Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. I'm Zach McNeice and this is Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing from My Heart Radio. Whizach? Is this one
Speaker 1: of those summer archives shows again? Yeah, I'm hosting the
Speaker 1: show today. For the rest of the summer. Every other week,
Speaker 1: different members of our team are featuring two of their
Speaker 1: favorite interviews from the archives. And who were your guests? Well,
Speaker 1: today we have Penjalalette and David Blaine. Wow, that sounds
Speaker 1: really good. Good luck, Zach, Thanks Alec. I've always been
Speaker 1: fascinated by magicians. It's an intriguing sector of the entertainment
Speaker 1: world that can turn an audience of any age into children,
Speaker 1: eyes wide on the edge of their seats. Today we're
Speaker 1: revisiting interviews with two of my favorite magicians, Penjalalette and
Speaker 1: David Blaine. David Blaine's magic is stunning. Some of my
Speaker 1: favorite performances of his are from his Street Magic series,
Speaker 1: where Blaine walks up to people on the street and
Speaker 1: performs card tricks and other illusions so mes rising. People
Speaker 1: are often left staring in shock, eyes wide, almost in terror,
Speaker 1: wondering how it's possible to have witnessed what they've just
Speaker 1: seen with their own eyes. The other side of the
Speaker 1: world of magic and illusion is the theatrical show. Our
Speaker 1: first guest today, Penjalette, performs as one half of the
Speaker 1: world famous duo Penn and Teller. Together, Penn and Teller
Speaker 1: star in one of the longest running shows in Las
Speaker 1: Vegas history. Penjealette is also a musician, juggler, and inventor.
Speaker 1: A towering figure at six ft six, Gillette is an
Speaker 1: outspoken atheist and libertarian who, perhaps not surprisingly grew up
Speaker 1: in a traditionally religious household. I was raised a Congregationalist Massachusetts, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: Western mass and I went to church. When I got
Speaker 1: to be uh junior high age, my parents said I
Speaker 1: could go to youth group instead of Sunday morning services.
Speaker 1: I wanted to, and I went to youth group, and
Speaker 1: I believe I was the only one who took it seriously.
Speaker 1: And the ministers boke with us about religion, and I
Speaker 1: read the Bible and then came in with some questions,
Speaker 1: and I had a wonderful, wonderful minister who was very
Speaker 1: open and would talk with me for hours. I did
Speaker 1: this exactly the way the church would want you to
Speaker 1: do it. There was no horrible rebellion, there was no
Speaker 1: fuck you, there was no screaming, there was no being molested.
Speaker 1: I have not one horror story. I've just kind, wonderful,
Speaker 1: sweet people and an intellectual discussion. And I went, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't like the idea of putting God before my family.
Speaker 1: My family is more important to me, and I don't
Speaker 1: like the idea of their being a love greater than
Speaker 1: the love I have from my family and friends. And
Speaker 1: I do believe that humans are good on their own
Speaker 1: without this, and I don't think anything happens after we die.
Speaker 1: And my minister, there's no way to tell this story
Speaker 1: without making him look like a goofball. But he's not
Speaker 1: a goofball. There's a sensible thing he called that. My
Speaker 1: mom and dad had said, you know, Penn is doing
Speaker 1: wonderful in youth group, but we're having discussions, and I
Speaker 1: believe he's doing a better job at converting the other
Speaker 1: children to Atheism than I am with Christianity. So one,
Speaker 1: why don't you just not have him come to youth
Speaker 1: group anymore? And I talked to my my parents and uh,
Speaker 1: my dad till the day he died, prayed for me
Speaker 1: and would say what And he would say to me
Speaker 1: all stuff all the time, like, well, pen, you were
Speaker 1: such a good Christian, I'd say, except for that, not
Speaker 1: accepting Christ than Dad. My dad used to say, and
Speaker 1: this is, you know, just a tribute to My dad
Speaker 1: was the most most wonderful man I've ever met. My
Speaker 1: dad would say to me, I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: work so hard after I die to get you and
Speaker 1: your mother into heaven. But I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: I just have to work very, very hard. You can
Speaker 1: make it so much easier for me. You have to
Speaker 1: know that my mom and my dad never said hell
Speaker 1: or damn or any absenter hardcore in the house, hardcore,
Speaker 1: no alcohol, no hell there, damn. When I started doing
Speaker 1: card tricks my house, my father was like, you won't
Speaker 1: be gambling though. You can do card tricks, but I
Speaker 1: don't like having a deck of cards in the house.
Speaker 1: I would say, Dad, I'm just doing manipulations and tricks.
Speaker 1: Well that's fine. Now. When people, obviously, when they think
Speaker 1: of you, they think of you as part of a
Speaker 1: tandem and your partner. It's always mystified to me, the
Speaker 1: mute performer, what's that like for him to play that
Speaker 1: role all these years. It's thirty years forty. It's good God,
Speaker 1: and uh, it is a very He never shut up
Speaker 1: when he's homes Well, that's that's the joke. Everybody in
Speaker 1: the crew will tell you. Penn speaks on stage, doesn't
Speaker 1: speak off stage till there, doesn't speak on stage, never
Speaker 1: shuts up when if you were to come to one
Speaker 1: of our repearsals, Uh, it's me sitting over the corner
Speaker 1: reading the paper. And tell they're talking to everybody handling them,
Speaker 1: tell us essentially live via Lucille Ball direct. We can't
Speaker 1: and but you know, tell their direct Shakespeare. You know
Speaker 1: he's he's directing The Tempest in Chicago, a wonderful production
Speaker 1: with real magic in theater. Yeah, but more and more
Speaker 1: directing and more writing. And he's very articulate. Who's a
Speaker 1: high school Latin and Greek teacher, and he is a
Speaker 1: classic scholar. Where does he live where as his home Vegas?
Speaker 1: You guys both live in this about five miles apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you have a theater that your own theater and
Speaker 1: it's really near obligated. The contract is how many months
Speaker 1: of the year until we die? I mean we do.
Speaker 1: How many? We do forty six weeks a year for now, yeah,
Speaker 1: when you if we ever cross, if you ever, we
Speaker 1: don't have time off, and we sometimes do runouts on
Speaker 1: the on the day, on the day, supply six weeks.
Speaker 1: In Vegas. We do about two d and fifty shows
Speaker 1: a year a little more. It's a pretty easy schedule,
Speaker 1: but I make it as hard as possible because I
Speaker 1: play upright bass jazz bebop for an hour before the show,
Speaker 1: and then we meet everybody after the show, So we
Speaker 1: turn a cushy ninety minute gig into three and a half.
Speaker 1: Steve Martin yeah and everything. Yeah, yeah, I do. When
Speaker 1: Steve's in town. I love to talk music with When
Speaker 1: you were a child, I mean I grew up and
Speaker 1: anything magic or anything of the paranormal, if you will, Uri, Geller,
Speaker 1: crest Skin, all those things. I mean, I grew up
Speaker 1: glued to that. I love that. Where you glued to
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff? Where did it come into your life?
Speaker 1: I was. I was horrified by kreskin Um. I believed
Speaker 1: when he went on he went on a television show
Speaker 1: and he did an experiment, as he called it, and
Speaker 1: I believe that this was an area of science. I
Speaker 1: was fascinated by science, an area of science that I
Speaker 1: wanted to study. And my parents, who I said, weren't wealth.
