Penn & Teller: The Magic of Skepticism

nice to meet you gentlemen we're really supposed to be sitting with people we don't know but well do I do I can't screw that up all right Ken you were recently quoted as saying you should be honest with people even when you're doing magic which is essentially lying can you elaborate on that yeah I don't think people should ever leave a show any sort of entertainment with information that the person that was doing the entertainment knows to be false the rule we try to follow which is as far as I know more stringent than any other magicians is what I call this sawing a person in half rule which is when someone does a trick where they saw a person in half on stage nobody really except you know children or maybe someone who is seriously mentally ill leaves the theater thinking that they witnessed a murder no matter how real it seems at that moment and the one that we do in our show looks like an accident and there's a moment it looks like an accident the saw blade goes through and there is there is awful and blood and guts and so on but nobody leaves the theater thinking that they've they've been party to a murder and that seems like a really good rule for how you do all magic now that may seem like it's easy to follow except there's an area of magic called mentalism which is pretending to read minds and as many people stepped up and said that there was no evidence for ESP and there was no mind-reading and there was no supernatural people started falling into this I do this with psychology I do this by reading body language I do this by memorization there are all these hedges so people would end up leaving the theater thinking that this magic trick that they'd seen which was done of sleight of hand or electronic gimmicks or something like that had been done with some sort of cutting edge to acknowledge your body language and that is considered totally okay among magicians and Mentalist the vast majority and we think it's wrong so the idea is that all art is in some level lying it's at some level fantasy tell their likes to say that magic is the unwilling suspension of disbelief but that doesn't give you license to cheat what reality is so you must be completely and utterly honest even though your job is lying when when parents ask after we do our sawing in half ask me to reassure their children that she'll be all right I say yes she'll be all right in the morning we set her home in two taxis tonight tell her by the way his name is just teller I learned this backstage he won't tell you his first name he doesn't have it anymore and he showed me his driver's license it just says teller the people at American Express couldn't abide and they put on his card teller teller on the corporate one well my personal one it's just one tower when people leave one of your shows what do you want them to feel or to know I I'd love them to know that people who openly say that they're deceiving them can fool them at the same time and that's you know in in in the outside world you can be fooled by a lot of things you can be fooled if for example you've just someone has just died and someone comes to you and says I can speak to the dead you're emotionally vulnerable and you can be fooled in a way that's very destructive to yourself our art form is to lie to people openly have them look at it with full skepticism you know to stare at it say that that bowl of water is empty I can't see where the coins are the fish are coming from and leave that theater going wow if a couple of guys can lie to me openly and still fool me how vulnerable am I in the outside world what is the importance of skepticism in your work and in your message well tell they just answered some of that I think skepticism and atheism are which I believe are the same are which many people disagree with I believe are really really important because you cannot have community you cannot have love unless you have a shared reality and anything that comes from within any revelation that comes from within by definition can't be shared so what science did for us mostly was science gave us a reality that we could share and talk about so if I feel the presence of my dead mother with me that's personal that's poetic but if I'm gonna actually talk about what death means we have to go with things that we've proven and proof is been given such a hard cold kind of connotation whereas another way to say proof is just something you can share it's it's another way to say love if I believe there's a God in the universe and I can't prove it I have said nothing to the community if I think there's such a thing as black holes and I can give some evidence to that that's a way of showing love for other people now magicians are this very small little unimportant corner you know the the silly people dealing with the epistemology you know where the we're the ones that jokingly deal with how one ascertains truth but for our little part I think that showing that you can artistically deal with fantasy while in reality doing tricks is the most important lesson that that human beings can learn the difference between fantasy and reality and whether you're taught that by the Three Stooges who were when I when I was young the best teachers of the difference in fantasy in reality or whether you're taught that by video games which nowadays is how my children learn about fantasy and reality is realizing that they can die in a video game is not really dying that difference between fantasy and reality is the difference between personal space and shared space and that line between personal space and shared space is the definition of love and in a very very very small way that's what magicians should be dealing with a lot of the things you say will be will will be controversial with some people no audience especially when you're talking about the you you're basically saying that skepticism and atheism are identical there being no God say that again I think there's no controversy with is there anybody in the world that believes in God anymore it's gone settled you and need you do you not think you can be a person of faith and be skeptical well I mean for example Francis Collins head of the NIH National Institutes of Health obviously a a very successful science science deaf a huge part of science as we all know skepticism he's an evangelical Christian he sure is and he's also a brilliant brilliant scientist and I would like him to bring some of that scientific