Q: How do current anti-war protests compare to other, earlier protests in this country?
TELLER: Vietnam anti-war protests were sexier than the ones operating nowadays. Nowadays it's all reason and compassion and economics and common sense. The Anti-Vietnam people were hot and everybody fucked all the time. That made their protests more eye-catching and engaging. Now the sexiest protestor is Ron Paul.
Q: As a kid, I was told to wait an hour before swimming after a meal. Do you remember anything like this from your childhood?
TELLER: "Stay away from 'that man.'" There was a poor old schmo who used to take walks in the neighborhood I grew up in. My guess now is he was a widower on a low budget, since his clothes looked a bit frayed. He wore a Brooklyn cap and a raincoat. This proved to all the parents of the neighborhood that he was a child killer and we kids all loved to scream and run from him, on the assumption that he would catch and eat us. I suppose he must have enjoyed that, since he made the same rounds every day. Or maybe he never noticed.
Q: John Rocker, the baseball player who was forced to take sensitivity training classes after making remarks about New Yorkers to Sports Illustrated. What do you think about including him in the show?
TELLER: I believe in freedom. I believe everybody should say exactly what he pleases and that people with better ideas should speak up in argument. Rocker does not seem to be the most sensitive person around, but, he's a fucking jock, so what's new (sorry if that seems insensitive and stereotypical)? You think he's an asshole -- great. Speak up. But put things in perspective. Maybe Rocker has bad manners (oh, here I go again: a jock with bad manners? Well, I never!). So you teach him better manners, but that's the end of it. It's only an issue to people with a lot of time on their hands and a lot of media space to fill up. Me, I'm happy to let people hear him for themselves and make their own call.
Q: We’ve done several episodes of Bullshit about environmental issues. In your opinion, where do carbon offsets rank on a bullshit scale (compared to recycling, endangered species and nuclear power)?
TELLER: There is evidence for global warming, though there's considerable reason to believe this is simply part of a natural cycle. There is some evidence that humans may contribute at least a bit to the change (though many sources suggest that human pollution is insignificant compared with forest fires, volcanos, etc.).
But, carbon credits? The lowest kind of bullshit. So a person wants to drive a Humvee but feels guilty. What to do? Provide capital (with no expectation of payback) to a company that purports to be developing "green" technology? That's just nuts -- unless you're the entrepreneur getting your startup money as a gift from guilty, rich assholes.
Q: Do you have any sleeping rituals you’d care to write about?
TELLER: You don't want to sleep with me. I keep the room as cold as David Letterman's studio and cocoon myself in a thick comforter. I've built shutters in the room so that no light can come in, so it's very tomb-like. I have a white noise generator and a humidifier next to the bed. So it's rather like sleeping in the cold, dark, damp hold of a ship with its engine roaring. When I travel, I always ask for a quiet room, which usually means that they put me over the alley where the garbage is picked up at four a.m. The last time I had been in New York, I stayed at a hotel, at which I'd finally (after several tries) found a quiet room on a high floor. I requested the same room again. When I walked in and looked out the window, this is what I found.
TELLER: During the shooting of "Penn & Teller Off the Deep End," I was stuck waiting for a cue underwater in scuba gear and came face to face with a dolphin. It didn't seem much like a friendly puppy at all, just a big, cold, strange fish.
Click here to listen to Teller share this story with NPR's All Things Considered:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5007773
Q: It’s clear that you are fond of NASA. Why does the space program captivate you?
TELLER: When I was a kid, the Space Race was just beginning. I remember making a model of Sputnik out of a baseball painted silver and stuck with nails. I got plastic rocket models of rocket ships and put them together (and I was not a kid who instinctively loved gluing irritating littel parts together according to directions). I followed John Glenn's first space journey. Going into space was clear proof that anything was possible to a human being with imagination, intelligence, industry, and guts. Nothing could demonstrate that clearly or more dramatically. It was the idea of America made visible, just as clearly as Houdini's "self-liberation" symbolized America to the early 20th century.
Now as an adult I see another aspect that just so much what we find there (though that's thrilling, too) as what we see by looking back at the earth. How stupid does it become to worry about the hamburgers burning, or about making war over some patch of dirt, when it's clear we're all in the same beautiful blue boat? If Osama Bin Laden saw what Dan Berry saw, wouldn't something in his brain explode and Al-Quaeda collapse in ashes?
I've tried to see three shuttle launches. All postponed for weather. Now, I understand the rationale of putting the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, because of certain rotational and splashdown concerns, but in all the times I've been in The Sunshine State, it's never been anything but overcast. Maybe we should do a show on that.
Q: We heard that you enjoyed the performance of Dr. Learly, our occasional guest star, in this episode?
TELLER: You know, we get credit for these shows being funny, and I'm happy to take it, but, man, sometimes when the documentary footage arrives in Vegas for us to create our wraparounds, there's nothing really left for us to do. Our writers and Bruce "Dr. Semour K. Learly" just knocked one out of the park on this show as far as I'm concerned. I shouldn't spoil it for you, but when I first saw the sonic therapy our "Doctor" applied, I had about a seven or eight minute laughing fit. Uncontrollable, shaking, from the bottom of my stomach till it hurt. This is one of my favorite shows of the year.
Q: Has living in Las Vegas – a place that most people equate with sex (at least the sex trade) – changed your view of pornography at all?
TELLER: I've always thought of porn as just a branch of showbiz, in no way different from Indy Jones or a magic show. You look at stuff that allows you to live in a fantasy world for a while. I also love that it says frankly what is generally implied with a wink. When naked "legit" movie stars roll around in bed there's usually a sheet over their nether regions, and I feel cheated. Porn, to me, is the honest, American way to address sex in entertainment. Honestly, I hope in a couple decades the wall between "legit" films and porn will be gone. Pioneering movies like "Spetters" and "Shortbus" give me reason to hope that someday the casting of lead actors and actresses won't just be how well they can fake it in facial closeups, but whether they can get hard or wet on cue.
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