Penn & Teller's Bullshit!

Keep in mind, Penn is the type of person who claims to hate wacko pseudo-pundits... and then he pops up in shit like "Michael Moore Hates America." He's a boob.

I've only seen the War On Drugs episode thanks to Elvis and S. Cindy, and that one was great, incidentally.

yeah, i really dislike the show for this reason. it makes for good comedy, but i wish their targets weren't so easy. they sweep a stupid hippie off the beach so they can say "look! hippies are stupid!"

Statistics used by pro-death penalty people that supposedly prove that capital punishment deters crime.

this is some Stossel-level bullshit innit

From everything I've read about the show, yes.

Disappointing, really, since P&T television specials used to be awesome.

it's more fun to watch if you imagine the people watching aren't the choir, and p/t aren't preaching to it

Right, because this country is FULL of self-described libertarians who love magic and mutes.

The gun control episode is a hoot. "Guns are good, because, uh, freedom is good. And guns = freedom!" I think they even tried a variation on 'overthrowing the multilateralist black helicopter government if need be' line. It was some real Roger Adultery shit.

(nb: and I'm not a supporter of gun control)

The "Wal-Mart is good" episode kinda pissed me off. I didn't watch any more after that.

the show is getting worse and worse.

Right, because this country is FULL of self-described libertarians who love magic and mutes.

Not nec., but plenty of geeks and nerds who love magic & mutes are badly socialized enough to be libertarian. Core audience & whatnot.

ya too many smart kids w/ no friends reading "the fountainhead" in 7th grade and thinking that it explains why they havent gotten laid

or maybe they havent gotten laid in 7th grade because theyre only 11.

Right, and take those people and advance them 40 years, and then have them get put into some apparatchik position in a U.S. Admin.

that or HELLO FARK.COM

isn't this just the magic man's version of john stossel segments?

isn't this just the magic man's version of john stossel segments?

Yeah, the fourth season was all reactionary without any of the fun of the first two seasons.

i called it pretty early on.

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/063007/twenty-year-old-libertarians.gif

I like the part of the episode where Penn earnestly sympathizes with those in serious emotional pain searching for some comfort. He's not trying to mock their struggles, he has problems too. But the shamelessness of these...ASSHOLES who profit from other people's misery that just gets his blood boiling.

Teller's usually not pulling a bandana through his nose during that speech.

I only got through disc 1 of season 1 before giving up but I gather that it didn't get better.

Right, because this country is FULL of self-described libertarians who love magic and mutes.

I was thinking more like, full of people who think they're smarter than dumb people and love laughing at dumb people's CRAAAAAZY IDEAAAAS (like the healing crystals are bullshit episode-- no healing crystal fans are turning on the TV and thinking, "I want to watch P&T. What? These new age magnets are bullshit?! THANKS GUYS! clearly everyone watching the show was already pretty anti-healing crystals). Also, atheists.

k, I've just seen four episodes of this show....and while I admit some of the episodes are funny, after seeing the environment and diversity episodes,....they make Michael Moore seem fair and balanced (not that I dislike M.M.).

the assessments above are OTM, wish I had read your warnings first.

plenty of geeks and nerds who love magic & mutes are badly socialized enough to be libertarian. Core audience & whatnot.

-- kingfish, Friday, June 29, 2007 6:40 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

this is ridic otm

so many old school magic bros have gone this route it's ;_;

ya scifi writers too.

The show on free range kids has redeemed this season somewhat

Today, they are on ITV doing a Magician's X-Factor type thing.

Wonder if Teller will speak during this? (I know he does when the occasion suits, so ..)

Love this show.. 90% of the time.

OTM episodes: Alt meds, creationism, obesity, detoxing, new age meds, being green, stranger danger, good ol days, antivaxers

The other 10% is infuriating.

that's contrary to everything he's publicly said over and over, which is that he lost weight deliberately for health reasons

with all that fiber and hot pepper his shits must just be phenomenal

I don't see anything wrong with his diet? It doesn't seem as unpleasant as most vegans I know with the fake meats and stuff.

The blueberry cayenne thing, I'm going to try.

yeah that piqued my curiosity tbh

diet sounds pretty healthful to me too, any vegetarians around to weigh in on this? like he says, seems like he eats a lot, it's just mostly fruits and veggies. isn't that what we're all supposed to be doing?

He starves himself and then he overeats. He also has periods of not eating nutritiously, which is disguised by all the veggies and fruit he eats, but most of us are guilty of that.

Intermittent fasting isn't starving yourself.

Only thing that sticks out to me is that it's very light on protein but Furman is largely anti-protein IIRC.

He describes eating several pounds of food, really prodigious quantities, and he'll follow that up with huge snacks four hours later. And periodically going 36 hours without food sounds more like deprivation than fasting.

No, that's a pretty standard fasting style - eat dinner, skip a day, eat breakfast.

His 'pounds of food' is watermelon, which has a crazy high water content even for fruit. It's not like eating four pounds of beef or French fries.

but I don't see any particular health benefit in eating tons of watermelon?

like it's a nutritious and hydrating fruit to consume but id imagine the absorption of the vitamins in it isn't infinite, and like there's only so much fiber and fruit sugar you really need in a day?

Watermelon has low calorie density (filling but not terribly calorific) and the red pigment is lycopene, the same skin protecting carotenoid that colors tomatoes.

Penn's diet follows Dr. Fuhrman's guidelines, basically caloric restriction with optimal nutrition style, but achieved via ranking foods into seek/reduce/avoid categories rather than the spreadsheets etc. used in CRON, and there are few healthier. Some of Fuhrman's rhetoric about "toxic hunger" is unfounded, and I didn't care for the recipes. Most data sees diminishing returns on fruit and vegetable intake after 8 or so servings a day, and I'm increasingly convinced the health benefit of whole plant based diets owes more to what they don't include (fats and excess protein), so I've opted for a more comfort food diet (ie, more potatoes, beans, & corn tortillas), but I'll sometimes have a Fuhrman-style dinner salad with over a pound of greens, veggies, 'shrooms etc.

• Fuhrman, 2008. Effect of a high nutrient density diet on long-term weight loss: a retrospective chart review. Alternative therapies in health and medicine, 14(3), p.48.
• Dunaief et al, 2012. Glycemic and cardiovascular parameters improved in type 2 diabetes with the high nutrient density (HND) diet. Open Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2(03), p.364.
• Fuhrman and Singer, 2015. Improved cardiovascular parameters with a nutrient-dense, plant-rich diet-style: a patient survey with illustrative cases. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, p.1559827615611024.

It's not just pounds of watermelon. He eats two entrees and rice at the Indian place, and then at the airport he eats two containers of pineapple. He eats four big containers of blueberries, and the "big" containers I get in the stores around here are all 32 ounces. Maybe he means a smaller container, but he says "big." He eats an "insane" amount of watermelon, a "whole" container of cherry tomatoes, a "big, big" bowl of soup, and "a lot" of blueberries; that's just one evening meal. On the 8th, he seems to eat a reasonable amount of food, albeit three meals' worth in the evening, but he appends that entry with "I eat a lot of food," which makes me wonder how large the portions are. For one meal, the base is three pounds of spinach (is one container even a pound?) to which he adds brown rice and four vegetables, including four ears of corn. This is the evening after he eats a store bought wrap, so much peanut butter "it would make you sick," a whole watermelon, and the blueberries snack in the afternoon. At midnight he eats three melons, popcorn, and more peanut butter.

And whose fasting style is this? For what purpose? It sounds like a gimmick diet fast to me.