[jazz music]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
- From the Penn & Teller Theater
at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas,
here's our host, Alyson Hannigan!
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- Welcome to "Fool Us." Tonight's show is mm-mm good.
You'll meet the greatest magic minds among mortals
who will move mountains
to mystify our two masters of misdirection,
Penn and Teller!
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
Each magician who fools Penn and Teller
wins the coveted, and possibly only, trophy in magic.
They also get to perform in the boys' Las Vegas spectacular.
And our first winner might be tonight's first act.
- I have to say that I am not that good magician, you know?
I won the World Champion of Magic,
but actually, I don't know how it happened.
[chuckles] I don't know.
I am fireman for 18 years.
You know, when it's a fire, nobody wants to see magic.
But the fireman is a kind of magician, you know?
Because make the fire disappear.
[chuckles] It's a good trick.
At home, I'm like anyone else.
I love to play video games and I love superhero movies.
I can watch superhero movies every day, all the time.
But I figured out that my hands have mind of their owns.
They do things without I notice, you know?
I--they do tricks all the--all the time,
and I want to stop.
[groans] You see?
That's why tonight, my hands will be put here.
I will do nothing, nothing, nothing,
and someone else will fool Penn and Teller.
Not me.
[bell rings]
[cheers and applause]
- Put your hands together
for one of Spain's finest, Hector Mancha.
[cheers and applause]
- Hello, hello. Hi, Penn. Hi, Teller.
I'm a big fan, I'm a big fan.
OK, I have to fool you.
I think now I have to fool them.
[laughter]
And then--I am not a great magician,
but I will fool you, OK?
♪ [imitating dramatic music] ♪
♪ ♪
[laughter]
♪ [imitates dramatic flourish] ♪
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Did that fool you? - Not yet, no.
- Not yet. You have to talk each other to maybe--
- I think he just pulled his thumb down in his hand.
- Oh.
- [stuttering] I mean, I take--
I look like I take, but this is here.
This hide it. And--
you figured it out?
- Yeah.
- That's--you too? [laughter]
OK.
Then we're going--we are going to find someone else,
and I could fool you.
OK Alyson, please come here with me.
A big applause to Alyson, big applause.
Nice shoes, Alyson.
- Thank you.
- I'm going to prepare a trick.
- OK. - With the cards.
All the cards are different, right?
- Yes.
- All the cards are different--different cards.
Different, ah? Not the same card.
The same, no.
It's clever, it's clever. [laughter]
OK. Point one card.
- Uh, that one. - That one.
OK, look, I'm going to put this card in the glass.
- A-ha.
- There, there. Now it's a mystery card.
- Mystery.
- We have a mystery card, and we need a magician.
Do you know any magician?
Not them, not them.
- Not them? - Yeah.
- I think I have somebody-- not quite a magician,
but he's great to call.
- Oh, you are going to call? OK.
- Yeah, why not?
Oh.
- Oh, wow. - This is--
- Who... - Alex--hey, no way.
- Awakes me from my off-season slumber?
[laughter]
- Well, I'll just introduce you to Alex
from "Superman and Lois." - Yes!
- It's Alex Garfin. - Hello!
- Alex Garfin is-- I am a big fan, big fan.
- I cannot wait to see
what you have in store for us today.
- [chuckles] OK, Alex. - Hi boys, hi boys.
- Are you are a great magician to fool them?
- I think you and me together, I think we could do it.
- Let's go. - [claps and grunts]
- OK, Alyson, talk with Alex and ask for a card, any card.
- All right, Alex. Pick a card, any card.
- But concentrate. Concentrate yourself.
- I'm going with the six of clubs.
both: The six of clubs.
- This is--this is interesting. The six of clubs.
[laughter]
Do you want to change maybe for another card, maybe?
Because there's a lot of cards in the deck--a lot of cards.
There's maybe the five, the-- there's a lot of cards in here.
You want to change, maybe?
- No, I'll check, I'll check, I'll check.
- OK, cool. I'm going to show the card to you,
only to you, but really, really slow, really slow.
I don't do nothing with the hand.
Really, nothing.
Look these--their faces.
They are thinking, what are you going to do?
Really, really slow, I take the card,
and I'm going to show to you.
One card, Alex.
