This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, August 30th, 2011. I'm

Kila Brown. It may be surprising to hear comedian and magician Pen Gillette say

that he wants hated magic because he hated lying.

Gillette is a Minkin research fellow at the Cato Institute.

He is most recently the author of God No, signs you may already be an atheist and other magical tales and visited the Cato Institute

August 17th.

You're an atheist and more broadly you're a skeptic.

Yeah, James Randy is a good friend of yours.

I'm a very good friend.

Probably in a way Randy created me I think.

I think without Randy there wouldn't be me.

What do you mean? I mean that I hated magic, hated the whole idea of magic, hated it with a passion, and I didn't like the idea of lying. I didn't think that should be entertainment or they should be part of anything.

And I met Randy when I was 18 and he told taught me, showed me, demonstrated to me that you could lie in the service of truth.

That there was a way to tell lies within a proscenium that allowed you to explore truth.

And he showed me how you could be someone who was an outspoken skeptic and still work in magic and still work in entertainment.

And he was my, was, is my, the biggest hero of my life life I mean outside of my family and I don't think

that where I am now as an atheist and a skeptic and a magician and a person. I don't see how he could have gotten there without meeting

Randy. How does that dovetail with you being a libertarian? Well I don't know. I don't

really know.

Tim Jenison, who is the founder of New Tech,

tech companies now out of Texas, that invented the video

toaster.

...