Penn & Teller
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Penn & Teller (the ampersand is part of the team name) are a team of two professional magicians turned scurrilous debunkers. They used to be funny, now they are just irritating most of the time.
Their debunking show is called Bullshit!, and each episode usually features several debunkatopics. While they frequently do a half decent job of this, all too often their strong libertarian political stance gets in their way. A couple of examples of this were when they were "debunking" global hunger by promoting genetically modified food, and another segment (could it have been the same one?) where they resorted to little more than mocking some liberal neo-hippies for enjoying their hippie food.
- Note, this section was written by an editor who was very disappointed with the overall quality after renting one or two of their shows, and may not represent the opinions on others on this site, or even bear a close relationship to reality.
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(This was the article before we realized that "&" really screwed up article titles!)
Penn & Teller are a team of two "magicians", or illusionists, who are also known for their skeptical television show on the Showtime network, Bullshit!. While originally well-received by the skeptical community, it has been criticized for P & T's tendency to let their libertarian politics interfere with their rationalist message.
One example that irked one editor here was a segment on organic farming, where they mostly made fun of some hippies and extolled the virtues of genetically modified crops to feed a starving planet. No mention of population control or soil health was made. A similar example also irked another editor: when Penn & Teller took on the "Walmart destroys towns" meme and "debunked it", largely by looking at only particular sections of the Walmart "problem", and cherry picking pros of the Walmart phenomena. Their work on the Bible and creationism in general, however, is classic and can be found here.
