Penn & Teller: Bull! 3x6

1. My name is Penn Jillette.

2. This is my partner, Teller.

3. When we get out of high school.

4. Notice I didn't say graduated.

5. We really wanted to be hosts of a skeptical TV show called bullshit.

6. Unfortunately, at the time, there was no university

7. that could prepare us properly for that job.

8. But now there is.

9. Everybody, please repeat after me.

10. And then there's this asshole altogether.

11. And then there's this asshole.

12. Very good. Let's try one at a time. If we try there.

13. And then there's this asshole. Oh, good. On the this. Very good.

14. You give it a try.

15. And then there's this asshole.

16. A little more scorn than this.

17. And then there's this asshole.

18. Beautiful, Pretty cool, Problem is,

19. most other universities, in fact, college, as you know it.

20. It's bullshit.

21. I find them

22. so they can get.

23. And it.

24. I mean, who?

25. Do you.

26. College.

27. Behind these ivy covered walls.

28. Earnest young men and women are busy exploring complex

29. ideas, theories and philosophies.

30. And, well, enrich them as people expand their understanding of the world

31. around them and teach them important skills in order to,

32. advance in life.

33. Till I went to college.

34. When I met him, he was teaching Latin in a new Jersey high school.

35. I didn't go to college.

36. I was a street juggler in whatever city I happened to be in.

37. If you were looking at us 35 years ago, you've been reasonably certain

38. that one of us was going to waste his life.

39. Then Tyler quit his bullshit job.

40. Things were looking up for him ever since.

41. Now let's meet a cool college babe.

42. I'm Megan. And I'm 18.

43. And I'm a second year at UCLA.

44. To see what college is like nowadays,

45. we gave Megan a camera and asked her to keep a video diary.

46. That's why the picture looks so shitty.

47. Here's Megan putting on her makeup.

48. Here's Megan gossiping with her sorority sisters like he or she is studying.

49. Who's trying to go to sleep.

50. And hears begging, and her friend's building a beer bar.

51. This is what we. Made the other day.

52. Finished product right.

53. Here, man. Shop class has changed.

54. This is part of growing up for lots of kids.

55. But why waste four years sitting in classrooms between parties?

56. Hey, parents, just give your kids ten grand

57. and send them to Cabo for six months.

58. Nowadays, you've got to have at least some college.

59. Tony Carnevale, National Center on education and the economy.

60. Impressive title.

61. He even looks like he went to college. Kind of.

62. He's got to have the low down.

63. We live in a society where you don't go anywhere unless you go to college first.

64. Right, right.

65. It's important. What else?

66. The price of living in America has roughly doubled since 1975,

67. but the cost of going to college has increased sevenfold.

68. And it's fucking expensive. We knew that.

69. But is it worth it?

70. 70% of us get into college.

71. Only about 25% of us get a four year degree,

72. and only about 30 to 35% at best.

73. Graduate from a four year, two year school.

74. Wait wait wait.

75. I was always great at math. Hold on, hold on.

76. Most kids go to college and never finish.

77. Exactly.

78. The answer I got.

79. I'm happy with my sucky job.

80. And Jim Carrey, Tom cruise,

81. Richard Branson, Jackie Collins, Bobby Goldberg, Eminem, Joseph Pulitzer,

82. Ray Kroc, Colonel Sanders, counselor Marx, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin,

83. James Randi, Agatha Christie, Mark Twain, Doctor Dre,

84. George Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, and Ernest

85. Hemingway also did well, and none of them went to college.

86. Also, don't ever forget Bill gates is a college dropout.

87. There's a name for a person who educates himself.

88. Autodidact. Only autodidact.

89. You need to know that word. We.

90. We teach ourselves that work.

91. Hey, maybe this guy will know something about college.

92. You should go to college for three reasons.

93. John Katzman, CEO of the Princeton Review.

94. Ooh, fancy pants.

95. Okay, lay them on me. The first one.

96. It's a lot of fun.

97. For years, hanging out with several thousand other kids.

98. That's good.

99. Number two, the job opportunities for Non-College-Educated

100. kids suck and are getting worse. Shit.