Speaker 1: He bought me was a little ESP game as piece
Speaker 1: of ship with little pendulum in the ESP cards. And
Speaker 1: then I would do that with my parents over and
Speaker 1: over and then um, because I was becoming a juggler
Speaker 1: and practicing all the time in the library. If you
Speaker 1: cast your mind back to the Dewey decimal system, you
Speaker 1: know that the nine hundreds are religion, magic, juggling. They're
Speaker 1: all there together, which is great. My whole life is
Speaker 1: in the nine system. I happened to see a dune
Speaker 1: In jr. Book The Mentalist from the forties. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he was the most popular mentalist mind reader. And I
Speaker 1: opened the book on magic and they're in there was
Speaker 1: the description of how to do the trick i'd seen
Speaker 1: Christ can do as an experiment. And that moment in
Speaker 1: the library was a complete breakdown. I mean I went
Speaker 1: I could not believe that a scientist, which is the
Speaker 1: way I perceived it, had lied to me. And I
Speaker 1: went almost humiliated in front of my parents. By the way,
Speaker 1: here's the birth of the bullshit show too. By the way,
Speaker 1: absolutely everything my whole life. And I also pretty much
Speaker 1: at that point went from straight a's to failing because
Speaker 1: I said to my physics teachers and all scientists, lie,
Speaker 1: why am I listening to you scientists? Life scientist? And
Speaker 1: I hated magic, hated magic because why would you be
Speaker 1: fooling people? It's hard enough to figure out about the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why why are you doing that? And my parents, you know,
Speaker 1: would try to console me. It's just a stupid little
Speaker 1: game pad. God, Now it's okay. No, No, I'm a juggler.
Speaker 1: I'm not a magician. I'm not all of this. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I met Teller, who I met when
Speaker 1: I was in high school. Until they're seven years older
Speaker 1: than me and amazing Randy and may explain to me
Speaker 1: the very simple thing that if you put a proscenium
Speaker 1: around something, it's all of a sudden moral. If Robert
Speaker 1: de Niro runs around New York saying he's Travis Bickle
Speaker 1: and he's a cab driver, he is insane. If he
Speaker 1: does it in a movie, he's a genius. And the
Speaker 1: same thing with magic. If you come to our show,
Speaker 1: all the stuff we do would be immoral. If you
Speaker 1: take that proscenium. So you did a lot on the street.
Speaker 1: You were on the street, yeah, yeah, but but always
Speaker 1: as a juggler, it wasn't. Uh. So we try to
Speaker 1: follow this very strict moral code in the pen and
Speaker 1: tell the show, which is what I call the sawing
Speaker 1: a woman in half code sawing a woman in the half,
Speaker 1: which is we saw a woman in to have haves
Speaker 1: on stage. You see that no one leaves the theater
Speaker 1: thinking they've witnessed a murder. Nobody. That is my rule
Speaker 1: for all magic. If I'm going to do a mind
Speaker 1: reading trick, you cannot leave the theater thinking that I
Speaker 1: can read minds. It must be exactly the same as
Speaker 1: not witnessing a murder. There's a lot of intellectual and
Speaker 1: moral gymnastics that need to be done in order to
Speaker 1: follow that code and tell her and I A big
Speaker 1: part of our writing tricks is trying to be intellectually honest.
Speaker 1: So what is required of the street performer that you
Speaker 1: had the street and they score well, I, you know,
Speaker 1: I uh, with my parents permission, you know, left home
Speaker 1: when I was eighteen and was essentially homeless, hitchhiking around
Speaker 1: the country hippie and I supported myself juggling on streets
Speaker 1: and juggling in bars and uh, you need to uh,
Speaker 1: you need to gather a crowd, and you need to
Speaker 1: collect the money to the bit of a barker, yeah,
Speaker 1: or is it called to the carny talker? Um? I
Speaker 1: was a really really good street performers A matter of
Speaker 1: fact teller. I'm not sure how to take this, but
Speaker 1: tell her always says, you know, the best thing you've
Speaker 1: ever done in your career was your twelve bit of
Speaker 1: street art. There was really nothing better than that. Where
Speaker 1: was the money good? What was the place that was like?
Speaker 1: I had a rule that I would only work places
Speaker 1: that it was illegal, because I thought that was sexy.
Speaker 1: And I worked head Out Square in Philadelphia, and uh,
Speaker 1: I knew all the police officers, and the police officers
Speaker 1: would come to my show and say, the second someone
Speaker 1: can convince me that you're begging, i'll arrest you. Until
Speaker 1: then you're doing a show, and I would do. I.
Speaker 1: I was making so much money. I was nineteen years old,
Speaker 1: and I was making so much money street performing. I
Speaker 1: went to an accountant and I said to file tax
Speaker 1: I said, I want to file my taxes on the money.
Speaker 1: I made, and he said what do you do when
Speaker 1: I said, I'm a street juggling and he said, how
Speaker 1: much do you make? And I told him and I said,
Speaker 1: I have you know, I keep records of every hat
Speaker 1: I pass and how much I make, and I have
Speaker 1: it all laid out here, and I have when I
Speaker 1: brought it to the bank and when I did everything.
Speaker 1: And he said, and you're nineteen. I said yeah. And
Speaker 1: he said, if you go to the I R S
Speaker 1: And tell them you made this much money juggling, they
Speaker 1: will arrest you as a drug dealer. They will assume
Speaker 1: you're a drug dealer. And then he said, and oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, I think you're a drug dealer. By
Speaker 1: the way, I don't believe. And I said, well, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm really making this. He goes, take the money, don't
Speaker 1: put it in the bank, keep it in cash, walk away,
Speaker 1: and when does that change? Meaning then you're doing that?
Speaker 1: And then I put all that money. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: totally ruined my voice because I'd work for five people
Speaker 1: outside no training, just scream and put put chlorosceptic in
Speaker 1: a coke can and just go. Or is your costume
Speaker 1: to oh yeah? My rule on street performing was you
Speaker 1: have to look so that people are embarrassed to give
Speaker 1: you less than a twenty. I wore a three thousand
Speaker 1: dollar watch when I Street performed, I wore a really
Speaker 1: expensive suit, really expensive pants. Was perfectly groomed, much more
Speaker 1: than what I was, like Michael Douglas, than the artful Dodge.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. My idea was, I want to make as
Speaker 1: much money as Johnny Carson, so I'll be out there
Speaker 1: looking like Johnny Carson. So the idea was I would
Speaker 1: gather a crowd and you come up and go, man,
Speaker 1: he's really funny. He's really a good juggler. You'd be
Speaker 1: with your date and go, I can't give him fifty cents.
Speaker 1: I got a twenty up. You can't do that. And uh.
Speaker 1: And then Teller would alternate with me in the same spot,
Speaker 1: which we kind of owned, and the um, the local
Speaker 1: hoodlum children, UH loved us because what I would do is, I,
Speaker 1: you know, have them take care of my money and
Speaker 1: buy props from me and take care of that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Trusted them. So anybody else that came in
Speaker 1: to take that spot, the police arrested them and the
Speaker 1: local kids are asked them. So we had that spot
Speaker 1: to ourselves, and I would go to all the store
Speaker 1: owners that are around there. I would go up after
Speaker 1: every show and say, you're getting enough traffic in and out.
Speaker 1: I'm not blocking. Everything's okay. The police officers liked us.
Speaker 1: He join the Chamber of Commerce, Yes, pretty much, and
Speaker 1: we did that very well. Then then I really got
Speaker 1: interested in doing uh Tell, and I wanted to do
Speaker 1: a full evening show. We thought that the ideas that
Speaker 1: we had were more than just the twelve minutes. So
Speaker 1: we took all the money that we've made street performing
Speaker 1: and put it into buying lights and sound and and producing.
Speaker 1: Our very first shows were at the Walnut Street Theater.
Speaker 1: They had a space that would seat like seventy people
Speaker 1: and they had put that aside with a grant for
Speaker 1: experimental theater, and the experimental Theater company uh could not
Speaker 1: get it together in three months to put an experimental
Speaker 1: show on. Now you know, they couldn't in three months
Speaker 1: get it together. So they came to Teller they gone
Speaker 1: to college with, and said, you're doing your little show,
Speaker 1: can you just put it in and we'll let you
Speaker 1: have the theater for free. Now they were getting grants,
Speaker 1: we could have the theater for free. So we put
Speaker 1: the show up and we charged whatever it was ten dollars,
Speaker 1: and we got wonderful reviews and put the place up
Speaker 1: and then the uh the head of the Walnut Street
Speaker 1: theater called us in and said, uh, so the theater
Speaker 1: company up there, they gave you the they gave you
Speaker 1: the space, and how much money they give you to
Speaker 1: put this on? We said nothing. They just gave us
Speaker 1: a space, which is a big help man, huge help,
Speaker 1: not to pay rent. We can really make money on this.
