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Penn Jillette: Why Celebrity Apprentice Sucks Away Your Willpower | Big Think

Big Think | February 26, 2026



Penn Jillette: Why Celebrity Apprentice Sucks Away Your Willpower
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Penn Jillette: I don’t think Daniel Kahneman knew he was writing a magic book. I don’t think he knew he was writing about Celebrity Apprentice. But he might have.
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PENN JILLETTE:

Penn Jillette is a cultural phenomenon as a solo personality and as half of the world-famous Emmy Award­-winning magic duo Penn & Teller. His solo exposure is enormous: from Howard Stern to Glenn Beck to the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on Dancing with the Stars, MTV Cribs, and Chelsea Lately and hosted the NBC game show Identity. As part of Penn & Teller, he has appeared more than twenty times on David Letterman, as well as on several other TV shows, from The Simpsons and Friends to Top Chef and The View. He co-hosts the controversial series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, which has been nominated for sixteen Emmy Awards. He is currently co host of the Discovery Channel’s Penn & Teller Tell a Lie and the author of God, No! and Presto!
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TRANSCRIPT:

You know, I finished up Celebrity Apprentice. I finished, I came home, I had a book on my reading list that was Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. I opened it up and started reading and realized I was reading kind of two things at once: an explanation of what I’d gone through on Celebrity Apprentice and the best magic book I ever read. I don’t think Daniel Kahneman knew he was writing a magic book. I don’t think he knew he was writing about Celebrity Apprentice. But he might have.

When I was on Celebrity Apprentice, I would see people who I knew fairly well, and I would see them acting in ways that I found wrong for their personalities, inappropriate; I found embarrassing at times. And I couldn’t figure out why. When you’re outside of the whole thing, you say, well they must be giving them a lot of alcohol… which alcohol’s always available, but most people on my team didn’t drink. So that didn’t work… So maybe you’re telling people to act crazy because it would make better TV. That wasn’t happening either. No one ever talked to me about that.

And then I read, and this is not Kahneman’s work, he was quoting someone else, he just kind of brought it together for me. He talked about ego depletion, ego exhaustion. And it turns out that if you just put cameras on someone, like you’re doing to me here, and you ask them to talk, they will speak a little clearer, a little better, a little more carefully than they would if there were no cameras around. But that only works up to a point.

And we tend to think of, or I always tended to think of, I don’t know about anybody else… I always tended to think of some – willpower – as a character trait. My mom would talk about, you know, “Penn, you have to have willpower. With a lot of willpower you have self-control.” It was very, very important in my family, very important. And I thought it was a character trait. This was something that maybe I’m born with some of it, but I also want to develop.

And the mind-blowing thing about Thinking Fast and Slow, reading that book, was that it is not a character trait. It is not a quality. It’s a muscle. The ego, the sensor, the thoughtful part of us that controls us, the self-control, is something that requires effort, and a lot of effort. And after you’ve used that for a while, if they – if you make someone very, very careful about what they say for hours, they walk by a piece of chocolate cake and they’re on a diet, they’ll still eat the chocolate cake.

When I was on Celebrity Apprentice with the camera’s on me all the time and carefully watching my move, I did not make any attempt to eat healthy. Cheeseburger, French fries every single lunch. I just don’t have the energy to use my self-control that way. And for me, when my ego breaks down, when self-control goes away, I actually get very quiet. What I tend to do is shut up. And if you watch Celebrity Apprentice, as the day goes on, I am less provocative. I am less confrontational. When I am well-rested and working and full of self-control, I am very aggressive. It’s what I do for a living. When I get tired, I get quieter, I don’t have conflicts with people. I have to push to be an asshole.

Other people who are very, very nice and whose images were very nice – I mean their public image is very pleasant and sweet – after these cameras were on them, you know, for five, six hours, all of a sudden that, what I’m calling a muscle, that…

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/daniel-kahneman-on-magic-and-celebrity-apprentice

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Comments

This post currently has 39 comments.

  2. @PntrGrl

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    Wow, very thought provoking. I noticed on the show too how some people seemed to "change." Watch Big Brother, they know they are on camera, but they can't keep up with the facade for almost 3 months of constant viewing.

  10. @lloydhedges3011

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    I know this video is ancient and Penn will likely never come across this comment but it's worth mentioning that his talk on ego depletion really got me thinking on some things I've been dealing with and it really put it into a perspective I wish I had years ago.
    This talk didn't "save my life" but if Penn ever sees this I want him to know he gave me an important tool in dealing with my own Shit.
    Thanks magic man 👍

  11. @jilliansmith7123

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    Fascinating.  While I was under the scrutiny of a malignant narcissist (decades) I added weight slowly but constantly until I was close to  needing a wheelchair.  3 1/2 years after breaking free entirely, suddenly I was ready to start feeding myself properly, and have been since with few lapses.   AMAZING that Penn should speak of this.  Willpower is a muscle that gets tired.  WOW.

  13. @Grendal54

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    Penn knew what he was getting into. He wasn't forced to do the show. He doesn't need the money. What's he bitching about? Could it be the show has high ratings and Penn wanted to get exposure? There is always a trade off.

  16. @LaineeTheCatWallace

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    Penn is stupid. Willpower is a tactic. It is directly tied to self-discipline. Self-discipline becomes a routine and part of ones self when practiced regularly, and cannot be broken down when "tired." Those who break down are faking it or weak. That is what this process exposes. Penn is a sore loser, and all his comments have to be viewed through that lens.

  18. @cunuc

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    yea boss, it's called FATIGUE. Depending on the people and how fatigued are, people tend to change the behaviour A LOT… To the point of losing abilities, memory and EVERYTHING. More fatigued than that and you start having microsleeps, losing conscience, forced sleep and in the end, if you push it too hard, you will die of fatigue or lack of sleep. That's why it's important to sleep and breathe oxygen EVEN MORE than drinking clean water and eating healthy food. What's even bad is that you don't know when you are tired, just like a drunk person.

  21. @WalterLiddy

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    This may be a factor, but I have no doubt that the bulk of it is that they were behaving the way they believed was expected of them.  They all know that these shows basically are about people being obnoxious and clashing egos, so they put on a show.  To even do the show in the first place indicates a certain desperation, so its not surprising they enter with a desire to please and give the producers/audience what they want.

  24. @goglesux9810

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    Think back to Freud's id, ego and super-ego: When they put cameras on you your super-ego forces you to act examplary. Since examplary is the opposite of what the id wants (in most cases), your willpower gets depleted trying to stay in that "higher sense" for so long.

  25. @bigwalt2990

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    Stop touching your face….Some people (cops) would say that's an indicator of lying..

    If your glasses keep slipping of your face, I'm sure modern science has discovered a solution for that..

  31. @allixpeeke

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    I definitely agree with fidalgo66 that Celebrity Apprentice All-stars should have gone to Jillette instead of Adkins. I wrote about this in the Celebrity Apprentice facebook page, presenting a litany of reasons why Jillette was more deserving of Trump's nod.

  32. @allixpeeke

    February 26, 2026 at 3:29 am

    Mr. Perez writes, "[Suicide bombers] terrify [A]mericans."

    Suicide bombers do not terrify me, they merely sadden me. It saddens me to know that any individual human would desire to kill any innocent human without the prior consent of the human being killed. It also saddens me that some humans are so collectivistic that they are unable to distinguish the actions of the political class from the actions of civilians. Sad, sad, sad.

    Mournfully yours,
    Alex Peak

Comments are closed.

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