same thing when I look at the people who become academic administrators and I you know I've been part of this in search committees and all of that and and I've been part of it I would you know as chair of a department all of us it's all it's really weird because the last people you want to hire are the people that want that job no really yeah and probably true for politicians in fact probably we'd all be better off if the people we elected were the people who didn't want to be elected you know you go through you this is one of those situations where if everything you can think of it's true for it might also be true for the things you're not thinking of yeah yeah you know it's just that if someone that fits right in the pocket I mean it's the perfect example is Guns and Roses yeah yeah because you know what you want is the Sex Pistols yeah they don't like the Beatles yeah they don't like this they're gonna do something else you know and if I'd had an idea if if if there'd been the feeling of rap coming along if you know those first those first rapper's delight' records that come out then we're pitch became a little less important yet weird then becomes a little more important words become more maybe maybe that would have shifted it had I not met teller that would certainly have shifted that would certainly it pushed me into comedy but you know Johnny Thompson here is our mentor we recently died just three weeks ago Johnny Thompson said that I was able to get the ideas in in magic that he and teller didn't think of because I hadn't been studying since I was five he said that time when you were five - you're a team that you weren't doing what all the rest of us were doing it's actually a big help to us because it's able to pull you you know yeah what what do you need is this is a specific theory of mind to do magic yeah right you need a specific theory of mind and tell her I believe is the best alive right now and of course I'm of course I'm biased yeah but there's also some evidence teller is the best at being able to guess what an audience of course an audience doesn't exist yeah largest a group opinion yeah but what an audience abstracted is going to notice on a stage it is the only skill you need in magic right but teller can say things that to me are supernatural he can say things like yeah at that point you can put your left hand in your pocket and pull that out no one's gonna Wow I'll go why you go to the hole the tensions flowing is fine it'll be natural just reach in pull it out we got it okay and just do that works you just no one's paying attention and Teller has developed that's that intuition you know and I'm usually that word of course with no supernatural yeah yeah you're all real intuition yes he's developed that intuition for just what is going to fool people what they're gonna be thinking about well I love the way by the way you know not a lot of people use those two words together develop intuition I think it's magic it's literally magic people have intuition well I met in science you develop an intuition for what works and what doesn't work it doesn't reading about the fractals the bender brought yeah handlebar invar sets you know the I was reading about people just staring at him yeah thousands of them over and over again - they could go yep that's one yeah developing intuition yeah in fact people often wonder why we put physics just through what we put them through in order to become physicists because you know they don't who the heck cares what a block plans sliding down in a plane I mean no one gives a damn about that but what would the point of of that kind of apprenticeship if you want to call that is to develop an intuition of what kind of techniques work so that when you get to the point where we don't know the answer then then you know it then they'll they'll have developed intuition because it's it doesn't come I mean of course there's some people who naturally adapt to that better then somehow there's fills that's the sense the simple sense of when if we're if we're all sitting around pitching magic tricks right and we're gonna we're gonna do a magic show with you for pitching stuff you're gonna come up with stuff that can't be done mm-hmm and we're gonna come up with stuff that we don't know how to do and that difference is huge yeah and I'll say - tell her all the time can we can we can we get that over there and telugu yeah and then someone else the rooms how we're gonna do it no idea but we know we can do do that and then something else to just no can't do that can't do that at all and it's just we couldn't even tell you all the reasons it is it's just really company can solve this problem we can't have some and I believe that exact sentence we can solve this problem we can't solve this one is all through physics in math and science and yeah yeah no actually I don't know this interesting oh wow this is fascinating cuz to me I've often said that when I was talking to physic students that physics is about all about solving problems when you know what the problem is and and most often when we do students a disservice in fact by filling them for years and years and years giving them problems that are exactly solvable that you know can be exhausting them that they are fully trusting can be exactly solved and going ahead and do it and then we put them out in the real world whether it's in business or in finance or or in physics where nothing is exactly solvable right and so what you have to do and I wonder if you this is happen to you in I'm sure it has in your act but all I'd like to hear an example if happen so in physics are often you will start working on this problem and you realize you can't solve it what you do is you end up turning it into a problem you can't solve so at when you've developed tricks is it if you say this is what we really want to do and in the end it ends up being over towards all but that's always true that's always true as a matter of fact I have a artistic superstition that I that I'm in conflict would tell her teller is very easily easy using words like we'll find where this bit wants to go will feel where this bit wants to go will get a sense of it I get really bothered by that because I believe that what you're doing in art is showing part of your heart to someone yeah so if you change the idea too much as you're going you've lost that now teller would say it would make a argument that I believe is correct that because you're doing it you're always expressing stuff that you feel yeah and the finding it there he's not saying there's a path laid down by someone else he's saying that you were just discovering through it but I often do this useless exercise at the end of a trick going yeah that's what I started out with kinda sorta out to me yeah that's right yeah I got here but it still has the the soul what I was doing okay and it's just a cheat but I need to do because I had this belief because I'm from a small town and the