Speaker 1: We're supporting ourselves. This is trip we're getting going. He goes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And they were paid money to put a show on
Speaker 1: in there, and they just give to your free. So
Speaker 1: you guys are welcome to use the theater whenever you want.
Speaker 1: And they're losing all their grants. So we became we
Speaker 1: became the people that killed killed the experimental theater in
Speaker 1: that particular. And they were like, what did you do
Speaker 1: to us? We said we didn't even we didn't know.
Speaker 1: We were supposed to lie. We could have said we
Speaker 1: can't make money in there, but as it turned out,
Speaker 1: we could make money, you know, and in a hundred
Speaker 1: seed theater, we we could fill it up and make
Speaker 1: money doing nhows a week. Um, so you you you
Speaker 1: perform inside and you start to do the show. And
Speaker 1: what kind of a show was it back then? Well,
Speaker 1: we did. We was a three person show. Then we
Speaker 1: had a we had a third partner who did classical music,
Speaker 1: and it was called the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society, and uh,
Speaker 1: we got we did a thing that was so nuts.
Speaker 1: Teller was in charge of the putting the ads together
Speaker 1: and putting them in the paper, and I was in
Speaker 1: charge of getting critics to the show. So I just
Speaker 1: put on my leather jacket and went, you know, to
Speaker 1: the list of people that were critics, and walked up
Speaker 1: to their desks and said, Hi, I'm Penn. We're doing
Speaker 1: a show next Friday. We can give you free tickets.
Speaker 1: Would you come and review our show? To the you know,
Speaker 1: to the head critic, the Philadelphia Inquirer, who went, what
Speaker 1: are you doing here? No, you go through your press
Speaker 1: agent and do this, and he said, why should I
Speaker 1: come see your show? And I went, because I can
Speaker 1: do this. And I picked up his little spindle that
Speaker 1: he put papers on and rammed it in my head
Speaker 1: and jammed it in my nose. Doing a thing called
Speaker 1: blockhead and old Carney trick and you know. And then
Speaker 1: he took out a cigarette lighter and did a little
Speaker 1: bit of fire eating stuff and said, come to our show.
Speaker 1: And he was not supposed to review little shows. He
Speaker 1: was the big critic, but he came to see our show.
Speaker 1: And then he wrote a rave review and which piste
Speaker 1: off everybody because other big shows are opening. And then
Speaker 1: Teller said you have to call him up and thank them.
Speaker 1: So I said, okay, So I called him up and said,
Speaker 1: thank you for your review. It's gonna sell a lot
Speaker 1: of tickets. We're doing really well. And he said did
Speaker 1: you like the review? And I said, well, it's gonna
Speaker 1: sell a lot of tickets. It's gonna do really well.
Speaker 1: And he goes, wait a minute, did you like Did
Speaker 1: you like the review? I said, well, it's selling a
Speaker 1: lot of tickets and I appreciate it. Thank you very much, sir.
Speaker 1: And he said, what are you saying. I'm saying it's awful.
Speaker 1: You don't understand the thing we were doing. It's all
Speaker 1: you say kind stuff about us. But I did this
Speaker 1: show so someone would understand it. You missed the point
Speaker 1: of everything I was saying. It broke my heart. And
Speaker 1: there was a long pause and he said, uh, can
Speaker 1: I do an interview with you for like a few
Speaker 1: hours and then I will write another review. I'll see
Speaker 1: the show again. And I said sure. I told tell her,
Speaker 1: just tell us to just take up. I said, yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: I told him his review sucked. Tell us what are
Speaker 1: you doing? And he, uh, two weeks later wrote another
Speaker 1: bigger review that said more, this is a retraction of
Speaker 1: my previous review. I said they were wonderful, and they are,
Speaker 1: but everything else I said was wrong. And then he
Speaker 1: went in to wrote a whole other review. So now
Speaker 1: we've got a hundred seat theater that have had two
Speaker 1: front page of the Entertainment Section reviews within two weeks.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, we're selling ticket was sold,
Speaker 1: not you know, hundred seats. You know, selling a hundred
Speaker 1: seats is not that hard, but it was huge to us.
Speaker 1: And then a producer sauce there, and we went out
Speaker 1: and played in San Francisco for three years at a
Speaker 1: theater there there was a hundreds or something. I remember
Speaker 1: reading an article once about because I'm thinking about Vegas
Speaker 1: and what I know about Vegas acts, and I've been
Speaker 1: to Vegas, a few times, but not not a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm not a gambler. I go see shows, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't, I never, I never get dug gamble. With
Speaker 1: your background, it seems like I always I would go
Speaker 1: and people would gamble, I think, and I lost, and
Speaker 1: I thought, I I can't afford this money to throw it.
Speaker 1: And I'd see guys who do that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't want to name names, but I got some pretty
Speaker 1: high end friends of mine who really blow a lot
Speaker 1: of dought on that. I go, God, how do you
Speaker 1: do that? And it's so irresponsible. So many other ways
Speaker 1: to waste money, yeah, exactly, like like boats. I was
Speaker 1: like that as worse than gambling. It's so because you
Speaker 1: can drown. But I was reading this article once, this
Speaker 1: wonderful old article about Wayne Newton, and they said, how
Speaker 1: uh you know. The big punch line was that the
Speaker 1: guy goes and he and he takes with a stop
Speaker 1: watch the measure of the show, and Newton would come
Speaker 1: out for the encore and say, hey, you know we
Speaker 1: we never do this. I never do this, but I
Speaker 1: just love this crowd. I never played this song, but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just gonna throw all my my, my
Speaker 1: my preferences to the wind here and he comes and
Speaker 1: we never stayed for another song. I'm gonna do one
Speaker 1: more song and he just teases the oar and the
Speaker 1: guy and every show the show exactly and exactly the same.
Speaker 1: The show was exactly like one hour and fourteen minutes.
Speaker 1: You've never seen way Newton show that it was. It
Speaker 1: was just great. So it was phenomenal. Yeah, probably still is.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in a few of the idea
Speaker 1: of the show being for the man who you and
Speaker 1: your partner do two and fifty shows a year, regardless
Speaker 1: of the fact that it's in your own space and
Speaker 1: you know it's it's obviously it's a very lucrative thing.
Speaker 1: Is like, do you go out there and there's a
Speaker 1: menu like a playlist? We do? We do the same show?
Speaker 1: You do the same show. Now we're always writing new stuff.
Speaker 1: So I say the same show, it's the same show
Speaker 1: the night before, not the same show as the year before. Um,
Speaker 1: and I love that. You know, there's this thing that
Speaker 1: happens um in the variety arts. You know, I'm just
Speaker 1: old enough, I'm sixty, you're a yes, I am, I am,
Speaker 1: I'm a I am a crowd. Man, Um, I'm sixty.
Speaker 1: So when I was learning to juggle at fifteen, sixteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: I could just meet the guys who worked vaudeville their
Speaker 1: whole life, right, I could just meet the guys who
Speaker 1: wrote a show when they were seventeen years old and
Speaker 1: we're doing it when they were eighty and hadn't changed
Speaker 1: in it. And yeah, but there were guys jugglers, you know,
Speaker 1: because juggling it's not like music. You can't do a
Speaker 1: whole different routine with juggling. You learned that trick. It
Speaker 1: takes it six years to learn the trick. That's the
Speaker 1: trick you're gonna be doing for a while. You know.
Speaker 1: You know how to throw a cigarette behind your back,
Speaker 1: catching your mouth and throw a match catching then light them.
Speaker 1: That's what you're gonna do. That's your closer for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. And there's something you're able to
Speaker 1: do after doing something ten thousand times, not a thousand,
Speaker 1: ten thousand times, where you're able to communicate with the
Speaker 1: audience in ways that you don't even know what's giving
Speaker 1: them the information. When you first do a gag. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things you see on Saturday Night Live
Speaker 1: you know, I always want to say, boy, I'd like
Speaker 1: to see this sketch after they did a ten thousand times.
Speaker 1: As Bob Dildan said, I want to play guitar without tricks.