knowledge that he has into proving God and sharing it with us I I think that what exactly what I said if it's a totally personal revelation that you cannot give any evidence for then that's fine but don't claim it has anything to do with anyone else and he kind of does that he's kind of pretty good at compartmentalizing I know that there I've heard a lot of the arguments for the difference between skepticism and atheism and a lot of them seem to make sense but for me in the way I deal with it it's not a distinction that's that's interesting to me when I'm talking about something has anybody ever fooled you with a trick all the time I mean we actually have a TV show called Penn & Teller fool us and we bring magicians on and these magicians attempt it's you know I hate these competition shows in which people come on and show their best talents and then people who are totally unqualified go oh I really liked him you know I that drives me crazy I think there should be objective criteria so we have this magic competition show and the objective criterion on it is can they fool us and if they fool us they win and if they don't fool us they they lose but of course in ultimately in this little show everybody wins because they all get on TV and people become fond of them and they become famous and very very happy but yes it happens all the time our Fame and happy do they always go together they are absolutely the same I think any skepticism was brought to bear in the assertion there 40 years first of all congratulations that's a long time to be doing this you guys are you're both alive meaning you have not killed each other how was your working relationship evolved over these decades well it evolved in the first two or three years then kind of stay there we we spent most of the first six years I think fighting but you know when you when you've been together for 40 years six years seems like - yeah we what we what we the the great good fortune we had was we were brought together by a mutual friend we liked that friend very much and I still do and and and so does pen but we were not friends at all we we found ourselves very useful to each other found working together very very very good and that's very helpful we may be socialized four times a year possibly but making enough of a separation that we know that what we're doing is working and it's our responsibility to work we don't miss shows you know neither of us shows up drunk because neither of us drinks we're just very reliable I you know I trust Penn absolutely completely yeah we trust each other and not not to be overly dramatic but it's literally true with our lives we do things that are dangerous that are supposed to appear dangerous and could really be dangerous if we weren't doing it right the other thing that's different about our partnership is that many artistic partnerships are love affairs I mean lennon-mccartney certainly fell in love Gilbert and Sullivan we're certainly in love Martin and Lewis way over the top in love and when you have an emotional cuddly attachment to somebody that you're also working with when the cuddly attachment fades in anyway it's it's cataclysmic it's horrible and your heart is broken teller and I never started with any affection towards each other whatsoever that's really true I mean we really kind of a there's some people you meet and right away you kind of want to hug them and it's of an animal thing with teller and I it was it was like an email relationship before email I mean it's totally intellectual we think that we do better work together than we do separately we are polite to each other within reason although there are exceptions of that we never apologized which i think is really important we both have really is really true way of continual fights apologizing is just an excuse to keep fighting you know I said that to you because I was a little bit edgy that day because you don't always add yeah but you as a sketch you have kind of gotten me edgy over the days with being so tight ass about stuff that's what you keep not tight ass really that's where you keep rising apologies just letting it go and also neither of us have we both have terrible terrible memories so we have to hire somebody to remember who we're pissed off at you know like um like journalists you know write stuff like we totally suck and we find out six months later they're doing a fundraiser and we want to go do it for free probably the person organizing this pissed us off we just forgot it I feel in the remaining moments I feel I wouldn't like I would get in trouble if I didn't ask this but since the theme has edges do you feel that you have consistently and continue to push the edges of magic I I don't know about us but I I have always thought that the people who do the most interesting work in an art form don't quite belong there you know I I think that that it somebody like Bach did really really really interesting things with counterpoint because he had all the instincts of a dramatist right so while other people are going yes I'll make this all work nicely together the stuff that he does really adds up to something outside that that's just a little crackpot theory of mine that's you know there was a thing written by the residents Gary Panter out of San Francisco the Rostock manifesto that said if you don't like supermarket music for Christ's sakes start making supermarket music I I hated magic I still do really I I loved I loved The Velvet Underground and I loved Bob Dylan and I I didn't I don't I don't understand guns and roses at all guns and roses confuses the out of me because Guns and Roses loved the Rolling Stones and there is a Rolling Stones so why don't they just listen to the Rolling Stones if someone is in a form that you love and they're doing a great job stay away from it I knew that I didn't have a chance in show business against Bob Dylan and The Velvet Underground because they're really really really good but I knew we could do well against magicians because they blow the thing I hated most about magic was the patter and look who I hooked up with a good way I did so I think it's time for a trick an illusion you ready it's a trick we like the term trick term of art okay that means an actual visual thing you know but tricks are just swindles lies ripoffs that's what we do or maybe somebody from the audience okay I'll see you guys later this is a really weird thing we're gonna do this is probably the strangest thing we do what's