Backstage magic, blunt comedy, sideways wisdom.
Penn's Sunday School runs on fast, loose conversation between Penn and Matt Donnelly, with Las Vegas, travel, magic rooms, shows, old comedy, and sponsor reads all feeding the same comic engine. It suits listeners who like sharp tangents more than tidy segments.
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Penn's Sunday School is a long-running comedy conversation with the manners of a live backstage hang and the attention span of a magician with too many stories queued up. Penn is the dominant storyteller, and Matt Donnelly is the counterweight who opens the room, nudges the pace, catches details, and sometimes gets roasted for existing near a punchline. The show rarely walks a straight line. It sprints, doubles back, misremembers, corrects itself, and treats the correction as useful fuel. Recent episodes move through The Big Whoop, Clown Town, Duck's Breast Mystery Theater, Higgins Boys and Gruber, Two-Headed Dog, Jokers of Magic, the Oscars, shows, small-room Las Vegas magic, and the indignities of healing in public. That range is not decorative. It is the actual subject: how performance, memory, inconvenience, and ego get braided together when funny people keep talking past the clean ending. The show has a sharp feel for comedy history. Penn's admiration for Jim Turner, Gruber, and Mark Fite comes through as storytelling rather than résumé polishing. A guest or cast can enter, but the house rhythm remains the same: fond, cranky, fast, and allergic to solemnity. The recent health material gives the comedy a physical anchor. Broken ankles, wheelchairs, boots, uneven ground, restrooms, walking to a dressing room, and standing up again become running evidence that the body is both miracle and nuisance. Matt's own performance life adds a second track, from ship shows to the Magician's Room and the grim comedy of entertaining four people with full commitment. Las Vegas is everywhere, but not as postcard glamour. It appears as rooms, show counts, tech load-ins, contracts, schedules, backstage corridors, and jokes about what makes a Tuesday-Wednesday show worth building a trip around. The show also keeps brushing against religion, not reverently and not lazily. Easter, joke provenance, religious skepticism, and old comic instincts all sit in the same pile. Sponsor reads are not sealed off from the room; they are folded into the performance until lifelong learning, Bob Dylan, abstract art, and time management become part of the comic weather. The result is messy by design. It rewards listeners who can enjoy a digression before knowing why it matters. It is not polished panel comedy. It is sharper, stranger, and more personal than that. The pleasure is hearing seasoned performers turn practical irritation into timing, then undercut the timing before anyone can admire it too cleanly.
Made for: For listeners who like fast, irreverent performer talk with dense references to magic, comedy, movies, Vegas rooms, ship gigs, and aging bodies. Best for people who enjoy tangents that earn their keep.
What sets it apart: Unlike cleaner interview or news-comedy formats, the show lets correction, interruption, sponsor copy, health updates, and showbiz memory share the same lane. Its comedy comes from process as much as punchline.
Join us as Penn Jillette, Matt Donnelly, and YOU discuss the news of the week. We'll examine religious news, talk about monkeys, and anything else that seems funny or makes us mad. We'll also take your suggestions for things you feel like talking about. We run a live video stream from Show Creators Studios for people with the time and inclination to watch people sitting and talking. The live show starts Sundays at noon Vegas time, at www.twitch.tv/reddirich, & is usually available for download from your favorite podcast aggregator by 9 am Monday morning.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Penn Jillette and Matt Donnelly turn performance logistics, personal setbacks and stray recollections into loose, steadily escalating comedy.
Penn's Sunday School runs on the conversational friction between Penn Jillette and Matt Donnelly. Talk of performance schedules, travel and Penn's recovery from a leg injury readily wanders into television plots, smoking memories and the practical oddities of working in magic.
A pedal steel guitar hijacks the hello; you know whether that's your kind of Sunday school.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Penn's recovery week becomes a shaggy, sidewinding riff on age, labor, and magic.