101. That's bad.

102. And third, college is a terrific opportunity to explore

103. for a couple of years.

104. Different career paths, different interests.

105. And before you settle in on one.

106. It's lovely to have that chance to explore right?

107. Broaden your horizons like this guy did you know before college?

108. He can only crush Dixie cups, but what do these students think about college?

109. I think there's a very good chance at 25, I could be unemployed on my parents

110. couch.

111. I think it's really important that you have a college education,

112. especially because of the job market right now.

113. Without college, like you don't go as far.

114. Especially now that almost everyone goes to college.

115. I didn't go to college, and I'm extremely successful,

116. and I have a ton of freedom and a great life, and I'm very flexible

117. schedule, and I travel all over the world and I love what I'm doing.

118. Fine for her, but what about beer cam guy?

119. So I'm going to be successful.

120. I'm going to do a great institution right here.

121. I have a degree from this place.

122. I can go wherever the hell I want. Get it, get it in there.

123. 25th year.

124. Get out of my fucking year, you dumb ass ass.

125. Stop hitting me to college.

126. Should be a place where you explore,

127. where you take chances, where you find out what other people are like.

128. Because people speak their minds.

129. Our universities are not that.

130. And it's a tragedy that they're not.

131. Fuck. Here we go. A cold, hard truth.

132. This is Allen course,

133. and he's the founder of fire, a group that fights for student rights.

134. He believes the First Amendment is at risk on college campuses.

135. No kidding.

136. What is happening on our campuses?

137. In the name of progress.

138. And social engineering is the enemy of liberty.

139. And it's also the enemy of American progress and rights.

140. and in mutual respect, that any deep and significant level.

141. In college, you should hear

142. all sorts of good and bad ideas and play with them, see if they fit.

143. That's part of what learning is.

144. But that's not happening.

145. Colleges have become meccas of politically correct bullshit.

146. Where? What do you say?

147. And maybe even what you think is being controlled by Antifa

148. freedom weasels, colleges and the ideas are supposed to represent

149. are being crushed like beer cans, crushed by one word,

150. a word students are brainwashed into repeating like a Harry Krishna chant.

151. Diversity. Diversity.

152. Diversity. Diversity. Diversity. Diversity.

153. We visited a college fair where the recruiters were pushing

154. diversity big time.

155. We have an excellent, diverse campus.

156. Diversity is important.

157. the days of just saying

158. my campus is limited to these individuals or those individuals.

159. So this is essentially over.

160. You start to get to know

161. a really a wide variety of people and I think that broadens you as a person.

162. And this girl agrees.

163. Her name is Erica Halverson and she's from Desmet, South Dakota.

164. I came here because I didn't want anyone around here.

165. I was too close to my family, and I wanted to be more diverse.

166. And where did Erica go to get more diversity?

167. Saint Cloud State University in Saint Cloud, Minnesota.

168. We decided to visit this typical Midwestern public

169. university to get to the bottom of this freedom of speech.

170. And maybe we could get diverse.

171. Diversity means awareness and understanding

172. how other people do things differently from you.

173. This is Michael Davis.

174. He's an associate professor of education at Saint Cloud,

175. a diversity specialist, and he has a really cool brain.

176. Saint Cloud State has a lot of problems with racism.

177. Sexism. What here?

178. You know, there's a lot of resources, a lot closet bigots.

179. Saint cloud state, big time.

180. Okay, Michael, give us names and we'll kick some ass.

181. This is a campus, where

182. myth rules reality.

183. and where political correctness is absolutely.

184. So out of control.

185. Oh, I don't believe there is a problem here.

186. I don't I really don't believe that.

187. King Benyon is a professor of economics at Saint Cloud State,

188. and he's trying to defend the right to speak out by saying the other people

189. speaking out are speaking out against students speaking out.

190. We're encouraging them to speak out.

191. We're encouraging them to explore ideas in the process of exploring ideas.

192. They may, on occasion, land on something that is, in fact

193. a homophobic statement, or land on something that is or a racist statement.

