Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/home.do

I figure now is the best time to post this one. They kicked off their seventh season just a few weeks ago and they're still going strong.

The idea behind the show is to tackle a topic or organization and expose the truth behind it. They go after the usual suspects such as Astrology, War On Drugs, Profanity, Hypnosis, etc. However, they also go after a number of topics that are all but universally supported, such as Recycling, College, the Obesity Epidemic, etc.

This post is coming with a disclaimer, though. I don't always agree with them or support their stance on certain topics. It is considered a documentary show, but it is by no means unbiased. They take a certain stance on a topic and tend to make the other side look deliberately bad to either support their stance or just for comedic effect. So the show is always to be taken with a grain of salt. What this show does do, though, is give you the side of the story that you're not likely to hear. This is a show to not be taken totally on face value, but to give you a unique perspective on a number of topics, and allow it to serve as a jumping-off point into the topic if you do want to learn more about it.

I have to be fair. You're not getting that much out of this week's link. You'll be able to watch some brief video clips, and usually the most recent episode, but other than that, this link is really just meant to make you aware of a quality show that fits in here. The first six seasons are out on DVD, or you can download them from iTunes.

The Daily Show/The Colbert Report

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

http://www.colbertnation.com/home

Blow these shows off if you want as being for (as Bill O'Reilly put it) "stoned slackers," but for nearly a decade now, the people behind these shows have gone above and beyond being mere political satire. They have been instrumental in exposing some of the ludicrous actions of the major news networks, the lies of the Bush Administration, the failures of Congress, and have had some of the best guests with some of the most interesting debates I've ever seen on national television. I won't tag this is as a news posting, but what these shows really are are infotainment, which can be one of the most powerful tools in the spread of information. They can take news segments from the day or the week and spit it back at you as funny and hard-hitting as Dr. Strangelove. Of course, always take these shows with a grain of salt. They're not news, so they're certainly biased. They are both left leaning in their philosophies, but they happened to also be owned by Viacom (one of the big media corporations).

The main reason I post the links to their websites is that you can watch nearly every single thing they've ever aired--updated daily--and some things that weren't aired including longer, unedited interviews and extra segments.