Speaker 1: You know, all the tricks should be gone and it
Speaker 1: would just be the material that you're just selling. And
Speaker 1: I just love that, so tell her and I try
Speaker 1: to be very conscientious. And there's some stuff that's only
Speaker 1: a few months old, but there's other stuff that we've
Speaker 1: been doing forty years. I'm Zack mcneis in for Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin on our summer series from the Here's the Thing Archives.
Speaker 1: Alex been hosting these kinds of surprising and in depth
Speaker 1: conversations with performers, policymakers and authors for more than a decade.
Speaker 1: If you want more, be sure to check out the
Speaker 1: complete list and Here's the Thing dot org. After the break,
Speaker 1: we'll hear more of alex conversation with Penjolotte. I'm Zach
Speaker 1: McNeice and this is Here's the Thing. One of Penjolotte's
Speaker 1: favorite weekly pastimes is movie night at his home, where
Speaker 1: a less than traditional viewing experience ensues. Tuesday nights after
Speaker 1: my show, people come over and we watch Vegas in
Speaker 1: Vegas over my house a killer screening room. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have about Sometimes people come over and well, yes, but
Speaker 1: this is not showing the love of movies. This is
Speaker 1: just thirty people screaming. And people think when they come
Speaker 1: over that it's going to be witty. It's not witty,
Speaker 1: simply obscenity. It's simply spewing out the bile from the week.
Speaker 1: Is a group, it's a group encounters much more than
Speaker 1: more than And now we're in the middle of twenty four.
Speaker 1: We're watching every season of and I am so trying
Speaker 1: to convince Keefer to come by one night because I
Speaker 1: would love to have you. Yes, how how tall are you?
Speaker 1: Exactly came, you know, just we we and it's just
Speaker 1: it's just screaming. He's just gonna get because you know,
Speaker 1: I tend to because I have my children are nine
Speaker 1: and ten years old, and because I do so many
Speaker 1: shows and have so much stuff going on, I really
Speaker 1: don't get a chance to hang out with friends. So
Speaker 1: this is my two hours a week that just it's
Speaker 1: what what's something? Yeah, exactly what some guys to do
Speaker 1: with pokers? Just it's just yelling. So when did you
Speaker 1: become this arbiter of bullshit? When did when? Did it it?
Speaker 1: Just the things that you strike you as bullshit? That's
Speaker 1: whatever word you want to use to sing, genuous or
Speaker 1: false sortever, did it sat in your crawl? How long
Speaker 1: before you decided I got to do a TV show
Speaker 1: out of this? We we have always wanted to do
Speaker 1: a skeptical TV show always, and we started pitching that
Speaker 1: in the eighties. Yeah, and we're because we're both. You know,
Speaker 1: there's two very strong schools in magic. There's the Houdini school,
Speaker 1: which is the we are or as Robert Houdin said,
Speaker 1: we are actors playing the parts of magicians. Uh. It
Speaker 1: also starts with the sixteenth century the Discovery of Witchcraft,
Speaker 1: which is the first book written that says this stuff
Speaker 1: is fake. We are doing tricks. There's that whole school
Speaker 1: that believes that the magician is someone who helps us
Speaker 1: study how we ascertain truth. In other words, I've studied trickery,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about the truth. Then there's a whole
Speaker 1: other school, which is you know, David Blane, for instance,
Speaker 1: who's a friend of mine and who we get along with. Well,
Speaker 1: we have a very strong philosophical disagreement. He believes that
Speaker 1: the magician's job is to distort reality, that you must
Speaker 1: leave his show thinking things that aren't true. He believes
Speaker 1: that strongly and can make a very coaching argument for it,
Speaker 1: which I disagree with, but I know I like them. Um,
Speaker 1: there's those two schools, and tell him I've always been
Speaker 1: strongly in the Houdini amazing Randy camp on that. Ben ps,
Speaker 1: I don't see a David Blaine theater in Vegas, by
Speaker 1: the way, so I don't know who I'm putting my
Speaker 1: money on, although we had him on the show and
Speaker 1: he was He's great, He's wonderful. He's a great, great
Speaker 1: magician and h and a great guy. Um. So we've
Speaker 1: been pushing this and I would go in and say,
Speaker 1: the nuts always have the passion and the scientists always
Speaker 1: have this low key, measured way. What we will give
Speaker 1: you in bullshit is we will do the best to
Speaker 1: give you the scientific point of view done with the
Speaker 1: passion of a nut. And I'm willing to give you
Speaker 1: all that passion and rip my heart open and be
Speaker 1: wrong and go off half cocked. But I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: it for the other side, and and the and the
Speaker 1: topics came to you, was like, what was the first
Speaker 1: The first show is very complex because the first show
Speaker 1: was about talking to the dead, and we conceived the
Speaker 1: show to attack, you know, John Edward and those people
Speaker 1: who say they can communicate with the dead. And I
Speaker 1: conceived it intellectually, and then while thinking about it, my
Speaker 1: mom died at the age of ninety in two thousand
Speaker 1: and we started doing the show in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: and this happened. Forgive me for only in this one
Speaker 1: way comparing myself to Hudini, But Houdini had this intellectual
Speaker 1: dislike for people who claimed to talk to the dead,
Speaker 1: and it was a lot of Houdini's posturing, I do
Speaker 1: better tricks than them. I do tricks no one can
Speaker 1: figure out their tricks. Aren't that good? And then his
Speaker 1: mom dies and Um Arthur Conan Doyle CHERYLA. Holmes writer,
Speaker 1: it was a big believer in in spiritualist. Judini wanted
Speaker 1: to be around him because Zudini Um was the son
Speaker 1: of a rabbi, but uh, but it was not well educated,
Speaker 1: and Arthur Conan Doyle was very acted and very well educated,
Speaker 1: and Judini was thrilled to be traveling in that circle.
Speaker 1: He was cheap carney trash, traveling the circle of the intellectuals.
Speaker 1: He loved Eric and his mother. Judini's mother died and
Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle's wife did automatic writing, okay, which was
Speaker 1: you just without thinking, you would just write, and it
Speaker 1: was the spirits talking through you. And Arthur Conan Doyle said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you miss your mom so much, because Judini
Speaker 1: was another similarity, a mama's boy, which I was. I
Speaker 1: was very close to my mom and Houdini, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a little dangerous, you're gonna talk to my mom,
Speaker 1: but okay. So his wife sat down and then did
Speaker 1: automatic writing and a ton and Doyle's wife, yeah, And
Speaker 1: at the top of the page I would have given
Speaker 1: the bay to be there was a cross and the
Speaker 1: first words were dear Harry, and then it went on. Now,
Speaker 1: what Arthur Conan and his wife didn't know was that
Speaker 1: his mother didn't speak English. He was born in Budapest.
Speaker 1: He claimed to be from Appleton, Wisconsin. He was actually
Speaker 1: born in Budapest. He was the son of a rabbi.
Speaker 1: Cross at the top probably not right, and his mother
Speaker 1: never once called him Harry. That was a stage name.
Speaker 1: So Houdini felt what it feels like to have your
Speaker 1: image of someone you love distorted. And Houdini went apes
Speaker 1: ship and then the second half of his career was
Speaker 1: all busting these people. King and so we were going
Speaker 1: to do Talking to the Dead, and I we did
Speaker 1: that show, uh, you know, within a year of my
Speaker 1: mom dying, And so it was very, very passionate because
Speaker 1: the point that people don't make is a lot of
Speaker 1: times the people that do this communication with the dead,
Speaker 1: they say that they're bringing solace to people. The most
Speaker 1: valuable thing I have in my life is the memories
Speaker 1: of my family, my mom and dad, also my children.
Speaker 1: The new memories I'm making, but let's let's go with
Speaker 1: from the past, the memories of my mom and dad.