You said one card, any card in the world.
52 cards, and you said this six of clubs.
And this is not only
the six of clubs.
[cheers and applause]
Look at the faces! - I did it!
- A big applause, big applause!
- Alex, you're amazing. - I did it!
- Very well, very good. Thank you to Alex.
- Thank you, Alex Garfin. Woo-hoo!
[Alex giggling] - And Hector Mancha!
- Thank you.
- All right. Thank you.
- Wow, this is amazing trick. - Oh!
- I don't know how he do that. - [laughs]
- It's crazy, I don't know. It's--
- So does Alex get the trophy if you fool him?
- No, no, for sure.
- So what do you love most about being a fireman?
- The most lovely part of being a fireman
is that you don't know what will happen.
Someday it's a fire maybe, someday it's a cat.
Maybe someday it's a fire with a cat.
[laughter] - Oh, no.
You seem very laid back.
Like, I hope that as a firefighter,
you get to the fires a little, like, more intense.
- Yeah.
When we work, me and my partners,
we are not like, oh, come on, go!
Come on! [laughter]
- I guess it's good that you're calm.
I just hope you're fast.
- It's better, it is better.
Like a stage, you know?
- Yeah.
- On a stage, you have to be calm.
Even you throw cards to the floor...
- [laughing] - You have to be calm.
- OK, Hector.
Let's find out if Alex Garfin fooled Penn and Teller.
- Yeah, let's find. - Hola, Hector.
- Qué tal? [laughter]
- We're just talking to you about Alex, right?
Because you didn't do the trick.
You did nothing. - No, I did nothing.
- I'll just tell you, as soon as you
say you're Spanish, we pretty much just
bring down the trophy. [laughter]
Every person from Spain fools us.
It's as simple as that.
You guys are the best, and your style
is just one of the funniest people we've had on here.
But it's an amazing routine, and we didn't catch anything,
but we think that it was a free choice that Alyson had.
There's no words there about a force.
We don't think there was a force.
It looked clean to us.
But we noticed that after Alex picked a card,
which we know from the rules of the show
could not be set up in advance.
After he picked a card, you went and said
you could have picked another,
and you pulled the deck out and looked through it.
Now, since you were looking through the cards
and had them in your hand after he said the name of it,
you could have copped the six of clubs.
Now, here's what befuddled us so badly,
is you kept, you son of a bitch,
showing your hands empty, conspicuously,
over and over again.
So if you palmed out the six of clubs, where did you have it?
And we think-- [laughs]
And as I'm about to say this,
it sounds stupider and stupider.
But if we're right, it's going to be great.
We think you were standing kind of behind Alyson,
and we think maybe you had like a little piece of tape
or a wax or something,
and you stuck the card to Alyson's back,
showed your hands empty a lot, and--
- The back of her? - Yeah.
[laughter] - No, I--no.
- You had nothing on your back?
- I--no. I didn't feel anything.
He was close to me, but I didn't feel him touch--
- He was very close to close.
- He was touch--he was not touching me, that I felt.
- Did you put anything her?
- On the back on there? No. - No.
And you didn't-- when you showed the cards,
you didn't--[sighs]
We should have just stuck with you're Spanish,
because once you're Spanish, you fool us.
It's as easy as that. [audience exclaiming]
Yeah. - We have a fooler!
- Whoa! No way! Oh!
Alex will be so happy! - Alex gets the trophy!
- Alex, this is for you, Alex!
- Oh, Alex. - Oh, let me do it!
Let me do it! - Yay.
- Thank you very much, Thank you very much.
Oh, thank you. Oh.
Very good--oh, no way.
- Hector Mancha and Alex Garfin fooled Penn and Teller!
- Thank you all. Thank you very much.
- Oh, thank you so much.
- Thank you, man. Thank you. Bye-bye.
- We'll trust you're going to give that to Alex.
Yeah. [cheers and applause]
[sighs] It looks like our boys have been busted,
and another Fooler's Trophy leaves the theater.
Come back after the break, and see if it can happen again.
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
[jazz music]
♪ ♪
- Welcome back to "Fool Us."
We already have one Fooler in the house,
but for Feng Shui purposes, it feels like this house
could use a second one.
I hope our next magician can help us out.
