A list created by Lee Sonogan
Originally published on entertainmentcultureonline.com
Known as magicians, the people behind the tricks and turns are personalities and thinkers behind psychology and objective reasoning. Pseudoscience is some terminology brought up although you don’t have to agree with the monologues that are brought up. There are multiple perspectives to consider when consuming this so be warned if easily trigger with these somewhat polarized tangents. Watching every single episode of this show, it might have taken a mantle in being one of the most entertaining informative educational shows in history.
- You know, when you hear about people predicting the end of the world…they’re always predicting 60 to 90 % of the world’s population is going to get killed. It’s odd how they’re always planning on what they’re gonna do when everyone else is dead. Teller and I have always played the odds, so, we’re betting we’re gonna die. You should see our credit card bills. They’re higher than our cholesterol! Good thing we don’t plan on paying ’em! [microphone appears] I’m sure that we…Cameraman: Cut! Cut. The mic was in the shot. We have to go again.Penn: Fuck you, it’s the end of the world! If you live, you can fix it in post.
- [on the subject of bottled water] Consumers are offered water with names conveying pure and pristine water sources. Ever hear of Alaskan Falls water? That must come from the crystal-clear glacial waters of our 49th state, right? Sorry, folks. Alaskan flows from this liqui-box corporation building in Worthington, Ohio. Does the brand Yosemite conjure up visions of the cool, pristine waters rushing through California’s high sierras? Well, then the marketers have done their jobs. The source of Yosemite bottled water is actually 400 miles away in Northwest Los Angeles. How about Everest Water? Could our piddly show possibly afford to send a camera crew to Nepal? NOT NECESSARY. Everest comes from the industrial section of Corpus Cristi, Texas! In fact if you read the fine print on the FUCKING LABEL, they even admit that the water comes from a MUNICIPAL SOURCE! THAT IS TAP WATER, brothers and sisters of the cult of the bottle!
- Throughout history there’s never been an abundance of food. All food is the product of technology; apples, corn, tomatoes, all modified. Every food has been changed through selective breeding or grafting. For ten thousand years each attempt at improvement has changed the DNA of the plant. Now some people are up-in-arms about changes in DNA. You know what? If you’re able to get up and have food you should celebrate. We should all dance about how much food we have. Why is anyone fighting food advance? A very small percentage of the world’s population is fortunate enough to have the luxury of turning down food. The rest of the world spends most of its time trying to get any food. You know why? Technological problems. They got dirt, they got water, they got sun. They lack the technical ability to till or enrich the soil. They lack the machines to plant enough to feed their families. They lack the hybrid plants that produce more food per acre. We need to spread all the technology all we can, so all people everywhere can deal with the problem of too much food. We can’t start getting picky because we’ve got enough food- that’s just self-centered and racist. Unless you and yours are starving, you need to SHUT THE FUCK UP!
- Ethical means moral or proper which differs for every person, it’s something to discuss. It’s not an absolute. It just sounds nice, it’s like ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’, I mean- c’mon! Everyone is pro-choice and pro-life. It’s for or against abortion that your group is about. And who wouldn’t wanna treat animals ethically, anyway. Nobody gets off slapping their monkey or choking their chicken or roughing up their clam.
- The most frequent question we get asked about this show is, why would assholes like Brian Brown and Michael Medved come on a show called Bullshit! to get called “assholes”? We do not lie to them; we make sure they know all about the show. We give them copies of past shows, and it’s always pretty clear which side of the issue we’re gonna be on. The long answer is that people who come on this show generally consider themselves to be bulletproof. Most have never talked to anyone with a dissenting view, and certainly no one with a real research team, like ours. If you say something on our show, we check it. If you lie or make something up, we know. But we’re fair — we never take people out of context. We’re biased as all fuck, but we try to be honest. Now, that’s the long answer. The short answer? [Penn and Teller shrug.]
- CUT! Jesus fucking Christ, Neil! How many times do we have to try this? “One small step for A man”, not man. A man! And that’s YOU! Everybody take five. Neil, practice your fucking lines! Ooh yeah, let’s use real pilots. I wanna use real pilots! [to the camera] Faking the Moon Landing is easy. You need dirt, wardrobe, a sound stage, a lot of black paints, and some stupid suits. The hard part is shutting people up. It’s been 36 years! You’d think the technicians, and prop people, camera people, directors, everyone who works at NASA, and the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, and all the nice folks at Cape Carnaval in Florida, plus members of the US Congress and the White House all shut up about this amazing cover-up for all that time? The Government couldn’t even fucking cover up a break-in to a psychiatrist’s office in a fucking cheesy hotel! Watergate is the answer to all this shit. If they couldn’t cover that up, they fucking can’t do anything.
- “Since Mr. Lama has been run out of Tibet, the Chinese have introduced secular education, running water and electricity so maybe life is a bit better on the ground there. Of course the Chinese have also thrown thousands in labor camps and prisons, stomped out as much free speech as possible, and there’s that whole fucked up Communism thing. But if you ask Tenzin Gyatso, dba Lama– what is it with these holy people and their aliases? His Holiness will tell you that he must return to power for the good of his people. In this case, “good” may translate into his people living in squalor and his government condoning slavery. Remember, the lesser of two evils… is still evil. And the enemy of my enemy… is not my friend.”
- There are so many people in the world who need our help, that it’s sickening to spend all this money on pets. What about people? Couldn’t all the money spent for fake dog balls, diamond collars, and cat food be spent to help people? Sure it could! But I have original mono copies of Bob Dylan’s early albums […] Teller has an original bondage cross and handcuffs that Houdini owned […] We both spend three bucks for a cup of coffee, and live in houses that are way more than our families need. All that money could certainly go to helping people, too. Pets are more bullshit that people waste money on. But fuck, we’re in glass houses on this one.
- Next time you feel like worrying about fake violent video games, try a little gedankenexperiment: imagine that video games were invented 100 years before football. Picture school video game teams and uniforms and hot-ass cheerleaders with big, bouncing pom-poms. Now imagine after 100 years of extracurricular video game fun, football is invented and introduced to schools. Thousands of kids get real, no kidding, no fantasy, no make-believe broken knees, legs, ankles, cervical trauma, heatstroke, and concussions! [Throughout Penn’s injury list, the crowd quiets, eventually becoming totally silent.] …What would parents do? From 1931 to 2007, 650 kids died… from injuries they suffered playing football. This is not video game violence – this is real violence done to real children by other real children, all encouraged by schools and society. Every parent worries about his or her kids; every adult worries about all children, but you need to pick what you think is worth worrying about.
- “Provide a Clear and Comprehensive National Mandate for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Individuals with Disablities.” That’s what the Americans with Disabilities Act says it’s gonna do. What the fucking fuck? What is wrong with us? Have we all gone fucking crazy? We think the government is so good at what it does, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on war. The government is so fucking good at that, they can fucking do anything? They can make us all physically equal, they can heal the lame, they can make the fucking blind fucking see! How about the government sticks to courts, police, defense, and corruption, and leaves compassion to people that fucking have that! Motherfuckers!
- Now hold on, this isn’t some Wal-Mart lovefest. Sometimes, they’re really assholes. In 2000, Wal-Mart reportedly paid $50 million to settle a lawsuit filed in Colorado by 69,000 workers who had been forced to work off the clock. In December 2005, Wal-Mart had to pay $172 million to 116,000 California employees for not giving them their legally-mandated 30-minute lunch breaks. So that’s at least, uhh… 185,000 people who had a legitimate beef. And, uhh…don’t spread it around, but I’m kinda-sort’ve a Target guy myself.
- So what have we learned? The U.S. government continues to dump hundreds of millions of our dollars a year into misleading, religion-based, anti-sex education. The only good thing about the program? It doesn’t work. Most kids just ignore it. Sure, we’re throwing away money, but only really religious kids are hurt by it. Our religion-based government can’t fuck us up on this because bullshit detection is written into our genes. The sex switch gets turned on at puberty, and no matter how much government or religion twists the truth, they’re fighting the honest beauty of love and sex. That’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight.
- (voice over) Have some self respect Gloria. If the chef at this world-class restaurant thought his hamburger would be better eaten in halves, he would have cut the fucking sandwich himself!! You ignorant, self-serving, kill-joy, nit-picking, burger-cutting bitch!! Whore! Asshole! Cunt.
Looking into the mechanisms of their art, I watched all of this > https://ungroovygords.com/2019/08/23/penn-teller-teach-the-art-of-magic-a-class-review/. Becoming glad to write about these guys once again, their craft is inspiring on the surface and though-provoking in the underlying data. Taking in the challenge of accepting something I do not know and then being grateful for their positive philosophy on and off the stage.
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