Serious Inquiries Only

We welcome back Dr. Eric Jaffe to help us understand a really cool, groundbreaking scientific discovery! Our brains are not one organ! Turns out your forebrain and your hindbrain might be two completely separate lineages that never actually came from each other, more like two kids in a trench coat than one continuous evolution. Why does that matter for ALS research? And how far back in evolution d...

How does AI use affect learning? You’d be surprised how much we already know. Dr. Jenessa Seymour takes us through the research on screen use, metacognition, cognitive offloading, and some recent papers Sources: Clinton, V. (2019). Reading from paper compared to screens: A systematic review and meta-analysis . Journal of Research in Reading, 42, 288-325. Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L.S., Miller, K.,...

Kids are weird, like really weird, but in a fun way? Dr. Jenessa Seymour is back to tell us about some classic child development paradigms that really need to be reevaluated. Depending on when you learned about these experiments, you were either taught that they were the gospel truth, with established ages where kids can and cannot pass these tests, and major consequences for late development, or...

You've seen the headline: AI "solved" one of math's Millennium Prize problems. Thomas and Jenessa (here as a friend, not an expert) are joined by David Souther, a software engineer and LLM researcher, who's SO annoyed about it. Why did he answer Jenessa's text in all caps? And what's the deal with a rushed phone call between OpenAI and a math professor? Are you an expert in something and want to b...

Dr. Tania Lombrozo , professor of psychology at Princeton University (affiliated with its philosophy and cognitive science departments), joins Thomas to discuss her forthcoming book Why We Ask Why : The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand . Why are humans so driven to explain things, but only some things? Why does understanding go beyond just being able to predict? And what ha...

David O'Brien , higher education policy scholar with the California Community Colleges System, is back to answer the question Thomas posed last time: why is college so expensive? They get into tuition vs. total cost of attendance, the dirty little secret of private university pricing, administrative bloat, the amenities arms race, and why the people loudest about college costs are likely well-off,...

I cannot stop thinking about Cody from Some More News's video in which he could not stop thinking about Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Cody is INCREDIBLY sure that you're an idiot incapable of watching movies or consuming art if you don't agree with his conception of what the ending of Brand New Day meant. The problem is... Cody gets about a billion things wrong and his arguments are terrible. This wa...

... and other autism/ADHD research! So pleased to have Dr. Jenessa Seymour back - this time with a variety of studies in the Autism and ADHD realms. Jurek, L., Duchier, A., Gauld, C., Henault, L., Giroudon, C., Fourneret, P., … Nourredine, M. (2025). Sensory processing in individuals with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder compared with control populations: A systematic review and meta-analy...

Part 2! Dr. Eric Jaffe returns to actually treat the cancer this time: why radiation is basically catching your kid smoking and making him finish the carton, how CRISPR turns your own T cells into an assassin squad, and why oncolytic viruses are just Jurassic World Dominion for tumors. Haven't heard Part 1 yet? Start there or you'll be lost. Mentioned: CAR-T therapy RAS inhibitor drugs Oncolytic v...

Part 1! Dr. Eric Jaffe , the biology teacher who keeps naming proteins after cartoon characters, returns for a two-part cancer deep dive. Today: what cancer actually is at the cellular level, why elephants barely get it, why whales get it even less, and why the "they're hiding the cure" conspiracy falls apart the second you learn who actually funds the research. Mentioned: Peto's paradox HeLa cell...

Part 2! Thomas is joined again by David O'Brien , a higher education policy scholar with the California Community Colleges system, to finish dismantling The Daily's take on Trump's student loan crackdown. Reagan, Pell Grants, and decades of quiet state defunding all get their due, plus a theory on why tuition keeps climbing that has nothing to do with cosmetology degrees. Mentioned: The Daily coll...

