Penn and Teller at home in cynic city

Frazier Moore

Friday, Feb. 7, 2003 | 9:47 a.m.

NEW YORK -- For their new Showtime series, Penn and Teller chose a title that proclaimed their skepticism for such things as weight-loss products, feng shui and creationism; for end-of-the-world forecasts and the purity claims by bottled-water marketers; for ESP, sex aids and "second-hand smoke."

Of course, the title they arrived at -- a more graphic version of "poppycock" -- isn't usually found in a family newspaper. No matter. Viewers up for a weekly dose of artful debunking are urged to watch what will here be designated "Penn & Teller: (Poppycock)!"

"We're gonna hunt down as many purveyors of (poppycock) as we can," pledged Penn Jillette (the tall, ponytailed one) when the series began its 13-episode run two weeks ago.

He and Teller (the mute one with the single name) are off to a rambunctious start.

Already, they have tackled alternative medicine of varying extremes, including magnet therapy and chiropractic.

Another episode targeted people who claim to communicate with the dead. It cast a jaundiced eye on TV psychics John Edwards and James Van Praagh, after which Penn and Teller presented their own convincing "spiritualist" -- who turned out to be an admitted fake.

Airing Fridays at 11 p.m., "(Poppycock)!" this week blows the whistle on such Penn-and-Teller-decreed (poppycock) as UFOs and alien abductions.

"(Poppycock)!" has no time for what is Penn and Teller's forte: magic, which they perform nightly at The Rio.

On the other hand, their magic act has always championed intellectual honesty. Costumed in their gray three-piece suits, Penn and Teller strive to make the audience see how magic is, so to speak, easily explainable (poppycock).

Sassy secularists in the priesthood of magicians, they do everything they can to undermine their brethren's baton-and-black-cape mystique. This includes a most heretical practice: revealing how they perform certain tricks, blowing the whistle on themselves as a way of proving that magic, after all, isn't magic. Just fun.

Penn and Teller are, in short, skeptics promoting skepticism.

"There's always been that point of view to our work," Teller says in a recent interview. "This show is just a chance to make it very explicit."

Very, very explicit. As host and narrator, Penn uses extremely harsh language to describe the people whom "(Poppycock)!" sets out to debunk.

Maybe he would have preferred to brand them "liars," "quacks" and "rip-off artists." But such precision could get a guy sued, he explains on the show. Far preferable, or so the lawyers advised, are more freewheeling terms of character assassination, which slander laws don't usually prohibit.

"So forgive all the (poppycock) language," said Penn on the premiere episode. "We're trying to talk about the truth without spending the rest of our lives in court because of litigious (unpleasant people)."

During Penn's excited outbursts, the seemingly pint-size Teller stands by silently, often wearing the sly smile that seems borrowed from a Dr. Seuss character.

That is Teller's shtick. But outside of the act, he displays a loquacious streak (and, at 5 feet, 9 inches, normal height, despite being dwarfed whenever standing by the 6-foot-6 Penn).

"There's a movement of people who want to look into dubious phenomena with a critical eye," says Teller, further explaining the colorful language, "but this movement has been very polite, for lack of a better word. The idea of our TV series is to look into areas that people believe in that may not be true, but with the same passion that previously only the believers have demonstrated."

"Television as a medium does not care about the truth, it only cares about the temperature of the performance," Penn chimes in. "What you've always had on skeptics' shows is someone who's well-mannered, has all his ducks in a row, going up against a nut. On TV, the nut will always win.

"But I can promise you I'm as bum-nutty as anybody you've ever seen on the other side."

So consider the style of "Penn & Teller: (Poppycock)!" as craziness deployed in the name of reason as Penn introduces "whack-job passion to the side we believe in."

"It will alienate a portion of the audience, I'm sorry to say," Teller sighs. "I don't think we'll have many nuns tuning in. And I suspect that nuns would benefit from knowing the truth about bottled water or reflexology!"