I have been watching a lot of P&T lately and have really come to like the show. There is very little that I can disagree with from an Austrian perspective. They are a tad bit lacking as far as economics is concerned, but the general message is great and the social criticisms are excellent.
Is anyone else a fan of Penn & Teller: Bullshit?
Definitely a fan! I’m glad someone else on here has seen it! I had no idea Penn and Teller were libertarians until I first saw it on YouTube. Speaking of television, have you ever watched Real Time with Bill Maher? I don’t necessarily like many of his ideas, but I’ve heard a few libertarians who like him.
I don’t usually watch Bill Maher very much unless he is doing an interview with someone like Ron Paul. Have you seen his movie, Religulous?
No, I haven’t yet. I’ve been meaning to check it out. Have you seen it?
The bottled water episode was freaking hilarious.
It saw it quite a while ago and I really liked it. It poked fun at religion without being as offensive as some other works that I have seen.
I watch Bill Maher to get my mix of comedy and ‘what those crazy folks on the left are saying’ for the week. With the way Bill runs his panel, he really lets people flush out their ideas on topics, which is nice. He is just very confused on a lot of things.
P&T is good but they cover even lower hanging fruit than Stossel. Very rarely do they take on big topics. Would love to see a 'the Federal Reserve is Bullshit" episode, but I doubt it.
Well to be fair to P&T, they are not the undisputed dictators of that show. They have to clear stuff with Showtime’s lawyers before they tackle a subject. It may say “Penn & Teller’s Bullshit” on the title sequence, but Showtime really calls the shots.
For instance they’ve been wanting to do an episode on Scientology since forever, but the network execs won’t greenlight it.
P&T is a great way to shake up the preconceptions of non-libertarian friends in my experience.
I watched a bunch of P&T episodes with a close friend of mine that’s a committed leftie. We laughed together at the Feng Shui, Cryptozoology, Speaking to the Dead etc…stuff that affected neither one of us. Then I showed him the Recycling and Gun Control episodes and he got pretty pissed. But then I showed him the Big Brother episode(probably my all-time favorite one), and my friend was really blown away by it - he thought that since P&T tore into the environmentalists and the gun control movement, they HAD to be on the other side of the surveillance issue. As soon as he saw them lay into some of the left’s holy cows, he pegged them as being these orthodox conservatives. It really shook him up that there were these guys out there whose stance on the issues were based on principles that were not based on the tired old left/right dichotomy. It made him far more open to thinking that maybe these guys had the right idea on the bullshit that HE believed in.
^Good stuff Einar. P & T are great for introducing hippie-esque leftists and libertine leftists (if I may use two, broad, sweeping generalizations) to the concept of there being something beyond the cliched left-right paradigm.
Not so good with Christian conservatives. I tried showing some of my “Hannitized” and “Ditto-head” friends the episode on sex. It … didn’t go over too well. Let’s just say that they got up and walked out half-way through. Now they think that all libertarians are soulless epicureans.
Lol! That would be some good shit (or bullshit, as the case may be).
My favorite episodes aren’t the political ones, but the ones where they debunk psychics and similar frauds. Since P & T are illusionists and performers themselves as well as students of James Randi (an awesome guy btw, youtube him if you don’t know who he is), they are in their prime element when exposing telekinesis and similar bullshit.
Interesting. How do you hear about insider-executive information like that?
Epicurus was actually AGAINST CASUAL SEX!!
There’s a clip floating around youtube, or at least there was, of P&T answering an audience question at some convention about the issue. They basically said that the Scientology episode has been in lawyer hell for a long time, but that they personally really want to do one.
I saw it posted to one of the Anonymous anti-scientology activism forums.
Did you watch the one on walmart?
I love their show! I have actually met Penn and Teller in real life. Penn is a sweetheart.
If you enjoy Bullshit, you will probably also like Penn’s radio show. It was on for a few years and can be found archived here: http://www.pennfans.net/category/Audio_Archive/PennRadio/
He talks a lot about libertarianism, and atheism.
Nice find Cal, thanks!
Here’s a link to the Q&A where P&T address the lack of a Scientology episode for those who are interested.