Thomas is joined by David O'Brien , a higher education policy scholar who works for the California Community Colleges system, to pick apart Trump's new rules threatening to cut off student loans and Pell grants from "low-earning" degree programs, and to fact-check The Daily's recent take on the same story. The real history runs through Reagan, Prop 13, and decades of quiet austerity nobody on that...

Thanks so much to the folks at SkeptiCal for inviting me! Though the talk does deal with the Butler shooting, I thought some way different stuff for this including a ridiculously overwrought hypothetical, my favorite kind! And, I found a Young Turks video where they are apparently Joe Rogan now!

The "nice guy" is the villain. We watched Obsession and cannot stop thinking about it. It has so much to say about gender, consent, "nice guys" and more. And it scarred Lydia for life. WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS. Are you an expert in something and want to be on the show? Apply here ! Please support the show on Patreon! You get ad-free episodes, early episodes, and other bonus content! https://www....

Thomas is joined by Dr. Eric Jaffe , biologist, dinosaur enthusiast, and high school biology teacher, for a conversation that starts with a deceptively simple question: what are biological definitions actually doing ? It turns out that biology is far more like history than math, and that difference has enormous consequences for anyone trying to weaponize phrases like "the biological definition of...

Thomas is joined by  Dr. Jenessa Seymour  to dig into the brain science behind a surprisingly strange phenomenon: why do astronauts who spent just nine days in space need weeks of physical therapy to walk normally again? The answer turns out to involve ancient calcium carbonate ear stones, the same material crabs use for shells, a multi-layered sensory system your brain is constantly running witho...

The history of disability rights is often treated as a modern story, but what if that framing misses centuries of earlier, more complicated history? This week, Thomas is joined by Professor Sari Altschuler, Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University, to explore her new book Before Disability: A History of American Citizenship . In the book, Professor Altschuler traces how disability...

Continuing the discussion of the CNN Rape Academy article. It gets even worse. And also, how our information environment is ruined and getting ruineder.

You might have seen the CNN article from a while back entitled Exposing a global ‘rape academy’ . While most of the article is technically true, the broad takeaway that virtually everyone had (including me) was wildly, irresponsibly false. Even if you came across debunks of this, there's a good chance that I'm debunking this even more than you've seen. I don't think people have fully grasped how m...

We continue the pruning of idiotic Butler Shooting conspiracy theories. Once we establish the facts using actual sources, what room is there left for a conspiracy or staging theory?

It wasn't staged. None of them were staged. Yes Trump was shot in the ear. I thought you all were doing a bit, but apparently you weren't. This isn't good and you should stop doing it, please. In discussing this current shooting, I found that way too many of you think that it was a hoax and even more think that Trump wasn't shot in the ear. So, let's go through the Butler shooting and see why YES...

Well, what do you know - it's a day that ends in y so the internet has a woman to hate. You might have seen some of the chatter about child-hating Chappell Roan lately, and it's just so depressing every single time one of these hate campaigns rears its ugly head. Lydia joins the show as resident Chappell Roan fan to discuss what actually happened, and why society so quickly jumps on these opportun...

  Popular media will tell you that placebos, inert inactive substances taken as if they’re medication, can work miracles. …Placebos don’t “work”. But what does that even mean? And if that’s true, why would we include a placebo group in a study? Is there anything remotely like a “true”’placebo effect, where belief in a medication could influence the body? Jenessa walks us through scientific study d...

Everyone's favorite biologist and dinosaur enthusiast Dr. Eric Jaffe is back! Project Hail Mary is a very fun, and quite good, sciency movie that is cleaning up at the box office right now. You should see it! Eric is going to take us through the biology of the movie (and book) and what it gets right, and what it gets quite wrong.

“Yes we can” vote and protest our way out of authoritarianism. It’s a classic case of academic literature never making it to mainstream consumption. Hang around social media long enough and you’ll hear that we’re basically screwed. A complete fascist take over is either extremely likely, inevitable, or it’s already here. And there’s not much we can do about it. Unless some other country invades us...