After 50 years, The Magic Circle finally inducts Penn and Teller

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/arts/penn-teller-magic-circle.html

by wbl • 10 months ago

230 100 10 months ago

nytimes.com

jmclnx2• 10 months ago

Good to see.

I never got their act, so I never really watched them, but my relatives thought they were great.

Anyway, I did like and enjoy their performance in Babylon 5.

dylan604• 10 months ago

Wouldn't that be "I never really watched them, so I never got their act"? How could you ever expect to get anything you never watch?

actionfromafar• 10 months ago

They never caught my attention either. Clearly very talented, but not my cup of tea. Maybe it could be an acquired taste, but I'll leave that FOMO on the floor.

jjj123• 10 months ago

“Never really watched them” doesn’t mean “never watched them even once”.

Penn and teller had a TV show, so it could mean they caught an episode or two and weren’t into it (which, same).

SapporoChris• 10 months ago

There are many things that cannot be directly observed but can be understood.

wbl2• 10 months ago

The balls and cups with transparent cups is stunning.

JKCalhoun• 10 months ago

Yep, it was probably what pissed off the Magic Circle. https://youtu.be/i0m8CC7Ovj8

domoregood• 10 months ago

https://archive.is/v7PEM

mjcarden• 10 months ago

I'm having trouble getting my head around an interview with Teller. We all know he doesn't speak. :)

browningstreet• 10 months ago

He speaks at the end of the movie “Penn & Teller Get Killed”.

jacquesm• 10 months ago

4:15...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jko5BGhc-Ys

freetime2• 10 months ago

Here's a talk he did at Google where he talks at length:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJRIkTHqTSE

philiplu• 10 months ago

He has a speaking role in an old 1987 baseball movie, "Long Gone", with William Petersen and Virginia Madsen, as the son in a father/son partnership who own a minor league team (Henry Gibson was the dad). Very disorienting to hear him talk when I first saw the movie way back when.

tcoop25• 10 months ago

If you go to any of their shows in Vegas, he hangs out after the show and talks with the fans. Felt very weird talking to him.

arkmm• 10 months ago

Unfortunately I think they have stopped doing this since COVID.

bsder2• 10 months ago

They don't seem to do this anymore. Or, at least, not without paying some money. I think they have a "Hang with Penn and Teller"-like thing that you can buy VIP tickets for.

The other thing to note is that Penn and Teller are getting old. Penn is 70 and Teller is almost 80! Don't expect anything in their act which requires physicality anymore.

Yhippa• 10 months ago

These guys are something else. I remember seeing them on Scooby Doo when I was a kid growing up. Their Vegas show is great. I’ve seen several magic shows and specials on TV, but the way they ran the whole thing and let you inspect the stage was super cool.

the_af5• 10 months ago

Penn and Teller: Fool Us is amazing. I went on a binge a year or so ago, watching everything there was to watch on YouTube (which is a lot).

I love how genuinely enthusiastic and encouraging of lesser known magicians they are. Always willing to celebrate their strengths instead of mocking them for their failures.

And they are excellent magicians, too.

My respect for Penn also went up after he realized his hardcore libertarian position was untenable. It was nice seeing him grow out of it.

wbl2• 10 months ago

My favorite episode had a magician do a great act about reading the paper, and all these terrible things spilled out and then he closed it, reopened it and good things spilled out. Penn and Teller of course recognized a zombie and a twilight seance but went out of their way to say how moving and entertaining they found the act.

x______________• 10 months ago

I went on a binge a year or so ago

I did the same a few years ago and it was one of the few series that kept me hooked, trying to figure out how the contestants try to fool Penn and Teller. I'll need to revisit for some newer episodes that I may have missed..

A bit off topic but no one else brought up Penn's great acting as Hal the system admin in Hackers (1995), a classic movie that everyone should be familiar with (and if not, worth checking out!).

brutal_chaos_• 10 months ago

I think we gotta hacker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2OYNMO_mNw (first 20-30sec)

iambateman3• 10 months ago

The show Fool Us is wonderful…and this clip in particular is my favorite: https://youtu.be/5_KcQt0z-eE?si=xO5gTByzV0spzS2e

gkoberger2• 10 months ago

Even if you never want to practice magic, I highly recommend buying a few Dani DaOrtiz lectures. The way his mind works is phenomenal, and the things he talks about (psychology, how people think, crafting experiences) are applicable across the board.

(I rarely perform his tricks... they're brilliant, but they're so perfectly suited for his style that I can't even come close to pulling them off without seeming like a confused idiot. But I love watching him explain what goes into each trick. This specific trick is available on Vanishing.)

iambateman3• 10 months ago

I’ll check it out! I’ve watched hundreds of tricks on Fool Us and the moment I watched his act I was stunned. Just absolutely beautiful performance.

