RoR: Forum

FYI -- In the latest episode of Penn and Teller Bull Shit they debunk a lot of anger management programs and at the end give examples of how people do positive things in the face of anger to empower themselves. One of the examples from Penn is "Ayn Rand was enraged by communists and people who tried to tear down heroes so she wrote Atlas Shrugged" as Teller throws a book with a hammer and sickle on the cover in the trashcan.

Post 1

Sunday, May 27, 2007 - 2:48pm

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg18n2e.html

Penn until recently had a radio show and listed on the radio website under books to read Atlas Shrugged.

By the way, I was featured in May on Penn and Teller's Bullshit, which is a TV series on Showtime, discussing the Americans with Disabilities Act. You can read my article on the ADA in 1995 in Regulation magazine:

Here's the Youtube links to the episode in 3 parts:

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BeB7OS-hL8

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9AuVnczV4k

Part 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut8Fg6_T2dY&mode=related&search=

Also I discussed Penn and Teller in my article in the April 2006 issue of The New Individualist on "Skeptics and Humanists: Allies or Enemies of Individualism?"

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1772-skeptics_1.aspx

(Edited by Ed Hudgins on 5/27, 3:19pm)

(Edited by Ed Hudgins on 5/27, 6:45pm)

Post 2

Sunday, May 27, 2007 - 3:07pm

While I'm at it, might as well post this. Note Penn's tee-shirt!

Penn and Hudgins

Post 3

Sunday, May 27, 2007 - 11:48pm

Ed:

Next you'll be telling us you've been waterskiing with movie stars.

:)

Tyson

Post 4

Friday, June 27, 2008 - 9:30am

Here's a quick update on Penn and Teller. TAS had a display table at the "I, Skeptic" meeting in Las Vegas, put on by the James Randi Educational Foundation, June 19-22. Penn and Teller were on the program. Teller stopped by the Atlas Society table, said he was a Rand fan and took a copy of my new book, An Objectivist Secular Reader. In the Q&A session with P&T, Penn was asked whether, as a critical thinker, there were blind spots he had to watch out for in himself. He said that he is a strong libertarian and mentioned Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand and that tries to keep a critical perspective on his ideas or words to that effect.

And their TV show Bullshit is great! Watch it!

Ed-and-Teller-1.jpg picture by edwhudgins

Ed-and-Teller-1.jpg picture by edwhudgins

Post 5

Friday, June 27, 2008 - 11:51am

BTW - congratulations on the book. I look forward to getting a copy next week.

Post 6

Saturday, June 28, 2008 - 12:48am

Dr. Hudgins,

Did you get to *speak* with Teller? :-)

Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II

Post 7

Saturday, June 28, 2008 - 1:51am

Of yes! You can probably find some youtube clips of P&T speaking at past TAM events. By the way, after their Vegas show, which I catch whenever I'm out their, they stick around in the hall and chat with the audience. Nice guys!

Post 8

Saturday, June 28, 2008 - 9:29pm

I've been a huge fan of Penn & Teller's ever since those days in the '90s when they hosted "Monstervision" marathons on the cable channel TNT. And I love Bullshit!, so their appreciation for Ayn Rand is particularly cool.

I think my dream debate would be a public debate between Penn Jillette and Religious Rightwinger Dinesh D'Souza on the cosmological arguments for the existence of God.

I've been watching D'Souza's debates against atheists on YouTube (while promoting his new book What's So Great About Christianity), and I noticed that D'Souza's atheist opponents almost always let him get away with saying silly things. For instance, D'Souza invokes Immanuel Kant to argue that reason is no better than religious faith, because you can't be certain that your own senses give you accurate information about the real world. And Christopher Hitchens lets that slide. And I thought, "Penn Jillette wouldn't have let D'Souza get away with that!"

And a Penn/D'Souza debate would be really funny. I remember when Penn went on The Colbert Report. Usually when a free-market advocate appears on the Colbert show, Stephen Colbert ridicules the free-marketer with his sarcastic schtick (saying something like, "I'm a libertarian because, like you, I think the poor are just lazy bums"), and the free-marketer gets flustered. But when Penn was on the show, it was Penn who acted weird and ultimately took control in the second half of the interview. Both Part 1 and Part 2 of that Colbert interview are online.

Post 9

Saturday, June 28, 2008 - 10:00pm