Penn Jillette

Saturnight Live? Exactly like it was for you? That's so interesting. Hi. My name is Pen Gillette, and I am more than half by height of Penn and Teller, but I've been known to line Hi there, everybody. Oh, I am so excited for today. Welcome back to Off the Beat. This

is your host, Brian baum Gartner. And today, as you just heard, I I'm talking with, well with one of the greatest magic men in history, the extraordinary and extraordinarily interesting Penn Gillette, who was able to take a field that was filled with quote, greasy guys in tuxes with a ton of birds. That's his words, not mine, and turn it into something truly truly spectacular. You probably know him as half of the duo Penn and Teller, because the two of them have been working side by side

for decades. Forty seven years they have known each other, Penn told me today, honestly, probably longer than some of you have been alive. I know, much longer than many of you have been alive. They've had hugely successful TV shows like Penn and Teller Bullshit and Penn and Teller fool Us. They've had a residency at the Rio in Vegas since two thousand and one. Penn has written books,

had story ideas adapted into amazing television episodes. He played Freaking Drell on the nineties version of Supreme at the Teenage, which he has done it all all driven by his deep intellectual curiosity and his his pure devotion to keeping things fun and interesting and much like Greg Daniels on The Office, truthful. So with that little primer, I'm gonna let Pen come on so you can hear from the man himself. I had so much fun talking to Penn today.

We didn't know each other before today, but I tell you this, We're going to be friends for life. Ladies and gentlemen. Penn Gillette, Bubble and Squeak. I love it, Bubble and Squeak, Bubble and squeaker cooking it every month. Lift over from the ny What's up? Pen Boy? That countdown told me just when to tense up. I got really tense. I got five seconds to get tense, and I did it. I'm so good. I am a long admirer of you and your work. Thank you so much

for coming to talk to me today. Well, it is mutual. Uh. My son has watched The Office all the way through, I believe four times. I can't say that I've watched every episode with him every time. But if I want to win the home theater to watch something, it's always you on the TV. How old is he? He is? Okay, that's that's it feels now. Whether they like the show or don't like the show, it's become cultural required viewing.

And um over supper, he will do whole hunks. Occasionally he'll he'll start speaking a little more wittily than usual and we realize he's quoting The Office. Oh that is awesome. I oh my gosh, your life, your career is so fascinating to me. I'm I'm really excited to dive in. I want to start where you started. You grew up in what you described as a dead factory town in a school system that taught you absolutely nothing, Greenfield, Massachusetts. So how how did you how did you occupy your time?

You you are a well educated man. I am not um. I uh well, when I was about twelve years old, I realized that I couldn't masturbate all the time, so I learned to juggle. I didn't think working in show business or the arts or performance was a possibility. I didn't think anybody ever really did that, you know. And what I said I was I want to preface this by saying I was very close to my father and mother, and my dad was not did not say this in any sort of discouraging way. He was just saying what

we all felt. What I said that I kind of felt like I might want to do performing his He said, what you think you're Johnny Carson? I mean that, And he wasn't saying it like you think. He wasn't being an ass at all. He was being just, oh, so that's what you think you can do. And I said, I I think there are other people besides Johnny Carson. I mean they're there are people that like run camera and move curtains and stuff. And he went like I guess.

So you know, um, he was so supportive but had no understanding that you could actually make a living wage making a joke. So I thought, and I guess I'm still like this. I believe that you could solve everything with practice. So my idea was, I was in Greenfield, Massachusetts, I would be a good enough juggler that the art talent scouts who we're looking all over the world would say, oh, there's a guy who could juggle, Well, let's bring him into show business. That didn't happen, Okay. I got to

be a good juggler. Why I don't know, but I got to be a good juggler, and strangely enough, that ended up leading me into show business. Which is the most amazing part of the story is this twelve year old hairbraid scheme actually worked. So what what was it about juggling or how how did that? Yeah? How did how did it start there? What were you just like holding the balls or yearl? I like nothing about it. I wanted to be in music, Okay. All I cared about was music. I did not care about comedy. I

did not care about juggling. I cared about music, but I didn't have perfect pitch or even relative pitch. My my sense of tone was not good. My sense of rhythm was very good. I was a drummer. But there were people better than me at music at my high school. And we all know that everyone in Hollywood was the best in their high school at whatever they're doing. There was not a better musician. And at Jimmy Hendricks's high school, Jimmy Hendrix in Hibbing Public High School, there was not

a better songwriter than Bob Dylan. Bob. The fact that the fact that Phil Tetro was a better musician than me at Greenfield Public High School and that Phil Tetro didn't have a chance of being a professional, said well, I'm not gonna so I I loved music tremendously, but I thought, well, I'm not going to do that. The hand that I'm dealt does not give me that. And I thought I wasn't good looking enough. You know, I

was tall enough for basketball, but I hated sports. So you you know, you you fan out the cards you've been dealt, and you say, what do you got? And I said, I can't do anything, but if I practice a lot, I can learn to juggle. So I went, now it turns out that probably if I had practiced as much on music as I had on juggling, I could have probably been with four or five incredibly lucky breaks, a D level drummer or bass player, maybe at a wedding band level, or maybe at a local local band level.

