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Hello, I am Joshua P. Warren, and this is Joshua P. Warren Daily. I'm sorry I haven't left the podcast for you in a few days. I've just been so super focused on some experiments that I'm doing involving extremely dangerous high voltage for a potential TV project. And the reason I say potential is I've been told that I'm going to be on this program, but uh, you know, uh until you get the official green light, you shouldn't talk about what you're going to do on TV. Uh because anybody who works in the TV business from time to time knows that sometimes things just change dramatically at the last minute. And so uh you don't want to seem too confident that you're gonna be appearing. Sometimes you do a shoot and you end up on the cutting room floor, sometimes you do an entire episode and the whole thing gets canned. You you know, so but I'm I'm taking this very seriously, and it's quite dramatic. I'll tell you a little bit more about it in a minute. But um I just want to let everybody know that I am in Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada. I am not in North Carolina because I have received uh many kind uh emails and and various messages from concerned friends uh wanting to know if I'm okay because of the hurricane that is striking North Carolina right now. And yes, I'm fine. Don't worry about me. Um focus entirely on the people who are there. In fact, you know, it's it's it's fortunate for me that I seem to have this talent for leaving a place right before a hurricane strikes. Uh and that's unfortunate for many of my friends because I hate to say it, but it kind of looks like maybe hurricanes follow me around. Um I can tell you stories throughout my entire life about me being in a place and then leaving, and then something bad happens. And I prefer not to dwell upon it, but I have to be honest with you. Larn and I have our own private little list of places where we've gone and then we leave, and then something bad happens within well, certainly within the next 30 days, and it makes like national and often international news. So that's not the kind of reputation I want to have, and the kind of thing that I don't prefer to talk about, which is why that I'm not going to go over that private list with you, but it's real, and some of the people who know me best uh they know that list, and so it's amazing to me that I have spent so much time in the Caribbean, not to mention most of the past five years in Puerto Rico, and I have never been in one spot when a hurricane hit. Now I have endured some suffering from hurricanes. Uh for example, when I was in uh western North Carolina, uh when one of the I think it was Ivan, yeah, that's what Ivan the Terrible came through. My basement got flooded. And what's weird is that when you're in western North Carolina, you're a long way from the coast. I mean, North Carolina is a very long state, and so if you were to drive from Asheville to the coast of North Carolina, then you're talking about probably an eight to ten hour drive, depending on where you're going. Now, the fastest way to reach the water is to drive from North Carolina toward Charleston, South Carolina, which is about a four-hour drive. So we're talking about a minimum of a four-hour drive to get from western North Carolina to any kind of coastline, and still the remnants of Hur Hurricane Ivan, I forget what year that was, coming through, you know, continuing to just pour water, uh caused such flooding that even being in the the mountains of western North Carolina was dangerous. And we happened to live at that time in a little house that was right at the intersection of two creeks. And these creeks could barely be called creeks. It was just a very pleasant flow of water at the bottom of this probably like ten foot ravine or whatever. I mean, just too practically too small to even have a fish. And all of a sudden, one night I, you know, I walked outside and whoa, it looked like that we had the French broad river uh and and and rapids on both sides of our house. And you know, the thing is when these waterways start really flooding like that, a flash flood, they carry all this debris along. So if you were to fall into that or get swept into that, I you know, yes, drowning is a possibility, you know, that you'd you'd just get sucked down and you'd drown. But aside from that, just jumping into a blender of of trees and and just junk. You know, people just have junk around their houses and it gets just swept away. Um, and a lot of it's big heavy stuff, old rusted cars, and you know what. And I mean, you're you're there with this stuff being slammed and churned all around you, and it just bang you and cut you to death if you fell into some of those areas. And sadly, uh there already has been at least a couple of deaths from this hurricane Florence, and it's because of a tree falling on someone's house. And that's also something else that uh happened. One of my cars got smashed when a tree fell on it. So when when you're told to evacuate a hurricane zone and you don't do it, you may not understand all the different threats that you're up against. It's it's not just about the actual wind coming in and blasting your property away or the water coming up to your front door. No, it there are all these other things that can happen, like just a tree that happens to fall right on top of you. And in in this particular case, I just read it was a mother and her infant baby were killed by a tree, and uh the father is in the hospital. See, one tree is all it takes to do something horrible like that, falling on your house, and that's why you have to leave when these things come in. You have to. Even if you can't afford it, you have to find a way. People will help you. People are very generous when something like this happens, they will help