Sweatshop (or sweat factory) is a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have hazardous materials and situations. Employees may be subject to employer abuse without an easy way to protect themselves.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office defines a sweatshop as an employer that violates more than one federal or state labor law governing minimum wage and overtime, child labor, industrial homework, occupational safety and health, worker’s compensation or industry regulation.

History

While many workplaces through history have been crowded, dangerous, low-paying, and without job security, the concept of a sweatshop has its origins between 1830 and 1850 as a specific type of workshop in which a certain type of middleman, the ''sweater'', directed others in ''garment making'' (the process of producing clothing), under arduous conditions.The terms ''sweater'' for the middleman and ''sweating system'' for the process of subcontracting piecework were used in early critiques like Charles Kingsley's ''Cheap Clothes and Nasty'', written in 1850, which described conditions in London, England. The workplaces created for the sweating system were called ''sweatshops'', and variously comprised workplaces of only a few workers, or as many as 100 or more.

In the sweatshop of 1850, the role of the sweater as middleman and subcontractor (or sub-subcontractor) was considered key, because he served to keep workers isolated in small workshops. This isolation made workers unsure of their supply of work, and unable to organize against their true employer through collective bargaining. Instead, tailors or other clothing retailers would subcontract tasks to the sweater, who in turn might subcontract to another sweater, who would ultimately engage workers at a piece rate for each article of clothing or seam produced. Kingsley asserted that the middleman made his profit by finding the most desperate workers, including immigrants from Ireland, women and children, who could be paid an absolute minimum. While workers who produced many pieces could earn more, less productive workers earned so little that critics termed their pay ''starvation wages''. Employment was risky: injured or sick workers would be quickly replaced by others.

Between 1850 and 1900, sweatshops attracted the rural poor to rapidly-growing cities, and attracted immigrants to places like London, England and New York City's garment district, located near the tenements of New York's Lower East Side. Wherever they were located, sweatshops also attracted critics and labour leaders who cited them as crowded, poorly ventilated, and prone to fires and rat infestations, since much of the work was done by many people crowded into small tenement rooms.

In the 1890's a group calling itself the National Anti-Sweating League was formed in Melbourne, Australia and campaigned successfully for a minimum wage via trade boards. A group with the same name campaigned from 1906 in the UK, resulting in the Trade Boards Act 1909.

In 1910, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was founded in an effort to improve the condition of these workers.

Criticism of garment sweatshops became a major force behind workplace safety regulation and labor laws. As some journalists strove to change working conditions, the term ''sweatshop'' came to describe a broader set of workplaces whose conditions were considered inferior. In the United States, investigative journalists, known as Muckrakers, wrote exposés of business practices, and progressive politicians campaigned for new laws. Notable exposés of sweatshop conditions include Jacob Riis' photo documentary ''How the Other Half Lives'' and Upton Sinclair's book, ''The Jungle'' about the meat packing industry.

In 1911, negative public perceptions of sweatshops were galvanized by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City. The pivotal role of this time and place is chronicled at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, part of the Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site. While trade unions, minimum wage laws, fire safety codes, and labour laws have made sweatshops (in the original sense) rarer in the developed world, they did not eliminate them, and the term came to be increasingly associated with factories in the developing world.

In a report issued in 1994, the United States Government Accountability Office found that there were still thousands of sweatshops in the United States, using a definition of a ''sweatshop'' as any "employer that violates more than one federal or state labour law governing minimum wage and overtime, child labour, industrial homework, occupational safety and health, workers' compensation, or industry registration". This recent definition eliminates any historical distinction about the role of a middleman or the items produced, and focuses on the legal standards of developed country workplaces. An area of controversy between supporters of outsourcing production to the Third World and the anti-sweatshop movement is whether such standards can or should be applied to the workplaces of the developing world.

Sweatshops are also sometimes implicated in human trafficking when workers have been tricked into starting work without informed consent, or when workers are kept at work through debt bondage or mental duress, all of which are more likely in cases where the workforce is drawn from children or the uneducated rural poor. Because they often exist in places without effective workplace safety or environmental laws, sweatshops sometimes injure their workers or the environment at greater rates than would be acceptable in developed countries. Sometimes penal labor facilities (employing prisoners) are grouped under the sweatshop label.

Sweatshops have proved a difficult issue to resolve because their roots lie in the conceptual foundations of the world economy. Developing countries like India, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Honduras encourage the outsourcing of work from the developed world to factories within their borders in order to provide employment for their people and profits to their employers. The shift of production to developing countries is part of the process known as globalization, but may also be described as neoliberal globalization to emphasize the role that free market economics plays in outsourcing.

Positions on sweatshops

Anti-sweatshop movement

Some of the earliest sweatshop critics were found in the 19th century abolitionist movement that had originally coalesced in opposition to chattel slavery, and many abolitionists saw similarities between slavery and sweatshop work. As slavery was successively outlawed in industrial countries between 1794 (in France) and 1865 (in the United States), some abolitionists sought to broaden the anti-slavery consensus to include other forms of harsh labor, including sweatshops. As it happened, the first significant law to address sweatshops (the Factory Act of 1833) was passed in the United Kingdom at the same time that the slave trade (1807) and ownership of slaves (1833) were made illegal.

Ultimately, the abolitionist movement split apart. Some advocates focused on working conditions and found common cause with trade unions and Marxists and socialist political groups, or progressive movement and the muckrakers. Others focused on the continued slave trade and involuntary servitude in the colonial world. For those groups that remained focused on slavery, sweatshops became one of the primary objects of controversy. Workplaces across multiple sectors of the economy were categorized as sweatshops. However, there were fundamental philosophical disagreements about what constituted slavery. Unable to agree on the status of sweatshops, the abolitionists working with the League of Nations and the United Nations ultimately backed away from efforts to define slavery, and focused instead on a common precursor of slavery — human trafficking.