But you know, uh, you're gonna enter an arena. It's like why I never write anything or talk about love because I'm not gonna go one on one with William Shakespeare. You know, I'm not going to enter a competition where I automatically lose. So in juggling, I didn't know that. You know, ignocked Off was gonna be a much better juggler than me, But it didn't matter because I was good enough. I was good enough to get to Ringling Brothers,

and I was good enough to get those places. And then I discovered this thing that I would have never discovered without juggling, which is I had a had a juggling team called the toss Ups with Like Motion, who was to win a MacArthur Genius Grant for juggling, and the two of us would perform fifteen dollars for a nursing home or or due talent shows. And this funny thing happened. We started out just coming out and I

would say hello, where the toss ups? And we would juggle, and then I would start doing little introductions to each juggling, thing that I would start doing longer introductions to each juggling, And then I discovered that the less I juggled, the more successful our juggling troop was. Okay, So that gave me the confidence that maybe I could do talking as

well as juggling for a living. And if I had not had but I would have never had the bravery to attempt stand up or morning DJ or anything like that. But when I was hired to juggle and people said afterwards, oh, you talk really good, I felt like that gave me. It was like, I'm gonna talk a little bit, but it's okay because afterwards I'll do really hard stuff. Yes exactly. Now, looking back, you were you funny starting out? You were entertaining. I think I I think I was. I think I

was okay funny in my way. And it also gave me a kind of freedom that you never get because I never prepare heard what I was gonna say, I was gonna ask next. You only prepared the juggling. So it allowed me, as a fourteen fifteen, sixteen year old to do a hundred percent verbal improvisation in front of people, which amazing. You never get to do never, never, never. So by the time I met Teller and want to do magic, I was already very comfortable walking out on stage.

As you know, as the crew makes fun of me, they say, give me twenty minutes and I'll give you an introduction to a thirty second trick. I have to ask you about this because obviously we're going to transition and and talk about where your life went. But I read something fascinating that something that was a fundamental building lock for you and your life became your disdain for

the amazing Kreskin. Yeah, now it is amazing. I want you to talk to me about that, how how he came into your life, and then how you felt when when you found out that you'd been duped. To me, it's like the mosquito being the most dangerous animal on earth. Okay, you know, hippopotamus is second. Hippopotamus deserves it. Mosquito does not deserve it. This dipshit does not have a right to have the influence in my life. That he had, but god damnit, he did. He was carrying malaria. Who knew.

Crestkin appeared on a television show, which I don't remember which one, but I know it wasn't Carson because Carson would not let people like that on. But he appeared on probably a daytime talk show. I would probably guess Mike Douglas, maybe MERV Griffin or something. And he did a scientific experiment with extrasensory perception and he was flogging an ESP Science magic kid that had a little pendulum with idiomatic movements and ESP cards and that kind of job.

And I was a real fan of science. I was an avid reader. I considered myself to really like science, you know. So I watched him have this demonstration of a scientific principle, and I talked to my parents, who were not wealthy my dad was a jail guard, you know, and said, there's this science thing I want to get. It's Christin's ESP kid. And we bought this kid. And at the time, my sister was much older than me had moved out, so I was essentially we were a

three person family. And I made my parents run through these endless experiments with the SP kit and then and I refer you, of course, to the Dewey decimal system, which I know you're a big fan of. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of that. Juggling and magic are very close together in the Dewey decimal system because Dewey knew these were junk art forms. And the Greenfield Public Library, where I spent a lot of time, there were two books on juggling which I had memorized, and there are

a bunch of books on magic. And as as chance would have it, the way I tell this story is probably not true, but it's the way I remember it. I picked up the book by dunning Er, who was a mentalist in the forties, very famous, and I opened it up and I remember it as seeing the same trick Question had done on TV. When I think about that objectively, I say, probably wasn't true, you know. But I saw something that made me see that you could

do tricks like this with trickery. And my reaction could only be justified by being fourteen years old, absolutely inappropriate, out of scale. Everywhere, I stopped doing any science. I went from an a student to a failing student in science. I hated all magicians, I hated all scientists, because these were people who would lie to children. And I put that chip on my shoulder so strongly and said, well, you know, Bob Dylan doesn't lie to children. John Lennon

doesn't lie to children. Jack carro Wact doesn't lie to children. To Move doesn't lie to children. You know, Lenny Bruce doesn't lie to children. Fuck the scientists, Thuck the magicians.

I'm going with the people who don't lie to children. Um. I also had a chip on my shoulder about magicians because you tune into and I'm older than you, I believe by quite a bit, but I could tune into the Hollywood Palace and even when I was young, Ed Sullivan and they would have a great band on like The Who, and then before that would be a greasy guy in a tucks with a lot of birds, torturing women in front of mylar too bad, small dick, rip off white boy music, And I was like, stop him,

break the band down. Why on earth wouldn't The Who do three songs and let that you know? And as nobody knows, the Beatles first appearance on Ed Sullivan was followed by a magician. No, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's amazing yeah. Uh So it wasn't until I met tell her and tell her told me and an Amazing Randy. When I've read Amazing Randy's book Flim Flam and I met Teller shortly after that, I understood that you could do magic honestly, and then also that magic wasn't special.