you find a way out. But I am here in Las Vegas, Nevada, so I'm fine. And I've actually been having some fun. And you if you follow me on Twitter, and I hope that you do, you you should, if you listen to this podcast, then you should follow me on Twitter because I tweet when new ones are available, and I also post supplemental images and links to stories and things that I'm talking about through Twitter. And uh yes, I also have other social media. I have an Instagram account, which is fairly new. I have, of course, my Facebook page, but you know, with Facebook you have to be accepted as a friend and all that. So Twitter's the easiest thing. And also, thanks to President Trump, uh Twitter is pretty damn recognizable, and you know, everybody knows what Twitter is. So I tweet things, and I've tweeted uh some pictures. Laura and I recently went to a pen and teller show here in Vegas, and I am about to say some bad things about pen and teller. And I don't usually say bad things about people in a public forum, but in this particular case I feel okay with it. And that's because that pen and teller have been absolutely merciless when it comes to their criticism of people who are involved in the paranormal or the realm of ESP or any anything that you know is considered a fringe or some kind of an open exploratory mindset in in my opinion. Okay, in my opinion. They've been merciless, and so I am going to say some unpleasant things about them. And I don't feel obligated to do that, and I don't want to do that, but I'm just doing it because it's true. And I think they'll appreciate it how I break this down with the evidence that I'm going to present. You know, I've always loved uh Penn and Teller, frankly. You know, I've always loved every time growing up I'd see uh oh on David Letterman or uh going, you know, going going all the way I guess they were probably on Johnny Carson uh and of course Conan O'Brien. I mean, I was I was always uh just excited when Penn and Teller were gonna come on because you never knew what they were gonna do. And you know, but Penn is named Penn Gillette, and Teller has just changed his name so that his name legally is just Teller. So I guess if you looked at his driver's license, it'd just say Teller. It's kind of like Madonna or something like that. Penn is the big one who does all the talking, and Teller is the short one who doesn't talk on stage, which is actually wonderful because he does talk otherwise, and he does interviews where he says, I decided to stop talking because I found that the patter, which is what magicians call the s the the the story they tell throughout a trick, the verbiage, you know, which is usually silly and has a bunch of jokes and stuff. He says he found the pattern annoying and irritating, and he thought it was much more intimate to just be quiet and to just come out and do a trick, and uh it gives the audience an appreciation uh or the or or the well, let me put it this way, it gives the audience the the feeling they're being appreciated for their intelligence because they automatically know what's going on. And furthermore, um they have to pay more attention because you're cutting out one of the senses to some degree, which is hearing, and so that magnifies uh the other senses, and when you're doing magic, the most important sense is uh the visual. Now, of course, by magic I'm talking about illusions here. I'm talking about magic tricks, not real magic with a K, which is how we distinguish those two. And so when they do these magic tricks, um Teller stays quiet, which is ironic, and it helps you remember who is who by remembering that the guy who is quiet is named Teller. Like he's telling things, but is but he's the quiet one. And then Penn is is the big tall fella who does all the talking, and he has all the skills and various rhetoric. So those two guys uh they really have sort of revolutionized the way that magic is presented as entertainment. Um, and they were always doing things that were kind of shocking and violent, and you know, and uh and and uh they would do things that would really throw you off guard. I mean, like one of the famous tricks was doing the cups and balls using clear cups, you know, just to show how skilled they are at the manipulation and misdirection. It reminds me of some of these guys who have done tricks with fake thumbs who supposedly use a bright red fake thumb because they are trying to show off that they're so good at misdirection that even wearing a bright red fake thumb to conceal things, you can't see that bright red thumb. So, anyway, um I've always admired them, and and it their story is is fascinating. They started uh doing magic together in 1975, which is before I was born. I was born the following year in 1976, so they've been doing magic for over 40 years. And uh Penn, the tall guy who does all the talking, is younger than Teller. Uh Teller is 70 years old right now, and Penn is 63, so there's a seven-year difference. They're both from the northeastern area, I believe that Penn is from Massachusetts, and Teller is from Pennsylvania. I think that's about right. And um when they met, uh Penn was a high school student and Teller was a high school teacher. They weren't at the same school, though. Uh Teller was in a different district. I think Teller was maybe an English teacher or something like that. But they met up because they were um both doing performances at some kind of sort of local gig, you know, I don't know if it was a community center or whatever, but Penn to this day always claims that he hates magic and that he was always like the juggler guy on the unicycle, more of a busker type. And Teller uh always really enjoyed delving deep into the art and science of magic and illusion. And so they got together and it was um obviously a marriage made in heaven, even though they claim they