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Penn & Teller judge magic of their CW show 'Fool Us'

Comedic magicians Penn Jillette and mono-monikered (and Philadelphia-raised) Teller are coming to a TV near you Monday for the sophomore season of the CW's Penn & Teller: Fool Us.

Comedic magicians Penn Jillette and mono-monikered (and Philadelphia-raised) Teller are coming to a TV near you Monday for the sophomore season of the CW's Penn & Teller: Fool Us.

The us of the title refers not only to the audience, but to the deceptive duo. During each episode, Penn and Teller judge the boggling feats of aspiring illusionists, mentalists, and other gifted tricksters, and they conclude with sleights of hand of their own.

Expect stunts such as "psychic surgery," where a magician produces a supposedly swallowed dollar bill with faux-gory verve - Penn and Teller did something similar on Late Night With Conan O'Brien - and "digital" magic, done with a tablet that takes "interactive software" to a whole new level.

"No miracle on TV is going to impress you because you've seen impossible spacecrafts land or superheroes fly," Teller said (yes, he does, in fact, talk). "Fool Us is our attempt to give you as fully as possible a sense of doing magic live."

The show was originally broadcast in Britain, but it ran for only one season. The CW picked up the original run last summer and ordered a new set of episodes for this time around.

(For those looking to see Penn & Teller in person closer than in Las Vegas, they will be in New York at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway from Tuesday to Aug. 16.)

Still, digitally documented tricks have their merits, especially for those who want to learn the craft.

"If you watch [the show] over and over, and you're a 12-year-old child like I was, it's easy to go take a phrase that I say and search that on the Internet," Jillette said. "There's one show that's on the surface - watching the magic tricks. And there's another show that's educational."

Jillette alone delivers the verdict to contestants about whether they fooled him and Teller, whose typical silent shtick is intact.

As a child, Teller lived at 15th and Vine, where he credits poring over the books at the Free Library of Philadelphia and David G. Rosenbaum, his English teacher at Central High School, as major influences.

It was here he developed the silent persona. Tired of magicians' redundant and patronizing tendencies, Teller adopted it as "a rebellion against magic patter."

"I became intrigued by the idea of lying without speaking, of letting the audience gather the lie themselves," said Teller, who returned to his Philly roots when he and Jillette brought their act to city venues in the mid-1970s.

"You get into magic in order to get fooled, because you love being fooled," said Jillette, noting that he and Teller were duped infrequently during the first season of Fool Us. "You don't get into magic because you love fooling people."

TELEVISION

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Penn & Teller: Fool Us

Second season premieres at 8 p.m. Monday on the CW, Philly57.EndText

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