I mean, by my childhood definition of lying, when you go on the office, you're lying, you know, because you're not actually working in an office, it's a studio. Uh. And you can be honest by just saying we're within a proscenium. Robert de Niro is not Travis Pickle. He does not drive a taxicab. There's a proscenium, and that can extend to magic. And then tell her said to me a sentence that is complete and utter nonsense that we have explored for forty seven years, which is that

mad jack is an intellectual art form. And that sounds like crazy talk until you think that music goes to your lizard brain. You can tap your foot right away. You know, poetry goes to your heart, even literature goes directly. But magic you have to formulate what's impossible and talk about what doors are closed to allow that to be done. By the means that you know, so magic engages the intellect at a level that no other art form does. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm just saying

I believe that's a true thing. And what's interesting to me is that most other magicians pissed that away. They say, put your doubt aside. Come in a magical journey with me. No schmuck. The important thing about magic is the unwilling suspension of disbelief. Shakespeare says, Okay, we're on an island now, and there's been a shipwreck, and this guy you saw in the deodorant commercial is actually a king, and the

audience goes, okay, Bill, what you got right? And in magic you come out and go I'm holding this quarter

in my hand, and now it's gone. And you're supposed to look at that with doubt because he doesn't say, here's a quarter, let's pretend it's gone, right, And magicians presented as though they are doing willing suspension of disbelief, whereas the entire art form is the unwilling suspension disbelief, which, by the way, the phrase unwilling suspension disbelief was coined by the greatest mind in magic, which is teller, who

have I written on his back for forty seven years? Wow, I've never thought about it like that, right, of course, because I grew up doing theater, and so it was all about you know what I mean. There was a lot of discussion, and then of course when I was doing more experimental things, it was about, well how do we change this? Right? But like, there are rules, and the rule is once you sit down, there is a willing suspension of disbelief. Right, And you were fifteen years

old saying you know I'm a salesman. Right, that's right, that's exactly right. Going, okay, right, we're gonna go with you here and see where it transports us. Right, okay. Yeah. When the magic show, the audience never says, okay, this box is completely empty. Maybe not, we don't show us. Bang the back of it, okay, turn it around, Yeah it's empty. We're not sure. We don't know. Oh sure looks empty. It made it look empty, but we know we know you're a magician, so may not be empty.

So it's very different than other forms of the in your show. What's what's more important? Well, what where do you feel like you have achieved? Your greatest success. Is it the tricks or is it the words in between that you started doing when you were twelve or thirteen. I I don't think that could be separated. I don't

even see them as different. I I believe and and tell her to that what matters is the ideas, and tell her and I usually I can't say always, but when we're at our best, we start with an idea that we share, that's in our hearts, that we want to explore, and the tricks and the jokes come later. And for me, uh and this is something that with other comedians, even though my social circle is full of comedians,

there's a difference because I add the jokes last. You know, we will run through stuff until I feel the ideas are clear, and then I'll kind of try to make it funny. I mean, obviously there are exceptions, but there are very few where I started out going, this is the joke we gotta get to. We gotta get to

this joke. It may it may surprise lay people that I cut a lot of jokes that could huge laughs, but that there it's the wrong kind of laugh, or it doesn't build the idea that's genius, you know, you've got to do that. Uh. I have a really good example of that. There's a there's a joke, an obvious joke, absolutely clearly obvious joke that three of us in Vegas did simultaneously because it's an obvious ad lib. We all got huge laughs and we all cut it the next night. Uh.

That was when Vegas first opened up. You can figure the kinds of people that first came to Vegas. They were the kind of people that were not risk averse for whatever reasons, to be polite, to be polite. And it was also, and this is a little bit chilling, it was wonderful for the gambling industry. The people who came in early without fear of COVID. We're also big gamblers. So I was doing an act. Michael Goudeau, a juggler,

was doing an act. Piff the Magic Dragon, the magician, was doing an act at all of us at different places. Said there was one moment I was holding a torch and I said, if you doubt this is real fire, I'll come in to the audience, stick this into your eye. Okay, just a little turn. And then I followed it one night because it was obvious by saying, but I'll be

safe about it. I'll put a mask on. Huge laugh, after which I hated every person of the audience because they weren't laughing like, oh, this is a pandemic we're in. They were laughing, Oh, those mass things are bullshit, And it was like whoa. And it was really funny because I was telling that story to Piff like a week later at Piff went yeah, I did the same joke, cut it the same night, and then Gougo said me too. I was up on a unicycle juggling knives, and I said,

I want to make the safer. I'll put a mask on anyway. Whoa, No, I didn't need to do that, Chike. No, No. But that's a case of cutting it for what I would call moral or emotional rights. And then there are many many more cases of cutting it because that that confuses the trick, that confuses the idea. It's so interesting to hear you say that. I've discussed this a little bit on here, but it's why I consider Steve Correll to be maybe the greatest improviser of now and up

there with any of the legends. And it's because of that. I watched it for ten years. He had full license

to try and do whatever he wanted. But what he was able to do was to improvise on character and on story, and and the ability to do that after day after day and stay there and not take the cheap joke, not take a joke that we can land because we know we're going to get a laugh that doesn't further the story or in your case, what what you're wanting to explore in this particular show or whatever. And stay true to the character that you've created. Have

you created a character? Jeez? You know? Of course? I mean, of course, Uh, you can't claim to be yourself on stage because I don't say the same things every night and do the same tricks. However I try, I don't know. Try. It gives me too much credit. I don't have a choice. I'm not a good actor. I haven't studied acting ever. I have no skills in acting. I'm a performer. And that distinction is unimportant to lay people, and crystal clear to anybody who is one of the So I don't

think at all about character. I think first person myself all the time. I realized that's a cheat, and that's a lie. And if we're to analyze it. I'm obviously doing a character, but I have removed that line of make believe, and I believe that I'm really saying on stage what I feel. Therefore, I have to align that as much as possible. So when they bring me in for acting roles, and I've done quite a few things, I always saved them. Listen to me as I walk

