The celebration of Penn & Teller’s 50 years together continues. The duo went back to their roots and performed at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, performed live on CBS Mornings, headlined at Radio City Music Hall, and had a feature in The New York Times.
The videos of them performing are, of course, well worth watching (and watching again). But The New York Times article is a nice complement to John Lovick’s feature on the duo in Genii’s July 2025 issue. Genii’s piece delves into Penn & Teller’s origin story, and while the Times article touches on that, it also digs into their relationship, with reporter Jason Zinoman getting the following quote from Teller: “We always claim we are not friends, but of course we are. When Socrates defines love, he talks about that being two completely different elements coming together like a male and female producing a child. And the product of that is the beautiful thing.”
This extra attention to the duo is obviously well deserved. But spending time reading about their career and watching them perform are a reward in itself. Perhaps James, a commenter on The New York Times article, sums things up best: “The world is so full of misery and bad news at the moment but for one joyful hour I inhabited Penn & Teller’s world while I read this article and looked at some of their tricks on YouTube. I was transported somewhere else & captivated. Surely there’s no greater trick than this?”
Photos courtesy of Penn & Teller Archive