Speaker 1: If I come to you grief stricken about my mom
Speaker 1: and you claim that you're communicating with her and then
Speaker 1: we have some sort of communication, what you have done,
Speaker 1: you can call it bringing solace, but you can also
Speaker 1: see it as distorting my memory. You've now said something
Speaker 1: that she never said, And I cannot think of a
Speaker 1: crueler thing. In order to get power and make money,
Speaker 1: you're doing this, and it's actually the most Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's horrible. I am naturally not cynical, and
Speaker 1: when you're naturally not cynical, you bump into this stuff
Speaker 1: all the time. I tend to uh, I tend to
Speaker 1: be skeptical but not cynical. And people always put those together,
Speaker 1: and they are very different emotional states. You know, Skepticism
Speaker 1: is is cold and cynicism is hot. You know. Cynicism
Speaker 1: is is Uh, everybody's full of ship, everybody's lying to us,
Speaker 1: everybody's doing this. Skepticism is let's get to the truth.
Speaker 1: And those are two very different things, you know. And
Speaker 1: I talked to Bill Moore about this, because Bill Moore's
Speaker 1: proudly cynical and I am proudly skeptical, and we are
Speaker 1: different things. It's a very different reactions. And and I
Speaker 1: think that if you get to Pollyanna, and I am
Speaker 1: very Pollyanna, I am much too optimistic. I'm much too straightforward.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things you get, you get with
Speaker 1: a with a perfect you know, everybody in show business
Speaker 1: complains I'm from a dysfunctional family. I drop out of
Speaker 1: those conversations. You know, my my dad never got the
Speaker 1: memo that Dad's just supposed to give you conditional love.
Speaker 1: He never got that. He was just unconditional love and
Speaker 1: supportive and even thinks he didn't understand. My parents tried
Speaker 1: from the time I was seventeen until the day they died,
Speaker 1: tried to get me to cut my hair. And the
Speaker 1: really funny part of it was that this boy, this
Speaker 1: baby laugh is my mother. When she was in her
Speaker 1: eighties and I was in my forties. My mother actually said,
Speaker 1: I just love this moment. My mom sitting there and
Speaker 1: she goes, you know, Pen, when you were a young man,
Speaker 1: having the long hair was fine, but now that you're older,
Speaker 1: I mean you're older than middle aged, and you have
Speaker 1: some gray in there. You need to get your hair cut.
Speaker 1: And I said, Mom, this is how far we've come.
Speaker 1: We've now come to the point where now it was okay.
Speaker 1: When I was young, that never happened, because every single
Speaker 1: time she saw me, that battle went on. But I
Speaker 1: want to say, and I want to say this proudly
Speaker 1: to the world, that before my mother died, I went
Speaker 1: out one evening when visiting her and we remembered to
Speaker 1: get milk on the way home. Magician and entertainer Pendelotte
Speaker 1: to hear the full interview of this show, go to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing dot org. Magician David Blaine is most
Speaker 1: widely known for his television specials, where he often pushes
Speaker 1: the limits of his own body. He spent thirty five
Speaker 1: hours on a hundred foot high pillar with no harness.
Speaker 1: He encased himself in a six ton block of ice
Speaker 1: for sixty three hours, and in two thousand six, at
Speaker 1: Lincoln Center in New York City, Blaine spent seven days
Speaker 1: and nights submerged in a tank of water as a
Speaker 1: public spectacle, which culminated in his attempt to break the
Speaker 1: record of eight minutes fifty eight seconds for underwater breath holding.
Speaker 1: I witnessed the stunt live. Ultimately, Blaine fell short of
Speaker 1: the record, managing to hold his breath for an incredible
Speaker 1: seven minutes and eight seconds before he finally took a breath,
Speaker 1: long before the body punishing stunts and card tricks on
Speaker 1: the street. David Blaine came from humble roots. We grew
Speaker 1: up really poor. So my mother in Brooklyn. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: mother raised me as a single mother, working multiple jobs.
Speaker 1: She actually grew up with a really wealthy family and
Speaker 1: when she was eighteen, she was living at the Sharon
Speaker 1: Neveland with her family that was the of the Jewish mafia,
Speaker 1: one of the top families that was on the cover
Speaker 1: of Time Life magazine. All these crazy things, and she
Speaker 1: felt that that that the whole family and all the
Speaker 1: corruption was really bad. And eventually, at age eighteen, she
Speaker 1: tried to kill herself. So she went to rehab and
Speaker 1: she had kind of a coming of age, and she
Speaker 1: moved to Brooklyn, never to really speak to her family
Speaker 1: for the most part again. And then she met my
Speaker 1: biological father. She met him in a nondenominational church and
Speaker 1: when they fell in love, he immediately got shipped to Vietnam.
Speaker 1: So she waited for him. Where was he from? He
Speaker 1: was Puerto Rican in a mixture of other things, and
Speaker 1: didn't know him too well. I only met him a
Speaker 1: couple of times. So they fell in love. He got
Speaker 1: sent off to Vietnam, and when he came back, as
Speaker 1: many of the soldiers, he had witnessed things there that
Speaker 1: completely destroyed it, like he saw his close friend get
Speaker 1: hung up on a tree alive and gutted, and all
Speaker 1: these terrible things. When he came back, my mother had
Speaker 1: waited for him, and he was having nightmares and waking
Speaker 1: up with violent you know, screaming, yelling, breaking, So she
Speaker 1: got pregnant. When she told him a few months later
Speaker 1: that she was pregnant, at that point he looked at
Speaker 1: her and said, I don't want to see you anymore
Speaker 1: and he left. So that was it and my mother
Speaker 1: put everything, everything that she had into me. We lived
Speaker 1: in a sixth story walk up. We started in flatbushed
Speaker 1: and we went to park slope and it wasn't what
Speaker 1: it is today, you know it. Aged three, my biological
Speaker 1: father showed up. I was ringing the doorbell because I
Speaker 1: guess he wanted to see me and maybe her, And
Speaker 1: when she came downstairs, he punched during the nose, broke
Speaker 1: her nose and everything like that. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like my first jarring and you know, terrible memory of things.
Speaker 1: But anyway, at around the age of four, her mother
Speaker 1: had given her a Tarot deck of playing cards. It
Speaker 1: was a regular deck of cards of Tarot images on it,
Speaker 1: and she gave it to me and I cherished this
Speaker 1: deck of cards and carried it everywhere. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: that my mother did is when she had time, she
Speaker 1: would always take me to museums, libraries, bookstore, everything that
Speaker 1: she could just to educate me and show me other things,
Speaker 1: which was way more valuable than any of the toys
Speaker 1: that i've you know, you could ever give or get.
Speaker 1: And so I would wait for her at the library
Speaker 1: and a librarian that was working there showed me the
Speaker 1: simple self working mathematical book of magic Tricks using that
Speaker 1: deck of cards. I always said, so I learned something
Speaker 1: very simple, And when my mother showed up, I did
Speaker 1: this to her and she went crazy like she had
Speaker 1: witnessed real magic. And that was the beginning of the
Speaker 1: love for performing and learning more and continue. You thought
Speaker 1: I could just get a Vegas lounge filled with people
Speaker 1: like my mother, then I'd be said, rip it. But
Speaker 1: the other thing that happened was I was also born
Speaker 1: with my feet turned in, so yeah, but really bad.
Speaker 1: So I had leg braces and it's like Forrest Gump
Speaker 1: and I had leg braces and things like that. So
Speaker 1: when you're in Brooklyn without a dad and you're alone
Speaker 1: a lot, and you can't run and you can't be
Speaker 1: athletic escape, No, that's part of it. But you're also
Speaker 1: picked on because when I wasn't at the library waiting
Speaker 1: for her to finish, on days that she was working. Later,
Speaker 1: I would go to the y m c A. And
Speaker 1: I was on the swim team. So I couldn't beat
Speaker 1: the kids swimming because my legs didn't and they still
Speaker 1: don't actually, but they didn't work perfectly. So in order
Speaker 1: to beat everybody, I just wouldn't breathe. So at the
Speaker 1: age of five, I learned that you know, they have
Speaker 1: to turn their head like this to breathe. There I
Speaker 1: would just swim and I wouldn't breathe. So I started
Speaker 1: to at a very young age, build up this inforance yeah,
Speaker 1: or this ability to just use your brain to override
Speaker 1: the pain basically, and I would win. And then if
Speaker 1: it was two laps, I would hold for two laps.
Speaker 1: So at the age of five, I started to get
Speaker 1: really good at these types of things. Now I started
Speaker 1: to play games with the kids, so I would challenge him.
Speaker 1: I would say, Okay, I'll stay under water and you
Speaker 1: can stand the water, and then when you go up,
Speaker 1: you can come down, go up, come down, go up
Speaker 1: five times. So eventually I was like that kid that
Speaker 1: could hold my breath under water while they would hold
Speaker 1: their breath, go up for a breath, come back down.
Speaker 1: Go up come but but but I didn't even understand
Speaker 1: that the science of it was that makes it very difficult.
Speaker 1: When you go up and go down and go up there,
Speaker 1: it wastes a lot of OO two. So that was
Speaker 1: kind of the beginning. And do you hold the record? Now?
Speaker 1: I had it, but it was taken away. Um, it
Speaker 1: was taken away by a friend of mine, Tom Z
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, but I became friends with him through
Speaker 1: through the breath hold when I did it on well
Speaker 1: that's where I did it for the world record, but
Speaker 1: the first time I did it was at Lincoln Center
Speaker 1: and I did it live on my ABC television show.
Speaker 1: So I held my breath and I was just going
Speaker 1: for a straight non PuO two breath hold record, which
Speaker 1: means you don't breathe PERO two first, you just purge
Speaker 1: really hard and then take a deep breath and hold.
Speaker 1: And the record at that time was nine oh eight.
Speaker 1: And I thought, for some reason I would build up
Speaker 1: a tolerance and and someholp pull it off. But I
Speaker 1: cracked at seven and thirty. So then I went back
Speaker 1: and I did the on Oprah. I did pero too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's a different world record, but that one I
Speaker 1: knew I could get and the Perro two makes a
Speaker 1: big difference of absolutely, and when you do, when you
Speaker 1: hold your breath for seventeen minutes and four seconds, like
Speaker 1: towards the end, are you blacking out? Are you punching
Speaker 1: a table to try to keep yourself going? It depends
Speaker 1: and then I mean, sometimes it's really peaceful and amazing.
Speaker 1: When everything is just right, you kind of go somewhere else.
Speaker 1: But when things are falling apart, it becomes layer after
Speaker 1: layer and it gets worse and worse, and you're trying
Speaker 1: not to black out, and the pain is building up
Speaker 1: and you think you're going into cardiac arrest and you're fighting.
Speaker 1: So when it's not perfect, it becomes really bad. But
Speaker 1: when it's perfect, it's it's one of those amazing meditative
Speaker 1: assuming it was perfect done open because you did seventeen minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty good, but it started really bad. It
Speaker 1: was better at the end when I actually realized that
Speaker 1: I made it and I wasn't, you know, going into
Speaker 1: cardiac arrest. But the whole experience of it was was
Speaker 1: pretty brutal. So the Deck of Cards four years Old,
Speaker 1: your Mother is the beginning, if you will, of a
Speaker 1: sense of the power of magic. Yeah, her reactions and
Speaker 1: was and holding your breath in the pool was when
Speaker 1: you first began to embrace and durance capabilities and the
Speaker 1: advantages that could give you. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I was also in the library and I would be
Speaker 1: looking at other books on magic. So you see images
Speaker 1: of guys like Houdini, or specifically Houdini dangling from the
Speaker 1: side of a building and you look at this man
Speaker 1: chained up to the side of a building. You don't
Speaker 1: have a father figure, like WHOA, this is really crazy.
Speaker 1: So I would go to sleep at that young age
Speaker 1: and I'd have dreams of these things that I'd seen
Speaker 1: on these books. And what Judini was doing was kind
Speaker 1: of similar because he was doing things that you knew
Speaker 1: were real. Even at that young age, you could see it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not an illusion. When you're four years
Speaker 1: old and you have the magic book and you're doing
Speaker 1: the tricks to to go to the level you're at,
Speaker 1: it is instruction involved. How do you go to the
Speaker 1: next level after being the four year old boy with
Speaker 1: the deck of cards in a book. In the beginning,
Speaker 1: it's only books. It was a different day and age.
Speaker 1: That's how you learned? You learned from reading? That went
Speaker 1: on for how long? Um, until the age of eleven?
Speaker 1: Did you have a mentor? No? My mother called my
Speaker 1: great aunt who sent a check to her for a
Speaker 1: couple hundred bucks so I could go to some magic
Speaker 1: camp for a week, did you Tannin's Magic Camp. I
Speaker 1: went there and Tannin's Magic from Long Island, where I
Speaker 1: entered the competition and I won. So I had all
Speaker 1: this comps as a kid, and I started doing little
Speaker 1: parties and shows, but I never performed really from my peers,
Speaker 1: and not other than my best friends. Nobody knew I
Speaker 1: did magic, and it wasn't so you could have been
Speaker 1: I mean, these are all tripes. You could have been
Speaker 1: the life of the party. Yeah. But back then and
Speaker 1: the kids are like, oh, you're some weird though, so
Speaker 1: it's not. It's the opposite. It's like, get the yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something weird, you know, you're a nerdy or so.
Speaker 1: So I kind of kept it to myself pretty much.
Speaker 1: And uh, at around the age of eighteen, I started
Speaker 1: performing with it where, um all over New York. Really,
Speaker 1: I would just I'd be walking off the deck of cards,
Speaker 1: shuffling cards in my hand and like the guys you
Speaker 1: know that they were the parking garage would see me
Speaker 1: and they'd reacted just a simple shuffle. I was practicing.
Speaker 1: So I'd go and do magic and I would get
Speaker 1: all these amazing reactions from people, and it was addicting.
Speaker 1: Who was at the top of the heap when you
Speaker 1: were a kid, when you first became aware, and they're
Speaker 1: they're just amazing using magicians, but they're not doing talk,
Speaker 1: they're not known, but they're incredible. So they would just
Speaker 1: do these in there in private world. No, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: they'd all meet at this little deli in New York
Speaker 1: and like the Earl in nine, it was called Rubens.
Speaker 1: It was on Madison and thirty eight, and it was
Speaker 1: you know, it was it was not the deli that
Speaker 1: they would let us meet. It was the back room
Speaker 1: of a deli and all these yeah, none seriously, none
Speaker 1: of them. But the people in the deli were happy
Speaker 1: because they like magic. So the magicians do stuff. And
Speaker 1: then the magicians were you know, more green grass. Of course,
Speaker 1: the father. I went to school with Barney, but his
Speaker 1: card do you ever hang out with him? Yeah? He
Speaker 1: knew all my relatives. So eventually, yeah, it was funny though,
Speaker 1: those are the kind And then my great aunt when, uh,
Speaker 1: when the one that put me to magic camp, that paid,
Speaker 1: gave that, gave my mother that or three? When so
Speaker 1: when when I started to make, you know, a little money,
Speaker 1: because I was on TV here and there, which my
Speaker 1: great aunt at a hundred years old living in San Antonio,
Speaker 1: Texas thought was, I was, you know, this incredibly rich
Speaker 1: guy would order from body from Party green Grass, from
Speaker 1: the sun Gary every other week, and she's alone in
Speaker 1: San Antonio and this little oh and and everything you
Speaker 1: can take up astray and locks and this and that
Speaker 1: filth everything they ship it down there. Once I showed
Speaker 1: up when she died. When she died, I came there
Speaker 1: the next day to handle everything. And I get there
Speaker 1: and again she lives alone in a hundred and three
Speaker 1: when she died, lives alone. I get there and the
Speaker 1: next day a huge FedEx arrived from Party green Grass
Speaker 1: and it's either loaded with this insane amount of food
Speaker 1: that nobody could eat them. When you do a show
Speaker 1: in the world of magic or illusion or whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call it, and I'm gonna ask you what
Speaker 1: do you call it magic? I mean, I just like
Speaker 1: the word magic because it's a general term and it's easy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people get it. So when you when you when you
Speaker 1: think of Houdini escaping, because a lot of his was
Speaker 1: escape dustry, is that viewed is very very simple and easy.
Speaker 1: Now have things advanced and now because that guy put
Speaker 1: so much in so what he was doing it was
Speaker 1: about like just being tough, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I think he was very tough and willing to go
Speaker 1: through whatever the hell it took. So it's like very
Speaker 1: few people have that kind of tolerance to this day.
