Bullshit!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
Penn and Teller host Bullshit!
Genre	Infotainment
Running time	30 minutes
Executive producer(s)	Randall Moldave Star Price (2003-2006) Eric Small Mark Wolper Michael Goudeau
Starring	Penn Jillette Teller
Country of origin	United States
Original channel	Showtime
Original run	January 24, 2003–present
No. of episodes	49
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

This article is about the TV show. For the card game, see Bullshit (game). For the expletive, see Bullshit.

Bullshit! (also known as Penn & Teller: Bullshit!) is an American, Emmy-nominated television series, running since 2003 on the premium cable channel Showtime. It is hosted by professional magicians/comedians Penn & Teller and inherits their characteristically blunt, aggressive presentation. The show aims to debunk an array of popular misconceptions, sometimes supernatural in nature. It criticizes proponents of such things, often citing ulterior or financial motives. The stated aim of the show is to apply critical thinking to misconceptions.

Supernatural subjects in previous episodes include alien abduction, alternative medicine, and ESP; other episodes cover social issues such as the War on Drugs, gun control, and recycling.

Penn & Teller's objective is similar to the objectives of Harry Houdini and James Randi (a frequent guest in the show), who are known for debunking claims of supernatural powers. ^[1]

Four seasons have aired, and it has been renewed for a fifth season, currently in production.^[2] The series has achieved worldwide success, being shown in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden, Colombia, Ireland and the United Kingdom.

1 Show format
- 1.1 Title
2 Episode list
3 Criticism
4 Trivia
5 Awards and nominations
- 5.1 Awards won
- 5.2 Awards nominated
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Show format

In each episode, Penn and Teller debunk a chosen misconception, such as cryptozoology, or debate, such as gun control.

Proponents of the topic make their case in interviews; however, they often end up appearing fallacious or self-contradicting.

For example, in "Safety Hysteria", a manufacturer of "radiation guards" for mobile phones admits that there is no proven link between mobile phone radiation and brain cancer, but assures viewers that "you can't be too safe" (mobile phones use conventional radio waves for communication, which are non-ionizing radiation). When he states his background is in advertising, not medical science it is implied that he knows his product is useless, but exploits people's fears to turn a profit.

A second consecutive interview with another proponent is often started with the phrase: "And then there's this asshole..."

Penn Jillette has stated that those being interviewed know which show the interview is for. One episode shows a video crew from the show going into a building to perform an interview, and Jillette points out that a member of the crew is wearing a Penn & Teller: Bullshit! baseball cap.

Opponents are then interviewed and they offer rebuttals to the proponents' arguments. These are usually experts, celebrities, or sometimes speakers from the Center for Inquiry Transnational, James Randi Educational Foundation, and the Cato Institute.

Penn and Teller conduct informal experiments, which are admittedly unscientific at times. For example, in the episode "Bottled Water", diners in an upscale restaurant are presented with a variety of apparently fancy bottled water brands. After the diners praise and pick a favorite, it is revealed that each bottle was filled by the same garden hose behind the restaurant.

In one of their more serious experiments during the "Conspiracy Theories" episode, Teller shoots a rifle at a melon to demonstrate that when a human head is shot, it is likely to be forced in the opposite direction that the bullet was traveling in order to discredit a John F. Kennedy conspiracy theory which points out that the fatal gunshot rocked JFK toward the shot.

Penn and Teller often use skits and stunts performed on-set or through stock footage which combine reasonable argument with straightforward, entertaining ridicule. The "Sex, Sex, Sex" episode satirizes society's obsession with sex appeal by having the hosts constantly surrounded by naked actors and actresses.

Penn and Teller often close with an impassioned ethical plea against the subject matter near the end of the show as to why this particular belief is harmful and should be resisted. The presenters distinguish between believers (often saying that they would like to believe also) and direct their anger at those they see as charlatans while showing compassion towards the victims of what Penn and Teller see as manipulation and deception.

Since their act is not normally associated with a frequent use of profanity, Jillette explains this choice in the opening episode: if they referred to people as frauds or liars, they could be sued for slander, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of chicanery, but as "vulgar abuse" is not legally considered slanderous, referring to them as assholes or fuckers ostensibly expresses an opinion rather than a statement of fact and is legally safer for them.

[edit] Title

Due to the show's title being considered a mild obscenity, the series is often listed in newspaper television listings under the alternate title B.S. Some printings of the show's DVD releases also carry this alternate title.

In the "Profanity" episode, Penn tells the viewers that the original title for "Bullshit!" was intended to be "Humbug!" This, Penn goes on to say, relates their skepticism (and TV show) to Harry Houdini's reactions to the popular misconceptions of his day; but the idea was scrapped due to "humbug" not having as much of an impact as the more profane, more informal word, "bullshit."

When discussing Bullshit! on his radio show, Penn will either break the word in half, usually with a clap and a slight pause, for example "Bulls *Clap* Hit", or change it to Bullshot. In an episode of the public radio programme Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, Penn refers to the show as "Bushlit".

