Hi, everyone.
I'm Scott Stein and we're live from CS 2019.
Our next guest doesn't need any introduction, really.
He's a magician, comedian and just an amazing all-around talent.
And today, he is here on the CNet stage to talk about health tech and other things.
Penn, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me, man.
Good to see you That wasn't a good handshake.
Let's do it [INAUDIBLE].
We had kinda one of these like it was a grandmother handshake, we had a bad job.
Yeah, so first of all, I know you wrote a book on losing weight called Pressed Out and your signing copy is over at the [INAUDIBLE].
I guess I will be, yeah.
Yeah I think so, so FYI, that's gonna be happening.
All right, so you lost a lot of weight, and I cover health tech.
I've used fitness trackers, but I don't consistently lose weight.
And I have discipline, I know, because I track my weight over time, I know what I'm going back up to.
But how do you consistently keep it off?
You know what it's going up to?
You've got tech that tells you where you're going?
It shows the trajectory.
Yeah.
Right.
Advanced AI.
But you know what, the straight-line trajectory is wrong.
Otherwise I would now weigh 7,000 pounds.
[LAUGH]
Yeah you all wanna go straight line trajectory.
The amazing thing I was so interested in tech earlier on and the Internet and so on.
And the part that amazes me is that the things that it improved, we didn't expect it to improve.
I didn't expect the juggling would get better.
Because of the Internet.
And juggling dipped, tremendously, cuz people had information on what was possible and where to get equipment, stuff like that.
I would never expected that technology would've been as helpful as it was in helping me lose weight.
And it really was.
I mean, knowing where you were and having goals Is very, very helpful.
And all the Withings stuff that I used, I still, every single step on that scale.
And every single day it goes right to my doctor.
And right to everybody else who will get on me if things aren't going properly.
So is that the key?
Cuz you had a high blood pressure problem, I have a high blood pressure problem.
I had blood pressure like UK voltage.
Wow.
Yep.
So And did you find that it was the ongoing discipline or did you feel like, do you want more coaching, or do you feel happy with what it takes.
No, I actually found that my big problem, this is I think, you know, everything I wrote in press tour was very personal.
But my big problem was trying to do it easy.
You know, every article you would read would say all you got to do is cut down your portions a little and do this and talk a walk and so on.
And, I realized that I do not respect moderation.
I do not like doing things the easy way.
No one ever brags about walking up a little hill, they brag about climbing Everest.
So my friend Ray Cronice from NASA, I said, can you help me lose some weight?
Cuz he did a lot of studies on that, he said yeah.
And I said, will it be easy?
And he said, no, no it'll be really, really hard.
And at that moment, that sentence was when I decided to lose the weight.
Doing things easy is not fun.
Doing things hard is wicked fun.
I lost, and Wibbings will tell you this, I lost .9 pounds a day for three months.
Wow, I'm happy if I get to like a pound a week when I was [UNKNOWN]-
Yeah, that was the average.
So it just was, [SOUND] crashing down.
Which means the faster you lose the weight, in many studies The more likely you are to take it off.
And Winning's helped me see it as just really exciting, and you really feel like you're accomplishing stuff.
So I think discipline is the wrong word.
It should be seen more as like a fun adventure.
Like, boy, how much of this can I do.
Is it different now for maintenance than it is-
Maintenance is hard.
Maintenance is wicked hard.
As a matter of fact, I lost the hundred pounds, I lost about 110 pounds.
And the ten pounds is where the battle is fought.
Right.
And we've just gotten over the holidays so I'm up about 10 pounds than where I'd like to be but now I know how to take it back, so it's not that hard.
Well, at a show like this, which I find impossible, like what do you do with it, what's Fitness tips for keeping people from not going off the [INAUDIBLE]
If you are staying in Las Vegas and you don't live here, and you're staying in a hotel, give up.
That's it.
That's my advice, give up.
There's no way to stay fit or healthy or anything, everybody go have fries and pie!
I feel liberated now.
Yeah, that's your only choice is give up and decide you'll start when you get back.
I mean, I guess you can I mean, I'm pretty hard core vegan now, and now because of Steve Winn, I guess we're note supposed to be mentioning him anymore.
He's vegan, so there are some vegan restaurants that are here.
But even the vegan restaurants that are here are essentially vegan McDonald's, it's not really good food.
What I really do which makes it easy is Whole food, plant-based diet, you know?
WFPBD.
And if you stick with that, you can eat any amount you want.
But it's gonna be all vegetables.
They have that Apostle burger 2.0 debuted here.
Yeah, but that's none of that.
That, yeah.
That's not whole food.
Right.
That's nothing.
Yeah, just stay away.
The Apostle burger is tasty.
But if someone is offering you fake blood and they're not a magician, walk away [LAUGH].
Is there anything you'd want in health tech that you're not currently getting, like in terms of technology assistance or is it in you?
I'm very interested right now, Withings has a new blood pressure monitor.
And it's really not good to just do your blood pressure, I donate Platelets, so I'm getting my blood pressure taken professionally every two weeks.
But it's not enough.
And you really need your blood pressure taken more often.
And [INAUDIBLE] had a really good system for that.
