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Magic Vs. Lying

Lesson time 04:26 min

To convince an audience, you need to encourage them to arrive at a conclusion on their own. Penn & Teller discuss their philosophy on the deception inherent in magic.

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Topics include: Magic Vs. Lying

Penn & Teller

Teach the Art of Magic

In their first-ever MasterClass, Teller breaks his silence as he and Penn teach their approach to creating moments of wonder and astonishment.

Preview

[MUSICAL TRILL] - You have to accept the fact that in order to do magic you're going to lie. And you have to accept the fact that you don't want to, and you really don't want to, and you're fighting against that. And you have to accept that in a very, very simple way of your executive functions taking over your empathy and compassion. - One of that one of the big tricks to making something convincing for the moment to an audience is to let them come to that conclusion themselves. So instead of saying, here I have an ordinary deck of cards, you say, would you shuffle those cards for me? Now, the person is shuffling the cards, and that tells them that the cards are normal. All those cards might all be identical. But if the person is just shuffling them and not paying attention, the person has become convinced that it's a real deck of cards. The magician enables the audience to tell itself the story that we want to tell. It's very hard for them to contradict what they themselves have constructed. And that's much more convincing than when you try to force the meaning on it. - What you're doing in magic is you're exploiting the fact that it is very, very hard to accept that someone looked you in the eye and told you something that was not true. The taboo of lying to someone within your tribe, something you know not to be true, not self-deluded, not a couple ways of looking at things, but actually giving false information is one of the complete taboos. The actual looking in the eye of a friend and tell them something that's not true is one of the most perverse things you can ever do. So what you've done is you've asked for the audience, and received from the audience, a free pass to lie. - One of the things that you see any magician, even practicing, do right at the beginning until they've done it for years is if they're doing a secret move, at the moment that they're doing something sneaky they'll look up. They'll look away. They'll look any place except at what they're doing because looking at what they're doing makes them feel so terribly guilty. When they learn that they can actually look directly at the move that they're doing and they don't have to go really fast at the moment that they're doing something sneaky, they start to become good. - It's one of the reasons, I think, that there's almost too much celebration. You know, there's almost this, we've got them good. Your overcoming that. And I don't think you ever get over that. But you'll learn certain tricks. You'll learn to control your breathing. You'll learn where you look. Often in patter, you give away that you're lying by simply saying something, often true, that you wouldn't say if you were doing it for real. - That kind of stuff drives me crazy. And so that was part of my reason for not talking. I just thought it was-- I also thought it was kind of an interesting-- in the lying capacity, yes, what you are trying to do is this sort of experiment where you're ...

About the Instructor

With more than 40 years performing together, Penn & Teller have sold out shows around the world, earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, and created the longest-running headline act in Las Vegas. Now the legendary magicians are taking you behind the curtain. Learn fundamental magic tricks and the psychological tools that create amazement, at home or on stage. Expand your perception of the possible.

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Penn & Teller

In their first-ever MasterClass, Teller breaks his silence as he and Penn teach their approach to creating moments of wonder and astonishment.

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