194. So it will happen here.

195. But is there a greater incidence of it here?

196. According to Davis, there is.

197. Another name for university is a plantation.

198. It's a plantation.

199. It's just evil.

200. This place is evil.

201. When did all this controversy get started?

202. Maybe it was when someone accused the psychology

203. professors at Saint Cloud State of being racist.

204. That claim alone of the universities split up their department.

205. Ouch. It didn't matter that later

206. the professors were found

207. to have been wholly innocent

208. of any bigotry or prejudice whatsoever.

209. Or maybe it was in 1999 when a student equated a proposed

210. ban of credit card companies on campus to a hypothetical banning of blacks.

211. He was accused by the university president

212. of insensitive, racist speech.

213. We're talking about speech.

214. We're not talking about hitting someone.

215. We're not talking about doing physical harm to someone.

216. We're talking about words that offend.

217. David French is the president of Fire.

218. He hangs out with Allen cause a lot, and they just get crazy.

219. People are so easily offended and they believe that they have a right,

220. if they're offended, to shut the person up, who offends them.

221. Yep. If they offend Michael Davis, they must be silenced.

222. Michael, on the other hand, well, this.

223. Is the worst of the worst.

224. All the students

225. that come here, they're damaged goods before we get them in the classroom.

226. This is a plantation.

227. This is sickening. This place is sick.

228. This is sick.

229. Are we a little donkeys running around?

230. You will be a slave. You will do this.

231. You will do that.

232. Good barbecue, watermelon eating corn.

233. Bad sucking.

234. Uncle Tom's got a handsome mom and Tom working together.

235. This place is hopeless.

236. I don't want one watermelon sucking Tom.

237. Uncle Tom, that his lips are so down.

238. Why don't you use kissing so much? Dan? White ass man.

239. And he's a diversity specialist.

240. And my mother always told me. Don't listen to negative people.

241. What really got Davis is goat or beret.

242. I'd say Cloud State was in 2001, when a ten year position

243. opened up on campus and a Jewish professor pursued it.

244. The person applied for it, didn't get the job,

245. felt like he had been discriminated against and sued.

246. That's when all hell broke loose.

247. Saint cloud has a problem.

248. A theory is problem.

249. Davis and others made sure this latest racist claim and the media attention

250. it garnered put a shitload of PC pressure on the school administrators

251. as if they wanted to shut the school down or something.

252. The plantation should be shut down.

253. But the plantation wasn't shut down in its cultural sensitivity.

254. It decided to pull out the checkbook.

255. One of the first to get a cut.

256. This man.

257. His name is Doctor Edwin Nichols, and there's a lot to say about him,

258. not the least of which is that he desperately needs a piano tuner.

259. For now, all you need to know is that he got a check for $87,000

260. to do a cultural audit of Saint Cloud State.

261. The cultural audit is, in essence, a diagnosis.

262. And what did his diagnosis determine that there was a perception of racism

263. at the school.

264. In response, Saint Cloud State wrote over $1 million in checks

265. every doc with a quack, including a six figure sum for the George Professor alone.

266. And based on the settlement.

267. We've spent an enormous amount of money on a Jewish study center.

268. I don't believe there are even 100 Jewish students on the campus.

269. These absurdities upon absurdities are teaching people

270. that not just common sense,

271. but any semblance of freedom of expression

272. is to be sacrificed on this altar

273. of do not offend.

274. So is Saint Cloud State racist?

275. We asked around campus and as expected, the opinions were all over the map.

276. There's still a lot of racism here. I don't see it.

277. No, it's not true.

278. So basically, who the fuck knows?

279. But how bad can diversity in Saint Cloud State be?

280. When Erica Halvorson teaches hip hop dance?

281. I mean, really, you?

282. Know.

283. Let's head back to UCLA,

284. home of our perky coed Megan, to attend the campus protest of the week.

