Penn Jillette

speaker

2,353 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 14 Jan

Penn Jillette’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan · Penn Jillette | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan · 14 Jan 2026 podcast

You know, people that do fake psychic stuff.

But it built up a... Rage is too unkind a word, but it built up an anger for people who take advantage of other people.

So Randy, like Houdini, went from being a very...

skilled and successful magician, Randy not at the level of Houdini, but still very good, to being a kind of crusader or scientist in terms of... I mean, one of the quick things you'd call him would be Ghostbuster, but that, you know, not in the sense of the TV show, but just saying, there seems to be nothing supernatural.

You know, that was kind of Randy's point.

Yeah, and the thing is that he searched for it so conscientiously.

You know, that's the thing that when people deal with skeptics, they often talk about being closed-minded, not being open to things.

And the truth seems to me to be quite the opposite.

The people that I've known that have worked hard on skepticism have been the ones that most...

uh, investigate.

And you end up being, uh, you know, uh, in, uh... I'd been a... I was a follower of James Arandi, and he was a mentor and a hero and a very good friend of mine, um, from the time I was 18.

And all that time, I just saw him searching out every single chance there was something supernatural and finding out there was nothing.

Which is also Houdini.

Houdini is the same story.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know of that quotation.

And what's fascinating about magic... I feel like I'm an honest liar.

What's fascinating to magic about me is you take something that is deeply and profoundly immoral in every culture, which is lying to people of your own tribe, and you put a proscenium around it, and all of a sudden, it becomes a moral, beautiful act.

And that's all because of consent.

When you go to the Penn & Teller Theater, we tell you we're gonna lie to you.

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