10 Questions with Penn Jillette

You and Teller have been working together for 50 years. How has the act evolved?

We’ve been doing more new material in the past five years than in the previous 45. Most performers our age are locked into a greatest-hits routine, but we’re still chasing new ideas. If I ever retired — which I won’t — my hobby would be exactly what I do now: writing ideas and having people watch them.

What keeps you excited after all this time?

No two shows are ever the same. The audience brings a different energy every night. Sometimes someone laughs in an unexpected place, or reacts in a way that makes us
rethink a moment we’ve done a thousand times. That keeps it alive for me.

Bob Dylan is on the ‘Never Ending Tour,’ and I feel the same way. I’m still on the road, still doing shows, because I don’t know how to do anything else — and I wouldn’t want to.

If someone meets you for the first time and asks what you do, what’s your answer?

I’m supposed to say “Vegas magician,” since we’re the longest-running headliners in Las Vegas history. But in my heart, I say “writer.” That’s how I see myself. I also play upright jazz bass. My real loves are music and writing, and magic is the way I bring those together.

What’s the secret to a 50-year creative partnership?

We didn’t start as friends. We started because I thought I could do better work with Teller than alone. That turned into a deep friendship, but the show always came first. We trust each other completely, show up on time, and do what we say we’ll do. No drinking, no drugs, no tantrums — just the work.

Penn & Teller are famous for revealing how tricks work, yet still astonishing the audience. How do you pull that off?

Most real methods are ugly — gaffer’s tape, fishing line, that kind of thing. We invent beautiful methods we’d never actually use to “get away” with a trick, then perform using that method and reveal it.

Sometimes the explanation we give is more elegant than the real one. It’s about giving the audience that rare ‘aha’ moment. Like Einstein, but in a tux.

Has it gotten harder to fool you after so many seasons of Fool Us?

No, because magic has changed. It used to be one of the last truly misogynist art forms — the Magic Circle in London didn’t admit women until the 1990s. Now, thanks to the Internet, a 16-year-old girl in Iowa can learn magic without walking into a cigar-filled basement. We push producers to book people who don’t look like us, and the art form is better for it.

You’ve worked across TV, Broadway, Vegas, YouTube, TikTok. How do you stay “relevant”?

We’ve never thought about relevance. We think about ideas. We never said, “Let’s get to Vegas” or “Let’s do Letterman.” We had ideas, and those were the venues that fit. We were just as happy in the 70s doing small theater shows no one knew about. The joy is in the work, not the platform.

You’re known for skepticism. Is there any belief you hold onto just because it feels good?

I operate on the unprovable idea that every artistic problem has a solution, even though experience tells me that’s not always true. More broadly, I believe people are good, there’s no such thing as evil, and things are getting better — despite appearances. Every time I get very sad about what’s happening in the United States, I remember that, in my lifetime, the percentage of young girls being taught to read on the planet has gone from 10 percent to 90 percent. That’s huge.

It’s easy to get caught up in bad news, but if you look at the big picture — the arc of history — things are getting better. Literacy rates are higher, extreme poverty is down, access to information is exploding.

Just the fact that a kid in a remote village can watch a physics lecture from MIT on a phone blows my mind. That kind of access to knowledge used to be unthinkable.

How do you stay healthy and energized?

I’m still vegan. It’s better for my health, the planet and animal suffering. I exercise, and I make a conscious effort to be social. Left to my own devices, I’d sit alone and type, but isolation is killing us as a culture. My kids are 19 and 20, which keeps me connected, and I try to see friends, even when I’d rather stay home. Once I’m
with them, I’m glad I came.

What do you hope people take away from your shows?

That we can share reality. Skepticism isn’t about being closed-minded — it’s about using evidence so we can agree on what’s real. We can disagree on solutions, but we have to start from the same facts. Magic, silly as it is, deals with the most profound question there is: How do we know what’s true?

Penn & Teller will be performing at Mesa Arts Center on Nov. 6. To learn more or buy tickets, go to mesaartscenter.com.