in the room. Look at me. If that's precisely what you want for the character, hire me. If you want things faster, slower, louder, softer, angrier, pleasanter, sweeter, kinder. I can do all of that. But if you want someone different, you've got to pick someone else that's in that room, because I can't do it. There are people that I know who are men of a hundred voices. I am a man of one voice and one character. You can put me in a different outfit, you can comb my

hair differently, you can give me a different name. But motherfucker, I sound like this. Oh that's amazing. You make Steve Carrell even more amazing to me. Right well, he is. But your career, it seems to me, which is You've discussed this a little bit. It revolves around your commitment to representing truth accurately? Do you think everything that has

come after reverts back to Kreskin? Like, do you think your entire career or is really built because of that as a young age and you wanting to do something different, be defined differently? Well, you know in in Moby Dick, which all I ever mentioned is Moby Dick and Bob Dylan. In Moby Dick Um, it is said that Starbucks, arguably the hero character, doesn't see cause and effect and Ahab

sees everything as cause and effect. We live in a world that we can't understand, where cause and effect are the most important thing, and a little bit beyond our grasp. Even at a Newtonian level, never minded particle physics level, we can never get you know, one pool ball hitting another pool ball by the time you get to the fourth or fifth hit. You have to know every particle in the universe to be able to predict what happens next.

So if I want to even pretend to be even slightly thinking about the truth, I have to say no to that. The story that I've created about my life, which is definitely not true because Kreskin did not cause any of this, but the story I do feel that there is a an obsession with what's real and what's not that most people go through in their teen years that I did now grow. I really really care, and

it is an impossible task because truth is relative. We have not got the experiential skills to really get to the kind of truth that I emotionally want. So what I I'm doing is impossible. And to even claim that I'm trying it is pretentious and presumptuous. But emotionally the answer is yes, but it's only emotionally, not in any sort of reality. Um, you went, you mentioned this briefly. You went to Wringling Brothers and Barnman Bailey Greatest show

on Earth. Clown College. Thank you? Yes? Are you a graduate? Yes you have? Do you have a degree? I have a I have a bachelor's in buffoonery. Okay. Clown College was a two things. Was a publicity vehicle because they got a Sunday magazine story in the New York Times every year and also something in Praying magazine every year, and uh, that was worth the amount of money that

they put into it. They also really did train clowns, and we're able to get people at a very low wage that we're very, very skilled, and because of all the hype about it, they got really good people, and they got them really cheap, and they got a lot of press out of it. It was a good deal for everyone. Having said that, I'm afraid that I sound a little bit cynical about their motives that made it

a business decision, But their motives are also pure. They wanted to get funny people together and do really funny things. For me, it was incredibly important because I was the youngest there. I was seventeen. I had just gotten out of high school that did not go well, and it was the first time, well I I'm gonna I'm gonna

say this without without any bullshit modesty. So the first time I was around in person people who were funnier than me, and they were a lot funnier than me, but more important than that, because that's just competition, bullshit, who cares? More important than that. It was the first time I could talk to people who spoke seriously about comedy. Now you had that experience probably at nine years old.

I never experienced until I was seventeen. I would read National Lampoon, I would play the Lenny Bruce records, and I would say to my friends, isn't it really interesting how they're doing? And they would go, ha ha, it's

really funny. What the funk you're talking about? And uh, that's what you're supposed to do, by the way, if you're not, if that's not your life, right, you know, But to me it was, you know, Lenny bruce Is is inventing this whole form, and look at how this puts together, and how this goes from the joke to his divorce to his trial. Look how all that's happening. And look at National Lampoon. How there Michael o'donni he was game, and they just shut up, you know, shut up,

they answered to me. And I got to Clown College, and as silly as that name is in everything, I was with thirty five people who had spent longer than me, every one of them more seriously than me and better than me, thinking about those ideas and the fact that they were thinking and I know you understand that the fact that we're thinking about how to do a pants

drop right does not change the seriousness that's right, you know. Uh. They were trying to find where that part of our heart that laughs lives and it doesn't matter whether you're using a Seltzer bottle or whether you're Lenny Bruce. There is there's something about thinking about that that really matters. And those two and a half months where I, you know, did trapeze, learned to walk a wire, you know, did double backflips on the trampoline. Uh, they only let me

in because I was a good juggler, right. They didn't let me in as I was funny. They let me in and I was And I know this for a fact because talking to the administration later, I was the last person it picked and only in because someone else got sick. I was the alternative. So I least least deserve to be there, and therefore it might have been

the best experience for me. Right, you know, if you're the worst one, You know, if you're in a band and you're the best guy in the band, quit, If you're in an improv group and you're the funniest, quit you want to be the worst? That's right. I was gonna say, I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm sure that you do not. I don't talk about it very often. Now, this is not circus. Are

you familiar with Jacques Lacock. Sure, of course, yes, So I did not go clown college in a way, but I studied and did men any many shows in the theater with with his direct descendants, and and felt like in a way, yes, Tatra de la June lon Uh was French and American company performing in Minneapolis. I did

a lot of shows with them. And there's something you just said that I haven't thought about in a long long time, which is like analyzing the pants drop, Like at what exactly how do we do this thing now? It's not exactly the same. It was not circus clowning,

but clowning in another way. And in fact, this podcast that you're on right now is called off the Beat because of the director that I worked with there, who taught me that comedy and I'm translating that to being life happens off the beat, that true comedy happens in unexpected moments, not in the moments that we think that it should. Yeah, has to be and uh, learning to

internalize that rhythm is really important. You know, by all association, I mean people at the cheesy clown college that I went to and the people at the classy clown college you were involved in did mate Oka. Of course they were the same. They were the same species. Not long after you left, you met Teller. I met Telling before I went to Clown College. Met you met when I was I was in high school. He was teaching high school.