And I hope they have a new one I'm gonna try today that's better.
Cuz I really would like to be doing my blood pressure everyday.
Not because,
Because I want the minimum amount of drugs possible.
And I'm very mild blood pressure drugs now, but my goal is none, and you can only do that with very accurate blood pressure measurement.
Yeah, they haven't conquered good, there aren't many blood pressure sensors that are wearable.
Omron has that Cuff base one and they're trying to develop something, Valent Cell is trying to develop an ear.
I don't think you need something wearable but you do need something you can slip on easily in the morning and get like one thing right after your meditation or something.
So you really know where you're really at.
Okay.
Cuz you don't want that to sneak up on you because blood pressure will kick your ****.
Yeah.
And I find it harder to monitor.
But also, how much salt do you eat?
Stop all salt.
Yeah.
Too much.
Yeah, salt's stupid.
Here's the only, this is the low-tech health test.
Go to a movie, take the popcorn, smell it.
If it smells disgusting, you're healthy.
If it smells good, fix it.
Right.
Well, I need to follow that.
Now, you also follow other types of tech, you've been to a lot of these CESs.
I have.
And I've been to a lot, you've probably been to even more.
I've been to a lot of them.
What do you think about it now, versus over the years?
Well, the fact that it used to have a porn section, and then it was great.
And ever since since the porn section's gone, I'm still wearing my black arm band.
But That's like in a few weeks right?
[CROSSTALK]
It used to be the same.
It used to be you could tell people that you were going ces and actually just go to a porn convention.
There was over here!
Yeah!
It was great, it was right in there!
But they've changed that.
Yeah i'd like to see the new stuff, you know.
But there will always be the new things, it's funny that you can never tell what is going to change I mean I guess some people can't and that's why they're billionaires but I can never tell what's gonna be the thing it takes off while you're you're going to see stuff that like prints your picture on coffee.
I go wow that's the next thing and it turns out wow it's curing malaria.
So I can never tell.
I thought printing on coffee was more important.
We reviewed you with those printout coffee things.
Do you, but you-
I have my picture on coffee.
Do you understand that?
I had my picture on coffee.
Really?
Yeah.
Well, VR, you've exported VR too?
Yeah.
You have a VR game company.
Yeah, I have a VR game.
We're working with Gearbox.
Okay.
Randy and [UNKNOWN] pitched for it.
And we did a thing called Desert Bus, which was the most boring video game ever done.
I remember that.
It was a performance art political statement about the people that hate their children.
And they call it "being worried about video Video games.
But really, anybody who speaks against video games is just hating children.
Same as the comic book people, the rock-and-roll people.
Video games are an art form, and a beautiful art form, and they are the future.
Anybody that talks against them, is a pig, it's as simple as that.
So we did this video game in the 90s when someone said that there should be video games that were more like real life.
Yeah, exactly.
So we did one that was driving a bus
From Phoenix to Vegas with nothing happening.
And now I'm proud to say Desert Bus is now out in VR.
So it's a simulation, like a super crazy simulation.
It's a super simulation of driving a bus and doing nothing.
[LAUGH]
So if you want a video game that's totally peaceful that prepares you for the real world, get Desert Bus.
But coming out with that will be a Penn and Teller VR game that's coming out from Gearbox, I guess, this summer.
So do you feel that magic informs VR or technology?
Or do you see ways that you could apply what you've learned in attention and cognitive science?
Well, sure, certainly, because there's the term in magic that everybody knows, but no one uses correctly, which is misdirection.
Right, but one of the things you're accomplishing in [UNKNOWN] is getting people to feel they have a totally free choice in everywhere they're looking, and where their attention is, but not really having that [INAUDIBLE] where you want.
And in VR, that becomes incredibly important, cuz you need to give the freedom that you can be anywhere.
And yet, you need to guide that in a very natural way.
Cuz, this is what theatre is too.
Right.
When you're on theatre, you can't do pop in close ups, you have to move the attention around that way.
And magic is just a very specific fractal part of theatre.
And it's very important for VR.
You didn't have that problem before VR in video games.
Cuz you control the attention very clearly.
But now you have to be a little sneakier [UNKNOWN] control.
And when it comes to sneaky, talk to me.
Well, AI as well.
I feel like awareables even, there's a lot of assumptions that it makes to work that are about understanding what they think you might be doing.
Yeah, yeah.
And so there's an interesting interplay with that.
Yes, and also, making sure that You don't have choice, but think you do.
Yeah.
That's an important feeling.
Thanks so much for joining us.
You know, you were an influence on my childhood.
My mom still tells me when I was on your show and I threw up in the balcony-
When you come to Penn and Teller You throw up.
Exactly.
You attend the Stars show here?
Yeah, What?
Good job.
Yeah.
I did, I did.
It was a big [CROSSTALK]
No other show in Vegas can you come to and puke your guts out.
Take it from Scott.
I didn't throw up at all the shows that I saw of this.
[LAUGH]
[LAUGH] Just that one, and my mom always reminds me.
But thank you so much for coming, it was great to have you here, and there's a book signing over there, so.
Okay.
I'll be there.
Yeah.
22 miles of Bungee.
Okay, well thanks a lot.