285. Something about students, workers and fisting. No.

286. We wanted to see if diversity at UCLA extended to political diversity.

287. So we sent this guy to the rally.

288. His name's Aaron, and he's one of our producers.

289. We gave him a sign which the protesters might find offensive.

290. We made him some fliers, and he even came up with his own chant.

291. Two.

292. Four. Six.

293. Eight College student indoctrinate.

294. Not bad.

295. The 300 plus protesters pretty much ignored him.

296. Excuse me.

297. Excuse me.

298. Hey, buddy.

299. But his fliers got to this guy.

300. His face really looks like this guy.

301. Now, listen, it's a very volatile situation, okay?

302. And you have a right to have your agenda to say what you want to say.

303. Free speech. Right. Totally support it.

304. Yeah. For your safety.

305. For the safety of our members and everybody who's out here.

306. Lastly, you come over here with these guys.

307. There's 300 of them and one of us, and he's worried about their safety.

308. He's either a pussy or he thinks he recognizes Aaron from Drunken Master two.

309. Okay.

310. And if one goes, gentlemen, nobody's going to hassle you if you stay over here.

311. It's going to be a problem. Okay. There's going to be a problem.

312. What's up with that?

313. That sounds like a threat. He's definitely a pussy.

314. Come on. Aaron.

315. You're a producer for a show called bullshit,

316. and you get a motherfucking constitution on your side.

317. Show those boss. Tell him. Tell him.

318. Tell him his pussy style is no match for your snake fist.

319. You do that. Thank you.

320. Aaron is now our receptionist.

321. Diversity requirements at UCLA are just wrong.

322. Is it the liberal agenda?

323. The kids at the rally couldn't

324. imagine anyone would show up with an opposing opinion.

325. We wondered why.

326. 80% of our colleges and universities restrict speech

327. in ways that the government could not do

328. in the larger society.

329. Colleges can also limit free speech with something called speech codes.

330. At the University of New Hampshire, students can be convicted of harassment

331. for unwelcome remarks made in a person's presence

332. at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

333. And if you violated their sex offense policy, if you use terms of endearment,

334. shouldn't the public university follow the free speech rules

335. of our fucking country?

336. So let's really talk about this.

337. Everyone is offended by something that's good.

338. People should be fucking judgmental.

339. They should fucking speak out against things they hate or split.

340. They should just.

341. No offense, ma'am.

342. If you're offended by coarse language, get away from it.

343. Look around you.

344. If you were a vegan to be offended by our sausage and eggs, you'd be offended

345. by our leather belt, our our shoes, and eat any animal products at all.

346. And that's okay.

347. You can.

348. Now, that was fine.

349. Mostly nonviolent protest.

350. And now it's over with no government interference whatsoever.

351. Make your point.

352. We live in a marketplace of ideas.

353. Just speak up.

354. Some people want to protect trees.

355. If they're persuasive, we'll give up our chairs.

356. The table is plastic, but some folks hate anything made from petroleum.

357. There are people that feel that we shouldn't

358. use products from countries which don't have workers unions.

359. That takes up no coffee.

360. And then they tell stellar shoes.

361. And most of our clothing.

362. It's a good thing that all the fruit of the loom is made in jolly old England.

363. Teller and I are easy to offend.

364. Some clergy claim the tsunami in South Asia was a test by a loving God

365. to shoot us.

366. And I was offended by that empty, stupid, mystical escapism.

367. Lord of the rings. I didn't want it banned.

368. I just did not want to see parts two and three.

369. It didn't take government interference.

370. We're all offended all the time, and we don't have a fucking right

371. not to be offended.

372. A free country is a marketplace of ideas.

373. And college should be more free, not less.

374. Now, Harry told my fucking take ass.

375. The lesson that is taught

376. is that people have a right never to be offended.

377. That is a terrible and dangerous lesson to teach.

378. But why would colleges

379. want to use diversity in speech codes to minimize free speech?

380. When the left got into power.

381. It closes the door behind it.

382. David Horowitz, students for Academic freedom.org.

383. Get them.

384. Dave Horowitz has made it his mission to take on universities

385. that he believes infringe on students rights to a political agenda.

