Audio excerpt from the last few minutes in Episode 247 (November 20th, 2016) of Penn's Sunday School podcast.
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Summary:
At the end of Penn's most recent episode of his weekly podcast, Penn discusses David Blaine's recently aired special "Beyond Magic" where Blaine debuted his own version of the "Bullet Catch" trick, a classic routine done by many magicians for over 100 years, but nowadays generally considered to be a signature Penn & Teller finisher (but by no means considered their property).
Penn explains that he has no qualms with Blaine performing the trick, as it is essentially public domain for magicians, but he goes on to harshly criticize the style in which Blaine chose to carry out his own unique version.
Penn discusses the morality of performing the trick in what he calls a violent perversion of what performance art is meant to be, questioning if it's what fans come to a live magic show to see and asserting that it's what they don't want to see. Overall, he approaches the issue from a somewhat abstract and philosophical perspective, comparing magic and performance art to other forms of entertainment like sports, violent video games, and movies, while contrasting it from careers where there is a mandatory safety risk involved. He claims David Blaine's Bullet Catch crosses over a crucial line beyond what magic should be, which, in his belief, is traditionally an engineered fantasy and celebration of life, the imagination, and skill, separating Blaine's version of the Bullet Catch as a brutish, gladiatorial spectacle.