Those focused on working conditions included Friedrich Engels, whose book ''The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844'' would inspire the Marxist movement named for his collaborator, Karl Marx. In the United Kingdom the Factory Act was revised six further times between 1844 and 1878 to help improve the condition of workers by limiting work hours and the use of child labor. The formation of the International Labour Organization in 1919 under the League of Nations and then the United Nations sought to address the plight of workers the world over. Concern over working conditions as described by muckraker journalists during the Progressive Era in the United States saw the passage of new workers rights laws and ultimately resulted in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, passed during the New Deal.

More recently, the anti-globalization movement has arisen in opposition to corporate globalization, a process by which multinational corporations move their operations overseas in order to lower their costs and increase profits. The anti-sweatshop movement has much in common with the anti-globalization movement. Both consider sweatshops harmful, and both have accused many companies (such as the Walt Disney Company, The Gap, and Nike) of using sweatshops. Some in these movements charge that neoliberal globalization is similar to the sweating system, arguing that there tends to be a "race to the bottom", as multinationals leap from one low-wage country to another searching for lower production costs, in the same way that ''sweaters'' would have steered production to the lowest cost sub-contractor.

Various groups support or embody the anti-sweatshop movement today. The National Labor Committee brought sweatshops into the mainstream media in the 1990s when it exposed the use of sweatshop and child labor to sew Kathie Lee Gifford's Wal-Mart label. United Students Against Sweatshops is active on college campuses. The International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit on behalf of workers in China, Nicaragua, Swaziland, Indonesia, and Bangladesh against Wal-Mart charging the company with knowingly developing purchasing policies particularly relating to price and delivery time that are impossible to meet while following the Wal-Mart code of conduct. Labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO, have helped support the anti-sweatshop movement out of concern both for the welfare of workers in the developing world and those in the United States.

Critics point out that sweatshop workers often do not earn enough money to buy the products that they make, even though such items are often commonplace goods such as t-shirts, shoes, and toys. In 2003, Honduran garment factory workers were paid US$0.24 for each $50 Sean John sweatshirt, $0.15 for each long-sleeved t-shirt, and only five cents for each short-sleeved shirt – less than one-half of one percent of the retail price. Even comparing international costs of living, the $0.15 that a Honduran worker earned for the long-sleeved t-shirt was equal in purchasing power to $0.50 in the United States.

Critics of sweatshops cite high savings, increased capital investment in developing nations, diversification of their exports and their status as trade ports as the reason for their economic success rather than sweatshops and cite the numerous cases in the East Asian "Tiger Economies" where sweatshops have reduced living standards and wages. They believe that better-paying jobs, increased capital investment and domestic ownership of resources will improve the economies of sub-Saharan Africa rather than sweatshops. They point to good labor standards developing strong manufacturing export sectors in wealthier sub-Saharan countries such as Mauritius and believe measures like these will improve economic conditions in developing nations.

Critics of sweatshops argue that the minor gains made by employee of some of these institutions are outweighed by the negative costs such as lowered wages to increase profit margins and that the institutions pay less than the daily expenses of their workers. They also point to the fact that sometimes local jobs offered higher wages before trade liberalization provided tax incentives to allow sweatshops to replace former local unionized jobs. They further contend that sweatshop jobs are not necessarily inevitable. Eric Toussaint claims that quality of life in developing countries was actually higher between 1945-1980 before the international debt crisis of 1982 harmed economies in developing countries causing them to turn to IMF and World Bank-organized "structural adjustments" and that unionized jobs pay more than sweatshop ones overall - "several studies of workers producing for US firms in Mexico are instructive: workers at the Aluminum Company of America’s Ciudad Acuna plant earn between $21.44 and $24.60 per week, but a weekly basket of basic food items costs $26.87. Mexican GM workers earn enough to buy a pound of apples in 30 minutes of work, while GM workers in the US earn as much in 5 minutes." People critical of sweatshops believe that "free trade agreements" do not truly promote free trade at all but instead seek to protect multinational corporations from competition by local industries (which are sometimes unionized). They believe free trade should only involve reducing tariffs and barriers to entry and that multinational businesses should operate within the laws in the countries they want to do business in rather than seeking immunity from obeying local environmental and labor laws. They believe these conditions are what give rise to sweatshops rather than natural industrialization or economic progression.

Critics also point to the fact that sweatshops often do not pay taxes and thus don't pay for the public services they use for production and distribution and don't contribute to the country's tax revenue. In some countries, such as China, it is not uncommon for these institutions to withhold workers' pay.

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Furthermore, critics of sweatshops point to the fact that those in the West who defend sweatshops show double standards by complaining about sweatshop labor conditions in countries considered enemies or hostile by Western governments, such as China, while still gladly consuming their exports but complaining about the quality. They contend that multinational jobs should be expected to operate according to international labor and environmental laws and minimum wage standards like businesses in the West do.

Pro-sweatshop arguments

In 1997, economist Jeffrey Sachs said, "My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops, but that there are too few." Sachs and other proponents of sweatshops cite the economic theory of comparative advantage, which states that international trade will, in the long run, make all parties better off. The theory holds that developing countries improve their condition by doing something that they do "better" than industrialized nations (in this case, they charge less but do the same work). Developed countries will also be better off because their workers can shift to jobs that they do better. These are jobs that some economists say usually entail a level of education and training that is exceptionally difficult to obtain in the developing world. Thus, economists like Sachs say, developing countries get factories and jobs that they would not otherwise. Some would say with this situation occurs when developing countries try to increase wages because sweatshops tend to just get moved on to a new state that is more welcoming. This leads to a situation where states often will not try to get increased wages for sweatshop workers for fear of losing investment and boosted GDP. However, this only means average wages around the world will increase at a steady rate. A nation only gets left behind if it demands wages higher than the current market price for that labor.

When asked about the working condition in sweatshops, proponents say that although wages and working conditions may appear inferior by the standards of developed nations, they are actually improvements over what the people in developing countries had before. It is said that if jobs in such factories did not improve their workers' standard of living, those workers would not have taken the jobs when they appeared. It is also often pointed out that, unlike in the industrialized world, the sweatshops are not replacing high-paying jobs. Rather, sweatshops offer an improvement over subsistence farming and other back-breaking tasks, or even prostitution, trash picking, or starvation by unemployment.

The absence of the work opportunities provided by sweatshops can quickly lead to malnourishment or starvation. After the Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in the US, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs in Asia, leaving many to resort to jobs such as "stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution." UNICEF's 1997 ''State of the World's Children'' study found these alternative jobs "more hazardous and exploitative than garment production."

Writer Johan Norberg, a proponent of market economics, points out an irony:

In their Wal-Mart episode, Penn & Teller interview Benjamin Powell, a Professor of Economics from San Jose State University. Professor Powell argues that sweatshop-type jobs in a developing country are often a significant improvement over other employment options (for example, subsistence farming). He further notes that the United States went through its own period of sweatshop labor during its development.

In an article about a Nike sweatshop in Vietnam, Johan Norberg wrote, "But when I talk to a young Vietnamese woman, Tsi-Chi, at the factory, it is not the wages she is most happy about. Sure, she makes five times more than she did, she earns more than her husband, and she can now afford to build an extension to her house. But the most important thing, she says, is that she doesn't have to work outdoors on a farm any more... Farming means 10 to 14 hours a day in the burning sun or the intensive rain... The most persistent demand Nike hears from the workers is for an expansion of the factories so that their relatives can be offered a job as well."

According to a November 2001 BBC article, in the previous two months, 100,000 sweatshop workers in Bangladesh had lost their sweatshop jobs. The sweatshop workers wanted their jobs back, and the Bangladeshi government was planning to lobby the U.S. government to repeal its trade barriers so the sweatshop workers could have their jobs back.

A 2005 article in the ''Christian Science Monitor'' states, "For example, in Honduras, the site of the infamous Kathy Lee Gifford sweatshop scandal, the average apparel worker earns $13.10 per day, yet 44 percent of the country's population lives on less than $2 per day... In Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Honduras, the average wage paid by a firm accused of being a sweatshop is more than double the average income in that country's economy."

On three documented occasions during the 1990s, anti-sweatshop activists in rich countries have apparently caused increases in childhood prostitution in poor countries. In Bangladesh, there was a closure of several sweatshops which had been run by a German company, and as a result, thousands of Bangladeshi children who had been working in those sweatshops ended up working as prostitutes, turning to crime, or starving to death. In Pakistan, several sweatshops, including ones run by Nike, Reebok, and other corporations, were closed, which caused those Pakistani children to turn to prostitution. In Nepal, a carpet manufacturing company closed several sweatshops, resulting in thousands of Nepalese girls turning to prostitution.

An October 19, 2008 Associated Press article reported about the Chinese citizens complaining about how the current U.S. economic crises had caused them to lose their sweatshop jobs. The article quoted Wang Wenming, who had lost his job at a Dongguan sweatshop, as saying, "This financial crisis in America is going to kill us. It's already taking food out of our mouths."

Defenders of sweatshops cite Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan as recent examples of countries that benefited from having sweatshops.

Organizations working on the issue

Clean Clothes Campaign international alliance of labor unions and non-governmental organizations

International Labor Rights Fund

International Labour Organization a specialized agency of the United Nations

National Labor Committee founded to combat sweatshop labor and US government policy in El Salvador and Central America.

Green America membership organization based in the United States

United Students Against Sweatshops a student organization in the United States and Canada

Free the Children A Canadian organization that helps raise awareness and put a stop to Child Labour - Also helps other children in need.

Reason Foundation Founded in 1968, Reason Foundation is a nonprofit organization advancing "free minds and free markets."

Not for Sale Campaign

See also

Anti-sweatshop

Assembly line

Comparative advantage

Contingent work

Child labour

Economic development

Emerging markets

Exploitation

Export processing zone

Game sweatshop

Maquiladora

National Anti-Sweating League

Nike sweatshops

Precarious work

Protectionism

Race to the bottom

SA8000 — Social Accountability Certification Scheme for Manufacturing Industry

Sweating system

Union organizer

References

Notes

Category:Manufacturing Category:Labor Category:Garment industry Category:Business ethics Category:Clothing controversies Category:Anti-corporate activism Category:Economic growth Category:Economic development

ca:Taller de treball esclau de:Sweatshop es:Taller de trabajo esclavo fr:Atelier de misère id:Sweatshop he:סדנת יזע ms:Kilang peras tenaga nl:Sweatshop ja:ブラック企業 simple:Sweatshop fi:Hikipaja sv:Låglönefabrik zh-yue:血汗工廠 zh:血汗工廠

name	De Staat
background	group_or_band
origin	Nijmegen, Netherlands
genre	Alternative rock
years active
website	www.destaat.net
current members	Torre Florim Vedran Mircetic Jop van Summeren Rocco Bell Tim van Delft
past members	}}

De Staat is a Dutch alternative rock band, formed in Nijmegen in 2006.

Biography

De Staat started as a one man project by the leadsinger, Torre Florim, who brought the band together. Their first demo was made in 2007 and recorded in Florim's apartment. Before they even got signed they were already a full grown band, because of their well received live performances in the Netherlands. They were also the supporting acting of the populair Belgium band dEUS. De Staat got signed by Excelsior Recordings in 2008 and they released their debutalbum ''Wait for Evolution'' early in 2009, all the songs were written and produced by Torre Florim himself. He wrote the album as a graduating project for his studies "Music Production". Not only did Florim produce his own album, he also produced the debutalbum EP of another Dutch band Go Back To The Zoo in 2008. Within a year De Staat's popularity rose and they performed on festivals like Dot to Dot, Glastonbury, Sziget and Lowlands. When they performed on Lowlands, they were spotted by Chris Goss, a music producer. Goss introduced them to Mascot Records, which released ''Wait for Evolution'' internationally in the spring of 2010. After their international debut, they spend a lot of time on the road, touring abroad.

Members

Torre Florim (leadsinger and guitarist)

Vedran Mircetic (leadguitarist)

Jop van Summeren (bassist and vocals)

Rocco Bell (pianist and vocals)

Tim van Delft (drums)

Awards

Winner

Live XS magazine - Best Album of 2009

3VOOR12 Award 2009 - Best Album in the Netherlands

"Duiveltje" - Best vocalist 2009

Nominated

Edison Award for Best Album 2010

3FM Award 2010

3FM Award 2011

Discography

Albums

'' Wait for Evolution'' (2009)

# Sleep Tight # The Fantastic Journey Of The Underground Man # I Am Here To Lose Control # Wait For Evolution # Habibi # We're Gonna Die # My Blind Baby # Kill The Man # Meet The Devil # You'll Be The Leader # Taste It # Love It

''Machinery'' (2011)

# Ah I See # Sweatshop # I'll Never Marry You # Old MacDonald Don't Have No Farm No More # I'm A Rat # Keep Me Home # Tumbling Down # Psycho Disco # Rooster-Man # Serial Killer # Back To The Grind

Singles

"The Fantastic Journey of the Underground Man" (2010)

"Wait For Evolution" (2010)

"Sweatshop" (2011)

References

External links

Category:Dutch alternative rock groups

nl:De Staat (band)

name	John Stossel
birthname	John F. Stossel
birth date	March 06, 1947
birth place	Chicago Heights, Illinois
education	B.A. in Psychology, Princeton University (1969)
occupation	Journalist, author, columnist, reporter, TV presenter
status	Married
spouse	Ellen Abrams
religion	Agnostic
credits	''20/20'' ''Stossel''
url	http://www.johnstossel.com }}

John F. Stossel (born March 6, 1947) is an American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist. In October 2009 Stossel left his long time home on ABC News to join the Fox Business Channel and Fox News Channel, both owned and operated by News Corp. He hosts a weekly news show entitled ''Stossel'', on Fox Business which debuted December 10, 2009, airing in prime time every Thursday repeating on both Saturdays and Sundays. Stossel also regularly provides signature analysis, appearing on various Fox News shows, including weekly appearances on ''The O'Reilly Factor'', in addition to writing the Fox News Blog, "John Stossel's Take".

Stossel practices advocacy journalism, often challenging conventional wisdom. His reporting style, which is a blend of commentary and reporting, reflects a libertarian political philosophy and his views on economics are largely supportive of the free market.

In his decades as a reporter, Stossel has received numerous honors and awards, including nineteen Emmy awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. John Stossel is doctor ''honoris causa'' from Universidad Francisco Marroquín. Stossel has written two books recounting how his experiences in journalism shaped his socioeconomic views, ''Give Me a Break'' in 2004 and ''Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity'' in 2007.

Stossel began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV and later became a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City, before joining ABC News as a consumer editor and reporter on ''Good Morning America''. Stossel went on to be an ABC News correspondent, joining the weekly news magazine program ''20/20'', going on to become co-anchor for the ABC News show ''20/20''.

ABC is reported to believe "his reporting goes against the grain of the established media and offers the network something fresh and different...[but] makes him a target of the groups he offends."

Early life

John Stossel was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the younger of two sons, to a prominent Jewish family, and graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka. He overcame a stuttering problem so he could become a reporter, and is now a supporter and advocate for The Stuttering Foundation. Stossel graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Psychology in 1969 and was a member of Princeton Tower Club while there. He began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV in Portland, Oregon. Stossel later became a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City before joining ABC News in 1981 as consumer editor and reporter on ''Good Morning America''.

Career

''20/20''

Stossel was named co-anchor of ABC News' ''20/20'' in May 2003. He joined the weekly news magazine program in 1981, initially as a correspondent. His "Give Me a Break" segments featured a skeptical look at subjects from government regulations and pop culture to censorship and unfounded fear. The series was spun off into a series of one-hour specials (which, Stossel stated in an interview with ReasonTV, cost ABC half a million dollars per Special), beginning in 1994, with titles including:

"Give Me a Break" – regular segment

''You Can't Even Talk About It'' – 2009

''Bailouts and Bull'' (in association with ReasonTV) – 2009

''John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics'' – 2008

''Sex in America'' – 2008

''Sick in America, Whose Body Is It Anyway?'' – 2007

''Cheap In America'' – 2007

''Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity'' – 2007

''Cheap in America'' – 2006

''Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids'' – 2006

''Privilege in America: Who's Shutting You Out?'' – 2006

''War on Drugs: A War on Ourselves'' – 2002

''Freeloaders'' – 2001

''John Stossel Goes to Washington'' – Spring 2001

''Is America #1?'' – 1999

''Greed'' – 1999

''Common Sense'' – 1995

''Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?''

''Junk Science: What You Know That May Not Be So''

''Boys and Girls Are Different''

''You Can't Say That!''

''The Power of Belief''

Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network

In September 2009, it was announced that Stossel was leaving ABC News and joining Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. In addition to appearing on ''The O'Reilly Factor'' every Tuesday night, he now hosts a one-hour weekly program for Fox Business Network and a series of one-hour specials for Fox News Channel, as well as making regular guest appearances on Fox News programs.

The program, entitled ''Stossel'', debuted December 10, 2009, at 8 pm EST on Fox Business Network. The program looks at consumer-focused topics, such as civil liberties, the business of health care, and free trade. His blog, "Stossel’s Take", is published on both FoxBusiness.com and FoxNews.com.

Publications

Stossel has written two books. ''Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media'' is an autobiography documenting his career and philosophical transition from liberalism to libertarianism. It describes his opposition to government regulation, his belief in free market and private enterprise, support for tort reform, and advocacy for shifting social services from the government to private charities. It was a New York Times bestseller for 11 weeks. ''Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel – Why Everything You Know Is Wrong'' questions the validity of various conventional wisdoms, and argues that the belief he is conservative is untrue.

With financial support from the libertarian Palmer R. Chitester Fund, Stossel and ABC News launched a series of educational materials for public schools in 1999 entitled "Stossel in the Classroom". It was taken over in 2006 by the Center for Independent Thought and releases a new DVD of teaching materials annually. In 2006, Stossel and ABC released ''Teaching Tools for Economics'', a video series based on the National Council of Economics Education standards.

Charity and other work

Stossel often makes public appearances and speeches, advocating his brand of libertarian thought. Stossel explained at the end of the December 30, 2010 episode of ''Stossel'' that he gives away his earnings from these engagements to charity; they contribute 25% of his income. The three main groups he supports with his donations are the The Doe Fund, the Central Park Conservancy (on whose board he sits), and Student Sponsor Partners (SSP), which partners low-income high school students with donors who mentor the students and pay tuition for the students to attend private school (usually Catholic schools), which Stossel says have higher graduation rates than public schools.

Stossel and his former ABC News colleague Chris Cuomo are silent investors in Columbus Tavern, a restaurant on Columbus Avenue at 72nd Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Political and personal beliefs

Contrarianism

Stossel's news reports and writings attempt to debunk popular beliefs. His ''Myths and Lies'' series of ''20/20'' specials challenges a range of widely held beliefs. He also hosted ''The Power of Belief'' (October 6, 1998), an ABC News Special that focused on assertions of the paranormal and people's desire to believe. Another report outlined the belief that opposition to DDT is misplaced and that the ban on DDT has resulted in the deaths of millions of children, mostly in poor nations.

Libertarianism

As a libertarian, Stossel says that he believes in both personal freedom and the free market. He frequently uses television airtime to advance these views and challenge viewers' distrust of free market capitalism and economic competition. He received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from Francisco Marroquin University, a libertarian university in Guatemala, in 2008. He told ''The Oregonian'', on October 26, 1994:

Stossel argues that personal greed creates an incentive to work and to innovate. He has promoted school choice as a way to improve American schools, because he believes that when people are given a choice, they will choose the better schools for their children. Referring to educational tests that rank American students lower than others he says:

}}

Stossel has criticized government programs as inefficient, wasteful, and harmful. He has also criticized the American legal system, opining that it provides lawyers and vexatious litigators the incentive to file frivolous lawsuits indiscriminately, which Stossel contends often generate more wealth for lawyers than deserving clients, stifle innovation and personal freedoms, and cause harm to private citizens, taxpayers, consumers and businesses. Although Stossel concedes that some lawsuits are necessary in order to provide justice to people genuinely injured by others with greater economic power, he advocates the adoption in the U.S. of the English rule as one method to reduce the more abusive or frivolous lawsuits.

Stossel opposes corporate welfare, bailouts and the war in Iraq. He also opposes legal prohibitions against pornography, marijuana, gambling, ticket scalping, prostitution, homosexual activity, and assisted suicide, and believes most abortions should be legal. He favors replacing the income tax with the FairTax.

When President Barack Obama altered federal guidelines in April 2010 governing the employment of unpaid interns under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Stossel criticized the guidelines, appearing in a police uniform during an appearance on the Fox News program ''America Live'', commenting, "I’ve built my career on unpaid interns, and the interns told me it was great—I learned more from you than I did in college." Asked why he did not pay them if they were so valuable, he said he could not afford to.

Regarding religion, Stossel identified himself as an agnostic in the December 16, 2010 episode of ''Stossel'', explaining that he had no belief in God, but was open to the possibility.

Praise and criticism

Awards

Stossel has won 19 Emmy Awards. He was honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club, and has received the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the Peabody Award. In one year, according to Stossel in his book ''Give Me A Break'', "I got so many Emmys, another winner thanked me in his acceptance speech 'for not having an entry in this category'". According to Stossel, when he was in favor of government intervention and skeptical of business he was deluged with awards, but in 2006 he stated, "They like me less... Once I started applying the same skepticism to government, I stopped winning awards."

Praise

The libertarian Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman lauded Stossel, stating: ''"Stossel is that rare creature, a TV commentator who understands economics, in all its subtlety."'' P. J. O'Rourke, best-selling author of ''Eat the Rich'' and ''Parliament of Whores'' praised Stossel, stating: ''"... about John Stossel's fact-finding. He seeks the truths that destroy truisms, wields reason against all that's unreasonable, and ... puncture(s) sanctimonious idealism.... He makes the maddening mad. And Stossel’s tales of the outrageous are outrageously amusing."'' Steve Forbes, the editor of ''Forbes Magazine'', described Stossel as riveting and "one of America’s ablest and most courageous journalists."

An article published by the libertarian group Advocates for Self Government notes praise for Stossel. Independent Institute Research Analyst Anthony Gregory, writing on the libertarian blog, LewRockwell.com, described Stossel as a "heroic rogue... a media maverick and proponent of freedom in an otherwise statist, conformist mass media." Libertarian investment analyst Mark Skousen said Stossel is "a true libertarian hero".

Criticism and controversy

Watchdog groups

Progressive watch dog organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and Media Matters for America (MMfA), have criticized Stossel's work, for what was perceived by those groups as a lack of balance of coverage and distortion of facts. For example, Stossel was criticized for a segment on his October 11, 1999, show during which he argued that AIDS research has received too much funding, "25 times more than on Parkinson's, which kills more people." FAIR responded that, "In fact, AIDS killed more than 16,000 people in the United States in 1999," whereas Parkinson's averaged "a death toll in the United States of less than 4,000 per year."

Accusation of conflict of interest

In a February 2000 Salon.com feature on Stossel entitled "Prime-time propagandist", David Mastio wrote that Stossel has a conflict of interest in donating profits from his public speaking engagements to, among others, a non-profit called "Stossel in the Classroom" which includes material for use in schools, some of which uses material made by Stossel.

Galbraith and Stossel

University of Texas economist James K. Galbraith has alleged that Stossel, in his September 1999 special ''Is America #1?'', used an out of context clip of Galbraith to convey the notion that Galbraith advocated the adoption by Europe of the free market economics practiced by the United States, when in fact, Galbraith actually advocated that Europe adopt some of the United States' social benefit transfer mechanisms such as Social Security, which is the economically opposite view. Stossel denied any misrepresentation of Galbraith's views, and stated that it was not his intention to convey that Galbraith agreed with all of the special's ideas, but re-edited that portion of the program for its September 2000 repeat, in which Stossel paraphrased, "Even economists who like Europe's policies, like James Galbraith, now acknowledge America's success."

Organic vegetables

A February 2000 story about organic vegetables on ''20/20'' included statements by Stossel that tests had shown that neither organic nor conventional produce samples contained any pesticide residue, and that organic food was more likely to be contaminated by ''E. coli'' bacteria. The Environmental Working Group objected to his report, mainly questioning his statements about bacteria, but also managed to determine that the produce had never been tested for pesticides. They communicated this to Stossel, but after the story's producer backed Stossel's recollection that the test results had been as described, the story was rebroadcast months later, uncorrected, and with a postscript in which Stossel reiterated his claim. Later, after a report in ''The New York Times'' confirmed the Environmental Working Group's claims, ABC News suspended the producer of the segment for a month and reprimanded Stossel. Stossel apologized, saying that he had thought the tests had been conducted as reported. However, he asserted that the gist of his report had been accurate.

Frederick K. Price

In a March 2007 segment about finances and lifestyles of televangelists, ''20/20'' aired a clip of Rev. Frederick K. Price, a TV minister, that was originally broadcast by the Lifetime Network in 1997. Price alleged that the clip portrayed him describing his wealth in extravagant terms, when he was actually telling a parable about a rich man. ABC News twice aired a retraction and apologized for the error. In August 2010, a lower court's dismissal of the minister's defamation suit against ABC, ''Price v. Stossel'', was overturned by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"Sick Sob Stories"

In an opinion piece published in ''The Wall Street Journal'' in September 2007 called "Sick Sob Stories", Stossel described the case of Tracy and Julie Pierce that was explored in Michael Moore's film, ''Sicko''. Julie Pierce criticized Stossel, saying her husband would have been saved by the Canadian health care system, and she thought Stossel should have interviewed her and her doctor before writing about them. Stossel expressed sympathy, but said she had been misled to believe the treatment was routinely available in Canada. He said that the treatment is also considered "experimental" in Canada, and is provided there even more rarely than in the U.S.

Global warming

He challenges the notion that man-made global warming would have net negative consequences, pointing to assertedly warmer periods in human history. Central to his argument is the idea that groups and individuals get much more public attention, donations, and government funding when they proclaim "this will be terrible" than groups that say "this is nothing to worry about." He points to groups like the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and to activists such as Rachel Carson and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore as examples of environmental scaremongers.

In 2001, the progressive media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting criticized Stossel's reportage of global warming in his documentary, ''Tampering with Nature,'' for using "highly selective...information" that gave "center stage to three dissenters from among the 2,000 members of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which recently released a report stating that global temperatures are rising almost twice as fast as previously thought."

In a 2006 discussion hosted by the Fraser Institute, Stossel stated that he accepts that global warming has occurred in the past century, that it has been about one degree Celsius, and that man-made emissions "may be part of the cause." Nevertheless he groups environmental groups with astrologers and psychics in his second book, ''Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity''. He stated that the "myths" come in with the debate about proposed solutions to reduce global warming, which he argues will not solve the problem at all and will restrict people's freedom.

David Schultz incident

On December 28, 1984, during an interview for ''20/20'' on professional wrestling, wrestler David Schultz struck Stossel after Stossel stated that he thought professional wrestling was "fake". Stossel stated that he suffered from pain and buzzing in his ears eight weeks after the assault. Stossel sued and obtained a settlement of $425,000 from the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). In his book, ''Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity'', he writes that he has come to regret doing so, having adopted the belief that lawsuits harm hundreds of innocent people. Schultz maintains that he attacked Stossel on orders from Vince McMahon, the head of the then-WWF.

Personal life

Stossel lives in New York City with his wife, Ellen Abrams. He has two grown children.

Stossel's older brother, Thomas P. Stossel, is a hematologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and a professor at Harvard Medical School. He has served on the advisory boards of Merck, Biogen Idec and Dyax, as a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, and as a trustee of the American Council on Science and Health.

Stossel's nephew is the journalist and magazine editor Scott Stossel.

See also

List of newspaper columnists

References

Further reading

External links

"John Stossel's Take", John Stossel's blog at Fox Business

Harper Collins (Publisher) – Biography at Publisher's website

Biographies and articles about Stossel

ABC News Biography

Johnson, Peter. "Stossel's evolution from activist to contrarian angers some of his fans", ''USA Today'', April 30, 2006

"John Stossel: Myth-Buster", FrontPageMag.com

Sigall, Ed. "John Stossel: Not Afraid to Tell the Truth", NewsMax.com, June 3, 2006

"John Stossel – Libertarian", TheAdvocates.org

Sullum, Jacob. "Risky Journalism: ABC's John Stossel bucks a fearful establishment" ''Reason'', April 1997.

Articles by Stossel

John Stossel's 20/20 Web Page

John Stossel's Newspaper Columns

John Stossel's contributions to Reason Magazine

"Confessions of a Welfare Queen: How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars" is an excerpt from his first book.

John Stossel's Column on Creators.com

Category:ABC News personalities Category:American columnists Category:American libertarians Category:American people of Jewish descent Category:American political pundits Category:American skeptics Category:American agnostics Category:American television news anchors Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Fox News Channel Category:George Polk Award recipients Category:Jewish American writers Category:Minarchists Category:New Trier High School alumni Category:Peabody Award winners Category:Portland, Oregon television anchors Category:Princeton University alumni Category:1947 births Category:Living people

de:John Stossel fr:John Stossel ms:John Stossel simple:John Stossel

name	Penn & Teller
birth name	Penn JilletteRaymond Joseph Teller
birth date	Penn Jillette (March 5, 1955) Teller (February 14, 1948)
residence	Las Vegas
othernames	Asparagus Valley Cultural Society
homepage	pennandteller.com
known for	MagicComedy }}

Penn & Teller (Penn Jillette and Teller) are Las Vegas headliners whose act is an amalgam of illusion and comedy. Penn Jillette is a raconteur; Teller generally uses mime while performing, although his voice can occasionally be heard throughout their performance. They specialize in gory tricks, exposing frauds, and performing clever pranks, and have become associated with Las Vegas, atheism, scientific skepticism, and libertarianism.

