YouSaid · the spoken record

Penn Jillette

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120
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2020-01-09
most recent
2020-01-09
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1
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podcast

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  1. “And as I said, notes in every conversation. I don't know how much it is, probably 500 to 1,000 words a day. I should know how much it is. And then, and I believe this is the part that may be the most useful. Obviously not when I started. But since then every morning I read 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and one year ago. Now those numbers for how long ago have of course changed, you know, used to be five. But I find that maybe the more useful, the most useful part of my journaling because I time travel. So every morning, it's mostly morning, I talk to myself 20 years ago. I talk to myself 10 years ago, and I talk to myself last year. And I read that entry. And I will tell you.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “You know, and that was 34 years ago. And I guess it's not literally true that I haven't missed a day. There may have been a day that was I was unconscious, but it is certainly fewer than five days I've missed in 34 days. And I do not have any sort of particular system. I write the date, the time where I am, and then I usually write I got up. I then record the previous 24 hours. I take notes on every conversation I've had. I write a book report on every book I've read. I write a movie report. Every movie I've watched. I write an art report in every museum or artistic thing I've experienced.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “But I had promised myself that if we got a good review of the New York Times, which in 1985 meant something. It doesn't now, but it did mean something that our rotten off Broadway was going to continue, that I would buy myself a computer and a bass guitar and a good bass guitar. And that happened. And I bought myself my first computer. And when I first sat down, not the computer, the very first things I wrote were published as short stories. I mean, I went from not writing to writing constantly. And then it's very funny to think of this. But at 30 years old, I thought, man, I haven't kept the journal. There was all this street performing. And when I was homeless and living on the streets and all of that that I haven't recorded, nothing's going to happen from here on. But I guess just for the hell of it, I'll start keeping it jerked.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Well, you know, it was very funny when I was 30 years old not keeping a journal. And I can't read my own writing and my typing Is very, very fast, but I'm very bothered by any sort of mistake at all. And then I go back and retype it. And it's terrible. My mom was a typing teacher and taught me to type. So I've been typing since I was 12. So there was no way that worked for me to record things before computers. When I was 30 years old, we became very successful off Broadway. And Teller and I had a very strong rule that we did not celebrate successes because we'd seen friends get a record contract and then buy a car. And that seemed incredibly stupid. So when Teller and I had big things happen, we would, you know, celebrate with coffee and donuts. And that was the end.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “But then again, it's very hard for me to imagine taking them less. But those are kind of my rules. I haven't given them with the kind of bullet points and clickbait one would like to see them. But those are honestly the kinds of things I think about when I'm assessing whether something is real or not.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Sadly, you have to be a little careful of that. I mean, I remember when there were all sorts of stories about Lron Hubbard having pitched his exact Scientology as a science fiction novel, you know, the year before. And you hear that story as a skeptic and you go, boom, bang, boom. And you got to be very careful of those things. People that I know who are very, very anti-Trump and very distressed about that were thrilled to pieces that he hired prostitutes to piss all over. They love that story. And immediately all their skepticism went away as to where that came from. And also the fact that Trump is not hip enough to do anything slight. I would dig him so much more if that story had a chance.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “All the stuff that the generation before mine was kind of taught, like don't try to get something for nothing, which is also known as Second Law Thermodynamics. Don't try to get something for nothing if something seems too good to be true it is. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't need a lot of evidence that the Starbucks around the corner is going to still be there tomorrow. I need a lot of evidence for perpetual motion. And those kinds of things work pretty well. The other thing is if you desperately want to believe something, if something feels you would.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “You want to, if random selects or you select, you're doing okay. If someone selects you, you have to be a little cautious. So if somebody comes to you and says, if you go to somebody and say, I want to talk to you about my problems, I want to be friends with you. I want to pour my heart out. Your chances are pretty good of whoever you talk to is going to be okay. If someone comes to you and says, I can help you with your problems, your spitey sense should tingle. I mean, that is a very different.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “With my brand new Tesla, and I run into the Starbucks and I say, listen, my wife is about to give birth. We have to go to the hospital. She's in an Uber. Here's the keys to my Tesla. Here's my phone number. Please, can you park it somewhere and then give me a call later and tell me where? Thank you. And I run out. And I just throw those keys in the air and someone grabs them. My Tesla is really safe. Really, really safe. If someone comes up to me and says, can I help you? I have to be very, very wary. That's because they have selected themselves.