386. The university has been redefined.

387. From being.

388. An institution dedicated to the disinterested pursuit of knowledge.

389. To an institution for social change.

390. That's the definition. Of a political party.

391. And which party?

392. Well, it's the libertarians, the Whigs, or the cornbread sucking uncle Tom party.

393. Who does that. Leave?

394. A lot of universities have served as sort

395. of a training ground for for leftists.

396. No. Dan Flynn, author, intellectual morons.

397. According to Dan and a shitload of statistics.

398. American academia is run by the Democratic Party.

399. If you look at the surveys done of the political affiliations

400. of college professors, the Rocky Mountain News,

401. had it 31 to 1 Democrats, two Republican at the University of Colorado.

402. Similar surveys at Dartmouth and Cornell.

403. It's 25 to 1 at UNC Chapel Hill.

404. Ten Democrats to every one Republican.

405. Stanford 9 to 1.

406. If you look at the history departments, these five schools

407. combined, there were 137 Democrats and just three Republicans.

408. And the Kremlin was more diverse than that.

409. If we were going to find out why, we realized we had to go to the top

410. to the college professor, considered by many to be the smartest man in academia.

411. Noam Chomsky.

412. Chomsky teaches linguistics at MIT.

413. He's a fawned over cultural hero of the left due to his protests

414. of the Vietnam War and virtually every action of the United States since.

415. So at first reading, he sounds like someone we'd like.

416. Vietnam was way American bullshit.

417. How the fuck do we get Noam Chomsky on our show?

418. You're right.

419. Professor Chomsky.

420. We told them we'd introduce them to Kirstie Alley,

421. the smartest man in academia. My aching ass.

422. He fell for. It.

423. So is there any validity to the claim by some

424. that campuses have become bastions of left wing groupthink, brainwashing?

425. Campuses have become, what was phrase,

426. campuses of the past tense of left wing groups.

427. Groupthink, brainwashing.

428. I suppose you can find maybe 2% of people

429. on campus of whom that might be true. 2%.

430. What the hell is Noam talking about?

431. After all, we've shown that Minnesota college the statistics and he admits

432. it only 2%, 2% of the number of people who like peanut butter on their pizza,

433. 2% is how many people wear Star Trek underwear.

434. Chomsky wasn't being upfront with us.

435. And now that I think about it, why would he be?

436. Our show is called bullshit.

437. And he's supposed to be the smartest man in academia.

438. He can't show his cards right away.

439. Better to keep everyone unsuspecting.

440. the slippery bastard.

441. Just look at him

442. wearing that crafty smile and that non-threatening sweater.

443. He's ruthless.

444. Goddamn it. Good thing our crew packs heat.

445. Let's get back to the Saint Cloud story.

446. Oh, no, not that doofus.

447. You want one? Anybody want one?

448. No, I want you want one.

449. There. That's better.

450. You remember Erica Halverson?

451. And then there's this asshole.

452. Pretty good,

453. You remember him?

454. He did the best PC cultural audit for 87 K.

455. That turned Saint Cloud State upside down.

456. Well, let him introduce himself now.

457. We do this in every show, but this one is our favorite.

458. I am Doctor Edwin Nichols, clinical industrial psychologist

459. specializing in organizational development

460. for systemic congruence

461. through cultural competent leadership

462. for survival in the global economy.

463. His business card is on OTC tag.

464. Edwin Nichols has been peddling his insidious bullshit in colleges

465. all over the country, from North Carolina state to Wisconsin to Harvard.

466. He's the personification of what's wrong on campuses today.

467. Still, he did let us visit him at his home in Washington, DC,

468. even though he was preparing for a fondue party.

469. Well, I have some friends coming over.

470. And don't worry, this won't take long.

471. We've got it down to a science.

472. The colleges are the place for major formation.

473. If you don't put input into it, then you won't get out

474. the product that you want.

475. Did he just call students product? Wow.

476. That offends us more than his humidity ravaged piano.

477. Nichols runs diversity seminars.

478. Today, we have been looking at the philosophical aspects

479. of cultural differences.

480. Spewing the most incredibly inane gibberish we have ever heard.

481. This valor makes the outstretched arm give the value for pi.

482. And you can imagine how much inane gibberish we've come across on a show

483. called bullshit.