don't hang out much uh outside of what they do professionally, but uh it was one of those deals where you know Teller was uh very happy with his job as a teacher, and uh Penn said, Hey, I'll we need to go all this summer and uh just see if we can make money doing this. Uh and it turns out that when Penn really researched it more, he said, Well, we're gonna have to go on touring dates that will go through aug the end of October. And Teller said, Well, I can't uh do that because I, you know, I got the summer off, but I can't go that far. And Teller goes, uh well, Penn says, Well, we have to do it that way. And so anyway, uh Teller ended up taking a leave of absence so that he could extend his summer, knowing that he could always go back to his teaching job, so he had that support, but he never had to, because those guys were so good, so good at what they did, that they always made money, and uh it was just a big success story. And I again I've always loved them, I've always admired them. And then the more famous they became, the more they, and especially Penn, uh started proclaiming atheism and being rational and sort of taking this whole amazing Randy type stance on things, which really goes back many believe to Houdini. Now, first off, I want to uh take the steam out of this myth that there has to be this distinction between people who are into exploring the paranormal and experimenting with weird things and magicians. And that's because Houdini was not out there to attack people who were researching or interested in fringe topics. He was specifically uh trying to bust fraudulent people who were taking advantage of others, who were misleading them and uh and and and like like really misleading. You know, magicians say, I'm going to mislead you for entertainment purposes. No, these were people in those days in the 1800s who were just outright misleading others, and they were fraudulent folks, they were taking advantage of the pain that one experiences through the grieving process when a loved one dies, etc. And so uh Houdini thought, well, this what this is wrong for people to be so blatantly misled, and so he was out there busting criminals, basically. And I completely agree with that. One hundred percent I agree with that. And then Amazing Randy, he popularized in the twentieth century uh the same concept as Houdini. Randy also was going after criminals, basically. So uh as a matter of fact, I interviewed Amazing Randy at least twice on my radio program Speaking of Strange. Randy knew who I was and what I do, and he was he was great. I mean, I there was I don't think there was anything that he said that I disagreed with. As a matter of fact, my radio program, Speaking of Strange, which at that time was being carried by Clear Channel, the biggest radio company in the world, my radio show was the first radio show where Amazing Randy came out of the closet as a gay man, aside from his own sort of podcast or whatever that he just did for his own institution or his own subscribers. So Amazing Randy came out of the closet as a gay man on my radio show. Uh most people don't realize that. And and I asked him, I said, Well, do you feel like it's ironic that you're a guy who has you know spent years sort of busting people who have been misleading others, and yet you've had this secret your whole life that you've been a gay man. I mean, do you find there's some irony there? And he said, No. He said, Because I have not ever tried to mislead people about that. He says, it just doesn't come up. He gave he goes, it wasn't like I was running around and parading and charading as a straight man, and then I turn around and say, okay, I was lying to you. He said, it just wasn't a it wasn't an issue. And I think that's absolutely, you know, the best way to envision uh that whole situation, and I agree, you know, it's not the same. He had no problem with me and what I do, and I have no problem with amazing Randy and what he does. And so I give you this as an example of how that we can all get along here and respect the other person. Penn and Teller, however, came out with this TV series called Bullshit many years ago on Showtime, which was a great show. I watched it all the time, I loved it. Very entertaining program, very entertaining program. But they ended up making fun of some people that I know, and I got the inside sort of story about how all this worked. And I'm just gonna tell you right now, one of the people who has been a good friend of mine for a long time is Nick Redfern. Uh Nick Redfern has spent the night at my house, we have gone on tour with each other, we have shot TV programs with each other. Nick Redfern is the most solid, honest researcher that you're going to find in this field of exploring, you know, the strange, the mysterious, etc. He's just a good person. He you know, he's from England. Uh he lives in Texas. I suppose he still lives there because he met a lady from Texas and they married. And of course, you know, my wife Lauren is from Texas as well. And uh Nick is a real writer's writer. I mean, to this day, just Despite how complicated the the publishing business is, he still manages to make a living by just, you know, writing constantly and putting out great content. All his books are great. As a matter of fact, it might be his last book or one of his last books. So scary that I didn't even want to promote it. I started reading about it, and it's scary. And I'm not even joking here. Okay. I started reading about this book, and it was so scary that I didn't even want to talk about it. And I think he probably found that that was a problem for him marketing this book. I don't know. But if I felt that way, if I felt that way, there's no telling how other people felt. It was too damn scary. Because the way it was set up was like, if you even talk about this subject, then you're