We met different high which, incidentally, if I hadn't convinced and yes, I convinced he did not want to and I not convinced Teller to take a sabbatical from teaching in Lawrence High School in New Jersey, if I had not convinced him to do that. The very next year, the first student enrolled in his class was John Stewart, who was signed up to take Mr Teller's Latin and Greek classics class. I was very excited about it. As far as I know, the only person ever excited about

taking a class was John Stewart. And John Stewart has said many times that his only goal in show business is to be the more famous person from Lawrence High than the teacher who abandoned him from the class he wanted to take. Why does your working relationship? Why does it work so well? I mean, here, here's the question. You've only been asked nine hundred thousand times, but it's fascinating to me. So I think it's because of an absence of love. Um. Respect is more powerful working relationship

than love. Many of your greatest teams fell in love, Letting, the McCartney were undoubtedly in love, Martin and Lewis whoa, I mean embarrassingly in love, UM, Gilbert and Sullivan for the first year, probably in love. Jagger and Richards. We now I found out actually physically in love certain people. You walk into a room with them. We don't know why, and maybe the distance their eyes are apart. It may

be pheromones. But you walk into a room and you have a cuddly feeling with them, You want to be close with them, you want to move with them. And I'm calling it sexual and it is, but it doesn't mean sex, partners. It just means affection, warmth, whatever. And there are other people, and I have friends of both kinds that your relationship would be exactly as rich if it were only over the internet. It's completely intellectual and isn't tied to that. When I met Teller, there was

a complete and utter lack of cuddly feeling. We weren't emotionally drawn to each other. We did not want to be in the same room together. We did not want to be close. But I had never met anyone more intellectually stimulating. And we both believed very early on that we did better stuff together that we did separately. Now what happens is if you're in love, the first moment you're not in love is really traumatic. The first moment you have a horrible disagreement that gets personal, The first

moment someone else enters your world. You know, when you fall into love with somebody that maybe is more sexual, those things crumbled. Tell her and I when we did not get along, when we did not particularly like each other, that was not consequential, That meant nothing. You're working at a seven eleven, the guy who cleans the slurping machine pissed off? Who cares? I got gum to sell, you know, So tell her and I. Over forty seven years, he's my closest friend. I spent all day yesterday with him

in the hospital. He gets out today. He had bypass surgery and he's recovering well. And I cried my eyes out. And when my children were born, the first person to hold them other than my wife and I was tell her when our parents died the first people we talked to. My children insist that Teller is my BFF. We are very very close. It is an intellectual bond that that spread to emotional with a great deal of time to

have that happen. And still people are a little shocked when they work with us at how formal we are. We work fairly formally and fairly meanly, but it's formal. We arrive on time, we are polite, we we we come there to work. And people have been amazed that Teller and I have heart wrenching disagreements and the time comes to work and we go right to work. And that's all because there's no one I respect more than Teller, and is a lot of people I love more than

tell her. And that's absolutely okay. We also don't socialize very often. We even have mutual friends who come to town and choose one of us. We're going to dinner with Penn Tonite. We don't usually go I mean maybe three or four times a year. Me now, when he was in the hospital, I spent a lot more time with them socially, of course, but a normal year, maybe four times a year we go out to have dinner, the two of us four times a year, and we worked together seven days a week. And the reason is

we go we go out to eat. What you do today, Teller saying, fucking thing you did, Penn, same what you do twenty years ago, Same thing you did. What was it like to be with Letterman? Same as it was when I was with Letterman? What was it like to do Saturnite live? Exactly like it was for you? So interesting, right? I never thought about it like like that. I mean,

you hear what you know? The stereotypical you know, if you if you're working with your spouse and you don't have any time away, then you don't have time to share what else is going on in your life with

other people. And yeah, I mean the ability to tell stories and to share with someone who was there and let those stories, which is really important, really important, let those stories drift because the story that you tell yourself about your life is who you are, and that story has to drift and you can't have someone they're busting you. I keep a journal like a teenage girl, which is

what I am. A teenage girl essentially. I keep a journal every day so all it can occasionally be backstage in our green room, which we call the monkey room and tell they we'll have friends backstage, And for some reason, I haven't rushed home, like I want to eat something. So I sit in the room and I'll hear tell her telling a story to his friends that I was there for, and he'll be telling it, and I will sit there thinking this is wrong in every detail and

he's not lying. And then I'll remember that story myself and I'll run it. And occasionally, not often, but like two or three times, I've gone back and been able to get the coordinates to be able to find that in my journal and read what I wrote that the FBI would accept in court, you know, contemporaneous notes, and it does not overlap with the story either of us

had in any way. What I find interesting is I've heard tell her and I tell the same story, and tell her gives me the punch line, and I give tell her the punch line, which is really interesting. You know, we reverse, we reverse who gets who was the clever one and who did the setup, because we know you'll get a bigger laugh when you aren't self aggrandizing, get a bigger laugh setting up. If you're telling a story of something someone said on the step that was hysterical.