first person I met in show business was me I never knew anybody I really never knew anybody nothing one person what a job in the arts not at all testing never hmm and so I all this stuff came handed down to me television and radio and records as though it was from Olympus and probably the two most profound things one was the hating of Kreskin yeah now I understand it I never really knew that why why they were such visceral oh yeah it's it's as I said you know I'm in one article I wrote a bottom which you wanted to sue me for then one article I wrote about him I said you know I have to keep talking about how he's wrong because I made a promise to a 12 year old boy I don't care anymore but that boy still does yeah and there might be another one out there yeah and want someone to say it's [ __ ] the wantem yeah yeah but the right thing was that was so important to me was Beatle bootlegs okay the first Beatle boot like the kid that I that came to grief it was a thing called comeback K um EA ck it was outtakes from let it be a little little bit little bit from Abbey Road but mostly from let it be I think was maybe all would it be and I had believed firmly believed that I still can fall into this mm-hmm I had believed that the Beatles would get the idea for Sgt pepper's in their head they would talk about it and they would get clearly what they wanted it to sound like every kazoo every violin part every vocal they would get that clear in their head and they would go into the studio with George Martin and they would say this is what has to be we have to get this kind of crowd sound to start sergeant Pepper's that we want to pork astre tuning up and then we'll first have a kind of fuzz guitar come in and then the on beat three will have the drums come in and they would lay that out and they would then do it and I would just go this is the most perfect thing ever and that was every record blonde on blonde freaked out I just believe that and then Beatle Bullock okay $10 a gribbins music store I don't I might come back you know and then John singing the wrong lines yeah yeah what what's he doin and then George doing it and completely inappropriate solo so that was also you know I was like oh you get to try this so that it didn't it didn't heartbreak you it it it it opened up a Hallward totally inspired me I mean I want to say in this please please forgive me for this but I kind of said I can do this yeah I'm not telling you I can do sergeant pepper's yeah yeah but I can work in the arts yeah yeah okay so that I can show you it was accessible and I still go crazy over this when you know the new the new blood on the tracks Bob Dylan bootleg came out with every single mm version of it and I am fascinated by you know this is this is all ties into one of my least favorite words which is the word genius uh-huh which is another word for lazy yeah someone that uses the word genius is someone who's lazy yeah because they want to say oh this guy can just do this yeah and there's no guy who can do this yeah yeah and you know there was always this myth that was Bob Dylan did blood on the tracks he was having fights with Sarah they were gonna get a divorce he would into the studio he poured his heart out he wasn't quite happy with that he added a band blood in the tracks came out it was just pure from his heart just poured out then there were rumors that there was a notebook where Dylan took little notes and worked on it and everybody heard about the notebook now he's given his archive so that new Museum there were three notebooks in preemie tiny writing both sides of the paper yeah every single song on the album every single word changed crossed yeah sure had it in crossed out they finally interviewed Bob Dylan said so this was just about your marriage break because I was reading checkoff and I was interested in where the short stories can be told out of time and I was also studying painting and the perspective idea of how that changes over time interested me and I wanted to put that down in the words and that's why I'm changing these things here and there but word things terrible was Sara yes they were but I was also working on a rack there's a wonderful parallel to someone else who's a hero of yours and a hero of mine Richard Fineman because you know Richard Fineman looked like he was doing magic went because wherever whenever there was a conference or a problem and and and you know people would say they talked about he'd go well this is this is the way to do it or or you know oh no that won't work because of this and it was like whoa and he loves know you portrayed that but then you but then not even enough when he died but after he died what you saw was 30,000 pages yeah he he worked and said you know he'd solved every single problem so in the end it can say you know it's there we met his hand on the Space Shuttle when he asked for the glass of ice water he asked for a glass of ice water and he drops the thing in yeah and it's in his book on that there's a sentence in there that blows my mind where he says I cheated a little I tried it before yes remember that say yeah yeah of course I'd she's a little trying before but no one knew that yeah he didn't say it it's a showman let's just get some ice water let's see what the hell yes he puts it in and he acts surprised yeah he was the showman he loved it well he di cuz he he loved to give that appearance I mean for whatever was he'll have to walk around like hard carny yeah yeah yeah he wanted you to think he was hardcore yeah exactly but you know that was living with them with Tim's Vermeer yeah our move that whole movie could be called anti genius you know Vermeer worked harder than we thought he did yeah and lazy people want to say oh yeah Bob just grab a guitar he pours his heart out and there it is no [ __ ] the problem is you aren't willing to put in the amount of time Bob put in and that's why you're not we haven't gotten to the talent yet well that's a genius and talent yeah I mean you can't you could believe me I could ha ha for a million hours I could be Bob Dylan because I don't have that talent but I could probably solve some equations above don't couldn't even if you're what but but neither one of you gets it full-blown from the mind of Zeus yeah yeah absolutely there's no such thing that revelation nonsense is I mean you know it yeah it's it's hard work and it but those bootlegs showed me that because I believed in Greenfield Massachusetts at 14 years old that Frank Zappa Bob Dylan and it was inaccessible genius yeah and it was inaccessible to you completely not a chance that's good and then here it is here to [ __ ] up did that allow you to do that allow you to be freer about music to where you realized you couldn't I still I still wasting very self-conscious about music because uh who wrote that that that that great essay about learning something that you you you're way below your appreciation you have to start out that way and that