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Penn Jillette
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this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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I'm really glad to see this.
Penn Jillette played a big role in who I am today. Bullshit! helped shape my skepticism in my late teens, and I was fascinated with magic even earlier than that. I went on to adopt some libertarian views and listened to his podcast for years, but I grew away from him during COVID because I was seeing how his position was harming people. I always thought he was a smart respectable guy, so seeing him reflect and change is heartwarming.
I've been rewatching Bullshit! recently and found myself disagreeing with him quite a lot. I used to like the show a lot, and the same as you it helped build my skepticism. Some episodes are still good, some have aged terribly.
Which episodes?
They had a pretty shitty take on wealth redistribution
Also compared social security to a pyramid scheme
I don't love their stance on gun regulations
They do have some pretty based takes though. They're against the death penalty, and they've always been right about vaccines
Incredibly based take on drug regulations as well
Yikes, I haven't seen the wealth distro one in a while.
I'm still firmly in the 2nd amendment camp, especially given the current climate.
Thanks for the links
Yeah, I'm of two minds on 2a. On the one hand, in a country where anyone could have a gun, everyone should, and if they start trying to round up political dissidents to put in camps, I should hope that enough of us have guns that we can successfully prevent it.
On the other hand, we are the only country where school shootings regularly happen. A 16 year old kid was shot to death at a high school two days ago, and I didn't even know about it until I looked it up.
This is the one topic where I do not know where I stand. I don't know if the very real, very present innocent people dying on a regular basis is worth the potential to resist tyranny, should the need arise.
Second hand smoke and the Walmart episodes I disagreed pretty heavily one.
The college one had some fallacies in their arguments.