You've learned you'll get a bigger laugh if you give that line to someone else, and you do it because you want the laugh more than you want the credit. Right. You guys have been together now in residency at the Rio in Vegas twenty one years. Uh longest running headliners to ever continuously play the same hotel in Vegas. Is this the life you ever imagined for yourself? You know? You know? No, never possibly imagined, never within my goal set. Never,

you know. Um. Paul McCartney has said in interviews that the Beatles should have been more successful. Right. He said that Elvis Presley wanted to be more popular. If you know Howard Stern when he was the king of all media, he wanted more. If you've met Madonna, she wanted more. If you've read biographies of Houdini, being the most successful person in the United States of America was not enough

for Harry Houdini. I've never felt that my goal was to maybe make a middle class living in something like the arts show business. My view of show business was

very similar to my father's. I would have been very happy being a you know, segment producer on a local talk show setting that up, I would have been really happy to be a local DJ who said a funny thing or two between songs tell her and I. Our goal was maybe two hundred seat theaters, and if not, we were thrilled with cruise ships, corporate shows, trade shows. Our heroes were people who had lived their whole life

like that. Some of the funniest, most skilled people I know, Johnny Thompson, Billie McComb, all these people no one has heard of, and they worked their entire life in show business and made people laugh their nutsacks off. They amazed them, they thrilled them, and they worked corporate shows and get paid really well, you know for a guy, you know, not really well for Robin Williams, you know, but really well for a guy. And they were the ones we

were aspiring too. And we did the off Broadway show as kind of like, well, we'll see how it goes, but we had fair gigs booked for after it, right, we were going right back to being carny trash. We were very happy, and it was so uncomfortable when people would interview me will We're playing on Broadway and it was our first run on Broadway. People said, is this a dream? Come true? Have you finally lived? And I'd say, no, it never crossed my mind to be on Broadway. That

was sincere when I was off Broadway. It didn't cross my mind to be on Broadway. I just didn't think that was the kind of thing I did. Also, they said, what does it feel like, after struggling for all these years to finally have a successful show? And I would say, well, I don't mean disrespect, but within six months of Taylor and I working together, we were making as much money as our dads, and we're doing exactly what we wanted, and we were really proud of the show. So I

considered us wicked successful. You've never even heard of us, you know. Neil Simon said, the big difference is from zero dollars a week to two dollars a week doing what you want, and after that, adding zeros doesn't mean anything. It does to Howard Stern, it does to Houdini, it does to Madonna, does to Paul McCartney, it does not to me. And I remember reading the Silverman biography of Houdini, and I had always identified with Houdini as a child.

And this is a wonderfully written book, very very detailed, then later ratso that the Sloman book came out, which is also wonderful. And I always felt like I was kind of a Houdini guy because he busted psychics and he cared very much about the truth and he was a magician. And I read this book and went wow, I could not be further from Houdini because I am satisfying, I'm content, and that he is a star. He was

a star. I will never be a star because I don't feel unfulfilled the fact that nobody in China has heard of me does not bother me at all. It ate at Elvis. Do you know that Elvis was bothered by that that people in China didn't know who he was. That bugged him. As far as I'm concerned, people in China could keep elected the same guy over and over again. At as long as they don't go nuclear, I'm happy with them not knowing who Pett is real. Oh my gosh,

you're so interesting. I truly I could talk to you all day. I I want to hit a couple of things. I'm now going to reduce your hit television show Bullshit that ran seven eight years in one sentence, what was your favorite thing that you debunked on bullshit. Uh, That's the most emotional was talking to the dead, because I did it right after my mom died, and I had intellectually knew that that was morally wrong, but I never felt it emotionally. I was parenting what Houdini was saying

after his mother died, but I never felt it. And when I felt as an atheist that all I had of my mom was the memory of everything she said to me and everything we've done, and that there were people, because of a lack of talent and a quest for power, we're willing to take people memories of their loved ones and distort them. Let me tell you, I don't give a funk about the money. I don't even give a

funk about the truth. The fact that people have someone they love and someone comes in and says, this is what your loved one is thinking or feeling, and that distorts even by that much who that person was to them.

Fuck you in the neck. That was the one emotionally, The one intellectually that I had a fight for was when we did the anti anti vax show, which people say to me, Wow, how did you guys do that so many years before the anti vaxers, and I say, Jenny McCarthy was killing people well before, well before the santos um. But I had a I had a fight for that because they said it's not interesting, it's not sexy.

And I said, I will promise Shoe, I will find a woman with larger breaths than Jenny McCarthy and we will have her topless, reading teleprompter with actual facts on vaccines, and Bryant I delivered. Now I had to make a deal. They said if we wanted to do the anti anti vac show, that we had to do a show on cheerleading. And I said, give me a fucking break. I got to bullshit on cheerleading, and they said, yeah, we think it's an interesting subject and we can also get a

lot of sexy stuff in there. And I went for me. And then the cheerleading show ended up being one of our better shows because it was fascinating and dealt with sexism at the dangers, the dangers of cheerleading and so once again proving I'm wrong about everything. Uh, your your newest show that's only been been running eleven twelve years, Penn and Teller fool Us Uh just premiered October, you can check out the new season of fool Us. This this is is a take on on what your core

values are, right, uh kind of you know. Uh, I will tell you though. Uh. Everybody puts the emphasis on magic, as they should. It's what we do to sell it. But one of the things that Teller and I wanted to do, and I'm so gratified that people have noticed this, is we wanted to treat performers on a talent show in the broad sense, uh, with kindness, because I believe anyone who opens up their heart in the arts at

all deserves kindness. And some of the other shows, although they have changed over the years, they've mellowed a lot. The other shows where we started full Us. Some of the other shows were um celebrating cruelty in a way that Taylor and I found unwatchable. And also it's very strange. But fool Us is in a certain way objective, right. It's not like, oh, you're gonna make it in show business because of that wonderful smile, or oh you have a sense of timing. It's I don't know how you

did that boom. I don't know. Maybe everyone else, which it seems on the Internet. Everyone else does, but we didn't at that time, and that's kind of objective. And I really liked that part of it. I liked the part of it that the people we liked the most and who did the best warming didn't necessarily fool us, and the people who fooled us weren't necessarily best. I really enjoyed that. And also I like the fact that we weren't putting our thumb on the scale of show business.