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “First thing one needs to do is to work very hard to be skeptical without being cynical of the 7 billion people on the planet if we round it off about 7 billion are good. I do not believe in God. I also do not believe in the existence of evil. I believe there's very little bad in the world. There's a lot of mistakes, but not people maliciously trying to do bad things. So your chances of coming across someone who is actually scamming you are fairly low. My rule of thumb is if you pick someone you're really safe. If they pick you, you have to be careful. If I drive in front of a star,”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Of the scientific method to guard against that. But there isn't a lot in the scientific method to guard against people lying to you. I mean, test tubes don't change themselves from one place to another overnight. Radio telescopes don't give false information that is malicious. And Randy has been there and I think has done huge amounts for science in letting people know that people who claim psychic powers probably don't have them.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Changed their career path that much. I mean, the other one, of course, was Houdini, and the other one who will come back to over and over again is Bob Dylan. But he was able to change his career from magician to skeptic. And Randy is also an autodidak. He did not go to college, which is something else I share with him. And therefore was not taken seriously at first by scientists and has since then made it very clear that when scientists are testing people who claim powers, they kind of need a magician on their team because scientists are not used to being lied to. There's an awful lot of study of scientists being aware that they lied to themselves. I mean, N-waves and all of this other stuff that's come up. And there's a lot of things put in place.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “He became a guiding light from when I met him when I was 18, you know, 73 until, you know, this second. I have not given a bio of Randy. I've talked about myself personally. James Randy was a magician, an escape artist, a mentalist, and then realized that he was hurting people with his lies, his claims of mind reading. And he became a crusader to let people know that parapsychology and the paranormal were as far as we've discovered so far non-existent. He's one of the few people that is”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “I'm enough of a skeptic and I'm aware enough of the science around this that I do know that what I'm telling you here is emotionally correct, but probably not actually accurate because that long ago and that emotional, you conflate things and that every time you tell the story you change it. So I'm aware of that. I'm aware that I don't know. So I want to make clear to you that I'm telling you a poetic and emotional truth. And Randy was so open and so giving and showed me, I mean my entire career path. I mean I could not have done magic if not for Randy. I could not have been a kind skeptic without Randy. I would not have the balls I have without Randy.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Within a short period of time, that I realized that it was possible to be moral and be a scientist and be moral and be a magician, the latter being harder, of course. Teller and I started a conversation about how magic”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “With the Dewey Decibel system knows magic and juggling are very close together under the arts nobody cares about. There was ventriloquism and mine. And arts that aren't really art. And I happened upon a book by Duninger, who was a medalist in the 30s and 40s, I guess. And there in it was a trick very similar to the one that Crescent had done. And I realized that I had been scammed. And I was appalled that a scientist would lie to children. And my grades went from straight A's to flunking in everything. I hated science. I hated magic. I was very, very alienated. I went to rock and roll. And it wasn't until I was 18 and met Teller and Randy.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “Didn't allow him on. And once again, I don't trust my memory. I keep an elaborate journal. So that's one way to teach yourself that you don't remember things properly. But he had done a magic trick on a television show that he passed off his science. He passed off as ESP. This is Crescan. And I'm not from a wealthy family. My father was a jail guard. But I was very, very good in the sciences and very good in school. And so they bought me this ESP kit to study the science that I'd seen on television. And I spent a lot of time with my parents running these ESP experiments and doing all of this. And then because I was juggling at the time, I would go to the library. And as everybody who's familiar,”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “Well, Randy is so much to me that it's almost hard to give a capsule bio. I mean, personally, Randy is maybe the most important person outside of my family in my entire life. I just was with him a couple days ago for about an hour, which is about all he really has the energy for now. But I was mentalism, fake mind reading changed my life rather profoundly. A hack, horrible medalist named Kreskin, was on some TV talk show when I was a child, when I was about 12. And it couldn't have been Johnny Carson because Johnny Carson”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Many of those questions are answered with one word, and that is Dylan, an interest in Bob Dylan and that kind of writing have brought me to everybody from Solomon Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens to Brian Koppelman. We talk a lot about Dylan. I think we, oh, I do know where we met. It was some sort of party for one of those ocean numbers, Oceans 11, 12, 13, one of those. Here in Vegas. And we were up at some big fancy party, which I didn't want to be at. And he came over and started chatting with me. And we started arguing rather aggressively about religion. And I'm happy to say that he came around to much closer to my point of view over the years. But we talked about Dylan and we talked about God. Those two ideas almost interchangeable to any thinking person. Except there is a Bob Dy”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “Jeez, I don't know. That's somehow lost in the fog of time. I know that he had seen our show and really, really liked it. And I don't know exactly how our paths crossed. It's funny because I consider him a friend. We've spent quite a bit of time together. But I don't really know how it started. I'm sure somebody does. Maybe he does. Maybe his wife does. Or maybe that information is lost for all time. And I don't think humanity is much worse for it.”

    2020-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT