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Comment by metalliqaz | Hacker News Reader

I've seen P&T's show in Vegas a few times, and I've seen many of their TV appearances. They do explain how illusions work, but they don't spoil other magicians tricks. They will do an old classic, show it from the "other side", and then while you aren't paying attention they pull off something new, giving no explanation for that one.

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You should pretty much never trust magicians who "explain" how their illusions work. Sometimes they genuinely do explain it, but often, it's still another trick. Derren Brown does this a lot.

My absolute favorite "magician" was a card manipulator who demonstrated how several of the standard card tricks worked. Even showing the trick from the side and also from behind (his back to the audience so you see how he's doing it) the technical skill was amazing. It motivated me to learn prestidigitation. It turns out that my fingers are too short to do card tricks with standard playing cards (also too short for the fretboard of a classical guitar - I have to stick to acoustics & electrics).

For small fingers, bridge sized card decks are an option!

I used to love watching the Derren Brown specials until he did the one predicting the lottery numbers. That made me realize all of his tv shows could be camera tricks and paid actors.

Same here. It was the lottery episode that made me realise that he is willing to lie when explaining his illusions. I didn't feel delighted by the illusion, I felt lied to.

My favourite example that I’ve seen of this was Asi Wind on Penn and Teller where he “explains” the trick and fools everyone anyway https://youtu.be/fg0CC99hVK8?si=6BpmQjHEe-AkP84v

I just saw an interview with Penn wherein he stated that they have been thrown out of The Magic Castle, et. al for revealing tricks.

Given their popularity, I'm sure they've been allowed back in. :-)

The Magic Castle is for Magic Circle members. Magic Circle rules very strictly prohibit their membership. They could always attend the Castle as guests of a member though.

The Magic Circle still asks them to donate items to their museum, despite refusing their membership.

You're confusing the magic castle with the magic circle...

It's the Circle that has strict rules about not revealing tricks. If they're Academy of Magical Arts members their access to the Castle is guaranteed.

Or maybe they’re confusing magic castle with white castle. It’s an easy mistake to make, although I suspect it’s harder to get thrown out of white castle.

The Magic Circle is a private magic club in London England. The Magic Castle is a private magic club in Hollywood California. The Magic Castle has a restaurant and regular magic shows by professional magicians in three theaters. The performers change weekly. Members of the Magic Castle can give anyone Castle guest passes to go for dinner and shows. In practice, this allows almost anyone who really wants to go to the Castle to get in as they aren't very restricted. I was a member of the Castle for over a decade until I moved out of the area and still have many friends who are members. I haven't checked lately, but in most eras, if you just called the Castle office and asked very nicely they'd send you a guest pass. I'm sure Penn and/or Teller have wanted to go to the Magic Castle, there'd be no issue.

The Magic Circle is quite different. It's not generally open to the public and is, frankly, quite old fashioned. It was only very recently that they even started permitting female members. For that reason alone I doubt that either Penn or Teller would ever want to go there. They'd probably be more likely to actively protest against the Magic Circle (at least until recently).

I used to hang out with Penn back when I was a castle member and he never mentioned that to me. I guess it's possible that happened but it would have been a very long time ago. The Magic Castle was founded in the late 1960s by two brothers, Bill and Milt Larson. Since then it has gone through quite a few different regimes. There was a brief time back in the 1980s when P&T were first breaking nationally when some older magicians made an issue about what they heard the P&T show contained (most hadn't actually seen it themselves). But this was a minority of magicians, mostly older hobby-types, and never the working pros. Every club tends to have some older cranks who focus on policing hall passes or whatever. If P&T wanted to go to the Castle in recent decades they'd be gladly welcomed. I'm pretty sure Michael Close, who's been the senior technical coordinator running the behind-the-scenes of P&T's Fool Us show for many years was on the Magic Castle board of directors at some point.

It would make more sense if perhaps P&T were "uninvited" from the UK's Magic Circle, which is a very different, much smaller and entirely unrelated private magic club. The Magic Circle only very recently started allowing female members, so I'm pretty sure P&T would be delighted to be banned there.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here to your point about sharing other's work. Some (many?) sell their tricks. So assuming that you've spent time developing a new trick and some portion of your living depends not just on presentation, but also selling the trick or training.... I could see some getting upset.

Otherwise, I don't think the issue is spoiling it for audiences as the craft and presentation style count as much or more than the trick itself.

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