Because I've often said about, you know, American Idol until you can prove to me that tiny Tim sun Raw, Bob Dylan, and David Allen co win, I don't want to watch it unless you can prove to me that the absolute nuts that America has embraced they're gonna win this show. I don't want someone that's singing perfectly on pitch and whose mother is dying of cancer. I want someone that opens up their chest, shows me their heart, and says so there. I gotta ask you about Black Mirror.

The Black Museum was adapted from a story idea of yours. How did you get involved with that? I I was touring with an avant garde band called The Residents out of San Francisco. I was touring their opera as the narrator and in Barcelona, Spain, I got wicked sick and taken to a Barcelona hospital, which we're not the best hospitals in the world, where nobody knew where where I was because I had been taking an ambulance when no one from the crew was watching right. I spoke at

the time, no Spanish, The doctors spoke no English. I had a fever that I only saw in centigrade, but was wicked high. I was hallucinating out of my mind and all I thought about was if one of these doctors could just feel the pain without me having to talk, they could diagnose it and fix me. M in a

fever dream, an actual fever dream. I imagined the whole story of the Pain Addict, which is my original short story that I published, and I I was taken out of that hospital by one of the band members, who was a tough American who just said, get your fucking

hands off them. We're Americans, get your fucking hands off them, come on, pat and carried me out of the hospital and left me in the hotel room in Barcelona for three days with a dancer who has left to take care of me until I got better and joined rejoined the troop. Then, many many years later, I got to meet Charlie through a mutual friend in England. We've been out for lunch and we are having a wonderful time. And I said to him, you know, I don't want

to turn this into a business meeting. I'm sure everybody pitches you, said, Bob, I have been out of ideas for two years. Tell me anything. And I told him the story idea and he went, jeez, that that'd be really good. And then he said to me, listen, let me tell you about me as a collaborator. I don't answer the phone. I don't answer text I don't answer emails. I will tell you we're doing something, then you will hear nothing about it for three months that I'll call

you and talk for two hours. I will leave you out of the process. I'll throw things on your shoulders. I'm the worst person to work with in the world, but I'd like to do this. I said, good. I called him stead, we're gonna work on this nothing. Six weeks later he called me, talked for three hours and said, I'll send you a script and you can make notes on it. I said, great, I have some other notes on stuff we've been talking about. This will be great.

I'll send you my notes. Nothing. Nothing. Uh. Then he sent me the script. Eight months later, he sent me the script. I called him up. He answered and said, we're shooting next week. I said, I have some thoughts. He said, I'm sure you do. We're shooting next week. I said, you don't. I really wanted to audition for one of the roles. He said, I'm sure you did. It's cast. I said, what what is the credit? And they said, you'll be happy. He then gave me a

fabulous credit and overpaid me. And my agent said we're gonna call him and negotiate the fee. We're sure we can get him up from here. And I said, listen, for one time in show business someone has paid me more than fairly. I think we should reward this behavior and say thank you. Yes. And it came out and people gave me all this credit and said, oh, was your original story? And I said, yes, but a lot of what makes it good was not done by me.

But thank you. That's amazing. He's I will now say he's the best person to work with you could ever work with. Makes you work not at all, gives you more, and it pays you well, goes away and no no email or call saying that kid out okay or I did a good job, didn't I nothing. We went out to dinner afterwards when I was in Britain and he said, yeah, that went well, and that was the entire about we talked about it. Oh my gosh, Uh you'r how much of your shows now is written? Are you still? Are

you still making it up as you go along? Obviously there's a structure, and I'm I'm and teller. We're both the biggest tight asses you've ever met. We do stuff that looks really dangerous and really isn't and we're proud of that. And we do stuff magic tricks that are really, really really hard. That means that although there's a loosened provisation to begin with, and there are moments that I

can improvise. Uh, if you come see our show two nights in a row, I scratched my nose at the exact same place, I clear my throat at the same place. And if I change a line, which I sometimes do because the audience or what's going on, there are eight people who go on high alert on headsets and say pen is off book. Everybody ready, and they will they will follow me. But I know fabulous improvisers, and it would be disrespectful of me to say that I do

any improvisation whatsoever. You're you have a new book random just released available now. It's about a man who begins making life choices based on the role of his lucky dice. What what pushed you to write this story? Where did this come from? Uh? Well, once again, I don't get

much credit for it. It's it's an unpleasant story. Thirty years ago, I was doing a television show in England and I'm going to change details of this story to make the story better, but more important, to protect privacy. You'll understand as I go on. And there was a woman working with us on the show in a rather high position, and she called me into her office one day while we're doing the show, say can I talk

to you? Closed the door and I was like, hey now, but no, she said, I feel an affinity with you and I want to talk to you about something. So if you read a book called The Dice Man, and I said no, she said, well it's available. You've got two days off read it and I went, okay, I'm giving homework with a show with my name in it. Okay. So I picked up the book and I read it and came back and she said, would you think And I said, well, you know, I don't like satire and