Careers

On 19 August 1975, Penn & Teller did their first show together at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. Penn and Teller were introduced to one another by Weir Chrisimer. From the late 1970s through 1981, the three made up an act called "Asparagus Valley Cultural Society" which played in San Francisco at the Phoenix Theater. This act was sillier and less "edgy" than today's Penn & Teller act. Chrisimer helped to develop some bits that continued, most notably Teller's "Shadows" trick, which involves a single red rose.

By 1985, Penn & Teller were receiving rave reviews for their Off Broadway show and Emmy award-winning PBS special, ''Penn & Teller Go Public''. In 1987, they began the first of two successful Broadway runs. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the duo made numerous television appearances on ''Late Night with David Letterman'' and ''Saturday Night Live'', as well as ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'', ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'', ''Today'', and many others.

Penn & Teller had national tours throughout the 1990s, gaining critical praise. They have also made television guest appearances on ''Babylon 5'' (as the comedy team ''Rebo and Zooty''), ''The Drew Carey Show'', a few episodes of ''Hollywood Squares'' from 1998 until 2004, ABC's ''Muppets Tonight'', FOX's ''The Bernie Mac Show'', an episode of the game show ''Fear Factor'' on NBC, NBC's ''The West Wing'', in a two-part episode of the final season of ABC's ''Home Improvement'' in 1998, four episodes during season 1 of ''Sabrina, the Teenage Witch'' in 1996, NBC's ''Las Vegas'', and FOX's ''The Simpsons'' episodes Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder and The Great Simpsina and ''Futurama'' film ''Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder'' in 2009. They also appeared as Three-card Monte scam artists in the music video for "It's Tricky" by Run-DMC in 1987, and were thrown out of a Las Vegas hotel room in the music video for "Waking Up in Vegas" by Katy Perry in 2009.

Their Showtime Network television show ''Bullshit!'' takes a skeptical look at psychics, religion, the pseudoscientific, conspiracy theories, and the paranormal. It has also featured critical segments on gun control, astrology, Feng Shui, environmental issues, PETA, weight loss, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the war on drugs.

On ''Bullshit!'', the duo describe their social and political views as libertarian.

They have also described themselves as teetotalers. Their book, ''Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic'', explains that they avoid absolutely all alcohol and other drugs, including caffeine, though they do appear to smoke cigarettes in some videos. Penn has said that he has never even tasted alcohol, and that his tolerance for certain drugs is so low that his doctor only had to administer a minute amount of anesthetic relative to what one would expect necessary for a man of his size to undergo surgery.

The pair have written several books about magic, including ''Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends'', ''Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food'', and ''Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic''. Since 2001, Penn & Teller have performed six nights a week (or as Penn puts it on ''Bullshit!'': "Every night of the week . . . except Fridays!") in Las Vegas at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino.

Penn Jillette hosted a weekday one-hour talk show on Infinity Broadcasting's Free FM radio network from January 3, 2006 to March 2, 2007 with cohost Michael Goudeau. He also hosted the game show ''Identity'', which debuted on December 18, 2006 on NBC.

Penn & Teller have also shown support for the Brights movement and are now listed on the movement's homepage under the Enthusiastic Brights section. According to an article in Wired magazine, their license plates are customized so they read, "Atheist" and "Godless", and when Penn signs autographs, he often writes down, "there is no God" with his signature.

Off-stage relationship

Penn Jillette has told interviewer Larry King that a big part of the duo's success and longevity is due to their never having been close friends. They enjoy working together immensely, but have little in common besides magic. As a result of their drastically different lifestyles and interests, they rarely socialize or interact when not working. Jillette believes that their partnership succeeds precisely because they give each other a great deal of space off-stage.

Tricks

Their tricks include Teller hanging upside-down over a cushion of spikes in a straitjacket, Teller submerged in a huge container of water, Teller being run over by an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, Teller swinging going through Penn's hands. Many of their effects rely heavily on shock appeal and violence, although presented in a humorous manner.

Sometimes, the pair will claim to reveal a secret of how a magic trick is done, but those tricks are usually invented by the duo for the sole purpose of exposing them, and therefore designed with more spectacular and weird methods than would have been necessary had it just been a "proper" magic trick. For example, in the "reveal" of one trick, while Teller waits for his cue, he reads magazines and eats a snack. Another example is their rendition of the cups and balls, using transparent cups.

Penn and Teller perform their own adaptation of the famous bullet catch illusion. Each simultaneously fires a gun at the other, through small panes of glass, and then "catches" the other's bullet in his mouth. They also have an assortment of card tricks in their repertoire, virtually all of them involving the force of the Three of Clubs on an unsuspecting audience member as this card is easy for viewers to identify on television cameras.

The duo will sometimes perform tricks that discuss the intellectual underpinnings of magic. One of their acts, titled "Magician vs. Juggler", features Teller performing card tricks while Penn juggles and delivers a monologue on the difference between the two: jugglers start as socially aware children who go outside and learn juggling with other children; magicians are misfits who stay in the house and teach themselves magic tricks out of spite.

In one of their most politically charged tricks, they make a U.S. flag seem to disappear by wrapping it in a copy of the United States Bill of Rights, and apparently setting the flag on fire, so that "the flag is gone but the Bill of Rights remains." The act may also feature the "Chinese bill of rights", presented as a transparent piece of acetate. They normally end the routine by restoring the unscathed flag to its starting place on the flagpole; however, on a TV guest appearance on ''The West Wing'' this final part was omitted.

One of their more recent tricks involves a powered nail gun with a quantity of missing nails from the series of nails in its magazine. Penn begins by firing several apparently real nails into a board in front of him. He then proceeds to fire the nailgun into the palm of his hand several times, while suffering no injuries. His pattern builds as he oscillates between firing blanks into his hand and firing nails into the board. While performing he states that the trick is merely memorization, and explains that the fact that he does not flinch when he could be firing a nail into his hand should be a sign that the trick is not actually dangerous. A later revision to the trick replaced the false claims of memorization with a more open explanation, allowing the audience to enjoy the rhythm of the nail gun without fear of a serious mishap.