7thpower2• 10 months ago

I was only half way paying attention because I was enjoying the joy of everyone around him.

I wonder if it will hold up the next time I watch. I keep notes for my daughters to read some day and wrote about this tonight (it’s been too long since I wrote them), I hope this video will still be around when they are ready to read the notes so they can experience it too.

onlypassingthru• 10 months ago

May I suggest a little yt-dlp and an external HD to go along with those notes? A digital archive doesn't have to be restricted to family photos.

iambateman3• 10 months ago

I have young children and this is a sweet idea. Thanks!

jcattle• 10 months ago

As someone who has watched this video approximately 100 times already I can tell you: it holds up.

larrymcp• 10 months ago

Fantastic. Another great one that blew my mind (and P&T's) is Nick Einhorn from the first season, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma-S9-bgvlg&t=77s

purpleidea• 10 months ago

Nah this trick is crap, it's just stooging. Kind of disappointing they let it on.

willvarfar• 10 months ago

Back when national TV mostly showed national magicians, and sparingly, my family loved "Fool Us" because it brought such a variety of different magicians from all around the world into our living room. My favourite magician I've discovered since being online is Lennert Green https://www.ted.com/talks/lennart_green_close_up_card_magic_...

Really wish he'd been on Fool Us!

mazokum• 10 months ago

Lennart Green is actually one of DaOrtiz "parents" in magic (the other being Juan Tamariz). You can see Lennart's spirit in his use of chaos.

danpalmer2• 10 months ago

Great to hear. I'll never forget running into Teller in the lobby of a small show I went to that he was also in the audience for. I sheepishly asked for an autograph and he was very friendly and gracious (and spoke!).

vanderZwan3• 10 months ago

Did the speaking ruin some of the magic, or did it make the experience even more special?

danpalmer2• 10 months ago

More special definitely.

simondotau2• 10 months ago

There's plenty of video of Teller speaking. Being mute is a stage performance thing, not a mystical lifestyle choice.

Onavo• 10 months ago

I am not sure why they even bother...they are at the top of their fields and they are household names in America that are synonymous with magic. Not since Houdini has there been such famous magicians in show biz. The professional organizations should be naming prizes after them instead of them begging to be part of the in-group. You don't see Bill Gates, Jobs, or Torvalds begging to join the IEEE.

mjlawson• 10 months ago

I think the difference here is that Penn and Teller are just as much historians of magic as they are magicians themselves. Accepting the honor is also accepting that the history is still relevant and worth celebrating. Making this into an ego thing misses the point a bit, I think.

whizzter• 10 months ago

Keeping them out might have been due to some oldtimer in the organization that couldn't let go of the "never reveal secrets" gospel, whilst newer members at the top recognize that with todays social medias the cat's truly out of the bag and alienating the biggest household names is just counter-productive.

I think they've also seen that American Wrestling seems to be doing fine even if the entire fakeness is out in the open.

jkmcf• 10 months ago

Gives me Rush vibes when Rolling Stone finally put them on the cover 41 years, 19 albums, and millions of sales and sold out tours later. Not to mention the R&R HOF…

ohyes• 10 months ago

The thing I really love about magic is that so much of it boils down to “I practiced for years and developed a seemingly superhuman ability to manipulate this object”.

I really relate to this because despite being at least ostensibly “gifted” my entire academic career, almost all of my professional success has been because I have been willing to climb steep learning curves at the expense of hours of my life and extreme frustration.

In short, I can relate because I too practice a type of “up close” magic which few people can even appreciate.

gkoberger2• 10 months ago

“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” - Teller

JdeBP2• 10 months ago

Kostya Kimlat comes to mind.

tralarpa• 10 months ago

Nice, I didn't know Teller writes package.json files.

crooked-v• 10 months ago

That reminds me of a few episodes of Fool Us where they gave the prize to the guest because they knew exactly how the trick was done, but were literally unable to physically detect the person doing it because their skills were just that good.

khazhoux• 10 months ago

Jason Ladayne is a great example. His card control is unreal: https://www.youtube.com/user/CardMagicByJason

sqircles• 10 months ago

Jason is phenomenal. There is absolutely no telling how many hours he has had a deck of cards in his hands.

The foundations of card magic are certainly out there, and for me knowing how the fundamental slights work make it that much more magical to see it performed at such a level. No different than having played a sport makes spectating that much more interesting and appreciable.

CSMastermind• 10 months ago

Saw him live in person and I couldn't see a thing, no clue how he was doing it.

I've seen other famous magicians live and up close you can catch move or notice things but he was pure skill.