that's the difficult time of learn is it like Sedaris or somebody who says I don't forget and and and that's really horrible yeah there's that horrible time when you can see good and you can't do it yeah you can't quite get there and with music I'm afraid I listen so much and I keep I keep developing and it's so much that whatever I do I mean I did something I started playing upright bass when I was 45 years old there have been studies mm-hmm that have shown that you can't improve your intonation after the age of 45 I am a counterexample to that I I did improve my intonation yeah and I don't know what it was I don't know what it was but when I was 45 my mom died and I was I'm a I'm a real mama's boy very close to my dad - yeah you very close to my we're parents mm-hmm and the grief was overwhelming yeah and for some reason and I died boy that's to explain to psychologically it's way beyond me I mean for some reason I desperately wanted to start to learn something that I knew I couldn't be best at because everything else I started I didn't know I wouldn't be better yeah yeah it turns out it wasn't the best juggler yeah yeah there's that hope I was 14 or 15 yeah but at 45 we're going to play upright bass you know there is no way impossible winning the lottery ten times we're on the same day you're not gonna be the best bass player and yet you're gonna learn in any way and I got a really good teacher and I practiced my fingers bled all the time and now I'm 64 years old it's almost 20 years and I am NOT good but I am better than I ever thought I'd be and Josie tells me you could be a gigging bass player if you ever one day me you don't cut your income by five orders magnitude that's that's heartening because you know when I was listening your story about music again it resonated with me you know I did I did degrees in a one degree in mathematics and one degree in physics and I was good in math and and you know pretty good pretty pretty good and and and and good at physics and the difference was for me I could do math I could do any problems I could really good grades but in physics I could always see where I was going down the road and I couldn't math I didn't in math I I thought okay I'm doing this but I don't know where to go next and so you know I went I always loved physics anyway and and and it was fine to go into physics and I was always amazed at mathematicians because who I knew who who were much better mathematicians than me and physics the math and physics it seems pretty easy and I thought well it's for these guys physics must be trivial and they couldn't do it but I've always wanted and so I I'm happy i became a theoretical physicist which is mathematics and physics but I've always had this hope that's you who knows younger I was saying I just want to go back and do my I want to solve fair Matt's Last Theorem and now it's been solved so but you know but but it's interesting to know that there's hope although I'm 64 too so maybe I'd have to violate you know it's really one thing I have been do you know do you know another language yeah I do speak French oh yeah oh yeah Canadian yes I I think I told you about yes I I haven't I haven't I haven't dug in I have no heart at all gets harder oh I know I know I want to learn Portuguese cos find me did ya know it's really hard I yeah I know and you know I got a book called you know what language to learn yeah and it rates them all you know and it turns out and I have to be careful when you're saying this because I don't mean to to insult the man but supposedly the best literature's in English interesting that just true Chinese doesn't have that good literature and there's all sorts of theories for that what are the theories is that we have such sloppiness in English that there's many ways to say yeah yeah in Chinese is a little more precise nice yeah so what did it [ __ ] up the literature and you you know so it's what language do you wanna but the language that I could learn they could let me speak to the most people I can't speak to in English which one of my definitions it comes down to Mandarin Arabic Cantonese the really hard ones yeah and I've thought well I could learn first of all I got a bug up my ass that I that I want to learn call oh yeah and then I read that nobody has successfully learned cuz it's so hard and then I could talk to nobody except like five guys but wouldn't it be great if you said we have pen on he's a magician juggler comedian speaks call threw that one out but I figured Arabic puts me on every watch list I'm not already oh yeah yeah but I I started it I touched some people to teach me yeah and when boy is this a piss another role it's interesting when you talked about the fact that you know the the Kreskin thing you kept no you didn't immaculate record keeping and everything else I know that you're a compulsive record yeah and but you're also uh you you're dedicated you continue to do things and that's why it surprises me that you because I you know I'm kind of a dilettante and a lot of things and the discipline that's required at this time in my life to learn another language I keep wanting to but I think you have the discipline I yeah boy it's just I just go boys all such a long road and then I also I was in China you know and there I was people were speaking to me in English who had been studying English for a long while and they were struggling so and I went boy these guys have been working really really hard and it's not fun to talk to him and I'm gonna be there for so so long and meanwhile English is winning out of that one yeah we did it's it's always it's like a rock in my shoe like learning to play an instrument well and read music was a rock in my shoe I got that out of my shoe that's amazing because I've you know all I got all I've got is just and you know my friend Tim Jenison of Tim's Vermeer you know he says you know they say one man one language on one language one man two languages two men he said you learn another language you think different yeah you think better yeah well I think better but when I I want to speaking French where I could make jokes in French which is the hardest thing but I was still a different person when I was at a party you can say shoehorn and Brussels sprouts who what shoehorn and Brussels sprouts you say those in French French no friend of mine who spoke eight languages says that was his definition of fluid okay shoehorn to Brussels from never never needed to use either okay didn't say you meted it yeah yeah yeah okay but I am I got the language but for me it's that that that the same thing is music I we talked about that I've played miserably a whole bunch of I just wish I could just play one instrument well yeah there's there's there's moments they're very rare for me still when I actually feel like I'm playing jazz and it's unloading just wow well I just I just I just you just kind of flow into it and it's great I'm glad you have that but now you know when you