Penn Sunday School settles into a looser, wobblier rhythm as Penn does the show in a wheelchair while his leg heals, and that rougher edge gives the conversation room to breathe.
A boot, a bad flight, and a Vegas run turn into comic pressure.
Penn Jillette spends the week in a boot, working through a flight to Los Angeles with restroom anxiety and the SAG Awards before circling back to Las Vegas and the magician's room at the Link Promenade.
A cruise-ship comedy dispatch where dinner timing, sparse rooms, and one tin-foil blindfold turn backstage talk into real peril.
Matt Donnelly's cruise-ship dispatch gives this Penn's Sunday School episode its best comic shape. He is doing two to five short shows a night while Penn is at home, and the practical problem of dinner timing keeps slipping into the room dynamics.
Penn's wheelchair shows and a cigarette detour turn loose banter into sharp comic memory.
Penn Sunday School gets its comic tension from Penn doing shows in a wheelchair, while Matt Donnelly counts three performances from Thursday through Saturday and quickly catches the awkwardness of saying Penn is "taking steps forward." Penn keeps the room loose, turning the…
A pedal steel reunion becomes a loose, funny tour through television characters who would not stay dead.
Penn's Sunday School comes back after seven weeks with a pedal steel guitar cutting into Matt Donnelly and Penn Jillette's reunion, and that stray sound ends up setting the tone.
A car sale, a superstition spiral, and an evolutionary detour into "aftermarket breasts."
Penn's Sunday School starts with a car-sale story that should be simple, then lets it slide into a comic spiral of superstition. From there, the episode shifts into a frank conversation about attraction to artificial breasts, with Penn Jillette and Matt Donnelly keeping the…
Penn Jillette and Matt Donnelly host a live Q&A episode from their homes, discussing topics ranging from selling a car on Carvana to learning bass as an adult.
Penn Jillette and Matt Donnelly reunite after seven weeks apart, discussing Penn's recent Australian tour and sold-out shows.
Matt Donnelly announces the upcoming release of his autobiographical novel 'Felony Juggler' on May 6th, detailing special pre-order packages and directing listeners to akashicbooks.com.
The host announces the upcoming publication of his autobiographical novel 'Felony Juggler' about his street performing and Renaissance festival days, with special pre-order packages available.
Penn's Sunday School follows Penn and Matt Donnelly through discussions of crowd work, magic construction, injuries, and physical performance.
Penn Jillette introduces and interviews the cast of the movie 'The Big Whoop', sharing personal anecdotes about meeting comedians Jim Turner, Gruber, and Mark Fite.
Penn discusses his nephew's Easter joke that sounds like Gilbert Gottfried's style, involving a darkly humorous play on words about the holiday.
The hosts of Penn Sunday School celebrate returning to their Las Vegas studio for in-person recording after a long period on Zoom, while humorously discussing colloquial language and sexual terms becoming pedestrian.
Matt Donnelly introduces the Penn Sunday School podcast from Las Vegas and New Jersey, discussing Penn's Oscars experience, show successes with Jokers of Magic, and a Masterclass sponsorship.
Penn Jillette introduces a special Friday episode of Penn Sunday School from Las Vegas, discussing the immodesty of podcasting and justifying it through bragging and creating personal documents.
Penn is healing in a wheelchair.
Penn shows up in a boot after the cast.
Penn's Sunday School opens with Matt Donnelly broadcasting from a cruise ship while Penn Jillette sits at home, and the two trade notes from Grand Cayman, Cozumel, and Costa Maya.
Penn is doing shows in a wheelchair, and the phrase "taking steps forward" gets dragged into court almost at once.
This episode is a live recording from Scoopfest 2025 featuring Penn Jillette and hosts discussing the event's atmosphere, humorous observations, and sponsor Masterclass.
This episode features an interview with comedian Paul Provenza discussing topics like the anniversary of the Aristocrats and his experiences with Cracked Magazine.
This is a brief advertisement for Baystate Bath, a company specializing in bathroom remodeling.