Fezzik• 10 months ago

Feels like the perfect thread to re-link to my favorite card-trick movie - Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants. Not only is he a deft card manipulator, but he is a great story teller with a vast knowledge of magic history.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z7InE1zXAY4&pp=ygUfcmlja3kgamF...

itsthecourier• 10 months ago

what's your favorite speciality?

fenomas• 10 months ago

A good specific example of this that isn't widely known is the "muscle pass".

It amounts to holding a coin in a classic palm position (dead center of the palm), then spending several months strengthening the palm muscles and developing a callus, until you can propel the coin a foot or so without noticeably moving your hand.

Random video demonstrating:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sJJNULXJT0Q

osullip• 10 months ago

That's also a trick

Edit: but look, it's a good one. A little bit of reality mixed in so it looks cool

pklausler• 10 months ago

A learning curve is a model for how much you can learn over time. A subject with a steep learning curve is actually one that doesn’t take much time to reach a high level. It’s the subjects with shallow slopes that take more work to raise up to proficiency.

exe342• 10 months ago

No, the typical meaning of a learning curve is the path you walk up the hill - some hills are very steep, which takes a lot of effort.

elsjaako• 10 months ago

It's a bit of a fossilized error. Like "this begs the question of...", "head over heels", "sleeping like a baby", and "Have your cake and eat it too" everyone should understand what it means, even if it doesn't stand up to technical analysis.

lisper2• 10 months ago

so much of it boils down to “I practiced for years and developed a seemingly superhuman ability to manipulate this object”.

Amateur magician here (but a magician member of the Magic Castle, so I know a few things). Manual dexterity is certainly a useful skill, but it's just a tiny part of the art of magic. You can be a consummate sleight-of-hand artist and still be a mediocre magician, and conversely, some of the best magicians don't use particularly difficult sleights. The best example of that I know of is Dani Da Ortiz's routine on Penn and Teller Fool Us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_KcQt0z-eE

Now, Dani is in fact a master at sleight-of-hand, and so one would think that you are watching a masterclass in sleights, but no. There are a few sleights, but they are not particularly difficult, beginner-level. I could do them, and I'm not particularly skilled. The trick is based almost entirely on timing and misdirection and psychological subtleties.

The degree of psychological subtlety in top-level magic continually blows my mind. The best magicians make it look like magic even when you know how the trick is done. Dani's trick is a consummate example. The performance looks like chaos, but in fact every detail is meticulously crafted and serves a purpose. It's almost like watching a dance.

incone123• 10 months ago

" The best magicians make it look like magic even when you know how the trick is done. "

Agree with this. I remember being the 'skeptic kid' at a birthday party long ago. The magician involved me in a trick everyone could figure out but it was done with charm and I was completely delighted.

zvr• 10 months ago

You are absolutely correct.

When teaching this whole routine, Dani spends much more time on the psychological background and nudges that are used, rather than the physical card manipulation techniques.

fsckboy• 10 months ago

willing to climb steep learning curves

fwiw, learning curve theory relates how much learning you get through time or episodes of experience. a lot of learning from a small amount of experience (easy to learn) means you will slide quickly down that steep learning curve. a shallow learning curve implies that it takes a great deal of experience to learn.

iancmceachern• 10 months ago

Good for them, they deserve it

thehappypm• 10 months ago

Does anyone have a good recommendation for a video to watch of their magic? Preferably something that’s a longer form, like something on Netflix or prime video

Cogito• 10 months ago

They have a MasterClass® class that you might like if you have an account (or if you don't!)

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/penn-and-teller-teach-th...

schlauerfox• 10 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2souL3UxLtg This is a pretty good example of their prime. They play in Vegas, so in person is always worthwhile.

em-bee2• 10 months ago

watching this particular episode one might get the impression they are just trying to make fun of other magicians...

tquinn• 10 months ago

I enjoyed their live show very much in Las Vegas. It looks like they are currently touring. I would check them out if get a chance.

alex1138• 10 months ago

It would be remiss not to mention James Randi as well, who while being a magician also had a career exposing genuine fraudsters (who wanted you to take them seriously, unlike Randi's magic)

bityard• 10 months ago

Ha. I'll see your genuine fraudsters and raise you an authentic counterfeit.

bsder2• 10 months ago

And James Randi was a role model for Penn.

TiredOfLife2• 10 months ago

There is a documentary "An Honest Liar" about him. It goes to unexpected places

owlninja• 10 months ago

Good for them! They bucked plenty of the "rules of magic", but no doubt inspired another generation somewhere. I hope the craft never dies.

ongy• 10 months ago

What does 'bucked' mean in this context?

mock-possum• 10 months ago

Like a ‘bucking bronco,’ a horse kicking high and trying to throw off its rider - you ‘buck’ something to get it off of you, to get it off your back, to shake it off, to get out from under it. You might also see it in ‘bucking a trend.’

So it means “to act against” / “to escape from” the rules.

After 50 years, The Magic Circle finally inducts Penn and Teller

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