- Hi, I'm Adam Parisi, and I'm a straight edge weirdo.
By day, I write software.
By night, it's a slightly different story.
I traveled an unusual path to get here.
My mom, she had a tough time bringing us up.
We were homeless for a little while there.
I remember watching my mom and her friends play cards,
and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
So I learned to shuffle and deal when I was only five,
but I didn't get into magic until my 20s.
Because of how I grew up and the struggles I went through,
I don't want my kids to have to go through that same thing.
So I went back to college at 25
to study computer engineering,
and that's how I got my 9:00 to 5:00 job--
when I'm not moonlighting as a crazy magician
in the weirdest venues you've ever seen.
And now my path has led me here.
I don't know if I'm going to fool Penn and Teller,
but I know my kids are going to go crazy
when they see this insane stunt on TV.
[cheers and applause]
- Give it up for Adam Parisi.
[cheers and applause]
- Thank you.
So my two daughters absolutely love
having a magician for a dad.
That's not a joke.
They're not jaded teenagers yet.
I'm still cool. [laughter]
But sometimes, being a magician
can make even normal family activities a little strange,
and I will give you the perfect example.
Last year, we decided to get our first family pet.
Now, a normal family would just go to a pet store
and pick one out, but we are not normal.
We decided if we're going to pick a pet,
we wanted to do it our way.
It was going to be fun, silly, and weird, just like us.
So we picked our pet completely randomly.
We just had our daughters shout out the names
of different animals that we could adopt,
and we wrote them down.
As they shouted out dog, cat--
classics--sloth.
OK, that's my ten-year-old.
She absolutely loves sloths. Her entire world.
Turtle, unicorn--and that would be my six-year-old.
She not only loves unicorns,
but also doing everything her older sister does.
We got to about three dozen different animals
before they just started shouting out weird stuff
like T-rex or hydra. [laughter]
Now, a simple way of just picking one of these animals
at random would be to deal them down
and have one of my kids just call out stop.
Penn, can you pretend to be one of my kids?
- I sure can. - Perfect.
I'm going to need you to stare at a tablet,
and ignore everything I say.
[laughter]
Just go ahead and say stop for me any time.
[soft suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- Stop. - Perfect.
That's going to be your animal.
I want you to remember that.
I don't want to see it. Can you see it?
- I can. - Perfect.
I'm going to mix those up now.
When I did this with my daughters,
my six-year-old, she's the least trusting of all of us.
She said, Dad, you're a magician,
and you might try to do something sneaky
with those cards to get the animal you want.
I thought that was a bold accusation
coming from somebody
who can't even put a straw in her own juice box.
But to make it fair, I had my wife help us out,
and asked her to get a bag to put all the cards in.
And we'd mix them up blindly.
Alyson, can you pretend to be my wife?
- Sure. - Awesome.
I'm going to need you get your phone and stare at it
and ignore everything I say.
- Perfect. - No, no. I'm only kidding.
Alyson, ladies and gentlemen. [applause]
Alyson, right over there are some bags.
Can you just pick out any one that you want and open it up?
- Sure.
♪ ♪
OK. - And go ahead and open it.
Thank you so much.
♪ ♪
Perfect.
And you can see inside the bag,
there's no sticky stuff or extra cards.
I took all of the cards and I put them inside the bag
and then I gave it a good mix,
kind of like a zoo in a hurricane.
[laughter]
Now, I didn't even reach inside the bag
to take out the animal.
My daughters know I'm the kind of magician
who makes his living walking on fire and eating glass,
and they love that kind of stuff.
So they knew this was going to get super weird.
I went into our junk drawer and I got a nail.
And then I sealed the top of the bag closed.
[soft tense music]
Then I got a hammer,
and I nailed the whole thing straight to my face.
- Oh, goodness! - I know.
- In front of your children?
- Wait for it, Alyson. - No, don't do it!
Don't, don't--
- Here we go. - Ah!
Your children--
- Alyson, is that going into my face?
- I don't--I trust-- maybe.
Oh, my God.
- I have to admit that this is probably
the weirdest way ever to select a pet.
But Penn--Penn?
I--oh, there you--
Penn, do you remember the animal
you selected at the beginning?
- I sure do. - What was it?
- Fish.