I want to I want to go back to that 12 year-old boiling because the you had the makings and you still do in in many ways of a good scientist I mean and and I know you're fascinated assent but but it's not just this the immaculate record record keeping the precision whether it would have been a made you a great experimental this I will tell you I in taking in that inventory yeah and I really did this I mean III guess I seem so conniving but you know I was in I was in a dead factory town yeah I was surrounded by fellow children who went to prison or worked in factories and people did not do well in my town yeah you know I'm not painting it yeah eh it's worse yeah it was thought a town where everybody was getting out and doing going great and I was really interested in science and I said you know guys were really good at science they do three digit multiplication in their head they do really smart stuff I know I'm fairly smart I'm not smart enough if I go into science I'm sure I can get the coffee and I can back up the records and I can keep the tables and I can do all of that I believe that I don't want trying very hard to be honest and not falsely modest I thought I could get a job in science but I thought I'd get a better job magic work I just didn't I just you know and then you know it was very hard very hard for my mom and dad because yeah sure my mom and dad my dad didn't finish high school my mom and dad didn't go to college yeah and they believed that everything they didn't get was because they didn't go to college and they saved for me to go to college and then I did very well on my SATs and get a full scholarship and you didn't to go wherever I wanted and you didn't and I didn't go and that was the hardest thing for my mom and it wasn't until MIT made me a visiting scholar that my dad caught it wet okay you can do this you know neither my parents finished high school and and and and and obviously didn't go to college and and of course my case yeah my mother it was just my case was more obvious my mother won t be a doctor and and for years when I when I when I got my first I got a very fancy job at Harvard and I remember I was it was the best job in the world it really was and I and I found my mom when I did got it and and and my my then wife was was was there and I was out went out and my mother phoned her back and said he can still go to medical school oh yeah she was but then you know then later on now she's very proud so it all worked out it's very it's hard it really is my other would say physicist is that somebody give someone physics they didn't she mama said what do you want to get chalk on your hands what is this you know and it was it's yeah anyway it's an interesting that I love you don't know the joy it fills me that you could disappoint your parents with your education that's fabulous good we do this I see myself doing it I have lots of friends yeah who are very high up in academic yeah they just go pen you could have just gone to college you to be able to shut up about calling you because you still believe stuff we believed in a team yeah you were never disabused of that yeah yeah and really it would take you one semester but you know but you know I wanna you since I've known you I mean I get lots of great questions from you you were why I mean what I was gonna ask is so at one point you turned away from science because Kreskin had convinced you was [ __ ] because it wasn't different than lying when did it come back uh that might have also been Randi you know I just started because reading we reading flim-flam which was Randy's big book about I realized that if I was going to get into arguments I'm putting this in a very crass way I was gonna get into arguments about psychic events I needed to know some statistics okay and I didn't know any statistics I cannot exaggerate how bad my school was I mean if you if you saw what I came out of tenth grade with you know I am know I'm really ya know algebra yeah I mean none no I've Lori Lowe expecting any students that very low expectation you go oh Christ I okay regression to me I am good all the stuff you could kind of grasp but at a certain point you got to do some of the number yeah yeah student numbers at some point yeah you have to and I so that led to this and then I would like stuff know like I would read when I would read the it all started with skepticism and also with atheism and I'd read you know the the anthropogenic theory of this oh that's interesting oh they cite this book well I don't read that book and it just flows out from there and I get I get interested in something and read the books you are yeah I'm ma I'm very I'm just so impressed cuz people don't realize I mean I I'm quite envious and I'm not sure envious is the word but but really impressed all the time at the at the level of the number of things you read and the fact that you don't give you just follow it up and then and it also and when you ask me questions and I think you know and then you want to know further stuff it's really it pushes me and I'm okay mom find holes that are just phenomenal I mean I'm talking about from a proper yeah liberal arts education yeah and I'm talking about a very smart person with a very good education like Stephen Fry yeah yeah you know Stephen Fry when I'm talking to him and the conversation is flowing all over like it does yeah and I'll just see oh yeah there's that whole Greek pathology thing I didn't know enough yeah yeah oh yeah there's this and he just it's such the ideal of a liberal arts education that which is which is designed for a gentleman to be able to talk to his friends yeah that's all it's designed for yeah it's not designed to get a job I have good cocktail party conversation and be interesting that's all yeah yeah and there was this button I know that uh you don't even want to say these words but about the time the bell curve yeah there was there was uh this idea that what you needed to know what to read the New York Times okay and there was these whole theories that you had to get the word within a tenth of a second and know what it meant in context and there was a book that came out but I haven't been able to find since then that just had the minimum you needed to know to read the New York Times and because of that and I'm so happy for electronic yeah yeah trying stuff because when I read the New York Times I try to be so conscientious and click on every word I'm not sure of oh you say that I just go I'm not I'm not exactly sure what that word means like and then people tell me you click on too much into reading I get it from context nice if you get a have real contacts you're not using the word getting the word from context is the stupidest thing in the world you want to see what that word adds to the goddamn sentence yeah right yeah yeah you want a no no but you have that that's what I mean it's this kind of rigor most people don't have the patience to do that so I try to I try to say