Starting Tonight: Penn & Teller Tell a Lie
Tune in live tonight (Wednesday, October 5) at 10pm ET/PT for Penn & Teller's new series: Penn & Teller Tell a Lie on Discovery. In this slightly shaky video from Comic Con, you can see Teller talk (!) about the upcoming series:
There's a longer preview video after the jump.
It's Like MythBusters, But With Lies
The PR says:
In each episode, aided by a series of extraordinary visual stunts, Penn & Teller will reveal ... unbelievable stories like: • How were five people shot by their dogs since 1990? • Can you lift a 5,000 pound car with a human hair? • How did ancient aboriginal Australians create a cure for snoring? • Can you land a plane if the rudders go out? • What music causes alligators to have sex (clue #1 - it's not Barry White!)? • What happens to Teller when he's lowered into a tank of piranhas? And one of them won't be true, as Discovery's audience across multiple platforms decode which is the cock-and-bull story, and interact with the program to stop these wild anti-magicians in their tracks. Only at the end of each show will Penn & Teller's lies be exposed.
This series is a lot of fun -- you get to watch scary/weird/goofy stories re-enacted and tested (much like on MythBusters), and you vote online, in realtime, on which story you think is a lie. (Or, if you're a fan of the guys' previous TV work, "bulls**t!") You can either use the Discovery website or their iPhone and iPad apps (available through the same link...along with plenty of valid complaints that there's no Android app). While I haven't been able to play with the live voting yet, I can see how this adds an interesting social media aspect to the show (technologists call this "co-viewing" -- watching a show with a computer or smart phone in hand). The nature of the show and the voting also makes spoilers much more dangerous -- if you DVR the episode, watch it soon or the lie is likely to be spoiled!
Here's a preview from the first episode, airing tonight:
So, check it out tonight at 10pm ET/PT and see if you can spot the lie!