Speaker 1: I mean even if your physical pain. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: just tough. I'm assuming he would be because you're a
Speaker 1: very physically powerfully built person. Not right now, Well, is
Speaker 1: there an exercise regiment throughout your career you've had to
Speaker 1: do in order to have the strength, because a lot
Speaker 1: of these things require tremendous strength. Big time you're standing
Speaker 1: on a beam for you were up there h thirty
Speaker 1: six hours hours? How is that on your body? Well
Speaker 1: that you know, when I was a little kid in
Speaker 1: school and I get in trouble and the teacher would
Speaker 1: say go stand in the corner. I was like, come on,
Speaker 1: this is easy, Like you stand for forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be hard, so yeah, and then you
Speaker 1: can apply that. So it's like how long can you
Speaker 1: stand in one place? So that's really what it's about.
Speaker 1: So I would practice just standing in one place, and
Speaker 1: you know, I'd put a chair somewhere and just stand
Speaker 1: on and see how long I could do things like that.
Speaker 1: But in order to prepare for an event, no, well,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a training involved. Yeah. No, when it
Speaker 1: comes to something like that, I would I build really
Speaker 1: heavy weight vests or chain mail things like that, and
Speaker 1: I would just climb stairs, so I'd add sixty pounds,
Speaker 1: run upstairs, go jogging around the park, do all these things,
Speaker 1: and I would hide it snowe city. But you build
Speaker 1: up a real a real tolerance, and a real strength
Speaker 1: and an ability to to endure anything. And with a
Speaker 1: body that you put through those things, especially the breath
Speaker 1: holding thing, I'm going to assume it. You don't have
Speaker 1: to answer this question that there's a whole in you
Speaker 1: of things you just don't do. You don't smoke, you
Speaker 1: don't take drugs, you don't take alcohol, or are you
Speaker 1: a little more liberal? I go through extremes. So when
Speaker 1: I'm in training, I guess. So when I'm training, I'm
Speaker 1: like extremely, I eat by the by a clock and
Speaker 1: buy a scale. But when I'm on the other extreme,
Speaker 1: I'll have like you know the opening of the movie,
Speaker 1: I'll have another ship that one. But there's a supreme
Speaker 1: discipline and then you let it drop, right, It's an
Speaker 1: extreme on both ends. Is you're getting older, is it
Speaker 1: tougher to do? You're not old? But no, no, But
Speaker 1: I mean you know you feel the difference, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely noticeable. It's it's it's more work put in,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't feel more difficult. One of the things
Speaker 1: I read is your desire to do some sleep deprivation
Speaker 1: endurance record. Correct. I've been obsessed with that one. Why
Speaker 1: just because it's so difficult. It's a thing during every
Speaker 1: endurance thing that I've done, it's always a sleep deprivation.
Speaker 1: That's ultimately the most difficult part. I mean, sleep deprivation
Speaker 1: for me has really had a tremendous impact on my body.
Speaker 1: For me, at least, I struggle. I have a terrible
Speaker 1: problem sleeping. Although they say, like Edison and Lincoln, a
Speaker 1: couple of guys used to take naps um throughout the day.
Speaker 1: So they would only sleep a couple of hours a night,
Speaker 1: but they would take fifteen minute naps and Edison would
Speaker 1: hold like a set of keys in his hands, so
Speaker 1: if he nodded off, he dropped the keys and would
Speaker 1: wake him up. And that proved to be very effective.
Speaker 1: So I think there's there's different ways to well, I'm
Speaker 1: in a different business. Toda Edison and Lincoln Warren and
Speaker 1: those guys, actually they looked like ship today. They really
Speaker 1: looked terrible. They look wasted, tired. But I think especially
Speaker 1: but I think there is a way to build a
Speaker 1: good sleeper. Um, what's your normal constitution? Like borderline narcalyptic?
Speaker 1: You are? Yeah, but I wake up every morning at
Speaker 1: like five am. And even if I'm up, like yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wake up when when at the crack of dumb.
Speaker 1: But um, I nod off very easily, like I could
Speaker 1: easily just lights out and that's it. And I mean
Speaker 1: made conversation with all of my friends are at meetings,
Speaker 1: I'll just not off right. And so my friends said
Speaker 1: to me that he was a makeup artist and a
Speaker 1: hairdresser in the movie business, and he said he worked
Speaker 1: with Elizabeth Taylor and she would go to this place
Speaker 1: at the Clinic of Jovenetta in the Italian Alps, and
Speaker 1: they would go there and eliminate tobacco, alcohol, salt, sugar, caffeine.
Speaker 1: They ate this very restricted diet. And these people would
Speaker 1: go there and you would just pass out numb from exhaustion,
Speaker 1: like every afternoon at like two o'clock and sleep to five,
Speaker 1: wake up, have dinner, go back, pass out at nine thirty,
Speaker 1: sleep ten hours. You just slept for a month, and
Speaker 1: when the month was over, she lost thirty pounds. It
Speaker 1: was a weight loss probably feel amazing. It was a
Speaker 1: weight loss clinic and there and the key to their
Speaker 1: weight lost thing was to induced just this ridiculous amount
Speaker 1: of Yeah, the diet part is amazing too, though, Like
Speaker 1: we're taking away salt, sugar and all that stuff that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it makes your body function that much better. What's
Speaker 1: your weakness? Food? Was David Blaine The Farest Pizza. Luckily
Speaker 1: it's in Brooklyn. In sitting now magician David Blaine. If
Speaker 1: you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to follow Here's the
Speaker 1: thing on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. More with David Blaine after
Speaker 1: the break. I'm Zach McNeice in for Alec Baldwin, and
Speaker 1: this is here's the thing. David Blaine is always thinking
Speaker 1: about the next way he can push his body to
Speaker 1: the limits. But for him, the best delusions always have
Speaker 1: some truth to them. I try to do things that
Speaker 1: are real and magic. So I go, you know, I
Speaker 1: do use a camera and project things, but I also
Speaker 1: will drink, you know, a ask full of kerosene, a
Speaker 1: gown of water, light of fire on the stage and
Speaker 1: then put it out. Or I'll hold my breath for
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen minutes and the water tank on the
Speaker 1: stage and um like the ice picked thing that I
Speaker 1: did to y'all do that. So I mix it up,
Speaker 1: so it's the concept is real or magic? What's happening
Speaker 1: to entertain the audience? Are they like their bartenders? Like?
Speaker 1: Are there waiters? Like distributing drinks to the ground while
Speaker 1: you're holding your breath right on you. The way I
Speaker 1: used to do was in the beginning, it started with
Speaker 1: an act where I would do I'd be underwater and
Speaker 1: I would do all these magic things underwater, like I'd
Speaker 1: smoke a cigar underwater. I would have an eel come
Speaker 1: out of my mouth. I would do all of these things,
Speaker 1: but it started taking away from that, I'm actually holding
Speaker 1: my breath the entire time. So basically what we did
Speaker 1: is we took all of that away and just made
Speaker 1: it about the actual feet of endurance and let them
Speaker 1: walk around and feel it and see if it's real
Speaker 1: and interact with it, and that became much more effective.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of like when you see a
Speaker 1: guy that's risking his life for that entire duration and
Speaker 1: if you believe that he's really not breathing, that stands
Speaker 1: on its own without the actual tricks. So it was
Speaker 1: it's playing with that line of like how far can
Speaker 1: you push yourself before you crack? Live in front of
Speaker 1: an audience that I'm intrigued by. The Delian Deli on
Speaker 1: Madison was called one Again Rubens and you and are
Speaker 1: you a Magic Castle person? Have you hung out there?
Speaker 1: I have friends have friends that performed there and described
Speaker 1: to people what kind of a function that service. It's
Speaker 1: a private club. Yeah, there's a bunch of amazing magicians
Speaker 1: that you know that that hang out there and socialize there.
