Q&A with Penn Jillette: Crackpot hippies, politics and why the best tricks are no secret

Like so many, national arts reporter Geoff Edgers has been grounded by the novel coronavirus. So every Friday and many Tuesday afternoons, he hosts The Washington Post's first Instagram Live show from his barn in Concord, Massachusetts.

So far, he has interviewed, among others, actress Pamela Adlon, journalist Dan Rather, immunologist Anthony Fauci and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Recently, Edgers chatted with magician and comedian Penn Jillette. Here are a few excerpts from their conversation.

Q: So, going into this election, what are you thinking? I'm sure you've heard this a million times. It's the idea that you, as a libertarian or a member of the Green Party, you're throwing away your vote. Or, even worse, you're enabling the wrong person to get into office. So, what are you doing this year? What are you thinking?

A: Well, first of all, I reject that throwing-away-your-vote argument. Because, wherever you vote, it does make a statement. Voting for a loser makes a very, very, very strong statement. ... I will tell you now. All of that has gone away. Trump is so far away from real political discussion. He's so far away from kindness and beauty and thoughtfulness and wisdom that Joe Biden - who just five years ago I would have been able to sit down with and disagree with every sentence - I now agree with everything. It's just the scale has changed. You know, I used to be looking at rocks and now I'm looking at mountains. Every election that's happened in American history, someone has carried on and made a very good argument for "this is the most important election of our lifetime." That wasn't true a lot of times. But it seems like the last election, this election, the damage that one person and his enablers have done to our country is immeasurable. Or, maybe worse to say, "is measurable."

Q: I was a fan of the late, great show you did with Teller, which we have to call "BS" because we are a family newspaper. You seemed to take on virtually every hot-button topic we can come up with. Reparations, immigration, everything. Are there topics that, looking back, you wish you had addressed differently or you learned about in a way that you would not have dealt with them in such a way?

A: I can't imagine having to face myself as the kind of person that would stand by what I believed 10 years ago. I can't think of how in any of my philosophy that would be real. The answer is, I don't think there is a sentence that I wouldn't question from "BS" now, other than maybe "show peace and love to each other," which I said many, many times, and maybe about life essentially being beautiful. I guess I haven't gone back on those. But there isn't a topic that there hasn't been more science, more scholarship, more philosophy, more thinking and more wisdom that's been laid on me since then.

Q: The way I first learned about you actually wasn't through magic or a show; it was through the Residents. I remember getting this record, part of their composer series; it's Hank Williams and John Philip Sousa. And I remember getting this at 12 years old and being like, what the heck is this thing, man? You were involved with them. Explain to me the path from Greenfield, Massachusetts, where you grew up, to this universe of free thinking.

A: Well, I'm from Greenfield and Greenfield was a very odd town - a rural community that was close enough to Amherst, Mass. So we had a lower-class town with not a lot of money for education that then had crackpot hippies come in with their ideas. So I received, when all was said and done, no high school education whatsoever. And I was open campus, open study, as far as I knew. Everybody at my school was on drugs except me. I've never had a sip of alcohol or recreational drug in my life because of that time. I'm still very good friends with one of my teachers, who saved my life. Beverly Lucy, who is a creative writing teacher who got me through that. She was just the greatest, is still the greatest. And I spent all my time wanting three things: I wanted to be Jewish, I wanted to be gay and I wanted to be from New York City. All of my heroes fell into at least one of those categories. And I did not want to be a big, dumb, square-headed farm boy. All my heroes were those kinds of outsiders. And I became an atheist. And through my church, through the kindness of my church, I'm glad they treated me so well that I didn't feel I needed God. And reading the Bible got me there, and the unconditional love of my parents and my pastor. And I became a fan of music and I went from the Monkees to the Beatles. And then very quickly from the Monkees to Frank Zappa and Hendrix, and from (there) to the stranger stuff and then, by the early '70s, to the Residents.

Q: The Residents were never revealed. We never knew who they were. I feel like today, with the way the internet works and the way everything is revealed, I don't know if everyone would have kept this secret with a wink.

A: Secrets are an artistic concept. They're not real. So the example I can give ... Teller doesn't talk much during our live show. He's the silent member of the group. He doesn't talk. And then after the show, Teller and I will always meet everybody in the audience who wanted to meet us and shake their hand and so on. And Teller's very well educated, very articulate; the most talented, smartest person I've ever met. And he would speak to these people gently, kindly. ... And then those people would say, "You know, Penn, I think it's great how your partner never, ever talks." Now, these are people who just spoke with Teller four minutes before this, face to face. They walk 20 yards and say to me, "It's great how your partner never speaks." You can go onto the internet and find the secret to most any magic trick. Teller and I actually discuss when we're working on magic tricks. These videos will be put up and people will be writing arrows in on how it's done. I don't believe that does any harm whatsoever to the art form. There are people who think that magic is a stupid art form because all you need is the secret, and saying that all you need it is the secret. It's like saying that if you know how to finger a sax to play a B flat, you're all of a sudden (John) Coltrane. The secret is the most insignificant part of it. So, with the Residents, there was something beautiful about them being anonymous. And that is part of the art itself.