well I know a little more about this a little more about that and then I just go out someone mentioned Philip Locke yeah damn it every dimensions fill a better book everybody's everybody sick of Philip Roth but I didn't read them god double D rhonchi American trilogy [ __ ] I'm area comes shut up and maybe one of the reasons we resonate is I find it I mean I love the fact that what I've learned since I got my PhD far exceeds what I've learned before I got my PhD even in physics by the way and I think there are two kinds of people I'm and maybe this sounds yeah pompous I don't know you'll tell me but there are people who really when they hear something when they realize you're something they don't know are thrilled and they're people who are when they realize there's something you don't know are upset I think yeah and because the thrill the fact that there's so much more to know about the world is what keeps me going personally every day in some sense I think that's the difference between religion and not in the sense in the sense that the thrill of not knowing well yeah and firemen said that I you know I'm not afraid of not knowing and I uh I don't know if you've ever heard the ten-in-one model either doing fire eating no but I have it this was and I this this is just bragging okay good I just did it to stop finding there's it was the monologue that closed our show on Broadway closed our show off-broadway and we did it also before that in in LA it was a final monologue I did about how to eat fire I taught people how to eat fire okay and I talked about what the carnival meant to me mm-hmm and I had a section in the air which I I won't do the whole thing was I said people often think that that scientists are don't like the mystery want to end the mystery and the fact is scientists are the ones that love the mystery yes people that don't like the mystery the people that when there's a mystery there they just believe the first thing they're told yeah or they make up something and believe that mmm or they believe anything they hear on Oprah yeah just anything to shut out the mystery and stop him from thinking you know what scientists want is more mystery it's the opposite that it was a whole bong yeah yeah sure and it all culminates in teaching how to eat fires all about it's the fact of does it take away the mystery to explain the physics of fire eating doing that whole thing and Fineman mmm sauce accidentally we were playing a hundred seat theater in Hollywood before anybody knew who we were and he introduced himself as Richard Fineman almost passed out I didn't know how big a deal he was but the deal I thought he was was enough and he said I mean I mean I made cry saying now firemen said your final monologue I've been trying to explain to my wife for 20 years oh wow I never got her to understand it he said she understood it tonight with you eating that fire he said it is the most perfect description of science ever and then three weeks later Fineman showed up with eight Nobel Prize winners sign up and he came up afterwards and said this may be the largest concentration of Nobel Prize winners in the magic show ever in a magic and now I can figure out the don'ts don't fool them yeah but he said that that description that monologue was what he was trying to say but it was not it's not closing down mysteries and there's every time you read this anti atheist stuff yeah of scientists think they have all the answers you just know religion people think yes exactly yeah you've got all the answers and you don't even have a path to all the years yeah we don't even know what the questions are you don't even a path there yeah I mean if you solve every single thing you're working on right now you can't even measure that you've gotten closer yeah absolutely we don't know what the questions are and we don't that's things I've always been amused by that we would talk we were talking about the ridiculous Templeton Foundation this that they love this humble approach that religion is humble and it always amazed me to say it's humble to assume the universe was created for me and and but in fact and that scientists are arrogant but what could be more humble than saying first of all it's not created for me secondly I don't have all the answers and may never have all the answers well these this the most important part to me of the Scientific Revolution 300 years ago whatever it's just three words I don't know I don't know just no one had ever said that before no King had ever said that nobody get your head cut off for that in fact yeah or burned at the stake I don't know I don't know in fact we you know I you've probably heard me say this maybe I because I've said it so many times and is that that's those are the most important words that teachers and parents should use is it I don't know hey let's see if we can figure it out because four kids well fireman says I don't know maybe nobody knows maybe you know maybe you'll be the first to know maybe that's what it may be to the kids you'll be the first to know but even more importantly I was one day I was talking I was - I was there's a movie called the farthest and I was being it was it was a premiere of it and I was talking and I suddenly realized that for every kid every time they learned something it's the first time in the history of the world that it's been understood every learning act is an act of discovery and we do we do such a disservice to kids by making it appear as if it's remember this this is what's known it should all be an activist cover I don't know let's figure it out and the aha the aha it's an orgasm is stronger than sex yeah and that's why you have stupid detective shows yeah all the ORS fake AHA's yeah there's nothing else it never really works you know you talked about changing your mind you talked about I don't know yeah and I know you've been wanting to get to this cuz you've been you've been needling me with it for a little while now you want to get to the climate change thing because you just read a book I wrote several years ago yeah yeah which has an attack at someone who attacked me a climate change I think that there's no way you can deny that there's climate change I have completely changed on that although completely changed is a little bit confusing yeah because I never went beyond I don't know yeah what bothers me about the climate change thing was a great disservice done by Al Gore yeah of exaggerating ya know and always have was scare people we have to do this and I hate the fact that style affected me but the kind of people who were talking about it were the kind of people that were so dismissive of people that I loved that I I brought in an emotional reaction was very very emotional and also the fact and this is this is true for everything yeah which is why I don't know why it's special but it feels special I just don't have you know my friend Tim Jenison mm-hmm took a deep dive in to climate change and Tim is really