going to be inviting the shit into your life. And I'm like, I don't need that. So anyway, uh Nick is he's articulate, he is a very intricate thinker, he he's just a good guy. Penn and Teller did an episode of bullshit where um, you know, obviously he was present presented as as a buffoon. And later I talked to Nick, and Nick said, You wouldn't believe how misleading these guys were, their production company and all that, in terms of how this was set up. They didn't come to us and say you're gonna be on a show called bullshit. Um which yeah, I mean, you can see why you would not want to be presented on a show called bullshit, but is it ethical to do a show called bullshit and not tell the person that you're gonna be on a show called bullshit? No, it's not ethical. He said they kept that concealed from us, and then they that they took every opportunity to set up scenarios and guide us into situations where they could edit it into us looking like that we were really, you know, doing some stupid shit. So basically, um, look, I could go on with other examples, but I know that pen and teller have at very least endorsed projects that are merciless toward people that they don't agree with. So therefore, I'm going to give you a very honest review of what it was like to go to a pen and teller show here in Las Vegas. They're big boys, they can take it. Don't worry about them. So I was super excited about going to a pen and teller show. I mean, I've seen David Copperfield, and I thought that was amazing. I thought David Copperfield's show was fantastic. As you know, Murray the Magician is a friend of mine. I've been to Murray's show twice now. Murray's show is wonderful. It's a fun, every rollicking time. Everybody's having fun. So Lauren and I both were really psyched about going to Penn and Teller. I purchased tickets for, let's see, for tickets for the two of us cost two hundred and twenty-three dollars and seven cents. That's for both of us. And I had good seats, but there were plenty of seats that cost a lot more than those seats that we had. I mean, we weren't even directly straight in front of the stage. We were off. So if you've been standing on stage, we were off to the left. If you walked in the theater, we were off to the right. And it cost two hundred twenty-three dollars and seven cents for a show that's gonna last, I don't know, a little over an hour or something like that. So that's uh that helps you understand like your expectations maybe about what you're gonna get. Uh they actually open the doors. Well, the show starts at nine. The doors open at 7.30, and from eight to nine they have live jazz, which is a fella sitting at a baby grand piano, and he's very talented. And then Pen Gillette himself, a lot of people may not realize that. Pen Gillette himself is sitting there with a stand-up bass and he at a fedora, and he's playing the bass, and he's a very talented musician as well. So you have these two guys playing jazz for an hour, and also as you come in, they let you walk up onto the stage and examine this prop that kind of looks like uh a phone booth or something, and you get to look at it from all sides, and it has a history of being used and uh various uh illusions. And then finally, when the show starts at 9 p.m., Pen and Teller they emerge from this box that you've been studying. So it's a really cool way to open the show. So then you're sitting there and you're like, okay, I am ready for this. Blow me away, right? And what I can tell you is that I want so much to say the show was great, but it just was not good. Okay, it was not a good show. Um, it was not shocking or entertaining, and I say this even telling you that Lauren got plucked from the audience to come up on stage. Uh Teller himself came out into the audience and looked over and saw Lauren and grabbed her and took her up on stage, and she got to participate in one of the illusions. And Lauren, this happens to her a lot. And she always says, Why me? Why do I, you know, why do they always pick me? And I say, Well, it's two things. I get pretty good seats, and two, you're the most beautiful woman in the audience. They've got to put you up on stage. And so here's the thing, okay? Pen and teller have a reputation for doing stuff that can be violent and gory or shocking. You know, they have these famous illusions where like one guy shoots a bullet and the other guy's mouth, or um they they have uh more uh basic things like the the invisible cups or well the clear cups with the cups and balls. Or Teller's famous shadow trick, where he puts a rose on stage and you see this the shadow of the rose, and as he clips the shadow, the rose falls apart. None of that was in this show. None of those acts were in this show. Can you believe that? I mean, I don't know how much you know about the history of Penn and Teller, but if you know as much as I do, you'll be like, huh? Are you kidding me? They didn't do anything violent or gory. There was no shooting of the gun, there was the the shadow illusion wasn't there, they didn't do the clear. No, they didn't do any of that. What they did was just basic crap that anybody could do. I'm just telling you, okay? And again, I hate to say this, it pains me, but I have to be as brutally merciless and honest with them as they have been with their opinions toward people who are actually working in whatever fashion toward legitimate possible new discoveries. Because the only reason that any of us give two fucks about pen and teller is that they are great magicians who supposedly understand the ins and outs of human perception. And so when you go to their show and it fails, and you know, and again, you know, we're talking about a show that you paid two hundred and twenty-three dollars to go see for you know an hour and a half or whatever, and it fails, you think yourself, why are we paying