- I think it'd be pretty cool if I also got...
a fish.
[all groan]
[applause] Nailed it!
[laughter] - It's up his nose.
- Nailed it to my face. [laughter]
OK. [laughs]
Alyson, this is for you. A souvenir.
- No thanks. - No? [laughs]
That is kind of weird. I'll keep it.
Alyson, thank you so much.
Penn, Teller, thank you so much.
I have to admit that
this is exactly how we selected our first family pet.
Yeah, the hammer, the nails, my face.
My kids loved it.
- He's bleeding.
- To be honest, my kids would have loved anything
as long as they got a pet.
And speaking of pets, Penn,
the pet that you selected at the beginning, the fish,
that was our first family pet.
And I brought her along to say hi.
[laughter] - Aw!
[cheers and applause]
- Adam Parisi! [cheers and applause]
- Thank you. - Mm-hmm.
I think you should have gotten a bigger fish bowl.
- That's just a travel bowl. She has a much larger one.
She's a diva.
- You don't really do that in front of your children,
do you? - I do, yes.
They are so over it.
I could hammer a nail into my face at dinner,
and they would just be like, whatever.
- Wow. - Yeah, I eat--
swallow razor blades, I walk on glass,
and they're just ho-hum.
- I mean, I was like this guy is such a great dad,
and then you nailed your face.
And I was like, I need to talk to his wife.
- Well, two things can be true.
I can still be a good dad, and nail things to my face.
- OK. All right, I'll give you that one.
- Yeah.
When I told my sisters that I was coming on the show,
they're huge "Buffy" fans. - Aw.
- And I was like, if I make Alyson puke,
they're never going to forgive me.
- I give them permission to not forgive you.
[laughter] - Nail, blood, eh.
- So could you see yourself as a performer in a freak show?
- If I wasn't a magician,
if this was 100 years previously,
most definitely.
I would have been touring around with the freak show.
I would have loved it. Yes. - Ah.
OK, Adam, let's go to the boys and see if you fooled them.
- Hey there, Adam. - Hey.
Nice, nice, nice, routine.
You know, I know how you feel about having children,
and having them have to deal with what their father
does for a living, you know? - Right.
- Because you know we love the sideshow,
we love the sideshow stuff.
And I'm sure the name Melvin Burkhart
means a lot to you. - Of course, yeah.
- It means a lot to me. I got to meet him.
I officiated Todd Robbins' wedding
along with Melvin Burkhart,
and saw him hammer a nail up his nose.
That act, by the way, Alyson, is called blockhead,
and that is not a magic trick.
He is hammering a damn nail up his damn nose.
- [laughing] - I saw the blood.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I can only do on my right, because I
have a deviated septum... - Ah, yeah.
- On the other side.
But that's not that interesting, is it?
The problem with blockhead--
and I think you'll agree with me on this--
is it's very hard to get a lot out of it.
So when you do blockhead, you learn it, people like it,
but you're always forced to add some sort of other trick,
and they have to have some sort of second deal
to put in there with it.
So you have to do, like, blockhead
with sword swallowing, or blockhead with fire eating.
Or what you've done in this case,
which is blockhead with a really,
really nice magic trick.
And also love the goldfish surprise at the end,
the very non-claustrophobic goldfish,
I want to point out.
You want to give that fish a nice big area
to kind of swim it off after being in there.
- Oh, yeah.
- But it's a wonderful act, and very close to my heart,
because it's all the carnival stuff and you do all of that.
But I think in my little story of Melvin Burkhart,
I might have slipped in a word or two.
So I just have to know, did we nail it?
- You nailed it. [laughter]
- OK, so you didn't fool them, but you grossed me out.
Thanks so much. - Thank you so much.
- Adam Parisi. [cheers and applause]
See Penn and Teller perform later tonight.
See them take on another magician right after this.
[cheers and applause]
[jazz music]
[cheers and applause]
All aboard the Fooler's train. Next stop is this magician.
- Hi. I'm Ben Zabin.
I would say my shows are more personal than anything else.
I like to base my act around real events
that happened in my life.
I don't do any fancy illusions or crazy props.
It's just me, and what you see is what you get.
I've been lucky to travel the world
performing at Navy bases.
I love performing internationally,
because it's a real thrill to use magic
as a way to connect with people.