it steers right here shut up there's this is probably the strangest thing we do and it's about how magic works it's really not a magic trick it's more about how magic works we're gonna do magic for one person I said to ask you wear contact lenses okay what's your name please auntie cookie please Audrey now the only place imagines gonna happen is inside Audrey's head we're not gonna fool anyone at all just come up here and just face the audience Audrey let's just tell her here tell this is Audrey and nobody asked about contact lenses now even though it's the lights are kind of up and the house lights have gone down even though it's a little hard to see in there you have a really clear sense your memory of like where you're seated and who's sitting around you probably what they're wearing walk out to the lobby all that's all that's memorized all that's inside your head well during this bit we're gonna ask you to go to your memory go inside your head to your imagination there's a few times during that we're gonna ask you to close your eyes now to make sure you keep your eyes shut for the whole thing we put our fingertips very lightly on your eyelids they're gonna be too weird for you Audrey you face the audience Audrey close your eyes let's give it a try but our fingers right there is that too creepy it's certainly creepy just not too creepy right yeah yeah okay you can open your eyes now auntie when I say close your eyes I suggest you do it right away we're coming in and if you don't it turns into a Three Stooges routine and you're standing right on the great curly Howard's spot right there take this ring there Audrey and just examine just a solid ring there's nothing fancy about it pretty good sitting up with that around my next you know right where that is would you please Audrey you know face the audience Audrey now as I said the only magic in this room will be happening inside Audrey's head so please audience try to watch the next few tricks from just inside Audrey's head okay that's the point of view put your hands are just like this so they're touching okay I want you know just where we are so rubbing our fingers right down your arms there Audrey have a real sense of where we are now close your eyes on to close your eyes one fingertip on each Island is one fingertip on the back of each hand you can feel teller on the back of your right hand and I'm right over here on your left there Audrey now imagine our fingers imagine our hands imagine our wrists then just reach out holding our wrists on hotel it with your right knee with your left get a good grip there hold tight believe your elbows loose so we can move this would be really easy to imagine okay you'll be able to hear this and feel this you can hear and feel me leaning over television across he's grabbing that ring that you put around my neck so imagine teller holding the ring you put around my neck that's easy this next thing is impossible but I still want you to imagine it I want you to imagine that teller rips the ring through my neck and links it onto your arm without you letting go of this wrist okay it's impossible but I still want you to imagine it imagine teller rips the ring through my neck and links it on to you I feel that Audrey open your eyes your open eyes that's solder there Audrey that's all totally unbroken there Audrey don't get a little weird of there Audrey face the audience here close your eyes Araji one fingertip on each I won't forget tip into each hand I reach across I do with your right hand and grab the ring and slide that right off your arm there Andris lie off your arm i watch doing what stay in constant contact with you there Audrey why do you bring the ring above your left arm and tap it a couple times now it's really easy to imagine that ring isn't it Audrey because you're holding and also tapping it now raise that ring a few inches above your arm and hold it there nice and still now in just a moment Audrey I'm gonna count to three right after I count to three on the next beat Audrey you let go of that rings let it drop completely let it fall it's gonna feel weird Audrey and expect that ring to hit this arm but it won't instead I do you imagine this when you drop that ring after I count to three the bottom of the ring will open up it'll suck your arm in and then it'll heal up completely when you drop that ring it'll link onto this arm without me letting go of this wrist and if you people can watch this from inside Audrey's head this may be the biggest miracle you ever experienced right after 3:00 there Audrey and 1 2 3 drop feel that Audrey open your eyes you're out open your eyes is that solid there Audrey totally unbroken one more obvious a Fiat if you have a Fiat it close your eyes you ought to close your eyes close your eyes take the ring in both hands are robbed you're taking both hands make sure the ring is solvent get a good feel for it there yeah good now hold the ring with your right hand and let it go with your left yeah now bring your fingers up and replace our fingertips on your eyes so blindfold yourself with your hands you know just eat your lunch one end there you go beautiful you've made a solid ring having geography from your face to your fingers to your hand to your arm to your elbow to your arm your shoulder to your neck that's a solid unbroken ring of flesh there's no way we could link anything on to this arm without these fingers coming away from your face let me have the ring here Audrey imagine this and 1 2 3 feel that Audrey open your eyes open eyes that's all of their audio have a sensor I am sensing where color is sensible your seniors out there what that's Audrey there Audrey Audrey my name is Penn Jillette the partner caliber but of teloth gentlemen thanks so much

Channel: Chicago Ideas

Views: 89,551

Rating: 4.9325047 out of 5

Keywords: Magic (Literature Subject), Skepticism (Quotation Subject), Penn & Teller (TV Personality), Comedy (Theater Genre)

Id: sQm3ZjZRpdo

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 28 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Project_Durden]

That's Penn

[u/nomorepoetsplease]

Great routine from P&T but what point are you trying to make?

[u/Project_Durden]

That's Penn

[u/Jokard]

Teller is the one that doesn’t tell...

[u/tuxman20]

That’s exactly why magic works: the spectator misses a CRUCIAL part of the events that unfold, and his brain reconstructs it as best it can.... even if it means using shortcuts that are impossible.