Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Real people like us are used every single day, people we love, even ourselves. I have to admit that I even fell for some con men with a lot of visibility, some self-help pseudo guru and some pseudo alternate medicine.

From the Mozart effect to reflexology, alien abductees and fire walkers, the bullshit gets exposed the way only Penn & Teller can do it. The truth is distorted every where, from second hand smoke reports to the real effects of Mozart Music on babies (what effect?).

The real self-help is to not get conned, and it starts with the Penn & Teller Bullshit show. It can't be viewed in Canada but I got the DVD of the first season from their website.

Hilarious stuff.

"Bulls***", on Showtime, investigates things from the pop culture (like feng shui, bottled water) and reveals that they are, indeed, BS. There is also a bit of a candid camera element to them, making sure that the people look as stupid as possible.

e.g. They filled up fancy looking bottles with hose water and gave them what sounds like fancy names (like Aqua de Culo, which means "butt water" in Italian)...and people at a restaurant raved about how clean and tasty the waters were, as opposed to tap water.

Penn's cynical commentary is also hilarious. Him and Teller do a great job with this show.

Wow. This should be mandatory viewing for the entire human race. Con men of all stripes hate this show, and with good reason. If enough people see it, they'll be out of business. To re-cap the first season: Bottled water is the same as tap water. Your penis can't be enlarged. "Intelligent Design" isn't. ESP -an old con debunked 10,000 times over. When will people learn. As for "talking to the dead" -these people deserve prison.

And already in the 2nd season we've seen that PETA is a terrorist organization.

Of course, I already knew a lot of this stuff, but Penn and Teller do a fine job of presenting the truth with humor.

When I say this is hilarious and informative, I mean it informs you of how stupid some people are. Penn and Teller do such a good job with this show, and do an even better job of de-bunking con-artists. Everything from Feng Shue to Magnet Medicine and these people who communicate with the dead (such as John Edward) are de-bunked. I just watched an episode where Penn and Teller got people to try out a "Mucas Mask". This was a supposed be a beauty treatment/facial massage in which people actually let somebody put snails all over their faces. You then see these people who have faces covered with nasty slime giving testimonials on how much better their wrinkles looked and how relaxed their face felt. This was something P&T set up just to show that these testimonials for other cons are not reliable. People can be so stupid, and Penn and Teller do a hilarious job of pointing out how gullible some people are. I reccomend this show to anybody.

This is one of the most interesting shows I've ever seen. OK, so the portrayal of some of the issues is a bit biased, and it does descend into ad-hominem with worrying frequency, but it gets two very important things right: it's thought-provoking, and it's funny. So, although many of the arguments given seem watertight enough to me, if it's a fair and rigorous exploration of the issues that you're after, you're going to be disappointed; however, if you want to be introduced to new, intellectually-stimulating topics in an entertaining way then it's just what you're looking for. Oh, and they do have a talent for picking the funniest nutters imaginable when they're choosing their interview-fodder.