MrBob

Anybody watch this show on showtime called Penn and Teller: Bull S#!T? It's a really cool show that features the famous duo as they expose popular scams and misinformation, and they don't pull any punches. In fact they have to call these scams Bull S#!T to avoid possible slander law suits. I really like this show and it is really entertaining, as a matter of fact it's the main reason that I have showtime.

Some of the topics they have done shows on include:

Chiropracters (SP?)

Magnet Theropy

Penile Enlargement drugs

Bottled Water

After Life Speakers (IE John Edwards, they event Called him the biggest Douche in the Universe too)
Nostradomus

Doomsday Prophecies

Fung Shui

Walking on hot coals

Self Help Semmenors

Spoon Bending

How Second Hand smoke wasn't harmful

And tonight they talked about Gentic Engineering of food and weight loss products. They Ripped Green Peace pretty bad tonight it was funny. Also they tested the Hollywood diet. If anybody wants any info on P&T's stance on any of the topics mention and what they did in that show and I'll try to post a synopsis of the topic.

What do you think of the show, and if you haven't seen it you should watch it.

das Monkey

is your friend.

Great episode tonight. I love how Penn gets so pissed off over some of these issues. "So unless your children are starving, SHUT ... THE **** ... UP!!" I like how they went after the diet scams, but I wish they had done a more comprehensive job. Some diets like Weight Watchers are nothing more than a simplified tracking system for a typical balanced diet. It wasn't accurate for that one lady to lump it in with ephedra-based drugs and Atkins and the like (yeah, I know ... to Atkins or not to Atkins ... that is the question in a string of Otter threads)

The thing with the anti-war protestors pro-world hunger protestors was pretty good too. Pardon the stereotype, but that one group living in daddy's beach house preaching "living off the Earth" was great. Hypocrites ... they make the world go round.

das

movielib

I think this was easily one of their best shows yet. I think it involved a trick: get people to watch a show ostensibly about diets but switch fairly early on to the very serious subject of exposing GreenPeace and some of the other environmentalists concerning their obsession with genetically engineered food and the way they do whatever they can to keep people all over the world starving with their pseudoscientific bull ****. I also liked the tribute they paid to Norman Borlaug, someone I have been reading about for a long time. See:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97...ug/borlaug.htm

I think the diet part of the show was treated superficially because it was not the message they really wanted to get across, except to show us Americans that our problems of losing weight are miniscule compared to those who don't get enough to eat every day and thus set us up for the real message of the show.

Great show, P&T. It makes me even more impatient to see the upcoming show on Environmental Hysteria on April 18.

Red Dog

This was definitely one of better ones. The piece on organic foods was probably their 2nd strongest so far - next to 2nd hand smoke. Never heard of Norman Borlaug before - a shame too since it sounds like he was a remarkable human being.

I loved the part where the guy outside the supermarket challenged the environmental nuts position.

RandyC

movielib, great point about the reason for the diet lead in.

Tuan Jim

Thanks for the article. We talked about the Green Revolution in my Population Geography class, but I don't recall Borlaug's name coming up at all.

I definitely subscribe to "Development is the best contraceptive." So true.

edytwinky

Where and when is this on?

movielib

Penn & Teller Schedule

Edit: I see they have no new shows listed after the Environmental Hysteria show on April 18. That looks like it will be the end of the season which makes sense since it is the 13th episode.

Let's hope this program gets renewed.

Red Dog

I hope they replay the 1st season soon. The first one I saw was the 2nd hand smoke one. I know that could not have been the 1st one.

edited: I guess I missed...
Alien Abductions
Alternative Medicine
Talking to the Dead

MrBob

My favorite would have to be the Fung Shi one, where they totally exposed the Bull **** of that "Science". I about died when that one idiot forgot he was on camera and said the living room looked like ****. LOL

The bottled water episode was Freakin Hilarious to with that one guy filling up all of the fake bottled waters with the hose out back. God People can be stupid.

I hope this show gets renewed for next year.

movielib

You also missed the End of the World. The Secondhand Smoke show was the 5th.

IC_Freeze

is this cable only thing?

Patman

It's on Showtime, so yes, it's a cable (or satellite) only thing.

BTW, excellent show this week!

Red Dog

No - I actually caught the repeat of that one shortly after the 2nd hand smoke one. I remember because they had the guy on who had the underground compound with the connected buses; plus they also talked about Nostradamus.

wildcatlh

I missed everything until the episode that aired on March 14. (was staying in a hotel that got Showtime, saw it, ordered Showtime when I got back home that Monday). So I really hope they replay everything.

wildcatlh

I'm finally watching the diet foods episode from Friday.

This is great. But those raw foods people scare me. Big-time.

Chew

Good episode this week and loved Penn's closing line!

wildcatlh

Agreed. If it wouldn't have made me feel so stupid to be applauding my TV I would've been applauding that closing line.

sherm42

I saw this for the first time yesterday on a free preview weekend on DirecTV. It was really good, but not good enough for me to pay $11 per month to get Showtime.

AXP 103

As a non-Showtime subscriber, I hope this get a second life somewhere else (DVD or Comedy Central).

Roto

I doubt it would ever get a second run on basic cable just because of the language. The best bet would be DVD or maybe even CBC (Canadian network) because they don't censor language late at night.

movielib

I got Showtime only for P&T. To me it's well worth it.

If the season is indeed over on April 18, I will cancel my Showtime until the show returns with new episodes.

MrBob

Don't forget the Sex episode that had more nudity in it than family Business does.

MrBob

opinions on the last episode?

I enjoyed the hell out of it the Ouija board expose was pretty good, but the NDE stuff was interesting as hell. I had never heard anything about scientists being able to duplicate similar experiences in a centerfuge. That was cool as hell. I might do some more research on it just for shits and giggles.

Josh-da-man

I don't get Showtime.

How did they debunk Ouija boards? (I've heard of this being done by blindfolding the users.)

I have read about the centrifuge experiments to simulate NDEs, but from what I've heard, it isn't exactly conclusive or able to completely replicate the effect.

Interesting thing about NDEs is how many of them come from people who weren't revived, ie, "brought back." I remeber, quite a while ago, hearing about some guy who had a "hellish" NDE, and the guy had never even "died." He was just in a hospital bed in pain. And I'm like, dude, it was a freaking hallucination. If you're going to see what lies beyond the realms of death, you'd actually have to die first.