Speaker 1: But so when people come, they get to see these
Speaker 1: improvisational sort of improvisational magic shows. It's pretty amazing if
Speaker 1: I went there years ago, But it depends you know
Speaker 1: who's there. So if it's like if people are lucky
Speaker 1: to see like Derek, they'll Gaudio and uh and Garrett
Speaker 1: Thomas or some of these guys performed there, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like WHOA. There might be a lot of people
Speaker 1: who you know and Saime. In my business, there's journeyman
Speaker 1: actors who are doing we theater who are the great
Speaker 1: undiscovered actors. You know, they don't have big careers in
Speaker 1: film and TV, but but they're phenomena. They just they
Speaker 1: just crushed that time. So there's guys out there who
Speaker 1: are famous, amazing, but that you'll never know. Is it
Speaker 1: because there's only room for so many? Do you think
Speaker 1: there's only so many seats at a table up there
Speaker 1: at the top. No, I don't think so. I just
Speaker 1: think like there's different things to work on. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of magicians complain about houdini showmanship skills during his
Speaker 1: lifetime because they say, oh I could do that better,
Speaker 1: I could do this. But Houdini was a showman, so
Speaker 1: he was kind of thinking about the the bigger picture
Speaker 1: in certain senses. So there are guys that could do
Speaker 1: much better slight of hand than him, or could could
Speaker 1: do moves that were better routines. But he was thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the actual showmanship of on a bigger scale.
Speaker 1: So before you go out, whether it's on Oprah, any
Speaker 1: kind of endurance event you've done, exhibition, any show you've done,
Speaker 1: whatever you've done, is there a state you have to enter?
Speaker 1: Is there a regiment you adhere to to get your mind?
Speaker 1: Because I would imagine you have to have the most
Speaker 1: intense level of concentration known to man, right, which is
Speaker 1: why I do so few like I do such little things,
Speaker 1: because when I go into something, I put everything into it.
Speaker 1: You know, the movie Houdini is it's it's a wonderful movie.
Speaker 1: It's enjoyable, but it's a little shiny. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's a Tony Curtis and Janet Lee and the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But there are moments that are thrilling, and you carry
Speaker 1: into it your obsession with Houdini and a man that
Speaker 1: did those kinds of things back then. And there are
Speaker 1: intimations in that room of the supernatural where they've got
Speaker 1: some kind of otherworldly dial tone that they're making their
Speaker 1: phone calls on there that you and I that other
Speaker 1: people don't have. Yeah, that's the movies, right, that's the movies.
Speaker 1: So in real life, to you, it's all reality, and
Speaker 1: it's all technical and it's all your hard work, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing about anything that's done in that world. No,
Speaker 1: that's the stuff I'm most interesting. Is I like the
Speaker 1: idea that like anything that I do, anybody could do
Speaker 1: you really believe that that? Okay, does your religion come
Speaker 1: into play in any way in your life? I mean
Speaker 1: that that's a good question. So the last thing my
Speaker 1: mother said before she died was God is love, and
Speaker 1: I kind of I think that that that's kind of
Speaker 1: what I look at it as I look at you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of have blind faith in a weird way.
Speaker 1: It's funny though, because I'm so skeptical of everything. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it's like I feel my mother
Speaker 1: there when things are going really bad. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of where I'm at now, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: my life, it's become so um uh so spiritual. But
Speaker 1: you know, I actually just thought about something. I do
Speaker 1: think that, like what you do is very like what
Speaker 1: you said, Is it is it real or do you
Speaker 1: think the powers are real? And I think part of
Speaker 1: being a really good showman is a magician is similar
Speaker 1: to acting because I think you kind of have to
Speaker 1: believe that what you're doing is magical while you're doing it.
Speaker 1: So I think part of it is you play into that,
Speaker 1: that commitment to this thing actually being magical. You are
Speaker 1: a solo act, correct, you've never partnered with anyone, You've
Speaker 1: never performed with anyone. No, but when I when I
Speaker 1: was doing my tour, I have a different Magicians do
Speaker 1: magic while I was breathing pure oxygen getting ready to
Speaker 1: go into the tank. So when you're shooting a project,
Speaker 1: when you're making a film, like as we're sitting here
Speaker 1: right now, we're being filmed, what's the conflict for you,
Speaker 1: if any when you are being told by people and
Speaker 1: now you have a collaborator, whenever you start shooting it's
Speaker 1: a collaboration. Is it all get worked out really, really easily?
Speaker 1: Or do you find that collaborating with people is tough?
Speaker 1: I mean, with him, I'm lucky because he's an amazing addition.
Speaker 1: So but but if somebody clicks, well, but if some no,
Speaker 1: he just has a great vision so if somebody has
Speaker 1: a great vision that goes beyond what your vision is,
Speaker 1: then it works. Well. If somebody's if you're fighting with
Speaker 1: somebody to try to like do something good, then it's
Speaker 1: a nightmare. But if you have but that's vision is
Speaker 1: let's do better than what you're doing, or or let's
Speaker 1: do better than what you're doing, then it's exciting because
Speaker 1: I know that in films, you know, directors sometimes are
Speaker 1: one Glen Carry Glen Ross, and he was a good directors,
Speaker 1: very very helpful man. It's also the guy that directed
Speaker 1: the Ricky j F two assistants and was speaking of
Speaker 1: him or or Copperfield, of any of the more well
Speaker 1: known people. Uh do you get like do you get
Speaker 1: an email of V now? And then the Copperfield says
Speaker 1: to you, I speak to both of them, the one
Speaker 1: always wondering world just burnt to the ground like that
Speaker 1: you seem. And I hope you don't take this the
Speaker 1: wrong way because I don't know you that well. I
Speaker 1: mean I know your person and I've seen you, and
Speaker 1: you seem like a very warm person. You seem to
Speaker 1: give a lot of love in your heart. You talk
Speaker 1: about your mom, you have a daughter and of course,
Speaker 1: in my mind, you're in that tank for seventeen minutes,
Speaker 1: you're doing one of these crazy things you're doing, and
Speaker 1: you know, all of a sudden you've crossed the endurance
Speaker 1: line and you've blown a gasket and had a heart
Speaker 1: attack and a tank of water and you're dead. Jesus
Speaker 1: does death hang over you? I mean, I I think
Speaker 1: you know. It's not like I have a death wish,
Speaker 1: So I'm never trying to go to the point that's
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna die. I train really hard, and I study,
Speaker 1: and I work slowly, and it's kind of based on
Speaker 1: estimations and mathematics, and I've done it this much, so
Speaker 1: now I can do it this much. And I slowly
Speaker 1: push and push. So I try to assume that I'm
Speaker 1: doing it in a way that I'll be okay um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I don't. I won't cancel
Speaker 1: an idea because of the danger. So you ever been
Speaker 1: scared before, You're ever in the zone doing one of
Speaker 1: these things and saying, wait a second, this is not
Speaker 1: going here. You're strapped into the rocket ship, and when
Speaker 1: the hallucinations start to come, like on the pillar it
Speaker 1: happened and uh in the block of ice, you go
Speaker 1: into another world. Things start to you, hear voices, you
Speaker 1: see people talking to that aren't there, and you start
Speaker 1: to really go into this sort of like a nightmare
Speaker 1: dream skate, but while you're awake. So it's it's always been,
Speaker 1: that's always been something that but but at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's weird because it's kind of like amazing at the
Speaker 1: same time. So this thing, you show me the pictures
Speaker 1: of the stage that you were crafting, can you give
Speaker 1: us a sense of win that might be ready but
Speaker 1: you might be doing that in the US. Win I'd say,
Speaker 1: you'll have it here in about a year. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and it will be everything that I've ever dreamed of,
Speaker 1: all put into one evening. You do it one evening.
Speaker 1: I wanted to not feel like a normal show. It's
Speaker 1: not going to be one even know it'll it'll it'll,
Speaker 1: it'll come and go, but it will be. It will,
Speaker 1: it will move, and it will change because you can't
Speaker 1: risk your life like that every night. So it's it's
Speaker 1: gotta it's got, it's got to live a life of
Speaker 1: its own. Thanks to David Blaine and Pendelt, and of
Speaker 1: course to Alec Baldwin, Here's the Thing is produced by
Speaker 1: Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donahue, and myself Zach McNeice. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Frank Imperial. ALEC will be back next week talking
Speaker 1: to documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney m