AnyelevNokova

NB: I honestly don't have the time or patience to transcribe the entire video word-for-word. If you want it that badly, go watch the video. This is the (somewhat) shorter version for people who cannot watch the video, using TTS, who don't have the patience to sit through it, or prefer to read. This is not word-for-word what they said, but capturing their answers in the most relevant way possible. I've used their words where I can and weeded out irrelevant information or paraphrased where necessary.

Penn does the talking - I'll note in places where Teller provides input. However, unless noted, assume I=Penn.

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1. Chyrch: Since it's unlikely that Bullshit will return, can you give us an example of some of the content from the Bullshit from Bullshit episode you were going to make? We wanted to address the cast and crew of the show. Who are these people to answer political and science questions? You've got carnie dirt, carnie trash, finished high school on a plea bargain, no college education whatsoever. You've got two half-assed magicians, one of whom has no college at all (Penn) and one who has college totally out of the sciences (Teller - in the Classics). Afterwards, we were going to go through all the shows and find the mistakes we made and just rip them apart. We wanted to do another season of Bullshit, but we wanted to go over and do Tell A Lie, so we kind of left that there. We wanted to do the episode ripping apart the show, but we also wanted to an episode ripping apart the things we believe in and love.

2. PoopasaurusRex: Has a trick ever gone horribly wrong on stage at a point where you couldn't recover? Has a trick ever gone horribly wrong without the audience having the slightest clue? Teller likes to say that magic is binary, it's either or: you don't have a trick that kind of fools you. If the whole thing doesn't fool you, you might as well not do it. There's been some bragging lately (Criss Angel, etc.) about being hurt. The beauty, however, is in that you can "shoot" each other with nail guns, and the audience knows it's completely safe. That's where the beauty lies. What you want out of art is for the visceral and the intellectual to collide. If you're supposed to do stuff that looks dangerous, it's important that you don't get hurt. That being said, we haven't done anything that we haven't fucked up. We make very big mistakes. We've had issues with the water tank where it had a crack in it when Teller was supposed to be drowning, so the water was slowly draining out of it. One time, I was on top of a mirrored platform doing a routine -- really selling it, it was a great, great trick -- when I dropped a prop. I walked away from behind the platform to pick it up, giving away the whole trick and ruining it instantly. So yes, we make mistakes.

3. StarVixen: On Bullshit, was there a segment you ever regretted doing, because of backlash or personal beliefs? Was there a segment that opened the door to new interests or causes? Yes. I regretted doing the hypnotism show because I thought it was a bad show. We didn't have a strong point - we weren't incorrect, but what we produced was mushy. We had filler shows (breasts, hair) that were weak, for production reasons. The Good Old Days was the worst show we did. There is no scientific or philosophical point that we made that was wrong ((Teller slightly disagrees on the second-hand smoke show - Penn argues that they weren't actually wrong scientifically, but people might have issue with what they said politically)). I don't think we got into any new interests, hobbies, or causes from the show.

4. ** Permutation: What was the most drastic shift in personal belief when researching a topic for Bullshit?** That's the same question, just in different words. But I'd say hypnotism. I wanted to say that all hypnotism is bullshit, but that's just not true. ((Teller adds: recycling episode)). Recycling, we started out with "recycling is bullshit", but meh ((not a clear explanation on this one)).

5. G_Julius_Caesar: Which performance on Fool Us had you most perplexed? Although we figured it out when the camera was off us, the act that was done with them serving the dinner with the three plates and the people from the audience -- knowing that the people in the audience weren't plants -- had us perplexed. It was really, really wonderful. Also, the card trick where the signed card was sealed in the deck was really perplexing. Out of the nine people that fooled us, eight had us truly perplexed and one may have weaseled it. We don't know who is going to be on, what trick they're going to do it, and we don't have any help. We wanted Piff the Magic Dragon to fool us - we wanted him to go to Vegas. For the most part, the stuff we were fooled by we were really fooled by.

((See next comment for the rest: it's too long))

NB: Offset every number by five for the actual question number.

1. Rakatoras: Have you ever not been able to master a trick, as in you knew the specifics but just couldn't perform it? As I've gotten older, my thumbs have gotten bad. There's been a couple of very interesting card and juggling things that I just don't do anymore because of my thumbs, and because we've just moved on from that. I know Teller's not comfortable hanging upside-down: that's simply just getting older and slower. We (and most other stage performers) don't usually work on stuff where the trick gets accomplished by real, borderline, razor-edge stuff that we can only do one night out of ten. Read Born Standing Up - there's a paragraph where is says that it's easy to be great but hard to be good. Most of our stuff that we fail at we fail at before it gets there. We tried a walking on water trick with Teller with a really powerful fire hose that had Teller surfing. We never had time to fail the trick - we failed getting the water on the stage how we wanted it because it ruined the stage and lights, so we weren't allowed to do it.

2. gcmandrake: In Penn's book God No, he states that, outside of a professional context, he and Teller almost never socialize. Has this always been the case? Did you do more non-work-related stuff together when you were a two-man act? When we first started out, we lived together in an apartment. We drove together. We shared hotel rooms together. If one of us wanted to have sex, the other walked around the parking lot for however long sex took to happen. Sex sometimes could take minutes. We were together all the time. We didn't really get sick of each other. But I believe that a lot of the volatile groups were pairs that were in love. When things started to go wrong, it interfered with their work. Teller and I started out with no affection at all. Our relationship was very sterile and cold, but very informational. He had so much to teach me that it was an intellectual relationship. I don't think many people who lived like we did (together almost 24/7) had that kind of relationship. It was built on respect. Respect is more important than love. Over all the years, Teller is certainly my closest friend. It's just a relationship of respect.

3. Gamelord12: Out of all of the topics that you covered on Bullshit, which is the one that you absolutely cannot believe that they thought what they were doing couldn't be debunked? ((Teller gestures)). Chiropracty. I think a lot of chiropractors know they're pulling a scam, but a lot of them don't. The placebo effect works both on the practitioner and the patient - they truly believe they're helping the patient. On one night, about fifty chiropractors came to our show (buying tickets) to tell us they were going to boycott us. I don't think they understood how a boycott works... There's also where people on the show don't believe what they're saying. When we did the thing with the people who climb the pyramids in Mexico thinking they were going to hear voices, those people came and talked to us. It was clear they were on our side. The Jerry Springer and Oprah thing happened - they just wanted to be on tv. It was interesting that we tore the creationists new assholes but they wrote us angry letters about how the angles were unflattering and their hair looked bad. It was funny how people cared more about being on tv than what they were talking about. Most shows were speaking from the heart on both sides, but you win some and lose some.

4. mr_eh: Has there anything that you've wanted to do but didn't do because it was too controversial? I assume this is about Bullshit. Most of the stuff that they didn't want us to do on that network wasn't because it was controversial but because it was too science-y. We had to fight hard to do our anti-anti-vaccine show. On Discovery, they loved that. But on Showtime, it was hard to push for it. That being said, after we did the Bible and Mother Teresa, Showtime asked us to not do any more of it. It's their network - that's fair. You could say that we'd done enough on religion. They also didn't want us to do Scientology - I was fine with that. I believe everyone knows Scientology is bullshit. Does anyone actually take Tom Cruise seriously? And South Park creamed us on Scientology and Mormonism. We did the best show on cold reading and John Edward that we could, but South Park did better.

5. karateexplosion: Any political or government backlash on your TSA "crotch-grabbing" blog? ((Penn is tearing up a little during this question)). You know, in our show, we give out a little metal bill of rights. The sad part is not that there was government backlash - the sad part was that they wanted to treat me special. This is not "don't grab my junk" - this was done back in 2002 when everyone was still gung-ho over 9/11 - but, in this place, it was against security. The heartbreaker is not that they treated me badly for that long: it's that they treated me well. After I wrote the blog, the TSA got in touch with me and told me to call them ahead of time when I go to the airport and they would put me through a "special line" so it wouldn't happen again. I refuse to receive special treatment. I go through the line like everyone else... In first class. I'm not going to lie about that. I'm not going to go through the special "you're making waves" line. It sickened me that, because I'm on tv, they were willing to give me special treatment. Although! I'm less likely to be a terrorist. Still, it's bullshit.

Also -- I could be wrong about this -- Black Friday. When that rolls around, you bet they need those 20 registers.

I had that after my son was born. Went from lifelong porker, pint of B&J's in one sitting appetite to suddenly completely disinterested. Nothing invoked cravings or reminded me that I was hungry. I'd be setting him down for yet another nap at 5pm and realize that I hadn't eaten anything in 24 hours but still wasn't hungry. I might force down a small bowl of pasta and then refuse to eat more because I felt like I would vomit. It came back within 3 or 4 weeks, gradually.

Remember, you're still adjusting. You're still recovering, and will be for some time. Your body has done a marathon. Your hormones are all over the place, you might still have lochia, and the human being you just spent nine months incubating and feeding internally is no longer a part of your body. That's some rough shit. It's going to take some time for your body to get back in the groove. Try to eat what you can and keep taking your vitamins. As long as you aren't passing big clots, fainting, or any of the biggies laid out in the postpartum care bundles you were probably given, you're probably ok with writing it off as another one of those "WTF, Hormones?" things.

Not OP, but worked in hospice in WA and have assisted with several patients doing Death With Dignity (in the field we often refer to it as I-1000 to avoid triggering people, but that is now the # of a current high-profile affirmative action initiative, so this usage may become obscure.) Most patients who express interest and fill out the paperwork don't actually fill the prescriptions. And of those that do fill the rx, most don't actually utilize it. It's a pretty small percentage that actually complete the entire process and choose to take the medications that will end their life. I knew several folks who had it approved but ultimately did not use it, for various reasons. You'll often hear people who will tell you that just having it as an option is peace of mind enough for them; that, if it gets bad enough, they can do it. But there is zero obligation for them to actually do it.

Of those that I knew who did fill the rx and intend to take it, people seemed to either A. make a plan, pick a date, and stick to it with a carpe diem, Best Day Ever kind of approach, or B. take things day to day, and sit on it until they felt their suffering had reached an intolerable level.

I personally have never seen anyone fill the rx, decide to use it, get set up, and then back out at the last second. But there is a LOT of counseling and discussion that people undergo through this process, and, coupled with the decision to pursue it in general, tends to filter out many people who might have otherwise decided to change their mind at the last second.