[edit] Episode list

Main article: List of Bullshit! episodes

[edit] Criticism

[edit] Allegations of bias

Many critics accuse Penn and Teller of being biased in their approach to debunking their opponent's arguments. For example, Chaz Miller, who was interviewed for the "Recycling" episode, said that Bullshit! attempts to exclude certain information if it does not favor the show's position.^[3] However, during an episode dedicated to questioning the factual accuracy of the Bible, Penn Jillette said that Bullshit!'s approach is support for viewpoints that they feel are honest and well educated.

In the episode "Family Values" Penn said, ". . . we're fair and we never take people out of context. We're biased as all fuck. But, we try to be honest."^[4] Still, some critics sympathetic with the duo's over-arching message have expressed regret that they can occasionally slip into the same sensationalism as their targets, including validating their points with pundits who possess dubious qualifications, such as controversial rock star Ted Nugent. This was summed up in a review by Slate which stated: "One of the unwritten rules for winning an argument against an inflammatory, irrational opponent is to calmly adhere to a loftier set of rhetorical standards. Penn and Teller showily throw this notion out the window."^[5]

While Penn and Teller are self-professed as skeptics, critics have been quick to note that Bullshit! is not dedicated to fact-based debunking or inquiry. An otherwise favorable review by The Onion AV Club noted:

Bullshit! isn't journalism, exactly. The show is one-sided by design: P&T's field interviewers rarely confront their subjects with the evidence against them, preferring to let the crackpots ramble on so that Jillette's voiceover rejoinders can score points without inciting a real argument. ^[6]

[edit] Secondhand smoke

Robert Todd Carroll, author of The Skeptic's Dictionary, originally sided with the show's conclusion that there was no link between second hand smoke and cancer. Yet Carroll switched sides after further investigation into the studies. Carroll concluded that the studies were biased, and consequently decided that secondhand smoke does have negative effects on people. ^[7]

In The Amaz!ng Meeting 3 the duo was asked about the evidence for this episode being faulty. Penn Jillette, with Teller standing at his side, said regarding this episode they were "wrong" and the next season would add a notation.^[8] Penn went on to describe that new studies do show a correlation between health risks and secondhand smoke.

[edit] Global warming

The threat of global warming was downplayed in the "Environmental Hysteria" episode, even though this contradicts the prevailing scientific opinion. ^[9] ^[10] Penn Jillette is a research fellow of the limited government and free market advocacy group the Cato Institute,^[11]^[12] which receives contributions from ExxonMobil,^[13] which has itself been criticized for funding "climate change denial" by several environmental organizations, The Royal Society, and several US congressmen. In the program, Jerry Taylor from CATO claims that scientists predicted an ice age in the 1970s, although these predictions of global cooling never occurred in peer-reviewed scientific literature.^[14] Despite the reference to scientific data, no mainstream scientist from the area of climatology is present in the episode, and Penn and Teller instead rely on figures such as the statistician Bjorn Lomborg and Greenpeace founder-member and now critic Patrick Moore. ^[15] (See also Global warming controversy.)

The same episode disputes current levels of species extinction, although much of the scientific literature projects very high species extinction levels. ^[16]^[17] (See also Holocene extinction event.)

Carl Sagan, a person mentioned on several Bullshit! episodes wrote "It's perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive waste, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth."^[18]

[edit] Trivia

During the "Conspiracy Theories" episode, the crew interviewed a number of people at Dante's bar in Portland, Oregon, during a weekly open-mike show called Ground Zero Lounge. One of the fellows in the bar that night was a man in a black beret, dubbed "Beret Dude" by Penn and Teller. He made a number of bold assertions, among them that the Kennedy assassination was an industrialist conspiracy to enforce the compliance of future presidents with the will of Big Business. The rant he gave was, almost verbatim, a rant given by Bill Hicks in a comedy routine from the album Rant in E Minor on Track 32 "The Elite". Also, in this rant, he claims that twelve men are behind the presidency.

There were plans to make an episode focusing on Scientology, but Showtime executives rejected this idea as to avoid any legal action against the network from the Church of Scientology. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, friends of Penn and Teller, were motivated by this incident to create their own long-planned, controversial South Park episode lampooning Scientology, "Trapped in the Closet".^[19]

Animals used on the show are supplied by Cathe Jones, the wife of Penn and Teller's pianist, Mike Jones. She originally met Mike through this work.

During the "Profanity" episode, Penn and Teller themselves did not use any profanity, even changing the name of the show to "Humbug!" for that episode. At one point, Penn suggests the use of the phrase "Jesus Christ!" by a non-Christian is not profanity, but as Teller apparently drops a bowling ball on his foot just as he mentions the phrase, his yelling of the expression makes its use ambiguous. (See Wikiquote's transcription of the quote.)