I don't like parody, and this is both. It's making fun of the Skee movement Warner Airhart, and I don't care about making fun of that. I didn't really like it much. But the idea that we have a society of mind, to use Marvin Minsky's phrase, and m I t have a society of mind that makes decisions based on a voting within our head, and that the second, third, fourth, fifth, six, seventh choices are sincerely part of us, but they never

get expressed fascinates me. And the idea of throwing a monkey wrench into there and making the loser parts be expressed fascinates me. Also, the idea of making a decision instantly is something I am so envious of. I try to do it in my life, to make a decision and act on it and stick to it, but it's very difficult, all the doubting voices. And she said, yeah, yeah, I want to tell you a story. She said, a few months ago, I was very close to my brother. I went to his apartment and I found that he

killed himself. He'd hanged himself. And she said, I did what I had to do to get the funeral done. Then I shut down completely. She said, I was just sitting on the couch. Said, I don't even know for how long. She said, I guess I fed myself, but no talking to friends, nothing. I completely shut down. And I had read this silly book a few weeks before, and I said I've got to act. And she said I had dice at my my apartment, and she said, I made a bell curve, but seven the most likely.

So the things I put on that were very very simple, have a sandwich, take a shower, call a friend. Because I threw the dice, and the second those dice hit, I had a religious feeling and I acted instantly and I did it and it made all my decisions that way. And I said, wow, how long? How long did you

do that? And she opened a briefcase because thirty years ago, when people didn't have backpacks, hoping to briefcase, and she showed me two dice in her briefcase rather ornate, and I went, whoa, You're still doing it and she said yeah, and I want you know it's it's a weird thing. But met the producers thought you would do our show because you were too good and our show was just starting out. And when you did, everybody was surprised, and she said, I rolled the night. I said, so, so

you decided to do our show? She said it wasn't. It wasn't my first choice. I said, oh, you're in a pretty powerful position. Do you make choices on our show based on the dice? She said, only, but I'm not sure. I so there there's random stuff in our show brought in by you. She said yes. And needless to say, that story stuck with me. And when I was out talking with my friends, I tell them about

this woman I met, and they were all fascinated. And I found out later on that bush now what's his name, Bushnell, who's started uh Comma our computers and Chuck E Cheese lives by dice. I didn't know that obviously, the question of why the hell did someone start Chuck E Cheese I've now answered for you. I expect a written thank you from you for that. Yeah, there's I have so many questions, but yes, okay, go ahead, and it's all answered by dice. Um that other people do this, and

that it's on the web. There's people that live dice life, as it's sometimes called. And two of my friends, during traumatic moments of their life, started doing it, and I said to them, I don't think you should. I think it's dangerous, but tell me all about it. And then, and this is the easy part for anyone to understand. Um, I thought it should be a TV show. So I pitched it, and Showtime bought it and assigned the show runner,

and then it fell apart because the show business. Then someone else bought it, and then the lockdown came and uh avor Trump said everybody should learn the language and write a book. So I did, because I do anything she tells me too. I just figured, you know, I'm so sick of going to meetings and talking about this. I can just sit on my keyboard, because God knows, I spent enough time with my fucking family during this lockdown.

I said, a my keyboard, and I can type, and I can write it as a book, and I don't have to get anybody else on board. So I did that and now of course someone's optioning it, making it do a TV show. They read the book and thought this will be a good idea for a TV show, and I went, you know something, that's why you're a producer. Oh that's amazing. But that doesn't By the way, you know this, but your listeners may not. It will not get on the air. It will not happen. I'm just

telling you it might. Actually this one, this one might. Most of them won't. Pen Thank you so much for talking to me. I am I will promise you this, and I'm not saying this because it can happen. Unfortunately, I am on a plane to Vegas tonight. I would come and see your show if it was happening tonight. But here's my pledge to you. The next time, when you guys are back up and running and I'm in Vegas and I'm there quite a bit, I will I will come and say hello to you at your show. Oh.

I would love that so much. We'll we'll go backstage and make some jokes. I love that, and maybe maybe we can even eat if ready to go someplace that's vegan and watch me eat dirt if you're willing to do that, and that sounds like a because you know vegan, no one wants to eat with the vegan. But if you're willing to accommodate that, I will go out and have somebody, you know. Okay, Uh, Pen, thank you so much. I'm gonna pick up random and uh, I can't wait

to read Thank you so much. Coming on and we'll find out what part you want and then tell the producers and uh I will I'll say we got we got Brian on board. Sorry. Last thing, the nail polish on your left hand, it's from my mom. It was originally it was originally a joke when I was like sixteen. My mom said, if you're juggling, people are looking at your hands, you have to make them nice. And I said, you mean like this, mom, And I put on a nail polish and she was old pen and then I

did it to mock her. And then later on it turned into a thing, um like Carol Burnette's ear. You know. When I was on it, I would do that to say hi to my mom. Uh. And now Moxie, my daughter, has been claiming it was done for her, and I think my mother would approve of that. Lot. There you go, Thank you so much pleasure, Penn. Thank you so much for talking to me, for taking so much of your time today. Absolutely fascinating stuff. I loved every single minute

of it. Thank you for stopping by. Uh and I might just have to start making some of my own decisions by the roll of a dice, as if I don't already. H To everyone out there listening, thank you once again for your support. Next week, we have got a very exciting guest. Here's a hint. They are a person who has done great things. Hoo hoo, hoo hoo. We'll see you next week. Off the Beat is hosted an executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive

producer Langley. Our producers are Diego Tapia, Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris, and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary, and our intern is Sammy Cats. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton,