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I did not want to be rich.
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I did not want to be famous.
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I wanted to come up with weird ideas with Teller and do them for an audience.
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I know people in Vegas for a fact.
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I know them personally, whose goal is to be famous.
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That goal is nonsense to me.
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Welcome to the Art of Charm, I m Jordan Harbinger.
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Today we re talking with Penn Jillette, the talking half of Penn and Teller, and one of the best shows in Vegas and some of the best magicians and illusionists of our time.
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You should listen to this episode if you want an inside look at a world-class performer s creative process.
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the role of flow or autopilot in high-level performances, and why Penn and Teller are constantly pushed and driven to innovate to stay at the top and continually push the envelope on what s considered truly great.
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Last but not least, why it s important to question the things we actually want to believe the most.
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By the way, this one is a...
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It s a little explicit because it s Penn, so be aware and enjoy this amazing episode with Penn Jillette.
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And by the way, if you re new to the show, we d love to send you some top episodes and the AOC toolbox where we discuss things like body language, nonverbal communication, persuasion, networking, negotiation, mentorship, and everything else we teach here at the Art of Charm.
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In the US, just text charmed to 33444.
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That s C-H-A-R-M-E-D to 33444.
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Everywhere else, go to theartofcharm.com.
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Also at theartofcharm.com slash podcast, you can find the full show notes for this and all previous episodes.
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All right, here s Penn Jillette.
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So thanks for doing this.
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I know we got some mutual friends in Sam Harris and Michael Shermer who helped make this happen for us, which is great.
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I m very thankful to have this coming on.
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I feel like I have to ask this first, and I know I m gonna regret asking this, but did you really drop your cock in a blow dryer?
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Yes, I did.
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It s the greatest story ever told.
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And it s told in detail in my book, God No.
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I tell the whole story of dropping my cock in a blow dryer.
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But yes, I have.
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You know, what I always say about atheism is, if you want the atheist scientific point of view, you go to Richard Dawkins.
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If you want the moral point of view, you go to Sam Harris.
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If you want the historical point of view, you go to Christopher Hitchens.
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If you want the point of view of a dipshit who dropped his dick in a blow dryer, Pendulet is your man.
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Perfect, well good, we signed up for dropped cock and a blow dryer, so we re good on that.
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We ve covered some of the other bases.
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So the disclaimer was really funny, even in the book.
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The whole book is really funny and I was glad for that because I wasn t super excited to read a quote unquote diet book.
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So I think you re gonna get people losing weight because they read this book before they even think about going on a diet.
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So you re kind of almost sneaking it in, getting a foot in the door there with the humor.
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you know, when I first pitched this book to Simon & Schuster, they said, you know, you re going to write a diet book.
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And I said, well, I m going to write a diet book the way I wrote an atheist book.
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I mean, my atheist book talks about dropping my cock in the blow dryer.
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In a certain sense,
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All of my books are memoirs or storytelling.
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It just so happens that there was, you know, six months of my life that was pretty obsessed with changing my diet so that I wouldn t die.
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This is the only book I ve written that people asked me to write.
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I mean, the other books were all, I felt like writing this stuff.
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But this book, people saw after I d lost 100 pounds and kept saying, you know, what did you do, what did you do, what did you do?
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So I finally just wrote it down so as not to have to keep repeating it.
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I use more first-person singular in it than a Donald Trump speech.
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This really is about what I did.
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It s not really advice for others, but people do seem to be learning from it.
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Yeah, I notice, and I definitely want to jump back on that track as well, because even producer Jason s given it a shot as well.
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I ve seen the show in Vegas with my friend Kevin Mitnick, who actually took me there, and you catch a bullet in the face every night, which is kind of insane.
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How many bullets have you caught at this point?
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In the past year, we haven t been closing with a bullet catch just because there s so much other material we wanted to put in.
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But I said, oh, I guess over the years, we can do this mathematics.
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I guess I did for about 20 years, probably 200 shows a year.
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So if you can multiply 20 times 200, you d have the answer there.
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Yeah, and I can do that, and that is 4,000 bullets.
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I guess probably also you had to try and experiment with this for a while.
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So congratulations on your 100% success rate or we wouldn t be having this conversation, I guess.
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Yeah, yeah, it is a trick.
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The interesting thing about
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The bullet catch is it s one of the effects in our show that s not original, that s not actually true, but I ll explain a little more.
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There s two things in magic.
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There s the effect, which is what it looks like, and there s the method, which is how you do it.
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And the effect, the idea of catching a bullet, goes back to being, unpleasantly enough, a Native American trick.
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You probably didn t know there were Native American performing magicians, but there were.
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They did the bullet catch, which I guess in terms of how it worked out for them historically, maybe a little bit of an ironic choice, but they did the bullet catch.
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That was originally done in the hand, catch the bullet in the hand.
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And then it developed a little later, late 19th century, it changed to catching the bullet in the mouth or in the teeth.
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It is the most dangerous act in show business.
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Oh, it depends on whether you count carnies or not as humans.
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But 12 magicians and three carnies, which is either 15 people or 12 people and three carnies, have been killed on stage doing the bullet catch.
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That s the minimum.
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That s the number that s clearly documented.
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That s shot in the face dead on stage in front of an audience.
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That s a really wicked high number when you consider how many people have done the trick, which is probably only about 25 or 30.
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It s a higher
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death rate than astronaut, president, or 7-Eleven holder.
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But the effect is a little different the way we do it.
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We do it two people doing it, two pangs of glass breaking and a signed bullet, which makes it magically more interesting.
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We also never claim during the show to catch the bullet in our teeth.
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I ve written it rather conscientiously to make sure
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that all I say is we re gonna magically move the bullet from one side of the stage to the other.
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Because if I were to say we re gonna catch a bullet in our teeth, people would just automatically in their hearts say bullshit.
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But the best lie is the lie you tell yourself.
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So I don t tell them that lie, I make them tell themselves that lie.
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But the method, the way we accomplish the trick, Keller and I believe very strongly that there is a not only self-preservation obligation
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but also a artistic and moral obligation to not do anything dangerous.
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There s this popular thing with some magicians, I would add shitty magicians, who want to claim the stuff they re doing really is dangerous.
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I find that repulsive.
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You should go to the theater to celebrate life, to celebrate health, and to go and say, maybe I m really gonna get hurt, is either insulting the audience s intelligence, because if you aren t gonna be,
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Or even worse, it s telling the truth.
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In which case, if you re coming to our show in order to see me get hurt, fuck you in the neck.
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I don t want you in the audience.
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Go watch, you know, cockfights or something.
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You should not be in our show.
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We are a celebration of life and a celebration of health.
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So in order to keep that morality, that artistic integrity,
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as well as self-preservation.
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No one working for Penn and Teller, nor Penn and Teller, have ever been injured.
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And when I say injured, I use the same rules as SM sex play.
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I mean nothing in the hospital overnight, nothing that still hurts every two weeks.
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I don t mean no one s ever sprained an ankle or cut their hand, but nothing serious.
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And I m really proud of that.
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And if we re expecting you to laugh and enjoy things that appear to be dangerous,
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we have made a promise to you that it really isn t dangerous.
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If you had heard, which is not true by the way, but if you had heard that we were really injured, you know, five years ago on Broadway, when you watch us in the live show, that takes the way you react to what we re doing.
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And unlike what Hillary Clinton says, unlike what Arnold Schwarzenegger says, the depiction of violence in the arts, and of course I include video games in the arts because they are, is not a celebration.
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of pain and suffering.
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It s a celebration of health and life.
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The 16-year-old nerd child who smears rubber cement in his face and says he s a horrible burn victim is not wishing to be a horrible burn victim.
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He is sending a fuck you to suffering and death by saying, I can fake it while still being healthy.
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So the method that we use follows Houdini s rule of never doing anything more dangerous than sitting is living.
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You can, of course,
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not eliminate risk entirely, that s impossible in life.
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A light could fall on us, but we do it a very, very straight, very, very safe way with three levels of safety precautions.
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And if I go off script and start saying stuff different or doing stuff different, every crew member is told to stop us.
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So if something were to be going wrong in the show, you could see the show ruined.
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You could see a crew member walk on stage and say, Penn, shut up.
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shows over, but you could not see us being injured.
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Other than a light falling on us, or you know, a crazy mongoose that someone brought into the theater attacking us.
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But we re under the same danger as anyone in the audience.
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Luckily the Rio doesn t like, has a no mongoose policy, so you re pretty safe there.
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You know, we also have a no terrorist policy, don t we?
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That s true, yeah, so far.
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That s a good point.
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There s always the mongoose factor.
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You re simultaneously known for revealing the tricks behind some of the magic routines and also ensuring that the tricks in your shows never lose the magic touch by revealing too much.
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How do you actually balance the audience s fascination with understanding how magic is done with the delight of actually being fooled by a well-run routine?
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Well, it s very simple.
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The way magic is done is always ugly.
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As a matter of fact, the way you can tell if a trick is good is if the method is ugly.
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So whenever you re giving away tricks, you don t give away really deep methods because they re not interesting.
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When that dipshit masked magician was giving away tricks, he wasn t giving away any real tricks.
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He was giving away tricks that are 150 years old and weren t really done then because those have explanations
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that you re excited about.
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The mind, and Einstein spoke of this a lot, the mind is looking for beauty, which one of the reasons that particle physics took so long to be accepted, quantum mechanics, is because it s ugly.
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We haven t found the beauty yet.
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Many people believe that at another level there will be beauty, but that s an aesthetic belief, not a scientific belief.
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Same thing is true for detective stories.
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Detective stories give you an aha watching them on TV, but you re not really solving a crime.
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Nothing s that simple.
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There s never one sentence.
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So if you have a magic method that is beautiful, a magic method you want to turn to your date and say to him, it s just a 45 degree angle mirror and we look through the box, we re actually not seeing the back of the box, we re seeing the side of the box, but we re perceiving it as the back of the box.
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If you can say that in one sentence and someone can go, aha, I feel great about it, you get a shitty trick.
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The way we really accomplish tricks is lying, gaffer s tape, rigged jackets, angles, all this really ugly stuff.
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As a matter of fact, if right now I started explaining to you the bullet catch, you would lose interest.
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There s at least 30 steps that make every little thing work together.
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So the tricks we give away
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are tricks that are beautiful.
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So the cups and balls that we give away is a routine that we designed in order to be beautiful if we gave it away.
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So there s that element that s important.
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So when we first started working mostly in New York, there was this attitude toward magic that Seinfeld summed up very well to me.
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He said, all magic is just, here s a quarter, now it s gone, you re a jerk, now it s back, you re an asshole, show s over.
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There s this battle line that s drawn between the magician and the audience of, I can do this and you can t, ha, ha, ha.
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It s juvenile, it s impotent, it s tiny dicked, it s defensive.
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We wanted magic that was confident.
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and a real performance form.
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So we had to tell the audience that we were on their side, to put it rather bluntly.
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We had to separate ourselves from the magician.
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So the way to do that was to give them an offering of showing them how the trick was done.
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Now if we really gave them that,
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It would be uninteresting and disappointing.
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So we wrote tricks specifically to give them away.
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So it s not a decision of we have a bank of X number of tricks and we re going to pick X over four to give away.
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We re just going to do that regardless of what the method is.
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We picked the tricks to give away that are written.
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So the artistic integrity is actually the bit includes giving the trick away.
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Also, that lie becomes bigger because once we give away two tricks that are beautiful, you automatically believe that all the methods we re using are beautiful.
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And of course, that s not true.
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Our secret is ugly.
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Right, so you don t want to see how the sausage is made, because like you said, we would lose interest.
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But it s far nicer to say, look, secretly it s in the palm.
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And when I put it behind me, it s actually going into a hidden pocket.
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And everyone thinks, wow, this is so elegant and cool and learnable and relatable.
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Meanwhile, it s like a computer.
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You can see the screen, but you can t see anything that s inside that actually makes it work.
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Exactly.
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If you want to continue with your sausage metaphor,
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It s, oh, you can watch us make this sausage, and it s all daisies and unicorns, and look how beautifully it works together.
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And oh, by the way, have a piece of this other kind of sausage.
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Yeah, exactly.
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You could go down that rabbit hole.
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Look, 4,000 shows, you ve done this show so much.
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How much of it can you do on autopilot, and how often do you catch yourself being like, wow, I ve been doing a show for 30 minutes, or are you super present when you do this?
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You know, it s really interesting.
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First of all, I just said the bullet catch, 4,000 shows.
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The number of shows we ve done together, Teller and I, is over 10,000.
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I believe we are the performing group alive who have done the most shows together.
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I mean, probably you can take The Stones and The Beatles and Pearl Jam and The Grateful Dead, put them all together, and they haven t done as many shows as we have together.
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But I find everything you read about acting and performance will tell you
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that you should be present and mindful while performing.
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You should be there and in the moment.
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And that s really, really good advice, except I think I have a lot of counterexamples.
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I m a big fan of the carny.
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I m actually carny trash myself.
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I ve worked carny.
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And I ve watched guys on the ballet, you know, performing, who are doing an act that they ve done 50,000 times in a lifetime, you know, of 50 shows a day.
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many more than that, maybe 100,000.
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And the words no longer mean anything to them.
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It s just an empty mantra.
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While they re speaking it, while they re doing the actions, they re clearly not present.
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I mean, their mind is, you know, how they can rat fuck whoever s in the audience out of another 10 bucks, you know?
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I ve also watched the Waterless Cookware show, which is my real inspiration for speaking on stage.
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The guys who
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sell pots and pans at the carnival, which is my favorite kind of speaking.
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And I ve watched those guys, and they re clearly, I may be wrong, but to me it feels very much like they re on autopilot.
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And I ve watched guys do all sorts of those, you know, jinsu knife demonstrations and things like that.
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They re on autopilot.
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And there s a certain kind of beauty in that.
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I mean, there s a certain kind of beauty in recitation.
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There s a certain kind of beauty when you go see an old musical performance act, and they re doing, you know, if you see Van Halen, they re doing jump, and the words just become words.
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You no longer realize it s about suicide.
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It just blends together.
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There s a kind of beauty in that.
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And in comedy, if you watch the real advanced people in comedy, you know, the Miles Davises and the Picassos of our time, which I throw out Gilbert Gottfried,
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as one of the geniuses of our lifetime.
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Sometimes his comedy, when he s at his best, actually goes away.
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You know, James Brown discovered that every instrument can be percussion, including the voice.
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And Gilbert has found that there are certain rhythms and sounds to comedy that go beyond the meaning.
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And I find that fascinating.
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I don t think there s many other people doing that.
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And I find in performances that at an A-level performance, I think you always want to be present.
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At an A-plus level performance, I think there are times
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when switching on to autopilot may jack you into something a little more interesting.
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I used to fight desperately to always be mindful and to catch myself thinking about, you know, fucking after the show or getting a snack or watching TV, all three of which are the same to me.
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I d find my mind deep in there and then I d pull it back and I d realize that I pulled it back
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that some of the rhythm and some of the honesty was actually going away.
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There was something in the muscle memory and the content that in some sense understood
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the bit more than my conscious mind.
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If you want to continue overextending a metaphor, which you may have noticed I love to do, if you want to actually use the word autopilot, the autopilot does fly the plane better than a human being in many, many, many cases, not in all cases.
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Then there may be a similar thing in performance.
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You know, there s a apocryphal story.
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I don t believe this is true, but it s an interesting story nonetheless.
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It s told with different actors.
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Let s use Lawrence Olivier.
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Lawrence Olivier gave a performance of Shakespeare.
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And I will once again tell you that I don t believe this story is true.
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And his friends came backstage, and Olivier was trashing the dressing room and screaming full of hate.
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And his friends said, what s wrong?
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He said, my performance tonight.
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And his friends said, well, your performance tonight was the greatest I ve ever seen you.
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And Olivier responded, yes, I know, and I don t know why the fuck that was.
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I think there is a level of mystery
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You know, Pinter said that if you could describe a play in three lines, that the play should be three lines long.
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I believe in terms of performance that there may be a more complicated thing going on than just we are mindful, we are present, we are saying the words clearly.
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There may be other sorts of lizard brain
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rhythms and so on that are picked up that can t be handled consciously.
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Or maybe this is all an excuse so I can do a monologue while thinking about getting my cocks sucked.
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Do you find certain points of the show where you find yourself slipping back into autopilot more?
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I mean, is it the more active parts or is it the speaking parts or is it the more dangerous parts?
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Is there any kind of commonality where you find yourself slipping back into that?
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I slip into it, not surprisingly, with things I m not worried about.
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and I m very comfortable with.
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The only time it seems really bad is when I go too fast.
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You know, familiarity breeds tempo.
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And you can tend to go fast.
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What I like, I really think that artistic speech should be faster than normal speech.
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I really like movies where people talk too fast.
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I like it to keep, you know, the Howard Hawks movies where they just rocket through the dialogue.
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And in our show, I try to keep the patter
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at a tempo that s a little faster than anyone would talk, but doesn t quite go to incomprehensible.
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I also find that
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I like, when I m in an audience, I like to be working a little bit to keep up.
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But I m also, I ve got rock and roll ears, which is a euphemism for I m deaf as a fucking post.
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So when I go to a show, I m always working a little hard to get the words.
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And I think I kinda sorta like that.
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So as long as I m not going too fast, or there s a comfortable section of the show, I will once in a while consciously
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put it on autopilot, and once in a while, I find myself on autopilot.
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I don t really know.
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You know, this is the question.
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There s also the psychological term flow, which is a very pleasurable state, just accomplishing a task, and you kind of lose yourself.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_00
When you re driving and you go five exits and you can t remember the driving during that time, has your driving been of lower quality?
2
SPEAKER_00
I just don t know.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t even know if there are studies that are done or how they would exactly do that.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it seems to me, when I m driving, I m unable to recall the past five miles, whether that driving was unsafe.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I m not saying that as a rhetorical question.
2
SPEAKER_00
It really is a question.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
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Now, back to the show.
2
SPEAKER_02
We ve talked about flow a lot on AOC, especially with the deliberate practice guys and the people who study this stuff, and often we do find ourselves wondering, because everyone s had that driving experience, wait, how did I get home, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
Not drinking and driving, but I mean like, how did I get home from college to my mom s house for dinner 10 years ago?
2
SPEAKER_02
There s still a time when I remember literally driving so far out of the way and realizing that I d gone in the wrong direction, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
That s not quite flow.
2
SPEAKER_02
I m talking about just that time when you go, oh yeah,
2
SPEAKER_02
I woke up on my own bed.
2
SPEAKER_02
I must have driven home yesterday.
2
SPEAKER_02
And we do this a lot with things that we re familiar with.
2
SPEAKER_02
Most of us, that includes driving, but when it s a performance, and I m glad to hear you chime in on this, that something that you either seek out because it makes you better or something that you try not to fall into because you re doing a lot of things that could end up going horribly wrong.
2
SPEAKER_02
And it seems like there s a balance there that s almost like your subconscious mind is taking care of it.
2
SPEAKER_02
It just knows when to go into autopilot and knows when to wake the hell up and pay attention.
2
SPEAKER_00
I should say, to make it clear, I don t think I ve ever gone into autopilot on a bit that I hadn t done 500 times.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s the reason, you know, very few, very few actors get to do a part 500 times.
2
SPEAKER_00
Nobody in a movie, and even on Broadway, I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_00
How many times did Lin-Manuel do Hamilton?
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t think it was 500 times.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you were teaching acting,
2
SPEAKER_00
there s no reason to ever mention autopilot.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I believe, and this is something that, one of the things I m kind of obsessed with, and that s the idea of new in performance.
2
SPEAKER_00
We try to conscientiously keep stuff in the show that we ve done over 10,000 times.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because I am old enough, I m 61 years old, I am old enough, I was not able to see any vaudeville.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I was able to see vaudeville performers who d done vaudeville when they were very young that were still performing in other venues when they were very, very old.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m old enough that I could see an 80-year-old who had worked in vaudeville when I was 18.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there was something I noticed about that.
2
SPEAKER_00
These were guys in vaudeville that would write a 12-minute act when they were 17 years old and be doing that 12 minutes when they were 80.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_00
having done it sometimes during their life, six times a day, seven days a week.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I would watch them and realize that there were things in that performance that I didn t think they could get to with any sort of shortcut whatsoever.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, this is also a time in the early 70s
2
SPEAKER_00
when novelty was heavily entrenched into the American psyche.
2
SPEAKER_00
The Stones would put out the same album with a different name and different songs every year.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then every six years, they would actually do a new album.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you can pretty much do that, you know, between the buttons, sticky fingers, exile, you know, you just go right through some girls.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it pretty much has that pattern.
2
SPEAKER_00
But they aren t doing the exact same elbow.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Andy Warhol said something very profound.
2
SPEAKER_00
He said, if people on situation comedies were gonna do pretty much the same show every week, why didn t they do the exact show every week so they could be good at it?
2
SPEAKER_00
When Saturday Night Live first hit, I really wanted to see that group of people do that first show for 10 years and see what that first show would become.
2
SPEAKER_00
I believe there s a place you get with repetition.
2
SPEAKER_00
So Teller and I have kind of the best of all worlds in that we have stuff in the show that I did last night that is a couple months old.
2
SPEAKER_00
There is brand new stuff we ve never done before that ll be going in in a week.
2
SPEAKER_00
and there s stuff that...
3
SPEAKER_01
I ve been doing since I was 20, all mixed in.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I believe there s a kind of subtlety that you get when you ve been doing something a zillion times.
3
SPEAKER_01
The example I like to use is we did a trick on Saturday Night Live where Teller s in a tank of water drowning while I m doing a card trick.
3
SPEAKER_01
We did it from a dawn up on Saturday Night Live.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we did it the very first time on Saturday Night Live.
3
SPEAKER_01
We d never performed it live.
3
SPEAKER_01
We did it live on TV, our first performance.
3
SPEAKER_01
And there s a moment in it
3
SPEAKER_01
when I m supposed to find the card, a selected card, and Teller gets out of the tank and is able to breathe.
3
SPEAKER_01
And there s a moment, a comedic moment, where I realize that I have not found the card and I ve screwed up.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then Teller and I look at each other when he s in the tank, and of course there s this
3
SPEAKER_01
moment of panic, which is comedy, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
When I m doing it on Saturday Night Live, and you can watch the video of this, there s a camera close up on my face when I look over at Teller, and I turn my entire head
3
SPEAKER_01
and do almost a full body turn over to tell her to get that laugh.
3
SPEAKER_01
After doing it on Saturday Night Live, we then took it on the road, and we did it a thousand times, two thousand times.
3
SPEAKER_01
And what I realized a couple years, three years later, as I was playing the Chicago Theater in, strangely enough, Chicago, which is a 3,500 seat house, which is big, and no iMac, no cameras, no video application whatsoever, that I realized that exact same moment
3
SPEAKER_01
not only was I not turning my body, not only was I not turning my head, but I was barely moving my eyes over to him and getting a bigger laugh.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the reason is that over the years, I discovered the timing, I discovered the words before that, I discovered the body language that made that moment inevitable.
3
SPEAKER_01
So when you re watching that, when someone s done something a few thousand times,
3
SPEAKER_01
You don t know how you re getting the information.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s so subtle that you believe that that moment is happening in your head.
3
SPEAKER_01
In other words, you know what Penn s thinking, but you don t know how you know he s thinking.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, every single situation comedy you ll ever see, you know instantly how you know a piece of information.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that guy did a take.
3
SPEAKER_01
He did a take like a fucking Muppet.
3
SPEAKER_01
He turned his whole head for that.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know how you get that information.
3
SPEAKER_01
but with stuff that s done.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sublimely, you don t know how that information is conveyed, and that becomes more powerful.
3
SPEAKER_01
It goes directly into your hearts.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why reading sexual content, sexting, on your computer can be more powerful than a note because that computer s an extension of your mind and someone is in there talking about their tits.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a pretty powerful moment.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I respect Louis C.K.
3
SPEAKER_01
tremendously when he comes out and does new material every year, but I also respect Seinfeld.
3
SPEAKER_01
who works for years on
3
SPEAKER_01
the exact wording and the exact rhythm of one punchline he s done a thousand times.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then you have the people who, to me, are the real heroes, like George Carlin, who would write new material constantly, but also make sure the old stuff was honed to go beyond conversation and a good joke to actual rhythms.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, one of the most startling things about Carlin is he has stopped taping to say that he lost count.
3
SPEAKER_01
which is that Carlin was often in his routines doing a full count like a musician while he was speaking.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he knew that a certain word had to come on four or the end of four as he moved through it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think that performance, there s room for all of that.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s room for, if you see Bob Dylan,
3
SPEAKER_01
you ll see a different show every night.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you see Paul McCartney, you ll see the same show.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now for me, Dylan is more compelling because Dylan is more in the Gilbert Gottfried category because
3
SPEAKER_01
Dylan also brings a certain kind of, I ve done this a million times, to the stuff underneath the novelty.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I think the answer to this is that there is a complicated mashup of it s not anything, but it s everything.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve gotta ask though, you ve been doing this for a long, long time.
3
SPEAKER_00
How do you stay on the cutting edge of performance when a lot of shows, especially Vegas shows, often those are artists who are, frankly, printing money and maybe not incentivized to keep growing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why mess with the recipe?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you guys are consistently developing and evolving the show.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why bother?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think it s because we don t play golf.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think that s all.
3
SPEAKER_01
As Bobcat Goldthwait said, heroin isn t killing rock and roll, golf is killing rock and roll.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what Vegas does.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s an economic model that says you don t need to change the show in Vegas because the audience changes.
3
SPEAKER_01
So Vegas shows are written somewhere else, developed somewhere else, get famous somewhere else, and come here to die.
3
SPEAKER_01
There is not really an artistic community.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, the Cirque du Soleil shows were all developed in Montreal.
3
SPEAKER_01
Blue Man is developed in New York.
3
SPEAKER_01
A lot of your singing acts are developed in other places and brought here.
3
SPEAKER_01
When I was 17 and first met Teller, I did not want to be rich.
3
SPEAKER_01
I did not want to be famous.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to come up with weird ideas with Teller and do them for an audience.
3
SPEAKER_01
I know people in Vegas for a fact.
3
SPEAKER_01
I know them personally, whose goal is to be famous.
3
SPEAKER_01
That goal is nonsense to me.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of good things about being well-known.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a certain kind of power that comes with that.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a certain kind of freedom that comes with that.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it s a goal itself.
3
SPEAKER_01
To me, it s insane.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you told me right now, Penn, you can have the precise level of fame that you have, you have the precise amount of money that you have, you have the precise amount of respect that you have, whatever that is, but you ll be doing a different show
3
SPEAKER_01
I would have no interest whatsoever.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you told me your amount of fame is going to go way down, your amount of success is going to go way down, but you ll still be doing your show, well, that s what I would do.
3
SPEAKER_01
I have the same dreams now that I had when I was 17.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe that shows a poverty of growth, but I want to do ideas with Teller.
3
SPEAKER_01
We don t do anything
3
SPEAKER_01
to keep the show fresh.
3
SPEAKER_01
We write new bits because we have to write new bits.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what we do.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what we do to live.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s our favorite thing to do in the world.
3
SPEAKER_01
We don t do it for commerce.
3
SPEAKER_01
We do it because that s what we believe our job is.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what we believe artists do.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it turns out that we have developed a different economic model.
3
SPEAKER_01
All the conventional wisdom
3
SPEAKER_01
has said you don t change your show, just let people change.
3
SPEAKER_01
We haven t done elaborate demographic studies on this, but it certainly seems, at least spot-checking, that many, many, many people are coming to see Penn & Teller every year, which they would not do if the show were the same.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we don t change it with any sort of rule.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we don t promise people, if you come to the show next year, there ll be 45 minutes of new material.
3
SPEAKER_01
It just kind of works that way.
3
SPEAKER_01
We just pulled out a few things that were 25 years old because we felt like doing them.
3
SPEAKER_01
But we threw a different ending on the show.
3
SPEAKER_01
We felt like doing it.
3
SPEAKER_01
We never take stuff out of the show because we re sick of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
We only put stuff in the show because we want to do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
It is not, to use old psychological terms, it is not an avoidance conflict.
3
SPEAKER_01
It is an approach-approach conflict.
3
SPEAKER_01
If we had our druthers, there s five and a half hours of material we d like to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
But we aren t fucking Bruce Springsteen in Finland.
3
SPEAKER_01
We don t do four-hour shows.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we have to pick and choose.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we are not stale with stuff that we ve done for 40 years, because there s a certain kind of emotional hygiene, artistic hygiene that we have to maintain in order to keep doing that stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, we enjoy doing that stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, but we also put in new stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we kind of have
3
SPEAKER_01
the best of both worlds.
3
SPEAKER_01
We do stuff we re good at, and we do stuff that we re learning.
3
SPEAKER_01
And because we have stuff that we re good at, we can do a lot of hammocking.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we can put in stuff that s really not fit to go on the show, and put it between two of our strongest bits, and no one cares.
3
SPEAKER_01
No one cares if a bit s weaker because goddamn it, now we re going to turn an audience member into a teller.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now we re going to vanish an elephant.
3
SPEAKER_01
Fuck.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, fine.
3
SPEAKER_01
We forgot that bit they stumbled through.
3
SPEAKER_01
That allows us to put in stuff that s a little bit braver.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the answer is, it s the reason you get into show business.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you get into show business to make money, well, first of all, you re an asshole because statistically that s not where you re going to make money.
3
SPEAKER_01
But if you do get in to make money or if you do get in to be famous, then I suppose,
3
SPEAKER_01
You can play golf during the day and just put in a work day that night at your show.
3
SPEAKER_01
But we didn t get into it for that reason.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we get into it because we like doing good ideas.
4
SPEAKER_01
As a matter of fact, when we re writing now, it s a wonderful feeling.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, we get together to write.
4
SPEAKER_01
One of us will pitch an idea.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve been thinking about this.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe we could do this.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the other guy will say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
That would kill.
4
SPEAKER_01
That would be really funny.
4
SPEAKER_01
That would be amazing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we know how to do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I m not interested at all.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then the next person will go, man, I don t know if we can do this.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if the audience will stay with us, and it seems too hard, and no one s ever done it, and I m not sure we can pull it off.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the other guy goes, okay, let s go.
4
SPEAKER_01
We ve come to the point where there s no economic pressure whatsoever to create new material.
4
SPEAKER_01
So we only create new material that is really hard.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think I can say, so I suppose there s someone who would contradict me, but I think it s fairly safe to say
4
SPEAKER_01
that Penn & Teller may not be doing the best material in the world today, but we are doing the hardest material in magic.
4
SPEAKER_00
How many successful magicians were there when you started?
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, there s always the same number.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, if I asked you to name any kind of musician living or dead in history, you re probably gonna start slowing down at about 10,000.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
If I asked you to name magicians living and dead,
4
SPEAKER_01
you re probably going to slow down before you hit a dozen.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can name Houdini.
4
SPEAKER_01
You may be able to name Blackstone.
4
SPEAKER_01
You may be able to name Thurston.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can name David Blaine.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can name Chris Angel.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can name Siegfried and Roy.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can name David Copperfield.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can name Penn and Teller.
4
SPEAKER_01
And now you re going to have trouble.
4
SPEAKER_01
And maybe even
4
SPEAKER_01
you can t get Thurston and Blackstone, and maybe even you can t get Criss Angel.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you can get Mack King, and maybe there s a guy that you happen to know locally that you can name.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it s always around a dozen.
4
SPEAKER_01
At the time, we were breaking in David Copperfield, who s our age but was successful way before us, and is the most successful magician of our time.
4
SPEAKER_01
David Copperfield, Doug Henning, Blackstone were working.
4
SPEAKER_01
We, of course, were aware
4
SPEAKER_01
of Houdini, Thurston, maybe Dante, maybe Blackstone.
4
SPEAKER_01
I already said Blackstone.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s kind of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that number stays kind of sort of the same, which is why you have people comparing Criss Angel to us.
4
SPEAKER_01
In music, you never, ever have that.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re so far apart that you would have 10 modifiers that went on, you know, you wouldn t be comparing Scriabin to Ace of the Bates.
4
SPEAKER_01
But because there s so few magicians, you end up with crazy comparisons, like comparing the Spice Girls to Bob Dylan.
4
SPEAKER_00
It seems like the old paradigm of a magician that you mention in the book a little bit was like a greasy guy in a tux terrorizing women, and that was the bulk of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people wouldn t want to be in that mix.
4
SPEAKER_00
Why jump in when a lot of the other people doing it were just like, I don t want to be confused with those guys.
4
SPEAKER_00
Why dive headfirst into it?
4
SPEAKER_01
That s the very reason.
4
SPEAKER_01
When I grew up, when people asked me,
4
SPEAKER_01
Who are your influences in magic?
4
SPEAKER_01
My answer is always Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, The Mothers of Invention, Lenny Bruce.
4
SPEAKER_01
Pretty easy to answer that.
4
SPEAKER_01
But no magicians pop up.
4
SPEAKER_01
You look at the hand you re dealt.
4
SPEAKER_01
When I was 13, 14, nothing mattered more to me than music.
4
SPEAKER_01
Nothing mattered more to me than writing, comedy, art in general.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was bookish, I was obsessed with all that stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I look at the hand I m dealt and say I want to go into music.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now,
4
SPEAKER_01
There s a big mystery to me.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you love the Rolling Stones, if you love the Rolling Stones and adore the Rolling Stones, why the fuck do you start Guns N  Roses?
4
SPEAKER_01
Why would you ever fucking do that?
4
SPEAKER_01
Everything that you re gonna do in Guns N  Roses, the Stones are already doing, is because you wanna stand on stage where the Stones stood?
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t get that at all.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes, I loved the Velvet Underground.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I certainly wasn t going to start a band that sounded like The Velvet Underground.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re doing a fine job.
4
SPEAKER_01
I love Bob Dylan.
4
SPEAKER_01
Why would I do Bob Dylan?
4
SPEAKER_01
I love The Mothers.
4
SPEAKER_01
Why would I do The Mothers?
4
SPEAKER_01
So I looked at the hand I was dealt.
4
SPEAKER_01
Not that good looking.
4
SPEAKER_01
Not particularly good looking.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t have what s called perfect pitch.
4
SPEAKER_01
Very good total memory.
4
SPEAKER_01
My intonation is not great.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have really, really good time.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have really good dexterity.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have a practice ethic that s very, very good.
4
SPEAKER_01
But looking at those first couple of cards, not having a great melodic sense.
4
SPEAKER_01
not having a great harmonic sense is going to hurt me a lot.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if I m going to compete in music, I have decided to compete with Bob Dylan.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m going to run in the Olympics, and the guy running against me has won the Olympics before.
4
SPEAKER_01
So we look at writing.
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And we have Melville, and we have Camus, and we have Shakespeare.
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and we have Sartre, now we have Nicholson Baker, and you look at that and go, so I m gonna talk about love, and I m 15 years old, and Bob Dylan and Shakespeare have already covered that?
4
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And then you look and you see magic.
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And as you said, there s a greasy guy in a tux with a lot of birds torturing women in front of Mylar to bad ripoff small dick Motown music.
4
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And you go, motherfucker, I can take him on.
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And also, there s a chance that I have something to say in this particular form that hasn t been said before.
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Obviously, Alban Berg, a great 20th century classical music composer, said there s a lot of good music still to be written in C major.
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There is new stuff to be said in music all the time.
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I m just not good enough to do it.
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But the qualities that I had, the ability to practice for hours and hours and hours and stay focused, manual dexterity, a pretty good voice, ability to memorize stuff easily.
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and the ability to write prose set me up very, very well to be a juggler.
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I started out as a juggler.
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And there s no great fame in juggling.
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You re not going to become a superstar juggling.
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There s never been one.
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But I could probably get into show business with juggling.
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And then I met Teller and that morphed into Magic, where I think I have a skill set
4
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that I can actually add something to the form of magic.
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So the very reason that there was no one to look up to in magic was the very reason I got into magic.
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Yeah, I see a lot of commonality here with what we re doing at AOC with personal growth and things like that.
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You just see a lot of charlatans or a lot of like think positive type people not doing anything productive or interesting or innovative.
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And you can kind of see that as a challenge and dive in.
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And also we re gluttons for punishment, so there was that.
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as well.
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Whenever you see anything where there s not something incredible happening, it s just ripe for innovation.
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So I can definitely see the draw there as well.
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The way I described it is a little bit more mercenary than I actually felt it.
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I didn t really say, you know, find a need and fill it.
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I was 14 or 15, but it was just, I wasn t as daunted.
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You know, whenever people ask me my biggest influence, I always say Bob Dylan.
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That s a very daunting hero to have, very daunting.
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You don t have to worry about competing with Bob Dylan because you ve already lost.
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And I think that s very, very liberating.
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You mentioned that in your creative process with Teller that you guys are never supportive because that can lead to mediocrity.
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What do you mean by that?
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Why is it important to your process to not be supportive?
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I think that compromise, you need it in order to live together and in politics.
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but you don t need it in art.
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When Teller and I disagree, we don t ever go to the middle.
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We just arguing until we get an idea that s better than either of the other two.
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I think that s a really good way to work.
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I mean, the only thing a committee can ever agree on is beige, and beige is not good.
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You know, it s why conference rooms always look that way.
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I mean, in art, I remember when Apocalypse Now came out in the 70s,
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I went to see the movie and of course loved it.
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And my date, or maybe someone else s date, I don t even remember, the person who said it wasn t very important, she said, I don t know, I don t want to see one man s ego trip.
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And when she said that, I said to myself, well, I don t want to see anything else.
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You know, I don t want a group of people to get together and agree on what a Picasso should look like.
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I don t want a bunch of people deciding.
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what lines Bob Dylan sings, I want to see a glimpse into someone else s heart.
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Now, I work in a collaboration, so we have to try to make sure that we don t compromise, or what we will do is water down what s good about the two of us.
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Where we meet in the middle is not the interesting place.
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It s where we push on the edges that are the interesting places.
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Teller and I are both raised well.
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We re both polite.
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We don t say, shut the fuck up, you stupid idiot.
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But we say, no, that s a bad idea.
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It was one of the things that when I was on The Celebrity Apprentice, no one that s ever been on that show has had more experience in collaboration than I have.
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And yet, they had these empty bromides of how people are supposed to work together.
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If I m working with you and I respect you, and we re working as peers, when you come up with an idea,
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My first job is to tear it down in every way possible because
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If there s a way that I can tear it down first hearing it, we don t want to waste any time with that.
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We don t want to go down that road.
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We want to make sure that the idea that we re going to adopt together is an idea that at least at this level is bulletproof because there s going to be a lot more that s going to come and tear it down.
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So when an idea is spit out in a Penn and Teller session, there s never a warm,
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cuddly.
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Well, that s a good idea.
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That s really good.
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And I like this about it.
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I like that about it.
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And just because that s not showing you any respect.
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That s not showing you love as a peer.
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The way you show love is you give me this idea and you go, oh geez, okay, what s wrong with that?
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What can we find wrong with that?
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Okay, I m not sure we can do it on a proscenium stage.
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If we re pulled back, is that going to feel right to the audience?
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I m not sure that middle section is going to be funny.
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Is that going to hold up?
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I don t really know.
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I mean, where s it going to go with that?
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Because in that,
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four minutes of me strafing that idea, I have done two weeks of cuddly work.
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And I ve done that because I respect you enough to know that your idea is something I may be dedicating five years of my life to.
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So I ve given you that.
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You don t need my smile and my charm.
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Yeah, right, it doesn t do anybody any favors.
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It s just sort of a nicety that ends up making the art less than it could be.
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either that or slowing you down.
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I mean, they re kind of the same thing.
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You either end up with something a little more mediocre or you take longer to get to someplace good.
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You guys have worked together for so long and you mentioned in the book that you started being nicer to Teller.
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Are you guys like family or do you have something more maybe formal or professional in order to keep enough distance to not kill each other over time?
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You know, there s some people you meet and there s an immediate cuddly affection.
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I guess it s kind of sort of called sexual, although you can feel it with people that you would never be sexual with.
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But there s a sense of some people, I don t know if it s the distance their eyes are apart or how they handle themselves or maybe smell or pheromones or something, but you instantly want to hug them.
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You want to be close to them.
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Then there are other people who your relationship with them is intellectual.
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That the relation would be exactly the same if it were over text as it is in person.
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My first reaction to Teller was no sort of affection whatsoever.
5
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Very cold.
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But my respect for him was higher than anybody I ever met.
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And I knew I would do better stuff with him than I would do alone.
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So our relationship in the very beginning was formal.
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and like two guys starting a dry cleaning business.
5
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Now, in many sorts of artistic endeavors, the people involved fall in love.
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I mean, Lyndon McCartney were clearly in love.
5
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Gilbert and Sullivan were in love.
5
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Martin and Lewis were certainly in love.
5
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Those kinds of relationships, when love goes away, leave heartbreak.
5
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And you see the heartbreak of Linda McCartney breaking up the Beatles.
5
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But we didn t start with love, and it turns out that respect lasts a lot longer than love.
5
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Now having said all of that, Teller s my closest friend.
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You don t spend 41 years with someone that you ve never been apart from for more than maybe six days, seven days, and that you work with 90% of the days you see that person and interact with them.
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You don t.
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spend that much time without becoming very, very close friends.
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When my parents died, my children were born, when I was getting married, first person I went to was Teller.
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But we don t pal around still.
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I mean, I get asked this a lot, so I ve kind of kept track of it.
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We go out social, the two of us, probably about twice a year.
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Teller comes over to my house to see my children because they adore him a couple times a year.
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I go over to Teller s house
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once every four years, five years.
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We went out to see a movie last January.
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We have dinner, the two of us not working once a year.
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We go out with mutual friends.
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maybe twice a year.
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Usually our friends pick one or the other.
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And yet, we re together all the time.
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But you have to think about this conversation.
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I mean, our conversation would be, what did you do today, Teller?
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The exact fucking same thing you did, Penn.
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You know, there isn t much information coming in.
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We re together a lot.
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Thanks for listening and supporting the Art of Charm.
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For a list of all the amazing sponsors and discount codes, visit theartofcharm.com slash advertisers.
5
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Now, back to the show.
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Yeah, I can see after a while it s like there s no marginal return on any more hanging out and socializing at that point, right?
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You need some space, you need to make it.
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It seems like it is better that way.
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Like you said, the respect lasts longer and you don t see all the drama that comes along with, well, this person now is hanging out with this or this person s relationship status changed and therefore the dynamic is different.
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You guys can t really afford that.
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It s not worth it.
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I mean, Paul McCartney s heart is still broken because John Lennon got married.
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It s crazy, but it makes sense.
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Congrats on hitting the NYT bestseller list as well.
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Presto is the title of the book, How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales.
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So I m gonna put this in a little tiny simple box.
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You lost a bunch of weight on a quote-unquote potato diet.
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That s crazy.
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It requires Penn Jillette-like intensity to eat only potatoes for how long?
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Only two weeks.
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You do a mono diet for two weeks.
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The idea is you want to rethink what eating means to you, which is pretty interesting.
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When you eat just potatoes, you ve taken away the entertainment of eating because it s not entertaining.
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You ve taken away the social aspect because no one flew into Vegas and said, hey, Pat, I just got into Vegas, let s eat a potato.
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And you ve taken away all your habits in terms of flavor.
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I mean, a simple way to say this is you reset your taste buds.
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All we eat is habit.
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And also,
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I wanted to do something very, very intense.
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I started by saying that I m not very good at moderation.
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And then I realized that not only am I not good at moderation, I don t respect moderation.
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As a matter of fact, I don t respect moderation at all.
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People don t brag about walking up a grassy slope, they brag about climbing Everest.
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The people that I respect and look up to
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are not people known for moderation.
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That kind of grown-up, I ll have a smaller piece of salmon thing, I don t know why I thought that would be okay in my health when it was not okay in anything else in my life.
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Now, I eat in a very, very intense, different way, and I really enjoy that.
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It becomes, I mean, performance art.
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It becomes something I have fun with.
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And it s really funny that although I didn t want to listen to music like other people, I didn t want to read what other people read, I didn t want to watch TV like other people, I didn t want to drink like other people, I didn t want to fuck like other people fuck, I didn t want to do any of those things, I wanted to eat.
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idiot American.
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Realizing that was all I needed to do to say, you know, it all comes down, it always will all come down, everything to Bob Dylan.
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And Bob Dylan said to live outside the law, you must be honest.
5
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I want to be honest.
5
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I want to live outside the law.
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And that not only includes the way I do magic,
5
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the way I live, it also now includes the way I eat.
5
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So people are gonna email and say, this is crazy, a potato diet isn t healthy eating, it s a dangerous fad diet.
5
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What do you say to those people?
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Because I think it s kind of clear that you know that.
5
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Well, yeah, for two weeks, you don t have to eat anything.
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There s no nutrient you require in two weeks.
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So you can do anything for two weeks.
5
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The prima ballerina, the New York ballet, can go about three weeks without taking in any calories.
5
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She needs water, she needs air, but no calories for three weeks.
5
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So the amount of fat you have over the Prima Ballerina, for every pound of that, you can go another day and a half.
5
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Yes, it s a stupid fad diet, you re not getting what you need from potatoes, not accomplishing anything, but it s two weeks, it doesn t matter.
5
SPEAKER_00
Is potatoes a healthy diet forever?
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No.
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Is potatoes a healthy diet for six months?
5
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No.
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Potato a healthy diet for two weeks?
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Who cares?
5
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You know, it s kind of like saying, well, I m gonna hold my breath for a minute.
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Well, is it healthy to hold your breath for 10 minutes?
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No, you ll die, motherfucker.
5
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Are you supposed to breathe about every 20 seconds?
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Yeah, you are, but a minute, no harm.
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And sometimes it s a good thing to take a really deep breath and hold it to look good.
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around you.
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To eat potatoes for two weeks, still be able to look around you and focus ended up being a really good thing for me.
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After that, I went to a incredibly calorie restricted diet, not counting calories, but still ends up being that of no nuts, no fruit, but everything else, no animal products, no refined grains, extremely low salt, sugar, and oil.
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And I was dropping 0.9 pounds a day average for three months.
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It turns out the faster you take off the weight, the longer you keep it off.
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And now I ve landed at my target weight.
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I eat no animal products.
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I say it that way instead of saying vegan because I wear a leather belt.
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It s unfair to vegans to call myself vegan because there is a moral and ethical component that goes with that that I don t share.
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My sympathy is there, but I don t share it intensely.
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I do it for health reasons.
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No refined grains, which means just whole plants.
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and then extremely low salt, sugar, and oil, extremely low on those three things.
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There s another way to say that.
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You can say it in two words, which is whole plants.
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And I eat that.
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I also spend time not eating, which I really, really enjoy.
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I enjoy the focus.
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I enjoy the hobby.
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I don t really call it fasting because I don t go for long times.
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I ll do maybe 30, 35 hours maximum.
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But most times, most days I go 16 to 20 hours without eating.
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And I really enjoy that focus.
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I really enjoy the way I feel.
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Of course, all of this is a cheat because being over a hundred pounds overweight,
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I was going to feel so shitty that anything I did now would make me feel better.
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So there are many illusions taking place.
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So I wrote the book Presto to answer the question, what did you do?
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And the answer to that question is, I don t even know.
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Certainly at least half of what I did is complete bullshit.
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I just don t know which half.
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The interesting part that I saw, the most interesting part was that you discovered, or it seems like you discovered a lot of personal psychology during your potato diet.
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What did your weight have to do with the pattern of self-deception?
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Because I think a lot of people do this, and so if we can help people identify this pattern of self-deception, like, oh, the things that you said, like, I m a big guy, it makes sense.
6
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Maybe we can start to put a stop to that kind of thinking, because people get called out on their shit.
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Yeah, I don t even know.
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The way you state it is a little harsher than I felt it.
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I didn t feel I was getting called out on my shit so much as I was just learning a little more about myself.
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I realized we re saying the exact same thing.
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It just didn t feel that combative to me.
6
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Yeah, it felt, the positive part was, you know, what I said to Cray Ray, who was kind of my guru in this, was I want to read the New York Times without wincing.
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I read the New York Times most days, and I come up with an article on drug abuse, and I read it with compassion, but I don t worry about it.
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I come up with an article about cancer, I read it with compassion, I don t worry about it.
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I come up with an article about people who are jobless, I read it with compassion, but I don t worry about it.
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Then I come up with an article about diet, people being fat, people being obese.
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And not only do I read that with compassion,
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but also it gives me a cold chill.
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Like I know this is wrong and I m not doing anything about it.
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And my reading goes off into morbid self-attention.
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Now I don t do that anymore.
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I see an article saying, oh boy, this much salt that Americans are getting are bad for them.
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They should stay away from it.
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And I read that with compassion and then turn the page.
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But that kind of thing, having something in your life
6
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that you know is wrong and you re not controlling, takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of time, takes a lot of mental gymnastics to not be obsessed with it.
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So the more of those things you put aside, the more time you have for the beauty of life.
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What were some of the things that surprised you the most about being thin?
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I mean, you hadn t been thin for a really, really long time, so it s kind of like doing that for the first time in your life.
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There had to have been some surprises somehow, like just, oh, this is how thin people do this.
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You may have heard here or there that I m an atheist, and I m not spiritual, and I don t believe in anything supernatural.
6
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And yet, so if you had asked me three years ago, do you believe in a mind-body separation, do you believe that there is a mind separate from the meat, you know, your meat computer, I would have told you absolutely not.
6
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And yet, I was surprised when my mood and personality changed when I got thinner.
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Now that shows the lie that I did not believe it was just meat or I would have believed instantly that my weight and my health affected my mood because there isn t a little homunculus somewhere in my mind, my soul.
6
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driving this meat machine.
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So when my mood changed, when I was happier, I was shocked.
6
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I considered myself to be a very happy person three years ago.
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It s amazing how much happier I am now.
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It s amazing that mood change.
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It s funny because I ve been weightless in the vomit comet and I realized the elation you get when you go to zero G and the depression you get when you go to two G and you weigh 600 pounds.
6
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And yet I didn t think that there was a big sense of that.
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But I am happier, friendlier.
6
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more focused.
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I didn t expect that at all.
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I didn t even cross my mind that could be an upside.
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I still don t have very much vanity in the way I look.
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I never considered myself to be good looking.
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I didn t mind being fat.
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I didn t mind the way I looked.
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I ve never been someone who thought about that much.
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Everybody makes fun of me and laughs at me because I m someone who can actually walk on stage to do a television
6
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and they have to remind me to look in the mirror backstage.
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I m sitting in a room now that has no mirrors.
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I just don t look in them much.
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My wife has to remind me to look in the mirror before I go out.
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To that kind of person, being thinner does not make very much difference in that way.
6
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In terms of energy, that s tied so much in with mood, I can t really separate it.
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The other surprise I found, this is so counterintuitive as to be almost insane, I didn t expect to
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before was monochromatic.
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I was eating nothing but what s called SAD, the Standard American Diet.
6
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I was eating fat, salt, and sugar.
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Interestingly, a pizza, a cheeseburger, a big plate of pasta, broccoli with hollandaise, corn on the cob with butter, are really all the same three tastes.
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What I ve discovered now is that I really do taste food and I really look forward to food and I really enjoy food.
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I would have never thought that going on a radically restricted diet would have given me a joy of eating that I never had before.
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Speaking of being more focused, you d mentioned that you like to skip meals before big events or during meetings because those that are eating are multitasking and you re not, so you can focus on the deal or the meeting or the decisions, but how do you leverage that advantage?
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What are you looking at or taking in that other people are not because they re eating?
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I don t know, I m just paying attention to what s going on.
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Also, I don t have that many competitive business meetings.
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But I do have business meetings where I have to come off smart and funny with a good idea.
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If you are really excited about an idea and explaining it to someone, it s easier to explain it to them if you aren t worried about spitting food on them.
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I realize that s the simplest, dumbest thing in the world, but it s really true.
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You take a mouthful of food, and right when someone asks you a question about how this character is gonna grow throughout the plot, and that few moments chewing throws off your rhythm.
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Also, you know, when I went on Jeopardy, which incidentally I won, I won on Jeopardy, I won on that show.
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I would have three years ago gone on there having had a good breakfast and fully fed and thought that was important.
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I made sure almost like a fetish, almost supernatural, almost like a good luck charm, I went on hungry.
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Because now I enjoy the way I feel hungry.
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I have no fear of hunger.
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It used to be, oh geez, I got a little bit of hunger, I better eat right now or I d be hungry.
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Wouldn t that be terrible?
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Well, no, it s not terrible.
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It s not terrible at all.
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It s like being a little tired.
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It s not terrible.
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It s the way the world is.
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And being a little hungry gives you a kind of focus.
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It s better than belching, and it s better than being that little bit loggy.
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I like the kind of balls of the feet feeling I get being a little hungry.
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I just enjoy the feeling.
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And we get very used to enjoying delayed gratification, certainly in sex.
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certainly in art, certainly in conversation, and certainly in comedy.
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It s very funny that I never made the connection, wouldn t that also be good in terms of hunger and food?
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Shakespeare said, there s no better spice than hunger.
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but I thought his words, and his words were good, and mine were bad.
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I don t know the big secret about magic.
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Jim Steinmeier, a great magic builder and creator, said that magicians were all guarding an empty safe.
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There is no technique in magic, really.
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There is just learning what other people are thinking.
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So I don t use anything in my personal life, I don t think.
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I mean, I spend probably more time thinking about how to express myself clearly
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verbally than I think about how to, you know, manipulate people, I mean, or how to do tricks.
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So I use that skill a lot.
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I mean, this communication skills, but in terms of magic, someone who thinks a lot about communicating and influencing people would be better off than a magician because so often what a magician is doing is just lying with honesty around it would be proscenium of honesty.
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and I don t desire to use the ability to lie with my children.
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Yeah, I think that s wise, and it would seem very unpenned-like to be pulling the wool over your children s eyes while then telling them to think critically about everything at the same time.
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Yeah, well, I have told them the frozen yogurt place was closed, and it really wasn t, but I try to keep it to that level.
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Yeah, Houdini-level manipulation there.
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Sorry, they re closed on Fridays at 8 p.m.
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We can t go.
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Another great question from AOC Family though, he says, gods and witches don t exist, but countries, money and companies don t either.
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I feel like atheists and skeptics draw arbitrary lines between all the things we believe, but believing bullshit seems to have an evolutionary purpose.
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The point of ideas doesn t seem to be rationality, but simply to define a tribe.
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So I wonder, do you see the benefit of being unreasonable or gullible almost at times and believing some fictions and not others?
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Do you think there s a time and place for leaving reason aside just so things can friggin  work?
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Well, there s a lot of stuff being conflated there in that everybody knows that a country is an abstract idea for a bunch of things.
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They may be able to define it, but if you ask even the most two-dimensional patriotic person
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what America means.
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They would tell you in some way that showed an abstraction.
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Same thing with money, same thing with government.
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Gods and witches are things that people say are not abstractions, but actually concrete things.
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God is a little more confusing than that, but supernatural and real and not concrete, but all the same supernatural and real.
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There is a slight difference there.
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Yes, when we re watching Shakespeare and the guy who you ve seen in the biography commercial comes out and goes, you know, I m king.
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You do a, I ll play along with this.
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You make a decision.
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When I did The Diet with Cray Ray, we used cult techniques.
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I mean, the same techniques Manson used and Jim Jones used in order to manipulate me.
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I chose to do that.
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You know, you can do the, what I would call, you know, fuck me like we re in love.
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You can do that all the time.
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Every time people play a game, which I don t like very much, but I ll use this example anyways, you pretend something s important, it s not.
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You pretend that winning matters.
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And I think that those shared conventions are really, really useful.
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And at the same time, repeating that they re bullshit is also useful.
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I don t think there s any use in saying,
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Countries are not abstractions.
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I don t think there s any use in saying this flag is our country.
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I don t think there s any use in saying this guy on stage actually is the king.
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But I think playing with epistemological ideas is useful fun and leads to learning.
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So I think my answer to that question is yes.
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Great, yeah, nailed it.
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You mentioned as well online, I ve watched a bunch of your videos and seen literally every episode of some of the things that you ve done.
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You say more than once that we need to question the things that we want to believe in.
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Those are the things we need to question the most.
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So anything that we want to believe in, we should question that even more than we question everything else.
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Why do you believe that?
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Why is that?
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Because you only test your freedom of speech
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with the Westboro Baptist Church, you only can define who you are at the extremes.
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And you also have to know the desire to believe something.
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You ve just made me feel incredibly guilty because I have been saying over and over again, there s no chance of Trump winning, that there s zero chance.
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And as you were asking that question, I was going, what do I believe very strongly that I also want to believe?
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And I realized that jumped to the front.
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Maybe I should think about that again.
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I think it s just knowing oneself.
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When you want to believe something, when you get good news, I think you really have to look at it because that s when you re going to be tested.
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The intellectual hygiene is much easier with stuff you don t want to believe.
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Penn, thank you so much for your time and for being just awesome.
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Jason and I are both huge fans and this has been amazing.
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Is there anything that I haven t asked you that you want to make sure you deliver to the AOC family?
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Of course, we re going to link to the book in the show notes, but if we ve left anything out, now s the time.
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Except that even though I don t look in mirrors very often, I want people to know that although I m not wearing pants,
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I am wearing a shirt and my hair is combed.
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Yeah, thanks for doing that, by the way.
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I thought that was funny.
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Jason said, oh, he said, we re not doing video, so I combed my hair and put a shirt on for nothing, and I thought, well, he ll be in good company, because I can count on one hand the number of shows I ve done with pants in the last probably 90 days.
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Yeah, yeah, you don t want to ever wear pants.
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Wow, that was so good.
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There s so much in there that I loved, and we could ve gone on for another hour and a half.
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It s almost a good thing that we ended up running out of time on that one.
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I m very much looking forward to round two at some point, because damn, that guy s smart, Jason.
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Oh, tell me about it.
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He is smart.
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And I m on day five of my potato diet.
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I can t believe you re doing that.
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How s that going for you?
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I m down four and a half pounds in five days eating nothing but potatoes.
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Like he said, it s not about the weight loss, right?
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It s about reprogramming your brain.
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So I m curious at the end of day 12 or however long you plan to go with it, what you end up doing with the programming of the taste buds and with sort of the thinking about food.
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I think we should stay in touch on that one and keep the AOC family updated there as well.
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Not because we abdicate a potato diet, but there s just something very AOC about reprogramming your brain and the way that it looks at food.
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It s
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They re delicious.
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Because I hate potatoes, honestly.
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But maybe even yet another reason why that would be an interesting experiment.
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If you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank Penn on Twitter.
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We ll have that linked in the show notes, as well as not only the video of him doing that trick on Saturday Night Live, but the book, which is called Presto, How I Made 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales.
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You can tap our album art and most mobile podcast players to see the cheat sheet for this episode.
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We ll link to the show notes right on your phone.
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I m also on Twitter, at The Art of Charm.
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It s a great way to engage with us there.
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And you can hear some of my off-script thoughts, but honestly, it s a great way to get in touch and say hello.
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Boot camps, The Art of Charm live programs, where you learn all this stuff in real life in front of us.
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Bootcamp.theartofcharm.com, and remember,
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Yes, we do it every week, but we sell out a few months in advance, so if you re thinking about it a little bit, you should get in touch ASAP, get some info from us so you can plan ahead.
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Also, we ve got our social capital challenge at theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or if you re here in the States, text charmed, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444.
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The challenge is about improving your networking and your connection skills and inspiring those around you to develop a personal and professional relationship with you.
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We ll also email you our Fundamentals Toolbox that I mentioned earlier on the show.
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And I m doing regular videos with drills and exercises to help you move forward every week.
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It ll make you a better networker.
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It ll make you a better connector.
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and it ll make you a better thinker, most importantly.
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So that s theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or text charmed in the US to 33444, and it s unisex for God s sake.
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I know a lot of people are like, oh, where s the thing for women?
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Challenge is unisex.
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There s a lot of women in there.
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I feel like in many ways they re doing as good or better than the guys that are in there, so don t worry.
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It s not gendered.
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We will challenge all who come.
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For the full show notes for this and all previous episodes, head over to theartofcharm.com slash podcast.
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This episode of The Art of Charm was produced by Jason DeFillippo.
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Jason Sanderson is our audio engineer and editor.
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Show notes on the website are by Robert Fogerty, and I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
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Go ahead, tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either
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in person or shared on the web.
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So stay charming and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.