A trick introduced in 2010 is a modern version of the bag escape, replacing the traditional sack with a black trash bag apparently filled with helium. Teller is placed in the bag which is then pumped full of helium and sealed by an audience member. For the escape, the audience are blinded by a bright light for a second and when they are able to see again, Teller has escaped from the bag and Penn is holding it, still full of helium, above his head, before releasing it to float to the ceiling. The duo had hoped to put the trick in their mini-tour in London; however, it was first shown to the public in their Las Vegas show on 18 August 2010. In June 2011, Penn and Teller performed this trick for the first time in the United Kingdom on their show ''Fool Us''.

Filmography

Film

! Year	! Film	! Role	! Notes
	''Penn & Teller Get Killed''	Themselves
	''Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends''	Themselves
		Themselves	Penn also co-directed the film

Television

! Year(s)	! Title	! Role	! Notes
1985	''Penn & Teller Go Public''	Themselves	On KCET Los Angeles
1985 - 1986	''Saturday Night Live''	Themselves	7 Episodes
1993	''FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman''	Themselves	They taught one of the show's contestants, Rubye, to perform magic tricks.
1994	''The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller''	Themselves
1995	''Phobophilia''	Themselves
1995	''The Drew Carey Show''	Archibald Fenn & Geller	2 Episodes: "Drew Meets Lawyers" (1995) and "See Drew Run" (1997)
1995 - 2008	''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno''	Themselves	4 Episodes: 14 November 1995, 27 November 1998, 13 May 2004, & 25 November 2008
1996 & 1997	''Sabrina, the Teenage Witch''	Drell & Skippy	4 Episodes: "Pilot" (1996), "Terrible Things" (1996), "Jenny's Non-Dream" (1997), & "First Kiss" (1997)
1997	''Muppets Tonight''	Themselves	Episode: "The Gary Cahuenga Episode"
1997 - 2003	''Late Night with Conan O'Brien''	Themselves	3 Episodes: 16 October 1997, 7 June 2000, & 23 January 2003
1998	''Babylon 5''	Rebo & Zooty	Episode: "Day of the Dead"
1998 - 1999	''Penn & Teller's Sin City Spectacular''	Themselves	24 Episodes
1998 - 2000	''The Daily Show with Jon Stewart''	Themselves	2 Episodes: 13 August 1998 & 5 June 2000
1998 - 2004	''Hollywood Squares''	Themselves	60 Episodes
1999	''Home Improvement''	Themselves	2 Episodes: "Knee Deep"
1999 & 2011	''The Simpsons''	Themselves	2 Episodes: "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" (1999) and "The Great Simpsina" (2011)
2002	''Grand Illusions: The Story of Magic''	Themselves	Discovery Channel documentary: Penn & Teller present 200 years of the history of stage magic
2002	''Fear Factor''	Themselves	Episode: "Celebrity Fear Factor 3"
2003		Themselves	Episode: "Luck Be a Lady"
2003	''Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour''	Themselves	3 Part mini-series
2003	''The Bernie Mac Show''	Themselves	Episode: "Magic Jordan"
2003 - 2010		Themselves	85 Episodes
2004	''The West Wing''	Themselves	Episode: "In The Room"
2004 - 2010	''Last Call with Carson Daly''	Themselves	6 Episodes: 13 July 2004, 16 November 2005, 5 April 2007, 16 June 2008, 5 April 2010, & 5 May 2010
2007 & 2008	''Late Show with David Letterman''	Themselves	2 Episodes: #15.32 & #15.113
2009	''Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder''	Themselves
2009	The Great American Road Trip	Themselves	Guests
2011	''Penn & Teller: Fool Us''	Themselves	7 Episodes (ongoing), ITV1 (UK)
2011	''Penn & Teller: Tell a Lie''	Themselves	Starts Fall of 2011

Books

''Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic'' (1997, ISBN 1-57297-293-9)

''Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food'' (1992, ISBN 0-679-74311-1)

''Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends'' (1989, ISBN 0-394-75351-8)

''Sock '' 2004, ISBN 0-312-32805-2 (Penn Jillette sole author)

''How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker: The Wisdom of Dickie Richard'' 2006, ISBN 0-312-34905-X (Penn Jillette and Mickey D. Lynn)

''When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours: Joe Teller—A Portrait By His Kid'' 2000, ISBN 0-922-23322-5 (Teller sole author)

Other Media

Music

''The horse you rode in on by Pigface'' (Penn Jillette only)

''Penn & Teller Present: Music To Look At Boxes By'' (With Mike "Jonesy" Jones)

''Never Mind the Sex Pistols, by Bongos Bass & Bob'' (Penn Jillette with Dean J Seal and Bob "Running" Elk)

''Tattoo of Blood by the Captain Howdy'' (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)

''Money Feeds My Music Machine, by the Captain Howdy'' (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)

''It's Tricky video, by RunDmc" Penn and Teller shown throughout the video and at the end appear to take over the persona of RunDMC

Jillette also toured with the Residents during the Mole Show, and hosted Ralph Records' 10th Anniversary Radio Special (1982). There is some mild controversy and confusion surrounding this. While the premise of 10th Anniversary Radio Special revolved around Jillette having never heard of the label or any of the bands on it (the Residents included), he was credited as a collaborator on the 1981 album Mark of the Mole, and he can be heard giving news bulletins in the first track. This has led some to speculate that Jillette may have been a Resident at one point.

Penn and Teller also appear in the video of Katy Perry's single, ''Waking up in Vegas'' in which they are kicked out of their hotel room by Perry and her boyfriend. They later kick Perry out again.

Theater

In 2008 Teller co-directed a production of ''Macbeth'' in Red Bank, New Jersey and Washington, DC.

Video games

''Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors'' 1995 - Absolute Entertainment for Sega CD & 3DO, Unreleased.

''Sabrina, the Teenage Witch: Spellbound'' 1998 - Simon & Schuster for PC - Voices for Drell & Skippy

References

External links

Penn's "Hydro-therapeutic stimulator" (aka Jill-jet) patent

A man, a ball, a hoop, a bench (and an alleged thread)… TELLER!

Category:Living people Category:Magician of the year Award winner Category:Celebrity duos Category:American magicians Category:Comedy duos Category:Duos Category:1955 births

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