smart and Tim has the the the resources to be able to take six months and do nothing yes okay it's nice job you can get it yes and he said it's too hard so I have to admit that I am taking climate change strictly on authority and period peer pressure and saying that sentence bothers me and yet I do it on everything else yeah we all do it everything else but I think you could let me try and reassure you a little bit we can't be experts ever at everything right so we have to take into car mechanics but but what you can always ask yourself if you're a skeptic is that okay look like you know I don't have the time resources or not more background to be able to necessarily test everything this person tell me but you can ask yourself the question what's in it for them and is is there a reason for them to lie to me is there a reason for them to fabricate is there a reason and I think those are the kind of questions you can ask but those that question gets the exact wrong answer that you want from me okay there's a lot of reasons any sort of doomsaying of any kind is really really sexy discovering the end of the world and how to exit makes you a superstar and a hero there's also always money in it well know what where's it where's the money I mean for most of you can't look there's a few people who are become public figures and that's a different thing but there are thousands of scientists who we're just doing this you know working on their models on a computer model and they're not whatever the answer at the end of the thing they're not gonna get more money if it's one thing or another in fact as I've you know if they if their computer model and it's well done show something dramatically different than the rest of the crew and it they defended then they become then they become right famous and so so there's every reason to try and go against the tide and science another you know all this I know I don't need to but I also think and I guess this is just I think it was okay when Al Gore was doing all that lying to go I don't know for a few months well no maybe here it's always look it's always right to I say I mean I can sympathize with that I think yeah of course you know the fact that he did well the fact that people oversupply well on the question is do you know it knowingly I here's my look I spent a lot of time explaining trying to explain science and there are lots of reasons why I think it's worthwhile doing I have very low standards in terms of what I can what I find acceptable I mean the bar when I when I thought when I when I castigate something is just simply this I'm when I'm explaining something I know I'm misleading at some level because I've never unless you do the exact mathematics whatever analogy I'm providing always fails so no it's never exactly as long but if I'm careful to say that to say where it's not accurate that's fine but the one thing that I have no tolerance for and I know a lot of people I'm not going to name names is to knowingly mislead that's the only thing if if you're writing about science and you get it wrong fine or if someone reads what you've written and gets it wrong and I remember the first time I wrote a book and my first book I worked very carefully trying explain everything and I have someone say I love this book it tells me this and it had nothing to do with what I was I was so disheartened and that I realize well I can't control what people get as long as I don't knowingly mislead and so I think what you have to do when you're simplifying or and anything is not lo knowingly mislead and then that's the thing I don't know that's why I used to be argue against by the way string theory so much is because not I think there's every reason for string theorists to want to do strength you I wrote a book about why it's someone well motivated but it's claiming that it's the theory of everything and we're on the cusp of understanding everything when there's no evidence that it that does any of that is what drove me crazy but here's how I get beat up okay we did a thing called a comic relief yeah for homeless sure yes Robin Williams no I mean and there was this whole speech in there that said anyone can become homeless it's not just if you're mentally ill it's not just if you are on drugs it's not just this this could happen to anybody or your family any day but I said to Robin that's not true oh well that's really not true more a great number of the homeless people do have mental illness issue oh yeah sure sure great number yes not true that it hits people at random no no there's no way do it but there's things that can happen to you they have no control right but what I'm talking about is they were saying well that helps us have more compassion for people rights and I was saying no no no we just tell the truth these people need help let's help the exact same thing happened well we started an organization called Broadway cares which is for peoples of AIDS yeah and it was in the 80s it was very early on very early on and I was in all these meetings and they would say we have to stress that this is not gay this is not drug users this is everybody and this is going to be moving to the straight population right away and I say well we don't know that so far it is drug users and it is yeah and we can tell people that and they said no no no we won't get any help from people we do that we have to scare everybody with that and I said no no we can't you know and they say and and and I'm now quoting so please forgive me you're not gonna get America to care about a bunch of [ __ ] and I said well maybe they do maybe maybe there is a love out there you can't assume and they said we have to say it's going down so there are all these shows in the 80s saying you know it's gonna move into the straight populations amount of time and their point of it was we need to help people it was done for compassion and then I was asked to do vo when I was on Comedy Central mm-hmm and they said this much rain forest is being destroyed every day but and there was just a series of numbers I'm giving and this studio wasn't ready which is their only mistake and I went through when I did the mathematics and the earth did it yeah and I said this actually doesn't play out he just said the number of acres and stuff I just multiplied it out it's just wrong and they said doesn't matter I said well no it kind of does we got this from the it does I said we'll just let him tell me let me call somebody cuz I'm not good at this there might be something wrong here and they said doesn't matter just do the vo and I said [ __ ] you just left well no that's you know that's you see that's your damn problem you're just too honest okay so I mean I I mean I you know I have to can but what I'm saying you are one of the most honest people I've ever met but what I'm saying is Al Gore please for the love of Christ you've got something that could be the end of the world don't cheat do not cheat don't say we need a