Well, it was so odd the whole thing. First off, I felt so sad for the poor guy. Here he was, his future guaranteed, top of the world working for the New Yorker, writing a book that had already sold 200,000 copies, and he shot himself. How could he have done that knowing it was inevitable he would be discovered? What kind of madness? Why would anybody do that? The self-sabotage to that degree was incomprehensible. I looked back at what I had said and half of it I know I didn’t say. ... If you had modest intelligence, why would you set yourself up for the disaster of your life that would ruin your life forever? He will never recover from this.

We want to ensure that there is no confusion regarding reports today about writer Jonah Lehrer and WIRED. Jonah has not been “hired” by WIRED; he’s been a contributing editor at the magazine and the website for years. When allegations surfaced about his work elsewhere, we immediately began a thorough review of his feature stories and columns in the magazine. So far we have found nothing unusual. Jonah also wrote tens of thousands of words for Wired.com, and the process of vetting that work continues. He has no current assignments. After gathering the facts–from our inquiry and elsewhere–we’ll make a decision about whether Jonah’s byline will appear again at WIRED.

“I was definitely on the verge of giving up the dream of becoming a magician ... I was ready to go back home and become a high-school Latin teacher.”

I read Teller his quote from the Wired article: “I always assumed I’d spend my life happily performing in artsy-fartsy little theaters,” before asking him about the contradictory quote in Lehrer’s book.

“That’s correct,” Teller confirmed, before pointing to the fabricated quote from Imagine, “This is not.”