In addition to magic,
I tried my hand at a bunch of other ventures.
I published a book, I launched a coffee company.
I had dabbled in...botany.
[coughs]
I currently live in Portland, Oregon,
where I produce and tour with the show Smokus Pocus.
The trick that I'm going to do tonight
is just the tip of the iceberg of what my full show is like.
Penn and Teller, I don't know if I'll fool you,
but I hope you'll be impressed by what you see.
[cheers and applause]
- Joined by six randomly selected dudes,
here's Portland's own Ben Zabin.
[cheers and applause]
- Penn, Teller, what I'm about to tell you guys
is not merely part of a magic trick,
but it's a cautionary tale about life in the digital age.
About a year and a half ago,
I got a text from an unknown number.
And this text was a picture of a dude wearing
nothing but his birthday suit.
I got a second text with another picture of the dude
in his birthday suit, and then a third picture.
Now, at this point, I'm starting to panic
because the dude in those pictures was me.
[laughter] I was birthday suit dude.
I'm looking at these pictures of myself.
And yes,
you could see my face and privates in the same shot.
This unknown texter then sends me the name and number
of everybody in my contacts list,
and then tells me to wire transfer them $500,
or else they would send the pictures to everybody I know.
So I'm panicking.
I call the police station,
and I tell them that I'm being blackmailed.
The officer tells me that it's probably
just some hacker overseas that they can't do anything about,
but that I should not send any money,
or else they would just come back asking for more.
So I said, OK, what should I do?
And the officer said,
cross your fingers and hope for the best.
And I did. You know what?
The pictures never got sent, all ended well.
And why am I telling you this?
Well, first to remind all the viewers
at home that digital media, not always secure,
especially photos.
And second, as a magician,
I try to use everything in my life as possible inspiration
for a trick.
And that's what brought me here today.
We have six dudes on stage. I've never met any of them.
They have no idea what's about to happen.
Guys, thanks for being here.
That whole experience with the hacker
taught me that it's not the best idea
to keep digital photos of privates,
which is why tonight we're going to do things
the old-fashioned way...
with hard copies.
Guys, I have six folders here.
Each of these folders has a picture of privates.
Now, five of these folders have the same picture,
and that is a picture of a private in the military,
like an army private dressed in a camouflage uniform.
But one of these folders has a picture
of my privates. [laughter]
Guys, I have a folder for each of you.
Hold them out in front of you,
and do not open up these folders, not even to peek.
That's for you, that's for you, and that's for you.
Alyson, will you help me out with this?
- [groans] Do I have to? [laughter]
- I don't see anybody else up here.
- OK, All right. - All right.
I want to leave what we're about to do
totally up to fate. - Oh, boy.
- I brought these six cards.
Each of these cards have a number.
One, two, three, four, five, and six.
Each of the guys have a number--
One, two, three, four, five, and six.
Alyson, I want you to take these cards,
hold them upside-down, and mix them up in your hands.
- OK.
- Whenever you're satisfied that they're
completely mixed up, flip over the top card
and tell us that number.
- One. - Number one.
Number one, I want you to clasp the folder
up against your chest and take a step back.
Hide the folder from the world.
If this worked, Alyson, the number that you chose,
number one, that should be the folder
that has the picture of my privates.
- OK.
- Which means that the other folders
should have pictures of the army privates.
Now we get to see how we did. [laughter]
Number two, open up your folder,
and show us your privates.
Yes, an army private!
We're off to--yeah, you too-- we're off to a good start.
Number three, open your folder.
Show us your privates.
Yes! Another army private!
This is going well so far.
Number four, open your folder.
Yes. So far you're on a roll.
- Oof. - This is good.
Number five, open your folder.
Yes!
All right, you got one left. How are you feeling?
- I mean, I'm glad it's not a picture of me.
[laughter]
- I hope it's not going to be a picture of me.
Let's see. Number six, open your folder.
Yes! Guys, we did it.
Alyson, excellent choice. Thank you so much, guys.
I appreciate you all being here.
You guys can head on off, except for you, number one.
Number one, thank you for keeping that folder safe.
- You're welcome.
- You're actually the only one that does
not get to keep the folder. [laughter]
See, some of the skeptics watching
this might be wondering,
what if they all had pictures of military privates?
You can head off stage, too, because I need the biggest
skeptic in the room to prove that this folder
really is what I say it is.
Mr. Jillette, would you please join me?
- Eagerly. - Eagerly?
I love this. - He's running.
- Should we do a dinner date first?
- No, I want to just go right to it.
[laughter]
- Who's this a picture of, Penn?
- It looks like a picture of you.
- What am I wearing? - Nothing.
[laughter] Butt-ass naked.
- What's that? - It's your little Houdini.
- It's my little Houdini? - Yep.
- It's all there? - All there.
- Then before you go back to your seat,
do we get that dinner date, or?
- Uh, yeah. - Yeah? Yes!
Alyson, do you want to join? - No.
- No? Just us, Penn.
[cheers and applause]
- Ben Zabin, everyone.
Ah.
Pretty brave you were worried about your contacts
seeing that photo, but instead,
you risked the whole audience world.
- Why not?
- Tell me about some of your greatest adventures.
- My greatest adventures magic-wise,
I've almost made a tiger appear,
but almost messed up the trick.
And a bunch of people in the audience
didn't know how close they would be
to having an unexpected guest in the audience.
- Oh, boy. - Not here in Vegas.
I was chased out of a casino in Atlantic City,
ran an underground poker ring for a while.
Uh, it's been a wild ride.
- Did you go to college,
or did you go straight into professional magic?
- I went to college for one year.
This--I was doing so many magic shows on the side
that the school kind of gave me the ultimatum
to either lose all of my credits or quit magic.
And I chose to pursue magic, and I said goodbye to school,
and it's remained fun.
And that's what counts. - [chuckles] Good.
- Yeah. - All right, Ben.
Let's see if Penn knows how you worked your magic.
- OK. - Hey, Ben.
- Hi, Penn.
- I feel we're very well-acquainted now.
- [chuckles] - I hope we are.
- One of my favorite things I've seen on "Fool Us"
was just tonight, right up there.
I really liked it.
And you're right, it is dangerous
to have naked pictures of yourself up on the web.
And you've taken something that's usually a little trick,
and making it big--
which you can do whatever joke you want with that.
And what's also interesting about this is all the words
we have for the private parts.
You use privates, you use birthday suit,
I used little Houdini.
And where I'm from, in Western Massachusetts,
it was called the limber himber timber.
It's just--[laughs]
Really good comedy, really good magic,
and a trick that I think fooled everybody on stage.
But I think we've given you enough hints
that you did not fool us.
And if we didn't give you enough hints,
we'll talk about it over dinner.
But I don't think you fooled us.
- So you didn't fool them, but you got a date?
- Didn't fool them.
And I know that you didn't get to see it,
but whether or not I fooled them, Alyson,
I want you to have this.
[laughter] - Aw, thank you.
- Thank for having me. Thank you.
- Ben Zabin! Whoo! [cheers and applause]
Enjoying this episode so far?
Just wait until you see our next act
when "Fool Us" returns.
Stick around. [cheers and applause]
[jazz music]
[cheers and applause]
- Welcome back.
We need someone a little sneaky to take down Penn and Teller.
It just might be our next magician.
Let's meet them now.
- I'm a bit of a techie, and I think it shows in my work.
I'm really into the neuroscience of magic--
how our brains work to deceive us.
[sighs]
That led to some real adventures.
For instance, I'm the unofficial Chief Magic Officer
at a big internet search company.
Let's call it Foogle.
I teach magic at Foogle headquarters
to stimulate creativity in people who work there.
I do shows on-site, too.
Lots of cool things to play with, many buttons to push.
The thing that I'm most excited about
that I've been working on for 15 months is a book.
It's creating magical experiences
for your coworkers.
It's not for magicians, it's for businesses.
I love "Fool Us." [snaps fingers]
I felt like I had to be on the show.
Penn and Teller are tough to fool, though,
so I don't know what's going
to happen for me tonight.
But I like that challenge.
If anything happens beyond that...
[snaps fingers]
I'll be as excited as a human being gets.
[cheers and applause]
- Give it up for Bay Area baffler Robert Strong.
[cheers and applause]
- My two favorite things in the world
are magic tricks and game shows...
so I decided to combine the two.
But since I'm not a competitive person,
I decided to use magic to create a game show
where you just can't lose.
It's like "Fool Us" plus "Jeopardy!"
I call it "Fool Hardy," which is also
what some people might call my attempt
to fool Penn and Teller.
Now, the rules are simple.
There's five questions, and a total of 20 answers.
There are 15 answers that match nothing at all,
and five that match the questions.
And to make this magical/impossible,
you won't see the answers or the questions before you play.
Now, starting with Teller.
Teller, I will start shuffling up the answers.
Would you please signal when to stop?
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
Excellent. What position would you like it in?
One, two, three, four, or five.
Four. Well done, Teller.
Penn, what if--
- Stop.
- Where would you like it? - Five.
Penn, you're driving along the streets of Las Vegas,
and you see a red octagon-shaped street sign.
It tells you to do what? - Stop.
- Well, actually, where would you like it?
- Two. - Two.
What should you do in the name of love?
- Stop. [laughter]
- Before you break my heart.
Where would you like it? - One.
And the last one, what should everyone do
before they smell the roses?
- Stop.
- Excellent, and that's position three.
The answers are in completely random positions,
but the questions.
Teller, please choose one, and Penn choose one,
and we'll switch places.
Two and?
- Three.
- Excellent.
And now, the moment of truth.
Are you two smart enough and/or magical enough
to win Fool Hardy?
We do answers first.
The first answer, the answer is Elon Musk.
The question, what's the name of the Tesla new car smell?
That is correct. [laughter]
Off to a fantastic start.
Answer number two, the answer is reading glasses,
car keys, and the unmute button.
The question is
name three things my parents' generation can never find.
That is correct.
[suspenseful music]
Answer number three.
They both do cavity searches.
What do dentists and TSA agents have in common?
That is correct. [laughter]
This is incredible.
The next one is FitBitCoin--
or FitBitCoin.
The question is what device counts
the calories you burn as you stress about cryptocurrency?
Now, it all comes down to this last one.
There's no guarantee there's a match,
because we had 15 extra answers.
Now, the moment of truth.
And the answer is my Netflix password--
my Netflix password.
And the question is,
what do my friends and family have in common?
Correct. [bell ringing]
We did it, everyone. [cheers and applause]
We did it. - Robert Strong.
[cheers and applause]
That was fun. - Yes.
- Have you always wanted to be a game show host?
- I think that my magic style, at some point,
was in line with the game show host,
but I kind of pivot that into trade shows.
- [laughs] OK. What is your favorite game show?
- What is my favorite-- of course, "Fool Us."
It's not a trick question. - Ah, good answer.
Do all of your magic tricks involve a game show element?
- No, they all actually involve kind of an improv element.
What I do is I write the structure of the script,
and then I allow myself to let the structure go
and play with what's in the room.
That way everybody feels like the experience
is just for them.
- And it probably makes it more exciting for you, too, right?
- Oh, no two shows are ever the same.
- Which do you prefer?
When it goes right or when it goes wrong?
- When it goes wrong, it's a gift from the gods,
from the performance gods.
That's when you can discover miracles and moments of joy
and all that.
And every once in a while,
you just have to leave with your tail between your leg
and say, nope, that wasn't it. - All right, Robert.
Let's see if your magic game show fooled our magic experts.
- Hey. - Boys.
- Hey, Robert. How are you doing?
You're really good. - Yeah.
- Really, really pleasant. Really, really sweet.
And also it's shown in this routine
that you set it up so the spectator wins,
which is really nice.
It makes it so it's not mean-spirited at all,
it's got nice jokes at the end.
It's no--no unkindness to the people you're performing for,
and I really, really like that.
And as I was watching this, I was thinking about--
I was back in New York City, and there was an art show there
of all African American art, which I just love.
I just love all the contemporary
African American artists.
And although I loved it,
there was a lot of controversy over it.
There was a big flap over the African American art.
And I don't know why that popped into my mind,
but it did.
It just popped into my mind.
And I want to play the game that you played.
You played a game where you gave the answer,
and then there was the question afterwards.
- OK. - We had to see if it matched.
Kind of a homage to Carnac way back on "The Tonight Show"
when Johnny Carson was the host.
So here's the answer,
and see if you can come up with a question.
We loved it, but we don't think so.
- Correct.
- [laughs] And what would be the question to that?
- Did Robert Strong fool Penn and Teller today?
- [laughs] Aw. - Thanks so much, Robert.
- Thank you so much. We loved it.
- Thank you. - Robert Strong!
[cheers and applause]
Grab a snack and come right back.
More magic after this.
[cheers and applause]
[jazz music]
[cheers and applause]
- Welcome back.
We don't wrap the show without adding a Penn and Teller trick
to the total package.
Here to put a bow on tonight's show, Penn and Teller.
[cheers and applause]
- You know, a lot of magicians
make the joke that this show should not be called
"Penn & Teller: Fool Us."
It should be called "Penn & Teller: Fool Teller."
And the reason is it's well-known
in the magic community and probably well-known
if you watch the show often
that I know less about magic than Teller does.
But now, we're coming on a decade.
It's a decade that I've been hosting a magic show,
and I don't really do that much magic.
So I'm changing my ways.
And Teller--I got the best teacher in the world--
is teaching me magic.
And Teller said the first thing I should learn
is a false shuffle.
It's used in almost all card tricks.
The idea is you've got a deck that's in order,
you know where the card is,
and then you look like you're shuffling them.
But when you're done, the cards are in the same order
they started in, so you've got a false shuffle.
It's a shuffle that's false.
See, it's very simple. And it's one of the basics.
If you're studying magic at home, if you're a child,
you're learning a false shuffle right away.
So we've got a brand-new deck of cards here
where they are all in order.
So this is a good way to learn a false shuffle.
So we're getting rid of the advertising cards
and the jokers-- come right out of there--
and now we have a deck in perfect order, ace to king,
ace to king, ace to king, ace to king,
spades, diamonds, clubs, hearts.
And the idea is that you shuffle the deck.
The audience goes, whoa, that deck is shuffled,
and yet, it is not shuffled, OK?
So I've been studying the magic.
It's so hard to--
I mean, I'm not afraid at all of the TV cameras,
but I'm afraid of Teller.
Teller's watching.
You know, when you're in front of your teacher,
you want to do it right.
So OK, here we go. Ah.
So the cards are in perfect order.
And when I am done,
the cards will also be in perfect order.
So first of all, Teller says cut the cards.
OK, so I've cut the cards.
What'd I do wrong?
[laughter]
Now, that's not part of the trick.
That's just aesthetics, right? I mean--or is it?
OK, OK, all right.
And now I'm supposed to bring my thumb down,
and the sound of the shuffle is the first thing you learn.
It's the sound.
So I want to make this sound like a perfect shuffle.
So my hands come in, my hands can be like this,
and they go like this.
[shuffling]
Was that good or--
good, good.
I'll do it one more time.
[shuffling]
- [gasps]
- Now I banged off the sound of the shuffle.
And I'll put them back together.
Right, just like that.
OK.
And now when I lay them out,
they'll be in the same order we started.
And there's a lot of tricks I can do with that
once I lay them out.
They're in--they're-- they're not--
they're not ace to king!
They're--they're just in a random order!
They're in a random order!
I didn't even touch them!
There was a set-- you said build a wall,
build a wall!
You said that! To have build the wall!
I built the wall, I made the sound,
and they're in a random-- [laughter]
[jazz music]
Show me again.
I built the wall, Teller.
It was-- they didn't even cross.
OK, same thing, same thing.
That's the way I started, right?
And then you cut them.
Good.
And then you had--
I had them closer together, but that--
OK, that's just the way I did it.
That's exactly the way.
Now I'm going to watch.
♪ ♪
[shuffling]
You made the sound.
Put it back.
And then he fans them out, and then--
in perfect order. [cheers and applause]
They're in perfect order.
The ace the king, ace to king, ace to king,
spades, diamonds, clubs, hearts.
[applause] I watched you!
I was this close to you, and look, I did the same thing!
I did the same--
Alyson! I did the same thing.
Did you see that? I did the same thing, Alyson.
- We hate to say goodbye, but we have to.
We'll have a brand new episode for you when "Fool Us" returns.
See you soon.
- There's no way. I did the same thing.
[cheers and applause] [indistinct chatter]