I appeared on Penn & Teller Fool Us on August 6th!

Penn & Teller have been a huge influence on my career.  When I was a kid I would watch their special “Don’t Try This At Home” over and over again.

The last few years I’ve watched their show “Fool Us” with my son.  It’s been fun to watch all the incredibly talented magicians do their thing.  My son started to ask me if I could go on.  I figured I may as well!

This was my first big TV spot since last summer when I appeared on Germany’s “Das Supertalent”.  https://chainsawjuggling.com/das-supertalent/ tells more about that adventure.

I created a trick I thought would go well for them.  It was very complicated.  In fact,  it took me many days, a lot of cash, and a few times thinking it simply wouldn’t work to make it happen.

Here’s the clip:

Sure, I may not have “fooled them”, but that was never my goal.  I was hopeful it would happen as a bonus, but the main goal was to appear on their show and do a piece I was proud of.  I accomplished my goal!

How it’s done:

The show is called “Fool Us” and the point of the show is to see if you can fool Penn & Teller.  Well,  I think the point is actually to get good magic on television, but the hook that makes it appealing to most people is the “how it’s done” element.

I’ve read many comments on YouTube about how I did it.  Most people seemed pretty confident they knew.  So far, no one has put a correct guess in the YouTube comments that was correct.  At least not that I have read.

Penn & Teller got it.  They knew enough that I feel I didn’t fool them.  But for the people that guessed in YouTube comments here’s a few things I can say about my method.

• There were 3 methods used.  One classic, one modern, and one I made up myself.
• The crossbows were real.
• It was safe.
• The cover over the chosen box had nothing to do with the method.
• I did the act myself, no assistants or backstage help
• Alyson fired the crossbows by pressing the buttons, I did not fire them.
• There was no “programming” the buttons.
• Each box had a power cord that ran to a crossbow and that wire is what caused the crossbow to fire when the button was pushed.
• There was no “remote” on the knife.  The knife was just a knife.

I did enjoy reading all the guesses on how it was done!  Thanks for all the interest in the trick!

Fool Us Airs on The CW Network.