Penn & Teller: BS!

Cafe Society
1

I love this show. It’s in the middle of season 7.

It’s a great concept - (mostly) debunking stupid stuff by consulting practioners, experts, and in some cases setting up their own little human experiments. It’s consistently funny and they try to work gratuitous nudity into every episode. Fantastic.

Most of the time they pick on issues where the right side is clear to any reasonable, skeptical person. Alternative medicine, astrology, feng shui, and ghost hunters are obviously bullshit. Still, the default stance of western media, especially fiction, seems to be a credulous stance - rarely is psuedoscientific or supernatural bullshit debunked. Far more common is the image of the closed-minded, reluctant skeptic being shown the errors in his ways. So it’s enourmously satisfying when you come across sources that are willing to call bullshit out.

Other issues are more political - gun control, the war on drugs, prostitution. They have an obvious skeptical, libertarian bent - so I almost always agree with them - so it all seems good debunking to me. However, there are issues on which reasonable people can disagree.

I started to think that perhaps the show was unfair - making the targets of the show look bad, using selective editing while the narration yelling aggressive or funny things at them… using the right technique, even if they were wrong in their stance on an issue, they could be very persuasive with their point of view. I gave them a pass because they were pretty much consistently right - no creationist or faith healer is somehow going to be right even with favorable editing. Still, it’s an obviously biased source.

But then the other night I was watching the episode on the death penalty - one of the rare (only?) times I’ve disagreed with them in episodes I’ve seen thus far. They are unambiguously against the death penalty - and I’m generally for it. But I didn’t feel as if they were unfairly slanting the show in their favor - I think they gave death penalty advocates a fair voice, and it seemed as though they felt strongly, it felt as though it was an issue where reasonable people could disagree. So I’m starting to change my mind - it may be biased, but it can also be fair to reasonable views that it disagrees with.

I’ve only seen a third to half the episodes though. There may be egregious examples I’m missing.

So what do you guys think?

2

An episode list to those who want to see what topics have been covered.

3

On political issues, they aren’t terribly honest. It’s really quite propagandic, which makes it annoying when–as they usually do–they agree with my stance.

The shows are funny, but I’d rather they utilized the same rational arguments and approach to every issue as they do on the issues where they care less about the answer.

4

I love that show. I usually agree with them, but not always. And sometimes I’ll agree with a couple of their points, without agreeing to their whole stance. I’m rational and pick out when they’re being pedantic or pedagogic, but usually I love watching them call people assholes and looking at naked chicks (not old man penises, like this episode).

5

The show is very entertaining as long as I agree with them, which I usually do. I particularly enjoy the episodes that ridicule alternative medicine. I can’t believe they get some of those people to go on camera.

But you have to remember that their primary goal is to be funny, not to provide fair and balanced coverage of the issues.

Have you seen the NASA episode? Penn & Teller are space buffs, and it was really hilarious to see them struggle with their criticisms. It’s the only show I can remember where they are less than enthusiastic about calling Bullshit!

6

So have they got a list of the number of times Penn says FUCK!! in each episode? Sometimes it seems like he’s got a quota. He always enjoys it, though. You can tell.

7

Yes the multiple fucks and bare breasts add nothing to the show and just comes off as childish, at least to me. I am glad that so far they seem to have laid off some of the more overt political stuff.

8

I like the show. It’s got some good stuff. Got me to stop drinking bottled water.

I think the one that bugged me the most was the one about college. The show a few idiots, a few quotes, and then conclude that colleges are all rabidly politically correct liberal brainwashing camps.

9

I’ll admit I’ve only watched a few episodes but I was not impressed. As others have pointed out, Penn and Teller make no attempt to use rational evidence to debunk things they feel are wrong. They just shout it down.

I remember watching one show where I already tended to agree with what they were saying before the show started (that second-hand smoke is not a proven danger) but found the argument they produced for their position to be terrible.

Also while I enjoy Penn Jillette as a performer, I’ve always found him extremely unpleasant as a person. His desperate need to convince everyone how cool he is becomes wearing.

10

I watch the show, but it saddens me how they waste the opportunity represented by having cable time devoted to a skeptical viewpoint. They should be winning people over, not just making fun of people for their opinions. Right now, Darren Brown is doing a much better job educating the public. But it’s clearly not enough.

11

I watch it pretty regularly, but I find that I enjoy the ones that deal with – how should I say this – “legitimate” issues more entertaining than the others.

For example, if you do a show on the apocalypse (which they did last week), anyone who honestly believes that the world is going to end in 2012 is going to sound like a lunatic. So when they make fun of them for sounding like lunatics, it’s almost too easy. Same goes for astrology, new age medicine, cryptozoology (although I appreciated learning the word “cryptozoology”).

I prefer the episodes where they can actually get rational people on to argue a position that they disagree with, and watch them shoot down their arguments. That, to me, is much more powerful. For example, some of my favorites were the ones on prostitution, “stranger danger”, and the death penalty. Even when I don’t agree with their position, it’s always more fascinating to watch.