little more fear don't say that by the year whatever he said by the Year 2015 we're gonna have four inches of water in Central Park whatever that was I'm making it up I know that's wrong ya know say Oh pendant yeah I know it's wrong remaining up but he said they said these things here and all of these people it was like we've been burned so badly we had the Population Bomb yeah there was the cemetery I remember late and well I'm I was really influenced by a book called limits to growth well yeah and I mean and it was well-intentioned by the way because just it's just what happens is technology responds to problems and so you can't predict very well which is by the way why I never try and predict anything less than two billion years in the future to check my math but but when we're dealing with it and also anybody who says we gotta fix climate change I'm against nuclear power I just go you're insane yeah cuz if we get a fixed climate change everything's on the tape everything and most people I know who I mean all the breeze real rational people I know say everything everything's on the tape everything has to be on the table because you know we might not get solar or wind yeah yeah I get more than fifteen to twenty percent out of that we've just got to stop [ __ ] coal yes stop the [ __ ] cold now you know and we talked about the fact that people are afraid of the word nuclear yeah and it and and it's so amazing because first of all radioactivity is so much easier to detect than almost any other kind of pollution I mean I mean I just it's trivial for me to detect the most miniscule amounts of radioactivity in this room versus versus any other pollutant plus the number of people that have ever been killed by any nuclear accident well in the history you know I'm compared to the number of my coal in every and every day you know how many people Three Mile Island killed no no a lot of people because that was shut down because like the people that were that were killed on 9/11 bite more people driving cars and having more cars yeah yeah but you know it seems like it seems like the solution if there is one has got to be technological well I mean yeah it's gonna because it's so much unfortunately I agree with you completely because unfortunately technology is so much easier than changing society it's just it now but I'll tell you I don't think there's gonna be a solution in the near term there are going to be technological mediation and I mean and and there may be solutions to taking carbon on the atmosphere I've been involved in projects in fact that that that try and do that and I ran programs that actually solar mother happening over in the we already passed the point where nothing we're we're we're not gonna have to adapt yeah so what we need to do is think of technological adaptations as well as that doesn't however the problem in that many of my colleagues say don't say that because it means it suggests the people that we don't have to change that's exactly that's exactly the problem the other thing is you know I was trying to think of of an example where where conservation worked there few and far between and we were running out of we were running out of tin we're trying to save tin everything was about ten that aluminium came along there's plenty of 10 that's the way usually well that they're also of point it's technology can be a game-changer and it often is but but having said that and I guess I was strongly influenced by Murray Lovins who I've known for a long time who who would point out that you know most of so in in big tall skyscrapers in New York City most of the energy so their air conditioning in the summer most of the problem the air conditioning is that the law is that they're overheating the buildings with the fighting so you're putting all this energy in to do what you could do if you more efficiently designed the lighting that wouldn't put the energy and in the first place that'd be a lot cheaper than building a nuclear power plant for example he's to point out and so those those we have to do kind of rationally by the way you know interestingly because I've been available of things cost were they really cost yeah we let gasoline cost for gas we cost yeah exactly and yet people in this country will always be opposed to that and but you know it's simply but because there's also perception I was involved in an energy conference once and and there there was a group in Sweden that had built a house that didn't need heating this is Sweden yeah the winter but they designed passive solar and lighting in such a way that it you could live in that house and you'd never need a furnace mm-hmm no one would buy into this thing cuz no one believes it's possible it just seemed irrational so you've got to overcome that kind of prejudice in so many ways but once again it comes back to lying in some sense distorting reality is what upset you about climate change I want to talk about ethics because I think you've talked about ethics a lot in the times I've known you in many different contexts and something you wrote about sort of surprised me in a way you're not what out someone I would call necessarily politically correct okay yeah yet at the same time you wrote poignant ly about not wanting to offend people mmm-hmm and I found that kind of interesting because in some sense went speaking the truth inevitably offends some people and so I wanted and you said you wouldn't you you don't swear in front of your children I don't know if you still don't that's that Dutch changed that's changed let's change I go through period to no there was a time lawrence O'Donnell mmm-hmm from MSNBC lawrence O'Donnell and I and Lawrence and on of course is a different image than I do but lawrence O'Donnell from Dorchester okay you know Debra knows Dorchester and lawrence O'Donnell and I were once in a taxicab in New York City in a taxicab in New York City okay and we were talking and the subject is very important we're talking about how to get a picture frame to hang in art straight on the wall okay that was the discussion we drove in the taxicab we finished the taxicab driver in New York City said I've never heard two people swear more we're talking and I was with another friend of mine who's a record producer named Kramer who butthole surfers and all these other variants we're all we're all out eating a meeting supper and one of us said I don't know who we should just stop swearing okay completely and absolutely now the rules were very simple okay we would not ever use euphemisms he would say [ __ ] if we meant intercourse okay you know we would say we know he would say [ __ ] yeah but no goddamn but also no gosh darn okay and no Galli you know those raw pike was also robbed Pike was there too was four of us wall just stop and we all did and it was phenomenal because I get emails from Rob by going I banged my toe yesterday and he said I just ouch I hadn't said out you so long and ouch is a fine words and