attention to what these guys think? Why are we paying attention to their views on atheism and and science and logic and what's rational, you know, like okay. The only reason is because you supposedly can do magic tricks. It's not like they've invented a better light bulb or cured cancer or found a better way to get a man back to the moon. No, they're magicians. And the only reason we listen to them and think maybe they have something interesting to say is because we think they're great magicians and you go and see them and they they're not great magicians. I'm not saying they've never been great magicians, okay? They're getting old. Maybe there was a time. But if you if you can't do it anymore, then just, you know, stop the show. Get off the stage, let somebody else have that space. So again, I know you might might be thinking, whoa, that's really harsh. Hey, they can fucking take it. Okay? They've dished it out, they can take it. So that's the truth. And I I would have to unfortunately tell you that if you come to Las Vegas and you have a couple hundred bucks to blow on a show for an hour or two, I would I'm just telling you, uh I wouldn't spend it on pen and teller. Maybe you'll love it. Now they did come out after the show and took pictures with everybody, so we do have our pictures with them. And look, I admire the guys. I think they have produced some great entertainment over the years. But right now, under these circumstances, if you go to a Penn and Teller show, if you see what I saw, you're not gonna be happy that you you went. So Okay, that said, let's move on to some other things here. Let's get back to what's really important. Okay, so why Penn and Teller are over here knocking around on stage trying to squeeze the last buck out before they retire, I have actually been working on some experiments. And some of these are experiments that are just for me and uh you know just related to the stuff that I'm working on, and some of them are for a potential big TV appearance that I again I can't really talk about uh this moment. But um one of the things that I posted is that I have right now a modified, and I that's what I've been doing, I've been modifying it, and I've had to get several people involved to help me do this. I have a modified five-foot-tall Tesla coil display that is scary. Okay, it's so cool. It does things that I've never seen a Tesla coil do before. I've been working on that, and uh someone uh replied to my tweet and said, Can you send us a picture? No, I can't because uh I mean I could, but the idea is that I'm using this for uh a TV show, and I don't want to sort of spoil the surprise if all this works out. Um and I have a big Jacobs ladder and I have all kinds of cool stuff. But speaking of TV, I want to let you know real quick, uh, because I'm gonna have to wrap this up in a minute, that tonight, and uh this is Friday, September the 14th, tonight on the History Channel, there is supposed to be uh In Search of at uh 9 p.m. Well, I guess that's probably whatever your time zone is, at 9 p.m. in search of, they're gonna have in search of Atlantis part one and part two. They're gonna be back to back. So it's like a two-hour thing. Kind of unusual. It's like, why not just make it a two-hour special? But anyway, uh part one and part two tonight on the History Channel, and that is one of the episodes that they interviewed me for. So I don't know if I made the cut because it was very weird how we had to set this up. I was in Puerto Rico at the time and we basically did it as a remote, and they didn't want to do it that way, but we did it, and they seemed happy with it at the time. So it's possible that I'll be on the History Channel tonight sometime between 9 and 11 p.m. So if that's of interest to you, you might want to go ahead and set your DVR at least, and we'll see if that works out. Um and then also I want to let you know that for people who are Coast to Coast AM insiders, you occasionally get to participate in a chat with some live chat, you know, with a coast guest. And uh so Lex contacted me and we got this set up. I'm gonna be the Coast to Coast AM guest for the chat on Wednesday, September 19th at 8 p.m. Pacific time. I think it will last one hour. So if that's sort of thing you're interested in, Wednesday, September 19th, 8 p.m. Pacific time. I also want to let you know once again, I'm getting geared up to go to Los Angeles. I'm doing something really amazing there. Um those of you who have tickets already, you're very smart, you're very wise. Those of you who don't, well, I will be showing you even more information about why you need a ticket. Um this weekend, if all goes according to plan, I'm going to be shooting a video presentation that will explain even more about why that I have why I'm adding certain new content to my program in Los Angeles that has never ever been presented before. And once I do that, obviously a lot of people who don't have a ticket will buy it. So this is your heads up. You listen to this podcast, I give you advance notice, advance warning. You might want to go ahead and buy your ticket before this video comes out. Uh, because there's only uh very limited seating at the Ruby Theater there in Hollywood. But that's it for today. I have lots of work to get back to. Uh while you're there at joshua pwarren.com to learn about my Los Angeles event, joshuapee.com, click the link to this podcast. It's called Joshua P. Warren Daily. That's because I try, I try to leave one for you every day. It's always short, it's always free, and you can subscribe through various means or just follow me on Twitter at Joshua P. Warren, at Joshua P. Warren, and I will tweet when a new one is available. So uh thanks for your interest and support. Uh thank you for listening, you know, thank you for staying curious, and I will talk to you again soon.