All that said, I’m going to slightly contradict myself and say that one of my absolute favorites was the one on talking to the dead. Obviously they didn’t have any rational people arguing that they could actually talk to the dead, but I loved how they showed how it was actually done – the ability to “read” people and the showmanship of it – great stuff.

12

I really enjoyed the video game episode.
The climax of the episode was them having their 9 year old video game nut go to a range and actually fire a machine gun. It was scary and he didn’t like it.
Penn then gave their “final thought” wrap up and sincerely apologized to the kid because the experience was very frightening and possibly traumatic. They then showed the little boy weeping and being comforted by his mother.

13

I had mixed feelings about that one. On the one hand, it was powerful, and really drove home the point that there was a big difference between playing videogames and actually firing an actual weapon. On the other hand, the fact that they showed the footage of the boy crying felt a little exploitative. They admitted that they debated whether or not to show it, and I’m not sure they made the correct decision.

I’m fine with whatever crap they want to hurl at adults, but showing a 9-year-old crying so they could further make their point made me feel a little uneasy.

14

I haven’t subscribed to Showtime in a number of years but, being a fan of Penn and Teller, I watched it when I did subscribe.

For guys who represent themselves as good skeptics and supporters of science and reason, I have to say that they were disappointing.

The show was entertaining. Hell, it’s difficult not to be entertained by them. However, the show struck me as dishonest. Even when I agreed with their viewpoint on a given subject, I felt that they often used dishonest rhetorical tricks and selective examples to make their point. This was irritating because they could have made the same point in an honest and straightforward manner. When they discussed subjects where I disagreed with their viewpoint the dishonesty was even more irritating.

I always liked these guys. Penn’s childhood sounds a lot like mine. I went through a “magic geek” stage for a few years as a kid. They never outgrew it. I’ve met them and I have books and a sweatshirt autographed by them. but this show has reduced my respect for them a little.

15

Wow. I never saw that one. My respect for them just went down a few more points.

16

People have listed trickery and dishonesty without any specific examples. Could you elaborate somewhat?

I admit it’s often easy to give a pass to people who agree with you and only see the flaws in their arguments when they’re goring your ox. Which is why when I saw the death penalty episode I was prepared to possibly be annoyed or insulted. But I didn’t feel that way.

It’s always unambiguous which side of the issue they’re on - they’re clearly biased - but I’m wondering if it’s accurate to say they’re unfair, or dishonest. Advocates of the viewpoints they’re trying to tear down often get their fair shake to get their point across - the interviews don’t seem to be selectively edited to make them look worse. I see much more deceptive treatment in “balanced” real journalism on a regular basis.

For instance, I’m watching the episode on Creationism now. They’re giving the creationists time to reason out their views… while creationism is wrong and stupid, the advocates on the show are given a fair chance to describe what it is and what they want to do with it. It’s obvious that P&T think creationism is bullshit, but that doesn’t mean they’re treating its advocates unfairly.

17

Several people have said that it was their side that P&T were on, including myself. I’d have to go back and watch several episodes to point out examples though.

18

Right. I sometimes felt that they were being disingenuous even when I agreed with their conclusions.

19

SenorBeef, it’s been a number of years since I’ve seen the show so it’s hard to come up with specific examples, however I do remember one. It was one where I agreed with their overall point.

They were discussing bottled water. Their point, if I recall correctly, was that it was a waste of money and that bottled water was often the same water that you got from the tap. I agree that bottled water is a ripoff.

They discussed a brand of bottled water that was sold in a particular city. I don’t remember the city. They were pointing out that it was the same water that came from that city’s taps. On screen they displayed one of the bottles showing the label listing the contents of the bottle. The bottle stated that it was from the municipal water supply of that city. They had this statement highlighted on screen. What was also on the label, but not highlighted, was the fact the it was filtered. I happened to notice this but it was easy to miss because the label was only onscreen for a brief time and your attention would naturally be drawn to the highlighting. Now I suppose that you could argue that their claim was literally true, it did come from the city’s municipal water supply, but the fact that it was filtered (which they did not mention) is not unimportant and does change things.

Now it could be argued that this wasn’t really the fault of P&T. It’s very possible that the bottle was chosen and highlighted by some production person and that P&T weren’t even aware of what was on the label. However, they were the ones making the claim on screen so I would hope that would have actually checked the label before making those claims.

20

Isn’t municipal tapwater already filtered?

Penn and Teller are no different than Jon Stewart. Stewart has a bias, and he’ll occasionally put his opponents on the show and selectively edit them and play various rhetorical tricks to show them at their worst. The ‘location’ interviews are particularly bad for that.

On the other hand, Stewart can get serious, and then he attempts to be a little more fair, but clearly has his own point of view.

Both shows straddle the line between entertainment and a serious exploration of the issues. Because of the freedom their format gives them, sometimes both shows can gore sacred oxes no one will touch or expose a real problem that no one else will talk about. On the other hand, sometimes they’re being completely one-sided. You have to learn to separate the entertainment aspect of the show from the real information.