484. I mean, we did a whole fucking episode on the Bible.

485. So what does Nichols teach?

486. Well, we'd call it racism.

487. That genetically races are culturally different,

488. that whites have to be somewhere on time.

489. Hence that on the social beat, on curcumin.

490. Why are you right.

491. That professors and managers should understand

492. if blacks are not somewhere on time?

493. Steve got late.

494. He says, I'm here now, baby.

495. And as for Native Americans.

496. The highest value lies in oneness with the Great Spirit.

497. So if you have those things

498. that are on two legs or on four legs,

499. flippers and fins, wings

500. and feathers, the essence of their belief system.

501. Told you.

502. But how operation systems is a reality for them?

503. Because we never do anything

504. that would be disproportionate to what is necessary to survive.

505. Colleges and universities are elevating chatty cafes

506. like Edwin Nichols to the level of Wise man for hire.

507. His suggestion that racial stereotypes are caused by

508. genetics would certainly not be refuted by the Klan or Hitler.

509. Sometimes people come up to you and say, you know, I knew I was different,

510. but I didn't.

511. I couldn't put it into words.

512. We can. It's bullshit.

513. Now, it's one thing to nail the dumbest guy in academia,

514. but what about the man they call the smartest back in the MIT?

515. We asked Doctor Chomsky about speech codes and the First Amendment.

516. He defends speech codes by citing the example

517. of putting up a Nazi poster in your bedroom.

518. My freedom of speech doesn't extend it for,

519. And there's something analogous that happens inside of college.

520. the kinds of

521. speech, behavior and

522. various actions that take place

523. are entering into the home of the student.

524. Notice how he slipped in that word.

525. Hope. It's their home now.

526. The college environment is their home.

527. Nobody. Right.

528. If the college were 100% private.

529. But the ones we're talking about just aren't.

530. What universities are saying by these codes,

531. special protections and double standards

532. to women, to blacks, to Hispanics,

533. to gay and lesbian students is

534. you are too weak to live with freedom.

535. You are too weak to live with the First Amendment.

536. If someone tells you you are too weak to live with freedom,

537. they have turned you into a child.

538. So our show was almost done and it was time to track down Megan.

539. We had to get our camera back. Cheese.

540. What a waste of time. That experiment was.

541. But then Megan wanted to say something about diversity.

542. I know what people think when they meet me.

543. And I might be young, but that doesn't mean that I'm naive to.

544. When you have all these different diversities,

545. people of different ethnicities, cultures

546. grew up in different places, different opinions, different political groups.

547. There's going to be conflict. There's going to be controversy.

548. And that's what makes college.

549. That's what the fuck, Megan.

550. Baby, if only these guys would step down out of their ivory towers and meet

551. our friend Megan, the most brilliant makeup putting on sorority sister.

552. Godspeed. Final exams.

553. Study in Beerbohm building.

554. Amateur filmmaker Evan.

555. Americans believe everybody deserves freedom to move up in the world.

556. That's a great thing.

557. But moving up means spending four years in a beer

558. commercial run by politeness police.

559. Maybe you should think twice.

560. Decide on your own how you want to use those four peak years of your life.

561. Don't go to college because you think you should

562. go because you love learning or because you love drinking.

563. Or maybe you get some specific training you need.

564. And if you do, go speak your mind and don't let anyone shut you up.

565. And don't pick college based on diversity.

566. Going. You'll find plenty of diversity in there.

567. In the real world. Take a look at our crew.

568. There are no quote us.

569. There's no diversity experts.

570. We don't care.

571. Anyone feels about to bet or the color of their skin.

572. Of course me.

573. We did have to hire

574. a couple of Asian extras because we didn't have any really on the crew.

575. It did look good, but we like these guys.

576. Maybe they'll stay and have lunch after the taping.

577. You just acting like you were looking at it out there for.

578. What do you think of Erika Halverson?

579. Don't know who it is.

580. Your loss.

581. No. To the job.

582. Just to try to.

583. Do all.

584. Can I try to?