not a bad word he said and we did that for about a year and a half and it was really illuminating and really fun and then when my children were born I realized I was saying god damn in Jesus Christ all the time and I wanted to stop it for the exact opposite reason people might think you want to I just didn't want my culture that I was given to my children and that steeped in Christianity and Christian you give it the oxygen yeah so I just wanted to phase that out and now I go through phases it depends a lot and who I'm around what I'm doing I also did I was really interested in transgressive humor and I did a movie the aristocrats yeah sure and got it out of my system really had really no interest now when someone like pushes the envelope in offensive comedy and I'm just bored because I tried to get a hundred people who as far as they could they did not say another should be born yeah yeah but for you I heard enough you know so I I really you have you know there's two kinds of performers that work for me mm-hmm one is the sociopath who needs nothing from you Dean Martin yang the best example Bob Dylan being a partial example Dean Martin it did not matter when you in the audience how much you loved him or how much you hated him or budem there'd be nothing different from him and there is something so sexy about them yeah if you've got someone that you can't touch yeah that you think that if you insulted them or you kiss them it would make no difference to them you just want to hold them and hug them and have them own you forever I mean that is one of the sexiest things I think especially for men especially for men to men it just brings that out very strongly I dunno so I'm there it's funny it's very enticing I know a few people who really amazingly don't care and I mean who do what they do because they believe what they do and they don't really care and and it's not just so they're saying they don't care they've been and and I would like to be that way in certain way and also you don't you feel an attraction you ever want to please them yeah yeah and the other kind of person I want to see perform is someone who desperately like Don Rickles yeah who just needs every second or Jerry Lewis every second needs that kind of confirmation I have which I think is a good formula for the way I work I have the desire to be loved by everyone offend nobody but do it on my terms yeah and that and that keeps a tension going yeah no I can't I can't I can't actually do the glad-handing fan yeah I try very hard to be complimentary yeah and be polite and and and give reinforcement but I try to always be knit yeah yeah no she's not that hard which is better yeah no it's not that hard well and fertile some people is but it's I also meeting in a salon I also know that shocked and surprised and out of left field and sexual stuff yes and that will get laughs it's part of Matias yeah not just easy it's yeah you know it's like with George Carlin yeah as a direct answer to yeah yes as people just say using those words are easy he just says it's just one of the things you can do yeah leave everything out there yeah yeah no you don't say in conversation don't use the word though yeah easy yeah well no but it fits right in there it's the right thing in there you know it does the right thing people used to say to me when I was I used to do Howard Stern yeah and remember and people would say to me Howard Stern just doesn't care what people think and I would go no no he cares desperately when people think but he acts anyway you know and this kid said so much but you can't say it too much I don't think bravery is not the absence of fear of course it's bravery is action in the faces of here absolutely so yes I want desperately to not offend than everybody like me and I also want to be brave yeah okay that's beautifully said I mean I yeah it's beautifully said because I think that is the definition knowing that you know you hat you're gonna end up doing something that that causes offence but but that's why I was surprised to read in some sense that you don't want to offend people because it was actually Stephen Fry who said we haven't in our society this notion that being offended gives you special rights oh yeah yeah walking that special rights if that's all different is you you own that problem i I you do not have any right to not be offended yeah that does not mean I want to feel well when I do exactly but those are two entirely different issue yeah they really are and I do very much like to be shocked and offended yeah I enjoy those feelings yeah very much yeah and I believe that's part of the human experience and part of everything else welp I think it's a character thing I mean I'm I'm similar but I think there are a lot of people who hate either of those yeah I guess I guess what I like was that yeah yeah there's there's a line in the bit we did years ago where teller and I it's one of the only Bitsey ever done that takes place not in the theater yeah it takes place and it's it's it's a playlet to memory when I showed the short play and we're not Penn & Teller were two different characters and I discover myself handcuffed to tell her inexplicably he's a stranger and I'm handcuffed to him and then the the story is about how I deal with being handcuffed to the stranger and how this goes to and it turns into a magic trick because the handcuffs vanish man they were never there but um there's one moment where I look at the handcuffs look at teller and I say this is great this is terrific what is this and I've had like 10 friends say if I had to sum up all of your life it would be that one thing this is great this is horrific what is this they said the only time we see you excited about something is when you are completely utterly confused in the dark your first reaction to not understanding is a huge grin no this is great this is terrific what is this that's why my friend you would make a great size that's great I think it's actually that's a great way to end because it's a perfect it's it's it's it is for me it represents what science is all about it represents what you are all about and it's one of the reasons I like you so much thanks a lot thanks for coming the origins podcast is produced by Lawrence Krauss Nancy doll Amelia Huggins John and Don Edwards and Rob's EPS directed and edited by Gus and Luke Horta audio by Thomas a misen web designed by Redman Media Lab animation by tomahawk visual effects and music by Rick Alice to see the full video of this podcast as well as other bonus content visit us at patreon.com slash origins podcast

Channel: The Origins Podcast

Views: 64,233

Rating: 4.8325934 out of 5

Keywords: The Origins Podcast, Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Project, Science, Podcast, Culture, Physicist, Video Podcast, Physics, james randi, penn jillette, neil degrasse tyson

Id: 7VHnXZ0cSXc

Length: 100min 42sec (6042 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 02 2019